Cold Turkey

Judy invited a few of her colleagues from school to share Christmas dinner with us on the evening of Christmas day. She had been planning to cook a turkey but our little oven just wasn’t big enough, so we ordered a freshly cooked one from The Wicker Basket, a local shop/restaurant/bakery which supplies roast turkeys for American Thanksgiving as well as for Christmas. We collected it piping hot while the vegetables, stuffing, etc. were cooking at home or in the kitchen of a flat two floors above us which a friendly Dutch couple had kindly made available.
Judy’s home-made Christmas pudding, complete with flaming brandy and silver threepenny piece, was declared by one guest to be the best she had ever had (Peter is writing this bit!). The home-made mincemeat was also a great success. We took some mince pies along to the staff Christmas meal on Christmas Eve, thinking that the Chinese members of staff would be unlikely to eat this strange British invention. Wrong! The pies disappeared almost immediately.
Most of the CDs and videos in the shops here are what we would call pirate copies, so Peter had tried to download a legal copy of a "Carols from King’s" album from Amazon, only to get a message that their terms of use did not allow downloads outside the UK. No wonder the pirates flourish! However, our daughter Philippa kindly downloaded and emailed no less than 25 of the carols for us, so we and our guests have been enjoying them.
Chinese DVDs are full of surprises. We recently tried to watch a British film whose cover was printed in English but whose soundtrack turned out to be in . . . . .. Spanish!! And the cover for "Let there be Blood" describes it as "A biright (sic) and breezy romantic comedy"!!
We have now discovered that we can listen to BBC Radio 4 online quite a lot of the time. We are 8 hours ahead of UK time, so it’s a bit strange waking up to the midnight news and listening to "Sailing By" at the beginning of the working day. Peter thought he would be able to enjoy listening to Test Match Special, but was thwarted by another "Only available in UK" message. Surely many ex-pat Brits would love to listen to TMS far from home? On the bright side, we have become regular Archers fans (Peter heard the very first episode as a boy!).
We plan to spend the first few days of the New Year (Western New Year, not Chinese) in Xishuangbanna. It’s in the same province as Kunming but further south and lower down so we are expecting to enjoy warmer weather there. Unpack those T-shirts and sandals again! Not that the weather here has been that cold. No snow or frost in Kunming, unlike much of China which is literally freezing now. However, we’ll probably experience proper winter weather during our Chinese New Year visit to UK next month. (The Year of the Ox starts on January 26th.)
The turkey is nearly all gone now. The traditional Boxing Day turkey sandwiches and turkey blanquette took care of that.
This will be our last blog entry for 2008. We wish you all the best in 2009.

Christmas is coming!!

Less than two weeks to Christmas Day and Judy is busy making mincemeat, Christmas puddings, etc. Her school Christmas dinner is on Christmas Eve and on the evening of the 25th we have invited some of her colleagues to join us for a meal, but it will be strange not to be doing many of the important things we usually do on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Many Chinese now celebrate Christmas with Christmas trees, decorations, etc. even though they don’t know the reason for it.


Robert, who runs the school will be away for a while and has asked Peter to take a couple of lessons for him while he is away. This is supposed to include "Christmas activities" although Peter is not too sure what that means in China!
We are not able to send Christmas cards this year but we hear that a number of cards and letters have already arrived for us in England. Thank you to everyone who sent them. We look forward to reading them in January. Judy’s school closes for Chinese New Year, so we are due to visit UK from January 21st to 4th February. On the way back to China we plan to spend 4 nights in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Peter has made friends with a Chinese family who run a Chinese pharmacy. He had a meal with them recently (while Judy was teaching). As in most small Chinese shops, the meal was prepared and eaten in the shop, with heating coming from an open fire burning in a metal bowl beside the table. Peter wasn’t too sure what all the dishes were and the family spoke no English but the generous hospitality needed no translation.

Peter continues to enjoy the warm indoor swimming pool. Life is tough in China!!

