Running the Wall

When long-distance runners talk about "hitting the wall", they mean reaching the moment when your body's stored energy reserves are exhausted and your legs just don't want to move any more. It is possible to find the strength and courage to keep going beyond this point, but it is very difficult: it is as though there is a solid barrier blocking your path, "a brick wall". Usually this point comes after you've been running for about 25-30km. This is why a Marathon race is so hard: it lasts just over 42km – you have to get beyond "the wall".

The race I took part in a year ago this week is even tougher: after 35km you hit The Wall – the Great Wall of China! The Great Wall Marathon is run each May in beautiful countryside to the north of Tianjin, and incorporates a section actually running along the Huangyaguan Great Wall. It's only a very short section, barely 2km, but it is very, very hilly, and includes thousands of steps. And you have to do it twice, once near the start of the race, and then again - in the opposite direction - just before the end: a cruel and unusual punishment indeed, and clear evidence of a sadistic bent in the race organisers. This is probably the most difficult regular-distance Marathon in the world.

In fact, the Wall section is not the worst of it. That's so steep that you really have to walk for most of it, rather than trying to run; and if you've done lots of stair-climbing in your training, it's actually not too bad. However, most of the rest of the course is hilly too. Extremely hilly. I had been misled about this by friends who'd run the event in previous years. They had all, I'm quite sure, assured me that apart from drainingly steep climb up the ridge to the beginning of the Wall section right at the start, it was all pretty much on the flat. Whether they said this out of mischief, malice, or mere forgetfulness, I cannot say. But that was dangerous MISINFORMATION (How I came to rue not having taken the time to read the course description the night before! It was rather too dauntingly detailed, ran to a number of pages - and I was just too darned tired to be bothered with it.). This course hardly has any flat stretches on it. And the first half of it is predominantly uphill. Even the best runners usually take a good hour or so longer to complete this monster than they would an ordinary marathon.

There is one continuous climb of nearly 10km – by far the longest hill I've ever attempted to run. Two-thirds of the way up, the race organisers had put out a sign that was meant to encourage us poor runners. It said: "If a hill has a name of its own, you can figure it's probably a pretty tough hill. This hill has no name." Most of us runners had plenty of suggestions for a name - but they don't bear repeating in polite company.

I was doing pretty well on this section, passing a lot of other runners (although, I confess, getting impatient for it to end); but then, near the top of the horrible, nameless hill, my left knee started to hurt – a lot. The injury was so painful that I was reduced to walking (or brief, agonising spells of shuffle-jogging, at best) for the second half of the race. That was hugely frustrating and disappointing for me, after all the hours of practice I'd put in over most of the preceding year to get ready for this event (damn, that was probably about the best shape I've ever been in in my life).

However, it was still a marvellous day out. The weather was gorgeous, as it usually is at this time of year: sunny, but not too hot. And the support from the local villagers and the volunteer helpers was fantastic. I'll definitely be back one day (next year?) to finish the course properly. To get the better of that hill. And to give it a name.

Runner's Blues

I was to have been running the Great Wall Marathon last Saturday; but a couple of weeks ago I regretfully decided that I'd better pull out. I knew I just wasn't in shape for it this year (not for the full distance anyway; and, since these days I often run the half-distance or rather more in training, I no longer find Half Marathons a very interesting challenge).

Too much work (at the wrong times!), a succession of niggling injuries, and my unscheduled trip home in January have all cut into my usual running regime rather badly this year. And then I got a bitch of a cold last month, which hung around for the best part of three weeks, just at the time that my training for this event should have been peaking. Bugger, bugger, bugger.

I rather fear my new hobby/habit - this dratted blogging - has been getting in the way of regular runs too. I'm up at 6am or 7am most mornings, but lately I'm tending to noodle around on the Internet for an hour or so and write a couple of posts, rather than getting out on to the early morning streets and racking up 10 or 15 miles before it gets too hot. Something's got to give.

I'd really been looking forward to the Great Wall Marathon this year. I was fired up to better my performance of last time, to show what I was really capable of, to "get my revenge" on the course (last year I was going really well over the first 11 miles or so, but then developed a painful injury in my left knee; and - there apparently being no sweeper bus - I had to finish the course shuffling/limping/hopping on one leg). Having to wimp out this time has left me feeling wretchedly frustrated and depressed.

