I finally made it to China this week, on a family holiday to visit my sister and brother-in-law in Shanghai with my brother, his wife and kids, and my mother. Here’s how six days typically pass in one of the world’s most exciting places when there are young children about.
8am: Wake up, raring to go and explore. 10am: Squabble about where to go. 11am: Drum your fingers while the laggards eat breakfast. 12pm. Froth as great activity related to dressing for sub-zero temperatures, results in zero forward momentum. 12.50pm: Finally get everyone out of the door. 12.51pm: Go back in because the baby has pooped. 1.30pm: Eat lunch, squabble. 2pm: Go home so that six exhausted adults can catch a quick nap. 5pm: Squabble about dinner. 8pm: Fall asleep (except for the kids).
Still, I did some nice things. On our first evening we went to the hot and happening M on the Bund restaurant, on the Huang Pu riverfront. I wondered if residents always went out in pink sequined bikinis, pink masks, pink feather boas, pink wigs and pink bunny ears and tails, until I was told that this was the joint’s tenth anniversary (dress code: something pink) and The Party of the Year.
The next day I went back to the restaurant’s Glamour Bar (barely recognisable sans burlesque dancers in nipple patches), to watch a documentary film about Jin Xing, who is one of China’s foremost dancers and who, before her sex change, used to be a Colonel-rank he in the People’s Liberation Army. Jin Xing was there, sharp, funny and beautiful, and talked about how she, her three adopted kids and her German husband deal with her alternative sexuality in a country which didn’t officially believe in alternative sexuality until quite recently. This was not how I imagined China at all.
I went to the Grand Hyatt hotel coffee shop, on the 54th floor of the bamboo stem-like Jin Mao Tower, for a bird’s-eye view of vaguely dystopian ranges of buildings fading into scarves of mist or smog. Shanghai is fabulous. It’s filled with sharp design, art galleries, parks, and beautiful neighbourhoods. The streets are spotless—and, importantly, peppered with cheap massage places—and the people are beautiful and dressed to kill (except for a few who still wander around in their nightclothes from the time when that was how you showed off the fact that you could afford nightclothes).
And I ate gloriously: Yunnan style, Hunan style, Szechuan style, Taiwanese style. Lily buds with celery or squash; ‘Jew’s ears’ mushrooms and fungi of every kind; the famous xiaolongbao (“little dragon pouches”—pork dumplings with soup inside); tofu topped with salmon roe; lotus stem; fish head…I could eat here all day, every day.
It’s odd that the streets of this notoriously insular 5,000-year-old civilisation are lined with Starbucks and Nike outlets, so I went to a Foreign Correspondents’ Club talk on the Chinese economy by MIT professor Yasheng Huang. A business journo handed me his card. “I’m a freelancer from Delhi and I don’t have a card,” I told him. “Oh yeah, he does some work for us—great work,” he replied, which made me wonder about his reporting.
My sister later told me that Huang had said some fascinating things about how China’s GDP figures mask the stagnation in household income growth. I spent the entire lecture wondering why the business journo drew a line down the middle of each of his notebook pages. My takeaway was: 1. Beijing-born Yasheng Huang doesn’t like Shanghai much. 2. Of approximately seven thousand journalists present, only one was wearing a red jacket. 3. Two glasses of wine are better than one. 3. I could totally live in Shanghai.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
Death and the toddler
Spirituality is a funny thing. When I was a teenager my great-uncle Vishnu, who doubled as a self-proclaimed palmist, read my hand, wiggled his eyebrows a lot, and foretold that I’d take a spiritual turn at the age of 28. It is indeed true that that year I spent ten days in a vipassana meditation retreat in Myanmar, but while I maintained the requisite state of silence and abstinence, the thought-bubble over my head was filled with hashes, ampersands and exclamation marks, and I spent my time trying to snack on the inside of my cheek because they didn’t feed us very much. I made, on the whole, a lousy monk.
Still, I’m not one to refuse to think about death on the grounds that it’s too morbid; in fact, I’ve been accused of a degree of over-enthusiasm about the subject, even though all my ruminations end with me sidling off into some shallower, splashier little reverie, the spiritual equivalent of lying in the grass and blowing soap bubbles.
