China Archives | James Alexander-Sinclair

I said that I would write another blog about food and this seems like an excellent moment- in other words it is a moment when I really should be doing things of much greater importance. Blogs may not carry the same heft as they used to but they are still an excellent excuse for procrastination.

Anybody who has read my last blog (or follows me on social meeja) will know that I was in China recently swanning around a place called Chengdu. This is the capital of the Sichuan region and a place that sets great store by its gastronomy. You can eat different things in different places for months without repetition although there is one really strong thread that unites all this together and that is heat. Chengdu does not do bland. Everything is steeped in chilli or, at the very least the numbing punch of Szechuan pepper.

This is a brief run through the highlights…

One of the great privileges of going off to odd parts of the globe is enjoying the hospitality and discovering places and things that, was I on my own, I would never discover. I am there for six days and I need to eat so am whisked off to all sorts of interesting restaurants. My hosts are understandably very worried about my pallid English palate but I felt that I was carrying the pride of Britain on my shoulders and it was not only my pleasure but my duty to eat anything and everything that was put in front of me.

My first experience was dinner on day one when I got an idea of what I was in for – a bony freshwater fish that had been interred under a mound of finely chopped chilli. It was a baptism of (almost literally) fire although, once I was over the initial shock it was delicious. After that the fun kept coming – I could have had chilli drenched stuff for breakfast ion the hotel but decided to pace myself and stuck to bread and noodles.

The big speciality of the region is called a hot pot – banish any similarity to a Lancashire hotpot from your minds. This is a seething, roiling soup made mostly from chilli and a whole bucket full of Szechuan pepper. For those of you who have not experienced this particular pepper it’s unique quality is that it makes your mouth feel as if a crazed dentist has been allowed free rein with his anaesthetic. You tingle and are numb enough to have a tooth painlessly removed. The experience is more pleasant than it sounds.

Into this soup are dropped various bits of animal – some recognisable and some ingenious. Top of the weird list for today are strips of aorta and finely sliced kidney – you prod them around a bit until they are cooked and then pop the whole thing in in one. After about half an hour of this everybody is sweating profusely. There is a sort of inner circle in soup tureen which is very slightly less spicy – I confess that as we progress I dip more and more of my stuff in this, the wimps’ bit, rather than the main inferno. After all the meaty things we are offered a selection of green vegetables for dunking – this is presumably to satisfy those eager to tick off their five a day.

The cylindrical things are not for dunking they are slightly sweet doughnuts objects that are there for light relief.

Lunch the next day are little bits of cold and gelatinous fish skin with peanuts

later, we ate oysters roasted with garlic, divine pork and a delicious if disturbing soup containing chunks harvested from of the outer reaches of a chicken and bits of pig stomach which look and feel like a worn scooter tyre.

Although most of Chengdu is Spanky modern there is an historic core which is now mostly full of tourists. The surrounding streets are old style with lots of street food – rice doughnuts, a sort of iced jelly with nuts, what is described as “stinky tofu” in black or white (it lives up to its name), a sort of sandwich and bits of bony rabbit in a hot sauce.

Another lunch (apologies for foodathon but I want to record this stuff and I am being taken to tiny restaurants across the city where foreigners seldom venture) is pigeon (it is obviously this because it comes with a head)

accompanied by a dish of mushrooms and ginkgo fruit- which tastes a bit like a bean and a bit like a potato but with a kick of bitterness at the end.

Barbecue- which worldwide has been a traditional way to eat slightly dodgy things. Anybody who has ever eaten a Wrestler’s hot dog or hamburger will know what I mean. The dishonesty behind a processed meat product is that it hides its contents – in China those ingredients are on public display. Amongst the things available for barbecue are the nasal tendons of pigs and intestines (with which I am by now on very familiar terms). Not pretty in their raw form and not remarkable when cooked but at least honest.

We also have a Second Dinner which involves skewers of things – the Chinese like eating. This is Graeme, choosing stuff.

At my final lunch we are treated to a Cantonese speciality – a sort of fish surprise. It is remarkably free from either pepper or offal. Lurking at the bottom of that dish full of shellfish etc is a large fish. Nice surprise

I return to Britain eager for a slice of toast with marmite.

I am going on an adventure.

