Here in the civilized world,
Stranger events by far occur
Than in the Country of Cropped Hair;
Before our very eyes
Weirder tales unfold
Than in the Nation of Flying Heads.
Pu Songling, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, 1679
When I arrive in Beijing at a quarter past five in the morning it is hot and muggy, I walk through the long empty corridors of the airport and think of a subtropical swimming paradise. It smells like a mix of wet concrete and iron grinding. Outside, visibility is 100 meters at most. Hu Wei is waiting at the exit with a sign with my name. Together we will take a cab to the center of town. Before I get in, I quickly glance over the shoulders of some of the cab drivers who are hanging around; they are watching soccer. The Netherlands - Costa Rica, it's reserve time and the score is 0-0.
In the cab we pass five of the six ring roads. But I can't see much more than the bumper of the car pulling out in front of ours. The world just beyond the guardrail dissolves into a yellow mist. I have no idea what the city we are driving through looks like. I ask Hu Wei if today is a good day or a bad day in terms of smog. I have no idea and I hope for a bad day. It is a bad day, he reassures me.
When we are almost there, we have to convince the driver to take us to the front door. Actually, he wants to drop us off at the main road. He's not really enthusiastic about driving into the narrow hutong where I'll be living for the next six months. Heizima Hutong 13, the Black Sesame Street, Sesame Lane actually. Behind the gate of number 13 a new world opens up. A collection of courtyards, houses and structures, a tree and some cucumber plants. The courtyard exudes the atmosphere of a village. I can't imagine that I am in the center of a city where more than 20 million people live.
Simon and Esther, the two other Dutch artists-in-residence, who have been here for six months, come "home" just after me. Simon is wearing a bright orange suit like the cleaners of the public toilets here wear, including an orange cap. They have been watching soccer, 'we' are through to the semi-finals.
Simon and Esther go to bed. I join Hu Wei in a search for breakfast. At least for me it seems like a search, I can't read any of the signs and after three turns I have no idea where we are. Hu Wei graduated from the Central Academy Fine Arts (CAFA) here in Beijing two years ago and works for IFP. He knows exactly where we are going.
We eat soup with tofu, something fried and an egg boiled in tea. (The thousand year old eggs will follow later that week). "I can get used to this" I think and I ask what the dish is called. Hu Wei makes a bill for me, as he will do more often than not. Bills I can then show to cab and bus drivers. Especially when changing from one bus to another, his directions prove invaluable. Without Hu Wei's directions, I would not have found the Great Wall of China, despite its length.
I walk and cycle all day in the city, look around, absorb everything. Tiananmen Square, the forbidden city, Beihaipark, the Lama temple, the hutongs, 798, Black Bridge, Cao Chang Di and the dumpling place around the corner, where they temporarily cook outside because the kitchen is being renovated. And in the evening I am exhausted.
When I try to order food in my best Chinese later that week and get only a pitying look in return, I realize how hard my Chinese teacher in Amsterdam must have tried her best to understand what my classmates and I were emitting in terms of sounds during class. I point at the weathered 'English Menu' on the window and get the same pitying look. I look around to see what the others are eating and point to the plate of the man at the other table. A few minutes later, I get just such a plate of noodles in front of me.
In the English bookstore I buy Cat Country by Lao She, a book about a Chinese astronaut who crashes on Mars. Written in 1932, the book is satirical science fiction and is about the aftermath of an empire inhabited by cat people. It is a commentary on 1930s China. Somehow I feel connected to the nameless hero and his adventures. A stranger in an unknown land where everything is different from what he is used to. A Lǎowài, a foreigner as the Beijingers might have called him, in a society undergoing enormous changes in a short time.
Very slowly I am beginning to gain a little insight into China, or at least the Beijing of today. Still, it's hard to get a handle on it. Beijing doesn't look like the China I had imagined. I don't get the impression that I live in a country where I have to watch my words. Young uniformed men are squatting in a row on the curb playing with their phones, cops at a red traffic light are ignored. The government seems far away. But on the other hand, I also hear stories of impenetrable bureaucratic procedures and see how at subway stations people are sometimes asked for their identification seemingly at random.
Sid, who like Hu Wei works for IFP, tells me that the Penghao Theater, which is a few blocks away from here, has to send the texts of the plays to be performed for review. That there are cameras installed in the theater and that there is the possibility of a mystery guest coming to watch every performance. He also tells me that IFP is not quick to use the written-out name, Insititute for Provocation - and let alone the Chinese translation - in official documents. At the same time, it just says it on the front door, or on my visa application: Institute for Provocation.
One Friday night I go to dinner in a floor-to-ceiling tiled Xinjian restaurant: three tables wide and I think seven deep. I sit more or less in the middle. Except for the mirrored walls, everything is golden yellow, so in fact everything is golden yellow. Over the yellow tablecloths is a sheet of glass. Everything shines and the mirrors reflect not only the space but also the sounds to infinity. It's Friday night. It's full and I'm in the middle.
The boys and girls who work here have some sort of self-made uniform on. The boys wear orange T-shirts. The girls all wear pink headscarves and T-shirts printed with a typographic verbiage of seemingly random English words. The word sex stands out. I don't think they can read it.
Smiling and gossiping men have their shirts rolled up over their bare bellies to below their armpits. The men, couples and young couples are celebrating that it is Friday. They talk at a volume as if the floor and walls were lined with carpeting and felt rags, rather than tiles and glass panes. Fúwùyuán! The noise is so loud that I can hardly manage to eat.
A slightly overweight girl lights one cigarette after another. She looks in love at the boy across from her. His face I cannot see, but he smokes at least as much as she does. And in the middle sits a foreigner, the Lǎowài, whom they have all looked at once. The man who drinks too much does not forget to top up his wife's drink. The man and the woman are twenty years older than the couple in love who have since left. He smiles and toasts me.
"Mǎidān!" I shout as I want the bill.
"San shi si"
"Thirty-four," I translate softly to myself. I checkout and go.
Slowly things start to become normal, slowly I have space in my head to think about new work I would like to make. I am collecting fragments, images, scenes for a work in which the city will play the leading role, in which Beijing will be the protagonist. The ever-expanding city that slowly swallows up the villages around it. A city that seems to move with you every time you cross a ring road. A city of swallowed up villages, generic apartment blocks and hutongs. The city where everything is pieced together, where every formal structure has an informal counterpart. Where on the sidewalk in front of the IKEA vendors sell even cheaper junk. In this gigantic city, it is perhaps not the big, but the small stories that fascinate me so much.
I am sitting in the park. Two ladies walk by gossiping and clapping out of tune. Every now and then they stop, but continue to clap. The excitement can be heard in their voices. A little later they walk on again, still clapping and still out of tune. From the other side a man in pajamas and with a small red transistor radio comes shuffling along.
Hu Wei is leaving for the Netherlands next week to begin the Master's degree at the Dutch Art Institute. I look forward to seeing him again when I return to the Netherlands. I am curious to hear his stories and adventures in the Netherlands. For his farewell, we went to dinner at a Japanese-Italian restaurant. Sushi and pasta.
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