Walked through the centre of Beijing, around the forbidden palace. Haven’t done this since 1997 when I was first in China. It has, on the face of it, changed less here, at least in terms of architecture. What has changed is the people; there seem to be more than I remember and they are dressed quite differently. There also seems to be more people selling stuff: hats, electronic spinning tops that fire patterns onto the floor, sweets, ‘crawling forces’ and flags.
At first I thought the flags were being given away as I, imagining it was the UK, couldn’t imagine anyone actually paying for a flag when crowding into a central London tourist spot. But no, visitors to the forbidden city buy small flags from the quite persistent flag vendors as a part of the experience. I’m curious to know what these flags signify, what meaning beyond that of the country’s symbol these flags convey. I expect that this is a very complex and varied set of meanings, in the same way as what the St George’s Cross signifies is contested and unstable. I have a better understanding of the latter having grown up with it and watched its evolution from solely adorning seriously dodgy pubs to becoming a more varied and acceptable symbol within the commercial world. What the Chinese flag symbolises is however a mystery.
I’m fighting through so much jet lag that i cannot even tell if I am early or late, I am simply opposite having come from the US. It is good to be at the Institute for Provocation’s guest apartment, up on the 20th floor overlooking the 2nd ring road. This is a familiar spot from my stay in 2009 and a good place to reorient myself.
Chance took me to a wedding reception and video screening last night. It was a relatively informal event in a cafe/bar in the fashionable Nan luo gu xiang area and it was mostly for friends of the bride and groom. They had already held two ceremonies for their families, one in Northern China and one in Germany, so this was more a presentation of the documentation sort of affair than anything else.
I become very curios about it as I have recently read how wedding videos are a growth market here with professionally produced videos retelling episodes from the couple’s romance by re-enacting scenes, often mixing some of the real people with extras hired to make up the scenes. The video tonight however was a more homemade affair but no less interesting to the outside observer for that.
From what I could make out, the wedding was a traditional Chinese one with many different rituals needing to be performed: walking over a fire, carrying the bride, archery and of course speeches. What I found curious was the absence of a priest. There was a master of ceremonies who kept it moving along but no priest invested with the authority of God or official with the authority of the state as far as I could make out.
The video lasted about 40 minutes, during which food arrived, drinks flowed and special wedding cigarettes were smoked. The screening over and the film talked over in detail, the party geared up with a three piece band doing blues covers striking up. I found the jet lag creeping up upon me however and with eyes struggling to stay open it was time to bid the couple farewell and make my way back to the apartment.
I believe I was the only non-chinese person at the reception other than the groom himself. He quickly recognised me as the other laowai and remarked up this. This term laowai is kind of interesting as it is the Chinese word for foreigner and it seems to be quite often used with ambiguous intent. There is a simple introduction to it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laowai
As a visitor this is one of my labels, Westerner a slightly more specific other and British a further still. I suspect that most of the time I fall into the first two categories the final elaboration being somewhat a detail.
Turkish Airlines conducted me safely to Beijing which after the Air France / KLM runaround made me feel quite grateful for basic efficiency and courtesy. My travelling companion seated beside me was a private security contractor on his way to Iraq. When he described the work he was stepping back into (along with about 10 other large British men in their 30s also on this flight) it made me feel very grateful that I was heading to a peaceful place to pursue work I enjoyed. It is easy to take things for granted and get wound up by the Lindas of this world, missing the bigger picture.
Jimmy was quite a lot more cultured and worldly wise than I had imagined ex-army Afghan vets to be and I was glad to have these expectations of mine broken. He understood the thrust of The Customer Is Always Wrong when I described it to him and related it to his world of working with Americans and Iraqis. Where it became interesting was when he said how the British forces tended to be far more cynical about the operation than the American forces and this made me wonder which was the better and which the worse: to fight in bad faith or to pursue folly wholeheartedly?
Perhaps the issue is to what extent is the famed British sense of irony simply a defensive mechanism that does little to change ones course of action but rather is something that protects one from the results of actions, whether they be positive or negative.
