A Modern Chinese Pilgrimage

When I was in Beijing two weeks ago I took a trip to the Olympic site one late Wednesday afternoon. My original intention was to take photos, but upon arriving my camera’s two batteries died after about 3 clicks each! Since posting the handful of blurry ill-composed pictures of the Bird’s Nest I took would be boring, I’ll have to settle for words.

Autumn in Beijing is perfectly crisp and windy, often with a mile-high blue sky that makes you realize just how flat and expansive the city really is. If it weren’t for the overwhelming pollution, the Beijing sky would probably be breathtaking almost every day. I picked the clearest day of the week to visit the Olympic site, because I wanted to see it as the Chinese intended it to be seen by the world.

Wearing corduroys and wrapped in a scarf I set out on my 40 minute subway ride to the site. I hopped onto the new Line 10 and rode up from the lower southeast corner of the city to the upper middle section, where I transferred to the short green-colored line 5—the Olympic line. Quite a few people transferred along with me; they scampered through the highly decorated subway corridors with their cameras out, taking pictures of themselves in front of the swirly blue decals that wrapped around the columns and the LED light that shimmied across the walls. On the Line 5 platform stood a suspiciously amicable object—a free-standing drinking-water fountain—that no one dared to use.

Not knowing which of the three stops to get off at I picked the middle one labeled “Olympic Green.” The first thing I saw was a family rush their young son onto the grass next to the subway exit, pull down his pants and encourage him relieve himself in the plants. Obviously, the Chinese people had already reclaimed the Olympic space as their own. Some people lingered on the benches and ate fruit on the green, but most turned south and started walking toward the flashier buildings. I had no agenda so I followed the crowd, since there was no map anywhere nearby.

The first notable structure we encountered was a mysterious deep pit lined with large grey bricks and surrounded by overlapping staircases leading down from every imaginable direction. Rising up from the bottom were towers draped with ancient Chinese bronze bell replicas and a sprawling cluster of tiled roofs, reminiscent of old Beijing hutong buildings. What was this place? There was no sign. I peered in as I moved along the side edge toward the main staircase. On looking closer, I realized that the indoor space, which could be seen through the glass windows that lined the perimeter of the lowest level, was completely gutted. There was construction dirt in piles on the unfinished floors and tools scattered on the ground. The only conclusion I could come to was that just a month or so after the paraolympic games they were already tearing things up and renovating the space for a new use, the speed of which came as no surprise to me after seeing mega-malls built up and torn down within months to make way for even bigger mega-malls.

The sun was getting low in the sky, so I passed up the chance to walk down the mile-long staircase into the pit in favor of getting up close to the most iconic structures of the games. As the Bird’s Nest came into full view, the crowd around me began to morph from the east-coasters that got off the subway with me to tour groups from the countryside, clusters of people with matching red hats, uniformly dull colored clothing and deep brown skin. These dark figures (many of them quite old), however, were illuminated by the look of wonder in their eyes and their fixed smiles filled with teeth gone awry. I got the sense that the ground they were walking on was both sacred and their own at the same time. They were in awe, yet supremely comfortable chatting amongst themselves and crunching on melon seeds. There was a sense of pride and joy that was especially evident in the older tourists. The younger east-coast looking tourists seemed more interested capturing the perfect snapshots of themselves in front of the stadiums than taking the scene in with their own eyes.

Already the buildings looked worn. There were no obvious markers of age that I can remember, but the bubbles on the water cube looked dusty and the gleaming media tower didn’t look as shiny as it did on TV. Things age fast in this country, but are usually replaced even faster. The grand entrances to the stadiums were cheapened by flapping banners advertising the 50 RMB entrance fees, like the ones you would see outside of circus tents. It kind of reminded me of going to Astroland in Coney Island, without being physically decrepit. Aside from the tour groups and a few odd garbage collectors, the site was completely deserted. The sun was half-set and the tourists were streaming over a wide bridge back to civilization, toward their buses on the far edges of the Olympic grounds. Stadiums were left alone to weather the harsh desert winds that sweep through Beijing, becoming just another piece of the glorious long Chinese history I’m always hearing about.

Railway Station

The Guangzhou Railway Station is infamous now, after last Chinese New Year’s disastrous weather left people stranded outside in the damp freezing cold waiting in line for weeks.  People were hungry and miserable, some were even trampled to death, and I got to watch them live every day on the news.  The travelers most affected were the migrant workers, who were desperately trying to get back to their homes in places like Sichuan for the holiday.  However, the youngest generation of migrant workers seemed perfectly happy staying in the big city to celebrate with their friends.

