Drum n Beijing 2

This thursday people - Bejing's first DnB allnighter!

Parental Guidance

As my parents have just booked their trip to Beijing for the summer, I thought I'd better send them an email full of things which happen on a daily basis here that might require a bit of forewarning, lest they be too freaked out and decide to return home. As I started to put the list together, I saw that it also might be of interest to anyone thinking of spending time here. I do want to state that it's not an attempt to put people off coming, nor is it a slur on China or its people - I'm just interested in what makes a place seem weird and alien to us. I could just as easily have called this list "reasons why I came to China", as it has always been about trying to find out about a culture as different as possible to British society. Speaking to Chinese people that have been to England, it's equally interesting to hear the things that they see as eccentricities over there. There's another list to be written about that some time...

Anyway here it is, things to mentally prepare yourself for prior to leaving your native country's hallowed turf:

1. Spitting - fairly ubiquitous activity practiced by both sexes and all age groups. Old ladies seem to be the most proficient at this, and one can only hope their prowess will be recognised when it is made into an Olympic sport in time for 2008.

2. Fights - actually not a daily occurence, but more frequent than you might think. Fights tend to fall into three main categories:
A) In a restaurant: pretend fight, but worryingly serious in appearance- (mostly with ones friends over paying the bill, alcohol being a contributory factor)
B) In a restaurant: real fight, normally less serious in appearance than A - (mostly with the manager over paying the bill, alcohol being a contributory factor)
C) Outside a restaurant: real fight, serious in both appearance and in reality (mostly with the manager and all of the male staff versus the aggressor and his male co-diners - and yes, alcohol being a contributory factor)

3. Being illiterate (that means you)- can you think back to what it was like when words were just marks on a piece of paper that had no meaning? No, me neither. Should one wish to recreate that feeling, simply get on the first plane to Beijing and try to read things. Rather odd, isn't it?

4. Comments - even if you know no Chinese whatsoever, the following phrases will be coming at you from all directions at all times, thus providing your basic foundations in conversational Mandarin:

"Ni kan, lao wai name gao a!" = Look, aren't foreigners tall!
"Ni kan, lao wai yong kuaizi yongde name hao" = Look, the foreigner can use chopsticks!
"Ni kan lao wai" = Look at the foreigner...

As you are actually the foreigner most of these phrases will infact be useless but if you're not sure what people are saying about you, you can bet your bottom yuan that it's one of these.

5. Toilets - I used to think that the job of cleaning public toilets in China would have to be one of the worst ever due to the wholly unspeakable unspeakableness one often encounters there. However, I'm still yet to see anyone fulfilling this function and can only assume that the profession is: A) in crisis due to a nationwide strike of toilet cleaners since the very beginning of time B) just too unspeakable for mortal man to undertake, or C) largely made up of those people you see loitering near the facilities reading the paper/chatting/sleeping, occasionally glancing at a nearby mop as if to wonder what it's doing there.

6. Old people walking backwards - Chinese people certainly have to be admired for their longevity, and one can partly attribute that to a healthy diet as well as daily exercise. When this exercise takes the form of early morning Taiqiquan, it is both a calming and beautiful sight. When it takes the form of walking backwards, it is not. Groups of up to twenty old timers can often be seen in parks and on main thoroughfares plodding along happily and chatting away whilst facing the wrong direction. Presumably the idea is to stimulate the circulation to various parts of the body, thereby keeping one fitter and younger, but it seems a bit like trying to drive a car in reverse to take the miles off the clock. Also, try getting overtaken by one of these groups when you're a bit hungover and not really with it - malfunction. does. not. compute.

There are quite a few more items that I could add to this list, and there may be another instalment in the future. If you've got any to add please post a comment. Like I say, these are intended to show up cultural differences, not to insult. After travelling to a few countries you stop seeing such things as "weird" and tend to view them as different instead. Who's to say that your own country isn't completely freakish through another nation's eyes? There are norms in your own society but you can't apply them when you're in someone else's.

Photos!

