Merry Christmas!

To get into a seasonal mood, we attended a Christmas celebration at the Okinawan Botanical Gardens. This light show gave us great ideas for future outside decorations at home.

Thanksgiving Weekend

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner at my partner's house. He was fortunate to already have a VISITOR. His mom was visiting from Peru.



After a weekend of Golfing, Diving, and Biking, we traveled up North to the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium.



The Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium is the world's second largest aquarium. Whale sharks and manta rays are kept amongst many other fish and plant species in the main tank.









For a limited time, any visitor to our home will get an all expense paid trip to the aquarium.

For information about the aquarium see: http://www.chample.tv/churaumi/index_en.html
For travel information contact unitedairlines.com

Halloween

As we are childless, we celebrated Halloween at my partner's house, Mike Hoffmann. They live on base and it's like Disneyland during Halloween. They actually bus the Japenese children in from out in town.



Mike and Stephanie and their children Gabby and Ryan.



We went through 8 bags of candy.



As we started to run low, Gabby had to ask permission to give the children without costumes candy.



Tania would have been proud of my pumpkin...

Nanjing

On Saturday, OCT 22nd, we traveled to Nanjing. A 3-hr train from Shanghai.
Having served as the capital of ten dynasties in ancient China, its splendour has remained and even enlarged with an extended population up to 600,000 when the government of the Republic of China set up its capital there in 1927. However, an outrageous and well-prepared war of aggression was started by Japan on Sep 13, 1931. Receiving no resistance from the government of the Republic of China, the troops of the Japanese aggressor occupied the three provinces of northeast China within a period of five months. Marching southwards, they launched all-out offensives on Shanghai and Nanjing.

On Dec 13, 1937, the Japanese army occupied Nanjing and during the following six weeks bore witness to the inhumane disgrace and bloody massacre exerted on the city. No less than 300,000 innocent civilians and unarmed Chinese soldiers were brutally slaughtered in mass and individual beheadings, burying alive, burning, and killing races. More than 20,000 women were raped and many were then killed. A third of the architectures together with their contents were damaged by fire and countless shops, stores and residences were looted and sacked. Corpses were seen floating on rivers and littered the streets and lanes. Whether they were children or the aged, from residents to nuns, few could escape from the savage atrocity.

Beth and I visited The Memorial Hall, a dedication to the Victims in the Nanjing Massacre, which was built by the Nanjing Municipal Government in 1985.

For the history of the Nanjing Massacre, see:
http://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/NanjingMassacre/NM.html








Several years ago, I read a book on the Nanjing Massacre written by Iris Cheng. This book, the best selling The Rape of Nanking (1997), documents the Nanking Massacre of Chinese by forces of the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and includes interviews with victims. The work is best known for its focus on oral history, and was the first popular English language work to deal exclusively on the atrocity itself. It was a New York Times Bestseller and remained on the list for months. It won praise particularly for the accounts of the massacre and atrocities, including mass rape. I recommend this book. For more info see:
http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_Chang


Iris Chang

Beijing

Beijing, the Capitol of China, is a wonderful city. It is known for the Great Wall, the Forbidden Palace, and Tiananmen Square. See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989
for more information on The Tiananmen square incident. Like the rest of China, it is rich in history.

Tiananmen Square with the Parliament in the background.






The Forbidden City is the Palace for this centuries Chinese Emperors. Most impressive are the number of tourists they run through this place on a daily basis. Needless to say, these Emperors had lots of storage space.



Christy would be happy here as the only store in the palace is a Starbucks...
We had to stop for Beth.

The Great Wall

We visited a section of the Great Wall outside of Beijing. Although many people believe that the Great Wall is the one man-made structure visible from outer space, this is a myth. For more info and pictures from the great wall see: www.chinapage.org/.../greatwall/greatwall.html

Xian

Our next stop was the ancient city of Xian. Xian served as the empire’s capitol for a long period of time during it's ancient history. It is mainly known for its Terracotta Army. The army consists of around 7,000 life-size stautues of Emperor's Qin Army, who served as the Emperor approximately 2,200 years ago. It is thought that these warriors were created to protect the Emperor in his after-life. 700,000 people helped to construct these warriors and the Emperor's tomb. Each warrior is unique. They were discovered in the mid 70s by a farmer digging a well. They have been described as “The 8th Wonder of the World.” The following web site has further information/ pictures on this fascinating subject: http://www.anniebees.com/China/China_42.htm









No Beth, You are not a Terracotta Warrior!!!

China

Click on map for better view.






We left for China on October 16th. We spent our first 2 days in Shanghai, a small city of about 17 million.

American Village

Our neighborhood is referred to as American Village. It is sort of like Seaport Village in San Diego. We can walk to the beach or one of many restaurants.





There are many Sushi restaurants to choose from. This one, a block away, is our favorite.

Island Life

We soon had a car and were able to head off to the beach.



However, the typhoons tend to ruin beach days. This is a view from our room during our first typhoon. During the summer there seems to be a typhoon every other weekend.