All images and associated pages copyrighted © by Don Chesnut, 2007
Geologic information from field trip guidebook...
Wang Jun, Liu Lujun and Zhang Yi, 2007, Pennsylvanian through the end of Permian continental sequences in Shanxi Province and an Early Permian autochthonous flora preserved in tuff in Inner Mongolia. XVI International Congress on the Carboniferous and Permian, Nanjing, China June 21-24, Janjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 23 pp plus 12 plates.
13 June 2007 Wednesday, Lexington, KY
I got up about 6 am, made some coffee and read the newspaper. Niki came early, about 6:30 and walked the dog and fed him. I took a shower and took out the last bit of trash. Ann Watson picked me up at 7:45 a and drove me to the airport. It is clear and warm. After going through check-in and security, I got to the gate area about 8:45. I had 2 hours to board so started on the book "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini.
On board the plane, I sat next to a young boy about 12 years old. He was flying by himself to visit his grandmother in Michigan. I told him about my son, Donald, travelling by himself from Hawaii to Kentucky when he was 6. We arrived in Detroit about 12:30 and I made my way to Concourse A. I had a 2.5-hour wait so went to a restaurant, had a Sam Adams, and read more out of my book. Weather was clear and warm.
I boarded the 747 to Tokyo and sat next to two Japanese fellows. They slept most of the trip. I watched three movies, one about songwriters. I slept mostly through the last one because my eyes felt like potato chips. It started getting turbulent 2 hours out of Tokyo. We were supposed to get a dinner, but it was too bumpy. Instead we got a voucher for a free meal at the airport. When we landed, about 4:30pm on 14 June, it was cool and rainy. I had to go through security again and they took my 1.5" knife. The flight continues to Beijing, but it's on a different plane. I have a two hour wait.
I boarded the plane to Beijing. I traded seats twice because others asked me if they could sit with their friends or family. I ended up sitting next to a young Chinese lady who was working on her PhD in Computer Science in America. She was from Wuhan and coming back home for a visit.
By the time we got to Beijing, it was dark. I went through customs fairly quickly, then walked out to the public area of the airport. I changed money and found a "Hotel Reservations" booth. I paid 50 Yuan for a car ride to my hotel, the Sino Swiss Hotel Airport (www.sino-swisshotel.com). I arrived about 10pm, stood in line to check in and got to my room a little after 10. There are a number of restaurants at the hotel, but I didn't feel very hungry. I went to the bar and had a Yanjing beer made locally in Beijing. It was pretty good. A four-person band was playing rock and roll. They played a Queen song which was surprisingly good with tight harmony. I went to bed around 11 and requested a wake-up call for 6am.
15 June 2007 Friday
I woke up through the night and finally got up at 5:30am and took a shower. After 6, I checked out and waited for the airport bus. At the airport check-in counter, I noticed a German colleague, Jorge Schneider, also waiting in line. He had 2 former PhD students with him. I teamed up with them while we all waited for our flight to Taiyuan (we are all on the same field trip). My Chinese is slowly coming back. We went to a coffee bar and had an assortment of coffee drinks. After an hour we went through security and boarded the plane. I sat next to two Chinese ladies that didn't talk. After about 1.5 hours, we landed in Taiyuan. We were greeted at the baggage exit by the fieldtrip crew. It was warm and sunny, but the air was not clear due either to silt, humidity or smog. We boarded a large bus where I met the Czech "Carboniferous Mafia," about 5 palynologists and paleobotanists. I guess we'll meet the others later. We went to a restaurant and ate a big meal with included many dishes. I ate donkey for the first time. Donkey is considered one of the best meats in China. They have a saying "In heaven, there is dragon, but on earth, there is donkey." The donkey meat was pulled into shreds and marinated in vinegar and spices. It was good.
We had to wait for several hours for the rest of the group flying in from Nanjing. We joined them about 2:15 and started our 6-8 hour drive to Baode. We will spend two nights there. So far, the only persons I recognized were Jorge Schneider, Herman Pfefferkorn and his wife Barbara. The English-speaking graduate student leading the trip is Feng Zhuo "Jumper". He got the nickname Jumper because he was a long-jump athlete.
We drove over two large mountains on switchback roads. I took a lot of pictures. The core of the mountains appear to be granitic and gneissic rocks overlain by dipping beds of Lower Paleozoic rocks (Cambrian and Ordovician) overlain by Late Paleozoic rocks (Pennsylvanian and Permian and perhaps later).
