China, the country of the rising sun, of the over one billion people, of the very ancient culture and of the silk; or for daylily friends: China the country of the daylilies; this or similar thoughts we have when thinking on China; similar like chocolate, mountains, banks and cleanness, which are the typical clichés for Switzerland. As I also could not completely keep off these clichés, my expectations for my first China journey were relatively high, especially concerning daylilies. Following I was very disappointed, but first lets start from the very beginning and one thing after the other.

Shanghai (which means as much as "up to the sea"), consisting of totally 13.4 million inhabitants on 6'000 square kilometres, is a city state in which city 7 million residents are living. They bustle about on 375 square kilometres, i.e. almost 19'000 Shanghaimen jostle oneself per square kilometre. The city is located at the Huangpu River, which flows 30 km downstream into the estuary of the Yangtze Kiang which is an important life-line for Shanghai because it is the access to the East China Sea.

On the airport of Shanghai we were picked up from the parents and the relatives of my wife. I was welcomed expectantly but very kindly from Jianping's parents and the families of her brother and sisters. This was hence my second family; it was great to finally meet them personally, as they could not come to our wedding. On the drive from the airport to Jianping's parents I looked curiously out the car to get an impression of the houses, roads, cars, shops, people and naturally also of the vegetation (but I did not see any daylilies). Everything was somehow new to me; certainly I saw also houses, roads and so on in Europe and in America, but nevertheless the tiny differences and its concurrence between what I saw here in China and the so familiar euro-american appearance caused that everything seemed to be strange. However even more strange was the language, because not only during the drive from the airport to the flat of Jianping's parents but also everywhere in this large country they spoke Chinese. Therefore I learnt over one year a little bit Chinese and I also knew some words but nevertheless I did not understand anything and everything seemed to me very Chinese.

We spent some days in Shanghai and I hoped every day to find either a flower shop, a nursery or a bookshop with daylily books or at least with books about the flora of China with many illustrations. But in the biggest two bookshops of Shanghai there was only a multivolumed work about the flora of China with black-and-white line drawings; there were no daylily books and a book about native Chinese flora with nice colour pictures was also not to be found anywhere (not even with Chinese text, much less in English). Who should buy something like this in China? And if one thinks that nobody is buying it, so why to produce it. Whatever is produced, should be sold without big problems and certainly yield a profit. This sounds somehow rather like capitalisme, but if one thinks about the practised communisme, one realizes very fast, that there is no place for luxury and hobbies (which is in principle also a luxury). But also the communisme in China is no longer what it was once. It slowly yields the capitalisme, which is clearly visible in the towns. The prices are normally not as stable as the tags on which they are written. In many shops you can bargain for the price even sometimes in big warehouses. Meanwhile there are also many small private shops, especially concerning telephones or handies respectively, electronics and food; by the way you also can find here Mc Donalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Simply for daylilies your looking in vain.

After long searching and asking we found in Shanghai a kind of flower, fish and bird shop (fishes and birds are the most spread domestic animals and hobbies in China; dogs and cats were temporarily under Mao not allowed as domestic animals). But when my wife Jianping asked in best Shanghai dialect for daylilies, the saleswomen simply turned up her nose and asked "What is that ?". My wife explained her, that its flower buds are used in China as a kind of "spice" or "vegetable" for sauce and soups. But the only thing what she answered was, "everything what I have as seeds are in this rack of small seed bags" (naturally she said this in Chinese, but my Chinese is so far not so good and concerning Chinese writing, it is even worse). There were many small seed bags and many of the presented plant seeds were familiar to me, but there was no trace of daylilies.

