Professional tourist

The Forbidden City:





The Temple of Heaven:




An interloper on the Great Wall:



Leaving the Great Wall:

Beijing 2020

It is amazing the people you can meet in cafes in Beijing. Check out the links: mindblowing.

Parklife

I'm in Beijing now, which means I've made it all the way from Dunhuang to here with only two posts on this blog. If I was a parent I'd be charged with neglect...

So this is it, the throbbing heart of "China", that most abstract of entities. This is where I'm living. Well, not literally on the street, I'm sure you know what I mean.


I'm enjoying Beijing, or all one day of it so far. The people seem quite friendly, a drastic contrast to their rivals down in Shanghai that I spent some time with a few years ago. The city is enormous, but wandering the hutong (the laneways that honeycomb the city's inner blocks) is quite interesting and allows one to take everything in, flaneur-style, at a much more human pace.

On a basic level, it is simply nice being in a big, cosmopolitan city, which is full of people doing
things. Much more interesting things than the yokels in the town I just came from (Sorry Datong, nothing personal), whose favourite pasttime seemed to be, 'stare [slackjawed] and/or try to rip-off the foreigner'...

The weather is clear, cool, and windy...also known as 'kite-flying weather'. As I took this photo, the guy in the red hat said, "Hey, the foreigner is taking our photo!". Everybody laughed...and wouldn't you? Crazy foreigners...


No, not a bird, plane or crime-fighter. A kite.

Can't work out how to keep those pesky songbirds from flying away when you take them with you for a spin around town? Consider string! (look closely)

Really, people do all kinds of things in parks over here, unlike back home where they are reserved for kids (of all ages) kicking footballs. In Xi'an I was surprised to see a guy warbling out a very strange take on "Runaround Sue" in a park around the corner from my hotel. He even had a PA system and had drawn quite a crowd. Though falling down in the street and not being able to get back up is enough to draw a crowd in China, admittedly.

So 10 days in Beijing. At the moment the art galleries are calling louder than the Forbidden City, though I suppose one does have to head over there, paying one's respects to Chairman Mao along the way. I'll (try to) keep y'all posted. While I'm at it, I hope to recap some of the other places I've passed through on my way here. But really, that might be getting a bit too ambitious...

The "Real China", in pictures

Today I got a warning from Big Brother that I was accessing an "unsafe" website (a Taiwanese newspaper, going through a proxy server to get around the blocks). It seems that while i can post to this blog, i can't actually access it, suggesting that it too is "unsafe". So be sure that you are wearing protective clothing and a closed mind when viewing the following.

Brave Zhongguo-nauts explore the surface of distant planets, with only bright orange space boots to protect them, Dunhuang:

The Maiji-shan Grottoes, Tianshui, Gansu: I've gotten into Buddhist cave art in a big way on this trip, especially after Dunhuang. Last week I was in Tianshui, a pleasant city in eastern Gansu. Nearby are the Maiji-shan (haystack mountain) grottoes, which as can be seen from the photos, are in a pretty spectacular, and vertigo-inducing, setting. Fantastic place.

Restored remains of the Tang-dyansty eating quarters, Xi-an:

New ideas in the old Confucian Academy, Xi'an. Everybody can be a celebrity these days in China. And yes, the Chinese says the same as the English, it is perfectly translated:

Despite my theoretical reservations (ranted about below), I am having a fine time. If it weren't for the flies buzzing around my head in this internet cafe, I'd go into more detail. Instead, I think I'll go get a cup of coffee.

"The Real China"

From the editor: The following passage illustrates all that go wrong when one tries do distill a half-thought-out, nebulous ideas into a few paragraphs, while sitting in an internet cafe with too little sleep and flys buzzing around one's head. In tone, direction, and style it is indicative of exactly how not to write about China, particularly after the first paragraph. Readers should not regard it as an accurate reflection of the Author's views. It is left here as a cautionary example for others. For a more mature, researched, and better written consideration of similar themes, readers are encouraged to consider this alternative.

[warning: rant follows]

Right now I am in Kaifeng, largest city in the world in the tenth century when it was capital of the Song Dynasty, but now a happy enough provincial backwater teeming with markets. It is also, I have been assured several times by other foreign tourists, "the real China". I don't really know what to make of that: I think it goes back to the 'post-tourist' idea, a rejection of travel as a quest for some kind of authenticity, as any such authenticity (be it a temple, a tour, etc.) will necessarily be staged for the tourist.

But on the other hand, after spending a few days in Xi'an (capital of most of the dynasties from the Qin to the Tang) I can sympathise somewhat. You see, in Xi'an you are assaulted by "History" constantly, in the form of temples, pagodas, museums, the (underwhelming) Terracotta Warriors, etc. etc. but it is not history that is on show, in fact, but myth. Or, more specifically, the mobilisation of historical narrative to stabilise a vision of the past seen not from the point of view of the actors, but from the point of view of the contemporary nation-state. (Talking here about 'public history', not the work of Chinese historians.)

This is uni-dimensional history, where the outcome has been decided in advance (in the sense that only results, but not causes are emphasised). Thus in Xi'an you are told that China is a 'glorious nation', that the Qin dynasty was renowned for 'uniting the country', that the Terracotta Warriors are 'the eighth wonder of the world' etc. etc. That the Qin lasted 20 years and was overthrown by soldiers and peasants rebelling against the tryannical rule of the Emperor is not mentioned. Just an example.

But maybe it is just this process, the mythologisation of history at the service of the nation that speaks loudest about "the real China"? And the fact that all the over-restored 'sights' seem to include space for a faux Tang-dyanasty KFC or McDonalds is the icing on the cake... For a much more literate consideration of what I'm trying to get at, see the Italo Calvino extract in the sidebar to the right...

Anyway, in Kaifeng now, wonderfully lacking in historical monuments and plentiful in night markets. If I can I'll post some photos of the places I've been recently, that didn't incur my wrath to the extent that Xi'an did.