I read this morning that the British are among the most pessimistic people in the world today, topped by only the Italians and Belgians. Unfortunately reading further it became clear that the idea of pessimism was one restricted to economics: pessimistic about making purchases or about job security. This made me wonder if there could be a wider index of pessimism, of half empty/ half full thinking on a broader level. I shall have to look into Chinese pessimism to see what sort of shape it takes. In the economic survey the Chinese came out pretty positively though they were topped by the Brazilians, but do those statistics say anything about a wider frame of mind? This is something I shall be interested to look into.
AF 2:
The work I will be doing in China and which should have begun today is a theatre and art project that is called ‘The Customer Is Always Wrong’ and, it will be presented in cities in China and the UK in 2011 and then tour internationally, like most of my work does. I will include this Air France/KLM incident within the project, it does, after all, fit the title very well. I could almost call it a gift, artistically speaking, so well does it fit. A gift I would rather not receive, but a fitting way to start my show all the same. I will describe this incident and find an artistic language to share the experience of being treated very badly by airlines, something many people will understand, and I will single out KLM and Air France. This will begin my stage show, it will also be written about on my blog and I may make an online video too, if I find a good way to express this. I would say that this will reach an audience of at least several thousand directly and many more indirectly. It will be very negative publicity for you as a company and Linda will not be presented as a sympathetic individual at all. If however you chose to properly correct your mistake, I will include this too within my project and will either drop the issue or give a balanced picture of a mistake properly corrected.
I should also state that I travel literally all the time with my work as an artist and use both Air France and KLM. Based upon yesterday’s experience I will have to withdraw from using Air France and KLM ever again, unless of course you correct this mistake. Avoiding you will not be so convenient for me as my main artistic collaborations are based in Paris and Amsterdam, to which I travel on a monthly basis. I will however do this, all the same, and you will lose certainly custom as a result. All this because of Linda in Dublin not issuing a boarding pass for a flight I had already paid for.
As I will be working in China till mid April it is best to send your correspondence via email as I will not receive post until then.
I look forward to your reply.
Yours faithfully,
Bill Aitchison
Yesterday I wrote to Air France Customer Care:
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am writing to inform of a recent excruciatingly bad experience with Air France / KLM and to ask that you apologise and refund me for it.
The incident happened yesterday on the 29/12/10. I was traveling from New York to London and was delayed by the severe snowstorm in NYC, 25cm of snow in JFK. I was originally meant to leave on the 27/12/10 and arrive in London on the morning of the 28/12/10 but due to flight cancellations and rebookings only left New York on the evening of the 28/12/10 and took a flight to London via Dublin with Aer Lingus that was due to arrive in London at 11.40. This flight got delayed and I only arrived in Dublin at 13.30. My flight with KLM was from London Heathrow at 17.05 to Beijing via Amsterdam. It was not possible to make this connection. The Aer Lingus staff however, offered to book me to their 17.10 Amsterdam flight to make the connecting KLM flight to Beijing (21.25) that evening. This was all perfectly possible and would even have timed out well. The KLM/Air France representative at your ticket sales desk in Dublin however, a woman named Linda, would not issue me with the boarding pass for the Amsterdam – Beijing flight. She said the booking was non-changeable and that if I did not use the first part of the flight from London to Amsterdam the entire reservation would be considered as a ‘no show’ and cancelled. I told her about the snow in New York and the severe delays I had encountered and she made a sarcastic comment about their being ‘no snow here! It’s not our problem.’ I had the sense that she had the attitude of a person who enjoys saying no, that she was enjoying the power.
The fact that you have already taken my money for your booking and had reserved a place on the flight for me but were unwilling to issue me a boarding pass is what upsets me. The extreme inflexibility in the face of severe transport difficulties, inflexibility that would have cost you absolutely nothing at all, is plainly rude. The rude comments of your staff Linda only made this poor decision more annoying still. As a result of this I have now lost the entire booking: both my flight to China and the return flight back to the UK with Air France via CDG in April 2011. This alone has coast me £566. I have had to book a new flight. Needless to say, I have not booked this with you; I will travel with Turkish Airlines later today. What is more, I have lost time, I was due to start work in China on a project of mine and this is now delayed. All because Linda would not authorise a boarding card.
(cont)
