02 July 2006
Welcome back
Over six weeks in Hong Kong, China, and Japan I became more and more convinced that this way of life is both silly and immoral.
In work terms the Hong Kong trip went smoothly (thanks HKTB) despite the intervention of a hurricane which delayed me for a day. Of course I spent part of the time locked up in a hotel room completing a story on Whistler. But I tramped up hills on Po Toi, visited a new fishing museum near where I used to live, spent a day hopping on and off trains around the New Territories, reviewed some new hotels for future guide book editions, tried out The Peninsula's new spa, and saw friends for dinners.
I was glad to keep my visit to Shanghai brief and mainly administrative, to do with work on the DK Beijing and Shanghai guide, before heading up the Yangzi into China's glum interior, hopping from one decaying and polluted former treaty port to another, and scarcely sight of the sun, which couldn't break through the murk. It finally came out when I headed north from Chongqing to Chengdu, where I had a couple of pleasant dinners with an Internet acquaintance.
After an overnight at a hostel near Shanghai's Pudong Airport I flew to Tokyo.
As I've found on direct China to Japan trips before, nothing makes China look worse than the quick transit to a country that for all its problems, actually works. Perhaps it's the superficial (micron-deep) similarity between the two places and two peoples that makes the contrast so shocking. Just getting into a lift is all that's necessary. In China people often reach for the close door button first, even if someone can be seen running for the lift, and then for the button for the floor. In Japan they reach for the button to hold the door open, and then shuffle apologetically around to make room for the newcomer.
And they are the world's pre-eminent queue-ers, too (step back, you British). Whereas even at Narita, being lined up by incompetent Northwest Airlines staff a family of Shanghainese tried to graft themselves surreptitiously onto a line stretching for many metres behind them. And of course no one in the line said anything, except the foreigner, who temporarily abandoned his bags to tap the paterfamilias on the shoulder and tell him in Mandarin to get to the back, at which point he said he was only standing there waiting for the line to go past him. This met with a sceptical response from me, and much giggling from the other Chinese in the line at his discomfiture.
I spent two nights at the new Mandarin Oriental in Ginza, another of these tower-top hotels, and with considerable style, not that I saw much of it due to a busy schedule (thank you TCVB) bustling around sumo beya (training stables) and kodo (appreciation of incense) meetings, and catching up with friends and acquaintances. Every time I'm in Tokyo I dine with former colleagues from my former life in arts marketing, and who worked on the UK Japan Festival 1991. On this occasion we were joined by someone from the cultural department of the Japanese Embassy in London at the time, but who is now one of Japan's most senior civil servants and an advisor to the Prime Minister, so I think everyone felt it was something of an honour that he gave up three hours for what turned out to be an excellent evening all round.
Then I flew north to Hokkaido for a trekking trip which turned out to be one of the least well-run organised tours I've ever been on--in fact the word 'organised' is hardly appropriate. I've experienced other tours this company runs, and I'm sure it's going to be knocked into shape (the other tours are excellent, and one is amongst my favourite travel experiences). But if this was my first time with them I'd be telling the editors who've commissioned the story that we shouldn't run it. (And that, incidentally, would make me a very rare freelance indeed.)
I was with a group of people some of whom had an annoying obsession with the idea that they were going to be written about, and one of whom threatened to sue if I did. This was despite the fact that the tour organisers had introduced me (I really wish they wouldn't do that--and they might have consulted me first) and mentioned that I was writing about the *tour* not the *tourists*. I often have to wonder in these cases what on earth is going on in people's minds in these cases. They turned out to be a well-read, well-travelled bunch with broad interests and in the end intrigued to know what I might have to say about the chaos they had just experienced, and which, while occasionally taking the organisers on one side to issue reproaches, they were determined to make the best of. I was decidedly glad that they were mainly Australians and not Americans or British, both of whom would have made the whole trip miserable by doing nothing but complain.
But there were some very good moments providing plenty of good material to work with, and the exercise was very welcome, although I was creaking by the end, and I didn't even do all the climbs.
I had a further day in Tokyo, picking up my latest Hiroshige ukiyo-e and doing a little shopping for stationery (my favourite notebooks come from Mujiroshi, although the best square, trouser-pocket-sized ones have been discontinued).
One final evening in Shanghai was used for a quick hotel review and bar update, during which I accepted too many glasses of champagne and too many cocktails, and as a consequence only got to sleep at 5am, and slept for a fitful few hours before having a tour of the hotel with a curiously reluctant PR, and then lunch before getting off to the airport. I slept on the flight, and have had much less difficulty than usual throwing off jet lag. So maybe this staying up all night before leaving Asia is a strategy I should adopt in future, although just at the moment I shudder to think of going back. This will probably wear off.
So I'm back, feeling alienated as usual, although oddly not as alienated as sometimes, possibly due to the same fairly continuous contact with home via Skype that may also have kept me more distant from China than usual while I was there. But Vancouver still seems as effortlessly fatuous as ever. Let's have a conversation about insulated coffee mugs.
Much following-up, tidying-up, planning for possible Europe in September and Middle East in February; a book to edit; two features to submit in July, but otherwise the commission book looking fairly empty, meetings with editors in HK and Tokyo not having produced much.
So no break here. No two weeks on the couch. I'd better get on with it.
Oh, and courtesy of the Internet I discovered while away that my second child, if all goes well between now and the due date in November, will be a girl. This brought a big smile to my face in Narita while waiting for the Shanghai flight.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment