People in Yunnan Province, China

We have returned from our 3 weeks in China -- about a week and a half in Yunnan (southwestern China) and then about the same in Beijing and Xian. China was breathtaking in every way -- size, physical beauty, depth and richness of the history and culture, architecturally, and on and on.

For a start, here are some pictures of people in Yunnan province.

We saw street vendors selling huge piles of beautiful fruit

and many selling smaller piles of fruit that we suspected were picked in public places on the way into town.

We saw people making all sorts of street food.

We saw people working in shops everywhere from the biggest cities to the smallest, dustiest towns. There were few shop windows -- when a shop was open, its front was wide open.

We saw people herding their animals

And countless people working in rice fields

We saw people carrying huge loads on bicycles and motor bikes

and on their backs

We saw people getting married (in this case, a wedding party in a restaurant; it turned out that beautiful tourist destinations were also prime locations for wedding photos. We were informed that wedding photos are taken a month or more before the wedding and sent with the invitation.)

We saw many, many people waiting ...

We saw lots of people chatting on cell phones

and chatting as they passed

We saw people outside Buddhist temples having their prayers for a good future written out for them by scribes

and we saw the well-tended fiery ovens where those prayers are sent aloft

We saw people praying and chanting inside and outside temples

and people rubbing ceremonial objects for good luck.

We saw many Chinese tourists getting their pictures taken (the places we went in Yunnan are much more popular with Chinese than with Western tourists)

and our light-haired fair-skinned daughters found themselves cheerfully pulled into many Chinese tourist photos.

Everywhere we saw children tended with love. They were dressed up for photos

they studied calligraphy

they dressed for parties

and they were wonderfully cute.

Little babies were frequently carried in beautiful, traditional cloth back-slings.

And of course we also saw many very "modern" people!


Many millions of people, working very hard, in a very beautiful part of China.

Welcome to China!

We have been in China for about 24 hours, and I have been so struck by the fact that so much is familiar, and simultaneously so much is different. Exhibit A: Yes, I can access the internet. But because of conflict between the Chinese Government and Google, I cannot directly access this blog, and the roundabout method I am using resulted in the photos-only version of this posting that I may have sent accidentally a few minutes ago! (Or maybe not .. it's hard to tell ...)

We are in Kunming, in Yunnan Province in southwestern China. The temple above is the Bamboo Temple, a Buddhist shrine built about 800 years ago and still in active use (monks and acolytes were steadily chanting as we walked through).

For lunch we had soup at a restaurant serving "Over Bridge Rice Noodle Soup," a regional specialty named for the characteristic of the soup that it stays hot when carried to farmers in the fields. We were each brought a huge bowl of steaming, delicious broth, along with raw meats and vegetables. Add the meat first, stir to cook, then add the vegetables and noodles. Delicious !

We proceeded to a museum documenting the cultures of the 26 different peoples living in the Yunnan region. Below, a percussion instrument made of bamboo; the strips supported by the bridge pieces are tuned like a xylophone. And then one of the many incredible woven garments on display.

On the street, below an advertisement, an open window to a small restaurant kitchen where a woman was putting the most recent fresh steamed dumplings into the stack.

In a public square, a vendor selling quail eggs, peanuts, and pickles.

At the temple shown at the beginning of this blog, I did not find a way to take a picture of the yellow-robed monk talking on his cell phone ... but I did get this shot of a group putting a fresh coat of paint on the door panels, in preparation for a festival in two days.

And finally, an incredible dinner at a local restaurant surprised to see foreignors; our guide "Tony" knew about it. Many delicious dishes, but I was so glad Amy had been intrigued enough by the woman in the front window making rice crepes and rolling them up with vegetables and meat to order a plate of them. We were told that they are a Vietnamese speciality (we are not too far from the border), and dipped in a spicy sauce these Vietnamese spring rolls were amazing !!

Best Things in Greece

In early June, Amy and I, and Rebecca's friend Philip, joined Rebecca in Greece, where she had been singing with her college choir. I had never been there before -- what a varied and marvelous part of the world! A few highlights:

Above: the Parthenon, sitting atop the Acropolis, at night. I had no idea how sprawling Athens is, or the way in which the Acropolis rises above the city, visible almost from everywhere. One imagines that 2000 years ago, above a smaller city with smaller buildings, the Parthenon must have seemed even more immense than it does now.

Below, one of the alleys that winds from old Athens up towards the Acropolis.

The olive trees (these in Crete) were growing everywhere we went in Greece. I love the shadows below the trees in this grove.

We spent three days on Santorini, an island in the Aegean Sea. The island is a C shape, the remnant of an ancient submerged volcano; the white houses and blue-capped churches sit on the rim of the island, looking from the distance like snow.

The tourist industry has kept some handcrafts alive in Greece. This woman, like most people we met, was incredibly friendly.

The bright sunshine and hot weather brought out beautiful flowers in every hue. This incredible flower is usually "nipped in the bud;" the capers we eat are the pickled buds of this plant.

There were street cats and dogs everywhere. They weren't exactly wild; while they didn't have owners, they were surviving on food and water put out for them by many Grecians.

Most of all, what caught my attention about Greece was the colors. The water, the sky, the flowers, the buildings, everything was blue and white and dotted with yellows and reds and greens. The gemstone reflections we occasionally saw in the sea seemed a reflection of all of Greece.

Playing With Fire

At our last ceramics class of the year, we did a raku firing. Usually once our pots have been low-fired ("bisque" fired), we slather them with the goop that will be melted into glaze, and then place them on shelves to wait. Anonymous ceramics apprentices will later place the pots into the big high-fire kiln, and a week later remove them to the closet that holds finished pots.

Raku firings are our one opportunity to run a firing ourselves. Under our teacher Debi's supervision, we load the pots into a primative kiln, light the propane torch, and later carefully remove the pots.

This year's class has been a really wonderful group. We chat through each Monday night -- sometimes about our pottery, and often about children, movies, books, pets, and politics.

While the first set of pots are firing, we put the next round (including my candle lantern) on top of the kiln to warm.

When the pots are "cooked," they are shiny and translucent. We remove them using tongs and great care, and place them in trash cans filled with paper, which catches on fire and makes a smelly mess, in the process giving the glazed pots more visual texture. From there, we plunge the pots in water to crackle the glaze.

This year we had two retired firefighters in our class; we thought they might report us to authorities when they saw the raku firing! But it turned out they liked playing with fire as much as the rest of us.

All told there's about an hour or more when the pot is firing and then still too hot to touch. The result is unpredictable. You never know what color or texture is going to come out of a raku firing. But some of the best things in life come through the fire, and their wonderfulness cannot be predicted.

Inside, Outside

"When the cat is in, it wants to be out; when the cat is out, it wants to be in," goes the complaint. But we're not much different.

The spring comes and we cut the flowers from the outside garden, and put them in a vase on the table. Then we go outside and plant flowers in a pot that sits on the patio.

The patio, of course, is the place we can sit at a table and eat breakfast, and still be outside.

But then we have our cars, which allow us to be inside while we're moving around outside. Unless you have Amy's Dad's convertible, in which case you can be outside while you're driving around outside, unless you put the top up, in which case you're inside outside again.

All this silliness actually points at something true about our lives: we like to be comfortable, and we have the accumulated knowledge and wealth to keep ourselves comfortable even when we're outside. Some part of us remains connected to the primitive ancestor who lived wild; we appreciate his flowers, and are happy to bring them into our comfortable abode.

Presumably the birds appreciate our beginning to do the same for them?