The Final Postcards of China – a land of contrast

I guess every country is a land of contrast but it seemed even more so in China. Maybe the larger the country and the more diverse its history, the greater the contrasts?

Take these two – the man in a working village (as opposed to the tourist village experience), was making traditional brooms. Mark looked at the photo and commented that they may very well be one of the most efficient brooms around and we should maybe have brought one or two home with us. I am sure he was referring to bringing home brooms and not the very modern young woman with the selfie stick who was completely absorbed in her own imagery.

The hotel display of mandarins and bedding plants (there appeared to be an unwritten understanding that helping oneself to a mandarin in passing would be Very Poor Form) was notable for its unabashed vulgarity. We anticipated a display of great exuberance at the National Orchid Exhibition in Dali but instead it was marked by the most exquisite refinement and restraint. There were plenty of colourful cymbidiums in bloom at the time but clearly this orchid show was not the place for them.

The contemporary sculpture was in the Xishuangbanna botanic gardens – a worthy commemoration of recent history, styled on heroic lines? The wall painting is typical of the domestic decoration seen in Bai Villages around Dali and probably dates back a long time.

I loved the wall painting, both external and internal, on the Bai houses. So evocative of classical Chinese art. I photographed this one inside a private house that welcomed us in Longxiadeng Village. The contrast to the modern hotel in Jinghong could not be more extreme. This was only a four star hotel, for goodness sake, though considerably better appointed than the modest hostelries Mark and I usually choose when travelling on our own.

China is renowned for the amount of litter and rubbish but the urban areas seem to be heavily endowed with street cleaners doing it the old fashioned way – and very effectively too. The city areas we frequented were cleaner than New Zealand cities. Sure, there was plenty of litter in the countryside but as we regularly pick up litter from our own roadsides, we are not at all convinced that New Zealanders are any better with rubbish – there are just fewer of us to litter. I was interested in the juxtaposition of the street cleaner with the ultra modern architecture of Foshan, a city just outside Guangzhou. We were told Foshan had been almost entirely rebuilt in very recent times and it was hard to spot anything that may have existed prior to the recent construction and development frenzy.

The three pagodas in Dali are old, very old. The front one dates back to the ninth century, the other two are newer by 100 years. When you come from the so-called New World, it is hard to comprehend the age and the respect conferred on these religious icons down the centuries.

The new buildings are by the Mekong River in Jinghong City – another symbol of modern Chinese affluence and development. The slowdown in the Chinese economy that is having a major effect on other economies around the world was evident. We saw many major new projects where work appeared to have halted in mid flight.

On the left we have a Dai village where it appeared that life was continuing in a pretty traditional manner. This was an unscheduled stop at a village off the tourist trail and was all the more interesting for that. Our translator told us that this was an official census being taken of all the residents. On the right is Bai hospitality in Longxiadeng Village which has tapped into the huge tourist market in the Dali area. It was a very polished operation at the most local level – full of colour, courtesy and friendliness but nowhere near as personal. They are clearly set up to deal with large numbers of visitors and to ensure that a quality experience is provided.

What can I say about the left image? That must be Confucius in the background. The scene is at the Confucian Temple in the very heart of Dali, where the National Camellia Show was staged. There was a magnificent display of bonsais, including some astoundingly old camellia plants being reinvented as bonsai specimens. To be honest, I am not at all sure what the lady in purple was there for – simply temporary decoration, I guess. The golden spades were lined up for an official camellia planting ceremony in Yu Er Park. Mark spends some time linseed oiling tool handles at home and at times he crafts new handles from scratch so the timber handles caught his eye. Closer inspection revealed that they are coated in woodgrain stickon plastic similar to kitchen drawer lining. It was all about the look for this ceremony.

On the Baotai Mount in Yongping at the forest administration station, the facilities were geared to the local market and a pretty astounding number of people turned out to witness the ceremonies on the day we were welcomed there to unveil a stone monument, enjoy lunch and walk amongst the wild reticulata camellia forest. There were times I felt that we were the exhibit, as much as the camellias, but always we were treated with great courtesy and kindness.

On the right is one view of the magnificent new glasshouse at Kunming. It has not yet been fully completed and opened but it is pretty amazing. It appeared they were giving the new glasshouse at Wisley in the UK a run for their money in the Grand Glasshouse Stakes. We were surprised how cold Kunming was, having understood it to have a similar climate to ours at home. Certainly the spring had been unusually cold, but it was clear that they have much colder winters than we have, though dry. Our winters are neither particularly cold nor at all dry but we grow many plants from this area of China.

