JB

Swimming in Crocodile Creek

2011-05-05T01:21:00.000-07:00

Our penultimate day on MV Orion ended with a breathtaking swim in crocodile territory, and we survived. Don't be impressed, we were swimming in a fresh water pool inaccessible by crocodile... and what a relief to throw off our clothes in the 27 deg C heat and splash around like excited kids. I headed straight for the small waterfall crashing over bulging rocks and let the water pour down all over me. Wonderful to finally dunk under the water and be immersed in some of that aquatic terrain after days of Zodiac jaunts, but no swimming. The Kimberleys' biggest drawback is its oldest and wiliest inhabitant...yep, the croc of course.
Apart from a gorgeous afternoon in the water under a benevolent and shining sun, there was the added sensory delight of a saxophonist to make us bluesy, and the aqua bar, complete with salty margaritas. This may be pioneer country, but rest assured, we are not slumming it...
On another note, I loved our Expedition Leader's one-hour talk in the morning on the theme 'Why Australia does not have Monkeys'. Rivetting stuff which taught me a lot, and made we wish for more of such erudite and entertaining lecturers in my life. I feel I understand a bit better about how the world works, and have discovered a new scientist, Wallace, to rival Charles Darwin. It's too long to explain here, but suffice to say, I was enthralled and a teeny bit wiser for the talk!
Another highlight of the Orion tour was the cabaret review held the penultimate night, starring the Orion crew, playing flute, guitar, macarena and dancing, even stripping! Hilarious, touching, talented, magical...it was lovely to see "ordinary" folk transformed into performers with panache.
Must sign off, the holiday ends and Qantas calls. Adios for now, au revoir le Top End!

Rugged, ancient and subtle

2011-05-03T02:51:00.000-07:00

It’s our 9th day on MV Orion, and only my third post. In a lazy way we sailors have been too busy to bother with the outside world. While we’ve been at sea this past week there’s been a historic Royal Wedding and the routing of the ultimate bogeyman, Osama Bin Laden, but none of us have sighted a newspaper in days, nor switched on a television screen. Today we made a foray into Talbot Bay where natural beauty beckoned in all her glory.

I felt poetic and longed for a well-thumbed copy of bush verses – “I love a sunburnt country” and musings of similar ilk. Who wouldn’t feel moved by the vistas and landscapes we saw on our outing today? Undulating ochre and black outcrops in aspics of aquamarine, sapphire and algae-green; soft, long grass bowing in the mildest of breezes; scribbles of cloud wafting across an intense blue sky.

The weather has been idyllic: warm but not oppressively hot. Cut the Zodiac motor and sit still for a while as you listen to the occasional trill of a kingfisher piercing the silence and you begin to feel the heat beat down. Then we move again and nature’s air conditioning recommences, lulling one into another reverie. Comrades click wildly at the slightest sighting of an osprey, sea snake, wallaby or termite hill. Me? I’m a child of Africa. The “wildlife” here is far, far too subtle and sparse for me. I prefer to simply drink in the vast, impressive vistas. I will not be here again; nor will I see something so rugged and ancient again anytime soon.
And so much water everywhere, yet not a puddle to swim in. If there’s one constant yearning, it’s to swim in the luscious lagoons that lap temptingly around every corner. But it’s not too be: every now and then, a harmless looking “stick” turns out, on closer inspection, to be a croc, floating serenely for a moment on the water’s surface, its pale green eyes staring at us curiously as a film flicks backwards and forwards across its hooded orbs like a camera’s shutter.
We watch as it propels itself backwards and dips languidly below the water’s surface, reappearing moments later with its corrugated jaw pointed skyward and yawning open as it gulps down its gullet whatever is caught there for dinner.
Aboriginals and crocodiles: these are the hardy survivors of thousands and thousands and thousands of years. The Kimberleys is their terrain and us? We are merely trespassers.
One of the highlights of our “Dreaming” holiday-on-water was a helicopter ride from the mouth of the Hunter River to the Mitchell Falls. There is nothing more awesome than seeing rugged, natural landscape from the air, but a helicopter makes it especially accessible. With no doors or windows on our five-man bug in the sky – imagine, if you can, the awe with which natives must have viewed such a flying machine for the first time– we floated above the granite and sandstone rooftops and noted the slow-burning fires through the grassy brush of the plains. Then we reached the falls themselves, bursting over a wide two-tiered ledge into a frothing, white pool below. Splendid!
Our helicopter lands on the enormous, wide rocks at the top of the falls and we scramble across the rocky terrain to find the best vantage point to photograph the cascading water. Then, our appetite for visual recording sated, we strip off and plunge, at last, into the cool pools eddying between the rocks at the top of the plateau. Twenty minutes of sheer bliss ensue as we immerse ourselves in the cool, clear water, and paddle around, lapping up the sun, sky and endless horizon like darting, silvery fish.
The previous day we visited Jar Island and a cave of “Bradman” art which apparently pre-dates Aboriginal settlement. The figures are Modigliani thin with tasselled headdresses and feathery finery, and were possibly created by the Macassan people who travelled down from Java. What kind of people were these? How did they live? And where did they hail from? We can only imagine...
Yesterday, by contrast, we hiked up another hill (my recently operated knee behaving extremely well) to another cave where etchings of men, spirits, fish, dugongs and crocodiles glowed in ochre-pink as if they had been sketched yesterday. Nearby carbon dating suggests, in fact, that these paintings by the local Wandjina clan date back about 8,000 years.
I love one of the theories about ancient art postulated on this trip: namely, that artistic endeavour flourishes only in good times, not in bad. When people have plenty of food, and don’t have to hunt, they have time to scribble and scratch on the walls of rocky caves in order to tell their stories. But when water levels drop off and food is scarce, people struggle to survive and artistic representations decline.
Sounds like a plausible theory to me.

Nirvana at last

2011-04-30T18:02:00.000-07:00

What a difference 24 hours make. After my torturous flight by light plane over the Bungle Bungles (the beehive range only discovered in the mid 1980s, I later discovered), I retreated to my stateroom in shock and didn’t reappear till the next day. While Steve disappeared on a day-long adventure, I pottered around in the morning until our Zodiac departed after lunch for a three-hour cruise down the King George River.

The water and sky were brilliant blue, the warm 28 deg C sunshine offset by a refreshing breeze as we chugged mellifluously along the river, surrounded on all sides by cliffs of rugged pink sandstone sculpted by the elements over thousands of years. As cameras clicked and guides pointed out nests high on the cliff face of sea eagles and ospreys, I fell into a trancelike reverie.
Back in the Big Smoke I had become oppressed by a sense of Groundhog Day. For weeks I had dreamed of communing with nature, and suddenly, at last, here it was... the moment I had imagined, and I gave myself to it completely.
As our Zodiac riffed along the sparkling water and fellow travellers oohed and aahed and chuckled among themselves, I was blissfully happy to be right here, in the Top End, far, far, far away from anything that was more of the same.
The King George River is pretty damn remote, and requires effort to reach, and it’s unlikely that the average traveller will visit twice. And here I was, gliding through a dream-like terrain of water, cliffs and sky, with each of my senses responding with subtle, trembling pleasure.
The afternoon sun began to sink as we approached the King George Falls, pounding furiously after a very rainy season. We teased our Zodiacs as close to the spray as we could get. Rainwater cascaded over the cliff face on either side of a rocky outcrop, and we bobbed in the foam whipped up by the sheer weight of the torrent. It was exhilarating to witness Mother Nature unburden herself in such lush, spectacular style.
After some playfulness at the waterfall, we turned back to motor relaxedly through our corridor of sandstone turning soft pink and grey in a sunset sky. I thought it couldn’t get better than this, but it did. We turned a corner and ...
... I kid you not, there was the MV Orion’s Maitre D, Roger, and his 2IC, Michael, waiting on a ledge at the bottom of the cliff face, with bottles of champagne poised for all passing Zodiac passengers. A toast to the King George River and its magnificent falls!
It’s silly, I know, to talk about champagne in the middle of such awe-inspiring beauty, but it was an unexpected gesture of bonhomie that struck the right note at the right time. It felt right to pay tribute to the grandiose beauty we were experiencing with a flute of bubbly. (And, truth be told, it also pretty much summed up the Orion experience which is all about seeing beautiful and remote places while maintaining a level of comfort that borders on the luxurious). Long live luxury cruising, I say!

