Home at last!

Hi all, well we made it home, much to the chagrin of the baggage checkers, as we definitely had over twice the limit. Due to charm, grumbling and pleading we got it home without paying extra. Customs though, had my name come up on their system to give me (therefore Lemon also) a FULL check. So of course they mucked about through every bag, asking questions about whether we were mules, if we had illegal stuff, the whole works! When they asked about whether we were importing drugs internally, I think they saw our green expressions at the thought of cavity searches, and they backed off. Their sniffing machine detected heroin, they said, and it got a positive result back THREE TIMES! This confused us as much as it did them, but after discussions and more mucking around they sent us off with all our stuff. So two hours, and all their pay turned up nothing. And we pay for this? They tried to tell me that the stereo-type was actually accurate in which case they ought to have been right! Maybe if they checked Grandma or Granddad they would get more stuff!

Well, after all that trial, here we are happy to be home again.

Thanks for all the comments throughout the trip. Was great to get word from everyone.

My Dinner Attempt

Well, we managed to find some ingredients I thought I needed to cook for the whanau. Good Old Guangzhou had everything, as I said.
My menu was to be: braised beef in grappa sauce; couscous with capsicum and onion; tomato pasta; basil and mushroom pasta; roast chicken stuffed with appropriate herb stuffing; roast herbed crunchy potatoes; tomato and mozzarella salad; olive platter.
My first pit was the lack of good cheeses, though I picked up some passable ones in Guangzhou. Then was lack of an oven. I had to rethink all the roasted stuff into fried/boiled stuff. I didn't realise how much I'd depended on an oven for cooking.
The next was that Lemon's mum ate nothing that came from a cow or sheep, but wasn't vegetarian, so still ate fish etc. All my dairy dishes, bread dishes, beef, cheese etc had to be reconsidered so she could partake. Pesto has cheese, for instance.
Herbs are impossible to find - fresh certainly, but not any I'd heard of (at least in Chinese) so keeping an interesting flavour was a challenge.
I did passably well despite these hurdles, but who ever thinks their planned dinner is exactly perfect? The polite trying of each unfamiliar dish and the apprehensive looks gave me, though somewhat vindictive I suppose, great satisfaction as I got to introduce new and weird flavoured dishes and vigorously encourage people to eat more! Hah! That's for the dove's gizzards, gecko floss and snout broth I ate all over China!

There was plenty left over for tomorrow.

Guangzhou

This cool city is the capital of Canton. Now I expose my judgementalism and ignorance: driving through it when we first started our trip, weeks back, all one could see from the train was rise after rise of skyscraping apartment blocks, motorway, grey urban jungle with the odd grubby tea garden nestled into the concrete. I firmly decided not to visit it. But when my plans to head to Macau were vetoed, I decided to go up with Lemon and stay a couple of nights.
How I should have known that the capital of China's most affluent province (a province which has been trading with the world for centuries and in may ways represents China abroad) would be a haven of cosmopolitan, forward-thinking, on-to-it, bustling, interesting stuff! I spent a day shopping in the infamous Zhuang Yuan Markets.
These markets are not unlike being on the London Tube, at rush hour, on 'free tube' day, during the London Olympics and Fashion Centennial Fesival. The street is little wider than an alley, and even skinnier little covered alleys branch off left and right. Each of the branches hosts tiny - and I mean TINY - shops, about a quater the size of the interior of those coffee carts in Wellington. Each packed with wares. And the shoe shops had teeny stools to try on shoes upon. The shop, or rather booth, was just big enough to fit one person and the seller, very cosily. Or two good friends and the seller very akwardly. There were about fifty or more shops per branch, and perhaps a hundred branches. And every kind of thing.
The excellent thing about Guangzhou, is that (as should have been obvious to me) they have been accustomed to foro's for centuries, so no one stared! It was such a relief, it was like a holiday. Except one little girl said 'look, handsome foreigner' as she passed [translated by Lemon], but her mum tugged her away, quite rightly I suppose.

