two Chinas, kids again, Stephen's place

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No pics yet but I'll see if I have time to add some later. We head for Vietnam on an overnight train. Arrive at 5 a.m. and our hotel has agreed to receive us by six. I've corresponded (in my bad French) with a hotel recommended by Wiki Travel. They have told me their address, promised me a room at the back (thank you Wiki), and told me the approximate cab fare from the station to the Hotel du Centre Ville. That's about it as far as planning. Hanoi sounds very cool. Vietnam, according to Wiki, is full of scammers and thieves--partly because it's relatively poor. No idea about its post-typhoon condition but we won't be going to any beaches where people are grieving the November devastation. Money is a bit of an issue: one Canadian dollar equals 20,000 dong!

Here are some notes I've been making the past two days:



Two Chinas

Walked past the Marriot Hotel here, close to Jinyi's apartment. There were maybe twenty kids (mid-teens) in formal dresses and tuxes acting like sixteen year-olds anywhere—a bit awkward, a bit silly. Some of them were very handsome, very beautiful. Polished luxury sedans were driving and leaving the formal reception area outside of the hotel, tires softly tracking across the polished tile and the soft lighting. The young people posed for pictures that they took of themselves. Even the boys appeared to have coiffeur hair-dos. Glitz and wealth were everywhere.



We walked through this scene and within twenty meters we found ourselves in a dark alleyway. A man came staggering toward us from a dimly lit building beside the hotel carrying two five gallon cans filled with a dark liquid, one on each end of his shoulder pole. He put them down with some effort; his companion helped him steady the cans; then they lifted them into the back of one of those motorized carts you see all over China, with a box and deck welded on to its back.



It was as shadowy here as it was bright at the hotel twenty meters away, but I could see these men were about fifty. They wore the dirty blue workers clothes I saw here three decades ago. I wondered if they were hauling septic fluid from some kind of holding tank. It was 8:30 pm and their cart appeared almost full. Maybe one or two more trips back to the dimly lit building behind them. Maybe another full cartload to go.



Kids

For some reason, there’s an “international” kindergarten across the street and directly below Jinyi’s second floor apartment, in the centre of this gated community. I think the international theme mainly refers to a lack of structure, though I believe some foreigners live in this gated community. I haven't seen any foreign kids though. I can sit in the balcony and catch glimpses of the kids through the tropical trees growing on the boulevard between us while I soak up the sounds of (mainly) happy kids at play.

The noise is simply huge: screams, shouts, squeals of laughter. And this goes on from just after seven-thirty in the morning until at least six-thirty at night. There are some structured activities, a half hour or so of dancing around nine in which a couple of teachers lead the 50 or 60 kids (who vary widely in their attention and participation and nobody seems to mind), while deafeningly loud children’s songs tell the kids to jump to their left, clap their hands, spin right around and so on; there is quiet here only at lunch time, when a half-hour lunch leads, sensibly, into a one hour nap period. Then the chaos takes over, the music and the yard filled with what seems to be unstructured play. I did meet one group of kids led by two teachers who were collecting leaves. And an hour later the same teachers were taking pictures of the leaves glued onto paper, held up proudly by two students at a time.

It is all so exuberant and energetic. Little bodies fly past my windows through the trees. Its as if their world is predicated entirely on motion and energy. Later in the day, a determined pianist plays classical march songs that frequently stop mid-stride, presumbably because something more important grabs her attention.

This wild, unbelievably noisy playground is so at odds with the patient masses of pedestrians or motor-scooter riders, stoically moving through and against each other, rarely making eye contact with anyone. It is a moment, my Chinese friend explained to me, before formal schooling takes over, before the disciplined heart of Chinese education insists on order, a time yet-to-come for these kids, when this kindergarten chorus, and the running and darting begin to get reined in, to get replaced by whatever it is that glues this place together.



Stephen’s Place



We met Stephen while he was quietly watering some small green plants in plastic containers outside the <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Umolis Bakery and Café that his wife operates near the gates of an upscale condo development in East Nanning that is filled with tropical trees.

He heard us speaking English and ushered us inside; soon we were back outside sitting out on his deck, drinking expensive, organic German tea with him. Most of Stephen’s tea is not processed in China; instead, it is largely a European selection that is displayed in glass vials for you to smell before ordering. It costs about seven dollars for a pot of delicious tea, served in a large pot with a filter on a plate, served on a small, square wooden tray, custom designed for the ceramic ware.

Stephen is from Taiwan. He runs a shoe factory in Nanning, part of a chain of factories his father built up in China, beginning over two decades ago. His wife is back in Taiwan caring for their newborn child.

Stephen shows us around his wife’s business. His manager is an English-speaking former nurse who was trained in England, and Stephen says he also has the best cocktail mixer in the city under his employ. What is staggering about this place is the quality of design and quality of product. To get things right, Stephen hired a design company that was working in Nanning on a huge building project to plan his café-bakery. He had some kind of relationship with the high-rise architects.

Everything about the place, from the dark floors to the white wicker settees with small white cushions with black line drawings of nineteenth century bicycles—the kind with the huge front wheels—seems integrated and immaculate. Soft jazz with English vocals whispers from a sound system that has just the right amount of energy: very bright, very clear.

I have had both tea and lattes here and I pay what I would pay at an upscale North American venue like this, Yaletown in Vancouver perhaps. Definitely not a Starbucks, definitely too chic, too perfectly understated. And on the walls, there is an exhibit of whimsy from a Taiwanese artist Stephen is trying to promote. Prices can be discussed, he assures me: very Frieda from Mexico-like in their whimsy. I'd like to buy one, but that will wait until after Vietnam. Stephen and I will talk.

The lattes and the tea that I have taken here are perfect. It is not the kind of upscale place that I inhabit at home, but for an hour or two in China, <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Umolis is an oasis that lets me scratch away with a pen, a coiled notebook, and a laptop, while I admire the art and listen to music that wraps me in and takes me, I admit, far away.

Stephen says this business is an experiment, an attempt—something like a demonstration project—to introduce a world-class coffee-bakery social experience to the new China. Not quite a hobby: Stephen is too much of a businessman for that, but he hopes this place will provide a new dimension to the city’s many eateries and hang-outs. He mentions, proudly, that the people just inside the door are all from the tv station, and that writers, teachers, and artists are prominent at the music nights he hosts here two days a week. Maybe he is a frustrated impresario at heart; or maybe he really does think he has something worthwhile to share with his ancestral home.

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