Fuddland

Photo-based entries from my time in China.

This category is a subcategory of Photos.

Summer has hit Sūzhōu (苏州) with its full force, which means several days of sweltering heat [pushing 40°C] followed by torrential rainstorms which, although a welcome break from the sun, turn the streets into dirty rivers and bring sticky humidity when the temperatures rise again the following day. It’s a far cry from the refreshing change of the final week of my holiday a few months back, which I spent on the southernmost shores of the southernmost part of China, the provincial island of Hǎinán (海南).

I admit I was fairly dubious about visiting a beach resort out here, and while it wasn’t quite up to the standards I’ve seen while visiting Nantucket or Cancun, the water was clean enough, and the beaches were kept rubbish-free despite the generally carefree Chinese attitude to littering. [Some days it’s all I can do to pick up the sweet wrapper that the kids in front of me have just thrown on the ground and thrust it back into their hands, but then a street-cleaner usually sweeps it away before I have a chance to move. This obviously works for them, but for someone with a deep-ingrained aversion to dropping litter, the lack of convenient bins every few hundred metres means I sometimes walk for miles with a sticky ice-cream wrapper flapping about in my hand.]

All along the south-east shores of the town of Sānyà (三亚) are lavish hotels and resorts with private beaches, but being a man on a budget I stayed in the Dàdōnghǎi (大东海) area, home to two youth hostels, the better of which I found to be the Blue Sky International Youth Hostel. It was right around the corner from a very nice stretch of beach, with plenty of restaurants overlooking the sea and lots of street vendors peddling deliciously fresh fruit — I’ve never tasted better mangos.

The area is apparently astoundingly popular with Russian holidaymakers — so much so that most of the shops and roadsigns are displayed in both Chinese and Russian, although a Ukrainian woman that I met at the hostel told me that the Russian was mostly as amusingly wrong as much of the Chinglish that can be seen all over the country.

Walk a few hundred yards away from this vibrant, luxurious district and you find several huge hotels that have gone out of business. It was quite eerie walking around these deserted places, which looked as though everyone had simply walked out one day and never come back: through the padlocked glass doors, I could see plants that had wilted and died in the lobby, newspapers on the coffee tables; the adjacent restaurants still had their tables and chairs set out. [I half-expected the Chinese name of the hotel to translate as Mary Celeste.] A large smelly skip was thankfully downwind from the currently-populated areas.

Between these two areas were small groups of local fisherman, whole families catching crabs and molluscs, and — to be expected — more than a few wedding photo sessions taking advantage of the scenic backdrops. Despite not being much of a beach person, I did enjoy my week or so walking with the soft sand between my toes, my breakfasts of coconut jam on toast, and the surreal experience of Chinese taxi drivers and waiters trying to speak to me in Russian.

Having got delayed for longer than we wanted to be in Kūnmíng (昆明) due to the whole of China shutting down to celebrate the Chinese New Year, Mary and I were itching to get away from all aspects of city life and enjoy a bit of peace and quiet. Nine hours by bus later, we arrived in the mountainous county of Yuányáng (元阳), famed for its sprawling hillsides of terraced rice paddies.

The first township we settled in was Xīnjiēzhèn (新街镇), our bus winding its way up some precarious mountain hairpins and getting there in the late afternoon to find it all a bit foggy. The hotel we checked into was supposed to overlook a spectacular expanse of countryside, but all we could see from the balcony was the blanket of cold, grey cloud that pervaded the interiors of the buildings as well as the town streets.

After a cold and damp night’s sleep, we woke the next morning to find the weather exactly the same as yesterday’s, so rather than hang about in the hope that the cloud would soon burn off or blow away, we elected to try and move on to one of the smaller villages further up the mountain. I’d read about one called Duōyīshù (多依树) that had a well-recommended place to stay called the Sunlight Guesthouse, run by an elderly local couple. This turned out to be one of the best decisions we made on the entire trip, and possibly of all time.

