Leiyang to Guiyang by bus

After some more trying to get two train tickets (no chance) and some trepidation at the thought of spending the rest of our Chinese New Year holiday here, we manage to get two tickets on a bus home, to Guiyang, where family is waiting for us.

The bus too is fully booked, but we get two seats in the back.

Three men board and take seats without tickets, when collector asks for tickets they say they could not buy them because they were sold out. They  argue, they want to go home. Then three more passengers with tickets board but can't find any seats because they've been taken by the three men. A long argument ensues then finally the three men leave.

Very noisy trip, people suck their drinks loudly, a car-sick girl vomits no one cleans up.

Meanwhile, it's been raining all day long.

We pass through some old villages. Old houses with pagoda roofs quite charming though need restoration.

New housing on the other hand mostly has with flat roof, just boxes of brick and mortar, no character but popular because can dry fruit on top . good for farmers who move to town but still grow crops in village plots.

Once at the Guiyang coach station we find a Didi (Chinese Uber) taxi driver who is rude and unhelpful. He does not move from his seat and keeps smoking while we load and unload heavy suitcases. But anyway we are home!

It is 4pm or so by the time we get to the apartment, and it is very cold. Hunan houses don't have a central heating system but many (including ours) have electric systems but people don't turn them on. In the evening it's 11 degrees inside, essentially the same temperature as outside.

Wedding in Leiyang

We get picked up early for a pre-wedding ceremony in the groom's village, about half an hour away. Here we meet his relatives and assist to a small ceremony in the paternal house.

They tell us how the husband went to the house of bride to take her with him and left a chicken as a symbolic form of gratitude to her family for having brought her up!

On a simple wooden table in the middle of the main room of the paternal house, we are offered tea, peanuts and cigarettes.

All around are many old houses with clay tiles, wooden beams and wood floors.Some are being demolished for new ones with flat roofing and cement bricks. More functional if less charming.

Back in town we see a rather large Christian church next to a Buddhist temple. We get our shoes cleaned  by a happy lady (one of many) who is working on the sidewalk with a little stool, a chair for her clients, brushes and polish. She is happy, smiling and works fast and very well!

 

We are told that this town of Leiyang also hosts the biggest cement factory in Hunan and a huge coal power plant they are very proud of! Also a shoe factory, not to mention a gold mine: 20 percent of china's gold is extracted in Hunan.

At the reception, people come and give envelopes at a table by the entrance where each envelope is opened and the money counted, then most of them just eat and go away, unabashedly taking leftovers with them! The meal is scrumptious as expected, local cuisine, moderately spicy. The bride and groom spend some time at the different tables, and at the end they come to ours. They are exhausted, but finally can relax a bit and eat their lunch!

We later take a walk around the Western Lake park with a large pond and bridges by the western lake middle road. Lots of children running around, many elderly men play card and mahjong. One lady is screaming obsessively at her son for who knows what reason, then starts to hit him. Lifang tries to calm her down but she tells her to mind her own business!

There is a beggar with broken feet, he says to my wife he was a construction worker but fell from the 3rd floor of a building and broke both his feet. He says he gets 200 rmb a month from government, just enough to pay rent for a room. Then has to beg for a living, moves around on a small sled with 4 little wheels and pushes himself forward with two broken metal pipes.

My impression is that it is not easy to be a beggar in China, it is not a compassionate culture if you can generalize about 1.5bn people. His pot is almost empty. I am thinking of London where beggars get much better treatment from passersby but a better comparison is India where (again difficult to generalize) people give more easily in the streets. Quite often I've seen people who look poor give to those who are poorer. In China apparently a lot of beggars are fake, they pretend to be sick or handicapped.

In the end we manage to buy tickets at coach station to go to Guiyang tomorrow, no chance for train, but better than walking!

Changsha to Leiyang

Amazing buffet at the Changsha Intercontinental hotel, eastern and western, hot and cold, sweet and savory, chopsticks and forks and knives and spoon, it is a real celebration.

Some of the highlights: I was first attracted by the local cold noodles, roughly grated with a special tool from a big boulder of dough. You then add spices and bits and pieces of veggies and meats. Also interesting the hot soup with veggies, pork, mushrooms, taylor-made for each of us by a dedicated chef.

