Not Bad For A Week's Work

Today sees the ending of the first week of me being in charge of the office and I have implemented a three day working week, installed a free flow gin bar and mandated the wearing of 1970s wigs for all. 

Not bad.

Speech!

Back in the office we are celebrating Hari Raya, the end of Ramadan, and with the forthcoming relocation of the office to the newly refurbished area we are combining an office "Town Hall" (to give information about the move) with a catered lunch for the aforementioned celebrations.

In passing, I innocently ask the organisers about the arrangements for the event there's a paling of their faces and one of them scurries off, coming back saying that, as Director, I need to make opening and closing speeches for the Town Hall, plus do a talk about my understanding about the religious festivities.

WHAT?!

I was really not impressed with this at all. One of the organisers does offer some help by writing a few words about Hari Raya, which are basically all about Allah and how we should give praise to him after this time of personal sacrifice etc etc. Hmm.

Anyway, knowing that most people already know that I am not a great believer, I scrap all that and write a few works about what I did to celebrate – which did omit some of the reality: if I told them that I was eating pigs brains and pork soup in China on the actual day, there quite possibly would have been an international incident and I would probably have been locked up.

The Wrong Day

Ugh, back to the office today – I am tired after the holiday and arriving late last night- but I am amazed how quiet it is on the roads, and get to the office in record speed – literally under 10 minutes. I sort of don’t register the car park is also completely empty until I get to the normal floor, by autopilot, and then decide to park nearer the lifts - on the floor below - as it was empty. In my haste I misjudge the ramp and on my way down, I smash the back door of the car… Bollocks!

It must be so quiet as, like Christmas, I guess most people have taken the additional days off to make the Hari Raya celebrations last a whole week...

As I enter the office, I notice the lights are off and there’s no one around – One of the shift team leaders is there and asks me what I am doing – it’s a holiday… 

What? Oh crap – I’d come in a day early, thinking it was the Friday! Bollocks!

You're Scaring Me

As we landed (from one of the worse flights I'd been on - the air-conditioning unit in our section was bust: it was just blasting freezing air noisily out of the trim on the ceiling, which was all cracked and smashed) I remembered that my key was probably not going to work as I’d used it to open those beer bottles at the Great Wall and I started to fret – how would I get in? 

Anyway, I put that to one side as I was suddenly more concerned that my luggage had gone missing - it was the very last bag off the lace, bastards. With my late luggage, I booked my cab back home with this scrawny little thing, whom I didn’t actually think was old enough to drive. 

Putting THAT to one side, I also didn't think he knew where he was going, as at every road sign he would slow right down and examine the way to Kuala Lumpur. I kept repeating to him to "go to Mont Kiara, via Sprint highway and probably MAJU express way" to which he just nodded.

Then he started driving really slow and then really fast on the highways, for no reason and swerving from lane to lane, speeding and slowing and basically scaring the shit out of me. At one point, a couple of cars tried to get passed by - but as he was all over the place, they couldn’t – so they beeped, which was my prompt to hit the back of his seat and tell him to drive properly as he was scaring me.

We nearly went into the central reservation shortly after that, so I told him to drive in one lane, the slow one, for the rest of the journey and just to keep heading towards Kuala Lumpur. I recognised the road we were on and directed him to Solaris Dutamas and then resisted the temptation to report him for dangerous driving.

I didn’t tip him, nor did I care if he crashed on his way back to the airport.

Farewell Beijing

It’s the last day today and I am exhausted - and probably ready to go home: there’s a lot to see and do in this amazing, interesting, hot, huge, dirty, smelly, noisy, ancient, new, foreign, friendly, fast and furious country - I just think that a week at a time is enough.

Anyway, for the last morning, we are up late and decide to go to the Curios market nearby, rather than the Temple of Heaven over the road and have a look around at some old crap that people are selling – nothing jumps out at me to buy (I already have my pro-Communism posters from the other night) so we make our way slowly back to the hotel to finish packing and check out, stopping to buy some breakfast snacks on the way. 

A quick stop to say cheerio to Ricky and we are on our way to the airport - actually far too early, but there had been reports on the news that the security had been heightened at Beijing Airport and a load of travellers had missed their flights, so rather than risk it...

