Caroline's Botanical Art Blog

www.botanicalart.wordpress.com

How it all started

It is April 2009 and I have just been awarded a Travelling Fellowship by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust to go to China to find, and paint, a rare tree first discovered for the West by the Irish plant collector Augustine Henry at the tail end of the 19th Century.

I’ve been a member of the Bath Society of Botanical Artists (BSBA) since it first started in 2002. We were looking for a project that we could all be involved with in, when we realised that one of our members was the great niece of Augustine Henry. It was a simple step to decide that we would all paint plants that he had discovered in China, or that were associated with him. I’d chosen my subject, a scrambling honeysuckle Lonicera henryi, and was struggling to finish it, what with working full-time, when out of the blue I got a rather cryptic phone call from another member that the “Emmenopterys was ready to paint”. I was quite reluctant to take on another project, but there was a note of insistence: “no-one else is painting it…” so I turned on my computer and did some research into the plant. I had no idea what kind of plant it was or indeed what it looked like.

I was hugely excited by what I discovered. Described by a contemporary of AH, the plant collector Ernest H Wilson, as "one of the most strikingly beautiful trees of the Chinese forests”, it had been introduced into collections across the world – however, it had only been recorded as flowering outside China less than a dozen times. Did my cryptic phone call mean that the Emmenopterys was actually in flower in this country? And could I be one of the first to ever paint it? I had a sleepless night… The next day, to huge disappointment, I discovered that it was the foliage that was in good condition to paint and “of course it doesn’t flower in this country”. But I had a germ of an idea - if I wanted to paint it in flower, I would just have to go to China to do so. And the rest, as they say, is history.

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Preparations for China

19 June 2009

It’s getting a bit more complicated than I thought, arranging an independent botanical art trip to central China.

I’ve booked the flight for 14 July, am half-way through the jabs, but now that I’ve sent my itinerary to the Institute of Botany at Wuhan Botanical Gardens, my contact says that they can’t provide me with guides or interpreters. The best that they can suggest is that I contact each of the Nature Reserves I intend to visit as they all have their own guides. Their websites are in Chinese. I have no idea how to proceed.

This is not exactly what I had in mind. I’d been led to believe that they would provide me with a guide who would know the area, find the plants I need to paint, act as interpreter, and arrange transport and accommodation.

So the hunt is on to find someone who can help me.

I wrote a letter to Roy Lancaster, asking if he had any contacts – got a call yesterday: last time he was in China was 1992 and doesn’t know anyone there any more, so that’s a blank.

Suggested I contact Seamus O’Brien at Glasnevin. It was Seamus who helped me put my itinerary together in the first place when I went to meet him in Dublin in early May. He’s organised three plant collecting trips to central and southern China already, so my itinerary was based on this model. But it’s become quite clear that organising expeditions through official channels and institutions is quite different from going it alone.

I’m really going to have to apply some lateral thinking skills here.

Are there any Chinese Botanical Artists out there?

20 June 2009

Shirley Sherwood kindly replied to my letter but wasn’t able to put me in touch with any Chinese Botanical Artists. There’s only one featured in her fabulous collection although, interestingly, quite a few Japanese artists.

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I can’t find any reference anywhere to a Chinese Botanical Artist organisation, but have made contact with VANDA magazine produced by GABA, the Guild of Asian Botanical Artists who have been very helpful

It seems to me that Chinese artists were employed voraciously when China was producing a National Flora. Finding them now, when the Flora has been completed, is quite another thing.

A new sense of freedom…

21 June 2009

Pale blue light lingering in the sky at 10.30 – longest day of the year. I’m saddened that I have allowed yet another Summer Solstice slip by.

Coming home from playing Bar Billiards at The Bell, in Bath, I turn my car lights off, open the windows, listen to Jazz on Radio 2 and inhale the sweet smell of fresh cow dung as I drive down the country lanes to home. I love England. I really can’t imagine what it will be like in China.

But I know I’ll miss this countryside: watching the deer browse from my upstairs window, picking up the warm russet hue of hares hunkered down in the stubble, buzzards wheeling – and bonking! I had my binoculars homed in on a buzzard on a fence post when the boy just landed and had his way. Amazing.

But right now I need to think about my travel plans and what’s going into storage. Each day I try to sort through another part of my life and discard the bits are holding me back. The clutter. And wonder what exactly is important.

When friends in Australia lost their house and all their possessions in the wild fires earlier this year you realise that it’s people that are important. And relationships. And helping other people, if you can, to have a better life. Especially when you are privileged enough to be able to choose how to live your life and it hasn’t been dictated by poverty or politics.

So now I’m wondering why on earth I’m putting anything in storage at all. Most of it is just “stuff”. Freecycle will provide when I need it. There’s a great sense of freedom in recognising that. And yet of course uncertainty about my future. The only certainty is that I would be going to China for 2-3 months. After that, is a complete unknown.

In the meantime, BSBA is organising an exhibition of our Augustine Henry paintings at the Glasnevin Botanical Gardens in Dublin – the home of AH and where a great deal of his herbarium specimens are kept. They have kindly agreed to host the exhibition and we are making plans to take them over and hang them at the end of June.

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Exhibition in Dublin

23 June 2009

Off to Dublin tomorrow afternoon to help hang the exhibition at Glasnevin Botanical Gardens. We’ve produced upward of 60 paintings of plants associated with Augustine Henry, with many of the specimens coming from John Phillip’s collection near Devizes. My effort, Lonicera henryi, is from a dark mass of foliage sprawling up the front of his house – we had to hunt for a piece still bearing flowers and my heart was in my mouth as John teetered on top of the steps yanking at the tendrils to pull it into reach. It roots really easily – in fact is a very invasive plant – and I still a piece on the windowsill, its long white roots curled around the inside of the glass jar.

We were invited to exhibit in Glasnevin following our exhibition in Bath last November. Henry’s a bit of a local hero and they have a China section in the gardens and many of his herbarium specimens that he sent back. It was thrilling to hold the actual herbarium specimen of Emmenopterys henryi that he collected over 100 years ago. And another that Ernest Wilson sent back from China a few years later.

I wish that I had had time to paint more pictures for the project, but working full-time made it impossible. I hope to make up for that in China!

Glasnevin exhibition

30 June 2009

Panel showing the unfinished Emmenopterys henryi painting, conspicuously without flowers, alongside images of it flowering in Denmark in 2006

Had a wonderful time at Glasnevin – everyone was extremely helpful and hanging the 60-odd paintings went

without a hitch.

The preview on Friday 26 was a very informal affair, and Peter Wyse Jackson, Director of the National Botanic Gardens, was thrilled to receive a book from

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Barbara Phillips of AH’s diaries transcribed by his wife Alice to add to their collection.

He also showed us the microscope that Henry had used to aid identification, and very kindly offered to support me in any way he could in facilitating my arrangements in China.

His opening address at the exhibition was very complimentary, and the very high standard of work was commented on, creating quite an interest from people wanting to purchase some of the works. We had never intended it to be a selling exhibition, but this did raise an interesting dilemma for us; none of the artists had been consulted on pricing their work, and no infrastructure put in place for Glasnevin to administer sales. So we agreed that anyone interested in buying paintings should contact the Bath Society of Botanical Artists through our website: www.bsba.co.uk and their enquiry would be forwarded on to the artist concerned. It would then be up to that artist to discuss a potential sale directly with the enquirer.

In addition to my submission of Lonicera henryi, I produced a whole panel on my travelling fellowship from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, illustrated with a painting of spring foliage of Emmenopterys henryi from John Phillips’ collection and supported by two posters of E. h. flowering at Kalmthout Arboretum in Belgium in 2006. I also produced postcards for people to take away of Lonicera henryi, with details of the travelling fellowship and this blog address.

Jen, Lyn and I shot off immediately after the preview and drove down to Kilmore Quay, a beautiful traditional Irish fishing village just half an hour from Rosslare harbour. We arrived with just minutes to spare to order food in the local pub (the ONLY pub) where I treated myself to the most amazingly fresh lobster dinner.

Then we ambled around the quayside as the light faded in the sky through exquisite pinks and blues to deep French Ultramarine punctuated by a crescent moon and myriad stars. The water was glass-smooth and stretched out seamlessly into the sea – boding well for the early morning crossing.

Our final evening in Ireland

BSBA Annual Exhibition 2009

7 July 2009

Just returned from the preview of our annual exhibition in Bath - the first one, I realise, that I haven’t helped to hang, or indeed exhibit in.

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I had painted Wood Anemones especially – but what with all my focus at the moment on packing up the house, trawling through the outdoor shops trying to equip myself with the right sort of gear, figuring out insurance, money, technology (laptop, camera, lenses, mobile phone etc), re-direction of post, cancelling bills, making sure Mum’s cared for (98 and still going strong), sorting out the car… I only realised after hanging was well under way and it was too late to slip it in.

Next year I hope to be putting in some of the work I will have started in China. What a privilege to be able to paint daily, after years of full-time work in an office on a computer, just barely getting a few hours in on the odd weekend!

I say again, a great big Thank You to the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust that is making this whole trip possible.

I spoke recently with Christine Hart-Davis about painting in similar conditions and it does all sound quite challenging. She went on an expedition to Sumatra about 15 years ago in tropical jungle which she said was mountainous and surprisingly dark – far too dark to paint. She had to take photos and bring the plant material back to the wooden jungle hut they were all staying, and record them there.

Because it was a scientific collecting and recording expedition, she also had to move at the same pace as the scientists - I suppose a bit like if I accompanied Seamus O’Brien on one of his “In the Footsteps of Augustine Henry” collecting expeditions to China, trying to get as much plant material and seed from as many plants as possible. I guess it must have been like that a great deal of the time for Christine when she was painting for the new Collins’ Flora of Great Britain.

The benefits of striking out on my own are that I should be able to paint at my own pace. The down-side at the moment is that I have no idea how I am going to arrange a guide to help me find some of the plants I want to paint. Or how I’m going to travel to the different Nature Reserves. Or how I’m going to arrange accommodation in or near the different Nature Reserves and other niggling things like - can I drink the water? Can I sit on the ground without half the insect life of Hubei crawling all over me? Will I just be too hot and sticky to be able to sit still for any length of time painting? How will the paint behave in such humidity? Will plants drip onto my paper smudging my work?

When I was in Australia back in 1991 travelling with an artist who was painting oils, I was trying to do landscapes in gouache. Clear blue sky washes were almost impossible: the desert air was 40 Celsius - the wind brought it down a bit - but the paint dried almost instantly. To quote Barry McKenzie, “it was as dry as a dead dingo’s dongo”.

Back to tonight. I’ve counted on my fingers so it must be true. It’s only 5 days before I leave, but I’d like to think about it as “next week”…

And what doesn’t get done, doesn’t need to get done. This is a great lesson in listening and trusting that life will provide exactly what we need, when we need it.

Bring it on!

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Arriving at Wuhan isn’t quite what I’d expected…

Thursday 16 July

I wake with a start in the night thinking I am still in England and have to catch my flight that morning. The hotel is silent apart from the air conditioning. It’s stifling hot outside – even at night. But construction work starts early on an extension, with metallic beats regular enough to dose off again.

The flight is uneventful – sleep through most of it – but look for some light entertainment from the movie selection, catching Amelie on the small screen, while managing to eat a really very good BA chicken dinner. Haven’t eaten properly for days what with the stress of packing up all my belongings to put into storage and making final arrangements for China. As it is I remember, in the middle of the night, that I’ve forgotten to cancel my electricity bill…

I arrive at Wuhan airport and waited for around 20 minutes before deciding that no-one is, after all, coming to meet me. I make my way to the upper level and the airline desks, where I approach a China Eastern Airline lady who speaks a little English. I am so glad that I’d had the presence of mind, in amongst all the turmoil of packing, to print off the Chinese home page version of the Wuhan Botanical Gardens’ website. I explain that I need to get there and she comes with me, outside to the taxi rank, and negotiates with the driver. An hour later and ¥100 lighter, after a silent drive across the city, I haul myself out of the cab and arrive hot and sticky at the gates to the Gardens.

I show them the e-mail from Prof Liu hong-tao and I’m waved on down a path.

Lotus Flowers

The gardens are lush with large grassy areas, huge palms,

greenhouses and fountains – there are vast lakes covered in lotus flowers and water lilies: the cicadas are deafening.

Water Lily

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It’s dazzlingly bright and the strangeness of it all, along with my exhaustion, makes me confused and disorientated.

Fountains at Wuhan Botanical Gardens

I haul myself along the path, eventually finding a student who speaks a smattering of English, who directs me to the Professors office.

He is away on business, no-one knows I’m coming, and no accommodation has been booked at the gardens for me – I’m told this is usually reserved for “guests”. It’s now quite clear that I’m not one of them.

Damselfly and Lotus bud

Several bemused ladies later, I’m helped to check in to the Hotel just 10 mins walk away. No-one at the hotel speaks English, they won’t take credit cards or travellers’ cheques and when I say I’m not sure how long I want to stay, they want one week’s money in advance. So it’s my emergency American Dollars. Exhausted, I have a shower and go to bed 6.30pm.

I sleep on and off for 20 hours, finally dragging myself out of bed at 2.30pm the next day, aching all over with exhaustion and stress. I make my way back to the Gardens where Lei, who’s been acting as translator, seems to have found me a student who speaks English and can act as a guide. No matter his speciality is the

evolution of Kiwi fruit from tropical to temperate – something to do with a mutation of chromosomes…

Wuhan Botanical Gardens Avenue

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Garden Pagoda

I spend the late afternoon in suffocating heat and humidity exploring a large part of the 70-hectare site being bitten (unbeknownst to me) by mosquitoes. Today I’m smothered in Deet.

Sunlit Lotus

I feel anxious that I am not able to communicate back home as my mobile has no connection (despite being reassured when I bought it a few weeks ago that it would work in China) and my laptop has no internal modem. The broadband (!) connection at the Hotel doesn’t help, nor at the offices in the Herbarium.

Water lily info, Wuhan Botanical Gardens

I meet Tao Shi (or Scotty if preferred) outside the gates at 8-ish and we meet his friend – the annual swim across East Lake takes place that morning, so I pile into a bus with them and drive through open forest to the edge of the Lake. Way across in the distance are flags marking the finishing point back at the Botanical Gardens. The tradition commemorates the day Chairman Mao swam across the Yangtze – why he did it in full spate is a mystery to me, as we are now nearing the end of the monsoon season and the river is high.

Scotty’s friend comes second and is exhausted – he gets a certificate. Scotty is second from last and chugs happily in on the back of a boat. Then the whole entourage of 50 or so descend on my hotel for a celebratory lunch sweeping me along without question.

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Scotty and Zhang Tingbo try to sort out my mobile, which involves several hours at a massive mobile phone emporium – success in part as a new SIM card is installed.

Pachystachys lutea

I manage to phone England, but texting proves more problematic. I now have a new mobile phone number which no-one knows, and can only partially communicate. One step forward…

This afternoon we met the elusive Professor who holds many titles here at the Gardens. Through Scotty he explained that I would need to apply independently to the Nature Reserves for permission as a tourist to enter.

Orchid House

The Gardens apply on a scientific basis, but could not endorse my application as I am not directly connected with the Academy of Sciences. He offered to help me identify and find Henry plants held within their collection – but it appears that the Emmenopterys henryi that I’d been assured was here, no longer exists, probably dying shortly after being identified by Seamus O’Brien! I’m beginning to feel like I’m chasing a “will o’ the wisp”…

The Professor also said that if I’m not used to field work, it will be very

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Leaf detail

difficult to identify the plants – and it’s unlikely that the Guides at the Nature Reserves will know them.

So if I can’t locate and paint many Henry plants in the Hubei province, maybe I’ll have better luck in Yunnan, and head down earlier than planned. Scotty also has connections I believe at Guangzhou where South China Botanical Gardens are based – and, incidentally, the ex-Director of Wuhan BG is now based. I hadn’t been planning to go there, but who knows? Better to get in some painting time than spend days fighting bureaucracy

Scotty can take a week off, starting next Monday, and we’re still hoping to get to Badong first to see the 250-year old Eh if I can get a permit – and after a 7-hr bus ride.

I’ve just eaten a huge bowl of bamboo shoots in the mistaken belief that the photo I’d pointed to was noodles. The portions are large and, with a selection of other dishes, intended to be shared: they don’t really cater for people eating on their own…

An amazing number of young people are employed in restaurants and shops – in fact almost everywhere – who seem to spend most of their time hanging around waiting for something to happen. Guess it’s egalitarian – better for everyone to have a little bit of something than a whole lot of nothing.

Optimism…

Friday 17 July 2009

Scotty came round to the Hotel 10-ish to sort out the logistics of my expedition to Shennongjia National Nature Reserve and for us to agree a schedule and day-rate. He phoned the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Shennongjia and it appears that as I’m not a scientist, and not collecting plant material or undertaking research, I don’t need a permit, and if we contact him on arrival, we may even be able to arrange a guide who has some knowledge of the plant material.

The area is vast by English National Park standards, and includes a number of Nature Reserves and Shennongton Park Garden where I can find the 1000 year-old Emmenopterys. Being down a deep gorge, it’s unlikely I’ll get anything more than a reasonable top-down photo, but that’ll be a start. Trees of this sort of age are extremely rare, and will have survived only because it’s completely inaccessible.

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Now I’m starting to feel more optimistic about painting independently in China, although painting specific plants will be very challenging without a botanist to guide me. So if I simply allow events to develop as they will, I will always have the pleasure of painting exotic flowers and plants in situ in such an interesting country.

We spent a few frustrating hours in an Internet Café (hold the coffee!) where I discovered I couldn’t access this Blog/Web address. I managed to send a few e-mails as I could use a Memory Stick where I’d stored all my e-mail addresses. And finally got onto my Incoming e-mail website to read a few of those, but couldn’t respond to them. It’s hugely frustrating and I need to go back there to download my e-mails onto my Memory Stick then cancel my Spam filter which is blocking all e-mails from coming through.

The heat is extremely tiring, and I shall be glad when we leave for Shennongjia Monday morning. It’s about a 7-hour bus ride to Muyuping where we’ll be based for about a week. Scotty’s available for up to 10 days, and we still need to get to see the 250-year old Emmenopterys at Badong. This is a closely protected tree also and comes under the Badong County Deputy. When Seamus visited in 2002 the entourage required a Police escort. Hopefully that won’t be necessary for me, Scotty, and my paint brushes!

All of this organising, negotiating and trying to sort out technology and communications has left me really frustrated that I hadn’t done any drawing or painting, or taken out my camera. So after a brief afternoon nap and cool-off back at the Hotel, I sorted out basic painting kit and headed back to the Botanical Gardens, sketching not a bad first stab at Gynura bicolor (wild) D.C. in the medicinal plant section. I packed it in at 7.30pm as I seem to have attracted the attention of a colony of massive black ants who were intent on crawling all over my feet and up the sides of the plastic flower-pot I was using as a stool. The “bicolor” will have to wait for its colour reference.

It’s interesting how this one pivotal quest comes with so many challenges. Augustine Henry “discovered” Emmenopterys in the hills behind Badong and I believe there were some rather brown flat flowers on the herbarium specimen I handled at Glasnevin Botanical Gardens back in May. Since it flowers around July, the timing of my journey set, the locality dictated. No matter that this is the hottest time of year around the Gorges, and that there is some suspicion here that I am actually on a mission to collect plant material. No matter that Emmenopterys actually has quite a wide distribution across China.

It is this one plant, on the bills outside Badong, which has brought me half-way across the world. Nothing less will do.

Faint hope

Sunday 19 July

Feels like a much more productive day, although my plans to paint in the Herb Garden before it got too hot were a bit of a pipe dream as it’s “too hot” before it’s light enough to paint.

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I tried a few more interesting items for breakfast but most things are either too dry or far too greasy. So I gave up and headed into the Botanical Gardens to take photos. They have the largest collection of Lotus plants – all full sun loving. I was rather glad of the sun umbrella I bought on the steaming tip down town yesterday to pick up some things before heading off to the cooler hills tomorrow morning.

Lei Jhang, who was summoned as my initial translator when I landed in the Prof’s office last Tuesday afternoon, has been enormously helpful. She hooked me up with Tao Shi “Scotty” who will be my guide for the next week or so, and has allowed me to use her computer station in the Graduate Office. I finally cancelled my Spam Blocker and was overjoyed to find a couple of messages in my Tiscali account. So just as long as I can find somewhere to log on, I’m now back in communication.

To top it all, I finally had a text message from England. It’s the standard 00 and China code of 86 followed by my new mobile phone number, so I don’t know why there have been problems. Hopefully a few more people will “check in” to see how I am – because I’m still unable to get onto my Blog.

But I’ve found a cunning way around that one, which I hope very much is a temporary solution! If I send my updates as a word doc attachment to an e-mail, I can ask someone else to log on for me and up load them. Not ideal by any means, but perhaps a creative way around the problem,

I managed to get a little painting done back at the hotel this evening. I’d drawn the flower days ago and of course when I returned it had withered away. But I did a colour reference and took a photo, so felt I could have a stab at it: Gynura bicolour (Willd) DC. Looks very much like a Day Lily… But even that was maddening as the light fades quickly, and early, around this latitude.

Difficult Journeys

Monday 20 July Yichang 9:20pm

Another frustrating day. We left my hotel later than expected as Scotty was held up in a traffic jam. Caught the 11am bus to Yichang, arriving at nearly 4pm. Once we were out of the City – which took at least an hour and a half – the landscape barely changed until our approach to Yichang: flat, small farm holdings with the occasional square lake presumably stocked with fish. I didn’t see a single being in the fields, and absolutely no livestock.

We got into Yichang too late to catch the bus to Muyuping, so booked into a Hotel just across a noisy city thoroughfare and a stone’s throw from the bus terminal – much more expensive than my budget can stand now that I’m covering the full cost of my guide, Scotty, but it’s still terribly hot here along the Yangtze and I’m not about to trudge the streets looking for a budget hotel lugging all this gear. Scotty has a toothbrush, change of clothes and that’s about it! I seem to have a well-stock pharmacy and, as usual, something to cover every eventuality – except perhaps snow…

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Wuhan reported its highest temperature for six years the other day: 40oC which is 104 oF and that’s without the searing reflection off the paths and roadways. Not great for sitting down trying to paint in full sun!

