It was still Day 8 of the extension, my one full day in Xi'an. I had decided on four things I wanted to see, and using those single code words, they were: Terracotta, Pagoda, Walls, Mosque, and we were up to Pagoda. We drove back into Xi'an, to its southeastern part, as you can confirm when you copy and paste our Xi'an map into another window and keep it for the rest of this posting:

http://www.onlinechinatours.com/uploads/city/city20110426f0b37.jpg

Great Wild Goose Pagoda    We arrived at an attractive, rather upscale compound. I'd assumed the pagoda was free-standing somehow, but it's actually part of the attractive Da Ci'en Temple campus (C=TS, the apostrophe separates syllables: da tsi.en). Copy and paste into two separate windows two items, neither of which I can link directly to. First is a so-so map I found:

http://www.chinatouristmaps.com/assets/images/travelmapst/Map-of-Dayan-Pagoda.jpg

The heading "Dayan" for "Great Wild Goose" we discussed in the last posting, including the character meaning "great, large, big" that looks like a person with stretched-out arms. Note the location of the spectacular Front Gate, specially pointed out on the map, plus the usual Bell and Drum Towers. The gift shop I used is in that large area to the right of the Bell Tower. Notice the park-like area among various outbuildings, then the temple area, with the pagoda at the back. The second item to link to is a very nice aerial photo:

http://oldimg.echinacities.com/Upload/2012/9/4/201209043006417.jpg

As soon as we arrived here at the temple compound I liked where we were immediately. In this picture you can see that it was a park-like, serene campus with statues and small outbuildings among the trees. We had just jumped ahead 8.5 centuries, having left the Qin Dynasty's Terracotta Army, two centuries BCE, and entered the Tang Dynasty's temple and pagodas, 6.5 centuries into the CE. It's important to realize this isn't all "old stuff", but that we were jumping between three widely spread dynasties during the course of a single day.

In this picture you can also see where we entered through that large Front Gate structure that resembles a small building, open to the front and back. It was here that I looked up to see the spectacular ceiling. We've seen this sort of colorful decoration in past pictures in China, where a riot of color is interwoven into a magnificent ceiling or an under-the-eaves design, including bright yellow, green, blue, red. This ceiling to my mind set the tone for the whole visit here in this Tang world.

Da Ci'en Temple was once the largest temple in the Tang Dynasty, but today covers only one-seventh of the area it once did. Today there is only this one courtyard, but in its heyday, it had ten comparable courtyards in total. Of course, though, the city of Chang'an was also larger than Xi'an. The temple was built in 648, four years before the pagoda in 652, by a crown prince in memory of his mother. I've seen two translations for the name—I go with Great Mercy and Kindness.

Mr Li explained that the Pagoda was built to store Buddhist artifacts, relics, and documents, and also for translation purposes. That satisfied me at the time, but sparked curiosity, and I've now gotten a lot more from post-trip research.

It all goes back to a man named Xuanzang (X=SH, Z=TS: shuan.tsang), who lived circa 602 – 664, right in the time frame we're looking at. He was a Chinese Buddhist monk who at the same time was a traveler, scholar, and translator. He is known because of his 17-year trip to India (Map drawn by Alexander Cunningham in 1871), the cradle of Buddhism. He collected various artifacts, such as statues of Buddha, relics of Buddha, and many, many Buddhist documents to bring back to China. Click on the map to see how he started in Chang'an and traveled the Silk Road through the Hexi Corridor (Hotan is on the way) to Kashgar and beyond, then swung south into India, which he traveled end to end. (It's difficult to imagine how he transported all that he acquired back to China, enough to fill a pagoda, and I don't think FedEx was in business yet.)

[I see an interesting parallel between Xuanzang and Marco Polo. They both traveled the Silk Road and Hexi Corridor, Marco Polo to stay in China for 24 years and to bring knowledge back to Europe, and Xuanzang to stay in India for 17 years and to bring knowledge back to China. It's also worth noting that, while we usually consider how the Silk Road connected to Europe, we don't always realize how its eastern end also served as a conduit into China from India. In any case, this further shows how the Hexi Corridor was the western entryway into China, a back door at the very least, approaching on being a front door. Ponder that as we sit up on our perch on the Tibetan Plateau watching all the migrating foot traffic in the Hexi Corridor below.]

