The railway line into Hanoi enters the city not in tunnels, or up on viaducts, but at street level, slinking tightly between buildings, rattling a hair's breadth distance past ground floor dwellings where people eat their evening meal, rumbling across innumerable lanes and boulevards, where phalanxes of scooters with myriad lights wait and fidget impatiently, interrupted in their flight across the city. We shudder and groan past innumerable cafes and restaurants, brightly or shoddily lit. We are instantly embedded in the city.
Its a surreal entrance. A haunting, and indeed Surrealist painting, hangs in the Estorick Collection of C20th Italian art in London ; a steaming, lumbering and slightly menacing locomotive passes through an empty sunlit city street. The picture always touches a deep nerve in me, don't know why. So much so that I want to prise it off the wall and take it home. Its only 12 inches wide and less in height, and would fit easily under my coat.
Last night we crossed the tracks on foot, with our delightful dinner companions Baptiste and Yusuke. 24 and 22. Yusuke teaches us some Origami, and Baptiste is charmingly entertaining. I am moved by their youth and high spirits. We are about to take farewell snaps at a street corner when a tearful young woman with a backpack approaches us tentatively and asks if we know of a hotel. She has been looking for hours. She hides her trembling chin in her scarf. She is Japanese, as is Yusuke. Rapidly her tears transmute into smiles of relief as the boys assure her their hostel is close-by; they will take her there, provided she take our photograph. Amidst much mirth, a touch of sadness on my part, and bright flashes, we say our goodbyes and depart separately into the night. New friendships formed, perhaps.
Monday, 8 December 2008
Saturday, 6 December 2008
¿is this hanoi or havana?
Yesterday morning began with a nail-biting rush-hour taxi-dash through Kunming, trying to reach the right bus station, after misunderstandings with the driver. Was this to be the first calamity of our trip? Will someone be slain? By the skin of our teeth, with only minutes to spare, we pile onto the bus, where high-emergency adrenaline keeps me rigid and palpitating till beyond the outskirts.
Ten hours of trying to see something through misted windows, and watching half a dozen kung-fu movies on tortuous mountain roads, leaves me battered.
We spend our last night on Chinese soil in an archetypally seedy border town ( a lady of the night disturbs my slumbers with a giggling phone call to my room; as she seems to know no English she just continues to giggle until, like 'outraged of Tunbridge Wells', I slam the receiver down.)
Outside flows the Song Hong (Red River), and on the opposite bank is Vietnam.
We cross over on foot in the morning, and within yards everything changes - physiognomies, sights and smells, buildings.
For the first time we travel 'hard-class' (Colin Thubron always does of course), which means 11 and a half hours of plain, unadorned, wooden seats in a marvellously crowded carriage, a chariavari of peddlars and babies and shifting passengers providing constant entertainment.
Our companions are two charming young men from France and Japan, travelling singly, who were on our bus the day before. From Lille and Tokyo. We meet up with them tomorrow by the temple in the lake.
At last we rumble into Hanoi, and it is exactly how I imagine Havana to be: a tropical breeze ruffling the palm trees, beat-up cars, cavalcades of scooters and bikes, lovely faded buildings and crowds of graceful people shimmying through the streets. Tears well up at the thought of the appalling suffering this country has endured.
We go for a quick meal, and then I sit at this keyboard whose lettering is mostly vanished, trying to recall Qwerty, and Mavis Beacon's typing system, for you dear reader!
Ten hours of trying to see something through misted windows, and watching half a dozen kung-fu movies on tortuous mountain roads, leaves me battered.
We spend our last night on Chinese soil in an archetypally seedy border town ( a lady of the night disturbs my slumbers with a giggling phone call to my room; as she seems to know no English she just continues to giggle until, like 'outraged of Tunbridge Wells', I slam the receiver down.)
Outside flows the Song Hong (Red River), and on the opposite bank is Vietnam.
We cross over on foot in the morning, and within yards everything changes - physiognomies, sights and smells, buildings.
