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Seniors' China Tour
"The only affordable tour of China focusing on seniors' interests. Through personal first-hand interaction, learn about Chinese culture and the secrets of longevity"
Papers from Seniors after China Tours
COST: US$1,199 per person (land only)
*** Single Room Supplement is US$300 ***
Included in the cost of the tour:
Not included:
According to the Law of the People's Republic of China Concerning the Administration of Foreigners Entering and Leaving the Country, foreign tourists must apply for visas at China's foreign affairs offices, consulates or other organizations authorized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
You may obtain further information at the Web site: http://www.chinaembassycanada.org
The location of the Chinese embassy in Canada is in Ottawa; Chinese consulates are in Calgary, Toronto, and Vancouver
In USA the website address : http://www.china-embassy.org
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2002 April trip photos posted click here
For daily itinerary of the trip click here
Pour encourager le développement des relations entre le Québec et la Chine
This trip starts from Beijing.
NOTE: Full refund for your payment if withdraw 60 days before departure date.
Extension Tours
15 days of Tibet Nomad hiking experience
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THE GREAT WALL
The Great Wall is perhaps China's most famous and most mythologized site. Several sections are conveniently visited from Beijing, including at Badaling, the most popular site, about 70 km (43 mi.) northwest of Beijing and at Mutianyu, 90 km (56 mi.) northeast of Beijing. These impressive brick and earth structures date from the Ming dynasty, when the wall was fortified against Mongol forces to the north. The Ming wall is about 26 feet tall and 23 feet wide at the base, and could accommodate up to six horsemen riding abreast. Watch towers were built on high points every 200-300 meters or so and were housed with small garrison forces that could communicate with fire signals or fireworks. These stretches of the wall are part of a system that extends from the Shanhaiguan fortress on the Bohai Gulf in the east to the Jiayuguan fortress in the west, altogether some 6000 km (3700 mi).
The Ming sections of the wall are only a late stage in a long history of the wall construction. The wall is most often associated with the First Emperor of China (Qin Shi Huangdi , reigning during 221-210 BC), who after unifying China by conquest undertook to link up previously existing sections of walls belonging to conquered states. The First Emperor mobilized massive conscripted labor forces, including convicts and prisoners, by some accounts up to a million strong, to conduct this building campaign.
While the Great Wall in its various versions had real military defensive functions, it also served symbolic purposes. For long periods Chinese populations lived north of the wall and nomads or semi-nomads lived south of it. The wall served as a symbolic reminder of dynastic authority and also of cultural distinction between settled agrarian culture and cities on the Chinese side and pastoral horsemen on the other. It continues today to serve as a marker of cultural and national identity.
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Hebei Province, located in North China and surrounding Beijing and Tianjin, covers an area of 187,770 square km. with a population of 63 million.
With 5000-year-long history, the province is the cradle of the Chinese nation and was once the political, economic and cultural centre of North China. The industrious and ingenious laboring people created a splendid civilization and left us very rich tourist resources.
Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei Province, is a new rising city, with a population of 950,000. Main tourist attractions include the Mausoleum of Revolution Martyrs along with the Tomb of Dr. Norman Bethune, Tomb of Dr. D.S.Kotnis, the famous Zengding Longxing Temple ten kilometres north of Shijiazhuang, and Zhaozhou Bridge 40 kilometres southeast of the city. Traditionsl arts and crafts from Shijiazhuang are famed, including New Year Pictures, papercuts, stone carving and bottles with decoration painted inside.
Baoding-- The Historic and Cultural City
Baoding, 140 km south to Beijing, is a national cultural city with a history of 2,300 years. There are abundant tourist resources here. Inside the city are distributed as follows: the ancient Lotus Pond which is one of the ten famous ancient gardens in China, Zhili Governor's Office Building which is the best preserved ancient government construction in China and the relics of the Military Academy in Qing Dynasty, etc. Outside the city are dispersed Dingzhou Pagoda which is the highest one in China, the Song-Liao Warfare Tunnel which was built 1000 years ago, the Western Imperial Tombs of Qing Dynasty, the Temple of the Master of Medicinal Herbs in Anguo, which was 2000 years old.
