Lots of people from the other side of the Pacific have been complaining that they can’t read the CDB. So bookmark this link to visit our new home.
It’s hosted in Suzhou by Ryan McLaughlin’s “Dao By Design” outfit. Some of his other sites are “Lost Laowai” and “The Humanaught”. Those sites are a must for expats and visitors to CHina.
It hasn’t got above freezing here for days. There’s a lot of snow and ice about, which really sets off the scarlet lanterns being hung all over the town for New Year (Spring Festival) on 7th February. Last night there was an amazing firework display on the estate, which has something to do with another festival, the name of which I couldn’t find out.
So here we sit, waiting for the thaw. Having lived in the south of England most of my life, I had forgotten what really cold weather was like. All in all, I would rather be a little further south!
Our last concert was a cracker. It’s not often that a principal Sydney Opera House tenor gets as far inland as Lanzhou, but those Australians are a tough breed, and some of them make it.
The tenor in question was Ding Yi, who comes from a little one horse town near Lanzhou called YuZhong, famous for its nearby forested Taoist mountain sanctuary. At this time of year it is the perfect Chinese winter wonderland, with snow capped pagodas standing serenely atop rugged alpine scenery.
The concert was arranged by Ding Yi’s local government, to honour him and his doings operatic. Despite carpy stuff about him in the Australian press (suspect a racial motive there), he has a most magnificent voice and it was a joy both to work and perform with him. All the big numbers came out, mostly Verdi and Puccini. He also sang some Chinese songs that are murdered time and time again by lesser mortals than Mr. Ding.
He raised them from the dead, removed the grave cloths and set them free! Such a fitting end to the season. “Local boy makes good” is always a great crowd puller. Oh - and the audience went nuts - sometimes in the middle of songs - because he had his home crowd in.
By the way, two other prominent Chinese are from Gansu as well. Wen Jai Bao and Hu Jin Tao, respectively Prime Minister and President of China.
So that’s it. Finish. Twiddle thumbs and other appendages. Make another cup of tea. Watch TV. Pom pom tiddley pom. Read that classic novel. Go for a walk. The orchestra’s on leave until 17th of Feb when we shall reappear in Paris at the Palais De Congres with the dance troupe and the band.
The author will be bringing you fresh updates from the UK and France after a brief sojourn in Lanzhou living purely on beef noodles and tea. Mei has jetted off to Korea for some snowy sightseeing.
One of the traditions at Chinese new year is for grandchildren to “Kow Tow” (pronounced something like koo too) to their grandparents, who then give the children some money.
To “Kow Tow”, you kneel in front of the person to whom you are paying obeisance, and knock your forehead on the ground a few times. I believe three times is polite, but I couldn’t swear to it.
Lanzhou is probably the worst place in China for pedestrian safety. One of the things that makes it so is that when something like a lamp-post or a litter bin is removed, they invariably fail to remove the studs that anchored the equipment. So at frequent intervals there are booby traps in the form of four one inch diameter steed posts about three to six inches high.
We were walking up a street near the theatre a few days ago, and a young lady went flying, having encountered one of these things. Whilst the girl was flat on her face, the elderly woman with her said something in Chinese, and everyone who heard it roared with laughter.
I asked Mei to translate what she said. It was;
“It’s not New Year yet - you won’t get any money out of me!”
Back to work again to rehearse for a couple of concerts this week. There’s an awful lot of songs in the program, which when you’re a Bass player is pretty much in the key and on the beat. Or if you like, in the “Oom Cha Cha” the Basses play the “Oom”.
Which leads to some hairy moments as it is quite mesmerizing. Suddenly you realise that you have lost count in the middle of 32 consecutive “Ooms” on the same note. A sheepish look at your neighbour usually helps, but if they’re lost as well you just have to trust your musical undergarments and prayer.
I hear that in the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra they have a wonderful player who never, ever gets lost. The whole section relies on him in a tight corner, and it’s not the leader, either!
Old Joke. Q: How do you know a Bass player’s playing out of tune?
A: He’s playing.
Years ago, after an honest days rape, pillage, slaughter and harrying their enemies, there was nothing an old fashioned Mongolian warlord and his merry band liked to do more than shoot a sheep to use as a sofa, turn a shield upside down over the fire, fill it with some oil and boil any foodstuffs available - usually offal from the deceased sheep - in the bubbling liquid. Together with some delicious herbs and spices, of course. (Mongolia is famous for it’s ornate knife and chopstick combinations.)
Myriads of Chinese carry on this barbarian form of cuisine to this day, replacing the shield and open fire on the rolling plains with a restaurant, calor gas burners and large metal pots full of spiced, stinking, oil or stock.
