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| Not Beijing: Tianjin |
It takes about a day to fully switch into Beijing mode. You can have your ideals of how to exist in and contribute to civil society but, after being physically jostled for the 20 billionth time, you have to put your elbows up and push back to fight for your space. What's interesting to me is that, for the most part, the constant level of physical contact in Beijing isn't that related to violence (or even its threat). Instead, it's more about asserting that you exist, and that you want something (space, the exit, a seat, etc.). Of course, this frame of mind doesn't make for an easy experience or a society that is invested in mutual social responsibility and trust. It also doesn't make Beijing, in my opinion, a very good place to live especially if your mandarin is frankly lacking.
Beijing though is an endlessly fascinating place to visit, especially after 3 months in Ulaanbaatar as it slouches towards its pseudoapocalyptic deep winter. After a 5 hour delay due to the ongoing 18th Communist Party Congress, I flew into Beijing on Friday night, mere hours after finishing my teaching for the term. Beijing's massive Norman Foster designed airport is something of a sight to behold the first time you fly into PEK. But, after flying in and out of that airport something like 12 times in the last year, it's less of an experience to be admired but rather one to be endured, as your plane taxis for literally 5 to 10 km to reach a runway, or you hike through miles of sterile corridors with nothing to see or do, or when looking for basic ammenities like perhaps some water , or something to do (or even eat) when you need to kill some time. This is China: personal comfort is not an architectonic concern, only grandiosity and totalitarian spirit.
Nevertheless, Beijing is a land of plenty, compared to UB, and the vast number of quality places to eat or shop or just hang out in is striking after being reduced to self reliance (and dysentery) by Mongolian markets and eating spots. In my first trip to the local expat supermarket, I wandered around in a daze, stunned by the selection of (imported) goods, almost all of which are unthinkable in UB. It's telling that when a friend asked us what we had planned in Beijing, almost everything that came to mind was food and beverage related.
During the trip, we also checked out Tianjin, which is a mere 30 minutes away from Beijing via the superduper fast train. Stepping into Tianjin is like heading into a mirror universe China, with its well preserved colonial, turn of the century architecture (parts of Tianjin were divided up amongst the European powers) and general charm, which is something that is missing from much of Beijing. In between breaks from a mining conference that Tess had to go to, we wandered the colonial backstreets of the city, discovering little shops, noodle joints, abandoned colonial mansions, Victorian parks that would not be out of place in Melbourne, and, of course, the gleaming new towers of Chinese modernity.
The enmity that many if not most Mongolians feel for China is both completely unsurprising and a bit of a shock in its intensity in Mongolia. The level of trust between the two countries is non existent, and Mongolia's mineral riches in copper and coal are 2 things that China as it so happens desperately needs. This lack of trust manifests in daily life. In class, a grade 8 student was taunted by his classmates because his grandfather was Chinese. The country's impossibly gigantic Chinggis (Genghis) Khan statue (in stainless steel, mounted on a horse) is pointedly facing China as if to act as a North East Asian Maginot line against a possible Chinese invasion.
Many times I have had conversations with people (friends, friends of friends, students) in UB where paranoid, xenophobic ideas about China are spouted as truth. I've had to generally let these ideas slide, not wanting to expose my (half) heritage. I've been most surprised that no Mongolians have really latched onto that fact. In China, I confuse the locals who 50% of the time assume that I'm some sort of the many minorities that the Han oppress and generally treat me in that manner.
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| WTF Architecture |
While I was away, the Mongolian government declared that today, Nov. 14, would be a holiday celebrating the birth of the great man, Chinggis Khan (the Man of the Millennium, apparently). This holiday would be effective immediately, so that the first Wednesday of Term 2 is a day off (next Wednesday is another holiday too). If only the Government, you know, dealt with the other more pressing needs of the country (corruption, the environment, urban growth, mineral dependance, infrastructure, the future) as quickly! This morning, I was walking to Millie's for breakfast and was cut off by a battalion of soldiers, cradling AK47s and marching in unison down the middle of one of the biggest streets in town. I followed them and came across some sort of military exercise in Sukhbaatar square, complete with a marching bands playing something that came across as something out a sandal epic soundtrack, dudes in pointy helmets with bayonet mounted rifles, said battalions of soldiers with high powered guns, and soldiers in berets keeping anyone non military off the square.
The invasion awaits.
