(Without rush) and the pace back East

I have been on a fascinating 10-day holiday trip with two colleagues around the western province of Xinjiang. We flew to the western-most commercial airport of Kashgar and from there hopped around from site to site by car, train and airplane, slowly making our way back towards the Northeast. We have seen amazing landscapes, mesmerizing historical and cultural sites, rode a camel and ate lots of mutton. However, the part of the trip I want to highlight is the music we encountered on most of our stops.

It looks like music has been a vibrant form of expression for a very long time in this region at the centre of Asia, a real crucible of cultures and religions. Already in the 3rd century AD, the buddhist frescoes of the Kizil grottoes depicted heavenly angels and local dignitaries playing all sorts of instruments to accompany the Buddha's ascension to nirvana.

Whether we were in Tajik, Kazak or Mongolian regions, there was music playing in the shops along the streets or from the tea rooms and bars. All markets had at least one shop selling instruments. Local tunes were often transformed by a beat box into a modern pulsing house number; we heard the local language being adapted to rap-style rythms.

In one of the ancient tea houses of Kashgar, a group of what looked like just friends of the tea house owner took their instruments out of their cases and gave the tourists and usual patrons an impromptu concert of traditional music.

In the 10th century Bezeklik grottoes, frescoes once again showed more musicians playing all sorts of instruments at the head of the reclining Buddha. Outside the grottoes, an old man kept the tradition going and invited one of us to improvise some music with him.

Is it not fascinating to witness the importance of music recorded in this region throughout the ages?

Go West
Pet shop boys, Discography: the complete singles collection, Parlophone

Photo of Julien with Tajik drummer: Frédéric Bessat

It's just another brick in the wall

Chinese tourists generally tend to congregate in photogenic places to take pictures of themselves, which they then post on their online social networks. 

Most Chinese tourists therefore try to cram as many photogenic spots into their travel plan in order to assemble as many tiles as possible to construct their online photo wall.

 

 The Great Wall of China undoubtedly has many photogenic spots along its 5000 km. It also flanks or bears many challenging trekking trails for hikers based in Beijing. 

 In line with the Chinese practice of picture tourism, here are three individual bricks I gathered from the the Great Wall:

1. The Western-most beacon tower overlooking a large ravine in Gansu province.
2. An unrepaired Ming dynasty section of the wall North of Beijing perched on top of a mountain ridge.
3. The Eastern-most beacon tower plunging into the sea in Hebei province.

And there are many more more-or-less photogenic Great Wall sites for me to explore all around Northern China. 

Another brick in the wall
Pink Floyd, The wall, Capitol.

Untitled musings on spring travels

After three months spent within the boundaries of Beijing municipality from mid-January to mid-March because of travel restrictions between provinces to avoid any risk of covid-19 spreading within China, I was very happy to see all sanitary restrictions on internal travel lifted. This meant I could once again start travelling to keep discovering this very large country.

In the past three weeks, I have found my way into three completely different ecosystems. All had fascinating landscapes and food.

Mid-April, I went for a few days of holiday in Changbaishan, Jilin province in the far Northeast of China along the border with North Korea. The weather was still chilly and the vegetation was only just coming out of its winter stage. Flowers were very scarce, most of the trees had not sprouted their new leaves yet. I ascended the sacred mountain of the Korean people where fresh snowfall the previous day had blanketed every thing under a thick layer of snow. So I ascended the mountain in a 4x4 vehicle and none of the walking paths were open to visitors. I will have to go back at a better time of the year to trek up the "Ever-white mountain". I particularly appreciated the hearty and simple northeastern food: meat-and-potato stews, saurkraut and kimchi, wild plants and mushroom harvested from the birchtree forest and tundra, maize-based bread and noodles, the best roundgrain rice of the country. 

