Re: Solar Eclipse March 29 2006: only 9 days left !

didier Meurgues wrote:

Thanks. Well, I would like to go to China (now that I have some
roomate's revenues !) but only if there is something worth to visit in
the totality zone (heritage).

The 2009 eclipse sounds like your best bet. It's going to be the longest eclipse of the 21st century. Both Wuhan and Shangahi will experience 5+ minutes of totality, and both are phenomenal heritage sites. Throw in some touring of Beijing and Xi'an -- easy flights from totality -- and you've got a honey of a trip!

Wuhan is a port city on the Yangtze River. We cruised upriver from Wuhan. (We were able to cruise alongside the dam since we visited before the completion of the locks.) I don't know how the river cruises have changed since the opening of the locks at the Three Gorges Dam.

The Hubei Museum in Wuhan was a surpise favorite on our '02 trip. The museum contains the artifacts dug up from a provincial governor's tomb. This governor was obsessed with music, so the tomb's contents included over 100 musical instruments. The originals are for viewing only, but the museum has made replicas of the instruments and offers concerts. The concert begins with traditional Chinese music and, then, segues, to Western classical music. Hearing ODE TO JOY played on replicas of 2,500 year old bells and other string instruments, was an amazing experience.

Shanghai is an amazing city filled with superlatives. It is home to the tallest building in China. Home, too, to the Shanghai Museum of Art, possibly the finest collection of artifacts in mainland China. The Bund reflects the city's heritage as a free port of international trade. It is also the site of a famous garden including one of the four most famous rocks in China. (I'm not kidding. The Chinese rate landscaping rocks, and Shanghai, along with its nearby neighbor Suzhou is home to several of these winners.)

My husband and I have talked about returning to China in 2010 to visit areas we missed the first time around. We also want to see the full flood height of the Yangtze River, but this monster-long eclipse is a serious magnet for moving our timetable up a year.

Karen Selwyn



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