Getting in Step

Greetings. By now you have deduced that we have surmounted the technical difficulties. We had help but the names will not be revealed.

As I write this we are in Chuxiong and the camellia conference is under way. The opening ceremonies this morning were absolutely mind blowing. We were driven to what appeared to be a large shopping plaza. To get to the area where a stage and chairs had been set up for the welcome and opening ceremonies we had to walk a distance approximately equivalent to going from the Sonoma County courthouse to the Santa Rosa Junior College. (For you out-of-towners I am guessing between one-fourth to one-third mile). Both sides of the literally red carpet were lined with colorfully costumed singers, dancers and musicians. The stroll from bus to assembly area took just shy of one-half hour.

At the reviewing area we were given Camilla conference baseball caps and treated (if that is the right word) to welcoming speeches by local politicians. Following the obligatory hot air there was some very cool music and folk dancing by some of the colorfully costumed greeters. This was capped with a small but very impressive fireworks display. (It is a shame that photos will not be available for awhile but in truth the photos will be a very pale imitation of the real thing).

Following the opening ceremonies we got to wander through the shopping center which was laid out like a small town about eight blocks long and six blocks wide. We were allowed to walk the length of it but restricted to only one-half the width. Potted camellias in full bloom, literally hundreds of them, lined the entire walkway. At one point, having wandered ahead of Nancy who was oo-ing and ah-ing over the camellias with her fellow enthusiasts I discovered a small art shop with Chinese style scroll paintings of camellia blooms. I went back and collected Nancy. She found one she liked and one of the student volunteers helped us to communicate with the shopkeeper. After the deal was struck we learned that the shopkeeper was also the artist. Nancy wanted photos of herself with the artist and the artist asked if we would download the photos to his in shop computer. Done.

At another point, having wandered off by myself again, I discovered a wine shop. There was a young blonde woman sitting out front and I chatted her up (old habits die hard). Turned out she was from Indiana and she and her husband ran the shop. I met him as well and when he learned I was from California and a wine drinker he brought out the only bottle of California wine he sold. It was a Merlot from Paso Robles. I gave him a stern lecture (kidding) and he invited us to return at 8 p.m. when he would open the bottle so we could give him our sophisticated (stop giggling) opinion. Unfortunately, the area was way too far from our hotel to walk so we were forced to take a rain check.

Sandwiched in here and there were two television interviews. At the first one both Nancy and I were interviewed for a local TV station. The second one was Nancy only (get the ugly dude off camera). I fully expect that if we were to return next year we would find Nancy’s face adorning billboards advertising cars or Internet providers or clothing, all of which are billboards we have seen.

On that subject China so far seems a strange mash up of the utterly alien (no toilet paper in the public restrooms, huge platters of food but no serving utensils at the meals) and the familiar (billboards, television advertising). As many folk far more articulate than I have noted China is a land of striking contrasts. The city we are in now is ultra modern, everything we have seen is post WW II construction and very clean. The city we were in yesterday was ancient and filthy.

Our bus ride yesterday took us to several historic and/or natural wonder stops. The best was a park where we hiked around through rock formations similar to what is found in Pinnacles National Monument or Bryce Canyon in Utah.

The weather has been very accommodating. Clear, dry, very cold at night but warm (around 70) during the day. Since I now find myself writing about the weather it is clearly time to stop. We will be sitting at this hotel for the next couple of days while the camellia conference continues so hopefully I can blog a bit more before we are on the road again.

Zai jian.

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Idiots Abroad

In bidding farewell a few days ago I quoted one of my favorite authors, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., to the effect that unusual travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God. Since then I have discovered, painfully, that when the couple doing the dancing have approximately three and one-half left feet the performance is not destined for a featured spot on “Dancing With the Stars.”

We departed from San Francisco Monday afternoon (January 30). We arrived in Beijing approximately 22 hours later. As you may well imagine we were pretty well jet lagged at that point. So you can probably understand our shock and dismay when we were told that we would not be allowed to enter China because we lacked the proper paperwork. Apparently, unlike the countries we had previously visited, a visa is required to enter China. Somehow this fact was never communicated to us either by the sponsors, the airline or anyone else. Apparently all assumed that we knew this. As none of our previous overseas adventures had required a visa our ignorance was quite innocent and genuine but it was ignorance nonetheless.

Now you might imagine that the Chinese, who must encounter this type of blunder on a somewhat regular basis, would have some sort of procedure in place to deal with it. You would be wrong. Instead we were taken to see an officious policewoman who bluntly informed us we now had two choices – go home or go to Hong Kong where, unlike on the mainland, a visa can be obtained in a little over 24 hours. Hong Kong it was. We sat in the restricted area of the Beijing airport for about 10 hours. We were then escorted by a policeman to the van that ferried passengers from the arrival building to the departure point for the plane to Hong Kong. Nancy confessed later that she was sorely tempted to ask the cop to pose with me but thought better of it.

Our sole companion during this extended wait was a young woman from Taiwan who had arrived in Beijing for the sole purpose of changing planes from the one bringing her in from a visit to the USA to one for Taiwan. For some reason the authorities objected to her passport and would not allow her to enter China, even for the purpose of changing planes. She was there when we arrived and, although arrangements had been finally made for her to depart; she was still waiting when we left.

The flight to Hong Kong took about three hours. During the flight Nancy related the reason for our visit to Hong Kong to one of the stewardesses. We were concerned that we would be unable to begin the process of obtaining the necessary visa as our arrival in Hong Kong was to happen at about 5 p.m. their time. The stewardess took pity on us and arranged for us to get off the airplane first and had someone to meet us and escort us to the office where we could apply for the necessary visa. When we arrived at that location we were amazed to discover that there was a thriving industry generating visas for entry into the mainland. Whether the customers of the over one half dozen businesses located there were other individuals who found themselves in our situation or just people who were in Hong Kong for other reasons but had decided to visit the mainland on the spur of the moment we had no way to determine.

We chose the booth with the name recommended to us by the young man who had met us at the plane. After completing some forms and forking over a fairly large sum we were informed that we could pick up our visas the next day after 7:30 p.m. Having a day to kill in Hong Kong we signed up the next morning for a tour of the island. It was great fun and we met some interesting folk from around the world. Then, while returning to our hotel which was walking distance from the visa supermarket, the van broke down. More tension ensued but we finally got to visa world and obtained the necessary paperwork.

The next day we flew to Kunming and joined the camellia group expecting to be the laughing stock of the tour. To our amazement others had encountered the same problem. The only difference was that their situation was diagnosed before they left North America. In fact they were not allowed to board the plane. One individual simply flew directly to Hong Kong and pulled our maneuver. The other couple was already in Canada so obtained the necessary visas there. Others in the group had used travel agents to book their flights and were thus saved the agony and the humiliation. Apparently the whole visa required rule is only about three years old.

Once here and able to log on we discovered that neither Facebook nor our blog site can be entered from China. Censored. If you are reading this you have probably deduced that I have figured a way around that problem. Photos are a bit trickier and will probably be posted after the fact.

Rest assured that all is well now. Nancy is renewing acquaintance with some of her fellow camellia enthusiasts that we met in Japan two years ago while I stumble around taking photos and tasting exotic food. Due to the technical difficulties these posts may not be as frequent as I would like but if you are reading this one hopefully the technical difficulties have been overcome and there will be more to follow. If we are not home as scheduled by February 15 please, in the immortal words of Warren Zevon, “Send lawyers, guns and money.”

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Our China schedule

http://camellia-ics.org/_ics/congress.htm

Hopefully the link above will take you to the China tour and conference schedule. It is a PowerPoint presentation so I was unable to paste it directly here.

Next week new adventure

Nancy and I are off to China January 30 for a little over two weeks. Once again Nancy will be attending the International Camellia Society's biannual meeting while I gaze around wide-eyed (one of my very special talents). We will be taking our travel computer and hopefully we can resurrect this blog while we are there. Below is the conference schedule. I will be posting the schedule for the pre and post conference tours as soon as the boss shares them with me.


Agenda of 2012 International Camellia Congress, Chuxiong, China
& The 8th China Camellia Expo