For the first time we travel 'hard-class' (Colin Thubron always does of course), which means 11 and a half hours of plain, unadorned, wooden seats in a marvellously crowded carriage, a chariavari of peddlars and babies and shifting passengers providing constant entertainment.
Our companions are two charming young men from France and Japan, travelling singly, who were on our bus the day before. From Lille and Tokyo. We meet up with them tomorrow by the temple in the lake.
At last we rumble into Hanoi, and it is exactly how I imagine Havana to be: a tropical breeze ruffling the palm trees, beat-up cars, cavalcades of scooters and bikes, lovely faded buildings and crowds of graceful people shimmying through the streets. Tears well up at the thought of the appalling suffering this country has endured.
We go for a quick meal, and then I sit at this keyboard whose lettering is mostly vanished, trying to recall Qwerty, and Mavis Beacon's typing system, for you dear reader!
Thursday, 4 December 2008
dwindling aquifers
The water in our lovely local park, Green Water Park, dried up a number of years ago, a man told me. The natural spring which fed it for centuries was depleted, exhausted, defunct. Consternation. A whole season passed, while kids played football in the empty basins, and the community scratched their heads while discussing what to do. Turf it over? Fill it in? In the end water won, but now it has to be piped in industrially. Similar problems arise nationwide. A cautionary tale of modern China.
Loitering in the lovely grounds of an ancient temple, I passed through a non-descript door, and found myself in an Academy of Ghastly Painting. On display were pictures of white horses frolicking in improbably green forests, fey child-girls in traditional costume smiling winsomely, distinctly pubescent girls with hardly a stitch on dancing in gay abandon to some ancient tune, juvenile pandas chewing on bamboo shoots, and many variations of Van Gogh's sunflowers. Huddled in corners were students of this Art, perhaps absorbing ancient pictorial techniques, but more likely learning to fleece the tourist.
A typical juxtaposition of modern China.
You are walking down the street minding your own business, when behind you there is a ghastly sound of a throat clearing, and projectile matter hitting the pavement. Surely it must be a consumptive in their death throes, a tubercular trauma. You turn round. As likely as not it is an elegant lady in no particular distress, or a businessman glued to his mobile, or a trendy teenager jiggering to his I-pod. Try as I may I cannot get used to spitting and its associated sound effects. But there's modern China for you, and I've loved it.
SoB: a group of art students, the real thing, sit around the reclaimed lake in Green Water Park with their easels. They are painting in their various ways the tormented remnants of a thousand lotuses in the lake, as the sun goes down over China.
Loitering in the lovely grounds of an ancient temple, I passed through a non-descript door, and found myself in an Academy of Ghastly Painting. On display were pictures of white horses frolicking in improbably green forests, fey child-girls in traditional costume smiling winsomely, distinctly pubescent girls with hardly a stitch on dancing in gay abandon to some ancient tune, juvenile pandas chewing on bamboo shoots, and many variations of Van Gogh's sunflowers. Huddled in corners were students of this Art, perhaps absorbing ancient pictorial techniques, but more likely learning to fleece the tourist.
A typical juxtaposition of modern China.
You are walking down the street minding your own business, when behind you there is a ghastly sound of a throat clearing, and projectile matter hitting the pavement. Surely it must be a consumptive in their death throes, a tubercular trauma. You turn round. As likely as not it is an elegant lady in no particular distress, or a businessman glued to his mobile, or a trendy teenager jiggering to his I-pod. Try as I may I cannot get used to spitting and its associated sound effects. But there's modern China for you, and I've loved it.
SoB: a group of art students, the real thing, sit around the reclaimed lake in Green Water Park with their easels. They are painting in their various ways the tormented remnants of a thousand lotuses in the lake, as the sun goes down over China.
ciao ciao china
Our papers have come through, and tomorrow morning we take a ten hour bus ride to the Vietnamese border where we overnight, and then continue by train to Hanoi. At some stage we cross the Tropic of Cancer, which will be very welcome as it has turned a little parky here in Kunming.
