Tuesday, 17 November 2009
Friday, 13 November 2009
Around Shasha's home village
Final transport across the river to reach Shasha's village
The family settle in before the wedding. Grandmothers old house on left. Roof of the newer family apartments on right (where outside wedding photos were taken). This is their own 'road' between the different family apartments. 
The village centre seen from the apartment roof.
Getting the building material off the road before the next bus comes
There's always room for another house
Serious wedding fireworks - made for noise rather than light. Keeps the bad spirits away. 
Shasha's family gathering for post wedding photos - adults left to right (sorry I dont know any names) - uncle, grandmother, father, mother, uncle, Shasha, Oliver. The children are cousins, but I never quite worked out which family was which, mainly because they are very much one big family.
Half way up the hill behind the village. It's steep!
View from the top down to the village and the flooded valley. This was a small river dammed about 40 years ago a long way down stream so it is now more of a lake, with no obvious flow. The original village moved up the hill. 
A lot of fish are bred in pens and the river is used for transport over long distances with regular ferries calling in to every little village and delivering goods and post etc. This is also how we started our return journey as in the photo.
Travels near Shanghai
Cycling around Souzhou
Souzhou - view from the pagoda
Souzhou - paper lights for the moon festival
Back in Shanghai - old town market
Shanghai - temple gardens in the rain
Off to She Xian - 'are we nearly there?'
Old village near She Xian
Another wedding in full swing
Wednesday, 11 November 2009
Photos - Oliver and Shasha's wedding
(Quite a lot of these photos were not mine - thanks to those who took them)
Bribes received, Shasha is released by the bridesmaids to meet her bridegroom.
Bride and groom proceed to the wedding surrounded by fireworks and confetti.
The 'ceremony'. On the roof of the family's shared block of accommodation overlooking the flooded river valley.
Getting in some practice with the baijiu ('white alcohol' for toasting - like neat vodka).
Never ending supply of food conjured from the kitchen(s) for 200 people.
Bride and groom continue their duties - now in their Chinese wedding attire.
Some water from the kitchen to help the digestion of the wedding feast.
Gambei! (bottoms up) - Again!
Happy Chinese uncles, aunts and grandmother. (I dont know - he was smiling in the next photo!)
The kitchen helpers get their chance to eat.
Dance time - less poular with the Chinese contingent, who prefer to play cards and mahjong.
Monday, 9 November 2009
Photos - Shanghai
Looks like putting photos into old posts retrospectively makes them a bit hard to find, so I will put them into new posts in future. The ones that I put in yesterday from Shanghai I will move to this post so you can find them more easily.
Oliver and Shasha in their 15th floor apartment tending their herb garden.
This was one of our meals in Shanghai after Phoebe Isabelle and Henry had arrived. Food arrayed for sharing on a rotating central turntable and tea 'on tap'. Same arrangement seen in many other eating places we went to, usually with less smart decor.
Street scenes in Shanghai. In spite of most older ones being replaced there are still a huge variety of small and large buildings. Streets usually quite wide. In spite of the apparent chaos of the traffic, it is quite easy to get around and vehicle drivers never seem to mind having to go around a few pedestrians - stopping the vehicle is not an options of course! Our hostel was very close to the base of the pointy skyscraper in this night shot, so we could usually find our way back quite easily.
People's Square metro - one tiny bit of it! Mass transport is brilliant in China. This rush hour crowd is no problem, just join the flow and you will get where you are going in very little time.
Contrasts: New street light and power pole (concrete of course) being delivered entirely manually by a crew with a heavy duty 'wheelbarrow'.
Old and new architecture.
Oliver and Shasha in their 15th floor apartment tending their herb garden.
This was one of our meals in Shanghai after Phoebe Isabelle and Henry had arrived. Food arrayed for sharing on a rotating central turntable and tea 'on tap'. Same arrangement seen in many other eating places we went to, usually with less smart decor.
Street scenes in Shanghai. In spite of most older ones being replaced there are still a huge variety of small and large buildings. Streets usually quite wide. In spite of the apparent chaos of the traffic, it is quite easy to get around and vehicle drivers never seem to mind having to go around a few pedestrians - stopping the vehicle is not an options of course! Our hostel was very close to the base of the pointy skyscraper in this night shot, so we could usually find our way back quite easily.
