China Eclipse Tour
July 2009

This tour was proposed by the Sutherland Astronomical Society and organised through China Bestours. It came to be known as Eclipse Tour Bootcamp, being a standard budget tourist trip through China, with half a day's eclipse viewing crammed into an already fairly exhausting schedule. There were also some 77 people on the tour (I can't remember exactly), which meant we were stuffed into two tour buses, not quite having enough people to justify three. Travelling around was therefore quite uncomfortable, and we were often in the buses all day, sometimes not getting into the hotels till 9 or 10pm at night, after leaving on 7 to 8am starts. The daytime temperatures were also averaging around 38°C...

So here are the photos...

18th - 21st July
Shanghai - Suzhou - Hangzhou

Shanghai is certainly impressive (or is that excessive?) in architectural terms - though being able to see the air you breathe can't be counted as one of its good points. I arrived with bronchitis as a result of having had the flu a few weeks earlier (conveniently just longer than the exclusion time for flying into China during the height of swine flu paranoia of course), but exposing myself to Shanghai's atmosphere was probably about the worst thing I could have done for my health short of taking up smoking (which is never going to happen). Sick, exhausted and unsympathetic before I'd even arrived, the city did nothing to win me over - I found it to be a hot, breezeless sprawling mass of concrete and dust with way too many people, way too much noise and a rapacious marketing pitch. On the other hand, the sheer scale of it is daunting enough to intrigue, and the night lights are glorious - as long as you don't ever want to see any stars. But all this size and industry comes at a cost... Shanghai is very impersonal, the city itself having completely usurped the people who live in it. And it smells awful.

I'd be quite happy if I never went back.

We passed through Suzhou on the way to Hangzhou, spending only one night there. Forget the pagodas, the gardens and the silk factory tourist traps - the highlight of the Suzhou area was the Synta factory (Celestron/Skywatcher). I have to give credit to the tour operators for pulling this one off, apparently the factory doesn't get many requests for a visit. Being able to see the full assembly line for some of the most popular mid-level telescopes in the world was absolutely fascinating. None of us were in a hurry to leave... however, instead of dropping something off the schedule to make room, Bestours slotted this in on top of everything else we were lined up to do for that day, so we had to rush.

Hangzhou was another large place we didn't get to see that much of. We did the obligatory tour of the West Lake. A pond full of carp provided some interesting photographic fodder and then came the eclipse...

22nd July
Eclipse Day - Hangzhou

In spite of the token attempt at discussing it, it was quite clear that the tour operators had no intention of deviating from their itinerary on eclipse day, and as we drove further north into heavier rain and thunderstorms, those of us who voted to go in the opposite direction were getting more and more annoyed. This was partly because by this stage the trip itself had become such an excercise in endurance that seeing the eclipse was looking like the only way of redeeming it.

The moment for first contact passed and the rain was still falling. We did an anti-rain dance. Second contact - and totality - was approaching. Just as we were prepared to do some blood-letting to appease Huey and any other potentially irritable weather gods and were looking around for a suitable sacrifice, a slight parting of the clouds occurred and there it was. Not a moment too soon..! The variable cloud made the corona difficult to photograph, but no one was complaining - we got to see all of totality, and a few minutes either side. I can't help thinking that we all used up a third of a lifetime's luck to have it work out that way, as pretty much most of the eclipse path across China was covered in cloud (reports from other eclipse watchers who did go in the other direction from Hangzhou indicated they did get slightly better viewing than we did).

After the eclipse we were hurridly dragged off to a restaurant for yet another chinese banquet, to a tea house for the customary tourist purchase, and then to a stage show called "The Romance of the Song Dynasty" - which has to be one of the most beautifully crafted and technically brilliant stage productions I've ever seen. I'm not sure the people who got wet from the waterfalls or flashed with green laser beams would agree with me, but this was impressive, powerful stuff.

23rd - 28th July
Xian - Beijing

After the eclipse all I really wanted to do was go to sleep for a couple of days, but alas the tour pushed on with a relentless succession of temples, pagodas, amusing Chinglish signs, factory sales outlets and identical banquets. A little variation in the standard menu would have worked wonders, but (except for a plate of french fries that was devoured in moments) they were all exactly the same! We never had the opportunity to order for ourselves and after a while people began to revolt, declining the evening 'entertainment' and catching cabs back to the hotels for room service (and yes, I was in on that). In spite of the annoyances, there were some interesting and important places too - the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and the Terracotta warriors, all well worth seeing. The downside was the schedule - too much, too quickly.

©2009 C.A.L.