Day One:
I am currently in the back of a cab where the driver has decided that I want to chat – he is sadly mistaken as I would rather sleep. This week I have spent over 15 hours in taxis, for various reasons which will probably become clear within the next twelve months and I have developed a routine of friendly silence dotted with small snoozes. And podcast listening. Suffice to say that I am now a black belt in taxi travel.

The taxi deposits me at Terminal 2 at Heathrow where I am to catch an aeroplane to Beijing. I am flying China Air which is a new experience- there seems to be lots of legroom but a seat lacking a bit in bottom supporting upholstery. An extra security announcement apart from the usual guff about life jackets and emergency exits is from the security officer who tells us in no uncertain terms that “Interfering with the safe and efficient running of the cabin could result in criminal punishment- the security officer and the crew will perform their duties conscientiously”.

I have three hours to kill at Beijing airport- the smog is so thick I can see nothing from the windows except the gloom of distant hangers. I drink coffee and watch the world go past. A lot of people are wearing masks that cover nose and mouth which seems a little overboard when inside the terminal. There is a boy whose face is almost completely obscured who is being followed around by a lot of young women with cameras. He is either extremely famous or they have mistaken him for Monty Don.

I am going to Chengdu which is the capital city of Sichuan province. A largish city by Chinese standards with an urban population of about 11million. The aeroplane is leaping around like a excitable mouflon and I am finding it hard not to think of the possibility of plummeting earthwards. As you can see, I survive and arrive at Chengdu airport to be met with a wall of 37 degree heat that is like standing in a Sauna while wearing a morning coat and a cashmere muffler. I am whisked off along immaculate roads which are still swept by hand; there is a woman wandering along the side of the road, inches away from a stream of enormous trucks, with a broom made from grass and a dustpan on a stick.

We go the hotel where I shower and then to the venue where I will be doing my thing for six days – there are large posters of some my gardens and a divinely air conditioned studio. It is organised by a ompany called Sikastone who are all charming and efficient. From there we go and look at some model gardens and then to dinner – of which more later.
I flop into bed – long day, thank the lord for melatonin.

Day Two:

We are going to a market. This is Chengdu’s equivalent of Covent Garden
market: many plants and assorted traders. There are halls full of containers, accessories and all the stuff you would expect but with the enlivening addition of a lot of koi , terrapins, crabs and at least one pissed off squirrel.

There is a good range of plants and stuff and we roam about looking at things while being photographed by the marketing people. We then eat lunch and go off on a jaunt. Chengdu is on the edge of the mountains and, in those mountains live pandas. As we all know these animals are impossibly cute looking but absolutely dreadful at sustained reproduction. The females are only receptive for a very short time and the males, apparently, have inappropriately short penises. An invitation to a swinging party at the panda pad might result in disappointment. However, this city houses the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding where you can fill your boots with panda based smoochiness. Our one mistake was to visit in the afternoon as the pandas, having spent the morning cavorting, conversing and possibly minuetting have now lunched handsomely on the finest bamboo shoots and are all asleep- with one exception.

They are still gorgeous and cute ranging from small bundles who were only born last month to lumbering stud males that lie like endangered rugs on the floor of their pens. I reckon we saw about twenty five of them which is probably the most you will ever see anywhere.

DayThree:

My students Are generally delightful although they are unembarrassed about using their mobiles during talks.* The Chinese are wedded to their phones more than anybody else – everywhere people are head down and scrolling. I thought I was bad but I have never considered doing it while riding a motorcycle in traffic.

Environmental note – the Chinese currently have no idea/interest in the perils of single use plastic. Even plates in restaurants are wrapped in plastic, clingfilm abounds and plastic bags are everywhere. It is all very well for us to get all smug about Bags for Life and banning plastic straws but until we get the x million Chinese on side we are pissing in the ocean – if that is not too inappropriate a metaphor. That is not to say we should give up our modest efforts but we should not kid ourselves into thinking that everybody is hanging onto David Attenborough’s very word. There is very large mountain of micro beads to climb.

First day seemed to go fine – I talked a great deal. Having a translator is good and bad. Good because it means that they (in this case the delightful Laura) talk for half the time so, in theory, it is less work. Bad because the talk becomes slightly staccato and constantly interrupted so one never gets the chance to riff freely.

