Wall of China won’t come between us
You notice the twinning signage on the outskirts of towns and villages.
These places frequently have strained relationships with the next-door town or village, because of bitter GAA battles of the past.
But, lo and behold, the brown signs say they are twinned with European towns, with names like Backofbeyond, and such like.
Until this week, I’ve had no time for twinning, but now I have been converted by the news that Co Clare is twinning up with Yunnan Province, in China.
It is a perfect match, my friends. The two regions fit like a warm hand in a kid glove, and immense benefits are bound to flow in both directions. The pure truth.
It does not matter at all that there are only 110,000 Dalcassians, plus a few blow-ins like myself, in the Banner heartland of Brian Boru, while there are 50m Yunnanites in western China. The more the merrier.
It is when you study the history of our new twin-land in great detail, as I did this week, that you discover the incredible linkages and connections between Yunnan and ourselves.
They don’t play hurling, it is true (they prefer soccer), and they don’t drink porter. Apart from that, they are our long-lost kinsmen, and the cultural exchanges ahead will hugely benefit both of us.
Connections? Would you believe that their version of the fabled, narrow-gauge West Clare railway was running down the lines towards the Vietnamese border from their capital, Kunning, during the very years that ‘Michael was alright’, and Percy French was among the passengers? It is a fact that the two lines were closed down commercially at almost exactly the same time.
It is a fact that the Yunnanites fought (and lost) even more battles down the centuries than the Dalcassians.
It is a fact that they have about three equivalents of Ardnacrusha on their foamingly violent rivers — which include the original Red River — and it is yet another astonishing linguistic fact that they, like us in Clare, have exactly the same quick-fire local dialect, because they run words rapidly together like we do (even the blow-ins), with a resulting loss of the ‘n’ and ‘y’ sound at the end of a noun or adjective.
They speak a range of different languages, of course, but, by my reckoning, we will probably readily understand all of them.
For your further information, the main Yunnanite clans are composed of the Yi tribe and the Dai tribe and the Hani tribe, whose physiques are very similar to those of the typical Dalcassian hurler or footballer. And all of that is the kind of pure truth in which I specialise. As ye well know by now.
There is more than that, and much more. You will hardly believe it. The 50m Yunnanites have a Poulnabrone dolmen similar to the famed, ancient tribal burial place in Clare, near Ballyvaughan, and they claim that the Yunnanite Man’s remains recently discovered there are the most ancient fossil finds in China. That fossilised chieftain or king, however, is merely an infant when compared with the age of the remains discovered under Poulnabrone by DNA experts in recent years.
And there is yet more. Tourism is as vital to our new Chinese cousins as it is to Clare.
But there is yet another vital connection. Clare, in recent statistics, has more tea drinkers and tobacco smokers than the national Irish average.
Would you believe that it was the Yunannites who first developed the habit of tea drinking?
Would you believe that their leading export, today, is a combination of tea and tobacco? Even more vital to them than their resources of minerals, especially zinc.
Clare is blessed with having herds of wild puck goats on the Burren of the north of the county.
The Burren is also famed for its wealth of flora and fauna. I’m sad to say that the Yunnanites seem to have the edge on us here. They have an unmatched horticulture industry in China, on their wild limestone and karst slopes and valleys and, more than that, where we have lively herds of puck goats, they even have tigers, fierce wild cattle, called gaurs, and even a declining, but still impish, population of black snub-nose monkeys.
I will leave it at that. Clearly, it is good that Clare is officially connected and twinned with what appears to be a worthy area of China.
I note that they know nothing at all about jigs and reels, and hornpipes and slow airs. And nothing about the ancient art of craic, which we have long since perfected. So there are certainly interesting and culturally stimulating times ahead.
I look forward to that exchange.
