A not so simple garden: China part 2-Tianjin

We spent the first part of our vacation in China in Tianjin, my wife's home town. Well its a city to be exact, one of the megacities of China and is not very far from Beijing. The good part was getting to see family and eating way more than a person should. The bad part is we both got covid soon after arrival, no doubt from eating out at restaurants every evening which we dont normally do back home. Fortunately we procured some paxlovid from home and a couple of pills from a relative to complete the 5 day course for each of us. We forgot to bring test kits but the antigen test kits are readily available in China and were delivered quickly to the hotel we stayed at. Since we were staying in a good international hotel the breakfast was good and had a lot of choices and relatives kept sending us food while we recouperated mostly in our room. Only three relatives also caught covid (they all had it right after the lockdown ended) but their cases were thankfully very mild and over in a day or two without paxlovid, which was very hard to get if not impossible at the time we were in China. I suspect we got a variant of what everyone in China got after lockdown ended which is why the relatives, many of whom are older, did not get sick or if they did it was very minor. Mine started with gastrointestinal stuff which was followed later on by the typical sinus headache and fever, while Grace got more of the coughing along with the headache and fever and some throat irritation. Paxlovid ended all of it in 3 doses (1 and a half days, its taken twice a day) but for me paxlovid worsened the gastro effects. I was glad when the five day period was up and we both tested negative for covid afterwards. Horticulturally there are a few things to note in Tianjin. First there are greenbelts all along major roads, this is common in the cities of China. And in those greenbelts besides trees and shrubs there are flowering things like roses and various annuals and perennials. We also went to a park nearby which had lotus in both pinks and white along with waterlilies too. The city has a nice skyline at night, which we spent a lot of time viewing during our covid bout. We were fortunate to be in a decent hotel, in a city that has decent hospitals if they were needed (which thankfully was not the case) and we could go out with our masks for short walks when we felt able to do so. After we recovered we were able to take longer walks and get ready for the next adventure which was to travel to Yunnan. Below is a photo of one of the cousins two dogs. They were quite old and one has passed by now. They had collars on to keep them from biting their skin to relieve itching I think. They also tended to be quite grumpy with each other, vying for the cousin's attention and frequent treats.

Then the food fest began, this evening we went to a restaurant that served Beijing duck. And while we can get pretty good stuff here in New York in Chinatowns like Flushing, its never quite as good as in China itself.

We were in three different rooms in the hotel during our stay, moving from one to another to find the best rooms free of smoking smells that we could. This is one area where China needs to up its game, "no smoking" more often than not means they open the windows and spray some air freshner in the room. Or the guy next door is smoking in a non smoking floor. Smoking is very common among Chinese males in particular and they tend to not obey the no smoking signs in hotels, which themselves are to varying degrees pretty lenient about enforcing no smoking rules. However this particular hotel was better than usual due to the fact that it was an international one of a well known chain so the smokers hid it in their rooms for the most part. The daily price for the room and the breakfast was a steal to be honest, somewhere around 70 dollars a night or so as I recall. Here is one view we had out of one of the rooms.

I'm not always a fan of all Chinese food and found the noodle soups of Yunnan much more to my liking than a lot of northern Chinese food (with the exception of Beijing duck but one shouldnt eat that every day either). However there was often a pretty good dessert of taro with a raspberry or similar sauce on it which was one of the better sweet things to eat in China. Its got nothing on a really good cannoli or chocolate chip cookie but it probably is a lot healthier to eat.

There was a tv tower of some sort that looked impressive by day and even more so at night. Here is a view from another hotel where the fam was having another huge meal, and the sun turned blood red as evening progressed. In general we were lucky as far as air quality went, there were a couple of days where the AQI index was not good but nothing that was noticible which was a good thing.

That same hotel had a good restaurant and some interesting huge ball thing over the lobby.

Then while visiting one of the cousins I noticed my stomach getting riled up. I thought all the rich food was the cause but alas it was not. When Grace started having throat problems and coughing and a fever, we ordered the antigen tests. Yup, covid, her first time and my second despite both of us having four vaccinations by that point. We left too soon to get the updated booster, which I got this past November. Grace is taking her chances, she gets more significant post vaccine malaise than I do and so far doesnt want to get the booster, and I honestly don't know if it matters much after we both got covid in China. BTW that second line shows really fast, you dont have to wait 15 minutes to see it in spite of most test kit instructions.

So now we weren't even sure if we could get to Yunnan, also our friend's mom was in the hospital for an issue at the same time but fortunately we got better and his mom's medical issue also resolved well. So during covid we mostly stayed in our room and went to eat breakfast each morning, and as we got better took short walks around the hotel with masks on. This rather colorful track was behind the hotel not far from a fenced lake.

In front of the hotel there were double flowered pomegranate trees, some with fruits. If they are out there all year then they must be pretty cold hardy versions.

Verbena dissecta is a plant I grow in my gardens but I have only seen it in purple and white forms. The hotel had a really nice mass of them near a fountain in those colors but also in pinks and other subtle shades. Very pretty.

The roses often were of a color changing sort that opened up yellow and eventually ends up as red, sort of like Rosa "Mutabilis" but as double tea rose form. They were common in greenbelts and park gardens.

I couldnt resist taking a photo of this little menace that as of this fall has also arrived in our area of NY. Yep, its the dreaded spotted latern fly in its native range, a sidewalk in Tianjin. I did not see large numbers of them there, presumably something keeps them in check. I also heard from a plantsman in Pennsylvania that they appeared in large numbers early on but in later years seemed to disappear as our native predators learned to eat them.

Portulaca umbraticola resembles purslane but with much larger flowers was planted in large beds along one of the walkways. I love when flowers come in multiple colors, it keeps the eye interested as it searches for another 'different" one. They are ideal for the drier and generally pretty hot summers of Tianjin.

When we were better we went to a park that had some interesting plants, roses and crepe myrtles among them. This rose appears to be of rugosa heritage.

This was an attempt to make a large bonsai I think of some sort with a bush that I didnt recognize in the same park.

And always there are roses nearby, tea roses in this case.

In the park there were these enormous fake flower things which were quite impressive.

A night view of that cool tv tower from our hotel. Almost looks like a flashlight shining downwards.

Back at the hotel we had a view in our last room of the back of the hotel property facing towards the fenced lake and forest. We also found this interesting sign near the lobby.

Then one day we went to a park by a large lake, it had lots of places to walk. What surprised me was how few ducks and swans were there but I also admired the lotus plantings. Good place for tourist photos too. By the way there were very few non Chinese tourists throughout our trip, nothing like what we would have seen on previous trips. However we did not encounter any problems so I guess the lack of foreign tourists was more of a problem in travelling there due to the airlines that have to avoid flying over Russian airspace and post covid travel jitters. For those few like us that went there, prices were very good and we found that everyone we dealt with to be quite hospitable.