I've spent all weekend by a scanner and stuck my travelling pics online for your delectation. Here's a couple to start with:

Tiger Leaping Gorge



Spider



Technomao

Enjoy!

Travelling - Xishuangbanna

Apologies for the absence over the last week or so - here's a long post continuing my recent travels to make up for it...

Having checked out a few more sights around Chengdu, such as climbing Qingchengshan and mellowing out at the Panda Sanctuary, it was time to go and meet up with Andy in Kunming, Yunnan's capital. As cities go, the travelling English teacher could do a whole lot worse than chilling in Kunming for a period. The temperature's very agreeable, the people are relaxed (almost certainly a link there) and they have some of the best meat things on skewers I've ever eaten. Still, we had planned to do something a bit more adventurous that put our stomachs' wellbeing in the hands of the street vendors, so we headed straight down to Xishuangbanna, a tropical area that has borders with both Laos and Myanmar (Burma) as well as Vietnam.

Using Jinghong as a base, we planned to explore the surrounding villages by whatever means we could, but before that we had a quick peek round the city itself. One of the most attractive features of this part of the world is its diversity. The variety of non-Han Chinese ethnic minorities that populate the city is fairly astounding, the most prominent being the slightly darker-skinned Dai people and the Burmese, more Indian in appearance. Naturally, this warming mixture of cultures made us feel a whole world away from freezing Beijing and for two fairly adventurous eaters could mean only one thing - lunch.

One restaurant that I'll never forget was the very first place we ventured in Jinghong. It was run by Burmese and we soon realised that we'd be more warmly received there if we stuck to using English rather than Chinese. I have to admit that it's possible to feel more than a little displaced when you're sat in a restaurant with an English mate, talking Chinese to someone originally from Burma who's making you something that looks like a French crepe, so we weren't too miffed at speaking our native tongue for a while. Before long, any form of language was utterly defunct anyway, unless you count the muffled appreciative mumblings of someone that's eating the best damn pancake of their life. These thin slivers of buttery golden sumptuousness came along with a curry-like fried rice salad and an amazing soup that I can't really begin to describe in terms of the Western palate. Wait, yes I can - it was bloody delicious. This was to become our regular (twice a day on average) food haunt in the city and so regular was our custom that I ended up playing a kind of hackysack using a wicker ball with a collection of the regulars. I was the only one playing that wasn't wearing a sarong and sandals, but I won't let that bother me too much. Sadly I have no photos of this event as Andy was getting chatted up at the time. He won't thank me for saying that...

We figured that the best way to get around this area might be to hire bikes. Having seen a few foreigners pottering around the city on them, the idea of dispensing with buses for a while was very tempting indeed, especially seeing as every day we had 25 degrees with perfect deep blue skies. So after a bit of bargaining in the rental shops we cycled off to spend the night in a nearby town. There was nothing particularly special about the place we reached - Ganlanba - but every minute of the ride to get there was fantastic. We were following the Mekong River downstream for about thirty kilometers, passing tiny villages of one or two wooden longhouses on stilts, and being greeted every five minutes by groups of scampering children, mischievous in appearance. They came darting to the edge of the road in small infant clusters, tiny limbs flailing as they ran. The result was always the same - a chirped chorus of "HELLO" as we rode past. This must have happened over fifty times a day while we were on the bikes yet the scamps' seemingly boundless enthusiasm inspired the same in us and it was always a joy to reply. The linguistic highpoint had to be when we passed a solitary child heading down a side road and just as I was about to remark on the fact that he hadn't greeted us, there came an elegant "How do yoo doooo?".

The landscape was similar to that of rural Malaysia - full of palm trees and quite dry, but never oppressively so. Our new-found means of transport was perfect for exploring there too, and sitting beer-in-hand at our hostel that evening we hatched plans for cycling further afield over the next week or so. There's something that's both incredibly free and incredibly freeing about travelling by bike. Firstly, there are no timetables, no tickets and nobody sat next to you with a screaming child in one hand and a perplexed chicken in the other – not a problem on the London underground, granted, but a more frequent one than you might imagine in southern China. Secondly it's the feeling of really being there for the whole journey rather than getting picked up at A and dumped at B that's so liberating. I think this is best summarised by a passage from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, so I'll leave it to him to describe:

"You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realise that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it's all moving by you boringly in a frame.
On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore and the sense of presence is overwhelming."

