January 7: Chair Skating
It’s skating. On a chair.
Specifically, chair skating is skating on a pair of chairs made of cheap iron (and plywood for the seats), welded onto an iron frame at the bottom. The whole thing is like a sled with two chairs welded onto it (one behind the other).
Since the Great Wall, our camera is NOT HAPPY. It’s functional inside (where it’s warm), but lasts about three seconds outside, and only then if it’s been in your armpit for at least half an hour. It’s a good camera, too. Fortunately we have at least one chair-skating photo, which (when we have the cable again later today) I’ll add here:
The chair skating was great. Other than the sled-chair, you get two iron thingies that resemble ski poles (sharp on the end). You use these to push yourself around. The whole place was outside, on one section of a frozen lake (which is used for paddle-boating in the summer). I’ve never seen natural ice thick enough to stand on. It was beautiful. We could clearly see through the ice, and it was about 15cm deep. Many fault lines spidered across the surface of the ice in fine lines, and shone pure white all the way down through the ice to the water. Inside the ice there were patches of snow and curious formations of bubbles, like forests of white fungus under my feet.
A lot of young children (as wide in their down coats as they are high) were there with a parent or grandparent. Three 16-year old girls gathered their courage and actually had a conversation with me (I really don’t think Beijing people care about seeing foreigners much – unless they’re selling something and you foolishly made eye contact).
Readers familiar with aerodynamics will realise at once that sled-chairs don’t turn particularly well. They don’t turn at all, unless you’re actually moving – and the only way to turn is to slide. Which is great 🙂
We also went and visited the CCTV Headquarters (aka the “underpants building” because it’s roughly the shape of a person’s legs if they were sitting in a chair with their legs far apart). It is a ridiculous building, and I don’t blame people for not wanting to go inside – it really doesn’t look like there’s any good reason for it to stay up. And it’s huge.
Interestingly, there’s a burnt-out shell of a high-rise hotel next to it (Chinese New Year fireworks happened rather too close last year). It’s so badly burnt that one wall is completely peeled away, showing hundreds of individual rooms. The rest of it is black.
Other than building a giant keep-out fence around it, no-one has done anything about the burnt hotel. Rumour has it that it’s built on the same concrete foundation as the underpants building, and helps to balance it. So if the burnt-out shell is removed, the underpants fall down.
That’s pretty much not good.
Today’s taste of the day is some kind of lolly. It’s made of gelatinous rice (similar in taste and texture to the inside of a jelly bean) coated in sesame seeds. I like it.
So tired now that when I walk I veer left.
Each morning when I wake up, I hear the scrape, scrape, scrape of the snow shovellers. There is still heaps of snow and ice and slush everywhere, and trucks are constantly passing with piles of snow in the back. Even though the scraping is unusual, I will always associate the sound of a shovel on concrete with Beijing.
Tomorrow is our last day here, and we’ll spend Saturday travelling to Indonesia (at roughly the same time as our hero). You can read more of our adventures at https://felicitybloomfield.wordpress.com
The Heroic Sidekick
Today’s Beijing adventures will be posted around 9pm Canberra time at http://twittertales.wordpress.com . Our plans for today are just too cool to share here and spoil the surprise. I will say that (a) I’m wearing pants today – no dress. (b) There’s a chair involved. A very special chair.
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Not everyone should be a hero. Some people are made to be the heroic sidekick. A mum or dad is a hero of their family story, but a marriage often has an epic member and a supporting member (which tends to work better than two heroes). Or, outside of the home, the story of a mum or dad might be a sidekick story eg they’re the support staff for a politician running for office (we’re assuming here that the politician is worth following). Most of us are a mix of heroic sidekick and hero, with a weighting toward heroic sidekick.
I’m a rubbish sidekick, which is unfortunate. Sidekicks made the world go around, and they are necessary to every hero. Nothing actually gets done without sidekicks. Sidekicks are perceived to be less attractive (usually – although Legolas is a heroic sidekick), and they don’t wield as much influence as heroes do. (One reason I need to be a hero – if I’m going to inspire others, being a hero works much better than being a sidekick.) They’re also more adaptable than heroes (something I observed in psych class many years ago), MUCH happier, better company, and much funnier. They usually get the girl – certainly more often than the hero, because the hero is so wrapped up in their epic they rarely touch the earth. Plus I think the girl can see that the sidekick will treat them better than the hero ever will (he’s too busy saving the world).
