Coming to Beijing in the middle of winter may or may not have been a mistake – in many ways it was perfect for what Willoh and I wanted to do and that was focus on rethinking the way we work and re-looking at older works.
The flipside to that was that the cold was not a great motivator for getting out and doing things.
I also started to notice something specific that was happening with the extreme cold (minus temps), was that all the old wounds – really really old – as in the dislocating shoulders I had when i was a child began aching. A deep painful ache that only went away once there was warmth in a room again. As if the weather was reminding me of the old issues my body has carried since the time of birth almost. Things that even I had forgotten about.
In thinking about the body in this hard environment with its pollution, concrete streets and buildings and trapped within 4 to 6 layers of clothing, i cannot help but think that it is being assaulted – i wonder how the inhabitants of this place survived the milennia of civilisation in the north of china when it got below zero.
But then the body seems to be something that is talked about here – that the topic is more open than in Australia. People are more exposed – they spit, they piss, they vomit openly, they smoke in the restaurants, they regularly get massages (sometimes communally) and they share public toilets together, at swimming pools it is not un-normal for women to pick at each other or talk about something that is apparent to one of them on the others body. (Beijing during the period before the Olympics led a campaign to have people stop spitting in the streets, so as not to offend westerners not used to the practice.)
I think that I have forgotten that I live in a society that is bound up in British politeness and almost shame when it comes to the body. Sure we are happy to wear hotpants and show off a lot of flesh but when it comes to discussing the intricacies of our bowel movements we are less likely to do that. And in the end what is more important? – I think that being open to our body and the problems attached to it is a much healthier process.
I have summised that somehow we see the body as a machine in the west – it is fine when everything is going right but when it breaks down we go and get a tune up. In China it is more akin to the centrepoint, around which everything else orbits (if you don’t have your health what do you have?) Any exercise you do is holistic, if you eat these foods it helps with this and stay away from xyz because your body doesnt like it. In Chinese culture there is also no mind/body divide – it is all part of the one organism, i like this approach.
I read somewhere that there is no western health practice that focuses specifically on breathing – in India there is yoga, in China there is Tai Chi. But of course…its so simple, breathing…
