Xiangfan - Staying with the Wang family - Oct 30, 2009

Hi friends and family

Well we are finally in a mega internet cafe in the basement of a department store which has taken us half the morning to find.

Any we are now actually in Xi'an but this entry will be about our time in Xiangfan staying with our Sister in law's family. We travelled up by bullet train - 2 hours. Smooth ride, comfortable and interesting watching the farming scenes going past. How come we can't do this in Oz? The slow train (a la Oz time) takes 5 hours. As you would expect very intense farming and as we travelled north the fields became barren in readiness for winter.

Xiangfan was wonderful. Wang Tai Tai and Wang Xiansheng treated us with such warmth and hospitality and made us feel just so welcome as did my sister in law's two sisters. I will paste John's email in re this time in below.

Xiangfan is a relaxing and clean city with old city walls and a wide clean river with wonderful walkways along the river and the moat that surrounds the old city. Lots of activity along the way to watch.

We spent one day travelling out of town to visit the spot from where Zhuge Liang (200s AD) ruled advised by Liu Bei. He is an important historic and mythic/legendary figure that i need to find out more about. A delightful park/forested area that has a lot of old style buildings that were all built in about the 50s to give some understanding of this period. Lots of tales of his and Li Bai's wisdom, strategy and good ethics.

Wang Xiangsheng told us the history of this area and the characters. He is very knowledgeable as his Qiuran's (our sister in law) bother in law. All the way Qiuran translating for us.

The food from this area is wonderful. And Wang tai tai's the best of all. The food here is mildly spiced (compared with Szechwan food) and has a lovely balance of flavours.

We experienced the Chinese custom in restaurants in which it is normal to take a private room with couches and in one case tv and mahjong table. As a consequence many restaurants are absolutely monstrous. I guess in a country with small apartments if you want to entertain friends and family you would need to develop something like this.

We were very lucky to be there for our nephew Zifan's third birthday which was held at one such restaurant. After all the gift giving the family settled down to dinner and Zif played happily with his new toys and his cousin and watched a bit of TV. It really was a very special and lovely occassion.

There is no doubt that this time with the Wang family and with Qiuran and Owen has been an absolute highlight for us and a real privilege.

Love to everyone, Joan

Here is John's email.

We spent the last couple of days in a lovely town called Xiangfan on the Han river, two hours by bullet train north of Wuhan. Yes I did say bullet train - they are being built all over the place in this country. Wuhan looks at first as if it has been left behind but then you realise that it may be in the early stages of benefiting from the progress that is so evident on the east coast. Joan's brother Owen and his wife Qiuran had told us that we were booked on the fast train. Hankou train station and the whole area around it looked like a bomb had hit it. Roads being rebuilt, cranes, rubble, dust. We entered this shabby station area, crowded and run down with no escalators but very awkward beaten up metal ramps we struggled to get up with our heavy bags. Eventually, after rushing with a crowd through this shambles we emerged onto a platform in the process of being rebuilt and there in the middle of all the chaos sat a shiny sleak bullet train. We entered its clean quietness and rocketed across the ancient farmlands of the Han heartland.

What was most special for us about Xiangfan was staying with the Chinese branch of our family - our sister in law's family. Lovely people and their hospitality was overwhelming in its generosity. The pleasure was even greater because Owen and Qiuran and their little boy Zifan met us in Wuhan and travelled to Xiangfan with us. Owen loves the place and it's not hard to see why. The Han river is magnificent here and the city has taken full advantage of it