seems familiar…
It would seem Kevin Rudd learnt a lot during his time in China.
back
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on January 1, 2008
We’re back after three cold days in Yanqing. I mean, that wind was great, but it really dropped the temperature, and combine that with the gain in altitude and absence of Beijing’s heat island, and it was just a tad on the chilly side. Winter has finally arrived.
But that wind was great, it cleared the air out really well. I was surprised to see only a mild haze off in the distance as we popped out on to the plain at Nankou, and the Xishan standing clear and stark against the sunset horizon.
I was also surprised with the traffic. On the way out on Sunday morning, on the Second Ring heading around to Deshengmen (from the southeast, just to be clear), it seemed that everybody was heading southwards, leaving us an almost unobstructed run around to Deshengmen. And from what we saw as we crossed under Jinsong Qiao, it seemed to be the same story on the Third Ring. And then there were far fewer people at Deshengmen queuing for the bus than I expected. Usually at the start of a holiday there’s a queue of at least 100 metres of mostly Yanqing locals heading home, and only a tiny, tiny queue for Badaling. And they always put on a whole lot of extra buses to cope with the holiday rush. But this time the queue was only slightly longer than a regular winter weekend, maybe 25 metres. Fortunately, they still had all the holiday extra buses on, so we were on a bus very, very soon after we arrived. I think the only time I’ve got on a 919 at Deshengmen quicker was that Thursday morning heading up for the wedding. And then the traffic was no heavier than a regular weekday. I guess the holiday helped remove a lot of the truck traffic that always slows the trip over the mountains- either because the police stopped them from running or forced them to take State Highway 110 (which separates from the Badaling Expressway at Changping town) over the holiday period, or because they took the holiday off (hmmm… seems unlikely) or both.
And the traffic on the way back was just as good. A pity, though, that some bright spark decided that we’d have to buy our tickets/swipe our cards before getting on the bus at the Yanqing station. That slowed down the loading process so that the rush back to work took far longer than it should’ve even though they were loading two and even three buses at a time. But once we were on the bus it was all good.
I don’t know what happened to make the holiday traffic so smooth, but I like it.
But the air up in Yanqing was spectacular, as only Yanqing in the winter can manage. A dry, hard, cold, crystalline air, and so pure. On the 31st, we could see clear across the basin in every direction from the gate of the courtyard- other courtyard walls permitting, of course. If I’d climbed up the mountains to the irrigation channel- or perhaps if I’d only climbed as high as the road that runs along the top of the fields at the very base of the mountain, separating orchards from forest restoration area, and if I had a good enough camera (the other big limiting factor apart from my laziness), I could’ve taken photos of the Badaling area a good 30-odd kilometres away, or the Kangxi area on the opposite side of the reservoir. But I don’t have that good a camera and apart from a visit to Ergu I didn’t bother going anywhere.
Anyway, there’s more that could be written, but I’m tired and smelly and I want a shower. It’s been three days, you see. I smell, and my hair is icky.
clear
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on December 30, 2007
Good recipes. I just need to work on the execution a little. Especially the 家常豆腐. I’m not used to going from deep-frying to regular frying in one wok, and so I wound up with far too much oil. And I was in too much of a hurry, so the plan I had all carefully set out in my mind got thoroughly buggered. Never mind, it still tasted good, and with a little more practice I’ll get it right. And the chicken could’ve used a little more ginger and a dash of vinegar.
Anyway, the air is finally starting to look clear after two straight days and nights of wind. And judging by the smoke coming from the neighbourhood chimneys, there’s still a bit of a northerly breeze, so hopefully the weather will stay good and we’ll get a few days of breathable air. There’s still a smidgen of haze in the distance, though, just to remind us how bad the pollution was.
And clear air is excellent and most timely not just because of how bad the pollution got this week, but because today is the first day of the New Year break and we’ll be heading up to the village soon. I’m looking forward to it. I just hope the queue isn’t too long at Deshengmen. Nevermind, as long as it may be, it won’t take too long to get on a bus. The 919s are managed very well.
scariest
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on December 29, 2007
Perhaps what’s scariest is not how visibly, palpably thick with pollution the air had gotten by Thursday. That was, in a way, to be expected, after several straight days of still, humid air. Same as last summer. Nor that the API would have maxed out at 500 yesterday- sure, the wind carries the local pollution away, but it also brings in pollution from other cities, and it kicks up all that sand and dust. No. Perhaps what is scariest is that after two straight days of constant wind the air is no clearer than on any average day. That, I think, shows best just how polluted it got this week.
weird harmonics
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on December 29, 2007
It’s half past six in the morning, I’ve been awake since about three, and not willingly, either, and the wind is still blowing outside.
I don’t know what woke me up or why I couldn’t get back to sleep, but there you go, I’ve been wide awake for several hours now. Mornings like this there comes a point where I just give up and get up and get on with my day. The internet is, after all, far more interesting than the bedroom ceiling.
