Xi'An Airport

I've finally got my VPN working and so can update my blog. It's strange that only airports and coffee shops seem to have a good internet system! The hotel internet didn't work at all and the office system seems to block VPN.

Work in Xi'An went very well. I also had fun eating all sorts of strange foods with Xiaopeng (including donkey and "pig's leg"). We also went to a very dramatic show that seemed to be "Tang Dynasty meets Star Wars". It was very impressive. Although it was all in Chinese, it was rather obvious what happened. Emperor meets lady. They fall in love. She gets killed by the bad guys. He mourns for her. They meet again in heaven. Apparently it's based on a true story that actually occurred in XiAn. The Chinese astronomer sitting next to me said that it was the best show that he'd ever seen. He comes from the Kazaghistan border of China and apparently they don't have many shows!

Back to Beijing now!!

Being ill

Instead of writing a blog entry about my new nephew (congrats Emma and Peter!!), I'm going to write about altitude sickness. Perhaps it will make him wish to become a mountaineer! I didn't expect to get ill. In fact, I thought that we'd have a fun drive into the mountains, take a few photos and look cool and trendy. I started to doubt my ability to look cool when all the joints in my body started to ache as our car went higher and higher into the mountains. This wasn't just a little pain - it hurt!! However, I put this down to the fact that the road was a dirt track and extremely bumpy - and three of us were squeezed into the back of the car for about seven hours. We kept going higher. My head started to feel as if it would explode. I put this down to the fact that I'd been standing outside in a blizzard for a while having some photos taken or that I hadn't had a coffee for more than ... 3 days ... or that breakfast had been a soup of liquidised chillies and peppers!

During our lunch stop, I bought myself a coke (I didn't know the Tibetan for "I'd like a coke" and so I just pointed). But that didn't help much. We finally arrived at the house where we stayed the next two nights. This cheered me up ... it definitely was an "I'm going to make uncle Mel jealous" moment (it's not clear why I think of Mel everytime I stay somewhere that looks as if it may fall down during the night) . Our room didn't have any heating. It was about -2C. The "bathroom" had a very smelly squat toilet with a shower over it. The water for the shower or toilet worked sometimes. However, the view was amazing and my head cleared up. So I was fine when we went to dinner. What a place. The kitchen looked like something from about 1750. The stove needed stoking with coal. There were big pots hanging up. A bit of a fish was stuck on the wall. Lots of people kept walking in and out. We ate a superb dinner and I decided that the best medicinal cure for whatever I had was to drink lots of beer. It worked fine. Neither Sha nor I could sleep much that night. She was in a bad way in the morning, whereas I felt fine. However, Sha - rather sensibly - took some strong altitude medication and started to improve. I didn't take any medicine and started to get worse. Lying on the bed seemed to induce an uncontrollable shaking that only stopped by munching on a heap of paracetemol.

The views were stunning as we took the photographs that day. Unfortunately, I banged my head on a beam in a house where we were getting changed, which didn't help my health! Apart from having low beams, that house really was incredible. I was let into the bedroom to change into my suit. Obviously the entire family slept together (I couldn't see any sign of heating and it must have been freezing in the middle of the winter) on lots of wooden beds spread around the room. The room was incredibly decorated with rugs and everything was red. This was the house where the hosts enthusiastically took delivery of their yak's head.

That evening the shivering was worse, but I took more tablets. On the journey back we stopped to take more photos. This was great for me because I didn't seem to feel the cold at all. Everyone else was complaining about how cold it was, but I was having a great time. I was also happy to have succeeded in using a squat toilet for the first time without falling over. The car ride back was actually fine. I was sometimes hot and sometimes cold, but not too bad. We had another incredible lunch where the vegetables were something the cook had found on the mountains (they looked like tiny ferns).

We arrived back at Chengdu and met back up with Sha's parents. They're amazing. Without even checking-in to their hotel room, they had given me some tablets, a dramatic back massage and got me into bed. I was clearly not better the next day and so they took me to the hospital where we immediately found that my temperature was 39.5C. I had a blood test (all fine) and then diagnosed as having altitude sickness (the only official requirements at the hotel was that I had to give my name 'Jiaozi' and my age - which Sha got wrong). I was put into a bed and a stream of pretty nurses came to set up a saline drip. Sha took my glasses away.

At this point it was rather clear that I wasn't going to be giving lectures on pulsars in Chongqing and so we got me a ticket on Sha's flight to Beijing and went off to the airport. Rather stupidly, I demanded a coffee (after having not eaten for a day) and then almost fainted and was sick. Then I felt better. Since then, I've been lying at Sha's home in Beijing with my temperature going up and down, shivering and sweating heaps. Amazingly, I ate some salt and now feel 100x better. Sha's dad has just walked in a a huge plate of strawberries for me to eat. They've been absolutely amazing!

