Bridge and Some Memories

Yesterday evening I went to a bridge teaching class again. I am finding this of great benefit; in two weeks I have learned two things I had not really understood before, and now completely understand. Before this I think a lot of my bidding was rather “seat of the pants”, and I am trying to get it into an ordered state.

I have become unused to going out in the evening recently and, as I didn’t get home until after 10 (and to bed about midnight), I feel a bit as though I am not firing on all four cylinders today.

I have also had trouble accessing a number of blog sites this morning, with Internet Explorer throwing me off. When I went back and looked at blogger dashboard I discovered that, for some reason some (many?) sites were being incorrectly identified as spam, but that they were working very hard to correct the problem

I feel deprived.

However, at least there were sites on other hosts, and through dickiebo I found a great one about a rancher in Alberta, Canada. She posts wonderful photographs of cattle and a bull or two.

I also this morning received a long, chatty email from a lady who was in the group who visited China about 10 years ago. Sadly she lost her husband last year, but she has picked herself up and carries on cheerfully.

She has kept in touch with a number of members of that party, and so I hear a bit about them too. It was a wonderful holiday, with a small group (about 20) and I still have warm memories of the people and all the sights we saw all those years ago. Not long afterwards she and her husband came and visited my sister and me and took us out to lunch. Sadly she lost a pearl earring that her husband had bought for her in China. Nowadays I cannot manage to visit her and doubt that she would want to make the visit up north now, but we keep in touch once or twice a year by email. I find writing difficult (or rather holding a pen difficult) so email is wonderful.

Can I get through a post without mentioning a washing? Well not really, but I have washed and ironed 3 table runners of assorted sizes which were crocheted by my late Aunt. It is very fine work with narrow gauge (is that the right term) thread. It manages very well in the washing machine, but I iron it when wet and dry it flat.

I have kept myself out of mischief by devising a spreadsheet to show last Monday afternoon’s bridge scores; someone else has an outline file on their computer but I was given a hand written one to pass on on Monday afternoon.

To nobody’s surprise, my partner and I came bottom!

However, I was so wrapped up in playing around with the Excel spreadsheet that I almost forgot about the washing!

China - Suzhou

We left off from my last post about China while we were still at Suzhou, having had a cruise from Tongli on part of the Grand Canal to Zhou Zhuang and on our return visited the Tuisi Garden.

While in Suzhou we visited two world famous gardens, the first of which is The Garden of the Humble Administer, which also had typical buildings with grey slate roofs latticed windows and heavy furniture. The gardens were landscaped with volcanic rock from Tai Lake in South China.

There were many flowers, notably azaleas, often in tubs.

There were lakes and waterways....

..and once again the now familiar style of building.

This garden was beautiful and somewhat extensive. What should have been a tranquil experience was marred somewhat by the leaders escorting their various groups, describing everything that was being seen through a megaphone at great volume!

China 4 (part b)

I was cut off in the middle of posting China 4, so here is the rest of it now:

Then it was off by train for Suzhou. From Suzhou we took a cruise on the Grand Canal to Zhou Zhuang. As you can see from the above picture, some of the houses we could see from the boat looked so like suburban Britain.

Here we had a magnificent roast pork dish named after a local rich merchant. After lunch and a look round the merchant’s house we wandered off to look at the small tourist shops. Because they left us alone to browse, we actually bought things, whereas at other times we were somewhat overwhelmed. We had a lovely peaceful break sitting in the shade of the trees below.

China (4)

I left you last, having visited the Terracotta Warriors, but it is perhaps also worth while saying a bit about Xian; the region around Xian is very fertile, and is probably the richest part of China. Crops include vines, wheat, pomegranates and persimmons. The scenery is flat, with hills not far away in the haze. Burial mounds were much in evidence and we wondered how much more remained to be found, as the Terracotta warriors apparently did not come from the richest tomb.

Our local guide told us that in 3 years they should be using “their” gas instead of coal, so pollution should improve. Beijing got “their” gas first (sounds just like Scotland’s cry about North Sea oil!)