So we asked further about, if somewhere in the town one can buy plants and we heard about a market somewhere in the centre of Shanghai. After patient asking our way to the market, we finally found it. This market was not on a big public place, no, it was in a narrow road which had on both sides provisionally looking stands. At the beginning of the road there one could find probably almost everything what an aquarium lover wants; not only fishes and other small animals and green fodder for the water, no also everything which is needed like aquariums, circulation pumps and other accessories, as well as books and journals up to turtles. In between there were many people trying to sell Cycas, sometimes some big plants for stinking cheap prices for our means. Probably it was always the same species but in different sizes. I do not know, why this plant was so often offered but I guess it is because it only grows slowly and therefore it will have for a long time space in the small flats in China. And look at that, ssomewhen there was a road embranchment to the left, from where we heard a loud warbling of birds and many birdcages made of wood or bamboo hanged around. But also the road with the mute fishes changed slowly into a road with nodules, bulbs, rhizomes and some greenstuff. The offer seemed to be manifold in first place; there were some bamboo rhizomes, bulbs and nodules of any for me unknown "I-don't-know-what", nodule-like rhizomes of Lotus and water lily rhizomes, lignified pieces of perennial peonies and bare lignified shoots with some poor roots of tree peonies and also some orchids like e.g. half to totally dried up shoots of Dendrobiums and wonderful flowering Cattleyas. As soon as my wife in my company asked for the price, the prices rose within seconds up to the 5 or 10 times of its normally asked or by Chinese people beaten down price. And if you start to beat down such exorbitant prices in company of a long-nose, that is how the European and Americans are called here, then soon you realize that a small crowd of nosy Chinese starts growing around you and participate more and more in the debate. No, they do not help to beat down the price, certainly not, one of them rathermore says, this guy can afford it, another one tries to sell his own plants and some others discuss the whole thing among themselves or some are simply gape, because they may not see such a racket every day. By the way as expected, there were of course no daylilies on this market and naturally nobody knew at the beginning which plants we call daylily. Only when my wife said the name of this sauce-soup-flower-spice or -vegetable respectively, they began to see the light. And suddenly they told us, that they can get different species if we want, we only have to return in 2 weeks. But we rejected, not because it would have been a problem to return in 2 weeks, but because we simply believed that we would probably buy a dozen times precisely the same species under different names (the Chineses are very efficient in business and concerning cheating, we probably can learn something too; but not all Chinese are like this). I guess we would have gotten the species Hemerocallis citrina, which flower buds will be picked shortly before they would open. As my wife Jianping understood the longer the better how to beat down the prices, we bought 4 water lilies (probably they did not survive this winter), some already dead and buried lotus, some excellent proliferous bamboo, 3 dormant or perhaps already dead perennial peonies and a slow growing orchid called Cattleya.

After all these failures concerning daylilies we decided to make an excursion into the botanical garden of Shanghai. Unfortunately it is not so close to the centre but in the south west, however it is still in the large Shanghai. Also here we have had luck inasmuch as we always found somebody after some asking, who could tell us where to get off the underground railway or the bus respectively. After over half an hour journey in underground railway and bus we finally reached the entrance of the botanical garden. We paid the entrance fee and asked immediately, if they have and sell daylilies. The answer was, however could it be differently, a simple no; they have other plants for selling. My wife negotiated diligently further and finally she was told the name and the office of the person responsible for daylilies. In the wonderful and spacious layed out garden we found on the described way the appropriate office building. It was at the lateral edge of the botanical garden and like the surrounding planting there, it was not really a nice presenting object. We asked around to find the appropriate person and when we almost started to leave, coincidentally the daylily responsible person came. She was a nice young Chinese woman. She told us that she recently finished her studies, and therefore she is not very long working here and among other things also responsible for daylilies. Unfortunately she did not know what daylilies were growing here in the botanical garden, as all have simply a number but no name. She led us to the daylily bed which is in principle not public accessible. Only a few were in flower and these were certainly any hybrids. She showed also much interest for daylily species, but it seemed that there were none here in the botanical garden of Shanghai. She regretted that even the native Chinese daylilies could not be showed to the visitors and affirmed that she wants to change that in the near future. This arouse naturally my interest to participate if possible. Therefore we agreed to make in autumn a swop; she will send me 1-2 fans of the daylily species, which she could find or somehow organize in China and I will send her 1-2 fans of my correctly labelled daylilies (i.e. species and hybrids); - since summer I am in e-mail contact with her and I heard several times, that she found or got a species or wild form but unfortunately she does not know its name (actually in autumn we made a daylily exchange and I received from her 4 different nameless species with some additional information about their habitat and their characteristics). - After we said goodbye, we walked a little bit further through the botanical garden and visited the included wonderful Bonsai garden, but certainly not until after we paid a separate entrance fee (it seems to be habit and customs that after paying the entrance fee you have to pay again separately for every smaller or bigger inside located exhibition, stalactite cavern or anything else to look at). Hence Shanghai was disposed for me concerning daylilies; result: expecting a great deal causes even more disappointments.

