Tuesday, 13 April 2010
Hong Kong Children's Symphony Orchestra
Yesterday we had a very pleasant surprise. We went to yet another classical concert – this time a Wagner Prelude followed by Symphony No 1 by Prokopief and Piano Concerto No 2 by Saint-Saens. The surprising thing was that the only adult playing was the Piano Soloist, Angela Cheng from Canada – all the other performers were the Hong Kong Children’s Symphony Orchestra, and all aged between 7 and 18 years old. Mind you, some of them even looked younger than 7 years old. We could hardly see their heads above their music stands! To all extents, if you closed your eyes and just listened, it was as if the orchestra was a full adult one. They were remarkable. Dr Yip Wai-hong founded the orchestra in 1996 on the principle that “When high quality music education is given to foster young buds, they shall sprout and become an influential force of Hong Kong culture in the future.” He couldn’t have been more accurate!
And here's a very poorly taken photo - on my mobile phone and in a rush as they don't normally allow photos in the Concert Hall.
And here's a very poorly taken photo - on my mobile phone and in a rush as they don't normally allow photos in the Concert Hall.
Tuesday, 30 March 2010
Lots to say
It's been a busy month with the Hong Kong Arts Festival in full swing. It's now over and ended with a rather disappointing performance of "The Tempest" by the Old Vic Company from London. Prior to that in the same theatre I had seen Steven Berkoff in "On The Waterfront" and was delighted by the magnificent performance. The actors in Tempest were very guilty of mumbling their lines and talking to the back of the stage and, unless you had read the play that day, most of the audience couldn't possibly have known what was going on. Other than that, the rest of the festival was memorable for the quality and variety of the performances. So there, that's my bit of theatre critic over!
Now, over the last few months there has been a growing drought over parts of South China caused apparently by a one-in-a-hundred year drought and the damming of the Mekong River in several places by the Chinese Authorities. Obviously they deny all responsibility, but it's strange that when they release some water, the river rises by over one metre. All being blamed also on the El Niño effect, another good scapegoat.
So, as a result of all this, the peasant farmers are losing their livelihoods and all their animal stock. BUT, the authorities are sending in the troops to drill 2,000 wells into the water table, no doubt worsening things when all they need to do is release the water from their hydro-electric dams.
Today we went for a walk along the bay in front of our home and wandered past a lovely market garden which we were unaware existed. Good veggies, all organic and freshly plucked before our eyes. Hong Kong continues to surprise at every turn.
On the way back we went into another garden centre and Barbara got some more beautiful pot plants, all delivered one hour later, free of charge!
It looks like the Rio Tinto court case has followed the norms cor China - no proper defense against the charges and no access to defence lawyers during the six months detention prior to the trial. Sentence of between 7 and 14 years in jail were passed down for charges of accepting bribes amongst other more obviously politically motivated charges. Funnily enough, no one has been charged with providing the bribes - strange how one-sided that argument must seem. Looks like a bit of a plant and some coercion to confess are involved here! Nothing unusual in China, I'm afraid to say.
Now, over the last few months there has been a growing drought over parts of South China caused apparently by a one-in-a-hundred year drought and the damming of the Mekong River in several places by the Chinese Authorities. Obviously they deny all responsibility, but it's strange that when they release some water, the river rises by over one metre. All being blamed also on the El Niño effect, another good scapegoat.
So, as a result of all this, the peasant farmers are losing their livelihoods and all their animal stock. BUT, the authorities are sending in the troops to drill 2,000 wells into the water table, no doubt worsening things when all they need to do is release the water from their hydro-electric dams.
Today we went for a walk along the bay in front of our home and wandered past a lovely market garden which we were unaware existed. Good veggies, all organic and freshly plucked before our eyes. Hong Kong continues to surprise at every turn.
On the way back we went into another garden centre and Barbara got some more beautiful pot plants, all delivered one hour later, free of charge!
It looks like the Rio Tinto court case has followed the norms cor China - no proper defense against the charges and no access to defence lawyers during the six months detention prior to the trial. Sentence of between 7 and 14 years in jail were passed down for charges of accepting bribes amongst other more obviously politically motivated charges. Funnily enough, no one has been charged with providing the bribes - strange how one-sided that argument must seem. Looks like a bit of a plant and some coercion to confess are involved here! Nothing unusual in China, I'm afraid to say.
Thursday, 11 March 2010
Time for an update.....