Well, the shortage of running itself in the past month or so has probably left me depressed. I generally hit a weird seasonal mood trough in April/May, and it seems to be particularly bad this year. Running usually helps to energize me, and clear the clouds and cobwebs out of my head; if I'm not able to do any for a while, things get very, very dark. Things are pretty damned dark with me at the moment.

So, I forced myself to go out for a couple of long runs this weekend, to try to get back in the habit..... and it appears I may have been overdoing things rather. Or perhaps I'm just getting old. Both knees and my left ankle are feeling worryingly crumbly, and I'm hobbling again. Bugger, bugger, bugger.

Loo with a view

My neighbourhood is generously supplied with public toilets (because many of the primitive hutong homes in the area are still without bathroom facilities of their own). When I first got here, they were pretty shabby affairs: cracked tiles and crumbling cement, no stalls (very communal!), no flush (the maintenance guys used to come around a few times a week with a hose), a characteristically pungent stench that could convulse your nostrils at a range of 100 yards. However, they have now all been expensively upgraded in preparation for the Olympics.

There's a particularly good one right next to the picturesque Bell Tower just down the road from me - the window from the Gents offers possibly one of the finest loo-views in the world. (And no, I don't routinely take a camera into the loo with me.)

Strange conversation

Another surreal moment from the recording booth. This is probably the most off-the-wall bit of dialogue I've ever had to read.

"Do you think Mr Green can clone a monkey?"

"I expect so. Let's go and ask him!"


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Spoiled for choice

The other week, I was rueing the fact that my love life is stalled at the moment because there are so many women I am attracted to that I just can't make up my mind which one to pursue. These reflections prompted the following bon mot.

"One of the secrets of a happy dining experience is a short menu."

The Missing Gun (Xun Qiang)

I thought it was about time I offered a Chinese recommendation in my occasional 'Film reviews' strand.

I do watch as many Chinese films as I can. There's a film club here in Beijing called Cherry Lane Movies, which shows recent Chinese films with English sub-titles on a big screen. I go through spells where I'm off there every week for a month or two; then again, I go through spells of ennui where I just can't summon the motivation to endure the long schlepp over to the other side of town and the two hours of bum-numbing torture on their rock-hard seats. Most of the time, I have to say, it is a bit of a chore. There is a reason why not much mainland Chinese cinema gets any distribution overseas.

However, amid all the plotless, meandering dross, the occasional gem shines all the more brightly.

When asked what is the best Chinese film I have seen since coming to live here, there is an easy answer. 'The Missing Gun' is far and away the most impressive film I've enjoyed in the almost 5 years of my intermittent Cherry Laning - thoroughly original, delightfully quirky, full of energy and invention, gorgeously photographed, superbly directed and edited (early on, it uses a lot of the hyper-kinetic 'music video' type tricks that we saw in 'City of God'), and - unusually, within my experience of Chinese films - sometimes just laugh-out-loud funny.

Ma Shan, a small-town cop, gets wildly drunk at his sister's wedding party and wakes the next morning to discover that he has somehow mislaid his service revolver. Realising that this blunder could jeopardise his previously distinguished career, he races around town in a panic, re-tracing his steps of the previous evening, asking everyone he meets if they have any idea where the gun is, but getting no leads. Things get worse for Ma when a femme fatale, his former love, suddenly shows up in town again, as the mistress of the local big-shot; and before long, she is dead, apparently shot with Ma's gun - so he falls under suspicion himself, and the pressure is intensified to recover the gun before anyone else is killed.

Yes, it's a fairly slender plot, improbable, melodramatic - but this is really just a convenient structural device. The adoption of a well-worn 'Western' genre - the detective story - actually gives the film a coherence and purposefulness, a narrative logic that Chinese cinema often seems to lack. This film is, however, far, far more than just a routine police procedural. Rather, it is primarily a social comedy of small-town life, interwoven with a touching study of Ma's struggling marriage - but executed with exhilarating verve and originality, and full of bizarre and surreal touches, elements of magical realism. It's thriller, satire and domestic drama rolled into one - but it works: highly amusing, but also ultimately rather poignant. (I think the comedy is mostly very accessible to a foreign audience, although you probably appreciate it even more if you've spent some time in China. My favourite line in it is "Don't use the brick"; but you have to have been here a while to get that.)

Ma is movingly played by the always compelling Jiang Wen (slightly portly, ugly handsome, a sweaty everyman), a giant of mainland Chinese cinema - their equivalent of Robert De Niro or Gerard Depardieu. And the film is directed (and, I think, also written by - although I can't find the name of the novel it was adapted from) by Lu Chuan - definitely a name to watch out for (to my knowledge, he has thus far only made two feature films: the other one is my second favourite Chinese film in the last 5 years!).

