Words from China
15th August 2013
The last update, before I return to Europe.
In Abu Dhabi airport now, feeling reflective, nostalgic, introspective …
..like a Tarkovsky movie..
OK, pause Tarkovsky. Let’s switch to a Danny Boyle Trainspotting style. I wanna compare China 2001 to China 2013:
I arrived Beijing June 2001 when it was a dirty, polluted, gigantic sprawl with everyone shouting, spiting, smoking, jumping queues everywhere, trying to sell me everything with 800% markup, trying to sell me un-sealed bottles of water, no city subway train, thousands, millions of cyclists, everyone ignoring traffic lights, massive construction already underway across whole city for 2008 Olympics. Once I got off the shabby airport bus I stubbornly wanted to walk with backpack from Tiananmen square to hostel. After 20 minutes I realised 2 blocks is 1 km, so I hailed a taxi, he can’t speak or read English, I can’t speak or read Mandarin, so I become co-pilot in the front seat using on-the-spot made-up sign language with guidebook. We got lost, how the fuck are we gonna find this hostel in middle of 20 million people. Then miracle, we see hostel sign, both are elated, he was worried for me. Hostel was across a wide river, which stank, worse stench ever, unbearable, had to put hand to nose and run back and forth the bridge every day during the week I was in Beijing. Hostel full of adventurous sociable backpackers (no smartphones then). Within an hour arriving there, on ultra spontaneous mode (best thing about backpacking) met Scottish girl Catherine and Chinese-American girl Mona and we decide to hike and sleep on the Great Wall for a few days with no guides, illegal to do this. An amazing memorable experience – middle of nowhere, absolutely no people, some local farmers wave at us from fields, slept on the wall towers at night, cold, sore back cos floor was so hard, my backpack fell off the wall crawling down steep section, took few hours to find it in the bushes and shrubs below. Back in Beijing, saw a few more historical sites and ate Peking duck. Mona teaches me how to bring all prices down by 90% with vendors, I’m too nice and can only bring prices down 70%, I became assertive and aggressive not letting anyone jump the queues I’m in. After Beijing I traveled on my own to middle of China for few weeks, saw no westerners, overnight trains, 2nd class with lots of green tea, lots of mosquitos, then when everyone sleeps, lots of mice eating leftover food. One day visit to Xian to see Terracotta warriors, then after.. I don’t know and never will know where I went cos all signs were in Mandarin characters and NO hotels in small towns, so I resort again to my invented sign language: mimic sleeping with hands: I get to stay with a family, mimic eating: I get rice and some chicken feet or eggs, couldn’t find toilet, didn’t want to mimic, drew a picture, they brought me a chair… eh…realized there were no toilets cos they squat over a hole in the ground…, so had to mimic peeing. Small towns in middle of China had little or no street lights and all dwellings look the same, got lost one night, walked into the wrong house, family eating dinner all turn and look at me…White Man: “Oops Sorry!, wrong house!” Whole journey everyone stared at me, kids saying “Hello!, Hello!” all day! Got to Shaolin where thousands of kids practice kung fu and wanna be Jackie Chan. Met and hung out with Chinese-Canadian guy called Lee there, first westerner in a week. I naively spur of the moment sign up for kung fu lessons (imagining I’ll be a black belt after a week), had my own teacher, first days lesson only stretching, send day lesson only stretching, 3rd day I literally cannot get out of bed, so stiff, all lessons canceled. Lee takes care of me for rest of the week. After Shaolin, visited beautiful crustal clear lakes Jiuzhaigou in Sichuan but thousands of Chinese tourists everywhere who are so loud that peaceful nature is not peaceful. Kept on travelling south. Met and travelled with English girl Rebecca (she taught English in China for few years) and 2 Israeli guys, we all go camping meeting Chinese families camping also, they think I’m the dad, Rebecca’s my wife and 2 Israeli’s are our sons, we rolled with it but being the patriarch I get offered bowls of Baijiu (40–60% alcohol tastes very liquorish) to drink. Disrespectful if I don’t finish the drinks being the father and husband, all macho now, I get absolutely shitfaced and slept so warmly, snuggly with smile on my face in tent while others shivered that night. Saw lots of pandas at Chengdu. Remember getting ferry down Yangtze River, beautiful three gorges, we took 3rd class on the ferry with cockroaches galore, listening to rats squabbling in the walls, I eat rice and egg and tomato nearly every day, sometimes chicken with feet, once dog meat. Got into a crazy stupid argument with Rebecca, the whole restaurant of 50+ loud Chinese tourists went completely silent during our outburst, very few women