Potted, stuffed and a bit dusty

We followed the signs to an unobtrusive front door, bought tickets, 5RMB, from the hole in the wall, climbed the steps and pushed through the heavy double glass and wood front doors. The lobby was reminiscent of the 20's with a mosaic tile floor and grimy stained glass windows. The former cotton exchange, still carries echoes it's previous inhabitants with drapped silk and fox furs crossing into the grand atrium with it's domed glass ceiling and moulded architraves. It's current collection of stuffed, ripened and potted specimens, largely donated by the British Museum in the mid 1950's sits gathering dust in grimy cabinets along peeling walls tagged with bilingual (Chinese and Latin) labels typed on an old manual typewriter.




The most exciting bit, the raison d'etre, is back downstairs in the huge atrium where a complete, four storey tall, 145-150 million year old dinosaur skeleton stands it's head tucked into the corner of the dome. The Mamenchisaurus (which looks like a brontosaurus to me)was discovered in 1952 on a highway construction site in Sichuan, China and named after the place it was found.
Beside the giant, sharing it's stage, are two more Chinese dinos; the 12 foot tall herb eating Tsintaosaurus with characteristic duck bill snout is posed reared up on back legs and the lumbering Tuojiangosaurus also from Sichuan with it's fiercesome spiked tail.



And as if thats not enough beside the dinosaurs, on its own plinth is a Yellow River Woolly skeleton, Manfred from Ice Age, the ancient elephant- in fact the mammoth is more closely related to the Asian than the African elephant.
Just around the corner in a red walled alcove are two Ming Dynasty mummies unearthed during the construction of Dapu Lu (road).

So even though the signs sounds apologetic:

"As we are limited by time, ability, and financial capacity, the exhibition might have many shortcomings. Therefore we will be very grateful to those who can give us good opintons."

...we felt like we'd hit the jackpot!

A little bit of history

New Zealand history dates back about 700 years.

Chinese history dates back to 400 000BCE.

When the first Polynesians were making their way towards Aotearoa the Chinese had already been making silk for nearly 5 thousand years, they had fought numerous battles, been ruled by Monarchy, Dynasty, Kingdoms and Emperors, had been using paper currency since 800BCE, invented fireworks, gunpowder, the flame thrower, the wheelbarrow, parachutes, the rudder and compass and been planting in rows all well before the Current Era began. And they had been keeping records for at least three thousand years.

For a Chinese city Shanghai is relatively new it's history spans just eight Dynasties. From a sleepy town of a few thousand families Shanghai grew to 250000 after cementing itself as a cotton and textile manufacturing centre in the 13th century and grew exponentially again during the Qing Dynasty as the British forced a concession after the Opium Wars and trade routes with the West formed up the Yangtze river. By the early 19th century Shanghai had a robust expat population of traders, bankers and real estate investors and an infamous reputation as an exotic 'port of call'. World War II saw Shanghai fall into Japanese hands, it's foreigners left en masse and stayed away even after the war as China became a communist state and firmly closed it's doors for nearly thirty years. Today Shanghai is again a modern cosmopolitan city, the second largest in China after Chongqing.


The city centre is divided into two by the Huangpu River and usually you can stroll along both shores to admire the skyline on each side.



A stroll along The Bund, on the historical side, would typically afford great views of Pudong, the commercial centre on the other side of the murky waters, and a more close up look at the line up of some of Shanghai's most beautiful buildings that once housed banks and trading across the road. I say usually because The Bund is currently undergoing renovation and encircled by a 6 foot tall fence but should be back to its promenading glory early next year just in time for Expo 2010. We walked all the way down Nanjing Road, Shanghai's shopping street, until we hit Zongshan Road, which boarders The Bund, then continued right, down the building side. Fifty-two buildings (minus number four of course) range in architectural styles from gothic to baroque, romanesque to renaissance. Apparently Shanghai has one of the richest art deco collections in the world.


Just south of The Bund lies the remnants of Shanghai's old city wall. In 1553, during the Ming Dynasty, the city of Shanghai constructed a city wall, nearly 5 km around, to protect itself against Japanese pirates. Today just 50 meters is all that is left dating back to the Qing Dynasty and bears the names of Emperors Xianfeng (1851-61) and Tongzhi (1862-74).



The Dajing Ge Pavilion, one of the 30 original towers has not long been rebuilt. For 5 RMB each you can explore. There is a photographic exhibit on life in the old Chinese city and a model in a glass case. The four characters on the piece of the wall of Dajing Ge, a Guan Yu temple, above, translate as 'To keep the faith for thousands of years.' Guan Yu is the Taoist God of War, a Chinese Military General, a hero in ancient China.