DAZED AND CONFUSED IN THE TOP END

2011-04-28T21:49:00.000-07:00

It’s the first time I’ve posted because I’ve been unwell most of the time up until now, and had absolutely no appetite for anything except sleep and escape. Talking to people has been like hiking up a steep and hilly mountain. And the din of cocktails for the Captain’s welcome aboard? Not fun.
Yesterday was hilarious though. I woke and felt human, even felt up to making small talk with relative strangers. Then I climbed aboard a small aeroplane at around noon, seven of us in all and the pilot, and I was seated at the very front, accepting this privilege with some foreboding. Sure enough, 10 minutes into the flight, sweating like a piglet in the midday sun, the cabin rocking wildly, I regurgitated the entire contents of my stomach into a handy sick bag, and for the remainder of the very long two hours and 20 minutes, closed my eyes, and prayed for touchdown to come as swiftly as possible.
Lake Argyle, resplendently full after a generous Wet Season, shimmered below me, but I barely noticed, and as for the corrugated grid of the Bungle Bungles, I saw them briefly from the corner of my eye, thought “Hmmm, remarkable” and closed my eyes again. Yes, I admit, the sprawling and dramatic beauty of the Kimberleys have been somewhat wasted on me thus far.

And honestly, I could not care less. Everyone must extract from their time on earth what makes them happy, and I am coming to terms with the fact that the external world holds less attraction for me than the more interior-focused world of stillness and contemplation. Fortunately, here on the Orion, there is the opportunity to embrace stillness... provided you can escape the politeness of people who feel obligated to chat to someone who has purposefully chosen to be solitary. (My husband, meanwhile, has given up on me, and booked himself for all sorts of hikes and adventures). I can be found masticating slowly through the most simple of schedules... breakfast on deck admiring the shimmering blue of the horizon; briefly hearing the stories of fellow travellers who exude their own kind of sweetness; then a brief session in the gym cycling; then some Sudoku in the lounge; a movie, a book or a nap; and later in the day, after a dip in the pool and a light lunch, an excursion.

Today we’re off in the Zodiac to visit King George Falls, methinks. I’m looking forward to something leisurely, and benign, with no possibility of further heaving. Let’s pray.

Yesterday, after my draining flight over the Top End by ‘plane, I retired to my stateroom in shock and did not reappear until this morning. Resting in my resplendent and very comfy bed, I suddenly felt the urge to see the film Australia, prompted no doubt by the many references to it during our bus trip to the bustling town of Kunnunarra from our dockside stop at Wyndham Station.

I hadn’t heard good things about the film, and after finally viewing it for myself, I understand why. I found it a harmless and relaxing way to spend two and a half hours, but I have to say I found it rather silly. It’s a fairytale of epic proportions with caricatures, not characters, and all of it not merely unconvincing, but also failing miserably to trigger any frisson of feeling. Sad, really, because it was a good idea... I think. Baz needs merely to regroup, and I am sure he will entertain us with panache again.

I also saw the film The Fighter during some quiet time in my cabin, and found that absorbing and inspiring. Who would have thought? Christian Bale deserved his Oscar; he played a crack addict to perfection (not that I am intimate with many crackheads, but still...)

Since flying to Darwin, I’ve seen more films than I’ve seen in weeks in Sydney, probably because I am seeking escape from people, or the heat. After sightseeing in Darwin on the weekend Steve and I went to see the Justin Bieber film, Never Say Never, and we found it a fascinating study of the whirlwind evolution of fame, circa 2011. Thank you, YouTube, thank you Twitter!

I love to bemoan the inanity of Twitter and Facebook, but I now accept that I am simply out of step with the Zeitgeist. What do you do, I wonder, when you are not running with the masses? Give up, give in, join up, or just ... walk the road less travelled?

Ah, there, I’ve found it. An allusion to M Scott Peck’s life-changing book makes a fitting close to my first post. Me? I’m not looking for shortcuts to any particular destination and I’m in no big rush to reach anywhere. I’m just bumbling along the path in front of me, and surrendering to the journey. Until the next post, folks, adios!

Dreaming of a Kimberleys getaway

2011-04-20T23:38:00.000-07:00

Rutherford D Rodgers, whoever he is, once said, "We're drowning in information and starving for knowledge". Well, that's how I feel. Running on empty, and not feeling overly confident about anything. In desperate need of R&R. So... luckily, not much longer to go. We depart three days from now for Darwin and from there will immerse ourselves in the rare beauty of northwest Australia, which is not exactly your overrun tourist destination. Thank heavens not! There, for the following 10 days, I plan to replenish my soul, and find some sense of serenity and calm once more... All aboard the Orion II for a 10-day cruise to the Kimberleys. While the boat is all about luxury, the holiday is essentially about immersing oneself in Nature and lapping up life in a unique, remote location. Am yearning for our 'time out' and loving the build-up to this ultimate getaway!

FAREWELL TO CHINA, LAST POST HONKERS

2010-06-25T04:23:00.001-07:00

Hong Kong isn't quite China, but I couldn't resist touching down on the former British outpost en route to Sydney to visit my niece, Hayley, and her beau, Jay, both whom are doing the obligatory stint for a multinational bank in the former British colony as part of their climb up the career ladder. As expected, Honkers was not as exotically 'foreign' as the China mainland, but it was exciting and vibrant nonetheless. Here follows retrospectively a smorgasbord of experiences, climaxing with our last night together when we decided on five-star dining at a recommended eatery, Hutong. What a disappointing, disastrous idea that proved to be!

FIVE STAR DINING? YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING! WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT 'HUTONG' PROVED TO BE!