People's Square metro - one tiny bit of it! Mass transport is brilliant in China. This rush hour crowd is no problem, just join the flow and you will get where you are going in very little time.Contrasts: New street light and power pole (concrete of course) being delivered entirely manually by a crew with a heavy duty 'wheelbarrow'.
Old and new architecture.
Sunday, 8 November 2009
Full Access to the Blog
We have now reached the Australian part of our tour and are comfortably installed at the house of Liz's cousin Sarah in Castlemaine Victoria. Full access to the blog is therefore restored as well as plenty of time to update it and add pictures, so in the next few days I expect to do a bit of backdated photo-adding and complete the writing up of the remainder of our Chinese adventures.
Since it will be a lot of backdated information all at once, I shall try to break it up a bit into readable sections.
I have already added some pictures to the earlier 'Shanghai' post.
Since it will be a lot of backdated information all at once, I shall try to break it up a bit into readable sections.
I have already added some pictures to the earlier 'Shanghai' post.
Friday, 16 October 2009
Update - Wedding etc
Bit of a gap - still no ability to add photos and to make it more difficult, I have had some sort of bug all week. I will separate the updates below to make them a bit more digestable.
TO THE VILLAGE
The travel to Shasha's village for her and Oliver’s wedding was quite lengthy. We went with the Shanghai contingent, in a comfortable 22 seat bus with tons of luggage wedding supplies, but unexpectedly with one too many people. Having said that, “unexpectedly” does not really apply in China. The journey was 5 hours to an overnight stop, then several more hours the next day. The second day the road got smaller and smaller and eventually we just reloaded everything/everyone into a couple of small wooden boats, rather like Thai “long tail” boats but slower, in order to cross a few hundred yards to Shasha’s village. The village is on a steep slope directly above the flooded valley which was just a small river 40 years ago, now dammed many miles downstream. The people there (including S's family) fish and grow tea, oranges and loads of other stuff. Every inch of ground is used, either for crops or living/working space, or else it is still being built on. Quite simple living conditions - concrete or stone buildings, cooking on a large solid fuel stove, a new outside loo was built specially for the wedding, traditional very hard beds. The extended family have quite a large block of accommodation (like flats), with the grandmothers old house behind and above it. The flat roof of the flats forms a big outdoor area in front of the old house with a view of the river and hills and was used for the wedding but with food eaten inside the old house - unlucky to eat the wedding meal outside apparently. Liz and I were treated royally, with the second best bedroom (best being for O&S of course) which looked newly decorated and bed clothes all brand new - bed still hard!
WEDDING
200 people were at the wedding, mostly relatives, mostly from in or near the village. The ceremony started at 11:18 (lucky numbers) with the bridegroom standing in the street "bribing" the bridesmaid to let the bride out by passing traditonal red money envelopes through the door, then the fireworks were lit (also in the street) and Shasha came out in her white wedding dress. She and Oliver then walked up to the wedding area, with fireworks all around them and got welcomed by the guests. We then had the formal announcements and congratulations - in Chinese, but we got the idea - followed by "speeches", very brief, including mine, so it was not too hard. Liz also said a few words. Oliver's good friend from Shanghai "JD" translated our words into Chinese and got a suitable response. I read out words from my parents and they were also translated and well received. Liz's well travelled (a little battered but repaired) wedding cake was then cut, lots of posing for photos, then down to the serious business of eating and toasting - drinking alcohol is ALWAYS toasting, no sneaking a gulp on your own! - The important guests were given a VIP room to eat in, which was a bit of a shame, since that really meant mostly us foreigners, but we had plenty of time to circulate and toast our hosts while the eating was still going on.
An amazing quantity and variety of food was produced by local hired helpers from the large but primitive kitchen. Nothing too scary, nice noodles and stir fried stuff, but there was also duck feet, preserved eggs, and turtles. All Chinese food is always presented for general sharing, so you load your bowl with whatever you want. They also deliver each dish as soon as it is ready, so the table gets more and more piled up (same in restaurants). I was glad to see the Chinese people ignored dishes and left just as much as we did. In fact it seemed to be a neccessary part of the wedding feast, that loads of food was left uneaten.
