Beijing - Off the Beaten Track

Beijing – Famous across the globe for being the epicentre of Chinese culture, education, politics and history. Those who haven’t been there can easily list a few names of well-known places of the top of their heads – The Great Wall, The Summer Palace, The Temple of Heaven… the list goes on. Beijing is equally famous for its cuisine on countless museums exhibiting a whole range of aspects regarding anything Chinese, as well as its narrow “Hutong” streets where the Beijingers dwell amid rolling rickshaws and a mass concoction of various noises. 

During the summer, the population of Beijing appears to double as it is swamped by tourists from other parts of China and abroad. Familiar sights of hat wearing tourist groups carrying flags whilst they hurriedly follow tour guides as they bark out historical information over a megaphone become unanimous, and packed subways, buses and heaving traffic become all too typical. Its during this time that I like to avoid the crowds and head down to parts of the city where special parts of Beijing can be found off the beaten tourist track. 

798 Art District, located in the north east side of the city on the way to the airport is a giant open air art exhibition that has been built on the site of a disused factory complex. As it becomes more and more accessible to the world, China, in particular Beijing, is currently undergoing a revolution in its creative sector, and all kinds of art, be it abstract or traditional, can be viewed here. As you stroll through old factories that don’t look out of place in the Cold War, a real sense of China’s industrial culture can be breathed in, and as the place is littered with works of art depicting all manner of things, a surreal feeling of nostalgia and modernity can be experienced.

Continuing on with the theme of creativity, Beijing’s Gulou district offers real exposure to the capital’s booming underground music scene. Although perhaps not quite yet known on Western shores, many rock bands are being churned out all the time, and venue’s such as the Mao Live House and Yu Gong Yi Shan are the places to go to find out what all the fuss is about. A brief stroll around the Hutongs of Gulou will lead you past many cosy looking bars and cafes, and prior to heading up to a gig at these places you can sit back and watch the world go by with a bottle of Tsingtao beer. The main road in Gulou leading up to these musical venues are littered with guitar shops, where local artists active in the rock scene can be heard jamming away. 

Historical sites aside, Beijing has an awful lot of special bits about that set it apart from many other Chinese cities, and as the contrast of old and new can be felt all over the city, it makes all the more an exciting place to be.

The straight library knocks the analogue

Expat Carousel

So I’m sitting here right now in this stifling midsummer Beijing heat on my day off having done my chores of washing the dishes, sending a few emails and playing a couple of well deserved games on Pro Evolution Soccer. Monday afternoon is my peak chill out time after the intense working weekend, and it’s not until around 6pm that my trough of laziness begins to escape me and I start to want to do things. A person can only drink so much green tea and aimlessly surf the net whilst basking in their own sweat for a certain amount of time it seems.

It’s now officially the height of summer, and as a result most of my weekend classes are slowly disappearing as the little buggers get whisked away to various exotic locations or are sent to partake in intensive English summer camps for their holidays. It’s nice, though my own school’s summer courses are looming and having had a teacher leave last week leaving his classes teacher-less, my schedule hasn’t seen much respite. Ah well.

Expat life can be funny. I’ve found that the westerners, or westies, as a friend of mine affectionately calls them, are all by and large subconscious of the fact that we’re all in the same boat living and pressing on in a strange country, and are therefore pretty easy to strike a chord with and become your friends. Of course there are many exceptions, with archetypes ranging from the “I hate everything about China” moaners, to the “I’ve been here 10 years and am better than you” wannabe princes and princesses. It’s relatively easy to identify people like that and the majority the expat community here are all like-minded and easy to get on with. Due to the similarities of your situation and experiences, friendships with fellow expats are easy to forge and develop pretty quickly, and there is even the notion that the group you hang around with become your second family. This makes it weird when you are presented with another typical aspect of expat life, whereby the carousel of people coming and going constantly has people hopping on and off. It requires a lot of flexibility from those who still remain, as they have to push themselves to make new friendships whilst accepting the fact that a good mate who you go down to the pub with every week after work could be packing up and leaving at the drop of a hat. Some are better accustomed to it than others, and it certainly takes a good few heartfelt goodbyes to become used to the pattern.

