Brian's Blog

Index

2012-01-27T10:55:00.000+04:00

For some time, I have been writing blogs, recording some of the many sights and sounds I have come across in my travels across the Middle East, China and, indeed, the rest of the world.

Some of these blogs are unashamedly "un-PC" - and if you are easily offended, may I respectfully suggest you move on to other pages on the web?

Here is a selection of some of those blogs:

BEIJING

Enter the Dragon: Part 2
Enter the Dragon: Spring Festival in Beijing Part 1
Santa Jostles with the Dragon
Making Tracks with Mao - China Rail Museum

Toasting the Dragon
At home with Sung Qing-ling
The World - sometimes not all it is cracked up to be!
My first Xmas in Beijing
A visit to Prince Gong's Pad
Exploring the hutong
Gobbing for China
Juggling with destiny … or crashing the diplomats’ party
“I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about.” (Oscar Wilde)
Summer Palace: best viewed in the autumn
Being single on 11.11.11 is not all it's cracked up to be
Judge not others, lest ye be judged yourself!
Telling the time in Beijing
The Hills are Alive with the Sound of ... Bullshit
In search of vintage paint stripper
Jackie Chan, Chateau Laffitte and a Jar of Penises
天鹅湖 Makes a Splash in BJ
You don't have to be a philistine to enjoy 798 - but it sure helps
Special Me is a Suave Dude!
Searching for the Moon Rabbit on Mid Autumn Festival
Patience has its rewards
It's Lotus Time in YMY
Brian Sprints his way around Olympics-ville
BJ's Fierce Creatures - or lack of them!
Overcoming the Pain Barrier - submitting to Chinese torture...
Following in Nixon's Footsteps
A Transport of Delight
Window on the World
An Amazing Day Out in Tianjin
Start of a new chapter in Brian’s autobiography
China Visa Red Tape - coping with officialdom

DUBAI & ABU DHABI

I Hate to Say Goodbye - Time to leave the Middle East
Dance bars in DXB - BS catches up on his education
Dubai’s RTA site needs a good kick up the *%^$#@*! if you ask me
Beijing Tarts: Over the hill at 30
Flying HMMOG Airways - and living to tell the tale
Selling my baby - Dubai-style
It's ATM time ... yet again, again, again
Emirates Airline - now I am beginning to understand why they are so expensive
Kate & Wills - A Proud Day for Britain???
Bangladopian Maid Arrested - for Doing a 'Bobbitt'
Emirates NBD - A case of Incompetence, Stupidity or what, pray tell?
Change is Needed - UAE Ministry finally takes action
Spamming the Spammers - getting my own back on these low life
Falling out of love with Qatar Airways
It's that time of the month: No! I don't mean that!
Abandon Hope: All Ye Who Enter Caribou
Callserve - No Calls and No Serve
Giving Away The Bride - No Refunds Permitted!
Now this is what I call service! You'll never find this in the UK
Should we pass around the begging bowl for Géant? Ramadhan shenanigans in Ibn Battuta's favourite store
It's not easy being a dad: when you have to buy a dress for your daughter!
Screwed Again! Sometimes you simply cannot win
Lowlife in the Gulf: A step off the straight and narrow
Metro Madness: Do the decision makers ever use their own transport system?
Chatting up a Filipina: Who needs a dictionary?
The State of Democracy in the Philippines
It's ATM time again as Dubai gears up for the tourist trade
Murdering the English Language: I love it!
Of Tigers, Hearts and Little Red Lai Sees When Valentine's coincides with CNY
Moving house is no fun especially when dealing with red tape
Floods in the Philippines What exactly is news?
Wake Up and Look Around! What? No civic pride?
Manila Sauce Getting ripped off on a Jeepney
Immigration Officers One of the worst jobs in the world?
Alex Beckons Thanks to Gulf Air I actually make it to Alexandria
For the love of a Kia Maybe not everyone's idea of a babe magnet....
Delhi Diary Having got the visa, it's off on Air Arabia...
Getting an Indian Visa The trials and tribulations of getting through Indian red tape
Concerto for Nokia & Orchestra - or what passes for Culture in Al Ain
Driving in the Gulf Smuggling and officialdom
Middle East International Film Festival Hobnobbing with the stars

SAUDI ARABIA

Saudi TV The joys of working as an anchor on KSA2
Immorality in Riyadh Naughty Brian!
Desert Roses in Qatar Adventure time in Doha
A Survivor’s Guide to Driving in Saudi Arabia That's what it says
Selfish Parking Getting one's own back
Hummer Day Out Falling in love with an H3
The Day You Hoped Would Never Happen Explosion in Riyadh
Trip to Wahba Crater The best hole in KSA?
Bukhra Dunes Tomorrow never comes
eMail from the edge First impressions of Saudi

Enter the Dragon Part 2

2012-01-27T10:50:00.001+04:00

One thing that the Chinese absolutely love without a doubt is making noises and letting off fireworks. Oh, OK – that’s two things they love, but they go hand in hand.

Throughout New Year’s Eve the sound of firecrackers being let off in the street is punctuated by larger mortar-style bangs. It frightens away the evil spirits, you see; I know if I was an evil spirit, it would certainly frighten me!

Come the arrival of dusk, Beijing goes totally ballistic. Talk about World War 3! From my apartment windows I can see maybe 30 or 40 different firework venues. As most people here live in high rise apartment blocks it would appear that one family lets off its fireworks in the street or courtyard outside, followed by the next family and so on.

So at 5.30 the reign of fire begins and it goes on… and on… and on… and as midnight approaches it increases in intensity such that there surely cannot be any evil spirits left in the entire country, let alone Beijing. By 1am the intensity lessens, but the building is still being rocked by mortar blasts until maybe 2.30 when some kind of sanity begins to take over.

Think about it. 5.30 pm until 2.30 am. That’s nine hours! I fall into bed and wake up the next morning to the sun shining through my window with the sound of swish swish swish outside.

Despite the fact that it is New Year’s Day, there is a veritable army of street cleaners outside clearing up the debris from the night before.

I down a strong coffee, made by my delectable espresso/cappuccino maker that I was given just a couple of weeks back, and head out for some fresh air. It’s time for another Temple Fair methinks – but this time I’m off to Chaoyang Park situated near the embassy quarter.

My web guide tells me that this particular fair is known as the Chaoyang International Fengqing Festival since there aren’t actually any temples in this park. Also, it adds rather ominously, it caters principally to the laowai crowd. (Laowai / 老外 is one of several Chinese words for foreigner, literally translated as old/lao/老 foreigner/wai/外.)

But when I arrive, there is not a foreigner in sight, save for some Russians making fools of themselves – literally – on the stage set …

and some Czechs/Hungarians/Bulgarians/Greeks giving out some tourist brochures to curious passers-by.

Unlike yesterday’s jaunt to Ditan Park, this outing reminds me much more of a European fair with 101 different ways of winning (or not!) a horrid stuffed animal that you could probably buy cheaper than forking out for a lucky couple of balls/darts/hoops/pop-guns with which to win these wretched animals.

Many of the stall holders have that look about their chops that gives their innermost thoughts away. Why am I here in the freezing cold, rather than lying in a nice warm bed at home they obviously think.

But the Beijingers are out in force. They are determined to enjoy themselves come what may and appear happy to part with their well earned quai.

Everywhere there are hawthorn candy sellers – that most popular street candy, made by sticking hawthorn fruit on sticks, dipping in boiling sugar solution and selling for around RMB4 a stick. (I have to admit to recently developing a taste for hawthorn juice in preference to my early morning orange juice.)

Other eateries are doing a roaring trade. If you want to know what it is they are selling, you’ll get a clue by identifying the carcass hung up over their counters. A few metres away from this dead pig, for instance, there are the remains of a sheep/goat hung up to tempt the visitors.

Naturally there are litter bins everywhere provided for the good burgers of Beijing, all clearly marked for what goes in which bin…

But I guess the world over, fairs appeal mostly to the kids (or maybe adults who have never really grown up). You could pretend for a short moment in time (well, about 75 seconds by my count) that you were Lord or Lady Muck and get carried around a circle inside a brightly painted palanquin.

All the while a band of musicians brave the cold to serenade the little blighters as they are carried around.

For the slightly older kids there are rides on dragon-decorated trains and roller coasters

and for the older still, you can get thrown through the air on dragon boats.

Safety is, of course, a number one priority and there are plenty of railings to keep back the crowds. Being the good citizens they are, I see no one trying to leap over anything, let alone a railing that I would have great difficulty climbing over, never mind leaping!

One of the most popular rides calls itself The Magic Sword Wheel. “It is a 20-meter-high dangling equipment,” we are told, “whose wheel dangles from the left to the right or circles clockwise or anticlockwise around the central pole with the maximum panning angle of plus or minus 110 degrees during the operation of the equip-ment. The passengers can strongly sense a gravity and fell as if they are riding the clouds”.

Hmmm. Somehow I am not tempted. But just to make sure, there is another notice beside the first which says that “those who are pregnant, drunk or weak or suffer from acrophobia, high blood pressure, heart disease, cerebral thrombosis, neurological disease or staggers are not allowed to take it.” Well I may not be pregnant, but I decide to give it a miss anyway.

Rather ominously, there is another stricture for the customers – “No smoking, littering or fighting” it warns. But those who stagger away from the contraption after the ride look in no mood for a fight, preferring instead to head for the public conveniences, which can be spotted a mile off in the shape of giant ladybirds.

Of course, it being the New Year, everyone is looking for a bit of good luck to see them through the coming year. Never ones to miss a trick, you’ll see the Chinese have planted good luck trees around the place. You pays your money, you bash away on a drum to get rid of the evil demons who might be lurking there, and then you pin your lucky ribbon onto the tree and voilà – you are guaranteed good luck ahead. What could be simpler?

Naturally there are cheapskates everywhere; and if you don’t feel like parting with the readies purely to bash a drum before hanging up your good luck prayer you can do it on the cheap at another tree without a drum bash for half the price!

Probably the best thing at Chaoyang – for me at any rate – was a collection of ice carvings that had been made, featuring an eagle, dragons, fish, rabbit, and various other animals. They were a definite hit with the kids too.

But don’t you just know it that when you look at ice carvings, with the outside air temperature well below zero, the first thing you start worrying about is where can you go to have a pee! I guess it is time to go in search of a ladybird once again…

Enter the Dragon

2012-01-27T10:50:00.000+04:00

New Year’s Eve in China is one of those in-between days. You know. Just about everyone has left for the Spring Festival holiday in the world’s biggest annual migration, but the shops are still semi-open and everyone is waiting for the big day tomorrow.

Some of the shops, though seem to be lacking in any kind of business – such as the train ticret office, since presumably everyone has bought their ticrets by now and if they haven’t, there aren’t any more ticrets to be had anyway…

Others seem also to be getting few customers, perhaps because today the temperature is a heady minus 16 degrees Celsius, and there isn’t much of a market for iced water…

As with many public holidays around the world, Beijing has its fair share of fairs – normally referred to here as Temple Fairs, which have been a part of daily life for many hundreds of years. You can find them all over the city selling tat that you would not normally be seen dead with. There are displays of acrobats and musicians, cross-talk (a kind of mix between stand up comedy and rapping, which became popular in the Qing dynasty) and of course food stalls everywhere.

But your favourite blogger is ahead of the game. Unlike most of the Temple Fairs in Beijing which open tomorrow on New Year’s Day, there are a couple of fairs that are actually open today; so I head for Ditan Park, otherwise known as the Temple of the Earth Park, just up the road from the Yonghe Gong Lama Temple.

The Temple of Earth, otherwise known as the Temple of Fang Ze, was once the place where emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties offered sacrifices to the God of Earth. This temple complex is now the largest of its kind in China, covering over 37 hectares and dates back to 1530.

It reflects the beliefs of the time that:
1. heaven is round and the earth is square (so it was built square-shaped)
2. heaven is blue and the earth is yellowish (so guess what colour it is!)
3. heaven is in the south and the earth is in the north (so of course this lies north of the Temple of Heaven)

But I doubt anyone really gives that a second thought as they make their way past the bored looking Mr Plod at the entrance…

and rush to have their photograph taken with something that purports to be a dragon, since of course we are entering the dragon year – one of the most propitious times in the Chinese calendar.

Others who are not so tat-minded decide to have their pictures taken under an arch of red and gold lanterns.

and then everyone heads for the tat stalls selling everything from dragons and silly hats to toys and puzzles and plastic 100-ton-mallets (for hitting people over the head with of course!).

But wait… what have we here? A group of emperor’s flunkies standing around with an old cart? What’s up?

What’s up, of course, is a re-enactment of the imperial family’s traditional prayers for good harvests originally held here in the summer months. So you see, it’s actually quite educational coming here too!

Re-enactments aside, the park is also filled with musicians of varying standards, freezing their little fingers off while performing to the crowds. I feel quite sorry for this girl playing the er-hu who appears to be in the first stages of hyperthermia (well I can only assume that explains the standard of her playing).

On another stage round the corner, a magician is performing the cutting-a-woman-in-little-bits act, although the woman is actually a very gay man, whose fingers that are sticking out from a hole in the cabinet are turning blue with frostbite.

Red lanterns are everywhere, of course; and the grid section of streets, making up the park, are all lined with colourful banners and stalls.

One range of merchandise that I notice is doing particularly well, are smurfs – presumably because their recent film has been a huge success at the box office.

But a stall that attracts little interest displays house signs, which presumably fell off their allocated positions during a storm or whatever. Are these really collectables? Well, with my eBay experience I know all too well that one can sell practically anything to the masses!

As I approach food alley, the cookers are warming up nicely and already attracting a small amount of passing interest; though soon it will be packed as the Chinese love to nibble in the street.

The local fire brigade is also there, proudly showing off its latest equipment; but practically no one gives them a second glance and when I snap a photo of them there is a look of thank-goodness-we’re-not-entirely-invisible written all over their faces.

A small crowd gathers round some girls spinning plates on sticks. With perfect timing they twist their bodies and contort themselves into silly positions, all the while keeping those plates from falling to the ground. The crowd murmurs in awe. Amazing!

Or is it? One girl gives the game away as she leaves the stage. The plates are attached to the sticks! All they need to do is wiggle the sticks and it looks like they are in perfect control. The crowd, realizing it has been fooled, turn their backs and head off for other amusements.

How about life-size dolls performing for the kids? Huh! In minus 16 degrees? You’re kidding. I count maybe half a dozen brave souls standing around to watch this pedestrian performance.

But parades are a different matter and over-the-top colourful floats are the very stuff of such fairs.

Even equestrian ladies with bright pink cheeks are a hit – though whether their cheeks are pink from the cold or from their makeup is debatable.

Dance troupes, too, are all the rage; and I watch for a couple of minutes before the cold forces me to continue on my way.

It’s been a fun-filled morning, but if I stay out here much longer I will turn into an icicle. It’s time to head for home and leave the park for others to enjoy.

>>>>> Enter the Dragon Part 2

Santa Jostles with the Dragon

2012-01-22T22:23:00.000+04:00

It’s January 22nd and still it appears that Christmas is more than just a passing memory. Although the Chinese New Year – referred to here as the Spring Festival – is almost upon us, Santa and his merry reindeer are still to be seen around town wishing us all a Merry Christmas from shop windows, hotels and in doorways, although it has to be said that I have noticed fewer Christmas trees in the past week…

No doubt this is because Mr Claus is wrestling for space with the dragons and New Year greetings that are fast taking over his territory, though this morning in my street alone I counted 14 santas and 13 dragons.

As well as dragons, many establishments are hanging up red diamond-shaped fu (福) characters which literally mean "blessings and happiness". This sign is usually seen hanging upside down, since the Chinese word for "upside down" (倒) is homophonous with "arrive" (到) and so it symbolises the arrival of luck, happiness, and prosperity.

Of course the shops have been gearing themselves up for weeks now targeting shoppers with New Year cheer, such that it is impossible to escape this festival in any way whatsoever.

At work, we were given a hong bao (红包) or little red envelope with two store credit cards inside – to the tune of 500 quai (approx ₤50) for one upmarket store, and another RMB 100 for a bakery chain.

Not being one to miss a bargain I have been tempted into the shops like everyone else, searching for must-buy items that I would normally never even consider purchasing!

Most shops have been doing a very brisk trade – and even normally sedate stores (if a Chinese supermarket could ever be called “sedate”) work on the principle of pile-em-high-sell-em-cheap.

Of course, while inside, who can resist buying some kitsch to decorate their apartments from the kitsch corners that have sprung up everywhere? (Actually.. I can!)

Anyone wanting just to buy their normal groceries has to work twice as hard fighting against the crush of eager Chinese. Thank goodness for the signs that can still be found everywhere guiding you to your chosen products.

OK, I have still to work out what is meant by “Nourish Food” – maybe it is the opposite of junk food? But it is a universally accepted term here – as can be seen in a similar sign in another supermarket.

As for “Expanded Foods” – don’t even ask! It’s about as clear to me as a “Functional Drink”. I’m dying to know what a dysfunctional drink is all about!

I am happy to see that my favourite sign in Wu Mart is still there to guide me to the toilet rolls. I mean, I never actually buy my bum fodder from there, but it still gives me a smile every time I pass it.

China, of course, is renowned for its Chinglish signs. Want to try your luck on the state lottery? Look no further…

Feel like playing with the overhead wires? Don’t even think about it!

Afraid lest you might miss out on an all important sign? Well I guess it is possible to suffer from sign withdrawal symptoms, so the lovely Chinese take it upon themselves to put up a sign telling you where to find another sign!

I guess too that the Chinese must have been the originators of mission statements – those grand sounding slogans that western corporations were so keen to introduce in the 80s and 90s to their work forces – albeit that I have never met a single person who could ever tell me what the mission statement of their company actually was. But true to form, the Chinese stick them up everywhere, even on their pedestrian bridges.

