My Morning Walks Along the Canal - and Beyond

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When I first arrived in Beijing had to walk along the canal from my temporary accommodation to the office. That was early March and the clear blue skies and sunshine imbued in me an instant love of Beijing and of the canal in particular. It is called the Liang Ma (Bright Horse) River but it looks like a canal to me. I am sure that what I have seen is typical of life alongside the many waterways of Beijing. I almost always have my camera in my schoolbag and I have tried to capture in photos the people I meet and the scenes I observe. Most of the photos were taken during my morning walks to work and I can’t explain why there is less activity in the evenings. I’ll describe what I’ve seen, but really the photos say much more than I can.
Last autumn the Beijing city authorities dredged the canal and for the next few months they were doing some refurbishments. In a letter at the time I told you that my colleagues at work had been disgusted by the green slime-like coating on the canal water in summertime. When the canal waters were being drained they watched as local people, including chefs from local restaurants, waded into the waters to capture live fish. My colleagues were appalled and advised me never to order fish in nearby restaurants!
You will see in the photos a line of huge orange/red things that are perhaps pieces of art. They remained there through the renovations, as did the riverboat nightclub. I’m not an engineer so I don’t really know what all the heavy machinery was doing in the canal dry bed in the spring. They seemed to be putting down pipes and then lining the floor and sides with rocks. Gradually the water was let flow back into the canal and then they put down large-leafed green water plants and reeds. From when there was only a trickle of water in the canal, fishermen were out every day. It was amazing. Fishing has to be the most popular sport I have witness in Beijing.
As the warm weather came and the green patches covered the water I discovered that they are actually tiny circular green leaves, not slime. Sometimes when the green carpet was too thick the city workers would scoop it from the surface and dump it on the footpath. With the intense heat the pile of dredging became smelly and slimy as the days passed before it was removed. I noticed that when the temperatures began to drop at the end of August the green cover decreased greatly. You will see in a photo I took last week where a city worker in a rowboat is attempting to confine the coverage, perhaps for later collection, by dragging a fire hose along the surface.
But the most interesting aspect of my canal walks is the people who frequent the canal sidewalks – the fishermen, the performers, the ladies chatting and those who practice tai chi or go swimming.
Before I came to China I had heard that large groups of people do tai chi every morning in the parks. I haven’t been to parks in the early morning but very rarely have I seen small groups of perhaps five or six older people gathering to exercise together. Exercise for older people is a big issue in China. For example, you can see special exercise equipment for seniors installed near playgrounds and public places, not only in Beijing but in rural villages. On my route I pass a railing beside a parking lot that I hadn’t realised was especially for exercises. I have seen older people putting one foot at a time up on the railing and then doing stretching exercises.
Although I haven’t witness large groups of tai chi aficionados, I know that tai chi is popular because I regularly see individuals doing the exercises alongside the canal. I was lucky one morning to get a photo of the older man with the long spear doing a form of tai chi or some martial art. I often see an old man walking along in a crouched position, obviously deep in concentration, with his hands curled in front of him. I was delighted to get a photo of him this morning.
I can’t understand why, but the most common exercise people do is to walk while clapping. I don’t get it. Some actually swing their arms criss-cross in front of them while walking and that could almost be termed “exercise”, but clapping? I must ask my tai chi teacher about it.
Beijingers love their dogs and I often pass people out walking their small dogs. I say “small” because it is illegal to walk a dog taller than 60cm outside before 9:00pm. (The Chinese love their rules!) But I’ll tell you more about the love of pet dogs another time. I doubt if I’ll be telling you much about dogs as cuisine! I love to pass the group of retired ladies (women retire here at 50 years of age) who sit on the wall every morning, chatting away while grooming their dogs. They seem to be having such a nice time, I wish my Mandarin was better so I could understand what they are saying. I’ll bet it is good.
Then there are the fishermen. I love to see them with their bikes and little chairs, long poles and short ones, maggots for bait (yuk!) hanging in clear plastic bags from the nearby weeping willow trees. The green coverage of the water doesn’t seem to deter the fishermen, but one day I took a photo of a man who had discovered an ingenious method of keeping the greenery away from his fishing hole. He made a circle of chunks of discarded styrofoam.
The friends of the fishermen come and chat away to keep them company. One fisherman brought his bird along and hung the cage from the branch overhead. Another birdman , who was transporting his birds in their covered cages, stops to hear the local news. On a warm sunny day, not too hot and not too cold, another serious birdman stands his cages on the wall and the birds chirp away happily while he chats to passersby. Maybe the birds are for sale.
This week we had 1st October on the lunar calendar which, along with the 15th October, is a very important time for remembering one’s ancestors. I mentioned last April about Ancestors’ Tomb Sweeping Day, which is a public holiday in China. The October dates are not so important, but must be acknowledged all the same. The focus for these rituals is that the weather is turning cold and one’s ancestors may need warm clothes in the next world. Therefore people make small piles of fake money and pictures of warm clothes from magazines or newspapers and burn them so they go to the other side. I took a photo of many small piles of ashes I encountered one morning.