It's a fun ride y'all!!

After 3 years living abroad and dealing with the sporadic departures of good friends over long periods of time, this summer sees a large flux of those near and dear to me either heading home to study, work, or get married. As someone who at 25 is considered relatively young when looking at the average age of long term expats I guess it’s pretty normal for me to experience this. Obviously, there’s the comforting thought of having decent friends from all the corners of the globe, though I guess this ever changing environment is what I bargained for when I chose to up sticks and find myself a home in a strange place. It’s funny when a large make up of your apparently stable social life for the past 2 years disappears, but change is a key element to life, and I’ll keep trotting on as long as theirs interesting people to meet - such as a music video maker who has worked with Dr. Dre and 50 Cent at the bar last night. Apparently Dre is a bit of a philosopher.

Media Mogul

It seems it’s been a good few weeks since my last post during May which what was for me a rather productive phase, perhaps the result of hours of idleness in front of the laptop screen  and a set of restless fingers. With the Beijing summer in full swing and lovely clear skies coupled with a short-term part time job as an editor for an online magazine,  my creative efforts were either drawn to the media industry or finding the nearest bar to grab a beer in the balmy weather. Now, with the job having come to an end and a return to Beijing’s trademark dreary skies (yet with added humidity), the urge to get back to blog writing and reflecting rears its ugly head yet again for any unfortunate eyes that may befall my facebook/blogger page.

So what of this magazine job? Well, Beijing sure can present you with a flood of opportunities to find work in almost any field if you know where to look. Luckily the Beijinger.com is the accessible platform for this, and a sudden willingness to find a professional platform for my writing as well as an encouraging girlfriend landed me with a decent opportunity soon enough. I was employed as the editor for a creative arts magazine, which was aimed at a niche audience of creative individuals and companies in the “high” arts spectrum of Beijing. Artsy fartsy enough? Well not really, especially seeing as the director of the magazine chose to listen to Katy Perry in the office as motivation music. In my two weeks there I conducted phone interviews, one with a guy from Kentucky who’d somehow imported gargantuan sized 19^th century printing machines to Beijing to set up a traditional printing business, and attended a couple of networking events not knowing anything of what was to be discussed until about thirty minutes before they started. It was pretty frantic, and besides simply writing for the magazine I found I had to educate myself on topics prior to interviews and attending events all in order to make me sound as if I knew what I was talking about. Did you know that the printing press was active in China way before Gutenberg introduced it to Europe in the 1400s? Despite getting my articles approved by the director of the magazine (though they are yet to be published as the magazine altered its release date), my proudest moment was name dropping Game of Thrones whilst asking a question at a networking event in front of a host of smart phone savvies. King of the North!

Raaaaaarrrrr! Death to all blonde haired smart phone users!

I was unable to stay any longer at the post as the company couldn’t support me doing the editor’s job at only ten hours a week, though it was a fun and educational experience. I’m currently back on the prowl for more freelance jobs as they come, though with my free time rekindled on my days off, I’m back to the usual pattern of reading, film watching and walks in the park followed by a good few bevvies in the sun. The school will stop its normal classes for the summer holidays in a few weeks which will be followed by the onslaught of teaching every day for 2 weeks as the Chinese parents push their kids for intense English cramming sessions, poor buggers. Looks like I’ll have to get my Mr. Bean which I hope will ease their suffering, though a bawling four year old as a result of me stretching my face into all manner of what I thought were humorous positions may indicate otherwise.

Smile kids - English is fun!

China’s Megatrends and a Confused Sussex Boy amid the storm

China is in the media spotlight so much these days, and for someone with too much time on their hands and regular tendencies to scroll through the internet in a brain dead zombie-like fashion, it can’t be argued that most of the English language coverage is pretty negative. Of course I’m no media analyst and my regular news updates stem mainly from the BBC, though it would seem Auntie is no pioneer for news reports that don’t hold unbiased “everyone who isn’t doing it like us is bad” viewpoints on developing countries.