Xuanzang became the first abbot of Da Ci'en Temple, and he was the one who supervised the building of the Dayan Pagoda, or the Great Wild Goose Pagoda within it. While it had a number of functions, the major ones were: ▲ to house the statues and relics he'd brought back from India; ▲ to serve as a library for the religious documents he had brought back that now belonged to the adjoining temple; and a language function, ▲ to serve as a translation site for those documents, which were all in Sanskrit. He had 50 translators translate them into Chinese, which ended up over time totaling 1,335 volumes. This was a major step forward in the history of translation.

We walked the grounds up from the Front Gate with that gorgeous ceiling, and I was able to appreciate the garden-like campus filled with outbuildings and monuments (Photo by Dennis Jarvis). Click to inspect both the beautiful one in the foreground and the green one in the background, which, as it turns out, is of Xuanzang himself (Photo by Dennis Jarvis). Click on this one as well to see the attractive terrace behind.

Also in this area is this Wishing Buddha (Photo by ArishG). Click to see where you can obtain a "Wish Card" at the kiosk behind, which you then drop into the brown box. There's one more thing you should see in this area, but I can only find a dreary, gray, rainy-day picture of it. On the terrace are two elephant statues facing each other (Photo by Maros). Click to inspect more closely these symbols of the Indian origins of the artifacts and documents in the Pagoda. I cannot imagine there are too many other Chinese temples, if any, that feature elephants.

After peeking at the pagoda several times in previous pictures, let's take a look at the Great Wild Goose Pagoda (Photo by Bobak Ha'Eri - CC-BY-2.5), which I recall as gray-beige and which takes on gray overtones in some pictures and beige ones (Photo by kevinmcgill) in others. (Also click to inspect the under-the-roof decoration in the outbuilding.) It's tall and graceful, a bit austere, and minimalist in style. But it certainly doesn't look Chinese. Where are the curly roofs and colorful decorations? There aren't any, because the style of this and its little sister nearby, the Small Great Goose Pagoda, is taken right out of similar buildings in India. The more I think about how this building is so prominent on the skyline (it's used as the symbol of Xi'an) and how its style reflects on India, the more sense it makes that it's the premier symbol of the UNESCO World Heritage Site for the Chinese end of the Silk Road. I visited it on 28 September and it became part of the Corridor WHS on 22 June, just nine months later.

When it was built in 652, four years after the temple, it had five stories, totaling 54 m (177 ft) but it collapsed five decades later. It was rebuilt by 704, adding five more stories, making ten, but then there was a massive earthquake in 1556 in Shaanxi Province, which reduced the height by three stories, down to the current seven. Talk about having your ups and downs. (Sorry.) The entire structure leans several degrees to the west, Pisa-like. Its current height is 64 m (210 ft), making it half again as high (149%) as its baby sister.

Only when viewing it up close (click) does one realize it's all built of brick (Photo by Zeus1234). It's been described as an "architectural miracle" because it's claimed that there is no mortar at all between the bricks. Although I had no intention of climbing it for the view, I understand that there's a winding staircase connecting those arched viewpoints on all four sides of each level.

The legend behind the unusual name is arcane and a little strange. Apparently of two branches of Buddhism, one ate meat and one didn't. On one occasion, the carnivores were hungry, but couldn't find anything to eat. A flock of wild geese flew over, and one monk prayed to a deity for some meat. Just then, the leading wild goose came crashing to the ground. But the end of the story is not what you'd expect. The monks took it as a reverse sign, that they were being told they should be more pious and stop eating meat, which they did. Thus the wild goose serves as a symbol of piety. The flimsiness of this story seems to me like we've been going on a wild goose chase. (Sorry again.)

On this last full day in China, I'd gotten it into my head that I wanted a pair of Chinese Imperial Guardian Lions. Mr Li and I had checked at the gift shop at the Terracotta Army, but they only had some large, über-expensive ones in jade. We then tried the gift shop at the temple, where there was a large selection, some tiny, some very large. Finally the lady brought out a pair that I really liked. She made the point that they were copies from the Tang period, which fit in perfectly with the temple and pagoda where we were. She also pointed out that this being the temple gift shop, all profits went to charity. They were ceramic, and each figure was about the size of two fists held together. Most important to me was that they were of a mélange of bright colors, with canary yellow bodies being predominant, and lot of fanciful decoration in blue, green, red, and brown on their bulging eyes, flaring ears, and fearful mouths.

