Hong Kong of the Heart

The weekend Before Last, I was accused of shilling for the CCP. the Chinese Communist Party, not the Caribbean Citizenship Programme.

The finger-pointer was a long-term foreign resident of Hong Kong, and the accusation was made during what began as a conversation but soon grew into a low-key altercation in one of that great city’s hipper bars, Penicillin, a dark and hard-surfaced space which channels a delightfully architectural public convenience vibe and markets itself as Hong Kong’s first provider of ‘closed-loop sustainable cocktails’.

Granted, the conversation had been stiff even before I revealed that I am an editor for China Daily, but as my Inquisitor was a friend of a friend and spoken of highly, I attributed that to the fact that having arrived early, I was already one cocktail up. Staring rigidly (and rudely) ahead, they peppered me with buckshot accusations. Where was my conscience? Was I a Believer? How could I square my admiration for both Hong Kong and Taiwan with what I did for a living? Was I too embarrassed to admit that I was a Party member? Or was I stupid or just in denial?

Given the history between Hong Kong and China, particularly since Beijing rammed through its heavy-handed ‘Security Law’ - attempts to prevent which led to those thrilling mass demonstrations that rocked the city before Covid (and the provisions of the new law) gave authorities the means to extinguish them - I wasn’t expecting my revelation to be received with applause but also I wasn’t about to lie.

I have multiple caveats about my choice of job however, I believe China has the right to present itself to the world as it sees fit. My agreement with those choices is neither implied by my decision to be employed by them, nor as an editor is it even necessary. For me, the decision was entirely self-serving. I wanted to move to China and when everything else failed, state media came through. I’ve wanted to live here since I was a child, and on that level, I have no regrets. China is fascinating, and like everywhere else, is so much more than its government. That said, my plan had been to get here, find my feet and (assuming I liked the country enough to stay) find a private sector job ASAP. Almost three years on, that is still an ongoing process, largely because COVID brought everything, including hiring, to a halt.

So had my accuser chosen to wield the Security Law, the threats, intimidation and rhetoric towards Taiwan, the skirmishing and land-grabbing along the Indo-Chinese frontier, the creation of facts on the ground in the South China Seas, the repression of Xinjiang and Tibet, Wolf Warrior ‘diplomacy’, the denial of history or the obfuscation over COVID as justification for their animosity, I would have understood. Possibly even applauded.

Instead, they defined their anger not in terms of the CCP, but rather in terms of the Chinese themselves. Or to be precise, mainland Chinese, for they were careful to stress their comments were not meant to be taken as being about the Chinese in general. My accuser’s issues with them? They were inhuman because they beat their children and encouraged them to defecate in public places, peed in public toilets with the door open, spat on restaurant floors (the inappropriate expression of bodily fluids were quite the feature of their argument), and worst of all, left people to bleed on the street after an accident. It was a litany of ills that I have heard before, particularly the kiddie poo part, but which seem to have been more common a decade ago, and which with the exception of the reticence to get involved in accidents for fear of being dragged into litigation, seem mostly to be the result of villagers doing in cities what is considered unremarkable at home - the kind of complaint that has been made since the Greeks.

When I tried to say as much, I was told I was at best naïve, and at worst, ‘complicit’, though by then, whether they meant that I was complicit in encouraging children to defecate in public places (Reader, I would no more do that than I would encourage children to appear in public), or by ‘denying’ these things were part and parcel of everyday life in China, was somehow complicit in whitewashing the CCP, I was no longer sure. The entire diatribe struck me as racist, and later made me wonder if I had in fact been in a bar in Hong Kong arguing with an expat who in their words had ‘grown up appreciating Chinese culture’, or with someone who had grown up appreciating Fu Manchu and Ming the Merciless.

When they departed to smoke a cigarette muttering that ‘this wasn’t what (they) had in mind for the evening’, I cut my losses and beat a retreat, for reader, an evening of bigotry passing for political indignation wasn’t what I’d had in mind, either.

Hong Kong and I have history. I’ve been visiting on and off since I was six, first with my father on our way between the UK and Taiwan in the 70s, and later during my life in Takasaki in the 90s, when I would come in search of respite from relentless Japanese politeness. I have friends who either grew up there, or have streets named after their great-grandparents. I was there in 1997 for the handover, which coincided with leaving Japan and my 28th birthday, and have visited on every occasion I could since.

Like Calcutta and Beirut, Hong Kong is a forever love, although I won’t claim to know it except on the most superficial level because I haven’t spent enough time there. But as a recurring character and as the first real city I experienced, it has exercised an outsized effect on me. I’ve come to realise that it defined for me everything I think a city should be; fast, fluid and vertiginous, canyon-like streets, stratospheric towers, acres of neon, bustling street markets and cafes, restaurants, bars and businesses stacked on top of each other.

But it’s also more than that. I love the complicated and the cosmopolitan, as well as the (gentle) clash of cultures. One reason I loved Beirut so deeply was because in the drive from the airport to my home, a distance of barely 10 km, you passed through communities that looked to Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United States and France, very distinct and disparate enclaves that rubbed against each other until the sparks flew.

Hong Kong is a similar collision of the hard and sharp and the soft and crumbling, its multicoloured temples belching clouds of incense, graffiti and wall stickers, peeling palimpsests of commerce and culture, the fading glamour of the Star Ferry and the dingdings, passing views through windows into other peoples’ lives, the banyans, the humidity, the fragrance of every kind of cuisine on earth. It’s mad, messy, miscegenated and pure magic, and while many places can legitimately  bill themselves ‘global’ cities these days, Hong Kong’s compact build amplifies the sense that it is the world in a teacup.

I had no real plans apart from Sunday lunch with a friend from London, who happened to be passing through and who I flew down to meet because he was in the neighbourhood. Given that Hong Kong is 2000 km from Beijing, that might make you laugh, but compared to London, Hong Kong is in the' hood. Additionally, as this was to be my first time out of China in almost three years, I was more than content to just sit in a coffee shop and watch the world walk by, but from the moment I landed to the moment I left, Hong Kong had me on the move.

On Friday night, a stroll around the streets of Central, including through the lovely, if Hipsterfied Central Market, led to what I thought would be a sundowner at the Tai Kwun Centre, the beautifully restored former Central Police Station, which is now home to galleries, shops, a museum, cafés, bars and restaurants. Walking into the main square set my senses tingling, for although Hong Kong is one of the few cities to still maintain compulsory mask-wearing outdoors (penalty for failure to do so is a stonking HK$5000), it was packed full of people enjoying the evening, more than I’ve seen in one place since 2020. The roar of conversation and clinking of glasses was every bit as intoxicating as the setting, and so after wandering around a bit, I found a perch on one of the upper balconies and ordered a cocktail. This turned into two, which naturally led to a third, which then led to a hasty attempt at ‘dinner’ – essentially a couple of arancini and cheese platter - but in my defence, the cocktails were excellent and I doubt even Jesus felt more relieved by his resurrection than I did by mine. I mean I’d waited 1040 days longer for it to happen.

I’d originally planned to have an earlyish night, thinking I’d save myself for a big Saturday night out, but the cocktails led to a walk down to Central Pier to catch the Star Ferry across to Kowloon (which I now was able to read translates as ‘Nine Dragons’) and then back again, just to enjoy the view of Fragrant Harbour, which is what ‘Hong Kong’ means in Chinese, though back in the bad old pump-our-sewage-into-the-sea days of the 70s, that ‘fragrance’ wasn’t necessarily the kind you’d daub on wrists.

I first rode the Star when I was six. My father and I stopped off in Hong Kong on our way to Taipei back in 1976 and used to cross to HK Island every day on the ferry, as Dad hunted for watches and cameras. My most abiding memory of that first visit (apart from the sheer cityness of it all) is of a sign for a club called ‘Bottoms Up’, emblazoned with a photo of thong-clad (or was it naked?) woman’s bum shot from above as it emerged from a sea of white fur. I want to say that it was in the same area as Club Pussycat and I’ve no doubt that Dad made some pithy comment that I didn’t understand at the time but probably laughed at anyway, but the memory has endured because what most fascinated me about the sign wasn’t the backside, but the furs. An augury, if ever there was one…

I’ve taken the ferry at least once every visit since, whether I need to or not, because penny for penny, it’s the best money you can spend in your life. While the bay has shrunk significantly since the mid-70s as a result of land reclamation and the planes no longer scream over head to land at good old Kai Tak, the proliferation of towers and neon means that the views going both ways are still spectacular. Stumbling misty-eyed off the boat at Central Pier again, the evening ended with several more cocktails and a solo singalong to Disco classics at FLM before tumbling blearily into bed at 2am.

Saturday morning I channelled my father and went electronics hunting. My goal was focussed: a PS5, which in the end I picked up from the hard-to-find Sony store in Causeway bay. Arriving too early, I wandered around the (mostly) shuttered shops in nearby Fashion and Food walks, attracted less by what was on sale than by the area’s cluster of mid-Century buildings which have been polished to perfection.