But what is a China journey consisting only of Shanghai; it is very simple, it would not be a China journey but a Shanghai trip. Thus one has at least to visit Peking and being in the north one can just turn to the west in order to threaten the Terracotta Army in Xi'an and then down to the south to ship around the scenic hills near Guilin and subsequently again back east to the Huangpu River and Shanghai. But first we still needed the flight tickets. Hence jumping into the travel office and negotiating. For when there are tickets available for here to there, which flights or airline respectively are cheaper, how many days do we need at that place to see enough and and and ... After one hour we had our flight tickets in the pocket and in order that our pockets were not so baggy, we plonked down some thousend Yuans; because air journeys are also not for free in China. However before we set out for Peking, we made a small side-trip as a one day excursion to Suzhou.

Suzhou means translated approximately "awaking area", has 700'000 inhabitants on an area of 119 square kilometres and is famous as town of gardens and channels. In Suzhou we visited the Lion Hill, the Poetic Garden, the North Temple, the Garden of Stay, the Tiger Hill and furthermore we made a teeny-weeny boat trip on the imperial channel.

In the early Sunday morning of the 31st May we went off to the north, to the capital of China, i.e. to Peking or as the Chinese name it, Bejing, which means as much as "northern capital". Peking is 16'807 square kilometres large and is populated by 10.9 million inhabitants. As former seat of the Chinese emperors it contains a city in the town called "Forbidden City", because during the emperors'dynasties the normal mortals had no admittance to these buildings as it contained the houses of the emperor (now it is the Palace Museum).

Arrived in Peking we first had to find a hotel to deposit our luggage. Then we decided to immediately visit the botanical garden of Peking, because we only planned to stay a few days in Peking. The botanical garden is located a little bit out of Peking in the northwest. From the Peking city center we needed more than one hour with the public busses to get to the botanical garden. It is not as extensive as the one of Shanghai. But there, what a surprise, some daylilies grew in a herbaceous plant area and there were even some species and one of them was even in flower. The flowering daylily was labelled as Hemerocallis minor and furthermore the label told that the flowers will be eaten. After we had realized that there are some daylily species here, we wanted to get hold of some of these plants by lawful means. However as it was Sunday, there were no gardeners but only a few supervisors and after finally finding them, they either sent us to another one or they said, we have to come again on a working day, when the gardeners and the responsible persons are working. Therefore we returned empty-handed to the hotel in Peking. The next morning my wife Jianping phoned the botanical garden of Peking in order to ask if we can buy some fans of the daylily species. After she finally had somebody halfway responsible for daylilies on the blower, she was put off the next day as he first had to discuss this with his woman head. Then we booked for this day a trip to the Great Wall. There I could see really nothing concerning daylilies except on some picture postcards, which were offered for sale every few meters in a 10 piece package. On this picture postcard there was a yellow flowering daylily in abundance, but apparently it was currently not the time for its coming-out.

The next morning my wife phoned again with the botanical garden of Peking and they decided there to sell some fans, but per species they demanded 100 Yuan, that is about 20.- DM per species. This is a stiff price not only for us but especially for China, and thinking on one hand of the more than one square metre large species thickets and on the other hand that they sell other already potted plants much cheaper, then this is a full-blown exorbitant price. But as I was so crazy about returning some daylily species to Switzerland and as it rained anyhow, we decided to go again by bus driving again for more than one hour to the botanical garden of Peking. My wife negotiated again with the daylily responsible person and we agreed on 80 Yuan per daylily species, i.e. about 15.- DM per species. The daylily responsible person organized a gardener with shovel and then it was time for digging. It poured with rain and we stood in the herbaceous garden and watched how the gardener following the instructions of the daylily responsible person dug out once a plant here and once a plant there. Meanwhile my wife talked with the daylily responsible person and he explained, that the flowering daylily thicket, which was labelled as H. minor and described as eating ingredient, was H. flava or Hemerocallis lilioasphodelus respectively with its nowadays correct name, and that none of these two are eaten but Hemerocallis citrina. After digging out a small thicket of all 6 available daylily species and labelling them, the adhering earth had to be taken off. Despite heavy rain they had to use the garden hose. After that came the paying and then finally the time has come that we could leave the botanical garden with the following daylily species: H. citrina, H. fulva, H. fulva 'Kwanzo', H. lilioasphodelus, H. middendorffii and H. minor (it turned out one year later, when it flowered at home, that the H. citrina is not H. citrina, but probably a cultivar). A first but relative expensive success. After that, how can it be differently, followed a one hour bus trip back to the Peking city centre. And as it was early afternoon, we decided to undertake a side-trip to the "Forbidden City" with the plants in one hand and the umbrella in the other hand. During the following two days we enjoyed also a leisurely 5-hour lasting train journey to the 200 km far-off Chengde and back.