But that wind, wow, it’s really been blowing all night. The wind first picked up about nine yesterday morning and was blowing through most of the day, although it started to die down in the afternoon. And then some time last night it picked up again, and boy did it pick up. It reminded me of home, Wellington, the windy city, lying there listening to this gale howl past our windows.
But there’s something, something, catching in the wind and making this weird, mid-pitched, humming-groaning sound. I can’t figure it out. We’ve had windy days here before, of course, but I’ve never heard this sound before. It sounds like it’s coming from within our building, too. It’s hard to describe, but the best I can do is to say it sounds like the wind is grabbing something metallic and pulling it real hard, threatening to tear it off the building, and the resulting sound is this energy and pressure being released in a way that does not result in that thing being torn off the building.
Ah, and now I hear the upstairs neighbours emerging for the day. Must be approaching a reasonable time to be up- if I had an eight o’clock class to run off to. Fortunately I don’t. It also means it’ll soon be time for lzh to get up and get ready for work. Yeah, office workers also have to do these silly catch-up days to make up for the holidays. I’m lucky. My timetable and my unusually logical boss have conspired to get me a very long weekend.
Well, the wind has been gradually dropping off since about five, and by the sound of it it’ll be down to something chilly, but light enough to allow lzh to ride her bike to work as usual.
bah
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on December 28, 2007
Unfortunately the snow stopped some time very early this morning, and most unfortunately the wind has died down before it has cleared all the muck built up in Beijing’s all too palpable atmosphere over the last few days. I was very happy to see the forecast snow on the ground this morning. Precipitation, be it rain or snow, is a mop scrubbing our air clean. I was even happier when the forecast wind blew up later on. Wind is a broom sweeping the airborne muck away from Beijing. Sure, the wind dropped the temperature dramatically, but shit, it’s almost January, it’s supposed to be cold. And after yesterday’s toxic pea soup of an atmosphere, wind was more than needed. I only hope we get to keep enough of a breeze coming through overnight to finish off the job.
humbug
wiring up
Posted by wangbo in life in Beijing on December 28, 2007
Well, I don’t know what, exactly, is going on, but for a couple of days now there’ve been random drilling sounds at random times in our building. Of course, I just assumed somebody was renovating. But there’ve also been workers running around with what looked like “electrical boxes”- you know, big steel boxes of the kind that hold electrical equipment and get bolted to apartment building walls. Well, today they’re stringing up wires through our neighbourhood, and a new box appeared in our stairwell with words like “broadband netcom” emblazoned across its front.
So hopefully all this drilling and wiring will turn into increased internet capacity. I mean, I’m quite satisfied with what we’ve got, but that’s largely because I don’t bother with things like radio or video or streaming sports events live…. unlike some of my less satisfied colleagues. One of whom fondly remembers his days freezing his arse off in Harbin, where he could watch all the football he wanted live online. And I have to say that our internet hasn’t been performing so well lately. Not too bad, considering, but still, not as good as it was. And it would be nice to have the kind of bandwidth that would allow me to, for example, watch the All Blacks without having to go to the Den. Of course, unless they change the pricing scheme, that kind of thing would still be just a tad too expensive, but still, it’d be nice to have that option.
move the capital?
And not for the first time this year, I’m reading an article suggesting that China should move its capital. It’s the same argument always applies: The historical reasons for Beijing to have been chosen as the capital no longer apply, and Beijing’s continued growth is stretching its environmental capacity to the limit. Shifting the capital would remove a large part of the reason for continued excessive growth in Beijing and therefore remove a huge amount of the stress on the environment.
What’s different is that the author, Mei Xinyu (I really can’t stand China Dialogue’s policy of Westernising the name order in the English editions of it articles. Nobody else does that, so why should China Dialogue?) points out that Beijing’s history as the national capital dates only from the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. Exactly. And its status as national capital has not been without interruption over the last 736 years. The first Ming capital was Nanjing, which is also where the Republic established its capital before being forced into exile in Wuhan, then Chongqing, and finally Taipei.
I also like Mei’s suggestion that instead of moving water north, it may be better to move water-intensive industry south.
But what would happen if the capital were to move?
Well, I guess that in the short term it would cause merry havoc in the economy, with the sudden spike in construction and all that would entail.
Then Beijing’s population would drop drastically as all the bureaucrats and diplomats moved south. That would lead to better traffic and therefore cleaner air, lower house prices, less crowded schools….
Would business move? Hard to say. I guess a lot of companies that have head offices here specifically because this is the centre of power would pack up and move. Then again, I can imagine a lot of businesses would shrug it off and continue on as per normal right here. Beijing, after all, already has a pretty well established business community.