After breakfast the real challenge of the day awaits us: find tickets to Leiyang for the wedding ceremony of Carrie, one of our best Chinese friends, but no seats were available to purchase online as usual. It is still the Chinese new year rush, with over half a billion people moving around the country to spend the holidays at home. We went to the station and tried our luck at the ticket office, but no way.

We were then approached by some scalpers who wanted 300 Rmb, not for tickets but as a fee to smuggle us on a train then we could then, supposedly, buy standing tickets. However I have never seen anyone standing on the fast train we need, and the slow train would take way too long, maybe up to 4 hours as opposed to 1. The whole thing is fishy, we give up.

We're stuck! My wife then remembers that there is an alternative: get bus tickets instead. We manage to catch the last bus to Chenzhou at 5:30pm, but must pay for the whole ride to Chenzhou even if we plan to get off at Leiyang. Actually at a highway station which is the stopover for Leiyang-bound passengers. But that's the way it is and we're lucky to be able to get (close) to our destination! Carrie's husband and his brother (who owns a car) will come and pick us up. Very kind for someone who's getting married tomorrow!

Meanwhile great buffet (40 Rmb pp) with unlimited food and beer at a restaurant by the gas station. Tons of meat (great), fish (so so) and veggies (again great). Beer is a local brand, kind of light, but tasty. No fresh fruit however. I loved the chicken paws and the pork belly. Also black fungus with quail eggs was juicy and inviting.

Gas station buffet, Hunan

Macau

Morning around town. Museum of the city, today entrance is free, lucky us. We can learn about the history of Macau, a mix of Chinese and European cultures. 

Given the Portuguese were here for 500+ years obviously there is lots of Christian heritage, though if you look around the main cathedral has collapsed long ago, only the façade is left and no one seems to be in a great hurry to rebuild it.

Huge crowds are channeled in one direction only through narrow cobbled streets, after all this façada is still one of the main attractions of Macau.

Other than gambling, Macau is well known for the manufacturing of matches and fireworks.

In the afternoon we visited a "Venetian" complex, complete with canals and gondolas, several of which are driven by Italian (I know they are, I talked to a couple of them) gondolieri one is a woman.

The choice for food is infinite, I'd like to try a Portuguese restaurant but Lifang's stomach was rumbling a bit and we decide to play it safe and go for a Hunanese eatery in the food court.

It was interesting to come to Macau, but I would lie if I said we were overwhelmed. Perhaps because we do not gamble, or perhaps we did not give it enough time, tomorrow we're gone again. Maybe it would be a good idea to return and spend a bit more time but somehow I was not able to get a feeling for the soul of this land.

Chinese New Year parade in Hong Kong

Traditional parade organized every year in Hong Kong for the Chinese (Lunar) New Year.

Alaskan crab in Hong Kong

Easy day of relaxing at the W hotel pool overlooking the city and some walking around.

Dinner at the Star Seafood restaurant on busy Nathan Road, there are only locals, obviously not yet discovered by the big guidebook publishers. I was here a few years ago by myself and tried to order their signature Alaskan crab, but they refused to serve me because it was too big!

We can not choose our own crab from large tanks which are prominently located at the ground level by the sidewalk. Each crab has a price tag attached to one of its claws.

A waiter grabs one for us and takes it to the table where he holds it up high for our final approval before dispatching it to the kitchen.

It comes back a while later on a large serving dish, piping hot and with all the shell and claws cracked open for us to enjoy the delicate meat inside.

It is a noisy restaurant, not really ideal for a romantic dinner with my wife but the crab is amazing and the price does not break the bank.

The head waiter advises us not to order anything else as this large animal (well over 1kg with the shell ) will be more than enough to sate our appetite. he was right.

When we ask for the bill he points out to my wife that it's CNY and so he expects a red packet from us, ie a significant tip!

Hong Kong New Year preparations and flower market on Valentine's Day

Visit a new year market with lots of flowers, food and a couple of musical shows. Huge crowds! The flow of the masses of people is channeled so that everyone is going in a one-way direction around the portion of Victoria's Garden at Causeway bay which is dedicated to the fair. It would be impossible to have everyone move at random, freely, there are just too many of us. Those in the middle of the human river can't even see stands on either side!