Our booking was for 8.30pm, so our ferry ride was perfectly timed to catch the nightly laser light show that sweeps the sky at 8pm. Hong Kong sparkles at night like a jewel and it's exciting to feel part of it. Then we glided up the escalator at One Peking Road and soared to the 28th floor where a retro Chinese ambience awaited us - "hutong" in Chinese refers to the old-style neighbourhoods of days gone by - and floor to ceiling windows letting in Honkers' super glamorous skyline beckoned as we were seated with a ringside view. Aaaaah, sit back, relax, feel like a rock star!
We ordered the Michelin tasting menu of five dishes and relished the first two - delicate tastings of scallops and seafood salad; asparagus dipped in sesame seed (I think); and other titbits. Then, a fish dish that melted in our mouths - we were starting to get excited and settled back into that warm glow of good food and good company. The menu, alas, went downhill after there, with a disappointing sampling of fried pork (!!) with pancakes and sauce; then a pathetic serving of chilli greens; and then, finally, a serve of ginger icecream with apple fritters and a sweet sauce.
Oh please! They had to be kidding - this awful stuff for a small fortune????? Luckily, we were nonplussed and satisfied with the wine (Cloudy Bay Sav Blanc, followed by a fulsome Australian red the name of which I cannot for the life of me remember now). The bill came, I felt completely ripped off, and we promptly jumped in a taxi and hit Lan Kwai Fong, the hot nightspot alley behind the central business district. It was hopping!!! The first round Brazil vs Portuguese World Cup soccer match had the young bankers and wankers glued to the screens again while gorgeous young girls, blonde and black-haired and everything inbetween, strolled the streets in search of a good time.
Here is a photo of me with some gals on Lamma island, which is a 25-minute ferry ride from the central quay in HK CBD. It's a pleasant trip over, and scenic to behold, as the waters surrounding HK are dotted with islands. Lamma is very laid-back without a skyscraper in sight, whew, and has a reputation for great seafood. I kicked back at a waterfront cafe and decided to get risque: I ordered crab and it arrived in a delicious butter sauce with fresh salad and yummy dressing, and it was a delight. A lot of foreigners live on this accessible-by-boat-only neck of the woods: I even bumped into a couple of Setheffricans and Australians! Who would have thought? Lamma really couldn't be more different from the hard and fast commercial splendour of the main island, and that's its chief attraction. Pity it doesn't have great beaches, though it does provide the opportunity for leisurely hikes.
And here (below) is one of my photographs of the town of Stanley which is way more attractive than the city of Aberdeen which you reach after hiking from Hong Kong island's peak. Stanley is like the Mosman of Hong Kong Island, while A is just plain commercial in a grotty way, and pretty much devoid of charm. Still, Stanley is not especially exciting, interesting or unexpected, just pretty and relaxing after the madness of HK island. I heard birds chirruping there, and could stroll along the beachside boulevard without hordes surrounding me. And it was a relief!
Below is Hayley on one of her many HK hikes, this one from the peak of HK island to that infamous town of Aberdeen, best avoided except for a rest before wending one's way homewards once more. Aberdeen not as ghastly as Shenzhen on the mainland, however. This is one of CHina's fastest-growing "Special Economic ZOnes" with a population already of 14 million that has sprung up in the past decade since HK lost its status as a British sovereignty. Once a sleepy fishing village, it is now the second busiest port in China after Shanghai and its main raison d'etre is business which typically doesn't augur well if you're a tourist looking for rustic simplicity or historical charm. Visit Macau instead if you want mainland distraction: at least there's vestiges of the region's Portuguese-ruled history, and a Las Vegas style casino culture that some revellers may enjoy.

THE NATURAL BEAUTY OF HONG KONG ISLAND

2010-06-24T01:54:00.000-07:00

Well! Hong Kong is more than a money-making haven for Gordon Gekkos from all over the world. Today I jumped on bus 6X to the seaside suburb of Stanley, and 25 minutes later, after a gorgeous cliffside drive where I looked out on islets of green splattered about in placid, silvery water, I arrived in this beachside mecca. Bondi Beach meets Balmoral! And along the way, Repulse Bay, see the photo here, with its skyscraper hotels, iconic Chinese attractions and sandy beach packed with locals whenever the weather permits...
But, back to Stanley which is about five minutes further along the cliffside road. OMG, I could not quite believe it: here I was, hearing birds sing, surrounded by verdant lushness, taking a leisurely stroll along the promenade, unhurried and unperturbed by noise, crowds or hustle. Quel joie, as the Frogs would say. Next minute I was accosted by a gang of adorable nine-year-old Chinese children who wanted to interview me about my thoughts on Hong Kong. Well! Did they find the right candidate! We chatted ad nauseum (photos will be downloaded and added here, in due course, soon as I can locate the right gear) and one fat-faced Chinese boy whispered in awe, "You very kind lady."
I could not help but notice how impeccable their spoken AND written English was, and wondered if you would see such consistently impeccable penmanship in a gaggle of nine-year-old Australians. I'm not sure!
I then went trawling through some pretty shops and the local market and was sufficiently relaxed to actually want to buy something, so I am yet another garnet ring richer. Love the jewel memorabilia to remind me of my travels! After a Nasi Goreng lunch, twice the cost of one at Broadway - god, eating Westerner in Hong Kong is expensive - I jumped back on the return bus (airconditioned) and enjoyed the gorgeous views on the easy, quick route home. A couple of 40-storey apartment blocks occasionally block the beautiful views, but overall.... a hint of the "outback" enjoyment that Hong Kong also offers was definitely on view. I live with two 20-something yuppies who thrive on the 'run, beach, hike' lifestyle and they report a never-ending calendar of outdoor delights. Now I'm thirsty for more myself!.

One important tip for anyone visiting Honkers is, get yourself an Octopus card. It's a local electronic purchase card that you load up periodically to the tune of 50 or 100 Hong Kong dollars at any 711 convenience store; with it, you can pay for groceries, board any bus, tramway or subway and generally take care of everyday mundanities without finding the right change in your wallet.
Tomorrow I'm off to another relatively unspoilt part of Hong Kong, all of which makes a delicious contrast to my nights which are spent roaring along with the crowds watching World Cup Soccer matches in the red light district bars, discos and pubs. All the usual entertainment has come to a standstill, huge FIFA screens are everywhere, and the Filipino prostitutes are filing their nails in boredom as all their prospective customers sit with their eyes glued to television screens.
Hong Kong is a wierd city really. It's supposedly Chinese, but apart from people looking Chinese, and talking Chinese, it doesn't feel Chinese at all. Not after visiting mainland China anyway! Hong Kongers are definitely more sophisticated, and more arrogant it seems - perhaps it's because they are citixens of one of the first true 'world cities'. But, can't report further right now - off to see Sex and the City 2 which seems ironically apt, considering that I am living slap-bang in Wan Chai, Honkers' hip and happening red light district.
Until next time...

HELLO HONKERS!

2010-06-21T19:57:00.000-07:00

In hot and steamy Honkers now, in a skyscraper eyrie on the 26th floor overlooking the hip and happening Wanchai neighbour-hood just a nudge away from the CBD and right on the tramline which I'm going to ride shortly, taking with me an umbrella for the sun, a Chinese fan, and a bottle of H2O. Shanghai population 20 million, Beijing population 18 million, Hong Kong a mere seven million. Hurrah!

