A New Chapter in China

Writing this at about thirty-five thousand feet on the good old BA flight back from Beijing to London (Good old BA cancelled the flight out at one hour’s notice ‘cabin-crew shortage’). Hard to really describe the place, it’s so immense – it takes four hours just to fly up to Urumqi where we’re starting this project (with good old WSPA funding it).

But it’s the strange mixture of the very old, traditional, and the very new. You’ve only got to see the sexy new Airport Terminal – Norman Foster design – state of the art technology etc, two English-speaking 'meet and greeters’ for every passenger, to be stunned by the speed and progress of China’s ‘economic miracle’.

Yet, in the deep and distant countryside around Xinjiang people still rely on donkeys for their transport. And one of the pony herders, and I have to be honest, they’re really proud of their animals, still thinks the only way to cure sand colic is by slitting their nostrils and bleeding them. So how do you square the two different worlds? And those ponies!

Tough and hardy, their black manes and tails streaming in the biting wind – I felt as if I’d forgotten to put any clothes on. Yet with their thick brown coats and black furry legs they were ideally suited to the place. Some of them had the mealy noses – just like our Exmoor and Fell ponies. I wonder if there could be any connection. Ghengis Khan must have ridden ponies like these and he got right into Europe. It’s not impossible, is it? Or maybe some Crusader or silk and spice trader, could have taken ponies from England, and sold them to traders on the Silk Road?

Talking of ancient breeds, this is also the home of the Kiang or Mongolian Wild Ass –ancient ancestor of our patient donkeys (tho’ people argue which wild ass was domesticated first),. They’re as rare as hen’s teeth now of course – I’d give a lot to see one in the wild - but they’re nervous flighty creatures and hard to find. No wonder when everyman’s hand has been against them for so long.

So now we’re heading home.

But I can certainly say I won’t miss jelly fish and fish-heads - the welcome and hospitality is humbling – but please, not for breakfast!

Oh, what fun. The Captain has just come along and stopped all the films – apoplectic with rage – smoke coming out of his ears. Apparently some naughty naughty boy has been smoking in the bogs – the ultimate sin. And if he catches the miscreant he’s going to have him arrested.

Just like me at school a million years ago.

Well that’s better than the naughty separatists caught on the South China Airways
Plane from Urumqi to Beijing last week – the day after us. They got lead injections.
Surely they can’t have been smoking in the loos?

Jeremy Hulme

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The SPANA Garden at the Chelsea Flower Show

It’s sometimes a bit depressing for us mere mortals when confronted with real experts.

So it was when award-winning garden designer Chris O’Donoghue and international gardening writer Helen Yemm came out with me to Marrakech last week.

You may have read in SPANA News that we were lucky enough to ‘win’ the opportunity of creating and building a garden at the Chelsea Flower Show in May this year.
I have to admit, that it was largely through Chris’s expertise and previous success at the show, that we were able to convince the organisers to take a gamble and let us have a go.

It will be based on the idea that animals, plants and humans are all interdependent –so we’re building a Moroccan courtyard garden, complete with fountain, stable, donkey cart, pots of nice smelly herbs, vines, etc etc. Of course it’s all a bit of a fiction – most Moroccan courtyards or riadhs have been bought up by trendy Islington types and turned into chi-chi little hotels or second homes.

But the idea is right, and I thought it would be fun to do. That is until the dread day draws near, and we are actually expected to put together a smart, professional garden, with more than a little of the ‘wow!’ factor.

Absolutely terrifying.

Hence the visit to Marrakech with Chris and Helen checking things out, and Hamid (our director in Morocco, who also fancies himself as a bit of a gardener) and I staring gormlessly at them as they argued about the ‘architectural structure’ and ‘intrinsic purity and vibrance of colour’ of this or that particular plant.
Of course it also gave us the chance to organise a fountain, donkey cart and harness, old window-frames, pots and tiles etc – so fingers crossed, with a bit of luck, and the afore-mentioned expert help we’ll have a garden to attract potential SPANA supporters.

Oh, I nearly forgot. We’re also having a live donkey – after all it is SPANA.
And the Queen visits on the first day. So, if you read the headlines the following day : ‘DONKEY BITES QUEEN – CHIEF EXEC THROWN INTO TOWER OF LONDON’ - have a bit of sympathy – come and throw me a stale crust of bread now and again.

Jeremy Hulme

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