wanderingwilcox

New Zealand women

2007-05-07T05:28:00.000-07:00

Not only does New Zealand have a female prime minister, 40% of its MP’s are women. Though given the vote in 1893, it was over half a century before the first female minister, Mabel Howard was appointed. Ironically, her ministerial achievements are less well remembered than the day she stood up in Parliament holding up two pairs of bloomers and demanding that sizes be standardised. Pictures show a waste bad variation of 6 inches between two pairs of extra large female attire.
Maybe there will be a time in the future when sizes on a garments are standardized. In the meantime, if I want to attain the male equivalent of the Liz Hurley figure I’ll apparently have to settle for a lettuce leaf and a glass of water for lunch. Just as long as I don't have to do as much running as 50% of New Zealanders appear to do daily.

I only walked out onto a hotel corridor to find two joggers trying to trample me down.

South Pacific Highways and village names

2007-05-07T05:23:00.000-07:00

Those versed in European languages will know that mastery of German street and place names is greatly aided by understanding the parts that the word breaks down into.

Those who irregularly travel to the Principality, may find Welsh difficult, but again familiarity in due course starts to inform understanding.

I guess Maori is the same. But the Wellington to Paraparauma train stops at Kaiwarawara, Porirua, Paremata, Plimmerton,
Pukerua Bay and Paekakariki.

It makes the St.Petersburg Metro seem a doddle.

And while I’m at it, what self respecting bather would swim at Peka Peka Beach?

Biggest building

2007-05-07T05:20:00.000-07:00

Given the regularity of volcanic eruptions in New Zealand, its no wonder that when Government Buildings were erected in 1876 they were built of wood rather than stone. When Mt. Tarawera erupted in 1886, destroying the unique silica terraces in the process, there were probably many who felt the choice of material was appropriate. Not only that, they were proud that Wellington boasted the largest wooden built structure in the world.

Unfortunately, it was later revealed that the Todaiji Temple in Nara, Japan was not only 150 years older, but was substantially bigger. In spite of its vastness, the latter building was only two thirds the size of the temple it replaced.

Inspired to write

2007-05-07T05:13:00.000-07:00

Long time since I wrote a song, but New Zealand inspired me. Its probably the boiling earth that does it.
This is the chorus. Still working on the tune and refining the verses.

Ask forgiveness, not permission
Be outraged and brave, and bold
Seek your fortune, but remember
Once you’re rich, to share your gold.
Stalk the borders of experience,
Hone the razors of your mind,
You’ll discover there’s no pleasure
Beats the love of humankind.
Stand your ground and fight your corner,
Don’t conform, act ‘cause its right
And you’ll move in with the Angels

When your daylight turns to night.

2007-05-07T05:10:00.000-07:00

In the circumstances I breached the 2797 metre summit and enjoyed the exhilarating experience of peering down into two mammoth volcanic craters, filled with ice and snow, yet active within the last decade.

The icing on the cake was relaxing afterwards in a steaming open air hot spring pool. Pity the showers were plumbed in to the glacier though.

Equipped?

2007-05-07T05:01:00.000-07:00

You often read about ill-equipped people attempting to climb mountains and unplugging their brains before they set forth. Sometimes it ends in tradgedy, mostly people get away with it. Mea culpa.

By the time I reached the foot of Mt it was already 15C and the chair lift that covered the lower reaches beckoned. However, in spite of others being clad in shorts, trainers and tee shirts, there were others boasting furry hats and weatherproofs, which suggested I should have at least a pair of jeans over my shorts, a jumper and windcheater, a cap and a pair of socks to double up as gloves. Even so, when we had climbed the glacier and passed 2,500 metres my “get back down” mind set was starting to dominate. Indeed, it would probably have won out were it not for the fact I was above the rapidly ascending clouds and the route back was shrouded in both mist and mystery.

Seeking comfort from my snickers bar was a mistake as the cold had already turned into nut brittle.

More female councillors in India, than the rest of the world

2007-05-07T04:54:00.000-07:00

Even those of us with international experience sometimes need to do a double take when we have to deal with statistics that relate to China and India. My friend Daniyal Aziz , Chairman of the National Reconstruction Bureau of Pakistan, asked Mani Shankar Aiyar, the Minister of Panchayati Raj and Youth Affairs in India about Capacity building and communication in India.

“Its not easy communicating with our 3.2 Million councillors," came the reply, " particularly when they speak 26 different languages. We are not like the Chinese who can send out 8 million notices a week to their politicians. Even though they can’t understand each other’s language in China, at least they can all read the same script.”

2007-04-17T04:17:00.000-07:00

At the end of the 19th Century James Carrol, New Zealand Minister for native affairs sent a gift of Angora goats to the people of the Te Urewera.

He’d hoped that despatching the herd to the mountain interior of the region would spur the growth of a lucrative manufacturing industry. Unfortunately, soon after the sure footed creatures became established, their wild offspring created so much damage to the flora and fauna that all of them had to be culled.