Even when you go to the loo, you cannot escape the signs. Do they really mean you should lock the door OF your convenience? Or FOR your convenience? Hmmm… the jury is out on that one I think.

One of my favourite signs can be found close to the Sanlitun area which is so heavily frequented by westerners. So it is not surprising that they make a special effort with their signs in this area. Thank the Lord for Google Translate!

But I digress. As the New Year approaches, many shops and even more houses decorate their entrances with rhyming couplets called du lian (对联) - a pair of lines of poetry which adhere to certain rules and that express happy and hopeful thoughts for the coming year.

A couplet must adhere to strict rules. For instance both lines must have the same number of Chinese characters; the tone pattern of one line must be the inverse of the other; the meaning of the two lines needs to be related, with each pair of corresponding characters having related meanings too. Oh, and there is a “headline” section at the top which is meant to sum up what it is all about!

As almost everything is shut during the Spring Festival, the markets have been having a very busy time offloading all their produce to the customers who buy up box-loads of meat, vegetables and fruit…

… while just in case there is anyone (such as me!) who still hasn’t bought a dragon or a fu or a du lian for his door, they’d better hurry up as stocks are limited. Or not, as the case may be.

Roll on the Spring Festival.

Gong xi fa cai! 恭喜发财! Happy New Year!

Making Tracks with Mao

2012-01-12T09:59:00.000+04:00

More than once I asked myself what the hell I was doing and why wasn’t I at home snuggled up in the warm instead of tramping aimlessly in sub zero temperatures through freshly fallen snow.

The fact is that I had set myself the task of discovering the China Railway Museum (中国铁道博物馆) and had even found it quite easily on the map. It surely couldn’t be that difficult to lose a 16500m² building … could it?

The museum is located near the circular test track of the China Academy of Railway Sciences in the NE of the city, not that far from the 798 arts district. So when I saw the Academy from afar and then a sign for the museum itself, I thought I’d be inside and be able to warm myself up pretty fast.

I should have known better. On the other side of this sign there was an arrow pointing down a narrow track towards the museum, so I duly followed to see where it would take me. Following the overnight snow, there were a total of six crunched cars – one of which had obviously ricocheted off another and ploughed straight into a wall. Anxious voices shouted into telephones as a bored looking policeman took down some of the details.

I carried on through the snow and found myself crossing not one, but two railway tracks before finding myself passing a plush building that proclaimed itself to be the Beijing Polo Club. (I didn’t even know there WAS a Polo Club in Beijing!) This couldn’t be right. So I turned on my heals and crossed back over the two railway lines … and saw to my right a turn off with the remains of a gate at its entrance.

I consulted my map again and saw that the museum should have been where I was standing; but as there was a very deserted railway line following the track, I decided to see where it went.

Five minutes later I was still walking with nothing to show for my efforts. However, I have an inbuilt philosophy that always cheers me up when I get lost: it is a damned sure way of discovering a city and seeing places you would never see otherwise!

I ploughed on regardless. If I was caught trespassing and given a strict telling off, I would put on my I’m-only-a-helpless-foreigner-and-could-do-with-some-help look which has got me out of many such a situation in the past.

But what was this? A very faded flag fluttering in the blizzard with the name of the Museum on it!

My pace quickened, I rounded a corner and there ahead of me was a large building with rail tracks going up to its walls. Could it possibly be…?

It certainly could! The problem was – where was the entrance? At that precise moment I spotted a man on a bicycle coming towards me. “Bo wu guan na li?” I shouted out to him, with my well rehearsed phrase of atrocious Mandarin, hoping he wouldn’t go into long explanations. Luckily he pointed over to the right and carried on slithering along the track from whence I had come.

Another five minutes later and I found a ticket office, of sorts, from which emanated a hot current of air from a blow heater. Bliss! Before I had even finished uttering a convivial Ni Hao, the girl behind the desk shouted out Er shi quai at me and was once again deep in conversation with her colleague before I had even had time to get my wallet out. So nice to be made to feel welcome!

I stepped inside the museum. And gasped. I don’t know if it was colder inside or outside. There was one other visitor that I could see. We were outnumbered by staff 4 to 1. My breath froze in the air as I walked towards what was obviously the star exhibit in the place.

It was a Class JieFang JF-Liberation No.304 that had been built in Japan in 1941. JF-304 was 23.75 metres long, had a 2-8-2 wheel arrangement, and was designed for speeds of 80 km/h; and it was retired from service in 1977.

So what? you may well ask. Well … hold your breath now … this train was actually used once by Chairman Mao ZeDong himself. Yes! Amazing isn’t it! The Great Helmsman had actually travelled in this train. And as if to drive home this point, a red and gold badge of honour was affixed to the front of the engine with a snazzy portrait of Mao himself, so that all the visitors could pay due homage to this incredible memento of history.

But wait! At risk of overdosing on superlatives, the train beside it (JF-1191) was another Japanese loco made the following year; and this one had been travelled in by no less a person that General Zhu De - Commander-in-Chief of the People's Liberation Army.

His mug shot was also used to adorn this engine.

I don’t know what it is about steam locomotives, but they tend to reduce grown men to little boys as they feel they have to touch every knob and lever and marvel at the power of these incredible machines. Well, if you are an overgrown schoolboy, then perhaps this museum is just up your street.

The first railway was built in China in 1876 and the museum houses trains built between 1881 and 1979. They were constructed in China, Britain, the United States, Japan, Russia, France and Belgium.

Opened in 2003, the museum is the national museum of the railway system. Half of the museum's main hall is reserved for steam locomotives, while on the other side of the central divide there are also diesel and electric trains, passenger coaches and freight wagons. In all, there are some 40 locomotives on display.

Actually, there are eight rail lines on which the trains sit, all packed in like sardines in a can.

In 1949 China had about 4000 steam locomotives of around 200 different kinds; but it was only in 1952 that China began to manufacture its own engines, based on foreign models. In 1958 manufacturing of diesel locomotives started, but production of steam locomotives didn’t stop for another 30 years, in 1988.

Throughout the museum there are loads of helpful explanatory plaques, with yellow backed translations in English positioned nearby.

You are allowed – nay, encouraged – to climb aboard some of the trains – such as this cab…

and even see how the elite travelled in their bunk beds on the sleeper trains…

Someone obviously thought it a good idea to paint one of the trains a lurid orange-yellow colour, akin to some of the emergency automobile breakdown rescue vans you see on the roads of Europe.

I half expected to round the corner and see that someone had painted another train in a bright fuchsia pink –rather as some of the more excitable Saudis do with their individualised penis substitutes. But in fact the pink had been reserved for no less a personage than Premier Zhou EnLai's personal onboard bathroom!

In the middle of the gallery was a cute little loco. Built in Britain in 1882, it’s a Class Zero steam locomotive (with a wheel arrangement 0-4-0 which enables tighter radius curves), one of the two oldest engines used on China's railways and used to ply the route between Tangshan and Xugezhuang.

For me (and I suspect for many other “little boys”) the diesel and electric engines are not nearly as romantic as their older brothers. I mean when you clamber into the cab and see a few dials and switches, it is so boring!

As well as trains, there are also a few glass cabinets with old telephones and switching gear inside (yawn)…

… as well as a sheet of railway bonds (mega yawn)…

and even a curled up map or two (zzzzzz……)

… while the passenger signs are just too wonderful to behold…(snore....)

Soon, however, having almost lost feeling in my lower limbs I could tell it was time to go outside once again and see if it felt any warmer. (It didn’t.)

A few old wheels and bogeys had been left idly about in the car park area - one half expected to see a carriage propped up without any wheels on piles of bricks (or “Liverpool Jacks” as they are known in the UK) but there was nothing to keep me hanging about.

I rounded a corner and discovered that if I had earlier that day ignored the sign telling me to turn right, and gone left instead, I could have entered the museum from the main road about 50 metres away.

I guess I will never get used to the Chinese’ attitude to signs.

It’s a bit like the advice given on one of the sites I looked up that “The China Railway Museum is not to be confused with the Beijing Railway Museum, which was opened in 2008 in the former Zhengyangmen East Railway Station of the Jingfeng Railway”.

But I doubt there is any chance of that. The BRM was actually closed indefinitely more than two years ago and no one seems to know if or when it will ever open again.

Toasting the Dragon

2012-01-06T10:30:00.000+04:00

They say the best parties to go to are surprise parties.

So there I am sitting at my desk, minding my own business, scribbling away on some amazing column I am writing, when one of the girls turns round to me and asks “are you ready?”

“Ready for what,” I reply. “Ready for the party, of course,” she says. I look blank. She looks exasperated. “You do know it’s the department’s Spring Festival party this evening?”

If the truth be known, I have been hearing rumours about it for the past few weeks, but it turns out that no one has thought to actually tell the “foreign expert” sitting surrounded by all these Chinese girls that the party is actually today, or even where it is to be held. All the notices sent out about it have been in Chinese and I have long ago got tired of dropping every official company notification into Google Translate on the off chance that one day there will be something that actually affects little old me.

My harem of work colleagues are mortified. “Come with us. We’ll show you where it is. You can sit with us. No, you MUST sit with us.”

With about two minutes notice I bundle on my coat and follow them out to the lift and down into the cold outside where it is already minus five degrees. Did someone say Spring Festival? Thank god it isn’t a winter festival we are celebrating!

We jump into a cab which promptly goes in the wrong direction adding about 50% more to the fare by the time we eventually arrive at a Tibetan hotel not a kilometre from the office.

Despite the girls’ earlier insistence, I am told there is a place reserved for me on the “International Team” table. “Just look for the plaque on each table. It’ll be up near the front somewhere”.

Luckily another westerner is already sat down at the table – just as well when I read the sign:

… which as everyone knows (well, everyone who can read Chinese, anyway) says Multimedia (thanks MeiLing!). But no worries. This really is the table we are meant to be at. For a start there are twice as many wine bottles than at other tables – always a sure fire giveaway! And none of your cheap muck either. This is one of the better Great Wall gut rotters – which is just as well as we are to find out a little later.

The room is quickly filling up. There must be around 25 tables each with ten places. I am well positioned just one table back from Top Table, round which are sat the good and the great. (I assume they are G&G, although in truth I only recognise two of them).

The evening starts off with a number of performances by groups of staff members. “A good way to get noticed by the top hierarchy”, goes the perceived wisdom, though in my experience it is sometimes better NOT to be noticed by the T.H. depending on how much of an idiot you are making of yourself.

But in the event everyone throws themselves into the mood of the evening with gusto…

… albeit that some are a little less rehearsed than others.

One of the “popular” acts is Chinese girls pretending they are Thai…

… not to mention the Chinese girls who are pretending to be Indian…

… or the guys who appear to have a gender imbalance problem...

… though no one worries about the apparent lack of talent in the girlie group as long as they wiggle their asses and show off their legs.

And what’s this? Karaoke sung by a group of Red Guards?

For me one of the highlights of the performances is a girl doing Peking Opera – and very well too. Not that I am an expert, you understand, but she appears to have strangled the requisite number of moggies to get that purrrrfect sound so loved by us P.O. aficionados.

All too soon, though, it is time for the speeches. Not one speech, not two speeches, but endless speeches thanking everyone, reviewing the past year, reviewing the industry, reviewing the highlights, reviewing the failures, reviewing each others’ navels, I am sure – though it is all in Chinese and so we foreign experts learn to laugh when everyone else laughs, clap when everyone else claps and pretend it is all a bundle of fun.

Mind you, as we are shown slide after slide of industry figures, and how our company did in the great scheme of things, I am glad to see it is not just our table that finds more interest in talking to one another than paying rapt attention.

Finally it is time to eat. The Tibetan waitresses bring in plate after plateful of delicacies. First up, jellyfish cooked with mushroom – a surprisingly good combination as it turns out…

And of course, every Tibetan meal has to have yak meat, doesn’t it? Delicious when tossed with coriander and tofu.

There are three soups to choose from, but the sharks fin soup, into which has been dropped a quail’s egg, is my favourite. No matter that the great Yao Ming has been on TV incessantly for the past few months trying to get people to stop eating this delicacy, (visions of sharks floating around in tanks, unable to swim without their fins) I’m afraid I thought it was frightfully good.

All the while the Tibetan waitresses hover over us and keep on replenishing the table lest we should even think for one second about holding back out of politeness.

And then, it’s prize giving time. Not any old prizes, you understand; but a table groaning under the weight of microwave ovens, vacuum cleaners, mobile phones, and stuffed dragons.

But wait, what is this? Is that really my name being called out? A Golden Dragon award? Just for doing my job?

It appears that there are both golden and silver dragon awards, it being the start of the dragon year; last year one assumes they had golden and silver bunny awards.

There is my name on the screen. They have even spelled it correctly. I and a head of section are given Gold. Of course, this being China, everyone is a winner. But the other “foreign experts” only win Silver.

I am presented with a huge box inside of which is a cappuccino and espresso maker. The silver awardees get a slightly smaller coffee machine. I am flabbergasted. I am delighted. I am pleased as punch. I’m glad I came.

And then it is time for New Year toasting. Now, as you may know, the Chinese take their toasting quite seriously. The idea is that a table at a time does the circuit around the room, toasting all the other people. Do the maths. You could end up having to knock back some 250 toasts. Of course, you don’t. You take a little slurp of your wine after clinking glasses with maybe five or six people (always trying to remember to clink your glass lower than the person you are clinking with, to show respect for them).

It doesn’t take too long before you start to lose count of who you have clinked with and who is still waiting to be clinked. Better to clink a second time just to make sure.

And then there are the trouble makers. There’s always someone, isn’t there, who instead of wishing you a happy new dragon year decides to call out Gam Bai! In Chinese Gam Bai is like saying Cheers. It literally translates to bottom's up, but they take it all so seriously. You can't say, Gam Bai and not finish your drink, regardless of how much is in the glass.

So trust me to have just filled up my glass with a good slug of gut rotter when the head honcho – the Godfather-figure of the company - comes over to us and shouts Gam Bai. And if it is good enough for him, then everyone else too feels the need to get in on the act.

Gam Bai! Oh rather, my good man. Gam Bai! to you too.

Eventually I feel a little tap on my arm. Or is that two taps? My guardian angel(s) ask(s) me/us “are you ready?”. “Ready for what” I/we reply. She (they) look(s) exasperated.

“It’s time to go back to work. Had you forgotten?”

My G.A.s have decided to take a cab back to the office, but I could do with a little fresh air; and hoisting up my Golden Dragon award I stagger off into the cold night air (it’s now down to minus nine) and walk the kilometre back to the office where I am glad to pour myself a cup of Mr Nestlé’s favourite brew.

Ah yes. Work! How could I possibly have forgotten?

At home with Sung Qing-ling

2012-01-02T10:14:00.002+04:00

I’ve recently discovered what must be one of the most elaborate frontages for a McDonalds “restaurant” that I have ever seen. It lies just south of Guloudajie station on line 2 and you pass it if you are on your way to the Drum & Bell towers or the Hutong area.

Emboldened by my visit a week or so back to Prince Gong’s mansion, I decided to return to the Hutong areas and this time to explore the north side of the Shichahai Lake which I have only ever wandered along once before.

Despite it being New Year’s Day, there were men hard at work cleaning the white stone of the lake’s surroundings, their jet-stream washers making clouds of steam in the below-zero temperatures.

A little further along the lake, which had almost totally frozen over during the past week, was a man fishing through three holes he had made in the ice, while others spent their Sunday afternoon walking on the lake as if to say “hey look at me” to their friends on the lakesides.

Amazingly there were fish to be caught, as evidenced by a couple of them lying on top of the ice a few metres away near another fisherman.

In fact, further north along the lake there were loads of fishermen sitting on the ice waiting with endless patience the way fishermen appear to do all over the world as if there is nothing else to do with their pointless lives. I never cease to be amazed at times what little mental stimulus some people put up with for the sake of their hobbies.

Not that lack of brain power stops with fishermen. Despite the midday sun having warmed the air temperature to a balmy minus 2, I counted not one, but five different people togged up in their swimwear and jumping into about the only non-frozen part of the lake for a thrash around in the water. I have to admit that my first thought was whether the water had remained unfrozen there due to some sewage outlet running into the lake. Passers-by actually on the ice looked in the direction of the shoreline, perhaps relieved that there were others more stupid than themselves!

Not surprisingly the local boat hire company had given up the unequal task of trying to get anyone to rent their boats as they would only have been able to go a few metres before calling it a day.

But entrepreneurs further down the lake were doing a great trade in hiring out chairs attached to planks of wood which acted as makeshift toboggans, propelled forward by metal rods thrust into the ice, or else doting daddies taking their kids out for a spin on the lake.

There was even another spot where you could hire real skates for a mere 2 yuan – 20p - (with a deposit of 200 yuan - £2) in order to slither your way around the lake.

Eventually, though, I found what I had originally set out to discover - the house and grounds of what had once been lived in by Sung Qing-ling, also known as Madame Sun Yat-sen. It’s a beautiful unexpected oasis of peace and quiet that contrasts starkly with the hoards of tourists that pass by its front gates, many of them totally unaware of what lies inside. Inside there are elegant rockeries and ponds set off by pines and cypresses. Winding covered corridors link traditional-style halls and pavilions.

In front of the house, that has been kept very much the way she left it in 1981, is a lake and gardens that no doubt look a lot more lush than they do at this time of year. Water from the lake outside has been diverted through an underground channel into a stream that winds its way through the garden, when it is not frozen solid. But even in winter, their starkness is somehow quite attractive.

I’m afraid that in my ignorance I had never heard of this woman before coming to Beijing; but Sung Qing-ling was one of three sisters who, along with their husbands, were among China's most significant political figures in the early 20th century.

She married Sun Yat Sen in Japan on 25 October 1915 – he was 26 years her senior. After Sun's death 10 years later, she was elected to the Kuomintang (KMT) Central Executive Committee in 1926. However, she exiled herself to Moscow after the expulsion of the Communists from the KMT in 1927.