Was lucky to reach HK at all. When I checked in, the check-in attendant pointed out that my ticket was for 20 June, and today was 21 June! Eeek. Luckily for me, I was born in the year of the Chinese Rooster, a sign that signifies great luck, and sure enough, the check-in guy informed me the plane was not full so they'll check me in, no problem. One week earlier, during the Dragon Boat Festival, and I would have been in deep trouble! So, will report back later as I've been in town less than 24 hours; just wanted to apologise for the typos and mistakes in previous blogs. I could not post directly in China as http://www.blogspot.com/ was verboten by the Land of the Yellow Star. Now I am in Billionaire territory, where millionaires and jewel-encrusted limos are a dime a dozen. Ah, the pursuit of the mighty dollar! .... Or should that be the mighty yuan? Only time will tell! I attach here a photo taken for me by one of my many new Chinese friends, at the Mao mausoleum in Beijing on Tiananmen Square. Below you can read about my strolls in the environs of T Square and the Forbidden City. Strange to have two such bedfellows sitting cheek to jowl with one another... one a symbol of the power of the common people, the other a symbol of unrestrained rule by all-powerful dynastic families! How did a famous philosopher describe the rollercoaster of life? "History", he said, "keeps on repeating himself." Hear hear, Voltaire, too true!

DON'T MENTION THE THREE Ts in CHINA: TIBET, TAIWAN AND TIANANMEN SQUARE.
Before I blog about Hong Kong, let me summarise the good and the bad about this vast Asian superpower
LOVE
1. The community activities in the parks in the early morning before the heat kicks in... ribbon sticks, feather soccer, kite flying, flute playing, line dancing, group opera singing.... you name it, it's all happening.
2. The fruit on sticks
3. The subways - pretty full, yep, but work a charm, and there's a total 10 lines in every direction
4. The cleanliness of public streets, parks, subways... gawd, there's a street sweeper on e very corner!
5. The eagerness of Chinese to be helpful (most of the time) to foreigners, despite their complete non-understanding of our tongue. After all, it IS "a completely different linguistic tree" (as our guide, Frank, put it) and they know a helluva lot more phrases than the Europeans who can't even be bothered to learn some basic phrases, like please, thank you, etc.
6. Chinese translations into English, eg. Black is "chill" this month, instead of "black is cool this month". or "the top hat of blue copper" instead of "the crown of bronze artworks" and a gazillion others where words are always in the wrong order. Too cute! What would they do without their Google translator???
7. Foot and body massages. No wonder they can all walk forever and don't suffer rickety knees; they look after their bodies. Gotta love it.
8. Chinese babies and children: definitely the CUTEST in the world
9. The romantic storytelling, the fables and mythology
DON'T LOVE
1. The crowds
2. The heat in summer, worse than Sydney.... and cannot speak for the other seasons. (This is June and apparently it gets hotter in July and August. Eeek)
3. The incessant noise, especially loud music on speakerphones
4. The never-ending bargaining
5. The obsession with accumulating wealth
6. The smell of marinated tofu
7. The crouching creeps of the public toilets- eeeeeek.

Over and out, the hotel manager wants me out of the office, I suspect he wants to nap. Everyone sleeps everywhere here: on their feet,in the subway, standing up, on the job, on their bikes, under a tree, on their haunches, ANYWHERE.It's been a culture shock, but I have learned so much and I leave with complete admiration for this country and its people.

Sunday mornings in Beijing are the best

2010-06-20T03:08:00.000-07:00

Hello again folks, well here I am again after my dummyspit on arrival in Beijing. What a culture shock! I have since acclimatised, calmed down and grown wiser to Chinese ways and as a result, I was able to have a moving and memorable experience in Bei Hai park, just outside the walls of the Forbidden City, this morning.
Firstly, I am immensely proud that I was able to negotiate appropriately with a taxi driver when he insisted on going "off the meter" and charging me 10 times the going rate. I made it clear that I knew my RMB from my US dollars, as it were, and promptly set off on foot with only a good sense of direction and a few Chinese phrases to guide me. Amazingly, armed with my umbrella for protection from the sun, a bottle of water, and some Lindt chocolate (Westerner breakfasts in my very Chinese hotel are unpalatable, I'm afraid), I walked to Tiananmen Square, paid tribute to Chairman Mao who is buried there, then strolled around the Forbidden City (not inside, but in and around the environs)and then meandered through various willow-fringed parks.
The Forbidden City is surprisingly small in scale, when one considers what I have already seen, and how everything in China is 'macro' rather than 'micro'. I couldn't help but feel desperately sorry for the Last Emperor Pu Yi (refer Bertolucci's masterpiece THE LAST EMPEROR) who was kept prisoner behind these immense wine-red walls from the age of 3 to the age of 24.
I can only pray that he was occasionally escorted out to a Summer or Winter Palace so that he could partially escape the rigidity of court life, the acres and acres of stone pavers, and the complete lack of natural scenery!Who said being an Emperor was any fun huh???

Kites, shuttlecock soccer, ribbon sticks, dancers, flutes and Feng Shui

2010-06-20T03:06:00.001-07:00

Upon the advice of locals, I strolled to Bei Hai park behind the Forbidden Palace this sweltering Sunday morning (around 30 deg C at 9am) and the experience lifted my spirits. As I joined the audience surrounding a choir accompanying half a dozen musicians on trumpet and saxophone, I found tears welling in my eyes as locals, old and young, thin and thin, and all as different from one another as Westerners are en masse, I felt this perverse longing to see Centennial Park in Sydney festooned with people like this, with many of them letting it all hang out in one way or another. Plenty of couples come along with their friends, or dance group, switch on their music, and start dancing in pairs for hours under the trees. As usual, I was the only Westerner for miles, and was tapping and clapping along to the point that I was invited to participate. I did, and their dances are relatively easy and straightforward, a kind of gentle rumba meets line dance which I'd be happy to demonstrate in person in due course.
Some of the singing sounds like cats screeching, but usually it is melodious and lovely to listen to, especially if it is accompanied by flute or some other zither-type instrument. As for the people's choir singing along to the "chamber orchestra" of trumpets, that was heavenly and so rousing, I felt profoundly moved. I didn't know what they were singing about. It could have been "Comrades, let us take up arms and conquer those stupid Westerners", but it was far more likely, when one considers how romantically inclined the Chinese are, that they were singing about the eternal path to happiness, the divinity of the gods, and all manner of heavenly things.
You only have to look at what they call their park pavilions to get a clue: place for cloudless thinking/ the palace of eternal rest/ place of stone and water/ etc etc... Taoism is all about man fusing with nature.

It's reflected in the paintings of fishermen, willows, cranes, and contrasts with the idolatry of dragons, phoenixes, lions and giant turtles (who represent longevity).
Why anyone in China would want a long life, I'm not entirely clear, because it doesn't strike me as an easy life. But when you are in Bei Hai, one witnesses only the beautiful, lyrical pleasures of these people who are bowed by centuries of brutal history, Mao's "re-education" and since then, the pursuit of the capitalist dollar.
Chinese are obsessed with Feng Shui, and this obsession in turn is focused on the accumulation of wealth - it is practically atypical for a Chinese person to not boast a jade "pichu" in their home. The "pichu" is the ninth and youngest son of the dragon and he is a strange creature that resembles a kind of lion/horse. His claim to fame is that he has no "exit hole" (to put it politely) which signifies that any wealth that enters his mouth never leaves, but simply accumulates. Now that, apparently, is good Feng Shui!