Today David and I packed a large parcel of longjohns and thermal sweaters, fleecy gloves and woolly hats which have sustained us for the last two months and shipped them back to the UK. Joining then were a talking (in Chinese) calculator , so when I am next here I may at least be able to count in Mandarin. I regretted the gloves as soon as we were back on the street. Heigh-ho!
I have discovered that domestic Chinese dogs may be no taller than 12 inches. (True fact). This I assume is a canine parallel of the one-child policy, and explains the proliferation of petite pooches. It is also a handy size for the casserole when the going is tough.
Kunming is our last Chinese city of any size. Like all the others we have been through it is continuously reinventing itself. Tearing itself down and rebuilding. There is little that seems to predate the last three decades. Old people wander around in a daze, hardly knowing where they are, familar landmarks having vanished, or am I just imagining that?
I did however come across an old Muslim quarter in the centre of town, surrounded by the clamour of construction sites, which retained some kind of integrity. At the heart of it were two twinned Art Deco buildings, superb in their delapidation and very moving, boarded up as they were, awaiting the knacker's yard perhaps, or who knows about to be restored to their former glory.
I don't know why I find buildings from this era - the 20's and 30's - so moving. They arose in Central Europe in an age (in retrospect) of 'innocence', of a brave new world, soon to perish in World War II and the Holocaust.
Passing a restaurant last night, strains of 'Silent Night, Holy Night' , sucrose if not saccharine, emerge. I am horrified. Is there no escape from Christmas and its toe-curling horrors? Apparently not. Santas are beginning to appear in the stores and decorations are going up in the streets. National Geographic magazine informs me that there are 8 million Christians in China, as many as there are Buddhists.
Coming here on the train a group of young men pass us in the corridor muttering halleluias. I take it as ironical reference to us, and am ready to have a fight (in my in-Christian way). They return a few minutes later still chanting and, remembering my charity, we exchange greetings. We discover they are Christians. We explain we are Buddhists. Much mirth. They depart assuring us that Jesus died for us.
Going for dinner.
Today David and I packed a large parcel of longjohns and thermal sweaters, fleecy gloves and woolly hats which have sustained us for the last two months and shipped them back to the UK. Joining then were a talking (in Chinese) calculator , so when I am next here I may at least be able to count in Mandarin. I regretted the gloves as soon as we were back on the street. Heigh-ho!
I have discovered that domestic Chinese dogs may be no taller than 12 inches. (True fact). This I assume is a canine parallel of the one-child policy, and explains the proliferation of petite pooches. It is also a handy size for the casserole when the going is tough.
Kunming is our last Chinese city of any size. Like all the others we have been through it is continuously reinventing itself. Tearing itself down and rebuilding. There is little that seems to predate the last three decades. Old people wander around in a daze, hardly knowing where they are, familar landmarks having vanished, or am I just imagining that?
I did however come across an old Muslim quarter in the centre of town, surrounded by the clamour of construction sites, which retained some kind of integrity. At the heart of it were two twinned Art Deco buildings, superb in their delapidation and very moving, boarded up as they were, awaiting the knacker's yard perhaps, or who knows about to be restored to their former glory.
I don't know why I find buildings from this era - the 20's and 30's - so moving. They arose in Central Europe in an age (in retrospect) of 'innocence', of a brave new world, soon to perish in World War II and the Holocaust.
Passing a restaurant last night, strains of 'Silent Night, Holy Night' , sucrose if not saccharine, emerge. I am horrified. Is there no escape from Christmas and its toe-curling horrors? Apparently not. Santas are beginning to appear in the stores and decorations are going up in the streets. National Geographic magazine informs me that there are 8 million Christians in China, as many as there are Buddhists.
Coming here on the train a group of young men pass us in the corridor muttering halleluias. I take it as ironical reference to us, and am ready to have a fight (in my in-Christian way). They return a few minutes later still chanting and, remembering my charity, we exchange greetings. We discover they are Christians. We explain we are Buddhists. Much mirth. They depart assuring us that Jesus died for us.
Going for dinner.
Monday, 1 December 2008
sunday in the park....and monday
Guilin. Sunday. Lovely parks.