I find baby philosophy about death very solid, and a good deal more sensible, than The Tibetan Book of the Dead. My niece Tara, who’s almost four years old, is a leading light on the subject. A few days ago she walked into my mother’s house and looked tenderly at the photographs of my late father and grandmother. “Dada died,” she announced. That’s right, said my mother. “That’s so sad. Badi dadi died too,” said Tara. Yes she did, we said. “Why?” she wanted to know. Oh, she got very old, and when people get very old, they die, my mother told her. “Yeah!” said Tara, as if my mother had just earned a gold star. She flounced up in her rainbow-striped jacket with an enormous pink flower clip in her hair and led me to the porch.
“When people get old,” she explained in a gentle, soothing voice, “they get wrinkles and their hair goes white, and then they get little and die. It’s very sad, but everyone dies. I want to tell you something,” she added, dropping her gaze delicately, “one day, maybe soon, you’ll become big and old and then, one day, you might, might, might die.”
I said that I definitely would.
“Yeah. But not now,” she said, trying to keep me calm. “First you’ll get old and you’ll have to walk with a cane and somebody will have to help you walk with the cane.”
Will you help me walk with my cane? I asked her.
“Maybe,” she said, “but maybe not.” She considered me with genuine pity and said, “I won’t die for a long time, because I’m new. But you’re not so new.”
Right again, I said grumpily. What happens, do you think, when you die?
“Your skin comes off and all the bones of your body go away,” she said. “And it’s not nice to live without your skin and your bones, so you die. Everyone has to die, yeah. But not now.” Then she picked up my mother’s phone and said she had to make a phone call to Badi dadi. “Hello?” she said, “Is that Badi dadi? I just wanted to say it’s okay.” She had a burbling conversation with her dead great-grandmother and returned with the news that all was well, and that Badi dadi had become new—and that was pretty much all anyone really wanted to know anyway.
Then she sat me down on the porch steps and draped a white handkerchief carefully over my head. “Now you look very nice,” she said. After a while I took it off and she said coolly, “I wouldn’t do that. Your hair isn’t so stylish.”
Still, I’m not one to refuse to think about death on the grounds that it’s too morbid; in fact, I’ve been accused of a degree of over-enthusiasm about the subject, even though all my ruminations end with me sidling off into some shallower, splashier little reverie, the spiritual equivalent of lying in the grass and blowing soap bubbles.
I find baby philosophy about death very solid, and a good deal more sensible, than The Tibetan Book of the Dead. My niece Tara, who’s almost four years old, is a leading light on the subject. A few days ago she walked into my mother’s house and looked tenderly at the photographs of my late father and grandmother. “Dada died,” she announced. That’s right, said my mother. “That’s so sad. Badi dadi died too,” said Tara. Yes she did, we said. “Why?” she wanted to know. Oh, she got very old, and when people get very old, they die, my mother told her. “Yeah!” said Tara, as if my mother had just earned a gold star. She flounced up in her rainbow-striped jacket with an enormous pink flower clip in her hair and led me to the porch.
“When people get old,” she explained in a gentle, soothing voice, “they get wrinkles and their hair goes white, and then they get little and die. It’s very sad, but everyone dies. I want to tell you something,” she added, dropping her gaze delicately, “one day, maybe soon, you’ll become big and old and then, one day, you might, might, might die.”
I said that I definitely would.
“Yeah. But not now,” she said, trying to keep me calm. “First you’ll get old and you’ll have to walk with a cane and somebody will have to help you walk with the cane.”
Will you help me walk with my cane? I asked her.
“Maybe,” she said, “but maybe not.” She considered me with genuine pity and said, “I won’t die for a long time, because I’m new. But you’re not so new.”
Right again, I said grumpily. What happens, do you think, when you die?
“Your skin comes off and all the bones of your body go away,” she said. “And it’s not nice to live without your skin and your bones, so you die. Everyone has to die, yeah. But not now.” Then she picked up my mother’s phone and said she had to make a phone call to Badi dadi. “Hello?” she said, “Is that Badi dadi? I just wanted to say it’s okay.” She had a burbling conversation with her dead great-grandmother and returned with the news that all was well, and that Badi dadi had become new—and that was pretty much all anyone really wanted to know anyway.
Then she sat me down on the porch steps and draped a white handkerchief carefully over my head. “Now you look very nice,” she said. After a while I took it off and she said coolly, “I wouldn’t do that. Your hair isn’t so stylish.”