Freddie And Foot Massage

Fully satiated on blood and brains, we head back to the hotel and notice that there's a 24hour foot massage place opposite - so me and Edwin pop in to see what it's like (not bad). We decide to get some booze from the local mini market and chill out in the room watching a remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street before venturing back to the massage parlour to have our Beijing and Tianjin tired legs and feet seen to. 

Bliss!

Hot Brains And Blood

We are meeting up with the Beijing Boys for our last dinner together tonight. Being rush hour and getting a cab was impossible, we decide to get a bus to the restaurant instead. Like the London Buses, the stops are all announced (in both Mandarin and English) so it was easier to work out where we were – the only thing was, we were actually heading to the wrong branch of this restaurant. Crap!

Realising we were a bit out of town, we got off the bus and got a cab back into the city and to the correct branch, and sat down for our evening feast of hot pot. As we are slightly late, Ricky had already ordered most of the food, and the dishes that we were to cook in the soup started arriving almost as soon as we'd sat down. 

The first of the delights to be popped into the soup was ducks blood – a brown blancmange textured sludge that I didn’t really want to eat. It was pretty tasteless actually, which was a plus, but it had the consistency of soft tofu, which I really didn’t like at all and had to eat quickly to avoid actually feeling the texture.

Other items were less of a challenge (actually, delicious) and were solid in form – meats and vegetables etc.

And then the pig brains came out. They sat there on the plate looking all bloody and disgusting and then Ricky plopped them into the soup, waited until they were bobbing to the top to know they were cooked and then fished one out, cut off half and gave to me.

Erm… not sure actually. Oh well, in for a penny, as they say... So I pulled a bit of the cerebrum off with my chopsticks and put it in my mouth: it had the consistency of a runny soft boiled egg and after the third bite, I gagged – gulping some of the not so disgusting soya milk (which had the same consistency of kaolin and morphine - gag). As we were the guests, I didn’t want to demand a beer, but to be honest, I really could have done with one at this point!

Bleugh!

Art Or Rubbish?

Back in Beijing, and now staying in a different hotel (a very un-Chinese sounding Radegast, which the taxi driver had never have heard of), which made the journey there interesting...) we head to the 798 Art District for the afternoon – we’d missed it the other day, having spent far too long in the Summer Palace.

It was quite a way out of the city by taxi, but well worth a trip: loads of interesting art workshops, displays and installations around the place – though there came a point where I couldn’t tell whether it was art, or simply just a load of rubbish: literally, an emptied wheelie bin with all it’s contents strewn over the pavement…

A (Rather Unattractive) Admirer

Heading back to Beijing today after spending a day or so in Tianjin – we’d spent last night looking for hotels to stay in, wanting something different to the A Hotel for our last night and settled for the Radegast Hotel near the Summer Palace – would make getting there a bit easier.

We check out and, despite previous experiences with taxis driving straight past us (probably due to me being there and not being able to converse with them!) this lovely lady driver stopped and practically pulled my luggage and me into her car. She was apparently offended though that I’d put the seatbelt on…but I wasn’t risking anything in the madness of the Tianjin traffic…

I get the feeling on the train that I am being stared at and delve deeper into my book to ignore it – but when I glance up from my seat, there is this guy just staring intensely at me and I am forced to give a smile and say a polite “ni hao”. He beckons me over to his side of the carriage and I get out my “Chinese for Idiots” phrase book and start to talk to him, primitively. I think he’s taken a shine to me as he asks Adrian whether I like “my own sort” and then starts stoking my arm hair.

He wasn’t very attractive.

Anyway, it was something to while away the journey, and he was harmless enough.

Hello Sir!

After the cruise we head for lunch and settle for this Peking duck place – though I somewhat guessed it wouldn’t be as nice as the da Dong restaurant in Beijing that we went to. Oh, and it wasn’t! We did check with the waitress that they were still open (it was 9 pm) and they were, but as soon as our first dish arrived, the staff started clearing tables, mopping the floor and then turned the air conditioning off! Yes, they weren’t closed when we asked, but she could have told us they were about to! 

Bitch.

Anyway, after that we wandered around the shopping area for a while and walked down these smaller alleys that had loads of food places (which probably would have been more adventurous and better food than the place wed just eaten in). I had to laugh – as soon as some of the stall holders saw me, they started calling out, in very plumy accents, “Hello Sir!” to which most people stopped their eating and looked at who the ‘Sir’ was, and then started taking photos! I was used to being the centre of attraction by now, but this was a little over the top!