Ok, this is written about motorbikes, but it captures what I was feeling at the time perfectly, and it was a sentiment which grew and became even more enjoyable as the next ten days of cycling passed. Having returned to Jinghong briefly after Ganlanba, picking up supplies and worrying the bike rental shop owner on the way, we made for the slightly wilder country further to the south. We'd been told that the roads round there were no good for bikes, but we'd also been told that the scenery was beautiful so a general atmosphere of "sod it let's just ride that way and see what happens" was established. Possibly for life...


But yes, the roads were awful and stopping every 15k or so was compulsory, otherwise we'd have lost several fillings each on the bumpy roads. Sweating profusely and being overtaken by trucks on dirt tracks can also do strange things to your appearance. Andy was quite glad of this impromptu covering of grime as his 10 Yuan sun cream was failing him badly by lunchtime. When we arrived at Xiaojie that evening we looked an absolute state, but were chuffed with the distance we'd covered and the joy of a post-cycle beer in such parched, dusty circumstances defies description. Once I could tear my gaze from the luscious green bottle in front of me though, I became aware that this was a rather odd little town. Firstly, there couldn't have been many foreigners through there in the recent past as we seemed to be a fairly big event for the townspeople. Secondly, as the light began to fade, many of the small dirty eateries that I am very fond of, no more than front rooms really, appeared to be pumping out loud techno. I'll be buggered if some of them didn't have strobes going too! I hadn't seen anything even resembling a club in southern China, yet this one-street town was flooded with mini-versions, one every fifty metres or so. This may be explained by the fact that it seemed like a truckers' town. In fact, the name Xiaojie ("little street") intoned differently can have the meaning of "prostitute", and there were certainly one or two massage parlours around. So having cycled away from the main urban area for over five hours along shoddy rural tracks, we appeared to have hit Hedonism Central. Not that this received more than a cursory comment from both Andy and I before the need to pass out for the rest of the night became overwhelming.

The rest of the trip passed in a similar vein, with the scenery becoming more and more jungle-like as we got closer to the border. Each day we'd end up with the same encrusted covering of sweat and dirt, only broken by the grins we wore at having struggled through some pretty rough terrain, or were we grinning at the beer...? Our one night in a villager's house was a great experience too. It was at our furthest point from civilisation in a village called, er, possibly Bulang (there were a lot of them) and we were fed two dinners in the space of two hours. The second consisted of the local baijiu as well as a plate of fried chillies. Now, I don't mean fried beef or chicken with chillies. Just fried chillies. They were very tasty indeed but my stomach, usually fairly resilient, had been playing up for a few days and I can think of more settling dinners than hot chillies, washed down with bottle of 70 percent paint stripper. Still, we entered into the spirit of things as seemed necessary, all the time overawed at our location - a wooden shack in a tiny village, miles from anything, populated by people that spoke a language particular to that one settlement. The stars that night were incredible too, though I can think of more poetic moments to notice such things than when you're outside relieving yourself.

One problem with propelling yourself on two wheels along rocky dirt tracks is the inevitability of punctures. Luckily we only met with one during the whole trip, but it was the mother of all punctures. Whilst riding over some particularly steep, rocky ground my back inner tube exploded in fairly spectacular fashion. To be honest, had it even been a small puncture we didn't have the means to fix it, so at least I could be pleased at having gone out in style. We still had about 20k to go to the nearest village, so it was a case of the "push-bike" earning its title. After about half an hour I ventured riding on the rims during the flatter sections as pushing was already becoming tedious in the baking sun. To begin with I imagined the rental shop owner's expression as I went over each bump, potentially buckling the wheel. I knew that a new inner tube would cheap and easy to find, whereas a wheel would be more taxing. As it turned out, we couldn't get either at our next location, Bulangshan, meaning that we had to get our bikes onto the roof of a bus the following morning. That night we were wondering if this was actually possible, but this is China and Andy assured me that when it comes to buses anything goes. As fate had it he was right, and after lashing the bikes to the roofrack with worryingly thin bits of twine I spent most of that journey with my face pressed up against a local's satellite dish that must have been a good two metres in diameter. I find it hard to think of a more ungainly object to take on a careering minibus, but I'm sure I'll come across one soon.