If I’m taking the train, I usually use the East Railway Station, which is smaller and a little newer.  Yesterday though, I went to the main station to buy a train ticket to Beijing.  I was planning on taking a plane, but found out that for some reason the price of a round trip ticket to Beijing is the same price as buying two single journey tickets, 3000+ RMB!  I can’t afford $450 for a two hour flight, so train it is!  Although the train is pretty expensive too, since I bought a “soft sleeper” ticket.  It’s going to cost me about $200 round trip.

The “soft sleeper” isn’t much softer than the “hard sleeper,” they are both rock hard, but there are several advantages.  Soft sleeper compartments have four bunks and a door, while hard sleeper have 6 and no door.  Doors are good because when people go in between cars to smoke, which they do constantly, the smoke gets sucked down the corridor into the rooms with no doors.  The soft sleeper sheets are usually cleaner too, sometimes they seem to be freshly laundered.  I also get the feeling that my luggage is safer in the soft sleeper, because the people who can afford to buy that ticket probably aren’t very interested in breaking into your luggage when you go to the bathroom, unless you do something stupid like leave your ipod sticking out.

Regardless of whether you buy a soft sleeper or hard sleeper, you’re still going to be stuck with a bunch of middle aged men with smelly feet and the tendency to shake the compartment with their snoring.  I found a set of earplugs in a set with an eye shade, which I snatched up for this trip.  My dream is to one day fill up a compartment entirely with people I know, but alas that dream doesn’t look like its coming true any time soon.  For now I am a lone asian-looking female traveler, who gets a lot of confused looks when the train attendant comes around asking for everyone’s shenfenzheng (China i.d. card) and I give them an American passport… “You mean shes not Chinese?????  But that’s impossible with her blackhairblackeyesyellowskin.”

Another thing I do that weirds people out besides flashing around a foreign passport is sleeping for almost the entire duration of the ride.  This has been as long as almost 40 hours in some cases.  Most people like to get up with the sun, play some cards, go to the food car and order a meal, etc.  No matter what time of day it is when I get on the train, I throw my bags up into the storage area and whip out my prepackaged bowl of instant noodles, which I usually add hot pickled vegetables too.  Then I walk to the hot water heater and fill up my noodles and large water bottle, wait, eat, wash my face in the bathroom, and hit the sack.  Sometimes I’ll take a hit of Chinese (non non-drowsy) dramamine to facilitate things.  If I have to get up to use the bathroom, I will replenish fluids and maybe eat a piece of fruit.  If I have anything close to a lame superpower, it is being able to sleep for abnormally long periods of time.

This Chinese woman I met in Sichuan told me that once she was in a soft sleeper compartment with three men and realized about an hour into the ride that they had shackles on their hands and feet.  They were prisoners being transported!  She asked for a room switch and was granted one, thankfully.  But, that’s so China!  Seeing shackled prisoners coming off a train is common; they are hard to miss because their legs are bound, so they have to be carried under the arms by soldiers all the way to the exit.  It’s kind of creepy to step off a train at night and be passed by soldiers running through the crowd with a limp and unwashed prisoner between them, and hear the sound of a thick iron chain dragging across the platform.

With my new earplugs and eyeshade, I think I could have my best 20 hours on a train yet… as long as there are no convicts in my compartment.

Cupping

My lower back has been out of whack for the past 3 days and I’m not sure why. It may be because I have to contort myself into an awkward position every morning to see into my bathroom mirror, which could have aggravated my already weak lower back. It makes sense, because my right hip hurts too and I’m constantly twisting to the right. Anyway, I decided to go to the Chinese medicine place on Shamian Island to have a doctor “massage” it for me. More like pummel every place that hurts with a vengeance.