Later O&S appeared in Chinese dress and handed out gold and red goody bags, sweets and cigarettes. We also had "moon cakes", which are a key part of the moon festival. They look a bit like small pork pies and have different fillings, sweet or savoury. As well as eating a lot, it is also required for O&S and other key family members to constantly toast each other, usually with "Gambei" meaning "bottoms up" (empty vessel required to be displayed), the drink concerned being "bai jiu" = "white alcohol" (similar to neat Vodka), normally >40% strength. Fortunately the "cups" are only measure sized, but it adds up over several hours! In the hubbub, saying "cheers" was the only form of communication between the 2 families in most cases, so everyone was kept quite happy. Most of the time it seemed that neither family had any idea what was going to happen, but it all happened anyway.
That went on for a few hours, then a bit of a lull during which some guests left and the helpers had their share of food, then it started up again in the evening, and soon became music and dancing on the flat roof for foreigners and younger people; cards and mahjong for the Chinese (quite usual at a party apparently), drinking, smoking and more food, for all. Some stayed up most of the night, but Liz and I collapsed much sooner.
AFTER THE WEDDING
We and the other foreigners stayed a few more days and had a chance to make a little more contact with the family. Shasha's parents are very modest and quiet people, especially by Chinese standards, so it was not easy to break the language barrier, but we did manage a kind of rapport on the last day. Unfortunately Shasha's mother has a long term heart condition which meant she could not join in very much, which was a great shame. Her own mother (head of the family) is over 80 and still very fit. Some of the uncles and aunts were quite chatty and extrovert, but full of surprises - one thing we discovered on the last day was that one uncle was a recently appointed school English teacher, but even then he absolutely refused to say anything in English! I suspect it partly stemmed from the method of teaching, which possibly has little to do with conversation.
FURTHER TRAVELS
Since we left the village we have been moving around a lot. We returned to Shanghai by boat, minibus taxi, then bus - 10 hours, for one night then a 12 hour sleeper train to Xian to see the Terracotta army. "Soft sleeper" i.e. 4 bunks per cabin and quite comfortable. Xian is yet another big city, with the same heaving masses as Shanghai but more tourists - mostly Chinese since we were still at the end of the national holiday - and more down to earth, i.e. more buses, motor rickshaws, motorbikes, less smart cars, smart shops, etc, but generally all the same goods and food on sale. Xian has a nice Muslim quarter, with lots of street stalls selling a different variety of goods. Lots of dried fruit, halva, and other stuff not so recognisable. It had a Chinese style mosque in it, which was a very calming and quiet refuge. Managed to see the "army" but not until we had been dragged into two other "attractions" that were thinly disguised huge souvenir shops. The army was impressive. Not very many tourists at that time, by their standards, since the week long national holiday had just finished, so we got a good look. While we did that O&S went to Hong Kong to get his first proper work permit sorted out. Apparently you have to leave China to do that and HK will do. His employers can now make him a proper Chinese employee and he is allowed to stay indefinitely.
For the last part of O&S's holiday we have met up at Yangshuo, the place with the classic pointy hills or "karsts". It looks like photos will have to wait until we are in Australia in November. Still cant put them on here with the blog sites being blocked.
TO THE VILLAGE
The travel to Shasha's village for her and Oliver’s wedding was quite lengthy. We went with the Shanghai contingent, in a comfortable 22 seat bus with tons of luggage wedding supplies, but unexpectedly with one too many people. Having said that, “unexpectedly” does not really apply in China. The journey was 5 hours to an overnight stop, then several more hours the next day. The second day the road got smaller and smaller and eventually we just reloaded everything/everyone into a couple of small wooden boats, rather like Thai “long tail” boats but slower, in order to cross a few hundred yards to Shasha’s village. The village is on a steep slope directly above the flooded valley which was just a small river 40 years ago, now dammed many miles downstream. The people there (including S's family) fish and grow tea, oranges and loads of other stuff. Every inch of ground is used, either for crops or living/working space, or else it is still being built on. Quite simple living conditions - concrete or stone buildings, cooking on a large solid fuel stove, a new outside loo was built specially for the wedding, traditional very hard beds. The extended family have quite a large block of accommodation (like flats), with the grandmothers old house behind and above it. The flat roof of the flats forms a big outdoor area in front of the old house with a view of the river and hills and was used for the wedding but with food eaten inside the old house - unlucky to eat the wedding meal outside apparently. Liz and I were treated royally, with the second best bedroom (best being for O&S of course) which looked newly decorated and bed clothes all brand new - bed still hard!
