一 日 千 秋: 'One Day, a Thousand Autumns'

Guozijian Street, Beijing. Photo: Luise Guest

In this time of isolation, anxiety, and various kinds of sorrow both deeply personal and globally shared, a time that Nick Cave described in his newsletter as making us 'become eyewitnesses to a catastrophe that we are seeing unfold from the inside out', writing is something that I and many others are turning to. For some that takes the form of a diary or frequent social media posts, for others it might be letters to friends and family. For me and other suddenly unemployed writers it's blog posts like this one. Whatever form they take, they are all  like letters in bottles cast into the ocean. The days seem very long, and somewhat shapeless, recalling the Chinese idiom: ‘One day, a thousand Autumns’.

Guozijian Street, Beijing. Photo: Luise Guest

Looking back over this blog since I began writing it at the end of 2010, I suddenly remembered the optimism and unfettered joy of my earliest trips to China. That astonished desire to exclaim, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, ‘Well Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore!’ is something I’d love to recapture. I had been so looking forward to taking my two grown-up daughters to Shanghai for their first experience of China, before Covid-19 brought the world as we knew it to a screaming halt. I am still hoping to do that eventually, although the news of China closing its borders to foreigners this week sent a chill down many spines, virus or no virus.

Hutong view near Dashilan'r. Photo: LuiseGuest

I’ve been looking back at my travels, to a time before they mostly became work trips for the job I have now lost – a sudden and unexpected redundancy that has profoundly shaken me, even in the midst of global turmoil. I’m hoping to regain my old adventurous spirit in the future as an independent writer and researcher, untrammelled by external strictures and obligations.

So, aiming for optimism and planning a new future even while living day to day, as we all now must, here are some of the things I love about China – and about Beijing in particular:

BEIJING GREY

Beijing Grey. Photo: Luise Guest

There is a particular Beijing grey (and those who know me know that I do love grey!) It’s the grey walls of the hutong alleys and courtyard houses and their grey tiled roofs, echoed very often by grey and polluted air that makes those rare blue-sky days all the more miraculous.  Grey walls are offset by red doors and brightly coloured washing drying on lines, fences, or draped over powerlines – less so than in Shanghai where it used to be called ‘Shanghai flags’, but it’s still a thing. 

Hutong Washing. Photograph Luise Guest

SUDDENNESS HAPPENS

'Beware lest suddenness happens' is one of my favourite 'Chinglish' warning notices (in the Beijing Zoo). And suddenness does indeed happen. Constantly. To follow the sound of music at 9 o'clock at night, enter the park and find more than a hundred people ballroom dancing in the dark. To come upon the water calligraphers still absorbed in brushing their beautiful characters onto the pavement at dusk. To round a corner in the park and find a man taking his songbirds in their cages for a turn around the lake. One morning I came out of the gate of my lane onto the street and found all the young real estate agents lined up outside their office with their hands on their hearts while the national anthem was played. This was quite a sight – they were usually fully occupied with lying across their motor scooters playing games on their phones, playfully pushing and shoving each other or vainly combing their hair and gazing into their mirrors. 

Blossoms in Caochangdi Gallery courtyard. Photograph Luise Guest

PEOPLE

And that brings me to the people. My first encounters were so open-hearted and generous, from the translator I hired who told me his English name was Stanley (‘Why Stanley?’ ‘Stanley Kubrick, of course, Miss Luise’) and constantly told me to wear warmer clothes, to the very young doorman at the hotel that I had booked in my complete ignorance of Beijing geography, on the wrong side of the city. Wearing a much too big PLA greatcoat and a battered fur hat he grinned each time I left and called out ‘Man zou ah!’ (Literally, ‘walk slowly’, but meaning ‘take care’.) Because Beijing was my first Chinese city, and because I made friends in that first six-week trip that I hope will be friends for life, it has seemed almost like home to me ever since. People are incredibly kind and open-hearted, and I hope that the recent, widely reported suspicion of foreign-ness will not change that. 

 

Beijing street scene, 2016. Photo: Luise Guest

I have always struck up conversations (in my sadly still non-fluent Chinese) with old men sitting out in the hutongs, with mothers watching their children in the park and – especially when my daughter was expecting her first baby and I was feeling very far away – with grandmothers wheeling prams or holding hands with red-cheeked toddlers bundled up in so many padded clothes that they look like miniature Michelin men. They were probably a bit bemused by the laowai’s unsolicited ‘I’m also going to be a grandmother!’ but they were always very kind. Dancing aunties ask me to dance with them in the park, singers explain the words of their revolutionary songs, and shopkeepers sometimes run after me with change I have forgotten or gloves I've left behind: all these encounters are woven into the threads of my memories.

