China Diary 2015

China my China

After a smooth landing, there are brief moments of beauty while we are whisked from the airport to Hangzhou city, capital of Zhejiang province, China. Travelling through the dense, new, city, suddenly, unexpectedly, an ancient bridge looms from out of the traffic hustle. It is not the only surprise. In small parks, silent statuary stands, surrounded by city hustle bustle. A half naked man, no flasher, practises silent Kung Fu. He kicks bare naked legs, waist high, thrusting a deadly foot into yielding air, as if in readiness for some Jackie Chan film role or some age old battle, yet to be won. Curiously large pansies accompany early spring roads which remain winter grey; bystanders are clothed in black, human crows waiting for city carrion, on Huangcheng Road (South).

All is well. Bright orange marigolds, symbols of death in Mexico, are a mere decoration in China’s Hangzhou. They shine from green leaves by multiple traffic lights, the stark contrast between man and nature made all the more apparent. The German made vehicle glides along cherry blossom laden Baochu Road and, eventually, after some debate with uninformed uniform clad officials, to the hotel.

The hotel, in reality, are rooms normally reserved for Chinese upper echelon civil servants, situated amidst the West Lake Botanical gardens, the magnolias, Japonica and calming cherry blossom. Hangzhou Botanical Garden can be found at the foot of Jade Spring Hill in the northwest end of West Lake. Hostile Mandarin is exchanged at the gate, for few are honoured with a stay in this park of peace. The guards persuaded, and the room shines with antique wood and Hungzhou welcome. Only the marble's icy floor punishes a wayward step, an acute reminder of the cool season. At night, as temperature drops, there is no sound. As darkness envelopes the gardens, silence too descends.

In the darkening, and before the evening repast, we are guided to the original site of what eventually became the China Academy of Art. Beside the West Lake itself. Yet before we are able to reflect upon those buildings (one time housing a small zoo), we are taken to see the original house of seals, the gate of which was torn down in the zeal of the Cultural Revolution, but has since been rebuilt. I am in awe at the sheer beauty and curvatures of the ancient Chinese script adorning standing stones, and carved into pillars. Seals, the red oil and silk marks frequently seen adorning Chinese ink and brush paintings, hold a unique importance in Chinese society. In antiquity everyone, and especially the illiterate, had to have a seal as their signature. A elder identity card. Seals are still revered, especially for Chinese artists, adding a red grace to ink and brush paintings, stamping both identity and heritage in a silent proclamation of ancestry.

Our day is not done, but just begun. After a late dinner of Hungzhou regional delicacies, surrounded by notable Chinese cinematographers, film producers et al, but no duck tongues at 'Grandma's House', we are swept off to the Shan Tan Museum of Modern Art, where an interview is to be recorded. Tracked by careful cameras, we discuss creative artworks. We ponder the immediateness of brushstroke versus the planned painting, of Chinese ink and of oil, of Shuen paper and of canvas, of Abstract Expressionism and of China's Neo Literati.

In that exhibition, an especial hanging for the documentary being shot, we smile, discuss, debate. We point pseudo-intellectually at painterly expressions, grimace where needed, gesticulate. We mock argue on cue and delight in the play acting like two naughty school boys, one an artist/intellectual, the other a writer. 'Take one' evolves into a multiplicity of takes. The ever polite producer coaxes artist and interviewer until her almost sensual satisfaction is reached. More smiles. Another, brief, interview - me this time. The charming producer solicits the final words on my interaction with the painter, my interest in his painting, and in China. It's a wrap. Multiple thank you(s), and the evening finished. Time to wrangle, once more, with officious officials at the gates to the Botanical Gardens.

Hangzhou Morning

In the chill of the Spring morning we awaken, stretch, gain our bearings. Abandoning the luxury apartment, its silence and its abundance of wood, and lack of breakfast, we saunter a few kilometres to the nearest promise of food. Our park wonderland, that oasis of botanical calm, provides the means to work up an appetite, denies the means to satiate it. We walk through the park, marvelling at yet more magnolia, head towards the West Lake (Xi Hu) proper, and eventually seek morning sustenance in a very small eatery. It is not the epicurean delight we had expected. Soggy Chinese filled bun (Pau) with a meat filling was all we could manage. The meat could have been anything, but we hope is an animal normally domesticated for such purposes, though recent stories of China tell us it could be otherwise. For the second day running, we discover that the Chinese really are not a nation of coffee drinkers. All manner of teas are available. Simple teas, which involve no more effort than the placing of leaves in a receptacle, are drunk with hot water. No milk, no sugar. Coffee is not on offer. Coffee is for foreigners and, like the English language, is not to be encouraged.

