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Wishing you every happiness of the season…

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Posted on 28-12-2011

Filed Under (Blog) by Adam

Wishing you every happiness of the season -

and a year of regeneration and hope in 2012

Adam Williams

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Posted on 22-10-2011

Letter to Mr Y C Pan

Filed Under (Blog) by Adam

Y C Pan - Portrait

Dear Pan

I’m listening to the collection of Pensive Music that you once chose and recorded for me. Poignant, heart-rasping strings are playing against a calm clarichord in Handel’s Violin Sonata 1/12, together inducing a sense of melancholy that is at the same time measured, sure and comforting.

I’m not sure what words I can use to describe how I feel since I heard last week from your family that you had moved on to new adventures, but it must be something like the feeling induced by this music. I am on the one hand desperately sad and bereft that a great friend, a truly great friend under every definition of great, has parted from this world. Like all departures it marks the end of an era, bringing regret and irreparable loss.

On the other hand, your presence, in memory, in thought, in sheer pleasure of recollection, is as strong as ever, and I suspect will grow and strengthen over time. All those who knew you will remember with sheer joy all the different aspects of your Protean personality. I have been reading with laughter and sometimes a tear the tributes from all over the world that have been sent to your family and copied (in your own inimitable fashion) to everybody who knew you (nobody in this life SHARED more than you. Being your friend was like being a member of a select society) .

First there was your ‘satiable curtiosity’ (like that of the Elephant Child in Kipling’s ‘Just So Stories’) And there was indeed something child-like in your curiosity, for you saw the world with the same fathomless wonder which envelops every wide-eyed little boy or girl encountering a new experience, only in your case it lasted all your life. You were interested in everything, and you brought us along with you to share it. How many of us on a Sunday have been rousted out of somnolence and idleness because you had discovered the temple where the Eunuchs of the Imperial Court were buried, and we just had to have a picnic there? Or been whisked on a train two hundred miles on a long weekend because how could a further day go by without visiting the Buddhist Caves, hanging temples and 11th century wooden pagoda in Datong? Or been pulled away from dinner to make a call on the last Aisin Goro Princess to whom you were delivering a box of chocolates? And that was just in Beijing where I had the privilege of being your companion on such jaunts. Everywhere else in the world you did the same. I have never been to the Ukraine, or Southern India or the northeastern forests and swamps of Poland – but I feel I know them, because you sent long emails, with photographs and detailed descriptions of everywhere you had been. Every message from you was a history lesson. In my mind I stood with you on a windswept shore in the Crimea by a prehistoric mound and then, simply by rolling down the cursor on the screen, found myself in the abandoned caves that had once housed the submarines of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet, but we did not linger there in those damp, dripping shadows; next minute I was standing with you in cold clear sunlight by the walls of mediaeval Kiev and from there we went on to Chernobyl. All in one email! And when you were not emailing, you were sending CDs of local music you had compiled. You were working on all senses, Pan! And cylinders!

You were never what I would call a tourist, though. What you were doing was closer to the research of an 18th Century Encyclopaedist or explorer – a Diderot, a Linnaeus, a Banks – cataloguing knowledge for that vast Encyclopaedia that was your own prodigious memory, compiling facts to be compared and analysed, then brought into discussion so that your insights could benefit your work and the society in which you found yourself.

I have never met anybody who traversed so many cultures and so successfully made them your own. Your knowledge of European history was no less than that of China or Japan. You combined the philosophy of China with the scientific rationalism of the Enlightenment and the spiritualism of India. I’ll never forget the wonderful China dinner in which you pitted yourself in argument against your good friend, the senior economist of the World Bank in Beijing – alas I forget his name. For the listeners, it was extraordinary. With great erudition and sincerity on both sides, he, an Indian, argued the advantages of Chinese materialism over the spiritual democracy of India and you, a Chinese, argued with panache the reverse.