This time the doctor rubbed a lot of yaojiu on my back in between assaults. Yaojiu is Chinese medicinal herbs soaked in liquor, which supposedly brings out different properties in the herbs; I hear old people like to drink it. Sometimes animals are soaked in liquor for years for the same purpose, like snakes and rats. Can you imagine a big jar of liquor filled with ten year old rats? I hope the kind I got today was of a more benign variety…

While I was lying there, we got to talking about how I don’t like the way acupuncture feels. It seems that I’m one of the few people who think acupuncture hurts. Hurt might be the wrong word, but I couldn’t think of a better one in Chinese. I just don’t like the idea of something so small entering my body and messing with my entire system, like when they twist the needle and the whole left side of your body suddenly feels like it’s on fire. That freaks me out! The doc asked if I’d ever tried cupping, to which I replied that I got one cup put on the back of my knee during one of my three previous acupuncture sessions. He said that I could try it, because it might help by getting the stagnant blood moving deep in my back. I figured, sure why not? I’ll try anything that might help me out.

The cups were made of bamboo and unevenly sized. The doctor heated the inside and outside of the cup with flames to create suction, then placed them on my back. At first he only used two and moved them around quickly, like a shell game. After doing this for a few minutes and gradually adding more cups, he reheated all five cups and placed them in a circle on my lower back. I could feel all of my blood, skin and fat being sucked up into the cup after about five minutes. It was definitely a weird feeling, but at least it didn’t hurt. After he ripped the cups off my back had a lot of light red circular markings on it and five dark purple circular bruises… pretty gross looking. If this makes my back feel better, I would definitely be willing to do it again despite the nasty bruises!

The Bottle Collectors

In Chinese cities, the demarcation between the “other waste” and “recyclable materials” garbage pails are meaningless. Most of the recycling is done by people who comb through the junk, pick out their recyclable materials of choice, and sell them to the junkyard. The most visible of these collectors are the bottle collectors.

I started paying more attention to these urban roamers with the beat up giant plastic bags on their backs after reading a post in Shanghaiist last year, which suggested that if you want to give money to the poor and make sure that they actually receive it (since most street beggars are forcibly organized by “the mob” and don’t get to keep their earnings) you should stuff a few yuan in your empty plastic bottle before you toss it into the street side bin. This method is a good compliment to buying a few extra baozi when you go out and giving them to beggars, which is what I usually do.

On my way to the gym every day I see the same bottle collector somewhere in between the Kecun subway station and the gym. I have literally seen her at least once every day since I started going over there. She, like most bottle collectors I’ve seen, is an old lady in her 60’s or 70’s with lank gray hair and a slightly hunched back. She makes the same rounds repeatedly, digging through the cans with her bare hands, squashing the bottles under her plastic sandals and tossing them into her huge wrinkled plastic bag. It seems that she always has full bags, because the Kecun area is a big transportation hub and the subway station is attached to a large supermarket that is busy from morning to late at night.

A few days ago I was sitting on a ledge surrounding flower beds outside of a 7-11 near the gym eating my tea eggs when I saw the bottle lady take a seat down at the other corner. It was almost 10 PM and she looked tired. When I got up to leave I took my empty bottle out of my bag and handed it to her, she smiled when she took it from me. As I was walking away I got hit with an idea, maybe I should get on friendly terms with her and find out more about bottle collecting. There are so many questions I’d like to ask, starting with:

-When did you start bottle collecting and how did you get the idea to do it?
-What made you choose this area and make it your turf?
-Do you ever have problems with other bottle collectors trying to edge in on your turf? If so, how do you deal with them?
-On average, how many bottles do you collect a day?
-When and where do you sell your bottles?

Each area has its regular bottle collectors, so it wouldn’t be too hard to hang around and eventually start talking to them (if they speak Mandarin!). It would be interesting to see how these people came to bottle collecting. Most seem to be poor, but not homeless, elderly women and I’d be interested to know what their circumstances are like. I wonder if they have children or not, or if their husbands are still alive.

Then there are the part-time bottle collectors who are usually better dressed, and finally the people who seem to just pull out a few bottles from trash cans on their way home from work. There is also a young mentally handicapped man who lives near me inside the SYSU campus who I see collecting bottles a few days a week, always with a cigarette hanging precariously from the corner of his mouth. I’d like to hear their stories too.

Do I feel a new side-project coming on?

Anime Convention and Tomb

I never made it to the Baiyun Mountain beautiful food festival, since it began raining on the day I was planning to go and didn’t stop for two days. The rain was definitely worth it though, because today’s sky is the bluest of the year. All hail high pressure systems! Before the downpour, I managed to get to the ACG (Anime Comics Games?) convention at the big convention center near Yuexiu Park and the Western Han Nanyue King’s Tomb Museum.