The only parallel I can give as to colors is to reprint this picture (Photo by Irina Polikanova) from an earlier posting, which shows (in Beijing) the beautiful multicolored under-the-eaves decoration I'm talking about. The lions are like that, but with a lot more yellow.

I spotted a perceived "defect" immediately, but liked them so much that I bought the pair anyway. As we've learned, the male is always on the viewer's right, with his inner paw (closer to the female) resting on a globe. That was fine. The female always appears on the viewer's left, and her inner paw always rests on a playful cub. I've got a cute cub in mine, but the "defect" is that her outer paw, away from the male, rests on him. In other words, both my lions are "righties". But then later research made lemonade out of this perceived lemon. Stylized as the lions are supposed to be, a lot of that stylization became more strictly codified in more recent centuries. I found out that back in the Tang period, the inner-paw stylization had not yet developed as a stylization, so what I have is perfectly representative of the looser stylization of the Tang period, so I felt pleasantly vindicated.

If you check on our Xi'an map, you'll see that in order to pass through the City Walls at the main southern gate, on leaving the 大 Wild Goose Pagoda, you have to get very close to the 小 Wild Goose Pagoda, which I got to see from the car from about a block away. The Small Wild Goose Pagoda (Photo by Guucancat) was built over a half-century later than its bigger sister, between 707 and 709, but still in the Tang period. While it has a very distinctive shape, it's still Indian in style, and contrasts sharply with the Chinese-style building next to it. It suffered only minor damage in the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake, and today stands, with fifteen levels of tiers, at 43 m (141 ft), or just two-thirds (67%) of the height of its big sister.

Ming City Wall    While we had moved forward 8.5 centuries from the Qin Terracotta Army to the Tang Pagodas, we now move another 7 centuries ahead to the Ming City Wall and the old city it surrounds. Of course in this case, "old city" is relative, since Ming Xi'an was built on top of the much older Tang Chang'an, and on top of only the administrative center of Chang'an at that, not the outlying residential neighborhoods. Perhaps it's better to describe where we're now headed as the "Ming City Wall surrounding the Ming Walled City", which, unlike in Beijing, was and is primarily residential and commercial, and not particularly administrative. As with any walled city, including Beijing in the day, you have to picture that there were fields, perhaps rice paddies, surrounding the walls all around the outside, while today modern Xi'an, much of which I'm sure is 20C, surrounds the walls and the Ming Walled City.

Refer back again to the Xi'an map. Note again the perfect symmetry of the rectangle formed by the Ming City Wall, forming a convenient street grid. It's very center, it's "navel" if you will, is the Bell Tower in the south-central part of the Walled City. You can see again the location of the Bell Tower Hotel I'd been interested in. Note the four streets that form the NS and EW axis of the city, all crossing at the Bell Tower. Remember that dajie, literally "big street" would be the equivalent of "avenue", and the four axial streets are named Xi Dajie, Bei Dajie, Dong Dajie, and Nan Dajie, once agai1n illustrating our four directional words. I would therefore disagree with the translation on the map of "West Street", since "West Avenue" would be more accurate. Each of these avenues corresponds to a gate in the Wall, and there are additional gates for main streets.

The street grid for the Ming Walled City is not an oddity. Many Chinese cities were purpose-built and planned, often including feng shui considerations. City walls in China have always been rectangular, or even square, unless the geography didn't allow that, as in the irregular wall we saw in Nanjing. The Ming Xi'an City Wall was built in 1370, and represents one of the oldest and best preserved Chinese city walls. Curiously, its mortar was made out of sticky rice strengthened with sand and other fillers. The wall has a circumference of 13.7 km (8.5 mi), all of which I was about to traverse along its top, which is 12 m (39 ft) high. The top is narrower than the 15-18 m (49-59 ft)-wide base. In 1982, Xi'an City Wall Park was established, encompassing the Wall, moat, and forested parkland (Photo by Maros).

[You may be aware that Chinese cities have a horrendous smog problem, with a city like Beijing coming close to closing down with serious health problems on a bad smog day. I've also heard about problems in Harbin and Shanghai, and I'm sure most cities have been hit with this problem. When I was in Xi'an, the skies were relatively clear, though a bit hazy, but, just so you're aware, most of the following pictures of the Wall will indicate some degree of smog.]

