David goes to China

Last exams for the module were this week. My conversation partner and I conversed haltingly in Mandarin for about 7 minutes; this was recorded for marking.
Then about 20 minutes of the teacher saying stuff in mandarain and us guessing what she said.
Not too bad and all done now.
I'm reasonably confident that I've passed these fairly artificial tests, but I can't figure out why my partner can understand me but the flunet Chinese speakers in Beijing pretended not to...

After the real world assessment in Beijing (result - failed miserably, I think) back to school.
I managed to fit in 2 or 3 hours of revision for the reading and writing exams, hampered only by my innate laziness and the warm weather.

The exam itself was technically a much better exam with a wider range of difficulty and it took pretty much the full 45 minutes before I ran out of answers/guesses.

Next week the final two exams - listening and speaking. It's a good job our teacher speaks muuuuch sloooower than the people do in Beijing otherwise none of us would stand a chance.

China is, of course, a contradiction. Western commentators say that it will be the dominant (economic) force in a few decades' time; I think they are right, but I'm not sure that ordinary Chinese either believe that, or believe that it will do the common people any good.

Currently (and bear in mind that I only visited Beijing and a little outside), it feels very much like the mixture you'd expect in a vast, (formerly?) totalitarian and insular, largely rural-agricultural state rushing forward into today and tomorrow. Some modern stuff (but not much ultra-modern apart from some architecture), slums (a lot being demolished), pollution, the occasional horse, lots and lots of manual workers (cleaning streets, digging holes by hand etc), lots of fresh produce sold by individuals and one-person service points (knife sharpening, bike fixing etc), high mobile phone onwership, clear generational differences (although with strong family ties).

It feels like a cross between Britain at the start of the Industrial Revolution and the Britain of the 1950s.

• Lots of stores like small or large department stores are actually a building with lots of stalls in them each operated by competitors. There are lots and lots and lots of sales assistants. In one place, there were just counters and counters each containing one mobile phone per foot and one sales assistant per yard. I was the only "customer". Each counter was, I think, a different business. This of course only applies to up-market(ish) and/or tourist places.
• Supermarkets where ordinary people shop are a lot like supermarkets around the world.
• Sales people like you to give them the right change if possible.
• Entry to parks or other areas with any claim to beauty or fame costs something, perhaps 15p. It doesn't put the locals off. There is a bureaucracy - one person sells you the ticket, another a few feet away checks it. Same with the subway.
• This system is operated in some shops (at random, obviously). In one shop I bought some items and went to the main exit/checkout to pay. Most of the items I was allowed to pay for. I then had to leave my paid for shopping and return to where I'd picked up a couple of the items. I showed the items to the sales assistant. She filled in a handwritten form/receipt for them and I offered her the 20p. She pointed me at a separate cashier 20 yds away, and kept the goods. I took my receipt to the cashier and was allowed to pay, then took my stamped receipt back to the sales assistant who exchanged it for the goods and another receipt. I took the goods and my new receipt back to the checkout to prove I'd paid and collect the rest of my shopping. Sorted!
• Lots of regular commuters had a special swipe card for the buses. They keep it in their handbag and wave it near a scanner on entry and on exit. Good idea.

I suppose I didn't think about what to expect in terms of readership. I only set up the blog to avoid a) having to send multiple emails and b) choosing what to email to whom. So I told a few people who I thought might be interested and they can choose whether or not to read. Almost all of those based in Sheffield or at least UK.
Not quite sure how people come across blogs or choose to dip in, but above is what Blogger reports as the distribution of readers. Some people in China managed to read it, although I found that difficult at times; sadly no-on in Africa (the pin on the left of Africa is Tenerife), Australia or Russia was interested...

I've not written a personal blog before and I've found it a very interesting experience.
As I've already said, it makes me reflect more on my experiences.
I think a lot of (most/all?) bloggers must be extroverts, because it also feels quite exposed for someone like me who is personally shy and introvert.