Colin Thubron on Guilin: "A long-time Nationalist stronghold, it had been blitzed by Japanese aircraft in 1944, and had survived as one of the ugliest towns in China. Now tourism was shoddily recreating it." That was written in 1986.
What a lot can change in 20 years! Like all of China it seems, Guilin has lost no time in reinventing itself, but there is little shoddy here now. Shoddiness too has been swept away. Its a charming low - rise city, on the river Li, full of parks and waterways, and tree-lined avenues.
I spend all Sunday....and Monday, walking around the lakes, sheltering beneath Osmanthus trees in the heat of the day to read my latest Chinese novel, "To Live" by Yu Hua; very good book which was first banned in the 90's, until it started to win all kinds of award im Europe. Its the story of a Chinese Everyman who endures the vicissitudes and horrors of the last half century in China.
How deep the changes go in Chinese life, who knows? Perhaps they are as counterfeit and insubstantial as the fake Calvin Klein briefs I wear that cost me tuppence in Xi'an.
A child starts sobbing when it sees me at the next table at lunch. My beard I guess. The Chinese don't grow beards - you can't call the wispy Confucian strands you see on a handful of very old men beards. Mine you may remember went through an elegant Tsar Nicholas phase, then a wild Chinggis Khan look (co-incidentally in Mongolia), and now untamed and unpruned is coming into its Santa phase in time for Christmas.
For a new month a new feature for loyal readers - Sight of the Day ; SoD for short.
First SoD for December: two flat wooden trays of drying persimmons, deep apricot - coloured discs lying in tidy rows, in the sun by a bright blue metal shutter.
Another train to catch - only 17 hours to Kunming, west of here, where we will get our visas for Vietnam.
Colin Thubron on Guilin: "A long-time Nationalist stronghold, it had been blitzed by Japanese aircraft in 1944, and had survived as one of the ugliest towns in China. Now tourism was shoddily recreating it." That was written in 1986.
What a lot can change in 20 years! Like all of China it seems, Guilin has lost no time in reinventing itself, but there is little shoddy here now. Shoddiness too has been swept away. Its a charming low - rise city, on the river Li, full of parks and waterways, and tree-lined avenues.
I spend all Sunday....and Monday, walking around the lakes, sheltering beneath Osmanthus trees in the heat of the day to read my latest Chinese novel, "To Live" by Yu Hua; very good book which was first banned in the 90's, until it started to win all kinds of award im Europe. Its the story of a Chinese Everyman who endures the vicissitudes and horrors of the last half century in China.
How deep the changes go in Chinese life, who knows? Perhaps they are as counterfeit and insubstantial as the fake Calvin Klein briefs I wear that cost me tuppence in Xi'an.
A child starts sobbing when it sees me at the next table at lunch. My beard I guess. The Chinese don't grow beards - you can't call the wispy Confucian strands you see on a handful of very old men beards. Mine you may remember went through an elegant Tsar Nicholas phase, then a wild Chinggis Khan look (co-incidentally in Mongolia), and now untamed and unpruned is coming into its Santa phase in time for Christmas.
For a new month a new feature for loyal readers - Sight of the Day ; SoD for short.
First SoD for December: two flat wooden trays of drying persimmons, deep apricot - coloured discs lying in tidy rows, in the sun by a bright blue metal shutter.
Another train to catch - only 17 hours to Kunming, west of here, where we will get our visas for Vietnam.
Saturday, 29 November 2008
no smoke, no cook
We are picked up from our hotel by another slip of a girl, who - ' call me Janet'- takes us first to the local market. We are delighted and entranced by the first hall, piled high with all manner of colourful vegetable, and then pass below an arch into an altogether darker realm, the Fish market. On all sides creatures, short and long and thin and stubby, with and without scales, are expiring in large vats. They squirm and slither and wriggle, or lie defeated on their sides. I pass a row of giant carp heads, separated from their bodies, lying on a stone slab. They are still mouthing their silent despair.
I hasten through another arch and enter the infernal realm of the Animal market. Again the produce is mostly alive in myriad tightly-packed cages. The Chinese, it seems, will eat anything. (I pass no judgement.) I quicken my step and leave to a dreadful cacophony of bleating, crowing, shrieking, whimpering, whooping, snuffling, bellowing, barking and meowing.
