china

This is my record of my trip to China.  It started on Saturday 26 March, 2011 and ended on 7 April.  And I am reading aloud from my notebook.  When you go abroad you’re travelling time not space because all the new things you see evoke memories of all the similar things you saw before - the skyscrapers of Shanghai evoke the skyscrapers of Berlin 1997, the Maoist monuments evoke the Stalinesque monuments of Zagreb 1975.  That junk antique stall evokes the Plata of Athens and the market at Rhodes and the shanty town evokes Mexico in 1968 and so on. How old I am and well travelled, but never as well travelled as here in China as it is so much the forbidden country and the whole earth alternative civilisation.  For middle earth please follow here.  I went by Swissair from Heathrow to Zurich and then again on to share power in Shanghai stop arriving at about 7.00 AM then getting through customs into a huge empty concrete hall within a single issue taxi touts and a big Mac that the nearby getting lower burger King where I while waiting for Anna.  She arrived soon looking svelte and trim, and me on to the Maglev, 400 kilometres an hour to the metro station whence we took a metro to Jing’An temple and thence to Anfu Lu, their home in the French Concession, by taxi.  On the first day we went downtown to see the Bund and the antiques market and buy a magnifying glass.  We negotiated very well for Caroline’s bird and very badly for the magnifying glass.  We had the first many sumptuous meals in the Hunan restaurant in a shopping centre with excessive staff but not much service and a very bad loo.  Beyond the piles of loo rolls were jolly Chinese families having their Saturday lunch.  Good views over the town centre.  Of course I previously recorded all this on the Elonex Notebook and quite forgot.

Elonex Notebook entry:

We met each other in Burger King; then 259mph Maglev to city centre, and metro to Buddhist tempe surrounded by skyscraoers and wakj to Anfu Lu,  next to a primary school and opposite the Spanish cultural centre. We walked along the wet market and tasted things. Also a woman squatting on the pavement who was scrubbbing a corn husk to make it smoother; walked to Shanghai library - tallest in the world - and walked to metro and bought an oyster card, travelled by the metro to the old town and saw the book market and telephone wires, chinglish in the kitty shop full of teenage girls buying stationery. Then taxi to Bund and “M on the Bund” for rooftop coffee and jasmine tea with turkish delight under the chinese flags, Down again to ground floor - owner is Australian Michelle for the M - then to Peace Hotel along the Bund (from Hindi Band, recovered land from river) via the historic buildings including the custom house -  Peace Hotel has mindboggling art deco with exhibition in gallery of Noel Coward, Marlene Dietrich, etc visitors in the 1930s Sassoon period. The 2008 guidebook said it would reopen in 2009 under the name Swatch Art Peace Hotel. Fortunately that idea died and it is now the Fairmont Peace Hotel.

Bund sight seeing tunnel from Puxi (East, old Shanghai) to Pudong (West, new Shanghai - mudflats till 1990). Mad psychedelia. Strange hoops of light supposed to evoke evolution but very tacky. Pearl Tower with its four ‘baubles’, spheres on its three legs and half way up its mast, a bit Expo 56 Brussels. And capuccino from Croissant de France; A Chinese Australian ordered it for us. Looked at Aquarium but £13.50 per person, so not tempted, then tourist info sent us to buy a Magnifying glass from No1 Department store but failing to find it we went to a tout who took us round the corner where Anna haggles like a trouper to get 98Yuan/RMB/Kwei down to 80. Then Dong Tai Lu for antiques and haggled a bird from 280 to 170. Walked away looked at Maos toys telephones typewriters toasters buddhas hindu deities chinese tutelary deities and mahjong, Lenin and Hitler busts together and dominoes. Back to the bird woman to haggle down to 120 armed with other offers of two birds for 100.