Yes, if you want evidence that Chinese cinema is capable of more than dour studies of urban alienation or colourful riots of martial arts escapism, this is it. See 'The Missing Gun' - and let me know what you think.

A Tour of the Archive

As promised a few days ago, here is my pick of the posts from the first three-and-a-bit months of Froogville.

I was aiming for a 'Top 20', but, well, the list just growed and growed. We seem to have ended up with 28 - which is a lucky number for the Chinese.

Pick of the Archive: Favourite Posts, Sept. - Dec. '06


1) A New Year poem - 31st December

A complaint about the generally poor quality of poetry themed on the turning of the year, and the humble offering of a poem of my own - one of my 'freaky fables' series.


2) My first Christmas in ***??*** (Where in the world am I? [19]) - 30th December

A little bit of nostalgia for my early days in China.


3) The Question to The Ultimate Answer - 21st December

A homage to the late Douglas Adams, and my solution to the great conundrum of his 'Hitch-Hikers' Guide To The Galaxy' series.


4) Touch the monolith - 15th December

My multi-million dollar website idea!


5) A favourite 'beachcombing' - 12th December

A nutshell tribute to one of my favourite humourists, J. B. Morton; and one of the most famous examples of his work - 'The Dancing Cabman'.


6) Logorrhoea - 10th December

Strange word, strange poem - but a good summary, I think, of the creative urge.


7) A footballer anecdote (or three, or four) - 9th December

Some well-known funny stories about the great game retold.


8) That time of the week again - 1st December

Not many of my haiku will make it into these lists - but this one is particularly dear to my heart: probably one of the most romantic I have ever written.


9) The Simile Game - 30th November

Two-for-the-price-of-one: some silly, cynical wordplay and one of my best (I think) short poems.


10) Pulling the ripcord - 14th November

More wordplay: an anecdote from my Bar School days - and a great aphorism to finish.

11) 'Morbid' thoughts? - 14th November

A frivolous little poem on the subject of poetry; but one of my most revealing?


12) They can smell the fear.... - 10th November

In which I confess my unmanly terror of bicycles.


13) On the beach - 6th November

A poem I wrote to woo the Great Love Of My Life. It worked..... for a while.


14) My first review - 25th October

Unexpected praise for the blog is the cue for some autobiographical aphorisms.


15) Sporadic advance of relevance - 24th October

My favourite ever piece of mangled English, and the story behind it. A possible sub-title for the blog itself??


16) A Dark Fable - 23rd October

One of my very favourite poems (of my own, that is); inspired, of course, by you-know-who.


17) Name-dropping - 10th October

I met a famous poet once: this is the anecdote.


18) Possible epitaphs - 10th October

What would you like on your tombstone? More jesting wordplay.


19) The people I fall for.... - 8th October

The story of my love life!


20) More shadows..... - 2nd October

Very short, very silly - but I like it.


21) Lone Mosquito Blues - 30th September

Can you believe I was still being persecuted by mosquitoes this late in the year?!


22) A Haiku with a back-story - 29th September

One of my first haiku, one of my best - and written in tribute to my greatest friend.


23) What job do I do? - 28th September

The story of my (non-)working life!!


24) Shadows and Froog - 25th September

A celebration of a favourite poetry anthology and a favourite poet; and the first and best of my own 'freaky fables' poems.


25) Fragment - 22nd September

A (still!) unfinished piece of poetry, but a promising one.


26) Christopher Robin goes down on Alice.... - 16th September

A naughty joke, and a very silly anecdote - but a good illustration of my frivolous, subversive personality.


27) I-Spy - 10th September

More on my employment prospects; and a 'true story' from my University days.


28) In dispraise of blogging - 8th September

A key early post on why I do not consider myself a 'blogger'!



Now, all I have to do is work out how to insert this in the sidebar......

This morning's breakfast browse

Revelling in the fact that this is the first morning of the week when I haven't had to plunge into the heaving human sea of rush-hour commuters (yes, I know, many of you have to do it every day - I don't know how you survive; it's driving me mad!), I've been indulging in a 'lazy weekend' ritual of a lie-in, an unhurried breakfast, and 20 minutes' poetry reading to start the day.

I just happened on this piece by Robert Graves. I don't remember reading it before. I never cease to be amazed by Graves - he's so diverse in his obvservations, has so many good things to say. This is a wonderful evocation of the sense of detachment, of alienation that we feel in modern society; and, of course, it chimes particularly with my experience this week of having to move among the faceless hordes on the subway every day.

