Valencia couple's Asian trip 'exhausting'
VALENCIA — When Robert and Gretchen Cararie of Valencia took a high-speed maglev train to a Chinese airport while on their way to take a leisurely boat ride down the Yangtze River, it was a perfect illustration of the new Asia that's rising from the old.
The Cararies encountered an ancient culture working hard to fit itself into the 21st century when they visited Japan and China from June 24 to July 18, 2012.
They flew from Pittsburgh to Detroit and from Detroit to Tokyo, a 15-hour trip.
While they were in Japan, the couple stayed with Aika Imai in Tokyo. Imai is a college friend of Gretchen, who's kept in touch since their days as Carnegie Mellon University undergraduates.
“I see her every five years,” said Gretchen. “We have a friend's reunion that coincides with the school reunion. She always says, 'Come see me.' This time we did.”
Imai, a retired computer software worker, volunteers at the local junior high school.
The Cararies stayed at Imai's three-story house with a rooftop garden.
“The whole lower level was like an apartment. That was where her father-in-law lived,” said Gretchen.
The room they slept in was built as a tea room because Imai's husband was very involved in the traditional Japanese tea ceremony.The Cararies took a day trip to Nikko, a holy city famed for its mausoleum of Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, and the Futarasan Shrine, which dates to the year 767.“We actually wanted to go to Kyoto,” said Robert. “Kyoto is where I went when I was in Vietnam in the 1960s. I took R'n R (rest and recreation) there.”“Because we were with Aika, she explained to us the customs. That made it really exceptional. She is like a teacher at heart. She wanted to keep sharing,” said Gretchen. “We were pretty fortunate that we had someone like her or we would never have made all the connections. She was like our private tour guide and travel agent.”Gretchen said in Nikko“there's this huge temple where several emperors lived and it is restored very well.”She added the Nikko temple has never been destroyed by an earthquake because it was built around a central core that sways during tremors.Nikko is also home to the world-famous “See No Evil” statue of the three monkeys.The Cararies said they were constantly on the go in Japan. On the second day, they explored a bit of Tokyo, going to the Tokyo Tower broadcasting facility and a cooking school.“I guess I like just walking through the city, observing people,” said Gretchen. “And the fresh food in the markets. People shop almost daily.”
“People in Tokyo are all dress conscious. Everyone is well dressed,” said Robert.“Everything is neat and organized. There's no pushing or shoving. In Japan they are very rigid about it,” said Gretchen. “It's very clean, there's very little litter. There's not a lot of traffic. People do take mass transit.”This was in contrast to their later destination. “Everyone drove in China, or tried to,” Gretchen said.They also visited the Meiji Shrine, where barrels of rice wine are consecrated to the gods.On June 29 they flew from Tokyo to Beijing, where they joined a tour group of 25 Americans.First, they visited Beijing and saw the summer palace area and the Temple of Heaven, the largest temple in the world.On that night they dined, appropriately enough, on Peking duck.In fact, Chinese cuisine proved to be very gratifying to the adventurous diner, the Cararies said.“The food was very good. You had to be open to eating different things. If you were a picky eater, you might not enjoy it,” said Gretchen.“I really liked the dumplings. There were a lot of different meats in small amounts. The meat was almost always in a mixture,” she said. “The meal almost always ended in watermelon. When you saw the watermelon come out, you knew the meal was ending.”Robert said their visit to Tiananmen Square was marred by the heavy air pollution in Beijing.He said he found the Chinese people open, friendly and willing to talk about almost anything.“All the people that we met were warm and welcoming,” Gretchen said. “I don't know why I didn't expect that. At the Great Wall, people would stop and try to talk.”“Even our tour guide, who knew a great deal about the United States, he had lots of questions,” said Gretchen.“They tell you how their government runs,” she added.“We really didn't see much military or police. It's not what you would have expected,” said Robert.“They really want to imitate us,” he said. “The roads were just jammed with cars. And you took your life in your hands to cross the road. Street signs are just a suggestion.”
The Cararies visited the Beijing Opera, a cloissone (metalworks) factory, a kung fu academy and the Great Wall.“That was something we looked forward to,” said Gretchen.“The wall had ramps and inclines. When it got too steep, you had steps,” she said. “It just goes for miles. It went across the whole north of China.”They also flew a lot around the country.“It amazed me the number of flights that were included in the price,” said Robert. “There were five interior flights.”At one point, they took the Shanghai maglev train to reach one of the airports to catch a flight to Wuhan where they began a four-day cruise down the Yangtze River.It is the first commercially operated high-speed magnetic levitation train line in the world.It connects Shanghai Pudong International Airport and the outskirts of the central Pudong area, where passengers change to the Shanghai Metro to continue their trip to the city center.“It was a seven-minute ride to the airport,” said Robert. “The train can travel at 430 kph. It's the only one of its kind in the world. Germany, Japan, we're still thinking about it.“You couldn't feel anything. There was no “click clack” on the tracks,” he said.The river cruise took them to the Three Gorges Dam project, a massive undertaking for hydroelectric power that displaced 1.3 million people.“It's the world's largest dam, four times as large as Hoover Dam,” said Robert. “It was a very impressive project.”The Cararies also flew to Xian to see the famous army of terra cotta soldiers.The figures are a form of funerary art buried with the Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China.The figures vary in height according to their roles, with the tallest being the generals. The figures include warriors, chariots and horses.“They were found in 1974 by three farmers,” said Gretchen. “They were built to guard the tomb of the emperor.”“They haven't uncovered all of them and not all of it is open to the public,” she said. “One of the farmers who found them we saw signing books at the visitors center. I guess he's made a good living.”In Xian, which is the beginning of the fabled Silk Road, they had an 18-course dumpling dinner and visited the Small Wild Goose Pagoda.Then they flew to Guiyu, famous for its limestone mountains and tea plantations and known as a honeymoon destination.From there they flew to Hong Kong and then back to the U.S.“China is much more modern than we expected. There are older areas, but they are trying as fast as they can to upgrade,” said Gretchen.“This was an exhausting trip. This was not a sit on the beach in the sun trip,” she added.
Sharing their snapshots are Robert and Gretchen Cararie of Jamestown Court, Valencia. He is a retired engineer who last worked at Tri-State Design in Carnegie.She is a retired dietitian who currently teaches nutrition at Butler County Community College and La Roche College in Pittsburgh.