We had escaped from the miserable weather below and from the rooftop of the guesthouse could look down the valley at the paddies stepping down the hillsides. For three idyllic days we slept late — “We’ll definitely get up for the sunrise tomorrow!” We sat in the courtyard in rocking chairs, read, drank tea and looked at the view. We walked to and through some of the other surrounding villages, past busloads of Chinese tourists armed with foot-long camera lenses and, for some reason, dressed from head to foot in all-weather gear like they were going on an Arctic expedition instead of being ferried up and down the mountain on a heated coach; down through tea plantations to teeter along the edges of the paddies and back up to the road; past oxen coming down from the fields and enormously fat boars suckling their boarlets; children playing in the stream running though their village; women in traditional dress buying live chickens from the market; men in their standard modern-day clothing of loose-fitting slacks and a dark-coloured suit jacket chewing on and spitting out chunks of sugar cane. We caught the minibus back to Duōyīshù when we got tired of walking, and wondered why so many of the women were getting physically travel sick. In the evenings we ate good, home-cooked meals together with the other guests around the kitchen table. Our decision to leave was based entirely on time-constraints and having other places we wanted to visit. If we had had more time or nothing else we wanted to do, I think we could have happily spent the entire trip staying at the Sunlight Guesthouse.

Late last year work began on the first of four planned underground lines in Sūzhōu (苏州), a huge construction job which I imagine is made even more difficult given the city’s extensive network of canals and generally chaotic roadways, especially in the city centre.

Major roads are having to be diverted, making rush-hour even more frustrating for commuters, and all the enormous construction vehicles and equipment — not to mention the tonnes of excavated mud and unsightly makeshift temporary accommodation for the migrant workers — will be putting a serious strain on Sūzhōu’s reputation as one of China’s most beautiful cities until work is completed in about four year’s time.

Last month I was treated by my nursery school to join them on a daytrip to Shànghǎi Wild Animal Park. Having had a pretty bad experience with the zoo back in Běnxī, I was a little apprehensive, but thought that a modern, wealthy, progressive city such as Shànghǎi might be a little more clued-in animal-welfare-wise.

Can you guess what’s coming?

To be fair, the animal enclosures were of a decent quality: good sizes, and the animals [for the most part] looked to be in fairly good condition, which is surprising once you witness the general public’s complete disregard for any and all prominent notices [of which there were many] imploring them to not feed the animals.

It was simply amazing: children and adults alike, gleefully throwing bread to the red pandas and offering cake and biscuits to the ostriches, or trying to pet birds doing the best they could to avoid the out-stretched hands whilst tied to a perch by a six-inch chain.

One mother couldn’t seem to accept the fact that alligators generally don’t do very much apart from sit on rocks for most of the day, especially when the weather is on the chilly side, so she decided to lob a plastic bottle at them so they’d get up and do an elaborate five-minute song-and-dance routine for her precious son. Sadly for her, the bottle just bounced off their tough hide and they barely even raised a scaly eyebrow. [One of the teachers decided that they were not, in fact, real alligators, but statues, although if she could have been bothered to stand still and simply look at them for a few minutes, she would have seem them blink and move everso slightly.]

But all that was left in the dust by the grand finale: a 45-minute long animal show, featuring, amongst other things:

• an elephant performing acrobatics with two girls, being encouraged to stand on its hind legs through the use of a metal spike on a stick

• three monkeys on chains scurrying up and down poles

• a chimpanzee dressed as a shoe-shiner engaging in slapstick routine with his handler [who, for some reason, was dressed as a Frenchman]

• a bear riding a bicycle, and later being made to walk upright with cymbals strapped to its front paws, whilst two other bears [also upright] took part in a wedding ceremony, attended by the elephant, monkeys, a llama, and a zebra.

Still, at least: the kids were pretty cute; I got to see white tigers for the first time; and, most importantly, there were many fine examples of Chinglish on display, my favourite of which was in the stay-in-your-vehicle stage, and said,

In case of breakdown, please dial 61180113. In case of no communication equipment, please whistle for a while, our working staff will tow out your troubled car.

The part of Sūzhōu (苏州) where I live goes by two names: to English-speakers it’s called SIP — Sūzhōu Industrial Park — which, for me, conjures bleak images of factories, vast warehouses and smoke-spilling chimneys. Contrarily, the Chinese name is Yuán Qū (园区) — Garden District — which sounds altogether much lovelier, with lush green parks, skipping children and tweeting birds.

