Posted on 28 September 2007 @ 16:18 in Travels
It had started at Guangzhou’s Baiyun International Airport. I was at the information counter, asking about taxis to the hotel I had reservations for. I could see the woman’s mouth moving, I knew she was replying in English, but the sounds coming out of her mouth did not sound English at all. We finally managed to understand each other, and I was soon on my way to the hotel.
It soon became clear that neither the hotel’s reception staff nor the woman at the travel agency next door knew much English, or any English at all. It got me rather irritated. They were after all employed in an industry where many of the customers were foreigners and English would be a required means of communication.
How was I going to get through my holiday in China? How was I going to make all these different people understand me?
It eventually dawned on me to try my very rusty Mandarin and thus, I started to make myself understood, first by the hotel’s reception staff and then by everyone else I spoke with during my 10 days in China. Knowing that I could speak their language, many of them warmed to me, and even complimented me on my fluent Mandarin. I’ll be the first to admit my Mandarin is far from fluent, but apparently it was fluent enough for me to be asked to help bridge the language gap between some of the keepers and their volunteers while in Wolong!
Many of them also expressed surprise that I knew Mandarin; they knew I was from Malaysia, but didn’t know there were Chinese in Malaysia. I’ve lost count of the number of times I told my family’s history during my holiday - how my grandfather had gone from China to then Malaya for business and settled in the new country and had a family; how my father was born in Malaya; and how I, too, was born in Malaysia (post Merdeka 1957 baby).
I have my parents to thank for my knowledge of Mandarin. We are by no means a traditional Chinese family, but my parents did insist that we learned how to speak, read and write Chinese. Their firstborn, my sister, was sent to a Chinese school. The next two - my brother and I - were not; we were educated in English, but with Chinese tuition thrown in after regular school hours. This meant, if we were in the morning session, we would go for classes in the afternoon, and vice versa.
The tuition classes were held in the building of a Chinese association somewhere near Petaling Street in town, and featured five levels of Chinese studies - standards 1 to 5, with abacus training added in standard 4 and even a graduation ceremony when one completes standard 5. My brother did, but I didn’t. I started playing truant in standard 4, mainly because I was in the afternoon session and classes for the Chinese standards 4 and 5 were held at something like 7:30 a.m., due to lack of classrooms in the Chinese association building.
There was a reason why my brother and I, and also some of our cousins, attended Chinese tuition at this particular Chinese association building - mother’s godmother was a teacher there. She taught Standard 2, and her classes featured endless copying of Chinese sayings from the blackboard. After all these years, I can’t remember any of the sayings I copied, except that I copied pages and pages.
So I never graduated from Chinese tuition, but I did know enough to use the English-Chinese and Chinese-English dictionaries I brought along to England many years later. Since my parents knew very little English, it fell on me to write Chinese letters home. Every letter home was a double event - first, the draft, with lots of references to the English-Chinese dictionary, followed by a clean copy to send home. And each time a letter arrived from home, out would come the Chinese-English dictionary to decipher some of the more difficult characters in mother’s letters. Yes, she was the one who wrote the letters from home.
Sometimes, when I couldn’t find the right Chinese character to use, I would write the one that sounded the closest and enclose it in brackets. Soon, mother’s letters from home would include corrections of my bracketed “sounds like” Chinese characters. She said it was one way to improve my Chinese.
After moving to the States, my letters home became less. In the States, phone calls were cheap and eventually replaced my weekly letters home.
When I came home for holiday one Christmas, I saw that mother had filed all my letters in a plastic 2-ring binder. As for their letters, while I still had them, they were not neatly filed, but still in their original envelopes in a British Post Office box that I still have till this day, altho not the exact location in my apartment. Go figure.
As it turned out, many, many years later, my parents’ insistence that we knew how to speak, read and write Chinese came to my help in my recent travels to the mother country.
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Posted on 25 September 2007 @ 14:56 in Stress Busters
There were three reasons I went to Wolong recently.
