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Our 2018 trip in 4 short films

17/1/2019

Before you scroll through this blog you may enjoy a summary of our trip in 4 short films

Slow Train to China (4:33' ) using Glenn Miller's cover of Chatanooga Choo choo
(see October posting for more explanation)

Getting Lost in China (2:39') using a recording of a song we wrote and recorded
(See November posting for more explanation)

Ian & Julia's 7 day Chengdu tour (4:31') a film made by a student in Chengdu including clips of us singing and playing

为人民服务 renmin fuwu wei Serve the people (You gotta serve somebody) (4:06) using Natalie Cole singing Bob Dylan's You gotta serve somebody. I thought of this song after our meeting with Liang Fang (see November posting with reference to Buddha and Mao) so I've used it for a film to pay tribute to all the people in China who gave us such a happy and unforgettable experience.

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Thanks to our good friends in China

11/1/2019

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As we’ve reached the end of 2018, I’ve run out of time to write in any detail about our two weeks in Kunming (with a three day trip to Dali in the middle of it). So I’m just going to finish off this blog with a thank-you to all the people who made our trip such a wonderful experience. You can meet Jiang, Candy, Shirly, Jason, Anqi and Zhouyi in the blog archives for May, June and October. You can meet Anqi’s parents, Yuzhi and Jianjun, her brother Liujia and other family members in the blog archive for October. My November post is all about our meeting with Qianqian’s friend San Lang and her mother in Chengdu. And you can read below about the afternoon we spent with Qianqian’s students, our visit to the Nightingale Music School and the special evening at the Sichuan opera with Qianqian and her friend Shanshan.

I could write so much more about our two weeks in Kunming, where the staff at the Lost Garden Guest House became good friends and we particularly want to thank DuXi (aka Shrek) , and his friend Zhouyu who took us to Chen Li’s studio (see July post for our introduction to Chen Li in London) and arranged for Ian to play in a restaurant near our hotel.

Du Xi is a photographer and when he had to go off to Japan, Zhouyu and her friend Rouyi took us to the new Yunnan Museum and out for “grab hands rice”.

In Kunming we also spent a couple of days with Xing Xing, a schoolfriend of Qianqian’s from their home province of Henan, and her friend Zhangjilai.

Xing Xing took us around the campus of Yunnan University, where she and Zhangjilai are doctoral students. She is hoping to come to the UK on a post-doctoral programme next year but needs to pass an English exam to qualify for government funding. If anyone reading this has an interest in material metaphysics and would like to help Xing xing practice talking about this in English, please let us know!

When we took the train to Dali DuXi had already put us in touch with hotel manager Lingling (aka Wendy, pictured left with her colleague), who arranged our excursion up Canshang mountain and looked after us in Dali.

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A week in Chengdu

1/1/2019

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Qianqian responded to a post that Jiang put on social media and she came to meet us as soon as we arrived in Chengdu. You can read in the November blog about our day with Qianqian’s friend (and dentist) San Lang and her 76 year old mother. Qianqian teaches English at Jiaxiang high school and she arranged for us to spend an afternoon with two of her senior classes. Ian took his guitar along and we told stories about our lives and sang in Portuguese, Spanish, French, English and Chinese. We invited questions and had some good discussions about family and relationships, about music, social media and censorship, about consumerism and democracy.

The students, who were only told of our visit the day before, presented us with touching gifts. The science students clubbed together to buy a big box of moon cakes

Some girls from the liberal arts class had spent the evening making a beautiful book of poetry in Chinese and English, with exquisite calligraphy.

We spent several evenings with Qianqian and her friend Shanshan, eating all kinds of food. One meal included arrowroot jelly, sweet iced soup with peanuts off-setting the hot chilli sauce, pigs’ brains, bits of chicken feet and gristly beef and veg on sticks.

Later on, one of the students made a video of our “7 day tour in Chengdu”, using film clips from our school visit and from our visit to the Nightingale Music School where Qianqian took us to meet her guitar teacher, Miss Wen. Ian had a lesson on the Gujeng and we all sang and played together all afternoon, until Qianqian took us to a restaurant for hot pot.

Qianqian and Shanshan took us to the Sichuan Opera, where Ian and I were given a VIP tourist experience of being dressed up as characters from the opera before the show..

and having a massage and ear cleaning afterwards.

The opera was more of a variety show with shadow puppets, firebreathers, acrobats, dancers, magicians and musicians.

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Our 2018 trip in 4 short films

Thanks to our good friends in China

A week in Chengdu

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