Rumours in China

One of the peculiar outcomes of censorship is the proliferation of rumours. I hear all sorts of strange stories all the time here—a whole car of policeman was run over by a bus, sweet potatoes you buy on the street are cooked in old chemical vats, air conditioners cause respiratory diseases (but the smog doesn't!), Bo Xilai was innocent/guilty/a victim of his own wife ... a personal favourite of mine was the rumour that the Chinese Government was overturned by coup, which turned out to be (fortunately or unfortunately) entirely untruthful. How on earth did that one start?

One particularly tragic outcome of that is that people don't know what is happening exactly when they need information most—during natural disasters. The recent heavy rains in Beijing came as a surprise to me when I received emails and messages from friends and family back home. How is it that the international media know about the local weather system before locals do? I direct you to an interesting read from the New York Review of books about the consequences of this information failure.

The outcome of all this is that nobody trusts the information that is given to them. I think that'd be an interesting topic for a PhD thesis.

Getting caught in the rain

(no pina coladas, sorry!)

Tonight I rode home in the rain at midnight. It was fantastic - I got completely soaked, but the rain was just cool enough to make me feel like the cycling was no exertion at all. It felt so good on my skin and the streets were almost bare.

I told my flatmate it made me feel so alive. She told me that was clichéd.

Inner Mongolian grasslands

When I read the word 'grasslands' I didn't think much about it. It conjured an image of an open grass field speckled with trees and some livestock … bounded by villages, highways or industry. In China I've got used to the feeling of being constantly surrounded by people or their endeavours. That's what I imagined when I signed up for a hiking tour of Inner Mongolia. But for once I am so so glad I was wrong.

Grasslands are not just a few miles of grass. The grasslands of far north Inner Mongolia are hectares and hectares of green as far as you can see. The hills are soft and smooth, like an artist has painted them on, and they sit calmly resting on the landscape as if they had never and will never have any purpose other than to bask in the summer sun. The grasslands aren't even marred by small groups of trees or tufts of cow pat-induced weed. It's like a children's book background - perfectly rounded, soft green grass against a baby blue sky with cuddly looking egg shell clouds.

I wonder what geological and political miracle has allowed these serenely fertile fields of plush green carpet to remain untouched!

I suspect it's something to do with the cruel winter, which begs an even more scholarly question about how the hell all the beautifully fragile wildflowers—and the equally delicate butterflies, grasshoppers and (unfortunately for those with hot blood in them) mosquitoes—survive under several feet of snow for half of the year. Where's a good botanist when you need her!

The industry that does dot the pristine natural landscape ('wilderness' doesn't quite fit somehow) is almost as beautiful as the grass itself—golden ribbons of canola (rapeseed) crops are, just now, flowering in thanks to the warmth of the few months of sun they will get this year. The little villages that support them are poor, hard working towns full of low houses and fences built from the thin, long logs sourced from local forests (one of the other big industries of this region). But the farming equipment is sophisticated and the farms are incredibly large. I guess when there's no natural barrier to end your field, then you just keep driving that plough until you hit someone else's farm! And the villagers seem as happy as their crops are to be waking up to a glorious sunlit morning, even of they do have to spend the majority of daylight hours tending to their land or animals.

At the end of our trip, a quiet Belgian lady in our group who had lived in China for the better part of 20 years turned to us and said "What a rare gift to see such untouched natural beauty in China. It's good for the mind".

Cycling in Beijing (a loooong post)

Since I bought a bike about a month ago, I have spent a reasonable part of my time here cycling. So much so that it's become part of my life, like my iPhone, my hiking boots and yoghurt. Man I love yoghurt.

