Ancient treasure

At a time when London was a tiny, insignificant city, millions prospered in Cambodia. Now the country is using this legacy to attract tourists. Jeremy Atiyah visits the remains of a civilisation

Published: 28 February 2004

Did Cambodians once build the world's greatest city, and live in the most prosperous country on earth? So I've been told, but right now I'm finding this hard to believe. I stroll through Phnom Penh, and see pigs rooting through puddles and rubbish. The people are charming, but their streets are dilapidated. On every corner, sundry ragamuffins await my generosity.

But perhaps the past really is another country: I've been reading about the Khmer kingdom of a thousand years ago, when Cambodia's irrigated paddy fields and fish-rich lakes supported a population of some 10 million, most of whom lived in the vicinity of Angkor (at a time when the population of London was 30,000).


What has happened in the interim? The Cambodians and the Khmers are one and the same people, but by the time the French arrived in the 19th century, they had sunk almost into oblivion. Their population had fallen by nine-tenths, and the remains of Angkor, having been mysteriously abandoned in the 15th century, lay lost and forgotten to the world, somewhere in the jungles east of Siam.


When receiving foreign tourists today, this is not an easy story for Cambodians to tell. The ancient temples of Angkor, naturally, are their greatest asset, and some hope that the revival of Angkor may eventually lead to the revival of Cambodia itself. But there is a painful edge to such myth-making: by dwelling on past glories, they remind themselves of how far they have fallen.


For the time being, at least, Cambodians seem willing to risk the humiliation. After a 20-year hiatus - between 1970 and 1990 - international tourism at Angkor is now booming. The closest town to the ancient city, Siem Reap, has countless new restaurants, hotels, guesthouses and cyber-cafés, as well as an international airport. Streams of boats, planes and buses make the 200-mile journey from Phnom Penh daily. I take the fast boat: five hours up the Tonle Sap river, past thatched villages on stilts, crossing half of the country in the process.


On arrival I hire a guide, a serious man with a bitter laugh called Kim, who wears the pain of being Cambodian on his sleeve. He starts talking about the suffering caused by landmines from the instant we meet. Then he glances at me: "But you don't hear mines exploding round Angkor any more. You tourists are fine." It's the locals who suffer, he wants to tell me. Angkor has been cleared, but mines still cause one death a day across Cambodia.


As we take the road north out of Siem Reap, Kim explains to me the basic facts of Angkor. It is not a ruined city such as Pompeii. Rather, it is the bare bones of an entire civilisation that flourished here between 1,200 and 600 years ago. When King Canute ruled England, this region was full of teeming towns and cities, in which millions of people lived and worked. Of the dwellings, warehouses and workshops of old Angkor, nothing is now visible. Right now, I am surrounded instead by what looks like dark, primeval forest. The only sign of life is the occasional motor-scooter. "Ordinary buildings?" echoes Kim, when I ask. "Oh, they've all disappeared. Only stone buildings remain."


He refers to a few structures of religious significance that were constructed at prodigious expense, in many cases using lava blocks imported from quarries tens of miles away. Today, scattered over some 200 square kilometres of jungle, these surviving temples rise up in odd isolation, like lilies in a drained pond, denuded of the towns and cities that previously surrounded them. It would take weeks to visit them all. Kim is going to show me a few of the highlights.


The first of these is Angkor Wat itself, the most magnificent and the holiest of all the temples, built by the great Khmer king, Suryavarman II, in the early 12th century. Approaching this vast structure on foot, I feel a kind of despair in the face of its incomprehensible dimensions. Its lotus-bud towers loom even in the remote distance, rising from within a walled enclosure nearly one-mile square. Before even reaching this enclosure, I have to cross a causeway over a colossal man-made moat, which once teemed with hungry crocodiles.


And no sooner have I swallowed these enormities than I am being dazzled by the minuscule detail of the scenes in bas-relief that decorate the temple's inner walls. Kim hurries me through the lengthy Hindu narratives on display. Only at the so-called "scenes from hell", reminiscent of Dante's Inferno, do we linger: here I see bodies sawn in half, bones broken, stomachs filled with red-hot irons. I find the pictures amusingly quaint; Kim, however, is looking hot and bothered. He is thinking of his very own hell. "I was once forced to cross a minefield on foot," he explains. "Men were exploding in front of me. I felt their corpses splashing over me." He seems angry that the hell contrived by the stonemasons of King Suryavarman II should be inadequate to describe his own experiences.


When we leave Angkor Wat, heading north, the first place Kim wants to show me is a 40ft-high stepped pyramid called Baksei Chamkrong. It is a low-key site, free of tourists. Its lotus-bud pinnacle has eroded into a blob, and leaves rustle under our feet. But Kim has a reason for bringing me here. "Vietnamese soldiers' tombs," he whispers, pointing, as we step over a series of grassy hillocks. The conversation again shifts from the Buddhist god-kings of the past, to Pol Pot and King Sihanouk, and Cambodia's ongoing political crisis. "The Khmer Rouge respected Angkor," says Kim, laughing. "They wanted it protected. They saw it as a living symbol of Khmer power and glory."


Even as he speaks, we are approaching the southern gate of the walled city known as Angkor Thom. This was Angkor's last capital, created at the end of the 12th century by its most obsessive builder, King Jayavarman VII. In and around its walls lived at least a million people, making it one of the most important cities in the world. Naturally, the city gates were grand. Each had its own tower and triumphal approach, flanked by figures of demons. But only this southern approach is in anything like its original state now. "The statues are being pillaged," explains Kim, gloomily. "The demon heads are being stolen. You can get thousands of dollars for them."


Following a trickle of rice trucks and bicycles, we drive up to the gate. I half-imagine that a bustling city still lurks within: I picture King Jayavarman's family and officials, his military officers and priests, all enjoying the fruits of power. But once inside, what I see is the silent road, and the same forest as before. It is a gate into four square miles of nothingness. We pass troops of monkeys, sleeping dogs, and the occasional monk under a saffron umbrella. "Funny how this place was abandoned," I say. "It wasn't abandoned," replies Kim, defensively.


"We Khmers never forgot about Angkor." What he means is that Cambodian monks managed to keep the memory of Angkor alive during the long centuries after its abandonment, right up to the time of its "discovery" by the French naturalist Henri Mouhot in 1860. Trees may have reclaimed the jungle, but the temples of Angkor never lost their power to inspire the Khmer monks. "You can try, but you'll never get rid of the monks!" he exclaims. "You can shoot them, they don't feel a thing. The French tried to stop them, the Khmer Rouge tried to exterminate them. But they are still here."


The monks seem to be the one thing that Kim believes in. I am still feeling obscurely pleased about this when the road through Ankhor Thom reaches a clearing. And in front of us, suddenly, rise the multiple stone towers of Bayon. Even today, there is mystery in the way Bayon's stones emerge from the jungle. Columns resemble tree trunks, pink and mottled. The towers seem organic. Were they placed here by human beings, or by some other agency? The first Frenchmen who camped among these strange stones could scarcely tell. At night, rhino and leopard prowled nearby. The din of cicadas was enough to drive a man mad. And then, in the half-light, through tangled branches, one came to sense that giant faces were staring down from above - faces carrying the features not only of Buddha, but also of King Jayavarman VII himself.


Over the years, for the benefit of tourists, the trees over Bayon have been cut away. But merely to prevent the roots from engulfing Angkor and its memories is a constant challenge. "When tourists stopped coming in the 1970s, they grew back again," says Kim, a familiar tension appearing around his eyes. "And while we were cutting them down again, we found lots of skulls."