Technology is still thwarting me – while I’ve been able to access the internet from this hotel, it keeps kicking me out of Tiscali and all I was able to do was to read a couple of e-mails and delete some spam. The one e-mail I thought I’d sent apparently didn’t arrive.

Looking on the bright side, I’m finally getting closer to the Nature Reserves – and my first sighting of Emmenopterys henryi in flower. Someone said rather disparagingly the other day at the Botanical Gardens: “It doesn’t have very beautiful flowers”. At this point, that’s very much a matter of opinion – having brought me half way across the world, I’m sure it will be one of the most exquisite sights I will remember for a very long time.

When we arrived in Muyuping at around 1.30pm the taxi driver recommended a hotel – always a bad mistake! But we were travel weary and I was very anxious to see if we could find Eh. So we checked into one of the dirtiest hotels in town for around 6 pounds a night. No AC (it’s about 90 today, but about 75-80 at night) and the toilet/shower room was disgusting. I don’t think the bedding had been changed in one of the twin beds and it was horribly damp.

So we checked out at 7.30am and booked into a proper hotel for 11 pounds a night. Cheap by UK standards, but it all adds up very fast…

Muyuping is a delightful little one-street town surrounded by soaring green peaks. It’s geared for tourism, being a good base to sightsee the many Nature Reserves in the area, with a great many small hotels, eateries and shops selling medicinal or otherwise dried herbs, fungi, seeds, fruits and other unidentifiable vegetable matter sourced from the surrounding area. But like almost everywhere in China, massive developments are taking place with new hotels and villas starting to line all the approaches.

An interesting phenomenon was the overwhelming police presence in the town. A police car or two was almost never out of site – and one wonders if there existed an underbelly of darkness that wasn’t at first apparent to the casual visitor.

Department of Forestry, Muyuping:

Huge building with large lobby. Mostly unoccupied secretary in massive office directs us upstairs to a deserted landing. Dark wooden doors, all closed. No signs. We wander up one staircase several flights, and down another staircase several flights (careful not to retrace our footsteps!), ending in the vast basement where hundreds of glass cylinders containing plant specimens steeped in preservative cover most of the floor area. Three scientists/ researchers/ lab technicians are taking specimens out of a large cylinder, about 1m in diameter and 1.5m high and placing them individually in the smaller cylinders. They are wearing protective gloves and coats and it smells not of formaldehyde, but that kind of chemical smell.

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This building was our first port of all here in Muyuping. I was hoping to get some assistance in entering the Nature Reserves – a map would be a nice start – and some means of identifying the rare plants there. We managed to get a few minutes with the one of Officials there, but without the requisite Letter of Introduction, we got nowhere. I could apply for a permit, but that might take days and would most likely be refused. So the only thing I can do is go into the Nature Reserve as a tourist – at a cost of 140 RMB a day or 14 pounds.

The 1,000-year old Emmenopterys henryi I had come all this way to see is at the entrance to Shannong Tan – just a few miles back down the road from Muyuping. So having drawn a blank at the Department of Forest, I decided not to waste any more time on officialdom and boost my spirits by finally seeing it in flower.

Found it! Can’t paint it…

We walked there, arriving at around 6.30 pm – it was much further than we thought – only to find that this grand old specimen had already almost finished flowering!!!

There were a few inflorescences left on the top-most branches and I managed several photos – but certainly couldn’t paint it as it’s next to a busy highway (had to lean over the rail as vehicles whizzed by tooting their horns) and down a deep gully.

Me and 1,000-year old Emmenopterys henryi

Sadly I don’t think any of my photos will be very sharp as the light was poor and there were constant vibrations on the bridge.

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Emmenopterys henryi flowers – 30’ away!

We were exhausted when we got back to Muyuping at around 8.30pm and crumpled down on a plastic stool outside the nearest foodstall and sank a beer.

Next morning (after checking out from grotty hotel) we took a bus to Shannong Tan where there are two trees probably about 50 years old. Hadn’t realised it’s dioecious – there were some old seed pods from last year and apparently it did flower earlier, but scientists came and snipped off the branch for scientific research. Just my luck.

Lost in translation and other notes

Thursday 23 July 2009

Garden: might mean a small patch of barely cultivated ground – perhaps cleared from the forest. Does not necessarily contain flowers and might not have anywhere to sit. Saw a sign in the forest for a Vine Garden – meaning a small patch where a few vines were visible, twining and straggling between the trees.

There are regular buses that you book from the Bus Station, but if they’re full, then you can catch a taxi car/bus for about 50% more than the regular fare. They wait until enough people arrive for them to go. In Wuhan, the ordinary bus costs 2 RMB for any length of journey. But presumably because of competition rules, there are also privately owned mini-buses which run the same route and also cost 2 RMB. How you’d figure that out if you didn’t have the help of a local I have no idea.

Mostly I can understand what my guide, Shi Tao, says. Sometimes there are spectacular gaps in our understanding – but that’s probably true of most Chinese/English translations. We drove into Shennongjia Nature Reserve today and one of the top tourist spots was Shannong Valley but instead of heading down the mountain, we continued climbing into the cloud. When we arrived, I realised then that it was a view of the valley – which of course we couldn’t see.

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Shannong Tan is a revered temple – huge stone face towering down. Two steep stairways lead to the top level: Chinese tradition says you should never retrace your steps, so we went up one side and down the other.

Are Kiwi Fruits my new future?

Scotty’s a research student from Wuhan Botanical Gardens whose expertise is Kiwi fruits and their evolution. Bizarrely, I’ve been invited by one of his colleagues who I’ve never met to go for a few days to a Kiwi fruit research station in Sichuan province. There are up-to-20 different Kiwi fruit species so instead of bashing my head against a brick wall trying to find Henry plants, maybe I should become a specialist in painting Kiwi fruits! I’ve missed the flowering season, so perhaps I could come back next year for those – with my official Letter of Introduction, of course!

The eclipse yesterday morning was simply amazing

Gosh, the Eclipse! Diamond Ring

Shennong Tan, 22 July 09.

The sun just seemed to lose it’s power gradually – like someone had put a neutral density filter over it – and everyone in Muyuping was getting very excited, out in the streets looking at the start of the eclipse through anything from medical x-ray plates (sections of someone’s brain!), the floppy film from inside a disc, arc welding helmets etc.

We saw some of the best stuff reflected in a dark bowl of water on the pavement – and children were playing with mirrors shining the crescent shape of the sun onto the side of a building. There was a wonderful atmosphere. Then we hopped into a little 6-seater minibus to Shannong Tan (15 mins by transport, hours by foot as experienced the other night!) and got there just as the power was really ebbing from the sun. The shadows of leaves took on a crescent shape and we saw the whole eclipse and the diamond ring effect.

I was disappointed that we couldn’t get into the surrounding countryside from Shannong Tan Holy Mountain, despite clambering up winding paths leading through a number of farmsteads. The under storey is quite thick and it’s just impossible to access. Very hot and sticky, we hopped on a passing bus back to Muyuping for Plan B. I think there are going to be a lot of those on this expedition.

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This morning we rented a car to take us into the Shennongjia National Nature Reserve for about 20 pounds for the day. Half an hour driving up narrow, steep and winding road, climbing all the way – overcast with a haze flattening distant views of forested peaks. Overtaking, horns warning, on tight, blind bends, weaving in and out, passing slow lumbering lorries bringing construction material to the massive new commercial developments at the entrance and within the park. Held up by an accident on one of the bends on the way back. All the vehicles cut the corners – but they shouldn’t both do it at the same time.

First stop at the tourist centre we managed to find a forest trail that took us up into the hills. It was finally bliss to be in the natural environment amongst the trees with a ground flora reminiscent of thick English woodlands. Back in the car we drove ever upwards to the next stop – a spur off the main road dead-ending at a waterfall.

It had started to rain. We walked up the steep steps and into virgin forest – well, as much as it could be considering the number of tourists that descend on the place. But again it was great to feel so close to nature – and out of the heat. But it wasn’t long before the rain really started to tip down and the temperature dropped to around 60 degrees F.

By the time we’d walked back to the car we were in very low visibility and it was getting to be much less fun. I’d taken quite a few photos of the plant species I’d seen in the forest, but again hadn’t had a chance to paint anything. And now it was quite impossible.

The rain set in and the clouds descend

So, starving hungry, cold and wet, we called it a day and headed back down the mountain for a massive meal in dripping Muyuping, downloaded the photos, and here I am at the internet cafe winding up this long missive at 9.30pm.

Tomorrow morning catching bus down to Badong where I will make one last attempt to see Emmenopterys henryi in the Hubei province. Failing that, will

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console myself with a trip up the Yangtze to see one or two of the smaller gorges and then back to the furnace that is Wuhan.

Muyuping, Badong and the Three Gorges

While the visit to the Shennongjia Nature Reserve was extremely disappointing and had to be curtailed due to the appalling weather, the bus ride from Muyuping to Badong tried valiantly to make up for it – albeit incarcerated within a 16-seater minibus. There was spectacular scenery, winding up the sides of these mainly forested karst-like mountains, their form reminiscent of extruded mud between the fingers. I took far too many photos through the window, and will probably keep just one or two to remind me of the scenery – choosing to ignore my reflection and the water-stains on the glass!

Badong is tiered up the side of the Yangtze and like so many of the towns and cities here, is in the process of construction – the GDP of China is surely concrete – with massive new hotels and shopping centres. The consumer ethos here is astounding and comes at you from all angles including TV advertising on monitors inside ordinary buses. You just don’t seem to be able to escape it. Maybe nobody here even notices any more. Oh, just give me the sound of the wind in the trees and the stars in a clear sky.

We eventually booked into a nice hotel having checked out some appallingly grubby ones. We also had a long discussion as to how to locate the 250-year old Emmenopterys henryi which I have the GPS co-ordinates for and is recorded as being “in the hills behind Badong”. Eventually I was persuaded that it was an impossible task and that even if we were able to find an Official who would allow us anywhere near it, it would no doubt also have finished flowering, being on a slightly more southerly latitude than the one I had already seen.

Faced with defeat yet again, all that was left for us to do here then was some research into a trip up one of the gorges – paying a bit extra for a guide who spoke English. That evening we spent some time at a local internet café for me to check e-mails and update my blog – via my UK connection – and Scotty to update his equivalent of Face Book with some photos I’d taken of him and the eclipse. Then we wandered around the sultry city coming across the People’s Square which looked like a local festival in action with food stalls, women doing formation exercise dancing, children running around and everyone generally having a great Friday evening.

Scotty had been particularly quiet and I thought it might be lack of food, but I soon discovered it was the money issue brewing. It was particularly uncomfortable discussing this in the street outside the ATM, but that’s how it was, and although we agreed on an amount, I refused to be held responsible for the fact that he had lost his mobile phone. Something he repeatedly brought into the equation. He had nearly lost his wallet earlier from the very same pocket – what can I say?

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The next morning we left at 6.30am to board the boat to take us up the Shennong Stream, collecting hundreds of Wendy Wu tourists en route – only the second Europeans I’d seen since my arrival, the first being two blond-haired people in Muyuping. There was a mixture of English and German groups and I had a brief but interesting discussion with an Ornithologist from Norfolk. Their trip including viewing the eclipse from an area south of Shanghai, unfortunately thwarted by cloud cover – he is an avid eclipse chaser so has seen a fair few in his lifetime. After an hour we disembarked into low, wooden “peapod” boats, holding around 30 people each, and were rowed upstream by a small team of wiry boatmen or trackers – apparently mostly farmers who supplement their income in this way. No mean task in the 90 degree F heat and high humidity.

It should have been a really pleasurable experience, and indeed the scenery was lovely and I took many photos, but for my sullen travel-mate. Things got worse when we arrived too late to catch the 2pm ferry back to Yichang and had to wait until the next one which was nearly an hour late.

It was an appalling journey in a disgustingly dirty and fume-ridden boat, the windows too grimy to see much of the scenery along the river bank. It disgorged us just shy of the Dam when we all piled into buses for the final leg to Yichang. I caught a glimpse of the massive construction by standing up and peering through a gap in the hoardings before we turned the corner and it was gone. We arrived at the bus station in Yichang at 10 to 7 – just minutes before the last bus to Wuhan. I was extremely relieved to board that bus as the thought of another night of this sullenness would have been really intolerable – my patience was being sorely tried at this point. The rest is history and I will now put this experience behind me.

I see my dreams evaporate

Sunday evening 26 July

In no particular order

I cannot describe the frustration and disappointment of the last few days – and it is with a growing sense of relief that I leave Wuhan tomorrow.

I’ve booked a flight to Jiuzhai Gou in Sichuan province, a World Heritage nature site, designated for its “dense forest, green meadows, rivers, rapids, ribbon lakes in various shades of blue and green chalky shoals and waterfalls of every kind – long and narrow, short and wide, terraced, rushing, and cascading.” Frommer’s China.

Which all sounds fantastic as a nature reserve, but this one is accessible. It has five designated scenic areas which run along a 36-mile, Y-shaped route, with over 200 shuttle buses travelling between 7am and 6pm. You can hop on and off at bus stops along the way, and there are wooden plank or stone paths on the opposite side of the lakes away from the main bus routes. The temperature is cooler, and I

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just hope that the meadows will contain some flowering species. Nearly everything in Hubei seems to have finished flowering – and given the heat, I’m not surprised!

And although the daily entrance to Jiuzhai Gou isn’t cheap at the equivalent of 22 GBP a day (nor are reasonable hotels there inexpensive – I consider “reasonable” as one that I would like to go back to for a shower during the day, rather than dread) it’s got to beat the daily expense, travel and accommodation costs of a guide who was really a bit out of his comfort zone and lacked the experience and imagination to be able to work around the problems we encountered.

It’s interesting how, when there’s a financial deal and people start to get unsatisfied for whatever reason, money becomes a critical issue. Food is another. And what with travelling long hours and covering great distances over the last two days, it was very difficult to eat regularly, or even well.

The two things combined made a difficult situation unbearable, culminating in a sullen and petulant travelling companion – who I believe felt taken advantage of despite agreeing a daily rate prior to leaving – and who abandoned me at the bus station in Wuhan at midnight, disappearing off home in a taxi. And to think I was even going to offer to pay for his!

Fortunately my copy of Frommer’s saved the day and after a conference of Taxi drivers, I eventually arrived at the Hotel Ibis Wuhan about 25 minutes later. The first hotel I’ve stayed in where they understand a certain amount of English at reception, and at ¥158 a night a god send. The rooms remind me of University campus rooms – a bed, corner wardrobe, “pod” bathroom, chair and shelf-desk. Oh, and the obligatory TV and kettle. You always boil water for drinking in China, and it is very often served hot.

It was also a huge relief to be able to have something I recognised for breakfast – there was coffee, which I’d previously paid exorbitant prices for, toast, cereal and boiled eggs. Then the usual dumplings and fitters and things like that. It’s taking a while for my stomach to settle down – I think it was quite alarmed at some of the spices it encountered in the first few days – and it’s good comfort food when things aren’t going too well.

So today has been a day to re-grouping and implement another Plan B. Hence the flight to Jiuzhai Gou.

Of course making the decision is one thing. Booking the flight quite another. CITS is the China International Travel Service, and I took a taxi to the office mentioned in the Travel Guide. Or at least I thought I had. It did look considerably smaller than I thought it should, but it’s easy to get disorientated in a foreign country where things are done so very differently.

After nearly two hours of trying to explain that all I wanted was a flight to Jiuzhai Gou (or the airport at Jiuhuang just northeast of the site) and “discussing” different flight times (the chap had extremely limited English and was really new at his job so didn’t have a clue what he was doing, and his experienced colleague didn’t speak any English at all), realising I had to get a connecting flight, and insisting that I didn’t want a hotel or a guide, he looked at me quite perplexed and finally

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asked me why I was going there. When I explained that I only wanted to paint, and asked why was it so difficult just to buy an airline ticket, he revealed that their Agency couldn’t just book airline tickets – they only dealt with packages.

It was now nearly 3pm and I hadn’t eaten lunch. But I’d noticed another CITS travel office nearby so asked straight out if they could book flights. No, she said, but she could show me someone who could, about 20m down the road. The young girl had studied English as her major and with her help I was finally able to book my flight. It took three of them to do it – this was only the second flight they’d booked in about six months and the hyphen in my last name caused quite a few problems until they eventually ignored it – but another hour and a half later I waked away with my tickets. And the young girl gave me her left-over Kentucky Fried Chicken lunch before I passed out from hunger! The kindness of strangers…

Then it was a 2½ hour round trip back to the Botanical Gardens where I’d left some of my luggage and finally the Hotel for a welcoming Heineken and shower – definitely in that order!

Escape to Jiuzhai Gou Nature Reserve

Chongqing Airport 4.30pm in transit to Jiuzhai Gou - Monday 27 July

Just eaten a disgustingly bread roll with what was described as ham – covered in some sweet sticky substance. Coffee is around £3.50 a cup so I’ve given that one a miss.

Glad I allowed enough time between flights as the earlier “connecting” flight had departed before I was near the departure lounge. Now a 2-hour wait and arrive at 7.30pm. Then it’s a 1½ hr bus ride from the airport to the town – but I think I’ll take a taxi and see if he can understand which hotel I want to go to – Frommer’s again. Apparently it’s a bit like running the gauntlet the strip leading up to the Nature Reserve entrance. Frommer’s gives the Reserve three stars, but deducts the town four for commercialisation, corruption and pollution. Great.

Wednesday 29 July

The flight from Changquing to Jiuzhai Gou with China Southern Airlines was a much nicer experience than out of Wuhan. The Airbus 319 was cleaner and more comfortable and at least no-one was sick, poor lad. The smattering of people on board had their choice of seats and I settled into for a window view. The rain lifted for take-off, bringing a new optimism to the day.

High between layers of clouds the aircraft briefly dipped its wing revealing a glimpse of a ribbon-river of gold in the evening sunshine. Then cloud below thickened, but was close enough to ground to be pierced by dark, jagged mountain ridges. As we started our decent, the lie of the land was revealed – sharp-edged, crumpled mountains, bare rock giving way to conifers on lower

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slopes – seemingly completely inhospitable to man. Then we approached an incongruously flattened mountain top which was our landing strip.

The sun was sinking fast as the taxi wound its way down the 80km switchback road to Jiuzhai, passing Tibetan villages bedecked with tall flags. The hotel I had chosen caused some confusion as apparently it was closed. There was much discussion over the driver’s mobile phone where I was being persuaded to spend a considerable amount of money on a “good, clean room” which I declined. I ended up at a small, rather grubby “hotel” where, unsurprisingly, the driver was staying. I was too tired to negotiate and we hauled my bags up into a top-floor, corner room – which ended up meeting one of my requirements – light and airy. It had little else going for it and the next evening I did some investigation and negotiated 30% off saying I’d found somewhere cheaper and was going to move. It was now cheaper than a single room at the Migu International Youth Hostel’s the road, but fell short of any of their facilities.

Wednesday morning I grabbed some street-stall breakfast bāozi, stuffed steamed buns, and headed for the Nature Reserve where I took one of the many buses right to the top of the left hand valley. The scenery was stunning as we climbed

ever upwards, passing waterfalls and lakes, each bend revealing another view of a forest-clad mountain.

After about half an hour we came to the end of the road and there, right beside the start of the boardwalk up into the Primeval Forest area were some delicate wild, purple orchids! There were other small flowers I was not familiar with, but I was delighted to spot some glorious star-shaped gentians glowing against the low groundcover.

One of the extraordinary blue lakes

While everyone’s eyes were on the scenery, I was head-down, scanning the forest floor and small meadow clearings.

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Wild orchid by the top car park

Not knowing what the whole biosphere might reveal, I decided day one would be a recky – and I walked for about 7 hours, heading ever downhill along the extensive network of well-constructed boardwalks which circled the lakes and waterfalls and extended into forest and meadow areas. The boardwalks were unfenced, giving a feeling of being right in the heart of nature – thankfully no HSE to spoil the fun! There was not a great deal of flora that was easily accessible from the boardwalk, and for good reason there were reminders not to step off into the forest. But I made notes of where to go back to paint.

The mountain ranges make the weather unpredictable and there were a number of sudden downpours – I was glad of my umbrella although I had bought it for the sun, it was cheap, and allowed through a fine spray.

In front of waterfall in Jiuzhai Gou NR

I hadn’t taken enough food with me, nor enough water, which turned out to be more serious. The water I’d boiled from the hotel kettle smelled and tasted quite strongly of camphor or something similar and I decided to throw it away, leaving

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me only two small water bottles for the whole day. A low, nagging headache increased in intensity, only slightly relieved by the kebab food I devoured from a stall near the hotel around 6.30pm. But it returning shortly after and although I drank several litres of water, I had a very bad night.

My plans to go back to the Nature Reserve as soon as it opened at 7am slipped away as I dozed until around noon, finally taking some Dioralyte in case I was lacking essential body-salts, which seemed to help a bit. It’s now about 5.30pm and I’ve had some food and wandered a little around the area, managing to find a China Mobile stall where I could top up my phone. I’ve no idea how much credit I have left on it as the help-line is in Chinese.

It’s still about 85o F today and quite close – and frustrating to lose a whole day of good weather trying to recover from whatever has caused this terrible pain – no doubt exacerbated by carrying heavy camera equipment in a back-pack. One of the things I regret now not buying – a good camera and lens bag that I could strap around my waist. It’ll be a while before I’m in a place where I can purchase one of those.

Hopefully tomorrow will dawn bright and clear and I can finally get some painting done. It would be just my luck for the weather to close in for the next few days…

Jiuzhai Gou

Friday 31 July

Of course it rained! I got to the Nature Reserve around 8.30am and had a cup of coffee (it’s very expensive and difficult to find around here) before catching a shuttle bus back up to the top right-hand valley. Actually, it’s the bottom of the left-hand valley – their map places South at the top.