Sunday 27 March

So onto the second day.  Up at 8.30 and coffee in bed .The air is cold and my shoes of plastic 40 wooden floor Nik plugs in the printer for his lesson resources and goes off to teach Anna and I go to baker and spice for toast and coffee and local strawberry seller offers strawberries.  We walked to the metro and emerge a few stops later walking by bleak high rises in Greenland eco development and across the road to a gatehouse for the 1920s Kuomintang garrison with dark detention houses and an execution ground behind it.  The latter is reached through a megalithic tunnel punctuated in its darkness by exhortations on the walls heroic martyr pictures and black metal pit props footed by mock hurricane lamps.  The other arm of the tunnel leads to the memorial park which has many memorials in all styles from standard socialist realism to Zen Garden sculpture to Henry Moore.  And minaret cornered tower blocks behind and a huge pyramid.  WE SEEK the simplicity of the humble vegetarian café in the local Buddhist temple but we were misled by a poster pointing right to the vegetarian buffet and got to the opulent Jen Dow international vegetarian buffet which has 48 metres of counter space with every vegetarian delight you can think of anD many many that you can’t; we staggered through six plates of exotica and made it to the temple, which was more crowded than the martyrs park but not too much.  Eager young Buddhists with hands clasped or joss sticks firmly in their joined hands interspersed with monks sewing or processing.  There were golden statues of buddha and two ferocious Chinese deities in four Temples with red kneelers in front and offerings of large pearly red apples on one plate and a pile of TUC biscuits packets on the next.  I found a WC which is the Chinese for toilet and paid 10p for toilet paper.  We went past another enormous building site where a traditional Chinese building with wings and key motifs was being demolished leaving a hanging lantern there desolate. Down Longhua road, which disappeared and then reappeared but appeared to be in the wrong direction we took a shortcut through a housing estate with its own shops and covered market but unfortunately were stopped by a security guard who sent us back the way we came, courteously but unhelpfully as we could have got to where we wanted via the estate.  We then got a taxi to the botanic garden and saw wedding couples posing with pink balloons are all in white or red. We  explored an abandoned temple via concrete round stepping stones and hired a self drive bicycle rickshaw with two sets of pedals a lever brake on the right a bell on the left which Anna enlisted at the at the crowds of Sunday walkers including sprightly elders and babies doted on by their adoring parents and grandparents.  There were 1.5 hectares of magnolias the same of peonies and medicinal garden tulips and daffodils imported for the 2011 flower festival.  There were singing stones everywhere at one stage singing silent night, a mysterious chinese habit.

Monday, 28 March

 Anna has to work PM but is there in the morning and we had delicious street egg pancakes for breakfast and go to the propaganda museum halfway up an obscure housing estate tower block.  Busts of Chairman Mao, and posters from the 1940s to the 1970s, with textbooks from the cultural revolution 1969-70, and odd incongruous posters of half clothed ladies.  Then to a dumpling house for lunch and goodbye to Anna. Nik and I made a long trek to his office downtown Perfect World, with wonderful views - a whole community on top of an office block seen from the deserted offices next door.  We also went to the Media Markt, six floors of electronics 3DTV and Ipads to play with.  I brought rick's adaptor but couldn’t find temple blocks yet; we went to the garden house shopping for English books and then took a taxi back home.  From here to a music venue which has friend Richard hoping for an open Mike for his poetry but, fortunately it was just American country music.  Richard johnny and I at the empty bar with more musicians than audience, reciting poetry to each other.  The music improved and included bob Dylan’s ride me high - bob was to play Shanghai on the 7^th of April but not allowed to sing blowing in the wind.  Behind the band were 1950s-60s  or even 1930s Soviet cartoon films satyrising bureaucracy and the sad life of the young gangster.

Tuesday 29^th March

The worst day - cold and rainy, Anna and Johnny mainly busy with their interview. Justin and I in endless treks, first to get his luggage to the left luggage office, then from scammer to scammer in Tiananmen Square, and then to join Johnny and Anna miles away in the diplomatic quarter, with no taxis available in the cold wet rushhour.  Another cold wet rushhour trip took us to the foreign correspondents’ club which was not so romantic as it sounds as I talked mainly to the French Beijing correspondent of an Italian yachting magazine and a Chinese physics reporter.  Who asked me why China had no physics Nobel prizewinners.  But we had a Peking duck lunch. we dropped Justin’s luggage at the Beijing Railway Station left luggage office, a heroic achievement, Then I enjoyed a trip around the square with Justin and with our three pairs of scammers, one pair for the Mao mausoleum square and one for each of the outer courtyards of the Palace Museum.  He bought a couple of scrolls.  After drinks at the club some Time Out Beijing people took us to a Sinkiang Xinjiang restaurant which had nice naan bread kebabs and salads and Gaby Alan Claire Charlie and Anna.