Chastened, and grateful that we have chosen the vegetarian option, we are whisked off to an idyllic farmhouse in the karst (for geological clarification of this, see Kieran's message of a couple of days ago, and for correction to my Cohn-Bendit story see Claus's of the same day - thanks guys, I'm grateful for your prompt interventions).
We are a rum crew - an Antipodean, some other Brits, a camp gentleman from Seattle and a modern lady from Xian who has always resisted her mother's attempts to inculcate her with cooking lore.
First lesson : let your wok start smoking on a high flame before proceeding. This must be where I have always gone wrong back in Blighty, nervous of triggering my hypersensitive smoke detectors. The ingredients are ready waiting for us in tidy dishes, and all we have do is chop and shred and smash and sizzle, and have a lark. One dish done, we go out to eat it and sip green tea in an arbour surrounded by bougainvillea, and contemplate the karst. Back in the kitchen, our woks have been miraculously sluiced and dried, our worktops gleam afresh, and a new set of peeled and prepared ingredients await our attention. Bliss. Why can't cooking always be like this?
Today we return to Guiling upstream, a delightful place.
I hasten through another arch and enter the infernal realm of the Animal market. Again the produce is mostly alive in myriad tightly-packed cages. The Chinese, it seems, will eat anything. (I pass no judgement.) I quicken my step and leave to a dreadful cacophony of bleating, crowing, shrieking, whimpering, whooping, snuffling, bellowing, barking and meowing.
Chastened, and grateful that we have chosen the vegetarian option, we are whisked off to an idyllic farmhouse in the karst (for geological clarification of this, see Kieran's message of a couple of days ago, and for correction to my Cohn-Bendit story see Claus's of the same day - thanks guys, I'm grateful for your prompt interventions).
We are a rum crew - an Antipodean, some other Brits, a camp gentleman from Seattle and a modern lady from Xian who has always resisted her mother's attempts to inculcate her with cooking lore.
First lesson : let your wok start smoking on a high flame before proceeding. This must be where I have always gone wrong back in Blighty, nervous of triggering my hypersensitive smoke detectors. The ingredients are ready waiting for us in tidy dishes, and all we have do is chop and shred and smash and sizzle, and have a lark. One dish done, we go out to eat it and sip green tea in an arbour surrounded by bougainvillea, and contemplate the karst. Back in the kitchen, our woks have been miraculously sluiced and dried, our worktops gleam afresh, and a new set of peeled and prepared ingredients await our attention. Bliss. Why can't cooking always be like this?
Today we return to Guiling upstream, a delightful place.
Thursday, 27 November 2008
ps calling krakow, berlin, mauretania and primrose hill
Many thanks Kieran and Claus for factual clarification, and to Nityabandhu and Mauricio and Mussy for your kind encouragements! I'm enjoying writing my blog, and thinking of you all, and appreciate your comments. love to all.
karaoke nights
Today we cycled through the karst and are none the wiser as to its geological origin. Its a flat plain with the most extraordinary hills just shooting straight up into the sky, and goes on for miles and miles. Our guide is Bin (call me Maggie) Yan, a slip of a girl more used to filing her nails and dying her hair orange than cycling. She spends a lot of time looking at her mobile phone, perhaps trying to coax messages out of it to alleviate the boredom of our frequent photo stops. The landscape is astonishing, and the orchards are full of citrus fruits , and cotton, and bougainvillea in glorious blossom.
After a few hours my bum is very sore. We all know how the sinews and flesh of the body hold a remembrance of things past; I am taken back directly to the summer of 1984. I was nursing a bruised heart after a confusing love affair, and thought the only thing to do was get on my bike and cycle alone across France . It took me 11 mostly blissful, and certainly saddle sore, days to ride from Dieppe to Nimes and my heart was mended for a while. More lastingly, the beloved's sister was an Alexander Technique teacher, so I had heard a lot about the Technique and been advised that I would even benefit from it. On my return from France I searched Time Out and found an Alexander workshop advertised. After that I never looked back . I began lessons and within a year had been accepted on to a three year training course which changed my life. So thanks Ben! I saw Ben recently at the theatre with his two teenage sons. We chatted pleasantly, and there was no tugging of the scar tissue around my heart.