We had one rest stop along the highway; our bus doesn't have a bathroom. We arrived at Fugu, across the Yellow River from Baode at 8 pm. We checked into the Binyuan Hotel. We had a large dinner at the hotel at 8:15 and didn't finish till 11:30. I have a room to myself this time. Most field trips, I have had to share a room. At dinner, we had a large variety of food including goat, which was roasted with five-spice, I think. It was very good. I went to bed around midnight.
16 June 2007 Saturday
I didn't sleep very well due to the time difference from home (12 hours). I got up at 6am and went down to the breakfast buffet. No tea or coffee.
There is the smell of coal smoke in the air. Today we drive about 50 km to get to the field area, Palougou, near Baode, but the drive took a couple of hours. The roads have a lot of switchbacks and the traffic was dense with many trucks.
The hill tops (top 1/2) are composed of loess, a deposit of wind-blown silt. During the Pleistocene, the valleys were filled up to the top (and perhaps higher) with loess. However, erosion has removed most of the silt in the valleys, exposing the bedrocks in the lower 1/3 to 1/2 of the former plateau. The ultimate source of the silt was the Gobi Desert.
We got to our field area, a valley called Palougou and spent all day looking at exposures. We saw evidence of bauxite-mining at the Pennsylvanian-Ordovician unconformity surface.
We had lunch in the field which consisted of cucumber, grape tomatoes, hard boiled egg, several buns and bottled water. After lunch, we walked to the other end of the valley.
On this field trip, there are about 5 Czechs, 2 Russians, 1 Frenchman, 3 Germans, 4 Americans, 1 Brazilian, 3 Poles and a number of Chinese geologists and crew. The focus of this trip is paleobotany of the Pennsylvanian and Permian rocks. We saw beautiful slabs of ferns. One, Tingia of Permian age, had shredded-looking pinnule tips. I took several pictures of the slabs at an active coal mine.
We drove back and got to the hotel around 9 or 10 (I forgot to look at my watch). We had the traditional Chinese dinner with lots of dishes and Qingdao beer (the dry variety of Qingdao). After dinner, I had so much rock debris in my shoes and socks, that I washed them out. I put the shoes under running water to get all the dust off and knocked out about a teaspoon of sand from inside each shoe. I washed the socks with soap and water. I went to bed a little after midnight.
17 June 2007 Sunday
I got up at 6, took a shower and started packing. I had a cup or two of tea; Guanyin is the tea supplied with the room. The green tea leaves are rolled into loose balls about the size of a pea. It's good. I went to breakfast at 7 after writing some in my journal. The breakfast was a buffet, as before, but with a different selection of food.
We met in front of the hotel and the hotel operator requested that we get our photo taken in front of the hotel. He wanted to advertise that his hotel was a good place for international business. We were the largest group of foreigners ever, to stay in this hotel.
We put our luggage on the bus and left Fugu about 9. After a few hours the country-side became gently rolling, instead of the deeply dissected region we had been in. About 11 am, we were close to one of the purported tombs of Genghis Khan (no one really knows where he is buried).
We ate lunch on the bus (same ingredients as yesterday) and it started raining about the same time. We started seeing dunes as we drove west and the land became flatter (I couldn't take pictures because of wet windows). I saw yurts occasionally. It was a long drive. I read a lot of the "Kite Runner" book.
We arrived at the Yi Ze Yuan Hotel in Wuda at 6 pm. Once again, we all got our own rooms.
At 6:30, we all met in the lobby and walked around the corner to the restaurant. The mayor and several other officials held a banquet in our honor. I sat next to the mayor. There were many hearty rounds of toasts with the rice whiskey and beer. I saved a label from the Inner Mongolian beer called "Jin Chuan," or "Health Care Beer" (www.21food.com). The food was excellent. My favorite was the roasted (or BBQ) mutton rib with many interesting spices including Szechuan peppers, I think.
I got back to my room by 9pm, wrote in my journal and then went to bed. We will spend 3 nights in Wuda. I understand that it was highly unusual to have rain this time of year, and to have so much too. We brought good luck.
18 June 2007 Monday
I got up about 6 am, took a shower and made two cups of tea. It rained all night and is supposed to rain for several days. This is highly unusual. The temperature is in the upper fifties. We met in the lobby and had breakfast at 7:30, a buffet breakfast.
Instead of going directly to the field, we decided to have a lecture and discussion.