The old and the new in Xizhou Old Town, snapped in a moment of time (which is why it is a little fuzzy). The gentleman on the right appeared to be at home there – not a visitor – though he greeted us in English as he strode purposely on. He was one of the very few Western faces we saw not attached to our group. Visiting the areas we went to was a total immersion experience.

The fence on the right had me briefly fooled. From a distance, I thought it was a beautiful example of an old technique using tree branches. No. It is actually a fine example of what you can do with concrete. The shade of green new paint is a bit of a giveaway but I imagine it may age quite gracefully.

021

A Red Letter Day

The wretched power lines draped across our park

Yesterday was a red letter day here. The electricity lines that crossed over the area we call the park were removed. Those lines had nothing to do with us. Our power comes from another line. Back when electricity was first laid on for the district, the publicly owned supplier took a shortcut across our property with a very long span between poles. When there is a long span, the lines get far more of a sway on them. In the decades since, the lines were sold to a private company and our trees grew. And grew. Most of the problem trees were planted by Mark’s father, Felix, who seriously miscalculated how tall they would grow but left the problem to the next generation.

Mark had been getting increasingly anxious about the trees and the power lines. Some trees, like the magnolias, could have branches removed without destroying the tree but we are talking about the upper reaches of an extension ladder to access those branches.

Michelia doltsopa ‘Rusty’ reaching into the wires

Even Magnolia doltsopa ‘Rusty’, though planted on the lowest point, was into the wires. This is a grand specimen and we were reluctant to start interfering with its magnificent stature. I see I calculated in the past that ‘Rusty’ takes up around 300 square metres of ground area, growing from a single central leader. It can now attain its potential mature size and height.

Pinus montezumae has had a reprieve from its death sentence

More problematic were the conifers. It is not possible to take the central leader out of a conifer and keep a good tree. Indeed, Pinus montezumae was going to have to be removed entirely. Then there were the next trees just out from the lines but at risk of downing them should they fall. The handsome metasequoia or dawn redwood is about 30 metres high but still a juvenile at only 65 years or so. We were always worried that its grip on the ground may not be that good and, should it fall the wrong way, it would bring down the wires. Indeed, the wires have been brought down twice in our time here – both times by falling poplars that were planted long before electricity lines were strung through the area.

But no more. Yesterday the lines were removed as part of an upgrade on that particular section. We could not be more delighted. And relieved. At least some of the trees should now be free to grow to their maximum size and maturity long past our lifetime.

Dropping the lines yesterday

Postcards of China 4 – rocks, improving vehicles and plants, both ubiquitous and not

Foshan (46) Foshan is a new city that was completely rebuilt during China’s boom times – which seems to have slowed to a near standstill in the last couple of years. We were amazed to see the scale of businesses selling mature trees, rocks and even stalagmites and stalactites. It is big machinery that has made this commercial activity possible and many were very beautiful. We couldn’t help but wonder how much of surrounding countryside has been pillaged to bring in these pieces of nature for urban decoration. We were told that it is now illegal to mine the stalagmites and stalactites but you never know, when you are on brief visit, whether you are just being told what the guide thinks you want to hear.

Foshan (60)

I did admire the stone water containers and the slab stools – no longer chipped and shaped by hand

Foshan (6) Certainly the nursery industry in southern China appeared to be booming and the scale of new public plantings was seriously impressive. We reflected ruefully on the battle we lost, trying to save many of the pohutukawa that once lined the Waitara River back home. About 30 mature trees were removed to make way for grass and concrete. It wouldn’t have happened in China, we thought. Those trees would have been saved, likely clipped to giant bonsais and relocated. The new planting would not have been limited to three small replacement specimens, especially given the prime location in the middle of the town. It would have been an opportunity to create something of beauty and social benefit to be appreciated by the community. Sometimes we just ain’t as enlightened as we like to think we are.

Mayodendron igneum – a tree jasmine, the signage said – was a spectacular example of cauliflory growth found in Xishuangabanna. That is when a plant flowers and fruits from its main trunk. Most plants flower on either new season’s or the previous season’s growth. A few flower from the oldest growth. We see cauliflory growth on Ficus antiarus and Tecomanthe venusta here, but it is not particularly common. The flying insect you can see in the photo looked distinctly like an aggressive hornet. I was cautious.

Mark was delighted to see these, the most basic of machines, still a-chuggin’ around. We first saw them maybe 14 years ago in the north of Vietnam, where they were the main transporter of heavy loads. The Vietnamese called them ‘improving vehicles’, our guide told us (something may have been lost in translation). There weren’t huge numbers of them around Dali, but enough to have us looking as they chugged past, often carrying loads way in excess of what one could ever imagine possible.

