Xiamen

Hello from the coastal city of Xiamen.

We had a very pleasant day Sunday with Maria’s folks walking around the Olympic Site and visiting the Llama temple. On our previous visit we had stopped only for a quick photo of the birdnest stadium in the rain during a jammed packed tour day so it was nice to see it in more detail. Lots of lovely public art. Also lots of new building happening for the upcoming 2022 Winter Olympics. Poor Maria was done being a translator by the end of the day. Admittedly, it’s very hard to even begin to know people if you can’t communicate. Maria’s Dad had lots of questions about my Mom’s place, and who’s was paying and what she is doing etc. Maria’s Mom has decided that we should move to Beijing because it’s much cheaper to live. She offered me a key to one of their flats. Very generous people indeed. However, in addition to many major reasons for not moving to China, the main day-to-day barriers for me would be a lack of good, affordable coffee and ditto for white wine.

We left Beijing on Monday morning bright and early. That is everything left Beijing except for my iPad which I left in the security area which was beyond busy. We were checked, ID etc at least 3 Times. Fortunately, a friend of Maria picked it up yesterday on his way through to Vancouver and we’ll recover it there from him. There is security and checks everywhere here and we were reminded by Maria that we must have Passports on us at all times. We don’t normally think about it. The Chinese have ID cards that they use for everything.

We are in another great hotel here in Xiamen in what seems to be a kind of expat district in this city. Nice lowers profile city and We have a beautiful view across the river to the main city. There is a Starbucks next door where we found decent coffee. Xiamen is a port city across the strait from Taiwan. There are essentially 2 islands- the larger one with the city and the smaller one was a British Treaty Port from 1842to 1912. Today we took the ferry to this smaller, car-free island called Golangyu. We put on lots of miles steps wandering around the island which is now a UNESCO site because of the many old colonial buildings. We visited a lovely small piano museum which had amongst the collection a Chickering piano - the same brand as mine! The island became a unique hub for pianists because of the large number of pianos brought to the area by the Brits. A number of world famous Chinese pianists came from the area.

We stopped for some interesting take out food. Fried things mostly . We are wary because of some of the crazy things that are on offer but also because of Mike’s allergy to shellfish.
Much of the food here is as Jon would say- greasy but good. We’ve tried a few unfamiliar things but mostly on the veg side - bitter melons. We had spicy fish head the other night. We left the lips and eyes to Maria who. Is very adventurous when it comes to eating. Tonight we went in search of some weird sea worms.... evidently a local dish. Everything is served family style and people just pick away at things. I’m getting much better with my cop sticks. The smells here are very strong and I have them hard time with them at times. The Duran fruit and the really smelly tofu just knock you over.

. Today we head inland on the bullet train inland to a place called Wuyishan. On the way we are stopping at another island . Wuyishan is a Chinese resort city in Fujian province's Wuyi Mountains. It's popular for bamboo rafting on the 9-Bend River and viewing the range's 36 peaks, including high points like Great King Peak.
That’s it for now.
Love Heather (Mom)
Fi, hope the trip to the Uk was uneventful.Read more