The Canadian Government was lucky to have you in its foreign service. You talked to me often about your aid work, though it was not on the professional side that I knew you. What I did see, from the outside, was a natural born diplomat, someone who could cross any cultural barrier with ease and charm, and through friendship give substance and meaning to international cooperation, cultural as well as economic. You did it with kindness and humour – mischievous, wicked humour, which made all of us love your company – but friendliness alone does not earn respect. That was earned by the steel inside you – you were not a man to suffer fools or villains gladly, and you had the virtues of stubbornness, anger and a lashing tongue at your command if it was merited. But even more potent than steel was your integrity.

You were undeniably an idealist. You saw the world as it should be and were determined to do your bit to move it in the direction of liberty and democracy, though you were never a preacher and were always rational and experienced enough to be aware that the Mountain doesn’t often come to Mahomet, especially in Communist China. Yet everybody who met you knew where you stood and that you were fearless in stating what you believed. When you kindly sent me your memoirs and I read about your courage as a young man standing up first to the Japanese, then the Kuomintang in Taiwan, it began to make sense, and I understood why, even though you clearly and vocally represented a system that was certainly in antipathy to China’s, many of its leading intellectuals and even ministers and vice ministers came to respect you, even visited your flat for dinner, because they valued your opinions and appreciated what you had to say. You had a remarkable gift, Pan. You could make people debate – and of course that is the first step towards liberty.

I think it was appropriate in your later years that you wrote a version of China’s Journey to the West. There always were elements in you of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King!

The music has stopped but I am finding that I am writing to you quite naturally, as if you can hear me. Well, if anybody can penetrate the veils of the after world to satisfy his curiosity about what’s going on on earth, it will be you. I like to think of you twinkling mischievously, Sun Wukong-like behind some cloud, looking down at what’s going on, checking on your old friends, though I know you’re also itching to explore whatever new dimension you’re finding out there.

But even if there’s nothing, I know you will have been content before the last light faded.

For besides the pleasure you gave us in your life, there is something else you have given us in your death. You have been an example to us. You have shown us what is unselfish courage, and you have done more than that, you have defied Fate and taken it into your hands.

I thought I knew you well, but I really got to know you during your last trials, after you had discovered the hideous fact that you had ALS. It might have broken a lesser man, or driven him to self pity or misanthropic introspection. You, however, saw it as a challenge. Quite simply, you made the decision to beat it. You set out to find a cure.

I consider myself fortunate that I was in Beijing where stem cell research was going on despite a world wide ban. We were able to find the one man on the planet who could help you, a modest physician who worked in a Military hospital called Dr An. It was painful, and very experimental, even dangerous treatment, but in astonishment I watched your relationship develop, not that of a doctor and patient, more that of a collaborator or fellow researcher. You meticulously noted every stage of your progress, feeding the information back to Dr An, as well as doctors in the West, so that they could learn and improve. It was one in a million odds that you would be cured. Dr An actually never told you you would be. But that didn’t deter you. You held the rate of the disease back for some years, and as the inevitable deterioration continued, you never lost your confidence, your hope or your good humour. It was always the old Pan I saw in the hospital when I visited, never the invalid, and like the old Pan, you, with Heng Ching by your side, played host, as well as you could, with whatever the hospital could provide. I could have been back in your home. We talked. We exchanged books. We debated. I realized your curiosity about life had not abated an iota – it was, well, insatiable.

Such courage, Pan. You would have thought lightly of it. You were being your stoic self. But everybody who had the honour of being with you was amazed as much as moved.

It was also wonderful to see you with Heng Ching. Her strength and indomitability matched yours. It is rare when you can see a couple where you can truly say, you are worthy of each other. And mature love and unselfishness is awesome.

The end of course came slowly. Nina and Nadia sent bulletins and we exchanged letters, although it was more and more difficult for you. The sadness I felt was buoyed by the love I knew was surrounding you. You did not have the monopoly of courage in your family, Pan.

A few weeks ago Nina wrote me saying you had a book for me and asked what address it was best to send it to. I didn’t reply immediately. I decided to send you a long letter full of ideas and politics which I thought might entertain you. I had it all there in my head, all the clever phrases and witticisms – but I never sat down to write it. Then I heard the news and realized it was too late. My sorrow was mixed with regret that I had lost a chance to say goodbye.

