beijing walks slowly

today i walk from dan's apartment, which overlooks the howtongs, to the forbidden city whhich is about 5 kms - the first hing i notice is that the locals walk very slowly which is just fine as my knee i buggered and i amble like an old man -it is cold but the long-johns and thermals are good and i don't need my gloves yet - it is very grey with no sun all day just a feint orange glow - it is definitely not as busy as bangkok in the inner zone of the city as all cars are clogging the ringraod that surrounding beijing- so you can actually get around quite easily - the locals are very friendly and polite almost like japan which is very different from 10 years ago in shanghai when everybody was rude or just indifferent - visited the amazing buddhist Lama Temple Yonghe Gong which is close by -built in the 1740s by Emperor Yongzheng whne Tibetan Buddhism was the official religion of china- with a standing statue of Maitreya that is 20 metres high made out of a single block of sandalwood - found a very tasty dumpling shop nearby where the food tastes great and the room is filled with steam - also saw the outside of the forbidden city and tian'anmen square and f course got ripped off in 'the great teahouse scam' but this time only for $40 (not like bangkok in he 80s when it was $500!) - the wierd thing is you can get a steamed bun for 20 cents, 12 dumplings for $1 but a pair of nike still costs $100 - some people here are vrey rich but most struggle with rising rent prices and general inflation - anna, dan's girlfriend, says there is definitely snow in the air and should arrive in the next couple of days - now that's exciting! this blog cannot be viewed by me in beijing - nothing from blogger is allowed through.

business class real estate agents and russian hookers

the plane flight to guangzhou on southern china airlines is so much better because they shove me in business class because i asked for stretching room for my gammy leg - the food isterible, the movies unwatchable, he vegetarian food never appeared but the seat is luxurious - end up sitting next to d. a chinese real estate agent from inner west of sydney - he was born in guangzhou and came t live in australia when he was twenty but regularly goes back to the mainland - his story is "from 1949 to 1979 china went hungry and we had very hard times - now we have had 30 years of trying to stabilize the country 'and fill our stomachs' - we do not talk politics now as politics only caused us trouble - now we are just busy making money and because the country is growing at 10% everybody is happy with this government that opened its doors in 1979 - we have to build up our health and education and ten we might start talking about democracy - probably in about 10 years - it is was not bad, it just was" - i will have coffee with him when i get back - for the rest of the trip i read karen smith's the real thing: contemporary art from china which is a catalogue for an exhibition held at the tate liverpool this year - at guangzhou airport i pay $6 for a coffee and watch two very tough young attractive russian girls smoking very thin and long cigarettes - they treat the chinese waitresses like shit and have total attitude - f course i think their high class russian hookers heading to beijing (at beijing they pick up 8 huge suitcases all the same all black) - i desperately help them with their bags naturally and they give me a very condescending smile - in the airport bus the mobile phones radiate a warm glow and the plastic hand grips shine like cut crystal glass - everything and everyone is so dark. over on the plane we fly past surreal hong kong where the huge white apartment blocks stand like planet of the ape relics, cuissinaire rods measuring 10,000 people a time - the sea looks like tundra frozen in space - the driver is waiting in beijing to take me to the cafe with sign saying bobo - i am very happy.

nine lives - the birth of avant-garde art in new china

this is the book i should have bought and read before i went to beijing - nine lives introduces nine artists (wang guangyi, geng jianyi, fang lijun, gu dexin, li shan, zhang xiaogang, xu bing, zhang peili, and wang jianwei), their personal histories and views on china today - karen smith, a uk born art critic, arrived in beijing in the early nineties to learn mandarin - she saw the future of emerging chinese art and never left - in 1993, ten contemporary chinese artists debuted at the 48th venice biennale - she runs a business promoting and selling avant-garde art - her business is china avante-garde - the book was criticised for promoting ‘chineseness’ essentialism and vasarian 'heroic agency of the artist'- but karen has a very good repuation in beijing and early this year, she was appointed to the advisory board of oct contemporary art terminal in shenzhen, affiliated with the he xiangning art museum - what i also like about her is that to welcome visitors at her home, she has 'made a massive table, which can seat 20 people' - i would love to sit at that table with dan!