At one stage, she was the Vice President of the People's Republic of China and became the first female President of the PRC from 1968 to 1972. She again became head of state in 1981, briefly before her death, with the title of Honorary President of the People's Republic of China bestowed upon her two weeks before she died.

Apparently one of her obsessions was keeping pigeons – a common interest she shared with Dr Sun…

and walking past her dove cot takes me straight back to my earlier days dodging errant pigeons in Trafalgar Square – except here they are treated as welcome guests instead of the pests they are regarded as in London.

Inside the house you walk back 30 years in time. Apart from erecting some glass screens to keep the masses back from the exhibits, you can see the place as it must have been when she entertained international guests and spent her last years here.

After the founding of the PRC in 1949, the Party and government made plans to build a residence for Sung Qing-ling in Beijing, and decided to renovate one of the Qing princes' gardens for the purpose.

The grounds cover an area of more than 20,000 square metres, of which three quarters are devoted to gardens, ponds and lawns. It was first built during the reign of Emperor Kangxi and successively occupied by various nobles and high-ranking officials until 1888 when Empress Dowager Cixi granted it to Yixuan or Prince Chun, Emperor Guangxu's father. He was succeeded by Zaifeng, Prince Regent and father of Emperor Xuantong (1909-1911), the last emperor of the Qing dynasty.

Sung Qing-ling moved into the mansion in 1963 and worked, studied and lived here until she passed away on May 29, 1981.

Another of Qing-ling’s passions was playing caroms – a kind of Chinese billiards – which she played with her staff when not obsessed with her pigeons.

From the dining room one gets a good view of a little courtyard garden that is surrounded on all sides by buildings that one can walk through at will.

And there are even pictures of memorable moments in her life – like when she was lying on her death bed and being told that she had just been voted the honorary title of President. Golly – that must have cheered her up!

So, all in all another memorable visit during my stay in Beijing and another lesson in history that may go some way to lessening my ignorance of my host country.

The World

2011-12-27T15:41:00.001+04:00

I remember once writing an article about a theme park in Shenzhen called Window of the World. I started off by saying that “Everyone knows that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris and the Taj Mahal is in India, don’t they?” I then smugly went on to write that these two monuments could also be found in Shenzhen.

Little did I know, in my ignorance, that you can also find the Eiffel Tower and Taj Mahal in Beijing – and I’m not referring to the Café de Paris or a local Indian takeaway either.

Located in the Fengtai District of Beijing, about 17kms south west of Tian Anmen Square, the Beijing World Park (北京世界公园) “features 106 of the most famous sites from 14 countries around the world”.

Measuring just short of 120 acres, the park – constructed over three years from 1991 to October 1993, consists of two parts: A “scenic area in miniature displayed according to the position of its country on the map”, and a “shopping, dining and enteratinment area” (so the blurb would have us believe).

“This enteratinment area is situated in an international folkloric village and the tourist can take an electric train and a motorboat through the park to simulate a trip around the world.” Sounds grand doesn’t it? It even looks great in the touristic blurb, guaranteed to whet the appetite of any aspiring tourist to Beijing.

Strange then that not a single expat I had spoken to had even heard of the place, while my Chinese friends had heard of it, but had never actually been there,

But perhaps it’s not as strange as all that. To get there means taking the subway on Line 1 all the way out to Wukesong and then finding a 967 bus which jerks, stops and starts its way along a crowded road for nearly an hour.

When the new Subway Line 9 opens in 2012 to join up with the Fangshan line, there will be a direct link all the way from downtown and no doubt visitor numbers will pick up enormously.

Since its opening in 1993, the Beijing World Park has apparently received 1.5 million visitors annually. But I have to say that on the day I went, 1.49999 million of them have decided to stay away. The place is practically deserted.

“Of China's theme parks, the BeijingWorldPark is outstanding in term of its exquisite architecture, rich and colorful activities and cultural atmosphere,” the blurb continues.

Well, maybe on the other 364 days of the year, but on Christmas Eve, there are no activities, colourful or otherwise; and the cultural atmosphere must be taking a holiday that day too. “Taking a speedboat one can have a global voyage” – no, they are all locked down for the winter; “and if one takes a battery-operated car, he can sightsee around the park” – no battery-operated cars; the “Special Joy Adventure City is a cinema with the latest technologies” – maybe, but it is locked; “by visiting the Modern African Primitive Folklore Exhibition one can experience the life of the original inhabitants of Africa” – sorry, but Africa, too, is closed.

Not that it really matters that much. It makes for a pleasant stroll across the five continents, as long as one isn’t too fastidious about the level of detail of the models.

On entering the main gate of the park visitors enter a “life-size Italian terrace garden”. How big is “life size” I ask myself? About as big as my back garden in the UK, I guess. It has “magnificent stepped buildings, fountains and figure sculptures of the Renaissance, full of European romanticism”. Hmmm. The fountains have been switched off unsurprisingly for the vicious Beijing winter, while a number of nude statues has one automatically pulling one’s coat tighter, as if you expect to see goosebumps on Michelangelo’s David clone.

Looking out onto what I guess is the ‘Paciflantic Ocean’ you can turn left to Asia or right to Europe and America. In the former you can find a Japanese Imperial Villa, the Great Wall, and – my favourite - Yingxian County Wooden Pagoda,

as well as Ankor Wat, Borobudur and other famous Asian landmarks.

There’s even a very pleasant traditional Chinese garden to wander around.

The Middle East has the pyramids, of course, and what are described as “the Pharoas of Alexandria” – but are actually at Abu Simbel!

There is also a stone slab with a relief of three topless Egyptians, which previous visitors have obviously been keen to touch up, judging by the smoothness of their mammaries. So it would appear that the Chinese are just as fixated with breasts as any one else!

Just to get the visitor in the mood there is also a cute fluffy camel; but unfortunately it is a Bactrian (Asian) camel (ie with two humps) not a Dromedary (Arabic) camel (one hump). But then, who’s to worry, or even care for that matter? No doubt the vast majority of the 1.49999 million visitors won’t know the difference.

The blurb continues in supra-over-the-top-hyperbole. “All these attractions were built with certain accuracy in designs and vivid sculptures,” it says. “They are such good works of art that even a person who have seen the originals cannot tell the difference.” Hahaha. OK, now I really must take issue. Surely the copywriters of this stuff have graduated from the Yashow Market School of ‘These are genuine Armani shirts and Louis Vuitton bags’ fame. Either that, or they have never left the Middle Kingdom to see the originals for themselves.

But let’s not be picky. Over in Europe, the “German Castle” is cute;

the Vatican (with the Eiffel Tower in the background) is impressive;

even Pisa’s leaning tower gets everyone queuing up to get their photograph taken pushing it back up again!

“The last attraction here is the LondonBridge, which connects Europe with America”, we are told.

Sure enough, there is the Washington Monument, the Capitol,

the White House, the Statue of Liberty, and a host of other American landmarks, including the Twin Towers, though without an aircraft about to smack into the side of them.

There is however an old aircraft of indeterminate vintage propping up the side of the children’s play area; but unfortunately it too is locked up.

At last, having travelled around the world, your favourite blogger is in desperate need of refreshment. Thankfully not all the cafés in the park are closed, and it is time to try out a concoction which seems to be popular over here consisting of tea with coffee flavouring, coconut and some gelatinous lumps floating in it. Once you get over the initial shock of adding Nescafe to Liptons Yellow Label, it actually makes for quite a nice drink.

Just outside the World Park, there is an International Street “for shopping and a rest, where you will find lots of food and snacks, and all the flavors from different parts of the world.” Except it, too, is closed.

Time instead to take the long trip home, having spent the day overdosing on cultural excitement, the like of which is hard to match. (BTW: Anyone know of any jobs going for a Yashow copywriter, perchance?)

Xmas in Beijing

2011-12-23T20:58:00.001+04:00

How many Irishmen does it take to screw in a light hulb?
Four. One to hold the bulb and three to turn the ladder!

Old English “joke”

To be perfectly honest, I had all but forgotten that Christmas was on its way. Despite what the glitzy expatriate web sites were saying, I didn’t see Christmas trees and decorations everywhere (not living in the vicinity of Beijing’s Diplomatic area, which of course is the exception). And having lived for the past decade in the Middle East (the majority in Saudi Arabia where anything remotely resembling Christmas is banned by the religious authorities) I can’t say that it is something that I particularly miss.

So I was drawn up short the other day when I walked into a supermarket to the sound of 铃儿响叮当 (What Google Translate tells me is Jingle Bells!) – that age old Christmas ditty played by a Chinese girl band. It was wonderful for me to hear a brand new take on a very old song.

There were, of course, other clues if one kept one’s eyes and ears open, such as this homage to western visitors I discovered in the Hutong area outside a coffee shop.

Amazingly, I thought, it didn’t seem to have much of an effect dragging in the tourists by their thousands. Someone obviously went to a lot of trouble to make the foreign devils feel at home, and that’s all the thanks he got!

Other clues appeared in the most unlikely places. Over the entrance to an office block near the CCTV headquarters, a group of reindeer appeared to be having an identity crisis with Cinderella’s pumpkin carriage.

And walking in the Diplomatic area, instead of the usual "You wan sexy massage yes?" shouted out by the ladies of the night, one was accosted with "You wan sexy Cleesmars massage yes?"

In the shops, lest there was any stock left after the mad Christmas rush, the storekeepers obviously had covered all their bases by being a little ambiguous with which holiday they were actually celebrating – a wise move, since the Spring Holiday (a.k.a. Chinese New Year) falls in January this year.

In some of the touristy areas of Beijing, pretty young girls sporting red Santa hats were now trying to tempt passers by into their shops; and at times the sight of a chubby old man with a red hat and thick white beard was becoming as common as Colonel Sanders, another well known bearded man over here.

In the Diplomatic area, Santa obviously felt more at home, though times are obviously hard (perhaps it is the Eurozone crisis yet again?) as he had left the majority of his reindeer behind. I mean, not a red nose in sight!

The touristy markets, of course, are the exception that proves the rule. Gaudy decorations for Christmas are intermingled with gaudy decorations for the Spring Holiday, and I am sure that there will be many a piece of gaudy plastic left up throughout the whole of January.

Mind you, I haven’t yet seen any mistletoe for sale anywhere in Beijing (a woody stemmed parasitic plant with waxy white berries) – something that you will always find in Europe. According to ancient Christmas custom, a man and a woman who meet under the mistletoe are obliged to kiss and even now, no girl (or guy!) can refuse to be kissed under the mistletoe!

At work, Christmas finally arrived on the 20th December when four Chinese guys took a couple of hours to erect a not-very-big plastic Christmas tree in the entrance hall of our office, complete with flashing lights, tinsel and baubles. Given that the tree is only about 4-5ft tall, you might be forgiven for wondering how come it took so long for four people to set it up?

From what I could see in my various wanderings past the work site, there was heated debate of where to put the star. Should it go in the middle? Maybe there should be two stars – one on the right and one on the left? Another star was procured, from where is anyone’s guess. But someone then had the brilliant idea of putting the first star at the top of the tree. So what to do with the second star? Better put it under the first star, because then it looks “meant”.

As for the fairy lights, it didn’t take long for someone to work out that the nearest power point is used for the office microwave. So now we have a Christmas tree that is lit up in the morning, and lit up in the afternoon, but is strangely dark during lunch hours!

Not to be outdone, the apartment block – which actually belongs to the same company - decided that they too would install Christmas trees on all the floors in which expatriate workers live, but not on the Chinese-only floors, which seems a tad mean-spirited I think. The trees are erected just outside the lift doors and are a warming sight as one steps out of one’s apartment to face another day in this secular utopia.

Downstairs, by the entrance, someone has got hold of a ghastly giant Santa sticker that says “Merry” in big letters, leaving one to search for a tiny “Christmas” that is actually there if one has the patience to look for it!

These ghastly Santas have mushroomed everywhere in the past few days (someone obviously bought a job lot of them) where they sit incongruously in the company of Chinese lions, Pi Xiu and lanterns.

The Hilton Hotel, according to tradition, has one of the largest trees of Beijing’s hotels. It takes up the entire foyer area and whereas before there was ample seating for visitors waiting to meet people and sup a tea or coffee to fill the time, now they have to cram into a tiny corner – and probably miss the people they have come to meet who walk by on the other side of the tree.

Mind you, anyone who likes model railways can enjoy the big boys’ train set whizzing around the base of the tree. I counted 12 trains and seven stations, (although I have to admit I might have miscounted when one of Santa’s mini-skirted helpers walked by serving out coffee).

So “out of practice” as I most certainly am with Christmas festivities, it will make a pleasant change, I think, to experience a Chinese Christmas for the first time. The only question is – where on earth can one buy mistletoe in this town?

A visit to Prince Gong's Pad

2011-12-23T15:56:00.002+04:00

One of the things I love about exploring a city on my own is when I come across something totally unexpected and, better still, that so few other people appear to know much, if anything about.

It was when I was exploring the hutong area of Beijing last week that my eye fell on a smudge on the map that represented an old mansion that had been standing on that same spot since 1777.

Variously known as Prince Gong/Kung's Mansion/Palace, depending on your map or guide book, it turned out to be one of those charming 'finds' a little off the beaten track that I am sure I will return to again and again.

It lies quite close to Shichahai Lake to the northwest of the Forbidden City. It was the private home of He Shen, who was the Grant Secretary and a favourite minister of Emperor Qianlong and he lived here between 1776 and 1799. In 1851, the mansion was offered to Prince Gong (also known as Yixin), Minster of Legislation, by Emperor Xianfeng and he lived here from 1852 to 1898, hence its name. Now it is the most well preserved mansion and most complete royal residence that still exists today in Beijing.

Outside, the entrance is guarded by a splendid pair of lions, who look extremely well fed. And inside there are numerous lesser lions and Pi Xiu.

The Mansion itself, which covers a total of 60,000 sq metres, is made up of three sets of courtyards each containing complexes of buildings: central, eastern and western, conforming to standard mansions of princes in those days.

The green glazed tiles on some of the roofs in the middle column designate an architectural grade second only to the imperial palace. The rear hall is a two-storey structure more than 180 metres wide.

The authorities here leave nothing to chance, however. One of the central buildings was destroyed by fire and now they are prepared for all eventualities, as can be seen by the not-very-well-disguised fire hydrants that have been made to "look like" little bushes standing on top of manhole covers.

The main courtyard of the western complex includes the Xijin Studio as its main hall and is entered via a gate with the name of "Courtyard of Heavenly Fragrance" carved above it. Surrounding the courtyard is a series of elegant rooms separated by "nanmu" (a type of cedar tree) partitions. In the centre of the courtyard are two rare midget crab-apple trees nearly 300 years old.

When I was there they also had an exhibition called "Introspection and Expression: Paintings of Xu Chenyang" which featured a couple of dozen pictures by this artist whose pictures sell for around $25,000 each. I'm afraid, though, the philistine in me won through, again. They were pleasant enough, and formed a good excuse to enter from the freezing cold outside (it was minus 7 that day) but I can't imagine that I would ever part with my hard earned cash to get one of these on my wall.

The gardens of the mansion were, for me though, the delight of the entire complex. The princes' mansions and large private houses in Beijing were often built with walled flower gardens laid out either behind or to the sides of the main buildings. Nowadays, there are very few such mansions dating from the Ming Dynasty. These gardens are ingeniously constructed with complementary buildings and terraces, well spaced vegetation and hill paths that wind their way around cool and tranquil grottos. They are an exquisite combination of classical Chinese architecture and tasteful landscaping. There's even a little temple with loads of red flags outside representing prayer wishes?

and also a long row of Tibetan prayer wheels that you are encouraged to turn as you walk past them.

There is also a man-made lake, which of course was almost totally frozen over when I was there, together with a peninsula islet sitting in its middle.

From the lake a mini-river meanders its way past stone cliffs and under stone bridges

into an ice bound fishing pond.

An unusual wooden artificial hill forms a flight of stairs which gives access to a building set at the top. A Chinese wisteria dating back more than 200 years is still growing in front of it.

But in the depths of winter, instead of flowers, the only thing that seems to cover the flower beds is pieces of broken ice.

Perhaps this is what the warning signs refer to (stuck up on the walls, there is no mention of what it actually is we have to be "cantious" about).

Definitely this place will deserve a future visit from me, hopefully when there are more flowers about and less reason to err on the side of cantion!

Exploring the hutong

2011-12-20T13:04:00.011+04:00

One of the great things about climbing up Beijing’s Bell and Drum towers is that you can look down on the rooftops that mark out the distinctive hutong areas of the capital. It’s sometimes hard to remember that once upon a time this is what all of Beijing looked like, or at least the old centre, marked out by the encirclement of No 2 Ring Road.

Nowadays, it’s an area that foreigners flock to, especially the immediate vicinity of Nanluoguxiang (南锣鼓巷), just north of the Imperial Palace and Forbidden City; for not only is it famed for its hutong (胡同 - alleyways) and siheyuan (四合院 - courtyard houses) but also for the multitude of cafes and bars together with clothing and handicraft shops that have sprung up to grab a piece of the capitalist action that permeates this section of the Communist utopia.

Yet despite the plethora of tourists – normally enough to guarantee that I give it a wide berth – the hutong areas possess a timeless charm about them, especially the ones where the encroaching tourist trade has yet to make a major indent.

Nanluoguxiang itself has a 768-metre-long south-north central axis, with 16 hutong meandering east and west off the central lane (giving each side eight hutong). This was the typical hutong layout of the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368).

The siheyuan themselves come in three sizes. The smallest ones have their main gate on the south side with the main rooms in the north (facing south) for the owner and possibly his parents; the corner rooms are for grandchildren; the west and east rooms are for sons or daughters, while the rooms by the main gate facing north are used as the living room or studio.

