The Peace of Heaven

It was a day for doing nothing. Washed clothes. Watched TV. Read Tao Te Ching. Spoke to my Egyptian friend who was bored and wanted to go to Egypt to do his PhD and evaluate his son's bride-to-potentially-be. Ate at my favourite restaurant. 6RMB for a huge plate of potatoes and eggplant that I barely managed to eat. The kung-fu movie on T.V. had a stunning fight scene on a pane of glass suspended from a crane on a sky-scraper.

Made it to Tiananmen (Gate of Heavenly Peace) Square at 7 pm. The sky to the east was brighter than the sky to the west. The west was bringing the most ominous black cloud I'd ever seen - an a red sunset underneath it. The cloud passed. I thought we were safe. And then the running started - the crowds gathered to watch the flag lowering, dashing for the nearest shelter.

Within seconds, the square was a sea. I was soaked. Sheltered under a police van, when a Chinese guy offered me the safety of his umbrella. We went to an underground walkway. To pack to hide, waves of water gushing down the ramp.

Then came the guard - shining bayonettes, pressed uniforms - all for the purpose of retrieving a flag that hung soaked, wrapped around a flagpole, powerless to offer shelter. They took the flag with the same ritualised sharp movements and marched out, the rain intensifying to make sky and earth one water-soaked entity. Not a single soldier out of step, the same measured pace as they'd take on any other day.

I wrung out my socks, rolled up my pants and caught a train and a bus to get to the far north of Beijing. Stepping into a noodle bar, I knew I was in the right place - it was full of funky kids with funny hair and studded belts. The gig venue was only a little further along.

Not what I expected. Clean, new... fitted out with wooden tables and chairs. Many foreigners - mostly Americans. Some girls decked out in evening-wear. The polite English-speaking guy working there asked me if I wanted to sit down. What?! I came for mohawks, filth and blood...

The first band had one mohawk. They rocked out. The crowd just stood there. The second band got some skin-head guys pushing each other around - but if was damnlame compared to what I'd seen in Japan. The third band started with a doors cover - they looked good, but it was a pity that the singer spent most of his energy on trying out his Jim Morrison poses rather than learning to sing. The fourth band blew me away - Rebuilding the Right of Statues were so Joy Division, I couldn't help but dance away. The fifth band didn't realise that to be loud you need such a thing as contrast. The best thing about them was the singer's "I love Elvis t-shirt." The last band, New Pants was awesome.

Spent some time talking to an American guy, then a drunken Chinese guy who came over and told us that he loved us. The sky outside was lit up white with lightning. Sat and watched the rain fall. It abated. Decided to walk the 20km back to the hotel at 3 am. Beijing was dark, misty and quiet at that hour. A few hobos sleeping, a few people on the way to early morning jobs. I got to Tiananmen at 6 am and took a bus from there... cutting down on 5 km.

Woke at 2pm. Time to pick up the visa. The woman at the paying counter told me to go to the next counter. The woman there gave me my passport and went away. Nobody seemed interested in my money. I 'asked' the woman (no-one spoke English) if everything was setted. She seemed to say 'yes.' I walked out.

Police and anger

There is one easy way to work off anger : walk. 11km from the PSB to my hotel. Got lost in the Hutong (old narrow alleys of grey houses being bulldozed to make way for "modern" highrise), found a street that had a park running through the middle of it. Got to the main shopping district and found another lovely park, running by a river parallel to a main road.

Then I found myself walking out into the middle of Tiananmen square. 2 girls approached me - students on holiday from Xi'an. They asked me what I thought of China. I gave them an honest answer, which was a bad move. I think they were genuinely offended at what I had to say about the government... quite ironic given where we were standing at the moment. We stood around and watched the flag-lowering ceremony (bunch of dudes with sharp bayonettes doing the flag-lowering thing), and met a Korean guy who was cool.

Another Brick in the Wall

I was thinking of spending some time studying Chinese. I was thinking of buying some books in Beijing and starting now. I was thinking of one day coming to China for 6 months, and doing nothing but travelling aimlessly on a bicycle.

This morning, I rocked up at the Public Security Bureau (PSB) with the intent of obtaining a 5 day visa extension. Having stood in a que for 15 minutes, I was sent to another counter to pick up the visa application form. Mid-way through filling it out, the woman told me that I couldn't use a ball-point pen, but had to use a marker. For some strange reason, my black and white photo was accepted - despite the specification that it should have been shot against a blue background. But there was a problem - I needed a temporary residence registration form from the hotel. Oh, well - back to the other side of Beijing.