Lunch was had at the utterly spectacular Mono, a South American restaurant run by Chef Ricardo Chaneton, Venezuela’s only Michelin-starred chef, and consequently something of a hero back home. The food is a blend of techniques and ingredients sourced from all over Central and South America, and as I was accompanied by a well-connected (and very funny) PRista, it began with Krug and finished 8 courses (and many pairings) later with a dessert that delighted mouth and mind. The flavours were fresh and inventive and featured few of the starches often associated with South American food. In addition to tasting beer made from fermented cacao skin, and a langoustine head sauce made with unsweetened cacao (which is peeled and roasted in-house, natch) that would have been perfect poured over ice cream (and which after the urgings of my companion to Chef Chaneton, who graciously presided over our meal, it may do in future), the dishes were all as beautiful to look at as they were to eat. That, however, you’ll have to imagine, as I was too busy eating and talking and to take pictures. I know. I would be a hopeless Millennial.

From there, it was back across the bay to West Kowloon, where an art district is emerging. I’m not overly keen on purpose-driven developments, as I’ve seen too many go too badly wrong, but my goal was M+, a newish exhibition space designed by the great Herzog&DeMeuron, where I wanted to have a look at the Sigg Collection.

Originally assembled by a Swiss diplomat in Beijing, the collection contains 3,500 pieces of contemporary Chinese art, only part is on show at any given time. The display I saw included a section on the 1985 Movement, which not only gave birth to some of the biggest names in contemporary Chinese art today, and some of its more memorable creations, but which was also part of the wave of cultural and political questioning and criticism that crested and was finally crushed in Tiananmen in 1989.

Sadly, some pieces deemed too sensitive have been ‘edited ‘ out, but plenty of what remains is still challenging within a contemporary Chinese context. That such an exhibition could be held in Hong Kong, a city that has only just experienced a Tiananmen of its own, said more for the surviving vibrancy of that city than a thousand impassioned op-eds ever could.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not as naïve (or as complicit) as my Great White Accuser would later suggest. HK is not the same city it was before the Security Law, and an art exhibition isn’t a political bellweather. Certainly, Hong Kong is no longer a refuge for mainland dissidents and recent changes to the educational system don’t bode well and suggest that China is playing the long game for tomorrow’s hearts and minds having accepted that it won’t win today’s. Even so, the fact that these pieces, many of which cannot be shown on the mainland today, were on display in a city that, to all intents and purposes is part of China, was hopeful. Hong Kong has long been China’s door to the world (why it should need one is discussion too long for this blog), but I did come away wondering whether, if it gets lucky and if it plays its cards right, it might also serve as China’s mirror, showing the mainland things about itself that have long since been repressed at home.

Sunday was a blur of dim sum at the very old-school Luk Yu Teahouse on Stanley Street with a friend from London who I haven’t seen since before the Plague where for a second, I felt like I’d walked onto the set of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (the bit before Indy meets Short Stuff) which was followed by a long walk to burn off the duck pastries and a pause in a park full of Filipina maids enjoying their single day of freedom. The rest of the afternoon was taken up with a visit to Petticoat Lane, HK’s biggest gay bar, where a drag queen dressed as Wonder Woman regaled me with tales of their teenage adventures in heterosexuality, followed by the finishing of an already opened, though still almost full bottle of champagne that had been abandoned by its purchasers and of which I became inheritor, and so the afternoon turned into evening in a delightfully blurry way.

Of course, I spent my final night wandering the streets and fantasizing about living in one of those vertiginous towers above Hollywood Street, vowing to make long weekends in Fragrant Harbour a regular feature of my future New China life. Whether that will happen, or if the Seouls, Taipeis, and Tokyos of the world will vie for my limited time, we’ll see, but I’d like to think that I’ll make it back at least a couple of times a year. I was away for less than three days, but by the time I got home on Monday night, it felt like I’d been gone for a month.

Hot on Harbin

A couple of weeks ago, a long held dream came true when I managed to sneak away to the deep freeze of Heilongjiang Province to visit Harbin Ice and Snow World.

Love me a pink and purple onion dome…

I can’t remember exactly when this annual extravaganza of giant snow sculptures and ice-brick buildings first crossed my horizon, but I seem to recall it being some time in the early 90s, when I was languishing in deepest Gunma-ken as the World’s Least Promising English Teacher, aka participant in the JET Programme. What I do remember is that the first time I saw photos, I knew that one day, I would have to go.

I didn’t manage while I was in Japan, even though Harbin was relatively close at the time, certainly much closer than it was during the 20 years I spent in Lebanon, but I never entirely forgot. Every year, I promised myself that it would be ‘next winter in Harbin’, and so you can imagine my frustration then, when after moving to Beijing, which meant that getting to Harbin no longer involved doing battle with the vagaries of Chinese visas or coughing up for a long-distance flight (though even from here, Harbin is still a 1300-km journey), I still couldn’t go because of COVID. And so for the last three winters, although I’ve never been physically closer to Harbin, the festival might as well have been taking place on Mars.

So when travel restrictions relaxed last December, I knew exactly where I was going first. Obviously, Heilongjiang isn’t the warmest of places but as a child of extremes, I like my summers hot and my winters cold. Even so, Harbin pushed my envelope. In the summer, it can pass briefly for Sienna, but in the middle of winter, it reverts to Siberia. Daytime temperatures were a (relatively) balmy -24C the weekend I was there, and I say balmy because the following weekend, they dropped to -33C and then a week after that, Mohe, China’s northernmost city recorded a temperature of -53C.

Suffice to say that it was brisk and that despite exhortations to remain masked, I swiftly abandoned mine as within minutes of being outside, it became soaked with exhaled moisture and froze to my face. Not one to bear calumnies lightly, I didn’t wear one again for the rest of my stay. I wasn’t alone. Many Harbiners weren’t bothering either, likely for the same reason. Frankly, it was a relief. Three years of being almost permanently masked, both indoors and out, have bequeathed me a visceral loathing of PPE, although apparently some people are now finding it hard to give up wearing them.

But back to Harbin.

The festival, about which more later, wasn’t the sole purpose of my visit. As I read up on the city, I discovered that between the 1880’s and 1930s, it enjoyed a cosmopolitan effloresence as a mini-Shanghai - or perhaps more accurately, as a mini-Moscow. For a few decades, it was city of two halves; one Manchurian, the other Russian. Interestingly - for until 1911 China was under Manchu rule (I’m lookin’ at you, Pu Yi) - non-Manchu Chinese were not permitted to settle there, just as old Peking’s Tatar City was also off-limits to Han Chinese residency.

Being both outsider and mutt, I’ve always had a soft spot for these Interzones, places that like Cavafy and his beloved Alexandria, were in if not of their host country. While most historically have been the result of empire or colonialism (and often both), others were sprung of slightly different loins.

In Harbin’s case, that was the railway, specifically the Chinese Eastern Railway, a shortcut along the Trans-Siberian that runs from Chita to Vladivostok through Chinese territory. It was the (poisoned) fruit of a somewhat lop-sided deal cut between the Czarist and Qing governments that entirely favoured Russia (and probably added grist to the Century of Humiliation mill) but the result was that the minor Manchu town, rapidly expanded from the late 1890s as Russian engineers and their families flooded in.

By 1920, Harbin was a city of 120,000 Russians, some 20,000 of whom were Russian Jews. It had Russian newspapers and schools, Orthodox churches and synagogues, and ran as much on  rye bread, borscht and vodka as it did on doubao, di san xian and baijiu.

After the Bolshevik Revolution, the city filled with dispossessed and (usually penniless) former aristocrats, imperial troops, White Russians and others unwilling or unable to remain in the USSR. As a boom town – I’ve even seen it described in some literature as *shudder* an ‘early Dubai’ – Harbin also attracted mountebanks, wideboys, drug dealers, pimps and prostitutes, many of them Russian, but some of whom arrived from the Philippines via Shanghai and Beijing after the Americans decided to ‘clean up’ Manila and sent all the Western women (and presumably men) of the night who had set up shop there, packing.

One of the new arrivals was Alexander Sosnitsky/Shura Giraldi, a Russian man/woman – the records aren’t clear and (s)he lived openly as both and may even have been an hermaphrodite – first made landfall in what was then Republican China before they moved to Beijing and set themselves up in the Chuanban Hutong, an area inside the old city walls to one side of the Foreign Legation that was famous for its bordellos, bars and bust-ups – that Chuanban’s main street was referred to in some foreign circles as ‘Heroin Street’ gives you a sense of what some of those busts ups were about.

Giraldi deserves a separate post, but after leaving Harbin, s(he) worked as a dancer, promoter and then became the lover of a local warlord, who gave them a club before fleeing the capital, and then in 1937 went on to organise the biggest bank heist in China’s history, not a single silver Chinese dollar of which has ever been recovered.

So despite the dissonance associated with all things Russian these days, I was as eager to get a glimpse of the Baroque Revival city that Giraldi would have known, as I was of today’s glittering extravaganzas in ice. I planned to visit the St Sophia Cathedral, a St. Basil’s in miniature in the middle of a vast open square once packed with houses, the old central synagogue (which is now a music hall), the Jewish cemetery, which is the largest in eastern Asia, and to stroll along the macaroon-coloured shopfronts of today’s Daoli district, which are reminiscent of St . Petersberg.

