Beijing for Beginners

Time for another travel review....

Daughter No 1 has been working in China for the last six months and we felt she was due for a parental visit.

‘Just be prepared for culture shock,’ she warned. Culture shock? I’d spent three years living in LA. I thought I was pretty well prepared for anything.

Our journey into the unknown began on the Express Way from the airport. We expected to be greeted by the fug of hazy sunshine – who hasn’t heard all about China’s pollution problem – but not the blizzard of ethereal white blossom that fell from every available tree.  The husband’s nostrils began to twitch rather ominously as this cloud of kapok infiltrated in through the open car window.

A visit to China is an attack on all senses. We stayed near the Wangfujing, one of Beijing’s major shopping streets, where the rancid aroma of steamed tentacles from the food market hits you as you browse western style malls. 

Deep fried scorpion, silk worm cocoon and star fish on a stick are all available within spitting distance of the latest Prada handbag. And I mean spitting distance.  That’s another Chinese habit which sends shivers down every western visitor's spine. The sound of en masse guttural clearing of the throats and depositing of phlegm is as synonymous to the city as beeping car horns.

(Closed toe shoes are a must. Apart from the fact that you will be spat upon and trampled upon, according to our daughter nappies are also apparently a privilege of the rich. When that toddler suddenly squats down in front of you, move out of the way.)

The locals queue up to view Chairman Mao’s mummified remains on public display in a crystal casket in a huge mausoleum adjacent to Tiananmen Square.  

‘Surely he would be turning in his grave at the sight of all this capitalism,’ I remarked to the husband as we passed yet another Starbucks. He no longer cared, his sinuses were so blocked up.  

Elbows at the ready we battled our way through the throng to all the tourist hot-spots – the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, Lake Houhai, the Summer Palace, the Great Wall. We took our life into our hands crossing Beijing's busy, congested roads - an adventure in itself. (Don’t be fooled by that green man.  If the taxi doesn’t run you down on the zebra crossing, the moped rider will.) 

Despite Beijing’s cosmopolitan veneer, Chinese families asked if they could pose with us – celebrity style – for a photograph. Others strategically placed grannie or granddad close by for a surreptitious snap of a trio of ‘waigouren’. Fair-skinned foreigners are still a novelty to those visiting the city from the outlying countryside.

Beijing is a city of contrasts. It is impossible to ignore the growing gap between the young and wealthy who embrace the western influences, and the poor and elderly, who appear to have been left behind. 

China has a fascinating history and I'm glad I've visited.  To stand on the Great Wall was an amazing, uplifting experience and so was the visit to  our daughter's neighbourhood spa. This is where a little local knowledge goes a long way.  £12 for a full sixty minute body massage.  Every taut, tense muscle pummelled, pinched and pulled into submission. It wasn’t my heart I lost in Beijing, but my back ache.

Off to Uni

One of the pleasures of being a mum of a teenager is the University Open Day.

In the autumn we set off at the crack of dawn for our first day out at the University of Bath. We both liked it, but Bath is a campus university, located out of town, and dissected by its very own 1970’s concrete self-contained shopping precinct.  The teenager’s chosen field of study, we were told, was well over-subscribed.  The entry requirements are high and Bath can afford to be picky. There was a sharp, disapproving  intake of breath when we mentioned the teenager's US education to the Admissions Officer. Therefore, we cast our eyes further afield and the following week we set out for Bristol.

Bristol. Yes, this the place to be. The teenager fell in love with it immediately.  We spent more time admiring the Gothic architecture of the city centre than worrying about the course content. And why not? If you are going to have to live somewhere for 3 years then you may as well live somewhere you like.

We toured the accommodation blocks, some way out of town, some in the thick of the city centre. You want night clubs, one the student guide told us, then this is the place to be. The teenager nearly moved herself in on the spot.

Two more open days followed, both in London.  The husband and I had already decided to steer the teenager in a westerly direction after three years of heavily subsidising daughter No 1 in the capital. Fortunately, we need not have worried. Nothing, it seemed, compared to Bristol.

Last week we were back in Bristol again.  An offer of a place now secured, the teenager was invited to a taster day, further encouragement – not that she needs it – to name Bristol as her first choice.

While the teenager went off to sample lectures, we parents were plied with free tea and coffee and expected to mingle.  This doesn’t happen of course, because we’re British. However, these occasions are always interesting from an observation/researching the next novel point of view – there’s always the Ab Fab type mum, more trendy than her daughter, parents who seem even more addicted to their techno toys than their offspring and the couple arguing over the parking metre expiry situation and inevitably heading for a divorce. 

At the end of the afternoon the teenager was scheduled on a lab tour.  As it was late in the day, and the Bristol traffic is notoriously bad, everyone else in her group had already departed, so I was invited to go along.

We were met by a post-grad student eager to demonstrate the wonders of his electro something or other research into brain responses.  He had rigged up an experiment and sat the teenager in front of his computer monitor with a simple instruction to press a clicker at certain sounds.  This she duly did.

‘Let your mum have a go,’ post-grad student said, obviously needing more than one example to prove/disprove whatever theory he was working on.

I’m not sure how many years he’d spent on his research but the teenager and I are apparently a psychological phenomenon.

‘It must be genetic..’ he said with a baffled expression on his face.

Apparently our responses to the experiment were not the norm…in fact the only other participants, he informed us, to have achieved the same results were all American….

Two years on and it seems the US psyche is still embedded in our soul. We left him perplexed, and re-writing his project parametres….

Meanwhile, although the teenager's brain may well have remained in California, her heart is still quite firmly set on Bristol.