I feel as though I am engaged in a losing battle to blot out the recent past. I study the decorations on Bayon's outer walls, where all the civilised arts of 12th-century war and peace are depicted: cockfighting and sumo wrestling; a lady being fanned by servants; a boar in a pot and satay sticks being served for dinner; acrobats, chess players, masseurs, smokers, fat men, thin men, rich men, poor men...


Later, we walk through Bayon's tangled corridors, stained by moss, lichen and soot. In one of the towers, a snake is doing battle with a pullulating mass of bats, its white tail flashing in and out of view. Kim's laugh echoes strangely in the darkness. But our time is short. We have just an afternoon to pant our way round the remaining temples of Angkor Thom, and the shadows are lengthening. We march past Baphuon, which was completed in the year William the Conqueror came to Britain. Having been dismantled a thousand years later, in preparation for a major reconstruction, it suffered an unthinkable disaster: the pillaging of the plans. What remains is the world's biggest jigsaw puzzle.


Next, we pass the so-called Elephant Terrace, where, in 1960, a parade of 1,000 elephants was led by King Sihanouk to celebrate the independence of Cambodia. With the benefit of hindsight, this attempt to bask in the glory of the past was a pitiful failure.


By now, the yellows of midday have turned to russets and browns; the cicadas are like jangling bells. We walk round the corner, to Preah Paliley, whose crooked tower rises at a precarious angle, with giant trees growing horizontally from its stones. Kim's mood is sinking with the sun. "All the money from tourism goes out of the country," he gabbles, as we walk. "Tourists drive up prices and we locals can't afford anything any more."


Pieces of an orange fruit lie about in the long grass. "From the sleng tree," remarks Kim, kicking. "Sleng means bitter, or poisonous." Strangely enough, Sleng is one of the few Khmer words I know. I came across it in Phnom Penh, at Pol Pot's Tuol Sleng centre (now the Museum of Genocidal Crimes), where 20,000 people were "processed" by the Khmer Rouge regime in the Seventies. It was indeed a place of bitterness. Sleng fruit contains strychnine. "I know a policeman who spends the night here on guard duty," adds Kim. "He eats the fruit. Now mosquitoes don't touch him."


I laugh, half-heartedly. For some reason, in this forest, I'm now thinking of Hindu myths, in which the primeval catastrophe involves not flood, but fire. I look out over red walls and green ponds, half-reclaimed by grass and weed. Tendrils dangle from the growing darkness above, and the sounds of the jungle - whoopings and cacklings and shriekings - grow louder by the minute.


SURVIVAL TIPS


GETTING THERE
The easiest option is to fly to Bangkok or Singapore and take a connecting flight to either Siem Reap (for Angkor Wat), or the capital, Phnom Penh. Through discount agents, fares to Phnom Penh are available for around £680 return on Thai Airways from London Heathrow via Bangkok. To reach Siem Reap, you could combine a fare of around £500 between London and Bangkok with a flight to Siem Reap with Bangkok Air (01293 596 626, www.bangkokair.com), for about £160 return.


RED TAPE
If you fly in, you can get a visa on arrival for $30 (£17); take two passport photographs. Arriving overland, you will need to acquire a visa in advance.


STAYING THERE
Siem Reap has many hotels and cheap guesthouses; see www.angkorhotels.org.


HEALTH
Protection against typhoid, hepatitis A and B, yellow fever, diphtheria, tuberculosis, Japanese B encephalitis and rabies may be necessary; take advice from a travel health specialist like MASTA (09068 224 100, www.masta.org).


SAFETY
The Foreign Office says the biggest risks are from "road traffic accidents; armed robbery after dark; landmines and unexploded ordnance in rural areas".

The call of the wild

A hundred years ago, the small Alaskan town of Nome was in the grip of prospecting fever. Jeremy Atiyah finds the biggest excitement in town these days is a dog-sled race

Published: 07 February 2004

Even by Alaskan standards, Nome is weird. It is on the American mainland (just), but you can't reach it by road. It has a mere 4,000 inhabitants. It is only a hundred miles from Siberia and unspeakably cold. Hardly anyone ever goes there. But once a year it fills up with television crews and the whole of the United States wants to see it.

Why? Because Nome is the terminus of the annual Iditarod: the 1,000-mile dog-sled race from Anchorage that grips the nation each March.

I'm more interested in the off-season. That's why I am boarding a flight to Nome in mid-winter - and I get the feeling that I am leaving the US and heading for a foreign country. Suddenly people with Asiatic features surround me. On one side, an exotic-looking woman removes a fur-trimmed coat to reveal a toddler strapped to her back with a shawl. She tells me she's a whaler. On the other side, a man tells me he has just been to a meeting in Anchorage to discuss tribal issues.

"Me," he adds, "I'm a caribou hunter. But we need to understand corporate USA or we'll be left behind."

When we land at Nome there's a gale blowing and it's minus 20C. I check in at a madhouse called the Polaris Hotel, which, like most cheap hotels in the US, doubles up as a hostel for bums. There is an empty whisky bottle blocking my toilet.

The next morning I take a stroll along the promenade in pitch darkness. It's 10am, and stars are shining from a black sky. Saloon bars line the main drag. Two gloomy natives approach me, asking if I can spare a dollar. "I'm from St Lawrence Island," says one, gloomily. "I'm from Diomede," says the other. Diomede? Ah yes, that tiny island in the middle of the Bering Strait - just three miles from Russia.
The proximity of Russia is something I am trying to get used to. Later, I'll walk to the airport to visit the office of Bering Air, the only airline currently offering local flights and sightseeing trips across the Bering Strait. I speak to a Russian woman working there, who turns out to have been born and bred in Chukotka, just across the strait.

But having made the big step to the US - I ask - wasn't she minded to travel a tiny bit further than Nome? Didn't any other place in the vastness of the North American continent take her fancy?
"Why?" she replies, puzzled. "Here I have the best of both worlds. I'm in the US, but I'm not far from home. It's perfect for me."

Come to think of it, she could even walk to Russia from Nome's beach. The Bering Sea is frozen solid at this time of year. From Nome itself the Russian coast is not visible, but from the 2,300-foot-high Cape Mountain, at Prince of Wales Cape (to the north of here), Siberia's hills loom bright and clear.
Which is not to say that walking the Bering Strait is a particularly good idea. In the middle of the strait the ice churns and buckles all winter long. Crossings between Alaska and Russia, on skis, sledges or amphibious vehicles, are perilous and rare.

And I find it hard to imagine things any other way. During the Cold War we got used to the idea of a world divided implacably down the middle by the Bering Strait. For decades barely a ship was seen here, let alone an aeroplane; and of course no umiaks or kayaks, the Innuits' own boats.

But strangely, it was not always so. Back in the late 18th century, when Captain Cook first charted these waters, the straits were busy. Indigenous peoples crossed between America and Asia as a matter of routine, using reindeer sledges in winter, boats in summer. The crossing time was not more than a single day.

After Captain Cook's voyage, it would not take long for the white man to sweep those old native trading networks away forever. Travel across the straits virtually ceased. By 1890 the Reverend Hudson Stuck could dismiss the whole Seward Peninsula as "a savage forbidding country... uninhabited and unfit for habitation; a country of naked rock and bare hillside and desolate barren valley, coursed with a perpetual icy blast."

And that might have been the end of all human interest in this part of the world, had not two Swedes and a Norwegian came prospecting for gold in 1898 and struck lucky.