For those of you that are interested in China and its chaotic mosaic of a society, and wish to pursue an understanding that doesn’t jump to conclusions but jumps away from attitudes and expectations held by Western democracies, a book named China’s Megatrends by American socio-economic expert couple Doris and John Naisbitt may be worth a read. I picked the book up for 10 Yuan (about a quid) on one of Beijing’s many street book vendors, selling pirated copies of novels old and new, as well as an alarming amount of get rich fast/self help books.

I’ll start with what I’ve gathered so far. The book is filled with various explanations and reasoning behind the actions and schemes of the Chinese government, emphasising its rapid development from a backward peasant society to the world’s second largest economy in just 30 years, and how as a political machine it has been brilliantly efficient in bringing China up to the standards of the developed world. Sound a little too good to be true? Well just when I thought it was refusing to tackle the BBC’s favourite issues of human rights and democracy, the authors make the point that in terms of opportunities and standards of living, the issues of human rights of China have improved dramatically due to the economic advancement and modernisation of the country. Also, the events of 1989 are not attributed to the need for democracy and freedom of speech, but a general dissolution felt towards the government regarding high inflation and lack of produce at the time (though interestingly the book refers to it as the Tiananmen Tragedy, not the typical “Tiananmen Massacre” used by other Western sources). Perhaps most interestingly, regarding democracy the Naisbitts bring forward the age old Confucian ideals of stability and harmony and their importance to the Chinese idea of well-being, thus a Western style democracy whereby parties compete against each other for power would throw the country into disarray when what it cries out for is stability and the idea that the population should all work towards a common goal. It also mentions that the current Western model of democracy took hundreds of years to mature, and China, with its current installation only really being 60 years old, has made massive leaps from its autocratic closed off society under Mao. Unlike the West, individuality is not seen by the Chinese as complete freedom, instead freedom to them is achieved by families and citizens cooperating together and the whole of society heading down a similar path. The book repeatedly quotes from leading Chinese politicians and scholars mentioning plans to put more power into the hands of ordinary more emancipate people’s minds, and take from other countries various pieces of political, technological and sociological knowledge to add to China’s already existing montage of very un-Chinese ingredients.

Although the ideas put forward in the book are quite intriguing and do contradict many of the claims of other media sources regarding political corruption and human rights, it isn’t without its flaws. A peculiar aspect of the book is that it was released in China in Chinese a while before it hit Western bookstores, despite it being written by American authors. This did cause me to ponder whether this book, with its strange reluctance to directly criticise the Chinese system, is being used by China as a propaganda tool; a viewpoint shared (perhaps predictably) by many English speaking media corporations who reviewed the book. With suspicious mistakes in spelling and countless misprints coupled with questionable grammar, I have even been pondering the legitimacy of this book. Alas, after various internet searches it would appear that the book and its authors are real.

The Naisbitts

With regard to human rights, corruption and other nasty stuff we always hear about when hearing about China, the book makes an effort to bring a new light on these matters and the need for more understanding of China’s situation which I fully support, though having lived here for 3 years I can say that a lot of things are without total justification and, among many other things, are the result of a country with a superfluous population all trying to make their way whilst sometimes discarding law and morality. It would however take me an age to write about this and some of the things I’ve witnessed and heard about during my time here. I’ll save those stories for the pub.

The book, criticism aside, does serve well as a vehicle bringing some much needed light and explanation on the current China socio-economic situation, and does appear relatively appeasing and understanding compared to much of the finger-pointing armchair criticism style seen so often on the BBC. I haven’t read much work written by Westerners who have lived in or have studied China’s trends, though so far I’ve found the books of Joseph Hessler, an American teacher turned journalist who has spent much of his working life in China to be the most unbiased and informative view on Chinese happenings. It’s certainly interesting hearing the story from the other side (free from the heavily censored Chinese media), and in the meantime I’ll continue on my new found quest to find out more in understanding China’s doings and directions. This has become more of a book review than a blog, though the theme of the book is a topic that has repeatedly been on my mind of late. 