Foreigner!

We wander back to the apartment to freshen up, before venturing out again to take a horse and cart on a tour of the city’s interesting and important architecture. OK, most were interesting, but others were no more than social housing blocks, so why they were interesting, or important, I didn’t get. I did feel like a complete tourist though, but then again I suppose we were.

We headed back towards the river for a cruise along there before having some dinner: the walk to the river was great as we got to see, on foot rather than by horse, a lot of the more interesting buildings and architecture - and I feel that we needed the walk after the huge lunch that was still sitting in my stomach! 

We were lucky with the cruise: we were just in time to get the one that was just about to leave so we hurried on. I did hear this Chinese woman shout ‘foreigner!’ as I got on, which made me smile. Nothing like a bit of racism. 

Actually, it was this that made me realise that I’d only seen another 1 or 2 Westerners in all the time we’d been in Tianjin… No wonder people stared and did double takes (most ending with a smile, it has to be said).

I'm Not Eating That, It's Still Alive

Walking back through Tianjin we head to what I think was like a China town, which was a bit strange, seeing as we were in China… anyway, there were loads of stalls selling food tit bits and souvenirs. I was nearly tempted by the snacks or scorpion / sea horse / starfish but put off by the fact that the scorpions were still alive… 


I buy some not so lively peanut sweets and fridge magnets instead...

Walk Along The River

After the huge lunch, we found a taxi to take us to this Heritage Street, where there were a load of shops selling various bits of arty and not-so-srty trinkets which was quite interesting. We walked from there to the river, and then along the riverside to this Temple at the other end. We were heading towards the Eye of Tianjin, but very disappointed to find it was closed for maintenance work. Damn – it was one of the attractions in Tianjin that I really wanted to see and have a ride on.

Chink Chink!

We meet some of Adrian’s colleagues for lunch in a local restaurant and judging by the looks and double takes I was getting, the other restauranteurs had either never seen, or rarely seen a Westerner in here before. Lunch was lovely, but we ordered far too much food and I was worried we’d be offending everyone if we left any of it.

Thankfully there was also beer – interesting etiquette: by chinking on a certain position on the glass, you demonstrated on how much you respected the person, plus you were supposed to chick and cheers each time you took another sip.

There was a lot of glass chinking...

Cook For Ourselves? Bollocks To That!

As we drive through Tianjin city I notice that it seems less frantic, the buildings have a bit more character (rather than the rather austere concrete ones in the capital), and it just seems cleaner than Beijing somehow. 

The place we're staying at (Moderna Residence) is nice, and after completing the temporary registration of a new address - as you have to in every hotel in China - we make our way to our apartment; an apartment this time, rather than hotel rooms, as it was cheaper and gave us more freedom to do what we wanted. I think there was an initial flirt with the idea of cooking for ourselves.

Bollocks to that!

Tianjin Taxi

Getting a taxi from Tianjin Station is an interesting experience. There's a process:

You form a queue which winds along metal railings underneath the station (boiling hot and smelly). At the front of the queue, there is a gate that is controlled by a rather surly 'cab coordinator'. 

On the other side of the gate is a six lane motorway where, a bit like a fairground ride, cabs are pulling up in batches. Once a new batch pulls up, the cab coordinator opens the gate and beckon you to come out and get into one of the batch of cars that have pulled up. 

After about 50 people are ushered though the gate, it's closed, and then you are screamed at by the cab controller and his helpers to “hurry up into your taxi” (in Mandarin, of course) before that batch of cars drives off, probably not bothering whether you are in the cab or not...

The cabs all then pull away, being replaced by another load; gate opens and the process is repeated.

All Aboard The Tianjin Bullet Train

We’re off to Tianjin today for a couple of days – Beijing has a lot to offer, but it’ll be good to see another city, and fun to go on the bullet train and whizz about 300km/h across the country...

… in the back of my mind, however, is that recent train crash with the same rolling stock. I’m not sure it was the same line, but may well have been.

Beijing South Station is like an airport and extremely busy. You really need to have a basic understanding of how to speak/read some Mandarin to get tickets - there's not much in the way of English on the indicator boards for which train is going where, so Adrian buys the train tickets. 

