China

Extracts only

(Non-italicised script was contemporary; italicised script is added in subsequent editing)

Visit to China: Beijing and Chongqing: 2 – 9^th May 2000

A DIARY

Iain Smith and Rae Stark

(This trip was about setting up a jointly taught Masters programme for Chinese teachers, to be delivered by a combination of the South West China Normal University in Chongqing and the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow)

Monday 1^st May 2000

Here we are: not on holiday and in the familiar narrow cell of a Fokker 100, en route to Amsterdam and then Beijing. Amsterdam for a few hours on a holiday afternoon is pleasant enough; and we have some champagne and sushi before we board the evening 747 for Beijing. We are lucky enough to have 3 seats for the two of us and there is a good evening meal as we head over Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea and into Russian airspace.

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Thursday 4th May 2000

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We meet the President and are ushered in to a banquet feast (with him, his wife, Professor Cui Yanqiang, Mr Li Yuanhu and Wu Xin). The private dining room (in a restaurant of the Foreign Affairs Office) may not be as impressive as our Principal’s, but the food beats it: chicken feet, duck tongue, meat dumplings with a fiery chilli sauce, exquisite sweet and sour chicken, fried river fish, pakchoi and giant mushrooms, prawns with mushrooms and fish fins; fish soup; green bean salad; Chinese roast pork; barbecued ribs; a pineapple stuffed with warm sweet rice and fruit; tripe and egg; sticky rice with sesame seeds; spring rolls of a wonderful sweetish flavour; and several others, all washed down with tea, local beer and red wine.

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Sunday 7 May 2000

After lunch, we are taken on a spectacular 3-hour car tour of the various parts of Chongqing (central district population 3-4 million, with another 30 million living in the surrounding districts- then, as today, the single biggest conurbation in the world ). We see the Yangstze River with massive bridges across it at various points and spectacular high rise office blocks perched on the various hillsides of the city. Interestingly, in the middle of a grim business area, there is a Christian church with an open advertisement for what it is. Construction work – buildings, roads and bridges- seems to happen everywhere. The massive industrial expansion of the area (confirmed by British Council the following day) is self-evident………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Monday 8^th May 2000

Then off to dinner in a local restaurant for a ceremonial banquet. There are two Deans; the President and his wife; Mr Li; Wu Xin; the driver; and the two of us. (At the round banquet table, the driver joins us an equal). The President presents us with two silk presents. Rae responds and gives him a picture book of Scotland.

The menu is impressive: duck’s tongue, three kinds of lobster, one raw, one as a porridge; hot fish in chilli fish; green vegetables; shredded carrot with spring onions; crab with spring onions and ginger; tripe dried as strips; tripe with peppers; water-melon and oranges; squid and red and green peppers; green pancakes; rice cakes with chestnuts; beef and noodles; green beans; shredded chicken with roasted skin; razor clams and garlic. There is plenty of wine and beer and tea. We debate Greek words about education and there are numerous mini-toasts. The President is abstemious; his deans are not. His wife reprimands the Deans. He laughs when I tell him all of this is a world-wide phenomenon in universities. (One of the Deans has a PhD from Edinburgh - on the philosophy of David Hume)

Tuesday 9^th May 2000

Up over Beijing, and the river plain soon vanishes beneath cloud. But an hour later, the skies below us clear and we have magnificent views of the Gobi Desert below us, a barren grey interspersed with the white of occasional saltflats. There are however a surprising number of indicators of the effect of man: long straight roads, small hamlets, occasional signs of cultivation. At the conjunction between the desert plain and the mountain uplands, Ulan Bator swims into view, a substantial city with industrial buildings at the core and housing on the periphery, spiking out along the different valleys which head north-west out of the city. The mountains are interesting, green with arboreal vegetation on the damper west-facing slopes and arid and brown on the east. In two or three places, plumes of smoke rise into the skies, perhaps the spring firing of old vegetation. As we head further east, there is snow on the higher peaks and plateaux.

Secure at 11000 metres, fortified by the lift of our RB-211 engines and of some KLM brandy, we fly serenely on. And so into Siberia, heading towards Irkutsk, St Petersburg, Copenhagen and Amsterdam.

Sushi and wine in Amsterdam; eventually home.