 

The following week, I flew South to Fujian province where I visited the tea gardens of Anxi Tieguanyin tea. The hot tropical climate had generated lush green vegetation covering all the mountains and hills. The tea bushes were neatly trimmed in lines along the higher slopes of the mountains because their ideal growing altitude was between 800 and 1200 m high. The food was extremely varied; some of the dishes were spiced up with infused or deep fried tea leaves. As we were presented with the local tea to taste wherever we went, I tasted a wide variety of different Tieguanyin teas over the three days of my stay there, and came back home with several boxes of Anxi Tieguanyin tea.

 

 

Last week, I flew off to the border between Ningxia and Inner Mongolia for three days of trekking in the Tengger desert of Inner Mongolia organised by Beijing Hikers. The landscape was unlimited sand desert dunes. Our group sailed through the sand dunes in 4x4 vehicles driven by expert local drivers. We trekked through the dunes on the soft sand and ate a lot of sand and dust with a strong wind blowing for a full 24 hours. It was no use trying to swipe the sand out of our tents, it came back in immediately. The best surprise from this desert trek was the food truck and local chef that followed our group to cook delicious fresh local dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The desert grass we would trample along our trek actually had culinary value with a slight chive taste when boiled and served seasoned as a cold apetiser dish. We ate all the parts of a lamb in every possible form: roasted, boiled, stir-fried, oven-dried... After three exhilirating days of trekking and camping in the middle of the desert without running water, the first shower in the hotel room back in Yinchuan town was a real godsend. 

 

 

So much variety within one very large intriguing and diverse country. Meanwhile, a pandemic rages and kills outside...

 

Pastoral symphony, Ralph Vaughan Williams

Adrian Boult and London symphony orchestra, Emi classics

 

The winter is driven away and spring is returning anew

 

I have survived my first winter in Beijing. It has been quite a shock for me to move from the relatively mild winters of Southwest France to the harsh and freezing winters of Beijing's continental climate. 

Riding to work on a bicycle by -18°C and winds blowing straight out of the steppes of Mongolia was particularly unpleasant. Luckily, the ride only lasts 15 minutes so it is still bearable with the right amount of clothing. 

 

On the other hand, I joined a trek on the Great Wall in mid February under strong winds blowing at -10°C. I think that has been the most demanding trek I have ever done up to now because of the freezing wind. Stopping and taking out gloves to relace my hiking boots for just 2 minutes meant 30 minutes trying to get my body and fingers warm again.

The one real advantage of the Mongolian winter wind blowing over Beijing is its pushing air pollution away. It is thanks to the wind that the city can enjoy wonderful blue skies and clear sunlight. 

 

 

Having had to stay indoors for four consecutive days of air pollution and depressing smog over the Chinese new year holiday, I think I now prefer cold temperatures and harsh winds to humidity and smog.

Waltz of my heart

Ivor Novello, James Shearman, from the original motion picture soundtrack of Gosford Park, Decca

Raise your glasses for a toast to a little bit of chicken

I am blogging again for work, though not about my work.

The cultural section of the French embassy in Beijing asked us agricultural counselors to write a series of articles around Christmas-time French food culture for Chinese readers, who are more accustomed to dipping all kinds of ingredients in boiling soup within hot pots during winter. 

After discussing various possibilities and topics, we agreed I would write a series of three articles on French traditional poultry Christmas recipes. I have tried to write the articles so that they are reader-friendly for both French and Chinese readers. 

The three recipes come from my family's cooking books:

Hen in the pot

Roasted capon with chestnut stuffing

Duck magret Rossini style

Ironically, I did not cook any Christmas meal this year. Although I had moved into my new apartment on the 22nd, my cooking utensils have still not arrived from France. The more important consideration for me was to be with family for Christmas. So I flew to Shanghai where I enjoyed a very juicy roasted chicken for Christmas lunch with the only family members I have in continental China: my Singaporean cousin Annie and her family.  