The reality is somewhere in between: there is certainly a large number of factories and office blocks littering the area, but in the residential parts, amongst the apartment complexes, are little pockets of green, constantly maintained by a small army of workers continually weeding, planting non-weeds, picking up litter and sweeping all things sweepable. In the last few weeks spring has sprung right over itself and almost become summer temperature-wise, but the blossom is out in full force.

Question: have I just never noticed it before now, or is it quite unusual for one tree to have two very different shades of blossom?

An hour’s bus ride out of Sūzhōu (苏州) is the small historic water town of Lùzhí (甪直). Just over a square kilometre in size, and dating back 1,400 years, it’s famed for its surviving small bridges and a Buddhist temple containing treasured sculptures of arhats — the term for those who have attained enlightenment.

A single ¥60 ticket gains you entry to eight local sites of interest — as well as the temple there are a few museums displaying farming tools and detailing the lives of some of the town’s famous inhabitants, as well as some historic houses — all within walking distance of each other, and it makes for a nice little daytrip. Lùzhí is rather less touristy than Tóng Lǐ (同里), but then it is also less well maintained — although that didn’t seem to bother the good few local artists from setting up their easels along the canalsides.

One of the more interesting sights was housed within the Buddhist temple: three thousand-year-old ginkgo trees, which I have since learnt is a species of tree with no close living relatives — an example of a living fossil [think crocodiles, horseshoe crabs and coelacanths]. But I was most intrigued by this sign off to one side in the arhat room:

Anyone got any theories as to the meaning of “119”?

Update: Disappointingly, it appears that 119 is the emergency number for the fire service. I was hoping for some kind of mystical significance, but I suppose this is still quite useful information that I really should have known before now. And what kind of sign is that anyway? Surely, “In case of fire, dial 119” would be a little more effective than a cute but cryptic couplet?

As if sensing that I’d not been inspired to post anything for ages, I’ve been gifted with a couple of interesting, “You don’t see that every day” type things. Presenting, firstly, the Men Painting a Building Hanging Precariously from Ropes and Only Using Rollers:

And for the main event: Man Strapping a Fridge-Freezer to His Bicycle:

One of the most fascinating things about the Terracotta Army is that, in their Chinese name Bīng Mǎ Yǒng (兵马俑), according to my dictionary the last character (俑) translates as “earthen figures buried with the dead in ancient times” — isn’t it lucky they came up with that one, just in case they should ever need it?

Getting to the site, about an hour’s drive from Xī’ān (西安), is very simple even if you don’t want to go on an organised tour [which I didn’t, both to save money and to have no time constraints] — you catch the green 306 bus from the car park on the east side of the train station and get off at the very last stop. The ten-minute walk up to the main site is disconcerting; it feels as though you’re walking through a modern housing development [and not a very populated one, most of the buildings appear to be empty], with pointless Chinese rock music blaring out of speakers [disguised as fake rocks] and hordes of peddlers repeatedly offering you miniature warriors until you punch them on the nose to make them go away. [Believe me, saying, “No thank you!” has no effect whatsoever.]

Once you’re through the museum gates life is a little more peaceful, although for some reason those souvenir sellers are also allowed in to harass the visitors as they wander around. I think most people head straight for Pit 1, the main hangar housing the largest restored collection of figures, but we veered off to the right and went for Pits 2 and 3 first, saving the “best” ‘til last. These two smaller pits contain many broken, partially-uncovered figures, horses and chariots, and work is still going on to unearth the remaining artifacts, the majority of which are still completely buried. It was nice to be able to see the statues without obstructive glass or netting, but how long this will be the case I’m not sure, seeing as there was a half-drunk bottle of Pepsi and a tourist map accidentally [I hope!] dropped into Pit 3.

The main pit is enormous, and it was a relief to actually be impressed by the scale of things — even moreso when you consider that, having recovered around 1,000 statues, there are supposed to be another 7,000 or so to go. Towards the back of the hangar — we entered through the exit, continuing our maverick, shoot-from-the-hip approach — is a reconstruction area, where you can see dozens of partially-restored figures and a big pile of broken pottery, together with a couple of computers and other gadgets which help with the jigsaw puzzle. The remaining two-thirds of the building is dedicated to the main show, and after the relatively dim previous pits, it was a surprise to see so much sunlight allowed to flood the room. The more you look, the more you come to realise that it really was quite an achievement for the people of the time. It’s hard to imagine even today people working with such patience and dedication to produce this volume of individually-crafted figures [and let’s emphasise this: each and every figure has a different face!].

