Letters From China No 5

Saturday night took us, with some friends, to the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra 2007-2008 Finale Gala (sic) and Mahler’s Symphony No 3. My understanding of classical music was tried to its extreme to get a handle on the opening movement. Discordance and very loud climactic brass and timpani did very little to prepare me for the beauty of the remaining 5 movements. Written around 1896 it seemed to be a harbinger of the horrors of World War one. What relevance might you ask has this to do with a “Letter from China”? Well, the situation in China today in the lead up to the Olympic Games leaves me with similar feelings. There is not the feeling of euphoria one would normally expect with little over three weeks to go. The security precautions in Beijing have been upped to such an extent that you would think a “Great War” was about to happen. Ground-to-air missiles deployed around the main sites and 200,000 paramilitary personnel tells a lot. The New York Times’ David Barboza notes, Beijing appears to be "less concerned about hosting a global party and more concerned with making sure no one spoils it." Seems about right!

Needless to say, we, being well away from the epicenter of all this fuss, see nothing of this security build-up except for the fact that any luggage we carry must be X-rayed before we can board the train to Hong Kong. The people in Beijing are being subjected to X-rays, metal detector walk-through doors just to get on the subway!

Last week saw us taxiing our way back out to our college to pick up our passports, newly stamped with our new residence permits a relief to us both in the current climate of deportations for any infringement of the immigration laws. On the way we saw more evidence of the recent flooding in the from of landslides in places we thought very stable. Just tells us how heavy the rainfall has been. The fields were almost back to normal with the farmers trying to pick up the pieces and salvage whatever they could. I’m just hoping that we have had the worst of the rainy season and that the rest of the summer will be blue skies (a rarity here because of the pollution) and sunshine. Talking of pollution, recent TV pictures of Beijing show it is just as bad as it’s ever been. It will be interesting to see both what the authorities do about it and how the athletes who have to perform in it react when they get here.

We’ll see……..