 

Chicken fried

Zac Brown band, Home grown, Atlantic

In the bleak mid-winter, frosty wind made moan

It is already bitterly cold in Beijing with night temperatures always below freezing and only just above freezing when the sun is shining. So, in the weeks coming up to Christmas, I am delighted to be preparing the festive season with warm friendly feelings, hot comforting mulled wine and carol singing. After five years living in France where the tradition of carolling has unfortunately disappeared, I am very pleased to renew with Christmas carols, although I have to sight-read and learn a whole lot of new tunes, in German! I have joined the Deutsche Kantorei Peking (DKP).

Having just arrived in Beijing, I immediately started looking for a choir to start singing again. I was particularly keen on finding a good quality choir as choral practice has been virtually banned since last March in France because of covid-19; I needed my fix of community singing.

I was first confronted with the obsolete nature of the worldwide web in China. All the references I could find to international choirs or choral societies in Beijing on the Internet were outdated from 2018, if not earlier. I finally found a QR Code for the Chinese instant messaging app Wechat to contact a singer in the French-speaking Maurice Ravel Choir of Beijing. Unfortunately, the French choir was not recruiting new members until February next year. However, I asked whether there were other international choirs in town and the lady I was in contact with said she would ask around for me.

On Friday afternoon of last week, I got a Wechat message putting me in touch with another person who could introduce me to the German DKP. Only 30 minutes later, after a series of instant messages on Wechat with a British DKP singer now stranded in Hong Kong, I was in contact with a German Beijing-based singer and the Japanese Chairwoman of DKP. The latter asked to give me a call. They were singing carols the next morning for the German Christmas market in Beijing; could I come join the singing? All I needed was a very warm black coat because we would be singing outside. I usually do not like busking concerts, but this opportunity was too good to miss. So, the next morning, I was given a folder with the music and off we went into the cold singing carols in German beside giant plastic Christmas tree and snowman. We were glad to enjoy warm mulled cider, mulled beer, hot dogs and sauerkraut in between the carolling sessions. 

One week later, choir members were invited to a private teatime party in one of the German members’ clothes shop for more carol singing, more mulled wine, raisin bread and ginger biscuits. We sung through most of the German carol song book together for over an hour. I left rather tired but elated just as the pianist was starting to get “jazzy” on my more familiar English and American carol repertoire. I hope he will stay inspired until next week. We will be carolling again at the Beijing German Embassy School next Sunday!

In the bleak mid-winter
Gustav Holst, Stephen Cleobury and choir of King’s college Cambridge, Holst: the composer of the planets, Warner

Photo DKP, snowman and Christmas tree: Christine Bérillon

Run run run run... To run away from you... Run run run run...

Continued from the last post here.

So I arrived very relaxed at the Victorian era Astor Hotel in Tianjin around 7pm for what I was hoping would be a quiet weekend to get used to seeing normal people up close without face masks agains, and to get to experience crowded streets and shops without keeping distances for fear of covid-19.

But there seemed to be a problem with my quarantine exit certificate. The hotel staff pointed to me that my certificate stated that I had just finished my 14 days of quarantine but also that I was invited to go home and stay there without coming out for another seven days! Having connected to the hotel free wifi, I could now register into the Tianjin healt kit app which gives green or red QR codes according to one's health status. Mine was green: I should normally be able to roam free around town. I also tried to point out that I had no home in China and that I did not know anybody in Tianjin. The hotel staff would not check me in. They called the booking agent who called me to say that the situation had changed since I had made the booking two weeks before and that they would cancel the hotel reservation with no penalty. However, I now knew for certain that no other Tianjin hotel would check me in for the weekend. I had to leave Tianjin.

Indeed, what had happened while I was obliviously confined in my quarantine room was the discovery of 4 covid-19 cases in Tianjin three days before I came out of my safe bubble. The situation in Tianjin had changed dramatically with everybody wearing face masks and travel restrictions for people entering and leaving the municipality. I signalled my predicament to my embassy colleagues in Beijing by instant messaging on WeChat. They immediately set into action to talk to the local Tianjin government and ask them to allow me to stay thanks to my diplomatic status. The reply was straightforwardly undiplomatic: the French government should make all efforts to get me out of Tianjin as quickly as possible. I had to leave Tianjin. 

