Travel – Page 35 – Ian Louis Harris

China Trip – A Super Day In Xian, 24 November 1993

24 Nov 93 – Xian – super day! Pan Po Neolithic village excavation plus exhibitions…

-> silk shops & terracotta factory ->terracotta warriors – saw two pits (1 & 3) plus exhibits…

Of course, in those days you could get up close and personal with the 3rd century BCE relics that comprise the terracotta army…

…oh, all right, I just made that bit up – of course you couldn’t get close to the actual relics and you couldn’t even take pictures of them, let alone with them. We were advised to take our holiday snaps in the factory.

-> lunch (nice vegetables)…

One of the advantages of getting deeper into China was that the restaurants were less reliant on westernised ingredients and made do with the local produce. The resulting vegetables cooked in a Chinese style were more to our taste than a lot of the bland meals we’d been served in larger cities. Janie and I were distinctly in the minority on the tour with our praise for this meal.

-> medicine market…

This is one of my favourite memories of the whole China tour. I wanted to buy some Chinese spices to take home, so this “medicine market” was right up my street. In China, the distinction between herbs and spices for food and for medicine is wafer thin.

No-one spoke any English and we didn’t have a guide who could help me to transact. But I was able to recognise, by sight and smell, the components of five spice. My idea was to buy a small quantity of each of those components, mix them up, place them in a spice grinder when I got home and thus be able to cook Chinese food with flavoursome, fresh ground spice that I had personally brought back from China.

I found a patient-looking woman spice merchant. Using pointing and hand gestures I indicated the five spices I wanted and that she could mix all five together.

The only remaining issue was the quantity I wanted.

In those days, there were two currencies in China. The local currency, Renminbi, was not translatable into other currencies, tourists were not even permitted to use it. Tourists were issued with Foreign Exchange Certificates (FECs) which tourists and locals could use and which were, at that time, translatable at 8.5 FECs to the £. Strangely, that rate is quite similar to the rate prevailing today for the single Chinese currency, which is known both as the Yuan and (confusingly) Renminbi.

I tendered the smallest note I had; a 5 FEC note – worth a little under 60p in UK money. I figured I’d get a nice little bag of spices for that money.

The merchant did not recognise the FEC as money at all, so wanted to reject my offer. She showed me her local money and I tried, through gestures, to explain that I didn’t have it and that I couldn’t use it even if I had it.

I knew that the FEC was legal tender for her; she was simply unfamiliar with it, so I gently thrust my 5 FEC note at her again.

She went off with my note to consult with fellow merchants. I could tell that one of them was convincing her to take my money. Presumably, that more knowledgeable friend also told her how much money I had tendered (and/or possibly made her an offer to exchange the note), because the merchant’s eyes lit up, she hurried to grab a carrier bag and started shovelling huge quantities of spice into the bag.

Once she had filled up one carrier bag, she grabbed another large carrier bag and started to shovel spices into the second bag. I tried to stop her – she was very welcome to my 5 FECs without honouring the deal with, in her terms, the requisite quantity of spices. It hadn’t occurred to me that the FEC was so ridiculously overvalued in local terms, that my 60p was a heck of a lot of money to this merchant and therefore worth a heck of a lot of spices.

One and a half carrier-bags-full of spices, to be specific.

I off-loaded some spices onto one or two reasonably adventurous fellow tourists, but still ended up bringing home a ludicrous quantity of spices; I was using that stash for years and years after our return.

->City Wall (bought cuff links) -> food market…

Janie was in her element in the food market, snapping away. This was the first place we visited where the locals seemed quite happy to be photographed in this way. I think Xian was not yet used to seeing lots of tourists, so we were as much a novelty to the locals as the locals were a novelty to us.

-> hotel to change -> mini banquet followed by amazingly naff Tang dynasty show (Janie and I left early).

Janie and I sat through some pretty awful shows on that tour, so that Tang dynasty one must have been especially bad.

Banquet – (Janie remarks that my jumper, nearly as naff as the show, “HAD to go” )…

…and show – I don’t think this picture does justice to the naff-ness

All the photos we took on that day – by which I mean all 66 photos – can be seen in raw form in the Flickr album below:

China Trip – A Day “At Ease” In Shanghai, What A Relief, Then On To Xian, 23 November 1993

This was a light day on our itinerary. In particular, I would describe it as an “easy morning”:

23rd Shanghai -> Xian – “free morning” (read hour) in Shanghai – went to arts & crafts exhibition (shop) bought a few things -> hotel -> Mongolian Barbie (again!)…

…but the thing I didn’t mention directly in that note, despite one of the undocumented events of that morning being embedded in my memory, was the historic movement of my bowels.

