Contortionists, jugglers and opera oh my!

There is a ridiculous number of things to possibly do here in Beijing. My friend Kevin has taken to lounging about in the hostel, reading books. His knee is bothering him a fair bit though, so he's got an excuse. Some days, however, I feel like I want an excuse to just stay in bed and read. I stayed in and read some issue of Time, the one with the "Person of the Year" on it. Perennial "good-guy" Dubya made it again, and got a fancy dose of some interestingly kitschy photography that comes as close to rhetoric as imagery allows. It's funny, but the more I learn about the guy, the more I'm almost glad he's in again. Not that I'm for much of his mandate. I do applaud his interest in getting back into space and making Mars by 2020 or whatever it was, and I also applaud his laudable avoidance of destroying the moon with nuclear weapons. I don't find much else in common with him, with the possible exceptions of liking a nice steak every now and then and appearing to be heterosexually inclined, white and male. What I appreciate, though, in all seriousness, is his consistency. You can pretty much predict how he'll act under a variety of circumstances. He's a predictable animal, if a canny one with suspect logic underpinning his values. I don't think he's an especially good guy, but there are scores of people I can think of who would make more evil statesmen/women who are considered by most people they know as "ok". I don't think you can get into a job like "President of the United States" and not be at least a little bit suspect in your niceness. He'd probably be someone you could get shitfaced with in a bar and not be too sorry for his company though, until he started a fight with those obvious deviants hunched over their cheap whiskey, all variously shaggy and shorn, pierced and tattooed smelling of well worn, sour denim, dusty leather and metal buckles, expecting you to back him up. Anyway, enough of politics. I'm on vacation, not employed as an apologist for the younger George something Walker Bush as person. I'd rather he was Woodrow Wilson, but I'd take him over Mao or Jerry Springer.

Beijing. Yep, that's where I am. It's still cold here. Not like I expected it to change, but the persistent omnipresence of the stinkin' coldness, in the shower, in the toilet, in the restaurants, in the stores, in the touristy spots, the computer spots, that's beginning to get to me. I guess I'll get used to it, probably just the day I leave. I'll probably get up to use the facilities in the early morning and find myself oddly unaffected by the bits-numbing icy chill of the frozen latrine.
Anyway, the cold is frequently offset by a nice hot cup of some of China's best. The tea here is great and ubiquitous. Famously so. I drink various varieties and incarnations a minimum of three times a day. The four eggs with hot peppers, rice and yogurt just aren't the same without a morning dose of North America's least preferred post-dinner drink.

So yesterday Caley, Anna and I mustered a noon wander around that famous square that oddly enough looks slightly more impressive than a big Walmart parking lot back home. If it weren't for the imposing architecture framing the large openness, you might have trouble figuring out where you were. We started with a look in the park on the west side of die Vorboden Stadt, then, after a quick bit of reasoning, we determined that indeed we would have to pass under Mao's big ol' mugshot to get into what is ecumenically termed 'the Palace Museum'. Forbidden City it is, Palace Museum, though it's current moniker, it is not. Communist-authoritarian rhetoric always likes to push it's vile little head into things that are bigger than it and had a better understanding of human nature. The whole idea of centralized communist states makes me ill. I used to think I might have communist leanings, given my socialist tendencies and preferences, further reading however, has led me to believe that capitalist, co-operation and communalism under a democratically elected and fully accountable division of powers between judicial, executive and legislative branches of a federal-style government, with subdivisions of similar bodies that are regionally responsive and accountable is really the best form of government and that it cuts the mustard quite well. The only things we really need to stay vigilant about is people trying to screw others, intentionally or otherwise or gather too much unaccountable power and influence. Nothing wrong with making a damn good go of things so long as you don't mess with people's ability to do something similar if they're inclined and able.

That said, I think a proper liberal education is essential. People need to think for themselves, even if they don't want to. They should never be allowed to abdicate enmass to any particular body, public or private, because as God is recorded as mentioning to Samuel, if people abdicate their freedoms so they don't have to be responsible, then they open themselves to tyranny. Jefferson's suggestion of eternal vigilance was primarily inward towards the US government rather than towards external threats to freedom and all that stuff. Anyway, in my humble opinion, communism failed miserably as a "people's movement". It's tyranny through and through and all this "Worker's Cultural Palace" or "People's Square" or "Monument to the People's Heroes" crap is utter tripe and the most vulgar kind of offence to human dignity. Of course we'll have to temper that with the fact that I'm a white male, and even if I am Catholic, I'm supposedly part of that tyranny machine called The West. The myth of The West can probably be exposed pretty nicely in The Lord of the Rings with the Men of the West in decline from a golden age and the onset of a kind of age of the myriad non-West forces. All that stuff aside, I think we're too hard on ourselves when we feel guilty about making judgments or holding opinions about non-Western civilizations that someone might be inclined to call ethnocentric.

Pervasive cultural relativism is crap. There have to be some basics. Sure the Chinese have different ideas about the manner with which they interact with each other in daily life, but when it comes down to it, parents love their children and vice versa, people fall in love, hump and have children. They eat and enjoy food. They sleep and like to keep healthy. Most people don't want to get killed. Most people aren't too keen on having people steal from them or sleep with their spouses. Most people feel their parents deserve some respect and most people seem to realize that wanting what you don't have leads to trouble. Everyone recognizes the need for rest as well. These things are not relative. Food and drink, clothing and speech, sure. That little tirade probably just marks me as a racist or something, not that I care too much about appearances. The proof should be in the pudding. It should be ecumenical and figgy.

So, back to the Forbidden City. It was pretty neat. There were haulkers galore without and not a one within. Turning down several offers by "English-uh-speakin-toua-guides" whose knowledge seemed to only slightly excel my own, we hired the esteemed Rodger Moore's voice on disk to guide us in his gentlemanly, at times subtle and gratuitously lascivious manner through the courtyards and passages of the former Son of Heaven. Times past, the place must have been something else. The shear quantity of marble and other nice materials is simply ridiculous. Full of Ming and Qing imagery, the place must have been quite memorable for the lowly unwashed who managed at some point in their lives to manage a view of the outer areas. Apparently the Emperor held audience with the relevant ministers and officials at the gate to his inner sanctum beyond which no one but him might pass. Some of them would have to get up at some ungodly hour every day to manage the meeting time of 6 am (I think it was 6, but it might be 8, early morning in either case).

