The Erhu Man is Back

One of Judy’s memories of the first time she led a school trip to Kunming was the atmospheric sound of the erhu (pronounced Ah Hoo), a traditional two-stringed instrument being played outside the university hostel. We have seen and heard the elderly erhu player many times since then and he has become a friend. We enjoy his playing and usually put money into his collecting bowl as we pass, although he seemed a little puzzled during last year’s school trip when he found in his bowl a ticket for lunch at the hostel which Peter had accidentally dropped in! We have a theory that the erhu man is actually a university professor who enjoys playing the erhu in his spare time.
For some weeks there has been no erhu music outside the hostel. Maybe he was ill or perhaps too busy lecturing! However, we are happy to report that the strains of the erhu are once again drifting into the windows of the hostel. On Friday Peter came across our friend sitting in his usual place and there was a shaking of hands and smiles on both sides!

Saturday was a school holiday. It was "grave sweeping day" when many Chinese visit the graves of their ancestors. Many shops were still open, however, so clearly not everyone does this - perhaps the journey would take too long. Judy’s school arranged for Saturday’s classes to be rescheduled to Monday but none of her pupils could make it, so the holiday was, unusually, a holiday.

March has been an extra busy month for us both which is one reason why there has been a bit of a gap in our blog entries. April looks like being a bit quieter.

We visited Kunming Zoo, in spite of the guidebook’s warning that it wasn’t a place for animal lovers. The guidebook was right, although the park itself is a very pleasant place for the human visitors. The birds and butterflies seemed happy enough but conditions for the large mammals (elephants, bears, lions, wolves, etc.) were far from ideal. But the yak looked healthy and we liked the way he had his hooves neatly together.

Later this month we plan to visit Xi’an and the Terracotta Warriors. We went to the impressive exhibition in London last year and are really looking forward to seeing them in their original setting, as well seeing the rest of what Xi’an has to offer.

Sad News

You may remember that Andrew Hay was taking his 93 year old mother to the Antarctic to visit the base hut used by her father who was a member of Captain Scott’s final expedition. Sadly we heard that she died 3 days before they arrived at their destination following a fall on board the ship during rough weather. This was over two weeks ago but the ship does not return to New Zealand until today when Andrew will have to face all the legal procedures as well as making funeral arrangements. It will be especially difficult because Andrew’s mother was a British citizen living in Spain who died in a Russian ship operated by a New Zealand company. Please keep him and Anna in your thoughts.
We marked Shrove Tuesday a day late this year for reasons which we cannot quite remember. One of Judy’s colleagues is French and sent us some crepes the previous weekend which were much appreciated, but on Ash Wednesday Judy made English style pancakes which we shared with some Chinese friends. They were amused and impressed by the pancake tossing ceremony and very much enjoyed eating the results.
Judy has been given another class at Robert’s School. This one is at the other branch of the school where few of the Western staff go and is from 1915-2115 on Friday nights with 9 and 10 year olds. The first week she had 9 out of 12 children, just a nice number, although the children had never had an English native speaker before and she couldn’t explain things in Chinese. They were studying Bonnie Prince Charlie and the ’45 Rebellion (who thinks up these subjects?) Did you know that Charlie’s mother was Polish and his fifth name was Casimir? Last week she arrived at the lesson to find that they had added another class to her original 12 and she now had 22 crammed into her small classroom. It was a nightmare!
Peter was invited to attend the first morning of an ICIMOD beekeeping workshop at the Agricultural University. ICIMOD (http://www.icimod.org/) is a group of 8 countries around the Himalayas and Hindu Cush committed to improving the lives of the people who live in these mountainous areas. He met a young Cornishman working in Afghanistan who said that water purification (which Andrew and I are working on) was not a big problem there but asked whether we could help him with information about low-cost solar-powered water pumps for use in the long periods of dry weather. Any ideas welcome!
After a spring-like February, the weather turned cool and wet for a short while but now we are back to warm sunshine (25 degrees by day). Peter is not sure whether the open air pool is warm enough for him yet and is still using the really warm (31 degrees) indoor pool. It has to be admitted, however, that some tough Chinese men have been using the outdoor pool every day throughout the winter!
A fascinating feature of Kunming clothes shops is the dummies they use to show off the clothes. Strangely, none of them looks Chinese. And they all have rather odd expressions or are wearing totally unsuitable wigs. We especially liked the "Army Cadet" outside what was apparently an army surplus shop.

Spring is here!

We arrived back in Kunming on February 10 (Peter’s birthday!) to warm sunshine. What a contrast from when we left 3 weeks earlier, from thermal underwear to T-shirts and sandals. Daytime temperatures now are up in the mid-20s.
Our fortnight in UK was, as most of you will know, a very different story. After the usual long and boring flight via Bangkok, it was great to be able to spend time with family in Tewkesbury and London, including the get-together in Coventry to celebrate the arrival of Esther, Philippa and Carl’s second daughter and our fourth grandchild who was born in August when we were last in England. We were very pleased to be able to meet with a group of the friends from Gloucestershire who have been taking an interest in our activities in China and to bring them up to date with our news. A big thank-you to Richard and Hazel who generously welcomed us to stay in their home while we were in Gloucestershire.




The family gathering at Esther's
"do". (Photo by Roger, Peter's brother)


Before we left Coventry the snow began. And kept on coming! The next day National Express got us to London and we managed to get quite close to Philippa and Carl’s home on the one train line from Victoria which was still running but then no buses and no taxis! Carl was eventually able to dig his car out of the snow drift and rescue us.


View from the aircraft window as we left Heathrow.





By the time we were left Heathrow for Bangkok the planes were flying again and we were wafted away to a 4 hot days in Chiang Mai, North Thailand. We swam in the pool every day and enjoyed exploring this lovely old city. We were there for the annual flower festival and an added bonus was an evening with Andrew Hay and his mother who were on their way to the Antarctic!
Judy has been especially busy back in Kunming because her school has been running extra classes to make up for the ones which the students missed in the holidays. Work in the workshop has been a bit held up by a loss of electrical power and overflowing drains but Peter has had plenty of other things to keep him busy.

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!

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!!