Once fixed, the bikes ran well and completing the loop back to Jinghong was a dream, ending on a day of pure downhill heaven. We had tried to cross the river again to get onto a seemingly better, straighter, newer road but the bridges were having none of it (see picture), and as it turned out the old village road was a dream - 50k of freewheeling with virtually no traffic except whatever we overtook. Neither I nor Andy had any idea when we gained all that height but we weren't about to complain.

Handing the bikes back was a surprisingly upsetting moment as we were reduced to mere passengers once more, reliant on the vagaries of local timetables and being put in boxes to "watch TV" again. After this (and yes, over a beer) we made a promise to get back on two wheels as soon as possible.

Welcoming Speech

Today was my first day back to Chinese classes after the spring holiday, and if I was expecting a leisurely start to things then I was sadly deluded. Firstly, the higher grade of classes appears to run at fairly breakneck speed, which I'm actually pleased about as it means I'll have to get on with learning characters asap - however, being confronted by a barrage of lightning-quick Chinese sentence constructions when you can still taste the toothpaste at 8am is a bit bewildering. Secondly, and this is what I really want to talk about, there was the "welcoming" speech by the local police/immigration officer for the benefit of the new students.For those of you that know the comedian Eddie Izzard, this speech was very reminiscent of his take on Catholicism, i.e. "Don't touch that! Put that DOWN! Leave that alone! STOP, CEASE DESIST!", which rather undermines the whole welcoming aspect, and which also generally reflects the official Chinese line about many aspects of life for foreigners. There's often a great divergence in the kind of language used. Just as in American English where the word "restroom" is used to cover up the more taboo functions of the human body, the Chinese authorities regularly try to obliterate taboo subjects with a hefty helping of misnomas and linguistic bullshit. Let me quote you an example from my Foreign Expert's Work Contract ("expert" perhaps being the first example): "Party B [Jon] shall respect China's religious policy, and shall not conduct religious activities incompatible with the status of an expert." Classic. It's as if somehow being an English teacher in China means that everyone will be perfectly happy to ditch whatever religious beliefs they may hold, or at least refrain from discussing them, as this is "incompatible" with their profession. I feel a more reasonable, yet still forceful version might read:

"Party B shall avoid freebasing crack and persistently blowing the resulting fumes into the face of a PSB officer whilst reciting the Lord's Prayer backwards and dancing on the complete works of Siddartha Gautama, as this is incompatible with the status of an expert..."

What counts as an unnacceptable religious activity? I'm not religious in any way, but if I were, then I reckon I might have been more than a little miffed at what was being said. The officer this morning mentioned that people are free to "practice [their] religion in specific, certified areas, but not to spread it around", as they are here "to study, not to preach". The reason given for this was that preaching is a kind of profession and you would require a work permit, should you wish to preach! Another Chinese classic. Whenever the authorities feel the need to curb something, they create a permit for it. The official line stops just short of a Breathing Permit, but we were told that we'd have to "apply for a dog", should the need for canine companionship arise.

The one final point that was driven home this morning was that as foreigners, we are strictly forbidden to take part in any demonstrations, as even Chinese nationals must apply for a permit if they are to hold any kind of political gathering. I found it almost impossible to suppress a slight chuckle at this. There was me, foolishly under the missaprehension that most people actually prefer to demonstrate about things which are forbidden...