A feast from the Caochangdi artist hangout 'Fodder Factory', now sadly closed. Photo: Luise Guest

FOOD GLORIOUS FOOD

And finally, of course, the food. It must be said that  food has figured largely in the fascination of my time in China. The visual richness of street vendors of all kinds was a feature of any walk in Beijing – sadly many have now been moved on or returned to far provinces – and the foods on offer changed as the weather changed. Tiny sweet clementines that I have never found anywhere else in the world, whole pineapples on sticks, pomegranate juice, grilled corn, chestnuts and walnuts, congee and pancakes and baozi, sweet potato sold from braziers, and cakes: Beijingers love their 'xiao chi' (literally, ‘little eats’, i.e snacks).

Girl selling pomegranates, Beijing 2015. Photo: Luise Guest

And I remember the beautifully coloured dumplings on my very first lunch with friends in Beijing, at a tiny restaurant that I could never find again, the duck at different ‘Lao Beijing’ famous restaurants, and the fabulous hand-pulled noodles. And the cakes (some delicious, some ... odd) from Daoxiangcun, an old ‘Beijing brand’ cakeshop established in 1895 -- or 1773 depending on who you believe.

Beijing is changing – it is already a different city from the one I fell in love with ten years ago. The gentrification, the ‘Great Bricking’ that made the old hutongs that had teemed with life more blandly homogeneous, the closure of street markets, the removal of migrants who had flocked to the city from all over China and the loss of their tiny, flourishing businesses – hole in the wall noodle joints, flower shops, bicycle repair stalls, tailors and convenience stores – all this has made Beijing cleaner, certainly, but perhaps less interesting. But constant change is a given in China, and its people are nothing if not resilient and adaptable. I just hope I will see it again, and spend much more time there than I have been able to in the last five years of brief work visits.

Hutong shopping. Photo: Luise Guest

I hope the terrifying children's rides are still there, too, but I fear all these little shops selling an extraordinary mixture of dongxi will be gone with the gentrifying winds of change.

Just for the record, I’m pleased that my second-favourite Chinglish sign was still to be found in public toilets on my last visit. It says: "This is what I have been wanting to talk to you about. Please flush the toilet. You are the best."

北京日记 Beijing Diary: Ten Things I Love About Beijing (and a few that I don't)

Ten things I love about Beijing - even apart from the art!

1. The kindness of strangers. When I smile at people they invariably smile back, and often stop for a chat in a weird mix of mime and Chinese. I suspect people are talking to me in a kind of pidgin baby talk when they realise that my communication skills are pretty limited, but I don't care if they are having a laugh at my expense as it is all so good-humoured. People go out of their way to be helpful, chasing after me with change, showing me where I am on a map (which it sometimes turns out I am holding upside-down) making sure I understand the special deal in the supermarket (so I now have 2 dozen eggs even though I only wanted 6!) and generally being kind. I notice otherwise insanely aggressive drivers stop for old people crossing the road (well, OK, only sometimes!) and there is much public affection for children.

2. Public singing. Often as people ride their bicycles or scooters past me they leave a trail of music behind them. I love the unselfconscious way that people sing loudly to themselves as they walk or ride through the streets or round the park. Despite the rather unnerving way in which Xi Jinping is making public statements about a return to 'Mao Zedong thought' I also can't help enjoying the public singing of revolutionary songs in the local park each morning. These are people singing the songs of their youth, and remembering a time which many thought was much simpler than the present day.

3. Food! No need to say more - chuan'r, baozi, jiaozi, noodles, beautiful tiny mandarins from the markets, chestnuts, peanuts with Sichuan pepper and chilli, cakes filled with sesame paste - it's all good! But I am avoiding the following menu items: Donkey sandwich, Pig intestines in soup, vanilla chicken (God knows!) and the mysterious and terrible-sounding "pale baby soup". At least for now. Even the multinational chains have an intriguingly local flavour - the 24-hour KFC on my street serves congee for breakfast (or so I am told), and Pacific Coffee sells red bean cheese-cake and osmanthus flower cake.

4. Beijing babies. Swaddled in so many layers of clothes, they are like little fat Buddhas. Babies are everywhere, usually being doted on by both parents and at least one grandparent. I have lots of smiling encounters with grandparents - in the street, in the park, at the shops, in the subway.