Saturday 2 April

Up at 6.00 to take a white London taxi, made in Shanghai, to the Great Wall with Johnny and Justin who we picked up from a Ken tacky fried chicken café near the diplomatic district.  It was a beautiful day and the suburbs gave way to groves of slim vertical trees, berms, and an empty waterway which, Tom says, used to bring Beijing’s main water supply.  He also wants us to stop at a cloissonée factory where the Ming emperors used to shop, but we don’t want to follow their extravagant example.  Buildings often decayed, many slogans, a herd of black cows, a small flock of white sheep guided along the waterway by a man with a long stick.  A few small grey birds and a large magpie like one which reminds me of Australia plus real magpies two for joy and four for a boy; chattering in the taxi, I tune out and gaze at the scenery hills trees concrete block buildings pylons occasional birds.  After a large industrial town we begin to climb and after orchards of plum in blossom cherry apple and pear reach the brash signs of a major tourist site, the Wall, but it is early in the morning and we are the only ones there in the bright sunlight; the climb up the causeway to a ticket office and on to a primitive chairlift to the top, rising above the exciting stainless steel zigzag toboggan run which will take us down again.  The wall is just like in the movie is climbing the steep slopes to right and left  beyond omountain ranges it also ridges into the distance, we jump off the chairlift and are on the wall.  Two storey guard house with arched windows and upstairs inaccessible through a trap door with no ladder.  Medieval grey bricks restored after the 1977 earthquake.  The steps up and down are too big for a flight, then too small, then just right, then too big again. Hard to understand the logic as it doesn’t seem to depend on angle of climb or length of steps.  No horizontal parts at all and then we reach the top of the range and are not allowed to go any further because it is the wild wall unrestored beyond.  Then we head back with some urgency in Johnny’s case and arrive at the toboggan but it is being sprayed so we have to wait 5 minutes to go down.  Johnny goes first, then Anna, then a timorous old man who has to be shepherded by a younger man at an annoyingly slow pace, then then me and then Justin.  It is great fun swooping up and down the curves but the brake is hard to apply and even harder to release completely.  Johnny photographs a couple of medieval warriors as we get off and stumble into tourist cacophony as stallholders demand  attention and we ignore them and go for breakfast noodles and dumplings.  We headed back to Beijing noticing an odd Edinburgh like grecian gateway with military units marching by, and signs by a lake saying Beijing ‘ 95 and sets of silver statues of couples dancing.  There are public statues everywhere in Beijing and Shanghai, often lifesize people.  There are strange human size statues of people with laptops and briefcases all in silver with enormous hammer heads in the Shanghai Airport.  All rather large and aspirational but no revolutionary art except around the Chairman Mao mausoleum in Beijing and the revolutionary martyrs park in Shanghai, plus the propaganda museum. Tom dropped us in the wrong park, Zhongshan Park which is unmarked on the official map of Beijing and has the grave of Sun Yat Sen, honoured as a revolutionary precursor.  We walk right through it and out again at a cost of £1 and round huge walls along a long street with a school to the other side of the Palace museum, and up a steep hill in Jianshan park which is where we wanted to go for its views of the forbidden city from the temple at the top of the hill.  The last Ming emperor hanged himself here.  We could also see lakes to the right and a huge donut-like dagoba built in honour of the dalai lama in the 18^th century.  We bought postcards and went down the opposite side past a choir of old people, groups of young women running and dancing and old men pottering, and a display of types of bamboo.  Outside we had a debate about whether to taxi or walk to the next rendezvous but no taxis so we walked through a hutong to the familiar jazz bar and its rooftop terrace.  It is busier today than yesterday, great convoys of 12 cycle rickshaws each with a company flag and an old couple inside, more moody wedding snaps of a couple against a large brick wall.  We go back to the hostel for a rest and then Ann and I go out for Korean hotpot in a modern café across the road.  Back for the third time to the jazz bar to await Bill Marrett,  he arrived just before the glorious four piece jazz band erupts into modern jazz classics with chinese characteristics - sax, grand piano, bass and drums. An older sax player - where did he practice during the cultural revolution?  Bill has unluckily had eight places to live in five months, but is looking forward to the pub where he works turning into a proper American diner so he can concentrate on his creations of European fusion food.

Sunday, 3 April

I rose early, wrote this journal and took a crowded metro to the summer palace.  A gorgeous spring morning and no westerners.  I ate a pancake on the wall outside the palace watching the crowds, An older granny had shown me a seat for the last metro stop and in return her toddler pinched my bottom.  On the way back I was about to take the last seat in the metro carrriage when a young woman rushed to take my place.  Previously a middle aged woman had got up for me.  In the palace I bravely bought a garden ticket by just saying the number 30.  Pines everywhere just like on the scrolls, a lake with Temples and shops and colourful banners, and the wonderful ‘tuile et briques’ pagoda.  Blossom on the winding paths, taichi practitioner blocking one path, a phalanx of older men and women in track suits and shell suits carrying incongruously traditional rectangular fans and doing fan dances.

