The Games and I

If you'd asked me a month ago, I would have told you in regretful tones that despite living in the host city I didn't hold out much prospect of seeing anything. But thanks to several rounds of good fortune all that changed...


On the 8th of August I caught the opening ceremony of the XXIX Olympiad on a big screen in the Sanlitun area, next to the Apple store (yes really). I was with a large group of friends from AIESEC, the Chinese among them able to explain some of the more obtuse historical references in what everyone agreed was a memorable spectacle. The crowd was diverse and enthusiastic, with every country in the athletes' parade receiving a cheer and many inspiring spontaneous flag-waving, hip-shaking performances from those present. Yours truly made some noise for Team GB, but unfortunately lacked a giant flag.

The following week some friends arrived from the UK bearing good news - they had been able to obtain Olympic tickets back home! They were for women's football in the city of Tianjin. Here you expect me to say "beggars can't be choosers". Well that's true, but we were fortunate enough to see the Chinese women's team play - and as anyone here will tell you that's a lot more promising than a game featuring the national men's squad. You may be surprised to know that this was my first live football game experience - the result was a draw, but the crowd were impressed and generally respectful.

So all was well and good - during my friends' stay I was able to show off my Chinese, my boat-piloting abilities (again) and the not at all narcissistic article I had published in the company magazine.

Then cityweekend came through for me - deciding that my riff on the chances of Team GB's footballing glory (zero: they don't have a team) was adequately amusing to win their latest competition - and the prize was two tickets to see, well, you can guess. It was my fellow trainee Angel's last full day in Beijing before she headed back home to Hong Kong, so she seemed an appropriate choice for the other ticket (far more deserving than me anyway).

Italy vs. Belgium, men's teams! Naturally as a true Brit I supported the latter as underdogs, and we were both thrilled when they turned out to be less "under" than we thought. The style of play was in predictable contrast to that of the women; two red cards and four yellows were testament to that. Final result: 3-2 to Belgium. A great day was topped off with dinner at a conveniently-placed Belgian restaurant opposite the stadium, followed by 6 straight hours of KTV starting around midnight.

The next week another surprise. My quite ridiculously generous friend from work had ordered tickets to the athletics events, and... you can guess this part too. A sort of early birthday present.

So it's 20th August, and we ride the Olympic line (8 of course) to the big park, see the exhibitions, listen to some French women warbling at a small sort of concert - and catch sight of the new landmarks. The Bird's Nest really is stunning. From a distance it may appear menacing, even brutalist, but when you're close up the lights from inside and the fog of angles on every surface create the impression of something warm and alive. Its concourses are so vast and stairwells so numerous that 90,000 people may enter or leave without a crush, and the seating is more spaced out than at either of the other stadiums I visited.


Among the events we witnessed were:

• Usain Bolt winning the men's 200m sprint and capturing another world record
• The women's hammer throw - and lots of grunting
• Pole vaulting
• Women's 400m hurdles - and a bronze for Team GB's Natasha Danvers
• The medal ceremony for a very amusing Estonian discus-thrower who won gold the day before

Afterwards we wandered around the park at night, gawping at the Water Cube like everyone else.

So the Olympics have now finished. My closing ceremony venue was a bar in Sanlitun (the outdoor area there and Chaoyang park being packed). There were Brits, there was a big red bus, and there was Boris Johnson shambling around in front of a billion people. A less impressive spectacle overall, with 8-minute London segment generating universal confusion but not distaste.

I am loath to pontificate on the lasting impact on the city and the country until after the Paralympic Games, when the traffic will return and the foreign journalists fly home (having only scratched the surface). So that's your lot!

It's China's big day

Whatever your opinions on Beijing's eligibility to host this event or the value of sport itself - today is pretty momentous. In a little under 6 hours' time it's reckoned that two-thirds of the entire human family will turn their heads this way.

I'll likely be at Chaoyang Park South Gate, one of the umpteen "live sites" broadcasting an opening ceremony that promises to astound everybody. It's being directed by Zhang Yimou, once criticised and censored by the government for slamming the Cultural Revolution, now embraced and celebrated for his colourful and "apolitical" epics - a label he claims for himself despite having joined the CPPCC.

Of course everything is politics. The banners are everywhere; support for the Olympics is quite explicitly linked with love for a "united China" and for "scientific and harmonious development", the line oft repeated by Hu Jintao, keen to make a natty catchphrase his legacy.

But tonight I will stand in a smiling crowd of Beijingers and feel happy for them. The vast majority will be good people, to whom too many of us attribute the sins of the few.

In other news: I cooked my first omelette and my fish perished. The two are unrelated.