Before long, it was discovered that Nome's beach contained pebbles of gold. By the time next summer had come round, thousands of amateur prospectors were stepping off steamers from Seattle carrying shovels. Tents lined the shore for upwards of 20 miles. In the wake of the prospectors, Innuits arrived selling knick-knacks and carved mammoth tusks. Within two years, Nome had become the largest town in Alaska, with shops, schools, restaurants, hotels, brothels and dentists.

The only losers in the story were the Russians, who, 30 years before, had sold Alaska to the US for a
pittance: if only they had known that gold lay in the sands right across the water from their own Siberian mainland! Meanwhile, in Nome, frontier necessities were soon making way for Victorian opulence. Those in search of a night out could find card parties, gambling halls and even music recitals. Characters as diverse as Jack London, Roald Amundsen and Wyatt Earp were seen in town.
None of this was to last. By 1920, the fun had died down, never to return. "Nome in 1920 was a fading gold camp," wrote one young adventurer; "it had shrunk to a few hundred die-hards. False-fronted saloons, once staffed with gamblers and painted ladies, calling newly-rich prospectors in off the street, now stood empty and forlorn."

In 2003, I confess that Nome seems as dead as a doornail. The treeless tundra, which begins a few minutes from the town centre, is colourless and frozen solid. At these latitudes - across Alaska, Canada and Siberia - the scenery is the same all the way round the globe. Only in the brief summer and even briefer autumn, will it blaze into colour. Then, for a month, blueberries, cranberries, salmonberries, blackberries and rosehips will suddenly be available by the bucket-load.

I take a breakfast of hot milk and waffles with a couple of hunters. "You're a tourist here?" one says, peering in suspicion. "In mid-winter?" He is wearing a red checked shirt that bulges tight. "For us Nome is a big city," he goes on. "We come here to stock up on food." They live out on the tundra somewhere and are in town for the weekend. They belong to that group of Americans for whom Alaska represents the final frontier - the place you flee to when the rest of the US seems too crowded. Outside, they show me the antlered caribou heads in the back of their pick-up. Later I go for a leisurely lunch at the Polar Club restaurant, where I get talking to some more beardy men in checked shirts, over a reindeer burger. One tells me that he came to Nome bringing a small dredger with him about five years ago. I say: "So people still come to Nome looking for gold?"

"They sure do. There's about 15 people who come here every summer to sieve on the beach. You can make a living like that. Not a good one, but it's enough to live on."

Moments later the miners are joined by a little old man with a tufty beard. He is a practising doctor. But he turns out to be a hunter and a miner too - as most people in Nome do. They all chat awhile, in a boyish kind of way, about dredgers and hydraulic nozzles and sluice boxes and picks and shovels and bigger stuff that I can't understand. When I ask the Swiss professor if he too came to Nome with his private dredger, he looks me up and down.

"Hell, no," he says. "I employ 400 men. You looking for work?"
I mutter something about not having the right experience. "You don't need it! You just need to be able to move heavy equipment! And it's hot down there. T-shirts off."

For a minute or two, sitting in bright sunshine by the window, beside the frozen sea, I am strangely attracted by the idea of a new life as a gold-miner in Alaska.

A woman comes in and sits down. "Sometimes I just can't stand it any more, that's when I have to start drinking," she says to the doctor. She goes on, in a pleading voice: "You don't ever get depressed, do you?"

With a wag of that tufty beard, there comes the answer that she dreads most of all. "Oh yes I do, sometimes. Oh yes. My years are running out and I got too much to worry about. I don't want any drama, but it follows me around."

"Oh, but I just need drama," gasps the woman.
I seriously doubt that she'll find it in Nome.


SURVIVAL KIT


GET THERE
The lowest airfares - around £800 return - are likely to be available on Northwest Airlines from Gatwick via Minneapolis/St Paul and Anchorage.


TOURS
Try North American Highways - The Alaska Experience (01902 851138, www.northamericanhighways.co.uk)


HOTELS
At the Polaris Hotel (001 907 443 2000, polarisent.inc@gci.net),reckon on $50 (£30) a night for a single room.


MORE INFO
Nome Convention and Visitors Bureau (001 907 443 6624, www.nomealaska.org/vc)

A dumpling masterclass with Mr Po

If you like Chinese food, you have to go to Hong Kong. Jeremy Atiyah stuffs himself with dim sum, washed down with black tea and a spot of t'ai chi

Published: 09 November 2003

So keen is Hong Kong to get its tourists back after the Sars calamity that even a miserable hack like me is being picked up at the airport in a green Rolls-Royce. I'm being taken to one the best suites of one of the world's best hotels.

Of course this royal treatment won't fool me. On my last visit to Hong Kong in 1995, I spent two weeks in a guesthouse in the Chungking Mansions, in a room that had been designed, grudgingly, to accommodate one thin bed. The only way to get under the showerhead was to sit on the toilet. And I paid good money for it.

Not that I'm complaining. Here in the Peninsula Hotel discreet British snobbery may have departed, but naked Cantonese snobbery has picked up the baton with gusto. In the vast gilded lobby I arrive to find tables packed with Chinese indulging in that great British tradition of afternoon tea, exchanging tiny sandwiches and cakes for sheaves of money. Up on the 18th floor, my rooms have got floor-to-ceiling windows, overlooking the harbour and the skyscrapers of Hong Kong Island.

Out in the streets of Kowloon, later, I still feel a little dazed. The sky is oddly clean, not as steamy as it should be. Expensive, chilled air is pouring out of all the shopping malls. Even the pavements seem to be air-conditioned. I wonder where they've gone, the old stenches, the fish markets, the flabby-leaved creeping plants, the copy-Rolex sellers, the turbanned tailors, the swindlers, the rickshaw drivers, the old sea-dogs, all the fetid trappings of the land where East meets West. One obvious thing hasn't changed. Taking the dear old Star Ferry to Central, I notice the whole island being shaken to its foundations once every 20 seconds. A giant pile-driver is somewhere at work.

How could I have forgotten: Hong Kong would not be Hong Kong without its perennial engineering projects. Noise pollution? Town planning? Feng shui? Economic difficulties? Forget it. The construct- ion of flashy skyscrapers must go on.

But this is all incidental. I'm not here to admire the skyline or to browse in refrigerated shopping malls. I'm here to eat. Because Hong Kong's food is one thing, I am told, that Sars, Beijing, Tung Chee Hwa, typhoons and the property crash can never touch.

To get started properly, the next morning, I head for a free t'ai chi session before breakfast, by the harbour. It's dark and stormy, and I feel very superior about having my morning exercise regime led by a wise old Confucian called Mr Ng, rather than by some inane Californian with a grin and a leotard. "And this movement," Mr Ng cries into the wind, slowly raising one arm and lowering another, "is called White Crane Flaps its Wings!"

Having flapped my crane's wings, and touched my ocean's bottom, and held my angel's hands, I set off in search of a suitably colourful local market. I am pleased to notice that these are not hard to find. At Yaumatei, off Nathan Road, I'm soon in the thick of it, surrounded by pigs' trotters, hearts, intestines and tongues. Men in singlets push barrows of greens, while old ladies sit behind boxes of meaty green crabs, salted eggs, live chickens, turtles, fresh fish, pickled bamboo shoots, green papaya, sheet bean curd, soy bean paste, and sticky rice puddings made with sugar.

This being a Chinese market, medicinal concerns are never far away. Here are strange leaves "to rid the body of moisture". Here are giant root vegetables, larger than footballs, "to eliminate toxins". Here are rosebuds, "to cure bruises". A tiny thin charlatan is selling homemade herbal wine. "It's five years old!" he cries. "I sell it worldwide! Even in America!"