That said, I am sure that if I said ‘sān Tianjin’ then we’d have got three tickets to Tianjin. Probably. Weirdly, you need to have your passport to buy train tickets - I am told this is to stop you buying more than 1 ticket per person and then selling them on for a profit, but I am not so convinced this is the real reason...

wheeeeeee!

Even better, we get the VIP class tickets for the journey, which means we get a compartment away form everyone else with loads of room for luggage etc. Probably totally unnecessary, but I like this style of travelling (and it cost £9). 

We keep an eye on the LED that displays the speed the train is going - and it gets up to 285 km/h, so about 150km and about thirty minutes later we are pulling into Tianjin Station, which looks even bigger than Beijing South Station!

Internationally Recognisable Chav

Having spent too long in the Summer Palace, we don't have enough time to do the next item on the itinerary justice (798 Art District), so instead we head to this shopping area to see this amazingly huge screen that hung like a canopy over a shopping street. 

It took us a while to find it, and at first it was switched on, but at about 7 pm, it started up – showing at first what appeared to be a screen saver – but then this spectacular Sci-Fi film for about 20 minutes – spoiled only by this twat next to us that was playing his crap music out loud from his mobile phone. 

I guess 'chav' has travelled across the oceans...

Lawns, Lakes And Pagodas - Not...

Up late today after being out until the early hours of the morning clubbing Chinese style, and today we were going to spend the (remainder) wandering around the Summer Palace, which is the opposite side of the city.

I was expecting a vast open space of lawns and lakes, interspersed with pagodas in the mist and the sounds of gentle Chinese flutes and chimes bringing peace to everyone.

Instead, it was a heaving mass of tourists (yes, us included) snapping photos of everything that moved and didn’t move, all crammed around the place, with nowhere to sit down in peace! It was very different to what we'd expected, but parts were really lovely. We'd hired these (rather clever GPS activated) audio guides to help us understand a bit of the attraction and history - mine in English; theirs in Mandarin - but oddly enough, the commentary was different. 

For example: when we were walking through one of the tree lined avenues, my guide started talking about the species of trees and how pretty the walk was. The Mandarin guide pointed out the ruined buildings that were ransacked, destroyed and burned to the ground by the b*stard English... 

We did manage to find a spot to drink the wine that we'd hoped to sip on a lawn somewhere - in a slightly less glamorous setting of the car park next to the exit!

I was really disappointed, so wasn’t that unhappy when we needed to speed up the pace if we wanted to get to the Art District later on.

Da Do Da Dong Dong, Da Do Da Dong

We’d been recommended to go to this place called Da Dong by the driver – but it was only about 4 pm by the time we reached Beijing again, and probably a bit too soon after the rather bland lunch that we’d had earlier to be sitting down for more food.

However, we decided to have a look and maybe try it out: and luckily for us we did – apparently there is a waiting list for reservations, but at 4 pm, the place was quite quiet. We had to wait about over an hour and a half or so for the duck, so by the time it came, it was dinner time and I was starving – well, not really, but the smell of roasting ducks was making my stomach do somersaults.

And it was worth the wait – it was absolutely delicious!

The Great Wall

Ugh – 0630 on a holiday morning! Still, it was to get about 150 km out of town to go and see The Great Wall.

After a couple of hours journey with the car (plus driver) we'd hired, we approached Simatai – one of the quieter gates of the Wall, but we weren’t able to stop there as it was closed for Health and Safety reasons (not anything I'd have ever expected to hear in China...) 

 Anyway a few kilometres away was another gate, Jin Shan Ling – a very quiet gate to the Wall, with hardly any tourists. This was a plus for us, as we could ramble at our own pace and not be bothered by loads of photo taking tourists (even though that’s exactly what we were!). 

The downside was that the pack of hyenas that hover around the foot of the climb had fewer pickings and latched onto us immediately. By hyenas, I mean these women with all this crappy tourist junk who followed us for a bit, all the time us saying “我不有 谢谢” (Don’t want, thanks) but they still followed, really close besides us, as if they were part of our walking group, not saying anything but occasionally smiling at us.

I kept waving them off, repeating the “no thanks” to them and eventually – after about 20 minutes – they get tired of following us and stay behind. This is nothing like other countries I have been where there are persistent sellers – at least after a swift and firm “NO” they leave you alone. Not these ones...