If, the outer courtyards and buildings were pretty impressive if in poor repair, the inner areas, also in poor repair although actually being repaired, were simply interesting. The three of us sheltered from the bitterly cold wind in a souvenir shop and drank some grainy beverage that claimed to be coffee but tasted and bore bottom-of-the-cup evidence of being something more like millet soup. The imperial gardens were pretty neat too. My main impression was of opulence and I've decided that cypress trees, apart from sporting some pretty otherworldly forms, are not my favourite trees. It was cold in the garden too. The only places it wasn't cold were the alleys between areas. These were sunlit and sheltered from the wind. That, coupled with their orangy red imperial warmth and nifty gate carving served to elevate them to my favourite bits of the city. I tried to follow many places with open gates, but was often turned back by the stern looks of the bored security peeps. All in all, the Forbidden City was a good day, but it would have been more interesting if there was more reading to be had on the signs in front of all the gates. Rodger Moore gave some interesting accounts, but I think I prefer reading. I would even have paid another 20 RMB for it.

This is a lion guarding the right hand side of a major gate. His paw is placed upon the world... read into it however you like.


When it came down to it though, the only thing that could have made it more of a significant even for me would have been more interest in Chinese history. I find it a wee bit difficult most of the time though, as I find it less meaningful than the history of other places in the world. It's a Confucian world and as such, is hugely different from the Judeo-Christian world I was formed in. I guess being used to denigrating and criticising the West, I get a bit tired of hearing how China's so old and so dominant. The centre of the world. Well, sure, the centre of the Sinic world, but not the rest of the world. If you think about it, China sort of changes significantly every time someone new captains the ship. There are the Chinese characters that to anyone without a good background in Sinic history represents some long line of continuous culturally hegemonic nation. However, the characters are a bit like Arabic script and numerals or the Phonecian or Greek alphabets in terms of their omnipresence. These things span continents, and are indicative of related civilizations and nations, but everyone who uses some form of the Phoenician alphabet doesn't speak Phoenician or even English. They're often so different that people from different nations who happen to use the same alphabet cannot understand each other. This seems to be the Chinese experience too. The Chinese civilization is no more the Han civilization than the West is the Roman civilization. Heirs yes, but not the same. China is Han no more than the West is English.

Anyhoo, on to tea and a less expensive dinner than the duck. The three of us, following a brief stop in a tea house to look at the prices and say "oh, do we have time for this before we need to be at the opera? We should probably go." and then unseating ourselves, thanking the waitresses in the otherwise empty place and bidding them all a "merry zaijian", made our way to a clean looking restaurant with a few dead fish in it's aquariums out front. Possibly not the wisest course of action, but I'd been studiously avoiding seafood so I didn't think much of it. Meat and vegetables can't die of diseases because they're already dead... Everything turned out to be fine, everyone was a diligent hand washer and the kitchen appeared as sterile as China gets. People were spitting on the floor in the dining room, but none of the staff could be witnessed flinging phlegm. It was almost classy. We ordered a tofu dish and some eggplant as well as fried rice, lemon chicken and Singapore noodle. The tofu turned out to be Ma Po tofu with, of course, ground pork. All vegetarians, Muslims and Jews like a little ground pork in their ostensibly vegetarian course. Don't fight it, you know you love it! Anyway, Anna and I, both being omnivorous C & E RCs promptly devoured the tofu. Anna had some sense and left most of the red pepper stuff in her bowl. I, thankful to finally have some kick ass hot food devoured everything wholesale which I was to regret at a later time both for the discomfort it caused while I tried to sleep and the discomfort it caused before breakfast... Evidently not enough numbing spice. Anyway, all was tasty and we set off for a little opera place recommended by the LP. Finding it in an alley behind the main road, we sadly discovered it was closed for renovations. We chose another, less favourable option in the area and set off at a brisk pace through the nightlife of the hutongs. The places come alive after dark, it's really amazing! People abound, doing all kinds of business, chatting, gathering in eateries, selling carved wooden pipes and jade pendants, oranges and crab apples. Wonderful, cacophonous, vital, dirty and fascinating. We managed to make it to a place called Lao She Teahouse, which despite the apparently obvious origin of the name turned out to be named for Lao She the novelist who wrote a book named Teahouse. Not sure if it's irony, fitting or what. Learning this left me a little unsettled, as the Lao She Teahouse is a teahouse. It would have been fine had it been a restaurant named for the book, but it was a teahouse! Dunno about that. Anyway, for 60 RMB we took one of the tables furthest from the stage, drank as much tea as we could manage and ate some very interesting Chinese tea sweets. There were anise flavoured pumpkin seeds that turned out to be very tasty indeed, but were a bit tough to chew as we were trying to eat the shell as well as the interior. Later we noticed the folks in front of us spitting half masticated seeds into their hitherto unused wicker basket. Looking around, everyone else was doing the same. When in Rome...
The performance included some Beijing opera, which we were hoping to see, but which turned out to be mildly more annoying than it was interesting. Pretty, yes, interesting yes, buying the album and looking forward to my next opportunity to see it live, no. There were also a couple of pretty awesome acrobatic acts, complete with contortionists and jugglers. Following them were a couple of Chinese folk groups that were pretty neat, again, not that I'd buy the album. Then came the Sichuan Face-changing opera. Sugoi! Wow, if there was a highlight to the show, this was in close competition with the fish magician. A little is all you need, but this opera style is hugely cool. The guy paraded around the stage with a big hat and a cape looking every inch the gaudy Chinese version of the Phantom of the Opera. The music was upbeat, kind of like the Phantom of the Opera tune, but what was hyper-cool about it was that this guy was wearing a mask and he was somehow able to change the mask completely in a microsecond, sometimes without the apparent possibility of using his hands or having anything to obscure his sneaky presto-chango. He even walked out into the audience spread his arms with his cape in front of one table, nodded his head and his mask was changed. Incredible!
The other slight of hand act was the fish magician. This guy had a fishing line and an aquarium. The aquarium was empty, but he started doing a bunch of things, and pulling fish out of nowhere. He took a piece of paper, folded it up, cut it up and had some audience members cut it up a bit more. He then took all of the little bits of paper back to the stage, next to the aquarium, put his fists, holding the paper into the air, shook them and opened them over the aquarium, dropping something like 20 goldfish into the aquarium! Other tricks included catching fish from inside people's buttoned jackets, including a 5 pound trout! Super fun!
After that excellent bit of entertainment, we wound up back at the hostel for a bit of baijio. Caley and Anna went to sleep and I stayed up a bit, drinking with Kevin and the Chinese guys running the tourism shop until they closed it to catch the last bus home.