The driver dropped us off at an inside court of the south gate, and Mr Li and I climbed a wide, stone staircase (copy and paste this link):

http://www.chinatourguide.com/china_photos/Xian/Attractions/old_city_wall_profile.jpg

This brought us to the top of the Wall (Photo by Maros) in the mid-point of its south side, something similar to this view. Click to inspect the width and taper of the wall, and its construction, with numerous towers along the way. Particularly note the low-rise nature of the Walled City to the left, and the number of high-rises outside the Wall to the right. Again, what I saw was less hazy than this. The 日 was trying to shine, and the outlook was generally rather 明, which was appropriate for a Ming Wall (bilingual pun intended).

If you're thinking I actually walked the entire circumference of the Xi'an Wall, think again. I enjoy urban walking, but up and down local streets, where the scenery keeps on changing (refer back to Macao). An extended walk on the Wall would have had repetitive views, but was also unnecessary, since I'd taken note of Frommer's suggestion that I enjoy one of the electric (golf) cart trips around the top. This is what I'd asked for when I first told the travel agent I wanted to see the Wall. I didn't get that hotel I'd asked for, but I got my electric cart, something similar to this, although not exactly the same (copy and paste link):

http://www.travelchinaguide.com/images/photogallery/2013/0923155426.jpg

Mr Li got me a ticket, and we had to wait until a cart filled up. The guide and driver were up front, then came three rows of two Chinese tourists each, and then came non-Chinese-speaking me sitting backwards in the back by myself (actually, I usually turned sideways). It was the one and only Chinese-language tour I've ever taken. I didn't understand what the guide was lecturing, but I knew what I was doing and where I was. Also, at various stops, there were explanatory signs in English as well, which usually told me more than I wanted to know anyway. It was the ride and the view that were so intriguing (copy and paste link):

http://www.passportchop.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/xian-city-wall-buggy.jpg?d0f6af

It took 1h10 for the complete circuit, with stops, usually above the major gates, for those views. But I had to smile at the other stops, where the guide said something, and everybody got out of the cart, so I followed. We then walked a little, and it became obvious why. When we'd made viewing stops, I hadn't noticed that there were huge humps in the roadway above the arched gateways below, but sometimes we'd reach a hump with no reason to stop for a viewing. It's that the loaded cart wouldn't have been able to cross the hump—sometimes it was a ramp--so the driver took the empty cart over the hump with all of us walking on the side. In a way, it got to be fun. This is a typical part of the route (Photo by Maros). Click to see the bicycles that are also rentable; there are also skate boards, and on occasion, marathon runners. This is a detail of a tower (Photo by Maros).

We rode counterclockwise those 13.7 km (8.5 mi), from the nan side to the dong, the bei, the xi, and back to the nan, with views on both sides, including the rail station I'd just arrived at the evening before. This YouTube video of the Xi'an City Wall runs only 1:53, is quite artistically done, and gives a very good portrayal of a visit. After you enjoy watching it, you'll see why I was so upset in Beijing about the loss of ITS city wall.

Great Mosque of Xi'an    Also dating from the same period as the City Wall is the Walled City it surrounds. While my goal there was the (Chinese) Mosque, there were a few other things on the way. Go back to our Xi'an map to find our route. From the south gate, find the Bell Tower at the intersection, the Drum Tower off to the side, and the Mosque, which is entirely surrounded by the Muslim Quarter of Xi'an.

The driver let us off on Xi Dajie, where we had a good view of the Bell Tower a couple of blocks away, at the center of the city's main crossroads. Xi'an's Ming Bell Tower (Photo by Jamguo) was built in 1384 and, with its central location, is another icon of the city. While we didn't visit it, I understand it contains several large bronze bells from the Tang period, is a brick-and-timber structure, and is close to 40 m (131 ft) high.

Closer still to where we were standing is the Xi'an Drum Tower, a term that, as it turns out, has a totally different meaning in Western terminology. In Europe, a drum tower is a circular tower in the shape of a drum on its side, often used to corner exterior walls of castles. But as we've seen, in China, a drum tower in the center of a city was a tower that contained one or several signal drums. It worked in concert with the always nearby Bell Tower, where a bell was struck at dawn to indicate the start of the day, and the drum was beaten at sunset for the end of the day. I understand that Xi'an's Ming Drum Tower (Photo by Wang Zhongyin) contains a huge drum, is also an icon of the city, and was built in 1380, four years before the Bell Tower.