I headed straight for the orchids, but only one orchid stem was left – the others having been nibbled off by small creature. But at least there was one, and conveniently close to a stand of conifers which provided a modicum of protection from the rain. As I battled sitting cross-legged on a plastic bag balancing the umbrella over my head and the paper, I attracted quite a lot of attention – especially from the guards as I was actually off the designated pathway. However, I smiled and shrugged and kept drawing and I guess I appeared innocuous and novel enough for them to allow me to continue.

I wonder sometimes why I seem to pick the smallest of plants to paint. The flowers can’t even have been 1cm across, with the most delicate of purple markings, and the whole stem probably less than 14cm tall – I have made accurate measurements but have packed the sketches away. I then caught a shuttle bus back down (or up!) to the fork in the Y and along the other valley, again climbing all the while into the cloud-base.

The scenery was not nearly as interesting, although quite magnificent really, and I thought it might be wasted for finding flowers, but just by the side of the path was another plant that I would have guessed was either an orchid or hellebore.

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Unfortunately I’m not a sufficiently experienced amateur botanist… I also got quite close to a little rodent – about the size of a water vole – to take some decent photos, it being quite blasé about the hordes of people rushing around taking photos of each other in front of the views.

There were some other interesting flowers and I’ve made a sketch or two, but really the weather was horrible again for sketching and I couldn’t get close enough to some of them to be able to study them properly.

However, it was satisfying to have actually done some painting at last, albeit probably a very common little orchid!

I had an interesting time at the Visitor Centre trying to make myself understood when I asked whether Emmenopterys henryi was actually in the reserve. I had the photos of when it had flowered in Belgium and the Chinese translation of its name, and just sort of gesticulated. No-one understood what I wanted but they directed me into the display area. I eventually found a door marked Science Room and walked in – much to everyone’s surprise! However, someone did speak English and they looked Eh up on their system, but sadly there was no record of it in Jiuzhai Gou. However, I did see a large photo of Rhododendron Augustinii something which was lovely – and had obviously finished flowering some time ago.

Back at the hotel/foodstall strip that has become home for the last few days, I discovered the International Youth Hostel booked travel tickets for a ¥10 fee – about one pound – so I arranged my flight to Chengdu for Saturday to meet up with the Professor who’s taking me to a Kiwi Research Station where I believe they want some photographs of an international visitor to lend kudos to their work. Hey, if it gets me to see another part of China for a day or two without taking a toll on my Fellowship, then I’m up for it.

It may also be extremely useful to me as the Professor speaks really good English and I’m hoping he might be able to help me with some real connections to locate Eh where my individual efforts have so far failed.

Given the difficulties I’ve had, I was quite upset to receive e-mail from Seamus in Ireland who couldn’t comprehend why I was unable to locate the tree at Badong which, he insisted, would still be in flower. Perhaps if you have a guide who has good local and botanical knowledge, an interpreter, a driver and GPS. On which I scored “nil point”. However, it’s made me even more determined to succeed here, even if it means retracing my steps thousands of kilometres back to Badong – no mean task. Now, all I need are those Letters of Introduction…

Exploring Chengdu, commercial Communism and excellent food

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Sunday 2 August – Somewhere in Changxi County – still hoping to paint Emmenopterys henryi…

Left Jiuzhai Gou on the 12.25 flight to Chengdu, paying an astonishing 38 Yuan for a rather poor cup of coffee at the airport – OK, I was desperate! The flight was delayed by half an hour, and I texted Dr Jiang to say I’d arrived. He was with the party from Changxi having lunch, and asked me to wait.

All sorts of things went through my mind in the intervening two hours sitting with my luggage outside the airport – was it for real? Had I somehow been set up? And why? But eventually they arrived and we headed off into the city to the hotel. Only they hadn’t made a booking and the various hotels we did find didn’t have enough rooms. We actually drove around for three hours – many of the same streets several times – until we finally booked into a shabby cheap chain that I’m not even sure had seen better days.

The affable driver of our troop took all of this in his stride, and I became convinced during this unscheduled tour of the city’s backstreets that he had poor long-vision and couldn’t read the signs, didn’t know his right from left, and couldn’t interpret Sat Nav. It was with some horror that we all piled back into the car half an hour later to find a very popular local eatery. Sure enough we got lost and were only saved when one of the team had the foresight to get into a taxi, which we followed at breakneck speed.

We ended up half an hour later in Jinli Gu Jie – Jinli Ancient Street – which is a series of narrow pedestrian streets built in 2005, a replica of traditional Eastern Sichuan architecture and a popular place to hang out, eat and drink. We had the most amazing meal – and they were really impressed that I could use chopsticks. Oh, those nights in Sushi bars in California…

It was really great to be in a nice restaurant with good company – even though I didn’t understand anything that was being said – and I felt I was being introduced to a new experience in China where I didn’t have to constantly be making all the decisions. In fact, I was entirely in their hands, and had no idea how this trip to the Kiwi Research centre would work.

Left Chengdu at 9am and stopped at Nanchong for lunch where we met up with some friends of one of the researchers. We went to this amazing restaurant that was incredibly popular where the whole theme is the Red Army and celebrating the cultural revolution, Chairman Mao and the theme of a Commune Canteen – and the waiters and waitresses are dressed in uniform. It was all a bit odd really as I seem to have a different impression of the cultural revolution and the Red Army. However, we had a banquet with about 9 or 10 dishes and the food really was amazingly good.

I’m quite a novelty wherever I go and children just stare at me. But a smile goes a long way and last night in Chengdu I entered into quite a lively discussion with a very precocious 8-year old who had some of the best English I’ve heard so far.

Shortly after 5 and we checked into another shabby hotel in Changxi I think – although everything’s in Chinese so I’m not really sure where I am. But the

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window overlooks a busy pedestrian shopping area and it’s really noisy. Saying that, I was on the 8th floor in Chengdu and that was still very noisy from the traffic. I’ve got an internet connected computer in the hotel room! Suppose it cancels out the broken toilet seat and filthy carpet and broken lamp?

View from hotel window in Changxi

We passed through a city en route which was being completely renovated. Every single building on both sides of the approaching road for miles had scaffolding up and was being re-built or re-tiled or re-something to improve it.

The Renovation Town

New planters lined the centre of the road awaiting new plantings, and new trees had been planted. The road was being re-patched and there were just masses of people involved in this mammoth manual labour.

Further up the mountain, the road was dreadfully potholed, giving way in places to just a rough track. The small farmsteads grew their diverse crops including patches of maize, and the stripped kernels dried literally in the road in dusty yellow patches.

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Tomorrow we go to the Research Station where I’m supposed to be some Western expert on Kiwi fruit – which should quite interesting. I’ve been convinced that no-one speaks English, so it doesn’t matter what I say. I certainly hope that’s true! But it’s good publicity for their international relations and I think I might be able to get the Prof to help me get a Letter of Introduction so that I can finally get the help I need to paint Eh.

We talked about it on the way up, and his boss is the previous Director of Wuhan Botanical Gardens who moved to another area about 4 years ago, but is the same man who helped Seamus put together his trip. He’s lived in the US for 8 years, so is pretty clued up about the ways of the world. And, he’s met Peter Wyse Jackson from Glasnevin, so if that doesn’t work, I don’t know what else I can do.

Changxi – feel like I’m in “real” China

Monday 3 August

Still in the shabby hotel in Changxi, but having eaten good food solidly now for two whole days.

The city is high up on the hill, overlooking the river, and last night we went to a popular hotpot restaurant right by on promenade. Hotpot is a traditional Sichuan meal that might equate to a communal barbeque or fondue dinner. The table is inset with a burner heating a large dish of bubbling broth and oil into which is tipped various selections of meat, vegetable and fungi – depending on what’s selected. A lot of it was unrecognisable – or at least partially recognisable but best not to ask. I think I might have consumed more offal in that one sitting than in a whole year back home!

And it’s a good thing I like fungi, as lunch was at a specialist fungi restaurant, and dinner tonight again a bubbling hotpot of various foodstuffs including this apparent delicacy.

The rain that was predicted last night materialised with the dawn and hardly abated all day – in fact increasing in intensity in the afternoon, preventing us from going to the Kiwi orchards. Instead we visited a local attraction, the Pear Exhibition.

Apparently this area is known as the home of the Shi Pear which can grow to 2 kilos and has a sweet, juicy texture. It’s late maturing and the heavy crop we saw on the trees at the visitor attraction won’t be ripe until mid September. On 8 March each year there’s a Pear Festival which draws huge numbers of admirers to view the blossoms – the publicity shows many Statesmen smiling through the delicate white petals.

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Me & Kiwi Researchers in Pear Country

The story goes that a fruit was brought into the area and the seeds distributed between different local families. One of the trees that grew from these seeds produced a particularly luscious pear and the local farmer propagated it, eventually developing the orchard which has now become the Pear Exhibition. The original tree still stands, according to the notice, and who am I to quibble.

I was interested in how the centre financed itself as it was really quite run down and the museum exhibits badly in need of some maintenance. Jiang told me that it’s run by the local Agricultural department, and that each of the workers there has a plot of land including part of the pear orchard which they can cultivate. They can then sell their produce in lieu of salary.

I had wondered about the intercropping system, with strips of maize, peanuts and pumpkins proving occasional groundcover under the trees in the best permaculture tradition, but hadn’t reckoned on this. “Good jobs are hard to find in China” is all Jiang said. We bought a box of pears on the way out.

We all then went for a foot massage at one of the many foot massage centres in the town. Apparently it’s quite a common thing to do – and of course, Chinese style, a social activity. The room on the third floor of the previously rather grand building had half a dozen reclining couches and our feet were variously soaked, kneaded, pummelled and stroked while the young girls failed to disguise their curiosity about me and the colour of my skin, and asked quite innocently if there were any jobs in England.

It didn’t seem appropriate to mention that I had been made redundant shortly before my trip to China, nor the plight of thousands of others suffering in the “economic downturn” in the West. Compared with the lack of economic opportunity for the vast majority of people in China, it would have been meaningless.

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The tellies blared away (there were two of them tuned into different channels in the small room) and we sipped green tea. The foot massage included a neck and back rub ‘as an extra’ because of the stiff competition for trade – which I was rather glad of after the long bumpy ride of yesterday.

Eating out with the Kiwi guys

Then we ate another massive meal of about 10 or 12 dishes circular style and were joined by the oldest Kiwi expert in the area who I’d met briefly that morning at their temporary offices in the city – the original ones having been damaged in the earthquake last year. He certainly looked the veteran, so I was rather shocked to discover that we were born in the same year.

It’s strange how we tend to have a concept of how someone of a certain age should act or look – but that it never actually applies to ourselves.

I’m a Kiwi Research expert!

Wednesday 5 August

The weather has turned and at around 95oF this lunchtime, we’ve postponed our visit to the local Kiwi orchard until it cools down a bit. This morning we drove to another of the local attractions – a pagoda style tower on the top of a hill overlooking the city. It was interesting to see how the city lay along the river from the top of the fifth floor, but also the new developments springing up on the fringes, including a rudimentary start to a secondary bridge. I would imagine this city of approx 80,000 people will increase by about 50% in the next five years or so.

I have now spent several days as a guest of the Kiwi Institute and their hospitality has been the utmost in generosity. Yesterday we drove out to one of the Kiwi research orchards where they are monitoring the developments of the Red Fruited Kiwi – a speciality of the Changxi county.

The drive over some extreme terrain took about two hours, migrating on the way from Pothole Road to Crater Road. We got held up at one point because the road had collapsed following the excessive rain of the last few days.

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The collapsed road on the way to the Kiwi Research orchard (interesting self-portrait!)

The remaining part of the journey was quite literally a dirt/stone road and I was very grateful for the suspension. I watched the local bus careening around and hoped very much that I

wouldn’t have to experience this again on my journey north to Guangyuan before heading up to Xi’an.

Just one of the small villages we sped through

We arrived at the Government Offices in the provincial township of Long Wang where we were treated to a very generous buffet lunch by the officials, and again I was lauded as an example of international relations. Dr

Jiang acted as translator at times, but communication for me relied mostly on close observation of others’ behaviour. It was friendly, but slightly formal with the Head Honcho who played his very political part admirably, making elaborate toasts which took one to the edge of thirst before quaffing the thimble-glasses of beer in readiness of the next excuse for a drink!

Traditional small farmstead (taken from moving vehicle)

Then another dirt-track ride to the experimental station which was full of chickens and nasty little black midges, giving my ankles the appearance of a bad rash.

Here we did the photography bit and I’ve never been so interested in Kiwi fruit development before!

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Discussing macro-nutrient deficiencies

I’m obviously fascinated by the yellowing at the edge of the leaf caused by a lack of macro-nutrients! The susceptibility of other experimental varieties to fungal infections!

Delighted by the emergent star-burst colouration of red in the cut, immature fruit!

Immature-red-fleshed-kiwi-fruit.

Photo-shoot over, its another 2-hour bumpy ride back to Changxi, quick change at the hotel, and out to a Fat Cow restaurant where nearly every dish was wafer-thin slices of beef, some of which were eaten sashimi style, others dropped into your individual hot-pot burner for a few minutes before being dipped into a spicy sauce. One of the dishes didn’t look like meat at all, being thin slices of a dark-grey and white stringy substance. All I got out of Jiang was that “maybe it was the bull”. I had a good idea what that meant and managed one rather tough specimen before abstaining.

Sadly, I haven’t been able to do any painting, but I’m still hopeful that the relationship I’ve built with Dr Jiang and the contact he has with the previous Director of WBG will lead to my being able to finally paint Emmenopterys henryi in flower in the wild in the Hubei province.

Dr Jiang is travelling up to Guangyuan with me then back to Wuhan, and I have tried to impress on him my sense of urgency to accomplish this before heading off

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to Kunming where, I’ve been assured, Eh would have finished flowering a while ago.

Escape to Xian

Saturday 8 August – Shuyuan Hostel, Xi’an

The train pulled into Xi’an station just after 5.30am and trying to get a taxi was an experience I don’t want repeat. Several taxi-drivers refused me when I pointed to the hostel in Frommer’s guide where it is helpfully written in Chinese characters – possibly it was too far and they wouldn’t get a return fare at that time of the morning – but eventually one agreed and deposited me near the South Gate of the city and gesticulated for me to go down a small, deserted, ancient street.

Not much fun lugging my gear up and down the street trying to find someone who could read a map or had any idea what I wanted. But eventually, after having been directed to two other hostels, I found the right one and after checking in, entered a pitch black four-bed dorm room, locating the one free lower bunk by the light from the corridor. I rested until about 8.30 but I don’t really think you could call it sleep.

The hostel doesn’t live up to its description of being “a magnificent restored courtyard residence” despite having three internal courtyards which would have been open to the sky in former times. It’s much more compact than I had envisaged and the lack of light in the room would be completely intolerable if it weren’t for the various communal areas. I’m currently sitting in the reception area which has a few comfy chairs and a sofa and is the only room outside the bedrooms with air conditioning. It’s a really busy area as the through-flow of people is almost constant.

Security is quite good, with each room accessed by an electronic key and touchpad, the same as in many hotels. The computer system, however, is a little over-zealous cancelling the key on an almost daily basis, requiring a trip down to reception for re-programming. There’s a very busy café area run by a small team of young, friendly Chinese.

They’ve just implemented a new system, giving numbered tokens for each order, after near chaos earlier when they lost several people’s breakfast order and one poor girl kept coming out every few minutes trying to reconcile an American Breakfast with its rightful owner.

I’m quite amazed by how many people smoke here. I’d got used to the non-smoking culture in Britain and it’s hard not to balk at the constant drift of cigarette smoke while eating breakfast

Yesterday I wandered the Muslim quarter with its many food stalls down tiny side-streets, then took the bus down to Xi’an Museum which has an amazing collection of exquisitely crafted artefacts dating back 3-5,000 BC. But it was touch and go

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getting in. The guide-book said nothing about there being a quota of daily tickets which, once reached, results in barred entry. There was an interesting family in front of me – a white American and his seemingly African wife and their two young girls who all live in Hong Kong. He spoke fluent Mandarin and had quite an in-depth discussion with one of the guards barring our entry. Apparently, they were waiting for the disappointed crowd to disperse – so I simply stayed put, and sure enough we were shortly waived through. Not very fair, as we obviously received preferential treatment as foreigners – but neither of us wanted to return another day.

Once inside I was also refused an audio guide as apparently there was only 1 ½ hrs left to tour the exhibits and the guide takes 3 hours! No amount of saying I could skip sections made any difference. There was not enough time, so that was that. Not very empowering, but so much of it here seems to be like that – officials making decisions and people having to go along with it with no recourse whatsoever – unless of course you have influence of one sort or another.

I made my way to the Terracotta Warriors today, having decided not to go on an organised trip or with a guide. I enjoyed the freedom it gave me to wander at will, choosing the smaller, Pit 3 to start and building up to Pit 1 where hundreds of the terracotta figures have been restored. The exaction is housed in a massive structure, the roof of which spans hundreds of feet and feels like a giant aircraft hanger.

It was quite difficult to focus on the “being” and not get distracted by the noise and constant jostling of the Chinese to take photos of themselves in front of the exhibits. I found the contrast between the exquisite workmanship achieved so many years ago in such a different culture, and the engineering of the exhibition hall fascinating. These artefacts had been carefully created and buried, then smashed and virtually destroyed by a combination of natural events and brutal aggression – and here they were being restored for all the world to see.

Their significance, the power of the Emperor that they represented all those many years ago having long been lost. It reminded me of the defacing of the features of the carvings and plaster reliefs I saw in the temples Egypt, where people believed that if the figures were unrecognisable, they could not be transported into the after-life, thereby destroying the deposed ruler or enemy’s attempts at immortality.

And these wilful acts of destruction of other cultures or religions continues today – the recent blowing up of statues by the Taliban, and targeting of Mosques or Churches…

Why is it so hard for people to learn to respect difference rather than fear it?

Thursday 6 August on the way to Shaanxi Province

Almost an hour into the train journey from Guangyuan to Xi’an and at 8pm the light is fading fast. I’m sharing the compartment with a woman of Chinese decent and her two small children, who were born in the States and live in Pasedena. She

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teaches Finance at Cal State Northridge which is just up the road from where I used to live in about 1988.

They were visiting relatives in Guangyuan and Xi’an and the children were quite confused about how many uncles and aunts they have in China as “back home” they only have one or two relatives. They are very excitable, leaping from bunk to bunk and I’m not sure how much sleep I will get during the 10 ½ hour journey in this small, four berth compartment. However, it is really nice to be able to have a decent conversation in English.

People are very curious that both the children are hers, as she’s Chinese and there is such a strong stigma to having more than one child. This control is exerted through social, cultural and economic pressure -

This railway was a great feat of engineering, taking many years to bore the countless long tunnels through the mountains – and if there was spectacular blasts of scenery we certainly weren’t able to see them travelling at night.

All the rooms at Xi’an Shuyuan Qingnian Lushe, the youth hostel I very much want to stay at, are fully booked except for the dorms – so that will be another interesting experience after the series of hotels. It sounds as though it really caters for the international travelling community, is well placed within the City, and runs economical tours to the main sights. Frommer’s : A magnificent restored courtyard residence, it formerly housed the Xianyang County government, was recently extensively renovated, has English speaking staff and offers impartial and useful information – plus free internet access.”

Yesterday afternoon we met the County Politician at one of the Kiwi experimental orchards and I carefully positioned myself close to him and nodded enthusiastically. Just getting him and his cavalcade to come out was a coup so I really hope I’ve helped their cause. It all took about 20 minutes, then we went back to the hotel for a rest – translated as time for a shower, change to a skirt and wash out my day-clothes.

Each day we’ve tried a new restaurant and this, our last evening together, was a Sichuan-style BBQ. Brightly coloured tables with a couple of grills each and a very poor extraction system… We were provided with plastic bib-aprons so I knew it might be a messy affair. The dishes of food came thick and fast, mostly different kinds of unrecognisable meat, some fungi and a few veg. We even indulged in a bottle of red which was just about passable and was probably quite expensive. Good wine is not a speciality of China.

Kunming Botanical Gardens – a breath of fresh air

Thursday 13 August

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I arrived at the Kunming Institute of Botany at around 3pm and was met by Feng Shi, the Assistant to the Director. She’s charming, and has enough English for us to be able to just about communicate.

Because I’d arrived at such short notice, they hadn’t been able to secure a reasonable room for me, and was shown to a small dingy room with four beds crammed into it – and nothing else. The toilet across the dark corridor was not that far off one of the worst I’ve seen, and there was no wash basin or shower. However, I was assured I could move to better accommodation the following night.

As it happened, when I pressed about being able to have a shower (I was told quite seriously by the “matron” it wasn’t good for me because I had a cold) they finally moved me into a slightly less dingy room with a bathroom if I agreed to leave after three nights. I’d have agreed to almost anything at that point to get a bathroom!

This is a very active research base and there are a lot of students in live-in accommodation on site (hence the “matron”) giving the place quite a buzz. I wandered around in the late afternoon after sorting out the accommodation and was thrilled to see many groups of older people enjoying playing cards or mah-jong (the gardens are free to the elders) and the occasional man finding a quiet spot to play a musical instruments or sing. After the formality of Wuhan Botanical Gardens, these have a lovely natural feel, where real people can enjoy living their lives, not just visiting as an attraction.

I found the student canteen for dinner – they eat early here, 5.30 sharp – and was fascinated by how fast Chinese people devour their food. Maybe students are particularly skilled at this, but the trick seems to be to put your face as close to the bowl as possible so not a second is lost in flicking rice, meat or veg directly into the mouth. Some chewing seems to take place, but probably while the mouth is still open! Tonight I was one of the first to be served, and about 25 minutes later, one of the last to leave. In the meantime, around 60 students and come and gone. It was breathtaking!

I met the Acting Director, Professor Sun, this afternoon and it was a most rewarding experience. He gave me a good deal of his time as I explained how things had not quite worked out the way I’d expected in Hubei. We discussed Botanical Art, and it was he who had tried to set up a Conference with GABA, the Asian Botanical Art association, last year, but had been thwarted through lack of funds – mostly diverted towards the Olympics it seems.

