Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Year everyone!!! I wish you all happiness, good health and all you desire. I still don’t know for sure how I am going to celebrate yet. We’ll see what the evening has in store. They do celebrate the New Year here, at least more than Christmas, but I don’t know how. Bu the way, I finally beat John at chess after at least 30 attempts. A great moment! It’s probably sign of success coming my way for 2008. At least I hope so.

In my quest for news, I heard about some orphanage in financial difficulty that supposedly was on the verge of eviction. A visit was organised there just before Christmas to go play with the kids and cheer them up a bit so I tagged along. It was about a 45 min. drive outside of town so that made my second excursion to the country side, the first one being The Great Wall one six weeks earlier. It made me realise once again how limited my view of China has been so far. I will visit the rest sooner or later.

It was my first time visiting an orphanage. I was somewhat expecting a relatively heavy and sad ambiance but it was all to the contrary. I was happily surprised to see all the kids being so smiley and joyful. The place resembled an elementary school more than anything else. The classroom walls were covered with Chinese characters for their learning. The kids seemed very pleased to see us and immediately accepted us as new friends. Children truly are marvellous beings. They make you wander what transforms us in such a way once adults. We seem to have lost this spark of intense joy that seems to be so tenacious even in children who have already been through so many hardships.

Apparently their financial situation was soon to improve and they had good hopes of avoiding eviction. Good news being unfortunately less popular than bad ones, I had lost my scoop. Of course it’s all for the better. Let’s all wish them best of luck and a Happy New Year!!!

Merry Christmas !!!

I’m just recovering from a feverish night. I don’t know if it was food poisoning or what but it had been a long time since I had felt that bad without the aid of alcohol. I’m feeling better now and I’m taking advantage of that forced rest to wish you all a merry Christmas! Here Christmas is not really celebrated at all even though commercial centers are working very hard in the attempt to remedy the situation.

Things are progressing slowly. Some days I feel like that I’ve come a pretty long way in only three months. Yet, some other days, I feel the exact opposite. I must stay positive... I started to wander the streets once again looking for images and stories to submit to Reuters. Nothing conclusive so far but there again, I must stay positive, the moment will come. I also keep giving and receiving my classes. I continuously make new friends and acquaintances which is very interesting and stimulating. I learn and discover a little bit more everyday even if it’s not as intensely as it was in the beginning.

I stumbled upon that old lady in a hutongs neighbourhood. Hutongs are narrow bordered by old traditional houses even if more and more they are being reconstructed anew but while retaining their style. Oftentimes older people tend to be more reticent but it was all to the contrary with her. She kept hanging me of kite toy (I don’t know how it’s really called, if you know please tell me) so that I could try it. She was giving me lessons and all. People that were passing by were quite amused to see us both playing and laughing together.

Here we can see the contrast in food hygiene. On the one hand you have a kitchen that looks like a surgery room and on the other you see pork’s stomachs and split up heads lying around on an outside counter. The way they manipulate and treat the meat can be rather disconcerting at times. Often it is not even refrigerated and is lying around for people to shuffle through by themselves in the search of a good piece like we do with fruits and vegetables. So even if the kitchens might seem totally sanitized you simply don’t know where the food comes from.

They are making dumplings here. They are a very popular kind of food. They come in all sorts of sizes and feeling, boiled, steamed and pan-fried. I quite like them myself too but I prefer them with hot sauce whereas people here have them mostly with dark vinegar and/or soy sauce.

30 Already...

Yes, it’s official. I am 30 years old already. What can I say? I spent my thirtieth birthday at working on my photos on my computer and at teaching English. I celebrated with 2 big bottles of beer and a king of Haagen-Dazs Popsicle once again in front of my computer. We could say that it’s part of the other side of the coin. Fear not! I am not putting this here to attract pity, nor a deluge of happy birthdays. It’s only for the record. Besides not only I think it’s safe

to say that I somewhat had coming but nothing would have stopped me from going out alone and embarked on an all nighter bender which could have probably happen with a minimum of good will. The fact of the matter is that I had things to do. That being said, I’m no longer in my twenties (not in body, that is...).

So what was I so busy doing? Well apart from finalizing Key Consulting’s studio portraits, and the souvenir calendar of the Great Wall, I had an important meeting with Reuters’ China chief photographer to prepare for the next day. I thus had to work a bit on my port-folio. It turned out to be a bit of a mission just to find their office and to get there. Apparently, it’s that way somewhat on purpose.

To summarise it, I had a rendezvous but I did not know exactly where nor did I have a phone number to call at. So after a few Google searches I found a building name and even an address. However, in such a big city, an address alone doesn’t help you that much (Beijing is not on Google map...) A few supplementary searches and I found another business with the same address. I called them and the receptionist transferred me to Paggy who spoke good English. I politely explained her the situation and she accepted to give me her cell phone number. Then all I had to do once I got in a taxi was to call her and pass my phone to the driver. There’s a neat little trick that saved me on several occasions. Once arrived and ready, the elevator doors open. The whole floor was undergoing intense renovations. They had obviously moved out a while back. Miraculously, at the same time, Paggy text messaged me to make sure I was alright. Quite generous with her time, she then researched herself Reuters address and phone number through the building’s management office. She wrote it all, in Chinese of course, on a piece of paper that I simple had to pass over to the next taxi driver. He of course dropped me off at the wrong place but after having found another helpful receptionist to pass my phone over to, I managed to reach my destination.

When I got up this morning, I was treated with a nice little surprised, our very first snow. I had a Mandarin class so I unfortunately did not have time to take very many photos of the event. Once my class was over it was all gone. Speaking of Mandarin, the progress is very slow but it’s there nonetheless. My pronunciation as supposedly somewhat improved and I can recognise about 15 – 20 characters which is nothing. To be able to read the news paper correctly, you need to know about 3000. Patience I must keep going.