So last night, off we went to a meal at one of these places, and oh dear, it doesn’t get any better. This particular restaurant was pretty vast, so much so that a count of tables wasn’t possible. It just seemed to go on and on, like the smell of oil that permeated every fibre of the rooms.
Having placed a two section pan over our burner, one half containing oil and spices and the other containing stock with stuff in it, the same old rubbish came out to be boiled to tastelessness. Very thin slices of beef, bread like stuff - possibly a variation of tofu, cabbage, small sausages, strips of processed Kelp and lumps of another kind of tofu.
After suffering the infernal bubbling and boiling under ones nose for an eternity, and sung a song, we made for the exit, shoe soles sticking to the floor on the way. We passed a little guy pushing cart of expired oil pans, slopping the stinking liquid about and into the trays on the trolley. A vision of hell, if ever there was.
But it really didn’t end there. Because the place was so badly ventilated, the stink has come back on our clothes, and can still be smelled everywhere around the flat.
This hotpot is simply a rip off. All you have to do is get some oil and/or watery stock, slice up a bit of meat and veg, provide more flavoured oil to dip the tasteless stuff in when it has been boiled, and hey presto! Your customers do all the cooking for you!. Brilliant!
Although Lanzhou has considerable modern infrastructure, it has its very poor areas. Near to our estate, there is a similar creek to the one pictured here, an open sewer feeding direct into the Yellow River. Cholera springs to mind.
Slum housing has not disappeared from Lanzhou, as in an area of obvious poverty and overcrowding near the No.9 Middle school. One source confided that he knows of crime organisations in the area, which you find in areas like this the world over.
A country with as much money as China could solve these problems at a stroke, simply by stopping the exploitation of labour because of the labour glut. The poor labourers tend to live in poor areas like this. Perhaps CDB is being naive and simplistic, but if labourers, especially in construction, were properly registered and paid, they would improve the area they lived in or simply move out. “A labourer is worthy of his hire”.
A call for the end of exploitation of working class Chinese for the sake of a few extra pennies in some rich developers pocket is needed.
Well, as Forrest Gump said, “you never know what you’re going to get”.
Suddenly appearing in the big new shopping street in Lanzhou, this gigantic fibreglass noodle bowl extolling the benefits of Lanzhou Beef Noodles.
So without further ado, here is the citation on the bottom.
“Cohering wisdom and contributions of numerous beef noodle masters, Lanzhou hand pulled beef noodle is not only delicious, economical and has high nutritive value. Particular about “clear, white, green, red”, Lanzhou hand pulled beef noodle has achieved harmonious unity of colour, smell, taste and appearance. It adopts superior refined flour with strong malleability and dough kneading agent without any harmful substances. The soup is boiled with dozens of natural seasonings and traditional Chinese medicines like beef, beef liver, beef bones, uncooked beef fat, fat native chicken, wild pepper, fructus amomi, cinnamon, ginger peel, boiled oil, MSG, salt, sauce, pepper powder, local green radish etc. So the soup and beef are fresh and mellow with no rank smell. Lanzhou hand pulled beef noodle is effective for curing stomach cold, rheumatoid diseases, etc., also nourishing Yin and suppressing Yang, nourishing Yin deficiency, removing blood heat, nourishing blood and tranquillisation, expelling wind and freeing channels in spleen, lung and kidney. It has magic results in invigorating the spleen, nourishing calcium, strengthening the kidney, strengthening the essence and improving health.”
So come to Lanzhou and get your spleen ,liver, and just about everything else rejuvenated by this miracle food. We would be glad to show you a noodle bar or two!
After a couple of bowls of delicious noodles, and a visit to one of the Auntie’s houses we went off to Mei’s brothers place where we would sleep the night. In the end there were four of us in the large Kang there. The night was bitterly cold, probably down to below -20C. This was the first time in my life I had slept in a bed with more than one other person!
The next morning after a very comfortable night (once the girls had stopped talking at 2 a.m) , it was time to see the bride off from the house we had eaten in the previous night. Alas! we were too slow and missed the cavalcade of cars taking her across to the neighbouring village! At the gate a man collected our donations and recorded them on a card. We sheepishly entered the east room at the house again for - more food!
When the family income is hovering around the 1$ a day mark, there’s little money to get decent food. Sitting on the Kang with the Aunties and lots of other relatives, a group of local villagers were served a meal of noodles, vegetables, pork, fish and sweetmeats; about seven dishes in all.
