Pictured above Left to Right: Shirly, Julia, Michael, Carole, Ian, Jiang and Candy.
On arrival in Beijing we checked into our wedding suite at the Double Happiness hotel! What a delight to find every comfort and luxury in a beautiful building around a courtyard with delightful staff to help us. Then we were taken out for dinner by Jiang, Candy and Shirly (see posting from May 2018 for an introduction to Jiang and Shirly). Jiang was living in Shanghai when he stayed with us in February, but was subsequently posted by his IT company to Guangzhou, where he met Candy. Jiang now has a new job in Beijing as Assistant to the CEO of a company that hooks up Chinese tourists around the world with Chinese-speaking drivers and guides. Jiang told us that there were over a million Chinese tourists travelling abroad at any one time. And there were also plenty of Chinese students and migrant workers in the same countries needing a bit of extra cash. So he was hoping this might become a business on the scale of Uber or Tripadvisor.
Candy was in Beijing visiting Jiang while on holiday from her management job (in charge of something like marketing or HR) in Guangzhou, where she had her own apartment. Shirly, a High School English teacher, also owned her own apartment way out to the West of Bejing. Our visit coincided with Shirly’s last week of school holidays, so she volunteered to be our guide in Beijing. While Carole and Michael went off on a trip to the Great Wall, Ian and I sorted out our Chinese SIM cards and then took the subway out to visit Shirly. The subway was packed - today was the somethingth anniversary of the glorious victory of the People’s Republic over the Japanese - and most people got off at the stop for the military museum.
On arrival in Beijing we checked into our wedding suite at the Double Happiness hotel! What a delight to find every comfort and luxury in a beautiful building around a courtyard with delightful staff to help us. Then we were taken out for dinner by Jiang, Candy and Shirly (see posting from May 2018 for an introduction to Jiang and Shirly). Jiang was living in Shanghai when he stayed with us in February, but was subsequently posted by his IT company to Guangzhou, where he met Candy. Jiang now has a new job in Beijing as Assistant to the CEO of a company that hooks up Chinese tourists around the world with Chinese-speaking drivers and guides. Jiang told us that there were over a million Chinese tourists travelling abroad at any one time. And there were also plenty of Chinese students and migrant workers in the same countries needing a bit of extra cash. So he was hoping this might become a business on the scale of Uber or Tripadvisor.
Candy was in Beijing visiting Jiang while on holiday from her management job (in charge of something like marketing or HR) in Guangzhou, where she had her own apartment. Shirly, a High School English teacher, also owned her own apartment way out to the West of Bejing. Our visit coincided with Shirly’s last week of school holidays, so she volunteered to be our guide in Beijing. While Carole and Michael went off on a trip to the Great Wall, Ian and I sorted out our Chinese SIM cards and then took the subway out to visit Shirly. The subway was packed - today was the somethingth anniversary of the glorious victory of the People’s Republic over the Japanese - and most people got off at the stop for the military museum.
Shirly met us at her stop and took us through her local park, explaining that there had been a big steel works in that area, but these had been moved further out of town and the park had been built so that the former steel workers could enjoy their retirement. We saw groups of happy old people doing just that. Shirly tried to engage some old women in conversation, but they were too intent on their card game, so we chatted with a guy who was smoking a pipe. He told Ian he had a much more valuable pipe at home. We established the fact that they had secure housing and a state pension, and we had the first of numerous conversations about Ian’s great age. When they congratulated him on his evident good health, he responded with praise for the British NHS! I understood that Shirly had bought her apartment cheaply from a former manager of a public housing block. I suspect this may be an example of government officials and bureaucrats profiting from the ‘opening up’ of the Chinese economy to privatisation.
Shirly’s flat, on the 3rd floor with no lift, was light and comfortable, with a window alcove full of plants. She sometimes lets out her bedroom through Airbnb, and sleeps on her living room sofa (like our airbnb host in Helsinki). It seems that the first thing you are offered wherever you go is a cup of hot water, and after drinking that, she set to making the dumplings. I’d asked her to teach me, so I watched and helped a bit, but the kitchen was too small for me to be of much use.
During this school holidays, Shirley had taken a trip to Japan and written a novel – or a series of short stories – about the pressure of the school leaving/university entrance exams, the gaokao (see Guardian article Is China’s gaokao the world’s toughest school exam?) I think each of her stories is about the way this pressure affects a particular young person with different educational needs. I hope she’ll ask me to help her edit an English translation one day.
That night we went to the Peking Opera with Candy, Michael and Carole, and the following day, we’d planned to go to the Forbidden City with a friend of Shirly’s – a history teacher who used to work as a guide there. When we found that all the tickets for that day were sold out, I was more disappointed at missing the opportunity to talk to Shirly’s friend about the content of his history lessons, than I was about missing the chance to join the 80,000 people trooping through each day.
 But once he realised that he couldn’t get us into the Forbidden City he went off.I think it was a serious loss of face for him, and we couldn't persuade him to |  join us for a takeaway lunch back at the hotel, where Shirly joined us in singing Where has the time gone? |
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