I pick up a glass of cold soy milk from a café, attracted by the grimy fans, the overhead cables, the tiny stools, the soot, the bubbling cauldrons, the women in wellies, the floor running with water, the cats, and the parrot that speaks Chinese. Tanned men in shorts and vests and flip-flops are shovelling rice porridge with their chopsticks, surrounded on all sides by packs of noodles and plum sauces. Just look at the fruits and vegetables round here! They make me want to live in the tropics. The ripe smell of guava fills the whole street. Here are crates of woody, earthy mushrooms. Here are carrots three inches fat. Here are spring melons; here are bitter melons; here are lotus fruits; here are dragon's eyes; here are hairy squash and here are boxes of dates (or are they duck gizzards?).

Just next door is the incense shop. This is to any Hong Kong market what WH Smith is to a British high street. "To contact your ancestors," explains the shopkeeper, "you need to raise smoke. Prefer- ably fragrant smoke." He shows me not only incense sticks and sandalwood, but also cars, shoes, beer bottles, Rolexes, houses, footballs, Armani suits, credit cards, bank notes, wallets and passports - all made of paper, to be burnt, for convenient collection by the ancestors. "To die," murmurs the man, "is a complicated business."

By now I am hot and starved. I head for one of those air-conditioned shopping malls at the top of Tsim Shat Sui to find a place called the Super Star Seafood Restaurant, which sounds just the job. The first thing I see is a chef patiently pressing crabmeat with shredded ginger into roundels of soft pastry. "Hairy crab?" I ask. "Royal crab," he replies, shocked. Someone quickly whispers in my ear, as though I am in danger of embarrassing myself: "It's not the season for hairy crab."

Anyway, it's bright and crowded and public in here, as all good dim sum restaurants should be. You never take your mistress to dim sum. It is, though, quite a royal food, with its delicate but numerous portions. I've got a soup made from a suitably ugly fish, in accordance with the infallible rule that the uglier the fish, the better the dish. "Yes, the look is the first thing," says the chef, introduced to me as Master Po, who now joins me. "Then the dumpling pastry should be thin and the contents moist." He offers five basic types of pastry: rice, flour, bread, sticky rice and green pea. The rice pastry is softer and more transparent; the wheat pastry is more like bread.

The chef's challenge, in Master Po's view, is to be both traditional and modern. He is extremely proud, it turns out, of the peppery stonefish dumpling that he has pioneered. (Stonefish is poisonous to touch, in the wild, but it is also promisingly ugly.)

Tradition demands balance in your dumplings. In the case of a good old pork bun, for instance, this means a balance between dough and meat, between wet and dry, between sharp and bland. But novel, unorthodox influences are also permitted: Master Po has a Vietnamese-inspired dumpling containing pumpkin and fishmeat, for example. His sticky rice comes from Japan. He is also the inventor of a sweet, penguin-shaped, family-friendly dumpling that may owe some- thing to Disney. "For
commercial reasons," he explains, cheerfully. "Children like it."

I take a walk through the kitchen, where muscular men are shoving entire pigs into the barbecue using forks with prongs two foot long. I stroll through to see chopping boards the size of tree trunks, and knives the size of helicopter blades.

Master Po has been working as a chef for 33 years, since he was 12. Have tastes changed in this time?
"Sure!" he cries. "Now we are much smarter in our taste buds, and we are much more health conscious! So the portions are smaller; it's quality before quantity." As he speaks, a delicate peach-shaped bun with rosy tints appears, containing a filling of lotus and salty egg yolk. Another novel-looking dumpling contains cucumber and barley and mangetout, wrapped in pea-flour dough. "You always know which filling to put in what pastry," smiles Master Po. "It's intuitive."

The most delicious things on this table, though, are some pieces of barbecued pork resembling an archaeological section, each piece comprising an identical spectrum of crackling, fat and meat, in that order. They melt in the mouth like butter. From the subject of fat, conversation turns to tea. To counteract the effect of grease, we should, in fact, be drinking an earthy-smelling black tea called bo lei. "Only hot people should drink green teas like jasmine," explains Master Po. Hot people? This Chinese notion translates, roughly, I think, into "people with high blood pressure".

Other hard-core delicacies from the menu include duck's tongues and bird's nest soup. (The "nest" comprises not twigs but the dried spittle of swallows and swifts. Everyone at the table agrees that it is good for you: a lady from the Hong Kong Tourist Board puts a tablespoon of powdered bird's nest in her cornflakes everyday.) Abalone is the latest craze - you have to order in advance, as they need to be simmered for up to two days before they can be eaten. A big one might cost £200. "This is what Hong Kong is," says Master Po, modestly, as we say goodbye. "This is what we are."

I know what he means. And right now, stuffed, I feel like sleeping. But this is industrious Hong Kong, and it's time to head off to the western district of the island, in search of dried goods.

These never cease to amaze me. I'm soon looking at dried sausage, ham, squid, octopus, oyster, mussel, abalone, scallop - and these are just the mainstream items. That thing that looks like a sheet of tofu is, in fact, the dried lining of fish gut. That stuff resembling chopped cabbage is jellyfish (and has a crunchy texture). Heaped up around me, I survey ginseng, starfish, sea slugs, seahorses, fish bladders, giant conch, chrysanthemum flowers, deer tendons, turtle shells, dried flying geckos, cicada skins, tangerine peel, crocodile bacon (good for asthma), liquorice plants (good for Sars). Old men sit silently sifting through ginseng roots, sorting the thin bits from the fat bits. Twenty-storey apartment blocks loom up all around us.

Time for another cuppa? We enter the traditional teashop of one Mr Ngan, who brews and pours us some teas. Do I fancy yellow, white, clear, green, black or red tea? He talks of tea in the way connoisseurs talk of wine. He has old cakes of tea that will sell for thousands of pounds. He also has his "new arrivals", sealed in pewter jars. Green tea, he explains soberly, is like champagne and should be drunk young.

I find myself on a strong, semi-fermented tea called Iron lady. The tea stands for 30 seconds and then it's time to pour. First I must smell; then I must drink. And because we are drinking a black tea, which must be brewed very hot, the pot is made of purple clay from Yixing. Tea-drinking and Yixing pottery, says Mr Ngan, have been evolving together for 3,000 years. As always in China, I get the feeling that my own preconceptions are rather shallow.

Back in Central, I am taken to a trendy organic food shop owned by one Belinda Wong. A young woman in her 30s, Ms Wong has been trying to popularise old medicinal products. She has published her own funky recipes, like organic sea slug on noodles or organic bird's nest and almond soup. A few western delicacies such as bison tongue are also on sale here. It may be trendy, but her shop has the same old smell of ginseng as all the shops in western district, a smell I am beginning to like by now.

Not far down the road, we come to a seriously upmarket Chinese medicine shop. This time I am able to read the alleged benefits of the medicines for myself, as the signs are all in English. Cuttlefish, I now see, "promotes the circulation of vital energy and blood" while pearls "tranquillise the mind and improve the complexion". Deer's tail pills are supposed to be good if you have a "yang deficiency" in the kidneys, while cinnamon bark "treats a decline of fire from the vital gate". Quackery? Who am I to judge?

The day is almost done and the lights are beginning to twinkle in the harbour spray, when I find myself at Wanchai fish market. A fish market may not sound the height of glamour, but this is Hong Kong. I arrive to find a queue of gleaming Rolls-Royces and Mercedes with beautiful bejewelled Chinese women stepping out of them in search of dinner. The place resembles the London Aquarium, with its bubbling tanks full of lugubrious-looking fish. In front, giant crabs and eels struggle to escape, despite being bound up like prisoners on death row. Their millionaire purchasers will have no pity on them.
It's time to head back to the Peninsula. But as darkness suddenly falls, somewhere on Nathan Road, I find myself jumped by a gang of men. Help! Except this is no mugging. These are restaurateurs from the Chungking Mansions, all competing to press their cards into my hand. For old times' sake, I settle on a dinner in the Delhi Club Mess, a dark room lost in a dark stairwell, somewhere in the dark heart of this appalling building, where the curries are hot and the beer is cold: just another corner of Hong Kong where the food will be for ever wonderful.