Frodo is the main hero of “Lord of the Rings”. (Aragorn, too, but that’s literally another story. Aragorn is also Frodo’s sidekick. Everyone plays more than one part.) Samwise Gamgee is the ultimate heroic sidekick. He suffers a huge amount for a great cause (because he’s an epic sidekick), which happens to also be a personal cause – I would argue that his cause is NOT actually destroying the ring, but being Frodo’s friend. His story is more beautiful than Frodo’s for that reason.
He also fights really well, cooks well, and ultimately – when Frodo’s strength is utterly gone – literally carries the hero. He is stronger than Frodo, and is never corrupted by the ring. His fight scenes are also more interesting, because a sidekick isn’t quite so deadly serious all the time.
Heroes don’t make good friends. (Mother Theresa, incidentally, was often invited to address influential people, and never failed to offend every single person in the room. She’d also withhold painkillers from her patients, because pain builds character. Betcha didn’t know that.) Sidekicks make the best friends, the most memorable characters, and the most noble heroes.
Yep, still cold
Today I rested (except for going out and having lunch by myself – I didn’t speak a word of English the whole time, yay!), and tonight we’ll go back to Lush for dinner (mostly because my partner and I have about $1 left, and the bar owes Bil a huge pile of free food for all the work he does).
It’s still cold outside, and my face is still attempting to fall off around the nose, but I was perfectly comfortable outside in just my voluminious skirts and down jacket (and gloves, hat, scarf and boots).
I’m still thinking about the “hero” thing, and what I can do about it. It goes without saying that my story MUST be an epic one – I’ve always known that. I have the first half of an epic tale already, with my writing. Thirteen years of trying to get novels published, plus five years of mental illness (while still writing positive, hopeful books) is certainly epic. I’m just not so sure about the self-sacrifice part.
I guess arguably I’m sacrificing good pay to write good books, but I simply can’t stomach doing anything else (oddly, even my tutoring work isn’t satisfying enough to do full-time – but it IS satisfying enough to do for the rest of my life). But I suppose a hero is meant to not be able to stomach an ordinary life – that’s what makes them a hero.
The song “What About Me” (most recently sung by Shannon Noll) tells a story about a pretty girl at a corner shop writing a novel, who has a heart’s cry of, “What about me? It isn’t fair. I’ve had enough and I want my share. Can’t you see?” Even just her desire to break out of the constraints of her small-town existence makes her a hero (at least a little bit). And small towns really aren’t a bad place to live. So it’s her passion that makes her interesting. I have plenty of passion, courage, and determination, which gives me a great start on being a hero. All I need is a deeper sense of purpose. I need to make the world better. When I’m not making the world better, staying alive is a chore. (That has been abundantly clear to me for a long time.)
I hate “Twilight”. I really do. Stephanie Meyer isn’t a bad writer, but the story is worse than hollow, it’s twisted (a 107-year old man picking up a 17-year old girl? So NOT romantic). I’m proud to recognise that my books are, in some ways, the anti-Twilight. The characters have far more interesting goals that to be super-obsessed with one another. When they ARE super-obsessed, it’s always revealed to be a mistake. Relationships in my books fail if the characters don’t have anything in common (and being emo simply isn’t enough. Ever). My characters are heroes – and reading the books has the potential to make readers into heroes, too.
The bit in the Donald Miller book that really got to me was a story about his friend, who I’ll call Frank. Frank’s thirteen-year old daughter was in a dodgy relationship with an older guy, and she’d begun taking drugs. When Frank talked to Don, he realised his daughter was choosing the best story available to her – and exciting and risk-taking one, even if it wasn’t a good one. So he thought hard and then called a family conference where he said the family was going to raise $25,000 to build an orphanage in Mexico. Not surprisingly, this was NOT received well. But after a few days, the daughter came to her parents and asked if they could travel together to Mexico, so she could write about the whole process on her blog, and show pictures of the changes in the orphans’ lives. Some months later, the daughter dumped her boyfriend, because he’d told her she was fat. The book points out that NO girl who sees herself as a hero would date such a loser.
So why can’t I (through my books) show girls and boys between 6 and 16 what a hero looks like? One of the best things about the story structure is that the hero doesn’t always win. But they’re still a hero.
I’m also hyper-protective of children and young adults, especially girls. I really like the idea of them having books that are worth reading. If I can internalise what I have felt for years, then my books really are worth building my life around (books, and God, and my husband and future children – but, although I gain more happiness from my husband than my books, I have an innate need for a more unusual story).