On Dwelling

Courtesies of good-morning and good-evening
From rustic lips fail as the town encroaches:
Soon nothing passes but the cold quick stare
Of eyes that see ghosts, yet too many to fear.

Here I too walk, silent myself, in wonder
At a town not mine though plainly coextensive
With mine, even in days coincident:
In mine I dwell, in theirs like them I haunt.

And the green country, should I turn again there?
My bumpkin neighbours loom even ghostlier:
Like trees they murmur or like blackbirds sing
Courtesies of good-morning or good-evening.

Robert Graves (1895-1985)

The weekly haiku

Exquisite torture
Of unrealised daydreams -
The imagined kiss.

In the meantime..... (coming soon)

Tulsa seems to be too busy at the moment to attend to her challenge to produce her list of 'favourite posts' from this blog, so I have been pondering the matter myself.

I am planning to produce a guide to my 'archive', highlighting what are, in my - hopelessly biased and flawed - opinion, my best posts so far. I hope this will provide some diversion to any readers who may happen to join me during the anticipated period of 'light' posting over the next few weeks.

There's already such a huge back catalogue of posts that I can't easily winnow it down to just a few selections. I'm intending to approach it quarter by quarter, and I think that's likely to produce a couple of dozen recommendations or so for each period.

The first instalment will cover the end of last year - from my modest beginnings in September through till December 31st. That's slightly more than 3 months, of course, but what the hey. I was rather less prolific back then; but I suspect that the recent increase in volume has been 'padded' by a lot of shorter and sometimes less consequential posts; the amount of 'real quality' has remained much the same.

It will take a little while to finalise and write up the list, so bear with me. Expect it in a few days' time.

Ominous signs

Blogger has been worryingly glitchy today.

It might just be some random problem of my computer or my local connection, but I easily get paranoid about such things as: Blogspot blogs being unavailable (even temporarily) via Anonymouse; Blogspot blogs being (even temporarily) unavailable on Firefox (via the cunning re-routing 'hack' popularized by Yee); Blogger itself being (even temporarily) unavailable for the creation of new posts. It is tempting to suppose that this is the Kafka Boys flexing their claws, toying with us like a cat with a dazed mouse, as a prelude to an intensified Internet clampdown around the end of the month.

It probably doesn't help that Blogger is now part of the Google empire. Last year, the whole Google operation (including G-Mail) in China got closed down for a week or more around the beginning of June, and there was severe disruption and slowing of connection speeds for a full month. Several guys at the American IT company where I used to work (this was not actually the armourers of government censorship here, Cisco - although some of them had previously worked there) confidently maintained that this was not directly the result of a 4th-June-related government crackdown but of an opportunistic 'denial of service attack' (probably orchestrated, they speculated, by Baidu, the leading player in the Chinese search engine market) that took advantage of the keyword filters being imposed in regard to the events surrounding that date. An intriguing, plausible-sounding conjecture.

It's 18 years ago this year. The new kids starting at University this September were born in that year. I think that makes it, potentially, an especially resonant anniversary. And, of course, it's only one year till the Olympics. The CCP leadership are crapping their pants.

I don't expect anything to happen at all - by way of protest or remembrance, that is. More's the pity. But I do expect the government to do its damnedest to stop too many foreigners blogging from here over the next couple of months.

So, if I go silent for a while..... that will be the reason.

Stopping suddenly AND bending down

An added twist to the local vice I decried last week. (I'm now once again an early morning commuter three or four days a week, so I am getting to see a lot fo this.)

In addition to suddenly stopping dead for no very good reason - in the middle of a dense crowd of moving people - many Chinese also seem to think nothing of dropping instantly into a crouch or a squat or a kneel, so as to become pretty much invisible to those coming up behind them.

The other day, I almost tripped over a young girl who decided to stop to adjust her shoes - one yard from the subway train she'd just disembarked from, in the middle of a narrow gap between two pillars on the platform, with about two dozen impatient commuters streaming around her. She was so tiny, she would have been far below my eye-level when stood erect, and when she scrunched up into a ball not much more than a foot high - INVISIBLE!