After the discussion, we boarded about 6 4-wheel drive vehicles to go to the open-cast Wuda Coal Mine. It rained continuously and at the mine, the wind drove the rain through our ponchos and rain jackets. The plant fossils, preserved by an ancient volcanic ash were spectacular. The driving, cold rain and mud everywhere made for a difficult field day. Everybody had mud on their shoes, in their shoes and on their pants. My socks were black from the coal mud. I took a lot of pictures of the fossils and some of the coal fires and spoil-pile fires. Even with my poncho and umbrella my pants were wet almost to my belt. The papers in my water-proof field bag were wet.
After the field stop, we went back to the hotel. Seven or eight of us had lunch at the restaurant next to the hotel. I also had a "Dragon Beer," and saved the label. I then washed my pants and socks in the sink.
At 3:30 we boarded the bus and drove to the mayor's house. He is a provincial mayor. We passed many flooded streets, parking lots, yards and countryside. We crossed the Yellow River and it had raised significantly. We arrived at the mayors very large house and he offered us yogurt to drink. It was very good. The 3-story house was like a museum. He had thousands of large slabs of polished petrified wood. He had artistic statues made of petrified wood and real wood. It was one of the most unusual things that I have seen. He loved fossil wood ever since he was a little boy. I took photos. As we left, it was still raining a bit.
Instead of going back to the hotel, the bus took us to a large compound with many yurts. When we got off the bus, two young ladies in Mongolian costumes sang songs to us. We walked to a large permanent yurt for our Mongolian banquet. The mayor was paying for everything. It was a huge meal with very many courses. The main item was a roasted sheep brought in with great ceremony. The mayor took a drink of rice whiskey and made several ceremonial cuts in the sheep's head, throat and chest. Then each of us, one at a time, was offered a ceremonial drink and then a white silk scarf was put around our neck and our picture was made with the sheep. Musicians and singers in costumes played music most of the time (with extreme echo turned on). The mayor sang along with a microphone for several songs. He kept coming to our table and offered toasts many times. Near the end, they wanted the guests to come up and sing. Several did. There was also some dancing. I took pictures. As we left, I told the erhu player in Chinese that he was very famous. It was dark when we left for the return trip to the hotel, but it wasn't raining at the time.
19 June 2007 Tuesday
I got up at 6, took a shower and checked my clothes drying in my room. My pants and shirt were dry. Both pair of socks were still damp. It is not raining for the moment. We got more rain for the last few days than they normally get for one year.
I went down to breakfast, a buffet. They had hot milk tea today, which was nice. We usually don't have any drink. After breakfast I paid 1140 Yuan (about $100) for my airline ticket from Yingchuan to Nanjing for tomorrow's flight. Now the streets are wet and it's starting to sprinkle. The bus windows are too dirty for picture taking, unfortunately.
We went to an artificial levee on the Yellow River to have a look at the river. It was very swollen. It was raining after we left the levee and the windows were all fogged up.
We arrived at a Neolithic petroglyph site "Zhou zi shan zhao shao gou yan hua." It was discovered in 1979 by a shepherd; he told his children and they mentioned it in class and the teacher reported the occurrence. We explored the petroglyphs in the rain.
We stopped briefly at the roadside to look at modern dry-land plants (in the rain). I took a few photos.
For lunch, we stopped at a Mongolian tourist site with many yurts. We had a large feast, singers and many toasts of vodka. Other than the usual Mongolian foods, I ate pigs ears, sheep liver and fried milk. We also had lots of mutton. The vodka was a special Mongolian one. I took photos of the bottle.
We drove back to Wuda and had another large meal with many toasts. I had too much to drink but it was hard to refuse the hosts.
20 June 2007 Wednesday
It rained all night. I woke up feeling a little uneasy from the vodka the night before. I woke up about 6:30, showered and went to breakfast. After breakfast, we put our luggage on the bus. The streets are somewhat flooded. There are leaks in some of the hotel rooms and I guess also in most of the buildings in the region. The field trip leader had been worried about sandstorms for our trip, but never considered all the rain. The bus has had a hard time getting through some of the roads and almost got stuck on several occasions. We have a 5-hour drive to Yinchuan for our flight to Nanjing. The farmers' fields were all flooded. A few minutes from Yinchuan, we stopped at a tourist restaurant and had another large Chinese dinner. One dish had large tubular potato noodles with beef (we thought it was tripe at first). After the lunch we got back on the bus and went to the airport. We were all checked in as one group. Our flight was at 3 pm. It was still raining at take off.