For medium and large siheyuan, there is more than one yard, with perhaps rooms for high ranking officials or merchants. The walls in the north-western buildings are normally higher than the other walls to stop the inner buildings from being blasted by cold winds, blowing from that direction in the winter.

The best time to avoid the tourists is first thing in the morning – well, before midday anyway! Correction: the best time to avoid western tourists is before midday. Chinese tourists and couples seeking a bit of personal space use the hutong as a perfect getaway from wherever it is they are seeking to get away at whatever time it is they choose to get away.

The word "hutong" is Mongolian in origin; literally it meant a "water well". In 1260, after the Mongol invasion, Kubla Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, established the Yuan Dynasty and chose Beijing as his capital, then the capital of the Jin Dynasty. The old city had been largely demolished, and so he began the large scale reconstruction of the city and with the digging of new wells, came the new communities. Later hutong came to refer to the narrow streets or lanes formed by the quadrangle courtyards.

When the new city was finished, there were clear definitions of streets, lanes and hutongs. A 36 metre wide road was called a "big street"; an 18 metre wide one a "small street", and a 9 metre wide lane was called a "hutong".

Surrounding the Imperial Palace, hutongs were established throughout the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties. Most of the hutongs we see today were built during the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911). There are only a very few hutongs preserved from the Yuan Dynasty.

Nowadays, the drab grey brickwork walls that mark a typical hutong are covered in modern signs, looking distinctly out of place. ‘Plastered’, for instance, is a shop that specialises in selling T-shirts, though you might not grasp that from its wall ad around the corner.

Other tourist shops leave one guessing as to what it is they sell inside – surely a dastardly trick to tempt the inquisitive English-speaking foreign devils inside …

One of the nicest of the tourist-invaded lanes is Yandai Xiejie (Tobacco Pipe Lean Street), a quaint 800-year-old hutong which used to be well-known for sellers of long-stemmed pipes, hence its name.

For me, though, the really charming hutong areas are to be found away from the tourist mobs and in the more residential areas where many display their song birds warbling and chirruping outside their homes.

Other caged birds are not as lucky, of course. Some sit there at the backs of restaurants, blissfully unaware that soon they are going to be the main attraction at some banquet table.

Even these less touristy hutong are invaded by streams of pedal-rickshaws filled with rubber-neckers catching a glimpse of the quaint old city. Little do these tourists realise that they would see one helluva lot more if they got out and stretched their legs occasionally. In the summer months the streets are filled to over capacity with these pedicabs, but in the winter you’ll only get around a dozen passing you every couple of minutes.

Cutting a swathe through the hutong areas is Shichahai Lake – the only remaining water system, dating back to the 13th Century (Yuan Dynasty). Spreading over 34 hectares, it is overloooked by former princes' houses, well kept Chinese courtyards and residences of celebrities. Of course, in the depths of winter when temperatures plummet to around -15 on average, it totally freezes over.

In complete contrast, Shichahai Lake really comes into its own during the summertime when the trees are out and the sun is blasting down to the point of discomfort.

Local boat companies bring in yet another tourist invasion, plying their craft on the water with boats that are 7 metres in length and 1.7 metres wide. Each is decorated with old Chinese traditional painting dating to the Song Dynasty 800 years ago. The boatmen wear yellow vests and bamboo hats, and all the boats are equipped with red lanterns. Some even position glamorous eye candy on the bows getting them to play Chinese stringed and woodwind instruments for the rubber neckers with real money.

There are also water sports companies that offer plenty of “entertaitnment” as well as something called “Fat-Boys’ Boat”, though I have yet to discover what this actually is.

If all this exercise gets too much for you, though, remember there are always the bars and cafés that provide instant refreshment – but do remember that in some of the older buildings there are lowish ceilings, so don’t stand up too quickly!

Gobbing for China

2011-12-14T19:55:00.005+04:00

There was a young man from Darjeeling
Who travelled from Barking to Ealing
When it said on the door
Don't spit on the floor
He immediately spat on the ceiling!

Every nationality has its customs and taboos; and what is considered socially acceptable in one country may be shunned in another part of the world. Over the last six months I have come to like my Chinese hosts a lot; but one habit here that is guaranteed to upset practically every westerner without fail is their hosts' penchant for spitting in the street. As one hears the grrrrrrahhhhhh sound followed by their gobbing to the floor, westerners turn away in disgust.

I know, of course, that people spit all over Asia. From India to Indonesia, for instance, those who chew on betel leaf gob out their vile red saliva, staining the streets in the process. But the inhabitants of the Central Kingdom appear to have the greatest need to spit which they do at every available opportunity - women as well as men - and if you are of a more delicate disposition, your stomach will surely turn every time you set foot outside your front door.

Is it so necessary to spit? In Hong Kong, for instance, they have cracked down on this practice - especially in the metro, where notices are prominently displayed banning this foul habit.

Shanghai, too, is slowly getting the message.

But to suggest to a Beijinger that he should desist would be a total waste of time. It is his birthright, nay his duty no less to gob for the glory of China.

I have to remind myself that until around 70 years ago spitting was considered quite normal in Europe as well. But following a particularly bad outbreak of tuberculosis in the 1940s (which can be spread by spitting) the practice was banned in the UK by law, with a fixed penalty of £5 for those caught doing so. I well remember seeing "No Spitting" signs on the buses in London in the 1950s (and Défence de Cracher on the Paris Metro too).

Social attitudes towards spitting have changed greatly in Western Europe since the Middle Ages. A few centuries ago spitting in the street was as normal as tipping your chamber pot out of the window. Then, frequent spitting was part of everyday life, and at all levels of society it was thought ill-mannered to suck back saliva to avoid spitting. By the early 1700s, spitting had become seen as something which should be concealed, and by 1859 many viewed spitting on the floor or street as vulgar, especially in mixed company.

Spittoons were used openly during the 19th century to provide an acceptable outlet for spitters. Victorian cities apparently just stank - people vomited, urinated and spat in the street at will. Spittoons became far less common after the influenza epidemic of 1918, and their use has since virtually disappeared, though each justice of the Supreme Court of the United States continues to be provided with a personal cuspidor.

Now the "educated" public of Europe considers spitting in public a wholly obnoxious habit - a gruesome piece of anti-social behaviour. So it is one item of conversation over here that is guaranteed to get an identical response from all westerners. "How disgusting," they say. "Don't the Chinese know better than to behave like that?"

Even in America the general populace have been educated not to spit. Local bye-laws have been put in place across the country from west to east. "No person shall spit upon any sidewalk, street, highway, alley, the floor of any bus used for public transportation, theater, railway or public transportation depot or platform or the floor of any school house, church or public building of any kind," reads one such law in Virginia.

Sportsmen, of course, are a race apart. There's apparently some lout called Wayne Rooney who kicks a ball around a meadow or three for a living, and is famed for his disgusting behaviour. Tiger Woods, too, has been criticised for gobbing on the golf course. One the other hand, you will rarely see a rugby or cricket player spitting on the soil they are playing on. So why do soccer players do it all the time?

It got me wondering, though, what habits we Europeans have that upset the Chinese to the same degree. For 'as sure as eggs is eggs', I am sure we do some things that offend in equal measure

Juggling with destiny … or crashing the diplomats' party

2011-12-02T20:44:00.001+04:00

It pays to have connections. I had nothing planned for Sunday night until I was asked if I would like to go see some Chinese acrobatics. The DRC – the body that runs the Diplomatic compounds around Beijing – had put out a general invitation to the diplomatic community to enjoy an evening of Chinese culture. As the seats were on a first-come-first-served basis and as I certainly looked foreign it would be easy enough for me to get in with no difficulty.

The brochure looked tempting enough. "The national acrobatic troupe with 60 years' accumulation of acrobatic arts, which has owned 45 gold medles in 57 years of wining awards, will inherit traditional acrobatic arts with more than 3000 years history, promot the quintessence of nation's art, show the top acrobatics in the world", it enticingly explained.

The venue for this grand gala was to be the Beijing Dongtu Theater; but try as I might I could find no mention on the internet of how to find this place. Another look at the brochure, however, showed a fuzzy picture of the Dongcheng District Library underneath some red and yellow writing praising the agility, balance and strength of the performers; so I decided that this was where I should be heading.

The library was easy to find – just 150 metres from a subway station, too, which made life a lot easier. And sure enough there were a number of Westerners wandering in through the front portals of this drab building.

Using a technique I had perfected when I was in Saudi Arabia, I stuck in close to a number of families and when asked if I had remembered to bring my invitation with me I just told the doorman that I was "with them", pointing in the general direction of about a dozen people ahead of me.

Now, having been to a couple of other theatres in Beijing where they take away your camera and even your bottle of water, I was surprised to see that here they practically insisted on not only giving you a bottle of water, but also chocolate biscuits and an Orion Pie - a kind of chocolatey-marshmallow-waggon-wheel type of biscuit. (Mind you they did later say no photography was allowed.)

Loaded down with my goodies, I quickly found an aisle seat, for it is a well known fact that Chinese theatres are not generous when it comes to the leg room department.

Well, they say there is no such thing as a free lunch – or even a free Orion Pie for that matter – so I was hardly surprised when we had to sit through a 10 minute presentation on how wonderful the DRC was and about their plans for the future. Interestingly, the presentation was in both English and Japanese, which must say something about the influence that the Japanese have in diplomatic circles.

Next up we were asked to give a big round of applause for the assembled dignitaries. I have to say that the Ambassador for East Timor looked especially fetching in her duffle coat; while the Ambassador of Bahrain looked from her figure as though she was already an ardent connoisseur of Orion Pies.

And then we were ready to begin.

Chinese acrobatics is said to have started during the Warring States Period two thousand years ago, though some claim it is four thousand years old on the basis of the mythical Yellow Emperor, Huangdi, having started a martial form of acrobatics at a victory celebration in Wuqiao some 300 km south of Beijing.

Acrobatics became refined during the Han Dynasty (221 BC-220 AD) by which time juggling, fire eating, knife swallowing and tight rope walking were regular features. In the Tang Dynasty (618-907), acrobatics received royal patronage with shows performed for the imperial court and soon spread to the gentry. But eventually, the performance arts lost favour in the Imperial court and most acrobats performed in the street.

During the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), it regained popularity with the Imperial Court and after the founding of the People's Republic in 1949, the art form gained further respectability. Following the policy of "Let a hundred flowers blossom and weed through the old to bring forth the new," there was a spectacular renaissance of the old acrobatic theatre. Troupes were created in each province and major city, and many were given their own theatres. The teaching was (and still is) done within the troupe, old performers training the new generation.

Nowadays more than 10,000 people are involved in the acrobatics industry across China. Children begin their training as young as four or five, spending the first two years learning the basic skills such as dancing and tumbling, before moving on to specialised roles.

So it was not surprising that in the first act there were four young girls, who can't have been more than about 10 or 12 years old, being thrown bodily between muscle-bound guys, who at the same time performed human towers and other acts of daring-do.

These girls were so flexible that they could bend and fold their bodies to a position where their feet clasped their face while wrapping other parts of their anatomy around bits that were never designed to be seen in that way.

The tempo, however, went decidedly downbeat after that when we had five minutes of some guy juggling. The problem is that everyone has seen this a thousand times over, so clever as it undoubtedly was, everyone was waiting for him to stop playing with his balls and make way for the next act – a collection of girls, wearing silly hats with feathers, who used ropes to throw diabolos high into the air while turning cartwheels and generally throwing themselves around before the diabolos followed Newton's law and were expertly caught by the girls, who would also juggle them between themselves and do other amazing things that you never imagined you could do with a diabolo. (Maybe I have led a protected life up until now!)

(BTW the secret of doing somersaults with a silly feather sticking out from the top of your head is to grab the feather in your mouth before you do the roll and then open your mouth as you land to accentuate the overall effect as the feather springs back into place!)

Next up was a group of girls who had perfected lying on their backs with their legs spread apart down to a fine art. They were bouncing umbrellas from their feet, turning them over and catching them with their toes and then throwing them to one another again from their feet. I'm sure it was awfully clever, but after they had done a number of variations of the same thing it was time to move on to something a bit more exciting.

Hoop diving - originally known as "Swallow Play" because the performers are supposed to imitate the movements of swallows as they jump through narrow rings piled upon one another – was next. The Chinese call it "Dashing Through Narrows" which just about sums up what it is all about. Dead clever stuff. You certainly would never see me bouncing off a springboard, doing a couple of mid-air somersaults and going feet-first through a bamboo ring. But then, I suppose, each one to his own….

Chinese acrobatics took a nose dive during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976); but it bounced back pretty soon afterwards as the government replaced the bureaucrats who were heading the troupes with senior leading acrobats, thus further encouraging their artistic development. When China eventually began to open up to the West in the 1980s, the acrobatic art form was packaged as a complete theme show.

Naturally, no acrobatic show would be complete without someone walking along a tightrope. Except the rope on this occasion wasn't tight, and it was more like a ribbon, but then who is quibbling? Rolling backwards and forwards on a monocycle was of course de rigueur as was doing a backwards somersault onto the 'wire'.

But it's a fine thing when everyone becomes so blasé, having seen it all before, that they get impatient for something a little different.

The next act seemed like a good way of reducing the traffic on Beijing's streets. The group bicycling act went down a real treat with ten girls cycling round the stage doing things that would have surely made the bikes' manufacturers cringe.

Cycling acrobatics were imported to China in the nineteenth century, but the Chinese have made it a specialty of their own. The most spectacular figure in a Chinese bicycle act is of course the "peacock" finale in which a large group of acrobats riding a single bicycle organize themselves in a tableau representing a peacock fanning its feathers. So eventually all ten girls ended up on one bicycle, as we just knew they would; but it didn't spoil the enjoyment as they tottered around the stage until the bike finally ran out of steam.

It appears that anyone can learn the art of acrobatics, given enough will and determination, if they apply to the Beijing International Art School, formerly known as the Beijing Acrobatic School - the largest secondary art school in China teaching circus arts, martial arts, dances and arts of other categories.

The acrobatic courses focus on such skills as flexibility, tumbling and handstanding, following which students learn to master advanced skills such as controlling their bodies, aerial techniques, tightrope walking, hoops, cycling, bowl/cup balancing, poles, equilibrium, contortion, pyramids ... in fact just about anything you can find in a modern circus. Most acrobats practise Qi gong, the Chinese breathing and mental art which helps focus attention, and the body and mind to work in harmony, or so they claim.

Graduates of the school have won over 20 'golds' from international circus festivals, and have performed in over 50 countries. Many students from the Americas and Europe have graduated from the School and became professional performers.

Not that you would ever catch me even thinking of subjecting myself to such torture! For starters, the Acrobatic Major has six days of study every week, including four days of speciality training and two days of academic study. You start each day at 6.30 doing an hour of exercises. Classes are from 8:30am - 12pm, and 2:30pm - 5pm, and again from 6:30pm - 8:30pm. And all for a mere US$5,000 a year. OMG! The Chinese surely put masochism into a league of its own!

Suddenly the whole show was over bar the shouting. It had lasted just an hour in total and it was clear that the performers – as they made their way back out onto the stage – were pretty well knackered. One would have felt quite a heel demanding an encore.

Instead, depending on nationality, the audience made a rapid bee-line towards the exit as the performers carried on waving to a fast emptying hall. The Americans led the charge, followed by the German contingent, while the rest of us carried on with the applause since there was no possible danger of missing the last train.

It seems a tough way of making a living, but as they say, I suppose someone has to do it. One thing's for sure, though; I'll never again complain about the physical demands of my job, or the hours worked… until perhaps the next time that is!

“I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about.” (Oscar Wilde)

2011-11-25T20:00:00.003+04:00

I don't know if you have ever had one of those moments when your response to being asked if you could do someone a favour is: "The answer's Yes! Now, what's the question?"?

Your favourite blogger had just such a moment a couple of weeks back when out of the blue he was asked if he would be willing to give a lecture to some students at Beijing's Renmin University. Now, I know this will totally faze some of my best friends, who won't believe this for a moment knowing the shy and retiring sort of person I am; but I have to admit to being one of those guys who just loves the sound of his own voice. (Yes, yes I know. Incredible, but true!)

So before I even knew what it was they wanted me to talk about, I heard myself saying "Yes of course; I'd be delighted" – or words to that effect.

Naturally I assumed they wouldn't be expecting the lecture to be in Chinese. And I was right on that score. What I hadn't been expecting, though, was that they would be wanting to hear my loquacious tones for a full three hours… and more!

It appears they knew I had been in the BBC for more years than I cared to remember. Would I talk about the independence of the BBC and how the BBC earned its enviable reputation over the years?

A simple request, of course; but for three hours? I mean I could say what I wanted to say about the BBC's independence in – what? – five minutes? How was I going to fill the remaining 2 hours and 55 minutes?

They wanted me to deliver the speech in two weeks' time. And the killer: because my "day job" was from 1330 to 2300, they could "squeeze me in" at 8 o'clock in the morning, "which would give me plenty of time to get in to work before the allotted hour".

8 o'clock? That would mean that if I had to be there by, say 7.45, I'd need to leave home at around 6.45 just to make sure I wasn't late. … which meant getting up at 5.45 …. Oh Lord! What had I got myself into?

Too late to worry about that now. I feverishly set about seeing what Mr Google's henchmen could dig out for me in the way of FACTS.

I look up Wikipedia; I search the BBC's web site; I trawl YouTube (through a proxy server, of course); I find web sites set up by geeks and web sites set up by radio amateurs; pictures of car stickers and of QSLs, not to mention transmitter masts and defunct pieces of studio equipment. And before long it is no more a case of how am I going to fill the time, but what on earth can I possibly cut to allow me to squeeze in everything I want to say.

The fortnight's preparation is pure bliss; going down memory lane; revelling in nostalgia (though I still maintain that nostalgia just isn't what it used to be). And finally the big day approaches. I decide to have an early night and set my alarm clock to 5.45 just in case.