Notes from New Zealand

2007-01-21T09:16:00.001-08:00

There can be no better metaphor to illustrate the strength of the dictum that the best solutions are local. Indeed, the damage inflicted on New Zealand’s eco system in the last 200 years is a living and recent example of how imposed solutions can have devastatingly damaging effects on different areas. Because it works in Auckland New Zealand, it may not be the right solution for Bishop Auckland in County Durham, but let’s approach things with an open mind.

Safety

2007-01-21T09:03:00.000-08:00

Sometimes its quite a shock to see people on motor bikes and scooters without a helmet. There's a duty to wear one, but as ever, some people are totally irresponsible and flaunt Spanish law and the authority of the State. If you share my sense of outrage, write to the man in the picture and let him know what you think.

Flamenco

2007-01-21T08:59:00.000-08:00

An assault on all the senses. As tactile, colourful and challenging as bullfighting, but without the bull.

Save the cast iron bulls, not those in the ring

2007-01-21T08:49:00.000-08:00

Controversy reigned when Spain introduced a ban on roadside advertising. The Osborne brandy company immediately removed their name from the huge bull structures that they had erected throughout Andalucia. Finally ordered to remove them all a "Save the bulls " campaign put an end to all that. They still grace the hilltops around Sevilla.

Sent from Sevilla

2007-01-20T08:46:00.000-08:00

In the summer Sevilla’s hell, in the winter its paradise.

I was in the Andalusian Capital at the invitation of UN-HABITAT to better understand why cities and regions in the world are concerned about the legitimacy of municipalities engaging beyond national boundaries. Basically, the question is, “Is international twinning legal?”, but more of that later.

Before the conference began I was already in Spain, so yet again Derbyshire didn’t have to pick up the tabs for my travel. I’d been to the Primera Liga game between Real Betis and Celta Vigo. Being a fan of Betis is the equivalent of being a Manchester City supporter in England’s greatest city. Both Sevilla and Manchester United topped their respective leagues at the turn of the year whilst their fellow clubs languished in the lower reaches.

However, that’s where the similarities end.

Back in 1936, Betis won the Copa del Rey. The players and management were Communists, so General Franco had them all shot. Horrendous though this sounds, the international value placed on human life at the time was not high. At the time of Franco’s indulgence, Hitler was exterminating thousands of gypsies and in Russia a year later, Yezhov signed order 00485. As a result 350,000 were arrested and 247,157, mainly Poles were shot. Nor were atrocities confined to Europe. During the so-called Rape of Nanjing at the end of 1937 between 150,000 to 300,000 Chinese civilians were murdered by the Japanese.

These events from the ‘30’s offer a perspective on present day involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. More importantly, they remind us of the important role that the EC has played in sustaining peace between Member States who spent the whole of their previous history warring, murdering, and mutilating each other. Perhaps it’s something that Euro sceptics need to bear in mind when having their wilder separatist fantasies.

But back to Seville. I learned that the first ever municipal international twinning agreement between Bristol and Hannover is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year. Today, there are 34,000 municipal twinning links across the 26 member states of the EU. So popular is twinning with English speaking parts of Europe that it was alleged that Ireland was now full, as indeed is Derbyshire. At a rough count an impressive one million Europeans a year are annually engaged in intercultural exchange.

How much better that millions are visiting each other in a spirit of mutual friendship, rather than with the intent to kill? But what if all this twinning is illegal? Well first of all it isn’t, secondly, even if it is, who in their right mind would want to stop it and even if they tried, who would support them?

There are no certainties in life. Progress is never smooth. But I was rather pleased at the start of 2007 to be in Spain with German, French, Italian, Welsh and Somali citizens seeking to further expand and understand municipal links with Serbians, Turkish Cypriots, Moroccans, Israelis and Americans.

May we continue to progress and may municipalities carry on being key leaders in the search for world peace and harmony.

5 JANUARY

At the start of every year hotel, flight and car hire prices are cheap. For me, four days in Spain in a Punto came in at only £51. So when I got a notice on the car window advising me that I faced a parking fine of £52, what had first appeared a bargain subsequently began to look like a liability. I don’t know whether I’m going to avoid payment of the fine because instruction on how it might be annulled were difficult to understand. A tiny envelope hidden under the windscreen wiper carried the following orders......

Their vehicle has been denounced. If you want to paralyze the sanction procedure we remind him that he/she can make it following these instructions.

It denounces to park without qualifying distinguishing characteristics. It has a term of 60 minutes from their imposition. To go to the nearest retailer and to negotiate the annulment rate that indicates him in the accusation.

It denounces to surpass the time authorised in the qualifying distinguishing characteristic.....

That's the point at which I decided to drive off and pray for an administrative error.

Santa’s sleigh isn’t geared to daytime temperatures in excess of 20 Celsius, so instead of visiting Spanish children in December, the three Kings step in, and hand out presents to children after they’ve gone to bed on the 5th January. Of course, any celebrations are an excuse for a festival in Spain and the streets and calles of cities fill with chariots whose occupants shower the watching populace with millions of sweets. Some catch the proffered toffees, whilst the more astute use upturned umbrellas to ensure Spanish dentists stay in business for the rest of the year. Its fun, t’s free and a joy to behold as parents and grandparents grovel around for spilled sweets to keep their excited siblings happy and fulfilled.