From Shanghai airport I phoned Heng Ching and Nina. They were both so calm that I almost broke down there in the airport lounge.

Then Heng Ching and Nadia told me how you had planned your end. You had waited selflessly through all your pain until the very last moment, and then with dignity, you had decided to make your farewells and go. You kept the initiative until the very end. You did it. You did defeat ALS. You controlled Fate.

I told Heng Ching you were the bravest man I had ever met. “I know,” she said.

So I decided to write to you after all. For somebody like you, there’s always time to say goodbye. You’ll hear me somehow.

Goodbye, Pan. I loved knowing you.

Adam

Heraclitus

They told me you were dying, they told me you were dead

They brought me bitter news to hear, and bitter tears to shed

I wept as I remembered, how often you and I

Had tired the sun with talking, and watched him down the sky.

And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest

A handful of grey ashes, long long ago at rest

Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales awake,

For Death he taketh all away, but those he cannot take.

William Johnson Cory

From The Morte d’Arthur

The sequel of to-day unsolders all

The goodliest fellowship of famous knights

Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep

They sleep — the men I loved. I think that we

Shall never more, at any future time,

Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds,

Walking about the gardens and the halls

Of Camelot, as in the days that were…

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

From The Book of the Courtier

There are dead in like maner manie other that are named in this boke, unto whom a man wold have thought that nature had promised a verie longe lief. But the thinge that should not be rehersed wythout teares is that the Dutchesse she is also dead. And if my minde be troubled with the losse of so manye frindes and good Lordes of myne, that have left me in this lief, as it were in a wildernes full of sorow, reason would it should with much more grief beare the heavinesse of the Dutchesse death, then of al the rest, bicause she was more worth then all the rest, and I was much more bound unto her then unto all the rest.

Baldassare Castiglione, lamenting the passing of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino and their court, and the great philosophical debates about chivalry and courtly love that used to be held in their beautiful palace. (Sir Thomas Hoby’s translation)

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La grappa di Ponte Bassano nel Bassano del Grappa (Grappa from the Bridge of Bassano)

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Posted on 12-09-2011

Filed Under (Blog) by Adam

Once a year, or whenever I can, I like to make a trip to the small provincial town of Bassano del Grappa, that rests under snow covered Monte Grappa at the northern edge of the Veneto Plain, where it touches the Dolomites.

Please click on thumbnails below to scroll through the gallery:

: The Bridge at Bassano

: View from the Bridge

: Alpini on the bridge

Partly I am drawn there by the town’s beauty: the magnificent castle, the many churches, the market that fills the cobbled streets between the tall houses and above all by the unique covered bridge that aesthetically, in my view, excels even the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. Its simple timber balustrades with its stunning views have been the subjects of prints and paintings for hundreds of years. It is a dream of mine that one day I may be able to fly fish for the trout, whose dark shadows can be seen basking under the wooden piles of the bridge and in the calm pools on the side of the weir.

: Alpini in action in a Bassano handicrafts shop

: Shop selling grappa on the end of the bridge

: Nardini Aquavite

I am also moved deeply by Bassano’s history, particularly by its association with the First World War. Situated at the bottom of a cleft of Monte Grappa, the winding road up to the war memorial on the summit was the one described in ‘A Farewell To Arms’, still my favorite novel of Ernest Hemingway. The bridge is associated with Italy’s most famous and toughest mountain regiment, the Alpini, which is headquartered in the town. A few years ago, on a visit, I found the bridge was full of veterans in their distinctive feathered hats singing their many martial songs under the beams. The chill and tragedy of that cold, white war in the passes, so evocatively described by Hemingway and lately in Mark Thompson’s majestic history of that campaign ‘The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919’ is still a ghostly presence.

: In an antique book shop

Finally, I use the occasion to stock up with possibly the best grappa in the world – and where better to buy it than the ancient oak paneled shop of Nardini that sits on the western end of the bridge itself? “BASSANO – al PONTE dal 1779” is the proud claim on the bottle – and every sip of it is as clean and bracing as the Monte Grappa snow from which it comes.