Tomorrow we do a Chinese cooking workshop on a farm nearby. If local delicacies are anything to go by - pig hand with sauce, steamed cuckold, fried pig face meet, spicy cattle hoof with local pepper, crispy pig lung, crab porridge, bamboo leopard cat, masked civet and snake (soup, pepper, braised) - we are in for a treat!
Our idyll here is shattered nightly by dreadful sounds arising from a hundred karaoke bars. I want to tear out the perpetrators' tonsils, which on reflection might make a nice soup.
After a few hours my bum is very sore. We all know how the sinews and flesh of the body hold a remembrance of things past; I am taken back directly to the summer of 1984. I was nursing a bruised heart after a confusing love affair, and thought the only thing to do was get on my bike and cycle alone across France . It took me 11 mostly blissful, and certainly saddle sore, days to ride from Dieppe to Nimes and my heart was mended for a while. More lastingly, the beloved's sister was an Alexander Technique teacher, so I had heard a lot about the Technique and been advised that I would even benefit from it. On my return from France I searched Time Out and found an Alexander workshop advertised. After that I never looked back . I began lessons and within a year had been accepted on to a three year training course which changed my life. So thanks Ben! I saw Ben recently at the theatre with his two teenage sons. We chatted pleasantly, and there was no tugging of the scar tissue around my heart.
Tomorrow we do a Chinese cooking workshop on a farm nearby. If local delicacies are anything to go by - pig hand with sauce, steamed cuckold, fried pig face meet, spicy cattle hoof with local pepper, crispy pig lung, crab porridge, bamboo leopard cat, masked civet and snake (soup, pepper, braised) - we are in for a treat!
Our idyll here is shattered nightly by dreadful sounds arising from a hundred karaoke bars. I want to tear out the perpetrators' tonsils, which on reflection might make a nice soup.
Wednesday, 26 November 2008
seven men on a boat
Undeterred by our recent trials on the Yangtse, we embark on another rivercraft, this time a small speedboat, in the company of two New Zealanders, a girl from Melbourne who wears bewilderingly few clothes, and a Frenchman from Bordeaux. This last, Fred, is the spitting image of Daniel Cohn-Bendit in his revolutionary prime. Remember him? Paris '68? Were you there? Daniel stormed the barricades, and speechified at the Sorbonne, elbow to elbow with Jean-Paul Sartre, then already a superannuated 'philosophe' trying to ingratiate himself with youth. Daniel ended up many years later as member of Parliament in the German Reichstag, a shadow of his former firebrand self. (Is this correct Claus?)
That heady summer of '68 I turned 21, and twiddled my thumbs while Rome burned around me.I went on no marches, set fire to nothing except the odd joint, and was very depressed, wondering when my life was going to start. It clearly hadn't. Until then, and for many a year after, it seemed just a painful simulacrum of a life.
Back to the river Li, where we careened and swooped, and shuddered and juddered, and sent the local flora and fauna rushing for cover. Our macho helmsman clearly fancied
himself as 007 in a movie, but was ever sensitive to our photographic needs (our craft bristled with Nikon zooms jabbing at the landscape) and would decelerate vertiginously at the sight of local colour - some poor fisherman trying to keep afloat on his bamboo raft in our shocking wake, water buffaloes minding their own business ( strangely the Chinese have not yet invented mozzarella, considering they had invented most things while Europeans were still daubing themselves in woad, and grunting) clouds of white egrets and fishing cormorants. These latter have a cord tied loosely round their throats so they are unable to swallow any fish they catch. The fish are squeezed out by the fisherfolk, and the cormorants are allowed to eat every seventh fish so they don't go on strike. Cormorants are sinister old birds at the best of times; here they are the size of vultures.
