Chinese New Year: The Great Wall, Clubs, and a Dead City

The Chinese New Year celebrations are coming to an end and the millions of people are flocking back to the city. I was expecting to achieve quite a lot over the week of celebrations, but that wasn’t as easy as I had planned. The city closes down for a week. It’s bizarre to see such a deserted city which is usually thriving. 75% of businesses close and the city is lit up with fireworks and firecrackers, just the noises you want to hear when you’re trying to sleep in.

So, I did what most people do when there is nothing to do – drink. Luckily, some of the few establishments open were a select few bars, and I could sniff them out a mile away.

I’ve had my first experience of a Chinese night club and they are quite the spectacle. When you picture a club in western country you imagine a bar and a dance floor, in China they sell booths and each booth is sold an expensive bottle (or bottles) of top quality alcohol and a fruit platter. Of course, a fruit platter. Most are dressed in their finest attire, while I was in a farmer shirt looking like I’d come straight from the rice paddies.

Chinese culture is built on saving face. (I’m going to define that now and any Chinese people reading this will probably scoff at my inability to grasp the “saving face” concept.) Saving face is about one’s public appearance and opinion. A Chinese person would buy a gift for someone they cannot afford to give the appearance of wealth, or order more food at an already full table while exclaiming there isn’t enough, or they'd rather borrow money from multiple parties at increasingly unsustainable interest rates than have others know that their company is broke.

This bodes well for night clubs as everyone is throwing money around. Although, not me. Again another Chinese culture I cannot get on board with. While most people were ordering bottle after bottle of high end vodka I blagged my way onto the guest list to get free entry and was waving my free drink coupons at the bar. "Another free rum and coke, please."

The competition was fierce, there were hundreds of rich Chinese guys that I couldn't compete financially with, but on the dance floor they’re as stiff as a scarecrow. This is where I come into my element. While I can shake it with best of them the difference between us is that at the end of the night the scarecrows take their ladies home in a Mercedes and I have to tell my lucky lady that we’ve got to wait until 5:30am for the subway to open.

I did manage to tick something significant off the bucket list during the week and that was visiting The Great Wall of China. It was definitely a wise idea to spend 3 hours in the Chinese mountains in a -12°C chill.

It is a very impressive wall. Originally built between 220-206BC, stretching 8,850km to keep out the Mexicans. And Qin Shi Huang even got the Mexicans to pay for it.

I went with Matt and Drew and we booked our excursion as part of a group tour. On my travels I’ve seen many Chinese tourists groups and hated every one. Always a large group of pushy tourists with a tour guide speaking incoherently into a very cheap and very loud PA system. Now I was in one of these groups. It didn’t take us long to break away from the guided tour and explore on our own.

Obviously it was to keep out the Mongolians (I was just joshing with you before) and looking at the surrounding mountains the wall seemed unnecessary. It looked pretty difficult to scale these enormous mountains, you’d think a wall would be a piece of cake. Their ability to scale mountains was trumped by their inability to build a ladder.

I do have a few criticisms of the wall and the first is the inconsistent step sizes. This tied with having a few beers on the wall made walking along it a lot more difficult than I had anticipated. Criticism number two, it’s too long. I was on it for 3 hours and hardly saw any of it. An escalator or a Stannah Stairlift would improve the experience significantly.

On the way back down the mountain we had the privilege of sharing the very same cable car that Bill Clinton had used when he visited the wall. Who knows what went on in that car, but knowing what old Bill is like I didn’t want to touch anything.

The Great Wall is impressive and it shows the achievement of the human race. It’s amazing what man can achieve when there is no concern for human lives. You’ve only got to see what they’re doing in Qatar to see a modern example. And you know, all those people who have lost their lives building those stadiums would say the sacrifice of life is worth having air-conditioned sporting arenas.

Going to try my hand at skiing in a couple of days. I could play it safe with snowboarding, but the idea of trying to ski, breaking a bone, and spending a significant amount of time in a Chinese hospital is just too appealing. 

Moving to Beijing #brexit

Anthony Costa, Lee Ryan, Duncan James, and Simon Webbe are quite the philosophers. Let’s just analyse one example of their genius.

“It's kinda funny how life can change
Can flip 180 in a matter of days”

These lines of wisdom really resonate with me. It was only a matter of months ago that I was preparing to sign an extension on my contract in Korea, yet I currently find myself starting a new chapter in Beijing.

I was fully prepared for my move; I watched Big Trouble In Little China, censored all the media in my house and I dismissed everything I ever knew about global warming as we all know the concept of global warming was created by the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.

The visa process has been more troublesome than I had hoped, but I’m here trying to adjust to a new time-zone, culture, language, and company.

Language:

It was a lonely start to life in Beijing. After I had said my goodbyes to my nearest and dearest in England I didn’t actually talk to another human being for about 48 hours. The driver, the hotel staff, the waiters and waitresses exclusively spoke Chinese, which I know isn’t strange as I’m in China.

I had planned on studying a little before I got here so that I would have the basics down, but I’m almost 3 weeks in now and I’m still a moronic tourist speaking in English and pointing at pictures. No one speaks English here. Luckily I have my Baidu translation app to get me through, but who knew the first thing I’d have to translate in China would be “I’ve blocked the toilet in my hotel room”. Most people use it to translate menus or for asking directions, I’m notifying the locals that my bowels are causing havoc to the Beijing city plumbing.

Public Toilets:

While we’re on the subject, the public toilets in Beijing are the worst I’ve encountered and I’ve been to India! My Beijing expert, Bernd, had warned me about the toilet situation, but nothing can prepare you for this encounter. The smell hits you making you recoil, closing your eyes and stopping your breathing. You assess that you need to get in and get out as soon as possible without touching anything.

