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.
