Magpie Tales, and Real Toads: Hoppek's "Ever"

Boris Hoppek "Ever"

in parts of China,
as in Japan,
housing space has become scarce—
homes
and beds
are becoming
smaller
and smaller—
with
some beds requiring seatbelts
to protect the sleeper

Posted for Willow at

The Mag 101

(formerly Magpie Tales)

and Kerry at

Open Link Monday

for the writers' group Imaginary Garden with Real Toads

Hold that... it's Thursday Theme Song

Photo by Richard Schear   

HOLD THAT TIGER!

Here I am in 2008, at a jade museum in China, holding that tiger, just as it says in Tiger Rag

as sung by one of my Mom's favorite groups, The Mills Brothers.

Next week would have been my mother's birthday. (Still miss you so much, Mom.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKwNVi-Ug8I&feature=related

Posted for that musical meme, Thursday Theme Song,

hosted every week by Hootin' Anni, a southern lady with a love of music and a sense of humor.

To hear what songs others have chosen this week, please click HERE!

Shadow shots from different places this Sunday

Dick, right, and others, make shadows on the Spirit of Kauai as they prepare to go snorkeling as part of our 'Captain Andy' catamaran cruise in Hawaii last month. Unfortunately, I didn't feel well enough to snorkel.

A rather interesting little dragon and his shadow in China's Forbidden City.

This cute little juvenile Nazca Booby casts a shadow on the rocky soil of one of the Galapagos islands.

We had an excellent guide named Arnold when we visited China. Arnold, center, talks to the group, most of whom are in the shadow of the building at left. My husband Dick, with his shady hat, stood in the sun at right, to hear Arnold talk about the history of this section of the ancient emperors' fabulous Forbidden City.

Posted for Shadow Shot Sunday,

hosted by Tracy at Hey Harriet.

To see other shadows from other parts of the world, please click

HERE!

Too many shadows to count when Dick photographed this hotel in California's Old Town San Diego.

Here, for You, is the great Yangtze River, and a twig

Y is for You because without You, I have no reason to post my photos to a meme.

Sampans on the Yangtze still have many uses. I don't think anyone lives aboard this one, however.

Barges on China's Yangtze River carry everything imaginable.

Our ship passed other cruise ships on the Yangtze.

There is always something to see when cruising in China. This was overlooking the river in July, 2008.

And, at home in Alberta, 2010, this twig in our yard forms the letter Y.

Posted for the fun photo meme ABC Wednesday.

To see how others around the world have used the letter Y, please click

HERE

W is for Warnings sometimes lost in translation

"Beware" it says on a fountain near the giant Three Gorges Dam in China.

"Please" it says to discourage people from climbing over the fence at the huge dam itself.

"Watch the escalator" where??? over my head??? This warning is in the Shanghai Museum.

A delicious warning sign at an ice cream shop on the pier in Clearwater, Florida.

Even with a sign in three languages, and staff working nearby, my brother Clint, the family clown,
 had to pretend to ignore the danger warning at this pool in Mexico.

Photos by Richard Schear, Kay Davies and Maria Davies

Posted for the ABC Wednesday meme. Other people, all over the world, have been playing around with the letter W. To see what they got, click

HERE

Chinese shadows shot on location 2008

It wasn't easy finding shadows in smog-filled Beijing before the Olympic Games in 2008, but this carved stone lion at the entrance to the Forbidden City casts his own shade onto his chin and chest, while the tourists at left provide shade for themselves with a pastel blue umbrella. Meanwhile, my umbrella was black, and absorbed the heat horribly.

The driver of the Dragon Boat taking tourists across the lake to the Summer Palace of the Chinese Emperors is partly in the shade as he ushers his passengers onto the dock. The dragon on the prow casts a dragon shadow, too.

Special windows and skylights send shadowy filtered light down onto the warriors of China's famous Terracotta Army in Xi'An. No longer exposed to the elements as they were when first dug up in a farmer's field, the soldiers are now in a climate-controlled building so they will not deteriorate further.

This elderly lady has combined old and fairly-recent technology with her bamboo baskets on the back of her bicycle. We can see the shadows of the baskets and of her front wheel.

