i fall in love too easily

we arrived in beijing at 12:20am. the airport is huge. you need to take a train to get from one place to another. we got lost trying to leave. then... / she saw us before we saw her. we were heading towards the elevator and she called her name. she wore sunglasses and a man in a red jumper followed. we rode through beijing in a red car. i wore red. the red smog we saw from the plane seemed to have cleared and we noticed blue appear in the sky. the trees at the side of the road reminded me of greece. we arrived at their home and i met her husband and friend. he wore a blue spotted jumper with a small green crocodile. their daughter was shy at first but slowly felt more comfortable with the strangers. we were the same. she called me xiao mao.
tomorrow we had a japanese lunch. sushi, noodles, fish eggs, my small friend hit her daddy with her chopsticks. her mummy had a bad cold and stayed in bed in the afternoon. we rode in comfort to 798. i like the name very much but the place didnt feel how i imagined it would. it wasn't so free. it wanted to sell. many shows were closed for the red lantern holiday but the light was so beautiful. that night the sky was full of fireworks, our ears sounded like pop pop pop, a fire blazed in central beijing and one man died fighting it.
tomorrow we had beijing duck and some of his favourite dishes. we rode to a forbidden city but it was closed for the ghosts to come out. we took pictures. we walked to tiananmen square and watched the flag fall down. we watched australia in english with subtitles. it was ok. we went home and played. i fell in love.
with beijing, with those days and with those people. we flew here and before in chengdu. the last time i saw the sky was the spring in two thousand and seven. i saw the mystery sunset that week. it lasts from those ten days. i hope the light falls on us again. we will chase it.

the rest of chengdu

we're back in england now, so i'm posting this mainly to upload some images and to write something on the last few days in chengdu.
when i arrived i hated it. i always feel strange to arrive in cities. chengdu is very different from london in that all the architecture is very modern or was modern in the late 80's and now looks stale. theres the odd statue and public concrete plaza. the roads are huge and numerous. buildings tower above you and adverts ask for your attention from every direction. but there are quiet places too. and you don't really have to look hard to find them. they creep up on you. one moment you're next to a huge ring road and in a few moments you've walked into what feels like an alley way in a town outside of the city center. i got used to the speed of the city after a short period of time. i've spent quite a bit of time there so it didn't take long. what helped was having a small group of friends there to enjoy the time with. we had some chinese fast food, a fantastic dumpling meal, indian and pizza - the last two being much less enjoyable. qingwei shared a room with her cousin and i shared one with another cousin. i wasn't looking forward to this to be honest - partly due to my colitis, but it was actually very pleasant.
qingwei had insisted that i go to see an eye specialist about my chronic dry eyes which cause me a great deal of anxiety and stress in england. in fact, they weren't causing me much trouble in china so i said i didnt feel it necessary to go, but we went. the first day we queued in several places and each time were told to go to another place. after several attempts to book an appointment, we were told that there were no appointments left and that we should come back tomorrow at 6am to book one with a certain doctor who specialised in dry eyes.
we went back the next day after having our complimentary breakfast of steamed bread, sweet rice porridge and contonese baozi at the hotel arriving around 8:00am. again we queued in several places and again there were no spaces left. however, as we were leaving chengdu in a couple of days (for england they assumed) qw asked if they could make a space for us and they gave us a ticket. then the waiting began. we knew we wouldnt be seen for a couple of hours so we popped out for some japanese food which was pleasant. we returned early afternoon and sat in the waiting area which is always completely packed with many waiting outside the hospital as well. a small introduction to chinese hospitals; the majority of hospitals are state owned and the dotors recieve a salary from the government. theres no gp system, the pateints just go to whichever hospital is closest or they think is the best and pay a small registration fee, equivilent to a few pounds each time they want to make an appointment. the patients then pay for any treatment or medicine the doctor prescribes. the doctors get commission on sales. normally you have to be at the hospital around 6am to get an appointment for that day. there are private hospitals but they are more expensive. most people go to state hospitals and they are much more busy. if you've ever seen pictures of chinese train stations at spring festival then you'll have some idea of what the hospitals are like. i was in a queue of 35 people when booking an appointment. this is not a huge queue.
we were the last called. this doctor had published internationally recognised research on dry eyes so i thought it was worth the wait to see her. i had several doses of rather uncomfortable eye drops, some paper stuck in my eyes and some more drops. turns out i have some kind of dry eye disease. this was good news to me because i thought that perhaps i was imagining my dry eyes out of some anxiety problems as i have before with other problems. i was given some medicine and the option for a short operation which involves injecting plugs and something else into my tear ducts. i didn't go for the operation this time.
it had taken from 8am in the morning. we were the last out of the hospital... the doors had already been locked and chained and we had to get someone to open them... we caught a taxi and went to see sichuan opera, grabbing some muffins and other snacks on the way.
sichuan opera includes the famous changing face sequence where the performers change faces within a split second as they flick their fan. its pretty impressive and great fun. the whole thing was very entertaining and id never seen anyone play classical chinese instruments like these guys did. a couple of times they pulled off solo's that you'd expect to hear from an electric guitar.
so we went back to pengzhou the next day or day after, i forget... and packed our things.

