Ringin' in the New Year...

Well, it's 2005, and what a year! We started it in a sadly underwhelming party that neither did a count-down nor cut the music during the turn over. The music just throbbed on, people kept talking about whatever mundane things they were talking about and we shouted, kissed, hugged, clanked our beers together and tried to sing Auld Lang Sign. Maybe 20 Chinese peeps raised their beers and shouted a "HAPPY NEW YEAR" along with the four of us, Kevin, Caley and Anna, over the blare of some generally unmemorable song.
The day had started out a little later than most, as we were all pretty nackered from the Wall the day before. We managed to get out to see the Temple of Heaven and the Lama Temple before grabbing possibly the best vegetarian meal I've had in over a year, heading back to the hostel and hitting the acrobats with Kevin followed by a taxi, a subway and another taxi to the expat area where we dug into some tasty indo-thai grub prior to hitting the bars. All in all a pretty full day.
The Temple of Heaven was a nice place. It was gaudy inside and pleasantly laid out on the outside. How it managed to get through the Cultural Revolution intact I have no idea. By rights, the sucker should have been smashed by that meat-headed movement, but it remains, a testament to the place greenery has in our soul. It's a big park. I mean a big, big park. The grounds are expansive to say the least. The thing may well be a kilometer on either side, stuffed full of as many cyprus trees as you'd care to count. All in a nice orderly fashion, of course. We wouldn't want any aspect of chaos in the human arrangement, now would we.
The Temple altar was pretty stunning inside. We didn't get to go in, of course, but we got a nice look inside from across the railing. Gold, red, blue, yellow, it's all there, all in mind-distressingly intricate patterns. Dragons and dogs and cattle and all kinds of things, it seemed. Nuts, absolutely nuts. The altar was under repair while we were there, so the one side of the building was covered in scaffolding. They say if something isn't baroque, don't fix it, but in this case, it's probably a good thing they are. It's almost baroque in it's intricacies anyway. The vault of heaven wasn't under construction though, and we got a good look at the whole thing. Possibly the most interesting thing, unless you consider yourself somewhat bookish and inclined towards 17th century Sinic cultural materials, say maybe if you're a kid or something... or maybe me, is the smoothly polished perfectly circular wall surrounding the vault grounds. You can look north along either the eastern edge or the western edge and hear the person at the place opposite you speaking in a normal voice. I thought it was pretty neat. Ok, so I'm not winning any maturity awards here, but that shouldn't surprise anyone. Lastly, the southern bit where there're concentric tiered levels made out of white polished marble was pretty neat. Standing in the centre and speaking made your voice AUDABLE AND SONOROUS, which was fun. The actual park area of the grounds needs only a cursory description as everyone knows that the profound excellence of being surrounded by your far distant photosynthesizing cousins, especially when they’re all fascinating and gnarly (Cyprus), cannot be conveyed by mere words, powerful as they are. When some people use them. Not like me.

Vault of Heaven. Neat place.



Anyway, the Lama Temple, which we arrived at following a harrowing cab ride was actually an active temple. The Tibetan monks were hanging out in each of the galleries, just to keep things kosher. We knew they were monks because they were wearing robes and had buzzed scalps and walked about a centimeter off the ground. Ok, ok, maybe not all of that is true, but I felt pretty comfortable assuming they were monks. Anyway, the temple itself was just interesting to look at, a welcome reprieve from the gaudy Qing stuff of Temple and the Palaces. One thing that this visit clinched for me though, is that Tibetan Buddhism is scary material. There are some profoundly disturbing images in their art. Demons with little human heads emerging from their foreheads like beads in a circlet, other Bodhisattvas with wild predatory faces, claws and giant phalluses shaped like and in forms only possible for a flat worm, things stepping on people, swords, canine teeth, brains being eaten. It all seemed to be the stuff of nightmares. I don’t know, maybe that’s the point, but it was not “nice” to look at. There was also some interesting “history” presented in an exhibition on the close bond of friendship between the Lamas and that good ol’ boy Mao. Apparently the Tibetan government gladly accepted China’s friendly offer to rejoin China after carefully reviewing China’s excellent relations with its ethnic minorities. “What!?!” you might be asking yourself, “I didn’t know China had ethnic minorities!”. Well, indeed, it would seem that China does, in fact have ethnic minorities. They all speak Putonghua and have the same rights, freedoms and opportunities as real Chinese though, eh? Of course, didn’t you see the exhibition at the Lama Temple? Ok, I’m letting it go…

Following that little afternoon segue way, we meandered to possibly the cleanest, nicest Chinese restaurant I saw in China. The deep fried eggplant was superb and the stuffed tofu and the ma po tofu were also excellent. The curry rice was so so, but the tea, was really something else. They served it in little glass cups that were as light as you can imagine something substantial being. They fit in the palm of my hand and were made of one thin film of heat tempered glass doubled over to create an enclosed insulating space and at the same time a depression in the ball creating a little space for tea. Superb really. So from there, we made our way back to the hostel, found Kevin and went out to the Acrobat show.