Instead, because I was only there for a day and half and because even at -24C, my fingers froze in seconds when I attempted to take photos, and walking was torture, I ended up saving my energies for the snow festival and after a longer-than-expected brunch that became lunch that became afternoon tea at the lovely January Co., a delightful café in the very industrial courtyard of a cluster of rusting warehouses that could almost have been helicoptered in from 2005 Portland, where my first libation was an unctuous Irish coffee because after a crisp and sunny morning among the snow sculptures at one end of the entirely aspirationally-named Sun Island, I was still frozen so solid that even after a 20 minute taxi ride to the café, I still had trouble gripping my cup – I just about had time to run around the outside of a shuttered St. Sophia, squint at pastel-coloured baroque buildings and some rather nice Art Deco fixtures in the fading light, before again taking refuge in a restaurant, where I thawed out again courtesy of a rather nice Bordeaux-esque bottle of Ningxia’s finest. The cemetery was forgotten, as was the synagogue, and any pretensions I had of tracking down specific buildings associated with Giraldi or any other characters from Harbin’s seedy past – which in the absence of a properly informed guide, would take a bit of detective work and hence time - were left shivering on the pavement.

But I did make time for the festival, both the snow sculptures and the ice festival proper, the former in the morning, the latter towards sunset. Why? Because I had been informed that however marvellous the ice brick structures were by day, by night, when they were lit up from within, they were M-25-Orbital-Rave-spectacular. And they were. A glorious collision of Disco and Delirium, a little bit of Camp, a whole lotta Kitsch and very, very China. So delightful, in fact, that until I was in the cab coming back into the city – which was full of lesser-quality ice sculptures so those who wouldn’t/couldn’t shell out for the tickets could get a glimpse of glacial glamour – I completely forgot just how fucking cold I was. Of all the structures, which included a recreation of part of the Forbidden City, my favourite was the giant ice tower at the heart of the fair which was passing itself off as the Crown of Ice and Snow, but which actually lit up like a Wall’s Rocket Lolly even though, or perhaps in direct defiance of the fact that the Rainbow flag is kindasorta banned in China.

The Crown of Ice and Snow at the Harbin Ice Festival. Lol. Are you Tripping yet?

So I didn’t come away entirely disappointed with myself, although this of course means that Harbin and I have unfinished business, and while I have a list the length of my arm of places in China I want to visit before I leave, top of which has to be Tibet, which (if it is open to foreigners then) I’m hoping to visit in the autumn, I can see a return trip to Harbin happening at some point too, preferably when the wearing of a simple summer jacket will suffice.

So, About the Last Three Years...

Last week, I was delicately reminded by a friend that to all intents and purposes, I have been MIA for the last 3 years.

Why? Suffice to say that for all of us here in China, SARS-CoV-2 - living proof that not all that is new is also novel - not only snipped our wings and narrowed our horizons, it also slapped us across the face, knocked us to the ground and then kicked us in the balls.

Repeatedly.

Of course, I know that the pandemic has been terrible for us all everywhere - and sadly for some, continues to be terrible -but as many of you will know from the headlines, the adoption of a zero-covid strategy in China effectively meant that 1.4 billion people (or should that actually be 1.28?) have been prisoners for almost 3 years, with the border effectively closed, and almost no flights out and even fewer in.

As some of you may remember, I arrived in Beijing in March 2020 days before China’s doors shut, and for the longest time, even when there were flights out (and leaving Beijing meant flying to Shanghai first as there were no international flights from here at all) seat were going for stratospheric, almost hallucinatory amounts.

At one point in early 2022, when you actually COULD fly back to London without having to charter a private jet (I’m not joking), you had to produce three negative tests taken within 72 hours of departure, your fastest route was a 50+ hour marathon via Shanghai, Hong Kong, Dubai, Frankfurt/Oslo and then London (all on different carriers) and there was no guarantee that even with a valid work permit and visa, you’d be allowed back in to China after, especially not if there was an outbreak in the country you planned to return from. Even if you were, you had to produce the same paperwork in reverse, then quarantine for 7-14 days at your point of arrival (which was generally Shanghai or Hohhot, capital of Inner Mongolia), then AGAIN at a quarantine hotel on arrival in Beijing (for anywhere up to 21 days) and then often at home for a week before you’d be okayed to go back to work and during the entire period, you’d be tested daily - twice daily if you were really lucky. Oh, and you’d also need to fork out £25-35,000 (excluding tests and quarantine) for the privilege. And that was for a seat in Economy….

Even travelling around China, which was not always permitted if you were a Beijing resident (we had far stricter controls here than anywhere else), was a nightmare. A brief business trip to Zhejiang Province late last year required three days of negative testing before the flight to Hangzhou, one on the morning of departure, another at Hangzhou International and then just for good measure, a third in the hotel lobby after our bags were disinfected for the n-th time that day. It goes without saying that we were all fully inoculated as well as masked at all times.

Over the course of the next four days, we were tested every morning in the hotel, and then because we were travelling between cities in the province, we not only had to download a health code app for each (as well as the provincial health code app, which we already had on top of the Beijing health code app), and fill them all out with exactly the same details, including a list of all the (negative) tests we’d done in the last seven days, we also had to scan QR codes everywhere we went so that our movements were comprehensively tracked. that part, though, was familiar, as in Beijing, you had to scan a QR code and show the guard you weren’t infected every time you entered a building, the subway or a bus. Even in malls, where you would have to line up and scan/present at one of the entrances that wasn’t locked, you’d STILL have to scan/present at every shop/cafe/restaurant you walked into, even when they’d just seen you scan at the main entrance. Naturally, shopping became a colossal chore.

On top of that, because China accorded a degree of autonomy to each province and to each subdivision of said province, when it came to setting COVID test policies, as we travelled between cities, we’d invariably cross a boundary and have to be tested again. On the most annoying day, we were tested 4 times in the space of 9 hours.

Over the course of seven days (3 days prior, 4 days on the road), I was tested 19 times. One evening, we were even pulled over by the side of the motorway because three of the group members had forgotten to test in the hotel that morning, and while the rest of us weren’t tested, a special team of flying hazmat-suited testers went to town on them as we watched. Because the rapid antigen tests were considered less reliable, the procedure was repeated until the testers were satisfied none of them was infected, and one of the three them was tested five times. Always up the nose. Not only did that little slip-up add three hours onto our already lengthy day, we were then forced to spend the night at a desolate quarantine hotel rather than the swank resort that had been booked, until their results came in the following morning, just in case.

As final punishment, our Beijing health codes all turned red, even though our trackers showed that none of us had been anywhere near an outbreak. So we then each had to individually plead/produce reams of evidence to prove that we’d tested, we were negative and we hadn’t been anywhere ‘high-risk’ (which meant anywhere that had registered a SINGLE case) in order to be granted a temporary code that would permit us to catch the return flight, and that ONLY on the condition that we agreed to be quarantined (thankfully at home) for seven days, during which we would be tested at random times to ensure that we didn’t go out.

And that was us lucking out. A few months earlier, we would have been stranded in Zhejiang, forced to quarantine in place until the authorities in Beijing - which doesn’t just mean the health authorities, but more crucially, the neighbourhood committee, the elderly volunteers who had the actual power to decide whether or not you could come home and who, not being specialists, generally preferred to err on the side of caution and refuse - permitted you to return, at which point you’d have been quarantined first in a temporary hospital (which were varying degrees of Hell), and then afterwards, at home.

Some benighted souls then found themselves being locked into their apartments by the committee, who attached external locks to your apartment door, to make sure they didn’t leave. Many, (viz summer 2022 travellers to Xinjiang, Tibet and Hainan Island from less ferociously guarded cities) got trapped for weeks, testing daily, waiting for the green light to go home and two further rounds of quarantine. Even those who didn’t travel could get caught out by snap lockdowns. Stories of people locked out of their residential compound (most Chinese homes fall into the compound category), at the office, trying to get back to the office, or on a blind date abounded, though at least the latter had a romantic ending as the pair later married. I even remember reading of a delivery man - home deliveries basically kept the country going when the shops were closed and you couldn’t go to the supermarket - who got caught out by a snap lockdown while out on a delivery and was locked into a residential compound just a few metres from his motorbike. He spent 4 days sleeping on the pavement until he was finally allowed out.

I am not recounting this to criticise (though I will admit to many a choice thought over the last few years), or to shame China. It did what it thought best and while I have many reservations about the zero-COVID policy, for 2020 and part of 2021, lockdown worked.. But for the last year of our almost 3 year ordeal, things became progressively harder. You avoided going out for fear of getting caught in a snap lockdown, you ordered everything in (although you’d have to go downstairs or to the compound gate to pick up your delivery, because the couriers weren’t allowed into the building), and you adapted to every new requirement and imposition, as mandatory weekly testing became testing every 72 hours, then every 48 and then, for a while every day. When early last year, a testing station was installed at work, it meant that we didn’t have to stand in line for up to an hour-and-half at a time to get tested at the public booth, but it also signalled that the nightmare wasn’t going away any time soon.

