frauke at large

Last year I missed them by a few weeks, this year I have finally managed to see them in all their glory, live on campus: Nelumbo nucifera - the lotus flower. Often used to represent Buddha in Buddhist symbolism it’s easy to see how this magnificent flower also symbolises elegance and grace. Had to catch them quite early this morning as they close their flower heads when it gets too hot during the day - was well worth it! - despite having to put up with several building site workers shouting: loawai at each other, because they had obviously never seen a foreigner before … welcome to China! You’d think that after working on campus for the last few months, erecting the new student dormitories … obviously not.

Anyway, all over, campus is bursting with colour and exotic plants, it’s getting very hot - the other day the temperature went up to 38′C and the humidity is unbearable - and for some reason the sky is blue on most days, even featuring the odd white cloud … you could almost call it paradise, if it wasn’t for the incessant pestering of millions of mosquitos and the lack of mozzarella, tomatoes and olives … oh and it could do with a hammock in the shade under palm trees and a good book …

These pictures were taken over the period of 3 days during my travels in China - Xi’An, Shanghai and Beijing to be exact, so it is safe to say that this is not a regional phenomenon. And funnily enough, they were not taken during lunch time, or perhaps in the evening either, but in bright daylight, often at their work place - one whilst buying tickets for the great wall. Economic boom anyone? … And … they can sleep on anything … anywhere!

A couple of days ago I watched Bertolucci’s ‘The last emperor’ again and now the Forbidden City makes far more sense than it did when I went to see it last weekend. It’s such as a huge place and unfortunately as it is only a stripped down version of its former glory, when thousands of people lived in it, it looks rather triste and empty and is thus quite difficult to take in. Went there really early in the morning in the hope to beat the crowds, and although I think I succeeded to some extent, it was already quite busy with Chinese tourists … only a hand full of laowai (Chinese for foreigners) in sight. The city is a string of courtyards followed by a temple, followed by a courtyard, followed by a temple, followed by a courtyard, followed by a temple, followed by a … From the movie you can imagine that it must have looked absolutely amazing and colourful with all the emperor’s servants running up and down in it. My highlight was the back of the city - i.e. the garden area. It had glorious red temples, magnolias, huge peony beds and a lotus flower pond. Magnificent!

Also went to see the Temple of Heaven whilst in Beijing. I call it the temple of heavenly awesomeness, as for some reason all temples and halls here feature some grandiose name, like the hall of ultimate harmony and the temple of eternal happiness … someone had a field day when they decided on those. I liked the temple of heaven a lot more than I did the forbidden city for some reason. It was more manageable, set in a huge big park, the temples are more diverse and the exploring of it felt much more adventurous … Also, I must say, I am quite templed out at the moment - Chinese temples are all very similar and so once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all - plus ever since having been to Tibet nothing compares. Hence, my post sounds a little uninspired. Nevertheless, the ones part of the temple of heaven were quite cool.

Day two of my trip to Beijing and this time I was on one of those Chinese adventure tourism group things. By Chinese adventure tourism things I mean going on a Chinese tourist tour is an adventure, rather than it including bungee jumping and the likes. The previous day I had bought a ticket to go and see the Great Wall of China with a tour and was now (8am) anxiously waiting for the tour bus to pick me up from the hotel.

And what an adventure it was indeed: all I wanted to do was to go and see the great wall … but no! When you go on a Chinese tourist tour you must first see the magnificent hall of jade whatsits where you can also quite conveniently buy gazillion tons of that jade stuff - it’s lucky you know! This is then topped with a trip to the Chinese herbal medicine shop, just in case you might find your chi slightly out of sync or your joints aching in anticipation of that great big wall that I am sure must be our next destination right? It’s the whole reason that I am on this trip in the first place!!! … Several hours later, one huge jade shop and one superfluous and completely out of context Chinese health shop later … we were finally on the way to see the great wall (at 11.30am!!!). Sometimes I think they do this so that when you finally reach your destination you can’t but love it … even when they expect you to climb their great big wall at 1pm in the afternoon, in 35 ‘C of blazing heat and being utterly annoyed by jade.