Aside from these utility workhorses from an earlier age, the vehicle stock we saw was modern and high quality. The most interesting aspect was the extent to which they are embracing electric vehicles – cars, small coaches and many motor scooters. While some of the charging was done by extension cords across the pavement, we could learn from the extent to which they are embracing electric vehicles.

U-turns permitted

A word about Chinese driving, as we found it, this being a hot topic in New Zealand. Yes, they are legally permitted to do U-turns in some pretty interesting locations and even the largest of vehicles will do so. And it is true that they will overtake on blind corners. We noticed. Well, we experienced it. But they do not have a death wish. They only overtake on corners where there is room for a third vehicle to pass to the side, in case of oncoming traffic. What they are relying on is everybody knowing the width of their vehicles to within a few centimetres and extremely defensive driving. Also the traffic speeds were low. It is no wonder they get into trouble on NZ roads where our driving is at much higher speed and aggressive, not defensive, and where there is an expectation that road rules are rigid at all times.

Ubiquitous plants of the world! I don’t travel enough to do an exhaustive study on this topic, but everywhere we go, we seem to see both the bougainvillea and poinsettia. To that can be added the jacaranda (but I can’t recall seeing these in China though I would wager they are there). I am not so keen on the poinsettia but I am pretty sure I have photographed bougainvilleas from Pacifica to Asia to Europe. Truly international plants these days.

Glimpses of magnolia in China

No yellow denudata image – just soulangeanas at Kunming Botanic Gardens

I missed photographing the most interesting magnolia we saw on our recent trip to China. It looked to be a roadside amenity planting of the yellow form of Magnolia denudata. Or it may have been one of the many big tree nurseries we saw. Because we were in a moving entourage of coaches, we couldn’t stop. I can’t think why it never occurred to us to hop into a taxi and return to the site. It is not as if taxis are expensive in China.

As far as we know, the yellow form of denudata is not in New Zealand, though it would be legal to bring it in because the species is already here. We first heard about it – but did not see it – in Italy about 10 years ago but we didn’t get too excited because we figured it was probably more cream than yellow. I think I did a search on it at the time and found Magnolia denudata ‘Fei Huang’ or ‘Yellow River’ widely available in Europe with assorted photos showing colour from cream through to bright yellow, but the authoritative sources leaned to describing it as cream with pale yellow tint at best. So we were taken aback by the trees we saw in bloom in China which were indubitably yellow and with a different flower form to the American yellows bred from M. acuminata. We kept enquiring about it as we passed through other areas, but failed to find out more information. It may have been a particularly good form that we were looking at. I just mention this in case anybody happens to be driving along the access road to Longxiadeng Village, which I am pretty sure is where we saw it.

Magnolia campellii at Mount Baotai

We were of course focussed on camellias for this trip. It was the International Camellia Congress after all, but we had hoped to catch some glimpses of magnolias along the way. The M. campbelli at the Forest Administration Station on Baotai Mount was in full bloom but not the best form we have seen of this species.

Tropical Magnolia balansae

Because we were not there to look at magnolias, Mark took solace in the sight of a solitary tropical specimen at the botanical garden in Xishuangbanna. Magnolia balansae (formerly a michelia) is not one we know at all but there are many tropical species that we don’t have in this country and which are therefore of curiosity value only. It was very handsome, was M. balansae, but large. With small flowers.

Professor Sun Weibang, Tony Barnes and moi at Kunming

I was honoured to be taken to meet Professor Sun Weibang at the Kunming Institute of Botany. Alas Mark was back in the hotel room, dying of the plague (a bad bout of the flu, to be accurate) so I was painfully aware that I was deputising for him at that meeting with a world expert on magnolia. We bonded over the magnificent book, Magnolias in Art and Cultivation, discovering a mutual friendship with one of the authors. There are several pages devoted to the Jury hybrids.

The most interesting aspect of my conversation with Professor Sun was his explanation that their focus had moved away from hybridising to conservation. This was demonstrated clearly when I subsequently came across the huge specimen of Magnolia sinica (formerly known as a manglietia). It was surrounded by scaffolding which is there to enable the systematic collection of seed. For this is one of the most endangered magnolia species in the world. There are only somewhere between 10 and 22 plants known in the wild and there is a concerted effort to build stocks for replanting.

