Bryan's China Part 2

Yes, yes, yes, I know, Fenghuang, is a tourist town and at night you can hear the music thumping from the bars...not quite as much thump in winter as in summer though. Many of those bars were looking quite empty on most nights.
That image above, incidentally,was what I looked out on from my hotel room balcony. In the evening it was ablaze of lights, which I could look at as I sat on my bed gazing out of the window. I wasn't complaining!!!

Touristy it might be, but Fenghunag is utterly atmospheric and beautiful. There are so many vantage points along the old town walls snaking above the river where you can look out over the rooftops and view the old houses built on stilts on the water's edge. Fenghuang had great shops, really interesting food and a maze of old cobbled lanes that we never tired of wandering around. One tour we did do, and there were many that we didn't, was out to a 1000 year old Miao village. It was constructed mainly of stone and mud brick. It was near an area where bandits had terrorised people for many years and we had a walk along the cliff tops where they lived in caves, in pre-revolutionary times.

After the charms of Fenghuang, which means Phoenix City by the way, it was back into solo travel and my first stuff-up was to underestimate the travel time to Huaihua and my rail connection onto Sanjiang in Guangxi province. Hence the snap of me on the sleeper bus to Lonsheng which was the easiest connection I could figure out after I had well and truly missed the train. Consequently, I found myself in Longsheng sitting under a lampost at 5.00am in the morning wondering where I was going to go. One sleeper bus was definately enough of a taste for this type of travel. Don't do it.Thankfully I had lugged Jordan's U-shaped travel pillow around for the past two weeks, periodically cursing it as a useless piece of unnecessary junk, but on that sleeper bus to Longsheng, it saved my neck, literally!!

So there I was under the lampost at 5.00am, waiting for the town to wake up and debating what to do, whether to continue to head (now back) to Sanjiang or forget it and keep going to the Dragon's Backbone Rice terraces. I actually found I had inadvertently deposited myself outside a rather unrecognisable bus station, with buses to Sanjiang. So decision made, that was where I was going. Fortunate decision too, for sitting quietly up the back of the bus happened to be a Canadian girl who had just been to the Rice Terraces and who had seen nothing as they were shrouded in mist. Having seen rice terraces shrouded in mist before I was thankful I had decided to head 14 km past Sanjiang to Chenyang to see the wind and rain bridges in series of Dhong villages near the Guizhou border. Chengyang was also a delight, a stunning place to spend a few days walking in the hills from village to village, which is excactly what I did.

The bridges are constructed with joinery techniques and without the use of nails. They and the surrounding country side were outstanding and I am ever grateful I accidently chanced upon the bus to Sanjing, as it was well worth it.

The hostel I stayed in had no heating but a snuggly electric blanket on the bed did the job perfectly. My room had not one but two balconies facing out to the bridge and surrounding countryside. The owners were super friendly too. On my first night I met a group of retired Tiwanese teachers touring through and on my second two young American-Swedes, the only other westerners I had come across for the past two and a half weeks.

After ChengYang, it was skip the rice terraces and onto to Yangshuo where I stayed at the Yangshuo Culture House for 5 nights and did some great walks and a ride along the Li and Yulong Rivers. I also watched a few Chinese meals being prepared at my hostel in the evenings. The food was very good. Each night they would come up with 6 - 8 dishes, which were included in the price of the accomodation. Not crap food either - good quality dishes, all fresh produce. The house was also way out of the tourist centre of 'Foreigner street' which, as far as I was concerned was a bonus, as after the amazing places I had seen in Hunnan I was a little underwhelmed by Yangshuo. Enough said!

As it was winter it was also citrus season. The citrus was plentiful, cheap and excellent quality. Those orangey discs you can see in the two baskets are actually peeled, dried persimmons. They are a little hard to describe but have the texture of something like a dried fig without all the little seeds. Not to everone's tast but I found them very 'haochi' (lit: good eating)!

After Yangshuo I headed to Dinghu Shan, a park in Guandong Province with the plan of doing a couple of days walking before arriving back in Guangzhou, but the hostel was so crappy that I did all the walking on the first day, complained about the 'no heating', 'no hot water' expensive price in the afternnon, got a 50 % discount and left promptly at 7.30 the next morning. This was definately the worst place I stayed in - the mattress was a board.

As I wrote previously, I was thinking I would be marking time back in Guangzhou waiting for my plane but in these two days I headed out into other areas of the city and saw a bit of the local life. It was actually quite engaging. I met a Korean guy and we went into town on Xmas eve and headed into 'People's Park' where we watched 100's of Chinese ballroom dancing and doing other leisurely pursuits. It was fun.

How's this for a way of organising the letter boxes at the front door of the apartment?!? You wouldn't see this in Singapore!!!

In the streets of the neighbourhoods, there is exercise equipment of all descriptions and people, old & young, using it day and night. My Korean buddy & I had a go at a few things as you can see here. Kooky stuff, but the idea of people unabashedly exercising in public spaces in China and also here Singapore, is something I find quite refreshing.


OK. So that was My China. Hope you all had a great Xmas & New Year & best wishes for 2010.

