I was conscious of the fact that my perceptions of the city were restricted to a rather narrow and attractive portion of it around the University and the downtown area. I thought it was time to see some more so I hopped on the first bus I saw and let it take me for a ride. 30-40 minutes later I stepped out in an area given over to large public buildings and a large shallow lake. Walking around it I came to a rather upscale road featuring a number of Western style cafes which did indeed feature a scattering of Westerners. This seemed one particular type of Westerner, more the business type than the backpacker or student. Maybe I haven’t been here long enough to feel any desire to step back into a Western style place, maybe I will will not venture to these sort of ex-pat bars and cafes. Time will tell.
It did strike me that I should frequent this strip, even if only for research, as some of the Westerners here may be able to help me with some of my questions. I think it is the memory of stepping into a particular type of ex-pat bar in Beijing that has put me off. Inside it they were holding a month-long drinking contest. When you ordered a drink you told the person behind the bar which country you were from. Your consumption would then be added to your country’s tally so that you were in effect drinking for England or drinking for Australia or wherever because at the end of the month the totals would be calculated and the winning country’s drinkers treated to a piss up on the house. As if they needed another one. Suffice to say I didn’t support the nation on that occasion. Now of course that was just one place and I didn’t see anyone downing chasers on this Sunday afternoon in Xiamen so I should perhaps be a little more inquisitive. Next time.
I later saw my first Chinese jogger. I felt like this was more my sort of person.
During a walk of several hours another rather striking thing became clear. I saw practically no CCTV cameras. I saw many guards sitting in their little boxes by gates but no cameras. The UK however is absolutely bristling with cameras, we have the greatest concentration, by some way, of any country in the world. Not so in Xiamen. I had to wonder what this constant surveillance does to your sense of space and personal privacy and whether removing the cameras removes this internal sense of being watched. One thing that is for sure is that I feel more safe here than I do in London or Portsmouth where random violence and gang behaviour is not exceptional though usually avoidable. I have seen none of that here and I it makes me think the CCTV cameras are about something other than security exactly.
I recall having a bag of mine stolen in Hoxton a couple of years ago. It was beside me and whisked away in plain view of the many police cameras and when I immediately reported it to the police they said they didn’t have the time to look over the images. They had bigger fish to fry, as it were. I suspect if I had been Lord Aitchison it would have been another matter altogether.
So why this British trust in technology to deliver us to a cleaner, safer future when all it seems to do is televise muggings and produce a pixilated image of hooded assailants? I think it has more to do with addressing a public perception of crime which is quite unrelated to the actual incidence of it.
In any case, upon returning to my compound what did I see at the entrance but CCTV cameras! It seems I live in a rather special gated community. In spite of any efforts I might make to the contrary I seem to still be in an island of the West.
I’ve been rather busy with lots of random stuff, which I’ll get onto, and yesterday had my first meeting with my new language exchange partners here in Xiamen. That is where I’ll start.
I met Jia through CEAC, he is a postgraduate art student who has been stringing out his studies in Xiamen University for seven years now, something I too would be inclined to do in his position. Jia introduced me to a friend of his who I will also exchange with, Lizzie a native of Fujian province who works in IT. They took me to a cafe where I drank my first decent cup of coffee since arriving. I have noted the address. Tea here is varied and often wonderful; coffee is an imported habit and rarely what it can be. I read that Starbucks opened their largest store in China just a few days ago here in Xiamen so there must be some movement here. Anyway, sitting in a far nicer local cafe, Jia showed me some of his work and we talked about a language exchange.
The work he showed was a folder of photographs and video stills. It was clearly accomplished. In one way the work was familiar in terms of the photographic language: highly staged portraits that were close to performance and installation. In another respect I was aware that the specific symbolism used was often unfamiliar to me and I was left asking myself to what degree would having access to this information enhance my appreciation of the work. In other words, I was trying to work out how to look at these photographs, how to position myself in relation to them. This is a bit of a running theme when looking at work here and I daresay similar questions may attend Chinese viewers of my performances. I am no believer in universals but I can see how some things travels better than others so do wrestle with this issue when making and adapting performances. In this instance I was lucky enough to have the artist present so we could have a conversation around the work and this issue of how to look at it.
Now the random stuff… The first I can file under weddings. I was doing a few more preparations down at the beach and came across a wedding photograph bonanza of at least 5 couples. What was unclear was whether they were models or genuine brides and grooms. The wedding industry is rather large and conspicuous and the photographs are often taken before the wedding day. They are, in effect, high-quality staged photographic performances. A young woman who was working as part of the crew stopped me to say hello and practice her English so I took the chance to ask here if these were real or fake. Her English did not quite go that far however and neither did my Chinese make it in the other direction so I will have let these blissful brides and grooms hover somewhere between real and fake, in a zone that I will simply call professional.
Returning to another theme, the size issue, I have found that the kitchen was designed for the same person as the shower.
Something I knew would be an issue is crossing roads. There are some larger roads that have three lanes in either direction and you have to cross them in stages, pausing between lanes with traffic flowing either side around you. What I usually do is wait till I see some Chinese people crossing and then follow them as they make their way across. Last night I got caught out and found myself at a crossing with nobody around so had to brave it myself. To cross safely you have to think a bit like the driver and do it by negotiation realising that the car always has the stronger hand. There is a leap of faith moment and then you have to just try to relax into it. I have seen few accidents so this system must more or less work but it is a lot more improvised and takes a bit of getting adjusted to.
