Xmas Briefs in Xining

Just a few days after doomsday, we have Xmas. 

Unable to come up with a coherent narrative for this most western of festivals on the cusp of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, I will summarise in a list of sorts:

• cutlets of bony fish
• half-knitted scarves
• sparklers on a stolen pine tree
• a blessed silversmith from Henan with his Mary Kay helper
• a four minus one cheese pizza
• a bastard freezing walk, a runaway bus and a disco taxi
• a lama playing fur ball
• three colours: cointreau and ORANGE, GREEN dropped in SILVER, and an apple in a box.

Gangnam Style in Xining

On a chilly Friday evening in Xining, a week before Xmas, a festive party was held for the foreign students and teachers of our university at one of the swankiest resorts in town, the 2-star Xining Hotel.

Oh, yes.

Staff had spent the night before decorating the main dining hall. A bemused santa stood in the doorway, and tinsel and balloons wobbled in the hot air spiralling up from the hot plates of the pink-faced noodle-makers. 

The backdrop to the stage was a map of the world with flags marking those countries from which the university could claim to have students and teachers.  I remember the Union Jack (of course), Ireland, and Sudan. 

If the size of the flag was in proportion to the number of students/teachers -- which it wasn't -- the South Korean Taegeukgi should have been a giant number. Most of our students are South Korean (and suspect missionaries) complete with children, tennis racquets, and of course the word of God. 

The Xmas Sacrificial Lamb

It was touching, as a lot of effort had gone into this party which was gloriously free of pomp and circumstance and the word "talent". 

Some of the foreigners performed but happily there was no national anthem or painful renditions of Tang Dynasty poetry. Instead we had a very hot Mongolian dancer, a very lovely pipa solo, African Gangnam Style and an appalling YMCA dance in which YMCA was inconceivably misspelled in body parts. 

The Hot Mongolian

When most of the guests had gone and the staff were beginning to clear away the dirty plates and smeared glasses, someone put Gangnam style back on. It sparked a wondrous free-for-all on the stage. A couple of the waitresses, who were clearly Gangnam stylees, got right into it -- sexy lady! Even our Tibetan teacher did a little horse trot which she skillfully morphed into the windmill style dance beloved of all Tibetans everywhere. One chef trotted across the stage to a burst of applause.

It brought tears to my eyes.

That's Gangnam Style for you. Xmas in Xining (part two!).

Xmas in Xining

It's not often you get a chance to alliterate Xining. 

While it's not uncommon to find Santa Claus and Christmas trees all year round in Xining -- tucked into corners, dusty and forlorn, baubles barely moving in the Qinghai-Plateau breeze, sad remnants of yesteryear -- as the holiday season approaches, upgrades are paraded for discerning shoppers and curious kids. 

Here are two recent sightings!

First, the freshest. This little fellow lives in the BHG Mall -- advertised as Xining's Beijing-style shopping mall. There's a modern cinema on the second floor -- only showing Chinese movies I believe -- while on the first floor are many of the chain fashion stores familiar to anyone in tier 1, 2, and 3 cities in China -- Vera Moda, Jack Jones and of course Hong Kong-owned chemist, Watson's. In the basement is a large posh supermarket which happily sells Spanish imported wine for RMB 70, Belgian fruit beer and that delicious brew, Hoegaarden, every monk's favourite tipple.

And as early as November, this festive display popped up in one of Xining's many branches of KFC (McDonald's has  yet to flip a burger here).

That's Xmas in Xining for you! (Part One!)

a man on a bus

Xining has an expert's knack of riling even the mildest-mannered people. From the rude, reckless drivers to the insane behaviour of pedestrians to the spitting, snarling and smoking populace who treat the street as their own front room. I once saw three workmen in hardhats go at each other with shovels and a girl bark like a dog and gob at her boy friend in a Xining cafe. He wasn't barking but he spat back. Don't get me started on the Hui men with their carpets and Friday afternoon prayers.

It's easy - especially if you are British where complaining has been mastered as a fine art -- to find yourself caught in an endless samsara of bitching.

But today I was yanked down to earth. 

It happened on the 102, a humble little bus that trundles from my university into the centre of Xining. 

I boarded and moved to a space clear of bags and human bodies and clung on (for dear life, I will do a post about the Xining's sado-masochistic bus drivers later) to the back of one seat. 

The man in that seat kept staring at me. In my peripheral vision -- I was in no mood to make eye contact -- I could see he was a smallish man and wore the distintive white cap of the Muslim Hui ethnic group.  Under his gaze, I gritted my teeth, stared out of the window and ignored him.

Then I heard a groaning noise. It was coming from the seated starer.  I glanced down, and it was then that I realised he had a nervous disorder, maybe cerebral palsy. His hands were twisted into cones, his body hung at a strange angle and he shook slightly but regularly.

