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 . . .