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.