In the middle of it all there was a theatre with a sequence of shows: singers illusionist, some free snack are offered to the crowd.

For street food, Hong Kong is rightly famous and today is no exception. We can stand in a fast-moving line at one of many howker stands and buy some quail eggs on a skewer for me and a pot of beef noodles for my wife. No meat, no meal!

While we are munching away, waiting for a show to start, a charming lady in her seventies comes to talk to us. She speaks good English and says her slight American accent is due to the fact she lived in Massachusetts for a few years. Her brothers went to MIT, my classmates! Then they decided to come back to Hong Kong. She is happy about her choice, this is home, but is worried about the future of the Special Administrative Region. A dilemma many Hongkongers face after the return of the British colony to China in 1997. As usual, the British left their old possession in a mess, just like India.

Filipino helpers are mostly sticking to themselves, there are so many here in Hong Kong, they are let in pretty easily to help out in the homes of the middle class. It is paradoxical but it is easier for a Filipino to come and work here than for a Chinese!

Dinner at one of the thousands of "hole in the wall" eateries of Hong Kong, this we found by chance as it was the only one still open at 11pm, excellent pork noodles. We sat at a cramped table along a narrow corridor and were joined by a talkative local lady. She is an ethnic Chinese but actually comes from Canada and is a regular here, she assures us we have been lucky to find this place by chance as it is one of the best "holes in the wall" around. She complained about mainland Chinese who come in droves and empty shelves of whatever it is they can't find in China. Baby formula is a constant. I don't really understand: why is it so difficult to procure more baby formula? If there is demand, local shops should be able to just order more from international suppliers and let the Chinese buy as much as they want.

Christians in Hong Kong.



Very dense crowd!

My book on the Maldives is available in English! "Journeys through the Maldives" by Marco Carnovale

Typical Maldivan boat

Tales from the many trips to the Maldives of the author. Avoiding the tourist resorts, he visited remote villages, where tradition is combined with innovation and technology, meeting local people and trying to understand their culture. Always island hopping by boat, he went from postcard perfect uninhabited islands and through the streets of the bustling capital Malé, in its hidden corners often overlooked by tourism. In dozens of dives, he witnessed the richness of wildlife and the sparkling colors of these seas.

But the islands are facing rapid changes and serious problems, and they are not always the paradise they seem. The Maldives are at a turning point, with political, economic and environmental changes that pose difficult challenges to the government and to the nation.

The book is completed by an analytical index, a chronology of the Maldivian history, a bibliography and some black and white photographs.

Available on all Amazon websites.


In the UK buy it here



In Italy buy it here



In France, Belgium and Switzerland buy it here



In the US buy it here



In Canada buy it here

Book review: The Maldives: Islamic Republic, Tropical Autocracy (2015) by J. J. Robinson, ****

Islamic Center in Malé

Synopsis

The Maldives is a small and beautiful archipelago south of India, more renowned for luxury resorts than experiments in democracy. It is a country of contradictions, where tourists sip cocktails on the beach while on nearby islands local women are flogged for extramarital sex and blackmarket vodka costs $140 a bottle. Until 2008 the Maldives also hosted Asia's longest-serving dictator, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. A former political prisoner, Mohamed Nasheed, an environmental activist, journalist, and politician, brought Gayoom's thirty-year autocracy to a sudden end, in the Maldives' first democratic elections.

Young, progressive and charismatic, President Nasheed thrust the Maldives into the spotlight as a symbol of the fight against climate change and the struggle for democracy and human rights in one of the world's strictest Islamic societies. But dictatorships are hard to defeat, enduring in a country's institutions and the minds of people conditioned to autocracy over three decades. Democracy brought turmoil, protests, violence and intense political polarisation.The ousted dictatorship overthrew Nasheed's government in February 2012, supported by Islamic radicals and mutinying security forces. Amid Byzantine intrigue, the fight for democracy was just beginning. (Amazon)


Review

It is unusual for a book entirely dedicated to the Maldives to come out, and here it is from an English journalist who lived and worked there for four years. The book is a compendium of his time there. It touches upon many aspects of Maldivian life, with special attention to the political dimension. Loads of facts and footnotes but also some opinions and evaluations. The book is written loosely in chronological manner, and it ends with the author's departure in 2013.