With the persistent bitches behind us, we climb the part of the wall here and it’s just amazing – stretches for miles (over 4000, actually). We walk about 2 of them in total, marvelling at the scenery and how long it use have taken to complete. Having walked a fair distance, we decided to settle down and have the beers that we’d bought at the base to enjoy up here when we spotted those women who’d been bothering us at the beginning. 

WTF?!

How did they get up here ahead of us? Maybe there was a secret money grabber tunnel passageway or something. Anyway, they said they’d been waiting for us for thirty minutes! 

WTF?!

We try to brush them off and they are having none of it – following us all along the Wall, and spoiling the experience. They'd probably go away if we'd bought something,  so I take a look and she produced with crap photo of the wall that I’d have not paid more than 50p for and says it’s 100RMB. £10! 

Fuck off you money grabbing bitch - you must think I am a complete idiot. So I tell her that I do NOT want anything from her and she needs to go away. Now. Edwin buys a book, and we think that’ll see them off, but it doesn’t – apparently we need to buy something off both of them. I raise my voice and tell them that I don’t want anything from them at all and walk off.

They still follow us like a bad smell. Adrian then gets cross with them and they eventually leave us alone. A little further on we come across some more who start the whole process again, so we take a bit of a detour to sit and drink the beer (actually we didn’t drink it there as the place stank of piss) but it avoided this set of persistent money grabbing bitches. Unfortunately, we didn’t realise that to take the cable car down to the base again, we’d have to go back through these women’s ‘camp’ and needless to say, one latched onto us, and even after showing her the book that we’d already bought and continuously repeating “我不有 谢谢”, she didn’t get it. 

Fortunately, she was distracted by something and we made our break away from her and scarpered towards the cable car station – it looked like we’d finally got rid of this one.

Time for that well deserved beer! However, what we had forgotten to bring with us was a bottle opener, so the guy that sold us the beer in the café gave us a set of chopsticks, saying we could open the beers with them. 

Yeah, right! I use my keys in the end which does the trick (and then notice that I have bent one of them and instantly fret that I won’t be able to get back into my flat ever again). The beer was delicious and well deserved, both from walking up and along the Wall, plus managing to dodge (almost) all the persistent money grabbing bitches, and we then get the cable car back down...

...to more women asking us to buy their stuff! By this time, it was really irritating, so after a quick lunch we head back to Beijing.

Despite the irritations - the Great Wall is exactly that - great. But I doubt you can see it from the moon... (not with all the smog anyway)

Tiananmen Where?

My Time Out Guide to Beijing is three years old, and completely out of date and useless, so I am on Google looking at the best way to get to the Forbidden City, plus what else is around that part of Beijing. I type in "Tiananmen Square" as I remembered that someone had told me that if you do, no results are displayed. 

Well, that's crap - they are.

However, when I went to open one of them, my internet connection was cut. I had to wait about thirty minutes (plus clear the cache etc) before the connection was allowed again...

Thinking that this may have been something to do with the connection in my room, I tried in Adrian's room: same thing.

Wow - Someone is Watching You!!

Forbidden City - All Made Possible By AMEX

We were supposed to be going to the Great Wall today, but the weather was so bad we were advised not to go, which was rather thankful, as I was knackered. Instead change our plans and head to the Forbidden City.

Opposite the Forbidden City is Tiananmen Square – infamous for the 1989 massacre, but actually not that impressive: it’s just a massive concrete square with a zillion CCTV in almost every location. The portrait of the dictator Mao was far more impressive.

We make our way up the massive steps to the City Gates and cross an enormous courtyard to get our tickets: we hadn't even entered the city, yet we'd been walking for ages! Tickets' bought, we made our way into the City...

Outside most of the City buildings were plaques telling the history of whatever building you were looking at, and we noticed that  these plaques also had "All made possible by the American Express Company" engraved on them: these had all been painted over, probably because it implied that AMEX had built this city - arrogant bastards. 

We just about managed to see all the parts that we wanted to - there really is too much to do in one day, and you get a bit "Templed / Concubine Chambered / Ante-roomed" out by the end. 

I would liked to have had a ray gun to evaporate all the tourists too, but what did I expect...