While I slaved away teaching at school, Ava took Mum and Dad out to DaGuan Park. They had a blast - riding bumper cars, merry-go-rounds, and enjoying a picnic in windy, but warm, weather. And Ava bought Dad a toy monkey to cement her new nickname for him!
Mum and Dad came to watch me teaching today. When our students finish a textbook they take a final exam and then have an Open Class to show off their English skills to their visiting parents. I'm used to performing in front of the students' parents, but it was weird to find my own parents watching today too! Last night was really cold - very unseasonal - but it got gradually warmer today so my parents, JIajia and I spent some time doing a little bit of shopping in the city centre. We decided to cheer the shoe-shining ladies up a bit by having a mass buff! They good-humouredly haggled us up to a total cost of £1. Then, as an early birthday treat for Dad, Jiajia treated us to a lovely meal at Pizza Hut. Luckily this, and the later tea, was all English food, as Mum had a nasty throwing up fit in the evening, but can't blame it on any Chinese food! Fortunately she'd recovered by bedtime. Dad was in his element this evening, exploring Robert's huge house (my boss), eating roast lamb cooked by Rachel (my other boss), followed by apple pie and English tea! Then, loosens his belt a notch and relaxes on the comfy sofa in their barn-size lounge! Back at my flat (tiny by comparison, but cosy), more signs that Dad is around, such as his hand-made sign reminding him where to deposit the toilet paper! A cold night expected tonight with temperatures plummeting even further. Hard to believe we were complaining about the heat just two days ago! We drove back to Kunming today in heavy rain, narrowly avoiding a motorway traffic accident which happened to the car just ahead of us. On the way we stopped in the town of TongHai. Ava has a friend there [right in photo below] who is building a shopping complex [see model in photo above] and wanted half an hour of Ava's time to discuss the advertising strategy and branding of the centre. He then took us all to a beautiful restaurant in the old part of town for a special kind of hotpot meal [right in photo below]. As it turned out we were to need the hot food as the weather got colder and colder on our journey. Yesterday's sunburn turned into a snow flurry in Kunming!
We played a favourite card game of Mum and Dad's last night called "Muggins". The forfeit for the loser was to crawl under a stone bench by our bedrooms. Ava and I got rid of our cards fairly early and were just waiting to see which parent would end up being the biggest mug! Today we braved today's hot sunshine to visit JianShui's biggest temple. In fact, it's the second largest Confucius Temple in China. We didn't see any other tourists there all afternoon and it was peaceful enough to hear the birds singing. The temple grounds are immaculately well-tended and there's a lovely lake with an island connected by a very Chinese-looking bridge. The interior of the temples themselves are less ornate than Buddhist equivalents, but that's Confucianism for you! The only slightly disappointing temple issue was that Mum and Dad had to pay for entry tickets. I'd been asssured that retirees - foreign as well as Chinese - get into places such as this for free. They were charged in TuanShan yesterday, too. Seems nobody thought to tell them about OAPs. We drove to TuanShan today - an old but well-preserved tin merchants' village which now has World Heritage status. It was a peaceful and warm day, with only two other tourists in the whole place. After wandering around there (with Dad trying his magic tricks on any unsuspecting child he saw) we drove back, stopping at Double Dragon Bridge [see photos]. The bridge seems to be out of all proportion to the lake it crosses, partly because the lake has largely dried up in the intervening years, and partly because the lake is small enough to be walked around in 20 minutes. Still, the bridge is still an imposing and impressive spectacle. In the evening we tried Jianshui's famous barbecue. We passed on the bamboo maggots, but Jiajia was keen to try the chicken feet and tongues! A 4-hour drive today saw us visit JianShui, a town south of Kunming which retains a lot of it's old town whilst not yet deluged by tourists. Jiajia had worked her usual magic, with a friend of hers managing to get us a room at the best hotel for a third of the usual price. And what a hotel is it was [see photos]. . . We had rooms in the Zhu Family Residence - a 100 year old mansion with a lake, dancing hall, gardens and hundreds of beautifully decorated rooms. Daytime visitors were paying £5 a ticket to view the courtyard where we were staying! The bedrooms were smallish, but ornately decorated and with very modern bathrooms. And in the mornings and evenings the whole tourist spot was all ours to explore. You can explore it too by clicking here. Trying out our dressing gowns in front of our bedrooms
Mum and Dad are tackling the food here with varying degrees of success. Yesterday's meal at Ava's was thoroughly enjoyed, and we've been to our fair share of Westerny restaurants too. But when typical Chinese food is the only option, there have been some issues! One is the chopsticks, which they can do really well for 5-10 seconds and then it all goes to pot and the spoons and forks (brought along) are broken out! The other is the food itself which is either too dry, too wet, too hot or too cold! Dad tried to out-stare the duck [see photo], but the duck won! We had fun this evening being taught how to fold and stick the perfect dumpling! Jiajia's Mum had already prepared over 50 for us to eat [see basket in photo] and we attempted another 10-20, with mixed success! After boiling them, we shared a nice meal with extra dishes prepared by Jiajia. It was really nice to see the future parents-in-law working together with good humour on a joint project, despite no common language.