Second day I had designated as a studio day where they all drew gardens and then I critiqued them politely ensuring (I hope) that nobody lost face and everyone felt loved and encouraged.

Day Five (or four, quite frankly I have rather lost track)
We are going shopping- each student is to design and plant a container and , when divided into teams, a quadrant of a small gardener. I have suggested a choice of different styles and it is now up to them.
In the morning I talk about various gardens followed by
We pile onto a bus and return to the market.

It is gleeful chaos. The students charge off, get separated, come together (Because they are summoned by the extraordinary power of WeChat), get lost, buy a load of plants and finally return to the bus. Everyone seems to have had fun, the nurseries had a bit of a bonus afternoon and the only damage was to me when I got whacked on the leg by a falling window box. We load up the plants: this statement makes the process sound considerably easier than it actually was. Three wheeled trucks keep appearing laden with yet more grasses (the naturalistic style seems to be popular amongst the up and coming Chinese garden designers) that are squeezed into three trucks and the boot of a large bus. We make our way back to the studio as it begins to rain.

I am grabbed by a stall holder who is eager to both sell me roses and talk English he goes about both tasks with gusto and at volume. He shows me an okay rise bred by his father and tells me how much he loves Zmr Bean and Michael Jackson. I feel that this is the wrong moment to talk about the latter’s many failings as he may not be aware and who am I to shatter illusions?

Day Sixish
It is raining quite hard and my students are supposed to be planting containers (two groups) or their gardens (other two groups) but I cannot send them out in the rain- although they would probably have been fine with that such is their stoicism. So I deliver a slightly impromptu hour and half on the history and inner workings of the Chelsea Flower Show. By the time I do that the rain has eased and off they go.

Lunch is followed by more garden supervision until I realise that the container lot are going to finish well before the garden lot. I need to deliver another talk so put together an hour on colour in about eight minutes. I get away with it but it sounded a bit off. Nobody noticed except me.

By five o’clock two gardens have been planted and the teams are in high spirits. We go to dinner with the chap who owns the studio building and much of the land around. He is the only person I have met so far who is older than I am. He used to be an artillery colonel for 24 years having been brought up during the cultural revolution when there were no universities not school exams do all he did was draw. Having becomequite good he joined the army and because of this skill got involved in drawing propaganda posters and the like. Because of this his term was relatively cushy in comparison to his contemporaries and he progressed from army to government. He left in 1992 with some land upon which he started building apartments and studios for artists and is now doing very nicely thank you having invested in modern Chinese art and property.
We eat frogs.

Uber, or at least the Chinese company that bought Uber China, sends a driver on an electric scooter. This is folded up and popped in the boot, the driver covers the driving seat with his own seat cover, hops in and off we go. All this because my friends have been drinking (not much) and I sure as hell am not going to even think about driving anytime Soon in this city.

Day Zero
Here we go again. The other two groups start building their gardens while more containers are put together. In the afternoon we judge gardens, there is much jollity and a graduation ceremony which involves me expressing my gratitude and congratulating everyone on their diligence and enthusiasm. It has been a very interesting and entertaining week. I enjoyed the students, I enjoyed the teaching and I enjoyed Chengdu very much.
I also ate a lot of odd things- so many that I think it is worth a blog of it’s own otherwise this post will try the patience of even the most diligent of reader- if there are any left out there.

After the graduation we tootle off for dinner with the whole organising team (those who have not already legged it back to Beijing). There are many sad faced fish swimming around glass tanks awaiting the inevitable. I am quite pooped and was expecting that we would rumble off for early bed before going to the airport in the morning: I was wrong. We wander up the road for a Chinese massage. Three of us are in one room where we change into pyjamas and are attended by three very jolly women. Our feet are plunged into warm water and then the ladies lay in with a will. My head is pressed and squeezed, my legs punched and pummelled, my feet are rubbed – I have very sensitive feet so this is an extremely painful fifteen minutes, I endure this in a very stoic way by use of steady breaths and thinking of England. It jolly well won’t do to let Johnny Foreigner see us cry: came within a whisker of letting the side down. I think it was doing me good.
After that we all lay there while the therapists assembled various tools including a feather, a little bulb that puffed air, a headtorch,a tuning fork, some long tweezers and a selection of probes. They then proceeded to clean our ears: a novel experience.

