ondrej is in beijingafter blogging from yichang i arrived back in this monstrous, polluted, beast that is beijing, and haven't left since. my secret location was dispensed with in favour of a period of rehabilitation and study. i study 1.5 hours a day with a tutor, the rest of my time is spent doing private study, exploring the city, engaging in interactions ranging from the bizarre to the unusual, and having lots of ondrej time (of which i seemingly can't get enough).
.
i'm staying in a forgetable little hostel in wudaokou. it's the sort of place where middle-aged men fall asleep at night with cigarettes in their mouths and people are discovered in cages in hidden basements. last week i found a ladder that led up to the building's tarred-over roof. there are six solar panels, a blinking neon hostel sign, and increasingly, a ponderous young australian sitting at the roof's edge at night watching the orange moon shimmering at the horizon. it's added a whole new dimension to my stay.
health - vaseline saves the day (again)
for my birthday three weeks ago, i got an angry, red, weeping rash that covered over 60% of the surface area of my body (using the rule of 9s). at night i would abandon myself to an itching-scratching frenzy. my topical hydrocort didn't seem to touch it, and when certain personal activities of daily living became almost impossible, i decided to prevent a mental health incident and started myself on a course of low dose oral prednisolone. it worked - the rash was replaced by a body wide lock-in of dry skin (i couldn't even turn my head properly my neck was so dry) replete with a different sort of maddening itch. i also developed big boils all over my body. these erupted at various intervals - the one on my right buttcheek popped during a chinese lesson, and my teacher was sickened when i pulled a blood and pus-stained hand out of my pants (or was he sickened by the grin on my face?). on another occasion i was having lunch with a friend. he turned to me and said "ondrej - you're squeezing blood and pus out of a boil on your arm and we're about to eat". i looked up suprised and asked: "is that not ok?". i found the life-cycle of the boils endlessly fascinating. for those of you who have never had boils but love squeezing pimples, you'd be in for a real treat.
my hip/leg injury is getting slowly slowly better. i've given myself a provisional diagnosis of iliopsoas tendonitis, which seems to fit everything. i still can't move very fast and have to take sets of stairs slowly slowly or right leg first, but it's getting there.
cruel and unusual
things took a turn for the weird when i went on a date with a guy called hu (not the president) from northeast china. when he turned up, so did a 26 year old californian high school art teacher - his self-professed jealous ex-boyfriend who was having trouble dealing with the break-up - and decided (to hu's embarrassment and my disbelief) to chaperone us on our date. he sat on the other side of the table over dinner staring, smoking cigarettes and scanning the environment like some sort of space alien. i was convinced that he was wearing an animal hair wig. at one stage he leaned across the table and gave me the name of an american felon who was working in beijing as a plastic surgeon. suggesting a chemical face peel or laser remodelling, he declared: "ondrej - something can be done!". i asked "about what?" to which he replied "about the...feet around your eyes".
it was the absence of the word 'crow's', as in 'something can be done about the crow's feet around your eyes' that so enraged me. going on a first date is awkward enough without an ex-boyfriend turning upt o catalogue your shortcomings.
beautiful bj
beijing is hot, dry, polluted, crowded and wonderful. i can honestly say that before my experiences on the beijing metro, i never truly understood what it meant to 'elbow your way through a crowd'. beijing's little old ladies have now been taught the meaning of fear - when i'm in a hurry, no-one's safe from the cruel justice inflicted by ondrej's sharpest angle. every time i squeeze myself onto a rush hour train - like that last pair of socks being stuffed into an already bulging backpack - i wonder where i am going to get a hit of the same experience in australia? the crowds, the jostling, the press of people even in suburban streets at 11 o'clock at night is something rich for me - a pulsating aliveness that i think we lack in oz.
