The Premier's Hand

Dear Family,
A curious day. It began with Kaz and I getting up early to cycle before breakfast to the hill of cherry blossoms closest to us (rain, forecast for tonight, meant it would probably be our last chance). There, we learned from a temporary road sign and a friendly constable that Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao, was due to visit Kyoto for a few brief hours later in the day.
As luck would have it, I was returning home in the afternoon through the dry ricefields in another part of Sagano, when I noticed a large number of men in black suits standing around in the paddies. Curiosity aroused, and using my intimate knowledge of the network of narrow agricultural tracks, I managed to avoid all the policemen and probable plainclothes heavies and get myself into position right beside a lonely farm near the back of Hirosawa Pond, where I soon learned the Premier was to arrive in just a few minutes.
The motorcade; the disembarkation; the swarming; the farmer's greeting; the stroll past the world's media, all herded into a neatly improvised triple-decker stand. I was with a group of local farmers and their wives, only about eleven or twelve of us in all - and one of the women shouted, Ni hau! Wen stopped in his tracks and waved at us. For fifteen minutes, then, he disappeared into the bowels of the farm, where, we later learned from the TV news, he sat on a tractor and delicately planted a tomato seedling in the soil. The fences and bushes fairly bristled with those dark-suited men with wires running into their ears (many no doubt with hidden guns and kung-fu black belts to boot). A helicopter hovered high over the pond.
His arm around the old farmer, eventually he reemerged, and the entourage streamed down towards the waiting motorcade. Wen again looked over to the motley assortment of token locals just out of reach - and trouble - across a couple of small fields and ...

/ ... he turns sharp right towards us instead of getting back into his car. It is as if he is making a bid for freedom. He is suddenly upon us. The first farmer, caught unawares, has his back turned; but when the Premier thrusts out his hand, the farmer whoops aloud and, looking straight at Wen, screams the not-entirely appropriate salutation, "Banzai!" And now he comes to me and offers me his hand. It is small, warm, rather soft, but full of - how shall I put it - well, ... a sort of grace. He smiles, says something in Chinese I take to mean 'Nice to meet you!' and strides on to a grassy paddy-edge just behind me, where some rustiques veritables are gaffing, their faces so obviously not suntanned just by the few good days of spring so far ... /

And then he was gone, and all eighteen cars with him; and the heli receded. There was just an excited murmuring of people moving back through the fields as the policemen relaxed their stiff walkie-talkie poses.
This evening, we took Padparadshah to the vet; he hasn't eaten for more than a week. He has cat AIDS. The vet has given him less than a month to live. And now it rains and rains.
We send you lots of love,
Tito

To spring earth
And speedwell,
A tiny orange butterfly and ...
The Head of the Chinese State.

(Sagano, Kyoto, 13.4.07)