Well hasn’t 2020 been a strange year, so far?  

Being isolated in my “care-bubble” for much of the year has meant that I have had, like so many I suppose, a chance to look inwards and backwards far more this year than most.  And one of the things I have realised is that I have so much material that I acquired whilst out in the Far East that I really ought to start sharing what happened to us once again.

These blog posts ground to a halt for a number of reasons.  The first was the frustration of a really poor internet connection and the endless hours of lost work that disappeared into the aether as I tried to load each post over the Chinese Great Firewall and onto an American server for these posts on WordPress to be published.

But that wasn’t the only reason.  I eventually made contact with the Shanghai Quilting Group by accident and joined their small, but sociable, group that met weekly over lunch in each other’s houses and apartments.  This got me quilting in a big way and my

old routine of sightseeing in the afternoon and writing about my experience the following morning dissolved into stitching in the morning but still roaming around Shanghai in the afternoons and evenings trying to understand the place.  Over the years I have learned that the best way to make real friends is to do something with your hands whilst chatting on and off as the whim takes you.  Big friendships are built up in this way – at school, in clubs etc as unforced chatter takes place whenever someone decides to voice something.  But there is no need to fill any silence with hot air and the more introverted can enjoy the company of others without having to “join in”.  I think it is this aspect of the lockdown in the West that is the most crippling to our societies at the moment: the loss of unforced chitchat in pubs and clubs across the land.

I also had illness in the family.  Illnesses such as my father’s major stroke in the autumn of 2015, from which he never really recovered and this meant much more to-ing and fro-ing between East and West than before  – with me spending much of 2017 here, rather than there.

The other activity that got in the way was my taking a photography course.  This meant that I learned to take much better photographs. But I found I couldn’t take good photographs and go exploring at the same time.  Good photography, it turns out, is about taking pictures of light, not of objects.  You set up the shot of the correct light and wait for the right moment. This is totally at odds with visiting museums, following a walk acquiring information and just snapping what you see to remind you of where you have been and what you have done.  I could either take good photos, or explore Shanghai.  I couldn’t seem to manage to do both.

So writing blog posts for The Pearls From The Orient fell by the wayside, until now.  I shall endeavour to remember things correctly, but I know I shall get some things wrong.  I will not follow things in chronological order anymore, but write about interesting people, places and events that swam passed us in our three years in China from the beginning of 2015 to the end of 2017.

I hope that what I write entertains and informs.  I shall do my best.

When we returned to the UK many would ask: What is China like then? And both Richard and I struggled to find the right answer.  How can you sum up three years to answer such a question?  I finally came up with the phrase

Fascinatingly Challenging……

So without more ado, herein lies more fascinatingly challenging Pearls From The Orient.