click [here] for many more images taken in chengdu

here today, gone tomorrow

just a quick update. tomorrow we leave for beijing. we will wake at 5:45am and arrive in beijing for a late lunch. during the past week, we spent time in chengdu city with qingweis cousins. it was a long time since i shared a room with another male, but it was an enjoyable few days. we went to see the chengdu changing face opera after searching for one that incorporates live music. it was great. more to follow on this trip. today we had hotpot for lunch and dinner. spicy hotpot for lunch, mushroom for dinner. i also took quite a few portraits of randoms on the street. felt great to actually shoot some images which i hadnt really done since being here. i have just been shooting as a tourist.
we will only spend three days in beijing and then we come back to england so i imagine i wont be updating again before that. pictures etc from the last week to come.

i can only show you the door

yesterdays lunch was at waipo's although she was not there this time. i believe she had gone out to play majong. however qingweis uncle was there and as normal this lead to some interesting discussions. firstly i should say that not many people of his generation seem to be very open about talking politics. im not sure if this is a correct observation but its the opinion im led to have by my experiences here. we began, as we had a number of times, by talking about tibet and the stories in the media at the moment surrounding the issue. this time it was chinese prime minister wen jiabao's european tour which deliberately excluded france due to sarkozys meeting with the dalai in december. see [here].
a lot of chinese people are still angry at the french due to their rather extravagant protests during the olympic torch run during which one over zealous protester tried to wrench the torch out of a wheelchair bound chinese who struggled desperately to hold on. video footage of this was shown on thousands of websites here and led to other chinese living in france to recall their own experiences of 'racism'. there is a joke going around at the moment that suggests that as mr sarkozy is such good friends with the dalai lama, he should ask him to pray for the french economy instead of asking for chinas help - which is what wen's european trip is seen as being - a plea from western countries for more business from china.
we talked a little more on the tibetan situation and the announcement from the chinese central government that the 28th march will now be celebrated in tibet as serfs emancipation day. i try to remain quite neutral on this topic as i dont believe, unlike others, that i should go rushing to a conclusion on something i know very little about. especially as its very hard to know what i know as every source of information is incredibly biased. on the issue of serfs, ive had several stories recounted to me from people who know people who used to be/have family that used to be serfs. all of them are unpleasant and some quite disturbing. i wont recount them here.
something i do want to mention is the chinese version of events regarding the 'liberation' of tibet by maos communist party in the 50's. its important to know that the government before mao, led by chiang kai-shek for the kuomintang party (the same party thats now in power in taiwan) was incredibly corrupt. we all know that land grabs happen now in china and they happened then too - and thats one reason that the communist party was very popular in some places - they took the land back and made sure a lot of people had somewhere to live - qingweis own grandmother as a child had her home and land taken by officials and not until the communist party arrived did they have somewhere to live.
the communist party at least in some cases, distributed the land amongst the people. the chinese believe that this is exactly what happened in tibet. just as mao took land away from the wealthy in china, so he did in tibet from the lama's (and others), many of whom had large amounts of land and wealth including serfs (slaves). the chinese version is that those tibetans living in exile are those who used to be wealthy and who maos army fought against. in this way, those tibetans are not very different from those wealthy chinese who also had to give up what they once had so that there could be equality. in fact, qingweis other grandmother is one of those people - her family used to own a lot of farmland which got taken and divided up by the communist army.
now the issue, i know, is not only this, but spiritual freedom and that the chinese government controls this with an 'iron fist', as well as the government response to protesters. however, its worth knowing or trying to find out something about the 'old tibet' and the control that the wealthy are reported to have had over the poor, which never really gets discussed. earlier today i came across several interesting sites. ive posted this one as its not written by a chinese whos posts are usually completely over the top and just silly. this is only to bring attention to more information if you are interested or have an opinion on this matter. if you are/do, read [this].
having learnt more about the chinese point of view on things has made it more difficult to know where to stand on this issue so i will continue to stand no-where. my default position is one of skepticism towards china/communism/china's tibet - as most of the information ive been exposed to is that from the media in the uk which has negative undertones in many news reports on china, especially those concerning tibet. however, i do also have a growing skepticism towards the 'free tibet' movement, many of whom i dont think have a clue about what they are campaigning for or even what that means. there has also been some very disappointing behaviour from protesters and woefully misinformed advocates of this movement voice their opinion in recent history, perhaps worst of all by sharon stone. and im going to quote her because.... my goodness...

"i've been concerned about how should we deal with the olympics, because they are not being nice to the dalai lama, who is a good friend of mine," she said.

"and then all this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and i thought, is that karma - when you're not nice that the bad things happen to you?"

quote taken from the guardian website (caps removed - dont know if youve noticed - i dont like to use them) anyway, im aware that this is not representative of the majority of those involved with the free tibet movement, but it does show how misinformed some people are on this topic.
[update: just also want to point out that the quake hit an area of sichuan largely populated by tibetans, so the tibetan communities living in this part of china are some of the worst effected.]
anyway, it was an enjoyable discussion. in other news: ive had two hotpots in the last two days which is fantastic. the one today was with qingweis friends from pengzhou. i almost didnt go as, last time... well, i wrote about it. but it was nice. i have been working on a new cv/portfolio and looking/applying for jobs as im going to be returning to england soon when my financial situation is likely to hit me hard. applied for one in beijing as well as, whilst china is an incredibly frustrating place to be at times, its also amazing.
hoping to do some more filming before we go to beijing so i can make something out of the footage i shot at the shelters. i also need to get my act together and start using up some more of the medium format films i brought with me.
its funny, i forgot what it was like to walk alone in china. i must have waved and replied hello to 5 or 6 people in the few minutes it took me to walk back from hotpot. i can feel so many peoples eyes on me as i walk past- not just feel - watch their heads turn to follow me. its not very comfortable. but i am comfortable right now in this awesome rocking chair.

click [here] for more images