can get me to loose my temper like that… and she did. We made up later that evening, perfunctory hug, said goodbye next day and never saw or heard from each other again. Visited beautiful Guilin. Arrived by train to Hong Kong and there’s a typhoon. So I stop travelling, go into reflective mode and sit in HK library and read for a few days,.. and…. jump to Beijing July 2013 –insane heatwave, hottest July on record. Nobody spits, nobody is loud, they’ve turned some streets into Disneyland-esque streets, thousands of cyclists have gone but they have excellent cycle paths, very safe, I cycle from 6am to 8am and then can’t any more cos the heat is too much. Western stores and cafés, international restaurants, young people all westernized, everyone with smartphones and tablets, consumerism aplenty, girls are now sophisticated and pretty and dress like Japanese girls, all have dainty umbrellas to block the blaring sunshine, there’s now 17 subway lines with 230 stations (as opposed to 2 lines I never found in 2001). Subway is ultra modern, 2 yuan per ride (20 cent), all subway stations have security scans like airports and seamless, no delays, they project tv adds onto tunnel wall while train travels, phone signals everywhere, mind the gap sign and the gap is only 5 mm?, designer stores everywhere, my favorite rice and egg/tomato dish gone, no chicken feet, no stench from rivers, maybe they got rid of the river, lots of pedestrian streets looking like Portobello rd. And after arriving in Beijing this time, like Hong Kong last time, I didn’t want to travel anymore. Took a break to just observe. Also no point in trying to re-create amazing challenging experience in 2001.
OK now switch back to a Tarkovsky / Wong Kar Wai film style:
I said goodbye trans-siberian travellers in Beijing and took the 300km/hour bullet train to Shanghai, pretty excited, first time to visit Shanghai. Growing up in a village of 200 people in a country of 4 million people arriving in a city of 24 million people in a country of 1.4 billion people: Bring! It! On! My adrenaline kicking. No guidebook, no plans, and first night – again I wanna get lost. I followed the throngs, the hoards of Chinese tourists from People’s Square down Nanjing road, wondering where are they all heading to, walking among thousands. In Chekhov’s The Seagull, Treplev asks Dorn where his favorite place was to visit. Dorn says Genoa describing: “there’s such a splendid crowd in its streets. When you leave the hotel in the evening, and throw yourself into the heart of that throng, and move with it without aim or object, swept along, hither and thither, their life seems to be yours, their soul flows into you, and you begin to believe at last in a great world spirit.” I think for me this is the closest to what Chekhov talked about. I had to listen to music on my mp3 player while walking among everyone, in anticipation… and you know when the right song hits the right moment, … I had Riceboy Sleep’s Stokkseyri playing and the moment the song crescendos (piano fades and the string synthesiser intensifies), I saw where we were going. We arrived to the river, the promenade and right across from us….the stunning, spectacular, extraordinary Shanghai skyline at night. Build from scratch in 25 years and makes all other city skylines look mediocre. To see this in at night among crowds, with this music… I was drunk…
Youtube this song to get my sense… Riceboy Sleep’s Stokkseyri.
I cycled some early mornings and evenings in Beijing to slowly, leisurely discover new China….One very early morning in Beijing I came to Temple Of Heaven park and saw hundreds of grannies and granddads doing Tai Chi, playing badminton, singing folk songs, and dancing, slow dancing, waltzing… so many elderly couples waltzing in a park at 7 in the morning.
I discovered the same at Fuxing park in Shanghai.
And the elderly who were too frail to dance, sat in wheelchairs observing with smiles and wisdom and nostalgia …
This really moved me. Every morning they did this, not once a week but every morning. Imagine…. The day you die you tell St Peter at the Pearly Gates: “I had a beautiful waltz a few hours ago with my neighbor”.
And here am I complaining about the heatwave on my bike and these elderly people are so active! The Chinese resilient spirit.
The romance… imagine that dance with the one you’ve always had slight attraction to for the last 50 years….
Reminds me of Van Morrison’s song Sweet Thing:
“And you shall take me strongly in your arms again
And I would not remember that I ever felt the pain
We shall walk and talk, in gardens all misty wet with rain
And I will never, never, never grow so old again”
This journey to the east concludes… for the time being.
Take me home.
More writing
Words from Mexico (March 2021)
Words from Iran (January 2020)
Click for Words from Myanmar (January 2018)
Click for Words from Russia (July 2013)
Click for Words from Mongolia (August 2013)
Click for Words from China (August 2013)