But I tell you, once at the wall, all those jade, chi, jing and medicine nightmares were thoroughly forgotten. That wall is huge and quite spectacular! Spanning over several hundreds of kilometers - that’s the section I went to alone, not the whole thing! - it looks so majestic and grand as it twists and turns along the mountain ridges. We walked from gate 14 to gate 6, so 8 kilometers in total, and it was amazing. They say they constructed this wall to be impenetrable and very difficult to walk on and they were right. I mean it looks easy to run along, but actually the steps are so narrow and awkward that it’s really quite hard work. The second best part of the wall was the toboggan slide back down the hill. For a measly 40 RMB you could take a 10 minute windy toboggan slide back down to the car park … which was just the best fun.

Not having had enough Chinese adventure for the day, back in Beijing, I stumbled across yet another version of ‘food street’ - of which there seems to be one in each town, offering different delicatessen creepy-crawlies. Beijing’s specialities: scorpion, bugs, starfish!!!, various inner organs of dubious animals, slimy things on sticks and … well you get the gist. Oh and deep fried crickets! Also on a stick … and what they do with the sticks once they’re done: they put them in a bin …

So having overcome my shock and horror of missing out on the solar eclipse of the century!!!!! I know! I thought I’d report back on my latest travels. Went to Beijing last weekend, well, the weekend before, to see what Beijing has to offer. I had always been of the conviction that for some reason I would not like it there and that Shanghai was much nicer, so I finally, the weekend before last, I had the chance to find out. And guess what: I do like Beijing … just not as much as Shanghai … it’s a Chinese city thing.

First stop after I arrived was the Summer Palace and let me tell you, it was distinctly underwhelming. I mean it was huge and impressive, but a real pain to walk around in and it was heaving with people … jam packed … traffic jam like … not pleasant! I think my highlight there was the fantastically humorous sign below: I’m sure they meant something else, but it just lends itself to false interpretation.

Spent the evening wandering along Qianhai lake, which features, on its banks, many local eateries, a live jazz club and bars. And with the weather in Beijing being gorgeous and warm but not humid, it lent itself beautifully to a nice cold beer outside. Honest, I kid you not, the picture of the lake below is not photoshopped or indeed apertured … it’s au natural … yeah nice, isn’t it? Oh and just in case you didn’t have the time to sit and enjoy a cold beer by the lake: a handy drinking express place … with cold water nicely packaged and heating up in the evening sun … they do think of everything!

well … it’s been in for a while, and they have even started organising official tours to see it: Shanghai and Ningbo will see a full solar eclipse on Wednesday the 22nd July 2009. This solar eclipse is special not only because it will occur in a place that I actually know and live in, but because it will be the longest total solar eclipse that will occur in the 21st century. It will last up to 6 minutes and 39 seconds and guess where I will be to see it? On the other side of the planet! Yeah trust my luck to be in the right place at the right time … nothing exciting happens in this backwater that calls itself Ningbo for decades and then the one time that something exciting, monumental and in fact historic does happen … I’m not around to see it! Cheers, thanks for that … Below a picture of the solar eclipse from the NASA website, in case you’re interested:

Following the old cliche: Ningbo is a little bit like a box of chocolates … you never quite know what you will find when a) you open your curtains in the morning and b) when you leave campus. 

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Seriously!? This is your brand name? … do Chinese businesses realise that their made up brand names are strangely hilarious to foreigners? Don’t they care about meaning in a blind race to signal international-ness? If these brand names really are all their own doing why don’t they ask some professional marketer for help to avoid being the laughingstock of us laowai? Or maybe they have and some foreign consultant has just been incredibly obnoxious? Who knows, but the debate on that one has been going on ever since I arrived in China …

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Last weekend I went on a short trip to Xi’an to see the Terracotta Warriors. Xi’an itself was not the most exciting of places that I have been to; the most interesting sites were the Muslim quarter, the city walls and the Terracotta Warriors which were all quite spectacular, but the city itself was just like any other big city in China: a mixture of bad air and dusty, grotesque, grey and unfinished skyscrapers.

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After searching endlessly on the internet for a picture of one and finally giving up and coming to the conclusion that I might just have to go out and take a picture of one myself, I do feel the need to make another marketing related observation of China: 

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