Upon getting back to the PSB I was told that the form needed to have the hotel's stamp upon it. I asked the woman if she could call the hotel and ask them to fax it. She told me I had to do it myself. So I did. Problem was, that nobody in the hotel had a sufficient level of English to understand what a "temporary residence registration" was and consequently had no idea what the hell I wanted. Back to the woman upstairs. She told me I could come back tomorrow. I asked how much the penalty for overstaying the visa was... 500RMB. With my sweetest smile I asked what the airport security would do if I rocked up with an overstayed visa and no money.

"They wouldn't let you leave."

But she got the hint and called the hotel. Fax came after 15 minutes.

Back to the que and the visa desk.

"Ok, you can pick up your new visa on Monday."

"Well, actually, I can't - I'm meant to be on a plane at 9:40 that morning."

"Oh... can I see your ticket?... Ok, photocopy the ticket and fill out this form."

She hands me the Reason for urgency request form.

I go to the photocopy centre. The matter is theoretically settled. Despite my outward composure, I'm sizzling beneath the surface. I suppose that little makes me angry, but the one thing that could drive me towards impulsive violence, is the helplessness felt in the face of power.

There and back again

Looking out over the mist settling on the corn fields, I felt weird... What does it mean to return to a place? It means to take yourself then and now and to perform arithmatic:

"the body is a device to calculate the anatomy of the spirit" - Rumi

I'll keep the conclusions to myself.

The train ride was more exciting than the others (which isn't saying much). Sat next to a girl who was studying English. Her mother told me I was handsome. The girl said, "it's true." Then they had to move because they didn't have seat numbers. The dudes next to me played cards. I read "Tess of the D'Ubervilles" (Thomas Hardy), ate noodles, drank beer.

West Beijing train station made me think "how did these people get the olympics" once again. A badly sign-posted, circular mess of multi-storey walkways which eventually led to a bus station. Caught the right bus. Talked to a pretty girl on the bus who was studying German, got off with her help at the right place and eventually found the right hotel.

The two people I was sharing dorm with weren't there. I left my door open... and there was Damien (Karakol, Kyrgyzstan). Nice to catch up - he got robbed in Mongolia and the cops didn't bat an eyelid, or fill out a report... In other news, he'd bought a laptop and was getting heaps of DVDs. To my great surprise, he has a liking for Visual-K. So, we sat around watching Malice Mizer concerts (Ahh, Gackt is so beautiful...) and talking to the dodgy Egyptians sharing his room about John Winston Howard.

Oh, a joke...

Q: Why can't John Howard be circumsized?

A: Because there's no end to the prick!

Taiyuan

Thought I'd come here, since there's apparently nothing to do and that's what I like doing.

The highlight of the train ride was an old guy in a bona fide Mao suit and the diorrhea all over the toilet floor. Honestly, you'd think that Chinese people would have enough practice aiming into squat toilets. I mean, just after 4 months or so of squatters and I've got my precision down to getting it into the hole...

The Lousy Planet (photocopy, haha) proved as lousy as ever. Walked down the street of budget hotels and got quoted 50 yuan for each one (more than I've ever paid for accommodation in China). Walked down another street. Found a place for 30... still too much. Was about to go to Beijing, when I stumbled upon a dirty orange building with no reception on the first floor. Just a sign and a staircase. Found reception on the 3rd floor, staffed by 3 beautiful women who had a giggle at my presence. 15 for a dorm. Killer.

Next stop : Public Security Bureau. Thought I'd ask the guard outside for directions. Bad move. You're not supposed to do that. Went inside, found the office and recieved the following treatment: "What is the purpose of your stay of Taiyuan? Do you have money? How much money do you have? Where is your hotel?" Well, I have no purpose in coming to Taiyuan, I have enough money to get me through, and I don't know my hotel's name or address, because it is a dingy hole that isn't allowed to take foreigners, and I'm not about to dob them in. In the end, the daft woman's friend turned up and told me to go to another office at 3:30.

Walked into a market and bought some camouflage sneakers and a camouflage t-shirt (arsehole tried to rip me off, but I talked him down from 40 to 25... and he probably still ripped me off).

PSB office was shining new, full of officials, none of whom could help me. Eventually, a woman rocked up and told me that visa extensions took 5 working days to process.

Walked around the main shopping district. The usual: hordes of beautiful young women with their ugly boyfriends, noise and the smell of grilled stuff.

Thought I'd walk into a CD store. The woman there knew her stuff, and could speak English. She even had an Einsturzende Neubauten CD, which I bought. Also got some DVDs, as it's cheaper to buy them here than to rent them in Australia!