The main palace building insight was completely swathed in plastic sheeting and scaffolding. After another crowded tube ride back to the hostel and an unsuccessful attempt to buy Tea and dumplings for breakfast I met Anna and we checked out leaving our bags.  We walked along Gouloudajie west, also known as hipster street, past shops called Soyou Mums and kids Mao livehouse rock and Vampires in Beijing.  We passed where I bought Rick his temple blocks at last, haggling all the way from 65 to 60 pounds, but I had forgotten the Chinese for 5.  We went up to another European restaurant and on to the roof in the warm sunlight I consumed a blueberry pancake and Anna had gnocchi salad and sandwich.  Her colleagues Clare Charlie and Nancy were there and Johnny and Justin.  Justin Anna and I then went on an endless search for Johnny Marrett’s cheese shop which I eventually found by accosting a Frenchwoman.  It was near a Confucian temple and a fine little treasure house of charcuterie and fromage.  Anna bought cheddar and st Paulin cheeses and planned to eat them with Branston pickle.  We returned to the hostel to find tom ready to take us to the Airport in his London taxi.  Traffic was heavy but smooth running and when went straight on until we pitch slap bang into the China National launch academy space flight centre which plunks itself in our path.  We had to take a wider detour round an old road full of potholes, past signs of dereliction, a soldier standing guard over to airliners, a sign saying no stopping no photographs, a huge line of empty taxis and a number of cleaners with traditional sweeping brushes made of grass, sweeping away huge quantities of litter.  Had there been some kind of party on the long narrow road?  That airport was our most Chinese experience.  Not an English sign or westerner in sight.  Five check in desks all closed.  Two shops both selling exactly the same weird Chinese Food.  One also selling aspirational books with the English titles but Chinese text.  At last I found someone who said checkin opens at 5.30, and after checking in we went upstairs to the departure lounge which had two shops exactly like the ones downstairs.  I had a bit of sunstroke but Anna cleverly found uspot noodles which kept us going.  We nearly missed our flight but the kind Chinese man told us that the gate had changed from 2 to 1.  We ate corn chips and drank red date Tea.  A ruthlessly expert queue barger beat me to the gate, but we had to wait nearly an hour for take off.  Then barely an hour later the wheels made an enormous bump as we hit the ground, and we thought somehow we had arrived early, but in fact it was a stopover so some people got off, some people got on, you receive the second of two in-flight snacks, crunchy striped beans and water, then we arrived at Shanghai at 11pm.  Unlike Beijing’s second Airport, Shanghai’s second Airport is as good as its first, and we took a taxi efficiently back to Anfu Lu.

Monday 4th of April and Tuesday morning 5^th of April

Quiet days in the French concession

I woke at 9.30 as Anna went off to work.  I talked to Nik and read and wrote till he went to work at 11.30.  For lunch I went to the only Anfu restaurant with no English signs, and successfully made a messy meal of prawn hotpot, eggplant with garlic sauce, and a nasty cold jellied chicken wished on me by the waitress.  I went home and cleaned up, but the handkerchief was still stained after washing in Anna and nick’s cold water top loading washing machine.  Then I went to post a postcard to Cal, which ended up as ½ hour walk to the city centre, where I found a post office and for the third time in China I asked for a stamp.  Next to the post office was the enormous garish Jing’An temple, enormous but still dwarfed by neighbouring skyscrapers (classified as those buildings over 100 metres tall, says Nik).  I went into the temple for £3.00 and lit joss sticks for Colleen and wandered round the first floor, with the giant dark buddha, five small buddhas with a hat on the one in the middle, febrile bodisatva below, and a drum tower and bell tower anna each corner.  Although the temple is modern it has a nicer atmosphere than the others, though partly spoilt by all the building work going on.  I walked back towards home and paused outside a blind massage parlor; Anna had recommended a blind massage so I went inside after a man on a motorbike arrived encourage the to do so, but refused to go further, really for fear of the unknown, but I said it was on the grounds that I didn’t understand MISN, for example 'two girls massage 70 yuan 60 misn'.  It was only when I got outside that I realized that the MISN were minutes.  I bought myself a pot noodle on the way home and Anna had a cheese sandwich with pickle. I also had some Baijo - 30p for 17.5cl.  We watched the 4 Lions DVD.