Bryan's China

A quick report and some happy snaps of my three weeks travelling around China, in a bracing winter.

Guangzhou would have to take the prize as the ugliest city I have ever seen. Building construction going on everywhere... rubble, shade cloth covered buildings and scaffolding...joy! A city getting ready for the 2010 Asian Games - same story in Shanghai, I heard. The much touted island enclave of Shamian Dao, advocated by Lonely Planet as a peaceful haven, was a building site. I spent half an hour there and got out. No doubt you can see why.

It was, though, easy to get around on the Metro...especially after a year on the MRT in Singapore...direct tansfer of commuting skills. On my return to GZ at the end of the trip I managed to have a couple of days where I ventured out into some more local areas...with leafy streets offering some oldy-worldy charm.This would be a hot place in summer and the pollution was thick enough to be cut with a knife. I managed to use my budding but very limited putonghua skills to buy the correct hard sleeper ticket to Zhang Jia Jie... and in an even more noteworthy achievement ... actually found my way onto the correct train (with correct ticket) among the absolute chaos that is Guangzhou Huochezhan (train station).

Zhang Jia Jie was definately an aweinspiring landscape. Stunning sandstone peaks in a misty national park. We spent two days walking, one climbing the 1000's of steps to the top to view some of the peaks and the next, thankfully, doing a long but very pretty gorge walk following a stream between the peaks.Our guide was a little painful as he wanted us to spend more money than was necessary and I don't think he liked the idea of us walking everywhere... wanted us to take cable cars, elevators and carts as many of the other, dare I say Chinese tourists, do. I think he earnt a commission from each ticket office where he got us to spend money... we did come down the the 300 meter elevator from the peaks on day one but other than that, much to his grumbling disappointment, it was hoofing it all the way. And was there any one else on the trails? You bet there wasn't, we had them all to ourselves!!!

After three days here it was on to the junction town of Jishou and into a mini-bus to the small Miao village of Dehang. My Chinese colleague's friend had advised us not to stay in Dehang...'nothing there' but I stuck to my guns and insisted on going and thank god I did. It was magnificient. How many people there ...me and my Chinese friend and you and stop counting. Yes it was cold and the hotels are really set up for the summer season.. but the walks out along the streams, throught the padis and into the gorges, climbing up to the two raging water falls were nothing short of exquisite.

So much clean, clear ,running water and the stone pathways and bridges were a constant delight. For me, Dehang was definately a special part of the trip.

So much for this post. I find the process of getting the images & text into the right alignment/position in these things tiresome. Next installment in a new post...

Festivals Galore

The past few months have seen a lot of festival and celebrations in this multi-cultural town. After hungry ghosts, there was the mid-autumn festival with lanterns and moon cakes everywhere. We tasted lots of different versions of moon cakes filled with a variety of different pastes: red bean, lotus, green tea, fruit and nuts and so on. We even had a tin of skinless mooncakes presented to us filled with ‘yolks’ of chocolate cointreau and ‘hazelnut-chocolate’ – very delicious.

One thing I now know about Ramadan is that it is only the first month of celebration. It is followed by Hari Raya Puasa- which I had thought was only a day or a long weekend, but in fact goes on for another month, and Muslim families visit each other and eat and celebrate together. We were invited for celebrations at two house holds, both teachers from my school. We were treated to lots of special Hari Rayi food, cakes and delicacies, which were all very lovely to try.

Most recently we have had Deepavali – the Hindu festival, which also scored us another long weekend. Little India has been ablaze with lights (as too have Geylang and Chinatown). We went down for a meal at our favourite Indian place then wandered over to Racecourse road to watch a procession of a wide variety of Indian dancers which was finished off with a spectacular Chinese dragon dance and fireworks. We also had the good fortune to be invited to Felicity’s friend Helen’s HDB apartment in Toa Payoh for Deepavali. She lives on the 12th floor with her 78 year old Tamil speaking grandmother – shrine to Ganesh in the bedroom. Curries and ‘murukku’ the traditional festive biscuits and pineapple tarts offered around, it was quite a night.

Actually, the boys & I were pretty exhausted as we had spent the day across the border in Johor Bahru. I forgot my Lonely Planet travel advice not to go on a long weekend. It was sheer hell getting over there – two and a half hours of queues, with all the Singaporeans heading to Malaysia for the weekend. Getting back was a breeze – 45 mins to clear two border checkpoints. This photo is on the Malaysian side looking back at Singers. The colourful thing that looks like a carpet is actually a sand mandala on the floor of a big Malaysian shopping centre - a speciality of Deepavali.

In the mid term break we also had a visit from our Melb friends, the Shergusons, which was great. We love having people over. We took them to a few of our favourite spots as well as venturing out to some new places including Pulau Ubin and a Halal restaurant up on the water overlooking Malaysia for some chili crab. The boys had a couple of trips to East Coast Park and got stuck into some wake boarding – their time was up and they nearly had the hang of it. I’m sure they’ll be heading back there any time soon.

Now up its exams and marking then at the end of term Felicity Xavier & Jordan are heading back to Melb for Christmas and I’m off to Zhongguo for a bit of an adventure – mandarin phrase book in hand.