But what happens if I sleep through my alarm? Or the dratted thing fails to go off (it has been known for me to set the alarm to a pm setting rather than am, you might be surprised to hear).

So I set another alarm to 5.40 and climb into bed; and worry that even with two alarms set to wake me up, I might keep on sleeping through them at such an ungodly hour. So just for good measure I set a third alarm to 5.30 which will allow me to hit the snooze button and then not be so fast asleep that I don't hear the following two alarms.

I wake up at 5.25.

Outside it is pitch black. Outside it is also minus five degrees. I crawl into the shower and soak under a jet of hot water deciding what shirt I can wear for maximum impact. My blue, turquoise and black one today I think.

I wrap up really well and creep out into the freezing night air and make my way to the subway station to catch one of the first trains of the day. Of course, this being Beijing, there are absolutely no seats to be had (despite the early hour) until three stations before I have to get out.

Any lesser mortal might have thought the obvious station to go to is the one for Renmin University (on Line 4).

But not being of the lesser mortal brigade, I take it upon myself to find out where the school of journalism is located. "To the right of the west gate" I am told in an eMail, seeking to confirm that I haven't forgotten my appointment, nor that I am thinking of doing a runner.

A quick check of my trusty Beijing map, courtesy of my Samsung Galaxy Tab confirms that the western gate is actually nearer another station on Line 10 – the same line that I am already travelling on,

which in some ways is a pity as it means I won't be going past one of my favourite Pi Yas located within spitting distance of Renmin Uni station.

But to make up for it, Renmin Universty itself has a lovely pair of Pi Xiu right in front of its Admin block and I snap away at the cute beasties in order to add them to my web site..

Renmin University, otherwise known as the People's University of China (中国人民大学 or Zhōngguó Rénmín Dàxué), was officially established in 1950, the first national university of the People's Republic. Its predecessor, established in 1937 during the Second Sino-Japanese War, was Shan Bei Public School (陕北公学), and this accounts for the 1937 date prominently displayed around the campus.

Naturally I find I have arrived half an hour too early, but this gives me plenty of time to wander around the place and get my bearings. The large map at the entrance, alas, does not prove to be that useful to me as I stupidly forgot to look up the Chinese for Journalism School. But having been told that it is located to the right of the West gate I head off in that direction.

There's no sign of anything remotely looking like a journalism school, but instead I get to see some of the 22 other schools, 13 research institutes and the graduate school.

They say that one of the university's most famous quirks is something called The English Corner where, every Friday evening, people gather at the Qiushi Garden near the east gate to practise their English.

It being only 7.30 in the morning I am surprised to find a group of students shivering in the morning cold, shouting out lines from a play in English. Perhaps they are getting themselves ready for an evening performance?

Just a little further on there is another group warming up for the day with a spot of Tai Chi. Don't you think anybody normal would just stay in bed for an extra half hour rather than face the bitter cold that has been gripping Beijing for the past two weeks?

The campus itself, though, is quite charming. With ponds and trees and sitting areas, someone has gone to quite a bit of trouble to make the place welcoming and attractive.

They even seem to have taken a leaf out of the Beijing Olympics area with their "witty" notices…

… but I fear that yet again Google Translate has let them down somewhat. (I worry that Mr Google's translation machine has a lot to answer for in this country!)

Wikipedia tells me this area is a good place to "meet and communicate with the students of the university and the common people of China"; but there aren't that many common people around at this early hour, let alone any of the "1,165 international students, many of them from South Korea". (In fact there are apparently so many South Korean students that the International Students Dining Room has a separate Korean menu aside from the traditional Chinese one.)

Renmin University is a popular destination for visiting foreign dignitaries too. During his state visit to China in January 2008, the then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited Renmin with Premier Wen Jiabao to talk with students, scholars, sportsmen and entrepreneurs. Thank God I arrived in Beijing 30 months too late. What a dreadful thought to have bumped into that Scottish moron. I pity the Chinese students who were probably hand picked to feign politeness to old Gordie.

I am awoken from my reveries as I walk past a sculpture of immaculately dressed students hanging onto every utterance of their wise old lecturer; and for a moment I imagine myself pronouncing to the masses from my vast store of locked up wisdom…

But the dream soon fades back again into reality as I mentally clock up another lamppost to add to my database of the world's best lampposts.

Time marches on, though; and with no sign of a journalism school anywhere remotely near the right of the western gate, I am glad that I have already agreed to be met by a student who goes by the name of Da Wei.

I've hardly had time to text him that I have arrived before I am greeted by a smiling face and escorted from the west gate in a leftwards direction. The School of Journalism is ahead of us, but we veer off into another building, walk up two flights of stairs and find our way to Room 307 immediately opposite the communal loos.

Amazingly my little laptop works straight away when plugged into the A-V system of Room 307 and I am told how cute my bright orange loudspeakers look protruding out from behind my red PC.

The students stifle yawns as they drift in to find a seat and I feel positively sorry for them – to think I am responsible for disturbing their beauty sleep. But I guess if it hadn't been me, they would still have had to haul themselves out of bed to listen to somebody else. Amazingly they are smiling; all 25-30 of them; and they continue to smile, even when I open my mouth and they realise they have to cope with an English accent, rather than an American drawl that Chinese have been brought up to believe is the "real English".

I tell them about Marconi. I play them an extract of Jeremy Paxman bullying Michael Howard; I play them an extract of Robin Day bullying Sir John Nott. I play them extracts of Maggie Thatcher being bullied by a common person whose name she forgets; of Dame Nellie Melba (still clutching her handbag as she warbles), of Radio Normandie, of 2MT, of Lord Haw Haw, of Caroline and 270 and Big L and Veronica; of Capital and LBC, and of course of the Empire and General Forces and World Services.

And before I know it my three hours are up before I have even got to the end of my beloved PowerPoint Presentation.

But they want me to go on. They demand that I go on. I am not to be allowed to stop.

I continue spouting forth, filling the room with pithy insight into the independence of the BBC. I answer their questions.

They want more.

I tell them about being arrested in Saudi Arabia after broadcasting on Saudi TV.

They still want more.

I tell them about smellavision, about foldable video screens, about thought transference experiments.

Finally the dinner bell goes; I am already into my fourth hour of performance. But these are students through and through. Food beckons. Finally the dulcet tones of your favourite blogger start to lose their appeal when weighed up against the thought of lunch.

These are Chinese students, though, through and through. No rushing off the way British students would undoubtedly have done. They clap, they thank me (while looking at their watches) and edge out of the room leaving behind a hard core of half a dozen who have obviously been hand picked to ensure that I am able to find my way off the campus.

But first I must pose for the obligatory photographs with the professor who has originally invited me.

I tell the hard core six that I will be unlikely to lose my way over the 150 metre walk in a straight line to the west gate; and bless their cotton socks you can see the cogs turning over in their brains that on the one hand this foreign devil probably speaks the truth, but on the other hand they were volunteered to escort me out. But reason finally prevails. They don't want to find their portion of chow has been dolloped out to someone less deserving, and as I accelerate my pace to put distance between me and them, they wave goodbye and turn on their heels toward the canteen block.

On the sports track, a whole load of students are already warming themselves up for a marathon afternoon session of study as I slope off to the subway station and head for home. It's been a good morning. I've decided I like Renmin University and I like its students.

Summer Palace – Best viewed in autumn

2011-11-14T17:43:00.003+04:00

I've already been to Beijing's Summer Palace on three previous occasions – last time it was pouring with rain – but it has to be one of my favourite places in the northern capital.

The Summer Palace (颐和园) or Yíhé Yuán, which literally means "Gardens of Nurtured Harmony", covers an expanse of 2.9 square kilometres, three quarters of which is water.

Line 4 of the subway system takes you virtually there. From Xiyuan 西苑 station, it's a 10 minute lope past loads of street food stalls and fighting your way through the army of rickshaw drivers who are intent on parting you from your well earned renminbi to drive you the length of the street.

But within minutes you'll know you have arrived. What hits the eye is a grand paifang not doing a very good job of hiding a bus terminus.

But what visitors often fail to notice, is that there is a little museum, otherwise known as a Visitors' Centre right by the paifang which is free to enter and actually remarkably good in telling you practically everything you ever wanted to know about the Summer Palace but were afraid to ask.

It also has what must be one of the most beautifully constructed loos, which is actually clean inside and well worth walking through the museum just to try out its facilities before venturing into the park.

In December 1998, UNESCO included the Summer Palace on its World Heritage List, declaring it "a masterpiece of Chinese landscape garden design. The natural landscape of hills and open water is combined with artificial features such as pavilions, halls, palaces, temples and bridges to form a harmonious ensemble of outstanding aesthetic value," it said. And quite right too!

The Summer Palace started life as the 'Garden of Clear Ripples' (清漪园or Qīngyī Yuán) in 1750. Artisans reproduced the garden architectural styles of various palaces across the Middle Kingdom.

The first thing you see when you enter the Summer Palace gardens is a lovely bronze Qilin statue standing guard over the Hall of Benevolence and Longevity. It's a great way to start your tour of the massive park, albeit that you normally have to fight your way through the hoards of visitors who have the same idea as you in what they want to see.

Apart from the Qilin, there are other statues around, such as stalks, lions and dragons, all of which will have attracted loads of Kodak Brownie camera owners in their day.

One thing that many visitors are unaware of, though, are the railings that have been specially constructed to keep their grimy mitts off the said statues. The Chinese obviously hold these in very high esteem, though in my ignorance I had never realised their importance until I saw a notice pointing this fact out to me.

For me, though, the main attraction of the Summer Palace is not the railings, but the central Kunming Lake which covers 2.2 square kilometres. It is entirely man made and the excavated soil was used to build the so-called Longevity Hill with its variety of palaces, gardens, and other classical-style architectural structures.

In the past I have always headed straight off to Longevity Hill along with the millions of other tourists; but this time I turned left through the Wenchang Tower (built in 1750 and the largest of the Palace Garden's six gate forts)…

and along the banks of the lake, which was actually created to imitate the West Lake in Hangzhou. The palace complex suffered two major attacks—during the Anglo-French allied invasion of 1860 and during the Boxer Rebellion, in an attack by the eight allied powers in 1900.

The garden survived and was rebuilt in 1886 and 1902. In 1888, it was given its current name, Yíhé Yuán. It served as a summer resort for the naughty Empress Dowager Cixi, who diverted 30 million taels of silver, said to be originally designated for the Chinese navy, into the reconstruction and enlargement of the Summer Palace. But I guess everyone is now pretty pleased she did and far from having her wrists slapped for what nowadays would be considered fraud, not to mention grand larceny, she must surely be the toast of the Beijing Tourism Bureau.

All around the lake you get fabulous views of the Longevity Hill as boats criss-cross their way over the water. A little further on you reach the Seventeen-Arch Bridge which is packed with people crossing over to Nanhu Island on the other side... and probably wondering why they bothered.

OK, maybe that isn't really fair. Nanhu Island covers 2.5 acres and is the largest one among the three islands in Kunming Lake. Seen from a distance, the island together with the Seventeen-Arch Bridge is said to look like a tortoise stretching his neck. As the tortoise is a symbol of longevity in Chinese culture, the similarity in shape justly satisfied Emperor Qianlong, who, being the mummy's boy that he was, built this garden to celebrate his mother's sixtieth birthday.

The island has a little temple poetically called the Temple of Timely Rains and Extensive Moisture, though it used to be called the Dragon King Temple. The pavilion-style Hanxu Hall is the shelter where Empress Dowager Cixi inspected the navy drill. In ancient times, the Dragon King was deemed as a mythical divine master of the rain. Every time Cixi came to the Summer Palace by waterway, she made a stop-over for the set purpose of worshiping at the temple.

From the island you get even better views of Longevity Hill – well you do if you have a telephoto lens at any rate!

Throughout the park hawkers sell their wares in the time honoured way. Yi kwai Yi kwai (one yuan) shrieked this annoying woman, ruining any possibility of a quiet afternoon spent enjoying the beauties of nature. The false plastic glasses and moustache were too irresistible to miss for all the naughty little boys who would harass their parents into parting with their cash and then jumping out from behind trees shouting the Chinese equivalent of "boo!" at anyone who was passing by.

I managed to resist the urge to get myself some plastic glasses and moustache. To be honest, shyness prevailed; that, plus I wasn't really sure how the Chinese would react to your favourite blogger jumping out from behind a tree shouting "boo!"

Some of the girls, on the other hand, who wanted to be topped out with a large red flower, looked much cuter than their male counterparts.

Of course, there were the usual street musicians, including this guy who had been playing at this self same spot every time I had previously made it out to this park. His female companion tried all the while to sell a CD of his best tracks, but not all tourists are gullible enough to fork out the required 80 kwai when you can probably get a much better CD rendition in a downtown shop for between 15 and 20￥.

And in contrast to the more "modern" attractions of Beijing such as the Olympic Park - where Mickey Mouse and his fellow rodents want payment for being photographed with you (note: I am led to believe it isn't the real Mickey Mouse who probably suffers from arthritis by now anyway, but an impostor masquerading as M.M.) – here you are more likely to be approached by someone masquerading as an emperor, or emperor's flunky at least, and wanting similar payment.

Back in the "civilised" end of the park, it was time to walk along the Long Corridor towards the many buildings that are the main draw for the visitors.

The Long Corridor ( 长廊 or Cháng Láng) is a covered walkway erected in the middle of the 18th century, and famous not only for its length (728 m) but also its more than 14,000 richly painted decorations, which depict episodes from Chinese classical literature, folk tales, both historical and legendary figures, and famous Chinese buildings and landscapes along with flowers, birds, fish and insects.. It leads from the Gate for Greeting the Moon in the east along the northern shore of Kunming Lake.

It was constructed so that the emperor's mother could enjoy a walk through the gardens protected from the elements. Like most of the Summer Palace, the Long Corridor was severely damaged by fire which the Anglo-French allied forces laid in 1860 during the Second Opium War. It was rebuilt in 1886.

Along its entire length, it keeps to the transitional zone between the lake shore and the foot of the Longevity Hill, passing in a southward bend around the central building complex on the lake side of Longevity Hill.

On its southern slope, Longevity Hill is adorned with an ensemble of grand buildings: The Cloud-Dispelling Hall, the Temple of Buddhist Virtue, and the Sea of Wisdom Temple, flanked by various other buildings. In the centre of the Temple of Buddhist Virtue stands the Tower of Buddhist Incense, which forms the focal point for the buildings on the southern slope of Longevity Hill.

Visitors can climb the tower for a panoramic view of the area. As an imperial worshipping tower, it enshrines a Buddha made in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) known as the Buddha with One Thousand Hands and Eyes (although in reality it only has twelve heads and twenty-four arms). Empress Dowager Cixi, workaholic that she obviously was, burned incense and prayed in the tower on the first and fifteenth days of every lunar month.

Despite the size of the park and the myriad buildings that you will want to see, the park authorities have gone out of their way to offer helpful advice as to the best route to take …

and you can be sure that where there is a special vista, there will usually be a sign board pointing this out for you, just so you can't possibly miss it.

You can tell at a glance that safety is a high priority …

which is just as well as there is quite a bit of walking up and down steep stone staircases to some of the buildings perched on the side of the hill..

As you would expect, there are fabulous views to be had from the top as you survey the splendour of the lake below.

Or casting your eyes a little nearer, you get a wonderful bird's eye view of the buildings below.

But sooner or later, what goes up must come down. So, continuing one's stroll along the side of the lake leads one to The Marble Boat (石舫 or Shí Fǎng), also known as the Boat of Purity and Ease (who one earth thought up these pretentious, but lovely names, I wonder?).

This is a lakeside pavilion, 36 meters long, erected in 1755 during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor. In 1860, during the Second Opium War, the pavilion was destroyed by those dratted Anglo-French forces, who have a lot to answer for, IMHO. But it was restored in 1893 on the orders of the Empress Dowager Cixi (who I reckon enjoyed a bit of retail therapy now and then).

In this restoration, a new two-storey superstructure was designed which incorporated elements of European architecture. Like its predecessor, the new superstructure is made out of wood but it was painted to imitate marble. On each "deck", there is a large mirror to reflect the waters of the lake and give an impression of total immersion in the aquatic environment. Imitation paddle-wheels on each side of the pavilion makes it look like a paddle steamer. I even heard one American couple wondering how often it sets sail into the lake!

From here on around the rest of the lake it gets pretty quiet as most people like yours truly eventually run out of steam to go any further. I'm sure that is something I will have to rectify one day as there are a whole load of cute bridges like this one that you can see in the distance (bless my telephoto lens!) to discover…

So instead, I crossed one final bridge before heading out of the grounds to Beigongmen station to begin the long trek home.

Being single on 11.11.11 is not all it's cracked up to be

2011-11-10T21:23:00.004+04:00

Last month I met a Chinese lady who, it turns out, is 28 years old. (Let's call her 'Miss E' for the sake of anonymity in this blog.) I have met Miss E on only three occasions all told, together with two or three eMails on a work-related topic travelling back and forth over the ether. Each time we talk, one of the main topics of "conversation", apart from work, has been her asking me if I knew of any single guys who were looking for a girlfriend. Perhaps nothing unusual in that, except she told me it was imperative that she finds someone – anyone – before the second week of November.

Why the hurry, I ask her. You're still young; your biological time-clock still has plenty of shelf life; what's the big deal? OK, so I'm still relatively new to China – you can tell. Otherwise I would be all clued up as to that special date in the singles' calendar – 11th November. Singles Day. 光棍节 – guāng gùn jié.

The name of the 'festival', for want of a better word, can roughly be translated as 'bare branch' – a tree with no leaves representing a person with no better (?) half. And for many, this is regarded as a single day of shame for singles. Certainly my new acquaintance was mortified that at 28 years old, she was already 'on the shelf', likely to spend the rest of her life as a lonely old maid – or so her parents would have her believe.