5. The Beijing accent. Everybody talks like a pirate! I am learning to make sure I say "Sanlitun'r" instead of Sanlitun. Taxi drivers keep kindly telling me my Chinese tones are good, which makes me happy, but then if the conversation continues I am forced to reveal how small my vocabulary is, and how bad my grammar. Shame. But I persevere. One day I am determined to have "yi kou liuli de hanyu" (literally: a mouth of fluent Chinese.) I may be 150 years old before that day comes, however.

6. Public Parks. All of life is here - ballroom dancing, public singing, mass aerobic dancing, qigong, flying kites, water calligraphy, mahjong, cards, singing Chinese opera, playing every possible variety of musical instrument, knitting, fishing, rowing boats, exercising (mainly old people exercising with great vigour and seriousness) and hundreds of people just sitting: reading, chatting, listening to radios (loudly) and eating.

7. Beijing taxis. They are cheap, they are everywhere, and sometimes the pushing and shoving in the subway just cannot be borne! I would like people to stop complaining about Beijing taxis. The drivers work REALLY long hours and very rarely try to cheat you. Some of them are mercifully silent and others are natural comedians. A driver the other day punctuated his swearing at the traffic with teaching me new words - many are self-appointed language teachers. I was dutifully repeating the things he said until I inadvertently repeated one of the names he had just called a guy riding a 'san lun che' who had cut in front of us. He gasped in shock, swerved the car momentarily onto the wrong side of the road (not that unusual, but terrifying nonetheless) and made me promise never, never, never to say that word again. So now I am too scared to look it up and find out what terrible thing I cluelessly uttered! Taxi drivers often want to tell me things about Australia, which I sometimes understand and at other times I have no clue. My tactic is to smile a lot and pretty much agree with everything, which seems to work OK in most situations - although it occasionally backfires when ordering in restaurants.

8. Late Autumn Weather. Most especially those rare and wonderful blue sky days when the air is not choked with smog. You walk around feeling cheerful all day and thankful to be alive in such an exciting city.

9. Hutong architecture. I hope that the government is belatedly realising that this absolutely unique and incredibly beautiful form of urban design is worth preserving. And I mean preserving in an authentic way rather than the Disneyfied versions that sprang up before the Olympics, after whole neighbourhoods had been razed. However, one must be wary of romantic Orientalism - people also need reliable electricity, running water, and internal private bathrooms. The thought of living through a Beijing winter and having to use a public bathroom is a truly dreadful one - an indication that true Beijingers are a really tough breed.

10. The constant surprises. To follow the sound of music at 9 o'clock at night, enter the park and find more than a hundred people dancing in the dark to recorded disco music. To come upon the water calligraphers still absorbed in brushing their beautiful characters onto the pavement at dusk. To round a corner in the park and find a man taking his songbirds in their cages for a turn around the lake. The other morning I came out of the gate of my lane onto the street and found all the young real estate agents lined up outside their office with their hands on their hearts while the national anthem was played. This was quite a sight - especially as they are usually fully occupied with lying across their motorscooters playing games on their phones, playfully pushing and shoving each other and combing their hair. One in particular is always picking his nose when I walk past. I'm tempted to give him some tissues.

11. The art. Of course, the art. OK I lied about ten things - here is number 11. One of the  things I most love is the art here. And I could have definitely put it at Number 1. It is unlike anywhere else on the planet. Beijing really feels like the beating heart of the artworld. In a place where even the smallest artists' 'village' contains hundreds of studios with artists working away in every possible form, the excitement is palpable. Not all of it is good, or interesting, of course, but there is such incredible volume of production that in any visit to the galleries of 798 or Caochangdi one is sure to find things that will amaze and delight. I am here to meet artists for 2 months - in 2 years I would not be able to see everything I want to see in just this one Chinese art  centre, to say nothing of Shanghai, Chongqing, Hangzhou and other art centres. And the new graduates pour out of the Central Academy of Fine Arts each year. A group of CAFA students attended the Redgate Open Studios event this week, at which I gave a talk about my research, and crowded around me to ask questions and tell me their ideas about what is driving the youngest generation of contemporary artists. So earnest, so passionate, and so interesting!