The first was to see my adopted panda cub, Yoong Ping. That I did. And touched her and tried to get her to stay still for some pictures.
The second was to participate in the volunteer programme at Wolong. That I did. Where I got to scoop panda poop, among other tasks. Panda poop, due to the high content of bamboo in the diet, is solid and hard. Unless the panda had less than the usual amount of bamboo, in which case the poop is more … er, mushy.
The third was to try and see Hua Mei, the first panda cub who ignited my love for giant pandas when I first saw her at age 6 months back in the year 2000. Under the San Diego Zoo’s panda loan agreement with China - which states that all panda cubs born to adult pandas on loan from China belong to the mother country and must return after they turn 2 - Hua Mei had returned to Wolong in 2003, about 2 years late due to the SARS epidemic a year earlier. I wasn’t sure if I’d get to see her this trip as she’d recently given birth. But I not only got to see her, but also her newborns, too.
So I fulfilled all my three reasons for visiting Wolong, and more.
I’d heard that Hua Mei’s father, Shi Shi, who had been returned to Wolong in 2002, was now in Guangzhou Zoo. I’d seen him during my San Diego Zoo trip in 2001, and wanted to see him again, especially as there were recent rumours that he’d died. Well, he’s still alive, altho completely blind. But in the care of keepers who I could tell, from chatting with them, love him very much.
I was told Panyu Safari World near Guangzhou Zoo has a panda exhibit. One of the pandas there was called Dong Dong and had originally been from Wolong. NekoMama7 wondered if this is the same Dong Dong who is Hua Mei’s maternal grandmother. Since I would be in Guangzhou, I made plans to go to the Safari World. There, I confirmed with one of the interpreters that their Dong Dong is a grandmother whose granddaughter Hua Mei is in Wolong.
In Wolong itself, I discovered more family connections for Hua Mei and also among the other pandas. Ling Ling, one of the pandas I helped care for during my volunteer time there, had fathered her first set of twins back in 2004.
Increasingly, I find panda family connections important and interesting. Wolong had a stud panda papa by the name of Pan Pan who fathered many of the younger pandas in Wolong, including Bai Yun, Hua Mei’s mother, now in San Diego Zoo and Tian Tian, Tai Shan’s father, now at the National Zoo. At Panyu Safari World’s panda exhibit, the three younger pandas include 2 fathered by Pan Pan. Even my panda daughter, Yoong Ping, may have been fathered by Pan Pan; when I asked Dr Wang, he said the father was either Pan Pan or Da Di. Pan Pan is now retired to Bifenxia, a Wolong affiliated reserve.
With so many pandas fathered by the same papa, at some point, there would be a danger of in-breeding. This is why Hua Mei’s return was important to Wolong; her father, Shi Shi, was a wild panda wounded in a fight and rescued in the early 1990s. Her other siblings - Mei Sheng, Su Lin and the newborn - will also be important to Wolong’s breeding efforts, thanks to the wild genes provided by Daddy Gao Gao.
From a mere delight in the cuteness of giant pandas, my interest in them has grown over the years to include what some might call panda genealogy. Whatever the name, this will be one area I hope to track from now on.
Meanwhile, the San Diego Zoo is getting Mei Sheng ready for his return to Wolong next month.
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Posted on 24 September 2007 @ 15:42 in Travels
An online chat with L, who’s currently attending a 6 Sigma worldwide conference in Lisle, IL, USA, led me to the following observations about coffee and tea making facilities offered by different hotels around the world.
Asian hotels provide electric kettles and a selection of instant coffee (usually 3-in-1) and teabags.
English and American hotels provide either electric kettles or coffee makers. For the latter, you get a selection of “real” coffee (L said her hotel offered one pouch of regular and one pouch of decaf) and teabags, too.
Chinese hotels also provide electric kettles, but no coffee, while the teabags are Chinese.