Dance Offs and Debauchery

After the intense working weekend of an English teacher in Beijing, Sunday evening comes the time where I am eligible to paint the red capital red. Though depending on how much watered down Tsingtao beer I consume from a giant 40 Yuan keg, perhaps a yellowish brown hue should be the more suitable choice of colour for painting the town, or at least a corner of my bathroom. The current hotspot for me and my colleagues, who due to a strange working schedule throws us together whether we like each other or not, is the PBD pizza bar. Of course we love each other really, and the topics of conversation, although rarely departing from frustrations in our attempts at educating spoilt Chinese kids, are always fun and varied, at least until we all stand up and dance in unison to “The Chicken Dance” song. This happens to be one of the tracks on our kindergarten class CD, and as educators/entertainers, we have mastered the technique of dancing perfectly in time to this kid’s party classic whilst feeling no shame whatsoever.

The bar itself is pretty nice and relaxed, serving as a student hangout for both Chinese and foreign students alike, offering cheap (but pretty yummy) pizza and other Western delicacies, as well as dirt cheap alcohol, ranging from the mentioned Tsingtao keg (fiendishly guised in a Hoegaarden glass), to mixers, shots, and all the quirkily translated cocktails you could imagine. After the initial “phew, the weekend is finally over” pint or five, the atmosphere starts to heat up around 10 as the bar staff pump up the volume of the music, instantaneously attracting more students like flies, and thus begin the many (attempted) dance offs. Since discovering the bar (thanks Simone!) it came to our attention that although being pretty packed most nights and playing loud (albeit generally dire) music, that nobody was getting their boogie on. Although perhaps an ambitious claim, we’re pretty proud that our Chicken Dance moves followed up nicely with Ricky Gervais style flash dance mixed with MC hammer shit to Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” caused a dancing sensation that is now a regular feature on the PBD Sunday night roster. As I mentioned earlier, the bar is pretty nice and friendly, and is full of Chinese students from all corners of the country, all of whom are up for a bit of dancing after a few drinks. We met these guys from Guizhou (a relatively under-developed province in south west China) who were celebrating a friend’s birthday, and after being showered generously with various liquors from these guys, we got up and repaid the favour by being true ambassadors of the highest of Western culture by dancing pristinely and elegantly to Usher’s “Yeah”. This in turn, caught the eye of a nearby bloke wearing tight clothes, who was shaking his body and was dancing in a highly suggestive manner that would most likely bring trouble upon his head should he portray said dance style in a bar in my hometown. That was our cue to decide to take a sudden interest and yearning to play table football.

You got served bro!

This Sunday I chose not to indulge in such shenanigans, and headed down to the old part of Beijing for a gig at the Yu Gong Yi Shane concert hall. It’s not a massive place, perhaps a little smaller than the Brighton Corn Exchange or The Underworld in Camden, though it’s the spiritual home of Beijing’s thriving music scene. It was only my third trip there, previously seeing Danish outfit The Ravonettes and American indie pop group The Pains of Being Pure at Heart (sounds like a band formed by a group of teenagers who hang out shopping malls right?), and this time I went with my girlfriend to see Australian indie pop duo/couple Agnes Kain. Although not particularly well known across the world (I came to this conclusion due to their not having a Wikipedia page), they were completing their China tour, and played a lovely set of sweet guitar/keyboard driven tunes. The crowd wasn’t huge, though was pretty responsive after each song and clapped along happily as the singer/keyboardist became more and more perplexed by smoke emitting sporadically from the stage. They tested out a couple of tracks from their upcoming third album, and their charm and honesty was exposed after a mouth piano malfunction and a prompt explanation about how they hadn’t rehearsed the new material a great deal. Still, after getting my feet going almost as much as The Chicken Dance, as well as hanging out at the bar and chatting after the show, the band are in my good books.

Agnes Kain - awwww

 I’ll keep my eyes peeled for any more gig news and will do my best to report any incidences from any of Beijing’s wide array of bars. It seems something worth raising an eyebrow to or writing about occurs in almost any given drinking hole on any given night here, as people party like crazy and paint the red town yellowy brown. I’ll keep you posted.