We're now well and truly into the 38th Hong Kong Arts Festival and it's turning out to be quite a treat. Ever since we started visiting HK from the Mainland - almost 7 years ago, I have wanted to have the time to see as many shows as I could in the month of the festival. Well, so far we've seen The HK Philharmonic Orchestra, the HK Sinfonietta Orchestra and Ning Feng, The Cafe de Los Maestros - (amazing 10 minute standing ovation), The David Murray Jazz Quartet (encores demanded and given) and tomorrow we go to see Valdimir Ashkenazy and his sons perform in a rare family performance - can't wait!! It's not all music - on Monday we get to see "On the Waterfront" directed and starring Steven Berkoff. It's all culture and wonderful performances!
More to come...
We're now well and truly into the 38th Hong Kong Arts Festival and it's turning out to be quite a treat. Ever since we started visiting HK from the Mainland - almost 7 years ago, I have wanted to have the time to see as many shows as I could in the month of the festival. Well, so far we've seen The HK Philharmonic Orchestra, the HK Sinfonietta Orchestra and Ning Feng, The Cafe de Los Maestros - (amazing 10 minute standing ovation), The David Murray Jazz Quartet (encores demanded and given) and tomorrow we go to see Valdimir Ashkenazy and his sons perform in a rare family performance - can't wait!! It's not all music - on Monday we get to see "On the Waterfront" directed and starring Steven Berkoff. It's all culture and wonderful performances!
More to come...
Sunday, 7 February 2010
A quick Trip
Now how's this for a bit of spontaneity! Yesterday, Saturday, I was coming downstairs to make a cup of tea at exactly 4:00 p.m. Barbara looked up from the "What's On" section of Hong Kong's version of Timeout and said "There's a concert I'd love to see tonight". My reply was "If you really want to see it, then, let's go. Who's playing and what?" It seemed an innocent enough reply. "Well, the concert is by Fou Ts'ong and it's in Macao at 8:00 p.m. - tonight" Now, Fou Ts'ong is a remarkable man who escaped China in 1960 to make his home in London. He just happens to be 75 years old and one of the most gifted pianists in the world. The chance to see this "giant" of classical piano playing was too much to miss. It was quickly back upstairs, quick wash, change and in 45 minutes we were walking the short distance to the ferry pier to Hong Kong Island. About 400 yards from our point of arrival in HK, the ferry departs to Macao, just across the Pearl River. We managed to get the 6:00 ferry to Macao - now this means actually going through immigration and customs as we were actually going to another country for the evening. Of course, we would do the same again in Macao. When we got to Macao we quickly hired a taxi tout who took us to the theatre - it was all a bit too rushed to get a normal taxi as we hadn't the faintest idea where the taxi rank was and didn't have the time to find out.
After we had settled in our last-minute seats overlooking the stage and the piano and the orchestra had finished their 15 minute tuning exercise (which seems to be a peculiarly Chinese thing - I can never recollect any western orchestra tuning for 15+ minutes on stage before a performance. They all seemed to walk on take their seats, hum a middle C and get on with the concert.) Anyway, the side door on the stage opened and on walked this "giant" of classical music, a very diminutive, frail-looking gentleman who was dressed in a traditional black Chinese jacket and who had what looked like fingerless mittens on his tiny hands. He has been described as "the poet of the piano" and he was accompanied by another great in classical music circles, Lu Jia, our conductor for the evening's two pieces, Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 and Bruckner's symphony No. 4 in E-flat Major, "Romantic".
This is the man.
What an evening!!!!!
Needless to say we got home at around 3:00 on Sunday morning after battling the ferries and two sets on immigration officers again.
After we had settled in our last-minute seats overlooking the stage and the piano and the orchestra had finished their 15 minute tuning exercise (which seems to be a peculiarly Chinese thing - I can never recollect any western orchestra tuning for 15+ minutes on stage before a performance. They all seemed to walk on take their seats, hum a middle C and get on with the concert.) Anyway, the side door on the stage opened and on walked this "giant" of classical music, a very diminutive, frail-looking gentleman who was dressed in a traditional black Chinese jacket and who had what looked like fingerless mittens on his tiny hands. He has been described as "the poet of the piano" and he was accompanied by another great in classical music circles, Lu Jia, our conductor for the evening's two pieces, Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 and Bruckner's symphony No. 4 in E-flat Major, "Romantic".
What an evening!!!!!
Needless to say we got home at around 3:00 on Sunday morning after battling the ferries and two sets on immigration officers again.
Sunday, 31 January 2010
Settling in
Well, I think we are now well and truly settled into our new home. All the mad dashing from China - all done at breakneck speed - behind us. You might ask, why all the rush after seven years of living there. here are some answers!
