New year greetings

Hi everybody,

I am currently in Germany for Christmas and Western new year.

I wish you all a good start in 2008! May it be an excellent year with a lot of fun, health and new experiences for all of us!

Katharina

Christmas Breakfast and 798 Art District

After a Christmas breakfast (or maybe you could call it lunch as we met at 12 am) at Claudia's apartment with a little bit of Christmas decoration and genuine German Weihnachtsplätzle which we had bought in a South-German bakery the plan was to discover Dashanzi Art District or 798 as it is also called. The district had been recommended to me by an American friend.

798 used to be a factory area that looks abandoned and has a somewhat shabby but alternative flair. Now many ateliers found their place there. Main focus is modern Chinese art. I loved strolling around there and the art hopping from one place to the next. A lot of Chinese people were there as well who combinded their Sunday afternoon walk with art.

The art itself was quite manifold. Some paintings in one gallery at the first look looked like traditional Chinese landscape painting, but on a closer look you could notice that the landscape painting was not that traditional due to the environmental pollution the painter had integrated, e.g. dirty rivers or factory chimneys.

I was astonished how much of the art coonveyed strong criticism - including self-critisism. And most of the art - though being modern - had something Chinese about it.

I most liked the photography (but this is maybe due to the fact that generally I quite like realistic photography and video installations).

Zhu Hendong's photography with his creative photos of landscapes and Chinese people attracted me as well as some pieces of the Gao brothers and the nice hutong photos of Ambroise Tezenas (being a French artists, but taking photos of Beijing).

I shall add some art to today's blog so that you can also have an impression. The photo in black and white is called "The last generation of lilly-footed women" (Artist: Li Nan). It used to be tradition in some part of China to tie the feet of women in a special form to keep them very small. Please check the link if you are interested in this former cultural pecularity.

http://www.ccds.charlotte.nc.us/History/China/04/hutchins/hutchins.htm

Shopping christmas presents and White Cloud Temple

Shopping Christmas Presents





Shop until you drop - this was this morning's motto. I met with my Taiwanese project colleague Gina in order to discover Xidan markets. The amazing thing was: Prices were good there and I didn't meet a single non Asian person during the whole morning in the market halls. Gina also helped me negotiating because of course prices were not fixed and the first price they tell you is overstated.





White Cloud Pagoda - Bai yun guan





In the afternoon I met Claudia (another German on the info year here) to discover the White Cloud Pagoda. This pagoda is one of the few Taoist temples left in Beijing. Taoists believe that you have to free yourself from material things and earthern desires.





I just quote one text of their philosophy here (in German):





"Nichts in der WeltIst so formlos und weich wie das Wasser. Doch nichts kann besser als Wasser das Feste und Harte aushöhlen. Selbst ist es nicht zu zerstören. Dass das Wasser das Feste besiegt, dass das Weiche das Harte besiegt -Niemand auf der Welt, der das nicht weiss. Und doch keiner, der es zu benutzen vermag."





Taoism (Geman: "Daoismus") is a very old belief. Herman Hesse was one of the more recent followers of Taoism. Taoist monks were long hair and often wear it in a knot. They also wear simple style clothes.



The photo on the left shows monks in the temple. The photo on the right shows a yard in the temple. The photo below shows Claudia with some coins which you use to throw coins and try to hit a clock to make it ring. This is supposed to bring luck.


So far for today. I wish you all a nice weekend.

Beijing Opera

First snow

This week we had the first snow on Monday. On Tuesday it was gone and the sun was shining again, so it was a short interlude.

Buying a new watch

My Chinese colleagues here like shopping with catalogues and ordering things. So they showed me one catalogue and asked me if I also need something.

Inside I found a nice Swatch watch at a reasonable price. So they called the company and wanted to order their orders and my watch. Unfortunately, the watch was not on stock.

So for the next try my colleagues looked for online shops selling the same watch. That's how I found out that e-business in China is quite different from e-business in Germany.

In China, the online shop didn't have any order form online nor did they provide e-mail nor phone. They just provided a mobile number with the hint: "no call, sms only". That's exactly how the colleagues got in contact with the company.

Next difference is: you do not provide payment details like bank account or credit card nor do you receive the watch automatically by mail / express / courier service.

Instead you arrange a meeting place (often the Mc Donalds or KFC around the corner). There you meet and have a look at the merchandise. If you like it, you pay cash and take the merchandise with you.

This is how you do online shopping a la China. Interesting!

Beijing Opera

Tonight we went to some old Beijing opera place. The building is called Hu Guang Guild Hall and was already built in 1805. Thus it is a very traditional opera place.

Beijing Opera is actually a misleading name. It is not an opera like the one we know in Europe, but a totally different genre. And it does not originate from Beijing, but from somewhere else in China.