So cycling. Originally I was resisting buying a bike. As long as you have google maps and a 3G connection, you can get buses and subways from anywhere to anywhere in Beijing between the hours of 5.30am and 10.30pm. Yep that's right, despite being one of the biggest cities in the world, Beijing's public transport system shuts down after dinner. There are plenty of taxis around but, unfortunately, these are also hard to come by at night time and ... well I'll reserve my comments about taxi drivers for a later post. I secretly quite like the fact that you can't catch a bus in the middle of the night. Maybe this is because it more closely resembles my city of birth, whose population is less than 2 per cent of Beijing's, or maybe it's because my window here overlooks a busy road, where bus drivers do not hesitate to notify unwitting cyclists that they are in the way by blasting their horns. But I think deep down it actually just feels more wholesome this way. It's like the city is punishing you for staying out too late—the little angel on your shoulder gently saying YOU SHOULD BE IN BED!

Where was I? Oh yes, I was resisting buying a bike. Simultaneously, I was looking for some place to exercise, to work off the fine layer of (Peking roast duck-) fat that was starting to envelop my hips. Gyms are surprisingly hard to come by in this place. Chinese people don't use them and, for the most part, the Westerners that want them are paid a sum fit for a monarch in this city. That means gyms here are under-equipped and incredibly expensive. I scoured the internet for weeks trying to look for a reasonably priced, clean gym that was nearby to my office or my house. I eventually found one gym in the basement of the Chang'an theatre and they quoted me ¥2,000 for a six month membership. That is actually more expensive than at home, and here my income is only a fifth of what I was earning at home! Crazy!

Even though I tried my very hardest at bargaining in Chinese and, when that didn't work, my colleague called and spoke Chinese with the gym manager, they wouldn't budge on the price. So I got grumpy (as I usually do when I don't get enough exercise) and stomped off to my local bike guy. That is, a place on the street where my friends bought their bikes at slightly less of a Western-premium than those in the bike shops. I bought mine—a little rusty but totally loveable—for about ¥200. Check it out:

I explained in very broken Chinese that my friend, who had come with me, also wanted a similar standard of bike. The trusty bike guy says "10分钟" (10 minutes) and toddles off. My friend and I are left a bit confused, standing there wondering whether he his actually going to come back. Sure enough, ten minutes later he's back, with a really nice Giant bike in reasonable condition. Hmmm ... wonder where he got that from? And I wonder what sort of deal he has with the bike shop he's standing in front of for them to let him get away with this?

So I'm assuming both our bikes were stolen from unsuspecting foreigners at some point. Bike stealing is a big problem in Beijing, which is kind of to be expected when most people leave their bikes on the street without locks. Maybe this is showing my Western gen-Y origins, by why the hell would you leave a bike unattended in a huge city without locking it? To be fair, most foreigners buy shiny new bikes with shiny new locks, and people still manage to steal them. I hear that many of the locks sold on the streets of Beijing actually have uniform keys (of course! it's cheaper that way!) so that probably doesn't help, although I suspect most of the stealing is done with a trusty set of bolt cutters.

Wow have I really written this much without even getting to the actual riding part? Let's get to it.

Riding in Beijing is nothing like riding in Australia. At home, if you're a cyclist, you must be:
a) super athletic, because obviously you ride hundreds of kilometres a week (and/or up and down mountains);
b) rich, because look at that shiny silver titanium bike that you chose over a house deposit; and
c) really un-self conscious, because ... c'mon you're wearing lycra!

Here, it's completely the opposite. Everyone rides a bike, or at least remembers the time when there were no private cars, and it was the only way of getting around. Cycling is not for exercise, or for leisure, or for competition, it's to get you from A to B. That means you have to do it in a suit and tie, or a skirt and heels, or a silk dress, depending on your destination. It means there's no point in having gears, because Beijing is flat and you can't ride any faster than the traffic, which is all going under 20km/hr anyway. It also means you have to find some way of carrying around your most treasured things, like your handbag (everyone has a basket), your best friend (no problem! they can just sit on the luggage rack at the back!) or your garbage (get a three-wheeler with a trailer!). Think I'm joking? Check out these pics:

You also need to have some way of avoiding the rain:

This is how the world-class recycling system in Beijing works:

How else do you carry your mattresses?