A few more photos

Baby yak on road

Sha wanted a trip that we'd never forget!! It has been incredible and so dramatic that I've just got out of hospital. We started off from Chengdu, met our driver, the photographer and make-up artist, all of us squeezed into their 4-wheel drive and then drove for about 8 hours into the mountains (past the tea plantations and the bamboo forests). Our first stop was in Kangding. This was the most exotic looking place that I've been to. Lamas were walking through the street, there were prayer wheels to turn ... The signs were in a Tibetan script. At this point Sha had her make-up put on in a small traditional restaurant. I had fun walking around and wondering whether Sha was completely mad or not. In fact, I'm sure that she is because we then drove even further into the mountains (typically mountain heights in this area are 6700m - although we didn't go that high) and then Sha was photographed in a blizzard whilst wearing a wedding dress.

The road kept going up. We passed hundreds (no exaggeration) of army trucks all heading for Tibet. We kept stopping to have photographs. Apparently, I'm very "cool" - actually I was frozen. I only had to learn three poses. In one, I had to gaze into the distance, with my hands in my pocket. For the second, I had to shut my eyes and kiss Sha's cheek. Finally, I had to lean on a fence post and look cool while my feet were in some yak dung. I have to report that I have nice skin and natural hair.

There were lots of yaks. They just ambled across the road. I had an interesting experience whilst waiting for Sha to put her make-up on. We were in someone's house when they had their gory yak's head delivered. They were very excited and took turns to hand it around. They gave our photographer the horns.

We stayed in an amazing "hotel". It was really a family house. I think that the people were from the Qiang ethnic group. It was freezing and both Sha and I had huge headaches from the cold and the altitude. The house was approx 3-3.5km above sea level. There were horses everywhere.

The photos that I've put onto this blog makes it look as if we had nice sunny weather. Actually, we had a lot of snow and hail.

We fly back to Beijing this afternoon. I was meant to be going to Chongqing, but after spending all morning in hospital, I thought that I'd better rest a bit more. I'll fly back again in a few days. Sha and her parents have been wonderful looking after me!

In Chengdu

I'm back in China!!! The journey was completely uneventful (apart from spilling my beer on the Swedish model sitting next to me and leaving my camera on the plane), but the views were spectacular. There wasn't a cloud above Australia! I had only an hour to change planes in Hong Kong, but that wasn't a problem. On the flight to Chengdu I sat next to a 4-year old Chinese girl and told her, in my best Chinese, that I was "an Englishman". She didn't understand me.

I met Sha and her parents at the airport. I like Chengdu airport. There wasn't any queuing at all to go through international customs. In fact, the official didn't speak any English and so he just looked at me, stamped my passport and let me through. We then took a taxi into the city. Chinese driving has not improved.

In brief, Chengdu is a large, noisy, smelly city. The smog is thick - you can taste the smog with everything you eat.

Argh, I've just been plunged into darkness. Sha has taken the room key because I've just been phoned by a "hooker" and Sha doesn't trust me not to open the door to anyone.

Chengdu has a large smelly river (the Fu Nan river) which we walked along for a while. However, of course, the greatest thing here is the food!! Sichuan food is wonderful -- it's certainly spicy. I've just eaten a Sichuan pepper. We should be up in the mountains tomorrow. We went to the photo shop today and I had great fun trying on all the clothes that I'll be photographed in. The first shirt that I put on had Sha and her mum laughing out loud. Apparently I looked just like Shakespeare.

We also went to an amazing temple. On the bus I made some friends with the locals. I even gave them my email address. I've no idea whether I'll hear from them again, but they were very friendly. Sha and her mum kept laughing at me.

I read the wrong book. There are apparently four great classical books in Chinese literature. I've read the "Journey to the West", but this city (and the temple that we went to) is where the "Three Kingdoms" story was set. There were lots of statues of fierce looking warriors. Apparently one roared so loudly that the enemy turned and fled. All the signs stated something like "Dong Yun (216 AD) son of Dong He, one of the four outstanding administrators then. Upright and principled, he dissuaded King Liu Shan from having more concubines. His statue was made in 1672."

There were also lots of exotic looking birds flying again!

After seeing the temple we headed off down an old street that had lots of traditional Sichuan snacks. My mouth is still burning!

I do have heaps of photos, but I forgot to bring the cable attaching my camera to the computer. So in the evening I used my other camera, but the photos are not so exciting!

Sha and I head off on our photography trip tomorrow!

My blog is alive

My blog is finally about to be resurrected (assuming that I can access it from China). I'm now sitting at Sydney airport listening to the names of people who haven't boarded their flights. It seems that every flight has about 4 people who don't show up. They've all got names that the announcers cannot pronounce.

My taxi driver told me about how he escaped Afghanistan by hiking through the mountains and into Pakistan. It was quite a story!!