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Asian Beijing Travel and Finest Art Exhibition Tour July 5, 2008

Posted by dodo in : Australia, China, Europe, Hotels, Japan, Restaurant, Tour, Travelling Bag, USA , trackback

The tourist coaches disgorge their contents into the forecourt of the Jinling Hotel, Nanjing. The colours and shapes of middle-class Europe, America, Japan, Australia, stream through plate glass doors and stand in dazed clusters among their luggage, whilst tour leaders completeyet another set of check-in formalities.

Polished chrome and marble reflect luxuriant indoor gardens. A pianist’s vacuous tinkling drifts from the intercommunication system. It could be the foyer of an international hotel anywhere in the world.

Outside, late autumn sunshine filters through the industrial haze. A complex of fountains makes dark splashes on patterned paving. The white-painted concrete fence marks a boundary, on the far side of which the other China, in sober-suited rows, peers with impassive curiosity at this world within their world, as we stand before cages at a zoo. We are aware of another China. It flows past endlessly on jangling bicycles; it smiles from doorways and factory workbenches when we are shown round.But in the restaurants we are segregated; even our Chinese guides eat separately. We shop in Friendship Stores for tourists, where they speak English. The other China is always just beyond reach.Travel Guidebook

Mary’s padlock had broken, and she needed a replacement before we moved on tomorrow. Reception couldn’t help. Neither could the girls in the hotel arcade, with its jade, cloisonné and mirror-smoothe laquerwork, all bargains to the wealthy. So I sketched a padlock on an envelope, and three of us ventured into the streets.

China goes to bed early. At 8.30pm the cyclists were thinning out and shops were closing, but delicious smells wafted from the stalls selling hot snacks, and there were people round these and the bookstalls. Orange sodium lighting freckled the pavement between shadows of plane trees bordering the road. Some shops re-opened at our approach. Their proprietors were anxious to help, but nobody had a padlock. We were about to abandon our search outside a shop displaying a plastic bowl of water in which a tangle of striped snakes writhed terminally (was that what we had for dinner?) when someone said in English:

“Excuse me, do you have a problem? May we help?” We explained about the padlock to the two young men. They looked doubtful, but one thought he knew a place, if we could catch it before it closed. They came from Bejing, we discovered, where they had studied English for two years at college, and kept it up since with a programme on Radio Bejing . . . “but it is wonderful to talk to English people!”

The younger man, with the fine-boned build of the northern Chinese, told me that he made his livi’ng as an artist. I was impressed. I had heard that only the specially talented could achieve this in China. I told him that my hobby was watercolour painting. His face lit up.

“My studio is very near. Please come and see my work. It is my home too.” Then, seeing our hesitation: “My wife will be there.” So we discarded caution and accepted.

We left the wide main street and found ourselves in an unlit alleyway. The ground was rough, and our companions produced torches to guide us. On each side concrete apartment blocks soared, with the sky a jar-edged patch of lighter darkness far above. Curious people looked from lighted doorways at the sound of our voices. We climbed a staircase outside an apartment block, and halted on the tenth floor, a narrow landing, onto which opened several iron doors with reinforced glass panels. Our friend opened the nearest door. We had arrived.

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Asian Beijing Travel and Finest Art Exhibition Tour

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