When we first went to China, we had been living in Holland and simply put all our things in storage, got on the plane with the cat, a story in itself, and headed for Peking (Beijing in politically correct talk, but Peking in English). After a few years of paying half our income on storage fees, we decided to ship our goodies to China. What would be a simple task anywhere else is a mammoth task in China. First of all we had to convince our employers to support us - this meant getting them to "allow" us to import our personal belongings. The we had to get them, the college where we worked, to complete all the documentation required to do this. This actually needed signatures from four senior managers including the President of the college Board of Directors, PLUS, a copy of the college's certificate on incorporation, to prove it was a genuine college - not enough that it had 10,000 paying students and over 500 teachers! This took over a month to accomplish as most of the managers were somewhere else when it was their turn to sign.
After all that, the documents had to be submitted to the Customs people for their approval, and only then could the shipment begin to actually move from Holland, by sea. This was no easy task as it required our container to be transshipped in Hong Kong harbour onto a small river ship that then trekked up the Pearl River to Canton (Guangzhou- as per Peking). Now it was in the hands of the Chinese Customs - HELP. They X-ray everything and then demand duty on such things as a twenty-year-old, old-fashioned, record player that Barbara had bought in a charity shop for ten pounds - she has a collection of old LPs and 45's, but no way to play them! We paid up about 200 pound in duty and "other" payments - never detailed, so you can imagine what they were for. Eventually our stuff arrived in our home in China.
Now comes the good bit. In order to export our things when we eventually leave China, we would have to go through the entire process in revers, only this time have to account for any items we had discarded, like anything which had broken and we had chucked out, and then pay excise duty on them - the authorities would think we had sold them on to some unwitting Chinese person. After all this we ended up asking our shippers if there was any possible way to get our stuff out of China without going through all this procedure. He scratched his head and came up with the fact that we could actually ship 10 cubic metres each out by truck, and only by truck, if we sent it by the equivalent of DHS, sort of mailing it! And it wouldn't even be X-rayed by customs. YES, we said, YES, YES!! China is full of idiosyncrasies, and this is only one of them. Now 10 cubic litres is a lot of space, approximately 350 cubic feet for my American friends. So we now had the possibility of shipping almost all our things with absolutely no hassle and even without informing the college and having to get their approval just to get the stuff out the front gate. We lived on campus and had at least two levels of security to get through before the open road! If this sounds a bit like escaping from a prison camp with all your worldly possessions, including a cat, it is exactly that.
We were now in the middle of the summer break and the campus was almost empty, apart from a few teachers who had nothing better to do and the eternal security guards. The shippers arrived and we bluffed the truck through the gates. We stayed on in our house as poor Puss had to still go through the remainder of her vaccinations. After another week, the cat exporter duly took us all to the train station where we boarded the train to Hong Kong in the company of a young man who would handle the cat customs at Hong Kong side!
That was it and now we're here.
When we first went to China, we had been living in Holland and simply put all our things in storage, got on the plane with the cat, a story in itself, and headed for Peking (Beijing in politically correct talk, but Peking in English). After a few years of paying half our income on storage fees, we decided to ship our goodies to China. What would be a simple task anywhere else is a mammoth task in China. First of all we had to convince our employers to support us - this meant getting them to "allow" us to import our personal belongings. The we had to get them, the college where we worked, to complete all the documentation required to do this. This actually needed signatures from four senior managers including the President of the college Board of Directors, PLUS, a copy of the college's certificate on incorporation, to prove it was a genuine college - not enough that it had 10,000 paying students and over 500 teachers! This took over a month to accomplish as most of the managers were somewhere else when it was their turn to sign.
After all that, the documents had to be submitted to the Customs people for their approval, and only then could the shipment begin to actually move from Holland, by sea. This was no easy task as it required our container to be transshipped in Hong Kong harbour onto a small river ship that then trekked up the Pearl River to Canton (Guangzhou- as per Peking). Now it was in the hands of the Chinese Customs - HELP. They X-ray everything and then demand duty on such things as a twenty-year-old, old-fashioned, record player that Barbara had bought in a charity shop for ten pounds - she has a collection of old LPs and 45's, but no way to play them! We paid up about 200 pound in duty and "other" payments - never detailed, so you can imagine what they were for. Eventually our stuff arrived in our home in China.
