distant ruminations

We’re back in Beijing.

I’ll tell you one thing: One way to guarantee you don’t get a good night’s sleep is to share a kang with people who have been getting up literally at the crack of dawn, or even earlier, for their entire lives.

It doesn’t help when you wake up at 4:30 and can’t get back to sleep….

Anyway, we’re back.

Same old story: Whatever means of getting back into the county town- preferably a miandi running the bus route, because that’s only two kuai each and will stop right at the bus station, whereas hiring a car or miandi will cost twenty, and the bus no longer stops at the bus station- on the 919, off at Madian, taxi round the Third Ring, turn the water heater back on and wait till it’s done, then chuck the dirty clothes in the washing machine and take a shower.

We’ve got this down to a fine art.

Our dog is getting fat.

Well, this morning dawned bright and clear. Not the clearest, there were still hints of mist around the edges of the basin, obscuring the views of the more distant mountains, but still, clear, and a huge relief after Saturday’s pea souper. Cold, too, though, of course, and once again, at least five degrees cooler than the forecast for Beijing, judging by the ice in the buckets. Still, the buckets thaw out pretty quick, usually by about nine, so it’s not too cold up there.

I realised that the tap in the courtyard doesn’t freeze. The water is turned off overnight. Makes sense: I mean, you can’t have people’s pipes freezing and therefore cracking every night.

And I was presently surprised by how clear the air was down here in Beijing when we got back. I guess the same wind that was sweeping Yanqing also worked its magic on Beijing.

Somehow the new “truck lane” for the G110, which is really a separate highway running parallel with the G110, really does seem to have cut down on traffic noise in the village, even though it’s only an extra twenty or thirty metres to the south. I don’t know how that works, but for whatever reason, every time we’ve been up there since the truck lane was opened, there’s been a lot less noise.

Speaking of noise, if they could do the same for the village PA system as they did for the trucks, things might improve a bit more. I mean, shift all the loudspeakers to somewhere twenty or thirty metres on the other side of the highway…

I forgot to add that I’m enjoying much faster, much more reliable broadband out here in the countryside at the foot of a mountain than I get in downtown Beijing. Strange how that happens.

It was still raining when we left home early yesterday morning. After sitting through a ridiculous traffic jam on the Third Ring, we eventually made it to Nongzhanguan, then hung a left and drove down to Dongzhimen then around the Second Ring to Deshengmen.

Funny thing was, the taxi driver was also from Yanqing. He’d somehow gotten a fare from Xisanqi, where he rents a room, down to BeiGongDa, and then emerged from the BeiGongDa West Gate just as we were looking for a taxi- never easy on a rainy day- and we took advantage of the other would-be passengers having their backs turned and jumped in.

Seems he wouldn’t have minded a reason to head home to Yanqing. He seemed to be trying to persuade us to forget the bus and just take his taxi. We stuck with the bus- and took advantage of the usual idiots refusing to take the last seats on the bus and jumped the queue, getting on the road within two minutes of arriving at the bus station.

And we arrived at Dongguan, in the county town, bang on 11:30, just in time for the start of lzh’s classmate’s wedding. Fortunately the wedding was in the same restaurant we used, just across the square from the Dongguan bus stop. I was ready to just run across the square, but lzh decided taking a banche (flatbed tricycle) would be quicker. Whatever.

But here’s what surprised me. Sure, I know very well that Yanqing is always a couple of degrees colder than Beijing, but not that much colder than it was yesterday, surely. When we popped out of the Badaling tunnel, I saw smudges of white on the mountainside. The bus windows were mostly fogged up, so the view wasn’t very clear, and I instinctively assumed the trees must be blossoming, but then I looked out of a clear patch of window, and no: It was snow. Alright, we’re still up in the mountains, where you can expect it to be a couple of degrees cooler than down on the basin floor, and therefore several degrees cooler than Beijing. But we got down to the basin floor and there were still patches of snow lying on the ground.

By the time we emerged from the wedding and got a miandi home to the village, the snow had all melted so it isn’t too cold up here, but still, quite a bit colder than Beijing.

And then this morning we woke up to fog. I went out to the toilet, and on the way back noticed that the tap and two buckets of water that had been left in the courtyard had frozen over. The forecast on CCTV 9 this morning said four degrees. I guess that shows it was at least four degrees cooler up here than in Beijing.