By car from Yang's apartment. Passed an amusement park which appeared to be open before 8am - strange.
At the airport, it's an almost unintelligible lengthy 6 stage process to exit the country, involving filling in a number of forms.
While waiting for my flight I found a deserted area with wonderfully comfortable loungers - heaven!
Prices at the airport are suddenly Western - about £1 for a small bottle of water, as opposed to 6p in BJ. It's a little culture shock.
On the plane I watched 3 movies and was still well to the east of Moscow. (Two made me cry, but I cry easily. At least I didn't cry during the thriller.) Which reminds me - on the way to China I watched Casino Royale; doesn't Daniel Craig remind you of Pete Middleton (obviously a bit the worse for wear, but he has worked at SHU for a while now)? Or is it Gary Lineker?
By the second meal, I switched back to western cutlery. I hadn't used a knife and fork for all the time I was in China and I literally had difficulty knowing what to do with them. (I also find I have difficulty writing English, not that I'd been writing much Chinese.)
The plane was late into Paris and I just missed my connection there, so another 3 hour stopover in Gucci and Rolex land.
"<"Rant>
Air travel isn't any joy is it?
It takes for ever and is very uncomfortable; even in Business Class (which I wasn't), it's hours and hours sitting in a chair less comfortable than your own at home, watching videos and eating food which isn't as good as your own cooking. In cattle class it's a quite uncomfortable chair - like the ones in 6715 - for 10 hours...
"<"/Rant>
Sue picked me up at Manchester (thankyou, thankyou!) and I eventually got into a bed 24 sleepfree hours after I'd got out of one in Beijing.
It's nice to be home.
:-)

..from China at least.
I've had a wonderful final day. Couldn't find a kebab seller on the street so went to a back alley restaurant where there was no common spoken or written langauge to go on. Excellent food though.
Then I played table-tennis for a couple of hours in the sunshine (and wind).
A lovely finish to a great holiday/ethnographic research project.
See you all in the UK.
D
PS I'll put up some more pics when I'm back.

Public toliets are evry half mile or so in the main areas for the use of the general public; and the same in the hutongs (back alleys, communal courtyard housing) - for the locals.
They are generally clean but almost all are the squat type, apart from urinals obviously.
I've glad I got the point and shoot mechanism installed at the factory.

• A few percent of people wear smog masks.
• On dusty days some women warp their heads completely around with a presumbaly see-through scarf, while cycling.
• Shops, as foreign shops do, sell strange collections of stuff (who'd think that tobacco and sweets went with newspapers?)
• Kite flying is very common
• So are a lot of activites which would seem demented in the Wset - eg hitting yourself in the chest repeatedly
• Please, sorry, excuse me; are all rare expressions here (in any language)
• There is a very wide range of skin colours
• Some people actually wear those red Chinese jackets with toggles on the front
• Quite a lot of people, older men especially, wear Chairman Mao type hats.
• Cylces don't have lights, at all, ever. And cars only turn theirs on when it's actually dark.
  

While you're still abed (it's about 4:30am UK time, 12:30pm here as I type), I'm enjoying my last day here. It's a beautiful warm sunny day. I'm off to find some warmed up meat-on-stick for lunch and see if I can persaude any more locals to play me at table tennis.

Tomorrow morning I leave Beijing :-(
Tomorrow evening I'll be home :-)

I went to the telecomms towers, 400m high, and up to the viewing platform at 225m. Stunning views on a glorious day here.
I didn't feel any vertigo, strangely. I've had vertigo since a sudden onset about 20 years ago and my knees go weak in simulations even.
And I enjoyed cycling back into town on my well-oiled machine.

See pictures of my (t)rusty steed at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/obscuredavid/DavidGoesToChina

I cycled off this morning and after about an hour my steed ground to a halt. The chain had fallen apart. Fortunately this being BeiJing I was about 50 yards from a roadside bike fixer.
The chain is all encased. He took it all apart, fitted a new link oiled and re-assembled for 20p.