My embassy colleagues told me to go to the train station, catch a fast train to Beijing and try to get a room at the hotel I had planned to check into after the weekend. I sent an Airbnb message to my Beijing host but there was no instant reply. Checking out the Airbnb website, I could see they had no room available for the night. So I asked my embassy colleagues to find a room for me in a Beijing hotel that would accept guests just coming out of quarantine with an official certificate stating they had to quarantine for seven more days at home. Luckily, they already had to deal with a similar case and immediately booked nights for the weekend at the Kempinski Hotel close to the embassy. I was to send an update when at the train station.

So I took a taxi with my two enormous and heavy suitcases for the train station. Dropped off in the underground car park of the station, I found my way to the front door using several escalators. There was a queue of people in front of the train station, all fidgeting with their mobile phones. Guards wanted to the see the Tianjin health code status of all people entering the station. There was no free wifi network around so I switched on my data roaming and managed to download a green health status QR code and got into the train station with my two enormous and heavey suitcases. The result was that my French phone operator texted me indicating that I had used up all my prepaid talk time with that one quick data sharing.

I then had to pass through my luggage and myself through X-ray scans. I found the ticket booth and purchased a ticket for Beijing using cash after one unsuccessful try using my French credit card. My train would leave in 40 minutes. I managed to pass a second security check and moved up a floor to the departure hall. By that time, it was already 9.10pm and I had last eaten lunch at 11.30am. I found a small shop selling Chinese fast food and gulped a hot bowl of beef noodle soup in just 10 minutes, thinking to myself that my original plan had been a leisurely Western dinner with meat roast and potatoes doused in gravy, a glass of imported red wine...

I then proceded up another flight of escalators to the main departure hall. It was huge and very crowded. My train platform was at the other end so I had to zig-zag between people and suitcases to reach my platform. Being a foreigner, I could not check myself in using the automatic check-in doors but had to show my ticket and passport to an attendant. She was busy explaining to another harried traveller that he could not get in. All the while, I was waiting to proceed while my departure time was approaching and I didn't know how far still I had to pull and push my two enormous and heavy suitcases before finding the door to my train coach. Luckily, finding my train seat was very easy once I cleared this third security check.

But I still had not managed to send my update to Beijing colleagues who were probably getting worried by now. Once in the train, I managed to get onto the free wifi network. I could then communicate with my Beijing colleagues to confirm I was on the train and give them the expected arrival time. One of them confirmed that my room at the Kempinski was booked and that he would be waiting for me in the hotel lobby. I should take a taxi from the Beijing train station and make sure I had a green health status on the Beijing health kit app. I tried accessing the Beijing health kit app but the system would always tell me there were too many people trying to access the app and that I should try again later. 

I decided to wait a while. The fast train to Beijing is very fast. I had hardly found the time to relieve myself in the toilet, have a sip of water and rest for five minutes than the conductor announced that we would shortly be arriving in Beijing South station. Even the train ride had been stressful and I still had no green QR code to enter Beijing.

Luckily, there were no health safety checks when leaving the train station. After queuing in a very long line with other travellers, I boarded my taxi which wheezed me to the hotel. I only had the time to top up my prepaid mobile phone and decided I would stop stressing with technology and have the hotel staff help me to get the right QR code.

Indeed, the porter was reassuringly proficient with both English and WeChat, even though I was using the French language version. He deleted the Beijing health kit app that wasn't working, downloaded a new version and helped me get the text message code that would allow me to unlock my WeChat app, and then take a digital picture of my passport with my mobile phone finally to get the indispensable Beijing health kit green QR code that would allow me into the hotel. 

My embassy colleague found me; I checked into my room. By the time I had calmed down, showered and enjoyed a cup of hot peppermint tea, I went to bed close to 1am. 

From cloistered autarcy to 24/7-expected hyperconnectivity and Big Brother supervision in just a few hours... Welcome to modern China!

Thorn in my side

Eurythmics, Revenge, RCA