But one thing I noticed at yesterday’s wedding: Based on my admittedly limited experience, Yanqing weddings are much better than Beijing weddings. For one thing, the soundsystems that I’ve seen used up here are of much better quality. You can actually understand what people are saying, rather than only hearing static that sounds like it might have been a human voice several lifetimes ago. Nope, no struggling to figure out whether the MC was saying 新郎 or 色狼, it was all perfectly clear. Loud, yes, ear-splittingly so, but if it’s happening in China, it’s happening at full volume. And, apart from the usual, “hey look, it’s a foreigner” bullshit from the less intelligent sections of the crowd, the people are a lot friendlier. Indeed, you still have to put up with the “hey look, it’s a foreigner” bullshit from the less intelligent sections of the crowd even in Beijing. And the food and drink were much better, too. And the restaurant was in the centre of the county town, not stuck on some remote and difficult-to-find corner of some far-flung and desolate suburb. In fact, had the 920 not left just as we were crossing the road to the Dongguan bus stop, we could’ve saved ourselves hiring a miandi to get out to the village. Why? Because the restaurant was at Yanqing’s equivalent of Wangfujing or Xidan.

We showed Ma and Ba carefully selected episodes of Country Calendar last night. No, we didn’t show half-wild cockies racing around mountains catching wild cattle, or the guy who lives alone in a tent in the Ureweras. We showed them more developed stuff: Sheep-dog breeders and trainers, shearing contractors, a bio-dynamic apple orchard, the guy who breeds whitebait, a crayfisherman. They were impressed. They said the sheep were huge. I pointed out they were bred for wool, and therefore their wool was very thick. They said, sure, but they’re still really fat after they’ve been shorn. And Ba wouldn’t mind getting his hands on some cuttings from those apple trees and planting them up here. And he was keen to find out just how big those crayfish were.

Success, in other words. Have to get that other Country Calendar DVD off my colleague and see if there’s any more good stuff for them to watch. Unfortunately, the episode on the sheep dog breeders we showed them didn’t show too much of the dog trials. I think they’d be impressed to see just how much control the shepherds have over their dogs, and how incredible the dogs are at herding sheep.

New Zealand has an election this year. Yes, I know, stating the bloody obvious. Everybody’s seen intense coverage of the run-up to the election plastered all over the international media. Chinese people I pass on the streets say, “Hey, you look like a Kiwi! What do you think of the election this year? Which parties are looking good?”

Uh, yeah.

Anyway, there’s one thing that really, really bugs me about New Zealand’s electoral laws. I have only been eligible to vote in two elections: 1996 and 1999. Every election since (1999, 2002, 2005 and this year), at least according to the rules posted by the Electoral Commission or one of its sister agencies online, I’ve been ineligble to vote. Why? Dirty, filthy, unpatriotic me has been out of New Zealand too long:

Yes, if you are 18 years of age or older and either: a New Zealand citizen and have been in New Zealand in the past three years, or a New Zealand permanent resident who has been in New Zealand in the past 12 months, then you may enrol.

Your electorate will be the one in which you last lived for a month or more.

(Notes: There are exceptions to these time limits for certain people and their families, such as members of the New Zealand Defence Force or New Zealand diplomats or trade representatives.)

Note: I am not a member of the New Zealand Defence Force or a diplomat or trade representative, nor are any members of my family. Indeed, probably the only member of my family who could squeak me through such a loophole, my wife, is a Chinese citizen.  And note that “a New Zealand citizen and have been in New Zealand in the past three years”? Yeah, in each of the elections since 1999 I’ve been outside of New Zealand for longer than three years. 2002 was particularly frustrating in that respect: The election happened while I was on a flight from Beijing to Hong Kong. I read the results in that day’s South China Morning Post, bought in transit in HK as I was about to board a flight to Auckland. Had that election been held one month later, I would’ve been eligible to vote. Only one month.

But actually, I’ve only voted in one election: 1996. In 1999, the election was just one month after I arrived in China. I got my voting papers from the NZ embassy, but they arrived only two days before the due date. I was in Changsha, quite some distance from the nearest NZ consulate or embassy. I thought, well, I don’t know who I’d vote for anyway, through the voting papers in the rubbish, and shrugged it off. Well, my last address in NZ was my parents’ address in Papakowhai, where I’d spent three months looking for a job in Wellington and then waiting for the flight to China. Before then I’d spent four and a half years in Dunedin. Had I stayed there, or had the election been held while I was still there, I would’ve known enough about the local candidates to make a choice, and of course I could’ve chosen a party for the party vote. Sitting there in Changsha with no idea of who the candidates in my parents’ electorate were just tipped the cynicism and political ennui just far enough over the barrier to kill any remaining desire to try and get my papers to the nearest polling station in time.

