Life's a Stitch

It’s been great hiking weather in the Pacific Northwest, warm and sunny after some drenching rain, the perfect recipe for mushrooming. Two Sunday’s worth of walks in the woods produced fresh springtime Oyster Mushrooms.

These entwined trunks called for a painting. Might do this one larger. It’s a Sitka Spruce and a Cedar.

The biggest seasonal thrill was on the water as we watched  a pair of Grey Whales, right from our deck, two days in a row. They’ve been hanging out in our shallow bay on their way up the west coast. My neighbour, who has lived next door since the mid 90’s, said this is the first time she’s seen them. Turns out a major portion of their diet includes crustaceans and our local crab hit the spot. Maybe there are more available, after a section of our city’s pier was taken out by a major winter storm, and nobody’s able to crab from the dock.

The whales would not pose long enough for a photo while they were substantially above the water. But I managed to capture two fins.

I always knew a walk in the woods did something for me. Little did I know I was practicing the Japanese health tradition of Shinrin-yoku, forest bathing. This is an article from Time, that explains it well. It’s the one thing I miss from living in the rain forest, my almost daily forays onto the wooded trails. 

Living near salt water has it’s own therapeutic qualities. You can’t dwell on much else while watching whales so close to home. Granted it’s a rare event, but the ever changing sky and water are a feast for the eyes and soul for someone interested in colour and texture. There’s  probably already a Japanese term for walking by water.

Luckily there are parks and forests within a short distance, so thick as to form tree tunnels.

Here’s a tunnel of cherry blossoms, two blocks from home.

Last week, while walking the trails at Crescent Beach I saw this one:

It provided the perfect mix of passions: walking, forest bathing, tree tunnels and painting in my watercolour journal:

 

I thought retirement meant a more relaxed pace to accomplish the activities of daily life and extra time for the things you love to do. Problem is, my to-do list hasn’t retired and continues to grow daily, hence the title of this post. So here I am sneaking in a smidgen of blog time. 

An indication of busy-ness is the fact that’s it’s been a two pavlova month. One for Easter and the other, C’s standing request for his birthday cake. Two things you can count on in this family, Boston Cream Pie on my birthday and pavlova for his. The Easter one was huge. 

Here’s the recipe, so easy for such a decadent dessert.

Easter was packed with family time including four sessions of geocaching with my current recruit, grandson Rye.

Here’s Parker, demonstrating his three year old personality.

One more little travel journal painting, a combination of two photos I took in Suzhou, the Venice of China. Look carefully at the laundry on the left wall. It’s Chinese tradition, if this year on the Chinese Zodiac is the same as your birth year, you’re supposed to wear red underwear or socks throughout the year for good luck. One of our tour guides was born in the year of the pig, so we gifted him with autographed red undies. 

And I just finished a watercolour brush stroke class, where we learned to paint flowers to embellish cards and envelopes. It was calligraphy in watercolour. Not my usual style, but lots of fun and an opportunity to develop brush control.

In between the bills, taxes and insurance forms, there’s still plenty of time for the fun stuff.

Perplexing

So, why are there gas masks in hotel room closets? Someone in the group guessed their use was  for pollution. It’s smoggy, but not gas mask worthy. I thought maybe for protection in case of attack. You never know with the state of the world and China’s proximity to threatening regimes. The real answer? They are there to protect you in case of fire. 

Scary

Fire fighting methods on a river boat. It’s a good thing they furnish gas masks, better yet that the shore appeared to be within reasonable swimming distance.

Charming

Air China’s safety video features a friendly panda and upon landing, the flight attendants stand at the front of the cabin to thank passengers with a respectful bow. Nice touch.

Endearing

The giant pandas at the Chungqing Zoo’s panda research and conservation program. Just our group of 32 and the pandas made for a memorable experience.

Industrious

The Forbidden City was built, start to finish, in only 14 years. That’s 980 buildings covering 180 acres, built by over a million workers in the early 1400’s.

The Three Gorges damn, the world’s largest power plant in terms of output, required the systematic relocation of 1.25 million people. An entire city was built to house many of them.