Now comes the good bit. In order to export our things when we eventually leave China, we would have to go through the entire process in revers, only this time have to account for any items we had discarded, like anything which had broken and we had chucked out, and then pay excise duty on them - the authorities would think we had sold them on to some unwitting Chinese person. After all this we ended up asking our shippers if there was any possible way to get our stuff out of China without going through all this procedure. He scratched his head and came up with the fact that we could actually ship 10 cubic metres each out by truck, and only by truck, if we sent it by the equivalent of DHS, sort of mailing it! And it wouldn't even be X-rayed by customs. YES, we said, YES, YES!! China is full of idiosyncrasies, and this is only one of them. Now 10 cubic litres is a lot of space, approximately 350 cubic feet for my American friends. So we now had the possibility of shipping almost all our things with absolutely no hassle and even without informing the college and having to get their approval just to get the stuff out the front gate. We lived on campus and had at least two levels of security to get through before the open road! If this sounds a bit like escaping from a prison camp with all your worldly possessions, including a cat, it is exactly that.
We were now in the middle of the summer break and the campus was almost empty, apart from a few teachers who had nothing better to do and the eternal security guards. The shippers arrived and we bluffed the truck through the gates. We stayed on in our house as poor Puss had to still go through the remainder of her vaccinations. After another week, the cat exporter duly took us all to the train station where we boarded the train to Hong Kong in the company of a young man who would handle the cat customs at Hong Kong side!
That was it and now we're here.
Saturday, 23 January 2010
Letters from China No 1
Introduction
I’ve wanted to do this for quite a while and hope you don’t mind being used as guinea pigs. I always enjoyed listening to Alistair Cooke on the BBC’s World Service giving us his latest report on life in the USA in his “Letters from America”. This is my attempt at reporting daily life in China as it happens.
14th June 2008
After several days of torrential rain and thunderstorms, we have a brief respite. Maybe some sunshine will appear as the summer break looms on the horizon. Two weeks to go, some final testing of our students, then our foreign teachers disperse around the globe on holiday, seeing family or just taking a couple of months to tour China. For some it’s a once-in-a-lifetime event, they’ll stay here a year then return home to take up their old lives again, though never to be the same. For others, ourselves included, it’s a time to relax and enjoy more of the surroundings in what has become our home here in Guangzhou.
Since the earthquake in Sichuan, things have quietened down a bit, the Olympic torch relay around the main towns and cities has resumed, although in a much more subdued manner. For people who twenty years ago were just emerging from the throes of the Cultural Revolution, the relay is something akin to Martians walking the Earth. To the ordinary people, it is almost meaningless, just another flash of the government’s push towards modernization. The meaning and symbolism of the Olympic Games is unknown to them, and of little or no interest. If they understand anything, it will be of some foreign culture being foisted upon them for a very brief time in their lives. The daily struggle will return tomorrow, even if it never went away today. We will enjoy the spectacle on TV along with the rest of the world, but for the farmers working a 14 hour day, day in day out, it means nothing and will benefit them nothing. In fact, it has probably cost them an enormous amount already in taxes they can ill-afford to pay. Watering their plants by hand from huge buckets slung on bamboo poles across their shoulders under the scorching heat, trying to get three, or even four crops a year from their tiny allotments is about all they can cope with.
The thunderstorms have returned as I sit looking at the cityscape from our 13th floor apartment. As long as it’s number doesn’t have a four in it then it’s not unlucky according to our Chinese friends. So we’ll be lucky and not be struck. The lightning strikes the highest of the local skyscrapers, including the highest building in China just half a mile away. Dramatic, to say the least. The thunder rumbles around the apartment.
A few weeks ago we had a stressful few days. As the Olympic Games approach, the authorities here are increasing security, hoping to avert attempts by Osama bin Laden and his friends to disrupt them. Airport-style walkthrough security metal detector arches have been introduced to the subway in Beijing. Here in the south of the country, various people have been rounded up and deported, mostly African , Indian, Sri Lankan and Middle-eastern men who have been trading here semi-officially. There have been Middle-eastern traders in Guangzhou for over two thousand years and today there are about a quarter million of them, so it seems a bit strange to hear these stories. Visa conditions are being enforced and what was once the easiest country to work in as a semi-legal visitor is now more strictly controlled. I was always amazed at how easy it was for some people to enter China and find unofficial work. It’s another interesting aspect to life here. Apparently the authorities have said it would return to the old way after October! Well, at least our visas are being renewed legally by our college after a six-day jaunt to Hong Kong to get the documentation in order.
Last night’s news showed the culling of poultry in Hong Kong after traces of the H5N1 Asian Flu virus was found in three wet markets. Wet markets are still the favoured way for the local people to buy food. They sell live chickens and fish and very fresh fruit and vegetables. It is always disconcerting for us “Guilos – Foreign Devils” to see old ladies walking home with a fish flapping about in a half-filled carrier bag. Or, indeed, a chicken poking it’s head out of a shopping bag on the bus, looking around at us guilt-ridden humans.