Liang Yuanwei's studio, photograph Luise Guest reproduced with permission of the artist

Liang Yuanwei in her studio, photograph Luise Guest reproduced with permission of the artist

Bing Yi Huang in her studio, photograph Luise Guest reproduced with permission of the artist

Bing Yi's assistants unroll her 30-metre long ink painting,
 photograph Luise Guest reproduced with permission of the artists

With Gao Ping in her studio

And some things NOT to love:

Air pollution. Enough said. Public spitting. This really is horrible.
Even more disturbing though, is the sense of a place which may lose its heart and soul unless there is a collective will to reconsider the social cost of the 'to get rich is glorious' ethos. While it is unquestionably admirable that China has lifted so many of its population out of poverty (so much so that according to Forbes Chinese Mass Affluent Group Report 93 million Chinese households are expected to join the ranks of the middle class) there is much public angst about whether China has lost its moral compass. The pace of change has been extraordinary. As recently as 2000, only 4 percent of urban households in China were middle class; by 2012, that share had soared to over two-thirds.  ( the diplomat.com ) 

In a review of the immensely popular movie 'Tiny Times', Sheila Melvin says,

 " Since the Cultural Revolution ended and the era of opening and reform began, the Chinese government has preached the gospel of materialism.  The Deng-era slogans “To get rich is glorious,” “Development is the irrefutable argument,” and “It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches the mouse” have been thoroughly absorbed.  Wealth-generation has become virtually the sole measure of success – for the nation, provinces, localities, leaders, and individuals. It thus comes as little surprise that a movie in which young people are obsessed with luxury goods and opt for money over love and in which parents will do anything to see their child marry rich – a mother in “Tiny Times’ tells her son’s girlfriend, “Our family is not open to the lowly poor like you!” – should be popular with young people.

On the contrary, it looks like a true reflection of contemporary society in which conspicuous consumption is often the dominant ethos; those who vocally advocate an alternative path – of religious faith or opposing politics – do so at their own risk; and the elite inhabit a parallel universe of privilege that, on those occasions when it is exposed (as following a sports car accident, a corruption trial, or a gang rape) makes the wealth-flaunting in “Tiny Times” seem truly tiny.  A rethinking of official rhetoric is already underway and I, for one – while recognizing the need for continued growth – hope that the new “Chinese dream” will encompass goals other than getting rich at any cost." (Best of Times or Worst of Times)

When you walk down a lane filled with family washing drying in the dusty air, with people eating noodles sitting on plastic stools, and then you round the corner and find a Lamborghini show-room, and boutiques selling Versace and Prada, the juxtapositions are breathtaking. And while this is partly what makes Beijing so fascinating for the visitor, it is also an indication of the dizzying speed of change and the resultant inequality. A potent mixture of influences, economic factors and social policies, this is causing considerable anxiety here. Two years ago there was much discussion about a return to Confucian values. Today the line is about returning to the core values of the Communist Party. I suspect that none of this means a huge amount to those young real estate agents at my gate, with their cheap suits and their expensive mobile phones. Once Pandora's box has been opened.....

Oops I forgot to learn Chinese

I'm sitting at my dining table, it's late at night but I can't sleep for going over and over all the things I should have remembered to do, buy, tell my children and/or pack before I leave Sydney for Beijing in the morning. I have started every day this fortnight with the very sincerest intention of doing some serious revision of my last two years of Chinese study - and every day work, life and the whole damn thing has intervened to prevent me learning some of those vital grammar or vocabulary points that always elude me in class. The ones that make me sound like a stuttering fool when I try to speak simple sentences about the incredibly irritating characters in my textbook. I have come to truly loathe the brash Wang Peng and his friends.

I've been doing 4 hours a week of Chinese classes all this year but I swear I am getting worse rather than better. How can this be? Last year when I arrived for the first time in Beijing I had only been learning for a couple of months but had all the crazy confidence of the complete novice. Fools rush in etc. Now I am at the horrible stage of knowing how much I don't know. And understanding just enough of CCTV or overheard conversations to be constantly frustrated.

But I persevere because it's so endlessly fascinating - and so beautiful when you begin to see the elements of silk, jade, wood or bamboo in the radicals of Chinese characters. And what's not to like about a language where the expression 'I'll come straight away' can be literally translated as 'I'll come on horseback'?

So, I'm not arriving on horseback but on Cathay Pacific 162. This time tomorrow I'll be looking at Beijing out of my window, and not breathing the jasmine scented air of a Sydney garden, but the cold winds of northern China. I'm looking forward to exploring more of the city that I loved from my first nervous walks around the West Beijing neighbourhood last year, and especially the old hutong areas where I took these photographs. I'm very excited about the many visits to artists' studios and galleries that I have arranged, and a little daunted by the task ahead of me. And by the prospect of extreme cold. But if the American art critic Barbara Pollack can have her 'Wild Wild East' experiences and turn them into a readable, if grammatically annoying, account of her adventures, then so can an Australian art teacher!