Chengde is 622 square kilometres large, has 208'000 inhabitants and the name means as much as "continuing the virtue". The city is located in the northeast of Peking and was the summer residence of the Qing emperors and formerly the meeting place for the national minorities, for whom the 8 outer temples were constructed in the style of their fringe nations.

The Chinese people in the railway carriage always ate and drunk and the waste they distributed over the floor (there were no wastebaskets). Tour operators of the destination as well as other women and men tried to sell in the railway carriage their tour arrangements, hotelrooms, city maps and other things, in addition the conductor or conductress (per carriage one person, normally female) wandered back and forth, once selling magazines, once with a vacuum jug with boiling water, in order that the passengers could again brew or thin their tea respectively. And in order that the passengers do not have to waddle in centimetre high waste, the conductor/conductress cleaned the floor shortly before the end of the journey (everything at its time; by the way in the 1. class carriages there were small metal bowls for the waste, one per open compartment on its little desk, this looks then a little bit neater especially if it will be really used, which was normally the case, but because of constant eating, it was relatively soon too small or too full respectively). It is true that smoking is forbidden in the train but it was tolerated, especially during train stops at stations. Even if the trains were sometimes very full, there were enough seats, because they only sell as many tickets as there are seats and every ticket tells where its owner has to sit. But as the Chinese are nice and friendly too, seats will also be switched, in order that a couple or a family can sit together. Everything is mostly very friendly and sociable. Such a train journey 2. class during the day is simply a must, in order that one get a real impression of the country and its people (this is not meant as sarcastic as it may sound; I did not like everything what I saw in the train especially concerning cleanness, but one get closer to the Chinese and there were some talks with my wife about myself and thanks to her translation knowledge also with me).

Back in Peking we visited next morning in addition shortly the Summer Palace (unfortunately a little bit too short), before we flew off in the afternoon to Xi'an. In the same evening the 6th June we arrived after a two hour flight in Xi'an.

Xi'an (Sian), which means as much as "western quiet", is located close to the Yellow River and is about 1'000 km southwest of Peking. About 2.28 million people live on 861 square kilometres in Xi'an. Already 5'000 years ago in the nearer and farer surroundings of this loess region of the Yellow River there lived the ancestors of the Chineses. About 220 B.C. the first emperor of the unified Chinese empire made Xi'an to the capital city and as it was also the beginning of the Silk Road it developed very fast to the biggest city of the world. Xi'an got famous not only because of the Silk Road but also because 35 km easterly of it in the year 1974 they found the first life-sized horse and warrior figures of the Terracotta Army made out of clay, which the first emperor of China ordered to produce about 200 B.C.

As we only had a full day available in Xi'an, we booked a day trip to the Terracotta Army (taking pictures was forbidden, but buying postcards and reproductions of the Terracotta figures in different sizes was of course welcomed). After that we visited in addition the Wild Goose Pagoda (Pagoda is a Buddhistic temple in the shape of a round or multangular tower). After the trip, in the evening, we went for a small stroll through the town to the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower and went up the completely preserved town wall which was build during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). Next morning, Sunday the 7th June, we flew to Guilin.

Guilin has 400'000 inhabitants on 54 square kilometres and means as much "Forest of Cassia Trees", because in autumn the flowers of the Cassia trees spread out its sweetish scent over the town. Guilin is located at the Li River and is especially famous for the surrounding with the abrupt limestone hills called tower karst which have inspired poets and painters for centuries.