Not everyone was so in awe of the millennia-old sight before their eyes: as I stood overlooking the main site, I turned and realised that the Chinese man next to me was not, in fact, taking photos of his cultural heritage, but decided that it was much more important to snap pictures of the foreigner. I quickly ducked out of view and gave him a look that said, “Oi, ninny, no!”, although this might not have translated very well as he immediately tried to take a photo of my Australian friend instead.

[Aside: back in Sūzhōu (苏州), I was walking down the street the other day, a few feet behind a Western man with his two young children when suddenly two Chinese men pulled up on their bicycles. One produced a camera and motioned [repeatedly saying, “Very cute, very cute!”] for the dad to pick up his sons and pose with them for a photo. Somewhat dazed by the speed at which it was all happening, the dad complied. I have no idea what they wanted these photos for. It was all a little creepy.]

Those of us of a certain age and nationality will fondly remember the classic Japanese kung-fu television treat that was Monkey Magic — the story of a Buddhist monk, Tripitaka, and his three mystical protectors, Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy, on a quest from China to India and back, seeking sacred Buddhist texts and battling all manner of demons in a variety of camp costumes.

The story is based on an ancient Chinese legend, Journey to the West, in which the monk is called Xuán Zàng (玄奘), which begins and ends in what is modern-day Xī’ān (西安). On his return to the temple of Dàcí’ēn Sì (大慈恩寺) [Temple of Grace], Xuán Zàng requested the construction of the stone pagoda Dàyàn Tǎ (大雁塔) [Big Goose Pagoda] within its walls to house and protect the precious scripts as he translated them into 1,355 volumes [as well as negotiating the rights to the television series, sticker albums, action figures and so on].

The Temple is currently undergoing a face-lift and, sadly, looks as though is was all constructed in the last twenty minutes instead of portraying its 1,500-year-long history, although the pagoda itself has largely been left alone and looks sufficiently weather-beaten for you to believe the legends surrounding it, and even today, still emits enough mystical energy for a few moments of levitation…

The Muslim Quarter, in the north-west of downtown Xī’ān (西安), is the place to go if you want to buy some nice-looking souvenirs, antiques and trinkets — from local crafts such as intricately-cut patterns in paper and jewellery, to novelty items such as Máo Zédōng (毛泽东) watches and playing cards. All the haggling can make you hungry — luckily there are plenty of restaurants and street vendors selling cheap and delicious food on the supposedly-pedestrianised road perpendicular to the shopping street. New dishes for me included yángròu pāomo (羊肉泡镆), small chunks of bread soaked in lamb noodles and hú là tāng (胡辣汤), thick soup laden with strong black pepper, as well as the Xī’ān speciality, candied dried fruit [beware the mixed bags: they also contain thick slices of ginger, which may be mistaken for pineapple at first glance and lead to nasty taste-bud-related surprises when you bite a chunk out of it].

Tucked away Tardis-like off the narrow winding market street is Dàqīngzhēn Sì (大清真寺) — the Great Mosque — the largest mosque in China, dating back to 742. I was slightly confused by its backwards [I thought] layout until it was pointed out that China is east of Mecca, so they pray to the west in this part of the world. Still in use today, it’s surprisingly peaceful considering its proximity to the bustle of the eateries and stalls, and resolutely Chinese in its design: I really was expecting to see a golden-domed building like the London Central Mosque that I’ve seen many times [and I’m quite sure once visited on a school trip, although that was possibly a different mosque], and was a little disappointed to be presented with a traditionally-Chinese structure instead.

The two large museums in Xī’ān that I visited — Bēilín Bówùguǎn (碑林博物馆) [Forest of Steles Museum] and Shǎnxī Lìshǐ Bówùguǎn (陕西历史博物馆) [Shaanxi History Museum] — both contained an impressive display of the region’s renowned history. I found the former more interesting simply because I saw stone tablets detailing conversations with Confucius, the first record of Christianity in China, and the first Chinese dictionary [so it claimed], all displayed with uncharacteristic subduedity. [I think I’ve just made up the word for the quality of being subdued.]