Towards the end of 2022, with few people on the streets, cafes and restaurants offering takeaway service only, no cinema, no live music, museums arbitrarily opening and closing, no parks (most in Beijing are gated and all the gates were locked), and no sign of an end, Beijing was effectively locked down in all but name.

Sure, we weren’t trapped in our apartments, as hundreds of millions of others were elsewhere - watching Shanghai’s 2-month ordeal was especially horrific - but when you went out, there was nowhere to go except the supermarket, when it was open, anyway.. But worst of all was growing dread that, given the continual exhortations about the need to fight a ‘peoples war’ against the virus, this nightmare was never going to end.

I know that most of you have been there, although probably not to such an extreme degree or for so long, so I’m not trying to elicit sympathy, but let’s just say that the last three months of last year were very, very (very) dark.

But now, everything has changed. Overnight. Zero-covid is history. The entire country is/has been sick, and while the statistics (which don’t officially exist) must be horrific, for the first time in a long while, it feels good to be alive. Really, really good. To make up for the last three years of stasis, I have just returned from the Ice Festival in Harbin, as well as four days in the Gobi Desert visiting the gob-smacking Buddhists caves in Mogao and Yulin, and have a year of weekend trips, small excursions and (yes!) international jaunts planned.

There are also other developments, including my incipient foray into the wonderful world of becoming a self-published novelist to share, but this weeks post is just to tell you that, as Elton once sang The Bitch is Back, and to say that I’ll be posting about both recent trips soon, and while I understand if you don’t believe me, I will try to be better at posting updates on my life in once again exciting China in the weeks to come.

Blog: Tui Na, the Art of Pain

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The Scottish Rock where it all began to go wrong….

Just over two years ago, as I was walking down from the top of Neist Point on the glorious Isle of Skye, I stepped on an exposed stone slab, slipped, and fell, landing on its edge with the small of my back.

I lay on the ground for several seconds in a daze. It wasn’t until I tried to get up that I realised I had done more than knock the wind out of me, for my legs weren’t prepared to cooperate.

My first thought was to reach for my phone, but I had no signal. Nor was there anyone within hailing range, for I had chosen a wet and magnificently blustery day to go cliff walking.

As I lay in the grass, still not feeling pain, I was beginning to imagine the worst when sensation flooded back as legs tingling, my angry, abused back vented its frustrations.

With great effort, and much pain, I managed to get to my feet and hobbled back towards the car, each step sending knives of pain lancing through my lower back. By the time I lowered myself into the passenger seat, I was sweating profusely but thankfully, sitting down wasn’t uncomfortable.

I reasoned that this was a good sign, for if I had broken anything, I wouldn’t have been able to place any pressure on my lower back at all. And so stubbornly, I decided against visiting the A&E ward, and opted instead for an early night with a fistful of painkillers.

Somehow, I slept, although I was not able to move easily once I had lain down. The next morning, I could see that a nasty bruise was already beginning to wrap around my waist. Over the course of the next four weeks, I watched the bruise blossom and spread, at first an angry purple, then a symphony of autumnal yellows and late summer greens. It would eventually form a belt almost the entire way around my waist, in places a good 14 centimetres wide. I walked slowly, and crawled up stairs. When I forgot to take painkillers, movement of any kind was excruciating, but as I could still move, albeit at the pace of an 80 year-old, I toughed it out.

By the time I moved to Spain a few weeks later, I had convinced myself that I’d had a close call, nothing more.

It wasn’t until February 2019, a full year later, that I began to feel the after effects of the fall. Lying on my back one morning, about to start a 30-day Yoga challenge, I realised that there was a bump on the right side of my lower back, where spine and slab had met. I’d not noticed it before, and it didn’t hurt, but lying on a hard, flat surface, I could feel it, and the slight lift it gave to my right hip.

In April, I began to notice my hip made a clicking sound, and hurt slightly after a long day on my feet. Perhaps because I hadn’t registered for reciprocal treatment before moving to Spain, perhaps because I was almost broke, or perhaps because I am part mule, I still didn’t consult a doctor. Instead, I began to go to the gym, in the hope that more movement would somehow fix the problem.

Oddly enough, it did. Or so I thought. It also did wonders for my waistline (gains now slowly being lost to the onslaught of fabulous Chinese food and the fact that gyms here are still Covid-closed). While I still experienced occasional tenderness and was sometimes left limping slightly if I walked more than 20 kilometres at a time - and as an inveterate roamer, that happened more often than might be expected - as I always felt fine in the morning, I gave my troublesome hip no further thought.

Then one morning in late January this year, I woke up with what felt like a trapped nerve. More uncomfortable than painful, it happened the morning I was due to travel to London to sort out some China-related formalities. The first two days weren’t too bad, I was definitely in pain by the end of the day, but by the third morning, the day of my return, I was also limping badly.

Back in Southport, I had only just registered with a local GP, and still hadn’t had my initial check-up, which had been postponed twice by the clinic at the last minute. I had a new appointment for the first week of February and so I loaded up on Panadol Night, as a new development, a dull pain in my hip and leg, was waking me up every night, and waited.

The day of the appointment, I casually mentioned my woes but after poking around a bit, the doctor who examined me said the lump was in my imagination, and that my intermittent pains, which were most pronounced at night, were probably a sign of age. I was told that light exercise would help - as indeed it had seemed to be doing - but that otherwise, I’d just have to learn to live with the night pains.

Stubborn I may be but I wasn’t about to accept that I’d ‘just’ have to live with the sleeplessness and other limitations those pains were increasingly imposing on me. My plan is to live to at least 132 – I want to experience an entire century - and the thought of living the next 70-odd years in various degrees of discomfort, less and less able to roam freely, didn’t appeal. 

I found a specialist in Liverpool, but once I had persuaded my GP to make the necessary referral, I discovered that the earliest appointment was in April, by which time I would be China.

So I decided that as soon as possible, I would get myself treated in Beijing. But then after I finally got here on March 16th, there was two weeks of quarantine, another three weeks when I couldn’t get into the office to pick up my medical insurance, and then a further week before I was paid, and could afford to see a doctor. Which brings us to the beginning of May

In the meantime, my hip had taken a turn for the worse. It now hurt to walk, and I had developed a constant rolling lurch, as I was unable to place my full weight on my right leg. Obviously, this was creating new strains – and pains – in my shin, left leg and back. I was falling apart.

That’s when I heard of Dr. Lan. A practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine, he runs a rather recherché clinic in north-central Beijing and was, I was told at a party I attended a few weeks ago, “an absolute miracle worker, darling.”

I’ve only had two experiences of TCM before, once to treat (very successfully) breathing problems caused by a mite infestation in the tatami mats of the lovely home I was renting in Takasaki, and the second time in Seville, when I thought it might help with the incipient pains in my hip, but it didn’t. 

In both cases, acupuncture and moxibustion were involved. But as my issue was most likely musculo-skeletal, something more hands-on was probably necessary. 

“Tui na,” my informant told me.  “It’s massage, only painful. Excruciating. It verges on torture and leaves bruises. But really sorts these problems out. Anyway, they do all kinds of things at the clinic. Leave it to Lan, he’ll know what you need. Oh, and his English is good, too, so you won’t have to worry about communicating.”

Four days later, after an examination in which Dr. Lan, a rather avuncular figure with a brisk but jolly manner, manipulated joints and limbs, prodded for pains and drew imaginary lines across my lower anatomy - whether linking Qi points, or muscle attachments, I’m not sure - I found out. My path was to be Pain. 

Yep. That pretty much sums it up.

Handing me over to a slight, smiling woman, I foolishly assumed that I was being spared the attentions of the rather more muscular-looking practitioner who had followed the good doctor into the room. What I hadn’t counted on was my masseuse being a ninja with hands of steel. So while my leg was only ever gently coaxed to take positions with which it has become unfamiliar in recent years, the accompanying pressure on muscles, nerve clusters and assorted anatomical features brought tears to my eyes.

“Ready you,” she said, smiling as she surveyed the tortured remains of my carcass on the massage table, “doctor coming.”

Reader, have two more ominous words ever been uttered in the English language? I think not. On a par with “transfer pending” and “die, motherfucker”, the doctor introduced me to a level of pain that not only left me teary-eyed, but gasping, as recalcitrant muscles were forced to submit and joints were skilfully manipulated back into their proper place. I was, you see, out of alignment.

“Yes,” Dr. Lan had said in the initial, pre-massage assessment, “you had accident here, yes?” He pointed to my right knee, which I had damaged in a childhood bicycle accident involving a Chopper, a steep hill, an abrupt right-turn and a rice field (this was in Taiwan).

I nodded mutely.

“Yes. Classic problem. Knee joint little twisted, not align. Make tension here,” he prodded an hitherto unknown muscle on the right side of my groin, making me wince. 

“This good side, relaxed,” he continued, prodding the same muscle on the left side. “Left hip also soft. You feel? This problem making many years. Then back accident. Now all bad.” 

“But we can fix,” he said, patting my shoulder. “Soon better. Okay?”

I whimpered gratefully.

“Turn on side left, please. Sorry. Maybe this time pain. We go deep. But better.”

This time? Somehow I managed not to scream.