Syringes and Strange Drivers

There are many ways in which as an expat you could be sceptical towards the education system here in China. One being the sheer the difference in the approach of learning in China, with it being more exam focused rather than focusing on practical life skills. During my time here, I’ve seen a wide range of different teaching styles, from ruthless, robotic rote teaching to the more open “let’s try and educate our students to question things” approach. Unfortunately the latter is harder to come by due to many reasons that I presume mainly stem from politics or traditional Chinese hierarchal ways of thinking, particularly in the north of the country.

In spite of this, this morning saw my first ever direct experience of the use of a syringe (minus the needle) to maintain order and discipline in the classroom. I had been having trouble with a class that features in my three time a week newly acquired kindergarten gig, and asked one of the senior Chinese teachers for some advice on discipline. This was mainly concerning one particularly disruptive kid with the ability to cause domino effect patterns of chaos to what is normally a reasonably well behaved class. I explained to the Chinese teacher that the kid was causing problems in the class, and she responded by stating “he is really naughty, but he’s afraid of injections”. She then proceeded to find a syringe, (which I presume was not stored for medical purposes but for last gasp disciplinary measures) then filled it up with water, and finally squirted the naughty toddler with projectile aqua (which is French for water). After its apparent effectiveness, she continued to be on syringe standby should he, or any other daring preschooler dare to misbehave in any way deemed unfit for this lady with an interesting passion for using primitive water fight techniques to bring order to a class. If any of the must haves of the 90s was needed now, it’s surely the Super Soaker 500. I don’t claim to be a child psychologist or anything, though I can see how methods drawing on a kids fear of injections to gain short term control of an unruly attitude could be detrimental to their mental well being. Though I can say, as a novice in controlling mental kids that frequently run recklessly into a particularly precious area, I’m still open to suggestions. Anyone familiar with such experiences, suggestions are welcome should you be reading this.

Sit down or I'll vaccinate you

After the fun is over, I usually feel pretty fresh from my work out of being paid to jump around with 4 year olds (yes Daily Mail, it’s what I do and surprisingly I’m not a paedophile), and can enjoy the rest of the day off in the lovely warm weather than Beijing is currently having. The driver who drives me to and from the Kindergarten always holds interesting conversations however, mostly maintaining an interest in Western practices and customs, questions which I’ve answered countless times since being in China though he can’t be blamed for his curiosity. We entered into controversial waters the other day though, as he brought up the topic of the British Empire by stating that British people look down upon other countries in an arrogant manner, and love to bully weaker countries. Although I’m usually pretty switched off and looking forward to getting home at this time, I was a bit shocked. I went to say that although Britain had committed some pretty despicable acts during the days of the Empire, some countries did benefit from the introduction of democracy, economic development and social welfare. I pointed out Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong as examples. He then retorted with “that’s your Imperialist education teaching you those things, but all you did was bully weak countries!”

My inclination was to go down the route of either saying “open your eyes” and look at the above mentioned countries current situations, or responding with “what about China bullying others with it’s claims over The Philippines/Taiwan/Tibet?” I perhaps rather foolishly choose the latter, though luckily my risk of offending him deeply was met with a simple “Eh?” as if such to question such matters was a completely alien concept. I stopped there and didn’t want to get into that can of worms, though it was certainly the first time I’ve experienced this kind of opinion in such a direct manner, though I was aware of its existence prior to this. Chinese people are generally pretty humble, though there is a theory that a key element to some of the Chinese people’s psyche is the idea of 弱者心态, which basically translates as inferiority complex or small man syndrome. This attitude stems from centuries of China being invaded, raped and pillaged by numerous other nations, though now, with China finding its way in the world, many want to prove its not weak anymore and will actively stand up against such foreign oppression, be it legit or not.  After swallowing my pride and trying not to get too offended by his claims, he went on a wild America bashing rant, mentioning some recent football match between the US and China where an American player refused to shake the hand of a Chinese player after being fouled. All I had to do then was be the typical foreigner in China nod and smile as he barked away, simultaneously meandering around the Beijing traffic as the cotton seeds that dominate the Beijing skies at present floated romantically around our surroundings, under a beautiful blue smog free spring sky.