The general approach is typically English, ie detached. John J gets to know a lot about the Maldives but one does not get the impression he ever fell in love with the country, or was emotionally involved with it at all. But that is not a criticism, in fact perhaps it is a good thing in a journalist!

What the book lacks is a more critical organization of the issues, but perhaps as a journalistic chronicle it was never intended to delve in political analysis. Still, you will find more raw material for political analysis her than in any other book I know of that has been written on this country in the last decades.

I recommend reading this book to understand more about a country known mostly for its resorts.

Book review: Wild Swans (1992), by Jung Chang, *****

Synopsis

Through the lives of three different women - grandmother, mother and daughter - this book tells the story of 20th-century China. At times scarcely credible in the details it reveals of the suffering of millions of ordinary Chinese people, it is an unforgettable record of tyranny, hope and ultimate survival under conditions of extreme harshness.

In 1924, at the age of 15, the author's grandmother became the concubine of a powerful warlord, whom she was seldom to see during the 10 years of their "marriage". Her daughter, born in 1931, experienced the horrors of Japanese occupation in Manchuria as a schoolgirl, and after their surrender joined the Communist-led underground fighting Chiang Kai-Shek's Kuomintang. She rose to be a senior Communist official, but was imprisoned three times. Her husband, also a high official and one of the very first to join the Communists, was relentlessly persecuted, imprisoned and finally sent to a labour camp where, physically broken and disillusioned, he lost his sanity.

The author herself grew up during the Cultural Revolution, at the time of the personality cult of Mao and the worst excesses of the Gang of Four. She joined the Red Guard but after Mao's death she was to become one of the first Chinese students to study abroad.


Review

This is one of the best books I have ever read. It traces a micro-story of a family through three generations of highly motivated women interwoven with the history of China over almost a century. It it meticulous and fastidious about details and context, which allows the reader to immerse himself into the incredible evolution and revolution of this continent/country.

China went from the feudal system of the late Qing dynasty to a modern superpower, passing through two revolutions, civil war, foreign aggression, a world war, economic transformations that took other countries centuries to complete. In the course of these events China was invaded, then locked itself up and isolated its people from the world, then opened up again after Mao's death, and that is roughly where the book ends.

So we don't see the new China in this book, but we can understand how it got there and why the Chinese today are so eager to break with the early period of the People'd republic and open up to the world. Even the Communist Party of China today considers the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, two of the central events in the book, to have been complete mistakes.

Translated in 37 languages and 13 million copies later, this book is banned in China, perhaps because it is very critical of Mao. Even if today the policies of China are the opposite of what Mao preached, the time to criticize the great Chairman too much has not yet arrived. Deng Xiaoping famously said Mao was 70% right and 30% wrong. This book would probably reverse those two numbers!

Film review: Farewell my concubine (1993) by Chen Kaige, *****

 Synopsis

The film gives a most interesting overview of China's history in the XX century through the eyes of Peking opera actors. We see the country moving from the fall of the Qing Empire (the last eunuch is still around for a long time after the advent of the Republic), through the Japanese invasion, the civil war and the various phases of the Communist rule.

Two boys are educated to play two classical roles in the Peking Opera, one masculine and the other effeminate. They are so good at it that they play the opera together for their entire career: during the chaos of China after the fall of the Qing Empire, during the Japanese occupation, the brief Nationalist takeover, the Communist take over, the Cultural Revolution.

Gong Li becomes the wife of the masculine actor, and as such created serious, and ultimately unsolvable, dilemmas in the mind of her husband, with tragic consequences.






Review

In this film the character Douzi represents in many ways the real life of the actor Leslie Cheung. Douzi was gay and struggled to be accepted in the society of his time, and so was Cheung in real life. He is however successful professionally and admired for that, and so is Cheung, the first Hong Kong actor who acted in a mainland China film. And the real life of Cheung represents Douzi's role in the film: he can't take the pressure any more and ends up committing suicide. Beautiful costumes!

A courageous masterpiece by Chen Kaige, a pillar of Chinese film in the XX century. He addressed the controversial issues of homosexuality and the Cultural Revolution in a film before anyone else dared to do so in the People's Republic of China. For this "farewell my Concubine" was banned shortly after its release in 1993, only to be cleared by the censors a while later in an abridged form.