Beijing would remain a cultural centre (and major tourist attraction, unfortunately). You can’t pack up all that history and culture and ship it south just ‘cos the government is moving out. Oh, wait….. Um, no, Beijing would remain a cultural centre. Take the universities as an example: Even if some hare-brained excuse for a university’s leadership decided they had to move with the capital, the spike in prices for construction materials caused by the construction of all the new government offices and embassies and housing for bureaucrats and diplomats would price the universities out of the moving market. And there is simply too much history tied up in the campuses of places like BeiDa and Tsinghua for them to move out. The same applies, I think, to every other aspect of Beijing’s cultural life. What would happen to Beijing punk if it were suddenly transplanted to Nanjing (for the sake of argument)? Nothing good, so far as I can see. Might I humbly suggest that Beijing’s culture has at least as much to do with its location at the edge of the plain, up againts the mountains, a stone’s throw from the grasslands and the deserts, in the dry, dusty north, and with its bitter winters, dry, cutting, windy springs, and torrid summers as it does with its imperial history? I mean, plenty of other cities have served as the national capital, and none of them have produced a culture like Beijing’s. They all have their own, unique local culture.
My only fear, really, is that to make up for the sudden, collossal hole the departure of the bureaucrats and diplomats would leave in the economy, the municipal government would invite heavy industry back into the city, leaving us with even worse air. But if the city could react by relying on and fully developing its technology, education and culture, and tourism industries and keep the CBD thriving as a high-end business centre, I think Beijing would suddenly become almost liveable again.
Alright, I’m sold. Let’s move the capital tomorrow.
But I don’t see it happening, at least not for quite some time. There’s too much cultural and political capital tied up in Beijing’s status as the National Capital. I mean, every time I ask my students to present a convincing, persuasive argument why people should visit Beijing (and they fail miserably every time, but that’s not Beijing’s fault), I wind up in a conversation that goes something like this:
Student: Beijing is the capital of China.
Me: So what? Everybody knows that, first of all, and secondly: Wellington is the capital of New Zealand, Tokyo is the capital of Japan, Paris is the capital of France. Big deal. Every country has a capital.
Student: Beijing has been the capital of many Chinese dynasties.
Me: Oh? Name them.
Students (as a collective): Ummm, ahhh, ohhh…. Qing…. ahhh…… Ming…… ahhhh….. ummm….. Tang? NO!…… ummm…….
Me (frustrated that I have to teach my Chinese students Chinese history yet again): Beijing was the capital of the State of Yan and the Jin, Liao, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. But so what? Xi’an, Kaifeng and Nanjing, among many other cities, have also been the capital….
Conversation meanders its frustrating, superficial way until I give up and tell them they should argue that Beijing, having been the capital of several dynasties, has a rich imperial history, and that a lot of the sites and relics and culture of that imperial history are very well preserved. The Forbidden City, for example…..
Anyway, the point is that most of my students seem to have this instinctive faith in Beijing as The National Capital very deeply ingrained into them.
And then there is, of course, the modern political and cultural significance of Tiananmen Square and its surroundings.
Perhaps a more realistic suggestion would be to keep national politics in Beijing and shift as much of the bureaucracy as is humanly possible, setting up a “dual capital” system at least for the short to medium term.
Anyway, I can’t imagine the capital actually moving any time soon, but still, it’s an intriguing thought.
Nanking
Last night we watched Nanking. It is an excellent film. A timely film, appearing for the seventieth anniversary of the Rape of Nanking. It’s a much needed film: How is it that the Rape of Nanking is still so little known outside China? It is not a scholarly film and does not present a “balanced” account of the events of December 1937- but tell me: How could you produce a balanced account of the Rape of Nanking? Doesn’t matter how you frame it, Japan’s going to come out looking bad.
It is terrifying, infuriating, moving, harrowing. Not at all an easy film to watch. In that respect, it puts Schindler’s List and The Pianist to shame.
It is brilliantly put together, with the actors reading out diary entries and letters, survivors and Japanese soldiers telling their stories, with photos and footage of the war and the Rape and footage of modern Nanjing mixed in.
I wasn’t so impressed with the actors. They did an adequate job, but not outstanding. The survivors, though… wow. It was incredible to hear them tell their own stories, to see them as they spoke. And the Japanese soldiers, veterans of Nanking? Wow. Some of them seemed sorry for what had happened. Others? One tried to justify the massacre of prisoners by saying the Japanese Army wasn’t able to care for them. Another laughed as he talked about the number of women they raped. How could any healthy person respond to that with anything but rage?
I do have to say, though, that I felt there was a bit too much of a focus on the Nanjing Safety Zone International Committee. However, the actions of the committee members, led by John Rabe, did a lot to save the lives of some 200,000 Chinese, and they certainly deserve to have their stories told along with the Chinese survivors, and they deserve to be remembered as heroes.
It is a harrowing film. It will leave you feeling gutted. We chased it up with Shrek 3, and that provided a necessary break, the time and space to process the horror we had just seen. But Nanking is a film you must see.
why?
Why does BTV’s 6:30 news look so much like CCTV 1’s 7pm Network News? Gave me a bit of a start, there: I hadn’t heard the familiar theme tune, and I didn’t think it had gotten quite that late yet.
And by “look so much like”, I mean the dress and hairstyles of the anchors, their desk, and the background.