Let's just all be friends shall we?

New Kindergarten Classes/Thoughtful Reading

With the recent addition of this three times a week early morning kindergarten lessons, my teaching schedule has been somewhat packed of late. Should I be complaining? Probably not as I am working a full time job that requires me to teach a now whopping 26 hours a week, and although one could argue that teaching hours require more mental and physical energy than office hours (depending, of course on the job), it’s a different world compared to the usual forty hour week. Anyway, this recent injection of pace into my professional life has certainly made me treasure my days off and not mull around on a supposed “working day” spending time rather unproductively waiting for the time when I have to reluctantly venture out for my sole 90 minute evening class. Teaching is also a job where you’re often required to take your work home with you, and I’m one of those people who like to get all my planning and marking done first so I can have stress free gratification of what is essentially one single day off a week after all the paper work mentioned above is taken care of. Suffer first and then be joyful afterwards, perhaps a Buddhist approach that is also mentioned in “Roads Less Travelled”, not a poem by Robert Frost, but a book on human fulfilment and spiritual development by psychiatrist Scott Peck which I initially thought was one of those Bill Bryson-esque quirky travel books, hence leading me to buy it. It wasn’t, though it’s proving an interesting food-for-the-soul read anyway. These types of books seem to be everywhere in China, both in English and Chinese, with authors like Peck and Malcolm Gladwell appearing in almost every street seller of pirated books, right next to those directly titled self-help books  such as “How to Talk to Anyone” and “How to Make Friends and Influence Others”.

Anyway back to my point about my recent attempts to make use of my spare time. I’ve just got back from Beijing’s expat exhibition, where various companies and organisations set up stands and smother you generously with brochures, key rings and pens as they try to pitch their product. It was quite a pleasant experience though, not what you would normally imagine given China being a place with quite a few people, and we were able to glide effortlessly through the stands, with the main aim being the curry stall. My girlfriend was there on professional duty doing research for her boss on various education companies, though I just hung around chatting to various expat company representatives whilst conspicuously eyeing their rubber bouncy balls imaging the possibilities annoying my neighbours playing one man dodge ball by rebounding the balls off the walls of my apartment. Apart from the cheap and delicious curry, the highlight of the morning was chatting to a Beijinger who was promoting wine by giving out free samples of Californian chardonnay and biscuits. We switched between Chinese and English whilst chatting, though it took me a while to pinpoint his English accent, though it turned out he studied in New Zealand. I revelled by sipping on my wine whilst listening to his mixture of northern Chinese English (which swings towards an American style) and his Kiwi accent, which in terms of uniqueness and unpredictability, blows South African English out of the water. Lovely guy though, and he’ll be certainly getting visits by us in the future if we ever want 20% alcohol wine. Yeah I was tipsy at 10am after sampling that stuff… living the dream.

The international atmosphere was pretty friendly, and I was surprised by encountering a group that organises Celtic themed evenings, with Irish bands, tug of wars and so on included in the festivities. The Welsh flag was featured on the brochure, though as an ashamed half-Welshman who doesn’t really know what we would do during such events, (insert sheep joke here?) I didn’t ask any questions and signed up for notification about coming events.

It's not just about sheep...

It was nice finding out about these organisations that were until this morning were unknown to me, goes to show how much Beijing has to offer. After just missing the chance to appear on a bilingual radio station at the exhibition, I did put my name down to appear as a guest host on their chat show, and should it come to pass, I’m going to have to be on my best behaviour to avoid being a Mandarin speaking Alan Partridge broadcasting to the ears of locals and expats alike. Might go down well though, who knows- “This evening’s hot topic is which is the best rice? Is it a) Chinese, b) Thai, or c) Condoleeza?” We’ll be taking your calls right after…Ruddy hell, it’s Soft Cell”. Classic Partridge.

Ahaaaaa!