Guess  that’s what happens in the absence of an elected government.

China’s entire super highway system has been built since 2000, 132,000 kilometres (nearly 80,000 miles) worth.

And what about that Great Wall? A military fortification, 21,000 kilometers (13,000 miles) long.

More to come…

What to do when faced with 27 hours of flying, a six hour train ride and four days on a river boat, all in a two week period? You need to know that I’m not a big travel sleeper nor watcher of TV or movies (especially Air China’s selections this trip), so those don’t appear on my to do list. This trip I packed a book, knitting, and my well travelled art supplies. These were completed….

On a train:

A boat:

And a plane:

 

 

Most meals, other than breakfast, were not included in our tour, but the two most memorable lunches were. 

The first was in a family’s courtyard house in a Hutong in Beijing’s old town. A Hutong is a maze of attached one level houses and courtyards, built hundreds of years ago. We squeezed into a living room/dining room wallpapered with family photos and were treated to a typical homecooked meal served family style. It started, oddly enough, with a bowl of Bugles (chips) and a kind of sweet pretzel, followed by chicken in garlic shoots, stir fried celery, chicken in onions, homemade pork and carrot dumplings, potatoes in soy sauce, pakora like veggie balls, and carrots and garlic, all delicious.

Afterwards the mother of the house taught us to make dumplings and the father sang. 

We always turned our noses up at organized tours, but this was done really well, and this experience was one we wouldn’t have found on our own. The sad end to the story is that the area is under consideration to become a Unesco World Heritage Site. If it doesn’t achieve that status it will be torn down to make way for modern towers. The residents lose either way. When areas become heritage sites  the people often can’t afford to bring their homes up to the standards required and are forced to leave.

The other memorable lunch was a hotpot experience in Chongqing  (pronounced Chong Ching).

Before:

After:

If you plan to visit China, it’s worth noting that beer, often very light beer, is the drink you’ll be served at meals, or you can have full sugared Coke or tea. No wine was available by the glass, except on the ship ($9), and a bottle was expensive. We bought several bottles of wine at convenience or grocery stores. Australian or Chilean wine, typically low priced in North America, cost about $20CDN. Great Wall Chinese wine came in a few different grades. The $10 one was ok, but light, with the exception of one bad bottle, which we determined was probably poorly stored.

Another favourite meal was when we had the opportunity to stop in one of Shanghai’s downstairs food courts. 

#1 Chicken feet, though not as appetizing to me as the ones my son made for my birthday last year, which were boiled, baked and deep fried to salty crispy nothingness.

Julie, our reluctant tourmate:

One blustery night I craved a bowl of laksa. When I saw the sign I knew I had found my soup. “The pork in Canada is Laksa.”

There are so many ways to approach the subject of food, it may have to be in two posts. I could do it by the meal: brekkie, snacks, lunch and dinner, by the odd signage translations, or unusual offerings. How about we start with breakfast and snacks.

Our accommodation, no matter luxury or basic, included wonderful breakfasts. All buffets, there were traditional western choices and a wide variety of local items: congee (rice porridge), noodles, stir fries, steam buns and pastries. An example:

The steam bun pictured was filled with delicious rich, eggy, coconut custard. Didn’t see those again after leaving Beijing. The absolutely best thing to pass these lips in China, possibly anywhere in the world, were these “Net Red Dirty Bags” in Hongzhou. 

It’s a croissant made of chocolate pastry, slathered with ganache, rolled in cocoa powder. Once the word got out, our group wiped out their supply. Sometimes called dirty bread, I am determined to find these in Vancouver.

Snacks. How about frog on a stick? Or fresh market frogs?

I’ve eaten frog legs in my past, and yes, they taste like chicken, but silk worm pupae don’t. 

I got brave and popped one in. They taste like dirty wood. I chewed and chewed then it struck me, I should just swallow and get it over with. So I did. Silk worm pupa? Been there, done that, don’t need to do it again.

Variations on the familiar, zoom in to read the flavours:

And the unfamiliar:

That was the name of our China tour sold by UTO Vacations, based in Ontario, Canada.