Tui na translates as “push, lift and squeeze” and is apparently based on Daoist principles. Much like acupuncture, it’s about manipulating the lifeforce, or Qi, by re-opening the body’s Eight Gates – essentially the joints – to allow the Qi to circulate unimpeded. This is achieved by flexing, lifting, twisting and bending, as fingers, hands, arms and elbows are used to apply strategic pressure to joints, meridian points, fascia and muscles.

If ninja lady’s hands had been made of steel, the doctor’s were made of diamond and while I had no doubt as his hands met my muscles that even the hardest knots would surrender, I did wonder if I’d be able to walk at all, afterwards.

And yet once the treatment stopped, I felt fine. My hip still hurt, though noticeably less, and the pains I’d been experiencing in my lower right leg were completely gone. My rolling lurch was also less pronounced.

After the second treatment a week later, the pain went away altogether for the first three days afterwards, until I foolishly decided to run to catch a train. And after today’s third session, in which there was a great deal of cracking and popping as assorted joints and bones in my hips, legs, and feet were coaxed firmly back into place, I am walking completely normally again. No lurch. No wincing. No tenderness. Well, apart from in my calves, which revealed hidden knots of pain during today’s exam, and were then mercilessly prodded, pummelled and squeezed until the muscles finally agreed to behave properly. In fact my session today was so intense, that at one point after my left leg had been worked on, I felt like it was two inches longer than my right.

I’m now permitted to walk short distances each day, more than 1km but less than 5, as the aim is to strengthen the muscles and joints, but not tire them. And then in a month or so, I will be encouraged to work them harder, go on hikes and climb hills, in order to ensure the new alignments are properly strengthened, and therefore take. And when tat happens, there will be no stopping me.

Look out China, here I come!

The characters for Tui Na.

They also translate as ‘10,000 Devils’.

No, I’m just kidding.

Or am I?

Blog: Hi Ho, Hi Ho.

That’s it in the middle. My office is ¾ of the way up the leg on the right..

Five weeks after arriving in Beijing, I was finally allowed swipe my pass, push through the turnstiles, wave at the snappily-dressed gentleman from the PAP (the People’s Armed Police) standing sentry in his glass box, put my bag through the scanner, swipe my pass again and enter the hallowed halls of the hollowed out trapezoid that is the CCTV Building on busy Guanghua Road.

It took me that long because my two weeks in quarantine had been followed by another two weeks working from the hotel and then home, and then an extra week of working from home, before the station’s management deemed me sufficiently safe to be allowed to meet my colleagues.

There were three of us being inducted that day, Hanali from New Zealand who was joining the HR department and Brian, from the US, who was going to be working on Breaking News. As I later discovered, our arrival was hotly anticipated. 

“Oh, you’re that guy who’s come to join Dialogue, right? We’ve been wondering if you’d get here before they closed the borders. How’re you enjoying Beijing? ” one of the other writers on my floor asked me later that day. “Lucky you arrived in time. We were sure you’d be stuck outside.”

I’ll admit, that prospect had crossed my mind, as well, which is why with a sense of determination that I think may have struck the HR department as slightly worrying, I had blithely brushed off the warnings about closures, and masks and restrictions, and maintained all the way through the long, and often delayed lead up to finally arriving that yes, I still wanted to come to Beijing, yes, I knew about the virus, and no, it didn’t matter, so would you kindly get me there as soon as possible?

Certainly, that determination had struck some of my friends as peculiar. At the time, the pandemic hadn’t quite become the all-encompassing worry into which it has since evolved, but as I watched it creep closer and closer to England, my overriding fear was that either China, or the UK would shut their borders and then, well, then I’d be well and truly stuck.

But my determination paid off, and so instead of languishing in a grey bedroom in north-eastern England wondering what the hell I was going to do next and how I was going to make a living, here I was striding down the halls of Rem Koolhaas’ Esheresque contribution to the central Beijing skyline, rubber soles noisy on the polished marble floors, on my way towards my first paycheque in years, new job, new apartment and new life in hand. I was so relieved to be in Beijing, that from the moment I arrived, I’d found myself struggling not to give in to the giddy desire to burst into song, and as I squeaked through the vaulting atrium, towards the lifts that morning, the twin leaning towers of my new office building rising high above my head, I pictured myself tap dancing across the floor, like some latter-day Fred Astaire.

The rest of the morning was taken up with new job things, filling out forms, adding funds to our e-passes for use in the café or one of the eight restaurants, and touring the building, which also houses a supermarket, a doctor, a gym, two banks and a barber (all still shut as a result of outbreak regulations).

Rem’s Rocking Interior: I don’t care for Koolhaas normally, but this building is a beauty.

After lunch, it was finally time to meet the teams, though as I discovered, few of my colleagues were in the office, in part because most were working from home, but also because with the Covid-19 changes, few were coming into the office until shortly before the live evening broadcasts of the shows.

Over the next few days, I got to meet more of them, though I still haven’t met everyone, and discovered that I would be splitting my time between two current affairs talkshows, Dialogue and The Point, editing scripts, coming up with questions and taking part in episode meetings via WeChat, as face-to-face meetings were not (and are still not) taking place. They are young and dynamic, most in their mid-20s to mid-30s, though the hosts are older. One of them, Liu Xin, who is the host of The Point, is also something of a national icon, catapulted to fame after a live debate on the US-China trade war with an American anchor, Trish Regan of the execrable Fox Business TV network, last year. They also work extremely hard, so hard that I wonder what kind of work/life balance China adheres to, if at all . Messages come in around the clock, and almost every day, though thankfully, only a few require me to reply.

Work arrives in batches, sometimes in a flood, but more often than not in a steady drip through the day. Some shows are pre-recorded, others are live and when they are live, I am also required to go into the office in the evenings, to sit in on the broadcast and determine what subtitles are used during the show, and in the case of The Point, to also prepare a few Tweets and a teaser for use on Chinese social media network, Weibo. As The Point doesn’t air until 9:30, this can mean that I’m in the office until 10:30 or even 11pm, if there is disagreement over which Tweets are most appropriate, but normally that isn’t the case. As Dialogue is broadcast 6 days a week, I am also required to work some weekends, though time off is then given during the week.

For the most part, though, I continue to work from home, so in some ways, life is much the same as it was when I was freelancing. Whether this will change in the coming weeks, especially as office life returns to normalcy as is believed will happen after the upcoming annual meeting of the Chinese Communist Party, which is apparently going to officially announce the end of the majority of restrictions still in place, remains to be seen. If I do end up spending much more time in the office, at least once all the facilities open, there will be plenty to keep me occupied in the quiet moments between bursts of work and I have already made the lovely 38th Floor café a regular haunt, mostly for the panoramic vies it affords over the city.

In all, the transition has been smooth, both in terms of work and life. Work is both enjoyable and interesting. Occasionally, the constant ping of messages is enormously distracting, especially when I am trying to write, but as instantaneous communication also enables my out-of-office workstyle - and once I have an iPad with a cellular connection, to working outside home, too - it seems a reasonable price to pay. Beyond that, my new home Beijing is a remarkably easy city to live in, especially now that translation apps abound, but then after 20 years in the world’s least predictable, immensely frustrating but most utterly lovely country, anywhere else (with the possible exception of an actual warzone) was bound to be easy. And for giving me that advantage, I will thank Lebanon for the rest of my life.

Blog: Free At Last, Free At Last (with apologies to the Rev. Dr. M.L. King)

Where do I even start?

So much has happened in the last few weeks, that it feels more like two months have passed. Or two years. Sprung from quarantine on the 31st of March, I emerged from the 12 square metre room that had been the extent of my world for the previous 14 days, blinking and pallid, like Rip van Winkle awaking after a hundred year sleep. For you see, unlike ‘lockdown’ elsewhere in the world, quarantine in China means that you do not leave your room. At all. Not for a walk. Not for ‘essentials’. Not for anything. You can imagine then, that to finally be able to step into the hotel corridor, and then (gasp) to make my way downstairs and outside, well, it felt like I was being born again.

Hallelujah.

A Very Happy Boy.

From the tender confines of the Huiqiao Hotel, I was whisked away in the back of a cab to my new hotel, the 5L, opposite the China World Mall, in the heart of Beijing’s skyscraper district and a hop and a skip from my new office at the Esheresque CCTV Building.

As with the bus to the Huiqiao from the Airport, the cab driver was separated from me by a thick sheet of plastic, and as I sat in the back – fully-masked naturellement – goggling out of the window at my new home as our America friends might say, like a hick in from the haystacks, I had a brief 70s flashback, and for just a moment, I imagined I had traded places with The Boy in the Bubble. 

Deposited at the 5L and after having presented my quarantine certificate and had my temperature taken, I found myself in another hotel room, this one much larger, with a double bed, a view of glass towers, and best of all, a door I could open and close at will. 

The sun was shining, the air was crisp and I had the freedom to wander. So I did. That first day, I mostly wandered around what’s referred to as the CBD, the Central Business District, which is every bit as vertical, thrusting and glassy as its name suggests.