We entered the Muslim Quarter in the direction of the Mosque in a maze of pedestrian alleys to the west of the Drum Tower (see map). I could tell it was just like an Arab souq (rhymes with "Luke"), a street bazaar for pedestrians, often roofed over, with stalls on both sides. My only other souq experiences were years ago in Spain, in the old neighborhoods of Granada, formerly Muslim before the Muslim and Jewish expulsion in 1492, and in Dubai (2010/24). Being here seemed an immediate historic connection from old Muslim Spain across the Middle East, down the Hexi Corridor all the way to Xi'an.

There were also Muslim food stands (Photo by Batiste Pannetier), and the streets nearby (Photo by chensiyuan)--here a nighttime scene--were narrow and quaint.

But we wound our way to my goal, the Great Mosque of Xi'an, which we entered through a gate in a wall and found ourselves in a modest, tranquil garden compound. The practice of Islam was allowed in 651 CE, and Xi'an has a large Muslim community, perhaps 50,000, most belonging to the Hui ethnic group. They support a total of seven mosques, the most famous being the Great Mosque, which is also the oldest mosque in China, founded in 742 during the Tang Dynasty. However, most of the existing mosque today is Ming, just like the rest of the Walled City.

Aside from the fact that it's an outpost in China of Middle Eastern culture, it has a very unique distinction. Unlike mosques elsewhere, Xi'an's Great Mosque (Photo by chensiyuan) is entirely Chinese in construction and architectural style, other than some occasional Arabic lettering and decorations. This is the prayer hall, which has no domes or traditional-style minarets. Just look at those graceful Chinese-style roofs and eaves! But a mosque does need a minaret, and this one does have one, but (Surprise!) its minaret (Photo by Mr Tickle) is totally in the style of a traditional Chinese pagoda-like pavilion. What a marvelous blend of cultures. And what a contrast between both Wild Goose Pagodas, which adopted the Indian style, and the Great Mosque, which totally sinicized Muslim style.

It was 4:30 and had been a full day. Earlier, after the Army, Mr Li had asked me if I was ready to go to lunch. Remembering my tour day in Beijing, where a paid lunch was blissfully not included, and I was able to go back to the hotel and get my own dinner, he said it WAS included—I'd already paid for it. Still, I wasn't about to skip what I'd come to Xi'an for just for that. But at 4:30 we were done, and I asked if I could then take it as a late lunch/early dinner, and he said certainly, so nothing was lost. He asked what sort of food I liked, and I wanted a dumpling dinner, so he found me a very nice dumpling restaurant at 4:45 to the south of the Wall. We had to wait until they opened at 5:00, and I was among their first customers. Still, all this all-inclusive nonsense bothered me. How expensive a meal had I been pre-billed for? Was I spending enough here to take full advantage of what I'd paid? This is one helluva way to organize a tour, but I suspect it's very, very common. Still, the meal of several kinds of dumplings was outstanding.

Departing China    They picked me up at the Golden Flower—one of those flowery Chinese names (pun intended)--the next morning, a Sunday, which was Day 9, the last day of my extension and the last day of the entire China trip. The whole trip, Hong Kong/Macau, the main planned trip, and the Tibet/Xi'an extension, had lasted an even four weeks, or 28 nights, and filled in the entire month of September 2013 except for the first day (my birthday) and the last. It provided enough fodder for twenty postings. I realized as we were driving on the expressway to Xi'an/Xianyang International Airport that, excluding the urban expressway in Shanghai, this was the first countryside expressway I'd experienced in China, since so much had been by train. It looked like an expressway anywhere, with the standard green signs at the exits and entrances. But I did note my very last bit of charming Chinglish posted along the roadside: Do not drive tiredly. Perfectly understandable.

In conjunction with my flight to New York in the early evening, I'd booked a late-morning flight from Xi'an to Hong Kong on China Eastern Airlines, three stars on Skytrax, meaning average. It was nice enough. I knew it would give me a 5h10 layover at Hong Kong airport, which I was willing to put up with so as not to miss the connection. It was odd to look at the TV screen in front of me as we landed and see the layout of the airport, which I'd written about all those postings earlier. Still, the time at the airport was confusing, and I didn't enjoy it as much as I'd expected. Then, when I was finally able to go to the departure lounge, since this was a flight to the USA, there was an additional security check right at the departure lounge. It was a pleasure to finally get on board.