Although indoors and roped off to protect them from tourists, these large jade stallions seem to be outlined in gray. It's the subtle shadow they cast because of the indoor lighting.

Photos by Kay Davies and Richard Schear. Posted by Kay for

SHADOW SHOT SUNDAY

Old & new yellows in old & new Shanghai

Above, and below, the only place I felt truly crowded in China was in Old Shanghai, a favorite destination for tourists from around the world.

Above, the lobby of the Shanghai Westin was alive with color, but the most interesting yellow was in the glass sculpture below, in vivid contrast to the orange-red.

Mellow Yellow Monday

This week, our contribution to Mellow Yellow Monday takes us back to Shanghai, final stop in the cross-China (almost) cruise tour we enjoyed with Viking River Cruises.

While I was posting the photos, I thought of an old song recorded by Doris Day in 1951, when it reached #9 on the Billboard Magazine popular music charts. The title was "Shanghai" but my father, who was a musician and an inveterate collector of funny song titles, told me it was "Why Did I Tell You I Was Going to Shanghai?" which is mentioned in parentheses in Wikipedia as the alternative title.

Why did I tell you I was going to Shanghai?

I wannna be with you tonight

Why did I holler I was going to Shanghai?

I wanna be with you tonight

It was just a little misunderstanding

That a kiss on the cheek could patch

I need you so badly, I'd gladly

Start all over from scratch.

Oh, why did I tell you it was bye-bye for Shanghai?

I'm even allergic to rice

Why don't you stop me when I talk about Shanghai?

It's just a lover's device

Now, who's gonna kiss me

Who's gonna thrill me

Who's gonna hold me tight

I'm right around the corner in the phone booth

And I wannna be with you tonight.

Photos by Richard Schear and Kay Davies.

Posted by Kay Davies for Mellow Yellow Monday.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Super Su !

The country of China is working hard to prevent the extinction of its iconic furry creature, the Giant Panda. To that end, China has loaned breeding pairs to approved zoos where the staff will work equally hard to raise young pandas to send to China. The San Diego Zoo has "returned" two zoo-born young adults to China already, and now plans are being made to send 5-year-old Su Lin to the pandas' homeland as well.

Su Lin is "my baby panda", the only panda youngster I've seen personally, so I'm trying not to get overly emotional about "losing" her, but it isn't easy.

Dick and I took these pictures when were in San Diego for the first World Baseball Classic in 2006. They show Su Lin when she was 6 or 7 months old, an age when wild pandas spend most of their time high up in trees for safety, while their mothers look for food. So here, silhouetted against the California sky is 'Super Panda' Su, dreaming of leaping tall buildings in a single bound.

See the sky from many other points of view, also, this week at Skywatch Friday.

Mellow Yellow Silk Art in China

It is impossible to describe, in one blog post, all we saw when we visited China. So it's a good thing I'm limited here to photos containing the color yellow, because we saw everything. Well, it felt like everything. China is an immense country. The only countries in the world larger than China are Russia, Canada and the USA. So you know we didn't see everything. We did, however, see a lot. Our cruise-tour with Viking River Cruises covered a lot of territory, a lot of history, and a lot of culture -- three things China possesses in abundance. Right now, for Mellow Yellow Monday, I'd like to share three kinds of Chinese art with you. Before this trip, we knew about Chinese jade carvings, of course, and we even knew about Chinese silk carpets. We didn't, however, know the Chinese have perfected needlework and made it an art form. At first glance, the picture of the two dancing cranes appears to be a painting. Close up, the picture of the mischievous fox shows this art for what it is, incredibly fine silk (a lot of it yellow) worked with a delicate needle. In the third picture, we see a large silk carpet on the wall of a carpet factory. In front of it are baskets and jars of dye, and I think the second from the right might be the yellow dye, but I don't really know. I do know a yellow-gold wall forms a spectacular background for the carving of birds and flowers in black and white jade.