Photos © Hong Ying

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Posted on 29-08-2011

Sunset at Pedaso

Filed Under (Blog) by Adam

Jetlagged and homesick for Italy in a grey Beijing, first day back, we are thinking of how only two days ago we broke out of the afternoon heat, hurtled down the mountain from our Le Marche home and drove half an hour to the Adriatic coast, making for the railway line that runs through the baking little port of Pedaso. Parking by the Municipal Garden, we passed along the lush hibiscus lined embankment, looking for the tunnel – pushing through it, as if it were a Narnian wardrobe, into another world, one of blue sky, blue sea and under big blue ombrelloni by the little fish restaurant of Il Faro, all shapes and sizes of brown flesh squeezed into the tightest bikinis grilled and broiling in the still strong sun, relieved only by the odd gelato and campari soda: the world of bourgeois Italy enjoying the summer vacanze.

Please click on thumbnails below to scroll through the gallery:

: Rocks on the sea

: The beach

: The heat of the afternoon

: Visitors lining the pool

: More visitors lining the pool

: Catching the fading sun

It was already 6.30 pm so there weren’t many swimmers left in the great natural pool bounded by the rocks of the disused fishing harbour, but we slipped into the dark blue water and let it wrap us like silk, lazily swimming out to the rocks and the gulls, and paddling water in the Adriatic itself, just outside the gap of the harbour – gazing north 50 miles up the coast to the shadowy peninsula of Conero with its wine and monasteries, and southwards to where the coast faded into infinity, with its parallel line of beach and railway that stretch unbroken all the way to Apulia on the spur of Italy’s boot. A gentle swell washed us back inside the pool. We let the tide take us, enjoying the postcard scenery of the old village with its square box houses and church nestling under a green cliff, with at one end a lighthouse (il faro, that gave the restaurant its name). If it had not been for the harsh bray of a train and a row of white Fiats on flatcars hurrying on their way to Bologna, we could have been back in provincial Italy of the Nineteenth century. This is bathing for me now. An empty beach on a tropical island? What possible interest could that have? How could it compare with the fat lady on the deckchair in the red spotted bathing suit feeding figs to her grandchild, or the lounging young Adonises exercising all their charms on sunburned goddesses on whom pasta has not quite yet formed rolls on the stomach, and the old couples in straw hats on the seawall looking out to the pink that was beginning to touch the horizon? Life in all its idiosyncrasy, in other words, among ordinary people enjoying themselves in a place made even more special by the lack of any pretension.

: Sunset

: Wedding

: Wedding photos

: Wedding photographers

: Folded ombrelloni and lettini

: Nightfall

The sun over the horizon, Angelo and his waitresses began to lay the tables for dinner at Il Faro, while his lads moved up and down the beach folding the ombrelloni. The sky was taking on the colour of a sort of pastel Zuppa Inglese, as Italians call trifle, full of pinks and oranges. The sun bathers, all bar the most doughty, had packed up and gone. It was time for newly married couples to come to the beach in their wedding finery for their formal portraits against a ‘natural setting’. Burly photographers and unsure bridesmaids followed behind from rock to rock.

Then, in the half hour before dinner, all was empty. The deserted umbrellas took on a surreal alien life form in the gentle breeze that was blowing off the heat of the day, while the splendour in the great sky above gently faded. Candles began to twinkle at Il Faro. The wash of blue changed imperceptibly to vermilion, and dusk was over almost before it started.

We plodded sadly through the tunnel with our bathing gear, heading back to our car by the municipal gardens, and China.

Photos © Hong Ying

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Paul French’s ‘Midnight in Peking’

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Posted on 25-08-2011

Filed Under (Blog) by Adam

Catch an amazing true crime story that shows the seamy side of expatriate China before the Second World War.

Visit the official ‘Midnight in Peking’ website.

‘Midnight in Peking’ by Paul French will be available in shops from midnight, 29 August 2011 in Australia and Asia.