He suggested I stay at Kunming Botanical Gardens and paint here, because of the difficulties in painting in the wild (and someone taking responsibility for me if anything happens) but do day-trips to the Western Hills a bit later. I felt such gratitude at this generosity after my previous experiences. There was no suspicion, and he has set me up with someone here who speaks English who can take to see plants I’ve already identified I want to paint, or maybe Henry plants I haven’t yet stumbled upon in these gardens.

He also said I could stay as long as I wanted – which should mean remaining in at least this level of accommodation. It’s certainly not the fancy Guest

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Accommodation I was anticipating, but I do have my own room – and as far as I can tell there’s no student bar here, so no late night revelry.

Last night the thunder started at around 8.30 (I was already in bed, exhausted from Xi’an and this dreadful cold I’m now suffering) and then the rain tipped down in stair-rods. It had eased by the morning, but there were occasional downpours in the morning as I wandered around the Medicinal Plant section, photographing beautiful, strange flowers – sadly not all labelled.

But now I have someone to help me identify them, and now I will have the time and ease to paint them. No matter that I won’t be painting all from the wild, I will at last be painting.

And in a place that I can settle – for it to become familiar – even if only for a short while.

Saturday 15 August

It’s just gone 3pm and I’ve come back to my room to shelter from the rain, having spent a good four hours in the Medicinal Gardens drawing and making colour references.

Codonopsis tangshen is a sprawling mass of delicate leaves and fine, climbing tendrils supported, in the herbaceous beds, on a low bamboo A-frame. Perched on a couple of bricks in the middle of a cultivated bed of beautiful red soil, I straining to grasp its structural details as the sky darkened and huge wasps sought out the last of the flowers. I really need to get a small folding stool – I’d bought one for our trip to Shennongjia, but sadly it disappeared, along with Scotty, in the taxi at midnight.

My next sketch saw me peering upwards to study the intricacies of Polygala arillata with its small, pea-like yellow flowers hanging carelessly over the path – not a Henry plant, but native to Yunnan and the mountains around Kunming. Carelessly, because the winged petals seem to be barely held together and the tiniest of movements saw them drop, spiralling down to scatter over the path. Just as I was setting up to paint, someone brushed the plant aside and I was startled to see the cluster I was studying fragment – instantly I recalled a dream I had last night. I had foreseen this event exactly. I was startled by this memory and wonder now about its significance. Those times when I have felt completely attuned to life seem now so distant; but they were real and perhaps that is what I must most strive for again.

After about an hour or so of concentrated detail work and struggling to keep the umbrella over the paper (tucking the handle into my shirt pocket), I was starting to flag. There’s no public café in the gardens – everyone brings their own food and drink – and having already missed lunch at the students’ canteen, it was back to my room for some biscuits and a cup of Nescafe (sachets with creamery and sugar, but the closest one can get to coffee here).

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Yesterday I spent the whole day walking the gardens with Professor Yuan Hui Kun, head of the Glasshouse section. He’s been with the gardens for a long time, starting off in the Herbarium and at some point spending five years in England at Wisley. Armed with my not-very-extensive-list of Henry plants and a copy of “An Enumeration of Plants Growing in Kunming Botanical Gardens”, we found a few species in flower, but mostly now starting to fruit.

Many of these plants in the Medicinal area are native to Yunnan, and some very rare, so I was pleased to see so many in flower – and some also bearing fruit which is a great bonus. Yuan Hui Kun’s extensive knowledge enabled him to easily identify interesting plants which bore no labels – and my notes and photographs which I downloaded last night enabled me to prioritise my painting time this morning.

The tired and outdated “hostel” that I’m staying in is just inside the West Entrance to the gardens; the canteen is opposite the driveway, and the main blocks of student accommodation to the right, and slightly up the hill. There is one modern block, two of similar construction but look as though they should be condemned, and two which have been completely gutted and are in the process of renovation. There are mounds of sand, bricks, and other construction materials, and works continue throughout daylight hours. This morning I was woken by the delivery of a truck load of aggregate at 6.15am – about two hours after the fighting dogs, which was about an hour or so after the thunder, which again was a few hours after the security vehicle beeped and flashed its way past the window. No wonder I’m exhausted by about 8pm!

But I have a treat in store for tonight, as I asked “matron” if there was anywhere to buy a beer and she, most concerned that I’d get lost if I attempted to catch a bus anywhere, offered to arrange for a couple to be bought for me. And this morning, while washing out my clothes in the covered courtyard, a young girl brought me two large bottles of amber liquid, setting me back 12 Yuan – or about 60p each. Now, how to figure out opening them…

Yesterday evening I walked across the botanical gardens to the main entrance, curious to see if the elders were still around, but they had gone to their respective homes. These seemingly gently folk are not all as benign as they might first appear. Preferring “natural” plants to shop-bought ones, they forage the gardens, picking young shoots, flowers and seeds, and even stripping bark off trees which have particular medicinal properties – Eucommia ulmoides was suffering such a fate, with a large strip of bark cut from the trunk.

Their “Food for Free” can cause considerable damage in the gardens and is problem that is now long-established and will be difficult, if impossible, to address. Other age-groups cause other problems; the reason why so many plants don’t have labels is that students in particular pinch them! Another favourite pastime of visitors is collecting fungi, and I saw people of all ages rummaging around in the grass and undergrowth searching for their prized specimens. As these are only the fruiting bodies, hopefully this activity causes the gardens a lot less grief.

The garden is divided into sections, with the Gymnosperms dominating the northern end. There’s a magnificent avenue of Sabina chinensis rising up from the

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ground in dark green spiky pinnacles – and a surprising number of towering Eucalypts, their silver-green foliage delicate in the evening light.

On the way back to my room, I thought I heard the start of gently rain – but there was not a cloud in the sky. I stopped, curious. I noticed the path was covered in small black specks and, looking upwards, the tree was startlingly bare – it had been completely defoliated. The culprits were thousands of yellow, black-banded caterpillars, now quite obvious on the branches and in the undergrowth, their droppings hitting the leaves and path below – sounding so much like rain! Some were spinning out a fine thread of silk, lowering themselves to the ground where they would continue feeding before cocooning to emerge some time later, no doubt, as spectacular butterflies. One or two had obviously thought going down was not a good idea and were laboriously working their way back up their silk threads. I didn’t hold out much hope for their future.

Later – I had hoped to move into a better room on the upper, second floor, where I have seen some large windows which would be perfect for painting when it’s raining. I have indeed just moved to an upstairs room, but I think there’s been a communication problem as the room is an upstairs replica of the one downstairs. Only it’s hotter, presumably absorbing heat through the roof during the day.

It seems the rooms with big windows are doubles – for couples not two single students, and I might just be out of luck. There’s certainly nothing I can do about it until Monday, when Feng Shi will be back in the office. I’d be more than happy to pay double the amount if it gives me the light I need. Being confined to your room by the rain is one thing – being unable to continue sketching or working on a painting quite another!

“What on earth am I doing, in the middle of China, sitting in a hostel room painting?”

Tuesday 18 – Thursday 20 August

The light has deteriorated rapidly from an overcast 125 / f5.6 400ASA, to a heavy, flat grey. Sporadic rain threatens – and surprises – and in frustration I have set up on the table in my room where the large wall-to-wall window offers as light as I will find today.

I was surprised to find the gates to the Medicinal Herb gardens locked this morning, until I remembered that they are moving a lot of plants this week and demolishing the outer, austere concrete wall. The replacement hedge will be a great improvement, proving a natural barrier and softening the appearance. I sought out Yuan, who introduced me to Yu Jian Yan, Head of Medicinal Gardens, and escorted me inside – whereupon I attempted to continue painting Platydodon grandiflora.

The plant is low growing making it difficult to study, but this time I sat on a chair – I badly strained my back the other day sitting hunched over on the path in an awkward position. I could feel the discomfort but was more intent on making some

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painting progress than listening to my needs, which was a foolish mistake – and one I have made many times before. I wonder why we think that discomfort somehow makes the experience more ‘real’. The old myth of suffering for one’s art…

Later – from the frustration of working inside – “what on earth am I doing, in the middle of China, sitting in a hostel room painting?” to the excitement of being handed a pot of six, small Begonia henryi collected from the wild at the weekend. Prof Sun, Feng Shi, Prof Yuan and a few others went off into the mountains on a collecting expedition –and how I wish I had been invited to join them!

The plants are still a bit in shock and the larger leaves are badly crushed, but there’s one half-decent flower bud and I think I can prop the leaves up so it looks like they’ve got a bit more life in them.

Begonia henryi isn’t rare, but is also not extremely common. It’s very low growing, on moist slopes where the water drips down through the soil. The plant has a small corm and produces just one leaf. The flower stalk is vibrant red and large patches on the forest floor make a striking contrast with the dark green ground-cover. Mature leaves have an interesting geometric pattern of markings – these appear red on the underside, but are brownish/ purple on the top where the green overlays the red. They are horribly hairy, and begonias wouldn’t be anywhere near one of my first choices to paint, but I feel it’s quite a privilege to have been handed the pot to take back to my room.

There’s another treat in store for me, if I choose. I’ve been offered the opportunity to paint a new species of Impatiens which has been in constant flower since it was discovered last February. I recall with some distaste the garish Busy Lizzies of English borders and hanging baskets – again not one of my favourite species – but these flowers are softer, and what a privilege to be one of the first to paint it.

Thursday

Lost most of Wednesday trying to get into town to wire money through to Shanghai to get my zoom lens fixed – something that challenged even Feng Shi as she battled over the Bank forms. I wouldn’t have had a clue.

The Bank was in a small shopping area of North East Kunming, and I took the opportunity to replace the reading glasses that fell out of my top pocket the other day, and buy some fresh fruit and real coffee. There’s a huge amount of construction taking place in the city (surprise!) resulting in horrendous traffic jams. After sitting on a bus for half an hour we legged it down deserted streets until we were in an area where we could flag down a taxi. Getting back to the gardens was equally frustrating as the taxi-driver found most of his usual routes blocked – resulting in a rather frightening, and unusual, tirade from the front which left us both rather shaken.

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I finished the study of Begonia henryi this morning and was pleased when Yuan remarked excitedly that he could easily identify it from the painting. I’d have been rather horrified if he couldn’t…

I’d produced a second list of plants I wanted to paint after poring over KIBs “An Enumeration of Plants Growing in Kunming Botanical Garden” and looking back through files on my computer. I’d forgotten that I’d done a certain amount of research into medicinal plants before I’d left England, and was really excited to come across the document BGCI (Botanic Gardens Conservation International) Plants for Life medicinal plant conservation and botanic gardens. This report was published only last year, and draws on a questionnaire survey of botanical gardens, experts and conservation organizations worldwide. The response to the survey was extremely encouraging and has resulted in a commitment by BGCI to develop and implement an international medicinal plant programme.

Various species are mentioned within the report of being of great importance for ex situ and in situ conservation – including a number held at KIB. In fact, Eucommia ulmoides is referred to: “possibly not known in wild, TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) tonic for arthritis and tooth fillings”. This is the same plant I mentioned earlier, and which is attributed to Augustine Henry, that has a web-like structure when pulled apart – and which suffers considerable damage when people strip the bark for their home-cures.

Eucommia ulmoides web in bark

Yuan allowed me to take a small twig from the tree which has a few seeds, and I can see that becoming my painting priority for tomorrow!

From the creative dearth of Hubei, the delays and frustrations of waiting for assistance to find and paint Emmenopterys henryi in flower – which never materialized – to the cornucopia of Yunnan…

How wonderful it would be to be commissioned to paint medicinal plants in the collection. Now there’s a pipe-dream!

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Clerodendrum bungei seeds

KIB, ethnobotany and Plantlife

Friday 21 August

The botanical gardens here at Kunming have a really easy sense of scale. There are structured plantings, but also semi-natural areas, interesting winding paths, and a change in topography. From the West Entrance, the hub of the Institute and where the students are based, the road curves upwards through well established conifers to “the main drag”: the Medicinal Herb Gardens on the left, the edge of the Arboretum on the right, the Greenhouses – where the elders can be found, day after day, playing their cards of mah jong. Then sloping down again through the stands of Eucalypts, the Gymnosperm section, the avenue of Sabina chinensis to the North Gate. And just outside, the busy street, three enormous factories and a great deal of noise.

Apart from the blocks of student accommodation, there are also apartments for researchers working on KIB projects. Staff used to live on site, but the apartments were sold off a few years ago and many of them moved out into the city, travelling in on the free buses that start arriving from their pick-ups around the city at 7.30am. There is now talk about buying back the apartments, but the uncertainty means that improvements are being put on hold as the owner may not be able to recoup their investment.

I was surprised how many people wandered around the gardens in the evenings, enjoying the surroundings – and guess that most of them live here either short-term or permanently. Men and women, some with their children, young people enjoying privacy in an enfolding, growing darkness.

And tucked in and around the gardens are a number of homes where caretakers or maintenance workers live with their families. The children have a wonderful, natural playground to explore, using their endless imagination to make their own entertainment – I don’t remember laughing quite as much as they do, as a child, nor having so many play-mates, but I do recall the wonder of discovery, and the joy of being outdoors.

It’s ironic to see these children, in their hand-me-downs, playing so freely and carelessly, knowing that they will never get anything more than a basic education, if that; their fathers and mothers working long hours, day after day, simply keeping the fabric of the gardens woven in place, perhaps never understanding the significance of their work beyond the doing. And the students attending the Institute, who use the plants in the gardens for their studies, learning the Latin names, their evolution, going on to their Degrees, and their Professorships – their careers.

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I have seen a number of Europeans around the campus (for that’s what it feels like), but haven’t known quite how to approach them – I’ve felt there must be more to life here than eating, sleeping, studying – or painting – and they would surely know. My hesitant approach to a young fair-haired man resulted in having dinner with Franz, his wife, their two small children and another Swiss research student at a small restaurant just outside the gates – yards from my room, but which I didn’t know was there.

I discovered there’s an Ethno Botany department here, that Caroline is writing up research on the ritual use of native plants by ethnic groups in Sichuan, bordering Tibet, that Peter is researching food plants collected from the wild, and sourcing material from local markets along with a Chinese interpreter from the Institute. And that the medicinal plants expert of Plantlife International, Alan Hamilton, is currently in Kunming.

I recounted my contact with Plantlife’s Press Officer and Editor, Sue Nottingham, back in April when I learned of their work at Ludian, in NW Yunnan – one of five international pilot projects working with local communities to find sustainable ways of harvesting medicinal plants, protecting a valuable resource, whilst addressing immediate economic concerns. Reading back over Sue Nottingham’s e-mail, she expressed considerable interest in my recording “some of the medicinal plant species being conserved in the forest reserves, and the gardens where farmers and individual householders are growing their own medicinal plants.” There are a number of Professors at KIB who gave been involved with this project – and if anyone can facilitate an introduction, then my chance encounter with the Swiss family might just nail it.

A back-up e-mail to Sue Nottingham wouldn’t be a bad idea either – remembering not to rely on others to ask for assistance on my behalf, but to be more pro-active: “if you don’t ask, no-one knows you want.”

A number of people have asked me now what I will do with my paintings, and as yet I don’t have an easy answer as the focus of my project, to paint plants associated with Augustine Henry, is by necessity shifting; there’s no plan for a book (and certainly not enough material) and at the moment they’d make but a small contribution to any exhibition. But the conservation of plants remains a key theme and no doubt a direction will eventually emerge.

Until then, my studies must stand on their own – an example of what I can do, of my deeper interests in botany. Studies of plants that have a cultural or economic significance – not always the most attractive, not the blousy cultivars of so much amenity planting, but sometimes the overlooked or seemingly insignificant such the dark green serrated leaves and thin, sap-green ovoid seed pods of Eucommia ulmoides.

Medicinal plants, rare or endangered plants, plants that have been used by people for hundreds or thousands of years – plants that are still important for life, and for our future.

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Painting in Kunming Botanical Gardens

Sunday 23 August

The watercolour paper I brought behaves quite differently in these temperatures, and I’m still struggling to get used to it. Initial washes dry rapidly, and can leave a hard edge which is difficult to remove; keeping the paper damp runs the risk of destroying the surface and ‘cauliflowering’, while taking too long to apply the paint runs the risk of having the paint well evaporate, increasing the intensity of colour or drying up altogether.

I need to spend several days just experimenting and re-familiarising myself with my materials. But I’m constantly starting to feel the pressure of time, and of how little I seem to have achieved.

Yesterday I discovered a whole new world outside the East Gate of the gardens, when I went for breakfast with The Swiss Family at a local market just 10 minutes away. The gate’s not marked on the visitor map as the entrance if for the Institute, rather than the Botanical Gardens, so I was unaware of its existence. It’s a thriving market, with areas dedicated to selling all sorts of meat products, fruits, vegetables and fungi, and tofu in all shapes, colours and textures – not much time to explore with the two little ones becoming fractious, but a great place to go back to with my camera.

I had planned to return this morning, or go into Kunming itself, but it turned into a bit of a non-day, and I just spent a few hours early afternoon enjoying a bit of sunshine and exploring tucked-away parts of the gardens – those shady spots behind the greenhouses, or barely-trodden paths past the compost bays and broken pots that disappear into the trees.

I also managed to get into the Admin building (it’s locked in the evenings and weekends, but students have keys so that they can use the computer room) and did some internet research on Ethnobotany at Kunming. I also discovered that I can bring my laptop and connect to broadband there, rather than having to use

their computers. This will mean I can download my e-mails directly onto my machine rather than holding them in Mail2web ether – another technological advance.

I took a few photos of the sketches I’ve been doing – sadly, no-where near the quality of a professional scan – but evidence that I am trying to accomplish something here. The Codonopsis tangshen and Eucommia ulmoides are Henry plants, but

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Platycodon grandiflorum one of the more attractive plants in the medicinal garden.

Codonopsis tangshen

Eucommia ulmoides

Platycodon grandiflorum

Still feeling a bit restless, I turned on the telly for the first time today – CCTV9 is an English channel which seems mostly to have regular Asian news and weather updates, current affairs, political or financial discussions of cultural programmes – although I haven’t watched enough of it to know what else they might offer. It’s the first news of any sort – national or international – I’ve been aware of since I arrived. I haven’t sought out English newspapers, or even know how easy they are to obtain. And I must admit I haven’t felt deprived, not knowing what’s going on in the world.

I have been reading though. The one non-travel book I brought is Dreams From My Father. Just one of the books I bought some time ago but, like so many other things over the past few years, never made time for. Barack’s journey of self-discovery is gripping – more so reading now with the hindsight of his Presidency than when the book was first written in 1995. There are numerous passages that are inspiring and illuminating – but what I read last night was more immediate and vital and resonated like a taut wire.

On his way to Kenya after his father’s death (the Old Man), he stops by Europe for a few weeks – and discovers that it is a mistake:

“It wasn’t that Europe wasn’t beautiful; everything was just as I’d imagined it. It just wasn’t mine. I felt as if I were living out some-one else’s romance; the incompleteness of my own history stood between me and the sites I saw like a

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hard pane of glass. I began to suspect that my European stop was just one more means of delay, one more attempt to avoid coming to terms with the Old Man.

“Stripped of language, stripped of work and routine…I had been forced to look inside myself and had found only a great emptiness there.”

That, perhaps, is when the real journey begins.

Feeling my way forward in a new world

Monday 24 August

The day didn’t start too well – I was expecting Yuan to let me know if he, or a student, would be able to take me to the Western Hills and explain the flora to me. By 10 am I decided to walk up to see him, taking my botanical sketches in case there was an opportunity to discuss some sort of project with KIB. I met him on the way, driving Feng Shi to the airport. He would call me tomorrow…

The frustration of uncertainty and delays was building – I needed to do something pro-active. So I dropped off my paintings, gathered my cameras and walked to the bus stop to go into the centre. I approached a young woman for directions, and it turned out that she had just finished an internship at the Institute. All Chinese who have studied English adopt an English name – a practice which I find rather odd, but which seems to please them – and Faye and I spent the next 40 minutes on the bus chatting like old friends, and arranged to meet up later as we were both planning to visit the Green Lake.

I then spent a tedious hour trying to find the Post Office (after having been sent to two Post Office Savings Banks) and retrieve a packaged from England which they had no record of, but easily found the camera store Faye had marked on my map to buy a camera bag – and prevent further mishaps. I eventually made my way through some fascinating, derelict old parts of Kunming – which of course were being torn down and replaced by modern structures – and the depressing bird and animal market.

So many wild birds crammed into tiny bamboo cages, geckoes, lizards and snakes in what looked like plastic lunch boxes, baby rabbits, mice and other small rodents – and more small wild birds jumbled up in a net bag ready to be traded to a stall holder. I saw no reason to photograph this casual cruelty.

The English Bookstore was harder to find, but I eventually bought a map of Kunming which wasn’t exclusively in Chinese, and headed for the Green Lake. Four hours walking was quite enough. We found a small Muslim restaurant and I had rice noodles while I got to know Faye and her friend from high school better.

The lake isn’t nearly as large as it appears on the map (they never seem to be to scale) but it was fascinating to see so many older people playing traditional musical instruments together, sometimes accompanied by fine female vocalists.

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Completely unselfconscious, often attracting a crowd of attentive listeners – even a rather brash brass band practicing by the lotus flower lake didn’t disturb the magic.

But I was flagging after so much walking, and felt very much in need of some caffeine. We walked away from the lake and past several coffee houses, until we came upon an area which had a strong western influence. Bars, cafes, signs in English – we passed Europeans mingling outside Salvador’s and headed up the narrow wooden stairs to an open-plan café with sofas, solid wooden tables and chairs – and a cosmopolitan clientele.

This was the Kunming of the guide books – where the Lonely Planet crowd hung out. The café/restaurant is owned by an American and Japanese couple, and has obviously struck a chord with both Westerners and Chinese alike. The place was clean the coffee and ice-cream excellent, and from the menu, a good range of European-style snacks and meals.