Where I stood, a thousand kids were playing on the street corners and in the plazas. They were running, racing, jostling, squealing, cheating and being children. Young girls verging on womanhood joined in, then checked and remembered that they were becoming more sophisticated. Restaurants tills were by now pregnant with expectation. Frustrated residents had already abandoned themselves to the bars. Tables filled even before the procession arrived. More strikingly for an Englishman abroad, throughout the whole celebration I saw no-one with a can of alcohol, no drunken behaviour, no yobbishness, no louts and felt no threat of violence and no fear of attack on the lonely walk back to the hotel.

6 JANUARY

Whilst the bullfighting ring in Cordoba (actually it’s a square) was the first constructed in Spain, the one in Sevilla was a close second. Compared with the Roman Amphitheatres in Nimes, Arles and Bayonne, Spanish rings are relatively modern and at this time of year subject to extensive renovation in anticipating of the start of the season.

In Sevilla, from mid-April and for next 30 days there are daily fights, each commencing at 5.00 pm and lasting the 2 hours it takes to dispose of six bulls. Bullfighting has always been brutal and it wasn’t until 1928 that the horses, from which the picadors prod the back of the bull’s neck, were given protection from the horns of their assailants.

In recent years the odds against the bulls have significantly lengthened. At the turn of the 20th Century, 6 men a year would die in Sevilla as a result of gorings, trampings and other unfortunate incidents that are part and parcel of the bullfight. But since 1992 there have been no human deaths in the Sevilla ring. Most people I know think bullfighting is uncouth and maybe they are right, but as the UK Government has found, legislation to ban blood sports (in this case foxhunting) is one thing. Enforcing it is something else.

The problem of enforcement has not deterred my old mate Robert Evans MEP from launching a European Parliament campaign to stop the EU subsidising farmers who breed the 40,000 bulls slaughtered in the ring each year. I have to wish him luck even though I’m an officianado.

On the wider front, I’m often wrong, but wouldn’t wager any money on bullfighting being banished this century. Its as embodied in the Spanish, Basque and Catalan cultures as is the right to carry a gun in America and the right to drive as fast as the car will go is considered a human right by so many Germans.

My first night in Sevilla is a shock as I ponderously retrace my steps past the Alcazar and the Cathedral and find that the whole town is awash with water. When I round a corner, a man in orange waterproofs squirts a few litres in my direction. Sevilla municipality doesn’t sweep the streets every night, it washes them clean 365 times a year.

7 JANUARY

For the British, Spain and Sherry are synonymous. When Sir Francis Drake used to visit Spain he allegedly never left without 300 barrels of Sherry in the hold of his boat, though I'm not sure whether they ewre paid for or stolen. With the Sherry triangle only an hour’s drive south of Sevilla, a visit to the bodegas of Jerez is a must. I chose Gonzales Byass – makers of Tio Pepe, Croft and a host of other branded sherries, brandies and vinegars. The tour was fascinating, the techniques deployed to mature the Sherry and maintain consistently are impressive, but the tasting was a disappointment. A glass of fino followed by one of Croft is about as stimulating to the taste buds as a slice of dry bread. If you want to go tasting in Jerez I suggest you try somewhere else.

People in Mediterranean countries love to swank. Sunday is the day to swank on. I remember by mum, who was a mill girl in Lancashire, used to tell me that Saturday night in Northern England was the time when everyone paraded up and down in their best clothes. But in Britain it’s a lost tradition, at least in most parts. The probable exception is perhaps the banks of the Tyne where men bare their chests to the icy December blasts coming from the Continent and girls clamber into dresses designed to reveal more flesh than a page 3 Sun pin-up.

In Sevilla the opposite is the case. The temperature gauge in the Plaza Espana read 18 C (65 F) but Sevilla’s men and women are clad in fur lined coats, knee length boots or thick woollen stockings. Top coats and scarves alike are subtle browns, with tinges of green, rich fauns and sombre yellows meticulously mixed for every stroll. The kids are out too. Hundreds of them, similarly dressed to the nine’s, showing off their new clothes and running amok whilst locals greet workmates and family with an enthusiasm that suggests that they have not met for years, whereas in fact they were in the same street the week before and had exchanged exactly the same greetings.

Sevilla starts to wake up at around 8.00 pm and there’s a good 7 hours of eating and gentle sipping to be done before the tapas bars and the entertainment places start to close down.

Tasty tapas, barrels of brandy, homemade and home produced foods of fabulous diversity are available on every corner. Black puddings, piquant chorizo sausages, cow’s stomach in tomatoes (tripe), tinned tuna and deep fried polpo and calamares are common to almost all menus. Then, of course, there’s paella, olives, succulent breads basted in tomatoes and latticed with savoury anchovies. Then comes the main course and afterwards the flamenco.

I manage to go to a flamenco show every night. Just like bullfighting can grow on you the more you understand its subtleties, so I find too that flamenco is much more than clog dancing with castanets. The dancers can talk with their feet, drum with their feet, bang and blast and boom with their feet whilst their accompanists sing, clap and strum guitars to a complex rhythm that challenges those of use more familiar with three/four time.

