Tiramisu In Tianjin (19th Oct)

We got to Nanjing airport just in time for a three hour wait! We spent it drinking every last drop of a pot of exhorbitantly priced lemon tea (I think I'm sick of it now!), plus free refills of water. My BBB weighs less after a thorough purge of summer clothes, and I pray for frosts. Well, I couldn't leave behind the 12 metre long painting in its scroll and box, could I? It was a bargain! And it came with a free fan. I shall look at it, metre by metre, on quiet days at home where it'll live in its box due to short walls!

The 2 hour flight was uneventful to Beijing, but I was totally unprepared for the difficulty in getting a taxi to Tianjin, which I'd decided on as a treat as I was very weary and teary and trying not to show it. I thought we were too late for an evening meal. Anyway we got one eventually and we drove there in the dark. It was a registered taxi, but I still get just the merest flicker of a "what if..?" thought on occasion, but the car was newish and far cleaner than others and he was Buddhist, judging by the dangling tassel from the rear view mirror.

Sophia's parents insisted we stay for a few days and welcomed us warmly. They were glad to see their daughter in one piece and we smiled and nodded at each other. It was lovely to see them again after our day out in Petworth last May and they lost no time in giving me (another packing dilemma) a beautiful teaset to drink green tea from. The real green tea, as opposed to the bagged stuff I've been trying to like, is heaven. Pale, fragrant, with just a hint of flavour drunk from 2-sip cups, and poured with due ceremony from the family heirloom pottery teapot. It's very expensive.

Unfortunately, as much as I try to like Chinese food, it doesn't like me, and now I'm wondering if I can like it. Soup is made out of every available, edible source and is slow-cooked overnight to have for breakfast. Anything not eaten is put into the next pot on the go. It makes for interesting mealtimes! And there are no rules; all food is eaten at any time of day. I was offered A Certain Gold Wrapped Chocolate usually served by Their Excellencies when they're Spoiling People, for breakfast on my first day. Odd, I suppose, but I wouldn't dream of eating chocolate before the evening.

Jenny from the Suzhou art gallery gave us a contact in Tianjin and Sophia rings him. He (Gung Gung) phones back to say he has arranged a meeting with a Mr Feng who is advisor to the local government on historical buildings. He is trying to save the old foreign concession buildings from further destruction, with some success. We are to meet him for dinner on Wednesday at the old German Club, now headquarters of the Tianjin Historical Society.

So we walk into Germany; all wooden panelling and very grand, and acres of newly installed marble flooring, which I can now skate across with elan. We are greeted by Gung Gung who leads us miles to a private dining room where Mr Feng and his friend Mr Song are seated at the round, elegantly laid table. Flowered curtains hang down into puddles on the floor and waiters and waitresses glide around, twiddling things into place and I notice a knife, fork and spoon have been arranged at my place. We smile and nod. Granny wrote a lot about doing that, and now I see what she meant. It's the universal language for every cordial greeting you can think of.
Mr Feng has great feeling for Tianjin's history and appears on radio and tv to speak about it. He also attends conventions and conferences as speaker and is the only real authority in Tianjin on the foreign concessions and their legacy. There were nine countries represented in this city!
The "lazy butler" was groaning with sumptuous looking dishes which reminded me of the Chinese restaurants in the UK. This can't be right, I thought! I left the "squirrel fish" with its insides a rather violent shade of orange, and the melon-something-unexplained which lay in aspic? I didn't trust it, whatever it was, but the beansprouts in rice and the duck in a dark sauce, sizzling vegetables on a trivet, and the little sugary pumpkin sweet, oh and the sort of Chinese Apfel Strudel, were too good to miss ... with unsurprising results. Oh dear. Blown it.

The talk went on around me for about four hours, but without great success. Mr Feng had been looking into the facts about the White Russian refugees when they arrived in Tianjin, having fled the Revolution. He said most of them were wealthy businessmen, but when I showed him the photos I had of the wooden folder and accompanying letter of thanks to my grandmother from a Father Victor on behalf of the destitute Russians, he said I must treasue it. I will, of course. I couldn't see a way round this. He explained that there was no record of these people due to the enmity between the two countries at that time. This I already knew, which was why I was here, really! Someone must know something, surely.

Now what?

He offered to take us round the old British concession on Friday morning in his official car with driver. We met at 9 in hot sunshine outside the old German Club and sat in the marbled lobby's leather sofas, which were three Hagrids wide. He gave me a brown envelope. Inside was a letter in Chinese describing the career of Father Victor. I was speechless. I wrote down everything it said, to make sure the translation was correct between him and Sophia. Father Victor was a White Russian refugee himself and arrived in China in 1920. He showed me an old photo of a Russian church, no longer there. Could this have been his church? As it turned out, no, it was far too big. The one Father Victor built only held 20 people. His career was meteoric and he ended up being (prelate is it called in the Orthodox Church?). Anyway, at the very top. He was a determined man when Granny knew him, for as we purred along the wide roads and eventually came to the British concession, there was my grandparents' official residence, just opposite All Saints' Church (now scaffolded), behind which the area where the poorest refugees were given shelter. I bet he knocked on Granny's door and her "kind heart could not look with indifference". Tears threatened again, but one look from Mr Feng and his driver corked them immediately!
Sorry, got so carried away I forgot all this; inside the brown envelope was a gift. Mr Feng had painted, in beautiful calligraphy, a poem from the Sung period about a Mongolian horse separated from his herd. The imaginary picture is of the wide, Mongolian steppe at twilight with the horse, looking. It's on thick, tissuey paper and folded in the envelope until I can frame it. First, the car parked in an improbable place and we got out into the middle of The City of London. Huge, stone-built banks with giant porticos and columns stood either side of the narrow street. A photo I had shown him at our meal believed to have been taken on Armistice Day in 1919, and with my grandfather in splendid Consul General plumed hat, standing feet away from Pu Yi, the last and "Little" Emperor, was actually taken in 1926 on another occasion entirely. The Pu Yi Museum had it on their wall! Next we went by the river where the British Consulate once stood. Granny would be appalled to see that their splendid consulate has been replaced by a very tall tower block. And it's pink!

Then he took us out to lunch! This time to a renowned Tianjin-style one where Mr Song joined us again, and Mr Feng's driver, too. I had leant my tummy-lesson and only ate tiny amounts (excuse me, but ..boohoo!), it smelt delicious.

Next day we visited the Pu Yi Museum, which had been his ancestral temple before 45 families were installed and nearly wrecked it. It has been renovated and restored and its monastic/Deco interior is one of the saddest places I've seen. His bedroom was particularly poignant in its simplicity and brownness. I suppose the last of his treasures have gone and the furniture might not even be his; it does have that air of uneality, a superimposed idea of what his life was like. Still, I found it moving, imagining what it must have been like to be so reviled, and forcibly moved from your opulent home (oh dear, that hardly describes the Forbidden City, does it, get a grip, Girl!).

Next day. oh dear, I remembered my memory stick but it's taken 2 hours to put my photos on it and now I don't have time to finish this. Off to Beidehe in a minute.

I shall send the dessert (Tiramisu) in a few days ...