Stray Birds

Hi everyone. I'm back in the States now, and very happy to be here. This time last week was my last day in Beijing, followed by a little break in England and now at last back to university.

I wanted to thank you all for keeping up with the blog, it's meant so much to me to hear all your kind comments and encouragement. It wouldn't have happened without you. Please keep me updated on your future adventures, if you would. Thank you for reading.

My wings leave no trace in the sky
but I am glad that I have had my flight

after Rabindranath Tagore

Playing in the Sand

It is finished. By the time this letter reaches you I will already be on the plane, and the China that I have enjoyed these weeks will be disappearing.

I think that lately I’ve been living out modernity, concentrated. I’ve lived in four countries in the last 12 months, each time with a new job and new friends and a new beginning. It feels a lot like building sandcastles: you put in all this love and effort, and then you watch each time as everything gets washed back into the shore. The funny thing is that you know how it ends even as you begin; you make things waiting to lose them. And yet we still keep at it, again and again. Because what is the alternative? To stay in one place and build one big castle, I suppose. Is that truly, meaningfully more permanent? I don’t know, maybe it is. I do know that I enjoy the building very much, and that the waves could happily take my work right soon if they would kindly let me gaze at it now, just a little while.

Bodyguards and Assassins

The other night, as promised, I went to see “Bodyguards and Assassins” (not “Monks and Assassins”, as I said previously, my mistake). I was also wrong to think that it would be a terrible movie – I have rarely had such a good time at the cinema. I’m not sure how much that depended on the whole experience, so I’m hesitant to recommend it as much as I’d like to. I guess it’s one of those films that you either allow yourself to get into or you don’t and that makes all the difference.

The film has some of the best heroes I’ve ever seen. China has a distinct tradition of valorising self-sacrifice for the sake of society. Whatever you think of this as a political philosophy, it definitely makes for amazing movies. I think the closest analogue I’ve seen from Hollywood is The Untouchables, a film about the down-to-earth Chicago cops who brought down Al Capone. Interestingly (starting a sentence with “interestingly” never bodes well, but) Bodyguards and Assassins, like The Untouchables, features a scene riffing off the classic Soviet blockbuster Battleship Potemkin. The scene’s been reproduced about 1 billion times since but I think the one in Bodyguards is my favourite by far. So it’s definitely a film with a little bit of depth – presumably there’s a glut of other movie references in it that went way over my head.

I won’t ruin the film by telling you what it’s about, mainly because I don’t actually know. Literally, I have no idea what the subject of the movie was. I have the classic language-learner’s problem that I understand the majority of the words spoken but almost none of the sentences. I always find this difficult when someone asks me “how much did you understand?” because the answer is often “most of it, and yet none of it.” It’s also why the people who tell you that foreign languages are easy because “50 basic words make up 80% of conversation” (or something) are idiots. Yes it’s true that the basic words make up the whole skeleton of speech, but the actual meaning is dependent on the, oh, ten thousand other words that people tend to use.

Anyway, I digress. Despite not knowing the actual topic of the movie I can confidently say that the themes of love, family, courage and audacity overcome cultural barriers. And even the ability to understand the dialogue.

Massage

Yesterday I went for my first-ever proper massage. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while now but was held up by the awkward inconvenience that in China “massage parlour” tends to be a euphemism (as does “barber shop.” You have been warned). Anyway, a friend finally recommended a place that offered genuine massages (and nothing else) so today I went in.

It turns out full-body massages are a bit of a mixed bag. The facial section I could happily have skipped, it was just a bit weird. Some of the arm and leg parts were a bit like going for physio—I felt like it was definitely doing me ‘good’, but I can’t say I really enjoyed it. However, the back, neck and shoulder sections are absolutely some of the best things I’ve ever spent money on. There’s a part where the masseuse pinches all the way up your back and then snaps it at the end – it feels as if for all your life previously your skin has been that little bit loose, and now you’ve taken it to a tailor to have it brought in a bit at the sides.

We (the masseuse and I) managed to fit in a couple of awkward-comedy movie moments during the session. At first I left on my shirt and jumper, just to be totally 100% clear that I wasn’t shopping for anything but a massage, but was quickly being suffocated by the collar every time she moved my head. Later we enjoyed the late discovery that my trouser pockets were still full of random junk e.g. packets of tissues and an i-pod. Also that the i-pod was still switched on, and catchy jazz numbers were humming through the headphones, though I hadn’t noticed myself.

My other favourite moment was when she told me I was the hairiest person she had ever seen in her life. Since she’s obviously seen a lot of topless guys before I felt like that really meant something. I also checked that she had massaged Europeans before, that it wasn’t a selection bias due to only seeing Asians. (I don’t think Asian men do massages much, I think it’s more for girls really. Though I’m not sure Western guys get massages much in the West, either). Anyhow, I felt unjustifiably proud of the accolade. I guess it’s just nice to come top in something.

