Spring is coming!

The daily bursts of firecrackers, a few shops closed already so that their owners can make the sometimes long journey back to visit their families and, today at least, the warm (-ish) sunshine are all pointing to Chinese New Year and Spring Festival. The actual date depends, like Easter, on the phases of the moon and this year it’s quite early - the year of the Ox begins on January 26.
It’s a Chinese tradition to visit the family for Spring Festival, so Judy’s school is on holiday and we are planning to visit our family in UK. We fly to London via Bangkok on Tuesday, 20th. It will be great to see them all again. After a few days with Philippa and family in London, it’s back to Gloucestershire to see family and friends in Tewkesbury and Cheltenham.
Andrew Hay (it’s his flat we live in here) is back for another visit from Norway before taking his 93 year old mother on a trip to Antarctica. Andrew’s grandfather was on of the party which found the bodies of Scott and the group who died on their polar expedition. Andrew’s mother is keen to visit her father’s base hut while she still can.
Andrew is continuing his work on water purification devices for Myanmar where many people are still having to drink polluted water. Peter is continuing to assist with building the devices, although we are currently reassessing priorites for future work.
The arrival of spring means that the bees will be getting busy and Peter is hoping to have more opportunities to work with several farm projects which are keen to include beekeeping in what they do.

Sunday lunch with Andrew, Judy and a duck.

Xishuangbanna

Xishuangbanna is in Yunnan, the same province as Kunming and is only 300 miles away (40 minutes by air). But how different from Kunming! Because it is further south and at a lower altitude, January in Jinghong, where we stayed, is like mid-June in a good English summer. T-shirts and sandals instead of thermal underwear.

It was a real treat to sit outside a cafe on the evening of January 1st and enjoy the warmer temperature. We ordered chicken cooked in coconut (expecting chicken cooked in coconut milk on a plate) but it really was chicken cooked in a hollowed out coconut - no wonder the waitress looked baffled when we said we’d like chips with it (it would have been really tricky to get them into the coconut!) Our most surreal eating experience was ‘The George and Dragon’ (you can probably guess the nationality of the owner!) Peter enjoyed a freshly made chicken pie while we watched the early years of the Beatles appearing on ‘Ready, Steady, Go!’ on dvd.
It sounds as though we spent all our time eating, but we did manage to fit in some trips as well. Having watched ‘Wild China’ (brilliant BBC series, with lots of pictures of Yunnan) Judy was keen to go to Wild Elephant Valley, even though we knew our chances of seeing a wild elephant was slim. There are warning signs to drive slowly because of elephants crossing the road, which we thought made the deer signs in the Forest of Dean look a bit tame. Our driver bowled along at a good speed, so we were quite relieved not to meet any elephants (wild or tame) before we got to the park. The visit started with an elephant show (which helps to pay for the upkeep of the wildlife park). The elephants went around the arena, selling bags of bananas to the audience and collecting the money. We were impressed by the nifty way they held the money in the crease of their trunks, while doling out bananas and transferring bananas from trunk to mouth at the same time.

After lunch (not bananas) we toured the animal park, bird enclosure and butterfly house (see the picture) and took a 2 km cable car ride across the rain forest. Then we walked back through the forest, looking for the elephants, but only seeing footprints and elephant dung. There are 70 wild elephants living in a huge area of rain forest and they were far too smart to be seen by us! However, we did see gibbons in the trees who put on a spectacular show of swinging from branch to branch (black gibbons are native to southern Yunnan).






Which leaf is the butterfly?






Our tour guide spoke very little English, but we were very lucky to have a lovely young couple from Beijing with us, who kindly stayed with us and translated lots of information for us.


On Sunday morning we went to the bus station and took the local bus to the town of Menghai where there was a market. The drive through the mountains was fascinating as we passed rice fields and amazing terracing on the steep hillsides. There were people from different tribal groups at the market, so it was lovely to see their colourful costumes. The choice of fruit and vegetables was wonderful, and there was one honey seller although Peter had hoped to see more. (Yes, that is a Pepsi bottle being filled with honey for sale.)


We were back in Jinghong by lunchtime, and enjoyed meeting up with some western friends in the afternoon.

We spent Monday afternoon walking around the beautiful botanical gardens. Lots of interesting tropical plants and trees, including a working rubber plantation where we could see the white fluid dripping from the trees into the collection cups. The gardens are a favourite spot for wedding pictures and we saw a number of couples posing for the camera.
Xishuangbanna is the home of the Dai people who are apparently related to the Thai. The road signs are trilingual - Dai, Chinese and English. In fact it’s more like Thailand than China.
We’re now back in Kunming with only two weeks to go before we go back to UK for the Chinese New Year holiday. We’re feeling the cold here but reports of the big freeze in England (and in northern China) make us realise just how well off we are!