I call this the 'Human Bollard' phenomenon. I have found it especially hazardous when running in the Beijing Marathon over the past few years. Actually, in my first outing - running the half-distance in 2003 - I had one guy who went from running normally to a dead stop AND in a crouch (adjusting a shoe-lace, I think) in the space of about half a second, when he was directly in front of me. I don't know how he did that. I just don't have that braking capacity when I'm running. Having no chance to stop myself, I was tempted to leapfrog over the top of him - but instead (a rare display of courtesy and tolerance on my part!) I jinked abruptly to one side to go around him...... and tore up something in my left knee. I managed to finish the race that day, but my knee was getting very sore and slowing me down badly by the end of it. And that has tended to be a recurring source of injury for me in long races since. Bloody Human Bollards!!

The story of my life

A favourite Gary Larson cartoon.

Rather alarming how one simple gag can so aptly encapsulate the whole of my experience on this earth!

37

"I am not a number. I am a human being."

But some numbers carry such emotional resonance that we wouldn't mind being associated with them. That, after all, is why so many people wear the shirts of famous footballers.

I have just watched Cool Hand Luke again - for perhaps the first time in a couple of decades. (Tulsa, noting my complaint that I had been unable to find it on DVD over here, very kindly brought a copy back for me from her recent trip home to the States. At first, I was in a panic that it wouldn't play. I don't think DVD players here are supposed to play US-coded DVDs, but...... this is China!)

I noticed - I think for the first time ever (it's not, after all, really a very important detail) - that '37' is the number daubed on the back of Luke's prison uniform.

I wonder if there is any particular significance in that, any numerological connotations, perhaps? Aha, a quick check on Wikipedia reveals that it is "the largest prime factor of the Number of the Beast, 666". Yes, I'm sure the writer, Donn Pearce, had that in mind! (More likely coincidence, don't you think? 37 is one third of 111, so it's a factor of all three-figure numbers with the same digit repeated.)

Well, it has a significance for me now. I love that film, that character - and now, that number.

Watch out for sly references to the number '37' in future posts.

But is it ART?

I was just challenged - by my new mystery commenter, EARTHLING - to publish more of my photographs on the blogs.

As I explained in my reply (over on the Barstool, here), I have certain technical problems about that at present - as well as a general reticence about "showing my work".

However, I did snap quite a few shots while up in the Dashanzi art district a week ago (although mostly of my friend's delightful little daughter, Elsa), and I happen to have those on this computer (most are stored on an ancient Vaio that I am no longer able to use for Internet access), so...... well, I suppose this one I quite like.

And yes, I am visible (but not recognisable) in the reflections.

A bon mot on lawyers

"Lawyers are like nuclear weapons. I have to have them because the other guy has them. But as soon as anyone uses them, everything gets fucked up."

Danny DeVito (as Lawrence "Larry the Liquidator" Garfield in Other People's Money)

PS: Putting a face to the name

My frequent references to my great, long-ago affair with 'The Evil One' have prompted a number of queries from my correspondents as to who she was, how we met, what she looked like, how she managed to cast such a spell over me.

Well, I did find this photograph of her on the Internet a while ago. I don't think she can object to my posting it here, since she remains veiled by my teasing nickname for her - and there is, I think, absolutely no chance at all that any of my blog's tiny readership could recognise or trace her from this.

Darn, is this really a recent photo? She hardly seems to have changed at all in 10 years. My heart lurches once again....


I did eventually succumb to an upsurge of moral qualm about having posted her picture here... a few years later, when it became apparent that websearch tools were starting to become rather adept at 'recognising' photos. This, I thought, might make it possible to identify her by doing a comparison search on the photo I'd used here. And I didn't want to run that risk.

Having her picture here was perhaps too taunting and torturing for me as well: more than a dozen years on, I'm still completely daffy about the damn woman.

A fetish from long ago

Great former love, 'The Evil One', had strikingly attractive hands - or so I thought. Funny the things we choose to fixate on, in regard to a loved one. They looked particularly fine in this pair of Italian gloves she used to like to wear, when I first met her, during London's damp and chill winter months. She told me she had bought them some years earlier, on a trip to Florence (apparently, Florence is the centre of glove-making in Italy; or so she told me; I hadn't previously been aware of that). And she was fretting that they were starting to wear thin, so rationed the occasions on which she would put them on. I fantasised about taking a holiday in Florence together with her, so that I could buy her a replacement pair.

Hence this little thing - another of my 'instant' poems, and probably the most romantic I have ever written.

The Ruin of the Florentine Glovemakers
("She had a favourite pair of gloves, you see...")