Soats

Tonight, for reasons I can’t really explain, I went to the Chinese-as-a-Second-Language Teacher Training Department’s New Year’s Party. It sounds less self-important in Mandarin, by the way, partly because there are no capital letters. The format was kind of a talent show, but with more 'show' and less 'talent'. No that’s harsh, actually, it was a pretty good night, I just thought it was a funny line.

The first act was really the winner for me, it was an Ode to the Chinese Language. The introduction, honest to goodness, went
Girl Host: First up tonight we have a song about a very special language. Boy Host, can you guess what language that is?
Boy Host: That’s too easy, it’s the Chinese Language! We all know the Chinese Language, and we all love the Chinese Language!
So on to the stage marched a line of teachers-to-be and proceeded to sing quite passionately about Mandarin. The background music featured pompous trumpets, military drumming, and rousing violins. The song finished with the lines “We love you our Chinese Language, we love you our Chinese Language!” Then applause and bows, and on to the next act.

My other favourite moment was when they pulled students from the audience to play a guess-the-word quiz: one partner has to describe the mystery words to the other as fast as she can, with much hilarity,you know the drill. But the first pair up were two adorable we-spend-all-our-time-together Chinese girls with huge smiles, and the topic they got given was ‘food’. So for the next two minutes they described every single word with lines like “ooh, ooh, it’s what you had for lunch on Thursday!” or “you eat it with rice, it’s the one your sister likes!” There is something enviable about knowing another person so entirely, not least that it wins you all the prizes at parties.

I’ve been trying to fit some ‘culture’ in while I’m here, and this week that meant a trip to the ballet. I’m not sure that I’m cut outfor ballets, generally, to be honest – I did enjoy it but there’s onlyso much I could watch. My favourite bits were where they were pretty much miming a love story, which was phenomenal, so affecting. It’samazing how much you can express with just body language, especially if your body language includes seemingly unlimited flexibility in all your limbs and the ability to dance close to flight.

Last week I went to see my first-ever Chinese Opera; it’s an interesting art form. The singing is so shrill that it technically shouldn’t be pleasant but it somehow still is. Like Joni Mitchell, perhaps? The movement is slightly stylised, which is awesome, because all the actors are wearing wedged shoes and often flit across the stage like birds. The form is laced with vocalised inner monologues and dramatic irony, with one memorable scene featuring the lead male thinking (loudly) “Ah, let me hide in this grass!,” then his girl sing-thinking “oh, I have such feelings for him!,” then the boy again “ah! She has feelings for me!” but somehow the girl doesn’t hear that, I’m not really sure how it works.

I should probably explain. The story starts with a group of Buddhist nuns, then a beautiful girl joins their order, then a handsome boyshows up to ‘study’ at the monastery. I don’t think I’m ruining it for anyone if I say that the girl and the boy fall in love and that’s pretty much it, for six scenes, with lots of high-pitched singing. There isn’t much will-they-won’t-they because they blatantly will. The main drama of the first part, for me anyway, was why a group of religious celibates had put so much care into their hair and make up –I’m telling you, these were some ridiculously attractive nuns. That’snot a line I’d ever thought I’d write, but seriously they were great.

I guess my biggest question right now is why the true-love story line is such an overwhelming, almost exclusive staple of our dramatic storylines, apparently across cultures. Why don’t we have more stories where the obstacle the lovers have to overcome is trying to decide whether they really like each other enough to make it work, or if maybe they’re more into someone else? What I’d really like to see is an opera where the girl meets a guy and falls head over heels, decides after a month that it’s not such a great idea, leaves him for someone quite nice but pretty uninspiring, then spends the rest of the play quite happy with her decision and cultivating various interests in a wholesome but not particularly fervent way. Is that too much to ask? Surely all-or-nothing love is not the only kind worth staging.

My ticket for next week? “Assassins and Monks,” which looks to be anabsolutely disastrous movie, but hopefully in a good way. Will letyou know how it goes.

Get Busy Living

There’s far less smoking in Beijing than I expected. That said, theair’s so thick with carcinogens that perhaps people find it unnecessary. And everyone says that things have got better in the last few years – back then, smoking was probably a health fad, the filter on the cigarette would at least get rid of the worst of thesmog. I’m having such a good time here, I love it so much, but I can’t help thinking that I should probably discount my happiness bythe two-three months this place could take off my lifespan. I think I’m kidding but I’m not entirely sure.

Aside from breathing, the scariest thing about China is crossing roads. In Israel you live permanently frightened of the taxi drivers, in Cape Town the barging minivans, in Oxford the pandemics of cyclists. In Beijing you have swarms of taxis, crazy driving, endless bicycles, and roads eight-lanes wide. It is genuinely an achievement to make it across the street in one piece, which does give each day a sense of purpose I suppose.

I asked a taxi driver once why they never give way for pedestrians here. “There’s just too many,” he said, “if I ever let one pass then the rest would go too and I’d never get any work done.” I can’t help thinking it's a sub-optimal equilibrium, but I didn't know how to explain that to him in Mandarin.