Ancient Chinese City, Huh?

Chongqing: Land of Impressively Accurate Boys

Chongqing was a great place. I think I’d really like to go back and get a better look at it. The fog that flummoxed the Japanese bombers was in effect until the final day. It’s very cool for a city to have so many views to show. Pity it’s an inferno in the summer.

Piracy in China. Also, fog.

The crazy thing about Chongqing is that it’s a mountainous city. It’s not really just that it’s in a mountainous area (it is), but it’s almost built in and on mountains. You’ll be walking along next a building and suddenly a gap will open up between you and the building and if you look down, you’ll see that the floor of the building right next to you isn’t really the ground floor, it’s more like the eighth floor, and you are walking on a sidewalk, but over the last 5 minutes or so of walking, it became an elevated sidewalk several meters above what may or may not be the ground down there. This ain’t no touristified Lombard Street.

What will really make or break the city for me will be how they handle the reconstruction. All major cities in China are going through a massive rebuilding period. I’m not so much worried about them tearing down old apartment blocks and such – Most of the ones I saw scheduled to be torn down looked more than a bit past their useful days, if not outright dangerous. I worry if they are going to be able to keep the neighborhood feel. I got the distinct feeling that, maybe because of the terrain, there were neighborhoods that meant more than an artificial division of the city. There were so many narrow winding streets. I wish I had taken more photos of these homey places, but frankly they were almost all in a pretty bad state. I hate to be the white tourist guy walking through taking pictures of a run-down place that people call home. I don’t like poverty porn.

Destruction in Chongqing


But that’s another interesting thing. Where Shenyang looked tired, beat down and listless, Chongqing seemed vibrant, active, and well, still pretty decayed. What I mean is that Chongqing and Shenyang seemed similar in that the buildings looked really run-down and falling apart, but in Shenyang, there were half-finished buildings where construction had been halted long ago standing next to partially destroyed buildings. In Chongqing, there was none of that. It looked like Chongqing had the investment money Shenyang didn’t. Buildings are coming down and going up all over Chongqing. In Shenyang, they seemed very still, preserved in whatever state they were when the last person left.


Buildings set to be knocked down (click through to the gallery to see a close-up of those red banners in the back. They're calling for people to chill about their houses getting taken away from them. Yes, the banners tell the people to "chill." It's a Chinese word. The Chinese invented chilling. Li Bai wrote poems about it.)

A slight digression on Shenyang: I’ve talked to two people who have said things are going really well in Shenyang nowadays. Possible explanations: 1) I’m completely wrong 2) things are going really well for the rich in Shenyang (both of the people I talked to were very well-to-do and didn’t seem very interested in regular folks) 3) After walking all over the town for two days, I only saw the run-down parts.
I’m partial to #2 myself. Shenyang has a long history of the elite doing quite well thank you very much.

Back to Chongqing. Another thing I noticed about the people there, and of Chengdu, frankly, is that the people I talked to (granted, mainly cabbies, shopworkers and the like) are pretty pissed, and they’re pissed at the government. I think I’ve only talked to one person who really touted the party line on everything, otherwise they were just going off on the not only the local but also the national politicians. They were using words like fraud and cheating and talking about fake elections and massive corruption and wasting of money. In Shanghai and Beijing, cabbies will talk generally about corruption or the “low quality” of Chinese people, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard so many stridently anti-government Chinese folks in China. Again, my sampling group was very very small, but still. Also, I saw a lot more protest banners that hadn’t been taken down. I only got a picture of the one (again, I’m too embarrassed to be a real photographer), but there were several. They generally call on the government to step in and get them a better deal from the housing developers that are tearing down their homes. Interesting stuff.


Banner chastising the government on a soon-to-be demolished building

I didn’t go to very many touristy places. I did see the Arhat Temple (remind me never to become an Arhat. They had hundreds of them in there and they were all really freaky – mostly lumpy heads, but also the bulging eyes, the ripped open chest to show a Buddha inside, the extra heads growing out of the back of their heads… Call me vain, but I’ll remain unenlightened.) I also went to a place called Ciqikou, which is about 40 minutes outside town (1.50 RMB for the scary rust-bucket bus). It’s an ancient (aren’t they all) town that’s famous for being the place where all the china got loaded on boats to sail down the river. It’s also famous for being where a lot of communist folks hid out during the war. It’s really a very cool funky place. I was afraid that I was going to be really turned off by how touristy it was, but actually it felt about right. I’m sure the racket and smell and renao of it all accurately recreated the town in its heyday. I always love those old twisty alleyways. It reminded me a little of the old town in Lijiang. Very nice place.


