It was 0 degrees in Beijing yesterday, but it is a cold that is negligible if you have a good jacket. We have spent a lot of time walking these past few days, slowing down our thoughts and focusing on the most basic things like looking around and eating pancakes from Hutong hawkers. I have been surprised with the fact we haven’t eaten any meat yet (although i am sure there have been base stocks that have been meat), people told us we would have a hard time in Beijing because it was so meat heavy in its cuisine but so far it has been ok. Rice congees, spring onion and egg pancakes and buns are easy and you can find them anywhere on the street, especially for breakfast. Dinner is a little harder but we haven’t eaten a lot of dinners for some reason.
This slowing down has been such a welcome change for us – and i think we may just continue like this for some time. Part of the reasons we have come away on this residency is really to consolidate our practice as Deadpan. To really try and work out what it is we have been doing, and where we want to go next. I know that both of us are so pulled in other directions with other projects, so to have this time to re-evaluate is very timely. In many ways the mode of travel has dictated this – we open ourselves to the whims of the city as we walk to our next destination, and without pushing it too much it opens space for the two of us to talk about where we are in our lives and with our work.
We visited Tianamen Square yesterday and I felt a little strange doing it. 20 years on…
For the people here I imagine it is long in the past, there were thousands of Chinese tourists buying panda hats and Chinese flags to wave and get photos in front of the monuments. So for them time has perhaps moved on, but we in the west invoke that day as THE example of Chinese government brutality.
This feeling of state controlled space has not been evident to us, I have noticed the People’s Liberation Army soldiers protecting government buildings (and you would not want to mess with these guys, even in -3 degree temperatures they are at their post incredibly alert.) but the general vibe on the street is one of the flow of a bustling metropolis. Cars, bikes and people intersecting with each other 24 hours a day without accidents (and seemingly without road rules). The Great Firewall has been the place that it has been most evident – still major social networking sites are inaccessible (but I haven’t missed them).
As we wrestle with the teeming mass of humanity that is Beijing we are content in the fact that we are doing it slowly, we are doing it on our two legs and in some ways we are mapping the city in our own accidental way as the street hawkers become marker points on our journey.
