Simon Lewis: Comrade Hack

The preparations for a traditional sardinian festival.

Few musicians, surely, make their instrument before the performance. But that’s what Franco Tolu is doing, fitting together and holing slender lengths of reed. ‘When you’ve been making launeddas pipes for thirty years,’ he says, ‘it doesn’t take thirty minutes.’

Now he is shaping the trickiest bit, the mouthpieces, or canellino. With a pocketknife he chips two tongues into stubby reeds. He weighs them down with beeswax that was kept warm and pliant under his arm. The finished article is three pipes; two short, five-holed chanters and one long drone.

He tests it, puffing out his cheeks and blowing through all three at once. I never heard so much noise from so slight an instrument, it’s like having an elephant trumpet in your ear. The chanters make a melody, the drone a doleful wail. The pipes use the same principle as bagpipes but instead of a separate bladder, the musician fills his cheeks with air. Meanwhile, he breathes through his nose. If that sounds tricky, it is; Franco says that ‘if you don’t learn the launeddas as a child, you never will’. But he isn’t satisfied with the tone, and adds more beeswax.

I’m in the small town of Maracalagonis on the outskirts of Cagliari in southern Sardinia. While the celebrities head north to the glamorous Costa Smeralda the real heart of the island beats in little towns like this one, where an extraordinary cultural continuity is practised. Yesterday, in Cagliari’s archaeological museum, I saw a bronze figurine of a man playing a three piped instrument exactly like the one I’ve just seen made. It’s from the Nuraghic Culture, and it’s over two thousand years old.

Here, in an attractive shady courtyard, workers are preparing for Sa Festa, a feast and a show put on for local weddings and, increasingly, curious visitors. A couple of capped men roast boar piglets on spits over a crackling open fire. The pig’s skin has been lashed with thyme to strip the hairs off. Long skirted women lay out bowls of olives on crisp white tablecloths. A girl slits and curls dough to make fanciful baroque whirls. When glazed and fired, the surrealist buns will be used as decoration. She makes for me a traditional Sardinian easter egg – a flat figure of a dough woman with a wide skirt, with a boiled egg affixed over the stomach with a strip of dough. It seems bluntly pagan.

There are still a few hours before the feast is set to begin so I go for aperitif with Carlo, the manager’s son. Maracalagonis is languid in the afternoon heat. Old women sit in the shade of palm trees outside the church and young toughs stand outside bars with beers and cigarettes – the men aren’t being ominous, just law abiding, smoking being banned inside.

The bodywork of Carlo’s car is heavily scratched from trying to negotiate the town’s narrow alleyways. Over a mirto, the Sardinian liqueur made from myrtle berries, Carlo explains how the Sa Festa venture snowballed from a venue for local celebrations into a tourist attraction that can host three hundred guests in one night. He feels that this is an exception; generally the Sardinians of the south are not good at making others aware of their rich culture, and blames their insular nature.

Island races usually go out and explore the world, but not the poor Sardinians; for them, the world came and beat them up. So they retreated to the hills and looked in rather than out, over the centuries developing a culture that is rich and, to outsiders, rather strange. I think of the pictures I have seen of village festivals, where men swathed in heavy goat skins stamp and jump to make the bells hanging from their body ring. In seems a long way from the urbane sophistication of the mainland. They must be doing something right, however; these inland Sards are some of the longest living people in the world. Carlo’s convinced that that is the benefit of their diet.

We visit the Coronas, three generations of sweet makers, who are busy making Sa Festa’s exquisite deserts, with sure hands that don’t need measuring tools to get the right quantities.

Laetitia, the youngest at eighteen, is making is making amaretti cakes. She explains that nowadays most people mix the ground almonds with wheat, and decries the practise. The almonds she’s using have been roast in the wood fired oven in the courtyard then ground with a pestle and mortar.

Her mother, Christina, is making a star cake by pouring caramelised sugar, almonds and lemon peel into a wooden mould. As well as the delicious roasting almonds, I can smell oranges – Anna, the eighty four year old matriach, is grating dried peel. She’ll use it in Pardulas, little cakes make with ricotta cheese and saffron. It’s a charming cottage operation, and the ladies won’t let me leave until I’ve sampled everything.

Back at the courtyard, juniper branches have been spread across the entrance way, and their delicious fragrance is released as they are stepped on. The dancers have arrived, and are changing into the Sardinian traditional dress of long black skirts and waistcoats. Carlo tells me that not so long ago it was common to see villagers in traditional dress, but now they only wear it on special occasions.