So, nothing much happened in Taiyuan. Catching a train out to Beijing at midday.

Pingyao

The 11 hour train ride to Pingyao cost 39 yuan ($6.50). Soon I realised why - no attendants to mop the floor (they were too busy wrestling each other), no trays for rubbish, no air-con, half the lights and fans not working. But whatever. As usual, I got landed next to some smelly middle-aged men who weren't keen on a conversation. So I tried to sleep. After 6 hours of that exciting pastime, I moved to the adjacent carriage which had empty seats.

Dawn brought fields fogged over with pollution, a crimson sun and the occasional coal mine/power plant. The

train arrived on time. Some guy from a hotel found me, and after a little bargaining I got a bargain - 45 yuan for a single with shower, t.v. in a Ming-era guesthouse. Bunch of moron Americans staying there being moron Americans, an anorexic chain-smoking vegan British guy who's into really studying Chinese and is hating the "Teaching English" (tm) experience. Very friendly Chinese family running the place.

Pingyao is incredibly well-preserved. Ancient city walls, ancient houses and despite the masses of loaded Western and Chinese tourists, generally friendly, decent people. The little kids are the best, screaming 'hello,' or running away to the safety of their mothers' skirts and then screaming 'hello.' The centre of the city has some tourist streets, but the rest is a vibrant, if comparatively relaxed town. Streets are generally too narrow for cars, so this means that the traffic is limited. Outside the walls, there are still many old houses and this is where to get decent food at a local price, and internet.

I've spent the past two days doing little. Catching up on sleep, washing clothes, enjoying the courtyard of the guesthouse, reading, writing, walking around town, bargaining and buying souveneirs. It's very pleasant, before the rush of noise and pollution that Beijing will bring.

Hua Shan

There's somthing about Taoism that intuitively appeals to me. Mean beards, holy mountains and bad 80s kung-fu movie special effects. Being thoroughly tired of Xi'an, I decided to climb a Taoist holy mountain. Finding a bus wasn't hard, and the friendly conductor wasn't trying to rip me off. In fact, he was too busy defending himself from his wet-towel slinging friend to care. In the end the bus took 2 hours to fill up and leave.

Got there at 4 pm. Heat around 40 celcius. Humidity around 80. Found a restaurant with friendly people who decided to recommend what I should eat. It was good. Wrote a post card. Sent it. Ended up procrastinating at the Taoist temple at the foot of the mountain. Great place. Peaceful carp pond. Waft of fresh timber (the gate is being built). Bearded monks playing music inside the small shrines. The park entrance gate brought a change to the atmosphere: one-hundred-fucking-yuan! Wedged into a narrow canyon there was no escaping it.

The reason for this obscene fee soon became apparent : there's a stone road that leads most of the way up the mountain, then becomes transformed into a series of steps. Everywhere, small stores selling everything from People's Liberation Army overcoats, to Red Bull. Occasionally, a Taoist shrine, or a house.

I took my time, trying not to sweat too much. Didn't help. Soon, I was like the Chinese guys : topless and sweating more than before. Once the sun set, it didn't get much cooler : the path just got steeper. Never climbed up a mountain a) half-naked b) in the middle of the night. Sounds like a good start for an ero-goth movie... but alas, the Hairy Woman Cave Hostel was a disappointment. A surly owner with a surly daughter. I decided to move on.

Ended up at the North Peak hostel. A clean new dorm. 35 Yuan.

Woke up at 6 am, and headed up for a circular visit of the mountain's 4 other peaks. Clouds everywhere, and a heavy drizzle... my luck with mountains and sunrises hadn't changed. Still, the clouds occasionally blew apart, revealing cliffs and pines.

The Japanese school of landscape painting is largely a rip off of the Chinese and so it involves heavy stylisation of what's there. The Chinese on the other hand were only slightly distorting reality. These mountains truly are surreal.

The morning also brought hordes from the cable-car : chain-smoking middle aged men with their families. The other staple : university-age couples. I felt slightly out of place, in my crazy Taoist running up mountain drag. Still, had a chat with a few nice people.

Once it came to coming down the mountain, the clouds cleared... well, until I descended to the sweltering valley below. Made it back to my favourite restaurant for lunch, hopped on the first best bus (which had a DVD of a kick-arse Jet Li film), got to Xi'an's suburban bus station, not knowing where I was. Taking a bus wasn't hard (they have maps pasted on the windows). Got to the station, wrote what I wanted on a piece of paper. Got what I wanted : 21:30 train to Pingyao. Bye bye Xi'an.