As we booked already on the airport of Xi'an a hotel for Guilin, we were picked up at the airport in Guilin. On the bus ride from the airport to the city we were familiarized with the offered excursion trips. We booked in the bus excursion trips for the next 2.5 days, i.e. it started already that afternoon with a visit in the Seven Star Park, in which there is the Camel Hill. The next day we should have done the ship tour on the Li River with outlook on the limestone hills. But as it rained and was also foggy, we could even not see much concerning outlook from our hotel room. In principle we wanted to take pictures during the ship tour, but not in rain and with no sunshine, because then everything looks flat, only little structured and a little bit gloomy. Besides while it is raining one normally stays in the closed ship part and not in the open view areas and terrace. So we decided to change the tour program, which lead to some discussions and telephone conversations. We were told that exactly the current weather is the most beautiful one for this river tour and for taking pictures; everything looks much more romantical and the landscape gets more charming. But as we did not enter the busses, which wanted to fetch us for the ship tour, this trip took care of itself. The organizer who picked us up from the airport was however flexibel, so that we could make another trip and postpone the Li River tour to the next day. Thus we visited during this rainy day the grotto of Guangyen at the Li River. Inside of this large grotto called Crown Cave there were many wonderful dripstones, which unfortunately were totally kitschified with harlekin lights. Included in this cave trip was a little boat tour through a part of the grotto and a track railway through an other part of the grotto. The weather on the next day was only slightly better and we were picked up by 2 busses. Yes of course there were 2 busses because we also went with 2 different ships and that is how this happened: As my wife is Chinese and I am not, there were only 2 possibilities for this Li River tour; either my wife takes the ship which is for Chinese only and pays 150 Yuan, or we both take the ship which foreigners are allowed to use and pay 450 Yuan per person inclusive lunch (i.e. foreigners were not allowed to make the tour for 150 Yuan). As we could not see why there are two different prices for one and the same, my wife Jianping made the Chinese ship tour while I made the long-nose ship tour. In the evening we told each other what we had seen and experienced. My wife's tour consisted of a ship tour nonstop to Yangshuo, with following bus tour back to Guilin and several stops at some shops where it was expected that the Chinese tourists throw their money away for any stupid pseudo-medicine or expensive trash. My ship tour contained a 1-hour stop for visiting the Crown Cave; but now the water level was higher in the cave and therefore the boat tour inside the grotto was impossible. Of course the entry fee for the Crown Cave was not included in the ship tour price of 450 Yuan and had to be paid in addition. During that hour I enjoyed a rest on the ship, watched how the ship personal washed the saucers in the river water and was delighted by the large flying around butterflies, which reminded me that here is the transition between subtropical and tropical climate. When the other passengers came back from the cave visit, the ship tour continued to Yangshuo and while doing so we got during the trip the lunch and from time to time also some rain. In Yangshuo a bus expected us to bring us back to Guilin. Though my tour started later but I was in the hotel one hour before my wife arrived. Now just under one day was left in Guilin, because on Wednesday the 10th June it should go back to Shanghai.

