<![CDATA[Tim Lyddiatt: Portfolio - China: meh]]>Mon, 13 Jan 2025 09:41:45 -0800Weebly<![CDATA[China: Meh]]>Sat, 03 Oct 2015 14:14:54 GMThttps://www.timlyddiatt.com/china-meh/china-mehChina is its train system, and it's a spellbinding spectacle to observe: at once terrifying, dizzying and unsettling – a nightmare dream scape of movement, of noise (that visceral noise) and bodies cast in perpetual motion.
It was a week of firsts. First time to China for my biggest big sister and the first time travelling within China to a major Chinese holiday hangout during a major Chinese holiday. It was our first time to Hangzhou and the first time we were travelling as a four instead of three. It was the first time we chose the train instead of the plane, and the first time too we eschewed our usual criteria for hotel selection: the cheapest, centrally located one we could find with a pool, and chose instead to try our luck with a budget chain. It was the first time too that I have been asked to prove that my daughter was ours.

All of these things were new, were exciting, shiny and new, and all of them have influenced and affected my experience of Golden Week, that last great kneesup before the cold turns up and gets all serious. It has made me think, made me think of what I love and what I don't love quite so much about China. It has been eye opening, has been eye popping at times. This is how it went down.

I'll start with the basics. My sister, all half century and long brown locks of her, in her riding hat and boots, in perpetual roll-up and common sense, has been excited about the prospect of visiting us since we moved here in 2010. Finances being finances, she has finally made it. She arrived on the Friday and we started dragging her around the Middle Kingdom early on Saturday morning. Our choice was the train – and not the plane – for a number of reasons, not least was cost. But more importantly was the belief that you have not seen China until you have seen its stations, its trains and its clamour to get from there to where you are going.

China is its train system, and it's a spellbinding spectacle to observe: at once terrifying, dizzying and unsettling – a nightmare dream scape of movement, of noise (that visceral noise) and bodies cast in perpetual motion. A calm, resigned trudge here (the face long, the furrowed brow), a frantic dash and dive there; the shouting, the sighing and the baby's scream. And always the mobile phone (newer and much more expensive than yours, or else museum pieces that you have forgotten you used to own), always on, and always barked at, instructions given, entreaties made. Until you have seen 20,000 people ostensibly waiting for a train, but playing out the most important story of the 21st century whilst doing so, you have not seen China. And you have not lived.


Chinese hotels with a small child are like hotels everywhere: not bad and not good; they are like holding pens, places you are forced to stay whilst your child sleeps. CNN is CNN is CNN.
 We took the train, and its only five hours to cover the 1500 or so kilometres it is to get to Hangzhou. We snacked, we talked and we marvelled at travelling at more than 300 kilometres an hour and not once turning a corner we could feel. China has had more high speed railway miles than the rest of the world put together since 2012, and they keep shooting arrows across the country at a frightening pace. Since we've been here, the journey time from Beijing to Shanghai has more than halved, making the cities doable in a day, much like London and Manchester. A longer day, but still a day: pretty incredible when you compare their respective distances.

We snacked and we chatted, and we dealt with the girls. Big is brilliant these days, only kicking off when she feels that Little is getting something she is not. Little has found her rage, and we spent much of the trip placating and pacifying, giving her things that Big did not need. Big, on the whole, was fine. She had her doll – her Jolly Jolly – and was happiest when Little went to sleep. We made it, and a quick taxi later, we arrived at the hotel.

We used to have this rule, or we developed it after Big stopped being little and dropped her afternoon nap. The cheapest, centrally located hotel we could find with a pool. It made sense. Take her swimming, tire her out; put her to sleep in a pushchair so that we could have dinner, or a drink – or just some time – before being forced to return to the hotel and her bed. Chinese hotels with a small child are like hotels everywhere: not bad and not good; they are like holding pens, places you are forced to stay whilst your child sleeps. CNN is CNN is CNN.

This time we thought we'd play it different. The difference in money is negligible – maybe £20, 200rmb a night – but the real differences are much more significant than that. For a hotel with a pool in the same location, we would be talking a lot more than that, but with the budget hotel we were right there, walking distance to why people come here at all: the West Lake and its boats, its boats paddled by aged men and women, their toothless smiles warm and conniving, the West Lake, and its boats and pagodas.

We checked in: two adjoining rooms, result. Big would be in a room with my sister and Little in with us. We had bought a travel cot for Little and Big was really excited about staying with her auntie in her own room: a girls room, a girls party room. We had with us, her holiday bed: an inflatable thing we have never really tried before, but that first night she didn't want it. (Later on however, when she realised that Little had a holiday bed, then she wanted it. Then, she wanted it a lot!)

We almost left home without a travel cot. They're heavy, cumbersome and awkward, we thought, thought instead we'd muddle through with parental beds and transferrals, with movements to some as yet unspecified space or place. Never do that, never even think it. Especially in budget hotels. There is no space. There was just enough space for the travel cot, but no chair and no additional bedding with which we could have made a nest. If your going budget, you need to come prepared.

The day was the day, and a very long – what with the five hours on a train and all – but very nice day. We saw the lake – it's very pretty – and ate some excellent food. When we ever leave China, it will be the food I'll find hardest to leave. I asked my sister a week in to her trip whether she actually liked it, it being so different from the Chinese she gets at home. As I did so, I contemplated what it might be to have to live without the tang of vinegar so nuanced as to be comparable with wine, and the bang of chilli in something as innocuous as cucumber or cabbage, to be without the sweet, musky brown of things that have been stewed in soy and that delicate sticky crunch of rice - or noodles that have been pulled in front of you. I said the words and realised that, not only did I love it, I would find it nearly impossible to leave behind. China is its food.