Comings and Goings

On Wednesday morning, Andrew was all packed and ready to fly to Bangkok. From Bangkok, he was going to spend a few days in Chiang Mai progressing the building and distribution of the water purifiers, before returning to Bangkok for his flight back to England and on to Norway. And then the news broke that 3,000 demonstrators had stormed Bangkok airport and had taken over the control tower. All flights in and out of Bangkok were grounded! Andrew’s visa for China expired on Saturday, so he had to leave by then. But how? He spent hours on the phone (including to the travel agent who hadn’t heard about the problem) and the internet. He rebooked his flight for Saturday, plus a provisional booking to Hong Kong, just in case. And then, on Thursday morning came a call to say that there was a flight to Chiang Mai that afternoon and he was on it. So off he went, still not knowing whether he would be able to get to Bangkok for his flight to London on Monday.

On Wednesday evening, we went to an American Thanksgiving meal at the International Coffee Shop. A lot of Chinese young people were also present, so we were not the only ones who had never been to a Thanksgiving meal before. We enjoyed the roast turkey even though they couldn’t find any cranberry sauce. And we were intrigued by the choc chip cookies (or were they pumpkin cakes with chocolate?) which were on our plates with the other vegetables. After the meal, we heard all about Squantas, the native American who helped the Pilgrim Fathers find food. The evening finished with singing the doxology and Edelweiss - with actions. You didn’t know Edelweiss had actions? The Chinese do!

Christine Carver, a friend from Tewkesbury, is being sponsored by the European Union to study in Beijing. And this week they have sent her to Kunming. She stayed with us Saturday night before returning to Beijing on Sunday afternoon. It was great to catch up with her news, swap stories about flooding, etc. We hope to see her in Kunming again while we are here.

At last we have discovered how to receive mail from UK - have it sent to Judy’s school. Apparently this stems from the Chinese tradition that where you belong is your place of work rather than your home. But the good news is that in the past week two items of mails for us arrived successfully from UK. As the address is a mixture of Chinese and English, I’m going to try scanning it and including it in this blog in case anyone wants to print it out and stick it to an envelope!

A Different November

November is probably the month when we really notice the difference between England and China. How strange to look out of the window on November 5th and see and hear no fireworks or bonfires. Judy tried to explain about Guy Fawkes to her students, but it sounded pretty lame to say that we all gather around a bonfire and burn an effigy of someone who committed a crime several hundred years ago. Especially as he was unsuccessful!

And no two minutes silence on November 11th or remembrance gatherings at village memorials. We were probably the only two people in Kunming wearing poppies, although we did meet a visitor from New Zealand who thought we must be observing ANZAC Day. (Is that in November??) Next week is Thanksgiving, (apparently it’s always on the fourth Thursday in November in USA, but earlier in Canada) and we are looking forward to finding out about this celebration when we share a turkey meal with our American friends.

One of the bonuses of living in Kunming is that the shops here are not all urging us to buy, buy, buy ready for Christmas. In fact there is no mention of Christmas at all, except that some of the bigger supermarkets are selling Christmas decorations. Judy has invited some of her work colleagues to supper on Christmas Day, soit will be a different sort of festival this year, and we hope to find out more about the way Christmas is celebrated in the USA, Canada, France and the Philippines.

Judy has recovered from the e.coli infection which was making her feel so bad. Part of the problem was that she was resistant to nearly every form of antibiotic, so none of the pills were helping. However, at last a successful treatment was found and now she is feeling much more like her old self. She is also getting to know her classes at school and finding better ways to explain things in English. It is noticeable that children who have made good progress during the lessons suddenly misunderstand completely when homework is set (just like England really!)


The Halloween weekend activities at Robert’s School were a great success from their point of view, with over 1,500 visitors attending taster lessons and many of them signing up to join regular classes. Judy didn’t want to dress up as a witch or a ghost, so decided that the blue bathroom curtains could be taken down and transformed into the cloak worn by the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella. She asked one of the Chinese staff to write ‘Fairy Godmother’ in Chinese on her name badge. It was only on Sunday that she discovered that he didn’t know what a fairy godmother was, so he had written ‘Old Witch’ instead! Judy was not best pleased!