For me, flamenco is fabulous because you don’t have to join in. You can admire from near or far from front or side. You can be tempted by the occasional glimpse of calf as the women lift their skirts and sneer their way through their routines, but as long as you shut up and watch, no-one tries to drag you on to the dance floor. The more you watch the more your admiration grows. With a clatter of shoes and the click of castanets, the plaintive contribution of the main singers challenges your general tonal expectations and meant for me that I still have to work out how sliding tones can be so compatible with the crisp melodies which emerge from the guitar.

8 JANUARY

The UN Habitat Conference began at Spanish time, only 20 minutes later than it was programmed to start. The Germans and Brits had been there at 10.00 a.m. prompt and by 10.30 a.m. the Italians and Africans were also at their places. The Russians arrived at 10 o’clock and signed in. They had finally obtained visas. The Italian tea service they bought as a gift was left at the door. They departed at 5 minutes past 10 and were never seen again.

No-one told the Mayor of Sevilla that his Development Officer was translating the speech of the Deputy Mayor at the Conference. The Deputy knew his stuff and presented as one would expect a professor to do so. It was a good start but by the time he had finished the trend for the conference was set. We were an hour behind time and all contributions, mine included, took this as a cue to talk as long as the audience stayed awake.

A challenging contribution from the Harvard Law School’s Prof Gerald Frug on the legal issues pertaining to International Municipal Twinning arrangements sparked lively discussion as did Diana Lopez Caramazana’s attempt to create an international league table. Nothing gets the nationalist juices flowing like a table that unfairly puts you firmly at the bottom. When Professor of Law Dr. Fernanda Nicola, aided by the aristocratic Clementine do Brosses finished the morning session it was three o’clock. We were late, but not in Spanish time. Fernanda seemed delighted to evade immediate questions and fortified herself with a few glasses of red in order to respond robustly to any challenge to her presentation following lunch.

International conferences are often the key to accessing buildings not usually open to Joe and Josephine public. So it was with our invitation to a private evening opening of the Reales Alcazares. The King of Spain still has a room there for when he visits Sevilla, just as in the bull ring he has his own private box to view the demise of torro from the shade. Forget the history, the place at night is just atmosphere. A trickle of water, salt cod from the sea, warm stillness and good company combine to make the first half of the night memorable. Recollections beyond midnight are equally fond but cloaked by plunging into waves of Rioja and the rhythm of flamenco.

9 JANUARY

When there’s a presentation to make about Derbyshire then the adrenelin flows. Yesterday’s formal session hadn’t finished until 7.00 p.m., so there had been no time to write and prepare. Fortunately I can get by on two and a half hours sleep, so by the time conference was underway again I’d done my first five hours of the day. A brilliant, considered contribution from Sweden’s Ambassador Hans Corell, former legal adviser to UN President Kofi Anan, makes the start of the day stimulating and it stays that way.

A Conference is like a crepe suzette. For those unfamiliar with this most delicate of French pancake creations, the art of the crepe suzette is to smear the thinnest of pancakes with a mixture of sugar, butter, orange rind and Grande Marnier. You then fry the pancakes in butter, folding them into quarters as you go, making sure they at hot, but don’t burn. When they are ready…that’s the difference between the cook and the follower of recipe books…the cook knows when they are ready…..a glug of Grande Marnier is poured into the pan and your cigarette lighter ignites the alcohol, turnig the outside of the pancakes into a sublimely crisp toffee. Timing, confidence and ingredients are critical, but when it all comes together there is no more tantalising and satisfying a plateful of pudding.

So it was with this conference. There was humour, crisp analysis, surprise, good relationships and good listening for all. Lots of delegates wanted to visit Derbyshire after my presentation, though I’m not sure whether it was the pictures of Kinder Scout or my description of the profusion of the hallucigenic mushrooms which will attract them.

10th JANUARY

Yesterday ended at around 4a.m. when the German guys I had started talking to finally managed to sink their last pint and the flamenco dancer put her baby back into the pram and headed homewards through the confusingly narrow streets of the old city. Without a map I would have been totally lost. Indeed, even with a map I had struggled to find my way round Sevilla. It wasn’t until the second day that I twigged that the confusion arose because the map was printed East/West, rather than North/South. When I headed toward the sun at midday I was going East rather than South. They should never allow country boys into big cities huh?

Since I'd arrived in Andalucia, I’d had endless sunshine and sunny nights. The new year’s resolutions on drinking and diet had been spectacularly broken. As I was flying back Ryan Air with their stingy 15 kilo baggage limit there was no chance of taking the Rioja back with me, so me and Robert Rowlands polished it off in the hotel lobby before I headed off for the airport bus.

In spite of last night's short burst of sleep that qualified as a night of slumber, reading Simon Sebag Montefiori’s “The Court of the Red Czar” kept me awake. As we touched down in Liverpool, Stalin had murdered another 5 million people. Perhaps 40,000 bulls is 40,000 too many, but compared to the humans old Joe slaughtered it seems a modest number. On reflection, perhaps I should have beem less flippant about the disappearing Russians after all.