The following morning was a bit harsh, as we had to get up around 6:30 to catch the bus to the Great Wall. Three hours in that "bus" without heat, on hard seats. Had a chat with a British woman teaching in some south-western Chinese city. She claimed people felt she was going native, as they kept saying she looks more and more like a Chinese girl every time they see her. She had straightened her hair and was wearing a puffy down jacket that you see all the Chinese folks wearing. She claimed that virtually everything, yes, except the bra was bought, not just made in China. Interesting girl, trying to be less interesting because it seemed to cause her stress. She’s the only English speaker in her city, so her opportunities for more in-depth conversation are somewhat limited. I guess she copes by dumbing herself down. I applaud her courage, but I have no idea if I even could just stop trying to be interested in things. Interesting for it’s attempt at being not interesting. There’s some irony in there I’m sure.

So the wall was cold but awesome both for its antiquity and the stubborn persistence of its resident haulkers. We walked ten kilometers along an old assed bit of defensive masonry outlining the spine of a mountain range and for all but three of those kilometers, we were followed or hounded by people with bags full of cheap touristy stuff they wanted to sell us. “I’m a poor Mongolian farmer” seemed to be the identity of choice among all of them. Every last one of them was a poor Mongolian farmer, even the old women and young men. Hell, who was I to argue with them. I couldn’t even speak their language, but they seemed to be able to understand a fair bit of English. We thought the older women were guides, because they followed us without really asking us to buy anything. A few kilometers out, they did mention that they’d like us to look at the books they were carrying that were full of some wonderful and some poor quality photographs of the stretch of wall we were hiking. We broke down and bought a few things after about 5 kilometers. Then the women thanked us, bade us take care and wandered back the way we had come. We weren’t long without company though, as there was a tall thin dude in a big fur hat waiting to help us up into a tall tower about a kilometer past where we left the old women. The party in front of us had left him there, telling him there were more people behind them, a bigger party. Cheeky bastards. Anyway, this guy hounded us for 3 kilometers, not just walking with us, but constantly telling us to buy something. “You buy, you buy”. I’m sure his knowledge of protocol among Westerners was better than ours among Chinese, but he was really pushing it. We would stand looking out at things and he would be trying to push postcards in front of us while we were looking out. We probably should have just done what I’d seen some Chinese tourists do and yell at them to go away, but I just couldn’t leave my own ideas of what Western social etiquette required of me as an aspiring gentleman. Regardless, we managed to leave him behind just in time for some brutal descents. Truly crumbling ancient stonework made the wall so treacherous at points that the trail actually cut down to the mountainside. Fantastic.

Caley, Me and Anna (left to right)

We made our way back to Beijing just in time for rush hour. What a delight, 4 hours, instead of the original 3 on a freezing cold bus where the driver used a windshield wiper on the inside of the windshield (with his own un-mitted hand) to clear the condensation gathering on the windshield. The driver also stopped the bus just north of the city to do a bit of haggling with a farmer who had vegetables and persimmons for sale outside his house. Different world here… Anyway, we’re all back, safe and sound.

Tomorrow is the ultimate day of the year. It’s funny, but it doesn’t feel like it at all. We’ll see how tomorrow turns out… should be relegated to the Lama Temple and the Temple of Heaven and we'll hopefully go to the expat area of the city and find a party.

It's cold outside, but warm inside.

It's something like minus 10 in Beijing right now. In the Hutongs that's alright. There's no wind to speak of in these little warrens, but out on the main avenues, boy it gets chilly. I've been seeking out the warm sunny walls and leaning against them as breif respite from the bone-chilling wind. I'm not one to usually complain about the cold. Heck, I love the cold. I'd far rather be cold than hot; the idea of a tropical vacation makes me mildly ill. However, this cold is somehow different. It gets me in the bones. My toes are always cold, the back of my neck is always cold and my fingers are always cold. It's almost embarrasing that I find myself so affected by the cold. People find that I'm Canadian and automatically assume that I'm a polar bear and are enormously shocked when they discover that I'm cold all the time. I'm cold when I'm drinking tea as well as when I'm drinking beer. The only time I'm not cold is when I wake up in the morning in this hostel with the sun beaming in, adding it's unmeasured energy to the 30 degrees the heater is struggling bravely to achieve. I'm not sure what all that means, but I find myself eating less, thinking more and mustering less ambition to sight-see.

What I seem primarily interested in is architecture and people watching. I'm getting a huge kick out of watching the locals amble along, occasionally and loudly doing the gratuitous suck-back-and-spit. It's disgusting, but amusing. I'm not sure when it was that I left my Western disapproval by the wayside and just started enjoying the spectacle, but it's happened. I now just smile and chortle to myself whenever I see it or hear it. It may be seeing other Western faces' reactions to the sights and sounds, but I think it's mostly the absurdity of the affair. There's a widespread and deep-seated folk belief that hauking lougies is promotes health and longevity. While this may well be true as far as the interests of the individual go, it is entirely at odds with everything I know about pulmonary infections, disease vectors and general hygeine. Spitting is not a good idea from a proactive public health perspective. I would have thought that in a 'communist' country, the workers might be concerned about burdening their fellow workers with the financial woes that the West has discovered spitting imposes. This isn't even going to touch the smoking as that's a whole other kettle of fish that I'm not, this evening at least, interested in mulling over. Matter of fact, I'm done with spitting too, because as much as I find it hilarious, I also find it deeply repugnant. Moving swiftly on...