We were joined later by a Lebanese friend of Faye’s who was keen to show us a favourite place to eat, and we found ourselves down a lively side street near the University in Down Town Kunming sampling sushi and tempura as the thunder crashed and rain pummelled the bamboo awning, and we discussed the pros and cons of international study programmes.

I had heard that many Chinese wanted to study abroad, but don’t have sufficient grasp of English to be able to complete the initial application forms. Some struggle alone, but others from wealthier backgrounds pay an Agency to do the work for them. The Agency charges an enormous fee, but has experience of the application criteria and applies on the student’s behalf to a wide range of Universities, guaranteeing an element of success. However, they also told me about wealthy Chinese students being accepted Universities in London, but not bothering to study English – or indeed their subject – but spending their time drinking, socialising and playing computer games. Then returning home, perhaps to follow another “course of study”.

The rain cleared and we wandered down the street to Mandalays, a tardis of a bookstore with its rickety wooden stairs and nooks and crannies crammed with paperbacks which specialises in English, French and German books. After much searching we eventually found a copy of The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama’s second book – right by the checkout desk. I was surprised how expensive all the books were, even the second-hand ones – but then what is £10 for all those thoughts, for all those hours of enjoyment? You might pay that for a good meal or one night’s accommodation – the insights might last a life-time.

Thursday 27 August

Alan Hamilton is a delightful man, and was generous with his time discussing his involvement with the Ludian project in-between editing a scientific paper and preparing to leave for Shanghai. Sadly, it doesn’t look possible for me to go there – there are no trips planned from the Institute, and it isn’t the sort of project you

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can just fly into. No-one there speaks English, and they would be very wary of my arrival.

But as one door closes, another throws open a tempting sliver of light.

I finally caught up with Yuan yesterday to see if he had found someone to accompany me to the Western Hills, but while a number of students were extremely willing – I was offering to pay them – they were nervous about doing so as they lacked the were inexperienced in botanical field work. Eventually Yuan offered to take me himself, although I felt a sense of reluctance.

However, he was happy to show me where the Paris polphylla were in the Endangered Species garden, as the ones in the Medicinal Herb garden were atypical, distorted badly by being cramped in a metal cage – necessary to prevent people from taking them or their seeds. He had some business on the way, and I accompanied him into the Taxonomy department where I was introduced to Yu-Min Shui and other members of his team, including his wife.

It’s always awkward just being introduced to someone when they’re speaking about you in Chinese and you don’t quite know what’s being said – but they seemed delighted to hear I was a Botanical Artist.

I’d been carrying around my sketches with me “just in case”, and this time it seems to have paid off. They were thrilled with the Begonia henryi in particular – although it’s not one of my favourites – and then they produced some very fine pen and ink illustrations which had been done by their “resident” botanical artist, who had sadly died earlier this year. And they needed more illustrations done, they said…

After some brief negotiations, and much to Yuan’s great relief, Prof Yu-Min Shui and his wife are taking me around the Western Hills tomorrow and, if things work out, have invited me to go on a field trip to the mountains in September. They will also cover my expenses if I help them with some black and white illustrations – they are particularly keen to record a new species which has never been illustrated before. The drawings will be for publication in scientific journals – and this could be one of the little break-throughs I’ve been working so hard to achieve.

Timing could work out well too, as I will be heading off to Dali and LiJiang shortly, then down to Xishangbanna Tropical Botanical Gardens in the very south of Yunnan. I had planned to go straight to beautiful Guilin and Yangshou in Guangxi province for some R&R, but could easily delay this and head back up to Kunming.

After so many frustrations, and having to paint in Botanical Gardens rather than in the wild, it would be finally great to get into the field – and produce botanical illustrations which can be used for a particular, scientific, purpose.

Laws of attraction

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Thursday 27 August – later

Is it simply chance, that turns an ordinary event into something more special? Or is there something in timing, and the Law of Attraction?

I had planned to visit Kunming’s most famous attraction today, but had a bad night and couldn’t face the 2-hour bus journey. So Shi Lin, the Stone Forest, will have to wait another day. More pressing, I needed to get my back seen to, and started making enquiries into Chiropractors or Clinics – which is really difficult if there’s no-one around who speaks English – and eventually settled on Richland International Hospital (the International bit was the draw).

I left the guesthouse to catch the bus, and hesitated. Coming down the path was a young Chinese man, a research student at KIB studying alpine plants, whose bus home went directly past the Hospital. He insisted on taking me inside – a highly modern construction opened only two years ago, looks more like a hotel – but the Doctors had left for the day. I could be seen, however, for 20 pounds, or during working hours for 5 or 6 pounds – a much better plan.

If I hadn’t left my room exactly when I did, if I hadn’t approached the young man, who acted both as a guide and interpreter, it might have been much more stressful and I might not have got the information I needed. As it was, the whole trip took about two and a half hours, with a bit of shopping for the much needed coffee on the way, I now know where the Hospital is, and how it works, and have saved myself from having to spend out more money than is necessary.

So that’s Saturday morning dealt with, as I’m off to the Western Hills at 7am with Dr Yui-Min Shui tomorrow, Friday.

Monday 31 August

What an amazing – if pretty scary – couple of days!

Went off Saturday Morning with Prof Yu Min Shui, the Taxonomist, to The Western Hills, which has but towering hillsides overlooking Kunming covered head to toe with trees, a very long winding road to the main entrance where you run the tourist-trap gauntlet of stalls, several temples, and very steep steps carved through the rock, just inches away from the precipitous hillside. Amazing views over the lake which unfortunately were masked by low rain and fog.

This trip was less about my exploration of the flora, than about the Prof getting excited about the difference between two delicate Begonias or Impatiens, and then something unpronounceable which he has never seen in flower before; like bamboo it only flowers every so-many years, then dies back completely. His Nikon camera equipment is stunning (ring flash, a macro lens to put mine to shame – enlargements of the tiniest innermost parts of the flower – and he takes his professional shots with Fuji film as well as back-up with digital).

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As we walked back to the vehicle, past the stall-holders selling their tat, I noticed a small Begonia on the rock-face and recognized it as Begonia henryi! The tiny flowers were out, unlike the study I had made of the plants collected from the field, but my camera couldn’t do them justice – it was quite dark, flash simply bleaching them out, longer exposures without a tripod rendering them indistinct. However, it was an exciting find and shows that you don’t have to go into the very wilds of the countryside to find little gems.

The following morning, at 7am, I clambered into a minibus on another field trip with two research students, quite sure where we were all going or why. We picked up the Prof, his wife and 9-year old son up from the city, and drove for another 2 1/2 hours past the Stone Forest, off the highway onto a dirt road with massive pot-holes, and half an hour later up a tiny single track past ancient farm buildings made of fired mud bricks in the traditional way, to a small home-stead where we parked up. Then we traipsed for about 10 minutes or so into a beautiful, ancient oak forest on limestone – it reminded me partly of Wistman’s wood on Dartmoor, and partly of The Quantocks.

We had come there to study a species thought extinct, but discovered by the Prof last year, making news on the BBC: Gesneriaceae, Oreoicaris amibilis. And he wanted me to paint the plant – not just the flowers which were tiny, about the length of a finger-nail and about 3-4mm wide, but all the leaves – worse than Primula or Streptocapus for bumps – and also the habitat. The accompanying plants, mosses, lichens, stones, fallen leaves very important to show it was an oak forest. All this with a bored 9-year old leaning against my little fold-up stool, sucking noisily on sweets, staring at my work while I try – for probably the first time to employ new wet-on-wet water colour techniques in the field – balancing paper, brushes, water-pot (a waxed paper cup which was starting to leak), and pallet on my knee and staring in the gathering gloom at this little plant. Oh, and batting away mosquitoes all the while.

It was really getting dark now, and I heard the amazing sound of rain drumming on the forest getting closer and closer until, moments before the heavens opened, I stuffed the paper into my bag and whipped out the brolly. I huddled under a gnarled oak, stool, backpack and painting materials stuffed between my legs and under my arms as the rain poured soaking the backs of my legs, rivers formed around my feet, and everything was covered in the fine spray which forced its way through the fabric of the brolly.

We bore this stoically for about half an hour, but when it didn’t let up we slithered back to the van and headed home – about 2pm. Then the rain eased up, and moments later we were heading back into the woodland and setting up again for another couple of hours.

By 5.30 it was really getting dark – and starting to rain again. I packed up, but Prof was absolutely absorbed, bending over his petri dish, a research student holding the brolly, his lens inches away from the dissected parts of this poor, thoroughly examined, tiny yellow flower.

Supper was at 6 in the nearly village – lots of thin slices of cooked beef heated up in a central dish, into which various other items – tofu, veg, potatoes – were

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cooked. We all dunked our chopsticks in and fished out various bits and pieces – washed down with their lethal clear spirit which they say is like whiskey, but I think is a bit more potent, like pocheen.

We arrived back at the Institute, well fed but still soaked, at 10pm. Had it not rained so heavily we would have stayed in the local “hotel” (doss house) and returned on Sunday. Was I glad it rained! I was exhausted, and not sure at all I was doing a good job. I wish I could have sent the 9-year old packing, but I considered it part of the “trial” I was under.

And I think this trial period paid off and I earned the Prof’s respect as he phoned me this afternoon and we spent about 1 1/2 hours discussing the next few weeks. He knows I’m very interested in painting Emmenopterys henryi, and knows a place about 400 k away near the Vietnam border, where it may still be in flower. It’s possible that he can arrange for me to go there – with a driver – for a few days to paint it. It’s going to cost about 300 pounds or more, but if I finally get a chance to paint it, then I absolutely have to take it. Amazing, after all this time…

No-one will be able to speak English, but the driver (an employee of KIB) will ensure my safety, arrange accommodation – which will be extremely basic – and food. Absolutely essential to take my mosquito net…

Then, when I’m back (if this all comes off) I’ll head up to Dali and Lijiang for some R&R and a bit more painting – and practicing! – and back to Kunming where I could spend about a month doing pen and ink scientific illustrations and a paintings again of this plant for publication. Unlike the Chinese, my main interest is not in the publication, more using them as a portfolio for more work – and if they’re already in some scientific paper, all the better.

So I’m now a bit terrified that I can’t actually give him the quality of work he’s expecting, but I’ll jolly well give it a go. Oh, and he also wants me to help check the English grammar and construction of a scientific paper he’s written. We’re both interest in Augustine Henry, and who knows, if this trial works out, there may well be more opportunities in the future.

And if it doesn’t work out, I’ll just head on down to Vietnam and Cambodia – the weather should be a bit more comfortable later, and the rain eased off a bit.

Monday 31 August

Trip into Kunming to find art supply stores, get passport photos, buy a couple of items of clothing if warmer sleeping in a very rural village, pick up international mail and visit hospital for chiropractic adjustment. One of those “process” days.

Leaving Kunming – a new sense of freedom

Thursday 3 September

An hour out of Kunming, and the Expressway heads up through a steep, lush mountainous terrain, sprinkled with small villages, hamlets, settlements, adobe-

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coloured mud-brick houses with tiled roofs gently curved at the gables clustered together, curiously decorated with large paintings of dinosaurs; taller, mud-brick smoke-houses where the tobacco crop dries standing slightly apart. As the forested hills give way to cultivation, terraces of dark green maize jostle against acid green strips of tobacco crops, their partially defoliated stalks standing stark against the rich brown soil. In the small flat valleys between the hills lie the softer greens of rice paddies.

Scattered up the hillsides in the most inaccessible places, small Bai graves cluster together like ornate beehives.

This journey is bringing a new sense of freedom and adventure – a new beginning. Drawing the Fellowship to a close and moving on from the constant striving to accomplish what I set out to do. Discovering that the way I thought things might be were not at all possible from where I started. Realising that had the starting point been different, had I not inherited a plan based on a completely different premise – that of a botanist on a plant collecting trip – then they might have been. Accepting that while we learn from how other people think, how other people do things, it is only when we follow our own instincts that we find the path that is neither inherited nor a compromise, but which is unique and true to us.

I am not a city girl, and even being on the edges both at Wuhan and Kunming, I feel the weight of city, the people, the busy-ness and the dulling deadness of concrete draw the life out of me.

Perhaps the sense of relief in this journey has also something to do with the anticipation of meeting other travellers and speaking a common language, sharing experiences and discussing places to go, things to see – and perhaps doing things together – so I am not always visiting or eating on my own – a very lonesome experience.

I have caught the luxury, air-conditioned coach-with-toilet with only ten minutes to spare, just enough to grab a bottle of water, roasted cob from a street vendor, and packet of crisps – relying on instinct in my haste, I grabbed a packet I thought I recognised as plain, like Smiths or Walkers, completely failing to notice on the red packet the two chillies dancing brightly against the background…

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I had heard that eucalypts were a very invasive species in China, but I can’t help myself admire sea-green foliage shifting like kelp in the tide. But beneath their tall grace they are poisoning the soil – as with rhododendrons in England – creating an acid environment where the native flora withers.

It is all folds of mountains now, puckered together like so much smocking with olive green rivers winding between and small isolated farmsteads. And all the while the wide highway carves through this ancient landscape, raised above the valley floor finding the easiest course through the hills and mountains – as the people who originally settled here would have done. What they must think of this highway now – only 20 years ago the journey I am now making would have taken two days.

Nearly halfway through the 4-hour journey the landscape has flattened and we are passing though fertile alluvial plains given over to cultivation, invaded by a glistening sea of plastic of polytunnels, black horticultural netting, the linear villages straggling out alongside the base of the hills.

White fluttering scarecrows stand forlorn, the ghosts of generations still tending their land, trapped in their futile task long after the landscape all around has changed.

Where the highway has replaced the older road, businesses lie abandoned and land-locked behind the crash barrier. Where the old road survives, it winds through the valley alongside and lorries lumber through Jun Xing Village, suddenly giving way to a lake, brown with silt and a few small boats – the neck of the lake seeping into meadows where water buffalo and cattle graze. On the other side, small white temples peek through the sparse trees and women walk with baskets along the most convenient route, the railway line.

Further, vacant, grey concrete apartment blocks under construction stand sentinel to the raw gestation of another whole new city. Tall brick chimneys vent and the scarred earth testifies to another new highway bringing the people and jobs, perhaps, for these still ghostly structures.

Small local villages consumed, electrical power stations spawning pylons, their webs strung tight against the sky: a net of energy and power high above the reach of the few lone workers stooped in the soft green rice fields below.

These mountains are home to different ethnic groups, and Dali home to the Bai people, the oldest and second-largest minority group in Yunnan. The walled city sounds about the size of the centre of Bath, being able to walk from top to bottom in under half an hour, but like so many in China is based on a grid with clearly defined streets running north-south and east-west.

I have booked accommodation just outside the West Gate – preferring to be based away from the hustle and bustle of even a small town, but wanting some proximity.

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Wednesday 2 September

Just gone 10pm and I’ve packed my rucksack and am wondering just how I’m going to manage tomorrow on a couple of local buses down into Kunming for about an hour and a half, when it’s usually standing room only.

In addition to the backpack – which has heavy stuff like art-paper, books and shoes, computer and photography cables, and bulky stuff like a supply of malaria and water purifying tablets, toiletries and clothes – I have a day-pack which takes my laptop and all my other painting materials, plus various odds-and-sods that I might need to find easily: umbrella for those sudden stair-rod moments, wet-wipes, bottled water, sunglasses and hat, long-sleeved shirt, mozzie spray and mozzie bite relief, and some rather old biscuits for “emergencies”.

My camera bag is quite compact, but with three lenses it’s a noticeable weight. Finally, the shoulder bag takes all the other stuff that didn’t quite fit anywhere else. And then there’s the portfolio I bought the other day to keep my paintings flat when I’m out in the field… And the bum-bag with essential but not valuable things in, the money belt with all the other essentials, money reserves and very valuable documents. I hope it doesn’t rain.

The last-minute, and exciting possibility of being able to finally paint Emmenopterys henryi in flower was finally buried this morning, when the report from the field was of young fruit – the trees having finished flowering only two weeks ago.

The village I had hoped to visit was near the Vietnamese border, and would have required a driver accompanying me for the duration. One day’s drive there, several days doing field studies and whatever else I could cram in the time, and another full day’s drive back. Having to pay for the vehicle, travel costs and driver’s time, it would not have come cheap. Local knowledge was vital as there are still many unexploded bombs lying off the beaten tracks, left over from the war between China and Vietnam. It would also not have been a comfortable trip, staying in very basic accommodation – possibly a room in a local house and the sorts of things you worry about more as you get older, such as what if I need to go to the loo in the middle of the night – an abundance of mosquitoes, and no-one speaking a word of English. But it was certainly an opportunity worth exploring.

Tonight, however, it is with a much lighter spirit that I anticipate my journey to Dali, blowing away the sense of inertia I am always prone to when I settle into a place. Three weeks at the Kunming Botanical Gardens and a handful of studies. I think I may have had a rose-tinted view of what was achievable, having read experiences of artists going on flower-painting holidays, or believing that the intrepid artists of old, such a Marianne North, just headed off into the wilds with their wonderful talent and came back unscathed with a gallery-full of work. The reality is that the former are paying a huge amount of money for someone else to make all the arrangements for them; the latter have not only the finances behind them, they those all-important Letters of Introduction.

Dali

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Saturday 5 September

Dali is old cobbled streets, traditional Bai architecture and that wonderful mix of the countryside infiltrating the town. It is set back slightly from lake Er Hai at the base of the 13,000ft Canshang mountain range which extends some 40K north/south, and 25k east/west. There is a well-paved 18k trail running some way up the mountain with access to a number of temples, waterfalls, pools and meadows. It is a steep 1 1/2hour climb to the trail, or you can catch a cable car at the southern end or a chair lift half-way along. It is also possible to reach the summit, but that’s a trek that requires some preparation.

The Lily Pad guest house is very quiet – apart from the numerous dogs that bark at any unexpected night-time sound, each dog setting off another in a chain of canine communication around the hills.

There are a number of villages to visit around the lake, local markets and, of course, temples.

I joined a group of young Israelis in hiring a car to visit a local market at Wa Se on the opposite side of the lake, some 2-hours drive.

Bai Villagers Trading at We Se Market

Typical Side Street – Wa Se

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At the northern tip of the lake the road veers off to the right into a dusty, dirt and stone track. The hillside is scarred to bare rock as the road is re-built along its entire eastern length. Signs promoting new apartments indicate the level of development in the area, and on the way back from the market we stopped at Shuang Lang, where you can take a rather expensive ferry over to a small island with a huge hotel complex.

Fishing boats, Wa Se

It still has the trappings of a small fishing village, but the lake-front has been extensively developed with huge glass-fronted shops and restaurants and apartment blocks still empty – awaiting the next season’s tourists. While we were there they were laying the thousands of small light grey paving bricks, making up the promenade and parking area, well into the evening. That side of the river will be unrecognisable in 2010, attracting thousands of Chinese tourists who currently descend on Dali between July and August.

Sadly, the young people I shared the car with had no interest in stopping at any of the small villages we passed through, and even at Shuang Lang preferred to eat in the courtyard of a restaurant than explore with me the Folk Island peninsula.

This is still a small fishing village, but a number of very wealthy celebrities including singers and movie stars have built the most extraordinary houses there, overlooking Er Hai lake.

Modern architecture at Shuang Lang peninsular

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Local street at Shuang Lang peninsular

Huge slabs of marble and granite polished to a mirror finish connected with enormous sheets of glass rising from the rocks. Isolated and stark, the reflect a life-style completely incongruous with the traditional architecture – the simple homes of mud-brick and plaster that fit snugly together with a sense of earthy community found amongst the ethnic minorities.

Tiger Leaping Gorge

8 September 2009

I was looking forward to settling into a quiet pace of life in Dali for a while, when the opportunity to join a couple of people on a trek at Tiger Leaping Gorge landed right into my lap.

We put our main bags in store at the hostel and caught a 17-seater at 1pm from Dali for Lijiang, just managing to make the last connecting bus at 5pm for Changuan, a small town two hours further north, and the start of the Nature Reserve. We had to pay the entrance fee of 50 Yuan (5 pounds) to get to Jane’s hostel, run by a swarthy Tibetan woman in indeterminate age, but probably early 40s, who has clearly seen the harder side of life.

After having indulged myself for three days in Dali with a double en suite – with extraordinary pink lacy bed linen – I was in a rather dark and airless dorm of eight beds and a very basic squat toilet across the courtyard with a door that didn’t close. The light didn’t work either, but maybe that was a good thing. Sarah and I chose beds by the window, while Eric had a modicum of privacy behind a curtain near the door.

The eating area could cater for troops of hungry trekkers on their way to, or from, the Gorge, but apart from us and a few late visitors who booked into double rooms, we had the place to ourselves.

I was woken by a very pre-dawn cockerel and the intermittent scurry of what I can only surmise to be rats in the rafters. At 7.30am I was surprised to hear a morning drill of school children in the nearby school yard. Then it was breakfast and off and out down the paved road to the start of the climb, past a cluster of horsemen plying they trade. With the main tourist season over there would be small pickings – those setting out now would want to walk the trail, not ride it.

Gentle at first, past walnut trees and smallholdings, fields of maize with sunflowers still very much in bloom, winding up and around the base of the hills, arrows

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painted on stones and messages urging you to stop at the next, “the best”, tea-house or hostel.

And on we climbed, the path now rugged, stones protruding, the red eroded soil spilling into the fields washed down by sudden rain – but now dry, the sun hard and hot and barely a breeze.

The rugged trail

To our right the land fell away into the valley and as we worked our way around the mountain into the gorge. And behind us now, keeping pace with gentle persistence, one of the horsemen followed, stopping when we stopped to rest, offering with gentle persistence to carry at least one of us over the mountain. For two hours he tried.

Once we thought, we hoped, he had turned back, only to hear the horse’s bell growing steadily louder, ringing clear in the still, mountain air. I was convinced he had singled me out as the weakest – which I was, being quite unused to even hill walking and now embarking on a 2-day mountain hike – and was just biding his time until I realised it was all too much for me and would gratefully clamber onto his trusted steed.