All the glovemakers in Florence, all those craftsmen
Of fine calfskin, and their fathers and their grandfathers
Since the ancient trade began, have never seen hands
Like yours. Now they shut their shops,
And urge their sons to other skills, because they know
That Perfection, once encountered, ends the dream,
Destroys the motive; that lesser hands cannot
Deserve their labour or inspire their art.

And so it is with me. I have so admired
The elegance of your hand
That I will never wish to hold another.

It's happening again

Blogspot is blocked again.

Conspiracy or cock-up?

Actually, 'Conspiracy of Cock-up' might be a good title for a China book.

I think, this time, it's pretty clearly no accident, and is likely to remain in place for at least 5 or 6 weeks. After all, what sensitive anniversary is coming up at the beginning of June? I think you know what I'm saying.

A nod to Danwei

I just recommended one particularly interesting article from the Danwei news blog, but (if, by some strange chance, you haven't come across it already - it has a huge following amongst expats here in China) it is well worth checking out on a regular basis.

Indeed, for my money, there is only one essential 'China blog', and Danwei is it.

It's a fascinating, funny, often unbelievable roundup of China news, most of it translations of Chinese media articles (including bulletin board posts and blogs). I particularly recommended Liu Qi's gripe about the most common annoyances of modern life in China from a week or two ago, but other recent gems have included the annual roundup of the most common names in China (momentous news: Wang has just leapfrogged ahead of Li as the most common surname, apparently), the Ministry of Culture's fumbling attempt to explain and justify its crackpot new scheme for introducing a system of certification for 'cultural professions' (thought by many to be aimed at discouraging the proliferation of TV talent shows: they might run short of contestants if people had to pass a music exam before being allowed to sing in public), and the "It could only happen in China" revelation that the pre-Mayday special edition of the Beijing Evening News was so big that news vendors were hoarding it, refusing it sell it to customers because.... it was worth more to them as scrap paper! (Astounding, but true.)

There's wonderful stuff like that on there almost every week.

And over the past year they've also started adding a lot of self-shot video content, archived on the sister site Danwei TV. The latest clip shows the rather lovely musician Wu Fei talking about her instrument, the guzheng. A favourite from the archives is this film of American folkie Abigail Washburn (who does a mini tour out here each November) and her band jamming with musicians from the Mongolian folk group Hanggai on a hutong rooftop. And then there's the Sexy Beijing series, in which the irrepressible Anna Sophie Loewenberg (who does indeed manage to be strangely sexy - despite sporting the scary hair and horn-rimmed specs of a Gary Larson matron) hits the streets to conduct frivolous vox pop interviews (she's probably aiming for the sly satire of Louis Theroux, but mostly comes across more like a young Esther Rantzen - but still, pretty funny most of the time).

Of course, I have my gripes about Danwei (the name is the Chinese for 'work unit', the basic building block of social administration under the old-style Communist regime, and still extant to this day, although declining in importance as the economy grows and diversifies). It's sometimes a little too prolific for its own good (hey, I should talk, right?!): if you fail to check in for half a week, you can sometimes find 10 or more huge posts to wade through. It can be a little bit po-faced at times (although its coverage does seem to have diversified somewhat over the past year and a bit, moving away just a little from its original primary focus on the Chinese media industry to become more wide-ranging and quirky, as it tries to embrace the huge, nebulous, bizarre topic of modern 'urban life'). And it does tend to flaunt its creators' 'mastery' of Chinese a little unnecessarily (I see little need to pepper almost every article with quotations in Chinese; only rarely are the original Chinese characters of particular interest or relevance; and, in those cases, it would be nice to offer the pinyin romanization of them alongside - there are software programs that will do this for you automatically in a little pop-up balloon).

Nevertheless, it is a rare example of a 'serious' blog that maintains a sense of humour; and it has become an invaluable "window on China". A must-view for anyone interested in this strange, wonderful, crazy country.

"China Rage" - not just a foreigner phenomenon

I had been meaning to post a link to this story - Liu Qi on Civic Responsibility - for a while, but for some reason the 'archives' on the excellent Danwei site have been inaccessible for the past few days.

A few of my posts last week lapsed into what is known in the trade as the 'China rant'. I try not to do it too often. I try to do it with humour, rather than just invective. I try to do it with a certain self-awareness and self-mockery of my own faults and failings. I try to derive general principles that might be of use and interest to a wider audience, rather than just bitching about my 'bad' day. But, yes, from time to time, I do it. It is a vice that all foreigners here fall into. China is an awesomely baffling and irritating place in many ways, and sometimes you just have to vent.

