Is it ever black and white?

Life is different on a two day sleeper train in China. For a start our compartment companions were a well organised couple who had lots of excellent food in sensible containers and not much luggage. They didn’t speak English and we didn’t speak Mandarin (yet!) but we got on well enough …apart from when I threw some water at Rosa for being annoying and it went on the woman in the downstairs bunk, things were a bit frosty after that for a while but we got through it…

The main thing that was different about this journey was that most of the people on the train got up in the morning and exercised in the corridors. Stretching, doing Tai Chi and Chi Gong, walking whenever we got to a train station and we were allowed off for a few minutes…I felt right at home! I had been the only exerciser on the Kazakhstan train, the main reason people got off the train there was to smoke and I only saw one smoker and a lot of pacers on our Chinese train – up and back, up and back, never too far from our carriage mind, when they said it was time to get on we needed to move pretty fast.

Our companions made room for us to eat as a family and kept pretty clear hours for when we were welcome to sit on their beds. They looked to be in their early 60’s and the woman liked singing along to YouTube videos with her headphones on…that kept me entertained for about fifteen minutes at one point, when I was lying in my bunk pondering the most significant question of the hour, should I sit on the seat to stare out of the window or stand up?

On my first visit to the window I saw an incredible number of wind turbines, miles and miles of them, easily more than all the nimbies in the UK. They were continuous for over half an hour and at least twenty deep. They may have gone on for longer but I got distracted by my first Chinese camel sighting, literally only one camel but it still had me fully excited and refusing to leave the window seat for two more hours.

After that window stint I drew the conclusion that the centre of China is pretty barren, admittedly there is very little marked on the map so it was pretty obvious but the hours of ‘not much’ made it settle in my imagination in a way that books don’t quite give me – I later discovered that part of our journey had taken us through the Gobi desert which is the one of the biggest deserts in the world and where the first ever fossilised dinosaur eggs were found.

There were almost no people out here and the few distant cities we did see seemed to be made almost entirely of concrete and steel, ugly sprawling places, full of factories and heavy industry, not easy places to live. Only the occasional camel sighting, and the mass farms of windmills broke up the otherwise dry, and dull landscape until the very edges of the Himalaya came into view. They were the biggest mountains we had seen and I could tell they were only the foothills…they were a decidedly better back drop for my camel watching than the endless flat.

Three nights on back to back trains turns out to a bit rubbish and by the third night I had had enough …stupid trains, with their panic making lurching, that time their lurches for the moment when you are just about to fall asleep, and why do they make such weird noises? …and why do they go so slowly!

I have always had slightly romantic thoughts about long distance train travel, after three nights I can tell you they are actually tedious and stupid – although I reckon I’d have a different story to tell if I could just get my hands on a bottom bunk. I spent quite a few hours lying in my top bunk (when I wasn’t listening to my Chinese lady singing her youtube songs or chucking water at her…) deciding how I was going to be, come the glorious day, when we get our first bottom bunk sleeper. I am certainly going to be smug, but will I be generous …or totally selfish?!

I don’t think any of us slept well on that third night, added to the tedium was the slight fear of what was to come.

We were looking forward to meeting Zewu Li, the friend of Trevor’s, but I had agreed that we would give a talk about our ‘travels on the silk road’ for two hours to seventy 13 to 15 year olds and a bunch of their parents… Decidedly not mine or Rosa’s comfort zone…it is Theo’s, and it would have been easy to lay back on my crappy upper bunk, put my hands behind my head and say ‘over to you Mr Speaks Really Well!’ But that’s not what this trips about. I want to face those challenges and I would love Rosa’s voice front and centre as well – I couldn’t ask her if I wasn’t prepared to do it myself. It made sense to me that we were equals in this – it’s our story and we all get to tell it – Rosa and I certainly aren’t going to get better at it if we hand over to Theo…so, there I was, scared and bored.

The train arrived at 8.21 (exactly on time) and we were met with a sign with our names on. It was fun seeing a sign that said ‘Shannon Welcome’  and we were driven to the school in a swanky air conditioned electric car by Dong Hai – the schools administrator (the obvious question being ‘why couldn’t I ever afford a car like this’?)

We were headed to a new part of the school Zewu had originally opened, a middle school for Classes 7 – 9, and it had opened in a beautiful old town. It was very well resourced (we later discovered that the new school was being hosted by a private school that had space).

We were shown to our rooms (yep, rooms!) and left to rest after our long journey. Zewu was coming at 15.00 and lunch was at 12.30…a couple of hours to get ready for ‘the talk’ and to acclimatise to not being on a train anymore.

Lunch was in a canteen with trays very similar to the ones Amber the chef manager at Avanti Park had tried to introduce, and I had one of my many moments of wondering how everyone at school was doing…it isn’t easy to let go and here I was, in a school, in China…pinch me! Is this real?

Obviously the food was delicious and after we had gone back to our rooms I heard drumming – really loud and with such interesting rhythms I had to go and see.