A proper AIESEC day

Today I had the kind of day that an AIESEC internship is uniquely able to create.

We're welcoming two new interns this week - one from Norway and one from Taiwan - and to celebrate we headed to Chaoyang Park. We rented a pedal-powered 6-seater and trundled around on the pavements discussing point scores for flattening various classes of pedestrian, rode the spinning roller coaster, log flume and spinny-octopus-thing and went to the Sony ExploraScience museum (great exhibits; shame about the café). Later we rented a boat and generally lazed around in under a perfect blue sky.

What a difference taking half the cars off the roads, shutting down the factories and the chance arrival of torrential rainfall makes! Yesterday we were able to see from the middle of town all the way North to the mountains. The city looks wonderful when it's clear.





This evening we went to the AIESEC office and each of us cooked something "native". I went for mashed potato. It was a resounding success (though I say it myself), despite the oddly coloured margarine and UHT milk that went into it. So far no-one has had to bring it back up again, and we all live in hope.



The Olympics start on Friday. We all have the afternoon off, so will either head to a sports bar or one of the humongous outdoor screens to catch the no-doubt arse-achingly long Opening Ceremony in Beijingovision.

New places

Went to Room 101 last night to watch the delightful Panjir Quartet play a medley of Uyghur tunes which made me dream of riding on horseback through wild deserts, attacking townspeople etc.

My companion suggested we walk back, which took the better part of 2 hours, but at least I got some nice photos and we saved a 30RMB (£2) taxi fare.

Today I paid another visit to my new favourite café. Those of you who are avidly following my café affairs will know that SIT was my previous caffeinery of choice. But the writing's on the wall: Waiting for Godot has writing all over its walls, plus natty film posters and the best spagbol this side of the Great Wall. The coffee is a bit of alright too.


Click on that for full view. I'm sure you'll agree it's lovely.

Shanghai is big. I am small.

Friday night my friend Ziyi and I hopped (or rather stepped elegantly) on to a fancy Z-train and 11-hour'd it down to Shanghai [writes Craig, chomping into a banana split].

We checked into the Captain Youth Hostel, right next to the Bund with a spectacular view from the rooftop bar (and less than a £fiver a night). I guess we did most of the standard Shanghai things; art museums, Yuyuan gardens, the French concession, various former residences of key figures in modern Chinese history, the Sex Culture and Health Museum and other mildly surprising list items. Shanghai feels rather like a European city, with narrow streets, plenty of "historic architecture" (much of it, well, European) and a Sex Culture and Health Museum.

Aside from all that highbrow malarkey, we did much people-watching, skyscraper-gawping, sweating, fume-breathing and sweating. The air cleared on Sunday, permitting charming views of the advertising boats sailing up and down the Huangpu river.

I like it there, really. It's a bit more organised than Beijing's sprawl, but with the same nice little alcoves. The streets are narrower, but you're less in danger of being run down by a horse. Parts of it feel uncomfortably exclusive though. To wit:


Returned to the Beige on Tuesday; the sky was blue and the climate was cool. Didn't last.

[Finishes banana split, is run down by horse.]

Favourite photos

I'm on a deviantART uploading spree. Here are some of the participants:





More here

I ♥ Houhai

The walk from Golou Dajie subway station to the Drum Tower and then on to the lakes is a personal favourite. Lots of folks playing weiqi, lots of cheap food, lots of tacky souvenirs and generally a happy atmosphere.

Observations on Beijing

Beijing continues to intrigue, throwing up difficulties (breathing) and pleasures (photographing) alike.

James from ispyshanghai.com was up here the other weekend for a visit with his girlfriend. Before coming to this city I tried pretty desperately to find a placement in Shanghai, memories of its skyline growing more rose-tinted (and ironically less hazy) by the day. My brief encounter with Beijing in 2005 was punctuated by plumbing problems (of the non-vulgar kind) and homesickness, while images of Beihai Park and the Summer Palace had by this year been replaced with news footage of smog and congestion.

But when I consider Beijing now, not as a political symbol (don't forget they've only had 60 years in a history of 5,000) but as a city, a patchwork of human experience... it's invigorating.

If I want live music, I know where to go. If I want to spend the day with friends in a pleasantly landscaped park (can't believe I was the first to upload a photo of it to Wikipedia), I'm spoilt for choice. If I want to spend £10 and eat like a 老大 or 50p slumming it nextdoor at the baozi joint - it's simple. As Pa is fond of saying, "what more d'you want?". Some things are amiss of course. It remains to be seen whether Line 10 (which rather handily connects me to both of Beijing's youth-iest nightspots Sanlitun and Wudaokou and the CBD, which I've yet to explore) will solve my daily sardine-tin experiences, but my personal feeling is that the city needs about fifty more subway lines and a sub-subway. Construction sites continue to look like deathtraps, dust continues to accumulate on everything and Houhai has so many clone bars that out-of-towners will never find real character without a copy of City Weekend and an astrolabe.