The Acrobats were incredible! They made a few mistakes, but the sheer excellence or utter wrongness of some of the things they were able to do was simply incredible. The vaulting, bounding, accurate flips, balancing, precision of every motion, and stunning grace with which they achieved all this were simply overwhelming. There were two performances that really stuck with me. One was of a kid, he could have been no older than 10 but was probably more like 8. He did back flips as easily as he walked. He did back flips up and down a vertical pole as easily as most of us run. He was like a little monkey, he was so agile! I know other white men have been given a lot of grief for calling Chinese kids monkeys, but if you know me, you’ll know this is descriptive rather than pejorative. If I’m anything, I’m a culturist rather than something as silly as a racist. Discriminating based on appearance is utterly foolish. Discriminating based on culture, now that’s another story. People do it all the time… it’s the basis of nationalism. Anyway, back to the acrobats. The second act that wowed me was a balancing contortionist act. This woman balanced what looked like intricate chandeliers, but turned out to be layers and layers of tiny balanced glass water goblets, on trays on first one foot, then hands and the other foot and then finally the head via the mouth support thing. She proceeded to bend into shapes that I wasn’t even able to recognize as human anymore. The utter anatomical impossibility of what she was doing made me have to redefine my parameters for human anatomy in this manifestation of reality. It was profoundly bizarre. Imagine, if you can, how a woman sitting on her butt can come to be resting her backside on her head while balancing a tray full of glass water goblets stacked five high on each of her limbs as well as with her mouth, via that balancing arm mouthpiece. I couldn’t even understand how she was doing it while I was watching her, let alone after. Simply… awful. Proper old sense of the word.

Anyway, that watched, we exited into the only slightly colder Beijing night to catch a cab to the subway where we caught a train to the expat area. As I mentioned there was some wandering, the patronizing of an indo-thai establishment with really cheap, but good beer followed by the walking of our sorry, cold asses back to the proper expat area where some Nigerians offered us some “blunt, or whatever else you need”. Frankly though, the last thing I wanted was to be caught with a presumably illegal substance in country that murders people for saying we want a meaningful multiparty vote. I could just envision it, my home for the next 30 years would be a Chinese gulag somewhere in northern Inner Mongolia where they would have me instructing school-children in ESL while pretzeled into a meter cubed cold iron box with a slot over approximately where my mouth would be. I would be set upon a desk and coerced to lead the children through pronunciation and listening activities. All my various nutrient and waste needs would be dealt with in a surgically altered automated fashion. “No thanks dude” I shook my head as I passed up the Nigerian guys offer. What the hell was he doing selling drugs in China anyway? I guess the living must be worth the risk and the omnipresent cold. Whatever. We made our way into one of the first expat bars we found, mostly to avoid the little swarm of pickpocketing kids who were getting their busy little hands into whatever spaces they could find and reach. I was reminded of younger versions of Oliver Twist. These kids were probably no older than 7 or 8 though, if I weren’t such a hard-hearted, grizzled bastard, it probably would have broken my heart to see these kids. Anyway, since I am, we just went into the bar and spent more on beer than those kids would have taken to feed for a week. We rung in the new year, rather underwhelmed and subsequently meandered down the street to a little pub with a table of Brits and a table of Chinese youths being entertained by and in turn entertaining (it was their bar) an older Irish couple. We were introduced and subsequently singing ensued. I gave them “The Last Saskatchewan Pirate” as well as I was able. All the other Canadian songs I know just weren’t with me in that bar for some reason. Anyway, we got a wee bit drunk, Anna sang something in Irish and we caught a cab back to the Hostel where we promptly turned in.

New Years day so-far has been a bit of a slow day. Anna leaves at 3:30 or so for Korea, so we’ll just do a bit of souvenir shopping and call it a day. Then Caley and I will find something to do before we turn in for our last night in China. Sniff. I will miss this, tough as the cold and the spitting and the sheer dirtiness of almost everything is to take, I’ll miss it. China is vital, its alive and humming. A roiling, boiling, reactive stew of peoples and stuff. I will miss hanging out with Caley and Anna and Kevin too short time as it is since I’ve known them. Good peeps for traveling with. Many thanks guys!