I felt a sudden stab of shame. 

When he looked up, I smiled, and he smiled back.

Maybe five minutes later it was his stop, He curled out of his chair. I tried to help him move to the door, but he had everything under control. He gestured to the now empty seat for me to sit in it (very rare in Xining where seats are fought over tooth and nail) but I shook my head and smiled.

As the bus screeched to a suicidal stop and the doors jerked open he clambered down. As he stepped off he looked back and gave me an enormous grin.

The bus pulled away I watched him walk off in his unique way. His strides may have been uncoordinated but he walked strongly and with decision.

He treated me with humanity. 

And made me think what really do I have to complain about?

That's a man on a bus for you.

Dr Rex and China's 18th Party Congress

As China opened it's (very important) 18th Party Congress, and western journalists moaned about how boring it was before it had even started, thousands of kilometres west, I went to see a doctor about my hip that was giving me a bit of gyp.

Xining's Red Cross hospital sticks up like a bandaged finger on the edge of Xining's (relatively high-end) International Village (国际村）apartment complexes, favoured by the cities professional expats. It is of the old school -- bathroom tiles and blue-tinted glass for the exterior design but don't hold that against it. Miraculously, several western doctors work in the clinic including a Swiss surgeon and Dr. Rex (more on him later).

In the hospital's car park, a giant TV screen was playing footage from Beijing's Great Hall of the People, where the Congress is being held. 

Inside the clinic, it wasn't chaotic, it was clean and the nurses were courteous. Fourth floor for the 外国专家. A young nurse helped me join the hospital (simple form -- name, age and marital status!) and 挂号 (register to see the doctor). Cost to see Dr. Rex, who is a graduate from Harvard Medical School, 12 yuan. That's £1.20. 

The nurse chats for a while. It's turned cold, I say. (I'm British). Yes, she nods, Last night was 立冬 (Lidong). Lidong literally means the start of winter. She looks at her colleagues who are struggling with mops and buckets, gives me a hurried apology and says she has to get back to work.

I go to the bathroom. It's sparkling clean (unlike the fetid cesspits that invite wickedly at our university). "There's a foreigner here," I hear one of the orderlies say.

As I wait, two female orderlies crowd around me to inspect my silver rings. The very smiley one, who has faint pixie genes, is deaf. But she natters away.

Dr. Rex has been in China off and on for 10 years. He started in Shanghai, spent a few years in Yushu (pre-earthquake) and is now in the modern civilized urban harmony of Xining. He's here because "of his faith" and "to help the people."

He has a gentle self deferential manner. A passion to help beats beneath his white coat. And he has a doctorly chuckle. 

Better than I remember from my NHS experiences.

That's Xining's Red Cross Hospital for you.

Show and Tell

Everyone loves Friday. And I'm no exception.

This Friday it was a double bill of excitement for us here in Xining. In the afternoon our university held a Chinese Language foreign student/teacher talent competition. Our attendance in the audience was compulsory.  While tonight I got last minute tickets from a cameraman friend for a special show on Qinghai TV (Amdo channel), a song tribute to a moustached cowboy-hatted Amdo star.

First off is the the university talent show. Foreigners were herded into the middle aisle. A group of half a dozen Tibetan lads sat off to the side. One with a gravity-defying quiff that gave him a good extra half a foot in height.

Up on stage we were pleasured by a singing duo of Koreans, one with an acoustic guitar; a Malaysian woman who waxed lyrical about her Chinese roots and the great friendship between Malaysia and Xining, a mad Russian in a suit who said he loved Qinghai, an English girl in a Tibetan chuba who strummed her mandolin and sung the Kangding Love Song in a soprano, a Canadian, fluent in Tibetan but not in Chinese, who talked a bit about tangkas, a series of dreadful poetry readings, a Dutch woman who sang the Chinese national anthem in knee-high boots, and a black guy in a cool trilby who crooned a Smokey Robinson-esque number in Chinese.

The highlight was a group of Mongolians who did an edgy dance number as a finale. The girls looked they might have been washing dishes, but the guys, descendants no doubt of the mighty Kublai Khan, were right into it, tent trouser legs flapping in raunchy rhythm. 

Talent, there was not. Long spells of torturous Chinese sycophancy there was. It was nice to see that everyone got a prize, but the top prize went to the Chinese man who organized it! And why not?

Three runners up prizes went to the three brown noses: the Dutch girl who sang the Chinese anthem, the Malaysian woman who adores China and another Malaysian woman who recited poetry although it would have been nice if she hadn't. 

When we emerged blinking we walked into a sandstorm. The sky was a very attractive browny-orange and our mouths soon felt they had morphed into the bottom of our shoes. 