I was glad once again to be on a Cathay Pacific plane, the international flag carrier of Hong Kong. It's one of the currently only seven airlines that Skytrax awards five stars to. All seven are Asian, including one from West Asia, that is, the Middle East. Two others of these that I've flown are Singapore and Qatar, both in 2010, so this trip completed a five-star trifecta for me. The remaining Skytrax five-star airlines are Hainan (China), Asiana (South Korea), ANA All Nippon Airways (Japan), and the recently ill-fated Malaysia.

The seating on the plane was 3-4-3, but just as I'd had the foresight long in advance to ask for lower bunks on the Tibet train, on the Cathay Pacific flights coming and going I'd sought out online the very same seat in the rear. Where the plane tapers in the back, there's not enough room in the last row on either side for three seats, just 2.5. This means that there are just two seats, but the aisle seat has half a seat's extra legroom to its side. I'd chosen the one on the right of the plane both ways. The armrest on the aisle raised up, and I could swing sideways and sit that way as well as facing forward if I wished. The only danger was that this particular seat on either side of the plane, because of the extra space, was designated a handicapped seat, and if needed at the last minute, I'd have to surrender it in exchange. But my gamble worked out, and all went well in both directions. On this return flight, the Chief Steward, Patrick, did come up to me and ask if I'd be willing to voluntarily exchange with someone else who wanted to sit next to someone. I politely declined, which he understood immediately. So many people who don't plan ahead always think they can take advantage of those who do, but it didn't happen on the Tibet train, and didn't happen here. This back seat also had extra storage behind it and was close to the restrooms and to the galley with the snack area. Dream on, non-planners.

For dinner there's a menu with a selection of two entrees, something one rarely sees, and almost never in Economy Class. One entrée was more Eastern, and one more Western. And dinner, too, had a pleasant development. Spirits were included with dinner, even in Economy Class. Dinner service this time started in the back, so I'd been served the meal, yet beverages were delayed, and I finished dinner without the wine I would have wanted. I checked the menu, and for after-dinner drinks, they offered cognac. Although I like drinks based on cognac, such as Grand Marnier, I'm not a fancier of cognac by itself. But it seemed the right thing to try, so, sitting near the galley, I called Patrick over and, in place of wine with dinner, I asked for a cognac after dinner, which he promptly served. It warmed the soul, and I got curious about the cognac, so I asked just what it was I was drinking. This being Cathay Pacific, he didn't bring over some tiny airplane-bottle of something, but showed me instead the full bottle of Courvoisier VSOP he'd been serving, and asked if I wanted another. Yes, please.

I knew Courvoisier is a good brand, and I've checked since. It was established in France in the early 19C, and there are three major letter designations, all in English, since the early trade was with Britain. VS is Very Special/Superior, and it has to be aged at least two years; VSOP, which I tasted, is Very Special/Superior Old Pale, aged at least four years; XO is Extra Old and is aged at least six, but up to ten or twenty years. Cathay Pacific was serving me something reasonably highly-rated.

Then there was the surprise. We had come from New York via the Polar Route, up the Hudson, just west of Greenland, down over Siberia and Wuhan to Hong Kong. I expected to return the same way, and as a matter of fact, when we were taxiing to leave, the TV screen on the back of the seat in front of me indicated the Polar Route again. But then suddenly, the map showed we were flying east out of Hong Kong, along the China coast, and along the ocean side of Taiwan, Japan, the Kamchatka Peninsula, Alaska, and Canada. In other words, we were taking the Pacific Route home. It sounds like a curved route, but that's because of the curvature of the earth—it was a straight line. Between Vancouver and Seattle we turned east along the US side of the Canadian border, passed Minneapolis, the Great Lakes, Buffalo, and arrived in New York. In other words, the round trip turned out to be a loop route that encircled much of Canada, Alaska, eastern Siberia, and eastern China. Quite a surprise. And because of our direction, we kept on crossing time zones that still were in earlier hours of Sunday, so we arrived the same day. In other words, our flight, scheduled for 15h55, left Hong Kong about 7 PM Sunday and arrived at JFK about 11 PM Sunday.

I'd been aware we'd be having a late arrival, but wasn't concerned, since New York is the "City that Never Sleeps". Well, sort of. After clearing customs and getting the AirTrain—less frequent at that time of night--to Jamaica Station, I just caught the 1 AM train to Penn Station, and that, only because the conductor opened the door as I came running up. But in Manhattan, with three different subway lines that could get me home, there would be no problem, right?