I've taken to haggling. Haggling, for those of you who have yet to be introduced is basically the way the world works outside of market commercial arrangements. Prices are always debatable. People ask way more for things than they actually expect to get. I was offered a set of postcards by a haulker at Tiannamen Square the morning I got off the train from Shanghai for 30 yuan, which is about 4 Canadian dollars. I initially tried to ignore them, but I was trying to orient myself (no pun intended) and I just couldn't leave them behind. I offered 1 yuan. They looked shocked. No, no, no, is good, friend. You friend, you buy, 30 yuan. Yes, yes. I'm shaking my head the whole time, while I'm trying to look through my LP guide to figure out where I am in relation to where all the things, like the hostel are, but they're not taking the hint. I offer 2 yuan. They look hurt. They drop it to 25. I shake my head and start to walk away. Ok friend, is 20. Yes, you buy. No, 3 is all this is worth. I can buy this anywhere for 3 yuan. We argue about the prices of postcards in stores we've never been to, me in my language, they in theirs. I offer 3 again. They drop to 15. I walk away. They follow pulling my sleeve. Ok, 10 yuan, you buy! They start looking a little pained, so I offer 5 as a final offer. Done. I get a dirty look and start to move off quickly as a half dozen other haulkers selling the same things descend on me, hoping to sell me more postcards of Tiannamen Square. I quicken my pace and tell them that The Lord of the Rings was a great movie trilogy but that Tom Bombadil shouldn't have been removed in the screenplay. I've tried saying I don't understand in French and German, and sometimes it makes them leave me alone, but sometimes they speak better French or German than they do English and I'm in for a difficult time getting rid of them. Of course, haggling isn't always applied just to haulkers. This morning as Caley, Anna, Kevin and I were heading out to the Summer Palace, I bought a couple of one use cameras as I was expecting my digital battery to die shortly into the day. It's really important to price the item well before you make your offer because you can't go down from where you start. That's their job, you have to go up. Having worked the sales person down 20 yuan from where he started, he starts looking at another sales person and talking about what they can offer. I talked with Anna a bit about how much the yuan price would be in euros and decided to leave, telling him we couldn't go any further. So, he threw in another camera. We paused a bit, but then told him sorry, we wouldn't pay that much. So, he threw in another camera and jumped the price to 140 from 80. I offered him 90, he stopped looking happy and told me 140. I went to 100, he sighed and dropped it to 110 as a final offer. So, we walked away with three cameras for just over what two would have cost. I guess the idea is that they will never sell you something that they won't make any money on. Walking away usually drops the price significantly if it's prefaced with a bit of haggling and then an 'I'm sorry'. The other evening, I was buying some oranges from a few guys hanging out with their fruit cart, smoking in the cold and they seemed really pleased with my bargaining, laughing, offering me a cigarette and asking me where I was from. The whole exercise is absolutely super. I think it's one of the most enjoyable things I've done here.

Anyway, yesterday, after Caley and Anna arrived, we hit a hot-pot restaurant for some of the most stupid hot food I've had in ages. It may as well have been lava. It was brutally hot, but super tasty. Hotpot is a sloppy mess, but the lotus root, tofu and mushroom combination was pretty super. After that, we wandered about in Tiannamen square, watching all the plainclothes officers standing around looking like police officers. There were at least three paddy-waggons on hand to deal with any peeps who thought they might put a political bent on their tantric-hockey-yoga spiritual practice. Bizzare. The whole idea of a communist state is bizzare. 'we keep spendin' most our lives livin' on in a worker's paradise...' (sung to a very familiar Coolio tune)

China is no workers paradise though. People just do what they do, ekking out a living in whatever way they can. Although one might claim that communism has done a fair job of elevating the status of women, it can only properly be said that men and women seem to be equally oppressed. I'm getting a wee bit tired, so I'll leave this thought alone for a while...

Last night we went out for the obligitory Peking duck. We, not knowing any better, ordered the set as it was a tad pricey, but not too steap. We tasted duck liver pate, red preserved duck meat, spicy duck entrails, bamboo shoots with duck feet and a bunch of other things that just didn't work so well... the actual Peking duck was ok, but only ok. Oddly enough, my favourite dish was the spicy duck entrails. Live and learn.

Today we trapsed out to the Summer Palace via the metro and a crazy cab ride that was double what the LP said it should have been. I guess prices have gone up. It's like that pretty much everywhere here. Things are just a lot more expensive these days. It was relatively uneventful though, and we got some nice views of the hills surrounding Beijing as well as a look at some super architecture (new, of course) that we might not have seen otherwise.

Nice view across the frozen lake.


The Summer Palace itself was quite beautiful. I certainly wouldn't have complained about having to stay there. There's a huge lake circumnavigated by a paved path. (probably done by hand). The lake was frozen and people were milling about on it, but when I started out on it, I create a crack in the ice that I was able to watch run off to the limit of my vision. This, perhaps understandably, disturbed me and I removed myself in a slow and deliberate fashion from the ice. Maybe all those Chinese have hollow bones... ANyway, as I've been largely innundated with temples and stuff in Japan, although I found the palace quite beautiful and it captured my imagination quite a bit, there was little to amaze me besides the absolute audacity of the circumstances of the construction. For one, I have a hard time seeing how this largish structure was able to bankrupt an entire state, let alone one as freaking huge as China. Secondly, if indeed that was going to be the case, I kind of feel Cixi was behaving reprehensibly given the circumstances. It's my understanding that most Chinese agree with me and view her in somewhat of a bad light. Anyway, that's dictators for you. Solomon was a bit of a spend thrift too.

So after walking around the palace for the afternoon, we haggled ourselves a minivan ride back to Tiannamen Square. This was a ride from hell. The driver was driving exactly like those sporty cars you see driven by careless youth on the 401, zipping in and out of traffic by margins too close for comfort, honking all the while. None of our Chinese was good enough to ask him to slow down and a miming effort would have probably further endangered us. It's funny how once you commit to something like that you just have to trust the person. I got a haircut after I got back to the hostel and they buzzed my hair as I'd asked and then pulled out a straight razor and before I knew what was happening they were shaving the back of my neck. Shouting bao shir would probably have ended me up with a big gash in my neck, so I just had to make a fast decision to trust her. Scarry though. Why couldn't she just have buzzed my neck hairs. I'm alright with having my hair moving down my back... At least it's going somewhere rather than just making a full exodus.

So trusting people you don't know you can trust seems to be a very strong part of travelling. Maybe it's just more apparent when you can't talk to anyone in an indepth fashion, but it seems like when you're in a society where you are functional, you don't have to be as trusting to get by. It may be just that you know the conventions though. I couldn't say for sure. Something for a lengthly tangent I think... another time, when it doesn't cost me money and I'm not in a computer room open to the elements.