I thought of attempting to organise a demonstration about the fact that foreigners aren't allowed to demonstrate, but my mind got tied in knots thinking about it. I wouldn't be permitted to demonstrate since it's not permitted, but I'd only want to demonstrate because it's not permitted. Therefore if my illegal demonstration was successful and demonstrations became legal, then I'd no longer have any reason to demonstrate. And would I need a permit for all that?

Muhammad is God!

Before people start to think that I've become a misinformed Muslim, I'm actually referring to Kenny Muhammad, the sickest beatboxer of all time. I think everyone knows Rahzel's classic If Your Mother Only Knew - if you don't then you're in for a treat - but I'd never heard of Kenny Muhammad until recently. Apparently he's good mates with Rahzel, but I reckon he'd kick seven shades out of him in a battle. Check these two out :

Kenny Muhammad - Wind Technique
Kenny Muhammad - DnB

I guess his main appeal for me is that he manages to replicate drum and bass unbelievably well. He's clearly spent time thinking carefully about each hi-hat, snare etc until it sounds perfect, then he fits them all into some really smooth rhythms. I have to thank my mate Lee (MC Filter) back home for getting me into beatbox in the first place. It's hard to believe, but he's almost the same standard as these guys and the last I heard he did a five minute set in between Black Twang and Grandmaster Flash at a massive skating event. Nice!

Incidentally, this has taken me ages to write as I'm hungover like a bastard. We celebrated Andy (Clapperton, not Smith)'s birthday last night and as far as I remember it ended in a Baijiu drink-off between me and Marcel. Actually, I have to berate him for saying he'd down two cups if I downed one, then refusing to even touch the stuff. This he swiftly justified with the immortal line "Well, I was lying". Law graduates ...

Tunage.

Woohoo! I've just spent a bit of money on having some fresh new vinyl sent over from the UK in time for next week's gig. Here's a selection of clips:


Ed Rush and Optical - Evolution
DJ Marky - Soul Samba
XRS - Cold Hand
Tali - Airport Lounge (AI Remix)

I'm working on the soulful side of drum and bass out here as it's still a fairly new phenomenon in China. Having said that I played one gig back-to-back with another DJ when we decided to play the darkest set possible and it ended up going down really well. Anyway, the above tunes are a selection of the kind of thing I like to play before heading into the harder stuff.

Travelling - Chengdu

Speaking of all things being relative, arriving in Chengdu (Sichuan's capital) was like a entering a tropical paradise. Again it was actually only about four or five degrees, but when you've come from the minus ten of Beijing's arctic tundra, it's a real blessing. Your shoulders drop from the hunched position they've been in for the last three months, the less-than-sexy thermal underwear can be left in the rucksack and you no longer have to utter gasped expletives upon leaving any heated building - "£%@# ME IT'S *%$£ING FREEZING!" is a favourite, usually heard as the automatic doors to my apartment block open.

I felt right at home in Chengdu almost immediately. Five degrees above, wet streets, and a miserable, insistent, spitting rain that seems to be saying "Well, I don't really feel like thoroughly soaking you, but I'll just piss you off a bit without really trying". The kind of rain that seeps through your shoes. The kind of rain you get in England.

I decided that I could tolerate a couple of days of English winter so I checked out the city. There were a couple of really impressive temples around (Wenshu Gong, Qingyang Gong) as well as a huge range of Sichuan delicacies on every corner to keep my stomach happy. However, the highlight had to be spending a very chilled afternoon in the teahouse at Renmin Gongyuan (The People's Park) among the old folk playing mah jong and cards. At the time I was reading Wild Swans, the story of three generations of women and their life in 19th/20th century China, much of which is based in Chengdu. Sat there, surrounded by the respected older generation of Chinese engaged in the same activities that had gone on there for centuries, it was hard to imagine the era of the Cultural Revolution('66-'76), when gangs of thirteen to eighteen year olds (Mao's "Red Guards") would be ordered to break up any potentially counter-revolutionary public gathering. Teahouses were banned, chairs and tables smashed and even elderly participants beaten up. I reflected on the insane notion of 10 years of history that tried to undo the previous 4,000.

