Giant

Panda!














The last weeks of the trip have been lazy! Was wonderful: good food, good people and good cities to enjoy. Where Chengdu was still manageable (coming from the mountains), Beijing confused me in the beginning. The transport connections, the systems.. All in a sudden I had pockets full of credit card size plastic that opens the door to the apartment, or the door to the subway.. Had keys, maps, a second phone (a friend of my friends who works for Beijing Mobile or something).. And all the choice in the world. Literally, if you can't find it in Beijing, it still has to be invented (do it fast, the Chinese are gaining ground).

For the internet you still 'have to climb the wall' however, so I'd like to say thanks to my sister Roos once more!




In Chengdu a bunch of us at Sim's Cozy Guesthouse (one of the loveliest hostels I've seen) visited the panda breading centre. Pandas, they must be the laziest species on earth. If I understood it correctly, they actually went from a carnivorous diet, to straight vegetarianism (well, bambooism's closer to reality, not much variety with pandas), just because they don't have to chase bamboo around, like they would have to do with prey. The joke's on them though, as they now need more than 50 kilos of bamboo a day to keep their bodies healthy, so they literally have to eat all day. Earlier in the trip someone once told a third person: "The is not a man, this is an eating machine", referring to me, but now I know what a real eating machine looks like. It's black and white, with beautiful sparkling eyes, a facial print reminiscent of 'The Scream' of Edvard Munch, inverted, paw moving steadily up and down from the pile to the mouth.
Seeing a panda - sitting, munching away - reminded me of a bean bag, the comfy bags people lounge on.

I wasn't the only one (photo upper left-hand corner) who wanted to see this pinnacle of lethargy (photo in right-hand corner), and we got lucky, as it was early in the morning, their "active period", and saw a panda trying to climb a tree (left, below), and unfortunately fail to reach the canopy, after which we saw a panda with a depression (below, right).



Green and clean in the city. I like to see people's laundry out in the open. It's quite intimate, to see someone's dress, underwear included, but somehow people don't perceive it like that. It goes by unnoticed. This line has nice colours too.



I was curious to see Rem Koolhaas' creation: the CCTV tower. CCTV is China's state television, I don't know how many channels that all try to convince you of the fact that China is such a fun fun place to be at ("no trouble here!"). The barbed wire in front says it all.

The cyclist's typical for all the 'old skool' vendours you see, with their old skool vehicles and ways. They show you Beijing twenty, thirty years ago, but somewhere in between New York-like high rise was dropped on top of them.



So I tried the best I could to navigate my way through the city's districts (the neighbourhood of my friends is the size of Amsterdam; there are 4,5 million cars and each day the number grows with a thousand or so) by using public transport and the occasional taxi. My bike's still boxed up, and I didn't feel like unpacking it, but I recognize that cycling is a good way to go around, were it not for the air quality, which is horrendous. The last couple of days were ash-gray.

That's not what the pictures above show you though. I took them at dusk, close to the Forbidden City and in Bei Hai Park.



More green and clean.



In a place as materialistic as Beijing, this 'stone age' BMW (with showroom girl!) is just right. More and more roads, car parks, garages.. Asphalt aplenty. On it you often see telephone numbers for I don't know what. Most probably people that like to sell something.



These two sculptures I saw in a gallery in '798', the art district, which used to be an arms factory before (hence the name, or lack of name; hence the number). They're from a collection called 'We are the world'. It somehow fits seamless with the book I'm reading at the moment: 'Eating Animals', of Jonathan Safran Foer. Really good, I recommend it. For me it was the right thing to pick from my friend Joachim's shelve. I had become more and more flexible along the way in what I would eat, but this book brings me to terms again.

If flora and fauna mean anything to us, more people should go panda (and there's much more than bamboo out there!)



More artwork from 798. And from the Apple store, where "the perfect products" are sold, that everyone wants. Beijing for you. Burgers and Ipads. And young boys that love both of them.

Returning to urbanisation (I am not saying civilisation) comes with surprises. My Chinese friends telling me of their new Iphone 4 (for which they queued hours: surprise 1) and how you can tap with it on a melon to see if it's good (surprise 2).



But now the time has almost come. I was thinking of a good song to end the OST of 'my cycle ride east', but I am not sure yet what it should be. When I had breakfast in Xining with two Israeli friends we listened to 'Home' of Simon and Garfunkel, which was really good at the time, but I'm not really a S & G person, so I leave it open for now. To be continued.

I am going to panda a bit more, so speak soon. Out!