In a side hall, the pasta operation is in full flow. One cook is whipping up fregola. It’s simply stone ground wheat mixed with water and agitated by hand until it adheres into little pellets. It’s one of the oldest forms of pasta, a staple of the Sardinian kitchen first imported from north Africa. It sounds simple to make, but there’s more to it than it looks, as I discover when I give it a go. The tricky bit is getting the lumps all about the same size. The cook reminds me to always whisk anti-clockwise and pretends I’m doing well.

Malloredus shells are being made by pressing a sheet of pasta against a basket, then rolling up finger sized smidgons. A third cook is making ravioli, moulding a paste of three kinds of cheese and folding it into a pasta package. It all looks absolutely delicious, and Iﾕm impressed with the care and dedication.

I ask Carlo what the Sardinian is for free range and organic and he doesn’t even understand the question; everything is free range and organic, so he don’t even understand the concept. He advises me not to eat too much of the sausages now sizzling in a long spiral over the fire, or the ravioli now being ladled with rich sauce, as I must leave space for the boar; it’s rich and gamey and has little fat. By now, I’m feeling incredibly hungry, and glad that the guests are starting to turn up.

Most are Italian tourists, who have paid only forty Euros for this four course feast. As they arrive they are serenaded by Franco Tulo with his langueaddas. They are given a glass of wine, Moscato (sweet) or Malvasia (dry), made from a grape that the Romans would have used.

An accordionist and a guitarist play folk songs as the chefs, now changed into traditional dress, dish out the antipasti. The spits are hoisted up like pennants, three pigs impaled on each, to great applause. Carlo proposes a toast, Franco plays a jig, the skirts of the dancers rustle as they prepare themselves, and the party starts.

| The Italian magazine | Jan 07 |

From lowly rice paddies to high-rise metropolis, Shanghai has emerged as the world’s fastest growing city. But what is life really like in China’s chic, capitalist hotspot?

Surely it’s only Shanghai residents who twitch their curtains open of a morning and check how the skyline has changed. This is the fastest growing city in the world, probably the fastest ever, and locals joke that its mascot is the crane.

Too often China’s meteoric rise is expressed in dull figures – but gaze at glittering avant-garde architecture, neon lit flyovers and whole bar and restaurant districts, all of which seems to have sprung up like mushrooms after rain, and you can see a revolution happening. The place is buzzing with energy.

It’s raw, sometimes vulgarly nouveau riche, but its undeniably addictive. Coming into the city from China’s interior, I get culture shock. In comparison, the rest of the country is prosaic. Shanghai is somehow separate, international, and hyper-modern. In the Twenties, it was famous for style, gangsters, inequality, decadent pleasures and fantastic opportunities. Now the city has shaken off its communist mothballs, and exactly the same is true today.

Unique among Chinese cities, Shanghai is actually an attractive place. And it’s at its most charming on the Bund, the west bank of the Huangpu river. It’s best in the early hours, when residents start the day with formation dancing, tai-ji exercises and kite flying.

Here the story of modern Shanghai began, as foreign traders at the beginning of the twentieth century built grand European-style buildings. The British consulate is here, and the headquarters of the former opium traders, Jardine Matheson, and that stalwart of pre-war elegance, the Peace Hotel. Today these fusty colonial constructions are faced down by gaudy upstarts in the business district of Pudong, on the opposite bank, which ten years ago was mostly paddy fields.

I balk at the Chinese breakfast of noodles and buns, but fortunately in Shanghai, pastries, cakes and coffee are popular – perhaps it’s the lingering French influence. The Manabe chain has six pages of coffees on its menu (including jelly coffee cubes). But for real continental style cafe culture, I head to the cafes of the French concession around Huaihai Lu. There’s no better place for lingering over a cappuccino and watching the fashionable people tick by, do deals or discuss which party to be seen at later.

Style is king in Shanghai and the boutiques here are China’s chic-est. Look out for qipaos that’s the long dress with a slit up the thigh and designer originals, and you can get a great suit made for a fraction of the cost in the west. Continuing with the sartorial theme, every visitor should try a beauty parlour. There’s one in every mall. You’ll get seriously pampered with a manicure, a massage and a haircut for less than twenty dollars. During the cultural revolution ‘polluting’ foreign ideas such as permed hair illicitly continued here. These days, bleached streaks are everywhere, and lots of girls are sudden red heads. Only when I’m spruced up do I feel part of this city, where some people have a unique appraising glance -shoes to watch to face, taking in all the labels on the way.