The expression “A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing” is more or less where I am with my very partial understanding of Chinese. I can read things on the street and understand a character here and a character there but the full meaning evades me. Sometimes however I will understand half of the characters and it feels as if things are improving. This is precisely the moment I have to be cautious and make a distinction between understanding for practical action and intellectual understanding. For the former anything tends to help and rough and ready is better than not at all. With the latter however, the illusion of understanding, even if only partially, can send the customer off into a world of their own.
There is a huge difference between what I have learnt from study books, CDs and exchanges, and how people actually speak. I was expecting this to be the case but that knowledge does nothing to alleviate the gap. Basically I have learnt a few words and expressions of sanitised Mandarin and I can go back and forth with those words fairly well. If everyone in Xiamen spoke with a vocabulary of 200 words I would be just fine. That is not the way it is of course so I just have to persevere. When I was an English teacher in Paris back in the mid-90s I had to pleasure of seeing some people progress from speaking in a baby language, like I do, to the point of being able to hold a conversation. Not so many made this leap but some did so I know it is possible.
I’m starting to look around the city and also starting to look at myself looking around the city, as it were. I’m quite aware that the things I pay attention to are probably not the things that people from Xiamen regard as attention worthy. At first this brings with it a sense of pleasure, even of discovery in a very minor way, but this sense is slowly coloured with the dawning realisation that it is pretty much identical to the pleasures of tourism. This is particularly the case here as the city is a major tourist destination and it does indeed have a number of stalls selling tacky things made out of sea shells glued together that make fitting gifts for elderly aunts. I have the feeling there are two ready-made frames for me. The first is the tourist frame. Most of the tourists seem to be Chinese and I see quite a lot of organised groups. Still, I could be a random Westerner tourist who strayed to Xiamen. The second frame is the University. I could be a student, though I am a little too old looking for that these days, unless I was one of those pos-grad students endlessly stringing out a PhD, which it so happens is precisely what I was until recently. If not that I could also be a visiting lecturer or somehow or another connected to the University. What’s more, this frame is not entirely incorrect as CEAC is related to the University, it was until recently sited there, though now they are more independent.
Musing on this question of tourism and my role here I feel that the more I have practical things to do that engage me with people here the more I will have access to other perspectives. I have started setting up language exchange partners here, this should be one way.
One thing that marked me as quite different yesterday was running. I took a run along the boardwalk and noticed I was the only person running. Indeed when I think about it I have not noticed anyone running anywhere since I arrived in China. In Beijing that is understandable right now given the cold and pollution but here it is really quite ideal conditions. Maybe people run elsewhere, or maybe it is just not an exercise of choice. Anyway, I attracted some attention as I passed by, an eccentric lanky Westerner running by the beach. I also noticed that the beach was deserted by 7PM. I’m not sure if that was because it was dark or because any sensible person was sitting inside eating dinner.
A rather private thing that marked me as British these past few days was following The Ashes, the series of 5, 5-day cricket matches between England and Australia. I am not a big sports follower but I do make an exception for the odd test match and when it is a big one in the Ashes like this I watch with pleasure. It does feel rather perverse to be here and remain glued to a screen watching an event in Sydney, but that is how it is. This morning they wrapped it up with an emphatic victory and that drain upon my time is now over. I will not have to replicate the photo of the bereft English football fans of a day ago, I instead celebrated with a pot of delicious Puer tea.
Finally, to return to yesterday’s activities, I did some preparations for a photo I want to take on the beach that should serve as the project’s cover image. This came from a chat I had with one of my language partners who had asked me the other day if I was in China yet. I was not but I said I would be soon and that when I arrived in Xiamen I would send a picture of me on the beach in a T-Shirt. Proof, I guessed, of having arrived in the sun. Thinking further about this photograph I was to take, it elaborated itself in my imagination to include text and swimming trunks and I ‘m just waiting for a sunny moment when the tide is out to take it. Hopefully that moment will come today.
Arrived in Xiamen yesterday. The flight with Hainan Airlines down here was slightly late but uneventful. They are apparently much improved these days, but still have the look and feel of a budget airline, though not in the same way as a European one. Rather than the garish cabins and incessant promotional messages of say, Ryanair, Hainan Airlines’ planes feel worn in like a pair of comfortable shoes and the music playing was a pan pipe cover of Imagine. Just under three hours later I was on the south coast.
Everyone I met in Xiamen was complaining that it was cold but coming from Beijing where the rivers were frozen solid it seemed just fine to me. On the subject of Chinese pessimism, an earlier point of mine, one of the people I had dinner with that evening said that this Winter would be a particularly bad one with no respite whatsoever. I can only say that I hope he was speaking as a pessimist and will not prove to be accurate in his prediction. Dinner was good and I met the other resident artists and people around CEAC.
The apartment is comfortable and has a view over the sea. The neighbourhood is modern and not quite like anything I know. Before I say anything more I shall have to observe who lives and works here in a little more detail. There are one or two things that mark me as a visitor. The furniture is quite traditional Chinese, that is to say hard and wooden. In order to be comfortable on it you have to sit very properly. It has been adapted somewhat to Western tastes by previous residency artists. The shower is also quite comical, as you can see. I have noticed that while I am tall in most places at 1 meter 89 cm, I am taller, relatively speaking, here. More so even than in Beijing where I saw young men my height on the subway. Here however, I am clearly more than just on the tall side, I am ‘not from here’ tall. I shall have to look out for ways this is manifest in daily life beyond the shower cubicle…