WEDDING
200 people were at the wedding, mostly relatives, mostly from in or near the village. The ceremony started at 11:18 (lucky numbers) with the bridegroom standing in the street "bribing" the bridesmaid to let the bride out by passing traditonal red money envelopes through the door, then the fireworks were lit (also in the street) and Shasha came out in her white wedding dress. She and Oliver then walked up to the wedding area, with fireworks all around them and got welcomed by the guests. We then had the formal announcements and congratulations - in Chinese, but we got the idea - followed by "speeches", very brief, including mine, so it was not too hard. Liz also said a few words. Oliver's good friend from Shanghai "JD" translated our words into Chinese and got a suitable response. I read out words from my parents and they were also translated and well received. Liz's well travelled (a little battered but repaired) wedding cake was then cut, lots of posing for photos, then down to the serious business of eating and toasting - drinking alcohol is ALWAYS toasting, no sneaking a gulp on your own! - The important guests were given a VIP room to eat in, which was a bit of a shame, since that really meant mostly us foreigners, but we had plenty of time to circulate and toast our hosts while the eating was still going on.
An amazing quantity and variety of food was produced by local hired helpers from the large but primitive kitchen. Nothing too scary, nice noodles and stir fried stuff, but there was also duck feet, preserved eggs, and turtles. All Chinese food is always presented for general sharing, so you load your bowl with whatever you want. They also deliver each dish as soon as it is ready, so the table gets more and more piled up (same in restaurants). I was glad to see the Chinese people ignored dishes and left just as much as we did. In fact it seemed to be a neccessary part of the wedding feast, that loads of food was left uneaten.
Later O&S appeared in Chinese dress and handed out gold and red goody bags, sweets and cigarettes. We also had "moon cakes", which are a key part of the moon festival. They look a bit like small pork pies and have different fillings, sweet or savoury. As well as eating a lot, it is also required for O&S and other key family members to constantly toast each other, usually with "Gambei" meaning "bottoms up" (empty vessel required to be displayed), the drink concerned being "bai jiu" = "white alcohol" (similar to neat Vodka), normally >40% strength. Fortunately the "cups" are only measure sized, but it adds up over several hours! In the hubbub, saying "cheers" was the only form of communication between the 2 families in most cases, so everyone was kept quite happy. Most of the time it seemed that neither family had any idea what was going to happen, but it all happened anyway.
That went on for a few hours, then a bit of a lull during which some guests left and the helpers had their share of food, then it started up again in the evening, and soon became music and dancing on the flat roof for foreigners and younger people; cards and mahjong for the Chinese (quite usual at a party apparently), drinking, smoking and more food, for all. Some stayed up most of the night, but Liz and I collapsed much sooner.
AFTER THE WEDDING
We and the other foreigners stayed a few more days and had a chance to make a little more contact with the family. Shasha's parents are very modest and quiet people, especially by Chinese standards, so it was not easy to break the language barrier, but we did manage a kind of rapport on the last day. Unfortunately Shasha's mother has a long term heart condition which meant she could not join in very much, which was a great shame. Her own mother (head of the family) is over 80 and still very fit. Some of the uncles and aunts were quite chatty and extrovert, but full of surprises - one thing we discovered on the last day was that one uncle was a recently appointed school English teacher, but even then he absolutely refused to say anything in English! I suspect it partly stemmed from the method of teaching, which possibly has little to do with conversation.
FURTHER TRAVELS
Since we left the village we have been moving around a lot. We returned to Shanghai by boat, minibus taxi, then bus - 10 hours, for one night then a 12 hour sleeper train to Xian to see the Terracotta army. "Soft sleeper" i.e. 4 bunks per cabin and quite comfortable. Xian is yet another big city, with the same heaving masses as Shanghai but more tourists - mostly Chinese since we were still at the end of the national holiday - and more down to earth, i.e. more buses, motor rickshaws, motorbikes, less smart cars, smart shops, etc, but generally all the same goods and food on sale. Xian has a nice Muslim quarter, with lots of street stalls selling a different variety of goods. Lots of dried fruit, halva, and other stuff not so recognisable. It had a Chinese style mosque in it, which was a very calming and quiet refuge. Managed to see the "army" but not until we had been dragged into two other "attractions" that were thinly disguised huge souvenir shops. The army was impressive. Not very many tourists at that time, by their standards, since the week long national holiday had just finished, so we got a good look. While we did that O&S went to Hong Kong to get his first proper work permit sorted out. Apparently you have to leave China to do that and HK will do. His employers can now make him a proper Chinese employee and he is allowed to stay indefinitely.