The international influence is everywhere apparent. Pre-war art deco buildings abound, such as the Metropole Hotel on Jinagxi Zhonglu and the Shanghai Mansions on Suzhou Lu. They stand in the shadows of the brazen skyscrapers, yet, oddly, look more futuristic. Foreign food is eagerly experimented with; Brazilian seems this year’s cuisine of choice. Foreign mores too, are embraced, such as hand shaking (rather than namecard swapping) for men, and air-kissing for women. The Shanghainese have always felt rather apart from the rest of the country and looked abroad for inspiration as well as business. The city was built by immigrants, Chinese and international, with a common desire to reinvent or better themselves, and perhaps that is the heart of it restless dynamism.

There aren’t many sights as such, but one place I always return to is the Shanghai Musuem on Renmin Square, built in the shape of a Chinese urn, whose huge collection of art and artefacts offer a counterweight to the rest of the city, where the new is venerated. Here is a reminder of China’s five thousand years of continuous culture, and, finally, a quiet place to contemplate it. My favourite piece is a suit made entirely of fishscales by the Oroqen people of northern China.

Evening is when the city is at its most distinctive. It lights up like an arcade game, with even the tangles of the elevated freeways highlighted by garish neon. Green and purple are particularly favoured hues. Nanjing Lu, China’s premier consumer cornucopia, is full of stores trying to outdo each other.

Retrospectively, most visitors decide that eating was the highlight of their trip. There may be plenty of international food, but as always, it pays to stick to the local cuisine. A personal favourite is 1221 on Yan’an Xilu; simple, classy, Shanghainese fare that won’t break the bank. I’d go for the duck. Then if my budget stretched to it, I’d check out the classy bars; though at nearly ten dollars a beer, I’d be drinking very slowly.

I have one final recommendation – every visitor should try this. Go to the Hyatt Hotel in the Jinmao Tower in Pudong the highest building in the city – and take the lift to the top floor. Order a cocktail at the Cloud Nine bar and look in stunned awe at the twinkling city spread out beneath you. See that? That’s the future.

| Msafiri | Nov05-Jan06| Edition 53 |

Yunnan has a set of micro climates. Kunming, at the heart of the province, is relatively mild all year round, though rainy. Far southern and south western parts of the province have tropical rainforest climates and a monsoon from May to October, so they’re best visited in winter.

The area north of Kunming is vulnerable to freezing from November to February and places north of Lijiang such as Lugu Lake and Deqin get very cold indeed, and snow is frequent, so this area is best visited between May and August.

Times of year definitely to avoid are Chinese national holidays the first weeks of May and October – prices rocket and every tourist destination is uncomfortably busy. Also, try to avoid travelling just before Chinese New Year, which falls in January or February, as transport networks are over stretched.

Getting There

There are no direct flights from the west, but Kunming is only an hour and a half from Bangkok on Thai air.

Getting Around

Southwest Airlines is reliable and comparatively inexpensive; a ticket from Kunming to Lijiang, for example, costs around $45. Roads are generally good, at least between the cities, and most long distance travel is done on cramped but tolerably comfortable sleeper buses. Fast, a/c luxury buses run between popular tourist destinations. For foreigners, hiring a car involves too much paper work to be worth it; it s cheaper and less hassle to hire a car and driver.

Cost of Travel

Generally a bit more expensive than neighbouring south east Asian countries, but still very cheap by western standards. Rock bottom hotel rooms cost around $2-3, a decent mid-range a/c room costs $10 and the very best around $60 (though concessionary advance booking rates are often available). Eating out in China is usually a bargain; a decent meal for two costs around $4.

• Bottle of beer: 20p
• Cup of coffee: 50p
• Two-litre bottle of mineral water: 40p

Health & Safety

There is some risk of malaria in Xishuangbanna.

Food & Drink

Food is immensely important to the Chinese; they talk about it the way the English do about weather, and ‘have you eaten?’ is a standard greeting. Despite the impression you might have from Chinese takeaways at home, Chinese cuisine is regional, and in Yunnan each minority has its own specialities.

