You know you're in China when.....

My new German adventures have begun so if you would like to follow the address is thus:

www.rundannirun.travellerspoint.com

Tschuss for now.
xx

Other than all of the crazy people situations I have managed to have a number of great experiences in the new year. We have had some crazy parties which also included my first kiss from a girl…yes…it was very nice but I have to say very much not me. I think that boys are still very much on the agenda.

We also had some fantastic times with Silvia, the highlight of which was going to Houhai lake and going skating. As some of you may remember in summer when I was in Beijing for the first time Victoria and I went to Houhai lake and had the best pizza ever. Well, in winter houhai becomes a magnet for Chinese people who go to the lake in order to skate. You can rent skates but also you can rent strange small bikes and even chairs with skates on that you can ride around on the ice.

Silvia and I were both very scared because neither of us had skated in years and we doubted our ability to be able to move more than a few inches. We felt, however, that if we didn’t do it we would really lose out on an experience so we decided to do it anyway. We rented our skates and headed down to the lakeside. At first it was a little disturbing because you could actually see the water and fish and things underneath the ice but everyone else seemed unperturbed and so we started out putting on our skates.

After not having skated in so long it was hairaising to say the least. Silvia was a little more aring than me and also I think competent and so she headed out (slowly) to go and fetch us something to lean on. We had a bit of fun pushing each other around in one of the little chairs and gaining confidence with our skating ability. I felt that finally we came into our own and eventually were managing to gain speed on the ice a little. After a couple of hours we were freezing and my toes had gone numb and so we decided to leave and go and find something to eat.

I wanted to eat pizza and Silvia had apparently been before to a place called Hutong pizza that was really good. I was very cold and unconvinced that Silvia knew where she was going but let her lead the way, at least until I was going to be too cold, and I was amazed when she managed to find the way with the help of a random (and very happy) rickshaw driver who didn’t seem in the least upset that we didn’t take his rickshaw when Silvia spoke to him in Chinese. Hutong pizza was an amazing little place that I would recommend to anyone. It was a little pricey but well worth it and the selections of pizza were really huge. The accommodation inside of the old hutong building was particularly nice and the restaurant had a little pond with a fountain and fish inside. We both went home very happy but also very tired.

Another highlight was our trip to the 798. "798" is located in the Dashanzi area, to the northeast of central Beijing.It is the site of state-owned factories including Factory 798, which originally produced electronics. Beginning in 2002, artists and cultural organizations began to divide, rent out, and re-make the factory spaces, gradually developing them into galleries, art centers, artists' studios, design companies, restaurants, and bars. The area that 798 covers is huge and covers a massive area and has some of the best and most interesting cutting edge work I have seen in a long time. We went there with Max (from couchsurfing,) Honor, who we had met the night before in a bar and a girl called Emma who had been the instigator the trip. We had a really fantastic and relaxing day (except for my being a half an hour late and I discovered some really new and interesting artists including Kristina Heckova who creates mixed media work with pencil and string. The concept of the exhibition was capturing disappearing wildlife by having one half of them drawn and then the other half simply as a collection of lines of string. It was really simple and effective and I’d like to see more of her work.

Fun at 798.....

Another of the interesting artists was ----------------. She produced works that looked like traditional Chinese paintings but had strange elements added into them. Birds with the heads and tigers and dinosaurs. There was also ongoing themes in the paintings that included blood and alsomany of the animals being tied by red strings.

At the time of writing this I am not in China. I left about a week ago and the whole process was quite traumatic. I really really love China and leaving felt like leaving home. Leaving on the plane I felt a little lost as I really do think that part of my heart will always remain in Beijing.

Some things will always remain with me:
A belief that chopsticks are in every case superior to a fork
A love of hot water
The feeling that a meal in never quite complete without a bowl of rice
The impression that a train is never actually busy unless you have to be pushed on by someone
The knowledge that every kind of food has some kind of medicine effect and that both smoking and beer consumption have no negative effect whatsoever.

再见中国

So, happy new years to everyone! New year is traditionally a time where people make some great resolutions and then a few short weeks later forget all about them and go back to doing exactly before the bells tolled at midnight.

I wanted to take some of the time to reflect on the past year and it’s events. I started last year dreading the thought of going back to work and wondering what sort of direction my life would take. It was then that I took the decision to leave my work, leave my country and leave my friends and go and try and something else.

