After three months spent within the boundaries of Beijing municipality from mid-January to mid-March because of travel restrictions between provinces to avoid any risk of covid-19 spreading within China, I was very happy to see all sanitary restrictions on internal travel lifted. This meant I could once again start travelling to keep discovering this very large country.
In the past three weeks, I have found my way into three completely different ecosystems. All had fascinating landscapes and food.
Mid-April, I went for a few days of holiday in Changbaishan, Jilin province in the far Northeast of China along the border with North Korea. The weather was still chilly and the vegetation was only just coming out of its winter stage. Flowers were very scarce, most of the trees had not sprouted their new leaves yet. I ascended the sacred mountain of the Korean people where fresh snowfall the previous day had blanketed every thing under a thick layer of snow. So I ascended the mountain in a 4x4 vehicle and none of the walking paths were open to visitors. I will have to go back at a better time of the year to trek up the "Ever-white mountain". I particularly appreciated the hearty and simple northeastern food: meat-and-potato stews, saurkraut and kimchi, wild plants and mushroom harvested from the birchtree forest and tundra, maize-based bread and noodles, the best roundgrain rice of the country.
The following week, I flew South to Fujian province where I visited the tea gardens of Anxi Tieguanyin tea. The hot tropical climate had generated lush green vegetation covering all the mountains and hills. The tea bushes were neatly trimmed in lines along the higher slopes of the mountains because their ideal growing altitude was between 800 and 1200 m high. The food was extremely varied; some of the dishes were spiced up with infused or deep fried tea leaves. As we were presented with the local tea to taste wherever we went, I tasted a wide variety of different Tieguanyin teas over the three days of my stay there, and came back home with several boxes of Anxi Tieguanyin tea.
Last week, I flew off to the border between Ningxia and Inner Mongolia for three days of trekking in the Tengger desert of Inner Mongolia organised by Beijing Hikers. The landscape was unlimited sand desert dunes. Our group sailed through the sand dunes in 4x4 vehicles driven by expert local drivers. We trekked through the dunes on the soft sand and ate a lot of sand and dust with a strong wind blowing for a full 24 hours. It was no use trying to swipe the sand out of our tents, it came back in immediately. The best surprise from this desert trek was the food truck and local chef that followed our group to cook delicious fresh local dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The desert grass we would trample along our trek actually had culinary value with a slight chive taste when boiled and served seasoned as a cold apetiser dish. We ate all the parts of a lamb in every possible form: roasted, boiled, stir-fried, oven-dried... After three exhilirating days of trekking and camping in the middle of the desert without running water, the first shower in the hotel room back in Yinchuan town was a real godsend.
So much variety within one very large intriguing and diverse country. Meanwhile, a pandemic rages and kills outside...
Pastoral symphony, Ralph Vaughan Williams
Adrian Boult and London symphony orchestra, Emi classics
