Hunting for Cerana Bees

Peter set out to buy bees with Asing, an Indian who has been honey hunting in his home state of Nagaland. The professional beekeeper recommended by a professor in the Agricultural University Beekeeping Department had no bees for sale, but Asing had heard of bees for sale in a mountain village north of Kunming.

After a two hour bus ride to Wuding and another two hours by minibus over terrible mountain roads, we arrived at the village in a beautiful mountain valley which reminded Asing of his home area. The villagers were Miao, except for one Lisu family.

The Miao and the Lisu are two of the many minority peoples of China. The crowning glory of the Miao women seemed to be their hair which they wear piled up on their heads, looking almost as if they are wearing a hat.

The Lisu have their own written language - “Fraser script” - invented by JO Fraser about 100 years ago and much easier to read than Chinese characters. The Miao have a similar script, probably created by Sam Pollard, although these villagers seemed to be saying that it came from the Rev. Berkeley (may not have the name right!). It was very moving to hear one of the Miao reading familiar passages to us in his own language.

Asing had phoned the Miao beekeeper to tell him we were coming but he was not at home, so we went on to another village where someone said there were bees, but no luck there either. As we walked, we kept stopping to visit homes or chat to people by the roadside, so it was supper time when we got back to the first village, and the Lisu family generously invited us in for a meal.

Meanwhile the beekeeper had returned. When he saw that a foreigner wanted the bees, the price immediately doubled from that agreed over the phone. Furthermore, the bees were not in hives but in hollow logs, a traditional method but not what we wanted. And he was going to have to remove the combs, including the brood (eggs and larvae), which would otherwise have broken as the minibus bounced around on the journey back to Kunming. Plus, Cerana bees have a habit of absconding, especially if they have no brood, so very reluctantly we returned empty-handed.

The journey home was a nightmare! The minibus had no full beam head lights and we would suddenly encounter a lorry parked in the road with no lights, seeing it only just in time to avoid a smash. The minibus engine kept cutting out and the driver had to stop at intervals to fiddle with the wiring or pour water into the radiator. Much of the road surface had been broken up by hundreds of heavy lorries so we had to go really slowly in those places. Also, our driver constantly overtook on blind bends, somehow managing to dodge a head-on collision with the lorries coming the other way.

We were most thankful when got home at one o’clock in the morning. No bees, and stomach upsets for several days afterwards, but a fascinating glimpse of another side of life in China.

6 July 2009

A Tale of Two Cakes

Sorry we have not updated this blog for two months. For some reason, access to our blog site from China has been blocked. Probably our comments about the buses have upset the powers that be! If you can read this it’s because we have emailed it to UK for one of the family to upload. If you can’t read it, that idea didn’t work either.

We had an excellent visit from Richard and Hazel Padfield in May. We went together to Dali and Lijiang, two old Chinese towns which have been restored for the benefit of tourists like us. In Lijiang we stayed in the Naxi Tea Horse Family Guest House, a traditional Chinese courtyard building in the centre of the old town. The Naxi are a local minority people and the tea horses were used to carry tea along the Silk Road. It was really interesting travelling by bus to these two towns, especially for Richard who is a farmer. It was rice planting season so we saw hundreds of people bending over in the paddy fields, quite different from the mechanised farming in UK.

With less than four weeks to go before we leave Kunming we have started taking photographs of the people and places we have come to love, and Judy has gone into ‘last minute buying’ mode, because most of our stuff will need to be sent off by sea in near future. We can’t believe how much stuff we have managed to accumulate in just over a year!

It’s the rainy season here and it has been particularly wet and cold this July, we look at the people ploughing up and down the swimming pool below our window and think how hardy they are!

Judy has been making jam and cakes, with varying amounts of success. She bought some Chinese wheat flour and added some extra baking powder to the recipe (to make up for the altitude) - you can see the result in the sneaky picture Peter took.

It was supposed to be lemon drizzle cake, but ended up being Niagara Falls Cake as it erupted from the tin and cascaded into the oven.

Things went much better on Judy’s birthday, when friends brought over a magnificent cake and plenty of candles to go with it! We had supper in the revolving restaurant on the 21st floor of a Kunming Hotel This turned out to be a fascinating experience, as different parts of the floor (and ceiling) appeared to revolve in different directions and at different speeds. It was also tricky for the staff, because they would step into the room in a different place each time they brought the food, then they had to trot around the circle until they found our table. We were convinced that only the outer section and core of the restaurant were moving, and we were staying still, until we got up to leave and realised that Kunming University Library had moved!

We are due to leave Kunming July 31, arriving back in Cheltenham August 29 (a slow boat from China, or down the Yangtze at least)