Eating is a social occasion and the Chinese like their restaurants to be ‘renao’, hot and noisy. Slurping is considered a sign of appreciation, and isn’t rude, but leaving rice in your bowl is. The ultimate in good table manners is to put a tasty morsel in someone else’s bowl.

• Over the bridge noodles

This tasty local dish was said to have been created by a scholar’s wife. She used to take lunch to her husband when he was out writing poetry in an island pavilion, but by the time she had crossed the bridge to the island the noodles were cold – until she had the idea of keeping them warm by pouring an insulating layer of oil on top of the soup. Order this popular dish today and you’ll be given a hot chicken broth with a layer of oil floating on top, and, on a separate dish, noodles, pork, vegetables and egg to slip into it.

• Naxi bread or ‘baba’

This staple of the Naxi people is a deep fried patty of flour lard and sesame oil with a stuffing of meat or vegetables; it’s common in Lijiang.

• Stinky tofu

Love it or loathe it, you can’t avoid it; that pong isn’t the drains, it’s this regional delicacy ‘rotten’ tofu barbecued then covered with spice. It’s available at every street corner after dark.

• Crisp skinned duck

The whole duck is basted with honey and roasted over a pine needle fire.

• Fake meat

You’ll find vegetarian restaurants outside Buddhist temples; the biggest is opposite the Yuantong Temple in Kunming. Most dishes feature fake meat, often made using cunningly spiced tofu and potato, which can taste eerily like the real thing.

Matriachal Minorities

Anyone spending any time in Lijiang will soon notice the dominant role women play in Naxi culture; they’re running the businesses while the rather underemployed men while away their time with gardening, falconry and the like. Naxi society is, to a large extent, matriarchal, with inheritance passing to the eldest daughter. In more remote communities, children are kept by the mother while the father stays in his own mother’s house and provides financial support. The Naxi language reflects the feminine bias; ‘woman stone’ means boulder, but ‘man stone’ pebble.

Even more girl power is in evidence in the Mosuo people, who live beside Lugu Lake. Their axia system of marriage means, broadly, that any woman ditches her lover when she feels like it, and any children are raised in the mother’s house. Family names pass from mother to daughter. Children might know who their father is, but the bond is not seen as special.

Dr Joseph Rock

Joseph Rock was a larger than life Austrian botanist who lived in Lijiang between 1922 and 1949. As well as sending over eighty thousand plant specimens back and pioneering the use of photography in the field, he was a keen defender of Naxi culture and compiled the first dictionary of their language. His reports for National Geographic made him widely known in the west. His fastidiousness made him notorious, and he travelled with an entourage to rival any western film star, including cooks, hundreds of mercenaries, and servants to carry such dubious necessities as his gramophone, gold dinner service and collapsible bathtub.

Smuggling

Any visitor off the beaten track will find having his passport inspected at roadside checkpoints a common occurrence. This is because Yunnan, at the crossroads of south east Asia and the edge of the golden triangle, is a haven for smugglers.

Around 800 kilograms of heroin a month is estimated to flow across the ill policed border, bringing social dysfunction in its wake; rates of HIV infection in border towns such as Ruili are the highest in China. Another lucrative trade is in the body parts of endangered species such as pangolins and muntjacs, which are trapped in the forests of Burma or in Xishuangbanna. They’re consumed either as delicacies or medicines, usually aphrodisiacs. But surely the most macabre trade is in boy children, kidnapped then sold to families desperate for a male heir. Over two hundred boys have gone missing in Kunming in the last three years.

Tea

As with most Chinese customs, tea cultivation has been going on for a very long time; one of Yunnan’s most popular destinations – admittedly only for Chinese tourists – is the rather unremarkable looking ‘King of Tea Trees,’ in Xishuangbanna, which is nearly two thousand years old.

Broadly, Yunnan teas come in four categories; green, black, flower and pu’er. This last is half fermented and steamed into blocks – originally for ease of transport on the long ride to the main market of Tibet. It has a musty taste that lingers in the mouth. Tea shops stock thousands of varieties, and are more than willing to let you sample their stock; you’re not expected to buy anything until you’ve tasted it, but take note that some teas are extremely expensive.

Tea is drunk for health as well as refreshment; Snow tea is good for sore throats, flower tea is regarded as a sedative, and ‘slimmers tea’ is, it is claimed, an appetite suppressant.

| Wanderlust magazine | October 04 | Issue 66 |