Adventures with Julia

August 26, 2019

Things are very weird here in Beijing.  I had no access to Word Press while at the Peninsula Hotel or at the Apple store.  Now, at the airport, I have access through a Chinese server called BAI.  Hopefully it will hold.  But now I have no more time and must run to the gate.  Here is what I completed before we left home.   More as soon as possible.  Do not hold yours breath.

August 23, 2019

We are over Russian territory at 37,000 feet on our way to Beijing.  Our 7-week adventure to unvisited places in Asia has begun.  For the first time, I am feeling somewhat undone by the amount of time we have agreed to spend traveling.  Is my age the issue or have the stresses of work at home gotten the better of me.  I’d like to believe the latter.  For sure I am exhausted by all the stress.  In addition to difficulties finding a tenant for our Dickinson, Texas property and dealing with unfinished landscape issues at a property in Grass Valley, we recently entered into a purchase agreement for a house at Lake Tahoe. It is expected to close on October 22, but at the moment our financing is unsettled because the required appraisals have not been completed.  When we left SFO today, none of the issues have been resolved or even concluded.   Although we did make some progress with the landscaping repair problem at the last minute.  

Now that we are in the air, I am telling myself to relax, let go and lose myself in our coming adventures.  The stresses at home will naturally re-assert themselves the we return.  Maybe I should be grateful for seven full weeks in a different world where all I have to do is keep a low profile and stay away from trouble.  

We cover China from east to west, mostly by air

I have brought a lot of material to read about the places we will visit and hope I manage to get to the reading……soon.  To start, I downloaded a few maps, as many of you express appreciation for having them to study.  The first map is of China and shows all the places we will visit in that country.  We start on the east coast in Beijing and gradually work our way west across the entire country, albeit mostly by air.  After a day in Beijing, we fly to Lhasa in south central China and spend several days in Tibet.  From there we fly northwesterly across the country to a city called Urumqi, pronounced Urumchi.  It is the heartland of the muslim people known as Uighur.  There are about 12 million of them and they are in the news lately for being persecuted by the Han Chinese.  We will have a couple of days there and then fly further west and south to Kashi, aka Kashgar, where we will pick up a car, driver and guide and proceed by road into Pakistan.  The distance across China is much further than across the US.    

Back to our arrival in Beijing.  At the Peninsula Hotel we will rest and try to adjust to the 9 hour time difference.  The next day we plan a special meeting with the artist parents of a young woman we have gotten to know during the Classical Tahoe summer season in Incline Village on Tahoe’s north shore.  Her name is Zubaida Azezi, aka Zuby.  She is a violinist in the orchestra.  Her fiancé is Tim Dilenschneider and he is one of orchestra’s three bass players. During the regular season, they play in the Houston Symphony Orchestra. 

Zuby and Kim with us at Gar Woods.

We took them out to dinner one evening after we had learned that Zuby is Uyghur and from the city of Urumchi.  We were surprised.  She was shocked that we had even heard of her city, let alone planned to visit it.    She identifies as Uighur and told us about the difficulties happening in her homeland, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwestern China, where the largest muslim minority resides.  She has not been there or seen her relatives since she was a young girl.  It is too dangerous for her to go back, but she is confident we will have no problem as tourists.  I asked if we could look up some of her relatives and give them her regards and a photo or two.  She declined, saying even that was too dangerous for her people.  Of the 12 million Uyghur population, 2 million are incarcerated in “re-education camps” similar to what Kim Jung Un is doing with his people in North Korea.  Very sad situation.  Last October the BBC released details of an investigation into China’s “hidden camps”.  Perhaps you can find more news about it.  

 However, she said she would love to have us visit her parents, who are English speaking artists living safely in Beijing and ask if they would mind meeting with us and showing us their art and the art community in which they live.  That sounded really good to us, so she called them, made the contact and the next thing you know we cancelled our other activities in Beijing and agreed to meet her parents.  So that will be most of our day.  The drive to her parents home is about an hour from our hotel.  In the evening we have dinner reservations and tickets to the Wind Orchestra Show at the National Center for Performing Arts. We have seen the building from the outside and it is quite a lovely space.  I am looking forward to seeing the interior, which was not open when we were last in Beijing.