China’s First Lady Peng Liyuan, wife of President Xi Jinping, spent the better part of yesterday morning learning about and watching hummingbirds in Valley View off Silk Cotton Circle high up in the mountains of Maracas.
Dressed in a gold Chinese outfit, the fashionable and attractive Liyuan, described by some as the most popular woman in China, arrived at Yerette, Home of the Hummingbird, in the foothills of El Tucuche, T&T’s second highest mountain, with a fiercely protective security detail and members of the Chinese media.
Owner of the property, Theodore Ferguson, a retired University of the West Indies agronomy professor, said Yerette, located on the former Anderson Cocoa Estate, is one of the country’s most popular tourist sites, but villagers did not know the place existed.
The trip to Yerette was part of a three-day State visit to T&T by Liyuan and President Xi which ended yesterday. It was the first time a Chinese president visited this country. Asked how the president’s wife found Yerette, Ferguson said the Chinese Embassy made the connection.
Liyuan, appointed the World Health Organisation’s goodwill ambassador in 2011 for tuberculosis and HIV/Aids, sat in the porch of the hummingbird house, a homely flat, facing a garden of pretty flowers and small trees from which hung feeders filled with nectar around which dozens of hummingbirds of a variety of colours flitted.
Wife of President Anthony Carmona, Reema, and Shirley Dookeran, wife of Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Dookeran, who had arrived before the First Lady, sat in her company while Ferguson, gave them a lecture on hummingbirds. Ferguson began by informing Liyuan that T&T’s first people, the Amerindians, believed hummingbirds were sacred and carried the souls of their dead ancestors. Yerette, he said, is the Amerindian word for hummingbird.
The Home of the Hummingbird is also a therapeutic centre because the hummingbird has the power to heal internally, Ferguson said.
Sipping tamarind juice, Liyuan listened intently while one of her entourage translated. Ferguson said his place has 13 of the 17 species of hummingbirds which are found only in the Western Hemisphere. The hummingbird, which he described as a flying jewel, is the smallest and most energetic bird on earth with a heartbeat of between 500 and 600 per minute.
Ferguson said the bird, seen by some as magical and mysterious, was once hunted, killed and exported. He said the hummingbird trade ended in 1918 and the bird is today protected by international law.“It is illegal to catch, buy or sell one,” he said
Liyuan asked Ferguson if he studied hummingbirds as a hobby and he said yes. He said while other people pass the time playing golf and in the rumshop, he enjoyed photographing hummingbirds. Liyuan wanted to know how his wife felt about it and Ferguson said at first she didn’t understand but is very supportive now.
Telling him he did a wonderful presentation, the First Lady asked if there is documentary from T&T about hummingbirds. Ferguson replied no, that while it is an important national symbol, not much attention has been paid to it. Liyuan told him if a documentary was made, the whole world will know about the hummingbird. She presented Ferguson with an embroidery of a hummingbird and, in turn, he presented her with a large framed photograph of the ruby topaz, reputedly the most beautiful hummingbird in the world.
Probably, the most covered woman by the Chinese media, Liyuan was born into poverty and became a famous folk soprano singer in China before she met President Xi. She joined the People’s Liberation Army as a civilian at 18 and holds the rank of army general. The Chinese president and his wife are expected to visit the Republic of Costa Rica and the United Mexican States following their T&T visit.