It was probably one of the biggest decisions I have ever made and also one of the best. I have always wanted to travel but something has always held me back: the money, the fact that I had a boyfriend and sometimes just simply the fact that I was too scared. I remember an incident from about a year and a half ago when I was talking with my friend Amanda and she was heading away on a trip to Australia by herself. I said to her, how on earth can you just go away like that with no friends and no plans? She didn’t seem to think it was a big deal and I never thought I would be able to understand it. But now I guess that I do. One year later and gradually I am finding myself in a place where I am comfortable with it. Yes, there are moment where it can be scary and you don’t have the support of your friends to get you through but I guess that’s when I discovered you can get by on your own and often, no matter where you are, there will be kind people to help you when you need it most. In this regards special mention has to go to Jacky – my surgeon and Emma and Genice– my really sweet friends both of whom helped me get through my surgery in Ningbo.
So, yesterday, I spent some time thinking about what will happen in 2011. I have been feeling a little anxious about having no real direction in life and just doing things on the spur of the moment. Then I went for lunch with Sam, a person I had met through a couch surfing event a few weeks earlier. We had a discussion about life plans and how we felt about these things. He said something that struck a chord with me. He said. You know, I am just trying to achieve a state where I can be happy with myself and feel at home no matter where I am. I think that is the crux of the matter. Sometimes, when I have been doing things a thought pops into my head “you know, if this had happened to you a few months ago then you would have been worried” and it is true. Gradually, I have changed to a point where I can be reasonably happy in many situations. But, I don’t quite feel that I am all the way there yet.

I was reading an article written by a guy who has travelled to nearly all the countries in the world. He wrote about why people should quit their jobs and go travelling. It began an idea in my head. I cannot claim that I will visit every country in the world because my preferred style of travelling would most likely not allow it. I like to spend time in place and get to know the people and the society better. However, I did think to myself that it would be a good goal to try and achieve something similar. To make up my own list of places that I would like to go and see and AT LEAST visit each continent. I thought about the randomness of how I ended up in China. People always ask me “why did you want to go to China?” and actually I have no answer. Originally, I wanted to go to Japan but I missed the deadlines for applications for the programme. So, instead I looked for other cheap alternatives and China came up. In fact, If I had to list countries that I have very little interest in travelling to then China would probably be up there at the top. Mainly due to its millions and millions of people. Why, only for the first time the other day I got to experience the “pushers on” and the “pullers off” in the subway. These are people who are hired to push people onto the trains, to ensure maximum bone crushing uncomfortable-ness and also people to pull you off. The trains are packed like sardines so often you can’t move of your own free will. THIS, I thought, would be my ultimate nightmare. In fact, it is not, I love China, and moreover I love the big cities, I love the conflict between new and old. I love the people and I even love….shhh, the subway.

So, the thought occurred to me that probably there are a number of places that I have not even thought about going to that I would love…and so the map search began. When I left the UK I joked with people that I would travel for the next ten years. Even I thought it was a crazy idea but now it occurs to me…why not?I should make a list of all the countries that I would REALLY like to see and then a list of those I’m indifferent to and some that maybe some that I don’t want to go to and then start to make the beginnings of a plan as to where to start. Maybe sometime or other I will find my own Shangri-la and decide that I never want to leave. Bu I can’t decide that yet.

There are so many places that I haven’t been yet that finding somewhere to start out has proved difficult. I thought to myself about the places in the world that I wanted to travel for a long time. It’s strange because actually there aren’t too many of them. Firstly, Berlin. I would like to have some opportunity to use the German I spent so long learning and I just think that It would be an amazing place to visit. Secondly, Africa and of course this is specifically because I don’t think that I can die without seeing the wildlife there. Thirdly, Japan because it is the home of my much beloved studio Ghibli and I think it would be an amazing place to visit. Not to mention that I spent quite a lot of time in university studying it.. ..and that is pretty much it. It seems like a small list but actually I am quite pleased because then I can begin to look to countries where I have no expectations of what I want to see and explore and I think that is so much more interesting. I looked at the world in bits.

I started with Europe because there are lots of countries but they can be nicely broken up into areas and I think, with the exception of cost are easy enough to visit.

Then there are some of the really big countries and continents.

And some problematic continents like Africa and South America which are made up of so many little countries that it seems like an impossible mission. For now I have decided to forget about India and the middle east as they are on the bottom of the scale of places I want to see.

But anyway…so far my plan stand at returning to Europe when my visa runs out and then travelling for two months inside Europe. The after my holiday in Tenerife with the family and then Debbie’s wedding then I begin to work on one of the bigger and more far away continents….