Why then, I hear you ask, does Starbucks exist just across the road. It is the very same argument. Starbucks is for foreigners, tourists and their ilk, not for the average Chinese. Only Chinese middle class, men of the extreme short back and sides hair styles leaving a carefully coiffured mop on top variety, and women in the oh-so-cute short fur jackets, frequent those relatively expensive watering holes. Starbucks is a place to be seen drinking, egoistically, Western coffee in. And they are the sort of Chinese who not only purchase, but use, a 'selfie stick' with their mobile phone. Tea is the Chinese drink.

West Lake, Hangzhou, teems with nearly as many visitors per annum, as it does fish. The three major causeways across the impressively ostentatious lake, resound to the tramping of footwear from the young and the elderly, but not infirm. Rented bicycles threaten the slower pedestrians, and wind enraged kites, others. Tai Chi practitioners earnestly perform their gentle exercise to the sound of high flying birds and the rustle of winter dried lotus plants. Children are not overtly in abundance. Twenty and thirty something's are. Aged Chinese smoke their much slower way over the waters, while one exuberant selfie proponent asks, in broken English, if she could take a photo with me. I answer in the affirmative, she clicks and is away with a big grin. Moments later she collars an elderly gentleman and is back, thrusting her mobile phone at him, requesting more photos. She settles for a picture of the two of us, elder gentleman's thumb included.

The 1928 Academy, at one remove

Outside Hangzhou, the China Central Academy of Art sprawls amidst a variety of trees, shrubs and flowering plants. Although I remain unimpressed by Brut architecture, I have to admit that the art school has made many attempts to romanticise the singularly functional nature of my least favourite building material. There are interesting shaped 'cutouts' from the concrete, with others unfortunately reminiscent of World War Two, British, bunkers. Bamboo and wood have been manipulated to great effect, but this casual visitor is less impressed with the buildings than with the surroundings.

Perennial young students, on practically silent electric scooters, passively ride from lesson to lesson with no sign of a rebellious spirit. Their hair and body shapes are almost interchangeable, one with the other. In China's Brave New World, graffiti has limited itself to the odd stencil of Youtube, mainly on footpath lights. It is a token, a brief candle of rebellion. Buildings remain free of any sign of a rebellious art spirit. The majority of everything is in Chinese, and few speak English. The interesting art bookshop sells books only in Chinese. It is frustrating, but entirely understandable. This is, after all, China, where I and my language are foreigners.

Boating Away

Today is devoted to strolling and boating. We ramble to a small island inhabited, seemingly, by the elderly and young lovers. The young arm in arm, short fur jackets nestling heavy, old fashioned, wooden overcoats. Freshly permed hair briefly brushes partly shaven male heads, brief longing looks exchanged but no smooching. In public, China's young remains chaste. The not so young brush the air with arms and legs in movements of Tai Chi and Chi Gong, begun centuries before. Slowing, the property's of this gentle exercise move in a circle, scarcely more ambient than the statues on other parts of the island. One permed elder looks up from her ethereal dance, glances at the foreigner, me. For a moment she continues to glide caught in my glance, but quickly the spell is broken, and she returns to her meditative movement.

A couple alight from a small ferry craft, at the side of the lake, just near to where we stand. We debate, hurriedly, as whether we should walk or float. We opted to float. The river Styx, Yannis Markopoulos and Who Pays The Ferryman comes to mind, but the boatman is pleasant enough as his one oar slaps the water and we are guided through one if China's most beautiful lakes.

Another Morning in Hangzhou

While Hangzhou, and its surrounds, is known for a myriad culinary delights, this fact has not reached the cooks at Hotel Huabei. The obligatory breakfast, which began our stay as mediocre, has quickly descended into inedible. This morning I seek refuge in KFC, and tackle a flaky pastry bun wrapped around bacon, egg, Mayonnaise and lettuce. It comes as a set with the long, deep fried, dough, which in Malaysia is known as Char Kuay and in China ‘youtiao’, and the usual fast-food-joint coffee. This is in marked contrast to the creative gastronomic delights we have been savouring, curtesy of our hosts, at various well-appointed restaurants around the city of Hangzhou. The hawker foods too radiate with oriental mystery, and delectability. Yesterday's mid-morning repast consisted of Beggars's Chicken, Tea Chicken, battered, deep fried crabs and strangely conical steamed dumplings resembling nothing more than miniature pastry wine carafes. These were but a fraction of the interesting foods available.

The weak Chinese sun, which has played hide and go seek since the begging of our stay, remains hidden today. My wife, is sick, in the hotel room. I am alone, ordering Chinese food, in China, without the luxury of the local language. It has become a matter of 'smile', 'point', 'smile', 'pay', 'utter something which might pass as thank you in Mandarin' and collect what is given. Overall, staying in China continues to be an interesting experience.