CHINA BAODING RESPECTING THE AGED & KEEP-FIT FESTIVAL
Baoding, with beautiful scenery and numerous historical sites, is a famous historic city in China. The People of Baoding have a tradition of respecting the aged and have a good command of ways to keep in good health. The average life span of Baoding people is 6.4 years longer than that of the nation. The Respecting the Aged & Keep-fit Festival is held in Baoding from Oct.9 to 11 every year.
The festival incorporates culture exchange and sightseeing, especially keep-fit activities such as diagnosis and treatment by Qigong, traditional massage, medicinal beverage and food tasting, keep-fit ways earning, health ball playing and senior citizen family visiting.
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As the capital of China, Beijing is one of the world's truly imposing cities, with a 3,000-year history and 13 million people. Covering 16,808 square kilometers in area, it is the political, cultural and economic center of the People's Republic. We spend three days in Beijing at the completion of the hiking tour.
Situated in northeast China, Beijing adjoins the Inner Mongolian Highland to the northwest and the Great Northern Plain to the south. Five rivers run through the city, connecting it to the eastern Bohai Sea.
Administratively, the Beijing municipality equals the status of a province, reporting directly to the central government.
Rich in history, Beijing has been China's primary capital for more than seven centuries. China's imperial past and political present meet at Tiananmen Square, where the Forbidden City palace of the emperors gives way to the Great Hall of the People congress building and the mausoleum of Chairman Mao Zedong. The old city walls have been replaced by ring roads, and many of the old residential districts of alleys and courtyard houses have been turned into high-rise hotels, office buildings, and department stores.
THE FORBIDDEN CITY (Gugong)
At the city center is the imperial palace complex of 24 Ming and Qing dynasty emperors. In imperial times it was called the Purple Forbidden City from the association of the emperors with the color of the Pole Star. Surrounded by 10 meter (32 feet) high walls and gates and a 50m (164 ft.) wide moat, it was inaccessible to ordinary people, but well populated by imperial family members, their servants and staffs, officials, and guards.
The major ceremonial buildings of the palace are aligned on a north-south axis that extends beyond the walls toward the Temple of Heaven complex and Yongding Gate in the south. The main entrance to the palace complex is via the Meridian Gate (Wumen), from which the New Year was announced each year by the emperor, proclamations were read, and the fate of prisoners decided. Past five white marble bridges and the Gate of Supreme Harmony, a great courtyard could accommodate several thousand people for state ceremonies such as the imperial weddings.
The three most important ceremonial buildings are on the north-south axis, raised on a high white marble terrace, and accessed by ramps carved with ornate dragons over which the emperor was carried in a palanquin. The three main halls and associated side buildings formed the outer courtyard of the Forbidden City, devoted primarily to official and ceremonial functions, but including imperial libraries and studies. The inner chambers at the rear of the Forbidden City included private living and sleeping quarters of the imperial family, divided into three palaces and twelve courtyards. The Western Palaces were the residences of empresses, concubines, and princes. The Eastern Palace halls are now used as museum exhibition spaces, devoted to ritual bronze vessels, ceramics, craft objects, antique clocks, and paintings, including objects from the imperial collections and archaeological finds. The back precincts include the Palace of Aging Peacefully (Ningshou Gong) where the Qianlong Emperor of the late 18th century spent his retirement years.
TIANANMEN SQUARE
Just south of the Forbidden City is Tiananmen Square (The Gate of Heavenly Peace Square), the largest inner-city square in the world and that can hold up to a million people. It was cleared in 1958 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic. It replaced an older open space in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace, the main entrance to the imperial city and that had a longer history of political importance. On May 4, 1919, students demonstrated here against provisions of the Treaty of Versailles following World War I that were considered unfair to China. The May Fourth Movement spawned here was a widespread movement for political and literary modernization that impacted the rest of the century.
After the founding of the People's Republic, Tiananmen Square became symbolic of the socialist state through the construction in 1959 of the Great Hall of the People on its western side, and the Museums of Chinese History and the Chinese Revolution on its eastern edge. In the same period, a Monument to the People's Heroes was erected in the center of the square. In addition, following Chairman Mao Zedong's death in 1976, a Chairman Mao Mausoleum building was erected directly on the main north-south axis of the square. It contains the preserved body of Mao in a crystal sarcophagus, along with a standing marble statue of the Chairman. China's imperial past, revolutionary history, and political present are all represented vividly in Tiananmen Square.