And the scenery, which after all is why we are here? Fifty miles of the most stupendous hills and rock formations (karst our guidebook tells us, but none of us can remember what that means).
I have forgotten again where I am, but its quite charming , by the banks of the Li.
Tomorrow we hire bikes and will cycle amongst the karst.
That heady summer of '68 I turned 21, and twiddled my thumbs while Rome burned around me.I went on no marches, set fire to nothing except the odd joint, and was very depressed, wondering when my life was going to start. It clearly hadn't. Until then, and for many a year after, it seemed just a painful simulacrum of a life.
Back to the river Li, where we careened and swooped, and shuddered and juddered, and sent the local flora and fauna rushing for cover. Our macho helmsman clearly fancied
himself as 007 in a movie, but was ever sensitive to our photographic needs (our craft bristled with Nikon zooms jabbing at the landscape) and would decelerate vertiginously at the sight of local colour - some poor fisherman trying to keep afloat on his bamboo raft in our shocking wake, water buffaloes minding their own business ( strangely the Chinese have not yet invented mozzarella, considering they had invented most things while Europeans were still daubing themselves in woad, and grunting) clouds of white egrets and fishing cormorants. These latter have a cord tied loosely round their throats so they are unable to swallow any fish they catch. The fish are squeezed out by the fisherfolk, and the cormorants are allowed to eat every seventh fish so they don't go on strike. Cormorants are sinister old birds at the best of times; here they are the size of vultures.
And the scenery, which after all is why we are here? Fifty miles of the most stupendous hills and rock formations (karst our guidebook tells us, but none of us can remember what that means).
I have forgotten again where I am, but its quite charming , by the banks of the Li.
Tomorrow we hire bikes and will cycle amongst the karst.
Monday, 24 November 2008
yangtse capers
Embarking at the port we approach a splendid craft, dining-room ablaze with chandeliers, and a white-uniformed and helmeted brass band blaring away on the quayside. Surely our budget does not stretch to this opulence? Indeed it does not. We slope on despondent to the furthest dark reaches of the dock, and pile on to a fleapit of a boat. Fleas would have been the least of our travails. Within minutes of entering our ghastly dingy berth David has killed our first cockroach, gallantly. And then came the rodents. Difficult to know if they are modest rats or supermice, such a scuttling and scrabbling is there in the ceiling. We pull the foetid bedding closer around us, and I remember with horror the Sukhavati Rat. It entered, unbidden, our Buddhist community in Bethnal Green, and caused havoc for days. One night I returned and everyone on my floor had decamped to other quarters. The rodent had last been seen on my bed! I went to sleep tremulously. At some stage in the night I imagined ,or actually felt, a creature run over my head, and my screams woke the neighbourhood. How many Buddhists does it take to dispose of a rat? In the end we fudged and summoned Tower Hamlets Pest Control.
Was history to repeat itself in this riverine context?
On our last evening aboard our sordid craft we see evidence of a visit. A dropping or two, and macaroons scattered cavalierly about the room. David goes storming about asking the startled staff (who speak little English) what their 'rat procedure' is. We are assured, after much miming and leafing through a dictionary jabbing at hieroglyphics, that mice bring luck ( the rat word is never mentioned). Chinese smiles and titters (what are these whitefaced creatures making such a fuss about?) David, enraged, decides to dismantle the antique central heating system, from which we have heard much scuttling. I retire to my top bunk, wanting only to read my novel, a very good one by Xiaolu Guo who almost won the Orange Prize last year. The rat has clearly scarpered by now, seeking respite from this unwelcome and unaccustomed attention Our pleasant roommate reassembles the heater.As I gingerly go to sleep, I am less concerned with the tectonic plates far beneath me shifting in the night ( some scientists claim that the Three Gorges Dam, which is downstream from us, is responsible for recent earthquakes and will certainly precipitate further ones) than with whether ratus ratus will choose tonight to gnaw its way through the plasterboard above my bunk.