And then, of course, we beat ourselves up with post-colonial guilt, and apologise for our intolerance, insensitivity, and 'cultural elitism'.

It's liberating, then, to be reassured once in a while that the Chinese - well, educated, middle-class Chinese, anyway - experience the same phenomenon, share exactly the same pet peeves about their fellow countrymen as we laowai, and occasionally like to indulge in a cathartic bitching about them.

Liu Qi is a Chinese newspaper columnist based here in Beijing, and this piece is his personal list of the things that really get his goat about Chinese social behaviour - his '17 hates' (the Chinese just love numbered lists).

It's a fascinating piece.

It does, I think, raise many questions about how far some of this disdain is a product of unconscious Westernization (or conscious, aspirational Westernizing) - 'vices' like spitting and queue-jumping are seen almost as often amongst white-collar workers as they are amongst unlettered peasants, and you didn't see much public criticism of such behaviour until recently (ah, the Olympics - the major driver of social change in China..... for one more glorious year!). And you could find most of these problems, or their close equivalents, even in the more advanced, industrialized nations. Liu's comments on the callous impatience of a crowd of bystanders waiting for a suicidal ledge-jumper to make his fatal leap reminded me uncomfortably that such unworthy impulses lurk within us all; and, while I'd hope that such a response would not be so widespread amongst the British public, I am quite certain that you would find it in a significant minority.

Liu's main criticism, though, the thread running through his whole article, is the quietism of the Chinese, the paralysing reluctance to make a scene about anything, to speak out in criticism, to try to get things changed. That's been a problem in China for perhaps thousands of years. China's greatest modern writer, Lu Xun, was making similar points in his essays 80 years ago.

It may be a more deep-seated and more troublesome phenomenon here in China, but again, it's not unique to this country. Similar criticisms are often levelled against the British national character - who can forget the classic Fawlty Towers episode where Bruce Boa's loud-mouthed American guest gave all of his shy, reticent English fellow-sufferers an inspiring lesson in assertiveness? That, however, was 30 years ago now; and Basil Fawlty's sensibilities were rooted in a period a couple of decades earlier than that. I think the British today are far more outspoken, assertive, willing to complain - we haven't perhaps caught up to the Americans yet, but we are getting there. If we can do it in one generation, how long will it take the Chinese?

Anyway, do please go and check out Liu Qi's article (translated into English, of course): it's a very good read.

Two kinds of law

This is a distinction which, to some extent, holds true, I'm sure, everywhere in the world; but it does seem to be particularly marked, particularly important in China.

(I've just started leading a 10-week training programme with a big foreign law firm here, so I may soon be in a position to comment further on this, having picked my students' brains.)

There are the laws. And there are the laws that are - or can be - enforced.

In this country, most of the laws are of theoretical interest only: they have little or no practical consequence.

Take, for example, the prohibition on carrying out unsociably noisy work when people might be trying to sleep. I have been many times assured that it is a law here that construction work cannot be carried out - at least, not anywhere near residential areas - between the hours of 11pm and 7am. And yet..... just about every construction site in the city routinely works 24/7.

The law exists in principle, but you have to fight bloody hard to try to get it enforced. (I did once manage to get it enforced, at a very local level, when the hotel which managed the accommodation building I was housed in on the campus of one of the Universities I taught at a few years ago was relaying the surface of the parking area immediately outside my window, and wanted to work throughout the night. I got the hotel night manager out of bed and got one of my Chinese friends on the phone to him to explain that working after 11pm was illegal, and that we would call in the police if they didn't stop. It worked!!!)

On Monday night - the last day of the week-long May holiday, and the eve of my first early morning start at this rather important law firm gig - there was heavy plant rumbling up and down the street outside my apartment, workmen yelling, and pneumatic drills hammering away all night. They've been completely resurfacing my mile-long street for some time now, but that particular evening the work obviously reached a peak of intensity in the stretch around my building. I tried sleeping on a sofa in my living room (which has the 'double glazing' of an enclosed balcony at the far end, and no other external walls), but even in there the din was still very audible, irksome, oppressive. And it was a wretchedly muggy night as well. I got almost no sleep at all. Not a good start to the week.

At least that all-night working right outside hasn't been repeated since. I can't be answerable for my actions if it is!

A runner's haiku

Mile on mile on mile
The heart lightens, brain empties.
The Zen of running.