Destination Shanghai

2007-01-11T09:09:00.000-08:00

It all began in a paddy field in Nagano,Japan at the end of the last millennium.

"There's a Chinese guy wants to talk. He wants to twin with an English school", came the message as we tramped through fields filled with the most expensive rice in the world.

I met the aspiring twinner in a wooden bath that night. There was a poem about a horse written on a scroll on the wall of the farmhouse in which we were staying. My host read the poem in Japanese, the next woman spoke it in Mandarin and the final delivery came in Shanghai dialect.

All the speakers could read and understand the poem but none could follow it in the the language of the other. Thus began for me a consuming interest in the people and cultures of the Asian coast of the Pacific Rim and for my county an experience for our children which I suspect won't be bettered elsewhere in the UK.

In the third millennium thus far, hundreds of Derbyshire students have already enjoyed exchanges with schools and families across Japan and China. And by next year, if our latest plans hatch successfully, a third of our secondary schools will have direct interchanges with Japan and China, taking the number of students who have visited these countries into the thousands by the end of the decade.

There are two reasons for me planning a blog from Shanghai. Firstly, I want your sympathy. But secondly a little envy wouldn't come amiss either. After all, travelling east is not all jet lag and closeted meetings in smoke filled conference centres. There are sea slugs and snake skins to be sampled, freshly sliced and wriggling sea cucumbers to consume, delightful dogs to be digested and ducks sprinkled with deep fried crispy scorpions to be scoffed.

So as Derbyshire's dustbin for disgusting dietary items, imagine my delight when this summer, an invitation from Shanghai Foreign Languages School dropped on Dave's desk. Would I kindly fly, at their expense, to an International Symposium at the school in the week before Christmas.

Having checked that the four Shanghai soccer teams had a home game that week, I gladly accepted.

However, there's no such thing as a free lunch, so the penultimate sentence of their official October letter of invitation politely read "Besides, you are respectfully requested to provide a synopsis of your 3000 word thesis on Cross-cultural Education and Probationary International Elite Cultivation by the 9th November by fax or e-mail."!

Of course, I wasn't just going to present a paper. The visit was also a chance to go to many of the fourteen schools in the Yangpu district of Shanghai that the British Council identified as our next tranche of destinations for Derbyshire students.

Whilst Derbyshire will be responsible for drawing up the template agreements for international exchange relationships, there are going to be conditions on our schools before they become fully involved. Their domestic curriculum will need to be developed to incorporate Chinese cultural and language elements. There again, one of our top performing secondary schools in a highly deprived area already teaches Japanese to GCSE level. They have collaborative progression options available in conjunction with the local tertiary college to AS and A level and they did that even before becoming a specialist language college!

We are confident that if one can do it so can others. And looking ahead, what sort of parent nowadays wouldn't be rather pleased that in preparing their children for the third millennium, their school had already recognised the potentially enriching experience of engaging with the tiger economies.

And what, you may ask, about the 3000 word thesis on Cross-cultural Education and Probationary International Elite Cultivation? A doddle. My meanderings through Japanese texts had already equipped me well. They have the perfect proverb.

"SAVOUR THE DEADLINE. IT IS MERELY AN EXCUSE TO STAY AWAKE ALL NIGHT."

Dave Wilcox's "Blog from Shanghai" together with his provocative paper on Cross-cultural Education and Probationary International Elite Cultivation is available on http://wanderingwilcox.blogspot.com/

Pictorial blogging

2006-12-31T10:13:00.000-08:00

MY BLOG FROM SHANGHAI

2006-12-31T08:07:00.000-08:00

11 December 2006

“Excuse me. It not allowed to toilet in turbulence. Please return your seat.”

We were on the Shanghai flight, two hours out of Finland, bouncing gently over the Urals. More than half of the one hundred plus paying passengers in the rear section of the Boeing MD-11, saw me gingerly return to my seat and try to contain my own turbulence which had caused me to leave my seat in the first place.

By that time anyway, I had already decided this was my last trip with Finnair. Indeed, on the European leg of my flight from Manchester to Helsinki, the meal they served made me nostalgic for the reincarnation of Sabena.

Those who ever flew the former Belgian national airline rejoiced to a man when it finally went bust. Its very name became synonymous with terrible food, Sodding Awful Breakfast Ensures Never Again, was how most passengers spoke about Sabena.

So why the instant divorce from Finnair? Clean plane, nice staff, decent drinks trolley it had. But in the competitive long-haul market, with eight airlines offering Manchester/Shanghai cattle-class return for only £352.00, all that distinguishes the best from the rest is the succulence of the chicken breast. Others offer much more than the soggy wraps, dry bread and chocolate bars which characterised the Finnair offering.

Not that it had all been luxury. The early morning had been characterised by frantic phone calls to ensure that a one hundred and one year old constituent, who was trapped in her home because the grids outside were blocked was going to be able to do her usually weekly shop at Tesco. The great thing about being a local councillor is that it keeps your feet on the ground, even though occasionally your head may be in the clouds. The same could be said for my airline. It was certainly up in the clouds, but unfortunately its reputation with me just vanished into Finn air.