Since then, I haven’t been eligible to vote anyway, and so I just shrugged it off with an oh well, all the parties suck, so the party vote would be a horrible, degrading experience of choosing the least suckiest party- sorta similar to going to Blabla Bar back before Wudaokou took off because that’s where everybody was and there wasn’t much in the way of options locally- so big deal.

So I’m disenfranchised.

That’s right, people, I am a New Zealand citizen, but I am denied one of the most fundamental rights of citizenship in a democratic state simply because I live overseas.

I really should go home more often, I guess. Had I set foot in New Zealand at any time in the last three years, I’d be able to vote.

I guess I’m far, far from the only Kiwi in this position. New Zealand does have a rather high rate of expatriation. So here’s what I think: New Zealand’s electoral laws should be changed so that all New Zealand citizens over 18 years of age should be eligible to vote in all national elections regardless of where they live. Those of us who have lived overseas for three years or me should be at least allowed to cast a party vote (which electorate would I enroll in, anyway? I have no particular ties to my “last known address” in NZ, and no permanent address there). Really, set up a “diaspora” electorate for us expats. We don’t need an electorate MP- how would you work that anyway?- but let us cast a party vote.

After all, four million Kiwis back home, plus up to one million (according to some estimates, and considering the figures for Kiwis living in Oz and Pommieland, I suspect it could well be more) scattered around the world, many of whom have no electorate to enroll in back home- and don’t forget, we’re known for our loyalty to New Zealand (more than a few poor sods who had the misfortune to be born outside Aotearoa have told me that Kiwis are the people you meet in the weirdest, remotest, most paradisical place, and who tell you constantly how great life is back home), so why shouldn’t we be allowed our say?

And yet even if I were to be re-enfranchised, who would I vote for? Given the sheer idiocy the Greens have been spouting about China recently, I might actually have to consider [gulp] voting Labour [shudder- off to take a long, hot shower, that thought leaves me feeling so soiled]. What other options are there on the left/progressive/environmental  end of the spectrum?

Tangent: That last question was not meant to imply the Greens were ever left. It’s their environmental policies that I like, and I think, despite their inane, one-dimensional ramblings about China, we need them in Parliament.

Another tangent: Hey, wait! Maybe this Pakeha lad could vote for the Maori Party! I think we need them in Parliament just as much as we need the Greens! No, wait, I’m

NOT ALLOWED TO VOTE

in my own country’s elections. Anyway, the Maori Party looks pretty much set to get a very healthy slice of Parliament, thanks to Maori seats, the party vote, and smart Maori voters. And good on ’em, too.

Anyways, I don’t know why it’s been bugging me so much this year. Perhaps it’s the air of arrogance surrounding the Labour-led government? Maybe it’s because I’ve recently been making an effort to check out more of the Kiwi blogosphere? Dunno. And there’s still a good chance that even if I were allowed to vote, I’d still abstain as a protest at the lack of viable options. Whatever, it’d still be nice to have the choice- and abstention is a valid choice (unless you’re Australian, in which case abstention is illegal). But I am denied that choice because I have been outside New Zealand for more than three years, and I have been denied that choice in every election since 1999.

It has occured to me at various points in my time in China to right to MPs about this. I’m not sure which minister is responsible for electoral issues (Justice would be my assumption…) but the Prime Minister, as the head of government, should be a suitable subsitute. Foreign Affairs seems completely inappropriate considering I am a New Zealand citizen by right of birth. And if I wrote to the Prime Minister, it would seem appropriate to write to the leaders of all the parties in Parliament asking for their view. I wonder, though: Are MPs required by law to reply to people living outside New Zealand as they are required to reply to those living in New Zealand? Should be, right? I mean, I am a citizen of New Zealand…. Oh, yes, I have been denied the right to vote for how long now?…

Well, we head up to Yanqing tomorrow. A friend of lzh’s is getting married this weekend. So if I do get off my arse and start writing to MPs, it may well have to wait. But for now, I will simply issue a feral howl into the wilderness:

RE-ENFRANCHISE THE EXPATS!!!!!!!

We could, and should be an important constituency!