And here, for those who are visiting to hear about China, rather than my internal monologue, is another photo (this is made of jade, in a shop full of jade and other cool stuff – but because it was in Badaling, it was all stupidly expensive):
January 6: Blow-Up Gum
I stumbled across this story just after writing “The Spy Who Shoved Me”. It’s horrible, tragic. . . and funny.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/981756/exploding-gum-kills-chemistry-student
January 5: Real Life Adventures
Today I walked on the Great Wall with my husband and Bil (my Brother In Law), who lives in Beijing.
I should probably mention about now that, on Saturday and (especially) on Sunday, Beijing had the heaviest snowfall it’s had in sixty years (you can read more at https://felicitybloomfield.wordpress.com ).
So we caught a train (10 points for awesomeness) through the countryside (10×10 points for awesomeness) after heavy snow (10x10x10 points for awesomeness). The day reached maximum awesomeness before we even reached the Wall.
Beijing is a beautiful urban landscape made even more beautiful by the snow. I woke up at 7:30, with the sun, and saw a perfect blue sky. By midday the sky above still looked good, but every horizon was hazy with pollution.
I realised today that the reason I keep coughing when I go outside is that the pollution outside is even worse than inside the house (because the outside pollution is refreshed daily, and the filthy stuff takes a little while to really get inside – which, of course, it does. It’s the same air). The air of Beijing is so bad it irritates my throat. Yet it still has blue sky.
As we rode the train to Badaling we passed several industrial places belching smoke into the bright blue sky. Over the course of the day, the pollution grew visibly worse. For the first time, I realised that pollution isn’t something that makes things worse over decades and generations – it makes things worse minute by minute. I saw it with my own (swollen and irritated) eyes.
But it was still a beautiful day.
My partner has never been overseas, so the sudden change from flat Beijing land to instant sharp mountain peaks blew him away. Me too 😉 We saw several small structures perched in unlikely places on the way.
***
We were hungry and cold by the time we reached Badaling, so we had lunch. I remembered having “thousand year old eggs” in China when I visited many years ago, and how it looked like boiled egg that was turning black with age, but tasted just fine – so I ordered something translated as, “Preserved eggs”. I thought it’d be the same thing (and maybe it was, just a regional variation).
It was a little like egg-flavoured jello, and I barely managed to finish a single bite (the yolk part left a green residue on my chopsticks, too). Fortunately the boys were fine with it.
And then we went to the Wall. Because of the bitter cold Winter, there weren’t many people. We walked to the highest nearby tower (leftward, for those who’ve been there) and it was very very cold and very very hard. My legs shook with exhaustion, and breathing hard just brought Siberian wind into my lungs. Being in the mountains meant it was much colder than Beijing. Being ON the mountain was much worse. Wind hits the mountain and flies up it, gathering friends along the way, then BAM it rushes straight over the wall and then (presumably) wanders off at a more sedate pace. Many snow scrapers were at work, and we saw several trucks taking away loads of snow (to dump in the next province over, I bet).
Bil’s drinking water was increasingly solid (he says that “usually happens at around -15 degrees”), my pen stopped working (not that I attempted to write anything until we were back down at Badaling), and although I’m usually comfortable in just my voluminious skirts in Beijing, I was very uncomfortable today in my thermals, tracksuit pants, AND voluminious skirts. Much urg. My super-powered down jacket didn’t stop the wind any more.
But it was utterly stunning, and worth every second.
***
Every day I’m in China, I try to eat as much interesting Chinese food as possible, and blog about the most delicious one. (So far, the preserved egg is the only thing I haven’t loved.)
Today’s taste of the day is actually Vietnamese. Although my partner and I are SOMEWHAT excited about the huge and delicious variety of Chinese food on offer (most Australian Chinese food is very Southern in style, which leaves out a lot of excellent stuff), Beijing is truly a world city, with spectacularly good food from. . . everywhere. (Bil’s Chinese housemate is becoming an Italian chef, for example.)
I ordered a dish I unfortunately can’t remember the name of. But it was a deliciously thin, crispy pancake (my absolute favourite kind) wrapped around mushroom, shrimp and shredded chicken and served with lettuce, crispy bean sprouts, and a sauce (which I also can’t remember the name of, but it was like honey and lemon with chilli pieces). The menu instructed me to cut up the crepe, wrap the pieces in lettuce, and dip them in the sauce. I did, and it was excellent.
A random man wandered by and asked about our food. We swooned a little, and said it was delicious. “Oh good,” he said, “because I own this restaurant.”
When we were on the wall, I kept an eye out for Jimmy Bind, but didn’t see him. I hope for his sake he was taped to the lee side of the wall. Wherever he was, he was freezing his shapely arse off. (But is just too darn heroic to whine about it like I am.)