My original plan was to go to the GZ “The One” street dance competition, but when I got there I discovered it was part of a much larger convention devoted to anime, comics and video games. What street dancing has to do with anime, I’m not sure. Since it was still Golden Week and no one was at work or school the place was mobbed. I figured it must be interesting if so many people were willing to pay the 25 yuan entrance fee, so I bought a ticket.

The convention looked like what I imagine an ACG convention would look like; the ground floor had colorful booths by big companies like Bandai displaying gundam models and manga artwork. The second floor was filled with little booths that sold cosplay costumes, key chains and lots of hats with bunny and cat ears on top. On the mezzanine, a bunch of teenagers in full cosplay costumes primped themselves. The main difference I noticed between the Guangzhou convention and a similar convention, say, in America was the crowd that attended.

I felt that something was missing, the level of nerdiness was way too low. Yes, there were people in costumes, scrawny kids with glasses glued to the pages of their recently bought manga books and even teenage guys buying body pillows with their favorite female anime characters printed on top. However, in China this isn’t nerdy, it’s pretty normal and dare I say cool? Generally speaking, anything cultural that comes out of Japan is at the height of cool in China, especially in Southern China. This was more of a commercial convention than a social one.

The whole draw of comic/sci-fi/fantasy/star trek conventions in the states is the comradery and the chance to completely nerd-out with other like minded people. Maybe this is because many Americans look down on those part of these sub-cultures, so a convention is like a few days of freedom where they can do as they please and not be judged–even the furries. I may just be romanticizing the whole American geek convention thing because I like Star Trek (got a problem?), but I can’t deny the fact that most people who attend such events are insanely friendly to strangers while they are there.

Anyway, the dance contest was lame. I thought it was going be literally on the street, since the advertisement said “street battle.” Boy was I wrong… It was on a stage with flashing lights and a smoke machine on the second floor of the convention hall. There were so many people crowded around (video cameras too) that I couldn’t see, so I went up to the second mezzanine only to be shuffled along by a security guard. I caught a few glimpses of awkward hip-hop dancing and that was enough for me. Next on the stage was the cosplay. I haven’t seen much cosplay, but I was hoping for the performers to put on skits and mimic the characters they so faithfully dressed up as. However, it turned out to be somewhat like the dance competition with the addition of lip-syncing anime songs with worse dancing. There was a little stub at the end of my ticket that I could use to vote for the best cosplayer, but I couldn’t stand through the whole thing. Even the huge crowd of curious onlookers that lingered after the dance battle broke up after the first few acts.

The convention was a bust, but the Nanyue King’s Tomb was amazing! Who would have thought there was a real ancient royal burial chamber in the middle of Guangzhou? I had passed the tacky facade of this museum numerous times, but never went in because I was turned off by the fake rock “tomb” style exterior. Little did I know that inside the courtyard behind the first building, under the ground, was the actual burial complex of this king! The best part is that you can walk right down inside and check it out for yourself. I wonder if they give visitors as much freedom in Egypt’s tombs…

Aside from the rooms dedicated to the artifacts that came out of the tomb, there was a lot of museum space dedicated to a giant collection of ancient ceramic pillows from the Song dynasty that a Hong Kong millionaire donated. Some looked genuinely comfortable while others I am hoping were only used as decoration. There were a few “pillows” that were only as big as my fist. Did anyone actually sleep on those? I wonder what the benefits of sleeping on a rock hard pillow are.

Golden Week

Two weeks ago we had the Mid-Autumn Festival; today we have National Day with its accompanying Golden Week. Is it me, or does China have a lot of national holidays? Since I’m not really Chinese and I don’t benefit from days off of work/school all I am left with is minor inconveniences. Does this sound like an Andy Rooney segment? My main indicator for an upcoming holiday is the 40 minute wait in line at all major supermarkets, any time of day, that starts a week or so beforehand. Then there are the perplexing jam-packed subway cars in the middle of weekday afternoons. Also, let’s not forget the noticeable rise in cost of pretty much all consumer goods. When all three of these phenomena are present, I know there is a holiday coming on; it’s kind of like triangulation. It might be easier for me to just look at a calendar every now and then and take note of the upcoming holidays, but I like getting myself in tune with my surroundings and figuring things out myself; it makes me feel like I am learning something.

Instead of lamenting the crowds this week, I’m going to try to take advantage of anything potentially exciting happening in the area. So far I’ve compiled a list of events that I found on various Chinese websites, the most promising sounding ones being a street dance-off competition and a “beautiful food” festival on nearby Baiyun Mountain. I’m hoping the latter is something like an organic farmers market with seasonal items, because I LOVE buying produce. However, I’m not going to get my hopes up because this is China and it might turn out to be some kind of corporate-sponsored dairy festival.

