day: 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 epilogue

20 May 2007

to Tibet - Day Two: Big in Beijing

So no Great Wall today. Madcap schemes of were hatched over swelling plates of fresh fruit and waffles. The train idea was a bust and the day was already getting on. We opted for the summer palace instead. A big pile of loose rocks cemented together for the safety of modern tourists. So many clambering buffoons and yahoos to navigate around. I had a hard time finding it on the map at first because it looks like a golf course due to it's far reaching size.

It was with sadistic pleasure that i grinned as the wind picked up washing boating fools ashore in a freak rainstorm. These gnats and their gnat traps of trinkets and desperate pleas for a cheap sale of cheaper souvenirs were getting under my skin. There was one moment in which we stepped into a courtyard and much seemed still. It had been maybe an hour inside this summer palace when i realised this was once a place of tranquility occupied by one spoiled brat and some shuffling mute eunuchs. Emporism had it right keeping the common folk out, with their loud t-shirts and offending visors. Fuck 'em! Fuck 'em all! Serenity at 30 yuan a head!

The forbidden city made for a divide of the family. Us brothers didn't have the stomach to again see several dozen thrones multiplied with tourists so we took off. We crept amongst the construction / deconstruction of some shopping district. Middle of the day all over the open mall roaring jackhammers and grinding devices blitzed into the sidewalk piling stores of jagged rubble behind weakly chained off areas. Barriers even more feebly enforced as pedestrians roamed within inches of power tools and open pits.

It's a mad dash for the olympics of course. Everything is geared towards 2008, which i can empathised with living in the rapidly face lifting Vancouver. Countdown clocks and rah rah olympic slogan bullshit everywhere. The difference in the architecture between here and home is that much of it is not butt-ugly embarrassing in a way that makes you ponder every day why you remain in a revisionist town. I mean things here are big and impressive when they do it. The sprawling six lanes of traffic flanked by side roads for getting on and off echoed by wide sidewalks before crossing endless frontage to BOOM! Most massive chunk of building you have every seen. And it's not the phallic sky spunkers you'll see in many big cities that loom over head to a height that its point is quickly lost. It's a wider than tall behemoth that shrinks you to the smallest feeling you have ever had. Maybe thirty to forty storeys high consuming the better part of mile long blocks. Always stuns me.

All the while tiny alleys are tucked in here and there. Off of this shopping corridor a tinier more kitschy alley way snaked out and around to the soundtrack of a rooftop opera performance likened to a wringing neck. It must be a tourist attraction of some sort. That is if you are attracted to strangers touching and forcing Chinese treasures upon you in a tight back alley. Swearing that i had seen these exact hokey trinkets in any number of curios chops back home around Chinatown, their already miniscule value shriveled impotently into total non-existent uniqueness. Which sounds like a perfet stop for the arcade and greasy sesame balls.

It was around the corner from here that some friendly art students starting talking English with us last night. Really friendly and they would dazzle us with praises of how i must be an artist because of the long hair, or how easy it would be for one of us to find a wife here. The talk went long as we walked. Somehow we were led into a dark office building and then a grimy elevator. Just me, my brother, my mom and three grinning Chinese students. I took a quick turn with one to go to the can at the end of an unlit and long hallway. When i regrouped the rest of us were in this makeshift art gallery and the students were peddling their paintings amid a mix of wall hangings i had also seen back home. Those generic scrolls with dragons tigers and horses. I have at least one myself. They had played their friendship card and were looking to cash in on a couple of sales to which we politely declined and booked it out of there, happy that despite the deception and then dejected looks, it wasn't a sandbagging that leaves you bloody and penniless in a foreign country

joel

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