Far fewer graunching noises now.

A sunny, windy day.
Today I cycled around the hutongs looking unsuccessfully for the entrance to BJ's underground nuclear bunker built in the free-love days of the 60's when Russia was threatening.
There are no maps at all of the hutongs, so it's a bit tricky.

Then I went to an Indian restuarant for lunch. I have a habit of trying foreign-foreign food wherever I go to see what it's like. I had a papadom (oily, covered with chopped onion and tomato), rogan josh (defintiely lamb - a good sign - slightly tinny tomatoey sauce with heavy ginger overtones. No onion, fresh tomato or other macro-ingredients) and a nan (very good). Along with a couple of Chinese beers - like a light lager. A fiver, which was quite expensive for a fairly posh place down a back alley.

In the afternoon, to a tea-house which served pots of tea and a designed-for-tourists shadow play.

Isn't drunk as much as you might think, and little ceremony at home.
Each person has an individual cup with a lid. A batch of leaves go in and hot water from falsk. The tea is then drunk over a long period of time, topped up with water over a day or more before fresh leaves.
On the street, a lot of tea-houses and tea-shops simply sell leaf tea - don't go expecting a warm drink.

...but I can't.
It's difficult for me as someone who lives by talking and occasionally writing, persuading people with subtleties, not to be able to use much lanaguage at all, let alone subtlety.
My 150 words are not enough, and my pronunciation is apparently largely unintelligible.
This is part of my "out of comfort zone" experience.
Maybe writing this is a partial substitute.
But I may have to have a long chat with each reader indivually when I get back, to make up...

One of the points of a trip like this is to move outside my comfort zone, to have some of my views challenged and changed. For me this is usually a slow process, not a Damascene flash. I'll assimilate what I've experienced slowly over the next months.
One thing I've noticed is that I'm tolerant of the taste (decor, clothing, habits) of my hosts (defintiely not to my taste) , and much less tolerant in UK, even though people are clearly living out their version of their cultural identity just as truly, based on class, ethnicity, education, wealth etc.

I spent an hour with Yang this evening talking about language. We both learnt something, I'm just not quite sure what yet.

He told me that to Chinese people who don't speak English, all European langauges sound alike.

This evening's menu.

• marinaded fish with ginger (hot) [unusual, normally meat]
• mixture of lotus root, carrot, something made from pigs intestine (I think), nuts (cold) [served most evenings]
• courgette, unnamed veg, egg, onion in gravy-like suce (hot)
• brocolli relative, highly spiced (cold)
• large white folded dough dumplings (cold)
• tofu slices in mild gravy (hot)
• 1"x6" cylinders of thing which looks like sugar cane, tastes like a slightly sweet potato
• thin rice porridge

All food is eaten at the same time. Chopsticks are used to take food directly from serving dishes to the mouth. Bones are discarded directly on to the table.

It's difficult to convey adequately the scale of cycling here. There are probably more bikes than cars on the road, and there are a *lot* of cars.
About 15% of the bike are electric assisted, very few perol/moped/motorbikes.
At busy time s(ie most of the time) a bike is about as fast as a car (same as back home, really).
Theoretically in the centre, you need to aprk your bike in an authorise, supervised bike park and pay 2p for the privilege. In practice people park anywhere.
There are a lot of 3-wheelers with 3ftx4ft carry spaces behind them. They can carry beds, scaffolding, 3 or 4 people, 15ft lengths of steel piping, 6x4 sheet of glass, caged birds...
On ordinary bikes, I've seen 40 boxes of shoes, two bulging sacks of cabbages, all kinds of stuff.
BJers' are very accurate slow, close-formation cyclists and they need to be packed like a pelton of sardines with inefficient brakes (if any).
Overall BJ is OK to cycle in, even for a beginner, as long as you stick with the pack.

