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Panda Alarm Clock (Xiong Mao) from the Chengdu Zhong Biao Chang, Pingle junk shop, Sichuan 090317 ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

Pingle: Green

Pingle, Sichuan 090317 ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

Pingle: Red

Apothecary's shop, Pingle, Sichuan 090317 ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

The most incredible thing

San Sheng Hua Xiang, Chengdu, Sichuan 090318 ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

I witnessed the most incredible thing today: a Chinese queue - an actual real life neat and tidy line of people waiting to get on the bus. In over twenty years of China-watching I have not seen this orderly a queue more than a couple of times, usually in front of the Memorial Hall for Mao Zedong on Tiananmen Square in Beijing where people wait patiently to file past the Chairman's body. Just like in Beijing these people were kept in check by a man with a stick and a loud voice (the men in Beijing use bull horns). My companions and I were so flabbergasted that all three of us stood and photographed the event.

I must admit that various forms of unpleasant social behavior in China have greatly improved in the past ten years. But a queue in China is usually a non-thing, the very concept not existing in the general Chinese consciousness where every opportunity to get what you want before everyone else is taken advantage of by blithely barging ahead of all and sundry. Only the other day I had listened to British author Blake Morrison telling about how his father was a notorious queue-jumper and how it made his family cringe with embarrassment. I jumped the queue myself to get him to sign his book for me. 

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San Sheng Hua Xiang, Chengdu, Sichuan 090318 ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

You see the most unexpected things in China...

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Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan), Beijing 1987 ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

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Lama Temple (Yonghegong), Beijing, 1997 ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

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Forbidden City, Beijing, 2005? ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn 

Spring flowers, kites and heavenly trees

090313 ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn (Click on image to see in larger window!)

Friday afternoon the light was lovely and we spent a little time in the park that runs along Shenxianshu Nanlu, opposite Qinghua Fang. The magnolias inside Qinghua Fang were perfection this day and in the park peach blossoms of many different colors and hues were a welcome sight beside the row of weeping willows that line the canal skirting the park.

The name of this important thoroughfare that runs through a section of Chengdu has special significance. Shenxianshu means something like "Tree of the Heavenly Beings" (nanlu just means "South Road") and such a tree was thought to exist in the world of superstition and old tradition. The tree was a kind of "money tree" (qianshu) that have been found in Chinese graves for a few thousand years, but it had less to do with riches than acting as a pathfinder or bearer of the spirit or soul back to the Land of the Dead. I don't know why this particular road has this quite profound name, perhaps there was once a temple or graveyard located here?

The park itself is a favorite with kite flyers so we bought a simple one for 8 yuan and gave it a go. Most of the time we spent cursing each other and yelling instructions. We only succeeded in getting the kite in the air as long as we were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. The pros were of course the older gentlemen with fancy reels of robust string and decades of know-how. We did however succeed with one thing - not getting our kite stuck in a big, old tree that dominates the main square. This tree is a veritable graveyard for dead kites and perhaps in its own way a shenxianshu, carrying our happy memories of good times spent here back to the heavens above where our kites should be but never succeeded in reaching.

©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

Ett paket på änglavingar...

...anlände igår i form av mandelmassa. Underbara Susanna, en riktig ängel från Änglarnas stad Bangkok, förbarmade sig över oss stackars Chengdubor och  skickade ett nödpaket bakproviant, inklusive florsocker. Med en handskriven förmaning till kinesiska tullen att absolut inte röra eller ännu värre äta innehållet kom försändelsen oskadd fram. (Tydligen vet dem varken hur kokain eller anthraxpulver ser ut för hade jag bott i USA hade den aldrig sluppit igenom.) Så nu ska här bakas! Lite sent på året i och för sig men jag hade sett på Susannas mycket trevliga blog (om livet i Thailand, foto, fotografvärlden mm mm, besök den här) hur hon hade fixat med "marzipan" inköpt i Bangkok. Jag blev både sugen och avis direkt. En kommentar på hennes blogsida räckte för att ett paket skickades med detsamma. Det kallar jag en kompis! TACK! 

Och idag skiner solen med. Så kan det gå, upp och ner med livets små och stora händelser. Emy, ta fram bakskålen!