The Class 7 pupils were learning drum patterns on huge free standing drums – they had thick wooden sticks and were really hitting the drums hard …it was great to see some of the boys messing about at the back in between practices (thirteen year olds are the same everywhere it turns out 🙂

The wonderful Zewu arrived and we went into major organising mode – what did we need for the talk, how were we planning to do it, he would do all the translation (he showed us the room with all the seats set out…how do you spell ‘zxghfdsklghrxx?’ – the fearful sound my stomach started making).

I had reduced my photos to 150 but he thought we needed 30, OMG, which ones! …and how were we going to get them from my phone to Dong Hai’s laptop? …oh, and the schedule for the next two days needed a quick check over…

Zewu Li is one of those men that you want in your life. Smart, warm, and centred, a clear leader but not someone who takes over, and he had such a great sense of humour. I genuinely loved the man after less than 24 hours in his company.

After some negotiating we settled on a clear plan for the next two days. We would go to the local stand out attraction, ‘The Landlord Museum’, the next morning with two of the students and then leave with the school bus back to Chengdu in the afternoon. We wanted to go and see the school Zewu had opened in 2004 and after that we were off to a hotel ready for our trip to the Panda Research Base the next day (PANDAS!!).

Great plan, we just had this bloody talk to get through.

The technology part was a little chaotic but when you are in a band you learn some things about keeping a show going, and we started with the photos still being uploaded…we had extra help now and we were air dropping photos to one of the teachers who was emailing them to the laptop – we did this three or four times during the talk as I realised what we needed – it was just the right side of on the edge..

We had decided with Zewu that we would take it in turns to speak and take different parts of our journey and to my great joy Rosa agreed to go first.

Everything she said in Mandarin was greeted with rapturous applause – it was another hug myself moment as a mum! Rosa has a natural way with her that isn’t ‘confidence’ it’s different, and it’s only as I’m writing this that I’m noticing that. I think she is just being herself, quite naturally. She goes a little red as she speaks and I can see her delight at the applause she gets for speaking Mandarin. She explains why she came on this trip and that it was hard to leave her beloved cat behind. She tells them about Turkey and how full of cats it was and we show our pictures of the cats on the ticket machines.

We take it in turns to explain why we have come to China and where we are going, we share some of our stories and I do my best to get the students involved. When we tell them about the Whirling Dervishes I ask for four volunteers to come up and spin round and round. It’s a bit crazy, and it’s fun!

I tell them the story of searching for camels in Kazakhstan and I ask them what their favourite animals are. We ask them where they would most like to travel to in the world and why…and some reply in English …Theo managed to weave our stories together with some relevance to the history of the Silk Road and we all talked about how moving it was to go to Catalhoyuk in Turkey and learn that there had been a town of over 5,000 people that didn’t have any evidence of weapons or hierarchy for over 2000 years!

In between each of us sharing some part of the journey I am diving back and forth to the computer to add more photos and put them in better orders, and Zewu is translating skilfully to keep it interesting and relevant for the teenagers…teamwork.

At the end of the talk they wanted us sing a song and we asked the same from them, which caused all of the young people to stand up and express their opinions on how that was going to work out…a quick five minutes of craziness was followed by five minutes of intense activity (while the band set up).

They loved our song ‘Child of the Universe’ and we loved their song. The band was a pretty serious outfit, they clearly rehearsed together and new what song they were going to perform but as in most impromptu performances getting all the tech to work was a bit of a nightmare…

Basically we had a great time, and we were really proud of ourselves, we answered all their questions, we talked a bit about climate change and stereotypes on both sides of the world, and we made a genuine attempt to connect with each other, a good evening!

We slept well that night, in part out of relief but mainly because we weren’t on a sodding train anymore…

We woke up early and after another fabulous meal our two hosts came to find us and we set off for the museum. I don’t really like museums as a rule, I’m more of a ‘touch it, feel it, pick it up and use it’ type and they get funny if you do that with the bones of the long dead, start thumbing through ancient texts or sitting on the big throne like chairs …and they have no sense of humour at all when it comes to handling gold in any form…so I wasn’t really looking forward to it. I went because I am interested in China but I was surprised how much it got to me.

The brutality and cruelty were clear for all to see, many landlords were tyrants and the poverty the ordinary people experienced was extreme. Of course there is grey in all systems, there will have been nicer landlords and happier peasants, not everyone would have had to sell their children into slavery…but this was happening 75 years ago. The revolution took place after World War II – it was hard to believe such barbaric cruelty was taking place within the lifetimes of some of the people walking around the museum. These were the lives of most peoples grandparents.

At the beginning it was a little like walking around a British stately home, lots of objects and descriptions, and then we came to the central exhibit. All four sides of a large room were filled with fantastic sculptures, the students with us said they used actors to make them as lifelike as possible and we all found them incredibly moving…three dimensional pictures of human suffering allowed us to see why the peasants had had enough!

