DPRK: Prelude in Beijing, Lunch with Mr Liu

When we had all gathered we immediately split up again. Some of us had booked a tour of the Hutongs, the narrow alleyways that are the back streets of Beijing. Others were off to see the Bird's Nest Olympic stadium; others had their own individual plans. Those of us off to the Hutongs were taken by bus and dropped off in a small square where a row of pedal rickshaws were waiting.

First however we had a lunch. For this we were led into what appeared to be somebody's house. I wasn't very hungry so I just had a single bottle of beer while the others ate what seemed to be a very nice meal. As lunch was finishing we were joined by a local guide, a rather loud and confident young woman, and by Mr Liu, a man who though now retired was once a figure of some importance in the world of Singing Crickets and Fighting Grasshoppers. Mr Liu was a gap-toothed and weather-beaten elderly man carrying a rather odd assortment of items. His fame as a breeder of insects was readily apparent from the number of books he showed us featuring pictures of him with some of his prize specimens. Apparently, so our translator informed us, he was also famous for holding a record for cooking dumplings.

He showed us the tools of his trade: a fighting bowl, a living bowl complete with a separate connubial chamber, a long thin feeding spoon, a long flat (yet oddly delicate) cricket pooper-scooper, a long thin brush to encourage recalcitrant insects into the aforementioned connubial chamber.
Most intriguing were a set of miniscule scales for ensuring that the grasshoppers were fighting in the right weight class.
Someone asked, via our translator, how they knew who had won a fight. It seems that they operate not so much a "last-cricket-standing" as a "last-cricket-not-eaten" principal.
As he talked, Mr Liu bounced around the room with irrepressible energy, swooping and leaping like some demented thing. His enthusiasm was manic, his patter at a Gatling-gun speed that taxed the translator's abilities to the full. I felt worn out just watching him.

When he was finished he packed everything away - two ornate earthenware jars containing a grasshopper each vanishing into pockets in a trick worthy of Tommy Cooper.
It was fascinating but when I thought back to it later it reminded me of the last of the Rocky movies. In that film, Rocky is retired and running a restaurant. He is a convivial host, joining in with the guests, signing autographs and recounting tales of his past glories. Mr Liu seemed a little like that; a man who has seen some glory days and some acclaim now endlessly retelling his past for the tourists.
I felt a little sad at the idea.

Afterwards we went back into the square and into those bicycle rickshaws. They pedalled off down the streets and we sat back eager to see the famed Hutongs. I'm not sure what we had expected but what we got was a bit of a disappointment. The route led us through dull grey streets with dull grey walls. We stopped once at a gate but we didn't go through it, just looked at it. Finally we stopped at a market. It was predominantly a small local food market and not terribly interesting though it was, as markets almost always are, a good place to take pictures.

North Korea update

I realised, as I was filling in a form to apply for a DPRK visa, that I will, if all goes to plan, be entering the country on my birthday. I'd known of course that my birthday was during the trip but not that it was my actual entry date into North Korea.
I've spent quite a few of my birthdays out of the country because it almost always falls into the Easter break. For example, two years ago I was fifty and spent it having a marvellous time visiting friends in Chicago.
Our visit on to the pub on my birthday was very silly and to prove it here is one of the photographs from the event (let no one accuse me of being unwilling to show myself in an unflattering light!) wearing the rabbit ears that were one of the several Alice in Wonderland presents that I received.
Lest anyone should scoff, there exists in another location on the web, a set of such photographs showing each of the group in turn wearing them.



I must find out what the alcohol situation is in DPRK, though I think I'll leave the bunny ears at home.

My favourite American city

This entry refers to a visit to Chicago in 1999. A slightly different version of it has previously appeared on my other blog.

