A Canadian In Beijing: Piddly-Squat

by Ember Swift on
I know squats are good for me. They’re assigned in most aerobic workouts and they’re apparently my ticket to a more shapely behind. Still, I had forgotten that I’d be practicing this movement several times a day in China.

In 2001, Lyndell and I spent five days in Hong Kong on a stopover from Sydney to Toronto. That was my first introduction to the “squat-and-pee” style latrines in Asian countries. I didn’t mind them then and I don’t mind them now.

My knees mind them.

I’m hoping that after three months of this activity, I will no longer hear the crunch of my cartilage against bone as I squat to relieve my jasmine-tea-filled bladder.

Urinating in this position is actually healthier for your body than the western toilet. I learned this many years ago and understood squatting to be better for the bladder’s optimal drainage versus sitting which doesn’t enable one’s bladder to fully empty itself. This then puts more strain on the body to relieve itself more regularly, hence keeping this organ working overtime on a perpetual basis. (This company bases its whole product on these findings. Check out this image for a good laugh!)

I must say that they take some getting used to, however. Remembering to bring your own toilet paper is a must and no paper is deposited into the holes but instead is placed in the uncovered wastebasket provided. Sometimes this can be a smelly collection and I’ve found that holding one’s breath is the best solution. All in all, I’m then working my squats AND my lungs. Surely that’s exercise!

My room at the university and most modern hotels and shopping centres also offer western-style toilets. As Beijing continues to grow and accommodate travellers, more and more western-style toilets are available. Still, the toilet paper rule applies. In this way, they are keeping miles and miles of sewers free of foreign material and just filled with organic waste.

Now if Beijing would only start a humanure project! With this massive population, I’m sure the city’s many coal-driven energy systems could be replaced by the methane, combustion or fertilization possible via human waste.

But, I won’t hold my breath for that one!

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.