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it has just been waiting for me |
28 February 2008
((written last weekend and finally transferred - after some toil and heartbreak - over to the school computer))sunday morning and i am taking a much-needed break from the barrage of new experiences to relax and write something about the time that has elapsed since i last wrote. my account left off after the first full day in beijing, which i believe was tuesday, although this may prove to be wrong. i'm a little confused by days of the week at the moment, as i lost about half of last monday, and a night's sleep, due to the time difference and my total inability to sleep on a plane. so... wednesday. several things were lined up for us by tom, la. so, la, the first thing we did was to take the coach to the hutong, which is basically a maze of little old streets in the middle of beijing. they are in stark contrast with the dusty modern apartment blocks, white-tile buildings and massive new glass-fronted towers which dominate the streets. the hutong seemed designated as a touristy spot, but this only manifested itself in a number of street sellers waving postcards, and a man clutching a brace of rather strange-looking musical instruments, something like recorders but made of pale wood, and with a large bulb-shape at one end. we were taken for a rickshaw ride en masse, my first reaction to which was one of mortification. how much more touristy do you get? but actually once i had got over the embarrassment of doing something so hackneyed, it was great fun, and a good way to get a general impression of the labyrinthine hutong, without having to take a long and tiring walk. as we came back towards the rickshaw rank (of sorts), we were taken alongside the river, which was totally frozen. this is something i had noticed previously as we were being driven through the city: all of the rivers and lakes are covered with sheets of ice, even though the air temperatures during the day are usually above zero. to an english mind this seemed rather exciting, though doubtless it is a mundane and inconvenient fact of life to inhabitants of colder climates than ours. next on the list for the day was the summer palace, famously inhabited by the empress known as the 'dragon lady'. this was picturesque, although seemed to be more or less a repeat of the architectural style of the forbidden city: low, square courtyards enclosed by buildings with traditional chinese style rooves, painted with lovely but faded decorations. i have taken a lot of pictures of this sort of thing, but as i think i mentioned, its flatness means that it does not really lend itself to being photographed, my account of the summer palace is rather brief in part simply because i was extremely tired by that point, having still not managed to catch up on my lost sleep, and feeling rather imposed upon by constantly being part of a large and noisy group of strangers. after a rather good lunch, we were then taken an hour's distance out of the city to see a section of the great wall. on the way, i was interested to see what looked like a theme park under construction, with gaudy fake-medieval walls giving way to a mass of girders where further disneyesque architecture was soon to be. behind this, looming out of the haze, mountains suddenly appeared. announcing that we had nearly reached our destination. the wall itself was as one might expect: a long, fairly wide stone wall, stretching along the mountains, dotted with watchtowers. chairman mao said that no man is a hero until he has climbed on the wall, so naturally we had to take up the challenge. some energetic members of the group did manage to scale the full height of the (very tall) hill, but most fell back after a while, as the steps are both uneven and incredibly steep, so climbing the wall is most certainly not something to undertake lightly. and definitely not in stiletto heels, as i witnessed one woman attempting. wednesday concluded relatively early for me, as the next morning our alarm call was for a painful four am. at this dark and chilly hour, we arose and made our way down the hotel lobby. tom had wangled us each a packed breakfast in a very neat little box, which bore the printed legend 'love one another'. inside was triple decker sandwich with egg and salmon, a danish with something very odd inside which i would guess was bean paste despite being grey-blue, and a strawberry drink of uncertain status - milk or juice? i didn't manage to find out, but it was quite palatable. on the freeway out of the city we passed what looked like a horrendous small lorry smash. the contents of the lorry (whatever they were), along with pieces of the lorry itself, were scattered all over the road, and in the midst lay a dark shape which might or might not have been a body. it might in fact be an opportune moment to mention the phenomenon of chinese driving. the standards of vehicle control and traffic behaviour here are almost astonishingly poor. a recipe for driving a la chinoise: pick a lane - any lane you feel like using - and then zigzag in and out of other vehicles to overtake. to merge, simply drive fearlessly sideways into the moving lane, forcing the cars in it to slide into another line of traffic in the left hand lane or simply brake. overtaking police vehicles at speed is fine. do not brake for pedestrians, bicycles, rickshaws or little old men carrying twice their weight in cardboard boxes. to turn across another lane of traffic, simply slide out. consider indication for special occasions, but generally you will require no warning for changing lane in heavy traffic: simply do it. garnish liberally with loud beeping of the horn. despite this, we got the the airport and checked in with an ease which put our chaotic heathrow checkin to shame. we then waited for our flight, narrowly avoiding missing it due to a last-minute gate change which didn't register with us due to the announcements all being in chinese. there followed a short and uneventful flight to qingdao... utterly utter [
04:55 ]
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it's so bizarre reading this. can't believe i was doing it all a year ago. i miss the acrobatics!! looking forward to hearing about your school and teaching and everything...i sadly never made it to qingdao but the three i travelled with afterwards did and loved it! are you partnered with an australian?
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