A Canadian In Beijing: International Condiments & Conversation

by Ember Swift on

My first day in Beijing was spent in complete luxury at the Comfort Inn and Suites in downtown Beijing. I’ve stayed at a lot of Comfort Inns across Canada and the U.S., but let me say that I was surprised by the bellboys, marble entrance, fish pool complete with many fat fish of various colours, plush towels, door-to-door luggage handling from taxi to hotel room entrance, complimentary “western style” breakfast in the morning and free high-speed internet access in the rooms.

I was a bit shy about it all, to be honest. I’m used to mid-grade to low-grade accommodations unless music venues are generous and set up the musicians (us) with plush beds to lie in for the night. Still, I’m not complaining. Sleeping off my jet lag in style was a bonus and it enabled a delayed first impression of this city.

The western-style breakfast consisted of everything you can imagine for breakfast, plus…congi (sort of like a rice soup, which is definitely not western but is delicious), baked beans with corn (an interesting choice that was surprisingly tasty!), some pastries whose content I decided not to brave (veganism and pastry don’t often get along) and wait staff that were overly zealous in the clearing of your empties.

I sat next to a woman from Australia while a family behind me chatted in a Slavic language that I couldn’t recognize. I asked one of the waitresses for the word for watermelon in Chinese and proceeded to have the typical conversation about where I learned Mandarin and why I have come here. She giggled behind her hand when I spoke and then tittered with her fellow waitresses behind the bar.

Just as I was leaving the hotel restaurant, I noticed the condiments were as international as the conversations. Here is an image of the two options: jam from Austria and butter from New Zealand.

It’s time to really be in China now. No more of this veiled arrival business! Off to the university I go…

A Canadian in Beijing: Nightmare Travel Visa Just a Dream

by Ember Swift on

I had nightmares about getting my travel visa for China. I imagined large halls filled with children and people everywhere, line-ups barely visible in the human density, thick air filled with the sounds of late-winter coughs and sniffles, hours on aching feet, shuffling along but barely progressing – you can picture it, I’m sure. My dream state was so powerful that it made me procrastinate. I put off getting my visa until it was just a week before I was planning to leave Canada for an entire month of U.S. shows making it impossible for me to apply for my travel visa from within Canada before my trip to Beijing.

You see, you have three choices: either you send in your passport via an accredited travel agent and then wait the four processing days not to mention the postal time before you get it back; you go in to the Chinese consulate yourself to drop it off and still wait those four business days (which works great if you live in a city with a consulate office); or, you go into a consulate office and pay an expedite fee in order to get it within one business day. I was forced to go with option no.3.

To be perfectly honest, being without my passport makes me anxious. I didn’t want to be without it for more time than absolutely necessary and I was willing to pay for the peace of mind to avoid the separation anxiety. As a traveller, I need it regularly. It is my key to being able to work outside of Canada and that key is vital to my career.As I don’t live in Toronto, I made the five-hour trip to the city and planned to stay a couple of days to connect with friends before hitting the road with my band again at the end of February and for the whole of March. I arrived Sunday night and then bundled up in the blustery cold and walked the whole two kilometers to the consulate early Monday morning. The walk was refreshing and I felt invigorated and ready for the day. In fact, I felt redeemed from my procrastination as though the early morning and the crisp air had clarified my agenda and brought me back to task.

The date was Feb 19th. Brilliant choice for an East Asian Studies grad and one who feels rather confident about her knowledge of East Asian Culture. Why? Well, Chinese New Year was Feb 18th this year and all of the Chinese government offices were closed for two days following Chinese New Year. And rightfully so!

When I arrived at the very locked and formidable gates of the Chinese consulate office on that frosty morning, I felt like an idiot. I stood there a moment in complete disarray. I peered through the rod iron and read the sign on the consulate door three times. I scuffed the slush on the sidewalk and squinted at the sun’s reflection on the dormer windows of the Victorian buildings all around me. I turned three hundred and sixty degrees and studied the roof lines of the neighbouring homes and business offices and noted the angles against the sky and how the turrets jutted upwards as if reaching for spring. I looked back at the sign one more time and then I walked to a nearby café and sat down to think.

There was nothing to be done except wait.

I extended my stay in Toronto to accommodate the Chinese holiday and I decided to treat it as the holiday that it was meant to be. I fell into reunion mode with friends and had a great time.

When Wednesday arrived, I assumed that I would repeat my Monday morning trek, but I actually stalled (again) and didn’t make it to the consulate until about three in the afternoon. I had no idea if I’d be able to pick up passport the following day, but my plans quickly depended on it. I was scheduled to depart the city the following morning, so I was playing with fate (and crossing my fingers) that I’d be able to pick up my passport Thursday a.m. before departure. We were scheduled to cross the border into the states for a weekend of Ohio dates. All this to say that this was an example of irresponsible risk-taking, which isn’t usually my style.

Why did I stall that morning? I’m not sure. The rhythm of Toronto had sunk back into my limbs and I had a spontaneous coffee date with a friend in the morning and switched a dinner date to a lunch date with another at noon. I was in the swirl of socialization and I was enjoying the spin of my own Chinese New Year celebrations.

The consulate is in a historic area very near to the University of Toronto, just north of Bloor Street on St.George. When I arrived, its gates were graciously open and I could see a crowd inside. I held my breath as I mounted the steps, expecting my nightmares to be accurate, and when I took my place in line – a line that was so long that it was spilling outside – I was only there for a moment when a kind gentleman behind me asked if I was picking up my passport or submitting for my visa. I explained that it was the latter and he pointed me to a wicket that had no line-up and just a woman behind the bulletproof glass ready to take my forms.

What luck! No one in line! Apparently, the same-day service is very popular but the overnight service is less so. I was able to drop off my passport with all of my documentation within less than five minutes. I received a pink slip for the following morning and was back out in the melting snow and sunshine before I could even really take in the surroundings of the waiting room.

The next morning, I picked up my passport in almost the same fashion, only this time the line-up that was spilling outdoors was for the wicket at which I had dropped off my passport the afternoon before. The pick-up window was perfectly clear! I could have danced for joy right there, but the stern and irritable faces of those in line made me control my feet. There was much coughing, shifting of weight, and audible sighing. I slipped out unnoticed.

Now I’m all set.

The plane leaves tomorrow.

Beijing… here I come!

A Canadian In Beijing: Turn Up The Volume

by Ember Swift on

Ember Swift is the newest member of Gadling. Over the next three months, this Canadian woman will be living in and exploring China. During her time there, she’ll be posting regularly about her adventures. Check in every Wednesday and Sunday to see what China is like from a Western perspective…

Beijing is less than one week away and my musician self can barely keep the volume down. My excitement is cranking and I haven’t even started packing yet. That’s tomorrow’s task and it brings me that much closer to eventually hearing the lilt of Mandarin spoken nearly everywhere I go for a solid three months.

I am a full-time musician who has logged a lot of travel miles. I’m onto my fifth touring van since 1997, for instance, and only two died of unnatural causes (one fire, one theft) while all the others were just driven to their graves after years of loyal service. But, to give you more résumé-like context, throughout the past eleven years there have been ten different independent releases (nine albums and one DVD), thousands of performances averaging approximately one hundred and fifty per year, eight tours to Australia (our most frequent overseas destination) and lots of changes to my band line-up which I must confess includes six different drummers – yikes! All in all, it makes my résumé sound heavily steeped in experience but lacking in flavour. Of course, résumé bullet points don’t include the stories. These stories weave in and out of the awards and accolades, times of struggle and periods of prosperity, debt and recovery. They are told in songs or between songs; they’re stage material that keeps this crazy journey full of life.


At the University of Toronto, I completed a degree in East Asian Studies and have four years of university Mandarin training lodged in loyal cavities in my brain. In between university and this nearly-in-China moment, I have pursued my music career full blast (as described above). What has been missing is the subtle connection between my education and my career. Now, nine years since graduation, it’s time to bring it all together.

My life seems to be playing out like a long-laboured-over song arrangement; this is the moment when all of the players are gathered in the same space and it’s time to hear if their parts fit together. There’s excitement and tension simultaneously, but all of the amplifiers are humming and ready.

China has always been my dream destination. . . . “when the music thing was over,” as if it really would be “over” one day. It only recently occurred to me that I am the agent in making any and all dreams come true, and that I didn’t have to wait for one part of my life to die in order to birth another. Besides, who says they aren’t related? It also occurred to me that going to Beijing for three months is very much a career decision. And, it will be. Now – well, now that I’ve listened to those occurrences — the potential seems obvious. It’s spinning before me.

Not only will three months in Beijing be a luxurious block of time and space to write more songs away from the rigorous tour schedule and constant business and band dynamics, but being surrounded by the tonal beauty of the Mandarin language will push my ear into new musical territories. For me, speaking or hearing Mandarin spoken is like singing or being sung to. Top that off with the opportunity to explore what is happening in the music scene of Beijing and we alight on the research portion of my trip: I can finally dust off some undergraduate research work that was an investigation of women and music in China and the growing audibility of women’s voices in the outpouring of Chinese music. My undergrad research was limited by my geography and I always envisioned the research continuing there.

Here is the door. This is me walking through it.

I’ll be starting off my trip as a tourist. Just a couple of days in a downtown hotel before moving to the University district and setting myself up in a dorm room. I’ve already scoped some sightseeing tours that will take me to some official tourist destinations and then spit me out into the registration line at the Beijing Language and Culture University. There, I’ll be refreshing my rusty Mandarin in a part-time morning course at twenty hours a week. The rest of my time will be spent opening many live music venue doors to listen, jam, meet people and cultivate the hope that I’ll eventually bring my band to China. We are an internationally touring act, but not yet in Asia, and I do believe that this journey will yield that opportunity.

Isn’t that all potential is? Finding the open doors? Being open to opening them?

Three months in one place is a radical choice for a gypsy. Keep in mind, however, that this is a city of fourteen million people to keep me occupied! I am looking forward to undressing the underbelly of the arts scene — particularly the music world — and I am sure that three months of networking, connecting, befriending and exploring will yield colorful stories.

So, I start as a tourist, morph into a student and then morph nightly into the artist that I am. Already I’m realizing that I’m really all these things all at once; this cacophony, or symphony, is me.

How will it sound?

I don’t know for sure, but I’m turning up the volume knob anyway.

Call it trust.