The Facts


Getting there
Jeremy Atiyah travelled as a guest of British Airways and The Peninsula Hotel.
In November return fares from London Heathrow start at £563 with BA (0870 850 9850; www.ba.com). Double rooms at The Peninsula Hong Kong (00 852 2920 2888; www.peninsula.com) start at HK$3,390 (£260) per room per night.


Being there
Super Star Seafood Restaurant, Basement, Wilson House, 19-27 Wyndham St (00 852 25259238)
Mr Ngan's Teahouse, 290 Queen's Road, Central (00 852 25441375).
Eu Yan Sang medicine shop, 152-156 Queens Road, Central (00 852 25443870)
Delhi Club Mess (00 852 2368 1682), Chungking Mansions, 3rd floor of C block.


Further information
Hong Kong Tourist Board (020-75337100; www.discoverhongkong.com).

'We packed up our culture in 2,000 crates'

Mao had his Long March. So did his Nationalist enemies - taking a precious cargo of ancient treasures to the safe haven of Taiwan. Jeremy Atiyah reports

Published: 19 October 2003

Beside the vastness of mainland China, Taiwan looks like nothing: a crowded, industrialised little island, famous for its production of computer chips. Chiang Kai-shek may have sought to build up Taiwan as a microcosm of China, but even he was not capable of decorating it with the Forbidden City of Beijing, or the misty crags of Guilin, or the mountains of Tibet, or the Silk Road oases of the western deserts, or the Yellow River which gave China its civilisation. Once the Nationalists had embarked on their escape, the territory of China would be utterly lost to them.


China's cultural heritage, however, was another matter. Elements of this were portable. And when the Nationalists left, they decided to carry it with them. The results of this decision can still be seen in Taiwan's National Palace Museum, which is by the far the greatest repository of Chinese art in the world today.

It is in search of those treasures that I'm here, rather than for anything else. Taipei is not an attractive city in itself. Grim, grey blocks line the streets. Flyovers and bridges stomp across the skyline. Even the President has his residence in the former Japanese governor's office, a tatty-looking brick building that no one has been bothered to replace. I find it hard to avoid the suspicion that a subconscious expectation of "return to the mainland" has not quite gone away.

But Taipei's art treasures will make up for all of that. I already know that the collection here derives directly from the collections of the Chinese emperors, who ruled their vast territories for more than 3,000 years. I step inside the National Palace Museum with a feeling of awe.

One of the first things I see is a bronze cauldron from the ninth century BC. And this is not some archaeological curiosity from pre-history. The man who made it (the Duke of Mao, from the era of the Western Zhou) is a historic figure. Inside the cauldron is a long inscription, the Duke's own words, written to his uncle, expressing opinions on how to rule and how to survive your enemies.

Such objects have been regarded as precious by virtually everyone in China's history apart from Chairman Mao. "The bronze and jade articles that give pleasure to the king," states a 2,300-year-old memo from the imperial archives, "are stored in the Royal Residence." Later, in the second century BC, the visionary Emperor Wu Di was also storing the calligraphy and paintings that pleased him. He even employed scholars to authenticate treasures newly excavated from Shang Dynasty tombs that were (then) more than a thousand years old. In the wise words of contemporary historians, the possession of such items was a sure sign that the mandate of heaven, to rule China, had been won.

What a pity that the history of this collection, from then to now, has been not a smooth process of accretion. In fact, the losses have been severe. During the chaos surrounding the collapse of the Tang Dynasty, for example, around AD 900, many of the scrolls were destroyed by fire and looting. But once the Song Dynasty had established itself, the collection was soon flourishing again. And it was in the reign of the great Emperor Song Huizhong, in the early 12th century, that the structure of the imperial collection as we see it today was set out.

Song Huizhong was an artist himself, and the inventor, I learn, of something called the "slender goat" style of calligraphy. It is hard not to admire him. "As long as there is painting and calligraphy," he once sighed, "a lifetime of one thousand years would not be long enough." He sent out scholars to scour the empire for surviving paintings from previous eras. The rigorous and scientific catalogues he drew up, of his own great collection, are still extant.

This is not to say there would be not be many more losses over the years. First came the Mongol invasions. And through the ages, emperors have been capable of flogging off paintings for cash, melting down precious bronzes and doling out jade ornaments as gifts. Then there were the secretaries and eunuchs who found cunning ways of stealing treasures. Thus were the collections precariously handed down from emperor to emperor and from dynasty to dynasty.

In the 15th century, a great imperial palace was erected in Beijing that came to be known as the Forbidden City. Many of China's treasures would be stored there for generations to come. And in the 18th century came one more great patron of the arts, the Qing Emperor, Qianlong. He spent his reign not only commissioning new works, but also cataloguing old ones. He stamped practically everything in the collection with his own seals, often inscribing comments alongside - in the most tasteful calligraphy, of course.

After Qianlong's death, times again became dangerous for the collections, as indeed they did for China as a whole. The emperors grew poorer, and more inclined to plunder their own treasures in the search for gifts. This was not the only threat: in a notorious incident in 1860, British and French soldiers ransacked the imperial summer palace outside Beijing, seizing a large number of precious paintings (some of which can now be seen in the British Museum).

In 1911, the Republic of China was declared. But Puyi, the last emperor of China, was permitted to continue living in the Forbidden City and it was during these years that there occurred some of the most catastrophic losses of all, not least those caused by a huge fire deliberately lit in the Forbidden City by discontented eunuchs. And Puyi himself sold off countless treasures to raise cash for his private use. Not until 1925 was this flow of losses stemmed, with the expulsion of the profligate Puyi once and for all. Museum professionals could at last be sent in to check the contents of the palace.

Inside, they found literally millions of items, including piles of ancient ceramics still in use as common utensils. On 10 October 1925, the Forbidden City, and all its contents, was officially opened as a museum. After 2,000 years it seemed that the trials and tribulations of the most precious creations of Chinese art had finally come to an end.

It was a false dawn. The next 30 years were to prove the most dangerous in the collection's entire history. In 1931, the Japanese attacked and, for safety, nearly 20,000 crates were packed up, and sent south to Nanjing and Shanghai.

For a while it seemed as though Nanjing might become their permanent new home. In 1937 however, the Japanese began a full-scale invasion of eastern China. Once again the treasures had to be removed, this time in a hurry.

Considering the exigencies of war, it seems astonishing how much time and money the Nationalists were prepared to invest in protecting the museum treasures. An old superstition seemed to survive, that the imperial collections represented the spirit of China itself; that their safety would confer legitimacy on the rulers who protected them.

Only in the very last days before the Japanese burst their murderous way into Nanjing were the last crates finally removed from the city. Their destination was China's south-west, far away from the Japanese advance, though different batches took different routes. Aged trucks and boats carried them through remote and difficult terrain. At times boats had to be pulled against the current, or boxes carried along muddy tracks. Some of the boxes were carried on foot over snow-covered mountains. Japanese bombing was never far behind.

In the autumn of 1939 the boxes arrived safely in Sichuan, not far from the great city of Chongqing, where Chiang Kai-Shek had established his government. And here in Sichuan province a young artist and designer called Suo Yuming first came into the employment of the museum. I know this because I am now talking to the man himself, here in the tea-room of the National Palace Museum.