CHINA IS DRIVING ME CRAZY

2010-06-17T00:14:00.001-07:00

Well guys, I have been in China's capital less than 24 hours and already I want out. My cousin Jennifer returned to work and I was left in this godforsaken hotel, where I appear to be the only guest, and at 4am this morning I awoke, hot, and by 5.15 I was dressed and packed and telling them to find me a decent room or else. Getting understood is virtually impossible, I cannot believe I am now typing this in a department store where there is a wireless Apple stand. The young Chinese girl doesn't seem to give a toss, and I'm just bloody grateful, because my iPad is proving USELESS throughout China. Poor Chinese workers are committing suicide at Apple plants in the provinces (let's not even go there), and here am I, hick JB from Sydney, completely freaking out because I am the only Westerner face I have seen in a sea of locals all day.

Tomorrow I am going on a tour for the day to see the Forbidden City and walk the Great Wall. I was going to do it solo, but after what I've been through, no thanks. I'll take a guide's broken English and an airconditioned bus, thanks.

If I ever had any dreams of being an intrepid traveller, these are well and truly shattered. What was I thinking? All I want now is my house, my husband, my dog, my bath, my bed, my TV, my computer, my friends, my life.
Help!

Yes, travelling is great, but this is NOT one of those days. I will sign off now because I am spewing. Miraculously, thanks to my cousin's directions, I did find a bookstore that sold English books (my iPad books are all read, egads) so I am going to settle down for an hour or two with David Sedaris at Starbucks. Starbucks has Wifi and I thought I was going to have an iPad breakthrough, but THAT dream was shattered too.

Would I recommend Beijing to you? Ask me on another day....!

Love to all of you from a not-very-happy JB xxx

Xi’an: Where the Silk Road begins

2010-06-15T18:24:00.001-07:00

On our fifth city stop, Jennifer and I have tramped and trudged in dry 33 deg Celcius sun, but our tourist laps are nothing like the conquering emperors of China. The back story behind Xi’an’s terracotta warrior army, for example, is positively alarming. Having conquered a swag of nations and united these under one flag, the Qin ruler (about 2300 B.C.) became consumed with his omnipotence. Obsessed with living and ruling forever, China’s first emperor, swaggering around in the pretty green hills of what is now called Shaanxi province, focused a great deal of his courtiers and medicine men’s attention of finding him an elixir of youth. (Some fixations are common, whatever the era, it would appear.)
While his Taoist advisers subsequently concocted a mercury-laced brew that ultimately brought about a painful, prolonged death, the brutally powerful Emperor rallied some 20,000 of his slaves to build him a mausoleum that, still today, in 2010 AD, takes your breath away in terms of scale and detail. The catacombs cover roughly 50 square kilometres in some of the prettiest Chinese countryside I’ve seen so far, and entombed some 8,000 life-size soldiers (infantry, cavalry and charioteers) fashioned from clay moulds, baked at scorching temperatures and hardened, then painted.
As if all this wasn’t sufficiently back-breaking, the somewhat paranoid Emperor felt compelled to recreate his life above-ground for the afterlife, so that when he finally fell off his perch, he also had killed for good measure, the legions of slaves that had built him his underground Empire. And his piece de resistance? Throwing in, for seductive company, his still-alive concubines. Such scale of self-serving cruelty, to me, is frankly horrifying.
Whether the first or the last, or in-between, China’s emperors all had rollercoaster lives of unprecedented scale. In Xi’an, we also visited the Hot Springs Winter Palace of another Emperor who lived roughly 700 years ago. He fell in love with a concubine so beautiful it was said that flowers were shy to bloom in her presence for fear of being upstaged. The Emperor was so besotted that he was ordered by his generals and advisers to kill his concubine; instead, she fled to Japan where her descendants there still lay claim to imperial lineage. The tragic love of the emperor and his concubine is China’s own ‘Romeo and Juliet’.
And so, in the Chinese way where fable, fairytale and archaeological fact interweave to tell the story of a nation that dates as far back as Rome, Athens and Mesopotamia, thousands of travellers from all over the world hear the stories that have led China to be the superpower hothouse it is today. (Yesterday, Xi’an’s average 10,000 visitors to the First Emperor’s tomb swelled to 20,000, thanks to a three-day dragon boat festival). The heat from the sheer press of human bodies in the largest of the tomb’s sections was stultifying!
There’s a funny story about the discovery, made only as recently as the early 1980s, of the terracotta warriors. The farmer, Mr Wang (pronounced ‘Wung’) who discovered the terracotta warrior remains while building a well, was never compensated for his find, but allowed instead to work at the museum site where his book and autograph rake in yuan for the ruling junta.
In 1998, when Bill Clinton visited Xi’an, Mr Wang was primed with a few English sentences so that he and Clinton could converse. When Mr Wang saw Clinton’s bodyguards, he became overcome with nerves and instead of saying “How do you?” to the US President, he said, “Who are you?”
Clinton laughed and replied, “I am Bill Clinton, President of the United States and (gesticulating to Hilary Clinton next to him) husband of Hilary Clinton.”
And then Clinton said, “And who are you?” and Mr Wang, nonplussed, replied, “Me too.”
Apparently everyone, including the Chinese officials, had a good laugh about this. I’ve often felt that Chinese people are humourless, but that has not been my experience in China. People seem to love a joke, and our latest tour guide, Frank, is no exception. He is bloody hilarious while also a mine of information about contemporary Chinese life.
Tibet? One child policy? Democracy? Elections? Mortgages? Crime, corruption, graft? Frank reminds us that there are always two sides to a coin, and that every political or economic advance has its dark side; hence, while China’s rulers wave the flag of communism and stand on the road of capitalism, the divide between rich and poor, like everywhere else in the world, yawns ever wider.
But enough politics, much as I love it, and let me touch briefly on food, shopping and general vibe. Xi’an is a lovely town with a populace of only 8 million, ha ha, and a Muslim population of about 700,000. (Total Muslims, a mere 70 million). Across the road from our three-star hotel we have a magnificent view of a people’s square, a giant pagoda, and the Muslim Quarter where night markets twinkle every night. Unbelievable bargains are to be had: last night I bought two pairs of shoes for less than a $100. I hope I don’t regret it!
The extent of retail in China is ridiculous: there’s too much of everything, even for 1.3 billion people. Honestly! But I won’t go on and on about it: I hate shopping for things I don’t want or need, and I HATE bargaining with people poorer than me, but I am in the minority in this regard, I suspect.
The food at lunch has been fabulous – the usual banquet with quite a lot of spices, including chilli, which I prefer – but the hotel breakfast yesterday was abominable. I’ve decided to skip breakfast today because there is absolutely no choice: yesterday I had a fried egg on dry white bread coated with jam. Hideous!
We could not make ourselves understood, so we just had to eat what we were given.
So, 11 days in China have passed; and another six before I fly to Hong Kong. Am loving the experience of immersing myself in another world, and recommend it to anyone who needs to break the circuit of their daily life! .