But anyway….ramble over. I shall post some pictures of new year celebrations in Beijing which were spent (for the short time my lungs were functioning enough to enjoy them) in Punk bar which seems to be the hangout of many of the well to do in Beijing. Needless to say I felt very out of place there as I was wearing neither a suit nor a designer dress but a fun time was had by all

The three musketeers

sexy ladies

Sickness is the new fashion accessory

I hope that everyone had a fantastic New years and will be able to keep those pesky resolutions!

Today I went to both the temple of heaven park and the natural history museum. The temple of The Temple of Heaven, literally the Altar of Heaven is a complex of Taoist buildings situated in the southeastern part of central Beijing. The complex was visited by the Emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties for annual ceremonies of prayer to Heaven for good harvest. It is regarded as a Taoist temple, although Chinese Heaven worship, especially by the reigning monarch of the day, pre-dates Taoism.

The two most interesting parts of the temple of heaven are “the emperor’s stone” which is where the emperor actually stood to do his prayers to heaven and also the clapping wall. Basically if you stand in a specific spot then you can clap, or make some kind of sound, and the sound is reflected back. This meant that when the emperor did this, to the people outside it sounded as if the gods were giving him either a round of applause or that they were giving him some kind of praise. Of course I tried both of these things out, however, nobody was impressed and sadly my wishes for the temperature to remain above zero were ignored. Well, a girl has to try.

The bins were also quite interesting and i feel were TTOTALLY authentic...

Then I headed to the Beijing Natural history museum where I got to go to Jurrasic park and see dinosaurs eating other dinosaurs and ostriches who apparently live in the same habitat as baboons. I am not really convinced of this fact but if anyone else has some kind of better idea please do tell me.

I was originally drawn to the museum because apparently there was an exhibition of humans much like the one of Dr. Gunther von Hagens was on show. I was excited-maybe dead people would be very interesting. However, I was much disappointed to discover that only a few random bit of genitalia were on display and willies are ugly enough anyway without being shriveled up. So, sadly, the most exciting thing about the Beijing natural history museum was the collection of Geese I found wandering about outside in the street for no apparent reason.

Every movie and every newspaper will tell you that spending Christmas away from home is a heartbreaking affair that should leave you feeling cold inside and drinking whisky alone in a bar. So, it was very lucky that I had my Beijing family here to spend Christmas with. We got to bypass the customary Christmas dinner, Christmas arguments and yes – the Christmas games.

Christmas day started out with a marathon sleep. Until approximately three I think. Christmas eve had been spent, unsurprisingly, in the hostel bar and so we were all tired. Then, the boys went to do their last minute Christmas chopping, of course the custom in every country, while we girls stayed smug in the knowledge that we were reasonably prepared. One strange thing about China is that you can’t seem to find wrapping paper anywhere. I don’t know if there is a reason or if perhaps it is just that I am inept at looking for things but it just doesn’t seem to be anywhere. So, the presents were wrapped in some beautiful Chinese newspaper. The funny thing is that while looking for shops where wrapping paper was present I found large groups of people wearing devil horns, rabbit ears and santa hats.Somewhere along the line the Christmas message got lost for Chinese people. Western festival =dressing up in any outfit you happen to have lying around. Maybe it was some kind of hidden commentary about the vanquishing of both satan and the evil pagan symbol the easter bunny bythe birth of Jesus Christ. I have no idea.

We thought it was rude not to join in

So, after out long hibernation we finally came around to swapping our secret Santas. It didn’t work very well as we all knew who got what. I got Ben and interesting book about China, Silvia bought Bart a (stolen) t-shirt, Ben bought me a little fishing game and Bart bought Silvia some new mittens that she was VERY happy with. The boys of course spent much time setting the game up and Ben was particularly excited about winning.

Then commenced the traditional China Christmas strip show. This began as a distant conversation I don’t really remember where I told Bart that I thought it would be great if he did a stripshow wearing only an army costume and a china flag thong. Little did I know how seriously he would take this throwaway comment and so on Christmas day I got a very special “package.” For those people in the know, they will just be glad it wasn’t from “Santa.”

After we were all hot and bothered we headed to have some “Beijing kao ya” one of the only fully roasted birds you can get here. Of course the boys were very excited at the prospect of eating some meat and got so carried away that they managed to eat three whole ducks. we had a really great dinner.

After that we headed to Sanlitun where we danced the night away, ending up, as you do, munching yet more meat from sticks. I guess I have to add here that Ben ate some stomach and apparently it was “THE BEST MEAT EVER.” My guess is from that, that it should be recommended to anyone.