The music played in Beijing Opera is weird to European ears. At first you think it is totally random and shows no feeling of rhythm at all. But later you notice that it is skillfull.

Also the singing and talking is weird. Women sing and talk with a high-pitched (German: hohe) voice. Emphasis is put on words or sentences in a strange way.

Beijing Opera includes artistic highlights like throwing swords through the air, juggling or many back saltos.

The costumes are rich and some actors wear masks.

Some more information can be found under http://www.chinapage.com/xwang/index0.html or other homepages.

Holiday Friday - Summer Palace

Adventure of getting there ans away

Whereas before I had already gone on the subway and sometimes on the bus, but never for really big distances, I decided to try to go to Summer Palace fully with public transport. This poses a challenge in China because there is a subway plan, but no bus plans at all.

All you have is some Chinese signs at the bus station which tell you where the bus is supposed to stop. Even during the bus ride all announcements are only made in Chinese.

So first thing that happened was that I got on the wrong bus although I had asked in my "best Chinese" whether it was going where I was planning to go. So I had to improvise. Some time the bus stopped at some subway station and I just got off.

But I finally made it there. The 1.5 hour trip on the public transport cost me 40 RMB (which equals 0.40 EUR). And the nice thing about public transport is that you get in touch with Chinese people. So I got to know a mother with her child. They were trying to learn English pronunciation by reading some words and sometimes they asked me for the right pronunciation . And I got to know another Chinese woman with whom I exchanged mobile numbers in order to enable further meetings.

Yi he yuan - The Summer Palace

Actually, the Chinese word "yuan" means garden or park and this is really what Summer Palace is: not really a palace but a wide area of park and Chinese garden.

The specialities there are:

- the world's longest colonnade (Wandelgang) with a huge variety of traditional paintings

- a lake with islands, bridges etc.. The lake was covered with ice and the scenery very beautiful

- Chinese gardens

- longevity symbols everywhere (long life)

I personally think that Yi he yuan is even more interesting than the Forbidden City. It attracted me like the Great Wall and I know I shall go there again and see what it's like in the different seasons (winter, spring, summer).

But just see the photos to have an impression yourself.

Have a nice weekend.

Weekend in Nanjing

Why Nanjing?

Nanjing used to be the Chinese capital and has a lot of historical sites although many things were destroyed (mostly by the Japanese in the Nanjing massacre -> 6 weeks invasion, approx.250.000 deaths, pls. refer to Wikipedia if you're interested to know more). Nan Jing literally translated means Southern capital.

Nanjiing offers:

- some part of the large city wall still in place including some gates.

- emperor's tombs (Ming dynasty) as well as a memerial site for the Chinese (Dr. Sun Yatsen) who freed them from British rule

- a soon opening museum remembering the Nanjing massacre (we visited what was already there :-))

- the Yangtse river (third longest river of the world) with an old railway bridge

The overnight train there was quite crowded, but hygiene was okay (not excellent though). We didn't sleep that well.

When we arrived we drove into the mountains ("Purpurgoldberge", "Zijin Shan") to visit the tombs, the Sun Yatsen memorial site as well as some strange stone monument. The stone monument was quite high and didn't look that interesting, but the surroundings were nice and the story of it: An emperor let it be carved and thought he could let it be moved to another place far away. He thought he could do that because as an emperor he thought he has divine power. But even many people couldn't move it not even a little bit.

Another highlight was a buddhist printing house. The only traditional one still existing in China. They still product the books with handwork / manpower only. Amazing! Unfortunately, the books are in old Chinese letters. And I cannot even read perfectly the new Chinese letters!

So far for the text. I shall attach some Nanjing photos for your reference.

ILL IN Beijing

Ill in Beijing

Yes, you read correctly. Unfortunately, the unusual food here still causes me "problems" on average once a week so far. I hope that will improve because when I have stomach problems, I don't feel that good in general.

Apart from that last week I had some severe back pain. So my colleagues insisted on bringing me to the hospital. You might ask: Why the hospital and not a resident doctor?
This is due to the Chinese health system: They don't have many resident doctors here, but nearly all doctors practice at hospitals. That's why we went to an international hospital. The doctor was English and his suggestion was a injection of morphium. When I said I don't like injektions he gave me some pills which were so strong that I couldn't walk home on my own. Luckily, two Chinese colleagues had come with me to the hospital and they brought me home. They are just so nice!
With the medicamentation I slept the rest of the day and the whole night and felt better two days afterwards.

But I wanted to try something different to strong Western medicamentation: That's why today I went to acupuncture. They put a lot of needles into the muscles that need strenghtening. I hope that works all right.