Ciqikou: touristy but very cool

Well, I’ll try to cut this short. I’m on the ship heading down the Yangtze right now and we don’t have internet access very well, so I’ll probably not be able to post this for a few days, but hey, if you’re reading this, then it’s already been posted, right? So hurray for that.

Olympian

On my way to have dinner at JG & K’s house, I planned a few hours ahead so I could wander around the Olympic area before we met up. It’s really incredible.

Now before talking about the reason I like the place, it’s right to stop and mourn again for bulldozed Beijing. The powers that be basically bulldozed (拆 – one of the most visible characters in China. They paint it on all the buildings that are to be taken down) the northern pie-slice of the city, and rebuilt it to serve the Olympic Games. To be honest, I’m not sure what exactly was up there, but it had to mean uncountable homes and lives, businesses and livelihoods uprooted. The people are almost never compensated to any real degree of what their property was worth. Often they are promised housing in complexes they can’t afford in areas that make commuting prohibitively expensive. Again, I don’t know much about the actual situation in Beijing, but that’s usually how things run.

So, regardless of what was there, what has sprung up is truly remarkable. The main street is a massive pedestrian roadway – it would be maybe six or seven lanes if it were a highway. The street runs perfectly north-south on the same axis that pierces all the most important buildings in Beijing including the throne in the center of the Forbidden City. It was this same axis that boasted perfect feng-shui until Mao’s tomb was placed in the center of Tiananmen Square in willful defiance.




To either side are all the buildings you saw on TV: the bird’s nest, the water cube, the hotel that looks like a torch and all the rest. There’s also a lower level shopping concourse that connects to the brand-new subway line (with the china-plate signage below). Everything is made up in challenging architecture – and I mean that in a good way. It’s a wonderful public space, and it’s going to fail and collapse into decay and indifference.



Apparently, just like the huge, exciting and controversial Beijing Opera House, they can’t get anyone to rent out the Bird’s Nest or any of the other main buildings with any frequency. The shopping concourse is completely empty – not one shop is open. The main promenade is lined with hundreds of umbrella-topped tables, but there’s nowhere to buy food. The few – maybe three or four in the entire area – food stalls serve ramen noodles and little else. For a Chinese place, there was almost no one there, and the people there looked to be all out-of-towners. Has there ever been an Olympic City that has lasted beyond the Olympics to become a useful part of the city?

The major exception to this, I hope, is the Olympic Park. At the end of the promenade and the end of the subway line is a massive park. And I mean massive. It’s one of the things that only a totalitarian state could command: not to protect an already green space, but to raze a huge swath of the city and build hills and mountains and overlooks and dig a broad lake and plant thousands upon thousands of trees. To be slightly critical, it does have a little of the overly-planned feel to it, but that’s only a small quibble.

I think I’m especially drawn to parks in China. Maybe it’s because my lungs are crying out for less particulate, and let it be said that the pollution in Beijing is much less awful than I’ve ever seen it. That’s not to say it isn’t absolutely miserable, not to say that you still don’t cough out pretty colors and wake with an odd scratching in your throat, but it would be wrong to say there hasn’t been an incredible improvement. Standing on a man-made overlook, looking south past the Olympic venue into the haze beyond which Tiananmen Square and all the rest should stand, I was more than a little optimistic about weary weary Beijing.

Perhaps there’s something deeper and more meaningful to be found in another look at the sign that tells us to not lean on the railing:

Propositioned in Peking

So. Beijing.

Funny story about that.

Maybe not so funny.



I came in to Beijing a couple of days ago, and just like a pro, I took the airport shuttle to the subway and the subway to the stop nearest my hotel, then I hoofed it off to a good night’s sleep.

Well, that was the plan anyway. I ended up getting off the subway at Wudaokou about 10pm or so. Maybe a little later. Anyway, I rolled my little luggage bag with me down the street. In the direction of my hotel. Which wasn’t there.

