Life's a Stitch

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. 

I’m dating myself here. That song, Sailing, by Christopher Cross brings back warm happy memories of the early months of C’s and my relationship.

Truthfully, the only thing about sailboats that takes me away is painting them. It’s a thing here in British Columbia – boat portraits. Pets, houses, wedding flowers and boats, I’ve had the privilege of painting them all.  As for the boats, I avoid boarding them, for a variety of reasons including severe sea sickness. 

I studied with a well known BC artist who once combined two of his photos: a sailboat and a mountain looming over the horizon. His painting was produced into a large scale run of prints that were sold far and wide. One day he received a call from an irate man who recognized his vessel in the painting. He exclaimed “You moved my sailboat! It’s never been moored near Mt. So and So. My teacher calmly replied, “I assure you I do not possess the ability to move sailboats, only mountains.”  Certainly a testament to his dry sense of humour. He gave us two important tips when painting a sailboat:

1. Never place them in the right side of your painting. People at a show will perceive it as sailing off the edge of the paper and will move on to consider the painting beside yours.
2. It is too difficult to paint a boat with its sails up. I ignore that one.

Here are two of my recent sailboat paintings. 

For those of you who have recently requested notecards and prints, I’ll be in touch shortly as I need to get an order placed and don’t want to miss anyone.

I’ve done it. Twice. Fallen prey to the advertising efforts of two family search companies. 

Who can blame me? I know almost nothing about my father’s side of the family as my only surviving relatives are my sister and an older cousin. My goal was to build a family tree in order to discover if our family name lives on, as all surviving children in our generation are girls whose children were given the surname of their spouses.

The verdict? The exercise was worth the effort, given Black Friday prices. If I had it to do over again, which would I choose?

My maternal uncle traced his maternal ancestry over many generations, so I was familiar of my roots on that side. He even began a search of my father’s lineage and guided me as to how to continue. Bottom line, I was aware of where my a good portion of my family originated prior to their immigration to North America. 

23&me’s genetic reports seemed quite accurate placing 50% of my background in Poland, about 37% in the Iberian Peninsula and Southern Europe and 13% traced to my Caribbean Native American and African roots. I was connected to 1061 specific genetic relatives, many first and second cousins, thanks to a prolific great grandfather who had four wives and 20+ children.

Why bother to try another version? Because the last names of my relatives read like a Puerto Rican telephone book, nary a Polish family member to be found. There was one I suspected to have a connection, but I never received a reply. I was hoping that the other side may have more of a presence in another database.

A year later, having read that it is a better source for building family trees, off I went down the path of AncestryDNA. Although they advertise “2x more geographical detail,” I didn’t find that to be the case for me. The results appeared far less accurate, assigning  70% of my lineage to Poland and the Slavic areas and only 13% to the Iberian peninsula and Southern Europe, and about the same amount of Caribbean Native American and African origins. It connected me to over 1000 4th cousins or closer. I found a third cousin who lives near us who looks astonishingly similar to my mother in her younger years. 

AncestryDNA allows me to form a family tree and search their database of records such as US census data and immigration papers. Although that’s been helpful on my dad’s side, it requires a paid subscription or a trip to a public library to use their free version. I’ve since found the same information available for no charge, on familysearch.org. 

So, bottom line? I probably could have saved $59 by sticking with 23&Me and using Familysearch.org for their free family tree services.

Warning: 

1. Online family trees are only as accurate as the person who entered the data, sort of like a family Wikipedia. I found loads of errors in other’s trees.
2. This genealogy stuff is fun, time consuming, addictive and comes with surprises. I discovered my dad’s mother, was listed as the stepdaughter of the father we knew of, meaning there is another family line to research.

There you have it, not quite in a nutshell. My recommendation: 23&me.

On the topic of family here are a couple of family photos from this year’s holiday season trip down south:

Hiking the Painted Canyon trail in Mecca CA, a slot canyon requiring the climbing of a series of ladders in close quarters:

 

Cooking:

C, M and high school friend, Laura cooking KC’s birthday dinner, pierogies three ways. Each one picked their own flavour: butternut squash and feta, Philly cheese steak and turkey dinner pierogies (turkey, stuffing, cranberries and mashed potatoes). I made a sticky date pudding birthday cake.

 

B making his never fail grilled eggplant involtini:

We convinced him to do it twice:

Elephants

Watercolour on Arches 300# paper

Unframed size: 16×20

Painted with techniques learned in class with Lian Quan Zhen

This is the painting I was working on in my last post, while sitting by the pool in California. I hadn’t thought about getting it home, but luckily it fit in my suitcase sandwiched between two sheets of dollar store foam board.

I knew I wanted to paint these elephants in a larger format, but watercolour paper is tricky. If you cut a standard size sheet into halves or quarters, your painting won’t fit a standard size mat and frame. This one was planned as part of a series, the first one being my mama and baby zebras, so I needed a standard size in order to match the previous frames. The math in that decision meant cutting a $17 sheet of paper to 16×20 with only enough paper left for two small 8×10 paintings.

I’ll definitely get a better photo to do prints and notecards of this one before selling it.

This painting was started a couple of weeks ago. Last week my son found out he’ll soon be filming an African photo safari. He showed the company’s owner my elephants in progress. “Wow, she said, your mom paints the future!” Hmmm, I’ll have to have a look at what else I’ve done recently. I know there were two sailboats…

After our recent family sadness,  Christmas in the desert gave us time for much needed R&R. We made no advance plans allowing each day to unfold. Our first sunrise promised sunshine and warmth.

Down time for me, meant plenty of opportunities for artwork. I was able to take in a class with my favourite local award winning artist, Diane Morgan, whose subject for the afternoon was a close up of hydrangea blossoms.

The others elected to spend time at the pool  in the heat of the healing sunlight.  It struck me one afternoon, while painting alone at home, I was missing important family time. So I packed it all up and joined them. 

One of daughter M’s Christmas gifts was a set of German coloured pencils, as I was hoping for some creative time together, however M arrived prepared with her own larger art lesson. She led us in an afternoon of acrylic pouring. It’s messy, quick and satisfying. 

I found an online tutorial on using coloured pencils on black paper, which is producing a far more subtle version of the previously mentioned hydrangea. C kids me that it’s a version of the black velvet paintings of the 70’s. I doubt the tutorial instructor was even born then.

I’m going to finish it for a different kind of drawing, then try it in vibrant pastel pencils.

A tiny pink knit hat has a place of honour on our tree in memory of baby Sage.  Parents M and KC, our daughter and SIL, lost their little girl at 21 weeks gestation at the beginning of the month. There are so many words to describe this time in our lives,  but I’ll leave it at the title of this post: Loss.

For those who were aware, and were in touch, thank you for your kind words and actions.