No sooner have I arrived back in Nanjing I am gone again. This time I am off to Guilin on my long awaited (20 years) follow-up expedition to three remote villages on the Li Jiang near the market town of Xing Ping.
Everything is set and I hope to catch up with my old friends, the botanist Wei Yi Gang and chef Lego. and of course there’s Mr Qi, the govt official who helped us 20 years ago. He is throwing a big party for us all tonight.
All together there will be foreigners: Me, Stephanie (British from Shanghai), John (South African from Shanghai) and Julian (German from Guilin). Chinese: Ivy, john’s partner, Xiao Mina who I met at Millfield this summer and I have been promised at least one interpreter from Mr Qi’s office. I am worried about his ability to come good on his promise as my contact there, Sigrid, said they were very busy and she knew nothing about it.
I hope Mr Qi does not want to lose face by refusing me what he had previously promised!
I fly today at 10:50am and Lynn has kindly arranged for her driver to take me there in comfort. Hopefully someone will be there to meet me at Guilin and John and Ivy should be waiting for me too.
I am hoping that we interview at least 12 families each day in the villages which will make 36 in total. If I can get more interpreters we can more but they are hard to get even when I offer free accomm and free food.
So don’t expect to hear from me for a while. There is limited email access and of course, without a VPN I cannot connect to Blogger. however, I will do my best and keep you all posted.