This year, having six '1's in the date – 11/11/11 - is likely to see a larger-than-usual 'celebration' – Super Singles Day, as some are calling it. Not, as some might suggest, a day of fun and friendship, but in reality, a day of pity, emptiness and a search for romance.

The symbolism of the six lonely 1's needs no further explanation. Pity the millions of poor bare branches who are forced to receive Singles Day cards from their paired-up friends, attend Singles Day dances with hundreds of other desperate love-seekers or listen to their parents, for the umpteenth time, telling them that it is high time they found a partner.

It is said that Singles Day was started down south in Nanjing by some single college students around 15 years ago. Tradition has it that you eat four fried dough sticks to represent the four ones, and one steamed bun to represent the dot in 11.11 and all being well you might just be lucky enough not to be celebrating Singles Day next year. Presumably, then, our single friends will need to eat six dough sticks and two steamed buns this year, (and hope that it doesn't go straight to their hips?).

While relatively obscure in most other countries, Singles Day is likely to increase in prominence as more single men in China are unable to find female partners. According to a recent study by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, more than 24 million Chinese men could find themselves without spouses by 2020; whilst the Beijing Statistics Bureau estimates that there are already 104 men for every 100 women in the capital. The number of one-person households in China has gone up a staggering 29% in the last five years alone. The one child policy and the tendencies of many couples to prefer to have a boy rather than a girl haven't helped matters here either; and it's instructive to note that there have recently been a number of discussion programmes on state-run CCTV about the negative impacts of this one child policy.

In an online survey, 35 percent of respondents said the main reason why people are single in Beijing is the narrow social networks they are able to build up. With education being viewed so highly (something that many westerners could learn from?) the pursuit of academic advancement comes at a cost; and with many dormitory rooms having eight or more pupils in one suite, it is not conducive to having one's soul mate round for the night.

Similarly, dating in restaurants can be expensive. And this is just one of the reasons that on any night of the year you will see couples sitting together – sometimes shivering together – on park benches as they build a virtual protective wall around their common oneness. As one commentator noted: "Western couples drink and dance together. But in China, we study together."

Of course, there are two sides to every coin; and profitable business opportunities seem to be everywhere around this time. Indeed, if anything, this holiday proves to be a fine example of modern day 'capitalist' China. All sorts of featured gifts for Singles Day have swept the internet shopping stores, such as T-shirts with the characters 不孤独 (I'm not lonely) printed on them. Taobao, China's largest online retail platform, reported a transaction volume of 900 million yuan during last year's 'Singles Day' promotion and many more online shops have joined the campaign this year.

There is also Beijing's first 'love supermarket' (爱情超市) in Xi Zhi Men where singles can pay 99 RMB to hang their photo on a wall for other singles to view, along with vital statistics such as age, salary, occupation, hometown and height – all of which must be verified.

Trawling the Internet, almost every click on 11/11/11 takes you to a dating site, one of which - http://www.jiayuan.com/ - boasts over 26 million users, and holds an annual party for singles with an entry price of 111 RMB.

Of course, some actually do strike lucky on this day. And some actually hold their wedding on November 11th because the four (or six) '1's of the date can also be read as 'you are my special one' or 'you are the only one for me'. In fact, in Hong Kong the date is special for lovey-dovey couples, as the two elevens are spelled out as one by one, side by side. (I wonder if this year's six ones means that someone is going to be saddled with an interfering mother in law as well?)

We all know, however, that the grass is always greener on the other side. Which probably explains why Singles Day is not only applicable to single people, but for married people too. Some couples choose to divorce on this day and turn back to being single. In fact in a recent survey, some 70 per cent of married office workers in the capital said that they miss their single days. The online survey, which was conducted during a two-week period among 1,000 office workers from Beijing and 2,000 white-collar workers from other big cities, shows that nearly 58 percent of married respondents miss being single, a fifth of these saying they miss the old days frequently.

As Wikipedia wryly points out, Romeo and Juliet dated, but it did not end well!

I was somewhat taken aback, though, when I read in a newspaper report that was headlined 'Ten famous single men in history' that third position was taken by Queen Elizabeth 1st, and 7th place was held by Jane Austen. This might have explained why they remained single all their lives. I think someone might have told them, don't you?

Mind you, if you think that finding love is difficult in China, consider what a guy in the Nyangatom region of Ethiopia has to go through. First, he has to build his own house, store lots of tobacco and dry coffee leaves for the girl's parents and have a large number of cows and goats. Disaster if he falls for a girl from a wealthy family as the dowry given to her parents can be worth between 200 to 500 cows, about 1,000 sheep or goats, five camels and three rifles. Huh! These Chinese kids don't know they're born!

In modern times, it would seem that no matter what your status, happiness always appears to lie on the other side.

Meanwhile if anybody knows of any guy going spare, please let me know and I will pass on his details to Miss E. Just so long as he has personality, wit and charm; a modicum of money in the bank; and he isn't likely to do a runner at the first mention of the word marriage!

Judge Not Others Lest Ye Be Judged Yourself!

2011-11-09T10:23:00.004+04:00

The invitation came unexpectedly out of the blue. Would I, your favourite blogger, care to participate as a judge in the forthcoming New Media New Future contest that is to be held in a month's time? Being a man of the world, maybe I know a thing or three about new media, Web 2.0, SNS and the like?

It sounds like fun, but being (relatively) new in China I wonder if the powers that be appreciate the fact that my Mandarin runs only as far as buying vegetables in the market and telling the taxi driver how to get me home.

No worries, I am told; the proceedings will be in English. I will be one of six judges of whom three will be Chinese, one American and another Brit. Well what do I have to lose? I sign up on the dotted line straight away.

What are the rules? What do I have to judge? We'll tell you about that nearer the time, I am told. I try to contain my excitement as the big day approaches.

Meanwhile I discover the contest is the offspring of China Daily's web site with a plethora of sponsors, not least the BBC who are taking an active role.

The day before the competition I go for a briefing in the China Daily offices where I meet my fellow judges. One of them is Raymond Li – the Head of the BBC's Chinese section who has flown in from London. Although he joined the Corporation three years after I left the Beeb, we find we have a number of mutual friends. As they say, once a Beeb man, always a Beeb man.

The "New Media, New Future" contest, the first English speaking competition to test participants' perception and operation of new media platforms in China, will provide the top three contestants with a free trip to study at the BBC in London and the Missouri School of Journalism in the US.

Come the next day my alarm goes off at the ungodly hour of 6am. 6am I ask you! I didn't know such a time exists until today. Outside it is still murkily dark as I stagger to the bathroom for a hot shower (actually I just love cold showers, but being the masochist I am, I always have a hot shower instead!).

Out comes my smart grey suit from the wardrobe, brought over in case I ever need to present myself in a respectable light. A double-cuffed black shirt with a stunning red and black tie complete the ensemble and I feel the very essence of suave sophistication as I set off for the University of International Business and Economics, where we are due to meet at 7.30.

The campus is easy to find…

… being right across the road from China Daily's main offices…

… but I am glad we are to meet up at the west gate as I wonder if I would ever be able to identify the right building to go to.

Inside the hall they are putting the finishing touches to the set. It looks like a game show on a TV channel, which in a way is exactly what it is.

The entire proceedings are to be broadcast live over CNLive mobile TV and on the Twitter-like micro blog site Sina Weibo. The equipment in use is the rival of any TV network's.

Excitement is at fever pitch. Tweats – or to be more precise – Weibos are filling the ether with live reports and pictures…

and the entire show is being hosted by two presenters who chatter away in a mix of Chinese and English, bouncing off one another in professional fashion.

All in all there are 30 contestants who have been whittled down from more than 2,000 students from nearly 100 universities and high schools across China, including Peking University, Sun Yat-Sen University and the high school affiliated to Renmin University.

Although they are being judged individually, they have been paired up into teams of five and given the task of working as a team where teamwork is as much a necessity as individual skills.

At the end of each team presentation, we judges have the opportunity to lay into the students with pithy questions designed to ferret out the good from the bad, the brilliant from the no-hopers, the quirky from the straight-down-the-middle.

Should I act the part of a Simon Cowell, I ask myself? But I guess I am too much Mr Nice Guy and instead I try to come up with a pithy, intelligent-sounding question or three.

One major problem that none of us judges has thought about is the fact that it is already feeling like winter. But this being China, it is not yet officially switch-on-central-heating date yet (that's two weeks away, I gather). So the hall is icy; and despite the fact we are all wearing warm(ish) clothes, the combination of starting at 7.30, it being freezing cold and the fact that there are no breaks for the first four hours means that I am not the only one who is DESPERATE for a pee by around 10am, as I shiver to try to keep myself warm.

Our shivering is noted by the organisers (bless their cotton socks) who arrange for cups of hot coffee to be smuggled over to each of us. A lovely thought, but I am now in even more of a quandary. Do I warm up with coffee and feel my bladder complaining even more? Or do I carry on shivering and put up with my bladder complaining for another two hours?

Luckily the proceedings break into a spot of Chinese, and I grab the opportunity to climb over the judge beside me and make a dash up the aisle to the loo outside the hall. Oh… BLISS!!!

On my return I find I have started a trend as some of the others make a similar bee-line up the aisle. Finally we can enjoy the warm coffee and the next two hours fairly whiz by.

At midday there is an hour's break for lunch and we all traipse over to the university canteen. Despite the fact it is a Sunday, the place is almost overflowing with students. What on earth is it like on weekdays I ask myself.

We grab a tin tray and have tepid meat balls, rice, green veg and a pear dunked onto it together with a pair of metal chopsticks. I wonder if the army's catering corps is making a little extra money on the side.

The afternoon session runs through at an even faster pace and suddenly the competition itself is all but over as our mark sheets are collected and we make polite conversation while the marks are totted up.

I knock back a can of Red Bull to give my energies a boost and grab a couple of bites of chocolate – a rarity for me in China. And then the prize winners are announced as Yang Chunya, Managing Editor-in-Chief of China Daily Website, together with some other good-and-great make appropriate speeches to honour the occasion.

Each of us judges is asked to present some of the certificates and goody bags that each contestant receives, and we then all pose for a group photo.

As the event draws to a close, I have a bevy of – mainly female – contestants come up to me asking to have their photograph taken with me. I reckon it must be a combination of my stunning red-black tie and my British accent that is such a babe magnet. One of the girls even asks if I would like to attend a performance of Peking Opera at her college. Shame that I am (almost) old enough to be their grandfather!

To end the day in style, we are taken to a celebratory meal in a hotpot restaurant close to the university campus.

The meal is lovely and with a liberal amount of Baijiu (白酒), or "white liquor," flowing, the proceedings are lively to say the least. Now, Baijiu is a clear drink usually distilled from sorghum, and is normally around 80 to 120 proof, or 40-60% alcohol by volume.

At the table are nine Chinese who are determined to have some fun with these foreign devils and hardly a five minute interval passes before someone is making yet another toast. Little do they know that I am good at holding my liquor! (But little does your favourite blogger know that Baiju is lethal stuff!)

By the time I have finished off my fifth wine-glass I can feel the first indications that the time has come to call a halt to knocking back the clear liquid. I carry on with the toasts, drinking tea and I doubt anyone notices, as most have gone way past the point of no return long ago.

Eventually it is time to draw to a close and as I wander out into the cold night air, having made my fond farewells to all and sundry, I suddenly feel as if I have been smashed in the face. I also notice that during the time we have been inside enjoying the meal, someone mean and nasty has altered the curb of the pavement.

As it is quite dark, I have difficulty seeing the actual pavement itself and miss my footing a couple of times as I step onto where there should have been pavement, but which that mean and nasty person has actually removed.

My head feels as if it is about to explode, but I manfully stroll along the main road in a slightly circuitous route and safely make it back home before…

… I wake up at around 2am still in my smart suit sprawled across the bed. My head is pounding and I am so thirsty I stagger to the fridge and grab a bottle of ice cold water which I down in seconds.

I spend the night drinking water and feeling sorry for myself. By the time that dratted 6am comes around once more I am just nodding off to sleep when my alarm that I forgot to switch off yesterday wakes me up with a shrill blast.

I throw it across the room and bury my head once more into my pillow. But time waits for no man, and eventually I stagger out of bed to the kitchen, make a strong coffee and a large plate of porridge and dowse myself under the hot shower before being able to face another day.

Who on earth was it who said Judge not others, lest you be judged yourself!? I will know for next time. I may now be one day older, but I reckon I am certainly the wiser for it.

Telling the Time in Beijing

2011-11-07T13:07:00.000+04:00

What does a tiger, a rat, a dog, an ox and a pig, together with a bell and a drum share in common? I have to admit that a few months ago I would have had absolutely no idea, though I am somewhat the wiser now.

Whereas most people are aware that the Chinese zodiac is based around 12 animals, fewer know that five of those beasts represented time periods in the night for the Chinese in days of yesteryear, and as recently as 1924 a large bell and drum were struck to let the entire population of Beijing know what time it was.

Beijing's drum tower, or Gǔlóu (鼓楼), can be found sitting on the central axis of the capital – a meridian line that goes right through the middle of the Forbidden City, along with Tian Anmen Square, Mao's mausoleum, Jingshan Hill, and the Birds Nest stadium in the Olympic Park.

Zhōnglóu (钟楼), the bell tower, stands 100 metres away from the drum tower on the same meridian. Together they used to dominate Beijing's ancient skyline.

Nowadays, you can just about see them from a couple of blocks away, or from another high building, but they don't do an awful lot to stand out from the crowd.

Of course, despite the fact that they used to be a central facet of life in old Beijing, their principal role these days is (yet another) tourist attraction, a fact not missed out on by the swarms of rickshaw drivers who pester the passers-by at the base of the two buildings.

The Bell and Drum towers were the very essence of Chinese chronology during the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties and it was only when Pu Yi, the last emperor of China, was forced to leave the Forbidden City that western-style clockwork was made the official means of time-keeping.

As early as in the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220), there was 'a morning bell and a dusk drum'. In fact, "The morning bell and dusk drum" is a Chinese idiom, and during ancient times local officials would open the city gates at the toll of the bell early in the morning and close them with the strike of the drum in the evening.

Telling the time by bell and drum played an important role in people's lives when there was no other means to keep track of the time. As a result, bell and drum towers were widely constructed in almost every city throughout the country though the towers in Beijing are the largest and highest. Unlike in other cities, Beijing's are unique, in that they were placed fore-and-aft, not in the traditional way of standing right-and-left horizontally.

The Drum Tower was built in 1272 (during the reign of Kublai Khan), at which time it stood at the very heart of the Yuan capital Dadu. In 1420, under the Ming Emperor Yongle, the building was reconstructed to the east of the original site and in 1800 under the Qing Emperor Jiaqing, large-scale renovations were carried out.

It is a two-storey building made of wood, standing at a height of 47 metres. In ancient times the upper storey of the building housed 24 drums, of which only one survives in a dilapidated condition today. Its head was made of an entire ox hide and is 1.5 metres in diameter.

To get to it you have to climb up a very steep wooden staircase – upwards on the right hand side and downwards on the left (though I suspect this depends on which way you are looking at it, of course!)

Just in case you are too thick to notice the steep ascent, there are helpful notices displayed the length of the climb that read "Caution: The high tower and steep stairs!".

The method of sounding the drum was to beat it quickly for 18 times and then slowly for another 18 times. Altogether there were three rounds like this, making 108 bonks. Nowadays the rubber-neckers are treated to a good banging roughly once an hour on the half hour on reconstructed drums.

Of course, you couldn't ask your average drummer to work out the time all by himself; so the drum tower was also equipped with four bronze clepsydras , or water clocks, dating back to the Song Dynasty. A large bronze gong was linked to the water clocks through a series of mechanical devices and sounded each quarter of an hour. When the system of telling time with incense coils, which burned for hours were introduced, the clepsydras fell into disuse.

The Drum tower's drums were used to keep time at night, while the Bell Tower's bells kept time during the day. In the Qing Dynasty, the hours were marked at night starting at 7pm, when the drums were sounded 13 times, a procedure that was known as "setting the watch." Each subsequent two-hour interval was marked by a single drum beat until 7am. I wonder if the emperors used to turn over in their beds and bury their heads under the pillow cursing those dratted drums every night! It reminds me of the time I spent an unforgettable night many years ago in Würzburg in Germany in a hotel close to the cathedral whose bells rang out throughout the night.

Close behind the Drum Tower stands the Bell Tower, slightly bigger than its neighbour, but this one is made of stone. It's got grey walls and a green glazed roof and each face of the Bell Pavilion has an arched gateway to let the sound travel as far as possible (it is said that the bell could be heard 20kms away).

It first came into use during the reign of the Ming Emperor Yongle. After being destroyed by fire it was not until 1747 that Emperor Qianlong undertook its reconstruction. Obviously Qianlong was a dab hand with the bricks and mortar as this building was so sturdy that the only damage that it suffered during the Tangshan earthquake of 1976 was the loss of a single stone animal head decorating the roof.

Once again, as no one has thought to install an escalator, the poor hapless tourists have to climb loads of steps to get to the bell chamber.

The Bell Tower originally housed a huge iron bell. But because its tolling was not loud enough, this was replaced by a massive cast bronze bell over 10 inches thick that is in perfect condition today. The iron bell was moved to the back of the Drum Tower where it has remained for over 500 years. As recently as 1924, it is said that the bronze bell could be heard ringing out the 7pm chime from a distance of over 20 kilometres.

Hanging on an eight-square wooden frame of the second floor, the bell in this tower is the largest and heaviest in China. It is 7.02 meters (23 feet) high including the pendants, with a weight of 63 tons.

So this all brings us back to telling the time. As it wouldn't have been very practical to wear a clepsydra on one's wrist, combinations of drums and bells were used to mark the appropriate hours. The night was split into five time segments called Gengs which were equivalent to two hours. Each was named after animals in the Chinese zodiac. The first Geng came at dusk, and from 7pm to 9pm it was called Xu Shi, or Dog Hour.