Because, folks (and this is a matter that is rarely discussed in travelogues), I had, until that morning, spent the entirety of our China trip free of any bowel movement whatsoever.

Let me be clear about this. Between our departure from the Excelsior Hotel, Heathrow on 15th November until that morning of 23rd November just before leaving Shanghai…nada.

I even honoured myself with an:

Ex-Lax Award For Industry

This was not an entirely private matter on our tour. People on such tours talk about their bowel movements; in most cases because they are reporting excessive or unusual activity. My deficiency in that regard became a matter of some legend in our tour group.

“Any news?”, I would sometimes be asked by a curious (or plain nosy) fellow tourist at breakfast or perhaps at the start of the evening, after an hour or two of down time in the hotel. I’d reply with a doleful shake of the head, unwilling or unable even to simply say, “no”, or “not yet”.

I suppose this quiet morning in Shanghai was the first opportunity Janie and I had to sit still for a while, take stock on the many events of the holiday (including the lack of one particular type of event) and reflect.

Janie reflected that it was getting to the stage that further prolonging of the inevitable might be a health hazard for me. I was very resistant to the idea of taking medication which might easily send my system into the opposite, therefore even more troublesome, mode.

Janie tried some site-specific massage which, quite quickly, had the desired impact. A quite magnificent offering at that.

I think I might even have got a round of applause on the coach when we announced my (or perhaps I should say, our) delivery.

Flight to Xian -> long drive to hotel -> dinner at hotel and early night.

Of course there must be loads of big hotels in Xian now, but in those days we stayed in one simply named The Xian Hotel, as I don’t suppose there were all that many hotels in that city.

In that hotel, I awarded our floor boy (who was a girl):

The Brain Of China 1993

…although I cannot remember why. I also honoured the hotel itself with:

The Oral-B Tasteless Toothpaste Award

…see also my note in the Wuxi piece about the disintegrating toothbrushes – we always take our own brushes and paste now – even when we are staying in fancy-schmanzy hotels.

At least I was now at ease and ready for one of the most interesting days of our tour; our main day in Xian:

China Trip – A Super Day In Xian, 24 November 1993

China Trip – A Day And A Further Night In Shanghai, 22 November 1993

22nd Shanghai – Traffic! – Went to garden and around market in old town…

My comment on traffic was an abiding memory of the day – it took so long to get from place to place in Shanghai at that time. The city was growing much faster than its infrastructure would allow and it really was traffic bound. I honoured Shanghai with…

The Department Of Transport Award For Traffic Congestion

…which took some winning in China back then – all the cities were pretty congested, with a mixture of cars and bicycles, mostly the latter, not well separated.

…Jade Factory and Carpet Factory -> The Bund & Nanjing Road, on to Mongolian Barbecue…

Carpet Factory (the Jade factory escaped our lenses)

I recall being fed “Mongolian Barbecue” on several occasions on that tour. It was a “bit of a thing” in England back then and I guess the Chinese thought that the English thought that this was sort-of Chinese food. Actually, it turns out that this “comedy dish – Mongolian Barbecue” is slightly more Chinese than I imagined, although it has no connection with Mongolia whatsoever.

Jade Buddha Temple including Monks Prayer Ceremony…

Janie and I loved this bit. Remember, this was before we became “templed-out” and “monks-prayered-out” – this was our first experience of such stuff.

-> Children’s Palace – Chinese violins, ballet, violins, computers…

-> dinner at Rooftop Restaurant (everyone else hated) -> early night

Interesting observation about the Rooftop Restaurant. I guess that Janie and I felt we were getting a rare authentic Chinese meal there, whereas many of the other tourists missed their sweet and sour balls and chips. I don’t really remember – Janie might recall more, but I awarded that restaurant:

The Egon Ronay Award For Most Appetizing Food

Praise indeed.

All the photos we took on that day – by which I mean all 57 photos – can be seen in raw form in the Flickr album below:

China Trip – Suzhou And On To Shanghai, 21 November 1993

21st. Suzhou -> Shanghai. Went to Master Of the Nets Garden – very beautiful.

-> Embroidery Factory -> Water Gate and on to street market (Portobello style)…

I think we were advised/asked not to take photographs in that street market – it would be unheard of for Janie to resist taking pictures in a market otherwise.

Lunch -> sandalwood factory (fan making) with amazing solder artist…

…climbed pagoda…

We both felt the need to provide photographic evidence of the pagoda and the fact that we had climbed it.

