Xmas in Beijing

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?

Gobbing for China

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

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!