There were relatively few people on the streets, and even fewer cars. Shops were open, though no one was shopping, and when I stopped at a café for lunch, I had to rouse the sleeping staff, and was the only one to eat. I did briefly wonder how long it had been since they’d seen another customer.  

The office was still out of bounds. Though my official quarantine was over, CGTN had decided I should spend another two weeks (and in the end, almost three) self-isolating, before being allowed in to work.

And so, as I had been doing at the Huiqiao, I worked from the hotel room, battling abysmally slow Internet when I used the VPN for anything. It was this, more than anything that spurred me to find a place to rent, and so after a couple of false starts, I did and just over a week after moving into the hotel, I moved into my new home.

I now live in what is known locally as a ‘loft’ apartment, which means that my bedroom, a second toilet (yes, I am spoilt) and a rather peculiar three-quarter height room where the wardrobe is locate and which I use to store suitcases, an ironing board and other bits a pieces, are up a short flight of stairs. The building was originally supposed to have a Japanese design, with sliding screens, a wooden staircase and tatami matting in the spare room. At some point, the complex changed hands and was taken over by MGM (yes, THAT one), and so it now has a slightly more Vegas feel, with a fair amount of marble and lots of smoked mirrors. It’s minimal, open-plan (including the spaces upstairs) and just this side of good taste.

I love it. It’s a bit further from the bustle of central Beijing, out in the Southern District, or Fengtai, an area that was all rice paddies and little farms not that long ago. Now, it’s all superhighways, wide avenues and towers. I’m a 25-minute journey from the office by subway (no changes needed) and because I’ve chosen to be a bit further out, I’ve managed to get a bigger space for less money. 

Since I left quarantine, Beijing has slowly come back to life. As the trees blossomed, mostly cherry and almond (shades of Japan and Lebanon) and flowers began to appear, the scattering of people on the streets turned into a trickle, the trickle turned into a flow and finally, just last week, the flow turned into a stream. Today it was announced that Beijing’s strict quarantine measures have been lifted. Outside of Wuhan, nowhere had tighter regulations than the capital. Indeed until this morning, had I strayed beyond city limits, I would have had to go back into a two-week quarantine to get back in again. 

Masks, I’m told, are no longer required to be worn by law, by so far, most people still seem to have them on. It will probably take a few days for people to get used to not having to go out with one on, certainly it’s become second nature for me already, though I am can’t say I was looking forward to having to wear a mask now the weather is heating up.

And how summer has come upon us. Ten days ago, I was still comfortable in a light sweater, and needed a jacket at night. But this week, temperatures have soared, we should hit 37/38C over the weekend, though it’s expected to be much cooler next week.

Apparently Spring has not just sprung, it’s over, and though Beijing’s location on the edge of a desert, as well as in the path of cold winds straight out of Siberia means that large temperature fluctuations are normal, from here on in, it should be hothothot.

With the exception of a few tourist sights, museums, cinemas and parks, Beijing is open. The Forbidden City, which was closed in February, reopens tomorrow for May Day, though visitor numbers are being restricted for now, and with restrictions on travel within Hebei Province now relaxed, it will be possible to escape on day-trips and weekends to Tianjin, the wilder sections of the Great Wall and the canyons and temples of Cangyan. 

It’s been easy enough to get around fro the last few weeks, though going out isn’t hassle-free. While social distancing is not always observed on public transport, you were required by law to be masked at all times outdoors until today. So on the subway, for example, there are (or were, I’ll find out tomorrow) monitors whose job it is to ensure that everyone’s mask is properly fitted and to mildly chastise those who aren’t. 

While people don’t appear to be worried about infection – with a few exceptions, Beijing quickly became one of the safest places in the country thanks to draconian controls - I’ve noticed that people tend to keep their hands in their pockets and no one holds the handrail on the escalators. I also noticed that when someone on a subway carriage sneezes or coughs, a discrete but definite space forms around them. In any case, should you have had to touch something during your travels, most cafes, restaurants and offices have bottles of hand sanitizer at the door. 

For the most part, Beijing seems to be divided into residential compounds, and getting into those compounds is still not possible unless one is a resident. Why does this matter? Simply because many shops, restaurants and other services are inside the confines of those compounds. Thus my very first attempt to visit a supermarket resulted in being firmly, but very politely told that no, I could not go in to buy a couple of bottles of water, because I wasn’t a resident. 

“Try their website,” the helpful guardian told me in impeccably-clipped English, “they probably deliver.”

Most entrances and exits to compounds, malls and shops have been closed – again, it will be interesting to see whether in the coming days, these barriers are removed, or whether they will stay in place for a while longer -  forcing visitors to funnel through a single entrance where at a bare minimum, your temperature is taken and recorded. 

Some places also require that you leave your name, ID/passport number and phone number along with your temperature, so that you can be traced, should an outbreak happen in a place you have visited. Others also require that you produce electronic proof that you have not left Beijing in the last 14 days. Usually, this is done by scanning a QR code and entering your details, in exchange for which you are sent confirmation that you are safe. Or not. As there are several such systems, one of which is targeted at recent arrivals, as was the case when I tried to enter a hutong district last weekend with a Singaporean friend for Chinese afternoon tea in an old Beijing alley house, you are required to scan all of the appropriate QR codes before being allowed in. 

In a fun twist, one of the most widely used QR codes, the Travel Pass, comes in both a Chinese and an English-language version. This is obviously immensely helpful for people like me, who don’t then have to navigate in Mandarin, except for the fact that the Chinese version does not recognise non-Chinese names, and so at places that only have the Mandarin version of the code displayed – and this has happened to me on more than one occasion, including at said hutong - you are then unable to scan the code to confirm your status. 

Needless to say, this makes going out a little less than optimal. We only got past the two smiling but redoubtable neighbourhood Aunties who had been drafted in to monitor arrivals, and who viewed the arrival of not one, but two foreigners, one of whom was especially suspicious because he DIDN’T speak Mandarin, at the gates of their traditional neighbourhood of tile-roofed homes and narrow alleys because we called the tea house and the owners came out to escort us in.

Thanks entirely to my Mandarin-speaking companion and the timely intercession of the tea house owners, who pointed out that while the suspicious foreigner was not able to get his Travel Pass to work – the Aunties seemed surprised to learn of the language issue – he did have two other passes that indicated he was approved as virus-free, and besides, they said, they were vouching for him as local residents, and so wouldn’t that do?

Thankfully, it seemed it would. Mollified, but still not entirely convinced they liked the cut of my jib, the Aunties permitted us passage and so, a lovely, traditional afternoon tea was finally had by all.

Blog: A Hunting We Will Go

My 14 days in quarantine approach their end, in Beijing, self-isolation does not extend to a daily walk, or trips to ‘essential’ services and means staying firmly indoors, so I am very excited at the prospect of being unleashed upon the streets of my new, and as yet unseen, home. 

Tuesday morning, I will be driven to my new hotel in Beijing’s CBD, where I am hoping the Internet will be a little less prone to freezing up and where I will be able to explore my surroundings, and change my menu. For the last 12 days, breakfast, lunch and dinner have been provided by the Beipinglou Zhengyuan Catering Company, and while the meals have been delicious, I am looking forward to introducing a little variety. China has dozens of different regional cuisines to sample, and then there are the plethora of other Asian offerings, everything from Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian and Indian to work my way through. It would be rude not to do them all justice.

My new hotel, the contemporary-sounding 5L, is across the road from the China World Mall (Reader, I shall not be visiting) and is about a 10-minute walk from the office. Not that I shall be going into the office just yet. CGTN are erring on the side of caution, and so I will not be passing through the doors of Minjheer Koolhaas’ magnificent gravity-defying steel and glass hollow trapezoid until April 14th. 

While I will be working from the 5L, I also intend to make the most of my liberty. I have an entire city to explore, although how much of it is still closed remains to be seen. If it is open, my first jaunt may well be to the terrace of the Mandarin Oriental bar for a celebratory cocktail. It overlooks the Forbidden City and as the palaces are still closed, at least according to the website, the MO is about as close as I’m likely to get for now. That said, a number of other historic sites have reopened, including some sections of the Great Wall, and in town, several museums and the stunning Temple of Heaven, so if not before, I shall be indulging my inner emperor next weekend.

There’s a bit to get done before then, though. Work aside, I’ll be taken on Wednesday to get a local bank account and telephone number, and will undergo the mandatory health check for the residency permit. After that, one of my main extra-curricular pursuits will be flat hunting.

As with so much of life these days, that has become complicated. Leaving aside one perennial factor - that rents are apparently higher in the winter than in the summer, making this the wrong time of year for flat hunting - there are two Covid-related complications.

Firstly, some landlords are now unwilling to rent to non-Chinese, even though it is technically illegal to discriminate. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it is not possible to visit most of the places up for rent, as access to residential neighbourhoods is still strictly controlled. A fair percentage of apartments are located in compounds, which can now only be entered through designated gates, where those seeking ingress must submit to temperature control and demonstrate proof of residency to be admitted. While this does not apply to delivery services, in apparently usually does to anyone hoping to look at a flat. 