Old Town Blues

The journey from Hangzhou West Lake, to the antique town of Xi Tang was largely grey and mist enveloped. Unimpressive small holding buildings, long clotches of vegetables and partially mist shrouded fields made the arrival to the town all the more special. Aside from a momentary wrangle regarding tickets, of which we had none (being guests of the preserved town's director, Zhong Xiao Sheng) the entry to Xi Tang town was as interesting as it was painless. The walk through the tourist crowds was immediately reminiscent of Malaysia's Malacca, on a very busy weekend. It is a dilemma, this ancient town needs tourists to survive, but the very same tourists hail the town's demise. Zhong Xiao Seng mentioned that a future plan is to limit the amount of tourists, leaving just enough to provide the much needed finance, while reducing the amount of feet tramping over the old stone bridge and, hopefully, reducing the sticky fingers wearing away the Han Dynasty walls. 

As evening brightens the lights and darkens the buildings, I sit on an old stone wall eating fresh strawberries watching tourists, of which there are plenty. The cold of the stone wall seeps through my Marks and Sparks cargo pants and reminds me that I must move. 

Early morning, at least early for me. Seven am, the smell of yesterday's strawberries permeates the Kai Xun Boutique Hotel room. In Xi Tang old town the tourist cameras are already clicking. Hordes of early birds tote weighty zoom lenses, or simple iPads/iPhones, pointing and shooting at anything that doesn't move, alleyways, walls, each other and themselves. Most especially themselves, for this is the age of the ubiquitous selfie and unashamed narcissistic self promotion on WeChat, even in China. 

While boatmen cleanse the various rivers of the previous day's tourist discards, camera clicking tourists snap the men working. After the comparative silence of an early breakfast of Chinese buns (Pau), softly lilting songs by some Chinese songstresses drift above the raspings of the ever present renovation, and the toot tooting of hard working motorcycle vans. It is a chill day in March, but the dark clothed Chinese tourists are not deterred from their tourism, not even by the exorbitant prices for a humble cup of coffee (Y38...Rm19). Perhaps coffee has become a symbol of status in China. Bourgeois replaced by beanois.

A living, breathing, brown, young llama is tethered to a pillar in the centre of Xi Tang Mei Shi Guan Restaurant, where we, like Hobbits, eat a second breakfast. Customers in winter clothing drink watery soya bean in small bowls, eat fried dumplings with piquant chilli, unperturbed by the presence of the llama or the background of contemporary Chinese Muzak. I want someone to say "Mind my llama, no he isn't called Dalai, excuse me I have a cold." It would sound like an old skit from Monty Python's Flying Circus, perhaps with John Cleese and Michael Palin or, in another age, Peter & Dud. I absently wonder, are Chinese Food and Hygiene Regulations so very different from other country's then. For a brief moment the restaurant is lively as the llama escapes his tether and goes off in search of food. He (I presume it is he) trots behind the tea counter seeking what - the every elusive and much over priced coffee, perhaps. The llama makes a dash for the door. Recaptured, it is fed grass in the centre of the restaurant and settles, as does the restaurant and its customers.

On the drive over to Xi Tang, I had wondered where all the local inhabitant had gone. Few people were seen in the fields along the way. I found them. They had quite obviously split themselves between the ancient town of Zi Tang, and Hangzhou's West Lake. Towards lunchtime the small cobble streets of Zi Tang thronged with myriad Chinese, and a smattering of foreign visitors. The crowds so dense that it was a struggle to pull through them, to reach my hotel.The following day I sit on my favourite Chinese island (for now), and encounter the second half of the Chinese population. They are led, frequently by orange hatted ladies carrying flags and shouting orders, commands, or other instructions into head strapped microphones. These groups roll in and roll out if the park, like human waves crashing against the park's antique standing stones, bearing poetry.

Walk me to the end of Zi Tang town 

where moon faced children 

float bubbles 

which fly 

over ancient bridges 

dispersing

on the 

Persistent chiselled rock 

of memory.

It is the last day. The calm before the storm of the Kuala Lumpur conference. I sit alone, once more, in the island park,watching locals take endless mobile phone photos, and I am tired. 

Air pearls 

in Hangzhou West Lake, 

fish released, 

Floating

Like ferrymen

Pop before my eyes only

Sad

Brown

Lotus 

bows its winter head.

Pagoda

Silhouettes

March 

Sunday visitors 

Witnesses

To green flecks

Of Burgeoning Spring

In permeating heat

Cherry blossom

Parades

Against

Willow green

By half moon

Stone bridge

But I am alone

In the park

With no one 

to 

tell.