The fruits of fall

So I'm just going to pretend I've written all the blogs I've had in my mind the past 3 months, because unfortunately things don't stick around inside my brain for very long.  Let's dive back in with the lovely special fruits of China in the fall.  First the pommelo.  As a huge fan of grapefruit, I thought it held great promise; it was bigger, much much bigger, and so therefore I thought it would be even better.  I was a foolish beginner and bought the whole pommelo; I found out later that there's a reason why they sell them already peeled in the market.  It took about 15 minutes, and it reduced the size of the fruit by at least half.  Check out how thick the peel is.   Then there is all the pulp to contend with.  It is tough and not easy to penetrate.  I stuck with it, and was rewarded with the pretty pink interior.  However, one bite told me it did not hold the delicious sourness of the grapefruit.  It was a pretender to the throne, with not much juice or flavor.  My friend assures me when I go to Vietnam for Lunar New Year I will have a much different pommelo experience, but I'm not buying any that aren't peeled.  Too much work for not enough reward.

However, the persimmon is another story.  First the burnt orange is a perfect fall color, and the skin is very very thin, think tomato-thin, or thinner, actually.  Then when they are ripe, they are heavy and feel like they could burst easily.  Actually, I forgot I bought 4 at the wet market the first time, and failed to put them in the fragile bag.  When I unpacked the produce when I got home, the 4 previous-persimmon were pulp and juice, nothing round about them.  When not smashed prematurely, their taste is wondrous, but difficult to describe.  There is a very soft, juicy fibrous interior, with 4 or 5 more gelatinous seed pods or something inside the pulp.  Those are even more delicious.  I'm not sure what I'm

supposed to eat and what I'm supposed to toss, so I've developed a system of poking a small hole in the very thin skin, then sucking out all the pulp, and avoiding eating the skin.  I'm pretty sure it wouldn't hurt me, but I'm a beginner, and caution is called for.  I do understand now why so many Asian artists have painted persimmon through the centuries, the combination of their taste and their looks makes them a perfect fall fruit.  I would recommend you try one, but unless you are close to the source, I wouldn't.  

Finally, there is a hamburger-bun looking variety, which I'm not at all sure is a persimmon, but is trying to fool the less-informed.  It's not nearly as juicy, and I may or may not have bought one thinking it was like the smaller round version.  I wasn't impressed, but they are cool looking. That's it for the fall fruit adventures so far.  Except that the mandarin oranges have been in season for about 2 months now and there are

several varieties, and every time I think I have a favorite, another one appears in the market.  The smallest ones of all are now in season, and when our favorite vendor gave us her "bonus" today, it was 2 of those.  They are sweeter than any candy I've tasted, and I have known some candy in my time.  They make those canned versions seem like they are from another fruit.  It's been a highlight of the fall to enjoy some of China's finest fruit.

Japan in the Fall

I marvel at how privileged I feel to have seen Japan during the cherry blossoms of spring and now during the zenith of the fall foliage viewing in November, and within the same year.  There are not words sufficient to describe the marvels around every path, but there is neither a need for words, as I took many photos!  Please enjoy the photos here of one of the most beautiful, civilized, harmonious places I've seen.  Ever.  

Fall Vacation in Guilin Area

It’s “Golden Week” in China, which to me means a week’s vacation, and probably something more patriotic for the Chinese who understand what we are celebrating.  I’m celebrating surviving yet another beginning to another school year, which is no small accomplishment.

Many colleagues recommended a holiday to the area around Guilin, specifically the rice terraces of Ping’An and the stunning karst landscapes around Yangshou.  I read a guidebook to try to get an understanding of how these remarkable landscapes were formed, and I read about rain and CO2 and the formation of caves, which collapsed but are really still growing from the bottom.  I read it aloud twice, then closed the book with a shrug.  Don’t care that much, and it didn’t make sense.

This area is the subject of centuries of Chinese watercolors with good reason.  One day we took a boat ride up the Li River to view some of the most dramatic scenery, and tomorrow we’re off on cycles to do the same, then take a bamboo raft down another river.  It’s all beautiful, and beautifully relaxing, except when we try to see what a million or so Chinese people want to see, and are willing to be much more uncomfortable in the process than I am.

Here is what we are seeing:

My luscious passion fruit going into the cup

Today we took a 5-hour bike ride to some of the small ancient towns in the area.

