A Busy Month

The month of March turned out to be considerably busier than its predecessor. The last couple of weeks simply flew by. I worked on several photo projects: a publicity poster for a beauty contest, a local music band for new magazine and 2 corporate events, (http://net workclub.com/pastevents.html) one of which was for Reuters (http://awards.lipperweb.com/china/Index.aspx?lang=English&id=s633313572081488592).

Despite it all, I still took a bit of time to wander the streets in search of pretty photos to take. That’s how I stumbled upon a big outdoor food market. It would be Beijing’s equivalent to Montreal’s Jean-Talon market. It was quite interesting although, besides the open air meat counters, I didn’t really see as much surprising things a foreigner could expect to witness in a Chinese market.
















































I spent much less time teaching. No more English classes and I’m tempted to put an end to the French classes as well, especially since they are Saturday and Sunday mornings. On the other hand I feel somewhat bad to”abandon” my 2 students to whom I thought everything even though it’s not that much. As for my Mandarin course, I’ve stopped that also a few months ago. We were 3 students in that class and the other 2 were Japanese women. Even if my pronunciation was much better than theirs, they knew many more words than I did, probably because, unlike me, they studied in between classes, and they mostly knew how to read and written them since Japanese characters are in fact an old version of the Chinese ones. Thus I was slowing them down in some respects and they were slowing me down in others and I didn’t feel I was learning what I wanted to so I stopped. Since then, I have slowly summarised and synthesised the book we were using in an effort to learn what I should have already learned. Now that I’m done with that all I have to do, is to actually study it, stay tuned… ( here it is for those whom that might interest: /davidalarie.com/feature/china/blog/files/Mandarine.doc ) Nonetheless, I feel somewhat more comfortable and open to the language and some words and small sentences actually stick a little easier whereas they would simply bounce off at the beginning when my brain seemed totally impervious to it all.

On the unordinary side of things, a large clandestine pillow fight had been organised to happen underneath China’s largest digital screen which is 12 500 squared meters. I still didn’t take to time to make nice photographs of it but fear not, I probably will get around it eventually. Of course, the Chinese authorities being very sensitive to anything ever slightly unusual and even more so if it didn’t go through series of “approvals”, came in a large numbers and with dogs in order such an unprecedented event. That was entertaining in itself, to see such a big reaction over something as benign and harmless as a peaceful, family oriented pillow fight. Who knows maybe it would have ended up that way back in Canada as well.

For the first time in my life, believe it or not, I got a professional foot massage. A friend of mine had some extra gift vouchers valid in a quite fancy massage place. Massages, every kind of, are very popular here. There are “special massage” places on every second corner, but the place we went too was not that kind at all. There were about six or seven of us, all comfortably sited in a row one beside the other and each with our own masseuse of the opposite sex. They started by soaking up our feet in steaming hot water. After that began a 85 minute long feet massage. It was both intense and enjoyable. It ended up with a short massage of the legs as well and followed by another short massage, that time, of the back. We all came out of there quite relaxed indeed.

Lastly, yet another first, this time as an actor! Well maybe I exaggerate just a little bit when I say actor since it was only for a restaurant commercial and really all we were doing was to look very happy and lively while eating Chinese hotpot. The whole thing lasted only 2 or 3 hours but it was still an interesting experience and on top of a small pay we ate a nice free meal. Unfortunately I don’t have photos of it since I was in front of the lens for once.

Spring is in the Air

The smell of spring is in the air. Over here, winter is definitively over even though it was nothing compared to the Canadian winter, at least to most areas of Canada. There never really was any snow to speak of, at least in Beijing. It’s not that it did not get cold enough, we could safely skate on lakes but it was extremely dry and there were hardly any precipitation at all. There still is any and most days had a blue sky with the exception of a few smoggy days.




















































Besides the continuity of the Spring Festival festivities, the month of February was relatively quite in many respects. I thus took more time to wander the streets and small allies (hutongs). I also went to the Cinema Temple to look at it more closely. That was where I first saw the dragon dances and those special fireworks they make by throwing melted metal above their heads onto a platform of branches and bamboos. From what I could make up of this place, they use that area to shoot films hence The Cinema Temple. I was able to wander around what looked like an old far west ghost town but Chinese style. After dusk, there were once again sparkly fireworks but I particularly appreciated observing them preparing before it with that small metal furnace.






























A few days later, I was invited to a Chinese networking event. It was through that same group that I first visited the Cinema Temple. Chinese seem to be very keen on giving out business cards which they respectfully hand out and receive using both hands. I, myself, was so far given a relatively impressive stack of cards although I cannot read most of them since they are, of course, written in Chinese. We were presented a few performances like this young boy who could play an instrument similar to a trumpet with surprising ability. Afterwards, we all went to have lunch in a large dining room which took the better part of an equally big greenhouse. Back then, it was still somewhat chilly outside so we were quite comfortable inside. I couldn’t help but think about how pointlessly astronomical the winter heating bills must be. The food however was as good and diversified as usual.

The Olympic site seems to be approaching completion. The famous “water cube”, structure destined to the swimming competitions, lately hosted FINA, “Fédération Internationale de Natation”. I did not go to see any of the events but I still was able to sneak my way in the Olympic site where I was able to go around the cube and look it up from closer. The Olympic festivities are promising to be quite colourful.