Family portrait IV
(Ying and his dad in the botanical gardens: Singapore)
What I liked about Singapore, and there were many other things, is that it is so tiny that I was never really very far from anywhere. This was our first morning, mere hours after our early arrival at the airport in darkness. On an errand for the Reunion meal, Ying’s dad completed his task, looked at his watch and decided to make a detour, suggesting we cram in a quick one hour visit to the Botanical Gardens. I had a grand tour of just over a third of it in that brief visit, but it was a joy to have him as our personal guide. An extra element of that tour were the intermittent stops to show me views that Ying’s mum had painted – I was later to see all of these in her expansive portfolio at home.
In this image, you can see Ying walking next to his father. I was so impressed by the gardens – luckily we were there on a bright day and all the greens were so vibrant and crisp, so unlike the greens of China. Here, even wild greens are muted and antiqued with pollution, but in addition, the plant species that thrive in China are not the lush tropical plants that abound in Singapore. I was dazzled by my first morning there and you can see in the background, huge buttress roots of a gigantic tree – generally unremarkable to a Singaporean I would imagine, but to me, a flashback from Geography GCSE documentaries or in shots of David Attenborough on the BBC. It felt yet again that I had landed in another world, far from granite Glasgow and her drizzle. A million miles from the nasal whines of neds*, the herby scents of the parks, the churning bus engines and brick tenements. I am so far away now from where I used to be. It is so relatively quickly that humans adapt to new surroundings, that it just takes a photograph like this one for me to realise how different my life is from one year ago.
*NEDS: non educated delinquents.
In real time today, I am in Shanghai and so as not to deprive you of news, I have set this post to come up today. I still have hundreds of pictures of my January trip to Shanghai and one in February to Singapore for New Year. I even have a stack from everyday scenes of Suzhou that I will have to use at some point. Never fear – if there are requests to see something (within reason) then get in touch and I’ll do my best to oblige.