Today we joined a number of Judy’s work colleagues to celebrate PJ’s birthday. We went to a picturesque town on the outskirts of Kunming (9p on the local bus) explored the town and had lunch together in a local restaurant. The weather changed from cool and cloudy to glorious sunshine and it was lovely to get to know some of Judy’s Chinese colleagues better. We managed to carry a birthday cake around with us and then produced it at lunch, complete with a mechanical lotus flower candle which played ‘Happy Birthday’ in a rather sad minor key!

Beekeeping Conference

Peter has been in Hangzhou for 5 days attending the Ninth Asian Apicultural Association Conference. Why? He is trying to learn more about Asian Cerana bees and the best way to keep them here in Yunnan.

Peter was the only UK representative, apart from Nicola Bradbear from Bees for Development who was one of the speakers and attended part-time. There were over 1,000 delegates, 700 of whom were Chinese. Peter made friends with Rashid, the Royal Beekeeper to the Sultan of Muscat and Oman - actually he’s head of the relevant government department - and with the one delegate from Albania. But he had good conversations with experts in various fields of beekeeping, bee biology, etc., from many different countries.




Peter & Rashid with a Miao (?) lady






Probably the most exciting contact was with the team from Nagaland, an Indian state very similar to Yunnan but whose people speak English. They are actively developing Cerana beekeeping and largely share our aims and values. If you have read any books about the history of Nagaland, you will know what we mean. It could be that a visit to Nagaland will be necessary before too long! The capital, Kohima is not very far from Kunming as the crow flies, but we as are not crows we would need to go via Calcutta, but still quite a short journey. (The Kohima epitaph from the Commonwealth War Memorial there is often quoted on Remembrance Day.)
The foreign delegates were looked after by a team of English language students from local universities, including one girl who made it clear that she was definitely on the same wavelength as us. So we shall have friends in Hangzhou if we go there as tourists as we hope to do next summer.

The conference had its lighter moments, like when two Chinese gentlemen of similar age to Peter asked if they could have a talk with him. After about 15 minutes of rather mystifying conversation, it became clear that they had mistaken him for the European expert on Colony Collapse Disorder. Peter had to explain that the only thing he knew about CCD was that his colonies collapsed!

And there was the New Zealand expert whose government has banned the use of antibiotics to treat bee diseases. He explained other methods of treatment which are actually more effective. But he was followed by a Chinese speaker who felt that stringent EU standards for antibiotic levels in imported honey were unfair and were really intended to keep out Chinese imports! The closest things got to a political disagreement.


There were visits to a honey production factory and to apiaries with plenty of flying bees, but no-one got stung. The journey back to the hotel took about an hour in a fleet of 11 or 12 buses led by two police cars with flashing blue and red lights and an unmarked government car. There were policemen at every intersection stopping the traffic to allow the important visitors (!) to speed through unhindered. Peter said it felt like when we were stopped by a policeman near Windsor Castle and Mr Gorbachev went past right in front of us. The journey was made more interesting by the group from Bangalore who each insisted on singing a solo over the bus tannoy.





Gentle Cerana bees with Bangalore beekeeper






Apart from the apiary visit when the sun came out, it rained solidly in Hangzhou and Kunming all the time Peter was away. A very worthwhile conference but he is very glad to back in Kunming in spite of more torrential rain.

We are now in a period of warm sunny days, although with clear skies the temperature drops rapidly after sunset. A lovely time to be in Kunming. The water in the swimming pool is now really cold but Peter has found a Olympic size indoor pool heated to over 30 degrees Celsius. Luxury at £2 a visit!

Birthday & Bus news

You can’t get candied peel here, so Judy is making some for Christmas mince pies, etc. Oranges are plentiful and you can get lemons. She is also having a go at marmalade as local orange jam isn’t quite the same. Breakfast could be transformed.


A couple of weeks ago it was Andrew’s 60th birthday. Sadly, Anna, his wife, was not here to celebrate it with him, but they were planning to have an official birthday together a couple of weeks later when she visits him in Thailand. Chinese cake shops specialise in lavishly decorated cakes for every occasion so it was quite easy to get a personalised birthday cake. But what gave Peter and Andrew the most fun was the gadget which was supposed to light all the candles before opening out like a flower and playing "Happy Birthday to You". Actually, it didn’t work quite like that, probably because they didn’t read the instructions. But it was an interesting engineering challenge!