-> railway station, train to Shanghai -> straight to dinner -> hotel -> Peace Hotel for Jazz Evening.

The Jazz evening was good fun. I’m not sure whether the loud-looking redhead is Katherine, but I did give an award to a couple named Matthew and Katherine:

The Richard Branson Award for extrovert behaviour.

All the photos we took on that day – by which I mean all 46 photos – can be seen in raw form in the Flickr album below:

China Trip – Wuxi And On To Suzhou, 20 November 1993

20th Wuxi -> Suzhou. Lake view – fascinating breakfast…

I don’t really remember the breakfast. My guess is that I tried a Chinese style breakfast – wontons, congees and noodles – for the first time in China.

The Hubin Hotel in Wuxi is still highly regarded 25 years later, although I awarded it:

A Colgate Award for disintegrating toothbrushes

Janie and I have long since given up using hotel toothbrushes – we take our own whizzy ones.

Wuxi is an industrial City and our touring – to see factory life – felt very much like a commercial opportunity to try to sell us stuff.

…To pearl factory (shop), porcelain factory (& shop) and silk factory (& shop).

Lunch in Wuxi. Barge trip on Grand Canal -> Suzhou. Dinner followed by early night.

We had a guide on that barge trip from Wuxi to Suzhou, who I honoured with:

The Brian Clough Award for liking the sound of your own voice

Mind you, that sounding off might have been safer than the coach we took in Wuxi – I honoured the driver of Sally’s coach:

The Nigel Mansell Award for driving

All the photos we took on that day – by which I mean all 27 photos – can be seen in raw form in the Flickr album below:

China Trip – From Nanjing On To Wuxi, 19 November 1993

Janie really got the hang of the early morning tai chi…

…whereas I look somewhat “other”, compared with the regulars

This is what I wrote:

19th – Nanjing -> Wuxi – early morning tai chi after breakfast. Mausoleum of Dr Sun Yat-sen…

I recall being quite taken with the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum. Good exercise climbing all those steps too. So much so, Janie and I both wanted photographic evidence that we made the climb:

…then on to museum (real) and art gallery (shop).

A real museum exhibit being observed by a real Janie

I was starting to get a little vexed by the fact that so many items on our itinerary sounded like sites of touring interest but actually were shopping visits. Some people in our group seemed far more interested in shopping than in actually seeing China, so not only were those shopping legs dull, they also tended to be protracted.

I especially remember one woman, Heather, who was a shopaholic and was almost always last back on the coach after a shopping stop. She bought a huge consignment of tacky-looking laughing Buddhas to take home as gifts, so I honoured her with:

The Dali Lama Award for laughing Buddhas.

To be fair, though, Janie actually really liked that “art gallery” stop as there were some interesting artists with their own art works on show. She bought this small work there, which still has pride of place in the bedroom.

Late lunch in Nanjing, followed by Yangtse River Bridge & then on to railway station for train (shop) to Wuxi.

“Not only will this train take you to Wuxi, Sir, but you’ll have all manner of shopping opportunities on board…”

The number of vendors and the extent of goods – or to be more specific, gimcrack – tendered to the captive audience that was the rail passenger community – had to be seen to be believed.

…Straight to hotel for dinner followed by karaoke.

I remember the visit to a karaoke bar in Wuxi well. Chris, one of our tour guides, arranged the evening and only a few of us (mostly the younger folks from the tour) went. The locals clearly took their karaoke very seriously and mostly sang ballads and love songs – some Chinese pop, some western pop in extraordinary accents.

In keeping with the musical style that seemed popular there, I decided to deliver The Ultimate Love Song, which is one of my early parodies which works to the tune of Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You:

The Ultimate Love Song, Whoops Vicar, NewsRevue, Ben Murphy…, 29 February 1992

The subtlety of the piece was probably wasted on most of the audience, but karaoke is surely more about the karaoker than the karaokees.

Janie and I both remember our little group having quite a lot to drink. I recall Janie doing a duet with Chris the guide, but neither of us can remember exactly which song they sang. I think it was something along the lines of “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers”, sung melodramatically and very badly indeed.

For sure we had lots of fun that evening.

All the photos we took on that day – by which I mean all 29 photos – can be seen in raw form in the Flickr album below:

China Trip – From Beijing On To Nanjing, 18 November 1993

We did a little bit more sightseeing in Beijing before dashing to the airport for an internal flight to Nanjing.