WHO’S UP FOR A DAIRY CHALLENGE?

Culture

I went to the Guangdong Museum of Contemporary Art yesterday on this island in the middle of the city called “Ersha Island.”  I’ve never been to that island before because I could not figure out the ridiculously complex bus route to get there — no subway stops anywhere nearby and I’m too stubborn to take a cab.  Actually, I attempted to go two days ago, but wound up in the far south of the city in the middle of big expressways and factories, got poured on, and returned home in defeat — it’s typhoon season.  The museum was surprisingly good, even though I’m not a fan of most Chinese contemporary art.  The big theme was “Goodbye Post-Colonialism,” so there was a lot of art dealing with slavery and the British Empire, and a lot of projecting of sympathy on the part of the Chinese viewers who weren’t too busy taking pictures of themselves in front of paintings of black people.  At first I was like, why are Chinese people painting about black lynchings in the American South?  Then I realised there were non-Chinese artists too, haha.

Outside of that exhibit there was some random funky interactive art, like this black opaque curtained structure with psychedelic patterns on the outside.  Everyone walked up to it, peeked inside its dark mysterious interior and walked away confused.  I started blankly at it for a while, then realised that it was a play on John and Yoko’s bed-in during the 60′s and that you were supposed to sit in it, so I took off my shoes and went inside.  I guess the guards knew it was allowed, because no one yelled at me, but the people passing by were flabbergasted, like this was some really bold act of self-assertion.  I lied in there for about 10 minutes for a rest, while people peeked their noses in and gave me admonishing looks.  Some even gathered on the balcony above and stared down; I felt like a piece of performance art.  Then the intensity of the situation became too great and I couldn’t stop myself from cracking up, so I got out and was like “You can go inside too!”  Nobody did.  Why wasn’t there a sign in Chinese explaining the cultural reference being made?  As if any mainland Chinese person is going to know what John and Yoko were doing while the Cultural Revolution was going down at home.

Later on I found the sculpture garden, which had dense green grass, walking stones and patio furniture.  Because it was completely enclosed by the museum walls, I felt like I was in a well-manicured American backyard.  The other museum-goers were crowded at the concrete walkway by the entrance, squatting on the stairs.  It was like the concept of being allowed to walk on something so well-taken care of was completely foreign.  Chinese people can sleep in the most unbelievable places, squat in dense moving crowds while calmly slurping from a bowl of instant noodles, but they hold back from enjoying a place that was clearly built for people to enjoy.  I guess it’s a remnant of the prevailing mentality here, which is that nothing is allowed unless it is explicitly stated.  Pretty much the opposite mentality of most Americans.  However, I was more surprised than usual at this behavior because the people hovering around the edges were all about my age or younger.  I guess some ideas die more slowly than others.  Anyway, after I sat down and started cutting up an orange with my pocket knife (dad-style), a brave group strode over a little too casually and before I knew it almost everyone was sitting on the grass in the sun.

I left the museum feeling hungry and was surprised to find a “French” convenience store nearby, which was attached to a “French” restaurant attached to the Xinghai Concert Hall.  There were reasonably priced mini ice-cream cups in tempting flavors, I got durian!  Sitting at the table next to me was an odd family.  A burly white father speaking a bad mixture of heavily accented English and terrible Mandarin, a pregnant Chinese mother half his age speaking in Mandarin only, a middle school aged girl (who I’m guessing is the mother’s daughter from a previous marriage) looking sheepish, and a 5 year old half-Chinese son who seemed completely unresponsive to his father regardless of what language he barked out questions in.  Can i say… AWKWARD?  All of them looked miserable as they piled into their shiny silver station wagon.

After that wholesome scene I moseyed on over to the concert hall.  It’s a modern structure with large windows and good lighting.  I always judge a building’s level of classiness by the lighting, because in China even the classiest looking places can be marred by that terrible ice-blue florescent lighting, ack!  I felt positively singular when I walked across the empty lobby’s expansive marble floor to the brochure rack with the sun bouncing off my squeaking tangerine Crocs, stuffed fliers for Taming of the Shrew, a Kunqu opera called The Peach Blossom Fan, and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra into my bag and squeaked out.