12 December 2002

“Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday and now all is well”.

When you travel east beyond Mumbai, you are never quite sure what time of day it is. As we banked down into Shanghai, having watched the dawn over Beijing, I knew that the folks at home were on their way to bed. Once to ground, I was aware that the most gargantuan of tasks was to challenge my Circadian rhythms and convert night time into afternoon and evening into day. So as they went to bed to dream, I landed in one. Shanghai is an architectural peach.. Fortunately, Communism mummified many of the colonial jewels, so that today, the frozen gems of the past sit beside some of the most challenging buildings of the third millennium.

Across the city there are outstanding examples of Georgian, Gothic, Neo-Classical and the Chicago styles, as well as Chinese Imperial courtyards.

Unique to Shanghai however, are the Shikumen.

Built by successful British and French speculators for the new white collar classes of Shanghai in the 1850’s, they are a unique mixture of an English terraced house, surrounding a Chinese courtyard. Initially built to house a single family, they were soon sub-let to a peasantry, drawn to the city by opportunity and prepared to share not only kitchens and outside bathrooms but also the Chinese chamber pot, the Matang.

In the 1920’s, “no dogs or Chinese” were the words that appeared on the entrance signs to the tiny green plot that rests at the confluence of Suzhau Creek and the Huangpu river, know as the Huangpu Park. The five park regulations, adopted in 1916, initially only denied access to dogs and bicycles, but a separate regulation later denied access to all Chinese, unless they were natives, servants or friends of foreigners.

So what a privilege it is, ninety years after the first banning order, to be organising links between schools in the Hangpu area and those in Derbyshire.

If anyone had asked me in advance where I’d most like to have established a link with Shanghai, I’d have adopted the Huangpu area. Not only does it have an evident vibrance, but it is home to the famous Shanghai bund and also the busiest shopping street in the world. Even before it was pedestrianised, at the turn of the millennium, the Nanjing Donglu attracted an estimated 1.7 million shoppers every Saturday and Sunday throughout the year. It remains a magnet for those with a propensity to spend.

In the interests of carbon neutrality, after a pre-lunch nap of about forty-five minutes I had asked my hosts for less of the limo and more of the metro. As ever, the public transport proved infinitely more interesting than the private for those who put people watching before privacy.

Of course, there is always a bigger risk of robbery, violence and pick-pocketing when you use the public system, which my chaperone unfortunately confirmed in the café in the Palace Hotel when he searched for his wallet and found it had gone.

A briefing session with the British Council and an excellent Chinese meal in a regenerated sector of the city adjacent to Peoples’ Square, was still insufficient to stop me snoozing in the rear of the taxi back to the hotel. In the lobby, a voluptuous Chinese chanteuse sang a thirties jazz song evocative of Shanghai between the World wars. Sadly, the restaurant tables in front of her were empty and her only audience was the accompanying pianist.

13 December 2006

“ Real Estate on the No 1 Site in Huang Pu is selling at 17,000 RMB a metre”, said Mrs Li.

Call that a round £1,200 a metre. It means that property prices in downtown Shanghai are now above those in many parts of England and rising faster. (Just by way of comparison, the average price per square metre in Cardiff- Wale’s most expensive city- is £1,700) I was on the site of the now reclaimed former military airport,which if Mrs Li’s ambitions were realised, would be adding another 80,000 people to the already crowded Huang Pu district of Shanghai. We had just left the completed second campus of Fudang University, which by September next year will house 10,000 students and 50,000 white mice.

Of course, building on a former military site has had its complications, but once the builders became familiar with the shells of explosives, the safety record significantly improved and causalities have since fallen.

The Huang Pu authorities have sought to build an ecological urban garden in an urban setting, harnessing the water, connecting the whole network to the Yellow River and providing a fisherman’s paradise beneath the newly planted shrubs, trees and flowers.

The day had started with flowers at the Huang Pu School of Shanghai Conservatory Music. Half of the 1,300 six to fifteen year olds at the school play musical instruments, amidst the poinsettias and chrysanthemums which grow vigorously from pots dotted throughout the campus.

A precocious seven year old welcomed me to her school in perfect English, said that she was about to perform for me and in front of her sixty contemporise from the primary school orchestra, proceeded to play with the virtuosity of a born musician, a lilting Chinese folk song, which finished to rapturous applause. She then proceeded to conduct the sixty piece orchestra of six to nine year olds, swinging the baton and tiptoeing along the touch line like Jose Mourinho on a better day. Whilst I much appreciated the performance, I also saw it as a wake up call for Britain. If these kids could perform so well in classes of fifty, why don’t we see similar standards back in the UK?

Across the road in the secondary school, the sixty piece orchestra blasted out the March of Toreadors from Carmen, then for their English guest, they played the “Red Dragonfly”, a Japanese song, on Indonesian instruments, its flow only interrupted by the flash and pop of the paparazzi who had inexplicably appeared immediately after my arrival. Even their presence didn’t stop me embarrassing myself with an inept display of musical talent on a bowed Chinese instrument whose owner had made playing look so easy.

