Chinese War Heroes

Although lots has been happening in the last few weeks, I've been too lazy to write. Oops! Anyway, today has been interesting. This morning at 8am I joined a couple of hundred 12 year olds from my base school for the annual visit to the local War Heroes cemetery. I tried to get to the bottom of who exactly was buried there but it's still a bit of a mystery. I think that it's mainly (unknown) Red Army folk who died fighting in Danfeng and couldn't be sent home to their families as no-one knew who they were. The dates range from the early 1940s (WWII casualties) to the 1960s.



When I showed up at school, all the staff were dressed in black suits but no-one had told me that was the dress code. Luckily, I had a black cardigan handy which seemed to do. I was given a white paper flower to wear (similar to our Nov 11th poppies) with some writing on it which I was told said the equivalent of 'in memoriam.'




This coming weekend is the Tomb Sweeping Day celebrations where the Chinese honour their ancestors and so the date of the war heroes rememberance is linked to that.

The first two pupils carried a traditional funeral decoration which was the first time I've had the chance to examine one closely. I was delighted to find out that they are made almost entirely of recycled materials, usually used biscuit, crisp or sweet wrappers (or any food wrapper made of shiny foil!)

There was a one minute silence and a few speeches and then the pupils all walked round the cemetery and chose a grave to lie their paper flower on. Quite touching really. And like school trips anywhere, when the over excited kids arrived at the memorial, there were teachers trying to direct them everywhere - made more difficult by the fact that half of them were carrying 10 foot flags!.

A wander through Xi'an

One of my favourite things to do in Xi'an is wander through the food section of the muslim market. It's a photographer's dream - you can't take more than a couple of steps without seeing something you want to take a picture of. And unlike muslim markets in other parts of the world, everything's jumbled together. There isn't a separate meat street or fruit street or fish street. Here you can have a shop selling nuts and seeds next to a roasted chicken stall next to a bakery - which makes for a delightful mix of colours, shapes and smells.

Typical Chinese butcher's shop

Roasted chickens for sale

Boy selling various meat kebabs

baked seed cakes
cakes and pastries for sale - some delicious, some not, and some with surprising centres like bean curd or vegetables!