18th – Beijing to Nanjing – went to Lama Temple & briefly Confuzi Temple. Then on to airport for flight to Nanjing*…

*amazing business moving us from Gate 16 to Gate 19 & then back across the tarmac

I think this is the Confuzi Temple but this photo was not labelled at the time, so I might be getting “confuzied”

I remember the business at the airport, because we were solemnly told we needed to relocate to another gate in order to be in close proximity to our plane, then ended up wandering rather haphazardly across the tarmac to our plane, which was close to the original gate. Frankly that was one of my lesser health and safety concerns about the internal flights back then – more on that topic anon.

…straight on to coaches for trip to amazing bird market and then on to hotel – 5-star Jinling Hotel.

As yes, the bird market.

Janie and I found it fascinating and I’m sure these days Janie would have taken dozens and dozens of photographs there. Still, enough above to give you an idea. Some of our fellow tourists found the place unsettling; it certainly didn’t smell like a place where you’d want to try the street food. It’s probably highly regulated and much safer hygeine-wise now.

As for the 5-star Jinling Hotel – so famous and having had so many high-falutin’ guests it gets a Wikipedia entry – it was a strange sort of 5-star. My guess is that there were different grades of room and our tour group was in last grade:

Dig the rabbit-skin hat and rattan slippers. I still have that short- sleeved shirt in my “holiday collection” 25 years later.

My memory had Janie’s hairdryer debacle happening in this hotel, but my notes have now sent me to the Holiday Inn Beijing for the electrical debacle and I now recall that the incident occurred before our peking duck dinner, not before the music concert, so I have moved that anecdote to the previous day’s write up – click here or below:

Squeezing A Heck Of A Lot Into One Day In Beijing – Including Making The Holiday Inn Beijing Go Pop, 17 November 1993

What the “awards” notes do remind me is that the elevators in the Jinling Hotel were somewhat below five star standard. I awarded that hotel:

The London Regional Transport Efficient Elevator Service Award

On reflection, I think our departures from that hotel were always delayed by people unable to lifts get down from their rooms.

Dinner in town – not bad meal – good ribs. Music concert at which we didn’t fall asleep (but almost everyone else did).

So that will have been our very first encounter with Chinese traditional instruments, including the pipa – an instrument that has fascinated us since and which Janie has subsequently likened to a theorbo with predictably hilarious results in the early music world:

William Carter, Theorbist Extraordinaire’s Mystery Punter Outed, 24 September 2010

But I digress.

All the photos we took on that day – by which I mean all 18 photos – can be seen in raw form in the Flickr album below:

Squeezing A Heck Of A Lot Into One Day In Beijing – Including Making The Holiday Inn Beijing Go Pop, 17 November 1993

As a result of a “fog-bound Beijing” 24 hour delay leaving London…

An Anticlimactic Start To My & Janie’s First Big Travel Adventure Together, 14 to 16 November 1993

…we only had one of the two scheduled days in Beijing, at the start of our 1993 China tour.

Never mind. Kuoni would try to squeeze as much into one day as is humanly possible…possibly more than that.

No time to hang around in the throne room

17th – Beijing – went to Tianenmen Square and Forbidden City in morning – then closonet factory – then lunch on the way to Great Wall – food slightly spicy this time but still more Cantonese style than Beijingese. Great Wall in afternoon – walked up a bit bought a rabbit skin hat on the way up for ¥10.7 (£1.30) – straight back for Peking Duck dinner. [indecipherable added note]. Mr Poll Tax explained how to complain about anything.

Ah, so the Peking Duck was the second night, not the first night…still, everything I wrote about the Peking Duck meal (and the Park Inn) still applies.

My abiding memory of getting ready to go out for that meal was Janie’s hairdryer moment. I don’t mean her chewing me out Alex Ferguson style – that sort of hairdryer moment would be more predictable than memorable – no, I mean the moment when Janie, who insisted on schlepping her own hairdryer half way around the world, plugged in said hairdryer and made an entire Holiday Inn’s electricity go “pop”.

OK, it is JUST possible that something else in the hotel made the electricity go pop at the precise moment that Janie flicked her hairdryer switch…but what are the chances of that happening?

I don’t think Janie dared try to use her hairdryer again until we got to Hong Kong.

The Thomas Edison Award for electrical cabling – the Holiday Inn Beijing

I don’t remember much about Mr Poll Tax but I suspect he was a seasoned, semi-professional complainer.