The History Museum houses a nicely-chronological collection of locally-found pottery and metalwork, and it was nice to really see the skills of the craftspeople becoming more and more refined over the hundreds-of-years, although perhaps the most striking thing for me was realising that we, us human type people, seem to have an innate sense of beauty such that the designs on pottery dating back thousands of years are still pleasing to the modern-day eye; we all still like a nice, simple geometric pattern on our breakfast bowls don’t we?

Xi’an and the surrounding area is positively brimming over with sites of historical importance, and it’s well worth spending a good few days visiting the city of you want to be sure to make the most of the places of…

Read the rest of “Xi’an city walls”…

One of the lesser-known gems in Chengdu is Wang’s Tiny Museum of Mao Memorabilia. The name says it all: down a side street that I had to ask three people how to find despite having the address and a map,…

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Right next door to the hostel I was staying at in Chengdu was the Buddhist temple of Wenshu Yuan; it is a Chan temple, Chan being the Chinese for what is more popularly known as Zen Buddhism. Although initial…

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Happy Chinese New Chinese New Year! Or, as everybody is saying around here, xīn nián kuài lè [新年快乐]. The fireworks started early yesterday afternoon, went on through the night and are still going strong today. I joined a thousand or…

Read the rest of “18.02.07”…

Foolishly, I’d mentioned earlier to one of the other passengers on the bus how good the driver was: up in the mountains of Jiuzhaigou park the winding roads were still covered in snow, yet he managed to keep a steady…

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Aside from the dominant Han Chinese nationality, there are 55 other officially-recognised minorities in modern China; the province of Sichuan is home to four of them, and the village of Taoping has been occupied by the Qiangzu people for around…

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In typical in-at-the-deep-end style, I’ve been rather busy for my first couple of weeks with my new language centre, teaching children every morning and afternoon, and adults a couple of evenings a week — but thankfully it all comes to a dead…

Read the rest of “Candids”…

Just outside Ding Shan is a series of caves open to the public, the largest of which is Zhanggong Dong, set in a small park with the usual offerings of ponds, rocks and winding pathways. The caves would be a…

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Do the curly locks of the golf caddy on the left of the photo look vaguely familiar? That’s right, it’s none other than yours truly, helping out a clothes-designing friend of mine by being a clothes horse for her…

Read the rest of “Shooting the shoot”…

Our initial attempt to visit the border with Russia ended in partial failure: we were indeed taken to a border crossing by a taxi driver, but it was the purely functional one for immigration and import/export purposes — entirely uninteresting, tourist-wise. However,…

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Having befriended a quite crazy local cab driver willing to take us far and wide, we went to Dalai Hu — about an hour’s drive south of Manzhouli — and were surprised to discover that, despite the recent warm weather, the lake was still…

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Since we have a whole seven days off work, starting tomorrow night, Alan and I thought it might be fun to get out of the city for a while and head north, up to Manzhouli — the city where I was originally…

Read the rest of “Shenyanged”…

With the weather warming up [that is, above zero for most of the day], more and more people are spending their time outdoors — men sitting chatting with friends, women singing together, both playing cards, or, like the people I snapped out…

Read the rest of “Chinese Chess”…

A group of us foreign types took a hike up the highest of the mountains surrounding Benxi: Pingding Shan [平頂山, Flat Top Mountain]. We cheated by taking a short bus journey to the outskirts of the city, which rises part…

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The main event of the day was a visit to the Imperial Palace of the Qing Dynasty. The following is taken from the information sign on display at the main entrance: The Imperial Palace in Shenyang was the founding base…

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After grabbing a quick snack of baozi [steamed dumplings], our first stop was the enormous statue of Mao Zedong, situated in the centre of a huge roundabout since 1969. With his arm raised in gentle salute, he almost looks as…

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I used up one of my valuable days off this week to take a day-trip to Shenyang, the capital of the Liaoning Province. Catching an early-morning train meant I was able to gawk at the many dozens of people practising…

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Aside from the worrying vistas, I took some more pleasing [at least, to my eye] shots on my recent walkabout. [More of a walk-up-and-down actually, since it mostly involved climbing lots of stairs.] This is the long stretch of steep…

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On one of the clearer days I’d experienced since arriving, I walked up to one of the local hill-top parks to get my first real view of the city I now call home. It was quite an eye-opener. Although I…

Read the rest of “Cityscapes”…