So it's been about a month since I last wrote, which is pretty shameful really. My excuse is that life has been too busy and fun to spend time writing about it! I do have a few updates to fill you in on though if there is anyone still interested in my life out here.
I quite often wonder how on earth such strange things happen to me in Beijing. The answer is of course that it is china, and it would be more strange if I managed to avoid having experiences like this but still, sometimes my life feels very bizarre. Here are three examples from recent weeks:
Beijing university foreign language students competition
A compulsory part of our course here is to compete with all the other language classes of foreign students. We had to create some kind of presentation of around ten minutes on anything we like provided it was all in Chinese, and touched on something cultural for some country.
The whole competition lasted around four days, had varying degrees of difficulty and actually was taken pretty seriously by the other classes. We aren't in a normal stream like everyone else who is assigned according to test results and so on, but our little Cambridge class was also involved.
So one Thursday afternoon I spent five hours in a massive auditorium mostly surrounded by enthusiastic Koreans (most of the higher level students are Korean or Japanese) with banners and elaborate costumes, watching dance routines, plays, poetry recitals and chants in Chinese.
I also had to perform in a 'British version of take me out', where we each played stereotypes and humiliated ourselves. Laurence and Sam did a great job with some pre-filmed video clips and in the end we came second which won us a small box of Chinese chocolates.
So while all my peers are preparing to graduate and hand in their dissertations, find a job in the real world and so on, that I was having to devote my time to compulsory public embarrassment of the kind which hasn't been forced on me since primary school felt somewhat ridiculous. It also felt very China, no way would it be acceptable in Britain to force all the foreign language students to perform like dancing monkeys for the native speakers, let alone required.
Television theme song recording
The week after the competition, my course coordinator asked me if I would help sing a Chinese song with some other foreign students, and to meet her at one after class. My classmate Bex and I obliged, knowing only this information.
Upon arrival we were told to get on a minibus.
When I asked why, she told me it was to get to the recording studio.
I asked why we needed to go there- to record the theme song. What theme song? For the tv show.
What tv show? A foreigners in china X factor of sorts which would be airing on the Chinese equivalent of the BBC (CCTV).
How long will this take, I have just had three exams and I wanted to rest this afternoon? The whole day, but could be done faster if we sing it well.
What song are we singing? Didn't I send it to you yesterday? All the other students have been given a demo and lyrics to practice, did you not get it?
....
No. I did not get it.
Next thing I knew we were being carted off with about six other internationals to the east side of town with, one of which was an infuriating French Canadian girl in a full length kimono and fishnets who sang Chinese songs at the top of her lungs the whole way. She gave the impression of being something like a cross between a children's television presenter, a teacher's pet and a Whitney Huston-esque diva.
We arrived at a children's primary school, walked in and up a dirty staircase with blue paint peeling on the walls. The next flight of stairs was framed by an elaborate Chinese graven doorframe with a mat of fake grass at the front. We entered it and proceeded to climb. The next floor had a big wooden sign saying 'happy bee art'. We continued our climb and arrived at... A professional recording studio with several different rooms, a bar selling cocktails, a cafe, a pool table. Then a soundproof area with all the equipment set up and a large group of Chinese staff. Not what you expect to find within a primary school that from the outside seemed just like every other I've seen here.
I had to rapid learn the song, which was one of the most annoying things I've ever heard. It tried to incorporate every Chinese cliche possible, literary illusions, tongue twisters and patriotic lines such as 'no matter whether you are year of the dog, horse, snake or dragon, we all love China!'
We were filmed pretending to sing the song and then actually recorded it properly afterwards. Our pretend singing was helpfully inspired by the director telling us: 'remember -acting.' And then waving his arms in the air behind the cameraman. I don't know whether he wanted us to wave too, or look up, or he was just getting into it. The result was us doing a very good impression of acting confused and awkward.
So I guess I will be hearing myself declaring my love for all things Chinese on a tv screen soon...
Encounter with the police
The bizarre experience of this weekend was not so amusing or light hearted, and actually highlighted a lot of very sad things about the community I am living in now. I was having breakfast in a cafe down my road in the morning with a couple friends on Sunday, there was just the three of us and then two staff on duty, both young Chinese girls. Three African guys came into the restaurant, still drunk from the night before and not having slept yet.
One of them came up to our table and tried to flirt with us and sit down. The waitress who I am friends with came up and asked if we knew him, we said we didn't and she directed him to sit at a different table. He then slapped her across the face and moved to continue hitting her.
We jumped up to protect her, my friend went to her and I held him back and tried to drag him to the door, and told him to leave. He refused and started being physically aggressive to me as well.
While the waitresses hid behind the counter and I was trying to keep him away my friend ran out to the small police station directly outside the restaurant to ask for help. They continued to eat their dumplings and without looking up told her to dial the main office, it wasn't their business. His two friends who were all about his height and strength didn't do anything either for a very long time, then eventually held him in the hallway outside the restaurant.
By the time the police arrived the guy had already got away. My friend and I, the two African guys and the waitress were all taken to the police station for questioning, which was really unprofessional and fruitless because his friends claimed to know absolutely to hint about him aside from a nickname and were still drunk or under the influence of some other substance.
It was all very depressing, seeing how no one would help five girls who were being attacked in broad daylight, even the police. That a foreigner would come into a restaurant and attack a waitress completely unprovoked and totally defenceless physically and socially, then us as well and get away with it while his friends watched. Then that justice wasn't done by the police questioning.
I didn't expect to encounter that while I was having granola in a cafe, and it made me really sad. Definitely not the kind of unusual I enjoy encountering.
The characteristics of a Beijing Spring
The sky is raining cotton buds. I'm not joking, it looks like snow but actually they are just little clusters of fluff, each about the size of a coin. I'm cycling around trying to bat the cotton out of my face so that I can see and not inhale it. My friend Bethany aptly described the feeling as having invisible sheep in her eyes, it is very surreal. As I write this they are falling into my drink, inconvenient.
We had tomb sweeping festival holiday a couple weeks ago which in the past meant that people went and swept the tombs of their ancestors. However now china has too many people for anyone to be buried in tombs, almost everyone is cremated now and remains are stored in big official buildings. So that tradition has become gradually less significant through necessity. Instead the holiday is spent enjoying another Chinese tradition which is called 'stepping on green'.
It really is just stepping on green, green being grass. So lots of Chinese people go to the mountains or to parks or to some place a bit closer to nature than the metropolis we live in and take photos of themselves standing on green things, with budding blossoms, or just of flowers up close. I've found that appreciating spring and autumn is done a lot more purposefully than in the west, people decide that they will go out and look at the changing leaves or the new blossoms, and it is an activity in itself not something you do in passing. We would maybe take a walk and see the flowers, but Chinese take a walk to see the flowers, and document themselves standing beside them, often in traditional dress.
The temperature has gone from me still needing a hot water bottle at night and thermals to me currently sitting outside in a rooftop cafe tanning in shorts and a t-shirt. Everyone always told me that Beijing doesn't really do autumn or spring, the temperature rockets up without warning and then stops at either unbearable heat or cold, we are in the precious time of comfortable heat and I am savouring every moment.
Also, Beijing is suddenly beautiful. I had forgotten how many trees there were and flower bushes, colour makes such a difference to everything. And we either have polluted days where everything is grey, or bright blue sky with no cloud. So on the bright blue days it really is stunning.