Ramadan, Hungry Ghosts and 'Happy Teachers Day'!

We are just about at the end of our second term of teaching (and for the boys going to school) in Singapore. We are so much more acclimatised, some days even feel cooler and some of us, notably Felicity and Xave, even get cold in the air-con busses in the morning. Things have been moving along. we had a visit from my cousin Paul on his way back to China. Liverpool have been in town, Xave went to see them and gradually we are feeling more settled here.

One weekend took us down to Henderson Waves, a structure which joins two city parks, Kent Ridge Park and Mt Faber Park - where the cable car departs for Sentosa. Henderson Waves is a bridge, built in a wave formation that crosses above the expressways below and allows pedestrians to walk from one park to another, whilst admiring views out over Singapore. It was rather hazy when we were there, as this is the season when all the burning off happens in Sumatra.

Another area we have been to have a look at is Joo Chiat Road. It’s a bit of a night club area, but has many old magnificent shop houses that are very well maintained and painted in a range of both tasteful colours and gaudy pinks, oranges, greens, blues and purples. Our intention was to have a look around and eat in one of the Nyona restaurants that had been recommended, but as we were walking we came upon a run of Vietnamese cafes – so it was pho and rice paper rolls for dinner.

Ramadan began a week ago, Muslim teachers on the staff and kids in our classes now fast all day at school. They eat their food for the day before 5.30am in the morning and do not eat or drink again until after sunset in the evening. On the eve of Ramadan we ventured down to Geylang Serai to see the streets decorated with colourful blue and gold arches and all lit up with festive lighting. Dozens of food stalls were being set up along Geylang Road. People come out to feast at night, eating all manner specially prepared foods, sweet, savory and everything in between. It gets very crowded but has a buzzy atmosphere. Across the road were heaps of market stalls selling clothing, Arabian style curtains, statues, even cars and motor bikes. Perhaps it is considered more auspicious to buy during this month.
Alongside Ramadan, another Daoist festival now taking place is the Festival of the Hungry Ghosts. There has been quite a bit of activity in and around the HDB blocks up where we live. I stumbled across a Peking Opera being rehearsed behind our local wet market last Sunday afternoon. They were getting ready for an evening performance. In many places, huge red and white canopies are erected and inside makeshift restaurants are set up. I am not totally sure what goes on but there are often baskets of groceries that seem to be set up for auction. There are also many altars with offerings of fruit, incense and flowers.
The boys & I went down to Balestier Road last Saturday evening and saw one area where a Chinese orchestra was playing and a table had been set up with places for the ghosts to sit and eat. Apparently, at a certain time of the year the gates of hell open and the ghosts come out to roam around. They need to be entertained and fed. Apparently it all used to be Peking Opera but now can include the occasional scantily clad women strutting their stuff. Even the ghosts’ tastes have modernized! In inconspicuous places along the streets, curbsides and on open grass areas we often see orange cakes set out with incense burning. It has been quite interesting seeing it all going on. It’s not a big out there festival but seems to happen around the HDB areas where the people live – which I guess makes sense.

Another celebration that has involved us in a big way has been Teachers’ Day. Actually Teachers’ Day is today and we had the day off – beat that Australia. It’s quite a big deal here. Both Felicity & I have had big staff functions. Mine was last Friday at a down town hotel where we were all treated to a formal eight course Chinese dinner – very swanky. Felicity’s was sixties style on Saturday night at a venue in Orchard Road and several of the gals on the staff danced out the night at the Rupee Room – a Bollywood style disco down at Clarke Quay. In addition to the dinners, we also had a big celebration at school with a scrumptious breakfast, concert put on by the kids and an early finish. Not bad for a Monday in the last week of term. The kids also present teachers with gifts such as home-baked biscuits, cards, sweets and other mementoes that they often make themselves.

So for our Teachers’ Day off today, we hit the zoo. Singapore Zoo was not a disappointment. The primate exhibits are sensational, with so many different varieties of monkeys in open style enclosures swinging through the tree tops. You can get quite close to them. There is a free ranging Orang Utang section where they are literally cruising across vines above your head. The tropical vegetation and layout of the zoo is also very well designed. The location is like a small promontory of land on one of eh reservoirs –so there’s heaps of water and green around. It was a very engaging day for all of us. We saw some absolutely massive pythons and watching the elephants bathe was delightful.
Other things that have happened, Jordy has started a Drama class at Stage 3, which is in an Arts Venue house in a lovely old Asian style house built around a central courtyard. He's really enjoying the classes and has met some new people who he enjoys hanging out with. We have also been exploring the food horizons in Singapore. Bryan is still enjoying the durian and has sampled D24, D48 and the Red Lobster. He's also tried Kway Chap - dared by a staff member. It's a local speciality and involves all sorts of bits and pieces of the pig. I won't bother to mention everything that's in it - enough to put you off your kway chap! Don't think its gonna become a big favourite. One that is though, you can see being made at our kitchen table - Kuey Pie Tee - exquisite little pastry cups filled with shredded turnip and a variety of condiments including sweet chilli, molasses, egg and corriander all piled on top. Outstanding!!