He is a tall spindly character, now in his eighties. He got his first job in the museum as a painter and a designer; his work then was to help create imitations of some of the treasures, hidden in a small town. There was no bomb shelter. They just used to hide in a temple when Japanese planes came over.
After the war ended in 1945, the order came to pack up the treasures and transport them back to Nanjing, China's capital. For Suo, this was the beginning of an idyllic time. "In those days we never thought about politics," he says. "We enjoyed the feeling of victory, then got down to work." Suo was an assistant researcher, verifying the history and authenticity of each item. But his troubles - and China's - were not over. War flared again, this time between Chiang's Nationalists and Mao's Communists. And by 1948, the Communists were approaching Nanjing. Again, the Nationalists showed their attachment to the treasures. The order now came to remove them to the comparative safety of Taiwan.

The thought of packing up and moving for the second time in four years seems not to have depressed Suo. He supposed it would be a temporary move, as before. Many of the crates had not been unpacked since 1931 anyway. But they had just three ships in which to carry them. Only the most precious parts of the collection could be taken this time; less important items would have to be left.

Suo himself travelled in the last of the three ships from Nanjing, the Kunlun. There was supposed to be room in the ship for 3,000 crates, but in the event they were obliged to leave nearly 1,000 behind, in order to carry more men desperate to escape the Communists. By this stage, the selection process had become random - the dockworkers just picked up the first boxes they could lay their hands on. In some cases, sets of objects were thus separated from each other for ever.

Was Suo afraid? "No. The Kunlun was a military ship, and the Communists only had rifles." But his confidence was to some extent misplaced. Suo, like all of the departing Nationalists, was convinced that he would soon be returning. He could never imagine that he might still be living in Taiwan 55 years later. In the event he left behind a mother and a fiancée, neither of whom he ever saw again. But that is another story.

Right now all I can think of is a 1,500-year-old painting I've just been looking at, depicting two men on a bridge, a river, a barge, snowy trees, a wooden pavilion and the eternal misty hills of ancient China. People are such small and insignificant creatures, alone in a world of egrets and mountains. How does it feel to be buried in so much tradition? I shake myself and go to meet another member of the museum, the deputy director, Dr Shih. He is one of those elegant little Chinese men as quiet as a cat and with the distilled wisdom of 2,000 years of culture in his head. Does he worry, today, about the things that were left behind in 1949? "We would have taken it all, including the Forbidden City itself, if we could have," he smiles, sadly. "But most of the decisions taken then were the right ones. I don't complain."

He suggests that the mission to rescue the treasures from the Communists was a kind of Long March, comparable to Mao's. "It was a very holy, special, symbolic mission," Dr Shih says. "Any regime's legitimacy relies on a continuation of heritage. You also have to enrich your heritage, to prove you are a worthy heir."

Dr Shih tells me about the artists and professors - "the most important young intellects of China" - who
believed, in the 1940s, that they could create a new future for the fledgling Republic by lugging crates full of cultural treasures round China. They literally had 2,000 years of heritage in their hands. So highly did the Chinese Nationalists regard these treasures, that when the National Palace Museum opened in Taipei in 1965 - finally putting an end to 35 years of peregrinations - the director of the museum was a post that had ministerial ranking.

Dr Shih is anxious to remind me that he is more interested in the aesthetic aspect of the collection than in its political or symbolic aspect. But before I leave, he cannot help pointing out to me the bronze cauldron that stands in the courtyard at the front of the museum. "It is the ancient Chinese symbol of political power and legitimacy," he says, with a modest smile. I know what he means. The Communists may have won China, but they have lost her treasures. And for that, the Mandate of Heaven will never rest easy.


The Facts


Getting there
Jeremy Atiyah travelled to Hong Kong as a guest of British Airways (0870-850 9850; www.ba.com), and from there to Taiwan with Cathay Pacific. Return flights cost from £684 in November.


Being there
Places to stay include the cheap but cheerful Queen Hotel (00 886 2 25590489) at Chang'an W Rd, 226, 2nd floor. It is near the railway station and double rooms cost about £16 per night. Alternatively, the upmarket, central Far Eastern Plaza Hotel (00 886 2 2378 8888; http://www.shangri-la.com/eng/index.htm) at 201 Tunhua S Rd offers rooms from £150 per night.
The National Palace Museum (www.npm.gov.tw) is open daily, 9am-5pm. Admission is about £2.


Further information
In Taipei, the tourism bureau office (00 886 2 2439 1635; http://taiwan.net.tw) is at 280 Jungshiau E Road, 9th Floor.

The Lonely Planet Guide to Taiwan (£12.99) is the main guide-book. Visas are issued on arrival to visitors with UK passports.

Showtime in Carmen's old stamping ground

Bizet's flamboyant heroine still haunts Seville, discovers Jeremy Atiyah. Even if she's really a Belgian tour guide called Johanna

Published: 07 September 2003

It's 8pm and the solar whiteout is not yet finished. But I'm on a walking tour of Seville with Carmen. Carmen? Haven't I heard that name somewhere before? With her dark tangled hair and long baggy skirt she seems to have a touch of gypsy about her. She is slightly grungy, and might have been a fire-eater or a juggler on Brighton beach. She keeps projecting her voice above the rooftops, gesticulating wildly to the sky, breaking out into throaty songs. The only snag about her is that she is not Spanish, nor even a gypsy. She is, in fact, Belgian. Her real name is Johanna Vandenbussche.

But she definitely resembles the character from Bizet's opera, and she is also Seville's most theatrical tour guide. "I am the free, roaming spirit of Carmen!" she roars. "No one can tie me down!" She describes her act as "stand-up tragedy", and has already been on Spanish TV several times. Today, we, her paying customers, number about 15 people, including one state senator from Oklahoma and several citizens of France who cannot understand English (but who love Bizet). "The people of Seville," she is explaining, with an apologetic laugh, "are a little bit ashamed of Carmen." Which is why she, a Belgian, has taken responsibility for shouldering her story.

Off we go, with Carmen in the lead, heading on down to the tobacco factory. She is trundling a tatty old shopping bag on wheels behind her, from which she occasionally whips out an accordion. Then she begins to sing, rough little songs for Carmen and her lover Don Jose, whose two faces, on cardboard, face each other in an eternal stroppy stand-off above the accordion.

"Welcome to my factory!" she cries, when we get there. My idea of the tobacco factory from the Carmen story is of a handful of women in a seedy little sweatshop. In fact, this factory was the centrepiece of Spanish industry, and here it is: a monumental, square 18th-century palace, larger even than Seville's giant cathedral. It has royal gates and moats. Forty years ago it was converted into a university building; until then, it was a factory that at its zenith had employed 12,000 people.

And as Carmen now explains, you had to have very nimble fingers to get a job there. In other words, you had to be a woman, preferably (if rumours were true) a sultry, long-haired beauty with flashing coal-black eyes and a dagger in your garter, who would break out into a spontaneous foot-stomping, neck-arching, castanet-clicking dance routine every time the foreman turned his back.

No wonder the tobacco factory of Seville became a focal point of delirious male attention. In the southern heat, stories of passionate gypsies and heaving bosoms in the workplace (combined, perhaps, with memories of the Moorish harem) became ever more intense. Out of all this, Prosper Mérimée, a French visitor to Seville in the early 19th century, was stimulated to write a suitably febrile story about a woman called Carmen, a story later adapted by Bizet.