The scenery on our bike ride provided an apt snapshot of China today, new and old. First I had the unpleasant experience of riding through the gauntlet of the morning rush-hour traffic in the city of Yangshou, which was terrorizing when I stopped to think about it, but I didn’t have time to be reflective, so no problem.  I was too busy trying not to get killed or maimed, or both, if that’s possible.  I will never watch the scenes from movies featuring a busy, chaotic Asian traffic scene again without wanting to feint.  There were motorcycles, ebikes (stealthy, they make no sound), other lunatics on bicycles, cars, and the ever present “get-the-hell-out-of-the-way” buses. I felt like I was playing one of those video games where stuff pops out at you from all directions and you try to kill it before it kills you.  I never understood why people found those fun, btw.  It was incredibly loud, with several generations of vehicles and several vehicles that were hybrids of combinations of vehicles, with engines of tractors (loud tractors) attached to wagons, motorcycles attached to carts, and all of them loud, slow, and unpredictable.  This part of China is noticeable less advanced than the Eastern coast where we live, and we saw that in the old beat-up jerry-mandered vehicles.

Anyway, I survived intact and was rewarded with blue skies, and a bucolic river scene complete with bird calls and not much else, and stupendous scenery.  There are rice crops in several states of growth to accent the karst formations. 

Along the way I saw young Chinese enjoying a day off from work, motoring along with electric bikes, or groups of the new middle-class, decked out in identical expensive biking outfits and identical expensive bikes.  I also shared the road with older Chinese who were decidedly not middle class, but whose bodies showed the ravages of decades of carrying loads too heavy for their spines to support.  These people’s bodies were right angles, with their point of intersection at the waist and the top half of their bodies absolutely parallel to the ground, except for their heads which were peering up in an effort to guide their steps.  It was sad to see, particularly because there were also many people still carrying those loads, people whose future seemed sealed to the same angle of repose.

The road was periodically littered with red confetti paper, the remains of earlier fireworks used to herald the holiday, and as we rode through ancient villages along the path we saw ancient brick homes decorated with new door ornaments of red paper on either side of the door sporting calligraphy of matching couplets to adorn each side.  We could have been riding through these villages a 100 or more years ago and the gardens, the homes, and the “free-range” ducks, chickens, and small children would have played the same roles in these people’s lives.  Beside the ubiquitous rice fields there were mini-plots of various vegetables, soy beans, corn, and even cotton.  The children who saw our white faces as we cycled through yelled a friendly and excited “Hello” to us, unlike the urban Chinese who are not impressed by our presence for the most part.

Having spent a week enjoying the scenery the area is justly famous for, I didn’t know I was going to get a bonus of a relaxed, slower pace of life (rush-hour traffic aside) and a view into the “real” China, which is far more a mix of old and new than the very new “China-light” that we live in at Suzhou Industrial Park, which is only 20 years old in total.  I’m sure there are dozens more different perspectives on China, and I look forward to seeing more before we leave at the end of next summer. Here's what we saw along the way....

pommelos ripening on tree

still loath and fear them but these were pretty

And also these....

Along the Li River bamboo rafts waiting for customers

Farmer spreading out rice to dry

Loading rafts back onto truck for trip back upriver

mysterious code on elementary school wall

Rice harvest

The road along which we biked

Since We've Been Gone from China...

This Thursday there was a ‘new’ Chinese holiday, V-J day, or victory over Japan Day.  Chinese officials geared up for a huge public display/parade in Beijing, which included thousands of troops, and a brand new missile.  I got the day off from school, but not the following day.  Most Chinese companies let their employees have Thursday, Friday, and Saturday off, but then people have to ‘make up’ their holidays by working on Sunday.  Not my idea of a real holiday, but it’s what shakes down here.  By far the most amusing preparation for the holiday is one I read somewhere, and have copied for your amusement.

Date/Time: 9/1/2015

China has drafted a team of 5 monkeys to help keep the skies clear for the upcoming Victory Parade in Beijing this Thursday.  Alongside the huge procession planned for the victory parade, about 200 aircraft will also perform fly-bys and maneuvers.  The air force has recruited the monkeys to help protect the state-of-the-art planes from potentially dangerous bird strikes.  The monkeys, all male (apparently easier to train), have been trained to destroy bird nests, avoiding a possible avian assault on jets from the trees.  The monkeys have all received three months of training, resulting in an efficient, low cost, low risk solution to the problem.

One other preparation was the temporary closing of several factories that usually belch pollution into the air, and the resultant sky was dubbed as “anti-fascist blue”.  Gotta love that spin.
There are some changes to the Chinese landscape since we were here in June.  One amusing fad is some plant-like things are all the rage to be clipped on the top of people’s heads.  At first I thought it was an homage to my favorite Japanese animation, Totoro, since one of the characters from his movie has a lotus blossom leaf over his head as he walks around, rather like an umbrella. The lotus blossom does figure large in this fad, but I’ve also seen women and men with mushrooms, assorted leaves and ferns, and, as a colleague put it, “some people have clipped a whole garden in their hair.”  No idea what is up with that.  Check out the selection in a "garden-hair-clip" stand as well as how one woman was sporting her look at the museum.