There is no privacy in a Chinese public toilet, all squatters with a two-foot high divide between the holes and no door. Why would you need a door in such a circumstance? And there is always someone shitting. Always. It’s a city with a population of 23 million people, there are 1,440 minutes in a day, that means there are statistically 16,000 people going every minute – not taking into consideration peak times.

The locals seem so casual about it too. My days are planned around my movements, I don’t leave my apartment unless I’ve gone. There is no way I’m squatting in these hell holes making eye-contact with the fella next to me.

Pollution:

In the days prior to my departure all I saw in the news was how Beijing was experiencing the worst spell of pollution in recent years. Since my arrival it’s been nothing but blue skies! I haven’t seen a polluted China…yet. I’m sure when it does hit I’ll probably keel over.

Food:

Chinese food is meant to be amazing, right? Well, not the stuff I’ve been eating. I’m pretty clueless to be fair, just pointing at pictures and hoping for the best. Getting a Chinese take-away in England is a taste sensation, these local lads ought to get over to The Elephant on Bedford Road and taste some of their stuff. That’s real Chinese food.

Found a testicle in my soup. I didn’t eat it.

Even getting some simple supplies at the supermarket proved difficult. I had a basic shopping list; bread, butter, milk, and cereal. Easy enough. They had no cereal, I got margarine instead of butter, I got the bread, and this.

That looks like milk, it’s actually yoghurt. A litre-and-a-half of yoghurt. I don’t buy that much yoghurt throughout the year usually. Now I’m swigging yoghurt every time I pass the kitchen.

Chinese Hangovers:

Oh boy, they’re pretty rough. I’ve been in China for 19 days and 2 of them have been spent in bed recovering. I thought Tsingtao is meant to be pretty good. Well, I imagine the bottled exported stuff is the Chinese show beer, the local draught Tsingtao isn’t the same. I’m not sure what they’re adding to it, loads of chemicals and STIs probably, but it’s more than likely that if it remains cheap I’ll keep drinking it.

I haven’t tried any Chinese spirits yet and I hope I don’t. It’s not a promise I can make though and it will be a hangover that will probably be my death sentence.

Internet:

Using the internet takes some getting used to in China. A lot of content is blocked and many sites too. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Google to name a few. I didn’t realise how much I relied on Google. Emails, maps, internet browsing, translation, my calendar all powered by Google. You can get around it, but it’s a bit of a hassle. Most of the time I tend to use other search engines. I’m using Bing like some animal. It’s such a bad search engine. You enter your search and Bing says ‘here is one link with some of the information you’re looking for and here are another 50 links with absolutely no information related to your search’.

Sightseeing:

I haven’t done an awful lot to be honest, I’ve been on a training course for my new company, I’ve been apartment hunting, but most importantly it’s too bloody cold.

I’ve been over to Tiananmen Square and had a look at Chairman Mao’s preserved body. Mental, right? Mao actually requested to be cremated, but now he’s ended up as a tourist attraction. Don’t ever do that with my body. I’m not too bothered what you do with my corpse as I’ll be dead, burn it, bury it, take it down Bedford’s tidy tip, but just don’t make me into an exhibition.

I took a wander to Beijing’s Drum Tower (or Gulou), where in ancient times it was used to announce the time. I climbed the hundreds of stairs and stayed for one of the drumming performances and it was rather underwhelming. To be fair to the lads, if you dressed me up like a Morris dancer in the middle of winter and told me to perform every half hour in an open tower I probably wouldn’t be at my best. I walked across the way to the Bell Tower, but I couldn’t be bothered to climb all those stairs again to look at an old bell. If I wanted to look at an old bell I’ll just look at a picture of Harry Redknapp.

Culture:

I don’t know much about Chinese culture, but apparently you’re meant to greet the oldest person in the group first as a sign of respect, you’re not meant to place chopsticks upright in your bowl as this represents death, and never write in red ink.

One thing that definitely isn’t in their culture is queuing. That is something that is going to give me high blood pressure over the next 12 months. I was queuing in McDonald’s the other night getting something nutritious after a few jars of lager. I was waiting and a lady stepped in front of me and ordered. As I was lacking the language skills to tell her I was first, I just started speaking to myself in English while she looked at me. It kept me sane in that moment.

“Oh, I guess my McChicken nuggets are far less important that your McBullshit Chinese shrimp burger”.

And I can hear what you’re all saying.

“But Brendan, you’re in China, shouldn’t you adhere to their culture and customs?”

No. Queuing makes sense. We live in a society. This isn’t Armageddon, it’s McDonald’s. I’m ordering chicken at 4am not scavenging the last few bottles of drinking water before one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse decapitates me. We have enough water, we have enough chicken nuggets. Now, stand behind me in an orderly queue.

All told, my short time in Beijing has been fun an interesting. I’ve had the opportunity to meet some new friends and see a new city. I’ve been pleasantly surprised, Koreans like to say negative things about the Chinese so I was expecting the worst. In reality, people have been friendly, the skies are blue, and there’s less spitting than I was expecting.

It’s also made me realise how lucky I am. A few months ago, having just returned from a long holiday in southeast Asia I just decided to move to China, that's not an opportunity most people have. A lot of people are fleeing their war-torn homelands in overcrowded rubber boats that are likely to sink. I just did an online application and boarded an Emirates flight.

Anyway, things are going well. I’ve worked 3 days in the past month and now I’ve got 6 off for Chinese New Year.

新年快乐!