Anyway, I finished today off with a good meal at a restaurant serving dishes from all four schools of Chinese cuisine. It was pretty damned tasty and a whole lot cheaper than the duck and all it's bits. Man, it still makes me cring a bit. If you go for duck, just get the duck. After the meal, back at the hostel, I settled in for a conversation with a bunch of the German guys staying here. They all switched their conversations into English so I could be part of it and their English was pretty much as versitile as their German. I must resolve to aquire fluency in these languages I have studied. I got to use my francais a bit, as the Israeli guy in the conversation, who was fluent in German, English, Hebrew and French, (and probably another few just thrown in for good measure) was trying to work on his French a bit. It turned out that my French has not fallen quite as far as I'd feared. Maybe it's just that most of the French folks I've run into so far have just been irritated by my attempt and subsequent butchering of their fair tongue. Dunno. Regardless, I think I'm going to sign up for a distance ed French course and one for German too. I may stop drinking a fair bit to accomodate these goals... I wonder how that will work if I'm learning Japanese too... and then what about Chinese? I have another entry visa that I have to use by June 23rd of 2005... Ah the possibilities... I think I'll go to Kunming next time.
Ok, I'm going to sign off. My fingers are not responding quite as quickly as they should and I think it's because they're naked in sub-zero temperatures and have been for the past hour... Right, off to bed.

Beijing, everything old is new again.

Qianmen, the north tower of the Archer's Gate which used to be the southern gate in a now absent wall that encircled the inner city. Silly communists...


So Beijing is indeed cold! I got in this morning after an overnight train trip in a soft-sleeper car. It was super! I've got to say, that was one of the most comfortable 1500 km I've ever travelled. I'll get to the trip and where I am now, on Christmas day in the Beijing Far East International Youth Hostel in something of a developing chronology... So, I last posted on my first evening in Shanghai. The 23rd worked out to be a bit of a disordered day. It was very interesting, just not what I'd intended to do. I set out that morning, with a breakfast of fried rice looking out onto a thoroughfare choked with bicycles and scooters of every shape and size racing and honking and almost hitting each other time and again. Walking along the European architecture lined streets into some of the older parts of town turned into quite an adventure. I wandered and met a Chinese guy on his way to work. He spoke English quite well and we talked about how the city was changing. I left him at his bus stop and set off into the old town area where, apparently, most of the small machine shops are. I passed guys cutting 6 inch steel bar on the street with no protection for them or anyone walking by. They were just there, in the middle of my path, cutting steel, sharpening or grinding things all the while women, children, dogs and all kinds of guys were walking by. The sidewalk was about a metre and a half wide at that point, so it wasn't as if there was a lot of room... I found myself worrying my pants would go up as I passed him, by mere inches, having my boots showered with sparks.

From that neck of the woods I got deeper into craziness and danger. I wonder how they don't die more often from construction and industrial accidents. I accidentally stumbled into a construction site while trying to make my way along a 6 lane road when the sidewalk just ran out into a construction site. There was a giant front end loader with two and a half metre wheels heading for me with a load full of bricks. Kinda scary. I caught a taxi to try to get to the train station and that was again scary, although more for the people the dude almost hit... I was empathizing with them... my first mistake.

Anyway, the guy dropped me off at the north side of the Shanghai rail station. This was an all Chinese place. There were third world style warrens with peeps putting together all kinds of stustainance, that I mournfully declined. I keep finding myself wanting to engage, but the gluten and the general risk of three days of daihorea (sp?) keep me at a distance. I also felt a little weird walking through there with my pack, my warm leather boots, gortex jacket and big, functional backpack and generally well padded wallet. Not sure if I felt it was an affront, but I definately felt the difference my opportunities had made.

So following a long walk around the train station that involved ultra-modern, maybe even post-ultra-modern architectural phaluses of glass and steel juxtaposed between warrens of two century old, poorly treated poverty stricken craziness, populated by throngs of Shanghai's unwashed, disadvantaged cooking, smoking, sitting, talking, spitting, haulking, watching people go by, fixing bicycles and the like.

Profoundly telling.

After all that, I managed to buy a softsleeper ticket for Christmas Eve. I then took a metro to People's Square and checked out the Shanghai Museum for about five hours. Lots of pottery, jade, caligraphy and painting. Yep. Pretty neat. Lots of foreigners. Tea for 30 RMB. (my hostel bed was 60).

After that I went back to the Captain's Hostel and got another night. I went upstairs to relieve my headache with a nap, had a conversation with a couple of guys speaking Putonghua, one of whom turned out to be Japanese named Yoshimura. The other guy was from Huangzhou and had adopted the English name Johnson. We later went for Uyghur kebabs next to a construction site and followed it up with a bit of wok fried stuff in a place with a lot of cats hanging around chasing things. I though, if there are cats, there won't be rats... I was a little leary as I'd seen a rat in a place that afternoon and was really wishing I'd seen it before I'd eaten in the place. So, the place with the cats was a comfort. Pollished the evening off with a few beers, and a chat with an American woman named Katie, who turns out to be an English teacher in Yamaguchi, near Ube-shi. We arranged to hit up the French Concession the following day. Midnight, I turned in.

The following morning, after a super sleep, I hit up a green beans with garlic and fried rice breakie and hit the road with Katie, catching the subway down to the absolutely marvelous French Concession. I have to say, that place was the highlight of Shanghai for me. I could definately have tolerated living there. There were Plain Trees lining all of the streets and the architecture was cared for, not just used up. We got ourselves a couple of hour long foot massages. It was possibly the nices thing my feet have ever felt. Afterward, I stuffed the poor things back into my big leather boots and shouldered my fourty pound pack, heading back out onto the street to find some of the famous grub in the area. We ate at a place called Yang's Kitchen. It was super! Absolutely unrivaled in my stay here so far. After that, we tried our hand at the metro to get up to the train station. After two jam packed trains had come and gone, we decided that a cab was going to be our best bet. We hired one and he took us on a winding route to where we assumed the Jade Buddha was. Katie, being a perhaps a little more realistic, worldly or cynical, (I'll opt for the first) figured he was paid to drop off foreigners in a giant commercial miasma. He left us two km from our destination with only 2.5 hours to go on the clock before I had to catch my train. We hoofed it and made the distance in half an hour despite the traffic. Jade Buddha. Awesome. Jade Buddha temple. Wonderful. Jade Buddha temple's throng of beggars. Amazingly persistant. Like two blocks persistant. Even after you finally give up and hand them a bill that should feed them for the day, they keep coming after you, grabbing at you and stuff. It's only when the police come by that they give up. You can run, but they're like the mummy, shuffling after you... creepy.