Day Eleventy four:

To the airport in the rain. There is a motorcycle with umbrella attached to the handlebars weaving in and out of thundering lorries and swishy new cars. On the hard shoulder a man in a coolie hat and sweeps his section of the road by hand. China old and new: it is a amazing country with marvellous people: it is also far removed from a western style democracy which, looking at the mess Britain is in because of democracy may not be an entirely bad thing. At the moment it is a toss up whether I would rather have Boris Johnson or a serious man in a grey suit looking after my interests.

I am listening to silence as I am sitting in Glasgow Airport waiting for an absent aeroplane. It is four hours late. Thanks Flybe.

WeChat is the Chinese equivalent of Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp and a bank all rolled into one. They communicate, watch videos, post stuff and, most interestingly, pay for everything via WeChat. Every shop, street stall, cafe or car park has a QR code. Even a bloke wandering through the streets hawking a bike load of peaches eschews cash in favour of a QR code. You scan it with your phone and the bill is paid. No messing around.
It is amazing and works without problem- the advantage is that there is no competition, none of the other social networks are allowed here. Except that there are always ways to get round this small inconvenience…

I know that many of you have sat through various indulgent travelogues that I have written in this blog over the years – most of them concerning slightly eccentric jaunts to Russia. I am afraid that this is another story but this time I am on my way to China to judge a show and to give a talk to various assembled eminent horticulturists. I have never been to China before and my garden at home is full of the joys of spring so it is with mixed emotions that I pack too many shirts, a selection of striped ties and lots of charging cables and truck off to Heathrow.

Wednesday 25th: I am going to Shanghai about which I know next to nothing – there was a Bay City Rollers song called Shanghai’d in love but I don’t think that counts as a genuine cultural reference. From there I am going to a place called Haining about which I know even less except that it is the site of a flower show.

It is the grandly named World Garden Show and I am here to judge stuff and give a talk to quite a lot of Chinese horticulturists.

Thursday 9:30: I am met at the gate by a stern looking Chinese lady who escorts me through passport control and baggage claim before depositing me with three more people who put me in a car. It is like being a cross between a visiting dignitary and a prisoner under escort.
The sun is bright and my car zips along wide motorways populated by interesting trucks carrying interesting things like copper wire, watermelons, the contents of septic tanks and lots of building supplies. Shanghai seems to have cornered the market on cranes. They are everywhere. My driver says nothing but does a lot of horn honking.

Eventually we pull up at a massive resort hotel and I am ushered into a very cushty fifth floor suite. They know how to look after a chap: charming interpreters and delightful guides. I am quite knackered but push on with lunch – apparently the Chinese have lunch at 11:30 so we are unfashionably late by expecting to be fed at 1:00. We eat shrimps, broccoli, a bearded fish and very good soup with translucent phallic mushrooms floating in it.

14:00: There is a vast river at the rear of the hotel – vast to me, modest to the Chinese – which apparently has a spectacular 10m high tidal bore every so often. I cannot get at it though as there is a large fence between us so am writing this while sitting on a stone bench under a loquat tree. There are outdoor speakers unconvincingly disguised as rocks so I am listening to Simon and Garfunkel singing Scarborough Fair which seems a bit odd.

Dinner is not suitable for vegans. A couple of us opt to walk back too the hotel through the town. There is a dance class on the street every evening which is a lovely thing to watch – only women, mostly of a certain age participate. It is perfectly coordinated and very elegant. A lot of China is regimented – even the security detail at the airport and the road sweepers march onto shift in close order – but nobody seems to mind as much as we would. There is plenty of room for entrepreneurs and businesses but the government reigns supreme. All infrastructure is financed by them, all development is supervised by them and, although people are happy to outline the flaws and mistakes, they population seems mostly content with their lot.

Friday 7:00: The mystery of the breakfast buffet. I have always been confused by hotel buffets, I am never sure where to go or what to eat especially on the first day. By day three I am swaggering around juggling muffins and custom made omelettes. Chinese breakfast buffets are even more confusing as they add even more layers to the yoghurt and fruit or full cooked shebang choice. There is also pork porridge, noodles, potatoes, rice, assorted cakes in many colours, peanuts, gummy bears, weird bread, croissants, ice cream, shellfish and baked beans. Eating a fried egg with chopsticks is a challenge.

