My China trip

was rather intense. Here's a mask from Guiyang, where there are many indigenous hill tribes, similar to Guilin called the Miao people, I think they are similar to the Hmong that live in Vietnam and Laos and the Hmong that fought with the US troops during the Vietnam war who migrated to the US (I watched the Clint Eastwood movie where he was a Korean veteran encountering the Hmong people in the US).

The old house... well its still standing in Beijing, half of it, or rather 50 rooms used to belong to my g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g grandfather, who lived in Beijing for 10 years around 1810 to 1820 and later became the Governor of Canton. The guy who sold the house to him is more famous and so this house is named after that guy. The statue of the owner however is only about 5'2" and the doorways were also quite tiny. Only rooms of the 100 original rooms are left, the rest of the land has been converted to commercial use like a restaurant.

The stage is where the conference had its annual award giving for animation contest. Luckily my speaking stage was alot smaller though I think I did audience size like this once in Jakarta. Guiyang is quite a small town but very clean and the weather is very nice and they have national parks. I think its so far the nicest city I have been to in China.

The guy with the big mango drink at Haagen Daz is Uncle Zhang, whose father is Zhang Leping and the creator of one of the most successful cartoon characters in China today. Zhang Leping and my grandfather were very good friends and Uncle Zhang has been very helpful with our cause. He is a super nice guy.

Aunty Li, is the daughter of Wang Zimei, also a friend of my granddad though he refused to do anymore cartoons after the cultural revolution. I also visited a number of other friends of my granddad, it was an interesting pilgrimage. Fang Cheng is now 93 and Huang Miaozi is now 97. Ding Cong died earlier this year and I visited his widow.