There are also shrines to gods inside the temple pavillion but I couldnt find anything about them.


(I've finally worked out I can't upload pictures onto Blogger from home due to the intermittent speed of our electricity at the moment so these are back dated posts I am posting as I add pics using J's work computer.)

A lost nights sleep and a fast train

The flight from Phnom Penh to Shanghai was at the inhospitable time of 11.45pm and our plane was delayed another hour and a half. We waited in the terminal, eye lids propped open with toothpicks and caffiene, trying to recall how we had so nochalantly taken midnight flights in and out of Samoa a few years ago. The darkness unhelpfully closed in as the duty free shops switched off their lights, slowly pulled their roller doors down and the queue at the gate grew hopefully longer. Eventually the flight was called and people shuffled towards their polyester clad seats, pulled their blue polarfleece blankets towards their chins and determinedly squeezed their eyes shut. We managed to stay that way, dozing fitfully through the 4 hour flight despite food being served shortly after take off.

Shanghai airport is a massive, shiny hangerlike building with all the mod cons including Singapore clean toilets, fast moving customs queues and uneventful speedy baggage collection. The delay meant we were able to ride the maglev, short for magnetic levitation, which has since January 2004 provided a fast way of getting from the airport to Shanghai's Longyang metro station Pudong . A very fast way. The maglev, with a top speed of 431km an hour makes the 30km trip in about 8 minutes.


For reasons I haven't been able to uncover the train's speed varies depending on time of day and at about 6-30am, one of its first runs, it maxed out at only 301km hour but on our way back 6 days later (at 4-30) we hit 431. We transfered from the maglev's spacious comfort to the Shanghai metro line 2 at rush hour and standing room only. By 8am we were spread out over a comfy chair each in a 15th floor 2 bedroom apartment at New Harbour Serviced Apartments five minutes walk from People's Square downtown Shanghai, ready for a couple of hours catch up kip before exploring our new city.

Driven out by hunger and still a little foggy we made our way back towards the huge park that is People Square and a Starbucks we had spotted earlier. Fortified by coffee and scone we headed back across the road and into the park.

Peoples Square is as it name suggests is a large public square in the Huangpu district of Shanghai, the same area as the infamous pedestrian street, Nanjing Road-'Bag, watch, DVD?' Before communism, and the subsequent outlawing of horse racing and associated gambling, part of the park was The Shanghai Racecourse. The park now includes some pretty architecturally distinct buildings; The Shanghai Grand Theatre, The Urban Planning Exhibition Hall and The Shanghai Museum, where we thought we'd head to next.

The museum, which used to be housed in an office building somewhere nearby, is designed in the shape of a 'ding', a bronze carved bowl which sits on four stout legs used in times gone by for cooking. More specifically the 'Da Ke Ding' which you can see inside. It has a solid square base and round open top which symbolises the Chinese, 'round sky, square earth'. The museum is currently free after a recent Chinese government edict to make some of Shanghai's museums and galleries more accessible to it's people. Eleven galleries and three exhibition halls over three (or four I can't remember now) floors hold ancient bronze works, cjade, eramics, beautiful historic examples of calligraphy, fabulous ancient sculpture and a whole gallery full of seals. We wandered through the galleries until our previous nights lack of sleep began to steer us back to the apartment.

(I have loads of picture I have spent the last week or so trying to upload with very sporadic success. Hopefully I can figure out whats going on and add some more at a later date)

A wee break

A last minute decision saw us grappling for our passports at the end of last week. Downloading visa forms and diligently filling them in before our driver dropped them off at the Chinese Embassy, where he was given more forms, which we hurriedly completed and tried to drop off at the prescribed time.

Of course it was shut.

Open again at 8?

J went back at 8 the next morning (I had a meeting at the school) where there was a futile wait under the already hot Cambodian sun for some kind of action. He abandoned ship an hour later dripping under his long sleeved business shirt and suit pants. We still don't know when the office finally did open but Chunthy our driver eventually managed to hand in our documents in exchange for a receipt which said we would have visas on tuesday....thats today.

Sure enough Chunthy went back down to the Embassy after dropping me at the gym and was handed them on the spot.

So on thursday at midnight we get on a plane and end up here...

...somewhere we can fly direct from Phnom Penh...somewhere north about 3 and a half hours from Phnom Penh...have you guessed yet?