http://mellowyellowmonday.blogspot.com/

Consulting an Umbrella Expert

Oh, the trials and tribulations of an unfittie with photosensitivity issues, ending up in a hot Shanghai summer, seeking shade under a black umbrella (photo by Richard Schear). On a cruise to Alaska, Dick's blue and white golf umbrella hid him from the rain in Juneau (photo by Kay Davies) while in the Galapagos Islands, the big beige umbrella hid both of us from the sun at the equator (photo by Karina Lopez). Now the author has decided to consult an umbrella expert, Penelope Puddle, who lives on the wet west coast of Canada and can do wonderful things with the help of her umbrella. Perhaps Auntie Kay can learn to do the same. www.penelopepuddle.blogspot.com

Look again

You may remember this picture from Chapter 6 but, unless you clicked on it to enlarge it, you might not have realized this crowd in China's Forbidden City contained me, your faithful scribe, under that black umbrella, in a wheelchair being pushed by the man in the white shirt with striped sleeves, in the foreground, just to the right of center. Did I have a pretty pink parasol? A blue umbrella to match the sky? A white one to keep the sun's rays from turning the skin on my face and arms to pizza but still keep me cool? No. I wasn't that smart. I didn't even wear a hat, although my husband did.

For details, see Chapter 7, below.

Chapter 7 — Nearly Fatal Attraction

CHAPTER 7 –
NEARLY
FATAL
ATTRACTION

I screamed as the rented wheelchair carried me out into the traffic. But my slim young helper was stronger than he looked, and he pulled me back immediately.

Neither his English nor my Mandarin was particularly good (in fact, my Mandarin is pretty much nonexistent) but I understood him to say I’d be perfectly safe crossing eight lanes of Beijing traffic to get to Tiananmen Square, then from there to the Forbidden City, former home of the emperors, their wives, concubines, and children.

“No,” I said, gesturing toward an opening in the sidewalk a half block away, through which my husband and the rest of our group had disappeared. Again, bilingual waving of hands and shaking of heads got the message through to me: No ramp, just stairs leading down to a tunnel underneath the road.

“I can walk down the stairs,” I insisted, but my pusher wasn’t about to let me out of the chair. I knew I could walk down the stairs, but he would have to carry the wheelchair. So we had reached an impasse. An impossible impasse. As our guide Arnold had promised, there had been wheelchairs for rent where our tour bus stopped, but Arnold's ‘big strong man to push it' had failed to materialize. Instead, I was left with this slim young man, while everyone else had abandoned me by the roadside.

Soon, however, a large group of Beijing citizens gathered on our side of the road, and indicated to me with gestures and words, both Mandarin and English, their ability to provide a great wall around my wheelchair to escort me safely across the street.

Thus, the impasse passed, the traffic stopped to let me by with my entourage and, in Tiananmen Square I met up with our guide, our group, and also my husband, who cavalierly dismissed my adventure through eight lanes of speeding traffic with “Oh well, at least you’re here.” Easy for him to say, after he had crossed beneath the street where there wasn’t a car to be seen.

So there I was, with my heartbeat gradually returning to normal, sitting in a wheelchair with a black umbrella to hold over my head so I wouldn’t break out in hives from exposure to the sun, contemplating a three-hour trip through China’s Forbidden City.

If you’re an unfittie such as I am, able to walk, but not very far and not very fast, by all means rent a wheelchair because there is much to see inside those walls. Along with the Great Wall, the Forbidden City is the iconic picture that calls to mind the country of China. It is the most famous attraction in the city of Beijing. But be sure you negotiate in advance with the person pushing the wheelchair. Start right now saying, “I can walk up and down stairs” in a firm tone of voice. Learn to say it firmly in Mandarin if you can.

Then have your traveling companions or, preferably, your guide, confirm this, to be sure the message gets across. Because, although there are ramps in the Forbidden City, they are not wheelchair ramps. Anyone who has seen the animated movie Mulan or its sequel will know that. They were built as ramps for the Emperor’s horsemen, with ridges to make the footing more stable, as it were, for the horses.

