Huajiao in a Baoji market

Almost three years ago now at the beginning of my stay in China I discovered a weird and wonderful spice that I'd never heard of before. Huajiao, or Sichuan pepper contains hydroxy-alpha-sanshool which leads to a tingly, numbing feeling and, along with the subtle clovey/lemony overtones makes for a rather addictive experience. A mapo dofu (麻婆豆腐) would be nothing without the use of a good handful of huajiao and the expat favourite, gongbao jiding (宫保鸡丁) would lose a vital dimension sichuan pepper-free.

Anyway, I'm writing this to link to this photo, taken in Baoji, Shaanxi province as I went hunting for the solar eclipse last month. I often found that markets were good places in China for getting shots of the street-sellers who were usually very happy to have their photo taken, given a few minutes of small-talk first.

Right now, having arrived back here just a couple of days ago I'm having to stock up on food and having made a batch of humous which should last a good few days I have a chicken soup on the boil now. The local shops give away chicken carcasses for free and the pot is now full to overflowing with six carcasses. The smell is not helping my work!

Photo updates

A few shots from the last couple of weeks. First of all I feel I have to post an eclipse-ish photo. As I said a few posts ago, the sky was pretty cloudy where I was, though clearly as you can see from this photo, it wasn't complete cover everywhere. The photos from totality are rather featureless, but this photo was taken perhaps a minute before the lights went out completely, taken in Pingliang, Gansu province:

Before the eclipse, as I said, I attracted the attention of some local kids, I gave them my camera to play with and they had a blast snapping everything around them. This was one that I took of them, great expressions, great kids:

Back in Baoji, before heading back to Beijing I met up with a guy taking birds to market, chatted with him briefly and asked if I could take his photo. There's a compromise to be made between being overly polite, in which case you are likely to get the least natural photos, and being rude, which will probably give you the most spontaneous images. I tend to err on the side of caution a little too much, perhaps.

Onto Seoul, and just before the fantastic cloud shadows posted yesterday, caused by the layers of haze below the main visible clouds, we had a show of rather fine sun beams over the temple complex:

and finally, yesterday afternoon, this guy was sat perched in a tree. I waited for around half an hour for him to fly off. Eventually he did but I fluffed up the timing and didn't get a decent photo of the ascent, still, he gave me some time before to watch him stalking the fish:

More photos on my Flickr site and all can be found in larger sizes.

Today I've rested up and spent some time relaxing in a local cafe. Lots of things to get on with tomorrow after some productive conversations on Friday evening.

Eclipse hunting, part II

Well, I've finally arrived in Gansu province, in a small town called Pingliang after around 21 hours on trains. I'll be doing the same in reverse shortly. Sadly, weather forecasts for the region tomorrow are not looking good so I think my chances of seeing anything are remote, perhaps even more so than I am. Tomorrow at around 6 am I'll make my way to Kong Tong mountain, make the four hour walk to the summit, and see what I can see from there. Fingers are firmly crossed, but I'll just have to take what I get.

In the mean time it's been a fairly strange, interesting experience all around. I spent a day in Baoji, a city of around 4 million, walking around for a while, firstly panicking that nobody would sell me a ticket back to Beijing (you can never buy a ticket more than 5 days in advance here and pre-Olympics that has been scaled back to 3 days!) and than being amused by the stares of the many many locals who would follow me around, wondering what on Earth I could be up to in their little neck of the woods. I have a few photos of the People's park, including the most depressing fair ground I've ever come across.

This morning's ride to Pingliang has also been pretty strange, with non-stop stares from many people. Not, apparently amused, or moved, simply puzzled, with a look letting on little of what they were thinking.

Pingliang is in the East of Gansu province, and it's my first time in this region of China. My first impression is that the people are quieter than any Chinese I've ever met, not that they don't say much, but that they are soft-spoken, and after the hurricane of voices from Beijing to Baoji, this is no bad thing! Needless to say that these few days have been a great chance to speak Chinese.

So, after tomorrow morning, I head back down the mountain, photos captured, or not, get a train back to Baoji, spend a night back in the hotel, then in the afternoon I take another 16 hours on the train to Beijing. In Beijing I will have around 24 hours before I head to Korea where I'll be working for a couple of weeks. I'm really very much looking forward to this and am interested in seeing the contrasts to the Chinese departments I've been spending time in recently.

Anyway, with e-mails to check and various things to sort out, I'll have to leave it at that for now. I expect to next write from Korea...

Eclipse hunting

It's a strange kind of trip where you don't know where you're going, but you know when - I mean by this that the destination is a time, and not specifically a place. My destination is some time around 10.30 am on Friday the first of August, at which point a swathe of land from Eastern China through Mongolia and Russia and up into Greenland and Canada will gradually become covered in darkness.

I've never had the chance to see an eclipse, other than through the dense clouds of a Cornwall morning, some time back in 1999, so I thought that I would take the opportunity to go eclipse hunting this time in a somewhat more exotic location. I say I don't know where I'm going because my trip is only half booked. Today at 5 pm I will take a train to Baoji, some 15 hours West, arriving tomorrow morning, at which point I will find an internet cafe, look at the weather forecasts for Friday and plan stage two.

Currently, as I mentioned before, my plan is to head to Pingliang, though the forecast at the moment is not looking great. My second best option may involve heading another 15 hours further North West, which is going to make coming back in time to catch my flight to Korea somewhat tricky, so I have to play this carefully. Unfortunately it's impossible to book train tickets more than five days in advance here, so I haven't even been able to secure a return trip from Baoji. This is rather crucial, as I will only have around 24 hours to play with!

So, that's the essence of my trip. The idea of seeing an eclipse from the top of a legendary mountain in a distant province in central China makes my head spin just thinking about it. I really hope that conditions are good on Friday, but whatever happens, I have an exciting, unknown trip ahead of me for the next few days...wish me luck!

Getting ready for the mystery trip

After a tiring couple of weeks giving talks I'm down with a bit of a lurgy, but resting up, ready for my big trip starting tomorrow. In preparation today I went to the electronics district in search of some special camera equipment. I managed a great deal on a simple tripod, but the second thing I was looking for didn't seem to be around. I was looking for a very very strong neutral density filter, something which would cut incoming light by around 100,000 times. This, sadly, the shop assistants simply didn't understand, and told me that a regular grade neutral density filter would be fine for my purposes, though I had expressly told them what I needed it for. I was not impressed! I do at least know a few more Chinese photography words.

So, tomorrow afternoon I head off on the 15 hour train ride to Baoji, China's 25th biggest city with a puny population of only 3.7 million. Currently I then plan to make my way to Kongtong shan near Pingliang, a sacred daoist mountain in Gansu province, where my prize may await me.

I've got a stack load of papers to keep me going through the train ride there and back (some time around the 2nd or 3rd of August) and plenty of pen and paper calculations which need to be done.

If it's not clear already, I will probably give the game away tomorrow.