But he didn’t count on my grit. Even his eventual offer to carry our bags over the mountain for 18 Yuan (less than 2 pounds) met with smiles and dismissive waves of the hand and we climbed ever more steeply upward towards “The 28 Bends”.

Sarah, Eric and the persistent horseman

And what a feat that was, as the deeply cut, rocky track zigzagged sharply towards the ridge and the jutting edge of the mountain. My heart was hammering, and I felt like stopping every few yards, but struggled on around this bend and that until I gratefully spotted an interesting plant to investigate and photograph – and was able to finally catch my breath.

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The flora was indeed very interesting, and I wish I had been with someone who could explain the plants and ecology to me – but instead found myself identifying some of them for Eric who is a keen gardener back in north Canada, although be bemoans the extremely short growing season there.

Refreshments in the most unlikely places

Wild Delphinium, Tiger Leaping Gorge

As we approached the highest point we were amazed to find two elderly women tending a small stall selling fruit, water and a few crystals. We had brought our own water and food, but I felt a sense of guilt, perhaps, at my lack of compassion as we walked past without stopping. The effort they had put in to try to sell just a few things, right on the edge of the mountain. The horseman who followed us for two hours for a few Yuan. A threadbare existence in a harsh, unforgiving countryside.

I’m not sure what one does with these feelings – understand and accept the inequalities of life? Strive to change them? I can certainly not ignore them…

As we moved around the precipitous edge, so below us the roar of rapids grew. Far down below us now, the turbulent silt-brown river rushed through the Gorge. Opposite, dark green forest rose almost sheer – the range Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, distant peaks lost in the cloud.

Looking back down into the gorge

The path was close to the edge of the mountain, but the route was easier and we dropped down slowly through the trees until the mountain softened into open cultivation, small villages settling in the hollows. It was well into the afternoon, and a rest at the Tea Horse guest house became an over-night stop, just 1 ½ hours short of our aim for the day.

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Tea Horse Hostel

The evening cooled, but it was still warm and dry and we had no need for the fleeces and rain jackets we’d brought. And what stars in the clear, black sky! We watched them shift against the mountain silhouette until the gathering clouds obscured them – and then thrilled to the lighting caught inside, flashing wide across the night, distant thunder rumbling amongst the peaks.

After some discussion we had rejected the 20-Yuan-a-bed dorm with its low, dark-wooden ceiling and cell-like window in favour of a newly constructed pine chalet-style room, with toilet, with a view over the mountains. I didn’t want to sleep for watching, and lay in bed gazing through the window at this natural wonder.

Looking across towards Jade Dragon Snow Mountain

Next morning was bright and clear, the distant peaks of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain dusted white, and we hit the trail again. But the rugged forest track of yesterday had given way to a concrete paved road servicing the village and although the views across the Gorge were good, we felt as though we had experienced the best part of the trail.

This, together with a developing migraine probably caused by the heat, physical stress and my back being out of alignment, caused us to finish the trek at the next Guest House and take a car back to the starting point, Changuan, to catch a bus back to Lijiang and then Dali.

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Wild Begonia

The car arrived about 40 minutes later and took us almost straight down the mountainside on a newly constructed concrete road in an endless sequence of severe hair-pin bends which the driver approached, thankfully, with some caution. Each bend was exactly the full lock of the steering – there were no crash barriers and any misjudgement would have seen us toppling over down to certain death. We dealt with this in different ways – I gripped the seat with whitening knuckles, Sarah enjoyed the views, and Eric, in the front seat, closed his eyes unable to bare the tension.

Eventually we joined the tourist road that runs alongside the river at the base of the Gorge, navigating around rock-slides, sheer drops, and tour busses throwing up great clouds of dust. The tour bus car park was overflowing and the side of the road for about half a mile was nose to tail, with great troupes of Chinese tourists excitedly following their leaders to view the Tiger Leaping Gorge rock in the middle of the river: a sight that we forwent in favour of retaining our wonderful memories of an almost deserted mountain trail.

At Changuan we parted company with Sarah who was going north to Shangri-La, and waited at the side of the road for a bus heading south, only to meet up with our fellow trekkers who had completed the whole route. We shared the mini-bus – affectionately known as “a toaster” being a little white oblong box on wheels – down to Lijian where Eric and I stayed the night before going back to Dali.

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Codonopsis Pseudocodonopsis forrestii? As identified from my blog by Tom Lammers, Herbarium Curator, Oshkosh Department of Biology and Microbiology, Wisconsin, USA

The ancient city of Lijiang was a whole other experience…

Shaxi Part I

Thursday 24 September

The rice harvest was well underway when I left Dali last Sunday, heading north once more to the historic town of Sideng in the Shaxi Valley which I had visited just 10 days prior.

The Shaxi Valley was part of the “southern silk-road” which was active up until just after the 2nd World War. The route was important for bringing tea, horses and other items of value from Tibet down into southern Asia, along with cultural and religious influences between the many different ethnic groups along the way.

The township of Sideng was an important staging post along this Tea and Horse Caravan Trail, and many of the traditional wooden houses used as shops and inns still exist around the central market area.

However, with the decline in trade through this route, these had deteriorated so badly that a unique historical record of a lifestyle which had existed since the beginning in the Tang Dynasty (618 – 907), and flourished over five centuries throughout the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368 – 1911), was in danger of being lost.

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Market Square

Market Square detail

East Gate

In 2001 this was officially recognised, the Market Square at Sideng placed on the list of the World’s 100 Most Endangered Heritage Sites and the Shaxi Valley Rehabilitation Project established. The Project is an international collaboration between the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the People’s Government of Jianchuan County where Shaxi is based.

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Shaxi – Sideng Village Historic Map

Sustainable development lies at the heart of the project – renovations have been done sensitively, retaining the character of the village; improvements have been made in terms of sanitation and lighting, and a framework for economic development incorporating traditional income streams as well as new tourism opportunities has been established.

Side street restoration

The rural community of the Shaxi valley is predominantly from the Bai ethnic minority, with a population of approximately 22,000. It is a poor community, and in 2004 the annual per-capita income was approx 1170 CNY. There have, of course, been exchange rate fluctuations since then, but at today’s rate that’s the equivalent of 104 GBP, 171 USD, or 0.47 USD a day. In 2005 the World Bank established a reference line for poverty based on an income of 1.25 USD a day.

The main income source is through agriculture – the valley is predominantly under rice production, maize is also grown, there is some live-stock breeding and an important source of seasonal income comes from the collection of mushrooms in the surrounding mountains. There is also a small trade in medicinal plants.

It is the trade in mushrooms and medicinal plants that finds me in Shaxi for the second time – not for personal consumption, although I love wild mushrooms, but

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through one of those amazing coincidences that I am learning to accept as a normal part of life.

It was just over a month ago – in my diary entry of 21 August – that I met the Swiss Family Huber at the Kunming Institute of Botany, both Franz and Caroline studying ethnobotany in China. They had told me about their field trips in September to a rural village in the mountains between Dali and Lijiang and I had thought maybe I might meet up with them as I headed into northern Yunnan but I hadn’t marked the village on my map and had forgotten its name.

Using Dali as a base I had already ventured beyond Lijiang for the Tiger Leaping Gorge trek, so when Nicole from Holland was enthusing about a small traditional village she had heard about, not more than 3-4 hours drive north, it seemed worth exploring. Eric was also keen to visit, so we hired a car – being told that it was difficult to get to by bus – and spent two wonderful days exploring the village and walking up to the temples and “grottoes” in the surrounding hills.

The time was far too short and I vowed to return. It was only when I contacted Franz to find out where they were headed that I discovered that their research was based in Shaxi. They had been here for a few days already when I returned, checking into the Laomadian Guest House, one of the main historical inns on the edge of the market square that had been extensively renovated, yet which retained all its old character.

Laomadian Guest House

There are a number of small courtyards within the complex, with a range of accommodation from double-bed en suites – with all mod cons – to simple 3-bed dorms with one shared shower and a mix of western-style and squat toilets. The restaurant can seat up to 30 people, there is a café which borders the square, and an additional eating area upstairs overlooking the courtyards.

The building has a traditional base layer of stone upon which rammed earth and mud brick walls rise, the eaves extending outwards protecting them from rain. Internal walls are wood panelled and the lower floor of stone or tile. Some of the outer walls retain their traditional mud and straw plaster, painted white with predominantly black decoration.

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Rammed earth and plaster

The lattice-shuttered windows are small, making the rooms dark, but these have been glazed to protect against wind and there is electricity throughout. There is also WiFi, which is how I have been able to send and receive e-mails, and do internet research for planning my future travels.

Laomadian Guest House dorm

The Hubers occupy the upper floor above the two small dormitory-style rooms – I am fortunate to have one of these rooms to myself as it is small and there is no-where to hang clothes apart from the back of the door – and while the ceiling has good insulation, it is not sound-proof against two small children running around on the wooden floor early in the morning!

Franz’s research involves interviewing a sample of families from Shaxi and the surrounding villages about their collection of mushrooms or medicinal plants, whether for trade or home use. He and Caroline have been involved with the Shaxi project for over five years and work with an interpreter, Frank, who is also based in Kunming, mainly teaching Chinese to foreigners.

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Frank Interviewing a farmer

I was tentative about asking if I could accompany Franz on one of his interviews, but he was very relaxed about it. So the first morning Franz, Frank and I walked to the neighbouring village of Changle to meet the Village Official and ask for permission to interview a number of families from different economic backgrounds. After the obligatory tea and passing round of cigarettes, he took us to a very poor family on the edge of the village, Franz buying four bags of sugar as a gift from the tradition stall-type shops on the way.

Preparing maize for drying

I was very keen to make sure that the family was happy with me taking photographs of them and their home, but this seemed to be no problem. So while

Franz and Frank worked through their questionnaire, I wandered around photographing the interview process and the other activities that were taking place around the outside courtyard: the farmer’s mother plaiting the corn-husks together for hanging and drying and the Tibetan mother and child listening to the questions with keep interest.

Tibetan mother and child

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Because Franz was working through the questionnaire in English, and Frank translating the answers, I was able to gain an insight into this family’s lifestyle that I would never have been privilege to as a tourist to Shaxi. I was amazed that people are quite happy to discuss their and their family members’ ages and educational level, and go into great detail about the income they derived from various sources.

The Grandmother

There was no reluctance in any way to discuss such private matters – and I wondered if it was because they are used to revealing such information to Chinese officials. This may be part of the answer, but more-so there is a great reliance between individuals, families and neighbours within these villages to ensure a reasonable level of existence, and this information is simply not seen as being private. Unlike in the West where income – and more importantly the accumulation of wealth – is not a subject for open discussion. These predominantly farming families do not own their land, and have little opportunity to improve their situation outside increasing their educational level. And there is little incentive for this.

Farmer’s courtyard

Because farming is a seasonal occupation, other work is sourced from outside the village where possible. The first farmer we interviewed supplements his income by travelling to Dali where he paints the traditional decoration on the sides of buildings. Others are carpenters or labourers. But for the men who are completely

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unskilled, there is little opportunity for additional income apart from the seasonal trade from mushroom collecting or growing medicinal plants.

Over the course of about a week I accompanied Franz on a number of his interviews, learning a little more each time about the people who inhabit this peaceful valley – and about their perceptions of why the trade in mushrooms or medicinal plants is declining and, from some, what they believe could be done to protect the environment. This is part of the subject of Franz’s research, and my “fly-on-the-wall” experiences are grossly insufficient to allow me to draw any conclusions. However, I can allow myself some observations.

The Mushroom Collector

Saturday 26 September – Shaxi Part II

The interviews that Franz was conducting within the local community of Shaxi for his research brought us into contact with farmers from different economic and educational backgrounds – some better able to adapt to change than others.

We were all keen to get out into the hills and see for ourselves how easy – or hard – it was to find mushrooms, so were really pleased when we had the opportunity early on.

One of the first interviews was with a very poor farming family – they made little money from farming and the son was unskilled, his main ability being mushroom collecting during the few short summer months; the mother was chronically ill and there was left to buy medicines.

Like many of the households, the buildings around the central courtyard were shared with other families, usually relatives. However, this is not always the case as during various governmental reforms designed to make housing more equitable, landlords were required to share their own properties which were only partially occupied with new families. In Dali and no doubt other places, this extended to many privately owned homes.

Head of the household

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The different economic status of the families around this courtyard was clearly evident – half of the buildings were in a good state of repair while the rest suffered from dilapidation; one side of the courtyard lay vacant and derelict – the family had once planned to build a house for their daughter…

Where the daughter’s house should be

The son agreed to lead us into the mountains the following day if the rain appeased. It did. We walked to the next village and set off at about 9.30 through the narrow lanes of Changle into the hills, out past fields of maize and plots of land planted some 10-years ago with chestnut, walnut and other crop-bearing trees – part of the reforestation scheme (a curious definition).

Forest protection laws had been introduced many years ago in an attempt to encourage local people to manage the hillsides around the villages, prevent deforestation, and provide an additional source of income.

Each family was allocated a parcel of forested land, but the boundaries were never clearly defined, leaving people disempowered – and the environment as vulnerable as ever. Elders expressed concern that without clear government guidelines, and with no-one responsible, there was an increased tendency to exploit whatever resources were available. They were particularly troubled that there was a move away from protecting forests and resources for the future, towards thinking just of the “now”.

Heading out of Changle

Interviews had revealed differences of opinion as to why there was a decline in mushroom productivity over previous years: some said that there were too many people walking through the forest, compacting the earth and preventing the mushrooms from emerging; some felt there were simply too many people collecting – certain mushrooms commanding a very high price; yet another concern from the other side of the valley was the practice of the Yi minorities in cultivating the hillsides for potatoes – destroying areas that

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had previously been available for mushroom collecting.

It is perhaps all of these things, but there is another contributory factor – and this is only my perception from what was being discussed, Franz was the one doing the scientific research – and that is that the climate is changing. Rains are coming at different times, but overall it is dryer. What this means for the fragile economy is as yet unknown – nor how this will impact on this one particular poor family.

The Mushroom Collector carried a split bamboo woven basket slung over his back, and we were handed walking sticks – a nice gesture, but surely not necessary.

A short way up the hill this gave way to open scrub, and the signs of erosion on the red soil. Pine trees, mutilated for firewood, were effectively bonsai’d – few trees were more than a couple of feet high. Stumps were evident where they had been removed completely, even though the area was protected from felling Some were heavily encrusted with bearded lichen, looking bedraggled, cobwebbed and neglected.

And into the hills

We moved higher, into a more forested area, the thick lush, vibrant green pine needles refreshing against the red soil. Looking back we realised how high we were climbing, the Shaxi valley a thin, pale green sliver between the blue clouded mountains on the other side of the valley.

High in the hills

It was easy to forget what we had come here for – until The Mushroom Collector disappeared off into the forest leaving us wondering if we should follow. Suddenly we became excited that perhaps we would be the first to discover a mushroom,

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and we moved eagerly, and slowly, through the trees peering for something we weren’t quite sure of. Were the mushrooms white? We investigated white rocks. Were they brown? Red?

A shout brought us running – the first find, white, edible, but not valuable. He gently worked the stick into the soil clearing it from around its base and prised it up – before stowing it safely in the bottom of his basket.

Another find

We walked on, the pattern repeating itself – our expert disappearing off and discovering another one, or two, more finds. It was later, during more interviews, that it became clear that mushrooms appear in the same place – so of course he knew where to look: many places would have drawn blanks, or already been harvested, but our eager stone sightings and leaf-turnings would always have been barren.

We climbed on. The hillside became steeper. Paths petered out into animal trails. Animal trails petered out entirely – and I was then grateful of the walking stick, using it as another pivot point as we sometimes slid, sometimes scrambled down – and across – ravines. And it really was incredibly steep. Here I was with a local guide who did this route perhaps every day out of necessity, a fit young guy from Switzerland and our Chinese interpreter. And me – determined, but not very used to climbing mountains. There was no going back. It was just a matter of keeping up.

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High up over the valley

When we rounded the mountainside and I saw a thick green reservoir below us, I had a thread of hope. It was now four hours in and we had barely rested. Let alone eaten. We had bought some scant provision – a few boiled eggs and some rather dried pastries – a bit like Eccles cakes but stained pink in places: the printing on the bag was on the inside… And not enough water. I don’t think any of us had expected it to be so exerting.

The reservoir was not for drinking, but we did stop to eat and then the path got easier and we found ourselves walking into an area of cultivation again. And invited into the Reservoir Keeper’s house. He had lived there for 19 years with his wife, looking after the reservoir – and fishing it.

The Reservoir Keeper

There was a huge fish in a “holding tank” underneath the constantly running tap – for later. We gratefully replenished our water bottles, and The Mushroom Collector settled into what was obviously a social routine of smoking cigarettes through a huge bamboo bong.

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The Reservoir Keeper’s Wife

Despite great protestations from the wife, we declined her offer of a lunch and headed down a more gentle path – the course of water back into the valley, where the vegetation became more interesting. As well as mushrooms, I had been keeping an eye out for interesting flora, and I was eventually rewarded with a few gentians, orchids and begonias. There were other plants I couldn’t identify, but which Frank assured me were medicinal – given that one in three plants is considered to have medicinal properties, that wasn’t too difficult.

Orchid species

One in particular was interesting, resembling Spindle, Euonymous europea, and another with small red berries hanging down in bunches like red currants, which had a very strong spicy taste. And wild Monkshood – know for its toxicity – which I didn’t taste.

The Spindle like fruit

And then we were descending back down through the red eroded soil into the cultivated fringes of the Shaxi valley, passing women with wooden yolks bearing huge baskets of harvested corn cobs, children just out of school running up through mud-brick flanked passages, more women bent over with their huge crop of dried tobacco leaves disappearing down through the narrow streets.

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Forest trails

We had found only four edible mushrooms in our seven hours – not enough to keep a family alive, let alone one with a seriously ill mother. We pressed The Mushroom Collector for further information about her fall and subsequent illness, and why Western and Traditional Chinese Medicines weren’t able to help, but the answers weren’t at all clear. What was clear to us however, was the lack of money to buy options. As we walked back towards the house we agreed that we would double the fee we were paying, with half to go for medicines for his mother.

Returning to the village

While we were concerned for her health, I really wasn’t prepared for the request that followed: to take a photograph of the farmer’s wife – in case she died. I was ushered into her bedroom where they were attempting to peel back her bedclothes to show me her injuries, she passively resisting, protestations, my acute embarrassment and the pre-flash – there was no light in the room – bouncing around trying to find a focus as she subjected herself to this indignity.

I felt it.

But I also knew that the husband would be so comforted by an image of his wife – to remember her by – when she died.

It is then an enormous privilege I have, to be able to give him this gift. But I am not at peace with myself enough to feel that yet.

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Shaxi Part III and the road to Lijiang

Sunday 27 September

The weather changed today – at 5am the stars were bright against a black sky in the now crisp air. And it dawned bright and sunny, with lingering mists trailing through the mountains before burning off. The rice harvest will start tomorrow in earnest, having been held back by the rain over the past week.

The Swiss Family Huber will return to Kunming tomorrow, unable to continue their interviews once the heads of households are all in the fields. Their next field trip is towards the end of October high up in the mountains north of Muli with other minority groups as part of Caroline’s research project. And while it sounds very exciting to have the possibility of taking part and contributing my photographs, the accommodation is one simple room and, with no chairs or low stools, sitting is cross-legged on the floor which is uncomfortable at the best of times, but with a pelvis or vertebra not quite in alignment, could be excruciating.

Both Franz and I have bad headaches this morning which we feel we really can’t blame on the small glasses of red Yunnan wine we had at the Tea Horse café; rather, he attributes it to the change in weather – and I, to sitting too long sorting photos on the computer and the two bottles of beer I had before those small glasses of wine!

I find the minorities here extremely friendly, and a smile, nod and “neehah” greeting nearly always gets a broad smile, nod and some unintelligible comment in response. Even a smattering of Mandarin would be lost between us, both speaking completely different languages, but the understanding is mutual. I value these exchanges more than the perhaps furtively grabbed shots of them going about their business at market, or the unabashed pointing of the lens in their direction causing surprise or making them feel uncomfortable. Furtive shots always look just that.

But the Friday market is a wonderful opportunity for people from all across the valley, the villages and the hills, to trade their wares – whether it’s local produce, fruit, vegetables and truck loads of potatoes, chickens, spices, herbs, vats of chilly powder, cheaply made clothes, huge stainless-steel pans, hand-made baskets and brooms, tofu or various cuts of meat or other more specific animal body parts.

Shaxi market

The market starts early, with many Bai or Yi arriving in traditional costume – the headdresses of the married Yi women being quite spectacular, a five-cornered bamboo frame

covered in black material and measuring about a metre wide. It is also a social event where a great deal

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of gossip takes place. More poignantly, some trading takes place at a very personal level: women selling their long black hair for wigs; elderly women with small paper bags containing culinary seeds of various sorts that they have grown during the summer; old wizened folk with small bundles of equally withering medicinal herbs they have collected to treat a sore throat or headache…

And a few herbs

Perhaps I should have bought them as a few days later I felt a cold coming on – and off it was to the local Herbalist. He had been very involved in helping the Hubers and Frank establish their presence in Shaxi at the beginning of their involvement five years ago. His pharmacy is on the corner of the road leading down to the old town and he deals in both Western and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). He was thrilled when I turned my nose up at Western medicine.

Herbalist preparing concoctions

It was fascinating watching him take the old tins off the shelf and pour handfuls of dried herbs and various unknown substances into a cone of newspaper and then disappearing into the back room to boil it all up or infuse it. I was then handed a very hot glass jar holding a rather bitter thick green liquid. However, figuring out how to take the concoction was quite challenging as Franz and Frank had gone off to do more interviews and neither the Pharmacist nor his wife had any English.

I wandered off back to the hostel and pondered the meaning of what I had understood as “three”. Drink three times a day? Go back at 3pm? The Herbalist wanted me to take a photo of him, so I figured that if I went back at 3pm I might at least get one of my interpretations right – and take the photo at the same time. But he wasn’t there – and after a great deal of sign language with his wife, I finally realised that I was supposed to return three times to fill up my jar and drink it hot there and then! Whether it was the concoction or not, my cold abated and I rather sadly prepared to leave Shaxi and head over to Lugu Lake via Lijiang. But not before a last inquisitive look at the nightly trading in mushrooms.