Andrew was able to take over 50 of the circuits which Peter has been modifying. In Thailand, the staff and children in the orphanage will assemble the UV light water purifiers for sending to the Irrawaddy Delta. The total cost of each water purifier is only a few US dollars. We were shown one recently which cost $6,000, although that did include solar panels. As well as the bicycle driven model which we mentioned earlier, Andrew has successfully used a treadle sewing machine to back drive the DC fan motor (cheap car spares) to produce the voltage. Most villages have a bicycle and/or a sewing machine even if they have no electricity. It seems likely that there will also be a demand for these purifiers here in Yunnan.


Kunming buses continue to mystify and frustrate. Peter had to wait at least 20 minutes for a no. 82 the other day. The waiting crowd (they don’t queue here) was getting restive as other buses came and went. Shortly after Peter gave up and moved away to catch a different bus, no less than six 82s came along together. And when Peter eventually got on a bus, the passengers were jammed in more tightly than sardines in a can. One way of getting closer to the local community!

This week Judy’s school will be celebrating Halloween in what they think is the traditional British way. (Actually it’s more American.) Anyway, staff and pupils are all expected to come dressed as witches, ghosts, etc., something which Judy is not keen on. But the other option is to come as a Disney character. No suggestions, thank you, about which character she is most like.

Dali

Dali is about 250 miles from Kunming in the direction of Tibet. It’s motorway all the way and our comfortable long distance bus took 5 hours, including one stop at a service station for refreshments, etc. And then it was a short taxi ride to the ancient walled city. Our guesthouse was near the east gate on an almost pedestrianised main road, a short walk from the city centre. Our hosts were hospitable Moslems, the only drawback being that they spoke no English and we are still struggling with Chinese.

The old city has a wonderfully informal and relaxed atmosphere, very different from Kunming with its hordes of people and vehicles. Dali has been deliberately preserved and developed as a centre for tourists, both Chinese and foreign. We saw many more westerners than we ever see on the streets of Kunming, including the backpackers for whom Dali seems to be an essential stop on their journey. There are many restaurants and cafes where English is spoken and whose menus include both western and local dishes. And they all have free internet access.
And yet the local people are still very much in evidence. Dali is home to the Bai minority people, but there are other groups in the area too. We saw a lot of people wearing their traditional costumes, the younger ones for the benefit of the tourists but the older ones simply because that’s what they’ve always worn. Our first full day it was market day with an amazing array of fruit, vegetables and other items, as well as the open air dentistry. True!

We went out in a fishing boat on the local lake (the fifth largest in China). We were the only two passengers apart from the seven cormorants who did the fishing! The fisherman punted and rowed his boat out into the lake and then gave the birds the signal to start fishing. They had strings around their necks so they could only swallow the smaller fish which they caught as they repeatedly dived and surfaced. Big fish had to be brought back to the boat for the fisherman. Eventually another signal called the birds back on board and we returned to harbour. We were photographed with a cormorant on each arm; the wounds from their claws were only minor!

The rest of our time was spent shopping and walking in the surrounding countryside. All very relaxing.

Then, at 2.30 in the morning we were due to go home, Judy began to be ill. No need to go into details except to say that we were so grateful for our western style toilet and en suite bathroom! By 11 am she was no better, so we phoned a friend who put us in touch with two English speaking doctors. A taxi was called to take us to the hospital where Judy was put on a drip for about 2½ hours and given an injection and other medicines. Total hospital charges were less than £2, plus taxi fares in each direction. We won’t be claiming on our medical insurance.
So we returned to Kunming a day late. Judy was just well enough to go and teach over the weekend, but she will probably take a few days to recover fully.

Andrew is with us for another week before going to Thailand with the water purifier parts for assembly and delivery to the Irrawaddy Delta. It’s raining again today (!) so we hope that means the monsoons are still providing fresh water to Myanmar.

Welcome to our new blog home!

Congratulations on finding our new blog site. Actually, because Google have a base in China, it’s easier for us to upload to than to AOL. Do let us know how it is for you.