Now, in all actuality, it might be up there somewhere, but I didn’t find it. If I had to guess, it was a victim of the construction up there. There’s so much building going on, and most of the streets are called Xueyuan Lu or some variant, that I didn’t have much of a chance. What I did get was a nice couple of hours walking around Wudaokou late at night. It was kind of educational, really.

Wudaokou is kind of a student ghetto, with a really nice mix of local folks, foreigners and a general student/poverty grunge feel. I saw a few groups of people staggering home from bars – one poor sap being carried home in one group and another groups wavering uneasily around a passed-out compatriot. I saw more graffiti than I’d even seen in Shanghai. But in general, it was all about what I didn’t see.

That being my hotel.

So finally I circled back to the Wudaokou station where I knew there was a moderately passable hotel. I walked in (the indoor ATM alcove next door had two gentlemen curled up for a long winter’s nap) and got a room for what would end up being about 8 hours. No I don’t need breakfast.

Anyway, the next day I did find another hotel, a little further away from where I wanted to be, but the same chain as the one that disappeared on me (7 Days Hotel – no clue if they’re Adventists… that’s a joke, son), and the guy at the desk told me one of the ways they keep the cost down is by building in relatively out-of-the-way spots. This new hotel was no exception. Hidden away in a construction area, with snack restaurants that I’m too scared to try scattered around.




Funny/frightening story about the area- I was walking down one of the side roads, trying to get my bearings, well I say it’s a side road, but it’s really heavily trafficked, especially at 11 in the morning or so when I was there, and I saw a “leisure massage” place on the side of the road. Frankly, these are aaaaall over the place in Shanghai, on nearly every street except the main tourist drags. It’s funny because they almost all look the same, too. There’s a narrow glass storefront, inside of which on either side will be two couches. On the couches with be perched the prostitutes. Now usually, just out of the sheer gawp-worthiness, as I walk by, I’ll glance over, trying to look inconspicuous, and surely failing.

Usually, there are three of four very bored-looking women on the couches in really ridiculous outfits. They’ll be chatting or staring off into space. So I was a bit surprised to see a woman sitting on a chair in-between the couches and looking out to the road. I looked away and kept walking, but then there was an aggressive tapping on the window like with a coin or something. I kept walking, she kept tapping. The whole sex worker situation here is really difficult to come to terms with. I’m sure I’m adding in my own narrative here, but that tapping seemed desperate to me, and I remember it clearly.



A brief sequel to that story came yesterday. I took a wonderful long walk from my hotel at Dazhong Si down to Tiananmen Square through Houhai and the Forbidden City (which I forgot closes at 4:30, grrr.). So I was going to meet up with friends for dinner, but I had a few hours to kill. I went out near the square to check google maps and look for a café or something where I could get some reading done. Now, I have to admit, I do get a little kick out of scaring the touts who come up to foreigners and try to get them to buy something. All it takes is a little Chinese and most of them are pleasantly shaken up. So I stood there with my blackberry typing away and trying to catalogue all the people who were trying to sell me stuff. I didn’t actually take a count, but I should have. There were two women who wanted me to go see their art exposition (this is an old semi-scam I remember from years ago). There were plenty of very old women trying to sell me maps (they have Chinese flags too, but I guess they figure I don’t want one of those). There were plenty of people trying to get me to let them take me to the great wall. These last folks were the most persistent and I ended up chatting a little more with them, but the topic never strayed too far from what a wonderful trip I could have and how cheap it would be, no matter how many times I said I wasn’t going to go.




Anyway, I started to move away, still using the blackberry as a prop to look busy, and a couple of young women came up to me and said hello. By that point I was answering all “hello”s with “I’m not interested” in Chinese. That was usually enough to get them to move along, but these two would have none of it. Oh, your Chinese is good (although they corrected my grammar for me once, which I appreciated). How long are you staying in China? How long have you studying Chinese? All the standard questions. Finally I said, I really don’t know what you’re selling, but I’m just not interested. They were a bit miffed. I heard one say, Oh, he’s just too busy, but then they stood a little away from me for a few minutes. Finally one of them came back over and in a slightly saccharine tone, asked if I wanted to go get something to drink with them. It didn’t dawn on me at the time – those of you who know me are all probably aware how dense I am about these things – what she was probably actually saying. They eventually left to find a better mark, and I went off to find my café, embarrassed as I figured out that they probably weren't asking me to go look at their art exposition - come up and see my etchings, indeed.