Apart from these inconveniences (I'm sure Colin Thubron would not have made such a fuss) we had a lovely time, although grey-glaucous sky like phlegm hung over us for the duration, and the waters of the Yangtse were a ghastly glabrous green.. We passed hideous vertiginous cities, sprouting high-rises which clung to the steep slopes. Belching chimney stacks wafted thick smoke over the river. Improbably, heavily- laden orange trees and bananas flourished here too. We stop at Ghost City. An empty place. The river will have risen a staggering 175 metres when the filling behind the dam is complete. There are only 3 metres to go! Hundreds of thousands of people have been rehoused in other provinces, while remaining communities creep further up the mountainsides. At Ghost City you see roads and lines of lampposts disappearing into the water, and muse on these massive displacements of populations, which seem to characterise our times.
The folk on the boat, apart from half a dozen of us Europeans, are all Chinese. And mostly men in large groups, returning from training trips. We befriend a few.
'John', who works for the Government speaks bizarrely excellent English, although he has not practiced for five years and has never been to Engand and on his wage is unlikely to for 30 years, and is our articulate guide to contemporary Chinese reality, for which we are very grateful. He is charming, and once he has the linguistic bit between his teeth is unstoppable.
The Gorges were great , and the Dam itself stupendous.
We are now apparently in Wuhan. I have just had to ask David, as with all these displacements over huge expanses of terrain, I had lost the plot. I'm not sure where we are going to next , but there is a train to catch in the afternoon, and mosquitoes are in evidence and it can't be long till we start on our anti-malarials. The joys of travel!
Was history to repeat itself in this riverine context?
On our last evening aboard our sordid craft we see evidence of a visit. A dropping or two, and macaroons scattered cavalierly about the room. David goes storming about asking the startled staff (who speak little English) what their 'rat procedure' is. We are assured, after much miming and leafing through a dictionary jabbing at hieroglyphics, that mice bring luck ( the rat word is never mentioned). Chinese smiles and titters (what are these whitefaced creatures making such a fuss about?) David, enraged, decides to dismantle the antique central heating system, from which we have heard much scuttling. I retire to my top bunk, wanting only to read my novel, a very good one by Xiaolu Guo who almost won the Orange Prize last year. The rat has clearly scarpered by now, seeking respite from this unwelcome and unaccustomed attention Our pleasant roommate reassembles the heater.As I gingerly go to sleep, I am less concerned with the tectonic plates far beneath me shifting in the night ( some scientists claim that the Three Gorges Dam, which is downstream from us, is responsible for recent earthquakes and will certainly precipitate further ones) than with whether ratus ratus will choose tonight to gnaw its way through the plasterboard above my bunk.
Apart from these inconveniences (I'm sure Colin Thubron would not have made such a fuss) we had a lovely time, although grey-glaucous sky like phlegm hung over us for the duration, and the waters of the Yangtse were a ghastly glabrous green.. We passed hideous vertiginous cities, sprouting high-rises which clung to the steep slopes. Belching chimney stacks wafted thick smoke over the river. Improbably, heavily- laden orange trees and bananas flourished here too. We stop at Ghost City. An empty place. The river will have risen a staggering 175 metres when the filling behind the dam is complete. There are only 3 metres to go! Hundreds of thousands of people have been rehoused in other provinces, while remaining communities creep further up the mountainsides. At Ghost City you see roads and lines of lampposts disappearing into the water, and muse on these massive displacements of populations, which seem to characterise our times.
The folk on the boat, apart from half a dozen of us Europeans, are all Chinese. And mostly men in large groups, returning from training trips. We befriend a few.
'John', who works for the Government speaks bizarrely excellent English, although he has not practiced for five years and has never been to Engand and on his wage is unlikely to for 30 years, and is our articulate guide to contemporary Chinese reality, for which we are very grateful. He is charming, and once he has the linguistic bit between his teeth is unstoppable.
The Gorges were great , and the Dam itself stupendous.
We are now apparently in Wuhan. I have just had to ask David, as with all these displacements over huge expanses of terrain, I had lost the plot. I'm not sure where we are going to next , but there is a train to catch in the afternoon, and mosquitoes are in evidence and it can't be long till we start on our anti-malarials. The joys of travel!
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