Old China vs New China

Old China is ghastly, gaunt and decrepit - it is all the adjectives under the sun (the invisible sun, the elusive sun), and heaves as it breathes. It is drooping eyelids under the weight of its own history. It is playing mahjong or Chinese chess in hoards of old men, bent over like stray cats, lost in a mist of technology and change, caught in the eye of the storm, finding refuge in nostalgia, routine, traditional, stillness.

It is square dancing solemnity, lit incongruously by LED screens blaring ads and silent infomercials. It is being written constantly and literally onto the paving stones of parks, by men and women stooped forming right-angles over brushes, inhabitants of a bygone era, plucking watered words from their pasts and sweeping them in swathes over stone - only to be washed away with the rest. Hosepipes scatter puddles and the slate is cleaned. It is meditative, persistent, never cowing, droning on patiently in the background.

It is transient and permanent and clung to and revered. Temples, water, work, rice, sagging, beautiful, real - radiant, sad. Old China underpins the New like a giant slab of concrete, impermeable to change and being blinkered out, stifled by the monster redevelopment project of New China, by social upheaval and hyper-modernity and WeChat. Its song is mellifluous but its fingernails are breaking and its scratches are no longer indelible on the minds of the young - who flaunt the badges of New China like gold stars. The old chime lugubriously as their pasts are stripped away, & collect round each other with sunflower seeds and flasks of tea and chortle like characters from Beckett, half-dead, gripped by laughter and serenity.

The New China strides like a juggernaut, indefatigable and unforgiving. It is cement, glass, pragmatism - shiny, rustling faux leather and long puffer jackets, fashion town, colours, blasé, picture-taking paradise, boyfriends and girlfriends and shirking tradition - absence of past, eternal present future beckoning, industrious and lurid and loud and lawless and gloriously all of the above, unabashedly everything and in abundance. It towers over all else and constantly surveys, tacky and deadpan and resplendent and giggling, full of life and in perpetual motion - patterns and patents and discovering yourself - dancing yourself.

It is bottled green tea and inflated packets with mock croissants, 8000¥ t-shirts and exhibitions of wealth. It is techtonik dancing in an LED-lit, floodlit, jam-packed shopping reverie, pink hair and profile pictures. It is getting to grips with the ever-changing notions of flux and self and self-hood. It is unabashed and by itself, beside itself, fighting itself, for itself. It is of interest above all, and is only ever boring if that boredom stems from being overstimulated and therefore desensitised.

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These little yellow critters fall from the sky on Wednesdays. To ensure the most bountiful harvest, locals don special critter-catchers, contraptions which fasten to their backs, and lollop about like they're in some sort of bizarre arcade game, yelling HO-WAH whenever they feel the soft flump of a catch.

Dotted about People's Park (ding ding ding!) are groups of performers. They live there, glued to their seats, moving perpetually between two servile states: performing their set pieces and waiting. They keep their eyes closed, lest demons hover too near and tempt them from their post. It is a noble post. This violin-man has been playing constantly for 23 years, and the signs are visible. Unfortunately the picture does not show his feet, which are half concrete by now, so long have they grown into the ground.



I have been lent this fabulous gee-tar, so I can play whenever I want! I have already broken a string, but that was a piece of cake to replace.



If we feel like getting our fill of lanterns, lights and pizzazz, we head on down to Big Dave's - a wood-panelled alley housing all kinds of aural and culinary treats. Points to whoever can find Wally two large toy bears sitting down to a platter of hors-d'oeuvres.



If it has mastered anything, China has mastered the Art of Appellating. There is a park which belongs to the people. 80 points if you can guess the name. Points revoked for being a smart-ass.



Clearly this trumpet-man will not be playing for long. Eyes open and cheeks puffed, curiosity will kill this cat.



Grannies wear bright colours and challenge each other to bending over contests. This is a tradition harking back millennia. Who is winning this duel? I'll let you work that one out!!!



Anyone with the gall to bag me a pair of these boots, please exercise said gall. I want.



Inspiration for Lewis Carroll's Tweedledum and Tweedledee, or Laurel & Hardy. Sax = sex.



These games almost invariably end in a violent melee. Chips fly like spittle from man to man in hideous and carnal displays of pent-up virility and alpha-malism. I thought these were a patient people, how wrong I was.



Look, he's trying to communicate to me. I grunted that I understood, and received a chess-counter to the eyeball. Oh it was ON from that moment, and I killed the man. Not smiling now, that much is clear.





Meny of the men resemble animals, though it is difficult to pinpoint which.



Their hands hold centuries of board-gaming wisdom, and move quickly, resolutely. Age-old conflicts play out on the board, disputes are settled, sons and daughters divvied, organs exchanged, bets placed, shoes laced, routes paced, one- or two-faced, hearts embraced, garlic paste, give us a taste, speed vs. haste, minds erased, hearts unfazed, truly amazed - yes yes yes.



TO FINISH OFF:

Regularly we play ninja in Tianfu Square. Today, actually, we were told not to by a police officer. The police officers in Tianfu Square look cuddly but also mean. They wear arm-weapons covered in spikes in case you choose to defy them. So we don't. But here is a great shot of three of us knee-deep in a big old phatso game of ninja.



Sabryna and I often seem to be at loggerheads, when the game heats up. We have each of us come a cropper, boshing heads or boobs or whatever, and are now even. Who knows what will happen next...

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Ninja!

Adios, amigos. Love to you all.