"It was all Columbus's fault," Carmen is complaining, on the subject of self-indulgent males. She reminds us of how Seville had grown rich in the first place from the fantastic American trade. For nearly 200 years, the city had revelled in the massive benefits of a legal monopoly, after a royal decree stipulated that all ships from the Americas sail right up the Guadalquivir into Seville itself.

Luxury, then, is nothing new to these streets. This is a city where architects could afford to worry as much about the smell and sound of their buildings as their appearance. We pass a sign advertising "LOVELY TYPICAL SEVILLIAN HOUSES WITH SMELL OF ORANGE BLOSSOM FOR RENT". From courtyards green with foliage and littered with oranges comes the trickle of water and the coo of doves.

We head back to the centre. Tourists in shady squares are thinking about the first drink of the evening. Horse-and-carriage drivers keep shouting "Hola Carmen!" as they trot past. Right by the Alcazar, we find ourselves on a street called Miguel Mañara, which prompts Carmen to break out into new raptures. "My hero!" she cries, crossing her hands lovingly over her heart, before beginning to tell the tale of her alter ego, that other Sevillian symbol of libertinism - Don Juan, later immortalised by Mozart as Don Giovanni.

It is not clear who came first, the historical figure Miguel Mañara or the mythical character Don Juan, who first appeared as El Burlador de Sevilla ("the Seducer of Seville") in 1630, in a play by the Spanish dramatist Tirso de Molina. But either way, sensual Seville was their stage. Both date from the early 17th century; both were licentious but attractive rascals who lived for the day, and had great difficulties remembering about the morrow - not unlike Carmen herself (but very different from Seville's third operatic child, Figaro, the comic hero of The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro).

Carmen, meanwhile, continues to talk passionately about Miguel Mañara. As a young man, she explains, Mañara had not only ruined the chastity of respectable girls, but also had even taken to murdering their fathers. Later in life he had done a famous about-turn, becoming a prior and spending his entire fortune on a hospital for the poor. Now he is regarded in Seville as something close to a saint. "A little bit of an extremist," sighs Carmen, as we stroll past the 16th-century former stock exchange, "but a typical son of Seville."

Now she sits us all down in the shadow of the Giralda and begins to sing about the circumstances of how she met Don Jose, her lover in Bizet's story. She had cut another woman's face, she calmly explains, after being mocked for her gypsy origins. "And Don Jose was one of those assigned to the job of taking me off to prison!" she adds, with a laugh. "That was how we met!" But before Carmen has time to explain further, the bells of the Giralda start ringing like crazy, swinging and ringing as if there is no tomorrow. The heat is crushing, but the sun has set and a Spanish couple will marry.

We walk down towards the river into the old warehouse area that used to back on to the port. The poor once teemed here in their thousands. But Carmen's beaming smile tells us a story: for here is the grand Hospital of the Caridad, the hospital built on the orders of her old friend Miguel Mañara. And there, in a courtyard opposite, overgrown with roses and long grass, we glimpse a forgotten statue of the man himself.

Yet another Sevillian wedding is taking place, just as we try to peer into the famous chapel of the hospital. The guests are in elegant silk and chiffon; we tourists in shorts and sandals. But there in the doorway lies the tombstone of Miguel Mañara. Carmen is clapping her hands in joy and exclaiming at the top of her voice, to the consternation of the wedding guests: "He wanted all the world to walk all over him!" But I can't help wondering if he wasn't just lobbying for sainthood. "With great humility, in his will," I now read, engraved in stone, "he demanded to be buried where all could tread on him... here lie the ashes of the worst man who has ever lived in the world." If that isn't a bad case of 17th-century spin, I don't know what is.

Meanwhile, we are about to emerge on the river itself. Over there in Triana, on the opposite bank, are some of the best and cheapest bars for fishy tapas in the world. Later, I'll sit there and look back over the city, while snacking on sardines dipped in sea salt and scorched on coals. But over here, our singing guide is bringing her story to a climax. We pause under the ancient vaulted ceilings of what used to be Seville's shipyard, to listen in on the increasingly disputatious relationship of Carmen and Don Jose.

And now here at last is the famous bullring of Seville. By the river, we see proud, pompous arches of gleaming white plaster coming into view under a steel-blue sky: how small and funny it looks compared with its modern equivalent, the football stadium.

But there is nothing funny about this place. Later I'll enter the ring to see shaded seats for princes and for owners - and broiling sun for everybody else. Ominous damp patches stain the sand. The intensity and the intimacy are too much; all of society can see itself in here. There is the small chapel, stuffed with virgins, where bullfighters make their prayers; and here, in the museum, is the stuffed head of a cow, the mother of the bull that killed Manolete, Spain's most famous fighter, in 1947. Carmen hates all this. "But the strange thing was," she adds, with a sheepish smile, "that I did fancy the picador."

Ah yes, the picador. Carmen's fatal mistake. So there it was, outside the bullring, in a dusty square by the river, that she and jealous lover had their last argument. "Come to America or you die!" Don Jose threatened. Carmen, of course, refused. "I chose the spirit of my city," she tells us, "of freedom!"

At this moment I feel oddly emotional. All of us have fallen silent. Right by the river we find ourselves beside Seville's only statue of Carmen, who, in bronze, seems diminutive, and more demure than I would have depicted her. Her face is serious rather than sultry. "Sad, isn't it, dear people!" shouts the living Carmen, with a big laugh. "Poor Don Jose killed me! But as I've already told you, although I am dead, my spirit is free. Isn't that amazing, dear people?"


The Facts


Getting there
Jeremy Atiyah travelled with Spain at Heart (01373 814222; www.spainatheart.co.uk) and Europcar (0870-607 5000; www.europcar.co.uk). A three-night break in Seville starts at £350 per person, based on two sharing, including scheduled flights with British Airways and b&b. Europcar offers a week's car hire from £140 for a group A car.


The Facts
Carmen's guided walking tour departs daily except Tuesday and Sunday at 7pm from the corner of Calle Sto. Thomas and Calle Miguel Mañara, near the Alcazar entrance. What you pay is up to you.


Further information
Spanish Tourist Office (020-7486 8077; www.tourspain.co.uk).

Granada: Arabian heights Granada relishes the spicy legacy of its Moorish past

Granada: Arabian heights Granada relishes the spicy legacy of its Moorish past, says Jeremy Atiyah

August 3, 2003 Times Online

So much for what the legends say. I have come to stay in the Albaicin, the city’s so-called Moorish quarter, to look for the evidence.

So far, I am charmed. The Albaicin is lined with cobbled lanes, scuffed white walls and bougainvillea by the ton. It also happens to have the best view in the world, across to where the square russet towers of the Alhambra spring up like a Moorish myth from behind thousands of trees. But thanks to the steepness of its lanes, tourists are still outnumbered by the local children, who play football, smoke hash and sleep in tiny forgotten squares.

And look at this hotel of mine! The Casa del Aljarife is a centuries-old whitewashed house with an enclosed patio full of lemon trees. Its windows look up to the Alhambra, and when I wake in the morning, all I can hear is the distant wailing of flamenco singers.

The only problem, in fact, is the owner, a vast northern European who stomps about in shorts, shoes and socks. When I tell him that I envy him his house, he retorts that I do not know the reality of life in Spain.

“And you do not know,” he grimaces, “that when the Spanish say ‘tomorrow’, they mean ‘in about a month’.”

He is missing the point, I tell myself. Because if this sleepy place isn’t an Islamic paradise, what is? Even the restaurants resemble corners of heaven. Their garden sanctums are suit-ably veiled from prying eyes, and at many you must ring bells at hidden doorways to enter.