We left Xian by air for Shanghai.

{We had a National guide who came with us for the whole trip, and at each stop we were met by a local guide. The national guide not only knew about the sights we were visiting, but also acted as a trouble-shooter for the whole party, and the more paranoid among us reckoned that he was there to make sure we saw nothing except what we were supposed to see.}

Of all our guides, the Shanghai one was the least successful. He spoke excellent English, but seemed bored by it all and a bit unhelpful (especially crossing busy roads). We were there for less than a day, and saw only the Jade Buddha Temple, then went on to the Bund, a lot of which looked so like Edinburgh’s George Street used to look.

If you look at the building on the left towards the back of this picture, you will see what I mean.

We then saw our first garden, the Yu Garden; it has an artificial mountain and is quite small with a pond, rocks and greenery. After this we were taken to visit an exhibition of paintings and crafts. It was very hot and the guide would not let us stop for a drink; however we were starting to hit our metaphorical stride now, so we all rebelled. To spite us, the guide dropped us at the railway station early, with dire warnings not to leave until the train came.

Of course we ignored that and some of the men went off for goodies, particularly water or soft drinks.

China (Part 3)

We left Beijing by plane for Xian. I should comment here that every flight we were on (with one exception, which I shall tell you about later) left the ground (not the gate) at the advertised time - most impressive. We visited the Great Mosque - our guide had been raised in the muslim quarter.


Then on to the highlight - the Terracotta Warriors. There were 3 air-conditioned buildings, the main pit (below) and two others where work is still going on, so that we saw all stages of the archeological site: reconstructed warriors, pieces of warriors in situ, as found, the reconstruction site where the warriors are painstakingly reconstructed, and pits still to be excavated. Originally these warriors would have been very colourful.

Above is a postcard showing the inside of one of the buildings erected over them; no photographs were allowed. The scale is breathtaking.

This shows one of the warriors in detail. Every warrior is supposed to be different.

Above is a picture of the farmer who discovered the pit with the terracotta warriors signing a copy of the book about the site for us.

You may (or may not) be surprised to know that, if you see someone else's photograph of the farmer who found the pit signing a copy of a book for them, the farmer looks quite different! Of course we knew this would be the case, but enjoyed doing it anyway.

China - The Great Wall

Continuing on from Tiananmen Square, we saw the Temple of Heaven and the Summer Palace, but I don't have any good pictures to show you of them,

We then went on to see the Great Wall (or at least a small portion of it).

This is a postcard showing quite some length of the Wall. Much of it has been repaired of late.

This photograph is to show how steep certain portions are - taken by S; I went a short distance in the opposite direction to one of the towers (and even then needed to buy some Fanta!)

On the way back to our bus we found a "shopping opportunity" as we called it. On seeing us the glad cries went up "Lookee lookee we have big ones!"

I am sorry that it would appear that I did not take a photograph of the bus park; I certainly reckoned that, if you could see the Great Wall from space*, you could almost certainly see the bus park! (and we went to a less crowded part of the wall.)

* I understand this is a fallacy.

China

Some years ago I went to China on a 3-week holiday. It was such fun. although quite tiring. I am so glad I did it then, as I definitely would not be able to do it now!

Above is a photo of Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Our guide was busy extolling how many people the square would hold. Voice from the back "Ah, but how many tanks would it hold?" (Do you remember the student protest and the picture of 1 brave student standing in front of all the tanks?

Here is the entrance to the Forbidden City, which is off Tiananmen Square.

This is one of the "squares" inside The Forbidden City. To give you an idea of the scale of the place, when you go through the building you see ahead of you, you pass into another square and so on to at least 3 squares (my memory lets me down here)

a detail of one of the animals in the square. There were many buildings at the side of the square as you can see in the background here - these housed the Imperial Family and servants.

A detail at the entrance to the building you saw at the far side of the square.

We saw other things while in Beijing but that, my faithful reader, will have to wait for another post.