The prince, the princess, and the dragon
PS: I’m just about to go and write up today’s adventures at http://twittertales.wordpress.com and YES we made it to the Great Wall at last.
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I’m reading, “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years” by Donald Miller (the guy who wrote, “Blue Like Jazz”, and who is sort of like the biological biproduct of Anne Lamott, Annie Dillard, and Adrian Plass).
It’s about the structure of a story (an interesting character with a serious problem, who fights to overcome their problem) and how to make your life a more interesting story, based on the idea that we’re hard-wired to enjoy stories with the above structure, because God made us that way. (This theory also explains suffering in a way that works for me better than any other – suffering ultimately makes the story better.)
At one point, the author said that the next level up from basic story structure is an epic story – when the problem is VERY difficult, and involves selfless sacrifice.
When I began to feel I wasn’t meant/able to be a full-time aid worker in Indonesia, it broke my heart. I’d lost the epic story of my life, and I knew it. My substitute story for my life is my writing, but it just doesn’t seem as hard OR as worthwhile to me. Plus, being mentally ill, I suddenly can’t do a lot of things that I used to be able to do.
You all know how the fairy tale goes – the dragon has the princess and the prince rescues her. I used to be the prince (rescuing others), I HATED being the princess (dependent on others; the least interesting and least active character of the three), and I felt that with my mental illness I was slowly turning into the dragon – someone who caused harm to the world instead of good.
I’ve always thought of myself in terms of story. Always. It’s wonderful to hear it set out by Donald Miller, because it gives me permission to look at the way my story is now, and see what I can do to be a hero I really admire.
Maybe 🙂
Five minutes until we head off for attempt #2 at the Great Wall. Should probably brush my teeth 🙂
Chillin’
It’s only 2pm. (Photos now uploaded, and another paragraph at the end.)
Today Beijing has smiled upon us once again, putting on a beautiful blue sky that (except for the snow) makes the city look like spring (and no sign of pollution). It’s colder than yesterday, though – the forecast was -9 to -16. Now THAT’S refreshing. But my feet didn’t get wet, so I was fine. This photo is from yesterday, when it was still snowing:
We planned to go and see the Great Wall, but the train to Badaling (the section we planned to go to) was “a little delayed”. We chose to wait an hour, then give up (we gained no information of any kind in that time – for all we know, the entire stock of Wall-oriented trains had been eaten by yeti).
I just did a super basic google search and discovered this article http://www.globaltimes.cn/www/english/metro-beijing/update/society/2010-01/495913.html saying that, on Sunday, the buses to Badaling were stuck on the expressway for twelve hours because of heavy snow. To me, that indicates that the snow is heavier to the North (which is where rain and snow always come from), and it stands to reason that the high levels of snow also stopped the trains (but will be melted enough to get through by tomorrow).
A pretty building:
At a certain point last night, my initial manic joy suddenly vanished and my mental illness popped back up. It’s always a surprise when I’m having fun and then suddenly want to throw myself out a window. My body isn’t 100% happy with me walking around in the snow, so I decided to look after body and soul and go home. Best of all, I sent the boys off to see the art galleries (I can live without seeing that) and went home – by myself.
Photos my partner took at the galleries:
That was excellent. The boys dropped me at a train station on line 2 (the line that goes to dongsishitian, which is the closest to Bil’s house) and my partner hugged me goodbye in an especially endearing manner (evidently not sure we’d ever meet again). I walked up to the station and was immediately refused entry. The man spoke no English, so it was MY language skills – MINE, I tell you! – that gained me the information that it was closed, but the next station entrance along was fine. I spoke to a Chinese lady (all in Chinese, because I rock) along the way, and double-checked she was heading to the station. She was.
And then I went home, as easily as if I was travelling in Sydney (easier actually, because the trains are better here).
Before that, I came perilously close to successfully ordering a delicious and very cheap and healthy (ish) lunch for the three of us. I established that we wanted chicken, understood the server’s explanation that it was served in bread, and that it was spicy. I was able to say, “We don’t like spicy food” but not strongly enough (I needed to say, “We don’t have spicy food” – a word that I already knew). Bil took over for me, and the meal was very nice.
I now communicate as well in Chinese as I did in Indonesian after five years of studying (at which point I went to live with Indonesians for six months, and became properly fluent). Fundamentally, with the friends I already have here, I could move to Beijing to live, and would be able to get around on my own. Except of course that only REALLY stoic people can survive here.
All the same, I’m sure that once I’m home I’ll miss the gentle Siberian breezes. If only because. . . well, okay, I can’t thing of ANY possible reason to miss Beijing’s wind.
