Beijing Hotels
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You Only Lama Twice
Entry 5 of 6 | show all | print this entry |
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Forgive me Father for I have sinned. It has been almost 2 months since my last blog. Ok so I started this Blog..ooo..about a MONTH ago..I have been distracted..apologies...I know many have been wondering what happened next...SO much has happened. I have been visited by 3 ghosts
Past - My Cousin Vinny/aka Emma (drunkard, intrepid user of chinese public transport, clingfilmer of toes, with the ability of blackmailing me with pictures of past haircuts),
Present -Michelle Chadwick (she of the 'strawberry blonde', RADA actor, pocket rocket, scrabble whiz, Sub-woofer dancer, drunkard),
AND
Parents - again (drunkards, far FAR more popular at Centro than I ever was).
I have since finished my time in Centro in a whirlwind of crazy latino percussionists and have been to HK, SYD and am now in MEL (Hong Kong, Sydney and Melbourne for those of you not in the travel abbr. biz) but still I shall backdate otherwise Michelle, ma and pa and Cuz Em will be mightily peeved. I mean, come on, a mention in the blog of NJB is tantamount to fame a la Doomsday (yes Dad I know sp is Domesday) book stylee ie that it will be revered as a major historical document...although people let's not bring 'doom' into it...or anything biblical...let's call it something light and frothy...suggestions? Lowfat-Cappuccino-Day?...
but I am going to do a slow-release thing this week. I shall not let you get an instant caffeine buzz. Instead it shall be a drip drip waiting-for-your-pint-of-Guiness torture - you can decide whether it is torture that you are NOT getting it all at once or torture that there is more coming. As to photos. Well for those who can access facebook I have put many up there but as yet I am unable to upload to my blog during my visits to the Internet café. For the time being use your imagination and look forward to a mass of photos coming your way when I figure out how to upload and thus offload.
So let me rewind the tape without it getting jammed in the machine. Come, journey back with me to a time long past (well not long, bout a month ago, but go with it) and in a Wayne's world, Scooby Doo-esque way let the picture in front of you dissolve in vertical waves..
MARCH
I have now visited the Lama Temple (see previous blogs). Twice. YES I finally made it, got carried away and went again. I was most disappointed by the lack of lammas...and second time round at the pre-Torch start of the Tibetan crisis, I was most disappointed by the lack of ANY reference to Dalais...let alone a crisis...not even an acknowledgement that there may be a small argument brewing. Welcome to the blackout that is Chinese news. Anyway, twice is one time too many..and possibly one time and 30 minutes. Curly roof, animals, weird names. Incense. Smoke. A lot of smoke. Green. Red. Buddhas. Fragrant or otherwise. Yadda yadda yadda. THIS is what happens when EVERYONE visits in the short time one is away and wants to see the SAME stuff. The Great Wall. 3 times. In 4 months. Nuff said. Friends who have lived here for 11 years have not seen so much visitor action. But naturally every person was a delight and a gorgeous addition to my time here in their own different and inidividually special way. Ahhhh!
Anyway. Nancy. Concentrate. Temple. First time. We were being INCREDIBLY annoying (so annoying in fact that if I was an onlooker I would have thought we were AMERICANS!!).
But whilst there the pocket-rocket that is Ms M Chadwick and I noticed that all the vegetation had this fake look about it, a kind of plastic browny grey tinge..possibly from the Gobi dust, the Gobby spit or the building dust/pollution and more likely a combination of all three.
Right aligned photo tag:
We wondered if this would change with the new season. Spring is erupting and so is Beijing. .... Ri Tan Park is nearby the hotel. A 10 minute taxi ride. But it is a place that no matter HOW I intone, taxi-drivers NEVER understand where I want to go so I am walking more. It is less stressful. I have seen Ri Tan in its Winter hibernation, in its lantern-decorated Chinese New Year splendour and now, Spring. And through sitting in Ri-Tan I have discovered that the Chinese Spring-clean EVERYthing.
With the blossoming trees stretching out their arms to the warm polluted rays comes the rebirth of seemingly every part of the city....Ooo poetic.....and a tad trite which isn't very spring-like....but we'll continue...actually NOT rebirth but replacement. Creative destruction? Destructive creation? At night They knock down poor-looking concrete flats (possibly with poor people still inside, using poor people to do the work...poorly) and with the dawn come fresh buildings emerging from beneath the rubble, their shiny new windows reflecting the spring sunshine - or reflecting it when the sun breaks through the pollution or the dust storms that visit from the desert. Even in Ri-tan - Temple of The Sun - if the grass is grey, if the earth is dry and plant-less well then by Buddha They simply get lots of old people with interesting body-hygiene to replace it with NEW clumps of green (ish) grass...and NEW plants. It is a huge generalisation to say that everything one buys here will break and most likely sooner rather than later BUT when even the natural life breaks or stops working or just looks a bit grey and is simply replaced one starts to worry about the transient ephemeral nature of the former-communist consumerism New commie-sumerism. OOOooo my university sociology lecturers would be so very pleased with my words...
(nb the small rucksack I bought from Silk St market 2 weeks ago for my travels is starting to unravel, the trousers have de-buttoned and a belt has snapped. Hooray for cheap goods!)
Change. Replacement. Dizzying. Blink-and-it's-gone. Blink again and something else is there. A cramming of 200 years of modernisation into 20 years...and now into 4 months in time for the Olympics. It is most obvious in the cityscapes. When I first arrived my view was of a half-built new office skyscraper opposite and a red poor/small-ish/old/crap-in-comparision-to-all-other-CBD-skyscrapers block of flats. Now I glance out of my window and realise that the new build is finished and the red block has been razed and in its stead a park is rising. When did THAT happen? Chinese magic. Two days later I see young trees have appeared. Nothing up this sleeve, nothing up this sleeve - ah-ha! A forest! Out of nowhere. I believe it may be BJ's attempt to become greener. And possibly create some oxygen amongst the car fumes and cigarette smoke. Used to be that the only green one would see in the city were the 2D park-scape-painted shields that blocked the ugly view of the grey wasteland of former hutongs until new shiny buildings for new shiny rich people were ready to be unveiled.
But this up-and-coming park in the CBD will be gorgeous when it is finished. It is needed. More Green Please We're British. A veritable sun trap and ex-pat summer lunch haven. The fresh and now be-treed new park is surrounded by The E-tower, China World, The Kerry Centre and Fortune Plaza all of which house the offices of PWC, CBRE, accountants, lawyers, buisness people that you are never quite sure what they do but it is something to do with stocks and logistics and statistics and other-worldly things like that etc etc. A world dominated by ex-pats. It also lies on the doorstep of 'Central Park' - a mirrored, sparkly colony of ex-pat apartments. If t'were full of immigrants in the UK we would call it 'ghettoization' (by 'we' I mean annoying sociologists which I should count myself amongst as I was one once and pride self on still being annoying if not sociolgic'ly so) and other types of 'we' (wee) would also ask why 'these people' don't make the effort to participate in local culture (by 'we' I mean The Sun) but here 'these people' have money...and are Western...and the buildings look nice...so its different...its 'gentricification'...they don't have to adapt...they are showing these Chinese how it should be done...obviously...and sure enough the park also meant the replacing of an old grey chinese family-run restaurant with a gym and several delis. Well they do delicious almond croissants and pain-au with real-chocolate! Freshly made every day. AND they do great coffee. Sod this tea and rice crap. Spring is here, and I want to sit in a newly-laid park next to the new parade of delis with my newly-made french pastry and drink a low-fat cappuccino - what do you mean you don't have organic soy milk?
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