SUMMER PALACE
Fifteen kilometers (9 miles) to the northwest of Beijing is the Summer Palace. Yi He Yuan, or the Summer Palace, is the best-kept existing royal garden in Beijing. With a concentration of the best of ancient buildings as well as styles of gardening, it is a virtual museum of traditional Chinese gardening. Now a large park of 716 acres, it was formerly the imperial garden retreat from the summer heat of Beijing. Surrounding hills shelter the site, and the Kunming Lake provides a cooling effect. The site was used as an imperial park as early as the mid-12th century, and continued as an imperial garden in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
In 1860 Anglo-French forces burned the site to the ground. It was reconstructed 25 years later by the Empress Dowager Cixi in 1888, using funds that had been reserved for building a modern naval force. It was completed in 1895, and the name was changed to Yiheyuan (Garden of Good Health and Harmony). The large marble boat that sits immobile by the edge of the lake is an ironic reminder of the waste and mismanagement that led to the decline of the imperial state.
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THE Thirteen Tombs of the Ming Dynasty
World's Largest Concentration of Royal Tombs
At a distance of 50 km northwest of Beijing stands an arc-shaped cluster of hills fronted by a small plain. Here is where 13 emperors of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) were buried, and the area is known as the Ming Tombs. Construction of the tombs started in 1409 and ended with the fall of the Ming Dynasty in 1644. In over 200 years tombs were built over an area of 40 square kilometres, which is surrounded by walls totaling 40 kilometres. Each tomb is located at the foot of a separate hill and is linked with the other tombs by a road called the Sacred Way. The stone archway at the southern end of the Sacred Way, built in 1540, is 14 metres high and 19 metres wide, and is decorated with designs of clouds, waves and divine animals.
Different Views on Death
Beijing served as the national capital during the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. Unlike Ming and Qing rulers who all built massive tombs for themselves, Yuan rulers left no similar burial grounds. Why the difference?
This has to do with people's different views on death. Beijing nomads came from the Mongolian steppe. Mongols who established the Yuan Dynasty held the belief that they had come from: earth. they adopted a simple funeral method: the dead were placed inside a hollowed nanmu tree, which was then buried under grassland. Growth of grass soon left no traces of the tombs. By contrast, during the Ming Dynasty established by Han Chinese coming from an agricultural society in central China, people believed in the existence of an after-world, where the dead "lived" a life similar to that of the living. Ming emperors, therefore, had grand mausoleums built for themselves. Qing rulers did likewise. The stone archway at the southern end of the Sacred Way, built in 1540, is 14 metres high and 19 metres wide, and is decorated with designs of clouds, waves and divine animals. Well-proportioned and finely carved, the archway is one of the best preserved specimens of its kind in the Ming Dynasty. It is also the largest ancient stone archway in China.
The Stele Pavilion, not far from the Great Palace Gate, is actually a pavilion with a double-eaved roof. On the back of the stele is carved poetry written by Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty when he visited the Ming Tombs.
The Sacred Way inside the gate of the Ming Tomb is lined with 18 pairs of stone human figures and animals. These include four each of three types of officials: civil, military and meritorious officials, symbolizing those who assist the emperor in the administration of the state, plus four each of six types of animals: lion, griffin, camel, elephant, unicorn and horse.
Yongling, built in 1536, is the tomb for Emperor Shizong, Zhu Houcong (1507-1566). He stayed in power for 45 years.
The Dingling Tomb is the tomb of Emperor Wanli (reigned 1573-1619), the 13th emperor of the Ming Dynasty, whose personal name was Zhu Yijun, and of his two empresses, Xiao Duan and Xiao Jing. The tomb was completed in six years (1584-1590), it occupies a total area of 1,195 square meters at the foot of Dayu Mountain southwest of the Changling Tomb.
The underground palace at Dingling Tomb consists of an antechamber, a central chamber and a rear chamber plus the left and right annexes. One of the pictures shows the entral chamber where the sacrificial utensils are on display. Two marble doors are made of single slabs and carved with life-size human figures, flowers and birds. More than 3,000 articles have been unearthed from the tumulus, the most precious being the golden crowns of the emperor and his queen.
More Interesting Stories
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Come ! Join us to meet Modern Tibetan Women
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