“Blue ant army” a relic of the past

2010-06-13T21:30:00.000-07:00

A favourite Chinese joke is one about George Bush Jnr, the USSR’s Putin and China’s current chairman, Hu Jintao, driving together in a car when they reach a crossroads. The driver of the car turns to the three leaders and asks them in which direction he should go, and Bush Jnr (or “little Bush” as our guide refers to him) says, “Turn right”.
The driver then asks Putin which way he should go, and Putin replies, “Turn right”. Finally, the driver asks Tao which way they should go and Tao replies: “Make a signal to turn left, but turn right.”
The humour in the joke is simply this: in China, the leadership professes to be communist, but it is in fact capitalist.
And after just over a week in China, I get the joke all right. Boy, those Chinese may have been slavishly following Chairman Mao in the 60s and 70s, doing his bidding in their identical suits like a drab sea of blue-grey ants, but when it comes to the tricks of the capitalist trade, they are rapidly catching on and up.
Here we are, for example, in a UNESCO world heritage site called Guilin, a tourist spot renowned for its scenic beauty, and honestly, what can I say? I would not recommend you visit. Sure, the river Li, surrounded by its limestone hills, winds merrily through countryside unspoilt – hallelujah – by smog-belching factories, but everything in this relatively small town (population only half a million, which is tiny by Chinese standards) is geared to tourists.
There’s nothing I dislike more than trekking in nature chased by ethnic people trying to sell me bangles, belts or bags. Drives me nuts!
So here we are, in countryside that allegedly inspired the movie AVATAR, wending our way up the mountains to visit the village of an ethnic minority race, the Zhuang (pronounced Ju-ang), and practically every step of the way, blocking the misty view of the terraced rice paddy fields, there are stalls to lure tourists to open their wallets and hand over a couple of yuan. Prices are heartbreakingly low - $60 for a beautifully wrought gold leaf Laughing Buddha the size of a small dog, for example – but a) do you really want or need it? b) Can you bear to bargain them down another yuan when the prices are already so low? And c) How are you going to lug this home all the way to Australia?
I hate it when my destination turns out to be alarmingly overcommercialised, and alas, this is one of those moments. You can’t see, let alone enjoy the scenery, for want of a vista devoid of a shack offering amulets, embroidery and other bric-a-brac.
By contrast, when I was walking in the Himalayas, the journey felt far more authentic. If you stopped for lunch, the menu was limited to ethnic cuisine, and the décor was primitive at best. Here in China, there are lodgings all along the stone paths wending upwards that boast TV, aircon, internet and WiFi. Whaaaa….t? Unreal!
And this was after flying some 2.5 hours southwest of Shanghai (and south of Beijing), and then driving a further two hours into the hills. Obviously, we haven’t plunged deep enough into the interior… or, alternatively, wild, untamed China barely exists. C’est la vie!
On our way to the Zhuang village, we stopped at another “minority group” village, the Yao, and they put on a concert for us. That was charming and comical as they unwound their very long, black hair and demonstrated their singing, dancing, wooing, embroidering and marrying skills (see photo).
We ended our second day in Guilin with what is rapidly becoming a must-have luxury: a foot AND neck massage. We paid 100 yuan each for one hour (the equivalent of $20) and my cousin Jennifer felt cheated. Apparently, we paid far too much!
Our guide Amy has been a mine of information throughout our stay and amused us with her sayings. “In China, we eat everything with legs except tables and chairs” she says merrily and then adds very seriously: “But we don’t eat water buffalo, or cormorants, because we need both to harvest our food”.
country strong. She remembers, however, the hunger that many, many Chinese experienced during the Cultural Revolution when farmers were so busy studying Mao’s ideology that they failed to harvest sufficient crops to feed the people! “I would come home from school hungry and want to eat, and my mother would tell my sister and I to wait until the evening. Really, there was much suffering…”
By the time Mao’s successor, Deng Xaioping initiated his “Open Door” policy in 1979 and ordered the farmers back to the land, scholars back to school and professors back at university, “we the people had started to wake up,” explains Amy. “But in Chairman Mao’s time everybody slept without worries; today, with Open Door policy, more people are worried about where to live, where to work, about medical insurance, pension, everything. During Cultural Revolution, everything was taken care of for us.”
Hmmm. Yes, well. Can’t say I’ve got any easy solutions, Amy.
The next day, still in Guilin, we had a better day, and were reminded of Nixon’s words when he visited Guilin in 1973: “This is one of the most scenic spots in the world,” he apparently declared, probably being polite, but certainly Jennifer and I are growing accustomed to seeing the beauty of scenery despite mist and rain. Guilin gets rain more than half the year, but we are off next to a city of eight million where temperatures are around 33 deg C and dry. Meanwhile, Jennifer and I took one last happy snap at Elephant Truck Hill (a limestone hill in the shape of an elephant’s trunk) as evidence that we really did visit this 2,300-year-old metropolis.
As we drive to the airport for another flight, we notice that apartment blocks seldom exceed five floors, which is part of this autonomous region’s strategy for keeping Guilin as pretty as possible, and also…. to not block out the limestone hills that surround this valley. Certainly, it makes a big change from most of the cities that boast avenues of apartment blocks 30, 40, 50 storeys high!
So, tomorrow the Terracotta warriors of Xian. Right now, I’m tuning in to Chinese TV to get the latest on World Cup soccer 2010. Go Australia!

NANJING

2010-06-10T19:16:00.000-07:00

Hi guys! Ni Hao! I have now been on holiday for eight days and I am truly starting to relax. We arrived last night in Guilin after a two-hour local flight from Nanking and are now ensconced in a gorgeous hotel. We find it hard to believe that it’s only three star! All our other hotels have been more than adequate (with the exception of one) but this is GREAT. And we’re here for three nights. Yeeha.
To recap so far: my first three days in Shanghai were packed. I was very impressed with the city which, quite rightly, has been dubbed “the New York of the East”. It’s a seriously sophisticated metropolis that makes for great shopping – I spent far too much money in the space of 36 hours – and it also makes your head hurt. I was, truth be told, relieved to leave.
Bogglingly, Shanghai has developed to this point in the space, really, of only the past couple of hundred years when Westerners made it a trading nexus and systematically went about taming the population with opium. That led to the Boxer Rebellion in the early 1900s, when the common people, to use tourist guide parlance, tried to throw out the foreigners.
Alas, one power-hungry Dowager Empress sided with the Westerners and the rebellion was quelled. It’s taken some time for the new democracy to effectively oust all foreigners and to welcome them again as tourists. Good for the Chinese, I say. They’re incredibly patriotic, and very keen to not be ruled by anyone but themselves. Sovereignty is sanctity, as they say….
Our next stop was Hangzhou (pronounced Hung-jo), population only four million (get outta here) and here we had two days of more pastoral pursuits: incense-infused pagodas, temples and parks, lakeside strolls and river boat outings. Aaaaaah! Weather has been kind to us throughout, with occasional days of light drizzle, nothing that compares to the deluge I believe Sydney is experiencing.
Speaking of the outside world, Jennifer and I plan to follow the World Cup as best we can. Our hotel has BBC television, so we will be watching the opening ceremony tonight along with a gazillion others around the world.
I guess one thing many of you will be wondering is, what is the food like? Well, you are asking the wrong person, because I tend to treat meals as mere fuel stops, but cousin Jennifer, on the other hand, relishes the banquet-style eating. Egads, how do these people stay slim? Mealtimes here are over-the-top: dish after dish after dish! Usually, there’s a plate of duck, some meatballs, spicy chicken, prawns or fish, vegetable dishes, a light soup with seaweed and egg and, finally, rice. We’ve adopted a simple routine of light breakfast, hearty lunch, and almost non-existent dinner (usually yoghurt).
Next stop was Nanjing, north of Hangszhou and west of Shanghai, which was the capital of China for ten dynasties (around the 1300s). This is an enormous, sprawling city with hundreds of corridors of apartment blocks to house the population; strangely enough, the high-rise blocks don’t look too bad, though they are hardly as charming as the more rarely seen traditional houses. Most people in Australia may still live in a house but in China, it is only the extremely wealthy who own a house. Property is bought per square metre in China… and no surprises there. With a population of 1.3 billion - easily 100 times greater than that of Australia – what can one expect?
Nanjing is a city steeped with history and culture and we were boggled by what we learned and saw here. First stop was the mausoleum of the father of the nation, Dr Sun Yat-Sen, who founded the Democratic Party in 1924, and paved the way for self-rule as opposed to centuries of feudal dynasties. Dr Sun studied medicine in Hawaii in the early 1900s, but turned to a career in politics. “It is easy to cure people,” he said. “It is far harder to cure a nation.
Three hundred and ninety-two steps lead to Dr Sun’s burial site, the 392 steps representing the 392 million who lived in China at the time of Dr Sun’s death. My, how has the population exploded since then!
Close by, in the same gigantic park, is another burial site, this one in honour of the Ming Dynasty’s founding Emperor. The two sites are in complete contrast to one another – the former is built to more classical designs and is partly inspired, one senses, by European architecture; the latter, of course, is more traditional, with a high moat wall of enormous stone bricks, and an ornate wooden structure, once painted and decorated and since meticulously restored, housing the Emperor’s remains.
The following day in Nanjing was a highlight: the Nanjing Massacre museum.
My goodness, they document their history well, the Chinese!
This museum records the witness testimonies of hundreds of people who survived the slaughter of 300,000 Chinese civilians in December 1937 when Japan invaded Nanjing. Ironically, this museum reminded me of the Japanese museum in Nagasaki which records the suffering that resulted after the Americans dropped a nuclear bomb on its city in 1945. Both museums pay brilliant testimony to the horrors of war. Strikingly, the Nanjing museum ends on a beautiful, poetic “epilogue” where it asks us all to forgive what happened, but never to forget, in order that it never happen again. Amen to that, I say.
Then, before leaving, we went downtown to Nanjing’s Old Town (think of The Rocks) and visited a famous Confucius temple. I was delighted to learn more about a guy, born 500 BC, who is so often quoted on Quotations.com. This guy believed in scholarliness and preached much wisdom about how to live a balanced and harmonious life.
To balance and harmony, I say, and toast you with a Dragon Well green tea! For now, amigos, it’s au revoir as we launch ourselves into another day…