Anyway, the overnight trip to Beijing was spent in company of three Putonghua speakers learning a bit more about the language. I ended up having a good conversation with a guy who happened by and heard my English who had studied in Nottingham. Interesting, this travelling thing... Anyway, that's about where my hour of internet time leave me. More later. Back into the cold to face the haulkers and spitters...

Shanghai

So, I left Matsue at 10:30 last night on the overnight to Osaka. I arrived early this morning at Umeda and promptly caught the on-time limo bus to KIX. That airport is hugely neat. It's like a big tent, complete with sweeps of something that looks from the ground like fabric, arcing across the width of the vaulting ceiling. The flight was uneventful although at the Japan end the order of the airplane announcements was Japanese, English, Mandarin in contrast to the Mandarin, English, Japanese at the Shanghai end. I was pretty excited about just being in China for the first time, so I didn't even realize I was probably the only native English speaker on the plane. I've never been the sole white dude on a plane before. It was... interesting.

Anyway, it rained all day in Shanghai. I mean all day. It's cold, although not as cold as it should be for this time of year, so the wet is that much more difficult to deal with. It makes sight seeing a little difficult, but I managed a bit of interesting looking around by walking with some students through some mazes of back alleys and other people's buildings in this weird, public-private seemingly boundaryless warren of a city block. There were plants growing where you wouldn't expect them, laundry hung all over the place, despite the rain and people watching TV and smoking in what appeared to be actual residences half sectioned off from the places we were walking through that acted as garages for bikes, storage areas for mounds of stuff and hallways between people's more private places, like the plastic walled little rooms full of smoking men watching television. Very strange, very sureal, very much a throwing out of all my ideas about living spaces, utility spaces, public and private spaces and more generally boundaries like inside and outside. Wildly weird.

So I managed to find this place called the Captain's Hostel after about an hour of looking around in alleys and stuff. Turns out it was on a main street, so it would have been a breeze to find if I wasn't expecting it to be difficult. I was propositioned by four women in a little skilled massagi team at one point. They beckoned me across the alley and me, being still a little naive went over to see what they wanted. The weren't dressed very provocatively and there was an aquarium full of fish in their window, so I thought they were probably trying to get me to come in and eat. I figured I'd see what was on the menu. Well, a quick demonstration of the technique of massagi applied to my upper arm and I understood a little better what was on offer, being fairly certain at that point that it wasn't going to be black mushroom with garlic flavour and young corn. The one woman who grabbed my arm was being assertive and saying massagi and then sticking her tongue out like she was licking something... at that point I figured it was time to go. It was more difficult to leave graciously than I would have liked as four attractive women trying pretty persistantly to pull you into their shop is a little... well, lets just say it makes you wish you didn't have morals or a brain.
I found the hostel, and it's description as Art Deco is quite apt. at 60 RMB a night in the dorm, it's a bargain in comparison to the rest of the places in town. There's an Aussie, a Japanese guy, an American and a Chinese kid who doesn't speak or doesn't like to speak any English, French or Japanese. Conversations have been pretty good. I had dinner with a middle aged Taiwanese woman doing some backpacking on her own and she had some pretty interesting stories to tell. She'd lived in the US in Minnesota, New York (city and state), Canada, Brazil. Pretty interesting dinner conversation over some flaming hot beef, some garlicky beans and a nice fish soup. After that I went for a walk on the Bund and took some neat shots of the colonial facade and it's upstart counterpart across the river. Impressive and gaudy. People keep trying to hauk me pictures, umbrellas etc... it's kind of annoying, but I haggled with this one woman for an umbrella using fingers. I whittled her down until I saw pain in her eyes and then coughed up a little extra... ;o) I'm only kidding, there was no pain asside from her embarassment over the umbrella not actually opening.
Anyway, I find myself here at the end of the day, paying far too much for internet access and an espresso. I'm turing in soon and will hit up the Shanghai Museum tomorrow before I try to catch myself an overnight train to Beijing. Anon!

Shanghai: one of the many old alleys from which the spires of modernity erupt...

Who's Bad With Addies?

Many have asked and I half the time forget to send it when I get home and remember the nitty gritty, so in the interests of continued contact with my cared-for-ones I give you:

Colin's Address in Japan

Colin Walke
#303 Maison Century
509-6 Kuroda-cho
Matsue-shi, Shimane-ken
690-0876

My home number is 81 (Japan's country code) 0852 22-1560 however, this phone is wretched. I have a sneaking suspicion that my dad is right and Japan has signed some kind of "Anti-Landline Treaty"
My cell number is 81 08052320191
However, if you just want to get ahold of me post haste, sending me a phone email at colinwalke @ ezweb.ne.jp will be just as speedy and much less expensive.

I'm off!

Here goes nothing! I just finished the last of 34 rounds of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer with my last class of the year. I bade everyone good-bye and took my leave of the school. I promised Kawaoka Sensei a panda. ;o) Everyone else just wanted some good stories when I get back. So all travel arrangements are in place save my train ticket from Shanghai to Beijing that I'll procure when I reach Shanghai tomorrow at noon. It's supposed to be overcast and rainy while hovering somewhere between a balmy 12 and 2 degrees. I was only able to find the temp in Farenheit, so my conversion may be a little wonky. Anyhoo. I'm planning on packing (yes, I told you I'd be packing last minute) three days worth of clothing and buying a bunch while there. I've been told the shopping is superb there. Who'd have thought you'd ever hear me say or write anything remotely like that except in jest!?! I'm thinking silk long underwear, not fashion. Either way, I'm not going to need that much stuff. I can go on three or four days of stuff in alternating shifts. Realistically, I should be able to do this kind of a trip with my 40L bag. I removed the CBC patch as I thought if China blocks the BBC site, they're sure to take an interest in such an unbiased source as the CBC, which would be troublesome. Oddly enough, I'm also leaving my knife at home. I'm going to have my pack as a carry on so I don't have to muck about in the airports. I've just confirmed that I'll be able to recharge my camera whilst I'm there, so that's coming along too.
So, I'll be taking a camera, my ipod, my LP guide one pair of rugged pants, my boots (obviously), my MEC shell and fleece, four pairs of socks, the usual compliment of underwear, a couple pairs of long underwear, four undershirts a longsleeve jobbie, of course my touque, my gloves and a collared oxford shirt that can't help but look good even 5 years post purchase. The whole lot of it that I'll be carrying will be only twice as heavy as the two litre water bottle I'm planning on having on hand. (can't drink the tap water in China). It's possibly the lightest I've ever packed. It's less than I took to Kyoto for four days.