—–a bit later in the day—
We went to the same local Chinese restaurant (as Friday) for dinner, and ate much deliciousness. The taste for today is pumpkin chips (the same size and shape as fish and chip shop ships), battered in egg yolks and fried in something delicious – again, perfectly crisp and buttery. I’m definitely going to attempt to make them when we get home.
One mroe gallery photo, just for fun:
That’s not a Christmas card, THIS is a Christmas card
Yay! Photo o’clock:
It snowed again last night, and it kept snowing all day. The snow is more than a foot deep all over Beijing, and transport has ground largely to a halt (a huge number of taxis simply refused to take any passengers). But it’s not reverse global warming causing the wacky weather – it’s the government’s cloud seeding program (one girl told me there’s a “Winter Wonderland” set up in the olympic stadium, and that’s why snow was considered a good thing). All the snow is covered with tiny sparkles, like glitter scattered throughout. The whole city is hushed under a white blanket.
People are describing it as “fake” snow, which is perfectly accurate – it just happens to be fake snow that falls from the sky and is made of frozen particles of water. Other than the telltale glitter, it was also too powdery – not matter how much fell, it didn’t hang together like snow does. Even in Canberra (where it snows about once a decade), if you can gather a handful you can make a snowball. That was pretty much impossible today.
Nonetheless. . . snow! Great soft drifts of it! Interestingly, none of the roads were snow-ploughed. The thick snow was salted, turning it to a thinner brown sludge, and that was all. The footpaths were tended by sweepers with brush brooms and pieces of cardboard attached to sticks.
My feet got wet around midday when we went to meet some other Australians for lunch, and my boots, socks and feet stayed wet until we came home – just now, at 4am. (Which is why I shan’t be posting photos until tomorrow. Or later.) The temperature varied between -6 and -9 degrees, and I was cold. As we came home, I was shivering the whole way. But I’m fine now, and I hope the new day will bring (a) no more snow (b) a new shot of excitement.
I is dead.
Our main activity today was the relatively gentle one of socialising, most importantly at the Lush bar in the Wudaokou area. The bar has a lot of students (American, Korean, Chinese, South American, British, Australian, Danish and Swiss – at least, those were the ones I met while sitting at my table), and an artsy atmosphere. It is a genuinely warm and welcoming community.
Seeing Bil (Brother In Law) play was incredible. It always is, because he’s an excellent musician – the kind that not only plays well, but has a joyful psychic connection with other members of his band. I think genuine masculinity is about the most wonderful thing in the world (I LIKE men. A lot), and a band with that kind of connection is one of precious few examples of a healthy expression of masculinity. (“Healthy” sounds so unexciting. A better phrase – and I mean this as an observer of truly fine art – is “an utterly attractive expression of masculinity”). My husband also played bass – and sang “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”. Watching Bil, I felt that he was destined to make his musical home in Lush. He’d already told us it was the highlight of his week. Despite his low (and totally unreliable) income, I am insanely jealous.
Mine is the one on the left:
At around 2am (people from the crowd were still getting up and singing, and every single one could sing), a big guy brought in a guitar, sat down, and began to play – with the quiet smile of someone who has been playing for twenty-five years. He was Korean, and didn’t speak much English OR Chinese – but he made everyone else look like kids with plastic toys. When everyone else stopped playing and begged him to continue alone, he did. When he finished, one of the other performers (an American) said (haltingly) in Korean, “I want to have your babies.”
Everyone in the room did too.
Today’s taste sensation is a toss-up between a cocktail I had there – a mix of vanilla vodka, creme de cacao and chocolate shavings – and a lolly called “Piratos” which was like licorice, but condensed and made salty. (Luckily I was able to get rid of the taste with a margarita. Then I found myself wanting another. Such, perhaps, is the lure of Chinese candy.)
January 4: Chinese Phrases (contains swearing)
January 3: Bind Your Mind
Welcome to your new theme and new story, “The Spy Who Shoved Me”. (The actual tweets will appear late tonight, since my parents are posting them – China doesn’t allow twitter at this time.)
Our hero is Jimmy Bind, the lovechild of James Bond and someone even prettier.
He speaks thirty-two languages fluently (and none of them are Klingon), can shoot a thread through a needle at three hundred paces, and is so handsome 33% of women who observe him on the street faint instantly.
His tools include:
Sleeping gas pen.
Blow-up gum.
Two matchbox cars (including matches and gunpowder)
Piercing blue eyes.
A whole lot of high-quality duct tape (or gaffa, as we call it in Australia).