The second Geng, to mark when people went to sleep, was called Hai Shi or Pig Hour, and it ran from 9pm to 11pm. Zi Shi, or Rat Hour, signalled the middle of the night (11pm to 1am). The Fourth Geng was called Chou Shi, or Ox Hour (1am to 3am) and the Fifth Geng was Tiger Hour, or Yin Shi, and it ran from 3am to 5am.

The first and last of these Gengs were announced with the beating of drums followed by the striking of the bell and the gate of the city was closed and traffic was stopped as the sound of the first bell rang out each night.

Now, according to legend, some guy called Deng (sounds somewhat onomatopoeic!) tried unsuccessfully for over a year to cast the bell. On the eve of the final casting, his daughter (who was obviously lacking something in the brains department) decided to sacrifice her life in order to move the gods to bring about a perfect casting, and threw herself into the molten bronze. Her panic-stricken father could only recover a single embroidered slipper from the flames (oh yeah, right! He was able to grab a flimsy slipper from a vat of molten bronze?) The casting, though, was a success and the emperor, moved by the young girl's spirit of sacrifice, named her the "Goddess of the Golden Furnace" and built a temple in her honour near the foundry. By the ordinary people she was remembered as the "Goddess Who Cast the Bell." Just as well they hadn't introduced the one-child policy in those days I reckon.

After the bell was installed, the chimes could be heard clearly and resonantly all across the city. But on stormy evenings, the bell was said to emit a desolate moaning sound similar to the word xie (鞋), which means "shoe" in Chinese. Recalling the old legend, mothers would comfort their children with: "Go to sleep! The Bell Tower is tolling. The Goddess Who Cast the Bell wants her embroidered slipper back." I suppose the word "Tuoxie (拖鞋)" which means slipper wouldn't have the same ring to it?

The area around the two towers was the busy downtown district during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), full of storefronts and businesses. Apparently the street in front of the drum tower became the busiest shopping street in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) Dynasties. Nowadays you can get a birds-eye view of what's left of Beijing's famous Hutong areas made up of densely packed houses in narrow alleyways.

Apart from the electric street lighting and fast food outlets, I doubt much has changed here for many hundreds of years. Makes you wonder what on earth people did before the advent of KFC and McDonalds.

The Hills are Alive with the Sound of …. Bullshit!

2011-10-30T08:47:00.009+04:00

I should have guessed, I suppose. When a tourist web site tells you that something in Beijing is one of the major tourist attractions and that travellers had better go there on week days to avoid the great numbers of visitors at the weekends, then next time, maybe, I will pay more attention.

I'm talking of nothing less that Xiangshan Park (香山公园) otherwise known as Fragrant Hills Park. "The most spectacular natural scenery is the red smoke tree leaves over the mountains which, when autumn arrives, blanket the entire mountain," the website gushes.

Every year, they even have a Red Leaves Festival which this year is being held from October 12th to November 6th.

Because summer turns to winter here very quickly, you can be forgiven if you blink and miss the autumn. Already some of the leaves in downtown Beijing which were green last week have turned to a livid red…

As rain isn't forecast, I decide that today I will break the habits of a lifetime and actually get out of bed at the crack of dawn … well, 7.30 which is as near dawn as I care to imagine – and visit this little paradise on earth.

Now Fragrant Hills Park is a public park at the foot of the Western Mountains in Haidian to the north west of Beijing. It covers some 395 acres and consists of natural pine-cypress forests, hills with maple trees, smoke trees and persimmon trees, as well as landscaped areas with the traditional architecture and cultural relics you find almost everywhere over here (oh how blasé have I become!). Every year, thousands of tourists ride the cable cars through the park in order see the hills in autumn colours and not surprisingly the grand opening of Beijing's annual Red Leaf Festival also takes place here.

The problem is that as it turns out, one or two other people have had the same idea as your favourite blogger. I get onto the metro train which at 8.30 is already heaving with people. Eight stations along line 10, the entire human cargo decamps from the train and heads for line 4. I am carried along with the crowd. The incoming train sinks down onto its suspension as we spend the next 15 minutes enjoying one another's arm pits and hanging onto the carriage handles for dear life until we reach Beigongmen Station whence the train is finally able to disgorge its load and I am carried upwards towards the daylight.

There are 10 different bus routes that serve Xiangshan and it seems that every other bus in Beijing has been commandeered to provide a non stop stream of transportation for the masses. I see a bus labelled 000 which is actually a 447 bus masquerading as a 563 bus. But no one is too worried about what route it is serving, for every vehicle in Beijing, it appears, is heading in the same direction.

Whether I had wanted to get on this bus or not, it isn't as if I have any choice. I can hardly feel the road under my feet as I am swept up into the charabanc and a bruiser of a conductress finally screams at the remainder of the baying mob and manages to get the doors closed.

One advantage of taking a number 000 is that it doesn't stop at any intervening bus stops. Not that that actually makes much difference today since the 10 minute bus ride actually stretches out to one hour and 15 minutes. Stop, start, stop, start…. But the excitement visibly mounts in the bus as we see a clump of red trees at the side of the carriageway fighting for survival against the acrid motor fumes that are engulfing it. Ohhhhh…Ahhhh the bus sighs in happy unison, followed a few moments later by another clump of red trees and an equally happy ooooooooh…aaaaaaahhhhh. (Google Translate helpfully tells me that what I actually heard was a rendition of 哦啊 in the local dialect, but let's not split hairs.)

Finally we reach the end of the line and the bus spews out its contents onto an already crowded pavement. The entrance to the park is normally a 10 minute walk away… but today it takes 25 minutes…

But the crowd is well behaved and we surge ahead to the end of the road. To ensure there is no trouble, there are police everywhere and I see a number of stall keepers at the side of the road being castigated by the said police for a number of misdemeanours including slowing down the human traffic. There are even "PLICEONDUTY" boxes manned by zealous officers of the law to keep a watchful eye on proceedings.

At the entrance to the park it is obviously carnival time. Floral displays accentuate the red leaf motif …

and the two main entrances are bedecked with red plastic leaves …

But something is amiss. For once inside there appears to be a total dearth of red leaves. How can this be? Sure, there are beautiful trees all around,

but the problem is most are green or yellow. But wait… over there is a tree turning orange… does that count, I wonder? Obviously others, too, are somewhat mystified, as they head toward the orange spectre…

Now, the problem is that the Chinese LOVE the colour red, as the feng shui energy of red is that of arousal. It is hot, passionate, rich and celebratory. Red is the Chinese colour of luck and happiness. So now everyone is looking for something red to be photographed with. Some have their pictures taken in front of posters showing what the place would have looked like if nature hadn't put two fingers up to the world and actually done what it was meant to do.

A couple notice that an itinerant Mickey Mouse (whom I could have sworn I saw at the Olympic Green last week) has red trousers and insist on taking each other's pictures with the ruddy rodent.

Everywhere there are signs to ensure that no one can even think of getting lost. But I have to wonder how come the place names all have only three or four ideograms, but the word for 'wheelchair led person' has five characters, while 'Rubbish Receptacle' has no fewer than 11! (Actually Google Translate offers up only three ideograms for its translation, which all goes to prove that the signmakers at Xiangshan don't rely on such technology.)

It seems that I, along with a few million others, are not going to be lucky today. The fickle finger of fate has seen to it that we will all have to come back another day – perhaps after the Red Leaves Festival is actually over – if we want to see any red leaves at all here.

Undaunted, I head over to my favourite part of the park, which actually isn't officially in the park at all, though you have to pay the park entrance fee to be able to actually reach the entrance to the Temple of Azure Clouds which will set you back a further 10 yuan on top of the 10 yuan you have already forked out.

The Temple of Azure Clouds (碧云寺), is a Buddhist temple complex built in the 14th century during the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) which is built on six different levels over an elevation of 100 metres. It also includes a Memorial Hall to the celebrated Chinese nationalist, Sun Yat-sen.

As you pass through the Gate Hall, constructed during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), you are greeted by two warriors known as Generals Heng and Ha in Buddhism. It is their role to safeguard the temple gate. This one is General Ha, who I guess is slightly more cute than his companion …

You now pass through a series of gate houses and halls, each with statues of divine beings inside…

One hall houses a smiling bronze statue of Buddha Maitreya, 2.5 metres in height, while another features Buddha Sakyamuni with Manjusri and Samantabhadra together with two disciples – Jiaye and Anan on either side.

Something for which the Temple of Azure Clouds is famous is its Arhat Hall, built in 1748 for the first convocation in Buddhist history. It is the best preserved among the four arhat halls in

China

Inside there are 512 statues, of which 500 are gilded wooden arhats (spiritual practitioners who have gained insight into the true nature of existence and thereby achieved nirvana), 11 bodhisattvas (enlightened beings who, out of compassion, forgoe nirvana in order to save others) and one statue of Ji Gong (a famous Buddhist monk). All the arhats are life-size statues with different poses and expressions. It has been said that two of these were the statues of Emperor Kangxi and Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty.

Something else that this temple complex is famous for is the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall. Dr Sun, who died in 1925 is regarded as the foremost pioneer of Nationalist China, and is often referred to as the 'Father of the Nation' (國父). He played an instrumental role in the overthrow of the Qing dynasty during the Xinhai Revolution and was the first provisional president when the Republic of China was founded in 1912.

Inside, to the right of his statue, is an empty crystal coffin presented by the Soviet government in 1925 – though they were a bit tardy as his body had already been buried in Nanjing, having first been interred here before being sent to the Jiangsu capital!

Photos of Sun Yat-sen, his handwriting, books and statue are also on display in two side halls...

where there is also a thoughtful placard referring to the Giant of the Last Century:

"This is not a normal temple, really not," it reads. "…This temple, once formally visited by numerous Chinese descendents from all over the world, is more than a place for personal pray…."

"In his whole life, he loved his country, revoluted and made progress" it goes on in the same adulating tone, concluding "Over the past 100 years from the Revolution of 1911 to present day, people would have missed him at every important historical moment owing to his ideal, spirit and brilliant personality."

So there you have it. Dr Sun – a giant of the last century.

Sufficiently moved, I go off in search of a 'little boys' room' and am struck by the admonition stuck to the wall above the urinals…

Now I have to say this intrigues me. Yes, even I am impressed for once at how clean the facility is (unlike, it has to be said, numerous other public facilities in

China

). Keeping it clean is an admirable goal, of course. But keeping it cleaner? I half expect to see a flunky handing me a mop and bucket as I leave the facility and hurry out into the afternoon sunshine lest said flunky actually materialises.

As I walk down the hill towards the waiting buses once more I notice that for some it has been a hard day with all the crowds and excitement. I tiptoe quietly past the sleeping craftsman who appears oblivious to the world.

Avoiding the queues for the 563, I walk on an extra 200 metres to the bus station round the corner and have no problem getting onto a 696 (and even manage to grab a yellow seat - reserved for the elderly, sick and pregnant) which I discover takes me practically all the way home. OK, it takes over an hour with the heavy weekend traffic, but for the princely sum of one yuan (about 10p), who am I to complain?

In search of vintage paint stripper

2011-10-25T19:08:00.002+04:00

Men are like fine wine, a female friend once told me. They all start out like grapes and women then like to stomp all over them and keep them in the dark until they mature into something they'd like to have dinner with.

When I used to live in Saudi Arabia, they always used to say that the test of a good wine was how much 7-Up you had to pour into it to make it remotely drinkable. Many was the time when these well-worn "jokes" were trotted out:

*You should get health insurance before you drink that stuff!
** Does it come in unleaded as well as leaded?
*** Does anyone realise that this stuff is meant to include grapes?

Now I am in China I have found the same piece of advice is entirely apposite. Frank Sinatra may well have felt sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning that's as good as they're gonna feel all day. But obviously the great crooner never visited the Middle Kingdom.

The 14th International Food and Wine Festival is being held in Beijing's Hilton Hotel next month. They say it is the most famous wine pageant in Beijing, though whether there are any others at all, I really couldn't tell you.

But many "distinguished Chinese and overseas celebrities" are expected to attend as well as some 2000 exhibitors, some of which are famous international brands.

Now, this doesn't surprise me in the slightest, for the Chinese domestic market for wine is projected to become the largest in the world in a few years, even though the current average annual per capita consumption of wine in China is only 0.35 litres. But this year alone, China's wine consumption is expected to reach 828 million litres as the country uncorks (or should that read unscrews) more than 1.2 billion bottles of wine every year.

In 2008, wine merchant Berry Brothers and Rudd predicted that within 50 years the quality of Chinese wine will rival that of Bordeaux. OMG – is that really the best we can hope for? Why can't they set their sights a bit higher such as a good Oz or Kiwi wine?

But they say that while there is a small yet growing group of wine connoisseurs, the bulk of wine consumers in China are still in the "bling" phase, buying bottles to show off to their business partners or as an ostentatious present.

Traditional Chinese meals have always had one specific partner in crime - the ruthless take-no-prisoners "baiju" – a grain-based drink, which to my untrained palate tastes like a mixture of paint stripper, rocket propellant and lavatory cleaner.

But when it comes to real wine, it appears that among the different grapes, the Chinese tend to prefer Bordeaux to other wines because of its perceived value. It was the first western wine to enter the market here and as such consumers tend to play safe when ordering a bottle of foreign plonk.

At the moment, a few large wine companies, such as Changyu Pioneer, China Great Wall and Dynasty Wine dominate the market.

The largest wine producing region is Yantai-Penglai in Shandong province in the north east of China. (It is believed that Confucius drank the wines of this region, which all goes to prove he must have had the stomach of a horse.) With more than 140 wineries it is responsible for 40% of China's wine production. Unfortunately I couldn't get any statistics on how much 7-Up they consume there.

Of all the wines served in China, 8% is imported bulk wine (used for blending purposes), 9% is bottled import, and 83% is locally produced. Eighty percent of wine sales are red wine.

The taxes and duties on most incoming bottles are around 50%. And in restaurants and bars that mark up is typically 200-350%, so it is no surprise that the locally produced stuff is favoured by the unsophisticated local market. Interestingly, wines from Chile and Argentina are exempt from import taxes, and it is a well-acknowledged fact that when you get a mass-produced plonk that is arguably actually drinkable, the chances are it has a good dollop of imported bulk wine from Chile or Argentina in it.

Like many people round the world, Chinese wine consumers often judge a wine by the label. Market research shows Chinese drinkers do not particularly like plain white labels, but tend to prefer red backgrounds with loads of gold, as the two colours are regarded as lucky, and therefore suitable for presenting as gifts.

I decide to try a bottle with a bold red and gold label:

and thank my lucky stars that I had the foresight to purchase a bottle of 7-Up at the same time. How to lose friends in one fell swoop, I think to myself, red and gold label not withstanding. OK. It only costs 11 yuan (just over a quid) and I later discover it is excellent poured over a gently simmering chicken-in-a-wok dish, but to imbibe it on its own is a disaster. I doubt that any Argentinean or Chilean bulk has come anywhere near this particular bottle.

I decide to splash out a little and fork out the princely sum of 18元, though with little in the way of expectations as there is over two litres in this bottle. I have to admit though that I am buying it more for the cookability of the wine than for knocking it back by the tankard.

I realise that at this rate I will be soon living on chicken-in-a-wok or coq-au-vin, though I suppose there are worse ways to live. As the Kempinski Hotel's sommelier - Jean-Claude Terdjemane – is quoted as saying, "Wine, like people, should always have small imperfections. It's where the charm and character come from."

I stress to myself that JCT does say "small imperfections" and accordingly now splash out an amazing 19 元 on another bottle – this one from Grand Dragon (plenty of gold on the bottle, but no red.)

This time I am able to swallow it all without adding any 7-Up whatsoever and without having to rush to the bathroom immediately afterwards. Things are obviously improving.

I turn back to the interview with JCT in Beijing Agenda magazine. "Have you discovered any notable vineyards in China?" he is asked. "Yes. Grace Vineyards from Shanxi. You can sit with a bottle in any of our restaurants for RMB220." [Gulp! Thinks: I am only a factor of ten out!]
"What about Great Wall wines?" the interviewer continues relentlessly.
"No comment!"

Many wine boffs over here believe part of the problem for would-be Chinese connoisseurs is that the language of wine is western. They are faced with obscure words referring to unknown tastes (see how challenged you are if you go looking for liquorice or blackcurrants in a local shop!). As author Jeannie Cho Lee says: "Nobody has ever used things like Chinese chives or red dates, persimmons, or any of these more local ingredients to describe wine."

To try to plug this gap, you can nowadays go online to watch a series of programmes in Putonghua called Wine Connoisseur. It's already in its second season and has been produced by ASC Fine Wines, China's biggest wine importer.

Each episode features a conversation between Zorro - representing one of the uneducated Chinese masses at the bar who would like to know more about wine -- and Martin Hao - a wine expert. (This is beginning to have throw backs for me to those famous Pete & Dud sketches in Not Only... But Also from the 1960s!)

Topics range from the basics, like recognizing the difference between white and red, or dry and sweet wines, to more challenging matters, like pairing Chinese food with wine.

Not that you need Zorro & Hao sketches to learn about the etiquette of wine drinking – as I found out on my visit to Chateau Laffitte some 10 days ago.

"The wine tasting starts form at the table and ends in the mouth," we are told. "First, raise the glass and watch the liquid. Second, come closer to the glass and sniff in the fragrance coming out the wine. Third, and also most importantly, let your lips touch the glass rim and drink up the wine. At the same time, experience the tasting period." Sound advice to be sure!

"At the very end of the process, you would come to a conclusion of the impressions acquired in the above stets. To conclude is to summarize your feelings and emotions to make assessment of this wine.

"At last, it is worthy of mentioning that tasting the wine while standing will obey no rules of perfect order yet still with a lot of fun."