Shanghai, the largest city in China, famous for 'The Bund' a mile long wide footpath lined with fabulous old buildings along the bend (English for 'bund') in the Huangpu River- which is currently a huge construction site till 2010- and its ever changing modern skyline. I'm looking forward to being able to walk without breaking into an instant sweat, parks with big trees, Starbucks (even though where chains go I prefer Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf), Ikea, museums and art galleries and a week without housework. Cameras are charged, jeans are packed- well nearly I'm not really that organised- and school is almost out. See you on the other side...

The impermanence of sand

I saw this on the BBC the other day and just about cried....actually I lie ...I did cry. What she does is beautiful and haunting.

Kseniya Simonova was the 2009 winner of Ukraine's got Talent. The 24 year old only began making these sand drawings on the beach a year ago and now uses much less sand, a portable lightbox and a soundtrack to help her tell her story. The stories she tells are of love and war, timeless and relevant the world over, set in the Ukraine during 'The Great patriotic War' (World War II. )In the Ukraine it was a conflict that killed between 8 and 11 Ukrainians, nearly 1 in 4, almost 20% of all the casualties suffered during the war. A truely devastating statistic in a country that was already reeling from Stalin's manufactured famines.

Once Kseniya's story is told it is swept away, merely sand again, back into a box, leaving behind emotion and memories.

Fun Rally 2009

For weeks I had been part of the organising committee for the third annual ISPP Fun Rally Phnom Penh writing clues, finding prizes, coercing sponsors, creating posters and fliers, getting T shirts and hats printed, distributing said posters and fliers, selling tickets and managing the caterer.

On a sunday a couple of weekends ago four of us piled into a tuktuk for a four hour dry run of the Adult Route that took us in a meandering 20km loop from the Elementary school gate around the answers to 79 clues and tasks and back again hungry, hot, with spent brains and tummys sore from laughing. The route was slimmed down by five clues or aproximately one hour and the final copies printed.

There were two routes. One for adults- the clues more cryptic and the route longer- and one for children. Teams could be a mixture of both adults and kids but had to chose one of the routes, without seeing the clues and tasks, before they left. Clue booklets were a mixture of straight decipher and answer questions and those that invloved a task. The first clue of the Adult Route, for example, took contestants to the school athletic field where they had to run and then brave a ten gallon drum of goo to retrieve a teeny tiny crystal 'diamond'. The kids had much nicer tasks- decorating and eating cookies, fishing from a swimming pool and making sure their parents/guardians completed a set of push ups. Both teams delivered bags of goodies to orphanages on their routes and books to Open Book and ended back where they started...hopefully!



The day before we dressed the elementary school in Rally posters and red balloons, packed bags for the charity task with rice, donated stationary items and toys, and the book bags for 'Open Book', positioned the registration tables under sponsors umbrellas and we were ready.



Sunday dawned cloudy and with a hint of impending rain- perfect!

J and I manned the table for late registrations and sold tickets right up until the last teams were leaving. Teams, in either tuktuks or cars, were ceremoniously flagged off and times recorded in case of a point tie (which actually did happen for both first and second place in the Adult Route).



Two and a half hours later the first teams, doing the Childrens Route, began to dribble in. Followed closely by the eventual winners of the Adult Route. We spent the next couple of hours frantically marking route answers while the contestants were treated to a barbeque lunch and entertained by some clowns from Sovanna Phum and an energetic MC with a hand full of spot prizes.



The eventual winners received a grab bag full of vouchers from various very generous businesses around town and little handmade christmas decorations from Mekong Quilts and Ida Ira and other prizes were given out for 'best dressed' and the 'slowest'.

We arrived back home hot and tired after a glass or two of champagne and a job well done brimming with ideas for next years Rally.

The butterfly

While my sister and her family were here we took a customary trip down the river. Called a sunset cruise it is usually a two hour jaunt down the Tonle Sap round the huge sand dredger and then up the Mekong for a short way zig zagging across the two rivers as we go. The boat we took this time, The Butterfly, was a smaller boat than I had been on before, only one level but with the welcome addition of a lounging bed at one end.


We started our trip at about 4-30 just as the light was beginning to soften.


The shore on the other side of the Tonle Sap was littered with people playing da cau a kicking game with a shuttle cock instead of a hacky sack, badminton, washing clothes for tomorrow, cooking dinner, swimming...


...and just socialising in colourful groups. As the light dimmed fishermen began returning home on their picturesque vessels.

We saw a boat and it's friendly crew go past packed to the roof with massive stalks of green bananas.

The Royal Palace looks like a fantastical castle from the river.


The sand dredger looks as out of place as it is!


We motored and drifted for a very enjoyable couple of hours eating stuffed paninis and double decker sandwiches and drinking wine and beer Lao ending up back where we started ready for a cooling sorbet from Frescos before bed.