Comparing Beijing with Shanghai is interesting - certainly I get the impression that Beijing is playing "catch up". From the shiny new architecture and weekly nightclub openings to what-the-hell-took-so-long things like replacing paper subway tickets you had to hand to a woman on a chair with plastic ones you put into the turnstile (just a few weeks ago). But then again, we have the rather unique Factory 798 while they're planning an enormous Disneyland...

Here come the Olympics! Here's a story I'm fond of relating: during our last day in Beijing in 2005 we were in a taxi on the way to the railway station when we heard the live announcement from the IOC that London would host the 2012 Games. I didn't expect to be here for these ones though. I look forward to the rumoured nightlife opening-hour restrictions and hordes of Johnny Foreigners thrusting their mullets and baguettes in my face during my journey to work. Seriously though, I expect it will be fun.

China can only benefit from this torrent of outsiders bringing their ideas and arguments with them. I hear some mutterings in the Western press about a "propaganda coup" - but I think something different is happening. In their attempts to preserve unity, the government has encouraged nationalism to the detriment of socialist idealism. Students pay lip-service to their political education, but in private are apathetic. Their parents are faintly embarassed to talk of an era when patriotic songs blared from every radio while the iconography of that era has been relegated to ironic art and souvenir clocks. There's no "struggle" for them - their lives are comfortable - so why should they care? In the short-term that's good for the leaders: the rebellious youth movement of the 80s is a distant memory. But in the long-term, where is the next generation of dogmatists coming from? There's no-one here on the ground saying "the Olympics are a victory for the socialist system!" or "the Olympics reflect well on our leaders!" - instead they say "the Olympics are good for China" and "the Olympics will give us a chance to meet the world".

In other news:

• My friend Rich visited from the UK last month, we saw lots of the city and also travelled to Dalian (China's "most livable city") - very pleasant;
  
• A whole load of other interns and I went to a beach party at Laolongtou where the Great Wall meets the sea;
• I told a waitress "我的中文很差" and she said "我的英文很差!" and we laughed about it;
• I saw Kung Fu Panda - not the strongest plot in the world but some beautiful renderings of an idealised Ancient China and some laugh-out-loud moments (eugh what a cliché, just be glad this isn't a movie review blog);
  
• I ate a scorpion;
  
• I've seen experimental French-Chinese fusion, swing and jazz - but have yet to venture to D-22 to catch up on the Beijing punk scene...
  

Final thoughts:

• I was introduced to nciku.com, a Chinese-learning site with the most useful thing ever, a Flash thing that recognises even the poorest attempts to handwrite a Chinese character and links to definitions;
• I'm getting extremely fed up of reading on the BBC that the Olympics will be Beijing's "coming-out party". Kindly rephrase.
  

China Today

TV is still a healthy mix of plenary sessions of such-and-such, talent shows, quiz shows, weird talent-quiz hybrids, Taiwanese and Indian melodrama and dubbed Japanese films.

Of course now there are the relief concerts, telethons and other appeals. Meanwhile around the city I see candlelight vigils, donation boxes and Beijingers who read their papers and cry on the evening subway. My Canadian doctor has rushed off to Sichuan province to help out. Bad things bring out the best in people.

In other news, I continue to be squished on the di tie at 8am and we had a bit of a sandstorm today.

It's nice to find a place...

...that fits.

I arrived in Beijing for an AIESEC internship on Thursday, having had 8 months to dither and doubt. It's a strange place for a Westerner to be, in the heart of the political machine, lacking the glamour of Hong Kong or Shanghai, or the blue skies of, erm, Mongolia. It's a noisy, polluted, over-lit sprawl of poverty and wealth, conformity and silly hair, rickshaws and sleek subway trains, dodgy smells and amazing flavours, brutalist edifices and small treasures.

One such treasure is the S.I.T ("Sculpting In Time") café branch near UIBE in North East Beijing. It's of the Jack Johnson-playin', crazy tea-servin', open-till-late, wi-fi variety and I plan to fit through their doorway often.

I will now proceed to make a number of weak jokes about fitness and fitting into various places. The only thing that could stop me doing so would be some catastrophic network failu

Craig's Beijing Thing will begin at around 0800 GMT on Thursday 24th April 2008...