Date Time Activity Contents Activity Sites
Feb. 3rd All day Registering for expert group and judges Hotel of the Yi ancient town
Feb. 4th All day Appraisal activity for camellia exhibition of Expo Chahuaxi of the Yi ancient town
Feb. 5th 8:00-
18:00 Registering and signing of the guests Xiongbao Hotel
Hotel of the Yi ancient town
16:00 Directors’ meeting for China Camellia Branch Hotel of the Yi ancient town
18:30-
20:30 Welcoming banquet Xiangguofu of the Yi ancient town
Feb. 6th 7:30-8:30 Breakfast Hotels of the guests stay
8:30-9:00 Welcoming ceremony Yi ancient town
9:00-
10:30 Opening ceremony Yi ancient town
10:40-
12:00 Visiting camellia exhibition of Expo Chahuaxi of the Yi ancient town
12:10 Lunch Hotels of the guests stay
14:00-18:00 Academic paper exchange meeting；Serving with tea and desserts at break time Broadcasting hall of prefectural radio & TV center
Friendship meeting for flowers circle between 2 sides of the straits Hongfang guarden
18:00 Dinner Hotels of the guests stay
20:00-
22:30 “Sun girl” special theatrical performance Great theater of the Yi prefecture
Prefectural culture center
Feb. 7th 7:30-
8:30 Breakfast
Hotels of the guests stay
08:30-
11:30 Visiting in Zixi mountain
Zixi mountain
12:00 Lunch Farmhouse
Camellia Garden
13:30-
16:30 Visiting in Zixi mountain Zixi mountain
16:30 Return back to the Yi tribe of the Yi ancient town from Zixi Mountain
The Yi tribe
18:00 Dinner, watching grand ceremony of offering sacrifices to fir of the Yi
The Yi tribe
Feb. 8th 7:30-8:30 Breakfast Hotels of the guests stay
8:40-
12:00 Visiting camellia boutique garden, prefectural museum, exhibition of camellia photography, Handwriting and embroidery and exhibition of works of the badge collection Erlu park
Prefectural museum
8:00-
12:00 Directors’ meeting of ICS Serving with tea and desserts at break time） Xiongbao hotel
12:00 Lunch Hotels of the guests stay
14:00-
18:00 Academic paper exchange meeting
Serving with tea and desserts at break time） Broadcasting hall of prefectural radio & TV center
The award ceremony of camellia Expo and camellia enterprises Promotion Yi ancient town
18:00 Dinner Hotels of the guests stay
20:00 Academic seminar on ancient camellia protection Xiongbao Hotel
Feb. 9th 7:30-8:30 breakfast Hotels of the guests stay
8:30 1.Going to Heniu mountain of Zhongshan township of Cuxiong Municipality for visiting
2.Visiting Lufeng dinosaur valley Lunch will be arranged at the visiting sites
18:30 Closing ceremony and
Farewell dinner Xiongbao Hotel

Agenda of 2012 International Camellia Congress, Chuxiong, China
& The 8th China Camellia Expo

The Guiding Lights

Today’s post will be short and hopefully sweet as we spent the entire day in Walnut Creek at a - can you guess? - yes, camellia show. Sorry, no points for the camellia veterans. But I digress.

Today’s topic is a paean and a tribute to our Japanese tour guides: (in alphabetical order) Atsuko Takayama, Noriko Kuratani and Ryotaro Kunishige.

In each locale that we visited a local would act as our “informational” tour guide (for lack of a better term) for that day’s site visits. As knowledgeable and charming as some of these individuals were they got to go home when the bus returned to the hotel in the evening. Not so Atsuko, Noriko and Ryotaro.

Every morning when we went down for breakfast (sometimes as early as 6:30, never later than 7:30) there were Atsuko, Noriko and Ryotaro huddled together in the lobby or at a table working on the plan for the day. When Nancy would kick me out of our hotel room at 10 p.m. and tell me to take the computer to the lobby to work on the blog so she could sleep there would be Atsuko, Noriko and Ryotaro plotting and planning. All day as the bus rolled hither and yon there was the trio in the front of the bus making sure everyone was comfortable, informed about the plan and provided with a bottle of water.

They were responsible for our travel arrangements within Japan (which included making sure everyone was on the bus before we left), for our meals, for our lodging (especially challenging the day bad weather caused a cancellation of the jetfoil to Goto and the trio was forced to find last minute lodging for us in Nagasaki) and for our entry into the various gardens, shrines and temples we visited. They also tended the sick and the injured, put up with the complainers (of whom there were remarkably few) and gently herded the space cadets.

So please join me and raise your glasses to these stalwart individuals who worked so hard to make our visit to Japan comfortable, memorable and fun. Domo arigato (thank you). Sugoi (excellent)! Kampai (cheers)!

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The Name Game

One of the first things that caught my eye in Japan was the fact that many businesses have adopted English names. Not just English versions of Japanese names such as “Honda” but just flat out English names. The phenomenon was so wide spread that I began writing down the names in a notebook as we rode past them on the bus. As a consequence I don’t know what each and everyone of these businesses do but the names remain intriguing and amusing.

Here is my list:
Outlet J
3rd Planet
SoftBank
Mama Kitchen
3 Bond
Buster Video
Royal Host
Yellow Hat
Boss Coffee
Studio Mario
Cooool Games
Joyfull Restaurant
Dr. Drive
Truth Surf Department
Family Mart
Amazing Enterprises, Inc.
Eye Love
Mammy’s
Oily’s Café
Grease More Hair Studio
Internet & Comic Café
Joint Market
Betty Boop’s Garage
Naughties
Cockpit F-1
Home Wide
Bamboo Hair
Hands Man
Dog Run Café
Super Combo
Hair Woods
Hair Leaf
Dan City
Colorado Coffee
Duck!
Boo Boo House
Pocari Sweat

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Eight Miles High

As I write this we are flying high above the Pacific Ocean about five hours from San Francisco International if my watch is correct. The Japan adventure is almost over. The posts, while remaining chronological, have fallen behind by about three days. We were two days in Kyoto and then spent our final day in Nara. These three days featured one castle and then a seemingly endless stream of temples and shrines. Some of them were pretty impressive but in the end we were, many agreed, “templed out.”