Of course, it is entirely possible to secure a flat without stepping foot inside it. Agents are offering to film videos tours, though that does mean they might choose to overlook a flat’s flaws. Similarly, while apps and websites like Lianjia, Ziroom, Wellcee and the classifieds section of The Beijinger, make it is easy to hunt at a distance, doing so does require one to take it on trust that images accurately reflect the property. And there is sufficient reason to believe that some do not. As I have been warned, and have indeed begun to discover for myself, some agents post deliberately misleading photographs to attract more enquiries. 

While some listings are photo(shopped) to varying degrees of Instaperfection, most seem to have been shot after a hard-core night on the tiles; lighting is off, focus is blurred, angles are skewed and close-ups/partials feature heavily, making it (deliberately) difficult to form an accurate impression. In addition, little effort is made to make places look presentable. Instead, they are shot in a ‘come-as-you-are’ fashion, beds unmade, clothes strewn on the floor, furniture covered in piles of accreted junk, kitchens looking like they’ve just been used to cook for an army. Or been invaded by one. Throw in furniture that is as uncomfortable to look at as it must be to sit on, peeling wallpaper, flaking paint, missing door handles and water stains on the parquet flooring, and you have the flat-hunting equivalent of Lurid Digs. Minus the hilarious/heart-breaking nude shots.

I’m not suggesting that Beijing has a monopoly on less-than-appetising housing, though it does seem to specialise in the small and the awkwardly laid-out, at least at my end of the market. I’d need to be paying double my current budget to get the kind of place that makes my heart beat faster. Rents here are eye watering, though thankfully, everything else is much, much cheaper.

I’ll admit to being picky. I’d much rather rent an unfurnished flat and slowly furnish it – all you need is a bed to begin - than endure other people’s taste, but for some reason, that seems to be difficult to arrange through agents. Nor do I mind an unorthodox layout if I it gets me light and space in return. The last ‘flat’ I rented in London was on a pre-refurbishment Peabody Estate – Victorian housing for the working poor, for those who may not know - and so had a combined kitchen/bathroom, and while there was a wall between the cooker and the toilet (not all the flats had that ‘luxury’), it was still possible to turn the kettle on from the comfort of the commode. 

I’m also willing to live somewhere I don’t like until I find somewhere I love. It took four dispiriting years to find my beloved rooftop in Beirut, and I spent a year in the world’s most soulless, cinder-coloured prefab flat in Takasaki before I lucked upon the gorgeous tatami-matted, shoji-walled wooden garden house I enjoyed for my last two years in Japan’s navel. That’s the Japanese description of Gunma Prefecture, btw, not mine. Personally, I’d locate Takasaki somewhat lower down the human body. And on the other side.

So, I suppose that the long and short of this is to say that while I cannot wait to throw myself into Beijing life and look forward eagerly to welcoming guests at some point, it now seems likely I will not be in a position to do so just yet. Perhaps not even this year. Not that many of you are likely contemplating intercontinental travel when it now takes 8 hours just to move to the top of the online grocery shopping queue. But rest assured, I shall be tireless. My on-going quest for the year will be to either find a stunning 37th Floor flat with killer skyline views, or the most beautifully-restored hutong house in town. And once I do, as the Lebanese like to say, beiti beitak.

Oh and in case you thought I was exaggerating about those flat hunting website shots, feast your eyes on these. Click, for the full g(l)ory.

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Blog: A Cool, Refreshing Glass of Fetal Treasure.

All things considered, quarantine is going pretty well.

Now in my 7th day (or 6th, if Monday, the day I arrived is not counted), I haven’t felt the walls closing in, or the desire to squeeze through the window to freedom. Mostly, that’s because doing so would be followed by a four storey drop, and also because the window is on a horizontal hinge, and so doesn’t even open up far enough for Michael Jackson to dangle Blanket (shortly after renamed Prince Michael Jackson II and now Bigi), successfully. 

I find I have plenty to do. I have to report my temperature to reception and the office twice a day, at 9am and 4pm. I order my meals through the restaurant associated with the hotel, and they are deposited on a chair outside my door. Then, between online Chinese lessons, browsing the Internet (welcome back, Reddit), reading (thank God I swallowed my misgivings (and my scruples) and bought a Kindle), and a bit of yoga, the days have flown by. It also helps that on Friday, I started working, with my first job writing a summary of the online forum on Covid-19 CGTN hosted on Friday night.

Outside, the weather has been consistently beautiful, bright blue skies and crisp air, and while that has led to occasional pangs, especially after watching a BBC clip about life slowly getting back to normal elsewhere in Beijing, it’s definitely better than grey and rainy. As much as lovelovelove a blustery day, I’m not sure it would improve the view from my window, which is industrial, but perhaps not chic.

The Eternal Sunshine of the Quarantined Mind. Or, Look At That Beautiful Beijing Blue!

So I’ve managed to stay chipper. A colleague downstairs hasn’t fared as well. A smoker, he lost his lighter on the plane and today, he confessed that he had tried to make a ‘prison lighter’ using a battery and a piece of metal (I didn’t asked how he learned about that. Or where.) and was even trying to refract sunlight through a water bottle.

But I’m obnoxiously fine. Not even Damien, aka The Demon Child, and his shrieking mother in Room 436 across the hall, who punctuate the day with regular bouts of crying and shouting, or the occasional odour of cigarette smoke wafting through the vent in the bathroom, have managed to dampen my spirits. While this level of neighbourly noise would normally make my blood boil - yes, The Greens Dubai, I’m looking at you - I am currently in a sufficiently Zen place to empathise, and also to appreciate that being locked in a room for 14 days alone is infinitely preferable to being locked in a room for 14 days with someone else. Particularly when that someone else is too young to understand why he can’t go outside. Rosemary, you have my sympathies.

The interwebs also keep one in ‘contact’. The wonders of Skype, and a card linked to a bank account outside Lebanon, thus freely giving me access to all online services (Beirut, I still love you), mean that I’ve been able to keep in touch with my Dad more easily, which is good, as he’s currently back in hospital again. My future colleagues at CGTN – I say future, because we’ve not yet met IRL – are solicitous and regularly ask me if everything is going well. The food is delicious (hello, Scrambled Eggs with Fungus) and although the Internet slows to a crawl at time (it’s the hotel, not China), I haven’t had too many problems using a VPN. This is helpful as a number of the sites I’m visit to catch up with friends – FB, Google, Gmail, Whatsapp, Instagram – are currently blocked. Though I miss Google and Whatsapp (well, when I’m not VPNing), when it comes to FB and Instagram, inaccessibility might be a good thing.

The app everyone uses here is WeChat. It seems to combine aspects of all the above, and more. I’ve not yet fully explored its possibilities, but it combines instant messaging with news and articles and you can post photos and stories. It also functions as a payment platform, so you can order food, pay bills, rent, buy sofas, you know, useful things like that, and includes a nifty translation subroutine, so you can easily translate messages sent to you in Mandarin.

I also use Google Translate, mostly for the camera function, which WeChat does not seem to have yet. I downloaded the Mandarin file before I left, so it works offline and for the most part, it functions perfectly, though I’ve noticed that when it comes to translations through the camera, it is less reliable, especially when it comes to names and places. The Chinese characters on my bottled water, for example, which is labelled C’estbon (one word, no spaces) in English, translate through the camera function as ‘Fetal Treasure’ on Google. Hence today’s title.

Aimed at the menu I order my lunches and dinners from, it produces the kind of clangers you used to see on websites devoted to mocking translations around the world. While that mockery was mostly devoted to translations into English - you know in that irritating Anglo ‘foreigners, eyeroll’ kind of way - cultural crossed-wires cut both ways. I still remember VWs embarrassing climb-down after they released the Nova in Latin America, and had to be told that this probably wasn’t the best name for a car.

Think about it.

So, Chinese produces even greater opportunity for such mix-ups, as most characters have multiple and sometimes multiple, multiple meanings. This means each can be read (and sometimes also pronounced) in a number of different ways, which must make it a lot of fun to play on words, here. Specific meaning is determined by context. And Google Translate, running on an algorithm, isn’t quite there when it comes to context. Thus, it can’t work out that ‘Wooden Erythers’ are unlikely to feature on a restaurant menu and nor would Dried Partial Beans, Sriffy the Potato, Sack Sauce (I suspect that one’s just missing an ‘of’), Tools Stew, or Fragrance with Fish, though admittedly, that does sound delightful.

Of course (he says, with no trace of hyperbole), I should soon be able to read those menus for myself, for you see, my dear 朋友, I plan to become as fluent as possible, in the shortest time possible. And yes, you may remind me of that promise in a year’s time. By which time I hope to be able to blithely reply 但是我当然会说普通话 !  农民, 你不能吗 ？

Blog: Travel, In An Age of Plague.

16 March, 2020.

New regulations regarding foreign arrivals have just gone into effect, and so it is somewhat chaotic at Beijing Capital Airport. We land at around 1:30 pm, and sit on the tarmac for 30, maybe 40 minutes, before being let off the plane in rows of three. We are to undergo an initial temperature test in the aerobridge, and the ground staff are trying to avoid creating a bottleneck. This isn’t the first such test, mind you, the cabin crew have taken our temperatures three times during the flight from London, already. 