Imperial Springs

So wearisome was the massage, we had to ease off in the Imperial Hot Springs, out of the city. This top quality luxury spa resort, was just our thing. With about twenty pools of various sizes, each infused with a different mineral or herbal 'remedy', it was probably one of the flasher places I've accustomed. A splendid array of attendants salute or bow as one walks by; they help you with your every need from working the clothing locker to serving tea as you decide upon your next flavour of soakage.
A fresh towel is promptly wrapped around one as one steps from perhaps the sandalwood pool, your jandals having been arranged from the direction you kicked them off to face intended direction upon exit, for ease of donning. Tea and juices are offered as you recline into the bathing salts. Sometimes one can become too quickly accustomed to such treatment; more than once, as I'd stepped from maybe the 'rose and melon soup' pool I didn't hear the clamour of attendants rushing with a dry towel to cover my shoulder, nor did I feel said towel's cottonous warmth about me - and I was just starting to wonder why the DICKENS NOT?! - I spied a freshly folded, dry towel left discreetly on a rock, near where I had flung my used one. As darkness fell, and it became cooler, the attendants would us two towels, so my lower half should not be affected by the breeze and cause me mild discomfort.
Such were the flavours of the pools, I can't remember them all, but I particularly enjoyed the lavender, the 'hineysuckle' and the millet-wine. the colour of the waters were as varied as the flavours; now a deep maroon, now a pleasant lemon tinge, now a murky and soothing green. Each had a different healing quality, signposted on the wall, and was changed every 4 hours or so. I fought flu, strengthened muscles, invigorated skin, improved breathing, revived kidneys, cured aging and cleansed qi.
The site has been in us since the Tang dynasty, when the emperors and high officials and conco's came to bathe. The idea the resort had evidently, was to treat every guest as the emperor. Sipping tea after my hours of relaxment, freshly showered and out of my provided silk robe and shorts, it certainly felt imperial. Smiling at the bowing greeting-girls at he door, I left fully revived, ready for the embrace of the idle-induced slumber.

Salon Salubrity

My racks of frustration and boredom were greatly eased this day (excuse my air of imperiousness the following has got to my head a little). On insistence from Lemon's mum that I not be bored, myself, Lemon, her mum, her mum's mate and Driver Uncle, went to a VIP massage salon. VIP means that you get your own room (5 of us together I mean) serviced with tea and telly, and ease back on a leather lazy-boy whilst the manually skilled young girls and boys treat you to a neck and foot massage. Naturally, the opposing gender is required to service the guest, so Lemon's mum and her friend went out to find the prettiest girl for me (they make no prudish bones about that kind of thing - it's fairly obvious if someone is attractive or not, and you are quite at liberty to say so), and some handsome young gentlemen for themselves. After the neck massage, the masseu-r/sse plies one's foot with a scraping blade, then massages from foot to knee, over the course of an hour and a half. Lemon's mum had a double service, with two young gents, one massaging, one performing a pedicure. It was just the thing to wind down after a hard day of doing nothing. The cost was something like $NZ4 per hour each.

New Year

I spent this at a 'Western' restaurant with a few of the family friends. Western means the food is actually something other than pig blood, organs and chicken feet. The presiding uncle refused to use his chopsticks, I don't know whether it was because he wanted to show his knowledge of knife and fork (no, not everyone knows how to use them) or he just preferred it... I've started to find chops more easy after so long with them.
My frustration at being bossed about constantly, as is the 'way', came to its point when I decided to lean on the whiskey glass somewhat, and treated the ensemble to a top-voice rendition of 'auld lang syne'. Since they couldn't sing along, I decided that they'd like to hear three verses worth, with finale. I may have looked a monkey, but the unsettled glances as I increased my gusto was worth it.
After months of sitting quietly, I gave them all a pleasant shock.