Magnolia sinica

The conservation of indigenous plants was a theme that came through repeatedly on this trip to China. We were not in a position to work out whether the efforts in the field match the official talk, but there is certainly a high level of awareness and public funding being made available for this officially sanctioned priority. It made us think about the quaintly imperialist attitude that sees some in the West thinking that we can preserve the world’s flora. Unless it is a massive project such as the international seed bank at Kew, I think we may over-rate our efforts. There are times we wonder whether the ratepayers of Taranaki realise they are paying to conserve rhododendrons while some of our native flora is under extreme threat. And, frankly, one of this plant here and one of that plant there is not a significant effort in preserving another country’s native flora. This is not to deride the importance of maintaining genetic diversity but the maintenance of indigenous species is surely best supported in their country of origin, where possible.

Random michelia at Kunming. Not, as suggested, M. laevifolia, I think.

Stumperies – an ecological option

Our Rimu Avenue with its informal raised beds which are essentially a stumpery

Stumperies are a thing, overseas if not so much in New Zealand. After all, Prince Charles has one at Highgrove. So has Wisley, the Royal Horticulture Society’s flagship gardens. Indeed, many of the best gardens have a stumpery. The first deliberate construction of old tree roots and stumps is attributed to Biddulph Grange in Britain, where the keen owner wanted to display his fern collection but other shade gardens through history must have had incidental stumperies. They are hailed these days as ecological havens.

When you think about it, the stumpery is basically a naturalistic alternative to trendy insect hotels. But instead of being a confined hotel, it is more like an entire estate.

Our stumperies have rather more pragmatic origins than caring for the under-appreciated critters of the garden. In the area we call the rimu avenue, it has evolved over decades. The rimus are so grand and large now that they suck all the goodness and moisture from the ground around them. Our stump and log constructions are a means of getting informal raised beds so we can establish underplantings, including epiphytic plants like vireya rhododendron species and zygocactus, the so-called chain cactus. It adds a lot more interest and gardening potential to have these elevated areas and pockets for planting amongst the tree stumps and trunks.

When we have dug out the stumps of larger plants, these are re-sited to shade areas, sometimes placed upside down so the roots give more visual interest. There they can gently decay, but in the process they add some structure and height to otherwise flat areas dominated by very tall trees.

Allowing nature to create a stumpery – two pine logs left where they fell

The more substantial stumpery efforts come on the other side of the garden where we have venerable old pine trees. As with the rimus, they are up to 140 years old. Unlike the rimus, they lack a good grip below ground and from time to time, one falls. Four plus a gum tree of the same age have done so in recent years. They cause surprisingly little damage when they fall but were we to try and extract the enormous trunks, it would create a swathe of destruction. We do a cleanup of the foliage, the side branches and the prodigious quantities of pine cones but leave the main trunk where it fell and simply work around it, chainsawing back to clear paths where we need to.

A naturally developing ecological haven on fallen poplar logs

When our instant stumpery installations arrive, they are invariably covered in epiphytes – native astelias and collospermums in particular. We thin these if required but basically leave it to nature to colonise these new areas, adding in special plants to add interest. The ferns just arrive. Dendrobium and cymbidium orchids add seasonal colour and settle in readily. Clivias are often happy at the base. Hostas tend to need more soil than is offered in these situations, but rogersias and farfugiums have settled in well. Hippeastrums and scadoxus are bulbs that we find are happy in this environment and common old impatiens seeds down and adds some summer blooms.

A small stumpery (or stumpette) in a narrow, shaded border in Pat and Brian Woods garden in Waitara

You don’t need a large area to establish a stumpery. Many suburban homes will have a dark and narrow back border (usually the home of the wheelie and recycling bins and the garden hose). As long as you have half or metre or more in width and are not scared of wetas, you can bring in a smaller stump or length of tree trunk and start establishing shade loving plants around it. A little shade garden will contribute far more to a healthy eco-system than gravelling or paving and can be genuinely low maintenance. Fewer weeds grow in shade and once plants are established, it becomes a self maintaining system with the falling leaf litter and gently decaying wood feeding the soil. I did pause to wonder if a very small stumpery became stumperesque in style, or maybe a stumpette?

Amusingly, according to the information board on Wisley’s stumpery, “Not everyone appreciates an artistic garden feature. When the Duke of Edinburgh first laid eyes on the Highgrove stumpery, he allegedly turned to Prince Charles and said, ‘When are you going to set fire to this lot?’”

A natural-formed seat in the stumpery at Wisley, though it would look better without the dedication plaque

First published in the May issue of NZ Gardener and reprinted here with their permission.

Tikorangi The Jury Garden

Mark and Abbie Jury

The Final Postcards of China – a land of contrast

A Red Letter Day

Postcards of China 4 – rocks, improving vehicles and plants, both ubiquitous and not

Glimpses of magnolia in China

Stumperies – an ecological option

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