I mention those two instances because those kinds of things just don’t happen to me, and I figure for my friends who haven’t come to China yet, maybe this will give you a little flavor of the place. That and I can’t figure out whether it’s all funny or sad.

Wow. This was supposed to be a quick update. No luck there.

I couple more days in Beijing, then I’m heading out to Chengdu on Thursday, anything I should see while I’m there?

Soooooooooooooooul Train

Hurray and hurrah! I’m on my way out again. And, in line with the best of trips, I’m not entirely sure where I’m going. First stop is Beijing, then by an odd twist of fate, I’m heading to Shenyang, then back to Beijing, then, well… I’m not entirely sure really. But I’ll tell you the story so far.
I knew I needed to get out and about, lest I evolve chair-legs out of my butt, but credit is certainly due to Ms. M for getting me excited about a bit of travel when she stopped by Shanghai to lose to laptop – successfully, I might add. The other serendipitous thing is that Prof H, in whose house I’m sitting while in Shanghai, came back home for December, so I thought it would be nice of me to make myself scarce and give him his apartment back. So there you are, there’s always a good reason to go meandering, but sometimes it takes a bit of a push.
I decided to come to Beijing because I need to run an errand for someone, and I’ve got a few friends here that I haven’t seen in years, and well, ‘cause hey it’s Beijing! (That should be read in the same voice as the great Jack handy quote: “If you ever fall from a building go completely limp, and maybe someone will think you're a dummy and try to catch you, 'cause, hey, free dummy”) I lived here a couple of times while going to one language school or another, but I haven’t been here in a few years now, and as with any Chinese city over that period of time, I’m told everything is different. They demolished a pie-slice of the city to the north for the Olympics and built a huge park, and well, a lot of other stuff. I’m looking forward to exploring a bit.
The funny thing is that one of my old Beijing friends, J, who is now a wig of a rather large size, is heading to Shenyang for a couple of days and asking if wanted to tag along. Yeah. I do. Shenyang is a read pit. An eyesore and industrial failure zone. It’s like all the economic and climactic and psychic despair of the US rust-belt were focused into one sad little city. They lost their industry in the mid-90s and still haven’t really gotten it back. Well that’s hearsay, because I don’t know for sure. So why am I excited to go there? That was the first place I ever went in China. I taught there for a year. The people were wonderful – I met W there, who I dated for several years, and the food is really great homey country food. And there’s winter. Real crazy-cold blizzard winter. I love it. I know, I’m sick in the head. One trouble is that I haven’t been able to get in touch with anyone I knew from up there on such short notice, so I might not even get to meet anyone, but hey, still, I’m really looking forward to it.
So after that, a return to Beijing, meet up with some good folks from Qinghua U, and from the inky world of Public Relations, and then… then, where? Well, I’m thinking that I want to head down to Chongqing, and then head back down the river to Shanghai, but maybe there’s somewhere in the middle there that I might want to check out too. We shall see.
I guess I should close with a bit on the train I took to get here to Beijing. I decided to go the train because I really miss taking the train – I don’t get to take the train much in the US, and frankly I was feeling a bit nostalgic. Let’s see how long that lasts, eh? So it was the ever so swank D308 one-stop express to Beijing. You can see the extent of the swank in the photo down there.


Anyway, it was a little spooky because for the first leg of the trip – from Shanghai to Nanjing – I actually had the whole berth to myself. I had just started tempting fate by thinking it might be nice to have some random folks to chat with when we stopped to pick them up: one nice woman who made very embarrassed phone calls to someone in a hushed overly-secretive voice, and a couple. A talkative couple. At midnight. A loud talkative couple at midnight. After they finally wound down more than an hour later, a thought occurred to me. Is it always the way that the person most responsible for your sleeplessness will be the first to go to sleep? Also: big snorer, that man. And that only made me self-conscious. With all the dry recycled air in the train, I was worried that I’d be snoring too, so ah, well. Not much good sleep.
But I arrived happy hale and hearty in the nicely chilled capital of Beijing. I can’t do much wandering today because I’m saddled with my roller-bag, and I’m leaving tonight, so there’s no hotel. I figured I’d just take advantage of the fine folks at Starbucks and their Wifi and write you a note. Pity VPN seems to be balky, so I can’t get this posted right now, but hopefully soon.