There is also a new new mall in Suzhou, not to be confused with the new mall that opened down the street from us in June.  This mall is very high-end, and the good news is there is a place that serves a good rotisserie chicken.  However, the best news is that Din Tai Fung, my favorite dim sum place which has chains all over China and specializes in the Shanghai delight known as shao-long-bao, is coming to Suzhou!  I can only hope it opens before we leave Suzhou, as there was no sign that gave a date, or at least not one we could read.  This is going to make Suzhou at least 2% better to live in, and the added bonus is that it’s just down the street one block from our gym. Exercise first, get a tasty treat after, that’s my plan.

Finally, to cool off hot summer days, my favorite spot in town, the Suzhou Museum, has had a temporary exhibit dedicated to ancient paintings of winter scenes in blue and green.  They are gorgeous; here are a few to cool you off. 

Oh, and our white egrets are back in the swamp between our school and our apartment.  I was very glad to see them, as I thought all the building had changed their migration patterns, as in they weren't coming here anymore.  

We still only hear 1 bird cheeping/day, which I call our rental bird, but it does make us want to get out of the city in the future.

We’re in our fourth or fifth week of schools (seems like several months since I started) but the important date is 3 weeks from last Friday, which is the start of our week-long October national holidays vacation.  We’re headed to Guilin and some other beautiful area close by for hiking, viewing of scenery and casual biking.  Before that happens, I’ll be spending 3 days once again at “Cowboy Camp” with the entire 4th grade.  Yippie–i-o-kai-yeh?

Addio, Tuscany, senza rancore

When Wordsworth penned his famous poem “The World is Too Much With Us” I think he was talking about the feeling that teachers get the night before the school year begins.  I’ve decided to take the denial path and recap some favorites of our recent trip to Ireland and Tuscany. 

It was all wonderful, every place we went. Ireland was beautiful to see, fun to interact with the locals, and so relaxing. Dingle was our group's favorite, for the scenery and the music. The weather there was ridiculous, but we were forewarned, expected nothing, and got very little in the way of decent weather.  Some days the sun did shine, and it was very pleasant. 

Italy was incredible, too, including the wonderful house we rented, which had several rooms to ramble through, lie down for a nap in, and 3 or 4 terraces to sit and read at, and view some beautiful scenery of olive groves, vineyards, and lots of green. 

If anyone is planning a trip to the Tuscany area, I would always tell them to not miss 3 places (in addition to Florence, which is most people’s reason for going).  (1) Greve, a charming small town that is the epicenter of Chianti country and has a wonderful buthcher shop that takes great pride in its offerings, (2) Siena, which we barely were able to explore in a day but were dazed by, and (3) Ravenna, which isn’t really in Tuscany (it’s in Emilia Romagna) but is an easy day trip.  Ravenna had fantastic food and gorgeous mosaics sprinkled around its charming village.

All good vacations must come to an end, unless you can figure out how to make vacationing your life, I guess.  We couldn’t, so we packed up reluctantly and drove to the airport. When we got to our gate, I noticed a long line and a shop stuffed with customers.  I’ve seen people intent on getting their duty free on before they hit the skies, but this level of clamor over, what else, the wines of Tuscany, was a sight to behold.  Actually, I hurried to get my bag and join the line, remembering how expensive bad wine costs in China, and how little good wine costs in Tuscany.  Mission accomplished.  It rested in the bag with the 3 triangles of parmigiano and the 2 huge hunks of pecorino and they made the trip quite well, except for the small mishap in the boarding line when our carry-on bag tipped over, with said bag attached and a breaking of glass occurred.  I rushed into emergency mode and hit the bathroom with my bag leaking the most delicious smelling wine ever.  Fortunately the wine bottles were bagged separately, so I just drained the bag, dried off the outside of the cheeses, which were securely wrapped, and away we went. 

We’re back now in the scorching heat of Suzhou, and went to a supermarket today to stock up, putting on our best faces while walking by the “cheese” selection, and focusing on the really excellent (and cheap) mushroom selection one can get here.  We are negotiating on when we should consume the wine and the cheese, but I don’t give either of them much of a chance of seeing cold weather.

WOOPS: I forgot to post some pictures from L'Accademia, perhaps the most famous of Florence's museums after the Uffizi.  Michaelango's David is the star of the show, and what a star.  It was show stopping, as were his other unfinished statues in the same wing.  The other art in the collection was interesting in that showed the clear progression of the Renaissance from century to century, but the reason people keep showing up in throngs is thanks to Michaelango. It was a wondrous sight.  Have a look HERE.