There is a Confucian element to the way the locals obey the lights and trafficpolicers, but it's overlaid with a more Taoist "go with the flow" where necessary.
(No Bhuddist overtones unless that's the nature of the innumerable ring roads.)

I've realised that I've now done all the things I *really* wanted to do in China -

• stayed with local family
• cycled around BJ
• seen Tia'anmen Sq
• seen Forbidden City
• played table-tennis with locals
• walked the Great Wall
• eaten Peking Duck

*Now* I can relax.

And today I did - I got no deeds to do, no promises to keep...

Aren't holidays great?

Street food is common, especially at night. Anything and everything kebabbed to order.
Today for lunch I had somethign which may or may not be called bian-jia (or similar).
Imagine a galette or crepe about 20" across, very thin.
Add an egg and smear it across the whole surface; cook for 20 seconds. Add chopped spring onion, 3 diff sauces, including chilli, then put 2 crispy sheets of pastry(?) inside it and fold it all up.
Delcicious.

This morning I cycled to Marco Polo Bridge much againbst my hosts advice. They all felt it was madness to cycle that far (about 15km each way, if that).
It was tricky - the map, in Chinese only, didn't appear to match reality much. At one stage I ended up on a motorway for about half-a-mile (scary).
Eventually found the place - a lovely old bridge with hundreds of lions carved, one one each pillar and all different.
Sat on a bronze camel (apparaently they had camels) and had my photo taken.
Avoided the "We hate the Japanse garden" and the "We really hate the Japanese museum" next door and headed back to town.

Beijing will no doubt have the stadia built and the necessary telecomms infrastructure, but it won't be ready for the Olympics. The road network will creak - heavily - under the burden.
But where they are really not ready is culturally.
The *tourist* apparatus here can't cope with foreigners, except at very big tourist sites. Even there only (some) tour guides speak other than mandarin, and hwakers can say "You look, you buy" or equivalent. Timetables, brochures almost exclusively in Chinese.
How much a country should adapt itself to my ignorance and expectations is, in my view, only a little. I'm not sure that view is shared by the peopel who will spend larges ums of money coming here to see the Olympics and the sights.
It feels as there will be a massive gap between expectation and delivery.

Today by bus to the Great Wall. I intended to catch a bus to a specific section, between 6:30 and 8:30 am, as advertised. It didn' materialise.
I took a different "Tourist Bus" to the Wall via Ming Tombs.
After about 4 hours, we had stopped at an abandoned "Amusement" Park for an hour and then at a waxworks. I jumped ship and got a taxi the rest of the way to the Wall.

The Wall is stunning, awesome, moving, immense, precipitous.

Out of season, as now, it was still very crowded, but I did manage to find some empty sections.
I walked along it, about 8m high and 4m wide; it doesn't follow valleys of ridge liens - it takes the most up and down route it can find. The 5km I walked were like going up and down to and from Whitby Abbey continously.

A experience full of wonder.

The average speed is about 8mph and I've discovered that it's close to zero effort to go at that speed, pedaaling very occassionaly. So after a week here, I've managed to slow down a little.

Today was colder - I had to keep my trousers on. It drizzled a little too, but nothing like Sheffield rain, just enough to dampen the dust down.
Bike/ then subway to centre of city. Subway is great - fast efficient, frequent (and crowded obviously).
More shopping/mooching around - In enjoy mocching in strange places.
The subway to a prk where Japanses cherry trees were in blossom. Very pretty even in the damp weather. Plus a giant Tibetan prayer bell (I think).
Tomorrow I'm ging to stare at a wall for four hours.

I'd done too much walking and my foot hurt- quite a bit. I needed to find a pharmacist. At the first one after a prolonged and fairly fuitless discussion (not many words in common) I ended up with some herbal remedy which didn't relieve the pain. So the next day I looked for one with medicines I'd heard of.
Eventually found some western painkillers.
So I'm walking around a foreign country with a walking stick and a baseball cap, slightly unshaven, munching Tylenol.