I really can't believe I'm leaving! It's almost as surreal as leaving Canada for Japan loe those many months ago. Of course I'm planning on coming back to Japan within two weeks, so it's realistically not a big deal. I mean, people go to Mexico for two weeks on sun-seeking holidays. The difference here I guess, is that I'm basically going alone and I'm going for the unexpected and alien. I'm not going for comfort. I'm going for the challenge of managing to travel 1500km from one major communistish, alien metropolis to another in a country where I know how to say two things and some city names. That and to watch people doing Tai Chi in the square in the snow. I'm sure all the museums and such will be pretty interesting, but it's mostly about the old people doing Tai Chi in the snow and the explode fried sea bass with garlic flavour. In Beijing, of course, it will be Beijing Duck, but I'll cross that road when I come to it... ;o)

I think the most uncomfortable part of the ride will be the bus to Osaka overnight tonight. I'm really not looking forward to it. As much as I think busses are the responsible choice, barring rail, I don't like the current set-ups. I've done many an overnight trip on a bus and I can honestly say that it's tolerable. Not comfy, but it beats driving and environmentally, it beats flying. Of course I'll be flying to China... I could have taken a ship, but that would have taken two and a half days to get to Shanghai. The next time I go to China, assuming of course that I want to go back, I'll arrange to take the ship. Anyway, it's bus, jet, train. I hope I get to see Planes, Trains and Automobiles at some point on this trip. Not really, the movie just popped into my head as a laterally connected tidbit I recall from when the movie came out and was showing at the movie theatre in Kincardine some 15 or 18 years ago... Weird. Anyway. I should pack, as I need to be on the bus in under four hours now and I'm sure something will pop up that will distract me just enough to create crisis.

I'll be writing from the People's Republic if I'm able...

Tickets and visas and complexity oh my!!

Hoo hoo! I just talked to my travel agent last night and she has both recieved confirmation that China has granted me a double entry visa and that she's ordered me my return plane ticket. Wednesday next week I'll be in Shanghai!

This makes me think I should pack. I probably won't pack until Tuesday evening before I leave for Osaka though. I'm just like that. Why would I spend boring time packing when there're Christmas parties to go to, Christmas cards to write? No, it will be Tuesday evening, almost time to race for the bus and I'll be worrying about getting everything together.

I've got to start planning a decent framework for this trip too. It's all well and good to have one's days fly by the seat of their pants, but quite another to have nowhere to retreat to in the evening. Stressful, I believe is the appropriate term.

I haven't felt too stressed in a while, but somehow traveling brings it out in me. I think it's rather odd that although I find traveling stressful, I find myself wanting to do it more. It's as if I'm employing methods of resistance training to my mind. Push it hard, but not hard enough to tip it over the brink, just hard enough to elicite a strengthening response. Can that make one mentally and emotionally tougher though? I think I sometimes appear worldy and rugged to people who meet me and rather than getting to know the soft, crab-like interior, they look at the places I've been and the situations I purposefully put myself into and say, that dude's a rugged man. Quite possibly the beard and buzz-cut as well as the fact that I always carry my knife and wear hiking boots with my suit has something to do with it. Meh, whatever. I'm a softy and I'm by no means inclined to take risks. I hate risk, but risk breeds diversity, in whatever forms it's inclined to. Ecologies develop because creatures take risks based on their predispositions. Sometimes they work and that reinforces difference. Sometimes they don't and the things perish under what would usually be considered wretched circumstances. I think the same is somewhat true with individual's lives and cultures. Although properly speaking, there isn't the same kind of Darwinian melodrama in human circumstance. I'm no Social Darwinist, humans are stupidly adaptable creatures and they'll do whatever they need to to get by. If that means joining some esoteric cult in the backwoods of the midwest or mideast, they do that. If it means speaking American English rather than some form of British English or Mandarin, they'll do that. There's nothing inheritable about culture beyond one's exposure to it.
Whatever we're inclined to do, largely because of our lifespans, is almost entirely personal. What we seem to be responsible for, however, is our own moral, emotional and mental growth, which is, I think, why I choose to travel and inflict difference upon myself. It makes me more me, as it enables me to mould myself into the kind of views I have about diversity and life.
I think that is an important point. I view diversity as strength. I view difference as vital and complexity as beautiful. Having been initially drawn into world spanning ideas about complexity and interconnected destiny by the mythic appeal of the way the Gaia hypothesis is often portrayed, I've dug a little deeper and gone to the less new-age-fruity roots of Lovelock's ideas. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin the Jesuit scientist and teacher had a host of interesting ideas regarding complexity as moving towards an omega point where we would be able to know God. His ideas weren't based on hokey bible fact mining but on rigorous empiracly based hypothesizing. Others who looked at natural history and scientifically derived evidence evolved a similar idea about complexity being the overall evolutionary trend with consequences for consciousness being that it seems to increase as complexity does. All questions about whether that means rocks are at least somewhat conscious aside, it points towards a much richer implied destiny for human kind and society. I happen to like that approach. As much as I think everything that people do is actually as natural as ants building giant warrens or orangutangs building nests for the night, I do think there is some manner of guidance involved now. We get more complex and things become further revealed. I don't think people in the modern age are expecially more or less conscious than people of any historical age, but our complexity and maybe our consciousness seems to be 'increasing'. Anyway, it appears to be very late and I'm pretty foggy inside my head right now... I'll leave all those thoughts on the table, not bothering to tidy in any way, just like in real life.