This blog site blocked in China

2010-06-08T22:30:00.000-07:00

Hello again! I forgot to mention in my last blog that social networking sites like Facebook and blogsites such as this one are verboten in China. I popped down to an Internet café during my first 24 hours in Shanghai, paid 3.5 yuan for an hour, and sat down among all the young dudes playing games on computers, only to discover this.
So my blog is being cut and pasted and then posted on my behalf. Welcome to China!
My newsagent back home said she fled the crowds, the pollution and the “lack of freedom”. I guess it’s this kind of stuff that she’s talking about.
We’ve certainly experienced the crowds for ourselves and they’re legendary, but weirdly manageable; a pall of polluted grey sky is almost omnipresent and yet my sinus problems, thankfully, have almost totally disappeared; while the lack of freedom doesn’t affect foreigners overly, except for the excessive tracking of our movements with passport photocopying wherever we go.
But hey, at least I can read the Sydney Morning Herald on-line. I did briefly in my first 24 hours, but have been relentlessly busy since then sightseeing and what-have-you. Like all holidaymakers the world over, the world you leave behind becomes increasingly irrelevant as the days pass.
Here I am, in a fairly grotty so-called three-star hotel in Nanjing, where Japanese massacred 300,000 Chinese in the early 20th century, and cousin Jennifer and I are having a laugh a minute. We strolled in light rain to the supermarket last night to get our yoghurt (“swan-eye”), wasabe biscuits, bottled water and white rabbit lollies and then bought a whole lot of DVDs for dirt-cheap. I’m rather excited about watching Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor again now that I am in the land of dynasties… these are Qing, Hung, Sang Guo, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, Qing, in that order, spanning a modest 4,500 years. Sometimes as our car weaves through villages, I feel like I’m in Italy, traversing countryside that has seen so much joy, tragedy, hardship, pageantry, harvesting, toil….China, whatever you feel about it, is steeped in centuries of history and that gives voyagers a sense of something Buddhist… you cannot help but sense the insignificance of individual considerations in the broader context of nations fighting ideologies, pestilence, famine, neighbouring warlords
I love the sayings in China and the constant allusions to legends. After Shanghai, we visited a very beautiful city, Hangzhou, (pronounced “Hung-jo”) and visited this magnificent lake about the size of two Centennial Parks. Bordered on three sides by lush greenery and on the fourth by the city skyline, the lake is dotted with islands, pagodas and bridges built hundreds of years ago.
“A lake viewed in sunny weather is beautiful,” our guide informed us. “But a lake viewed in the rain is even more beautiful. And a lake in the snow is the most beautiful of all.” We looked at the lake in soft brilliant sunshine (temperature 26 deg C, humidity about 65) and tried to imagine it, frozen in time, like a delicate watercolour painting, at its most picturesque.
Our guide went on to recount the legend of the golden dragon and jade phoenix who allegedly gave birth to the lake and gifted it to the people of this rich rice-bowl valley west on Shanghai. Chinese citizens often describe things romantically; poets, for example, are revered, and the ability to describe things poetically much admired.

Our two-day visit to Hangzhou was an exquisite contrast to the steroid-infused pace of Shanghai. Here, about two hours west of Shanghai, is a city renowned for its beauty. We took a wooden junk ride on the lake itself and weaved our way around willow-fringed islets, before visiting a disused Buddhist temple, Lingyin, exquisitely restored by the Chinese. In China everything is enormous in scale and this was no different – four giant ‘guardians’, two fierce, two benign, shielded a giant golden Buddha in a temple surrounded by smaller outbuildings. One contained 500 giant bronze statues of various sagi!
The following day we visited a tea plantation in picture-perfect countryside dotted with rows of tea bushes, and learnt about the antioxidant effects of green tea. After a demonstration showing what quality green tea does to rice inside one’s stomach, I’m a convert and funnily enough, since drinking loads of it daily, my stomach has settled. (I was stupid enough, momentarily, to drink a little local H20 and swiftly learned my lesson). I also purchased a canister of Dragon Well green tea, which is reputedly China’s best, enjoyed by emperors, Queen Elizabeth (who visited here) and all the top brass in Beijing.
After Buddhist temples and pagodas and verdant, natural views, we headed for Nanjing down breezy, well-built highways. All the cities have corridors of high-rise apartment blocks for kilometres… the traditional farmer houses are rarer and infinitely more picturesque than the acres of concrete, even if they do occasionally have twirly-wirly Chinese touches.
Shopping? I spent a small fortune in Shanghai, but have now calmed down. Last night I was more interested in plasters at the local chemist for all my aches and pains. Unable to understand each other, I walked away with a box of plasters that I put on my aching left shoulder/neck area (go figure) and the plaster tingled away all night. I am becoming increasingly interested, it must be said, in Chinese medicine – they talk incessantly about the importance of “balance” and “good health”.
To YOUR good health, dear friends and family, until the next time!