We were quiet as we went back to the school – reflecting on a little more understanding of China’s history.

Then it was time for lunch, another attempt to get on the impenetrable ‘We Chat’ and it was time to go.

We said a grateful goodbye to Zewu, he had organised one of the school admin team to book our tickets to go to the panda research base and he told us the school had booked a hotel for us in Chengdu which they were going to pay for…! We couldn’t believe it…it turned out to be an actual hotel and we had separate rooms for only the second time since leaving England – thank you again Zewu Li!

After a lively journey we arrived at the school in Chengdu and were greeted by Gan, (please forgive my spelling if I’ve got your name wrong!) he was a lovely man, he had lived in England for five years and spoke great English. He was enthusiastic, clearly good at his job and proud of his school. He had worked there since 2008 and the school was stunning.

He showed us everything – the vegetable gardens and the beautiful play areas, the calligraphy room, the lake with lotus flowers growing on it…the intricate woodwork room built in the old Chinese style and lots of classrooms …but it was one of the kindergartens that stole my heart. Arranged in exactly the same way ours had been at the Steiner Academy Frome.

I had tears in my eyes as I came out of there…tears for all we had achieved, and all we had lost. It was good to remember how wonderful and rich a Steiner Education can be and I said a silent thank you to Guy and Trevor for their leadership and for all the incredible hard work of the whole team…I remembered our humble beginnings, the tough decisions and the courage of so many parents to give this a chance…I remembered how much I loved being surrounded by children and some of the wonderful decisions we had made back then

The main reason we were in China was because Rosa studied Mandarin at the school for eight years and was in love with the culture and the language…it felt like a completion of sorts and as I sat playing my guitar whilst a small group of four year olds played in the mud I sent my silent wishes out into the universe, that this little jewel be allowed to flourish…it was an honour to visit the Chengdu Waldorf School.

Gan ordered us a taxi and we were on our way to the ‘Panda Prince Hotel’ …a nice touch 🙂 …time for an early night – Panda day tomorrow!!!

Breakfast was included (!) and so we feasted on boiled eggs and bauzi (dumplings), cooked beans, salads and rice and weird little biscuit things in packets which I thought were horrible 🙂 …Rosa noticed that Theo and I were dressed in black and white and I noticed it was time to go!

We weren’t seeing pandas in the wild but we were seeing them in large enclosures and people regularly didn’t get to see pandas if it was too hot, or they were asleep somewhere in the undergrowth.

We had a family disagreement at the traffic lights just before we arrived, where I was vetoed from being allowed to spend 50p on a pair of fluffy panda ears.

Everyone was wearing them and so my ongoing and deeply justified outrage at not being able to spend 50p on something that would have allowed me to fit in with the rest of China (and most of them were actually there) eventually led to my mean family relenting 🙂 …they do look cute and I have promised to wear them at every border crossing to make sure they were not a waste of money!

Our argument forgotten and our excitement off the scale we walked into the hugeness that was panda central, they do so much conservation work here and the place was massive.

The first three enclosures we saw were pretty big and a panda could easily have been munching their way through several hundred kilos of bamboo and we wouldn’t have been any the wiser.

We began to suspect that it was a quiet day in panda town when we saw the excited throng of people all looking at something…a sure sign, and there he was (…and I did look at the board to see who we were meeting and he was called Po! Can you believe it, …well maybe Po wasn’t an entirely accurate translation of his name, but he did look exactly like the Dragon Warrior!)

He was so big, and so awesome, awesomeness radiated off him with every crunch of his bamboo stick. (Note: we have just watched Kung Fu Panda in Mandarin, as part of the study programme here, and it’s colouring my memories a little).

So, there we were, in the actual presence of a real life panda – how did we feel? Happy 🙂 …it’s quite simple really, they are huge and cute and he was right there…happiness!

Po eventually disappeared into the undergrowth and we walked on – we could see another big group staring upwards. A rather large panda had draped itself over a branch about 80 feet off the ground and gone to sleep…

We saw about fifteen pandas in all that day…we stayed a long time soaking up what was without doubt a once in a lifetime experience. They were pretty much all asleep or eating but we saw one mum playing with her cub which will stay with us forever…

There are just over 1,800 pandas left in our world and they are a precious part of it – and as much as we loved seeing the awesome black and white ‘bear cats’ it was also wonderful seeing the same love and wonder on every face in the crowds of people looking on.

Too soon it was time to leave and head back to the hotel. we needed to prepare for our trip to Guilin – Rosa and I were starting our Mandarin studies the next day and we both needed to do some washing, no-one wants to arrive somewhere new with dirty knickers.

We couldn’t resist having one more glimpse of a panda so we sneaked back into the baby panda enclosure, and one of them accidentally climbed into my rucksack! We didn’t notice until we got to Guilin and we can’t take her back because she’s part of the family now, so you’ll get to meet her when we get back 🙂