Wrong. That it was late was a minor problem, but that it was late on a weekend—that was a major problem, since a lot of maintenance work is done on weekends. From Penn Station/34th Street I took my usual #1 train, but it didn't go any further south than 14th Street, so I crossed over and took it back up to Times Square/42nd Street, where I could get the R train. I waited on a bench some 20 minutes before I realized it wasn't running that weekend at all. Then I decided to take the Shuttle to Grand Central to take the 4/5 downtown. But yellow tape indicated it was closed for the night. Then it came back to me that I'd heard years ago that they do that on the Shuttle late at night, but thought then it would never affect me, right? Wrong again. Directions were given at the yellow tape do go down below and take the Flushing train two stops to Grand Central, which I did, and finally got the 4/5 home.

I arrived at 3 AM, but remember, I felt like it was 3 PM, China time, so I unpacked, as I always do immediately, but also went through my old mail. But this was the beginning of a slow jet lag adjustment that I'd never had before. There had been no problem going to Hong Kong, where, after a short map, I adjusted to the 12-hour difference immediately and started sightseeing promptly. But on the return trip from China, I had some two weeks in early October of waking up in the middle of the night, and needing a nap in the middle of the day. But it all turned out fine.

Long, Overnight Nonstop Flights    My list of long, overnight nonstop flights used to have a lower threshold, but the list got too long, and my current list, last posted in 2010/14, is based on trips with TEN hours or more of scheduled time (not actual flight time, which is variable). To that list, I'm now adding the two Cathay Pacific flights from 2013, bringing the new total to nine flights, in reverse order of length:

The two China flights, with scheduled times only five minutes apart, now take 2nd and 3rd place after that fabulous Singapore flight. However, I discovered some sad news about that in the New York Times, which I've corroborated online. Due to increased fuel costs, the Singapore Airlines Newark/Singapore flight was cancelled in November 2013. I'm certainly glad I took it when I did (2010/14 "Singapore Airlines Flight 21"). The NYT article highly praised the amenities on the pricey business-class only flight.

It was apparently back in 2003 when Singapore Airlines had started the two longest nonstop flights in aviation history, this one, the longest, and also Singapore/Los Angeles, which was also cancelled, a month earlier. The airline will still connect Singapore to LA via Tokyo, and Singapore to New York/JFK via Frankfurt, but that isn't quite the same, is it?

Travelers' Century Club    I enjoy being a member of the Travelers' Century Club. Membership to me as a traveler is like receiving a diploma after doing academic work. Adding destinations to the TCC is to me like getting additional credits for further academic study. I also admire the TCC for having its list of destinations (not "countries") tailored specifically to travelers' needs in two ways: ▲ different administrative entities define different destinations, such as England/Wales/Scotland/Northern Ireland being four distinct destinations, and ▲ major islands or island groups are considered separate destinations, such as Tasmania as well as mainland Australia, and Hawaii as well as mainland United States.

My last addition had been Greenland at 144, and China is a perfect example of different administrative entities counting separately, including the Tibet Certificate: Hong Kong is 145, Macau is 146, mainland China is 147, and Tibet is 148.

I don't see my climbing much further up this list. The total TCC list as of the first of this year comes to 324 destinations. There are some rarified members who have done them all, and the newsletter regularly lists those who have reached 300, or 200, or 150. I will be lucky if I reach 150 or slightly over, and can get my silver pin. The reason for this is quite simple. In recent years, I've extended my travels beyond what I've called Euramerica to other continents and countries, but I've done this to places that really interest me. For instance, I chose just those Polynesian Islands that interested me, and have no interest in the others. There are lots of places in which I have no interest (I will not name them publicly), so I will not be reaching numbers like 300, or even 200. If that seems like too many to you, it does to me, too. Some of those people, while enjoying the trips, are just trying to set personal records. I want to go just to places I like, and will tally them as they happen to fall into place.

Years ago, I made my list of places I want to visit, or revisit, and there are precious few new ones on it, which is why I doubt I'll surpass 150 by much, if any. As the to-do list of new places gets shorter, most recently with China, I'm enjoying doing the revisits tremendously. For instance, going to Scandinavia and Finland in 2006 was a revisit, where I saw old places again as they look today, and also new ones. My trip to Québec last year was a repeat, and the greatest fun I've ever had in that city. I think there's a lot of travel still ahead, but the amount of that travel that will not be repeats, but that will be new TCC destinations, will be limited.