This was the very first film from the People's Republic of China to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

See my other reviews of films about China here on this blog.

Buy this film by clicking on one of these links

Film review: A United Kingdom (2016) by Amma Asante, *****

Synopsis

From director Amma Asante, starring David Oyelowo (Selma) and Rosamund Pike and set against the breath-taking backdrops of the African savannah and period London, A United Kingdom celebrates the inspiring real-life romance of Seretse Khama, King of Bechuanaland (modern Botswana), and Ruth Williams, the London office worker he married in 1948 in the face of fierce opposition from their families and the British and South African governments.


Review

A historical narrative of one sad page of the decline and fall of the British Empire after WW II. There are two levels to the story: a personal tale of love and a non-fiction account of the birth of a new African country.

Churchill is depicted for what he was: an anti-democratic imperialist, who would go back on his promises to try and salvage the decomposing British empire. But the prejudice of blacks against whites is displayed as well at length.

In the face of all these difficulties, it was a remarkable feat for the young leader to pull off a national reconciliation that would make Botswana a unique success story in post-colonial Africa. One of very few examples where the leaders who took over power from the colonial rulers actually improved their nation's lot and did not squander national resources for personal gain.

Highly recommended movie to understand a very special part of Africa.

Fullerton history and national gallery

Dopo un'altra sontuosa colazione di salmone e champagne al Fullerton Hotel, decidiamo di unirci ad un gruppetto per una visita guidata dell'hotel, che è uno dei 73 siti riconosciuti come monumento nazionale, di importanza storica oltre che architettonica.

Prende il nome da Robert Fullerton, uno scozzese che fu il primo governatore dell "Possedimento degli Stretti", come la Compagnia delle Indie di sua maestà britannica chiamò i possedimenti in sud-est asiatico di cui Singapore faceva parte.

Nel tempo è stato un ufficio postale, un club esclusivo, e poi, per nostra fortuna, un albergo di lusso. Non so quante volte ci alloggerò nella vita, ma ne vale la pena!

Pomeriggio alla National Gallery, una collezione di opere d'arte di artisti locali e internazionali. 

Colonna di libri, Museo Nazionale

Magic chair

Singapore heritage and songs

Oggi visita al museo del "Retaggio di Chinatown" (Chinatown heritage) di Singapore, al centro di Chinatown. I cinesi sono circa tre quarti della popolazione, quindi il retaggio cinese della città-stato è di importanza fondamentale per capirne l'anima.

Si tratta di una vera casa in stile tradizionale, con il negozio a piano terra e le camere per dormire ai primo e secondo piano. Ci sono oggetti vecchi, se non proprio antichi, che ricostituiscono, tra gli altri mestieri, i locali di un sarto di un centinaio di anni fa. Mi fa piacere che anche allora erano apprezzati i prodotti italiani, in particolare cashmere.

sarto tradizionale cinese all'opera

Cena a Chinatown,  ristorantino di cucina hunanese (eh già siamo partiti da pochi giorni, già ci manca) con gamberi di fiume come piatto forte.

Finale di serata alla "Esplanade" per un concerto gratuito di due amici musicisti, Lim and Shak. Canzoni melanconiche, e più di tutte quella che racconta di una ragazza, con cui Lim aveva avuto una intensa relazione. Il problema è che Shak was in love with her too. Sfortunatamente un giorno la ragazza morì in circostanze tragiche, e l'evento funesto fece riavvicinare Lim e Shak che diventarono molto amici e colleghi sul palco.

Asian Civilization Museum and Night Safari of Singapore

Today culture and nature. The Asian civilizations Museum of Singapore is a well-organized center of the celebration of art from the whole continent. Well-run guided tour with a volunteer guide.

Interesting fountain in Singapore

The day ends at the famous night safari, for which Singapore is famous. There is a long line, I think we waited almost an hour to get in, but it is worth the wait. After paying for the ticket you are driven on a small train to the zoo itself and start walking along the cages. All kinds of animals from around the world are shown here. It is my first (and probably last) time to see a leopard up close!

We were the last ones out, the guards politely waited for us and escorted us to see the last exhibits on the way to the exit.