OMG, I am Toto in the Land of Oz

2010-06-07T20:21:00.000-07:00

Before I left Australia I asked my Chinese newsagent why she left China and she replied, "Too many people, too much pollution, and no freedom." I thought, fair enough, and decided to see for myself.
Then Qantas flew into Phudong airport and I took a train in to Shanghai and boom! OMG, a city on steroids. Twenty-two million people jostle about this sci-fi city and I am agape at the crowds: the sweet young things in tricked-up wardrobes of denim, bows and lace; the elderly, mainly fit and spry, who have seen it all, including Mao's Cultural Revolution; the toddlers, cute as cute can be. One of my favourite phrases already: "Hoong koo-eye" (not the correct spelling, but how you pronounce it) which means "toooooo cute". I always was a sucker for an adorable kid, and China.... well, the country's full of them. Another phrase: "Hoong how" which means "very good". Yesterday, after a one hour body massage to heal my weary bones (OMG, the walking!!!!) I had to tell the massage "teacher" that he wasn't just good, he was "ding ding how" which means THE BEST. He laughed.
Chinese people think I am very funny, and I think they are very sweet. My father would have been in his element here. Coming from an island where European, Chinese and Indian all lived merrily together, each speaking in one tongue, French, the industrious Chinese folk of his town impressed.
And me? After four days so far in China, I'm impressed. Why? you ask. I'll tell you shortly, but let's stick with my newsagent here and discuss the sheer number of the people first.

Shanghai has a lot of people at the best of times; give it a world-first Expo, and you are talking a city agog with excitement. This is a city on show, and let me tell you, it does itself proud: the streets are apparently always clean, but now it's hard to believe that locals spit everywhere because everywhere you look there are nothing but freshly polished buildings lining spotless streets with immaculate public transport:aaaah, Sydney would kill for trains like these whirling in regularly and on time!
Let's talk about personal space for a second: many Europeans are appalled by the lack of it in China, and I've already one or two Caucasians in queues, semi-frozen in distaste, seemingly appalled by the people pushing and shoving to move a queue forward. One British guy admonished a Chinese fellow for standing on his foot: I felt like telling him to get a life and push a bit more himself! In the entrance queues at Expo, one tall Canadian guy, towering over the sea of people, looked like he was going into a fugue. A pal explained that he was having trouble with the pushing and shoving; again, I just wanted to tell the fellow to pull himself together. Honestly, you're in China, pal, and the population runs to billions. What did you expect?
My cousin and I went to Expo which was a brave move considering the show allows up to 700,000 visitors a day and the daily quota is always met; however, the entrance queue only took 40 minutes and we were pleasantly surprised. We had our umbrellas for the sun, just like everyone else [weather has been amazingly fab, by the way: sunny and clear] and jostled and shoved through the pig pens with the best of them. I was careful not to wear perfume after Jenny informed me that they find Westerners' penchant for CK and Gaultier off-putting. Luckily, I haven't smelled any body odour yet. On the contrary, I wish I was as slim, fit and strong as the majority of the population. I guess years of hard work, low wages, fresh food and plenty of walking has its benefits!
You know what? We could learn a lot from the Chinese. No wonder there's an international best seller at the moment, "When China rules the World". When you see what they achieve.... you realise it's quite possible.
The truth is, we only lasted about 4 hours at Expo. It just got too much; queues as long as three hours to get into popular pavilions (China, US, Germany, France, Taiwan, Japan) and one to two hours for the rest.... eeek. We popped into the joint Africa pavilion which was full of wood carvings, traditional huts and the beat of the drum, and enjoyed the coolness and vibe, and managed to get into Chile's pavilion without too much of a fuss... which blew me away. A fellow Vietnamese sightseer had told us it was "cool" and he was right - it was poetic, interactive, creative, fascinating. They had recreated four floors of a high-rise where you could see the family life inside and as you watched you couldn't help thinking that we may all look different, but our needs are the same.... babies crying for attention, mouths to feed, a living to make, housework to complete, birthday milestones to celebrate, sick people to tend.... life is pretty straightforward really, so make it magica! if you can!
Also in the Chile pavilion was this amazing touch phone map of Chile where you just touch a part and someone in that part of Chile appears and, by touching, you can pull in photos from their photo album and learn about their way of life. It was a fantastic way to learn about a country and made me want to get on the next plane to South America.
But after that one truly exciting experience, as the midday sun broiled, we soon lost the energy for queuing under our umbrellas and ducked into a Japanese restaurant overlooking one of the squares and rested. Later, we jumped on a ferry and left the sprawling Expo site, leaving the Chinese folk to visit the countries of the world the only way most of them ever will.
All seven million of Shanghai's permanent residents got free tickets to Expo; they also got a free train travel pass for the family for a month. This was the administration's way of saying thank you to the people for putting up with construction work for years. Since 2005, for example, the subway system has quadrupled in metreage, going from three railway lines to 10! When all the Expo visitors leave, the citizens of this massive city with its art-deco-meets-sci-fi cityscape, will have many urban upgrades to enjoy.
Bye for now, gotta go, have left Shanghai and currently enjoying the more pastoral beauty of a lakeside city, Hangzhou. Until next time...

China wasn't my first choice, but...

2010-05-23T15:24:00.001-07:00

Look, everything I've heard about China is less than appealing. Pollution, overcrowding, people spitting on your feet, zero comprehension of English,the regime's obsession with paperwork, bureaucracy and non-appreciation of the finer things in life, like taking happy snaps for your photo album. Verboten, in the Land of the Yellow Star!
So what the hell am I doing bound for the Orient? Serendipity takes me there, in the form of various loved ones stationed there for work. So I thought why not visit Tiananmen Square, and see if it is still surrounded by cyclists rather than cars, as it was in Chairman Mao's days? Will there be a paucity of shops to peruse, as it was back in the early 70s when a friend of mine visited the Chinese capital?
A lot has happened to China in four decades and now people are talking. I plan to read "When China rules the World" on my way over to Shanghai, which is my first stop in this vast Marco Polo region. I'll be off to the French Quarter almost immediately to check out the last vestiges of a bygone era... I believe a new skyscraper goes up in China's mainland cities while you blink!
More of all things Oriental in due course, for now I am simply ripe with expectation!

"I'm off on an adventure!"

2010-05-22T21:02:00.000-07:00

Goodbye Groundhog Day, I’m off on an adventure and aah, the soul soars! With my ticket booked, anticipation shimmies through my veins, coursing round my body till I feel the pop-pop-pop of mounting excitement and joy. I wanna go now, but I also want the days until my departure to yawn before me like a beckoning chasm of delight. It’s not that my life is bad - oh no, sirree, it most certainly is not - but you know, even molten chocolate can taste icky after excess. If possible, one should have something, like a journey in the offing, up one’s emotional sleeve to quieten the existential angst. Travel, gentle readers, is - as you well know - a honeyed balm for the soul. In general, speaking both metaphorically and literally, I’ve always preferred the road less travelled, but will I see ‘more of the same’ on my travels, only at different latitudes, or will I chance upon the truly exotic? Only time will tell! My shiny, compact suitcase gleams in readiness, and an iPad satchel is ordered for on-line connection 24/7 as I prepare to visit mainland China in June. “Ni Hao” is my first handy Mandarin phrase - and here’s another: “Zai Jian” (pron. Zai Djen, which means, “So long!”) So, for now, adieu….