I like Chicago much more than any other city I have been to in America. It was something that I realised very quickly on my first visit. In spite of the terrible weather (when it wasn’t raining it was foggy) I enjoyed every minute of my short stay in the city, from my visit to the Art Institute to my night watching Blues legend, Koko Taylor - 71 at the time- it was all good.
Even the architecture appeals. There is the same abundance of skyscrapers as Manhattan, each with a weird, wonderful and unmatched design, but unlike Manhattan they are spread out. The streets are wider and lighter and less crowded. People aren't in such a hurry to get to wherever it is they are going and the whole place generally feels spacious and relaxed.
As we strolled through downtown on the first afternoon one of fellow travellers, Vanessa who had an infallible eye for a photograph, who spotted the cow. Spotted the spotted cow in fact. The first bizarre thing about it was that its spots, against the brown of its hide were bright blue. As we approached I realised that in reality they weren't spots at all, they were holes through the body with the insides painted blue. And it was wearing spectacles.
Suddenly the whole world was filled with cows. It was like a magic eye picture where something interesting is lurking unseen but suddenly leaps out at you as your eyes take on the proper focus. There was a cow on roller blades wearing a walkman, a cow painted to resemble a milk float, a carousel cow and another whose hide had been sculpted into a relief map of the world. A red and green cow jumped over a crescent moon. They were everywhere.
It was, I discovered, the Chicago 'Cows on Parade' exhibition which businessman Peter Hanig had instigated after seeing something similar on a trip to Switzerland. Chicago had taken the idea on board with a vengeance. Scattered around the city were more than 300 of them decorated by local artists in every conceivable style. For a city which was burned down in 1871 by a conflagration allegedly started by a cow kicking over a lantern it was a remarkably appropriate theme. I loved it and added 'great sense of humour' to the things that I liked about the city, joining its general appearance and the numerous blues clubs at the top of the list.
Down in the art museum things just went on getting better. I can spend days wandering around art galleries and this one was one of the best I'd ever seen. Its collection is mixed by any standards. Any artist of note that you have ever heard of is likely to be represented somewhere among the 300,000 exhibits. Renoir rubs shoulders with Picasso, Warhol sits side by side with Monet. In keeping with the cow theme I was particularly taken with a plaster relief by Giovanni Caccini in which a king was having one of his enemies stuffed into the hinged back of a brass bull to be roasted alive.
Most interesting though was the contemporary art section. It occurred to me that this would be the ideal place for Damien Hirst to exhibit a cow sawn in half but no, there was nothing like that there. There were however a great variety of pieces, some of which I liked, some of which I disliked and some of which were so risible that they should be eligible for the Turner prize, a competition that regularly has me breaking down into fits of helpless laughter. One 'sculpture' consisted of a piece of electrical flex and some light bulbs - I mistook it for a piece of unfinished wiring until I noticed that it had a label with a title. By far the weirdest though was 'Clown Torture.' This was a large square white walled room with videos showing a clown rolling around screaming and the same clown sitting on the toilet with his trousers around his ankles. It was accompanied by a soundtrack of groans , screams and maniacal laughter. It wasn't clear if the clown was being tortured or the audience.
I went back to the comparatively less self indulgent works of Andy Warhol. As I was looking at them I chatted to Murray the huge security guard. In a London gallery the security staff usually sit solemnly on plastic chairs at the end of the room eyeing everyone with suspicion. I have never heard one of them speak and I've visited a lot of galleries. In America it's different. Wherever you go ten seconds after you enter the room and start looking at the paintings the guard is your lifelong pal. Murray had introduced himself as I stood looking at a painting by Gerhadt Richter that was a huge oil painting of an out of focus photograph of ablurred street scene, with the remark. The novelty of a good painting of a bad photograph appealed to me.
"Kinda messes with your eyes don't it?"
I had to agree that it did.
"You Australian?" he asked.
It was a mistake that I found all too common and totally inexplicable. My Wolverhampton accent sounds nothing like an Australian but everywhere I go in the United States people always ask the same question.
"English." I corrected.
At least Murray didn't go on insisting that I was from Down Under as so many of his countrymen have in the past.
He did shed some light on the mystery for me though by explaining that while Australians were usually happy to talk to him most English seemed less eager to respond to his friendliness. Presumably taken by the novelty of an Englishman prepared to listen he followed me around on my circuit of the room giving me his opinion of virtually every piece there. He told me he'd never liked modern art at all until he'd been transferred to this gallery. He'd always preferred pictures that were 'of something'. Here though, over the months, he'd spent so much time looking at the work that he'd started to find something good in most of it. His enthusiasm was as infectious as only that of an amateur can ever truly be as he showed me around some of his personal favourites. Intrigued by his insights I asked him what he thought about 'Clown Torture'. He scratched his head and pondered.
"I guess some things you gotta work at harder than others," he said "I'll be retired before I figure that one out.

I'm not sure if I've used this poem here before, though I suspect I might have, but if I have, here it is again - a poem I wrote after my visit to the Art Institute.

Clown Torture

If I live to be a hundred, and see it all before I die
Some things I'll never figure out, I'll have to let them lie.
There is no such thing as justice and no such thing as truth
There is no such thing as contact - we can't share a point of view
There is a distance that's between us that is more than miles or years
I can no more laugh your humour than you can cry my tears

In a corner of the institute
In a room that's walled in white
There is a scream that lasts for ever
From a clown that no-one likes
I thought I didn't understand
But suddenly it's clear
The dichotomy of terror
Turning laughter into fear.

If I live to be a hundred and spend every minute searching
Some secrets I know I'll never find, some pains will still be hurting
But there's no such thing as sorrow and no such thing as love
And no such thing as failure when there is nothing left to prove.
There's a distance lies between us that is more than miles or days
I can no more chose your dreams than you can guide my way.