Cold mornings, morning colds

I woke up this morning, to find the world outside of my little envelope of comfort to be super cold. I think there was frost last night, but I didn’t look outside early enough to tell dew from frost. It was cold though, and with the gaps in my windows I was feeling it. Sometimes I feel like my life in Japan is one big camping trip complete with a base camp and everything. The elements and I are simply in a closer relationship. We get to know each other intimately. The cold gets into my bones and during the summer, the heat found every pore my skin has, some it never knew about, and had each of them gushing sweat. Frankly I’m surprised the Japanese live as long as they do, given the actual physical stress of living in this poorly engineered amalgam of build and natural environments. One would think that insulation, in the minds of a culture that by all rights ought to be material-efficiency oriented, would be high on people’s list of technologies to ensure were widely utilized. I dunno, but maybe people feel that somehow by ensuring their buildings are limited to uncomfortable environments they find more pleasure in those little comforts. Then again, maybe it just gives them a peculiar sense of superiority. Given some of the literature I’ve been perusing of late, the latter wouldn’t surprise me, even if it maintained their manners, generosity and kindness. However, given what I know of the several dozen Japanese people I know, I’m inclined to think it the former likelihood.

Anyway, I’ve started eating Japanese breakfasts. I cook rice, miso soup, sometimes some eggs with a little sake and onions and coffee. There’s often a fair bit of seaweed and sesame involved in that arrangement as well as on occasion, some Japanese pickles, or tsukemono (漬け物). 漬け物 are delightful in small quantities and unbearable in large portions.

Ok, the coffee isn’t typically Japanese, but they’ve got inclinations towards the comforts it affords just as the rest of the world seems to have. The coffee is not always good in the various establishments that offer it, and I refer mainly, here to places where it’s an after-thought or actually from a vending machine (mmm… thick, syrupy, sour badness). The coffees in coffee shops here are actually quite nice, but they should be! I’ll put it in terms of sustenance. I can eat for a day, or I can buy a coffee with virtually the same number of yen. Sometimes I go for the coffee, though this doesn’t actually mean I don’t eat, it just means that I don’t eat out and that my day gets a little more expensive. That’s ok every once and a while, but mostly I make my coffee at home, where it only costs me the use of my stove and something like 200 - 600 yen per 100 grams of coffee, depending on whether I want it to taste like used tanning fluids or a nice, soul-soothing, full bodied bitter fluid worthy of the name coffee. Although I cut corners with money, like not heating my house, hanging my laundry to dry and cycling 12 kilometers into the countryside to find cheaper, locally grown produce, I don’t cut corners with coffee.

On my walk to school this morning, through my still gummy eyes, I watched the local pair of white something or other swans paddle under the bridge I had to cross, looking very serene against the reeds and grasses of the canal bank, despite the scores of people and vehicles bustling along the road bridging the canal beside the baseball diamond. It was kind of a surreal picture, as I’ve discovered most biological encounters are in Japan. It’s definitely a magical place, and the concrete only serves to make it all the more surreal.

At school, I joined the other 70 or so teachers in the teachers room for the morning meeting, which is for me, really just a Japanese listening exercise that I get paid to participate in. Still, it makes me feel and seem like part of the team, and that’s important. It’s probably more important for seeming like part of the team than drinking everybody under the table at enkais. Anyway, many of them shouldn’t have been there. There were very obvious fevers, remarkable pulmonary-sinus drainages and some very clear general malaise occurrences there in that room. It make me wonder about the social responsibility of quarantining oneself upon the onset of illness. Evidently the Japanese, at least when it comes to non-life-threatening illness, feel that a “ganbatte kudasai” is more appropriate than “go home before you make everyone else sick, you coughing, spluttering, shambling vector. And, oh, by the way, if you were able to avoid sneezing your goo on the keyboard that everyone in this office has to use, we’d think the world of you”. Today, my supervisor has a high fever, and she’s at school. While she’s super, a trooper and I esteem her greatly, the poor woman looks like she’s on the verge of tears. I wish I could convince her that being at home drinking soup and hot herbal tea all day would be better for her than wandering around a cold, drafty and frankly unsanitary place like this school. Anyway, I'll keep washing my hands and touching as few things here as possible, but as a backup, I think when I get home, I’m going to gargle with vodka and eat a bulb of garlic. Ganbatte kudasai!

Huzzah! Exams are Done! Right, Back to Work You Lazy Good-for-nothings!

So these poor students just finished a gruelling set of exams stretched over four days and cruelly including a Saturday. I felt the cruelty myself as I crawled out of bed to answer my keitai at quarter to 9 only to have my supervisor ask me without a hint of irritation, frustration or anything nasty if I could come to school soon because there was work for me. I guess working all those essentially unpaid over-time hours "for the children" pay off in that I don't get crucified for sleeping in accidentally. Nice. I had expected something else, but this place continues to surprise me.

All the first and second years are outside playing soccer or badminton depending on the genitals they happened to grow some 17 or 18 years prior. There's no grass here, so they played in the sandy mud. Pretty cool really. You can tell people were really working at it when they walk past, covered in yellow grey sand-mud up to their eye-brows. Youth is something to be treasured here as the third and fourth years had no break, they just went straight back into classes today. Poor buggers. Me, I just have to mark 368 written exams. Much of this will have to be done outside of work hours in order to get the exams back to the students before Christmas. Fortunately I still have a fair bit of scotch left and sitting at my kotatsu watching NHK and marking into the wee hours carries some strange appeal for me. Who want's to meet up with friends or go to sleep when you could do that?!!?

Anyhoo, the sun is shining, the leaves have turned some very pleasant colours and I'm really enjoying my walks now that I don't get drenched in sweat. As a matter of fact, I find it pretty difficult to get out of bed in the morning now because my apartment is essentially open to the elements and there is now the occasional frost to contend with. Luckily I have a REALLY big duvet. I like to pronounce that "dove-ette". Others disagree. Apparently though, it's not really a matter of tomato, tomato, but more along the lines of facade and fakade. Still, with people teasing me about the way I say my 'ou' combos, I've taken to grabbing people by the nose when they tell me that's not how ya says it.

This picture is of the short-cut up the hill I climb to school every morning. I've got to say, Japan likes it's stairs. This may be yet another reason they don't tend to die of heart disease so early.