Those ramps are not made for unfitties to be pushed up, after a running start, in a tilted wheelchair, by a young man whose enthusiasm outweighs his strength. Trust me on this one. It is scary and it is painful. Being pulled down the ramp on the other side, with the wheelchair tilted backward again, is scarier still. And there are many, many buildings, with many, many horse ramps.

If you’re ever in Beijing in the summer, take another tip from me. Before you get to the wheelchair-renting spot, which will probably be where your tour bus stops, on the far side of the road from Tiananmen Square, be sure you are carrying a light-colored umbrella or a pastel parasol. Even people without photosensitivity problems can sustain some serious sunburn. But, although black might be fashionable for most occasions, it is not, I assure you, for this one. 

Chapter 6 from 'An Unfittie's Guide to Adventurous Travel'

CHAPTER 6 –
ANOTHER LESSON
ALMOST LEARNED

There is a lot of talk these days about closing the Galapagos Islands to tourism because of the great sensitivity of their unique eco-systems. In the meantime, we’re only allowed to be there if we stay within the path outlined for that purpose. Therefore, on the smaller islands, Orlando, one of the guides from our yacht Flamingo I, would take his group clockwise around the island, while his colleague Karina took our group counterclockwise. This system worked fine until the day I got left behind.

One of the best days of my life!

Karina speaks excellent English and is a wonderful guide with a tremendous depth of knowledge about the Galapagos. Nevertheless, when she said we would see lots of blue-footed boobies one day, I was thrilled to find she hadn’t exaggerated. Just as my feet were getting sore, we came to a huge field covered with sand, rocks, twigs, a few shrubs, and a flock of elaborately-courting and minimally-nesting blue-footed boobies. With the exception of one booby protecting an egg, they paid no attention to us.

I was in heaven. “I’d love to stay here,” I sighed.

“Okay,” said Karina, “you sit here until… (I missed this part) …pick you up on the way to the beach.”

Another rule: Pay attention, or request repetition for verification. I’m not always good at this, either.

When I heard Karina say “Okay, you sit here,” I immediately unfolded my cane/chair thingie, and sat down in that wonderful field full of blue-footed boobies, without actually hearing all of her instructions.

Another communication problem existed, but I didn’t know about it until later. There I sat, with my giant collapsible beige golf umbrella shading me from the sun, and watched boobies sky-pointing in their courtship dance; looked at the ocean in the near distance; watched a group of male boobies trying unsuccessfully to intimidate one another; and looked at the ocean again in case dolphins or whales came by. They didn’t, but I enjoyed myself immensely anyway.

After a few hours, Orlando came along with the second group from Flamingo I. They all greeted me.

“Hi, Kay, how are you?”

“Oh, I’m having a wonderful time.”

“So you’re alright here?”

“Never better,” I said as I waved goodbye.

I didn’t know Karina had asked Orlando to take me back to the beach with them. I thought our group, including my husband, would be coming back for me.

Eventually, when I was beginning to get just a teensy bit tired of sitting, but not the least bit tired of booby-watching, Orlando and a man from his group came up behind me.

“We’ve come to take you to the beach.”

“Oh?” I asked, “where’s Dick?”

“He and the others are out on the Flamingo already.”

So off we went to the beach, where one of the pangas (boats) from our yacht was waiting.

Oh, yes, getting in and out of a panga. That’s another story.

But first, my giant umbrella: I searched and searched online until I found a large, collapsible, light-beige golf umbrella. For a sunny climate, a light color is best, because dark colors absorb the sun’s heat, as we all know but often forget when buying everything from clothes to cars – and then we’re sorry later, as I have learned the hard way.

My umbrella, along with my portable chair/cane, provided me with shelter and seating. My face got red from exertion, but never from sunburn, for which I was grateful because I’m photosensitive, among other awful things.

However, when we got home from that trip, I discovered some sand had found its way into the workings, so I could no longer open my wonderful umbrella. Did I order a new one? No, I forgot that, too.

Of course, the time eventually came when I needed sun protection desperately. Surrounded by tourists and locals who were carrying pastel umbrellas and parasols in the heat of a Beijing summer, I found myself holding a small black (yes, black) umbrella over my head. It might as well have been a portable oven.