No chicken for dinner tonight-----
Letters from China No 2
22nd June 2008
So far this year China has suffered several major disasters, the earthquake in Sichuan is the one most people will know of. But there were others including a massive freezing ice storm in the north and north-west which shut down roads and railways leaving people stranded around the country at the time when just about everyone is trying to reach home for their one and only holiday, the Spring Festival. In our city of Guangzhou there were over one million people sleeping in the street for a week outside the railway station. Numbers like that are unheard of in the west and the fact that nobody died was amazing to us all. Fortunately the weather was mild for February and the local government shepherded the people into the International Trade Exhibition Centre where, at least there was enough room for all those people to lie down and toilets etc. The Chinese army set up field kitchens to feed all of them. Eventually, they either got on a train for the days-long journey home, often sitting upright for more than 48 hours, or struggled back to their dormitories in the factories where they had worked all year waiting for this one moment to see their families again, albeit for a few days only. There have also been typhoons battering the coast not too far from us, sending millions inland for refuge. And not to forget several major train crashes which killed many more.
So 2008 has not been a particularly auspicious year for China and the coming Olympic Games in Beijing. So, much so that people have began to doubt the meaning of “lucky eight”. The number eight has always been considered lucky and the government, bowing to popular belief, has arranged that the opening ceremony of the Games will start at eight minutes past eight on the eigth day of the eigth month (August) in 2008. The reason for all this is that in Mandarin the word for 8, "ba," sounds like the word "fa," which means "fortune". That kind of superstitious thinking would have earned you stiff punishment not many years ago in China. The authorities have spent decades trying to root out "feudal thought." But it still runs deep in the popular mind, and Beijing apparently knows it.
People here believe natural disasters portend trouble for the country's rulers, which is an interesting thought. This dates back over 3,000 years, when the king who overthrew China's first recorded dynasty justified his rebellion on the grounds that the ruler he deposed had lost the "mandate of heaven" by ruling poorly. The belief is that “Good government preserved the harmony between man and nature”. So, if a ruler fell down on the job, there would be strains on the natural order reflected by catastrophes such as floods, droughts, and earthquakes" that augured his downfall”. This was the official ideology until the end of the 19th century. When a massive earthquake destroyed the city of Tangshan in 1976, killing at least 250,000 people, the popular imagination quickly linked the disaster to the death of Chairman Mao six weeks later.
Here are a few other examples of how the Chinese relate numbers, dates and symbolism –
It is customary to eat long noodles on your birthday, for example, because they signify long life.
Words that sound like one another, and dates, have an especially powerful attraction; September 18 is a popular day to open a business because the Chinese word for that date "jiu yi ba" (nine one eight) sounds like the phrase meaning "get rich quick."
August 8 has been regarded as a particularly auspicious date, both for its numbers and for the fact that the Olympic Games, a matter of intense pride to most Chinese, will open on that day. Beijing hospitals say they are expecting a spike in births that day, according to the state-run press, even if it means an even higher number than normal of C-section deliveries.
Parents of prospective "Olympic babies," however, laid their plans before doubts set in about just how lucky the number 8, or even the Games themselves, actually are.
Heretical numerologists have been all over the Chinese Internet in recent weeks, reading ominous significance into the string of misfortunes that have struck China in recent months.
The heaviest snowfall in 50 years that paralysed the south of China over the Lunar New Year holiday fell on January 25, ie 1/25. Add one to two to five, suggest the woe-mongers, and you get eight.
Same with the date that riots broke out in Tibet – 3/14, they point out. Same again with the date of the Sichuan earthquake – 5/12. To make matters worse, the earthquake struck 88 days before the opening day of the Olympics, which perhaps means double bad luck.
Then there's the "Curse of the Fuwas," those five cuddly Olympic mascots, each with a regional or mythical association, that some diviners of ill-fortune say represent a ghastly premonition.
One is a panda, native to Sichuan. Another is an antelope, native to Tibet. A third carries a torch, recalling the embarrassment of the protests that dogged the international torch relay. Another holds a kite, symbolic of China's kite-flying culture that was born in Shandong, in April the site of the country's deadliest train crash in decades.
What might the fifth, a fish, portend? The floods that have displaced more than 1.5 million people in southern China in recent days?
Back to College tomorrow and the last few days of testing. Monday night at around ten o’clock we will no doubt experience the massive setting off of fireworks, as will happen every night until exams are over. This scares away the demons, allowing our students to sleep peacefully. Never mind the fact that it keeps us awake through the night as some of the over-enthusiastic ones set off massive explosions throughout the night!
At least we’ll sleep well tonight in our apartment…..
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