health - vaseline saves the day (again)
for my birthday three weeks ago, i got an angry, red, weeping rash that covered over 60% of the surface area of my body (using the rule of 9s). at night i would abandon myself to an itching-scratching frenzy. my topical hydrocort didn't seem to touch it, and when certain personal activities of daily living became almost impossible, i decided to prevent a mental health incident and started myself on a course of low dose oral prednisolone. it worked - the rash was replaced by a body wide lock-in of dry skin (i couldn't even turn my head properly my neck was so dry) replete with a different sort of maddening itch. i also developed big boils all over my body. these erupted at various intervals - the one on my right buttcheek popped during a chinese lesson, and my teacher was sickened when i pulled a blood and pus-stained hand out of my pants (or was he sickened by the grin on my face?). on another occasion i was having lunch with a friend. he turned to me and said "ondrej - you're squeezing blood and pus out of a boil on your arm and we're about to eat". i looked up suprised and asked: "is that not ok?". i found the life-cycle of the boils endlessly fascinating. for those of you who have never had boils but love squeezing pimples, you'd be in for a real treat.my hip/leg injury is getting slowly slowly better. i've given myself a provisional diagnosis of iliopsoas tendonitis, which seems to fit everything. i still can't move very fast and have to take sets of stairs slowly slowly or right leg first, but it's getting there.
cruel and unusual
things took a turn for the weird when i went on a date with a guy called hu (not the president) from northeast china. when he turned up, so did a 26 year old californian high school art teacher - his self-professed jealous ex-boyfriend who was having trouble dealing with the break-up - and decided (to hu's embarrassment and my disbelief) to chaperone us on our date. he sat on the other side of the table over dinner staring, smoking cigarettes and scanning the environment like some sort of space alien. i was convinced that he was wearing an animal hair wig. at one stage he leaned across the table and gave me the name of an american felon who was working in beijing as a plastic surgeon. suggesting a chemical face peel or laser remodelling, he declared: "ondrej - something can be done!". i asked "about what?" to which he replied "about the...feet around your eyes".it was the absence of the word 'crow's', as in 'something can be done about the crow's feet around your eyes' that so enraged me. going on a first date is awkward enough without an ex-boyfriend turning upt o catalogue your shortcomings.
beautiful bj
beijing is hot, dry, polluted, crowded and wonderful. i can honestly say that before my experiences on the beijing metro, i never truly understood what it meant to 'elbow your way through a crowd'. beijing's little old ladies have now been taught the meaning of fear - when i'm in a hurry, no-one's safe from the cruel justice inflicted by ondrej's sharpest angle. every time i squeeze myself onto a rush hour train - like that last pair of socks being stuffed into an already bulging backpack - i wonder where i am going to get a hit of the same experience in australia? the crowds, the jostling, the press of people even in suburban streets at 11 o'clock at night is something rich for me - a pulsating aliveness that i think we lack in oz.
beijing is famed for its hutongs. these are the inner city's alleyways dotted with doorways that lead into ramshackle courtyards and passageways surrounded by the dwellings of several families. crammed with washing, pot-plants, derelict bicycles and toothless old people who are delighted for you to just wander into their homes and say 'ni hao'. it is these that are being leveled to make way for the new beijing. is it good or bad? does one preserve cultural heritage at the expense of an acceptable standard of living, or improve quality of life at the expense of history? pockets are going to be preserved, but i feel that the beauty of the hutongs is the spreaded-outness and everywhereness of them - the way you can spend a day lost in their mazes. one cannot look at a tree and understand what it is like to be in a forest.
i leave beijing in a just over a week for a final bout of 'travel for the disabled'.
pic 1 - they ate all the real camels
pic 2 - bell tower
pic 3 - fishing in the forbidden city's moat
pic 4 - a typical hutong scene
1 comment:
!!!ROFL!!!
Oh. my. god.! When you were talking about the enchanting roofsitting in Beijing I never imagined the hillarious events down bellow!
I call that a complete experience.
As for the art teacher you should have asked him if his wig was sable or hog. I'm certain you can get some ok, cheap sable in china, but dahlin' nothing beats Windsor and Newton series 7 ones ;)) Further I would have shaken his hand AFTER squeezing a boil and told him that Picasso got more women layed then paintings without wigs.
Post a Comment