There was no disguising the fact that these people hadn’t had a decent meal in weeks. They fell on the food very hungrily, gulping and swallowing as quickly as they could. The intensity with which they looked at the meal was unnerving. It really brought our own easy existence into perspective, as China has a habit of doing on a daily basis.
In the village, there is no running water. A year or so back, the well, which had been yielding good water for a long, long time, dried up. A new well was dug and it gives only salty water, which is disgusting to taste. Goodness knows what the stuff does for the body. Fresh vegetables are hard to come by, and food for most people is normally just noodles and a little meat. Day in, day out.
So we gratefully took our seats for the meal after the villagers got up.
What of the Bride? The real wedding feast at the Groom’s house?
Here we came up against tradition . A relative cannot attend a wedding if their father has died within the previous year. As this was the case with Mei, we couldn’t go. We could only imagine the fun and games we had witnessed a couple of years ago at another wedding.
After saying our goodbyes, we caught the bus back to Lanzhou. As usual, the driver and conductor packed in as many as they could, with the usual discomfort that this produces. So it was extremely gratifying when the bus was stopped by the police just on the outskirts of Goalan, the excess people asked to get off and the driver fined for his pains.
A few days ago we went over to Mei’s home village near Goalan to attend a wedding. Out there, about 2 hours bus ride north from Lanzhou, it’s quite a few feet higher than Lanzhou, and the village is in a very exposed, flat area. So we both dressed in industrial strength underwear, together with sweaters, hats, gloves, thick shirts and long down filled coats.
The buses from Lanzhou to Goalan aren’t Greyhound or National express standard by any means, and sitting on the padded toolbox behind the driver isn’t the best place to spend a bouncy couple of hours. On the way, the driver and conductor packed more people into that bus than you could ever imagine. Here it’s perfectly normal to endanger the lives of men, women and children, talk on the phone when you are driving and smoke. It’s illegal of course. (I bet you won’t find foreigners attending the Olympics have to suffer that way.)
We looked in at Mei’s family’s old place by the road where the bus dropped us off. We miss her father’s smile and welcome so much. He died nearly a year ago from lung cancer. After dropping off some gifts for Mei’s nephew and niece and talking with their Grandma for a bit, we set off across the road and through the winding dirt roads of the village to her sister’s house, whose daughter was getting married.
The rammed yellow earth walls of the village courtyards seem to have grown out of the soil to stand forever. The smell of burnt straw, coal smoke and dung hangs in the air. Many walls are being replaced by brick, but earth is still used by poorer people. That’s most people. The roads are dirt, and there’s no street lighting.
With a typical country house like Mei’s sister’s, the main house forms the northern side of the quadrangle, with the kitchen and various other rooms most of the east and west sides. The quad encloses is a small garden, usually with a Sichuan pepper tree and an apple or pear tree or two. The south wall of the quad has an ornate and substantial double doorway, usually near the east corner, capped by a very Chinese looking roof, with small tiles, swept up at the corners. The richer the family, the more ornate the door. With the doors closed, total privacy is ensured. And it keeps the bitter wind and some of the yellow dust out.
Supper was served in the east room where the Aunties and all the female relatives had congregated. Coming through the courtyard door into the noisy coal smoky yard I got some inquiring looks from the darkly clad men in uniform dark blue Mao caps drinking baijo (Chinese 56% clear spirit) and beer around a fold up table in the courtyard.
A massive Kang, about 12 feet across and twelve deep sits to the left of the corner door into the east room, taking up about half the room’s area. A Kang is a raised brick platform about four feet high which is the bed, loafing around area, dining area, and just a great place for the Aunties at times like this. They sit cross legged behind a small low square table, five of them, some wearing black head scarves, not tied but folded and placed on the head with two folds hanging down the side of the head over the ears. Chinese widow’s weeds.
The window above the Kang is a geometric lattice, with no glass but covered neatly with plastic and a red paper-cut design of dragons.
In the far corners of the Kang sit very neatly folded quilts, covered with decorative white cloths, embroidered with birds and flowers picked out in blue, red and gold. At night, the quilts come out and a straw fire is lit beneath the Kang. Sleep is blissful.
Immediately next to the door into the room is a coal fired range, where a cauldron is boiling some water for noodles. Wads of dried noodles, hand made by the ladies, are put in the pot, and soon a delicious dish of Sousa Mein is served, bowls of rich sauce with the noodles and a little vinegar to taste.
Slurping the noodles on the Kang and around the table opposite there must have been at least 20 women, all related. The progenitor of all these was one woman, who had 16 children, of whom only 7 survive, some of them the old Aunties.
To be continued….