Of course, we have all flown masked, and quite a few of the other passengers are more comprehensively kitted out. Many are wearing rubber gloves, and a number are also in goggles and disposable protective overalls. A few even wear see-through hoods over their masks.

The airport has been temporarily rearranged to funnel arriving passengers through a corridor of orange-clad hoardings. We trek past health advisory notices and bottles of hand sanitizer conveniently located on desks along the way, passing airport staff or medical teams, it’s hard to tell who is what, as everyone is masked and wearing white protective coveralls and goggles, and have plastic bags taped around their shoes. 

My temperature is taken again and I hand in my health declaration, filled out on the flight. We pass a bank of devices that I suppose must be temperature detectors, manned by a white-suited trio with full-on gas masks and clipboards. It could almost be a scene out of 28 Days Later, or The Andromeda Strain.

Following a winding route up and down a couple of escalators to get to Immigration, we’re divided into two groups - those that have baggage, those that don’t. I’m a bit surprised but later, I discover the logic. 

I have bags, so I join that queue. When I get to the counter, I’m told I need an Arrival form. That’s obvious enough, but I seem to have missed them on the way. The female guard says something to me in Mandarin and waves vaguely towards the other side of the room. I don’t understand more than a handful of phrases yet - learning to speak properly is one of my side goals in coming here - and I can’t see where she means for me to go, but she looks so hot and tired behind her goggles that I don’t ask again. Luckily, another passenger steps in and translates. 

I return with the card. There are constant announcements, but they are all in Chinese, so I only understand the ‘xie xies’ and a few numbers. I get to the counter, take off my mask for the photo and wait while the officer fiddles with my passport. It takes a while and he asks me a few questions. I strain to hear. He’s masked, behind a glass screen, speaking into a crackling microphone, and my ear hasn’t yet accustomed to the cadence of Chinese English, so we need a few tries to understand each other. Thankfully, he’s calm, polite and helpful. There’s no screaming at hapless passengers who obviously can’t understand, something quite a few Homeland Security officers I’ve had the displeasure of encountering over the years would do well to emulate. 

Then, it’s another, long, circuitous route up escalators, along corridors, down escalators, and around corners, following signs that often point in opposite directions, to reach Baggage Claim. We pass the hand luggage scanner on the way. The woman at the machine waves me through with a smile. Well, I think she’s smiling. Her eyes crinkle, but of course, I can’t tell because of her mask and hooded suit. How easily and quickly our world is dehumanised. I offer her my first ‘xie xie ni’. 

The signs lead me to a scrum of people. They’re waiting to descend yet another escalator to an area that has been repurposed for baggage claim, but the way forward is roped off, guarded by a poor, harried China Air representative, suited and booted like everyone else. Here, traces of irritation erupt, as passengers start clamouring to be let through. Slight but fierce, the Rep holds them back. I discover from another helpful traveller who translates for me, that we are going to be called plane by plane, to claim our bags. There are a lot of planes to be called.

“Find somewhere and sit,” she advises me, “it will be a long time.” 

Her friend who landed yesterday apparently waited 5 hours for her bag. 

It’s now just after 3:15. My stomach rumbles ominously. The Air China meal was basic and none of the kiosks in the airport are open, and I don’t have coins for the vending machines. I’m beginning to regret not packing a meal. 

Repeated messages over the tannoy helpfully remind us that we must all wear masks, and stand a metre apart, but good luck doing that in the baggage claim scrum. I hold my ground for the next hour and half, as there are no empty seats anyway, and I worry that I might miss the announcement for my flight - gio san ba in Mandarin - but by 4:30, I’m tired of standing, and go off in search of a seat. 

I’d had to queue for two and a half hours at Heathrow to check in - the ticketing system in T3 was seized up, and so it had been chaos there, too – so I decide that however much longer I have to wait today, I’ll do it as comfortably as possible. I fish a chocolate bar out of my bag and lifting my mask, I nibble. I’m briefly reminded of women in the Gulf lifting their niqabs to do much the same.

Victory finally comes at quarter to six and we are allowed into what turns out to be a transit lounge, where our luggage has been laid out. I pick mine up and then one of the overall-clad helpers points me towards another queue. We are to wait for a bus, which will take us to Beijing Expo, where we will be screened and, should we pass, be assigned hotels. Existing hotel reservations are no longer valid, as under the new regulations, only designated hotels are permitted to host arriving passengers during the mandatory 14-day quarantine we must all undergo. 

When we do eventually drive off, it is painfully slowly. It’s almost 6:30 and I’m desperate to leave the confines of Beijing Capital Airport behind. Plus, the facemask is beginning to feel suffocating. I miss the feeling of fresh air on my face.

We exit via a security gate and outside, a police car, lights flashing, awaits. It will be our escort to the Expo. At another time, you’d be forgiven for thinking our bus contained an important international delegation, or a bunch of notorious criminals. Not that the one necessarily cancels out the other. 

We drive slowly, oh so very slowly, through the deserted streets. As a final goodbye, our bus is sprayed with disinfectant before we leave the airport grounds. It is now 18:34 and I am officially starving.

There isn’t much to see out of the windows. It’s quite dark and the trees are still bare, though as we landed, I did notice that some were covered in the first delicate flush of spring buds. But all I can see now is a wintery landscape of leafless trees, large buildings lining even larger boulevards, and the occasional bright flash of passing trains from the elevated subway tracks overhead. No one is talking but after the incessant announcements at the airport, the silence is welcome.

There is a small gobbet of mucus on the window ledge just in front of to me. Someone has sneezed and it has been missed in the clean-up. I noticed at the airport that every surface was constantly being disinfected and on the plane, the woman next to me, who was completely enshrouded in protective gear, wiped the armrests with alcohol rub before sitting down. Now, we’re sat in a bus without ventilation, slowly heating the interior with our bodies and (masked) exhalations. Could there be a more ideal environment for a virus to spread? I begin to appreciate why some people are wearing gloves. The driver is safe, as he’s been screened off behind a plastic sheet.

There are few cars, and even fewer people on Beijing’s streets tonight, though I do spot one man queuing for food at what looks like a roast chicken takeaway. I’m mostly vegetarian (with occasional lapses) but my stomach rumbles ominously in response. 

The only reason I know that this bus is taking me to Beijing Expo to be sorted, and not off to somewhere else, is thanks to a steady stream of updates from the HR people at CGTN, the company I’ve come here to work for. Without them, I would have little idea what's happening, as I don’t yet speak enough Mandarin, and no one really speaks enough English. Consequently, one of the more common sights at Beijing Capital is of bewildered foreigners wandering around looking lost. And dazed. Thankfully, all the ground staff are as helpful as they can be, under what must be extremely trying circumstances.

Few cities should be arrived in by night. Streets empty and illuminated in the harsh glare of sodium bulbs - a lighting solution that can only have been thought up by someone who hated architecture and people - even the most beautiful tend to look desolate, especially on the way in from the airport. 

Twenty minutes later, we reach the Expo. Things here are under better control and it has been transformed into a model of (noisy) efficiency. We’re briskly separated into the cities and districts we live in, for processing. I don’t yet have a home, but as it will likely be in the (massive) Chaoyang District, for that’s where the office is, I pick there. 

Forms have to be filled out but thankfully, they’re easy enough and I quickly get assigned a hotel, the Huiquiao, the only hotel in Chaoyang now allowed to accept foreigners for quarantine. 

I had thought I might be given more thorough testing here, but as I’ve passed the temperature test on numerous occasions – despite my hot head, I apparently run slightly cold, at 35.7C – all I have to do now is wait for the bus to the hotel. 

My group is mostly Chinese, though I notice someone of South Asian origin, possibly Pakistani. He looks a bit sweaty, and eyes me warily, so I leave him alone. There’s also the Peruvian woman I bumped into at the airport who flew in on Aeromexico, an airline none of the baggage control people seemed to have heard of before. When I last saw her, she was panicking over her bags, so I’m glad to see she has been reunited with them. 

It’s clocking on for 9pm and it’s been a long day for everyone. Some of the passengers are not taking things calmly. I hear shouting in Chinese a few times, and once in Russian, outbursts presumably from people unhappy they will not be allowed to self-quarantine at home, or at the hotel they had originally booked. 

When our bus is called, our little group tramps across the disinfectant-slicked floor, then along a stretch of red carpet, where we do not experience an Oscar moment, and past blue and white banners emblazoned with stirring slogans of togetherness and determination. 

“We are always with you, as long as you need us”, one reads, while others exhort us all to fight as one, to never forget love and finally, over the exit, another reminds us reassuringly that “Spring always puts Winter to an end”. 

At just after nine, the bus pulls out from the Expo. As we drive off – thankfully without a police escort, so we can travel at normal speed – I see throngs of people still being processed inside. I do not envy the medical teams their job, and can only imagine the incredible strain they are, and have been under, since this outbreak began. They have truly done their utmost to make this new, and very difficult situation as smooth as possible.

There are stops at other hotels along the way, so it is almost 11 by the time I finally get the key to my room. I’m too tired to eat, so I polish off a bottle of water, strip and collapse into bed. And so, my quarantine begins.