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The mushroom traders

At around 7.30pm every night during the season, collectors come down from the hills to trade with the dealers who set up across the small town. When I was in Shaxi a few weeks prior (my first brief visit with Eric and Nicole from Dali) we had seen basket-loads of different kinds of mushrooms cramming the kiosk-style shops on the main street: shops that during the day sold kitchenware, shoes, or were hairdressers.

The mushrooms were prodded, weighed, sorted and graded, and packed into white polystyrene boxes with ice-packs in the bottom, carefully laid layer upon layer with paper in between, until they filled the very top. Then stacked into waiting vehicles and driven off into the night. I later discovered, with Franz, that the very best and valuable mushrooms were driven straight to Kunming for a flight out to Shanghai, and from there to Japan. Some big money was changing hands in Shaxi.

But the season is short, and in the few weeks between my two visits, it had tapered off to just a few transactions taking place – seemingly furtively – in the darkened kiosks, and a small number or rather despondent collectors bringing in just a handful of mushrooms. Rather like The Mushroom Collector who wouldn’t have made more than one or two pounds from the few we gleaned on our day-long expedition. And once the rice-harvest is over, what employment will these poor farmers find during the winter months, I wonder.

Monday 28 September

I caught the local 7-seater “toaster” bus to Jianchuan with Frank, who needed to buy the Hubers’ tickets back to Kunming the following day. I had hoped to catch the 11.30 bus, but as I was the only passenger I was told it wouldn’t leave and would have to wait for the 1.30pm. I checked my baggage into the Deposit Office and wandered around the busy Monday market with its many different ethnic groups, and into the quieter back-streets.

The old traditional buildings of wood were probably in the same state as many had been in Lijiang before it became such a tourist attraction, but there was no such investment here: many abandoned buildings, broken railings, litter and a general feeling of decay – as well as the acrid smell from open sewers

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. Jianchuan backstreets

I turned a corner and came upon a gated apartment block with a broken children’s fairground ride in the front garden – alongside the debris and rubble was a huge pile of discarded material that an old man was sorting through for anything recyclable.

Fairground Apartment

When I got back to the waiting room I was very surprised to see a David Attenborough programme on squirrels, dubbed into Chinese, on the obligatory TV. The reception kept fading and most of the time it was “snow” without a hint of colour.

I was finally able to buy my bus ticket and take the road out of Jianchuan to Lijiang heading north through the valley past an industry of marble grave monuments ever-more ornate. I find the practice of concentrating industry, craft or trade in one area in China interesting. It certainly leads to transparency, making it easier for the purchaser to compare quality and price, with the proximity of traders making this most competitive. It is also more efficient in terms of delivery of raw materials or stock. However, I prefer to see a mix of businesses, with perhaps the element of surprise, stumbling over something you would not normally seek out – rather like finding a wonderfully diverse wildflower meadow rather than a field of corn.

The maize harvest is now over in this valley, and the discarded stalks piled into stooks or strewn across the field providing fodder for browsing cattle, horses and donkeys.

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Stacking corn

Verandas are festooned with drying cobs, roofs turned yellow, ledges weighed down, and any tall structure serves as a drying post. Cobs that have dried sufficiently are stripped and the kernels raked out across the pavement or yard to complete the process. Sunflowers that had been planted amongst the corn now stand etiolated and forlorn, their heads bowed under the weight of ripening seeds.

Chillies too are being harvested, strung together in huge glistening red ropes alongside the bright yellow corn.

Chillies drying

I have not seen any of the older, white or coloured varieties of corn except for a few cobs in local farmers’ homesteads when accompanying Franz on his research. The yields are poorer – one farmer proudly showed us the seed packet of the commercially grown, bright yellow, variety. And

while we might regret the demise of the genetic diversity, one can hardly blame these small farmers for wanting to take every opportunity to maximise their income.

And the farmers in the Shaxi Valley will farm whatever is the most profitable – whether tobacco, maize or rice – although much of the rice is for personal consumption. Tobacco growing is different (although some may well be for personal consumption) and managed by quota per village, or cluster of villages, the dried leaves meeting strict government standards. It is labour intensive as this high quality comes at a price – spraying, mulching with plastic, fertilising, selecting and harvesting and grading leaves, then drying in the tall smoke-houses before transporting for sale. The government is introducing new regulations from next year for smoke-houses to use a combination of coal and wood to reduce the impact of deforestation. Whether this change will increase the costs of drying is unknown but no farmer seems to be concerned about it.

An hour out of Jianchuan and we have reached the neck of the valley where the pine trees come almost to the roadside – only to open up again into another valley where the maize harvest has yet to start and tobacco stands thick with leaves, some well in flower, their delicate pink tubular flowers bursting in sprays from the top of the stalks. Now we turn off the valley road and head up into the hills, again the red crumbling soil exposed on great raw edges to the road.

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The start of the rice harvest

Great jagged mountains rise up on the far side of the valley, a swathe of broken cumulous casting dark blue shadows in patches down their flanks. There is sparse and scrubby vegetation giving way to pale bare rock, or soil, with dry rivers of shale running down the crevasses. Now climbing over the mountain top we pass a Tibetan temple and into an area of re-forestation, the pale green pine needles thick, past beekeepers selling jars of clear pale honey alongside clusters of dark roadside hives. The temperature has dropped as we climb, and the windows mist.

We will soon descend into Lijiang and I must brace myself for the intense commercialisation of the Old Town, and the thousands of Chinese tourists now travelling to all the hot spots during The Golden Week. What a contrast to the peace and tranquillity of rural life in Shaxi.

Breathing fresh air and painting again!

Zhongdian, Yunnan Province, 29 October 2009

I have been very remiss in keeping my blog up to date, which has prompted one or two people to e-mail me, concerned about my whereabouts.

No news, in this case, is good news – I have been in Zhongdian, or Shangri-La, for just over three weeks, and the reason for the silence is that I have been out and about painting the alpine flowers I find in the hills just 15 minutes from the hostel in Old Town. The first time I stumbled into a small meadow beyond the decaying mud brick city wall I was astounded to find carpets of vibrant blue gentians – and then I discovered more and more tiny mauve and purple species.

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Painting of Gentian veitchiorum

So I’ve been rather busy painting them – and trying to find out more about the flowers and plants of the area. Rather late in the season, I know – and since I arrived the weather has changed rapidly. The first week was warm and wet, if a bit chilly in the evenings. It has now turned very cold at night – with heavy frosts in the hills – and scorching hot in the day with clear, azure skies.

The mountains are predominantly a mix of conifer, silver birch and evergreen oak. The leaves have suddenly turned – a dusting of yellow, now mostly blown with a chill northerly wind and crunching under foot. Larch glow in the late afternoon light, holding onto their needles longer.

But there are many species that I can’t identify, so I have been asking around for information on the plants and ecology. The bookshops have nothing. The Shangri-La Alpine Botanical Gardens has a big, picture, reference book “The Wild Flowers of Hengduan Mountains” tucked away upstairs on the shelves of its café; I have seen another book on “The Flowers of the Three Rivers”; I have been lent a large, out of print copy of “Highland Flowers of Yunnan” in Chinese and English, interestingly written, edited and photographed by people I met at the Kunming Institute of Botany.

But there is nothing available for the traveller or trekker who might just want to know a bit more about the plants they may see on their walks around the area.

And that’s got me thinking!

So apart from busily painting the gentians before the frost kills them off, I’ve been talking to different people about whether there’s a need for some sort of field guide – something you can stuff in your pocket and take on a walk. Something to underpin the cultural aspects of eco-tourism that already exists: you can take any number of tours to visit a Tibetan village, eat a meal in a traditional house, see an example of traditional crafts – but no-one can tell you anything about the plants you might see on the way.

So I’ve been busy on my computer writing up a proposal and passing it by various people here who might be interested in funding it. There are quite a number of NGOs working in the area on social and environmental projects, so it’s been a matter of talking to this person or that, trying to feel my way through a whole new

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network. And it all takes time – time for people to get to know you, time to write up a sensible proposal that’s deliverable, struggling with a budget. All the sorts of things I was doing when I was working for charities in England…

So I’m planning on staying here just long enough to find out if it’s something that might fly – which I hope won’t be longer than another week or two as it is REALLY getting cold, I only brought my small pack with me leaving the rest in Dali, and the beaches of Vietnam will be so temptingly warm…

Other than that, I have met a really interesting crowd on Westerners living here, running various businesses, tourism, restaurants, bars etc and heading up the different NGOs. Others come here for a few months at a time doing research into different aspects of the environment – many from the US on PhDs.

Being able to find English-speaking people takes a lot of the stress out of travelling and makes battling the language less of an issue, although the long-termers all speak Chinese – and some Tibetan. So evenings at The Raven can be an interesting mix of conversations in various languages, especially after a few drinks…

I’ve really found my Shangri-La!

Zhongdian – Tuesday 10 November 2009

The flowers on the hills are now all over, save a few withered Gentians, mostly now gone to seed, a dandelion or two and a small aster-like member of the Compositae family with purple petals and yellow centre.

I have painted most of the gentians I have found, and a small, creeping plant which forms wide-spread mats with purple bell-shaped flowers which I thought might be a gentian – until observed more closely: Cyananthus microhombeus.

Cyananthus microhombeus

There was just one bud and two flowers left, but enough to make a small painting. Sadly I had missed the main flowering season but from the seed heads in evidence they must make an extraordinary sight. In fact the whole hillside behind the Old Town where I have been sourcing plant material must look very

much like the traditional wild-flower meadows of yesteryear in England.

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Gentiana haynaldii

Walking the land takes on a different sound in Autumn, with crisp crunching underfoot – most of the leaves have blown off the birch (Betula platyphylla or utilis), the larch is clinging on, glowing golden against the firs. Patches of dark green dot the hills, mostly heavily browsed Quercus aquifoliodes and Ilex bioritsensis. The air is thin and hot with clear, azure skies, but the nights are bitter, a heavy white frost lingering in the shade well into the morning.

Gentiana yunnanensis

The alpine meadows are now turning brown with little vegetation of any nutritional value remaining; they have been extremely over-grazed by roaming cattle – most recently observed eating cardboard from the ubiquitous rubbish tip behind the temple.

The Chinese concept of waste management, “out of sight and out of mind”, very much in evidence.

My time in Zhongdian is drawing swiftly to a close and I prepare to return to Dali at the end of this week, then consider if I will venture into southern Yunnan and the Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve and Botanical Gardens, or head straight over towards the Vietnamese border.

Southern Yunnan has tropical vegetation – and it would be great to be painting something slightly larger than 5cm high! Of course the paper and paint will behave very differently in the high humidity, so new challenges await. But I have sufficient water-colour paper to be able to experiment. A mixed blessing perhaps – my thoughts of having built up a body of work of paintings of Henryi plants having faded well before the brilliant Gentians caught my eye.

I’ve taken photos of some of my paintings, which won’t do them any favours (they’re propped up outside N’s Cafe, under my sun-umbrella to diffuse direct light, but subject to colour cast from all sorts of sources!). Nevermind, it’s a record of some sort…

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Gentiana veitchiorum

Halenia elliptica

On Saturday I have a wonderful opportunity to go on a trip to Nidzu – a small town about 6-hours drive away – with a whole bunch of these long-term residents to stay in a eco-hostel that one of them is developing. And there’s been mention of a Horse Festival too – so it should be a really interesting time! We stumble back on Monday, so more later on that one.

Leaving Zhongdian – “the clouds rolled in…”

Mid November 2009

The clouds rolled in this morning, spreading lead-grey behind the sunlit Chicken Temple – my farewell visit yesterday afternoon now just a wind-swept prayer.

It feels right leaving now. I have taken the idea of a Field Guide for Shangri-La as far as I can, staying another week to discuss it further with interested parties; anything else that needs to be done will now have to be by phone or e-mail.

It has felt so worthwhile investing this time here, getting to know how the NGOs work and a small insight into their funding streams and time-frames. I was delighted to hear that the Shangri-La Alpine Botanical Gardens are very interested

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in the Field Guide as well as one of the main eco-tourism organisations in the area. Other NGOs have expressed interest, and I have set up a meeting with an international organisation in Kunming who certainly have the funding to support this. I’m also hoping that the Kunming Institute of Botany will put their name behind this project. As part of the Chinese Institute of Science this would add great credibility.

My proposal isn’t without concerns, however, that there will be a belief that the project could be achieved more economically through the use of stock photographs or new digital ones, altering the concept of the project dramatically.

There doesn’t appear to be a consistent history of botanical illustration in guides in China unlike in the UK. When I was in Shaxi with the Hubers, they showed me a copy of a Medicinal Herbal guide with full colour well-executed illustrations. And a picture of Chairman Mao on the Frontispiece – a great intention to encourage the use of local plants for health purposes; a lost legacy whose time has come again perhaps… That was a few years ago and before photography was commonplace. Since then illustrated books about the flowers or plants of China have used photos: scientific floras have traditionally use line drawings.

This would be so different – a Field Guide with ethno-botanical information where fine illustrations are a key component. And I believe a first for China. What a great opportunity to return to paint the flora of NW Yunnan next year!

The timing to leave Zhongdian also felt right as so many of the people spent time with, who are mainly or partially resident here, have heading off for the winter. And I relish the thought of painting tropical plants in the south of Yunnan, larger than the 5cm or so of the gentians that flourished on the hills behind old town , but which are now withered away remnants lost amongst the dried grass and leaves.

The hostel had organised a Winter Party the night before I left, and I commandeered this as my unofficial farewell do. Thrilled of course that so many of my Western contacts and friends came; aware that the main attraction might have been the “all you could eat roast beef, roast potatoes, veg etc and two home-made puds”.

Next day was packing up the few things I’d brought and discarding the many dried flower specimens I hadn’t managed to paint. Hard choices! You always think you’ll have time to paint some desiccated specimen – but then you’re on the road again and something new catches your eye.

I missed the direct bus to Dali, so did a quick change at Lijiang. It felt good knowing how the system worked, having been through Lijiang a few times now. Good road maps are great for this, and the Nelles maps have been an invaluable resource – the Chinese don’t seem to have a clue as to where anything is. They don’t know North from South and don’t seem to think that this even important. I really wonder what their idea is of their own country. Perhaps it’s all just gleaned from images on TV…

I am becoming excited now to see how the valley around Dali has changed in the 7 or so weeks I have been away.

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Certainly I am struck by the changes in vegetation I see as I leave Zhongdian.

The earth skin is cracked and peeling in the thin, dry air. Long strands of green-grey lichen Usnea longissima, looking like ‘Spanish moss’, hangs from the dark green pine branches like bedraggled hair on the moist, updraft side of the valley. The land is gauged and torn by man, the scars of timber runs betrayed by jagged stumps. Amongst the plumes of bamboo on the hillside, yellow ochre/burnt umber stains seep into the dry valley riverbed.

Now just an hour south of Zhongdian, Tibetan houses give way to brick and stone with tiled roofs. Gone are the wooden shingles weighted down with rocks. No drying racks, but stooks of corn stems piled by the roadside.

The burnt copper of deciduous trees splashes carelessly into the viridian pines and evergreen oaks in the hills. Below the roads-cut into the hillside, slips of shale stain down to the mountain stream. This lower landscape has escaped the heavy browsing of Yak and cow/Yak crossbreeds and thick dried grass and ground cover alleviate this dry and browning landscape.

The river spreads out in the valley, a reservoir: below the dam the parched vein of riverbed is dry grey rock until assuaged by fresh white streams. And now another dam just minutes south and again a parched rocky riverbed; stark silver pylons stride out the hills from the hydro-electric power station, spreading their web through grey poles of dead trees to isolated homesteads in the hills.

And now the river tumbling again over jagged rocks a vigorous frothy green, with urgency and force. New crops stain the terraced strips a vivid green in small patchworks. Houses now stark white and tall elegant eucalypts along the river bed and in the clefts and runnels.

At Ciotou and the start of Tiger Leaping Gorge, the river stills run urgently along a thin channel in a wider river bed unaware that moments later its vigour and purity will be subsumed into the chocolate expanse of the Yangtze. The flat dry pans are now an industry of gravel extraction and tiny toy blue trucks. This wide, dry expanse betrays the river’s glory before its disempowerment. And now we turn and follow this wide brown mass – the industry of the riverbed lining the road with small dusty factories of breeze blocks.

Leaving the flat slow river behind we wind up into the warm pine-fragrant hills. The roadside stalls of myriad fruits of just two months ago replaced by red braids of dried chillies above large white jars of chilli paste. The bunches of corn have dried a deep yellow, their stalks still standing brown and ragged in the fields or heaped in piles against the roadside.

We leave the mountainous terrain of Zhongdian to Lijiang, and drive through the flat fertile rice valley. The corn has all been harvested, and irrigation channels cleared, leaving neat rectangles with formal stubble, or tilled and planted out with another crop – lettuces, beans, peas, pack choy… All around, this fertile plain is being hoed, ploughed, irrigated, the wood is gathered in: all returned to order for the winter.

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There has been something very reassuring about having spent so much time in one place – getting to know it, feeling more confident in China, in travelling and understanding how things work.

I have less qualms now about travelling alone, finding hostels and ordering food, although my lack of knowledge of the Chinese spoken and written language can still be rather daunting.

I am determined, if I am able to return in March to produce the Field Guide, to study the language so that I can be a lot more independent.

“Incarcerated” in Kunming

Kunming Thursday 19 November 2009

As the bus approaches Kunming in the late afternoon, the landscape changes: great green plumes of bamboo sprout from the hillside, like fecund fleur-de-lis; brown and barren terraces sport towering Munchkin hats of rice stalks, gathered neatly into pointed tufts; lower fields are flooded, mirrored to the sky. Low sun glances across the ruckled hills into the long valley, lighting lone trees crimson.

Half the bird population of the mountains is on offer, roadside – pheasants stuffed in sacks and proffered as vehicles lumber slowly up steep gradients.

Descending once more into the fertile valleys, the evening light reflects off a river of plastic creeping down the flat wide plain where once the water ran; now dammed, secured, above. New polytunnels are forming: teams of people bending and tying the thick forests of bamboo poles into neat arches to be encased in more great sheets of plastic.

And now the air becomes thick with concrete and commerce, with factories belching smoke and fire into the sulphur laden plains. Dark clots of industry coagulate in the arteries of the city – dense polluted air, decay, debris, rush hour in Kunming.

Navigating narrow backstreets, barely scraping past motorcycles, delivery trucks and pedestrians with a well-honed skill exemplified by many Chinese bus drivers: the route to the small, southern bus station is busy. The city is busy. Thousands of people coming and going. Rush hour and raining – a bad combination for hailing a cab.

A disparate group of hailers straggles along the edge of the road waving disconsolately as cab after cab speeds by, the fortunate passenger a ghostly blur through the rain-streaked glass. Then, as a taxi pulls over and a passenger prepares to disembark, I seize my advantage. Before the front seat is even empty, I have thrown my gear in the back and climbed in. And I’m not getting out.

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20 RMB later we pull down a dark side street. Cloudland International Youth Hostel is a functional, 5-storey structure around a small courtyard with a billiard table, table-tennis, a stack of bikes and the ubiquitous, decaying, outdoor bamboo seating. There’s a small roof terrace, a reasonable café where they serve a range of Western and Chinese food, several computers, a large DVD collection, and Wifi. Every spare inch of balcony is draped with laundry, and almost every square inch of wall space is covered with graffiti – much of it puerile or obscene.

A very large, very red, national flag hangs limply from the roof out, over the street.

There’s also a ‘resident’ Chinese traveller in the girls’ dorm who’s been there for well over a month: she’s made a nest under her mosquito net and plays computer games into the wee hours, emerging late afternoon for a bout of table tennis before scurrying back before dark. She, like many others over-wintering in Kunming, has become disillusioned with her stressful job in Shanghai or Beijing and packed it in. She had lived with her parents, saved a lot of money, and has come here to relax. It’s much cheaper in Kunming than the East Coast.

Of course I didn’t know all this then. I discovered it during my 10-day “incarceration” in the city.

Unknown to me, I had been blithely travelling for the last five weeks on an expired Visa – apparently the Dual Entry part of the 6-month Visa I’d received wasn’t optional: I HAD to leave the country after three months, when I could re-enter for another three months.

The Manager at the Hostel refuses to check me in – my paperwork isn’t in order. Instead, she phones the Police. I have always suspected that Chinese International Youth Hostels are part of a government agency, and this does nothing to dispel the idea.

I am absolutely shocked, but there isn’t much I can do in the circumstances – it’s 7.30 at night and raining, and I’m likely to have the same problem anywhere else I try to check in. It’s a requirement for anyone checking into a hotel or hostel to have appropriate documentation – for foreigners that means a valid passport and visa. The information gets passed on to the Police “for our protection”.

The Police want to see me at 1pm the next day; I’m told by the Manager that they are taking this very seriously: there’ll be a substantial fine of at least 3,000 RMB and I may have to stay at the Police Station. Understandably I don’t get much sleep that night.

When we leave to catch the bus – the Manger will interpret – I half consider packing my toothbrush.

We end up deep in the suburbs in a cold, stark office, four floors up. The main liaison is a Minister of Foreign Affairs who, I discover, understands more English than he lets on. The procedure takes five people four hours. Despite my protestations – come on, no-one would blithely exceed their Visa by 37 days intentionally! – ignorance is not a mitigating factor in Chinese law, and I am fined a startling 5,000 RMB, or 500 GBP. Even the Manager’s eyes smart at this. The

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alternative to paying is seven days banged up – I’m not even tempted to see the “accommodation”: it’s bitingly cold, starting to snow, there’s no heating and I bet they don’t serve Italian coffee in the mornings.