Then onto Qinghai TV. We crawled through the molasses of Xining's Friday evening rush-hour traffic to arrive just in time to have lost our seats but get two new ones. The entrance was guarded by people's armed police and coppers in hard white helmets and white leather braces. I wanted to twang them but they weren't the Village People. 

We sat in the audience and clapped or waved our hands when directed. The performers, all very good, except for some young kids who were a bit rusty, mimed to their songs. So effectively we were listening to CDs. At very loud volume. In a hall. Surrounded by police. 

The old Tibetan man in front of me kept blowing his nose into his hanky. The girl next to me kept checking her phone. The cops were watching. We could have done with a snack.

Three hours in our bums were frozen into a rictus of pain and we escaped.

That's Qinghai TV for you!

Xining snow

Christmas came early to Xining today. About 11 this morning, big flakes, like saucers for mice, came floating down from the overcast heavens.

This magical scene lasted for about 20 minutes. An hour later, the sky was blue, the sun was shining, and wooly gloves were no longer needed.

This is the view from my bedroom window (echoes of  People's Public Housing Project 242 Romania circa. 1976), overlooking the university campus. The trees have been losing their leaves over the past few weeks and so now they are as bare as the day they were born!

Winter in Xining officially lasts six months. That seems unnecessarily cruel. However, the central heating -- centrally controlled -- came on in mid-October and will last until mid-April! Except for the protesters I caught protesting two day's ago (see previous post).

  

The Mad Hat Man

When I first met him, he was wearing a yellow hard hat -- the kind construction workers wear. I was in one of the Tibetan "greasy spoons" opposite Xining's boisterous bus station. Beggars regularly work the row of grubby eateries  (there are a couple of Lhasa joints, one Shigatse, another Rebkong) because Tibetans have to give as part of their religion-culture. Brownie points for the next life or something like that.

I was familiar with the old beggars, bent over double, faces creased over decades, women who smeared their faces with dirt and wore a ragged head scarf, and the Han Chinese monks in light grey, who chuckled when people give or didn't give. But Mr. Mad Hat Man was different.

Yes, he looked wild. His eyes danced a little. But he was young and hearty and healthy. Tall and strapping. "Why are you begging?" I asked, politely.

"Because I'm mad," he said, tapping his yellow headgear.

"Mad people don't know they're mad," I said. "I don't believe you."

He sat next to me, laughing. "I am mad," he insisted. "My family kicked me out of my home."

He was handsome under his dirt. Under his hat. Was he wearing a boiler suit?

"I don't want to steal. And I don't want to go out and work," he went on. "And so I beg."

You have to laugh, don't you?

The next time I saw him (in another Tibetan greasy spoon a few days later), he had ditched the hat and cleaned himself up a bit. He was handing out leaflets for a Lhasa tourist agency.

"It's you again!" I laughed. He smiled and tried to give me a leaflet. I declined. "Foreigners aren't allowed to go to Lhasa," I said. 

He was charming. 

He was disarming. 

Maybe he was mad. 

He followed me into the shop when I bought that lime green coat (see previous post). I had to hide behind the shop keeeper.

___


Today, Xining was crisp and sunny. Not bad weather for late October.

On the bus to the gym I spotted a tiny protest outside the government buildings on the main shopping strip - Xi Dajie. We like to call it Xining's Oxford Street! 

About a dozen or so mainly older people had erected a banner saying “Illegal Stoppage of Heating. How will we get through winter?"

"违法停暖气，冬天怎么过?"

It sinks to minus 20 in the deep of winter and so you can imagine their concern.

I took a photo with my camera phone. Some old guy put his hand out to stop me.  "Who are you?" I said. He walked on.

A few hours later they were still there. All peaceful and very small.

That's Xining for you.

The Flags are Out

The road to our university is decked with Chinese flags. Something new today. 

It's a little over a week before the 18th Party Congress is held in Beijing, which will usher in China's new leadership elite. Perhaps that's why this small city in northwestern China -- a backwater on the cusp of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau -- has been decked with the national flag. 

My Tibetan teacher scorned my new jacket. "It stinks," she said. "It's rubbish. You might as well throw it away." 

It smelt a little musty, shop worn, dusty. But she was going over the top. It's green, with fake fur trim, Tibetan style. If David Tang (of Hong Kong's upmarket Shanghai Tang designer store) went Lhasa he might design something like this. 70 yuan. A bargain I thought the night before at the bus station market when I snapped it up. Not so for Trashi. "70 yuan! I wouldn't have paid 20."  

As she left the classroom she said: "Seriously. Hang it out on your balcony. Let the sun and wind get to it. Air it out. Otherwise you'll poison someone with the smell." She walked off laughing. 

Tibetan humour.