All the photos we took on that big day – just 17 between the two of us would you believe – in those days it was rolls of film and rationing our supplies – can be seen in raw form in the Flickr album below:

An Anticlimactic Start To My & Janie’s First Big Travel Adventure Together, 14 to 16 November 1993

Janie and I embarked on our first big holiday together, to China, Hong Kong & Bali, 25 years ago as I write (in November 2018).

A long while in the planning, I got permission from Binder Hamlyn in August 1993 to take an exceptionally long vacation – four weeks, having accumulated a large backlog of leave, at which point Janie and I promptly booked the holiday and spent the next three months looking forward to it.

We booked this holiday through Kuoni Travel. Being somewhat unseasoned and relatively impecunious travellers at that time, the China portion of the trip was a group tour. In any case, in 1993 it would have been difficult to travel around China independently; it was fairly difficult even on a group tour.

Our excitement was curtailed when we got to the airport to discover that our flight had been delayed by 24 hours due to fog in Beijing.

My tour journal (see as written above, transcribed below) begins:

Excelsior Hotel 24 hour delay of flight – Beijing fog bound. We ate, swam, worked out in gym, ate, swam and ate…

What was the Excelsior Heathrow is now (November 2018) the Park Inn by Radisson Heathrow – if this link still works when you read this, you can decide for yourself whether you’d prefer 24 hours in that place or in Beijing.

I do also remember the tour group leaders, Sally and Chris, arranging a couple of briefing sessions at the hotel, to try to keep us all upbeat, to introduce us to each other and to explain how they were going to salvage what they could of our Beijing site-seeing, which was going to be reduced from two days to one very busy day. I took very few notes.

Departed for Beijing 9pm on 15th – arrived afternoon of 16th – straight to Holiday inn Beijing and out to dinner at rather ordinary restaurant next door.

I have one abiding memory of the flight. When we boarded, one gentleman, very red in the face, who looked like a travelling businessman rather than a holiday maker, elbowing people out of the way – flamboyantly ensuring that he got as much hand-luggage space as possible. He was probably an expert at manspreading too, although we were mercifully sitting a couple of rows away from him. Clearly he was a seasoned traveller and equally clearly not a very nice or polite bloke. Since that flight, Janie and I have always described that type of traveller’s behaviour as “like the man on the Beijing plane”.

Beijing Capital International Airport in 1993 was nothing like the place it is now or even like the place we experienced on our next visit, in 2010. In the early 1990’s, if I recall correctly, the runways and indeed the passenger walkways were more like the top of a great big outdoor wall…

…or perhaps I am getting my photographs muddled up. Perhaps that picture is from our visit to the great wall the next day.

Joking apart, the airport back then seemed very developing world and basic for a major international city. Also, it was extremely cold when we arrived in Beijing – an early season wave of arctic weather – hence snow on the wall.

My comment about the food at a “rather ordinary restaurant” next door to the Holiday Inn was an abiding theme on this holiday. The food was mostly not good and was very samey. There was an assumption that a British tour group would not be very interested in Chinese food beyond a few staple dishes of the pseudo-Chinese, sweet and sour balls variety. Every meal included copious plates of chips, just in case the “Chinese” food didn’t please people. To be fair, most of our fellow travellers were not particularly interested in the food and (unsurprisingly given the quality of food served) were not going to cultivate an interest in Asian cuisine on that touring holiday.

We were given some peking duck in Beijing – the next day it transpires…

Squeezing A Heck Of A Lot Into One Day In Beijing – Including Making The Holiday Inn Beijing Go Pop, 17 November 1993

…but that peking duck was of a far lesser quality than the stuff we were used to in good London Chinese restaurants – for example, the Park Inn – by which I mean May’s wonderful Chinese restaurant on Wellington Terrace, around the corner from my flat – not the Radisson hotel chain known as Park Inn. In the fullness of time shall write up May’s Park Inn for Ogblog. Strangely, though, on Googling it, I found one page – click here for link…

…or here for my 2018 scrape of that page… still listing May’s restaurant some 15-18 years after it closed. I wonder how many other restaurants on that listing still exist?

So it’s not just Beijing and China that have changed in the last 25 years – but I do think the changes there are more dramatic.

Anyway, the point is, evening of 16th November 1993, Janie and I had arrived in China and the touring was about to begin the next day.

China Tour, Pre Briefing Notes, 14 November 1993

While we were fog bound at Heathrow on 14 November…

An Anticlimactic Start To My & Janie’s First Big Travel Adventure Together, 14 to 16 November 1993

…our Kuoni guides, Chris Lucas and Sally Ward, briefed us ahead of our trip.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: