A Canadian in Beijing: Lone, Blond, Lady-in-Waiting

by Ember Swift on

Alright, so I know that I look different than most of the people here. I know that I carry with me enormous privilege with my white skin, English language and light-coloured hair (to name a few). I know that this privilege is my responsibility to recognize and acknowledge; it is the lens through which I am seen, no matter how “Chinese” I feel while I’m here. It is always with me and always will be. I also know that I am given great advantages, globally, as a result of this privilege and that any kind of complaint may well contradict this statement of acknowledgement.

But. . .

Here in China, I have experienced my first real taste of the disadvantage of difference. It’s high time I did. This white girl needed a dose of reality, I say. Bring it on.

Well, okay maybe in small doses. It’s good for the consciousness and hard on the spirit.

I was waiting for my friend to arrive at our meeting place before attending a concert at the Forbidden City Concert Hall. This is a beautiful venue located right downtown, across from Tian’anmen Square and next to the Imperial Palace. It’s the Beijing equivalent to Massey Hall (Toronto) or Carnegie Hall (New York) and I was done up to match the environment. I wore a new dress and some fancy shoes and went all-out so as not to look like a scruffy musician (for once).

I arrived by subway five minutes early and slowly made my way up to the entrance to the Imperial Palace – a logical choice for a meeting place as the huge poster of Chairman Mao is widely known. We were meeting “just under Mao” and the political double entendre made me smile.

My bright red dress looked good last night, I have to say. I was proud of my outfit and felt like I had scrubbed up rather well and would have no trouble blending into the highbrow theatre-going community. I strolled along and took some photos and just as I arrived I received a call from my friend (who I was meeting) who was stuck in traffic. He said he’d be about ten more minutes.

There I was, alone and surrounded by tourists (mostly all Chinese) who found me to be a great source of interest and delight. One young girl approached me and asked me for a photo with her. She was beside herself when I smiled and responded in Chinese. I know that she wanted a picture because I am a a white and blond foreigner (who was in a pretty dress). She kept saying “ni hen piao liang!” (you’re pretty!) and I found myself just slipping into my performer mode. I posed with her for a photo just as I would if a fan asked me for one after a gig. I also seized the opportunity to ask her to take a picture of me in return and she did. Then, she and her mother left with a wave and a smile.

Seconds later, a large group of people from a different province (because their accent was different to my ears) got very excited by me and started to point and laugh. They started taking pictures of me without asking and then came over to me with a small child in tow and motioned that they were going to take my picture, as though I were a circus trick or a street performer stationed there. There was much talking and not a single kind word was actually said to me; they were just surrounding me like I was a fixture for their amusement. I said “bu yao” which means “no” or a more polite way of saying “get lost” (literally: don’t want) and then I walked away from them and turned my back. I could hear the cameras anyway. I turned around and said, “that’s not polite!” but I think I got the words in the wrong order because they didn’t seem to register my meaning and just snapped a picture of my angry face and acted like my turning around and their successful shot was the equivalent to winning the lottery with their cameras.

I was very flustered by this point and felt totally vulnerable there. . . alone. . . in a dress.

Then, this young man sauntered up to me with a sticky smirk on his face. He thrust a pamphlet into my hand and got much closer to me than I’ve experienced with men here in China. He asked me if I’d gone to the Great Wall (in Chinese) and I answered him that yes, I had gone and I didn’t need the pamphlet, all the while backing away from him. His buddies joined him then and suddenly there were about ten young men around me all talking to me at once. I was answering them when they asked me questions while simultaneously looking for my escape. I eventually backed right into the white stone railing of the bridge behind me before realizing that I couldn’t go any farther in that direction.

Other people were looking on like it was some sort of spectacle. Surely they’ve seen white people speaking Chinese before! But it wasn’t just that. I was a lone, white, blond woman in a fancy dress and I was creating quite a hubbub of exuberance in these young men, joking and remarking and pushing each other, that it was enough to start to draw a small crowd of onlookers.

For the first time since arriving in China, I felt really unsafe and scared. I haven’t felt that way in so long.

I think this is why I rarely wear dresses.

I pushed through and past the group to break free of the cluster and then I started to quickly make my way back to the sidewalk closer to the road. When I did that, they laughed like I was a great big joke and I heard them commenting on my tattoo when I turned my back on them.

As I walked, I dialed my friend Rui on my cell phone, fuming mad (my typical response to fear) to ask him how to say “F*** OFF!” in Chinese. This is a very forward question here and to explain my angry tone, I told him what was happening and he taught me the word immediately. Then he offered to stay on the phone with me for a while until my friend arrived. I was relieved by this very logical suggestion and people miraculously left me alone as I was talking and so we chatted for about ten minutes before I realized that I was running out of battery power. I had to hang up because I didn’t want to be without a cell signal while my theatre date was still late (now twenty minutes) and possibly couldn’t find me in the crowds.

Suddenly, the guards all lined up and started their formation for the flag lowering ceremony which apparently takes place on both the Tian’anmen Square side and the side I was on (gugong) and so it is a popular time to visit the entrance to the Imperial Palace. I had mistakenly timed my arrival with this daily ritual, which suddenly explained the ballooning crowds.

They corralled us into two groups, east and west, and I found myself pushed with the herd to the east side. I got a call from the friend I was meeting and he had arrived on the west side; we were impossibly close but I had no idea how I would cross the barricades to get to his side of the entrance. He had a good idea, though, and he rushed through the underground walkways and arrived up on my side about ten minutes later, apologizing profusely.

I was just happy to see him and excited to shift the energy of the evening to a more relaxed, less stressful vibe. I smiled and took a deep breath. Right on cue, my cell phone died.

It was time to go to the theatre.

In my dress.

Proudly.

Hit the Open Road

by Willy Volk on

Doug McConnell is an expert on exploring the back roads of the American West. Now, he wants to help you — and have you help him — search for adventure in the region. To that end, McConnell recently launched OpenRoad.TV, a traveler’s guide to the American West.

To begin, McConnell pre-loaded the site with much of the video, photos, and insights that he’s compiled over the past 14 years of producing and hosting Bay Area Backroads. Now, it’s your turn to add your own stories, photographs, and videos — like Tina Martinez’s descriptive Moab Motorcycle Touring or Bill Buchanan’s adventurous Dances With Orcas.

In short, the site aims to be a comprehensive resource for people who want to explore, share, and celebrate the American West. Personally, since I couldn’t live much further from that part of the country and still be IN the country, I really enjoyed my virtual tour through the area.

Now I just need to get out there, shoot some video of my own, and add it to the site. Maybe this summer I can hit the open road.

America’s Dozen Distinctive Destinations 2007

by Kelly Amabile on

Preserving what’s best about America’s small cities and towns is vital to ensuring a nice balance between past and present in the places we live. The National Trust for Historic Preservation is doing their part to praise “unique and lovingly preserved communities” that are setting good examples in the areas of preservation and heritage tourism. Since 2000, the Trust has selected a dozen US cities each year that do an especially good job of preserving their town’s special spirit of place. The Trust’s list of alternative vacation destinations now boasts 96 places around the country that showcase special dedication to historic preservation.

The 2007 list includes places like Chestertown, MD, Morgantown, WV, Providence, RI, Little Rock, AR and Mineral Point, WI. And this year the Trust also recognized New Orleans in a special way for its commitment to preservation-based revitalization in the midst of the city’s rebuilding challenges.

May is Preservation Month — what is your community doing to preserve it’s culture and history for future generations? In the same way that narrow cobble-stoned Mediterranean villages have endured the test of time, it would be nice to see some authentic “small town America” spots still surviving decades from now.

Mumbai’s Dabbawalas

by Willy Volk on

Ever since I read that Mumbai was a crummy place to visit, I’ve been being reading up on the place. Today, I found this short clip profiling the city’s dabbawalas — 5000 men who move 400,000 lunch boxes every day using only their feet, the trains, and bicycles. So efficient are the dabbawalas that Richard Branson and other business leaders have invited them to give lectures on their system!

A Canadian in Beijing: My First Farewell

by Ember Swift on

My friend Sarah left yesterday and Beijing seems different now. Sarah was one of the people that I met on the Internet before coming. Well, actually, we met over email as she was one of several people who had been forwarded my proposal and my plans to come to Beijing. She wrote offering pointers and friendship for when I arrived. I took her up on both. It was Sarah who really provided my opening view into how Beijing works and where to check out the local scene. In fact, Sarah became one of my first friends here in China and I am really sad to see her go.

I have been told that I ought to get used to it. Ex-pats come and go here, some staying as little as a few weeks or a few months (like me) and others who stay a year or more on longer contracts or for longer school terms. There is a constant stream of greetings and farewells and the parties to go with it.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I also became the recipient of lots of Sarah’s “stuff” like her cookware, her bike, carpets for my dorm room and some excellent guide books to Beijing. I told her to make me her receptacle for any leftovers that she might not want to take back to Australia with her and I eagerly accepted whatever she had to offer. (Thank you Sarah!)

A few weeks ago, when she had to move out of her apartment early, I helped her down with her “stuff-to-keep” and we proceeded to get lots of weird looks for sitting on the dirty Beijing sidewalk with a bunch of random boxes and bags. Sarah lived here for six months already and so I can only imagine the huge transition it would be to dismantle one’s life and proceed to the next adventure. My guts twist around just thinking about leaving after three months here! We sat there together for about fifteen minutes waiting for a friend and then a taxi, just talking and taking it all in – the people, her neighbourhood and the whole experience of moving on.

A very loud elderly Chinese woman approached us and began to berate us about sitting in front of the stuff. She kept saying “you’re going to lose it” and it took me awhile to realize that she meant that we would lose the possessions because our eyes were not on them. Her anger was palpable and she reached over and wrenched my head around to look at the items, pushing my shoulders to face the bags as though I were a child that was ignoring her instructions. I was shocked by her forwardness – something I haven’t encountered in China very often – and several people walking by also stopped to witness the commotion. She got so frustrated with our confused facial expressions that she began to move the bags herself to position them in front of us rather than behind us, muttering to herself that we didn’t understand her and that we shouldn’t be so careless with these belongings.

I suppose her intentions were in the right place, but her approach was brutal and when she finally walked away, we were both visibly shaken by what felt more like an attack than assistance.

But then we laughed about it – finally – and the release was good. How else do you process such an experience, which is compounding something that is already hard?

And then, two weeks later, Sarah’s goodbye party last night was filled with people of from many different countries: Italy, Belgium, Australia, Canada, Austria, Indonesia, Malaysia, The United States and China. Even Jeni flew up from Shanghai and the place was filled with people who love Sarah and will miss her.

We all gathered at a bar called “Q-bar” that is located on the eastern side of the downtown and is a gorgeous, upmarket venue located above a hotel with couches and dim lights and menus in both English and Chinese. It even has a beautiful patio that we couldn’t sit on due to the light summery rain. Still, I would return there for sure, especially when I’m in the mood to feel closer to Toronto and/or wanting to see the lights of Beijing’s business district. It was great to feel lifted from the dirt of the sidewalks to the clean lines and crisp style of this modern bar.

When I left the party for home, I realized that a mini-era was coming to a close. My next phase here in Beijing will be without my friend Sarah who I have come to rely on for laughter, gossip and overall Beijing tour guide services (!) – not mention the most beautiful gift of all: her friendship.

I miss her already.

(Sarah: cut me some slack on posting this picture of you without permission, will ya?!)