Nov 5 and 6, 2007

Nov 5, 2007

Sitting in Beijing airport again, this time in the Domestic terminal, waiting for a flight to Chengdu. It's 12:30 and we should be in the air by now. Travelling in a group of four, two Chinese, one French and me. Flight delayed at the moment. Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan Province and is renowned for its food. Even the Chinese are telling me that, but that I must watch out for the spices. The next stop is Guangzhou on Wednesday. There I am told to watch what the food actually is. Even the Beijingers say that they eat weird stuff in Guangzhou. After what I saw on the markets last night, that does make you stop and think. We shall see.

Nov 6, 2007

Exhausted at 10:00 pm. Arrived at the hotel yesterday (the Wang Jiang, 5 star and genuinely so) and started with a major Chinese buffet. No Chinese restaurant I have been to in England prepares you for this, there is just no equivalent. Start with cold bits. Beef in salt water. Shredded turnips. Bean curd in every shape imaginable and more. Deep fried pig's guts. Fried chicken leg bones. Cabbage and duck blood soup. And many many more. Many things which just don't have an English name. For some reason I am diffident about eating something I can't name. Here, once I know the name I often wish I hadn't asked. But it is good. My skills with the chopsticks are rusty, but coming back. Then after a Chinese breakfast (oh, for a piece of toast) into the workshop, which is really just a conference. About 80 people listening to the experts talking at length, and length is important.

	I was down on the conference agenda to talk for THREE HOURS on ICT in European rural development. I managed two and a half with sequential interpretation into Chinese. Having an interpreter makes presentations much easier as it gives you time to gather your thoughts for the next words of wisdom. After the workshop we had a real Chinese banquet. Great rotating lazy Susan's on each table with an endless array of dishes brought out. Many variations on fungi of one form or another. Shredded meats, tilapia fish, many thing I didn't identify at all, but the lady next to me was from north China and she didn't know what they were either. Not too spicy, which was a relief as Sichuan cuisine is renown for being firey hot. Endless toasts of a clear local fire water had to be drunk, and every one came round to toast me, so I am a bit unsteady. The lady in white is Linli who is my guide from the project team. The lady in green was my interpreter, who was superb and I am sad to say I do not know what her name was.
	After the conference banquet Linli asked if I would like to go to town to see the old part, Jinli Road, where she wanted to meet an old friend she hadn't seen for a year. Needless to say, I went. The taxi driver was delighted to have me on board. He said I was the first foreign customer he had ever had. Jinli road is modern, but built in the old style and is very interesting. Very busy, lined with craft shops. It is next to a mausoleum to an old emperor and his vizier, which is genuinely old and looked lovely over the wall, but it was closed and too dark to see. This shop was selling the masks of the Chinese opera.
	The architecture is wooden. Columns and beams with doors between all the  columns. This allows the fronts to be opened up completely. Very attractive in the dark with lanterns all down the streets. Many bars and eateries and, sadly, one branch of Starbucks, looking popular but so out of place. Unlike India, China seems to have endless opportunities for moral dissipation. Drink flows like water and having a good time seems to be the order of the day. But all very open and friendly.
	One likes to obey the rules, but figuring out exactly what they are can be a problem
	A little girl dancing to the music of a shadow puppet show. The strangest thing about China is the lack of children. The one child policy seems to work strongly in the cities and there are just no crowds of children anywhere. You do see families, but they have nearly always just the one child, with his or her parents. There are no crowds of children anywhere and you rarely hear them. With a growing population of 1.3 billion, you can understand why they have the policy, but it doe give an empty feeling to the streets and markets.
	This was the operator of the shadow puppets, a boy of about six. He was pretty inexperienced and his puppet kept sliding below the screen, but he was having a wonderful time. The music was the most awful bubble-gum pop, super amplified, but everyone was enjoying it. Rows of puppets can be seen hanging on the right.
	A lady working on a silk quilt in a silk weaving shop. They stuff the quilt with teased out silk, rather than down. Wonderfully light and warm, but very expensive. How many silk worms must there be to produce all of the silk fibre in the world? If you touch the heap of raw silk, it is so fine you can barely feel it.
	A bag of silk worm cocoons either just before or after boiling to loosen the silk. I think they wait until the moth has metamorphosed and flown before they remove the silk. Apart from the ones they barbecue instead.
	One of the endless food stalls. Everything is freshly made. Even the noodles are made for the individual customer just before they are boiled. This was a stall of dim sum type steamed snacks. Many of the workers where face masks when they are working with food. It is all very clean.
	Everything is labelled in "English" although there were no foreign tourists at all when I was there. It is November, which is not tourist season and there are a lot here otherwise, because this is PANDA COUNTRY. Sichuan is where they live and Chengdu zoo has more captive pandas than any other in the world. The climate is strange; mild, incredibly humid and dull. The sky is leaden grey all the time. My interpreter said she has lived here for seven years and in that time has never seen the moon or a single star. I would die of depression, but she says everyone likes the climate because it is so gentle and the humidity stops your skin from going wrinkly as you get old.
	Proof that I am here. Linli and her friend kept wanting to photograph me so I would had pictures of me. Seems to be what everybody wants but I told them I can see me in a mirror and would rather have pictures of other people. But I gave way for this one. Tomorrow I fly to Guangzhou and its Cat's eye soup (shudder) in the afternoon, so I am hoping to see a bit of Chengdu by daylight in the morning.

On to Nov 7 >>

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