As my wife Jianping at my insistence made again and again inquiries about the botanical garden during the last days, we knew meanwhile, how to get there. Hence into a small long-distance bus and away to the botanical garden of Guilin. After almost half hour drive and go through a few villages, we arrived at the doors of the botanical garden. Before we entered the botanical garden, we changed our tactics, i.e. the daylilies should be for my wife and I am just a friend who is also interested in daylilies, because we did not want to pay such high prices for daylily species as in Peking. At the entrance we asked where to go concerning daylilies. Afterwards a 15 minutes walk started first through a kind of park but pretty soon through a kind of natural forest. And when the forest ended there was a glade with a kind of nursery, such as we have had it 30 years ago in Europe. During the discussion with the responsible person he told us that they have a Hemerocallis fulva species (#1) planted in a pot and one started to flower (with some human help; it turned out two years later, when one of the two plants flowered at home, that it is H. fulva 'Flore Pleno'). He said he has another different Hemerocallis fulva species (#2) in a pot, but without flowers (it turned out one year later, when it flowered at home, that this was not a species; and that one plant flowered orange-yellow and the other old rose). We decided to buy of each species 2 pots at a price of 8 Yuan per pot but leaving the pot and the earth there. After that we were sent to another place in the botanical garden where it could also have daylily species. Well we set out again with our new acquisition to reach the described place. There we waited a long time vainly for the responsible person and as she could not be found, a very kind employee decided to show us the daylilies. We found them in a meadow, isolated from each other and because of its orange-red flower colour the Hemerocallis fulva species (#3) were the current spot of colour in the meadow. They were planted here a few years ago for research purpose which are meanwhile completed. We let her dig out some beautiful, individual plants and paid 10 Yuan in total (here these plants were normally solitary, i.e. no thickets and normally 20-50 cm distance to the next plant; but maybe we got among other things that impression because less than one month ago the grass was mowed and not all growth was back again in its full magnificence). Now we wanted actually know, which Fulva varieties we had just bought and so we were sent to a professor who works in the botanical garden. We had luck because he just wanted to leave for lunch and would have been back not before 2 hours. We had "bad luck" because in China they do not distinguish the different Fulva varieties; H. fulva is H. fulva and if it is double, then it is double and one can call it H. fulva 'Kwanzo'; anything else they do not know or distinguish respectively; thus it is written in the Chinese botanical books. After that we left the botanical garden and returned with a bus to Guilin. As already happened in Peking and wherever we appeared with daylily plants, the people stared at me and asked my wife, what this is. As soon as the people were informed that these are daylilies and that we paid so much for Chinese means, the big shaking of the heads and lack of understanding started, because they would not have paid a single Fen (Fen is, like the Penny in Great Britain, the smallest money unit in China; 100 Fen are 1 Yuan). In the late afternoon the organizer of the tours drove us to the airport and then we took off into the sky towards east-northeast to Shanghai.

The following days we made from Shanghai a 2-day trip with the train to Hangzhou. Hangzhou, a town of 429 square kilometres and 1.2 million inhabitants, is located at the bay of the Qiantang River, which widens to the East China Sea. The town is famous because of the silk, the Dragon Well tea and the West Lake. The real tourist attraction however is the West Lake, which actually evolved out of the bay of the Qiantang River, but was already 1000 years ago developped to a lake. Hangzhou is meanwhile also more pupular for honeymoon trips than is sister town Suzhou.

Our day trip comprised especially of the West Lake, with an artificial isle, called Lesser Yingzhou Isle, which was made 400 years ago and on which there are even 4 ponds with water lilies. After leaving the isle a bus drove us to the Temple of Yue Fei (tomb of general Yuefen), to the Dragon Well, to the Buddhistic Temple of the Soul's Retreat called Lingyinsi, where close to it the figure of a popular potbellied Buddha sits in the rock (it is true that taking pictures was allowed but at the only good place for pictures you had to pay for it and then you could immortalize yourself with the laughing fatness in stone garb on celluloid). Subsequently we drove further to a kind of park, called "Song Cheng", in which historical things like houses and ships were reproduced in order to bring the past and the tradition of China closer to the visitors. After that we returned straight away or a little bit faster to the station and back to Shanghai.

The next day we visited another garden, the zoological garden of Shanghai. It is relatively wide and there are also some nice new laying-outs, but what annoyed me the most was that revel marched in too. When we left that place, I had a hard time to find out if I was in the zoological garden or on the revel. In addition we spent a few days with my parents-in-law before a taxi drove us and our luggage on Thursday morning the 18th June to the airport. We had some overweight; of course not we ourselves but our luggage, as our live weight together amounts to 120 kg. Our luggage on the other hand weighed 60 kg; Lufthansa only allows 20 kg per person. Nevertheless the airlines normally allow a little bit more witout extra charge, therefore we would have to pay 10 kg overweight; that would have cost about 500 DM or expressed differently, half of a flight ticket Basel-Shanghai back for an adult person with 20 kg luggage and an average net weight of 75 kg. We were not willing to pay such a enormous price for 10 kg overweight and the Lufthansa guy was not open to reason too. Therefore we left back some books at the airport which my parents-in-law fetched later. The airplane was half-empty and we could not understand, why the people of Lufthansa were so small-minded. For us it was the last time we flew with Lufthansa, not only because of the unfriendly ground personnel but also because one catches a cold from the air-conditioning, that oneself could not turn off and it was also impossible to protect oneself; the whole time it blew from above the windows along the whole airplane and flying time. We were happy when the 5-hour waiting on the Frankfurt airport for the feeder line was left behind us and we finally arrived Basel at night.

Result of the China journey: One meets in China rather more a person than a daylily !