Background: These are super low cost trips, subsidized by government and businesses, requiring visits to factory “museums” to hear a sales pitch, followed by a shopping visit in their showroom. There is no obligation to buy, and travellers are asked to consider it an educational cultural experience. We visited manufacturers of pearls, jade, tea, teapots, silk, And traditional Chinese medicines  It was a small price to pay, considering the cost of the trip, 15 days for $1300CDN including airfare, accommodation (hotels and four nights on a river boat) and amazing breakfasts. There were additional excursions available at a cost. 

Reading reviews in advance, there were a fair share of negatives from people whose expectations indicated they should have taken a higher priced tour. These trips require a sense of adventure and humour and we were lucky to be in a group of 36 like-minded travellers.

China, so filled with people, history and culture, it’s difficult to know where to start. Maybe with the stereotypes:

Yes, Beijing is smoggy. Yes, there are a lot of people. We rode for a hundred Kilometers (60 miles) on a train and passed high rise apartment complex after high rise apartment complex. We were amused when our guide announced we were entering a small city with a population of ten million.

Yes, they are technically advanced. We rode the Maglev train (Magnetic Levitation) in Shanghai, that floats above a track at 430 kilometres per hour (267mph). 

And this huge country’s entire highway system and accompanying bridges were all built in the last 15 years.

Yes, cheap things made in China cost even less there. We laughed that the things we didn’t buy in Spain, because they were made in China, we ended up buying in China. We did find something made in North America – western style Köhler toilets. 

The government is a socialist capitalist people’s system, figure that one out. But for your average wage earner it seemed sort of like life in a unionized environment. Someone I met said he didn’t care about who his leader was, he just cared about what was in it for him, what he’d get out of the deal.

Overall it was a wonderful culturally educational trip, thanks to our passionate and knowledgeable English speaking guides. The scenery ranged from huge cities, to the countryside, to the Three Gorges area of the Yangtze River. It is a paradox of ancient and modern.

Lots more to come, including the food, where this blogger bravely eats a deep fried insect pupa.

65?! Making it to this official marker of old age, in numbers of years  I’ve  successfully  outlived two grandparents and one parent. Beating the family averages, I was lucky to celebrate it twice, thanks to crossing the international dateline. This was taken on Birthday #1 in Chongqing China, at an airport Burger King.

Lots more to come on our great China adventure, the highlight pictured here on the Great Wall.

Seeking more compact, portable means of ceative expression is an ongoing goal. Gone are the days when I travelled with a suitcase dedicated to one 21 colour fair isle project, AKA Alice Starmore’s Marina. A close runner up is when we walked 500 miles on the Camino de Santiago and I insisted on carrying 13 ounces of watercolour supplies. C questioned my wisdom, telling me I’d be way too  tired  at then end of consecutive 22k days. He was correct. When travelling I still pack along a “purse knitting project,” usually something that reauires a skein of sock or laceweight yarn. I confess I don’t use it to knit socks, not my favourite kind of project, it goes toward a scarf or baby item.

During a recent trip to Hawaii, I crossed into the realm of coloured pencils. A beginner course at our local art society left me hungry for more. What a perfect medium for travelling, requiring nothing more than pencils, paper, an eraser and a sharpener. Blogless Marsha’s Dave and I continued our travelling tradition of online art classes. Of course my artistic load remained heavy as I was unable to leave the waterolours  behind. 

Here are my efforts, the same landscape, two ways. Interesting that the smaller, coloured pencil work takes at least twice the time of the panting,  considering  the capacity to lay down colour – a tiny  pencil  point vs a brush.

Here’s one I’ve yet to finish. A wild chicken of Kauai, roosting in a bare Plumeria tree.

Note: although the Prismacolor tin is modelling in my photo, I generally use oil based Faber Castel Polychromos pencils. Or Dick Blick or Lyra. Anything but those dreaded, prone to “lead” breakage Prismacolors. And this time I found rotted wood in the set, another count against them. Problem is, there are times when a wax based pencil comes in handy, so I admit to keeping a set around. And their tins are so pretty.