On a lighter note

I do stand very much in need of a major clean-up in my apartment. There are still unmanaged areas of stickiness from drink spills at my big party two months ago! And the landlord will be coming around in a couple of weeks, hopefully to renegotiate the lease for another year, or, ideally, two (I don't want to get kicked out on the eve of the Olympics!).

I was reminded of one of my favourite songs from the Dead Trolls' CD I mentioned at the start of the week, 'Mom's coming to my house'.

It's just your basic 'catalogue song', but the list of embarrassing things that need to be tidied away gets more and more outrageous:

"Hide the drugs, hide the butt plugs,
Cover up the pentagram with the rugs..."

An angry incident

I had another of those near-death experiences last night. I was leaving the Sanlitun bar district with a few friends after a nice farewell dinner and drinks for the visiting sister of one of them (it wasn't even particularly late - single mums with babysitters to relieve!). We were having to walk a few hundred yards to a major road to find a cab. The road we were on was fairly well-lit, but narrow, and - as so often in this town - it didn't have much of a usable sidewalk because of the massive obstructions of trees and telegraph poles planted in the middle of it.

Car drivers, knowing that this is adjacent to the teeming bar zone, and that people have no choice but to walk on the road, should anticipate the likelihood of pedestrians - often, indeed, large crowds of less than fully attentive pedestrians - blocking their path. This is not a stretch of road that cars should be driving along at 11 at night at 40+mph.

The bastard didn't even honk his horn or flash his lights. We heard his engine behind us, heard the tyres on the road approaching stupidly quickly. My companions instantly scattered to safety. I, on the other hand, spun around to fix the driver with my most baleful stare, and obstinately held my position in the middle of the road. I admit, I do play 'chicken' like this quite a lot. I almost always win. However reckless and incompetent Beijing drivers may be, they do have some slight instinct of self-preservation and they know that killing a foreigner would be very, very bad for them. Unless they're one of the black Audi brigade, of course; in which case, they can pretty much get away with anything. Well, this guy wasn't in a black Audi, but he was approaching so fast that I didn't really have much opportunity of getting out of his way if he didn't manage to find his brake pedal.

He braked - very late and very hard. His car nearly touched me, only finally coming to a stop an inch or two off my shins. I don't believe his car control is anything near good enough to have judged it that finely. He just got lucky. Very lucky. So did I. It was a sickening, terrifying moment.

My adrenalin levels, naturally, were through the roof. I vented by yelling obscenities and flicking the finger at him. I considered - as I have done once or twice in similar incidents in the past - pounding on his bonnet (that's the 'hood' to you, my Yankee friends), or kicking out at his bumper or headlamps.... but I refrained from this, being somehow still rational enough to realise that I didn't want to risk provoking an ugly escalation of the confrontation in front of my female companions.

The guy was glaring at me and revving his engine impatiently. He was off again the instant I started to move aside, and almost creased me with his rear end as he swung into a left turn. I was again tempted to aim a kick at his doors, but again relented - contenting myself with a loud slap of the flat of the hand against a window. This time it was his turn to stop and hurl obscenities at me.

We exchanged psycho stares for a few moments through his open passenger side window. I out-psycho-ed him and he drove off. I'd always been pretty confident he wouldn't actually get out of the car to start a fight. (I was much bigger than him; and there's a strong vein of physical cowardice in most of the Chinese - they'll yell a lot, but they won't often come to blows. Not unless they can take you by surprise with a brick or a bottle. That's a topic for another post, perhaps.) He may even have had some instinctual awareness that the fact that I had women to 'protect' - or show off in front of - would be likely to make me a more formidable opponent (that's not particularly a facet of my personality, just universal human nature).

There was a danger, though, that he would come after me in the car. I've had that happen to me a couple of times. (Again, perhaps, a topic for a later post.)

Fortunately, he disappeared into the night, and we were soon able to put the unfortunate encounter from our minds.

Sadly, this is a pretty routine event in China, and particularly in Beijing. Standards of driving are just appalling. People don't follow the rules of the road. People don't know how to control their cars (a nation of bike-riders who don't like to use their brakes is slowly becoming a nation of car-drivers who don't use their brakes). People don't have any basic sense of road safety. People drive too fast. People drive aggressively. People drive drunk. People drive with feeble, uncorrected vision. Official road death figures are in excess of 100,000 per year, and the WHO speculates that there is probably massive under-reporting. Even so, it's a little over 10% of the worldwide total.

My one-man campaign to defy and challenge arsehole drivers whenever I meet them is going to get me into big trouble one day, I know.