Chi le ma?

Fast forward....and we're both in Beijing after a lovely long break in New Zealand seeing the boys and sorting out our affairs at home. We had a wonderful time catching up with old friends; missed out on a few friends sadly but fully intend to catch up next year!

Beijing is a lively, enterprising, sophisticated place, full of surprises. We've been learning the ropes; everything from how to do the supermarket shopping, catching taxis, going to a tailor, getting onto the local mobile network and bargaining at the market to the more involved skills like finding an apartment and, in Ian's case, getting to grips with the business environment in China.

Yesterday we treated ourselves to a day sightseeing. Ian's PA found us a friend of a friend who could act as our guide to take us to the Great Wall, to a hutong (small street where regular people live) and Silk Street, one of the big markets.

Our guide, Dong, picked us up at 8 o'clock and we drove north through the Beijing traffic to Badaling, where tourists go to see the Great Wall. Dong is in his early thirties, university qualified, and working as a national tourist guide, which means he is qualified to guide tourists around the whole of mainland China. His English was great, he was well-read, knowledgeable, opinionated, lively and open about his background and family. The day was a special one, mostly because of the personal communication we had with him. He grew up in the north, near the border of North Korea. "Chi le ma" is a a greeting that his mother uses, along with that generation that has known hunger. It means "Have you eaten?" We all really liked each other, so much so that he invited us to his place for dinner next weekend. Let's hope that it happens!

Some pics:








The Great Wall, stretching into the distance.










Our part of the Great Wall.















Ian got a medal which says, "I have climbed the Great Wall, Ian Hendeikse"










Ian and I with a group of off-duty soldiers. They are all aged 18-23, mostly from rural parts of China. After we had our photo taken with them one of them was heard to say to his companion, "Why did they want to have our photo taken with us"?








Our hostess at a specialist tea shop called "Dr Tea". She wore a nametag that said "Number 23". We bought some teas there and a special teaset. Its picture changes colour when you put hot tea into it.



















Of course we saw the Birdsnest.

When we arrived to take our hutong tour, we had just been discussing with Dong the English nicknames we have come across here that Chinese people have adopted - "Apple", "Cat", as well as some more conventional names.
"Hello, welcome to China! I am your tour guide", twinkled a lively young woman, "my name is Eleven!"
I'm sure I heard Dong gently snort beside us.

She rode beside our rickshaw on a bicycle, telling us the history and significance of the hutong. Her ambition is to be a national tour guide.

We had a padded rug put across our knees and off we went, past the people on the street corners playing cards and mahjong, past people coming out of the communal bathrooms with towels wrapped around their hair, past the bicycles and cars and the people going about their lives.

We were taken into a traditional hutong home, homes for the extended family grouped in a particular way around a central courtyard. We met Mr Zhang, whose family had lived in the compound for 72 years. He gave us tea and showed us old photos of his family, then told us to ask him any questions we wanted to. Pushing down a voyeuristic feeling I asked him if he had lived here during the Cultural Revolution. During this time in the 1960s land and homes were taken for redistribution in China. Mr Zhang was sent from his university studies to work on the land in the north of China for six years, and like other people of that generation, was unable to resume his studies. He worked in a factory for many years when he returned, but was able eventually to get a better job through his foster sister, who had been able to finish her studies prior to the 1960s. They were eventually able to repurchase their family home from the government, where his sister's family and his 91 year old father live still. Mr Zhang is retired now and was reserved, but courteous and warm. He told us he had visited New Zealand, where he particularly liked the geysers.