For the last part of O&S's holiday we have met up at Yangshuo, the place with the classic pointy hills or "karsts". It looks like photos will have to wait until we are in Australia in November. Still cant put them on here with the blog sites being blocked.
Friday, 25 September 2009
Shanghai
(Was hoping to put some pictures here, but being forced to use a proxy seems to block that facility. Will try again for future posts.)
Oliver and Shasha have been showing us around and have introduced us to her uncle and family. Went for a great meal with a wonderful shared "hot pot" - cooking pot inset in a special table to cook the food in and lots of meats and veg to cook and dips on the side. Lots of "cheers" which is required whenever taking another sip/gulp. Lots of exchanges of pleasure at being part of each others families, translated by Shasha and her cousin (a few Chinese words from us). The uncle runs a small general store type shop with a mahjong gaming room at the back. Serious stuff, with special tables that automatically shuffle the tiles and put up the "walls" to start the play.
Shanghai is very busy as expected. Amazing buildings everywhere and variety of traffic all mixed up with us pedestrians - cars, scooters, bikes, electric bikes, motor rickshaws, buses etc - interesting crossing roads where traffic turning right (driving on right) can go through red lights and over the pedestrian crossings where the green man is showing, so you just have to dodge them as they come round. Seems to work once you get used to it, or even if you dont!
Sunny and hot the first day, now rainy and hot. Family have been arriving - Isabelle, Phoebe and Henry all arrived yesterday. We are all staying in a hostel right in the centre, hidden away in a little street behind other houses. Basic hostel style with small and shared rooms but lots of lounging space with flowing water features all around. Pretty good for £6 per night. The Marriott skyscraper 100 yards away, I suspect charges more!
Had an exciting "taxi" ride to a bar last night. Random unauthorised minibus picked up all 7 of us and drove like a madman through the city, only to get stopped 100 yards from the bar for taking too many passengers. He seemed quite happy paying his fine and only accepted £5 instead of the agreed £2. Presumably went of to terrorise more pedestrians.
We are going to venture a short way away to Suzhou on 27th. More after that.
Oliver and Shasha have been showing us around and have introduced us to her uncle and family. Went for a great meal with a wonderful shared "hot pot" - cooking pot inset in a special table to cook the food in and lots of meats and veg to cook and dips on the side. Lots of "cheers" which is required whenever taking another sip/gulp. Lots of exchanges of pleasure at being part of each others families, translated by Shasha and her cousin (a few Chinese words from us). The uncle runs a small general store type shop with a mahjong gaming room at the back. Serious stuff, with special tables that automatically shuffle the tiles and put up the "walls" to start the play.
Shanghai is very busy as expected. Amazing buildings everywhere and variety of traffic all mixed up with us pedestrians - cars, scooters, bikes, electric bikes, motor rickshaws, buses etc - interesting crossing roads where traffic turning right (driving on right) can go through red lights and over the pedestrian crossings where the green man is showing, so you just have to dodge them as they come round. Seems to work once you get used to it, or even if you dont!
Sunny and hot the first day, now rainy and hot. Family have been arriving - Isabelle, Phoebe and Henry all arrived yesterday. We are all staying in a hostel right in the centre, hidden away in a little street behind other houses. Basic hostel style with small and shared rooms but lots of lounging space with flowing water features all around. Pretty good for £6 per night. The Marriott skyscraper 100 yards away, I suspect charges more!
Had an exciting "taxi" ride to a bar last night. Random unauthorised minibus picked up all 7 of us and drove like a madman through the city, only to get stopped 100 yards from the bar for taking too many passengers. He seemed quite happy paying his fine and only accepted £5 instead of the agreed £2. Presumably went of to terrorise more pedestrians.
We are going to venture a short way away to Suzhou on 27th. More after that.
Sunday, 20 September 2009
Arrived in Shanghai
Met up with Oliver and Shasha at last. Lovely to see Oliver after more than a year and meet Shasha for the first time. Still jet lagged and very glad to have a local guide! Looks like the blog may not be very accessible in China, so this is an initial experiment.
Monday, 14 September 2009
Emma and Rich
Just back from our niece's amazing beach wedding in Anglesey. Now down to serious house clearing.
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