My parents and I spent this morning in Kunming Zoo, with Jiajia and her Mum [see photo]. The zoo has recently (thankfully) had many of its larger animals removed (they were not at all "comfortable" last time I visited, some 12 years ago), shipped off to a new safari park to the North of the city. The main attraction now, at this time of year anyway, is the amazing cherry blossom. We also liked a garden containing 15-20 peacocks, who were very happily showing off their plumage. Dad also enjoyed the WW2 American fighter plane! My parents have arrived in Kunming, tired but having had a smooth journey here from the UK. Ava and I met them at the airport and drove them back to my flat. Today is Ava's birthday, so it was a nice "gift" for her to meet them and vice versa. I gave her a unique gift myself. More of that later... My brother Dave and his two kids Esme and Josh took part in a "Santa Run" the other day, with dozens of other lunatics dressed as Father Christmas! All in a good cause though. Dave has added info on the charity and amount raised in the Comments. Well done guys! Enjoy the rest of the Christmas build up! My brother Dave and his family [see photo], plus my parents in tow, visited Disneyland Paris last week. They had a really great time by the sound of it. Dad's (edited!) report below gives a real flavour: "Simply amazing! That’s my reaction to Disneyland Paris. I wonder if there is anything quite like it. Three days of lovely sunshine helped. Then we saw 4-5 big shows (missing perhaps a dozen others!). In every case we got so much more than we expected. I thought the "Tram Tour" would be a simple ride around the Disneyland area, but no.... at the first main set, we stopped to look at a large tanker, parked by a hillside of rocks. Then it began to happen. Loud explosions told us an earthquake was happening. Our tram began to rock from side to side. Then it began to pelt with rain (fortunately we were under cover). Next… the tanker explodes, all the “fuel” inside going up in flames - yes real flames, some 10 metres high and very warm as we watched. Then huge amounts of water came cascading down the hill straight for the tram. Miraculously just as it was about to swamp us, it went down underneath. Then we travelled on to “London” in WWII. A bomb had just landed and the streets were in ruins, with a train hanging above us, looking as if it could drop down at any minute! Perhaps my favourite show was an open air theatre with some 5000 spectators in the stands. The scene in front of us was a large shopping centre. For half an hour we watched as cars and motor cycles did the most amazing stunts, quite impossible so it would seem. Again huge walls of fire went up with one of the motor cyclists catching fire and getting covered in flames. It was just one of many thrilling moments in the visit..." My Mum hit the big 7-0 today! She's not looking too bad on it either, is she? All the family (minus me, of course) attended a surprise gathering to celebrate, with the usual cards, cakes and presies. Then there was a day in a farm being driven around by tractor, feeding animals and letting the children (and certain adults) run wild, no doubt. Happy Birthday, Mum! I make no apologies for another "family" blog entry. Yesterday my Granddad celebrated his 99th birthday which is no mean feat in anybody's books! He is still in good mental health although, as he starts his 100th year on the planet, his aches and pains are inevitably taking their toll. I really hope he can make it to one more year (at least), though he himself is keen to be "reunited" with his wife, my Nan, who died some years ago. My parents arranged for him to ring me yesterday evening and it was great to hear his voice once again. Happy Birthday, Granddad! Well, just so they don't feel left out, here are my parents too! They celebrated an amazing 50 years of marriage last week. I was able to collate "Fifty Fotos from Friends, Family & Famous Folk" with all the photos having a 50 theme. I sent the completed album home by post and luckily it arrived the day before their Anniversary. They also had an extended dedication on BBC Radio 2! What's more, Mum and Dad recently bought tickets to come and visit Ava and I here in March, next year - something we're both really looking forward to. Being based in Hereford, Winchester, London and China, and all having busy lives, it isn't often that my family (or even part of them) get together. So it was lovely to receive this photo recently. My brother Dave is taking it, with my other brother Andy on the left, next to his wife Ali (holding their daughter Daisy). To the far right is their son Louie. Dave's daughter Esme is in the middle, holding the arm of her Mum, Sarah, with her brother, Joshua next. My parents are AWOL, as of course am I, but still - a