Begin the Beijing...

...as a Chinese Julio Iglesias might sing.

So we’re staying at this gorgeous ‘hutong’ style hostel, all single-storey with little rooms facing through windowed doors and heavy red curtains onto a paved courtyard. There’s lacquered furniture, Chinese lanterns, a cage full of live birds, a fishpond traversed by a wee wooden bridge and even a life-size replica of a terracotta warrior in the corner (to make any deceased visiting Emperors feel at home, or at least comfortable with security arrangements). It’s lovely and at £5 a night and beers at 20p becomes lovelier with every passing moment.

Funnily enough the only flight I’ve taken in the last 5 years was to China, when I came on a visit in 2006 with the RSA and ended up staying for 5 weeks to work on a major climate change communications project for the British Council. I joked then that next time I’d come by train as it only takes a week or so from London. Well, I’ve done it by train now, but it has taken 90 days to get here (but we weren’t exactly rushing).

Thankfully our visas are now being sorted. Because this is my third visit to China and due to the fact that when you leave China for Hong Kong (as I did a couple of times during last year’s stint here) you need a new visa to get back in, I’m now going to have about six Chinese visas in my passport. This either makes me look like an obsessive Sino-phile or a disorganised pratt (guess which way the Chinese Public Security Bureau looks at it). And there’s going to be more. Due to our border cock-up from Mongolia we’re only being issued with a single entry visa which means next week’s trip to Japan and our visit to Hong Kong at the end of June will both generate a new Chinese visa – at this rate I am going to run out of pages in my passport!

Bureaucracy aside, being back here got me thinking about all the wonders of Chinese life so I thought I’d share with you some thoughts that I wrote, affectionately, last year:

Observations on China

Everything is edible and should be eaten with gusto (this includes tendons, offal of every obscure variety, lips, insects (scorpions especially) reptiles, and of course fish skin). Delving with our chopsticks into last nights chicken noodle soup caused the hen’s head to roll over rather ghoulishly in front of us.

It is not necessary for the surface to be even, continuous or indeed passable for a thoroughfare to be described as a road

In the context of neon lighting – more is more

The sun is a rare and elusive celestial body glimpsed only occasionally through the urban fug

‘Engrish’ or ‘Chinglish’ is a splendid and under-rated artform:
> Subversive sign in Bank - “Question Authority”
> Sign on Hotel door - “Remember Civilisation”
> Sign in Hotel Bathroom r.e. reusing towels - “Earth Needs Help!”
> Enigmatic logo on an electric hand-dryer - “Guangzhou Electric Company Protects Wine Shop Thing Limited”

But the winner has to be:

> Sign by Beijing Lake – “No dumping, No fishing, No bathing, No raise poultries” (which I think refers to feeding the ducks)

The techno version of the Benny Hill theme tune is a popular classic

Mobile phone ring tunes favour electronic versions of Christmas Carols and my personal favourite, and an appropriate cultural choice, ‘Chopsticks’

It is amusing to give your two year old a lit cigarette and watch them try to smoke it

Nappies are superfluous Western indulgences, simply cut the arse off your toddlers trousers and let them shit anywhere

Masticating with one’s mouth closed is purely a matter of personal taste

The totally naff menus with lurid or utterly faded photos of the dishes on them suddenly become an absolute godsend when faced with a selection of choices only in Cantonese or Mandarin

Foreigners (“laowai”) are an endless source of amusement and fascination and should be watched with a mixture of curiosity and contempt, preferably with one’s mouth slightly agape (sustain indefinitely or until aforesaid foreigner moves on)

How many Chinese does it take to change a lightbulb? As many as possible in order to maximise the collective opportunity for gainful employment

Railway stations are, by popular belief, some of the most dangerous hotbeds of scum and villainy in modern China and should be avoided at all costs (this is the Chinese perception, not I hasten to add, based on our experiences)

If there is a spare scrap of land cultivate it (includes railway sidings, verges and even temporary mud banks in rivers)

32.4 M people constitutes a city, not, contrary to conventional wisdom, a medium sized European nation

Trains run at scarily regular frequencies, on some journeys the time between oncoming freight trains is less than 2 minutes

When hot roll up your t-shirt to expose your midriff, preferably a large paunch if you are rotundly blessed, and walk around flapping your arms

Smoking is important and should be practised whenever and wherever possible

Spitting is a national pastime, the more public and the more rasping the expectorant rumble to produce the necessary phlegm the better

Massage = prostitution (some things are the same wherever you are). Confusingly in Beijing hutongs barber shops also equal prostitution, which brings a whole new meaning to “something for the weekend sir?”

Power station chimneys are painted in fetching alternating red and white horizontal stripes in order that you can easily spot how many of them there are belching smoke into the atmosphere

Air quality is an oxymoron

Manoeuvring between lanes on the highway, turning across in front of oncoming traffic, stopping suddenly at the side of the road, entering fast moving traffic from a feeder lane or sliproad do NOT require any form of signalling or awareness of other vehicles…if a collision is imminent they will make you aware by honking their horn or taking evasive action leading to them…manoeuvring between lanes etc (repeat ad infinitum)

Flyover roads are great and grossly undervalued in the west, the higher, more convoluted, more complicated to navigate and the more 10th storey apartment windows you can look into from a passing bus the better

Anything organic is agricultural fertiliser (includes domestic waste, sanitary rags, human excrement etc)

Factories should be encrusted with filth, spewing clouds of thick smoke and steam into the air and generally look as terrifyingly Dickensian as possible

Construction site safety is merely an option, it’s not necessary to wear hard hats on a building site, even if the site in question is part of the headquarters of one of the biggest property development companies in China

Bamboo makes brilliant scaffolding material and can be used on even the tallest buildings