Tuesday, 5 April

Claire and her friend got up and left, and Anna left shortly afterwards.  Nick was off by 9.30 too.  I went out and bought a giant range of street breakfast food, two long tasteless floursticks, and tasteless empty Cornish pasty with seeds, the lovely traditional big egg pancake with spring onions, and an alarmingly glutinous rice and pork concoction in a green palm leaf tetrapak bound with yellow string.  That last one took some negotiating he wanted me to buy three for nine yuan but I ended up buying one for three.  I met nick at 1.00 PM at century park with his friend Yan who is a 26 year old English and linguistics student.  She is also his language exchange partner and former web designer colleague.  I spent much of the afternoon chatting to her answering questions like Are Americans ruder than British and how can I get into Cambridge University?  We waited for friends at the crowded entrance to the park and they turned up and we made our way through the crowds with their alpine tents and kites, a little like central park in New York surrounded by skyscrapers.  One enormous train of 20 kite shaped kites stretching up into the sun. Tom and Astrid from Sheffield, Stefan from France, and his Chinese colleague, Brais and his silent Chinese girlfriend who curtsied to me when introduced.  It was incredibly crowded but I suggested the exotic zone for Frisbee and it worked. Nik and Tom played then joined by Yan then me, playing around then pig in the middle.  Most of the party went to go boating but Nik Yan and I went towards the exit via an enormous breathtaking succession of gigantic park settings, a Lakeside terrace with a huge frieze of large mammals of the world from tapirs to elk with pandas in the middle.  A terrace lined with enormous silver posts.  The vast and metal bridge.  A Flash Gordon City of lumpy spires, pinnacles surmounted by spheres.  The terrace full of food sellers on bicycles and motorbikes, the motorbike powering the candy floss machine.  Corn on the cob, sweet potatoes, kebabs, and 100s of farinaceous  and porky products. I had a disgusting Saveloy later disguised in a decorated French crust, but that was in Careme.  Yan left us and we plunged below ground into the metro station and a fakes market. Watches, bags, Watches, bags, Watches, bags, Watches, bags,they all said.  We found an unprepossessing looking restaurant which was titled 'coffee and tea restaurant' - it was in fact quite good and I had a lovely fruit salad including tomatoes.  Nik had a steak sandwich.  We went to Anna’s Office but were they early so we went to Careme for the aforesaid saveloy and coffee.  We met and headed for the Korean sauna and Chinese massage. the Korean sauna is 40° not 70° as in Finland and Sweden, that is warm enough to create a sweat on its tourmaline surfaces.  We played Chinese checkers and watched 1.5 episodes of Friends, and were there for 45 minutes. Nik and I then lay on adjacent beds with holes for our faces and two short young women, one fatter for me and one thinner for Nik dug thumbs and elbows into our shoulder blades and spines, rubbed our temples and shins.  Then we were done, as we thought, but a man came in with 24 glass balls which he proceeded to heat and applied to our backs.  Nik looked like a stegosaurus.  The scars lasted several days.  We had cups of tea with the mistress of the establishment and then took a taxi to an Indian restaurant where we had a lovely buffet. I namasted the kitchen staff who all namasted back through the window.

Wednesday, 6^th of April

I left at nine for my appointment with whatif innovations and took a taxi to the jing'an temple behind which I found the office ducked into a low rise housing block.  A big open plan office with stairs to the platform in the middle staff to the right adventures and working collection of ill matched chairs to the left with flipcharts and big A3 pads for brainstorming. I met Phil and talked about scalable e-learning for 45 minutes.  I wandered round the marvelous international  food supermarket below the temple then got back to Anfu lu and nick and I went to the sculpture park which was a cool huge warehouse surrounded by external sculptures and full of internal sculptures.  There were also two cafes and we chose the one that wasn’t a chain and read the New York review of books.  After that I went on a bus for the first time with Nik and we had traditional Shanghai dumplings in a street café.  We met Anna on her natty Dutch style bright red bicycle.  I took them out for our final Shanghai meal in La petite fleur, a perfect rendition of a traditional French cosy family restaurant.  They chose risotto and I had the best duck I have ever tasted.

Every meal here has been pretty good and some have been a revelation. 

Thursday 7^th of April

Anna shared a taxi through misty Shanghai to the maglev station and over the enormous golden gate style Nangpu bridge.  We said our goodbyes and I magleved to the Airport.  There I had a fine Korean breakfast with Shanghai dumplings and pickled salad before taking the flight to Zurich and then home.  I took a coach to Trumpington park and ride and there was Caroline to pick me up.