Click to buy here

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Posted on 14-07-2011

Festa Diary 2011 in Le Marche – Amandola Rifugio Mountain Festa

Filed Under (Blog) by Adam

Sunday 10 July

Mass on Monte Amandola

We drove from comfortable farmland to the forest line, parking at the 1,200 M high Amandola Rifugio. From here we followed the footpath up the side of the mountain. It was 8.30 in the morning and the heat was already nearly 30˚C. Because we rested in the shade of every rare bush we could find, it took us nearly three hours to climb the further 500 M to the peak of Monte Amandola. At the top, about ten retired Alpini and two dozen assorted trekkers were gathered round a stone cross where a priest was holding mass.

It was already a mediaeval world. In the meadows at the top of the mountain, sun browned shepherds, fleeces on their shoulders, guarded their flocks, while their white shaggy maremmas (Italy’s version of Collies) chivvied and barked flaking pilgrims like me the last hundred yards to the summit. Across a deep gorge, above rocky cliffs, rose the sharp conical peak of Mt Sibilla, and behind were the other peaks of the Sibillini chain.

The tableau at the top was breathtaking, and very moving. It reminded me of the mosaic in the crypt of the St Emidio Cathedral in Ascoli Piceno showing Roman Catholic partisans at prayer with their rifles in the high Apennine pastures during World War Two.

Please click on thumbnails below to scroll through the gallery:

Luckily, since the heat had now reached 34˚C and my four-year-old daughter, Sybil, was in no state for the tramp down again (nor was I: I’d just experienced a visual white out in the blazing sunshine) one of the Alpini veterans volunteered to take us to the bottom in his Jeep (along with the table and the communion wine). We bumped along sparse grassy mountain tracks and traversed precipitous slopes. “Brutto” said the Alpino, though there was a view of paradise at every perpendicular bend.

I expressed my admiration for his hat. It was the traditional green, curled rim trilby, with the feather and badge of the Italian army’s most elite regiment. It was old and well worn, but in fine condition. He said he had been given it when he joined the army in 1969. He had worn it proudly when facing off Tito on the Austrian border, and ever since. He kept the felt supple with grappa – 52 bottles over 42 years.

Mosaic of Partisans at prayer in the crypt of the Cathedral of San Emidio in Ascoli Piceno

Mosaic of partisans at prayer in the crypt of the Cathedral di San Emidio in Ascoli Piceno

Photos © Hong Ying

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Festa Diary 2011 in Le Marche – Force Beer Festival

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Posted on 12-07-2011

Filed Under (Blog) by Adam

Thursday 7 July

Please click on thumbnails below to scroll through the gallery:

Photos © Hong Ying

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Posted on 03-05-2011

Easter in Rome

Filed Under (Blog) by Adam

Please click on thumbnails below to scroll through the gallery:

: Castel San Angelo on the way to St Peter’s April 23

: By the Tiber

: Approaching St Peter’s for the first time

: …so is a helicopter

: St Peter’s Square gets ready for the big day

: Thinking about Rome

: Rome

: Into the Colosseum

: Contemplating the Colosseum

: The Colosseum

: Looking down on Constantine’s Arch – Rome in decline according to the Blue Guide

: Titus’s Arch in contrast – How an arch ought to be

: Passing Domitian’s Palace on the Palatine

: Clio on the Palatine

: In the Ancient Roman Forum

: A seagull on a pillar in the Roman Forum

: Examining a seagull on a pillar in the Roman Forum

: Back to St Peter’ on the big day April 24 Easter Sunday

: Joining the congregation in St Peter’s Square

: Me and Pope Benedict (if you look closely you can find him in the far distance under the awning)

: Relaxing afterwards on a loggia of the Castel San Angelo

: Looking out on the Eternal City

: The Eternal City

: Me and St Michael

: Dinner with Clio in Antonello Colonna’s Restaurant

: Antonello Colonna’s famous Spaghetti con Pomodoro e Basilico

Photos by Clio Williams

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