On the train back to the capital, I watched a couple have their lunch. She, with only one mobile phone, with which she only answered calls and sent the occasional text, and a book; and he, with three phones all connected to Whatsapp, WeChat, Weibo and all the rest – he watched movies, watched TV and played games. The two of them ate separate lunches, and barely spoke at all. She ate with chopsticks, ate something from a bag that had been cooked in front of her on a stall outside the station. Still in her 20s, she is the old new face of China. He, with his attention deficit disorder, with his nation-state OCD, with his self combusting rice dish in a plastic box that he ate with a spork, something that produced steam through some strange chemical reaction between its component parts, he, he is the new new face of China: schizophrenic, paranoid and believing the future is already here, that if he can just grab hold of it, that his dreams have already come true.

That night, I came to contemplate the difference between cheap and expensive hotels. It's all about the carpets. In an expensive hotel, they're cleaned nearly as often as they're hoovered. In budget hotels, they're hoovered morning and night, but are constructed in such a way that they're cleaning is not so often required. I realised this because – due to the lack of space in the room, and the inability of Little to go to sleep quickly (or quietly) or with anyone in the room – I found myself stroking a blue and white striped carpet whilst drinking beer from a can in the corridor outside our room, waiting for my wife as she used the facilities in the lobby.

The thing is, as terrible as it sounds, it wasn't bad at all. Yes, we were drinking warm fizzy lager from a can in a corridor, but we talked. We spoke more about the stuff that matters those few nights in a cheap hotel corridor, waiting for and listening to our daughters go to sleep, in a tourist hotspot than we have ever spoken in our lovely home in the Beijing 'burbs. Why? Because we had nothing else to do. No TV, lest we wake Little, and no other distractions: no friends, no agenda – just the two of us, drinking beer and staying up late. It was like old times.

Breakfast was not a problem either. Due to its location credentials, our budget hotel was surrounded on four sides by cheap and yummy places that sold all the best things about the morning in China: Baozter, Jaozter and Conji, Bing and Ro zher mor. A food fest for pennies that set up the day.
Something that we haven't yet deciphered yet, is whether her rage is more of a surprise to her – or to us?


And so, inevitably, we get to the day. A day I'd rather forget. But it happened. It happened.

Little wasn't playing ball. She never does when she wants a carry and we want her to sit in the pushchair. She wasn't playing ball and she was making noise. As I have already mentioned, she seems to have found her rage. Something that we haven't yet deciphered, is whether her rage is more of a surprise to her – or to us? Her rage comes out in volume, in the starkest rendition of what volume can be – and how it might be twisted, affected, in order to cause the maximum trauma. Her volume is only half of it, the tone and pitch, just peripheral parts. Its the shock of it all that kills you, that takes you aback, by surprise; the speed at which it comes and the venom and vitriol with which it is unleashed. It is very hard, and very upsetting to deal with.

It happened that day. And then came this: a darked haired, grey t-shirted women, a dark haired, grey t-shirted women, with a phone, put her face between mine and my baby's and asked if she were my child. She had all the explanations: that she was crying so much, that she is Chinese – and we are not. That she is terribly unhappy with us. We walked on. My sister, Big and Wife were incredulous, they didn't think I'd got it right, that we'd been confronted over our parental status, our ownership, of Little. We had. I knew it from the look in her eye, that look that says I am empowered enough, speak enough English, know enough about how the world works, to make this a problem for you. And to get something in return.

I hate this country when it has that look in its eye. But it's happening more and more. There is a spirit, an evil sprite, that is born of education and wealth creation. They are much better off than they were when we came here, but they are not much better. They are, some of them, like the spoiled child you were never allowed to play with at weekends. They want everything, and resist all opportunity to understand what it might take to earn it. The worst ones are the ones with limited access to money, power and language. Those that have lots have far bigger fish to fry than an English family struggling with a screaming child. But those with just some have no hesitation in wielding attacks upon anyone they deem to be powerless to defend themselves.

There is a phenomenon here, of using the internet, using social media to unmask the corrupt and immoral of their society. They are frenetic and unrelenting. They do not stop. And they get results: corrupt officials have been sacked and imprisoned and shady landlords have been shamed into making reparations. But this culture goes further, goes deep into the psyche of everyone of the billion plus people that live here: If I feel wronged, then I am wronged. I cannot object to my leaders, but I can take it out on anyone else.

That's what I think happened in Hangzhou. Maybe she was concerned, maybe she thought she was helping. It didn't feel like that. We walked on. She came after us. She said to me, and to my wife this time, are you sure this is your child. She looked scared, but excited also. She had her phone in her hand and was calling the police. I would love for them to have turned up, to have them drive me back to my hotel and see the adoption certificate I always carry with me – just in case. Sometimes you need to show a brat a brat and hope they feel shamed by the experience.

Big also failed to not attract attention. This is nothing new; we have lived her 3 and three quarter years with her continual exposure to all of China's cameras. They love her and her white blond hair: they touch it, srtoke it and take a billion pictures. We always joke that were we ever to lose her, all we would need to do is tap into Chinese social media and she would already be trending. Maybe it was the holiday, maybe it was Hangzhou, but it was weird they way they stopped her: not photographing, not talking to her, but a circle – six people deep – just standing and staring and my little blonde child. Whilst completely ignoring her sister.

I got the rage then, and moved them on. I moved them on whilst taking Big from their view. If you are not interested in both my daughters, then I am no longer interested in you.

I said, many, many hundreds of words ago, that this week was a week firsts, and that all of them have affected my experience of Golden Week, of China. They have. It has reminded me of what I love about this country, and what I hate.

The very best, and the very worst.
@tynlyd

There is an awful lot more to this story, as you might imagine. The first part of the story can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/mjlg53g

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