7:51: Missed the bus but caught up eventually and arrived at the show in time for judging duties. I am judging 26 plants, 16 gardens and 36 tradestands. It is fearfully hot so I am issued with a red Donald Trump style baseball cap to protect my tender imperialist bonce. There are five of us, three distinguished Chinese, a delightful Anglo-American nurseryman and me. Our deliberations are independent so no discussions or debate. This involves a great deal more mathematics than makes me comfortable.

16:30: Judging complete we stagger back to the hotel for an eccentrically mixed dinner. It includes pasta, pizza, sushi, a chocolate fountain, chicken feet, suspicious looking chops, pumpkin soup, lettuce, boiled eggs, tripe, cucumber slices and sundry other things. Chinese cuisine is always interesting.

Saturday 8:00: Bus to the convention centre which is quite large. There are various other Europeans and Americans in attendance but they all know each other well and many have been selling their wares in China for years. We all sit down in this anteroom where we are brought coffee and interpretation kit by very young, well educated people of whom there seem to be an abundance.
By this stage I am getting a tiny bit nervous as I am first up and I have absolutely no idea what to expect. The auditorium is in an enormous university and holds a thousand people, there are lots of speeches to get the whole thing launched including a bit when the assembled dignitaries (all men) lined up on stage and pushed buttons which released a lot of fanfares and flashing light action.

10:45 ‘tis done. I pranced and pontificated as is my wont and it seemed to go down okay if judged by my usual criteria which is that if nobody sleeps, interrupts or throws things then it is a resounding success. It is nice to get it over with so I can now spend the rest of the day listening to other speakers. It is always good to see how other people speak.

11:50 Lunch. I am oddly starving especially as this is becoming quite an intense day as there are a lot of talks in very quick succession. The Chinese are only half listening as they are completely obsessed with their telephones- people answer them (quietly) during talks and are endlessly checking We Chat which is the Chinese WhatsApp. WhatsApp, incidentally, is not available in China – nor is YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Google so if you wish to avoid having your data harvested you could always contemplate moving to China

18:30 A banquet. It is quite a grand affair but not terribly relaxing as every five minutes I have to stand up and drink a toast with an important local dignitary. This happens at least fifteen times during dinner – they are drinking wine and I am on the cucumber juice so at least I unfuddled. I have, however, run out of business cards so the ceremonial exchange is somewhat one sided.

The banquet has also managed to give me food poisoning. I suppose that if you to be forced to spend the greater part of the night in close communion with a lavatory then better it is caused by a banquet than a casual sarnie.

Michael, Gary and some of the many other guides and interpreters

Sunday 8:00: I wake up feeling a little wan as I bustle off to a ‘fan meeting ‘ which, disappointingly has nothing to do with the fan dance and more to do with me being asked questions by fifty assembled putative garden designers. From there we zip off to the city of Hangzhou along rose lined motorways that are quite crowded due to the fact that we have picked a public holiday for this jaunt. We wander round various sites of historical interest and inspect a tea garden all of which is interesting but would have been more interesting if I was feeling less like a flounder who had recently had a contretemps with a mangle.

Final call of the day is the office of a large landscape architecture practice where they are doing extraordinary things. Huge developments in distant cities, a revival of the rural economy through building and tourism, mansions on islands and the conversion of a power station into a complex of shops, offices, flats and parks.
Nothing in China is little or unambitious.

I thought I was just having a look around but actually was taking part in a small seminar about rural development. Until you have sat through a picture free PowerPoint presentation in Chinese for over an hour you really haven’t lived. After that I talked about I am not sure what for half an hour and answered questions about gardens, the RHS and Britain.

In the end it was great but I was quite pleased to get back for a lie down.

7:00 Monday: I am back in a cab speeding towards Shanghai airport. It has been a brief but fascinating visit: I should have stayed for a couple more days and seen more places but that is life.

This is a country of such energy, variety, vastness (there are 110 million people living in the city and suburbs of Shanghai – there are 65 million people in the whole of the UK) and potential that it is easy to see how screwed we are in the west. Makes you realise that democracy is possibly not all it is cracked up to be.

16:30 (UK time or 23:30 Shanghai time): Land at Heathrow having watched five films, eaten two indifferent meals, read half a book and written this blog).

I am listening to Rumours by Fleetwood Mac through the inflight system. I have no idea why.