14 December 2006

The next school I visited were planning to twin with Anthony Gell Sports College in Derbyshire. A so-called attached middle school of the Shanghai physical education university, half of their three hundred and eighty students were recruited from Shanghai, the remainder from the rest of China.

They talked of plans for the Beijing Olympics and of their strategy for stacking up further medals in London in 2012.

The Principal, who numbered Tai Boxing amongst his professional talents, showed us examples of Japanese karate, Korean Te Kaedo and Chinese Dragon Dancing, before taking us out to watch a Chinese flag ceremony in which Shirley, the English translator, was exercising with the kids.

“Important make teacher healthy too”, said the number two translator.

The new Head of Education at the Huang Pu Town Hall was the diminutive and charming Doctor Wu, who was just completing her second week in office. In a previous incarnation she’d been in England researching school leadership and inspection regimes and was anxious to replicate some of the good practice she had seen.

Over lunch I had been challenged to eat sliced dark greythousand year old duck eggs. The challenge is firstly to pick it up, secondly to swallow it and keep it down. The perfect gift for my cabinet colleagues back in Derbyshire. Shame about not being able to import foodstuffs I thought. The evening fare offered slightly more challenge. Chunks of lobster were attached to a skeleton by tendons and tendrils, which made lifting them from the plate without splashing the other guests in sauce an almost impossible task.

The most heart rending experience of the night was strolling past the supermarket and being forced into a double-take in the shop window next door. On two settees, stunningly beautiful Chinese girls clad in identical skimpy red tops, short black skirts and knee length boots lay sleeping in the window like puppies in a pet shop. Eyes closed, legs a akimbo, waiting to be awakened from their slumber by the next punter, they were presumably a twenty-first century hangover to the time when one in every dozen women were allegedly “metered, taxi-dancing” girls. “sing-song” hostesses and street girls. They don’t iron the newspapers before re-reading them like they used to in the thirties but some elements of Shanghai seem to remain eternal.

15 December 2006

Relatively unpleasant weather was an unwelcome element of the first morning of the Seminar on the “Education of International Cross-Cultural Preparatory Elites”, at which I had been I invited to present a paper.

Students at the Shanghai Foreign Languages School usually speak their own Shanghai dialect, Mandarin and one, two, three or four of the six other languages taught at the school, which are French, German, Spanish, English, Japanese and Russian.

It is true that these kids have been chosen on the basis of their ability. However, my experiences from early days had made it obvious that even where selection was not the case, teachers were able to harness the motivation of parents and children alike, in order to develop global citizens of the future.

Although this is was international symposium, with academics and practitioners from many parts of the world, the average age of the youngsters looking after their honoured guests was thirteen!

Even if we don’t find that awesome, which all of us agree we did, the prize winning students from the college made conference contributions that would be the envy of many and beyond the capacity of many more back in the homeland.

Fascinatingly, the Principal of the Shanghai Foreign Languages School makes his introductory presentation with one of his students and allows the learner to spend more time explaining the purpose of the Conference than he takes himself. In such circumstances, asking for evidence of output or achievement becomes churlish because it’s personified in the way in which the college presents itself. In that context it is hardly surprising that the students appear supremely confident as they have every right to be.

The day is as diverse as it is rich. The Conference Hall is located in the Sisu lecture hall which benefits from air conditioning, unlike the schools, which operate without either heating or conditioning. Winter temperatures are close to zero and height of summer humidity bathes you in sweat before, during and after every lecture and every musical and sports performance.

As part of our rich and diverse menu we hear a prize student present in CNN perfect prose before watching mock UN meeting in which students play ambassadors and deal impressively with difficult decisions of the day.

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16 December 2006

“There is nothing to be gained from playing a piano to a cow”.

Today was presentation day. The text is on http://www.derbyshire.gov.uk/Images/Global%20Citizens_tcm2-177495.doc .

Fortunately, I brought my laptop to China and had some visual materials which I had managed to paste into my presentation last night. Most of us believe that “A picture speaks a thousand words”, but nevertheless fail to use pictures and indeed visual aids of any kind. For sure, death by a thousand PowerPoint pictures is painful, but the opportunity to do so much more with a presentation is so often missed by people who consider that words are enough.

For me, it was Rudyard Kipling who identified the essence of a presentation –
“I have six honest serving men,
they serve me well and true,
their names are How and Where and When,
and Why and What and Who”.

My task was to illustrate how education can change the world; my challenge is that is still has a long way to go.

On this particular occasion I chose Breughel’s picture, “The Fall of Icarus”, to illustrate how education professionals throughout the world can meet, feel that they are making a difference, but find they have made little, if any, impact on the world as a consequence.

Bosche and Breughel vie for my nomination as the most significantly challenging western artists in history. I can’t speak for Pacific Rim paintings because almost all of them incorporate calligraphy which describes the emotions of the painter at the time of creation and as a consequence, as a westerner I have never managed to even start to understand the qualities of the calligraphy, never mind the intricacies of meaning which the Asian artist adds to his or her creation.