Gladly, the enduring spirit of the Chinese people endures still, and I was happy at being able to enjoy my bottomless cup of molihua cha amongst the old-timers. Looking at the faces around me and seeing the vital tradition of human interaction and discussion that teahouses provide, I felt that trying to put and end to all this could only ever prove fruitless.

Huoche Hades - Train Travel in China

My original plans for travelling during the Chinese Spring Festival Holidays were to check out Yunnan province with a friend. However, I discovered that once I'd marked all of my students' exam papers I had no more ties at the university and so by setting the exams early I'd inadvertently given myself an extra 2 weeks' holiday. Obviously I was rather pleased at this happy accident so I bought the earliest train ticket I could to head down to Sichuan and squeeze in two provinces for the price of one.

A lot of travelling's allure is in the anticipation of arriving in that new place, a place where everything you see is alien and you're constantly learning. For me I was looking forward to being a foreigner twice removed: once as a big white Briton in Beijing, then again heading out of the city I've come to know and understand to put myself in whole new set of circumstances. Anyway, a lot of travelling's allure is in the arriving, but increasingly I've come to appreciate the process you have to go through to arrive, that's to say the travelling itself. I'd bought a hard-sleeper ticket to get down to Chengdu (a journey of around 24 hours). This basically means you spend a day living in an area roughly the size of 3 telephone boxes, and this space contains two lots of three bunks, as well as their inhabitants, the inhabitants' mothers, and quite possibly the mothers' pets for good measure.

Whilst waiting for the guards to allow passengers onto the platform, I made a quick calculation that there must have been over 600 people with tickets for the train, meaning that (a) the train was massive (b) the hard seat section was going to be absolute chaos. In China, the tickets for the hard seat carriages are sold indefinitely, which is great, as it means everyone that wants to get home for the New Year can do so, but as the number of passengers increases, there's no increase in the number of carriages. I'm no stranger to standing most of the way from Cambridge to King's Cross, but the idea of being on my feet for 24 hours or more is not one that's ever likely to fill me with joy. Although during the chaos that is Chinese New Year no-one has to worry about the strain of holding themselves upright for that long, as they spend most of their time squashed up against five or six other people. I've heard stories about being able to lift your feet entirely off the ground due the pressure exerted on you from all directions. "Look Xiao Wang, no feet!" In this twisted mass of human beings it's hard to breathe, you'd better have your arms up high from the word go if you're of an itchy nasal disposition, and most people give up all hope of ever going to the toilet. Imagine the most crammed tube journey you've ever been on, and then imagine that same underground line leads all the way to southern Italy.

All these things I observed on a brief wander down the train from the safety of my own hard-sleeper section, where it's a case of one bed, one human. I swore to myself that I'd never complain about any train journey ever again. Although I might permit myself a slight grumble if I ever have the misfortune of hitting the Tokyo subway in rush hour. There, I'm told they employ professional "pushers", not of the narcotics variety (though drugs might be welcome given the circumstances), but people who take a running jump at the seething masses of businessmen and women in an effort to crowbar them into the trains as the doors shut. At least those journeys only last an hour at a time.

Having seen the hardcore hard-seaters first hand, I took great pleasure in gliding effortlessly back through my carriage, taking in a leisurely trip to the toilet along the way before floating up to my top bunk with the greatest of ease to listen to some mellow reggae. Actually it wasn't quite as easy as that, but it's all relative...

Drum 'n' Beijing

I'm just in the process of writing up some of my travels and sorting out some pics at the moment, so in the meantime here's some music stuff.

If you're in the Beijing area, then you can catch me spinning at the monthly Drum n Bass night in Wudaokou:

-=DRUM N BASS MAYHEM @ LUSH=-

THURSDAY MARCH 3RD / 10 TIL WHEN

Come and check out the ruffest UK cuts played by

the cream of Beijing's DnB selectors

SLIDE, THE SYNDICATE AND DJ ELEMENTAL

"It don't get no fresher than this bredren!"