Kyoto is a major international tourist attraction unlike Goto or Beppu, so consequently the sites we visited were extremely crowded and Western faces were not uncommon. Aside from our group and the JET (Japanese Exchange Teachers) Goto and Kurume were without Western faces, or at least I did not see any. The press of crowds made our experience less intimate but the tour guides we had in Kyoto and Nara helped compensate for this with their knowledge, charm and humor.

Nijo Castle was the first stop in Kyoto. Nijo Castle was the “private residence of the Tokugawa shoguns” who ruled Japan for several hundred years. The most interesting aspect of Nijo Castle was the “nightingale floor,” so called because as you walked across it the floor made chirping noises. This was accomplished by pounding nails through the floor into metal sleeves located on the floor joists. As the boards shifted up and down from the weight of people walking across them the nails would rub against the inside of the sleeves creating the chirping. This feature was installed in the hallway leading from the castle entrance to the interior to warn the residents of intruders.

Our marvelous Kyoto guide, “Casey,” explained that the relationship between shogun and emperor was like that between wife and husband. The Emperor, like the husband, was always number one. The shogun, like the wife, actually exercised the power. You will just have to trust me when I tell you that when Casey wove his explanation it was far more elaborate than the one offered here and funny like a standup comedy routine. Casey was a young Japanese man from Osaka who spent one year at University of the Pacific when he was in college. He possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of Kyoto, the sites we were visiting and Japanese history and culture plus he had a keen appreciation of Western humor. Nancy says he would make a great trainer.

We then visited the Golden and the Silver Pavilion. These structures and the parks surrounding them were built by later shoguns from the same family. The Golden Pavilion was constructed in the 1300s. It was burned down in 1950 (the circumstances of that event are fictionalized in a novel, The Golden Pavilion, written by Mishima Yukio). It was rebuilt and the current structure is covered with 44 pounds of gold leaf. As impressive as that is the Silver Pavilion which, the guidebook points out, “is no more silver than the Blue Mosque in Istanbul is blue” was far more beautiful and enjoyable according to those well known experts on Japanese tourist attractions – Nancy and Steve. Perhaps because, again quoting the guidebook, it “epitomized the so-called Higashiyama style of Zen understatement.” Photos of both are offered and you can draw your own conclusion.

A visit to the Kyoto Handicraft Center provided some retail therapy before the final whirlwind of temples and shrines (although it must be noted that with the exception of Reikanji temples and shrines seem to have no qualms regarding merchandizing). The Reikanji Temple was very cool as it is a private temple open to the public only once or twice per year. Our entree was the fact that the temple grounds feature a large collection of camellias and the head abbess is a member of the International Camellia Society. We were there by invitation and once again welcomed with speeches, tea and mochi. A second private viewing took us to the “Goshiki tsubaki” at a private residence. Japanese hospitality is second to none. Before leaving Kyoto we went to the Kiyomizu Temple and the Yakushiji Temple. The guidebook says of Kyoto that, “Kyoto’s wealth of 1600 temples, 270 shrines, 200 gardens and 500 festivals is so mind-boggling that any visitor to the city runs the risk of premature burn-out.” Although we barely scratched the surface I would be inclined to agree.

A two hour bus ride took us to Nara where we visited the Yakushiji Temple before packing it in for the day. We woke the next morning at the hotel in Nara and after breakfast we visited the Kasuga Shrine, the Byakugoji Temple and the Gokoku Shrine before the final push to the Ana Gate Tower Hotel. That push took us through Osaka, the second largest city in Japan (population 2,653,552). It is unbelievably huge with seemingly mile after endless mile of skyscrapers. As Osaka was the first place we saw in Japan I believe that it was responsible for my first impression that Japan was “relentlessly urban.” That first impression, while not entirely untrue as Japan has 127 million people packed into an area smaller than Montana, does not do the country justice as much of it is suburban and even rural with ample greenery, natural beauty and open space.

A grand farewell banquet was held the final evening in Nara. The food, once again, was spectacular and we bid goodbye to all the new friends we had made from around the world. When we get home I hope to do a few more posts on the subjects of food, culture, guides, the international flavor of the tour and a few other topics but I think I’m done for now.

Photos (copy and paste if the link does not work).

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