reminder that the kids are growing fast and their parents are aging gracefully! "Hider" isn't a very common surname (especially spelled with an "i" rather than a "y"), but my brother Dave in the UK spotted a packet of food the other day made by "Hider Foods". Can't argue with the slogan though - Hiders are certainly the "essence of quality"! I had a lovely and totally unexpected surprise the other day - a parcel from "Willow", the Chinese girl I adopted (sort of!) some 16 years ago in Guizhou Province. Willow (Gao Ren Mei) was only a tiny orphaned baby when I stumbled across her and her "gran" in a countryside village an hour's walk from Duyun, where I was living and working at the time. I offered to give her the English name "Willow" as she was weeping so much at the time, and then was a bit shocked to be told that only a Father can name a child, so I was now her honorary foreign father. I've kept in touch ever since with postcards, photos, birthday and Spring Festival gifts. After I left Duyun, I've only been back to visit twice, once last year with "honorary mother" Ava, but have been made very welcome each time. However, I've never had any postal reply from Willow or her family, until yesterday. She sent some beautiful laminated photos, a handwritten letter in Chinese (and a little English) with some very kind words in it, and some hand-stitched handicrafts made by her grandmother. I was quite moved to finally have some sort of two-way contact. My "baby" is all grown up!! My brother David took part in a half-marathon race a few days ago, raising nearly £800. This was no mean feat for a guy who, by his own admission, was very out of shape 6 months ago. A gradual but increasing regime of distance runs leading up to the race saw him lose a lot of weight and gain a lot of muscle, before taking on this 13 mile challenge. A stomach bug the day before didn't help and he sreally truggled after 10 miles. The last few miles were increasingly vague, he recalls, and he finally came round in an ambulance, guzzling oxygen! But he made it and, having run the distance a couple of times myself in my youth, I'm mightily impressed. It's really no mean feat [as you can see on the right in the photo]. Well done mate!! I've managed to have 4 fillings this week after the toothache of last week. There's still more to do, but my kindly dentist, Prof. Liu, told me to let my mouth settle for a month or so before tackling the next bunch of cavities! She was even kind enough to ring me up this morning to check I wasn't in any further pain. The dental visit was the usual circus - patients wandering into the treatment room [see photo], drilling interrupted by phonecalls from the dentist's friends, and a gang of trainee dentists all taking the chance to gawp at the foreigner's mangled teeth. Another visit to Dr Yang in the army hospital last Tuesday led to him suggesting I stop virtually all the medicines I've been taking for various ailments, and see how my headaches and dizziness are affected. So far, I've felt no worse. The all-day headaches are now just an occasional light-headedness, which is an improvement of sorts. Worse news from home though, with my Dad finding out that a recently removed tumour was cancerous. None of the doctors thought it would be, so it was quite a shock for him and all the family. They will monitor him closely now, and don't think it's likely to spread. But still, not nice. The last I heard, my niece Esme was into gymnastics and trampolining. But yesterday I received this school picture showing her as captain of her school hockey team. What's more, the rest of the team is drawn from the year above her at school. Now if that doesn't show an exceptional mix of maturity and physical strength, I don't know what does. Bully off, girl! Last weekend was my nephew Louie's 4th birthday party. Apparently he was a bit overawed and shy with his 13 party friends at first. But I guess he perked up in order for this delightful photo to have been taken. Louie's sister, my niece, Daisy seems to have been too busy scoffing the chocolate cake to be in any way shy, by the look of this cute photo! Both of my brothers have such photogenic kids - I can only assume it's down to their mothers' genes! I'm flying back to China today. A little last-minute drama at the airport where my carefully weighed luggage (I thought) turned out to be 37kg instead of 30kg! So my parents and I had a frantic few minutes sorting the "necessary" from the "never mind" before finally making the weight. Now just a ten hour flight to Beijing, a 4 hour layover and a 4 hour onward flight to Kunming await. |
AuthorPaul Hider lives and works in Kunming (SW China) and regularly updates this blog about his life there. Past blog entries
May 2024
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