I spend hours under the orange trees at the Terraza las Tomasas, eating cod’s roe salad and Iberian ham with a moonlit view of the Alhambra filling half the sky. Later I try Taberna La Higuera, where I recline in a candlelit courtyard eating squid and drinking dirt-cheap wine. Why, I wonder after my fourth glass, doesn’t everyone live like this, all of the time? In such a mood, I feel ready to conquer the Alhambra itself. The ancient pinks, reds and browns of its hilltop battlements have obsessed me for long enough. It’s time to scale that summit.

The next morning, as I puff uphill to the gate, I’m met by armies of tourists descending from coaches. I hear disem- bodied voices in multiple languages addressing me on the subject of my rights and obligations once inside. I appear to be at the beginning of a touristic assembly line.

Lucky Washington Irving! When he applied to visit, the request was considered so freakish that he was given the Nasrid Palaces, within, to use as his private hotel. He lived there for several months in the style of a Moorish sultan, taking his meals “sometimes in one of the Moorish Halls, sometimes under the arcades ... surrounded by flowers and fountains”.

Not that I am going to let distaste for other tourists eat me up. Five-hundred feet below, the traffic of modern Granada seethes and rumbles; up here in the Alhambra, I have the rustle of trees and the murmur of water, and the cool air from the Sierra Nevada drifts among the columns and fountains.

It is easy to get carried along by the spirit of this place. The calligraphic decoration on the walls is the doodling of men with nothing to do but repeat the central happy certainty of their lives — that there is no god but God. I slip into a daze, stepping from courtyard to courtyard, dreaming of harems and other pleasures.

By the waters of the Patio de los Arrayanes, I recall the Nasrid sultan of Granada who once summoned his court here to witness his concubine Zoraya taking her bath. Each courtier was required to drink from a bowl of her bathwater, then rhapsodise in verse about the marvellous taste it had acquired. Only the vizier refrained: “If I taste the sauce,” he protested, “I may develop an appetite for the partridge!” That’s Granada, a city not of jokes, but of suggestive yarns. Neighbouring Seville and Cordoba have also tried to cash in on the memory of the lost Moorish culture of al-Andalus, but neither has half the legacy of Granada. Later, back in town, I discover that the new craze is for ever more splendid teterias, or teahouses — perfect venues for storytellers to idle away the afternoons of summer. These are no longer the dingy dives of a few years back, but cool, palatial bars, pastiches of the old Moorish pleasures. They have candles, divans and fountains, all surrounded by Alhambra-style columns and arches.

At the Teteria el Bañuelo, I am greeted by the murmur of Arabic music and the song of a caged canary. The walls are adorned with quotations — eulogies about the period of Moorish rule when Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together in peace.

But what’s this? The menu includes such offerings as “1,001 Nights tea”. Is this not just a fantasy arranged to impress naive tourists? I immediately think of Calle Calde- reria Nueva, where all manner of “Moorish” tat is now on sale, from leather lampshades to aphrodisiac brews.

“No, no!” protests the cafe’s owner when he sees my scepticism. He is carrying a huge bunch of fresh mint in his hand. “These are genuine ancient recipes of old Granada!” This leads to a rambling discussion about half-remembered “Moorish” dishes. He explains how the Muslims of Spain enjoyed cultivating vegetables, while the Catholics were content to rear cattle on the parched hills. Surviving specialities include dishes that are neither sweet nor savoury: soups combining almonds and garlic; fig tarts with pine nuts; honeyed aubergines fried in batter.

That evening, in a Moroccan restaurant called Arrayanes, I eat an extraordinary dish of filo pastry, shredded meat and icing sugar, all washed down with a green and gingery home-made lemonade.

And then, of course, there are the tapas. Granada is the last big city in Spain where the tradition of a free snack with every drink still flourishes. Tapas, they say, were a Muslim invention, designed to eliminate the unholy possibility of drinking without eating. Later in my trip, in an old-fashioned downtown bar called Cas-teñada, my glasses of chilled fino arrive with little dishes of lamb stew and plates of ham and olives — and I ponder the miracle of getting something for nothing. After five drinks, I will need no dinner.

If Granada’s Arabs had contributed only this to civilisation, I would already be in their debt. But before leaving the city, I have one more Arab speciality to sample — up by the River Darro, between the twin hills of the Albaicin and the Alhambra. This used to be a smelly lane, leading out into the melancholy country that Washington Irving found so silent and lonesome. Nowadays, however, the valley has been cleaned up — kids strum guitars on the riverbanks and cool trees line the river. And here is a genuine hammam: an Arabic bathhouse.

It’s not the original — that fell into ruins about eight centuries ago. This is a new one. But don’t be put off. When I step inside, there are fragrant candles burning, and languid figures lounge on the tiles or in the pools. Through the steam, the atmosphere is faintly nefarious, vaguely suggestive of a Victorian opium den. But I find there is no end to the pleasure of immersing myself in the hot bath then the cool bath, then lying on the tiles regarding the stars and the half-moons inlaid in the vaulted ceilings.

I can still see the place now, just as I’d seen it years ago in my imagination. The influence of the Arabs, who fled Granada sighing back in 1492, is definitely making a comeback.

Jeremy Atiyah was a guest of Spain at Heart and Europcar

Swissotel, Berlin

By Jeremy Atiyah

Published: 24 May 2003

The Swissôtel is just one of the new buildings that have sprung up in the Zoo area of West Berlin, designed to replace the tawdry city-centre blocks considered so glamorous in the 1960s. In common with certain other Berlin hotels in the five-star category, it is trying to promote itself as Swiss (efficient to a fault), trendy (full of modern art) and classy (Anton Mosiman runs the restaurant). It doesn't throb: don't expect crowds of flashy people. Instead the lobby is a silent, almost modest haven, four floors up from the street. Spaces throughout the hotel are sprinkled with paintings and sculptures from the German artist Markus Lüpertz said to be worth €20m.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
Augsburger Strasse 44, 10789 Berlin, Germany (00 49 30 220100; www.swissotel.com). The hotel is in the heart of old West Berlin, at the top of the city's most illustrious shopping street, Kurfurstendamm, and overlooking the landmark Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtnis Church. The upper rooms have fabulous views of the city. The only snag is that since 1989 the Ku'damm has become deeply untrendy. Mitte, a few kilometres to the east, is now the only place to be seen.


Transport: there is little to see within walking distance of the hotel, apart from the zoo and lots of shops. But Berlin's public transport is excellent, and the Swissôtel is only a few minutes walk from Zoo station, a major transport hub. Fast and inexpensive connections by overground train (S-Bahn) and underground (U-Bahn) run from here to all parts of the city.


Time to international airport: while From West Berlin's old airport, Tegel, a taxi takes 15 minutes at off-peak hours and costs around £15. The No 109 bus from the airport terminal (every 10 minutes for most of the day) takes about 30 minutes and stops right across the road from the hotel. The fare is about £2.50 each way.


ARE YOU LYING COMFORTABLY?
Your room is likely to have a soothing colour scheme of milk chocolate and butterscotch. The space at your disposal is not colossal, though the soft leather armchairs, potted orchids and original art on the walls will certainly suggest colossal expense. The bathrooms feature free loofer-mits and extra large tubs with space for two.


Keeping in touch: You can access the internet via your TV, though it will cost you a minimum of £5 every time you check your e-mails. Every room has modem sockets.


THE BOTTOM LINE
Double rooms cost from €120 (£86). You can book direct or through Leading Hotels of the World (00800 2888 8882; www.lhw.com).


I'm not paying that: Just round the corner is the Jugendgästhaus am Zoo (00 49 3129410) at Hardenbergstrasse 9a. A bed in a four-bed dormitory costs about £13.