During my recent trip, I was so homesick for Malaysian coffee, I pounced on a box of Nescafe 3-in-1 on display at one of the shops in Wolong town. How advanced of them to have available such a foreign product, I thought to myself. Not only that, the coffee was packaged in sticks, which is quite new packaging (I think), instead of the standard flat packets. The box of Nescafe cost me 20 Yuan (approximately RM9/-).
Wolong is a one-street town. Actually, I’m not sure if it qualifies as a town, or is really just a village. The shop where I bought the Nescafe is in the double-storey block of shops on the right side of the street, while the shop (actually, more of a stall) where I got the bottled water is on the left side of the street.
The hotel in Chengdu also provided a water jug in the room.
Unfortunately, the drinking water supply in all three Chinese hotels came from the bathroom tap, and after the first taste, I went to the shops to buy bottled water. In Wolong, I couldn’t get bottled water larger than the 500ml size; the shopkeeper’s explanation was that they cater mainly to tourists who don’t want to carry such big bottles of water. Fair enough. It was 2 Yuan (approximately 90 sen) per 500ml bottle of water. I bought a dozen in Wolong and carried the balance with me to finish in Chengdu. (Aside - 12 x 500ml, or 6 litres, for about a week is really below average water intake. I need to do something about this … )
And you know you’re in a Chinese hotel because of the slippers.
This pair is special. Or rather, the hotel is special, because of the name - Bai Yun - which is also the name of the panda mama in San Diego Zoo. Bai Yun, which means white cloud, is the name of the mountain range near Guangzhou.
Oh, all this coffee talk came about because L said there was no electric kettle in her hotel room, only a coffee maker. Like all well-brought-up Malaysians, she needed to boil her drinking water. I ended up showing her how to use the coffee maker as a kettle. She ended up having a nice cuppa later on.
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Posted on 17 September 2007 @ 00:57 in Stress Busters
So I got to meet and touch Yoong Ping, my little panda daughter. Who turned out to be one feisty missy who left a souvenir on my right arm.
Yup, of all the panda cubs born in 2006, I had to choose the most independent and fiercest of them all!
I was warned that she bites and just last week, she scratched and shredded the sleeve of someone’s uniform!
Yes, I was warned but I still wanted to meet her. It came to the point where I said I would be happy just to see her and touch her. Which I did, but I got photos, too.
She was up on her usual perch. One of the keepers lured her down with a piece of bread, which she took in her mouth and turned around to go back up her perch! No can do, missy, come down here, you!
I had other cubs wanting to play with me - one had his paws around my leg - and the one cub I wanted to play with kept trying to get away from me! HRMPHHH!!!!!!!!!!!
When I came out of the yard, I was in a bit of a shock, not totally believing that I’d just spent some quality time with my panda daughter! But as these pictures show, we did get to interact for a little bit in September 2007.
And for the briefest moment, I had her wrapped around my leg, too.
As for the souvenir she left, she’d managed to leave behind an impression through the blue plastic frock I was wearing (a requirement of all visitors going into the yard).
In contrast, Lang Lang, the little boy cub who sat with me on the bench for some shots, was a quiet little fella who didn’t try to run away. But then, he was happy munching his piece of panda bread.
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Posted on 6 September 2007 @ 00:25 in Stress Busters
Yes, seriously.
I’m off to Guangzhou, China in the morning, on my way to four days of volunteer work at the Wolong Panda Conservation Centre, and of course to see my panda daughter, Yoong Ping, and hopefully, Hua Mei, too, who’s in confinement after giving birth to her third set of twins in July.
The work will include cleaning panda areas and enclosures, preparing food for the pandas such as carrots, apples, panda bread and other nutritional biscuits, carrying lots of bamboo, and maybe even helping to collect behavioral data.
In Guangzhou, I’ll be visiting Hua Mei’s father, Shi Shi, at the Guangzhou Zoo.
On the way back, I’ll have about three days in Chengdu, to take in some tourist sites, as well as visit the Chengdu Panda Reserve.
Yup, it’s going to be a panda holiday for me.
Related page:
Save the Giant Panda: Volunteer at Wolong
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