The tradition is that a woman relative uses chalk to draw a small circle with an opening which faces toward the ancestral village. Two short lines are drawn from the circle out, like a corral with the gates open. After the fire is lit no one may enter the circle and the relatives sit back and watch the way the smoke blows. If it goes “out the gap” and toward the ancestral village, then one can be assured that the ancestors received the gifts. Relatives burn all sorts of photo/gifts, including the latest version of an i-phone or fancy BMW. One set of relatives must have been worried that their ancestor would be hungry on the other side because in the ashes I could see 4 or 5 small oranges, a few pieces of fatty pork, two moon cakes and a small bottle of rice wine. I noted that he relatives had kindly drunk the rice wine on their ancestor’s behalf! There was less incense remaining with the ashes than there had been in the springtime.
I love to watch all of this, but the real treats are the anonymous performers. These people obviously love to sing or play musical instruments and they don’t care who listens. They aren’t busking and often choose a discrete spot so they aren’t too obvious. I have a photo of a violinist who played from the sidewalk above the canal walk. But I can’t seem to find the one of the opera singer about two weeks ago.
The little girl of about 10 years of age was waiting with her mother when I passed by. I was admiring her instrument when her mother indicated that I should take a seat and her daughter would play a few tunes for me. She was a delightful, shy little girl and I was amazed by the speed of her fingers flying along the strings. Another photo I included is of a traditional Chinese stringed instrument, large like a keyboard, being played outside our leisure centre by a young woman.
During one of my first weeks in Beijing I was stopped in my tracks one evening by the sound of a man playing what seemed like Russian folk tunes. He had a small amplifier and played in the dark alongside another canal that is all concrete, in an underpass, with a highway running overhead. I was really puzzled as to why he would go at night to that isolated spot where there were very few pedestrians. Perhaps, like myself, he enjoyed the resonance of the music on the concrete surfaces surrounding him. Amazing. For quite a while I stood at a discrete distance listening to him. Unfortunately it was too dark to take a photo of him.
But what is really amazing about all this is that other people “pay them no heed.” I think that in the West if a person was playing music or singing, a small group would gather to listen or passersby would be rolling their eyes about “that nutcase.” I wonder if this has come from there being so little personal space in Chinese people’s homes so they like to go out where they are anonymous and practice their craft. It is such a feature of everyday life here that people don’t even comment on it, and the “performers” seem to be very unself-conscious as well.
Other photos I have included are of people I passed by, like the group who make fast-food (and I mean fast!) every morning at their sidewalk stand. Every now and again they disappear for a few days and we know that the local officials have come around demanding “protection money” and/or shutting them down. The team members seem to take turns acting as look-out. You never know what fruits or vegetable farmer will have come in from the country in the early hours of the morning and set up a stall for just that day. The man selling lengths of sugar cane was unusual.
Then there is the portable bicycle mending shop that parks on our busy corner and seem to be doing a roaring trade most days. You will find dotted along the way men who might be described as “odd jobs men.” They each have a flat cart, pulled by a push bicycle, which they will use to do whatever transport job arises. They wait in groups of three or four and often play cards or ma jong to pass the time to the next call. As you will see, very often they sleep on their carts. I took a photo of one that had been hired to move a large sofa.
While I’m telling you about casual “street theatre” away from the canal banks, I must tell you something else that I think is unique and entertaining. In the summertime my friends said to me, “You mean you haven’t seen street dancing yet? Go out at night to the parks and open spaces.” I’ve read that outdoor ballroom dancing became popular in 1978, two years after Mao died, when the Government introduced its “policy of reform and opening to the world.” In the 1990’s Break Dance made street dancing popular with young people in China. But with the massive economic and social changed since 2000, dancers of all ages and musical tastees have appeared in almost any open area, particularly the squares in front of banks and supermarkets.
I was really curious but I didn’t actually witness this Chinese tradition until the evenings began to cool in late August. I was walking home along a busy street at about 8:00 one evening when I passed a spot where the sidewalk broadened to a large patio in front of an office building. I first heard the music from a boom box, and then I saw more than a hundred people line dancing! They all seemed to know the steps and were having great fun. I was fascinated.
Then, at the end of September, we came out of the Westlife concert to find couples jiving on the plaza of the concert hall. Again, they had a ghetto blaster playing taped music very loud. The dancers were of all ages and were obviously having great fun. I heard that ballroom dancing is also very popular but I haven’t seen it yet. Street dances don’t seem to be formally organised and there are no tickets or busking.
It’s great to see the mix of people. Migrant workers, usually of minority ethnicities, work very hard in construction, as street traders or housecleaners for very little pay and no social benefits, yet they blend in with the Beijingers in the dancing crowd. I’m amused by the elderly women who may have been slowly making their way around the shops earlier in the day but are now forgetting their aches and pains as they strut their stuff in line dancing.
As with almost all of the things I’ve described, it is just Chinese people unself-consciously having fun for free!

Sheila

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Comments

[TinNiE]

pups!
they are so cute! I wanna buy one :)

[Niloufer Shaikh]

Thanks.
I had been to Beijing last year, your blog re-lived those memories.