I hand over all the ready cash I have, am escorted to the Bank where I withdraw the maximum allowable from my Credit Card, and change most of the large US dollar bills I’ve purchased for Laos. The Minister of Foreign Affairs’ leaving shot, “Don’t make the same mistake again” is so patronising, it sorely tests my civility. The kick would be aimed low – and hard.

I return to the hostel with a heavy heart; but everyone has a traveller’s tale to tell, and at least I didn’t get deported. Now that would have put a spanner in the works for my plans for next year…

On Monday I take my passport down to the Public Service Bureau to get a new Visa – you can’t leave the country without one – and I offer to pay an Express Fee so that I can leave the next day. Absolutely impossible. It takes a week. I relinquish my passport with a deep sense of despair – I am, in effect, stuck.

I watch a lot of movies that week. It’s cold and I don’t want to be here. But I try to be positive: I renew acquaintances at the Kunming Botanical Gardens, and make contact with Professors at Xishuangbanna Botanical Gardens where I hope to do some more painting. And I have a very constructive meeting with The Nature Conservancy who are enthusiastic about the Field Guide and keen to see how they can fund it.

And then I find a way to escape for the night…

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Leaving Kunming and Heading South

Monday 30 November 3.55pm, Kunming Airport

It is with a sense of huge relief that I am finally about to board a flight out of Kunming, down to Jinghong in Xishuangbanna – the tropical south, bordering Laos and Vietnam.

The nights at Cloudland Hostel have been very cold, and I am not equipped for temperatures below around 10oC. I had relented to the cold in Zhongdian, and bought a set of men’s long underwear (preferring the subdued slate grey to a rather violent cerise on offer in the female section); I left the long johns in Dali, assuming that The City of Eternal Spring would be warmer. I could not have been more wrong, and was extremely grateful when a travelling American offered me her thermal underwear before heading across to Yangshuo and Vietnam.

It came in really handy when we stayed in the Hobbit Hole.

Having been incarcerated in Cloudland Hostel for the duration of my stay in Kunming – no passport, no travel – my ears pricked up when I heard talk of visiting an organic farm about an hour’s drive away. It was being arranged through Go Kunming, an ex-pat website for all things useful in Yunnan. From what I can gather the organic enterprise, Green Kunming, operates along the lines of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) where people belong to a vegetable box-scheme, but can also go to the farm and pick their own produce.

The farm is high up in the mountains to the north west of Kunming, where the air is cooler, and a whole lot cleaner. There is a large reception area with displays of the organic produce, a large concrete hotel, and an extraordinary greenhouse structure, rising up about 40’, housing a café and some of the more vulnerable produce – tomatoes, peas, aubergine and fig; others took advantage of the warmth to extend the growing season. Alongside are some rather sad cages with guinea fowl, pheasants, rabbits and guinea pigs. I don’t ask if all the animals were part of the organic meat production…

Walking down a dusty track we see neatly terraced and laid out fields growing the huge white radish and many different kinds of lettuce and brassica. There are cherry trees, prunus and malus; purple potatoes and a delicious, tuber which is crunchy and sweet – apparently from South America. Two farm workers were packing these in individual nets of polystyrene and gladly peeled them for our inquisitive taste.

Out front there is a concrete lined pond which is thick green with stagnation, where some of the dads from the bus-loads of tourists take the opportunity to demonstrate their fishing skills to their sons.

And out beyond the pond lie the Hobbit Holes: half a dozen twin-bedded rooms dug into the hillside looking very much indeed, as if Hobbits might have lived there – except of course for the TV.

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They are a charming idea, which doesn’t quite come off – they’re bitterly cold, there’s no water pressure in the basin, and even after 20 minutes the shower tap doesn’t produce anything other than a slow stream of tepid water; the crisp white towels remained unused and we sleep in our clothes – by the time we’ve had dinner and requested a fire, the farm workers have all gone to bed. But it’s a novel experience and I feel rather smug about having escaped the keen eyes of the Manager for a night “out of town”.

The flight into Jinghong is brief, but covers some spectacularly forested mountains, which turn slightly surreal as the pattern of tress forms precise curves around the contours – from this height, a dense complex of Victorian box hedges or the short neat knotted hairstyle of African women. The trees I surmise to be rubber plantations – miles upon miles of coiffured terrain. The flat plain is given over to banana production.

I step off the plane into a hazy, balmy air, looking forward to a quiet night’s sleep in a light, airy hostel. Not many come recommended in the various guide books I’ve consulted, but Lonely Planet’s description of the Banna College Hotel sounds good: “most travellers are winding up here now, for good reason; clean rooms, efficient service…” Well, I’m not sure if I could possibly have checked into the same place: the dorm room is dirty, dark, with worn bedding. There’s no hot water and the sink empties out onto the bathroom floor. The noise is astounding! The windows back onto a high wall, so every sound from an adjoining office – they start work at 7.30am – bounces directly off the wall and into the room. This feature also amplifies the busy street noise, and in the middle of the night a very lively discussion takes place between a group of loud young students.

I have dinner with a Dutch couple who have also just arrived in the ex-pat street, Manting Lu, where they are investigating local treks, and we all decide to leave the hostel first thing, and check into a new International Youth Hostel some blocks away. And what a relief! I’m on the 4th floor in a light, airy 3-bed dorm all to myself, with a clean, en suite bathroom with hot water. And all for the same price. I’ll see if it’s quiet, later. (Later: it is.)

I’d love to be a doing a trek with the couple, but I’ve developed a bad cough which needs to get sorted before I head off into the jungle for over-night stays in local villages.

Wednesday 2 December

I drag myself downstairs at noon to book a couple more nights to recover from this horrendous cold – which I guess could be flu but for the lack of a temperature. The walk around the “Flower Gardens” yesterday afternoon exhausted me so much I lost interest in examining the extraordinary, ancient bonsai’d bougainvilleas, the tropical fruit plantation – mango, papaya, coconut, star fruit (quaintly labelled Country Gooseberry), jack fruit and fig – and the great stands of fading Frangipani with their exquisite burst of cream coloured, highly fragrant flowers.

And now I’m wondering what it is I’m meant to be doing here, resting up, after such a long time stuck in Kunming. The room is lovely and light, and although it’s a 3-bed dorm, there are very few tourists and I have it to myself. Time perhaps to

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read? It’s beautifully warm and I’m propped up in bed – tissues to hand – sunlight streaming in, with no sense of urgency or time.

Someone gave me a copy of Oracle Bones, a work of non-fiction by the writer Peter Hessler – A Journey Between China’s Past and Present. It’s a heavy hardback, and I don’t want to carry it around, so am intent on getting through as much as I can while I’m here.

Between the chapters, he has written passages he calls Artifacts (sic) – and this is where I’m finding illuminating insights.

“In order to write a story, and create meaning out of events, you deny other possible interpretations. The history of China, like the history of any great culture, was written at the expense of other stories that have remained silent.”

It’s obvious, of course, but how often do we consider how we “set” an event by our attempts to describe it? How often do we consider our responsibility to see it clearly, when doing so?

There are also possible insights to observations that have been bothering me: more about the practice of littering and total lack of care for the immediate environment – the out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach to recycling – but also an apparent dispassionate approach to other peoples’ situations, particularly poverty.

Hessler talks about the wider implications of top-down commands which manifest themselves in chaotic, irrational actions by local police, and references the suppression of Falun Gong’s silent protests in April 2000: “Without the sense of a rational system, people rarely felt connected to the troubles of others. The crackdown on Falun Gong should have been disturbing to most Chinese – the group had done nothing worse than make a series of minor political miscalculations that had added up. But few average people expressed sympathy for the believers, because they couldn’t imagine how that issue could be connected to their own relationship with the law. In part, this was cultural – the Chinese had never stressed strong community bonds; the family and other more immediate groups were the ones that mattered most. But the lack of a rational legal climate also encouraged people to focus strictly on their own problems.”

I am also reading Awakening The Buddha Within. In 1971 a young American, Jeffrey Miller, found himself travelling across Europe, heading further and further East, in search of a deeper sense of meaning. Deeply affected by the death of his best friend’s 19-year old girlfriend at Kent State in 1970, and disillusioned by his original life goal to become a lawyer – “I knew that I wanted to learn more, not earn more” – he finally reached a monastery on a hilltop in the Kathmandu valley where one of the lamas had learned a little English and was willing to teach Westerners.

Lama Surya Das is refreshingly pragmatic in talking about enlightenment: all we need to do is to free ourselves from our cravings and clinging to objects and obsessions – and through enlightenment we will gain a direct realization of the nature of reality – how things are and how things work. And that enlightenment will bring inner peace. He doesn’t pull any punches, though, about how long this can

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take. And the amount of self-discipline that’s required. But whatever length the journey, they all commence with that first, small, step. And just were we all are, right now, is the most perfect place to start.

Thursday 3 December

This afternoon I manage to get through to the Ward at the Royal United Hospital where my Mother is recovering from a couple of infections and a series of falls. Information about her condition came in bursts: technology doesn’t always work, but a combination of e-mails, Skype and texts sure supersedes Telegrams!

She’s a bit hazy as to whether she was at home in her sitting room, or somewhere else – the word Hospital eluded her – but adamant that she is being well looked after, very happy, is having many visitors and has plenty to read. Because of her very short-term memory, she often responds “in the now” with no sense of context – so it’s very difficult to assess how she really is – other people might catch her when she’s tired and confused and have a very different understanding of her state of mind. And she’ll make light of any difficulty to the extent of hoodwinking Doctors who should know better!

But she does have an extraordinary ability to accept life as it comes to her. To be pragmatic. She may not have been the perfect Mother for each or any of her children – but she was the Mother we got, and both she, and my Father, tried their best to make sense a world that was changing faster than they could keep up with comfortably. They were both born at the end of the Victorian era, and we were teenagers during the 1960s. How far apart in one generation can one get!

We were brought up to go to church, but there seemed scant faith in our upbringing. The routine of church services, Sunday School and Youth Club Bible Study were obligations that we eventually rebelled against. There was never any family discussion about what the Christian faith might actually mean; about alternative believe systems; about context; about the wide world.

I’m not sure my parents understood about The Wide Word. And when I was growing up, with all that change in the 60s and 70s, I really wanted some guidance – some handle on the world. Even an acknowledgement that they Didn’t understand it would have been something. But that’s what they weren’t really equipped to provide. Perspective. Context. A reason for being. But they always hung on to their Christian faith, even if they couldn’t convey their beliefs to me.

Listening to my Mother talk about her moment-to-moment contentment, while in Hospital and away from the independence of her own home which she loves, I wonder whether her Christian faith doesn’t take her to the same place as Buddha’s teachings.

There was cartoon I saw once about people trying to enter the Pearly Gates, the Kingdom of Heaven, Nirvana. There were a number of gates all around the base of the mountain, and above each gate was the name of a different religion. All paths lead to the top of the mountain. And at the top of the mountain was a rather bemused “god”.

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Friday 4 December

The Lonely Planet guidebook describes Jinghong as “torpid”, and indeed there is a very laid-back, tropical feel. The weather is very pleasant at this time of year, encouraging a relaxed, outdoor lifestyle, but I find it more alive than perhaps the researchers did. Since I don’t like cities in general, this one is passably good.

The wide boulevards are lined with date and coconut palms, or bayans (Ficus bengalensis), with their twisted fused limbs and straggling, unkempt hair of aerial roots. And there is, like in so many cities, a great deal of development taking place. The popular, sprawling night market has been replaced by a riverside “beer and snack cultural promenade” which extends nearly 2k through various themed zones. Wide stone steps descend from street level at various points to a lower promenade, still under construction, but the light display – flashing illuminated umbrellas and tropical rainforest “drips” of coloured light already shows signs of premature aging.

The beer and snack huts are a pastiche, a Chinese self-parody – all made of ticky tacky; the bamboo walls are fake, a thin veneer of compressed wood fragments and light splinters through the roof tiles. Disappointing in daylight, but a Hollywood film set at magic hour against the illuminations of New Bridge, reflected in the Mekong.

Instant landscaping is something the Chinese excel at, and the enormous trees are, at least, real, securely tethered by cables until the roots establish themselves. There will be no dislodging these trees, which is more than can be said about the shacks. Just the mention of a tropical storm would cause them to shudder.

Across the river is a large, dark undeveloped expanse, punctuated by one enormous illuminated sign advertising a phone number and not much else, and an enormous illuminated hotel. The rest is spectacularly dark. The map shows that this is where you get the ferries for Thailand – presumably not after dark.

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Jinghong – Dai Medicinal Gardens

Wednesday 9 December

Many of the travellers’ cafes have a stack of books that you can exchange, including battered copies of Lonely Planet, Rough Guide, Frodders and occasionally Frommer’s. It’s important to check the edition before taking the information too seriously – things are changing fast in China and it’s unusual to find a completely up-to-date copy. Even the latest issue is frequently out-of date as only a selection of venues is revised annually.

I was having a leisurely breakfast at Mei Mei’s on Manting Lu, browsing the 7th edition of Lonely Planet China (2000), and was bemused to read the following observation on the Medicinal Botanical Gardens in Xishuangbanna:

“Staff at the gate might try to deter you from entering by telling you it’s boring. It’s not a trick to keep you out … they’re telling the truth. If it wasn’t for the Y4 entrance fee, it might actually be a good stroll to kill a half-hour.”

Given my interest in medicinal plants and ethnobotany, I was intrigued; I hastened down there to see exactly how boring it could possibly be.

I found this enchanting park much more interesting than the lauded Botanical Gardens and Tropical Research Centre across the road, and which is described as “one of Jinghong’s better attractions”.

Some things have obviously changed since this description was written almost 10 years ago, but not substantially; signage has been improved and the entrance fee has risen to Y30, but the mature planting was clearly extant and it had not been majorly redesigned since opening in 1959.

At the small ticket-booth on the other side of the coach park, the path heads straight through a wooded area before opening out into a wide, grassy park. Unlike most other Chinese attractions there’s no gauntlet of tacky stalls and hawkers to wade through. It’s also more compact than the Botanical Gardens so much easier to navigate – you won’t get run off the road by a people-transporter, and there aren’t hordes of newly weds in ill-fitting, rented attire posing for their photo album against various exotic backgrounds. The signage is sparse, but text in both Chinese and English is informative, generally well-written and interesting.

As its formal name would imply (the street sign says simply: “South Drug Park”)

the gardens are a very important centre for Dai medicine and contain the largest germoplasm resource of commonly used plants, with over 200 species and cultivars. Planting is arranged according to the four

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elements Wind, Fire, Water and Earth: “The basis of Dai medicinal theory comes from the Theravada Buddhist belief that both the world and the human body are made up of four basic elements Ta, Du, Dang, and Si (or Wind, Fire, Water, and Earth); all in balance and all connected to each other.”

So if you know which of these elements you’re short of, you could wander around to the right area and indulge in a little self-treatment. That’s the plague of Kunming Botanical Gardens: people helping themselves to cuttings – or pulling up and removing the whole of the medicinal plant. They also remove high-value plants such as orchids with no sense of proprietary.

One of the notices in the Wind section required a bit of specialist knowledge: “there are all kinds of plants that can be used for medicine for eclampsia, witch, scour and cough…” Eclampsia turns out to be pregnancy-induced hypertension, but I’m still left wonder about “witch”.

There was some fascinating information about the enigmatically named “Mysterious Fruit”: Synsepalum dulcificum. This evergreen shrub is native to West Africa, and the fruit contains the glycoprotein miraculin which affects one’s sense of taste. While it itself is not sweet, it makes other foods taste sweet, with the effect lasting for more than three hours. Important for diabetics, it can be processed into food flavouring, while medicinally it can regulate high blood sugar, hypertension, high blood fat, gout and headache.

The path past the Dragon Tree, (Dracaena draco, exudes red sap, takes 10 years to grow 1 metre and lives for more than 8,000 years) leads to the orchid house which is covered in great cascades of purple trumpeted Pseudocalymona alliaceum.

The light filters through the mock high canopy of horticultural netting: Monstera deliciosa glows a vivid green, perfectly perforated young leaves unfolding to over 1 metre wide. Other tropical plants sprawl and climb across each other, a tangle of leaves and stems, unclear where one plant starts and another takes over.

And while the main orchid season might be over, there are a few spectacular blooms: an enormous, cerise, magenta and yellow flower a good 12cm across and 15cm deep, its deeply ruffed labellum resting languidly on top of a waxy, deep green leaf; leaning provocatively over the path, a spray of perfect, delicate white moth orchids with exquisite yellow edging.

Outside, a Hoopoe lands suddenly into a clearing and plunges its long curved beak deep into the soil, the open crest flaring golden in the afternoon light. Normally a very shy bird, it seems completely unperturbed by close human activity and reminds me

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very much of the Jay I observed at length in Bath Botanical Gardens – so rare to glimpse in the wild, yet now so adept to city living.

(pic courtesy of Google)

I had not seen Mother-in-Law’s Tongue Sansevieria trifasciata in flower before, yet here were large stands of them in the cactus area, with delicate pale green racemes, each spray holding 2-4 flowers with six long, thin petals rather similar to White Star of Bethlehem or Bath Asparagus. They were not fragrant, but had a slight dusty odour.

I’m not sure exactly what medicinal purposes this plant might be put to, but I needed no persuasion not to get too close to the attractive, glossy orange fruits of Strychnos nux-vomica: the ripe seeds contain both strychnine and Brucine – a nasty combination indeed.

And what might Scaphium lychnophorm be used to treat, whose mature seeds can inflate to eight times their original volume in water? Apparently constipation and sore throat although one might advise caution…

Architectural stands of palms.

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Towards the rear of the gardens the planting becomes more considered giving the minutely clipped open grassy areas enormous grace – massive palms rise in close formation: there is striking simplicity to their form, an architectural elegance. What might have been too formal an arrangement becomes contemplative.

As I leave this quiet oasis, the birds chatter and squabble in the trees; the sun slips low and the heady scent of Frangipani blossom wafts down in the cooling breeze following me out into the streets.

Frangipani

I can’t quite figure out which Planet the Lonely reporter was on, as I have just spent two hours entranced by these gardens. Boring? I don’t think so.

The following website may be of interest:

http://www.natureproducts.net/Medicine/medicine.html

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Postponing travels and returning to England

12 December 2009

My flight gets into Heathrow on Monday 14 December. It’s not going to be a pleasant journey, with an overnight 12-hour stop-over at Beijing airport, followed by an 11-hour flight, so I hope I can sleep on the plane, although it’ll be daylight all the way.

Continuing my travels through Asia wasn’t an option. There are important decisions to be made about Mum’s care, and I need to contribute what I can to the process. Christmas is not my favourite time of year to be in England; I had planned to be spending it with friends in Melbourne. But it’s the right thing to do and Asia will still be here next year.

Part of me feels that I should be cramming in the activities, with just a few days left, but my heart isn’t in it. I feel lethargic about painting, and even taking the bus to Menglun to visit the extensive Botanical Gardens. I wish, now, that I could have managed to get a flight back sooner but there must be a reason I’m biding my time here – I’m just not sure what it is yet.

It occurs to me I had a similar thought when I arrived some 10 days ago: “And now I’m wondering what it is I’m meant to be doing here, resting up, after such a long time stuck in Kunming.”

It became clear to me a few days later when the news of Mum’s fall and ill health reached me. Had I travelled down to Laos as intended, communication would have been much more difficult – my China Mobile wouldn’t have worked, and I might not have managed to install a new SIM card. I don’t know how easy it would be, either, to pick up e-mails. I had intended to go eco-trekking, and to make contact with the Botanical Gardens at Pha Tad Ke which are still in the early stages of creation.

(Interestingly, BGCI – Botanical Gardens Conservation International – is currently advertising for a “young and energetic gardener with passion, a sense of adventure and creativity” who will work their way up there into the position of Head Gardener. What an exciting opportunity, to be involved with such a creative project right at the beginning. Anyone interested? Check out http://www.bgci.org/resources/job/0318/ Deadline 25 February 2010.)

Either way, I may well have been out of contact for a week or so, and it would have been much more difficult to get back to England. The mandatory port of return on my airline ticket is Beijing, and it just happens that there’s one direct flight a day from Xishuangbanna. I managed to secure one of only four tickets left.

Thinking now about being back in England (which is something I haven’t done for almost five months), it’s hard to know what I’ve really missed. I’ve stayed in touch with several friends, and in some cases we’ve become closer. But I do miss some of the comforts and conveniences – soaking in a bath, reading a good book by candle light; wearing other than grungy travel clothes in the evening; some

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western products you can buy over the counter at Boots – Savlon, Neurofen, and Nice’N’Easy 101 to touch up those disastrously long dark roots… Lemon’s pretty good as a hair lightener, but I haven’t seen a single one in all my travels throughout China – other citrus but no lemons. I wonder where they grow – and when?

A little research, and hey presto!

“Lemons are considered the most useful of all fruits and thought to have originated in northern India. They were introduced into Assyria, where they were discovered by soldiers serving Alexander the Great, who took them back to Greece. The lemon later reached the Mediterranean after the Romans discovered a direct sea route from the southern end of the Red Sea to India. The Arabs were largely responsible for the cultivation of the fruit in the Mediterranean region. By the beginning of the 4th century CE, a fully indigenous orchard production had been established in southern Europe. The lemon flourished in Sicily, Spain, and parts of northern Africa, as well as the Mediterranean, which are still the main sources of the fruit for Europe. Some believe that this Mediterranean lemon may actually be a hybrid of the citron, India lime, and pummelo.” http://www.innvista.com/health/foods/fruits/lemons.htm

Not common in Asia then…

What happens now? April 2010 The astringent sense of lemons lingers as I reconcile myself to the loss of my mother and my sister, both within a few weeks earlier this year. But there is hope. I return to China in two weeks, 12 May 2010, to undertake a project which I initiated while over there – to produce a Flower Trail Guide for China’s second National Park which is still in the process of being set up. This is a hugely exciting opportunity for me. An opportunity for a whole new career following the devastating redundancy I faced last year and my recent losses and grief – one which could not have been possible without the belief in me by The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust. This is a truly life-changing gift. I thank you for this glimmer of light. I am reaching out to grasp it.

Caroline Frances-King 1 May 2010