In which I become a Chinese online media superstar


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Published: August 12th 2012
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On Sunday we went to eat at a Japanese place, and on Monday we somehow managed to stay out late again in the pleasant setting of Hohai park. It was a long way from where we all lived, but worth the trip- it consisted of a large lake laid out in a figure of 8 surrounded by bars and restaurants whose lights lit up after dark and glimmered out across the water.



On the way back from the park we discovered a gigantic screen had been set up on the square near where we lived, upon which was being projected some pictures of London and various Chinese olympic stars (of which this year there have been many). Seeing foreigners taking such a keen interest one of the women running it bounded over and explained. Apparently it had been organised by QQ, the Chinese version of Twitter. Random passersby could have their pictures taken with the athletes and then uploaded. Would we like to have ours taken? So it is that somewhere deep inside the Chinese internet there is a picture of us, probably gathering a large number of likes, dislikes, and triumphant comments of how China is beating us in the olympic games. Perhaps one day, should I get a QQ account, I may even find it.



This week was a bit quieter than some, then Friday came and it was several people’s last night in Beijing. In celebrating this we found we had a problem. Should we go out all night and give everyone a proper send-off, or should we stay in and preserve our energies? This would have been an easy dilemma to solve (for a British University student there is usually only one answer to such a question) were it not for the precise nature of what we were doing on the following day.



On the following day we were going to the Great Wall of China.



I decided on a compromise, so after going with everyone to a fancy restaurant and on to a bar with a good live band, me and a few others left under much protest at about 1 AM.



It was definitely the right decision, since I arrived on the bus at 7 hours later in good spirits. The bus set off and I looked out of the window. After three weeks in the urban sprawl of Beijing I had started to miss the countryside. But Beijing seemed to keep going. Endless, identical shopping malls and sky scrapers slid past the window, gradually giving way to factories, and then at the end of all that the growing concrete shells of new apartment buildings and new shopping malls and new factories, surrounded by a forest of scaffolding. With a population of already 20 million people (more than that of the Netherlands), Beijing was still growing.



Finally however the terrain began to change into green hills. Clusters of square, single-story buildings were dotted around the edge of the highway, and I guessed these were villages. No cars drove their streets and precious few people seemed to live in them now. Then suddenly boulder-covered mountains rose in front of us and the highway gouged into a valley between them, winding gradually upwards.



I looked up at their peaks with buildings occasionally nestled on their slopes and was reminded of trips to the Alps, now several years ago. It would have been truly stunning, but the sky was still ashen grey. Apparently only in Tibet is the air in China ever truly clear.



We saw the carpark for the wall long before we saw the actual wall. Ranks of tourbuses were pulled up and Chinese tourists were swarming up through the ticket stands.



The wall, as is well known, was very long, but also very steep. People paused for breath, leaning on the parapets. Clearly whoever built the wall were made of very strong stuff, and I tried to imagine what it must have been like to patrol the wall it all those centuries ago during the winter, the cobbles slippery with ice, wind howling through the windows, keeping watch for barbarians from the West. It was hard enough for the cleaners who still scuttled along it.



On the bus trip back I felt my day had been well spent. My legs felt well-used and my eyes tired. Then my phone vibrated in my pocket and I flipped it open.



It was from my Chinese friend inviting me to a concert. A famous Western DJ was playing. The tickets, which he had won in a competition from the Chinese edition of Time Out were for free.



I had planned to skype a friend that evening, and people were also nagging me to go out with them to the student district. But I knew then that there was only one thing I was really going to do that evening.



We met outside the club just at about half past nine. I had managed to ask for directions to the club from the metro, and so was quietly proud.



The club was near the Hutongs, in what I suspected was a former factory. OId industrial pipework lined the walls and Bauhaus skylights were set in the ceiling. However laid over this were enough fashionably shabby chandeliers, exposed brickwork and graffiti (in both Chinese characters and Western alphabet) to tell me this was a very classy place. The drinks were even at Western prices.





Both Chinese and foreigners were in the club, about half and half. The foreigners were professionals working in Beijing. The Chinese were those able to pay 200RMB for tickets (a price sufficiently high to make me think twice), and therefore in China a couple of steps above that. In Beijing, a city where there is a striking lack of any kind of dress code (clubbing in shorts and a T-shirt is entirely acceptable), people had dressed up.





The music was also a long way from the normal rather slushy pop music usually listened to in China. It was electronic, using samples from all manner of tracks from classical to funk to create a mature, urban, sophisticated sound that was simultaneously relaxed and which had a beat to it.

We enjoyed the evening immensely, watching the music and talking, then left at three. It was overall a night well spent.

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