We are just getting ready to travel to Dali. One of Judy’s colleague’s recommended the Tibetan Lodge, a hostel much used by backpackers, although the internet reviews had a few horror stories about creatures living under the beds and in the roof, even if the food is good. So we were very grateful when Stephen, Peter’s Chinese language teacher and a former Dali tour guide, arranged for us to stay at a guesthouse run by a friend. Stephen phoned us to confirm the booking while his wife was in labour with their first child. He rang us back a couple of hours later with the news that mother and son were doing well!

There are two Sunday morning international meetings in Kunming and this week we visited the one which is further away from us (about an hour’s journey). Also visiting were a group of Peruvians from the Amazon jungle who sang and danced for us. All very surreal. Judy was particularly impressed by the Philippino tambourine players, who danced while they played and switched to silent tambourines for the quieter songs.

Andrew has now worked out how to drive the water purifiers from a bicycle. Much easier than hand-cranking and no need to back drive worm-drives. (The Royal Society for the Protection of Worms approves!) There are plenty of bikes in Myanmar and all that is needed are some pieces of bamboo and a few easily obtained, low cost components. The next stage is to set up an endurance trial to make sure that the bike rig will last for at least 48 hours continuous running. The pedals will be turned by an electric motor, not a team of willing volunteers.

Judy continues to come to terms with local commodities. She has managed a successful pizza topping with the tiny tomatoes, but is having trouble thinking of new and exciting recipes containing giant radishes!
Any suggestions ........?

Well, actually no . . .

Within an hour of the words "End of the Rainy Season?" having been typed into the computer, it began to rain and we had two thunderstorms in 24 hours! Last night it rained nearly all night. Oh well, Yunnan weather, like British weather, has a mind of its own. Today the sun is shining.
Today’s good news is that we have finally got residency permits in our passports. We are now officially allowed to be in China until 31 August, 2009 and to come and go as we wish without having to apply for new visas every time.
We are enjoying a visit from Andrew in whose flat we are living. His wife Anna has had to stay in Norway because Norwegian regulations require farm owners to spend 6 months of each year actually living on the farm but we hope to see her for a few days later in the year. Andrew is still working on the Myanmar/ Burma water purifiers. His latest idea is to use windscreen wiper motors as hand-cranked generators to produce the 12 volts needed to light the UV light which kills the bugs in the water. Discussions in the flat are passing straight over Judy’s head as Peter and Andrew discuss ‘worm drives’ (some new form of animal cruelty?) diodes and Ohm’s Law!
Peter has now produced 60 of the alarm circuits which sound a warning buzzer before the UV light goes out if the person turning the hand-crank slows down. He is now testing them and putting right the ones which don’t work properly (usually due to human error, his!). The aim is to get the purifiers to where they are needed as soon as possible after the rainy season finally stops producing clean water from the sky and the people are back to using polluted river water.
This is the annual national holiday when many Chinese get a week off and Judy’s school is closing down for two weekends. We plan to spend a few days in Dali, a small town about four hours away by bus and much visited by tourists. We have decided to go after the second weekend, when accommodation should be much easier to find. Andrew will stay here and take over our usual tasks.
A couple of Sundays ago we were waiting at the bus stop when an Australian introduced himself to us and assured us that the no. 80 bus (which was just arriving) would take us to our meeting. Reassured by his words "You can trust an Aussie" we got on, only to be taken to another part of town entirely, one which our new friend, (now feeling rather embarrassed) did not recognise. We eventually had to get off the bus, cross the road and catch another bus, at which point we noticed that we were being followed by a Philippino girl who rightly assumed that we were all going to the same place and wrongly assumed that we knew the way! She turned out to be a friend of Judy’s two Philippino colleagues. Last week, she and some other Philippino friends stopped their car and offered us a lift to the meeting and today we all had an enjoyable lunch together. So thank you, Cobber, even if we were 20 minutes late for our meeting!
One of the delights of living in China is what is known as "Chinglish". English is China’s second language and many signs are displayed in both languages, except that the English is often a bit surprising. we think we understand "Deformed man toilet", and then there are the T-shirts, nearly all of which carry a random selection of English words with no clear meaning at all.

These two signs are in our local Buddhist temple. Maybe some places we know in England could use them . . .

Yes, it does say, "NO CONFLAGRATION"! but our favourite is this one . . .