Icarus, was a now very modern character from Green mythology, who ignored the advice of his parents. Given the gift of wings to fly, he was advised that the wax that attached them to his body was liable to melt if he flew close to the sun. But Icarus was a young man. He flew higher and higher until suddenly he lost control and fell to his death. Of course, we now know that his wings did not melt, but that as a consequence of flying closer to the sun and higher in the sky, the wax on his wings actually froze rather than melted, but the outcome was the same.

Breughel presents the fall of Icarus on a typical sixteenth century Flemish canvas. In the background a galleon sails towards a sun-kissed city. In the foreground a peasant ploughs the field, much as he has done over the centuries. W H Auden’s poem on the fall of Icarus, more accurately describes the scene than any words I can choose

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

In the corner of the picture, Icarus has fallen to his death, but only his legs show as he tumbles head first into the water.

The theme is simple. As the family of Icarus, as educators in schools, we can feel very important when we are with each other. Certainly, Icarus himself and his family would have viewed his death as an event of great significance. But what goes on in the confines of a small family or a capsule of educational practice is nothing unless it influences the rest of the world.

The challenge for the educated is to use their newly acquired knowledge and understanding, but critically to feed it back into their communities so that they, as a consequence, increase the mutuality of understanding across the world, and hopefully contribute to the peace and understanding which the Shanghai Foreign Languages School identify as the objective of their mission, to transform the life, opportunities, engagement and fulfilment of their students.

17th December

"The husband is the head, the wife is the neck and the neck ensures the head turns in the right direction."

The discussion around the head and neck began as a consequence of me misguidedly stealing a piece of duck which the lady sitting next to me indicated that she had earmarked for her own consumption.

On formal occasions, Chinese food is served up on a lazy susan, (or in some cases a lazy sally).

For those unfamiliar with Chinese customs, around ten guests surround a table, the centre-piece of which is a huge glass plate which turns like a wheel. Dishes are placed on the wheel and diners help themselves to passing fayre. Particularly testing with chopsticks are sticky lotus roots, (which are sliced but which nevertheless, as a consequence of being stuffed with rice, often have a stronger seal that Bostik), prawns from which you have to remove the shells and heads with chopsticks and teeth without using your fingers, and of course the jelly fish, which when dried are ideally designed to evade puncture with a fork, never mind clamping by chopsticks.

The duck in question arrived at the table to my left, in a bowl thick with hoisin sauce and liberally sprinkled with spring onions and other greenery. Unfortunately, it sped clockwise, so that by the time it reached me, all the upper flesh had been consumed. Under the hoisin sauce however, I detected a leg which I lifted on to my plate, much to the disappointment of the lady next door. Although I offered to put the item I had chosen on to her plate, she refused and took some other part of the anatomy and put it on her own plate. It was only then that I realised that I had not chosen a leg, but in fact the head of the duck – tongue, brain, eyes, cheeks and all.

Critical to relationships with Chinese people is that they should not lose face and that you must appreciate their food. In this respect, in truth, they are not very different than their British counterparts, for having chosen the piece of meat which one of my Chinese hosts coveted, I felt I had no option other than to consume it in full. Luckily, it turned out to be delicious. Guests to the Wilcox household, who frequently come and sample the local delights, will no doubt take account of my reaction to this part of the duck when considering future invitations.

Having been under the impression that I had resolved the situation, imagine my despair when the fleshless duck had almost completed its second circuit, and this time, spotting the real leg below the thick sauce, I lifted it from the dish on the lazy susan and dropped it on my plate.

Again the lady to my left had a eureka moment.

“That’s my second favourite part of the duck”, she told me, again refusing my offer to take it from my plate.

Closer examination revealed that on this occasion I had plucked the neck of the duck from the sauce, at which point I presumed that when it was slaughtered it must have been inebriated because as poultry goes it was clearly legless.

Again, in order to save face, I consumed the delicious fleshy neck and understood why my companion had preferences for parts of a duck which I had never previously considered edible.

As ever, there’s nothing like a familiar food in an unfamiliar culture, challenging prejudice and making you reflect on where and how you registered that prejudice in the first place.

On the way back to the hotel, it was time to prepare for home. I passed the forty foot high Christmas tree and a sleeping woman dressed as Father Christmas at the entrance to her tiny grotto when the singer next to the piano, embarked on yet another rendition of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”.

Only a couple of days earlier, students from the Shanghai Foreign Languages School had conducted a lively debate on whether the Chinese should celebrate Christmas and in a tightly fought contest had decided the motion to the negative. Yet every shop, shopping mall and restaurant was decadent with Christmas lights, Christmas wishes, Christmas music and Christmas fun. But of course, this is Shanghai, the most exciting and vibrant of all Chinese cities, awash with entrepreneurs and joint venture opportunities and confident that in spite of Beijing hosting the Olympics, that the minor part that they will host in their soccer stadiums, will nevertheless be the highlight. I’m rather hoping I might be there to cheer for China.

How much better that would be if hundreds of youngsters from Derbyshire had already visited China and and knew the score in advance.