We are advised that there are three stages of smelling:

"Smell as it set still: Let the glass remained still after or before rotating it. You can let it on the table or raise it into the air, then rotate it in different directions. Then set it still to let the delicate scent of micro-molecules come out, especially for those young wines.

Smell after rotation: The fragrance traced in this stage, either delicate or rough, will be so strong as to fill the whole glass. Yet for the young wine, it seems harder to be woken up. Therefore it's a bit early to draw a conclusion.

Smell after shaking: Either it is too dumb, closed, or ill smelled, you can confirm your impression by shaking the glass with your hands covering the mouth to prevent liquid from spitting out.

Only 35cl of wine will be poured into your glass when tasting the really expensive ones. Maybe you find it minimal, yet as a matter of fact there is no need to drink a lot of it. This tiny amount will suffice in 6-8 times tasting. However, if taken too little, your tongue won't be stimulated enough.

After drinking it into the mouth, the wine will be diluted by saliva, and the only taste you identify may be the worst part of roughness, bitterness, acid, the taste of tannin or alcohol, rather than the flavour of fruits. If you're drinking too much each time, apart from the awkward looking, there won't either be enough saliva in your mouth to deal with the quantity you take in.

After taking the liquid into your mouth, let the tongue stir it in a low speed to make the liquid fully touch the inner side of your mouth and the very back of your tongue. After chewing a bit, swallow down a tiny amount.

(Ah – that's obviously where I missed out on my Chateau Plonk. I forgot to chew!)

Spitting should be taken in a resolute way otherwise there will be an awkward moment of lingering saliva. Purse up your mouth to stiffen the muscles a bit and then spit them out like a compressor.If you can't make it perfect, then let practice do the job. And only in that way will you spit the liquid precisely.

Ah. Now I understand why the Chinese are such great spitters. Everywhere you go in China you hear that gurgle in the back of the throat which sounds like a simmering volcano, followed by a loud ptchawahh sound. So all they are doing is practising their wine etiquette! You see – there is always a perfectly rational explanation for the vilest of human behavioural patterns, just so long as you keep an open mind!

By the way… Did you hear about the new blend of pinot blanc, pinot noir, and pinot grigio that acts a bit like a diuretic? It's called pinot more. (I heard that on the grapevine, BTW.)

Jackie Chan, Chateau Laffitte and a Jar of Penises

2011-10-18T11:03:00.004+04:00

Those that know me well might have been surprised to see their favourite blogger crawling out of bed at some ungodly hour ready to see the sun playing peekaboo over the rooftops. But when there’s a free day out in the offing, you won’t see me slouching around in bed. Oh no. Not me!

My employer had organised a weekend away in the far north of Beijing; and at the appointed hour, when I would normally have been far away in za-za land, I could be seen striding manfully to the coach that was to whisk us away to the delights to come.

Our first stop was to be an area some 60kms north of the city centre, called Huairou, which nestles into the hills in Beijing’s ”backyard garden”. To be more specific we were going to a small town called Yangsong which has one or two things going for it, if you read the blurb.

The first thing it has going for it as far as I am concerned is the variety of beautiful - or gaudy, depending on your point of view - street lights that are the equal of anything to be found in Manila – my nominated street lamp capital of the world.

The second thing it has going for it is Feetang World Studio, the home of China Film Group Corporation, the ”most comprehensive and extensive state-owned film enterprise in China”. Opened in 2005, it has visions of becoming the “biggest and most integrated film and television programme production and post production base in the world”.

No lesser mortals than Angelina Jolie, Keannu Reaves and Jackie Chan have all filmed here – indeed Jackie is apparently on set as we are shown around the studio lots. But we have a tight schedule ahead of us and I can’t make the time to meet him. Sorry Jackie – you’ll just have to live with your disappointment.

Universal Studios this is definitely not. Instead we are shown room after room filled with costumes and props from a plethora of Chinese classics and other memorable occasions… such as costumes actually worn during the Beijing Olympics … wow!

to the outfit worn by ‘Confucius’ in that Chinese classic …

not to mention collections of old radios (and even a typewriter that I’m sure I used to own many eons ago).

We are taken to a lot made up as an old Chinese restaurant that is so good they just don’t want to dismantle it

and then to a rain forest…

…where a ‘no climbing’ notice pinned to one of the trees possibly explains the absence of monkeys

We walk around an open lot representing a street in old Shanghai.

where just metres away they are constructing a polystyrene version of the Dongzhimen Gate in Beijing as it might have looked 150 years ago.

But lest we overdose on excitement, we are whisked away from this amazing living museum and brought back to reality. We get back into the coach and are driven all of 200 metres to a hotel for lunch. It has been hungry work walking through rain forests so we settle our situpons into velvet cushions and wait as plate after plate is brought to the table. Pigs trotters for openers; chicken’s feet; duck livers; tofu; chillied beans; something unmentionable that is brown and sticky; something else unmentionable that is orange and less sticky; pickled cabbage; fish heads with crunchy eyes; and of course rice – all washed down with a bottle or three of Beijing Asahi beer. Oh yummy yummy!

Suitably replete, our next port of call is a classic car museum – all of three minutes drive away. The Beijing Museum of Classic Cars, which opened two years ago, features a collection of 160 cars, with prominence given to famous makes such as Dongfanghong, Fenghuang and Hongqi, as well as some slightly older European models.

We are shown a couple of Austin 7s and a Citroen Deux Chevaux (sporting a Mongolian number plate) which the Chinese think is so funny. “If you couldn’t get your shopping through the door, you simply lifted off the roof” says Luo Wentao, the private owner by way of our interpreter, and fell about laughing as he must have done on countless other retellings on previous occasions.

One of Mr Luo’s prized possessions is a cart dating back to the Qing Dynasty – saved from destruction by overzealous Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution by someone cleverly carving in a quotation from ‘The Great Helmsman’ onto the wooden front cross member as the said Guards revered their leader somewhat more than a priceless piece of history.

Pride of place goes to various Hongqi (Red Flag) sedans that have ferried famous leaders through the streets of Beijing.

There’s even a car that has carried Mao himself as well as his good lady wife.

But once again, all good things must come to an end. And with tears in our eyes we are soon hurried around another couple of streets, this time to Beijing Deerworld Theme Park – or should that be factory? The entrance reminds me of Snow World in the UAE’s Umm al Qawain with its plastic sea lions and penguins. Except of course instead of penguins, we have plastic deer in the entrance.

As we enter the estate through the public restaurant, whose menu not surprisingly serves venison as its main (only?) dish, we come across a display of the largest antlers ever chopped off one of these unfortunate beasts and now sits pickled in a large glass cabinet.

We are reminded that deer antler is everso good for you. It is a common ingredient in Chinese tonic preparations which can be traced back to a set of silk scrolls named Wushier Bingfang, from a tomb dated 168 B.C..

Deer farms started in the mid-16th Century in China during the Ming Dynasty period. Soon after, Wu Kun included a recipe in his famous book Yi Fang Kao (Study of Prescriptions, 1584) which combines deer antler and tortoise shell, plus two bone-like materials rich in gelatine:

Deer antler (lujiao) 5kg; Tortoise plastron (guiban) 2kg ; Lycium fruit (goujizi) 1.5kg; Ginseng (renshen) 0.5kg. This formula is said to replenish yin and essence, tonify qi, and strengthen yang. But all I can think of is that it reminds me of something out of Mrs Beeton: Crack 24 eggs into a large bowl….

To the right of the antlers is a large glass container housing countless deer penises.

I have to admit that for some unfathomable reason, the study of a deer’s penis is something we were never taught at school. No really. I do feel that I missed out on an important part of my education.

Apparently in traditional Chinese medicine, a deer penis (鹿鞭) is said to have important therapeutic properties and when consumed is also said to enhance male virility and is an aphrodisiac. But for it to retain those properties it must be extracted from the deer whilst still alive. Oh please! The very thought brings tears to the eyes.

During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the country banned deer penis, turtle blood, and angelica root potions from athletes' diets because it might have contained some sporting no-nos. It joined steroids and amphetamines on the list of banned substances.

Deer penis wine can be sold at around 40 Yuan a glass and often as high as RMB1400 for a two litre bottle. It is claimed to enhance sexual potency in men and to have a warming effect, aiding the joints. (Now why does that claim not surprise me one iota?)

If you want to know what deer penis tastes of, I’m afraid I am the wrong person to ask. But can I recommend this wonderful snapshot of life in Beijing transcribed in 2006 from the BBC’s ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ programme.

With our minds boggling, we are led on through to a number of cages at the back where there are countless antler-less deer talking in squeaky voices waiting their turn to be taken to the kitchen while saving the customers a fortune on viagra.

No one feels the need to stay on here any longer than protocol requires; and we happily board our coach once more.

Next on our itinerary is Beijing’s Chateau Laffitte Hotel where we are to stay the night. Sorry, don’t you mean Lafitte? Err… no. Chateau Laffitte Hotel, or Laffitte Chateau Hotel or Chateau Laffiitte, depending on which brochure, sign or TV screen you look at, but not Lafitte.

Now, you can forget Shenzhen’s Window on the World theme park which features a miniature Eiffel Tower. Here you can revel in the splendour of a European style chateau “standing for the essence of the culture of chateau with a pure European taste of classic romance”.

It is based, we are told, on Chateau Lafitte Rothschild with “Fontainebleau Palace styles east and west wings, excelling in its magnificent edifice and splendid decorations where no one can ignore the beauty and attractiveness in this magical chateau that is enhanced by the long row of spectacular Baroque arches, the elegantly decorated carpet flower beds, the pathways paved by snow-white cobblestones and the vividly sculpted statues of ancient Greek Gods and Goddesses!”.

But for some strange reason, as we arrive and look with awe at the splendid chateau on our left…
… our bus turns right, and we pull in to the Laffitte Hot Springs Hotel, reserved for lesser mortals. (Oh, did we say you were staying at the Chateau? Oh dear; we must have made a mistake.)

But I have been taught never to look the proverbial gift horse in the mouth. As we exchange our passports for our room keys, I wander down a very long corridor and find my room a few kilometres nearer Beijing than when starting off from the reception area.

Faded Elegance is an expression that quickly comes to mind. Either that or the decorators had knocked back a little too much Tsingtao when they had set to on the room. But the bathroom door works, after a fashion…

even if the painters had forgotten to use undercoat when painting the doors:

and there is a perfectly divine Ethernet distribution bay when I look inside my wardrobe:

And what is particularly attractive is the mural on one of the walls, though for some reason it has been applied from the bottom up and still has its original musty smell just to add a unique charm to its appearance.

I sleep well that night and the following morning go to breakfast where as well as a full Chinese brunch, they serve toast and jam for the western guests, together with hot orange juice and tepid coffee. One problem is how to spread butter on your toast using the chopsticks provided. But practice makes perfect. It’s the way you hold them that is the key to this conundrum.

Soon it’s time for a quick group photograph before we all climb into the coach to head home. Outside the trees are turning red, signalling that winter is drawing close.

The temperatures are already touching 4 degrees at night time. But inside we amuse ourselves by swatting some of the flies that got stranded here during our visit to Deerworld yesterday. All in all it’s been a memorable weekend.

天鹅湖 Makes a Splash in BJ

2011-10-03T05:22:00.005+04:00

I was swigging back my fourth cup of Lipton’s Yellow Label of the day, wondering where on earth I was gonna get any inspiration for the latest tome I am penning for my publisher, when my Blackberry made a welcome interruption. It was a friend, who gushed down the phone "Do you fancy going to see Swan Lake this evening."

It turns out the Russian National Ballet Theatre (alias 俄罗斯国家芭蕾舞团) were in town and her family had bought tickets for 天鹅湖 (or should that be Лебединое озеро?) only to find her husband had a flight that evening and couldn’t go. Would I like to make up the foursome?

I certainly didn’t need to be asked a second time and was already accepting the invitation when it was pointed out that no-one actually knew where it was taking place. The tickets were all printed in Chinese (what a surprise!) and although it translated 场馆 as ‘Venue’, what it didn’t do was to translate that all important information: 天桥剧场

But they don’t call me Boy Wonder for nothing; and five minutes spent on a mixture of Google, Google Translate and Google Maps meant I was able to say – with near certainty – that the 天桥剧场 was about 2 kms from the nearest Beijing Subway station at 前门 on Line 四 – or to put it another way, we had to find the Tianqiao Theatre some 2kms south of Qianmen on Line 4 of the metro.

Now, 2kms would normally take me a conservative 20 minutes to cover; but what we mustn’t forget here is that I was accompanying three females wearing what looked like extremely uncomfortable shoes (why on earth do women suffer so much for fashion?). But I guess God was smiling on us as a taxi pulled over to drop off some passengers at the subway, right opposite where we were; so with a quick 您好 and a repetition of that all important information - 天桥剧场 – as I waved one of the theatre’s tickets under the nose of said taxi driver (just in case he didn’t understand 'Tianqiao Theatre' spoken in the vernacular), we were on our way.

The Tianqiao looked like it had been built in the 1960s or 70s. It wasn’t particularly attractive, but then neither was it particularly ugly to look at either. I guess the word 'functional' probably sums it up style-wise. Inside there was a large bronze artwork, giving the clue that this venue was often used for ballet.

The first gong had already been sounded by the time we started to walk up the stairs to the third floor (the Chinese use the American system, so third floor in China = second floor in Europe); but I guess women are women the world over and I was not surprised that all three immediately headed off to the loo as the second gong was sounding. (The system here is that three sets of gongs act as a count down to getting everyone in their seats on time.)

As the third gong started, I could hear quick footsteps from the Ladies, and amazingly we were all in our seats before the lights faded down.

As is common in China, I discovered, they don’t see the necessity of having a live orchestra to accompany the ballet, so a near-perfect recording of Tchaikowsky’s masterpiece was blasted out in glorious compressed mono as a blanket of sound hit you full frontal, leaving you no room to escape. It was a shame, really, as the compression did terrible things to the instruments, and I thought to myself that one of the famous flute solos sounded as if it was being played on an ocarina.

Of course we all know the story of Swan Lake – of how Odette, the Swan Queen informs the young Prince Siegfried that an evil sorcerer, Von Rothbart, who so happens to be disguised as the prince’s mentor, has turned her and the other girls into swans and that the lake was formed by the tears of their parents' weeping.

Errr… OK, I have to plead ignorance. I actually didn’t know the story; and it wouldn’t have helped to have bought a programme since a) there weren’t any, but b) if there had been they would have been in Chinese anyway! Everyone in our party of four had assumed that one of the others would know the story (surely everyone knows it? Well, perhaps not) and one of our party, who had even seen the film Black Swan not a few weeks ago, couldn’t actually remember the plot.

So throughout the evening I kept wondering why there was what looked remarkably like a cormorant dancing with the white swan queen, and why the famous Pas de Deux looked like it had come straight out of Fiddler on the Roof.

Mind you the choreography was pretty hot stuff. Even Busby Berkeley would have been proud of some of the numbers. The Russian National Ballet Theatre (founded in Moscow during the transitional period of Perestroika in the late 1980s) did a pretty good job, albeit that there was a mixture of excellence from the solo dancers combined with one or two B-rated chorus girls – including one girl who surely must have been a last minute stand-in for someone who had gone sick. (Maybe she was normally the wardrobe mistress?) Not only was she plump (yes, really – have you EVER seen a plump ballerina???) but she was also top-heavy (have you ever seen a top-heavy ballerina???) and she was about five inches taller than the other girls. (And dare I say it - she looked like a man in drag!) If this had been the good old days of the communist Soviet Union, one would have assumed she was the obligatory KGB agent infiltrated into the ranks of the dancers to keep an eye open for possible dissent and asylum seekers. Certainly she was no delicate swan, that’s for sure.

The male dancers, however, caught many an admiring glance from the females in the audience. I could have sworn that the size of their cod-pieces was directly proportional to the star rating of each dancer, since Prince Siegfried seemed incredibly well endowed for someone passing himself off as a 21-year-old; while Von Rothbart looked like he would probably have to turn to the Viagra bottle to satisfy his chosen partner.

These were Russian dancers through and through – not only could you tell by looking at the faces of the ‘swans’, who all looked like they had put in a good day’s work down on the local collective, but the guys to a man had rippling muscles coursing up and down their legs. And don’t mention their buttocks! I kid you not, you could crack open a walnut by asking one of them to clench his bum!

In true Chinese fashion, cameras and cell phones were out in force with people taking pictures throughout the performance. The theatre’s usherettes, though, obviously had in their job description the fact that they had to suppress this type of behaviour, and red pencil beams from their torches could be seen criss-crossing the auditorium as they shone their lights directly into the lenses of the cameras in order to discourage such behaviour, shame the individuals and generally show who was boss. Recalcitrant individuals might even prompt some of the usherettes to work their way along the seating rows and end up having an altercation with the said offenders.

One particularly obnoxious man sitting behind me was texting from his mobile throughout the performance and receiving endless replies – all with the volume on his phone turned up to maximum. But this type of behaviour was obviously acceptable to the Stalinesque usherettes, who never gave him a second glance; and the word ‘shhhh’ said with forced clarity is obviously something that the average Beijinger simply doesn’t understand (maybe, as Google Translate now tells me, because 嘘 should be pronounced ‘shi’, not ‘shhh’).

The dancers were adept at milking the audience for every last drop of applause; and the Chinese, who are obviously well rehearsed in this particular talent, duly obliged.

All in all, then, a fun evening was had by all. As the performance didn’t end until just after 10pm, and as it was a good half hour’s walk to the nearest subway, and as the last trains run at around 10.45, it meant that I again had to practise my Mandarin on a hapless taxi driver who must have thought twice about picking up this foreign devil at the end of a busy day.

I still don’t know why a cormorant was dancing first with a white swan and then with a black swan, but I guess that is something I will need to Google in the morning. Everyone seemed to be humming some of Tchaikowsky’s catchy little numbers played on that ocarina as they left the theatre; and I guess that is as good an indication as any that the performance was a success.