So far I’ve revisited the Forbidden City of the Ming and Qing dynasties, see photos here, and this time it was not being renovated for the Olympics so I got to see the inner and outer area, the house of harmony and the amazing gardens with a little bit of extra high definition.
After the city I joined the crowd in Tenemana Square to watch the removal of the flag at 6pm in front of the huge bright world famous portrait of Chairman Mao. In a group of well over 1,000 people myself and Cristine my Microsoft colleague stuck out like soar thumbs and garnished a lot of attention. Photos were taken with babies and a very inquisitve older women who had very broken English and claimed to be an English teacher, which I’m sure she was, despite her 5 year old English standard, politely and very humbly asked us some questions:
“Where are you from?” To my surprise, she knew Ireland was beside England and small. Nothing else.
“What is your name?”
“How big is your family?”
“Why are you here?”
“What is the differences between Ireland and China?”
“Would you like to meet my son? He is my only child and studying law in Beijing University?” She then beckoned over a 6 foot tall, duffle coat wearing, muscular young man, who bowed his head courteousfully with a huge smile peering out of his round rimmed skinny spectacles.
The genuine inquistiveness continued...
“What do you eat?”
“When are you going home?” When I told her a week. She burst into laughing.
"What is your name?"
"Welcome to China!"
The brief interlude lasted about 6 or 7 minutes but it gave me a stark but clear small insight into the hunger for knowledge and self introspection that we take for granted in Ireland and we reciprocate ourselves. This women was warm and kind and wanted to know about my world. She was loving and caring and wanted to make me feel secure and at home. She wanted to share and to learn and with a beautiful smile and wonderful head bowing gesture explained to me with an invisible loud speaker the sacred words that I have learnt on all my global voygerism... my Ying for her Yang... my Harmony for her Harmony.... "You" and "I" are the same. For reminding me of that which I already knew from my travels but had departmentalised a little deeper than it should have been of late which always happens when you slip back into familarity in Ireland, I said "Bye", "Xui - Xui" and I saluted her as I left. She had reminded of that which I had forever learned in 2004 travelling the world and tatooed on my soul. She and I were the same. For her kind words and bright infectuous smile that nearly knocked Chairman Mao off his red wall I loved her as if she was one of my own.
After a walk around the beautiful square and some quick introspection and then inspection of the guarded Obelisk, the famous workers statues and a gaulk at the outside of the Chinese history museum and government buildings we headed for home which turned out to be an ordeal as if was really hard to flag any taxis down. Before we got one we passed a huge building called the “Book Building”... think of Eason’s on O’Connel street multipled by 4 in size. It was colossal and interestingly at the front of the shop was all communist rhetoric books and the best seller list which interestingly had Barack Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope” and also Warren Buffet’s autobiography. Books very cheap. 3 euros for a book that would cost us 15 at home. The sections were long and diverse. Similar than we had back home but calligraphy, philosophy and the childrens section were noteably much deeper. I had a quick look around and saw a Harry Potter book and a Lonely Planet like travel section but very Chinese like in print and design. I didn’t get a chance to find anything on Ireland but would have loved to. We were in a hurry to catch a meal so we didn’t stay long. As I left we both started a debate about how books get censored in China before they land on the shelf. It must be a rigorous process and something I can try find out today on my travels, especially if I bump into more teachers in squares.