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Happy New Year, world
The most common New Year resolutions include: I will quit smoking; I will lose weight; I will exercise; I will quit drinking; I will stop procrastinating; I will help others; I will save money; I will get organised; I will learn something new; I will spend more time with my friends and family.
Many people foolishly decide to attempt all these reforms at once, and end up flailing around like turtles on their backs. The secret to success is smart delegation, so it might be more practical, now that it’s been established that the world is an interdependent global village in need of serious reform, for us to work on resolutions for 2009 at a global level, and divvy them up into national tasks, with local adaptations where necessary. That way each player can focus all resources on one real problem, and no one part of the world has to do too much.
Here’s a list of who might take on what.
USA will quit smoking ’em out. It’s bad for you and for everyone around you. They keep setting fire to things, the blowback is awful, and nobody has yet stumbled through the smoke spluttering, “Bring me to justice, for the love of God.”
REPUBLIC OF NAURU will lose weight. A staggering 94 percent of the 14,000 Nauruans are obese, making it the fattest nation on earth and, at 21 sq km, the one most justified in not building too many gyms or, indeed, a capital. Micronesia, second fattest at 90 percent, may have to assist on account of nobody ever having heard of Nauru.
ISRAEL will exercise restraint. These are difficult times, but enough behaving like the Hulk every time one of those Hamas popguns goes off. By the way, what are you doing in the Gaza strip in the first place?
LUXEMBOURG will quit drinking. No, it’s not fair, but somebody’s got to do it. A good way to guard against lapses is to stop hanging out with people from France, Ireland, Portugal and (just to be safe) Russia.
PAKISTAN will stop procrastinating. Seriously. Everyone is sick of hearing, year after year, how Pakistan will set its house in order, fight its own battles, tackle its own problems, and crack down on this, that and the other. There’s no time like 2009, people.
SWITZERLAND will help others. Properly this time, not in the same way as they did during World War II with all the dubious banking stuff. However, it may maintain military neutrality.
ICELAND will save money. It’s only fair to the millions of people and various British coucils, police departments and civic services that got wiped out when the Icelandic economy went poof.
INDIA will get organised. Ha ha! This is the joke one, like ‘I will spend more time with my friends and family’. No, but really, we need to get more organised. We could ask China for a little help.
BURKINA FASO will learn something new. But it just needs to take the lead; developing nations can use a little time and space to improve themselves, and they can also use all the help they can get doing it, but really, everyone will have to work on this one.
NORTH KOREA will spend more time with friends and family. Relationships are not easy, and they need a lot of work, and you have to make a real effort to communicate your feelings. Calling up people and threatening to nuke them doesn’t count.
There, see? It’s not so hard when you share the work.
Happy 2009.
Many people foolishly decide to attempt all these reforms at once, and end up flailing around like turtles on their backs. The secret to success is smart delegation, so it might be more practical, now that it’s been established that the world is an interdependent global village in need of serious reform, for us to work on resolutions for 2009 at a global level, and divvy them up into national tasks, with local adaptations where necessary. That way each player can focus all resources on one real problem, and no one part of the world has to do too much.
Here’s a list of who might take on what.
USA will quit smoking ’em out. It’s bad for you and for everyone around you. They keep setting fire to things, the blowback is awful, and nobody has yet stumbled through the smoke spluttering, “Bring me to justice, for the love of God.”
REPUBLIC OF NAURU will lose weight. A staggering 94 percent of the 14,000 Nauruans are obese, making it the fattest nation on earth and, at 21 sq km, the one most justified in not building too many gyms or, indeed, a capital. Micronesia, second fattest at 90 percent, may have to assist on account of nobody ever having heard of Nauru.
ISRAEL will exercise restraint. These are difficult times, but enough behaving like the Hulk every time one of those Hamas popguns goes off. By the way, what are you doing in the Gaza strip in the first place?
LUXEMBOURG will quit drinking. No, it’s not fair, but somebody’s got to do it. A good way to guard against lapses is to stop hanging out with people from France, Ireland, Portugal and (just to be safe) Russia.
PAKISTAN will stop procrastinating. Seriously. Everyone is sick of hearing, year after year, how Pakistan will set its house in order, fight its own battles, tackle its own problems, and crack down on this, that and the other. There’s no time like 2009, people.
SWITZERLAND will help others. Properly this time, not in the same way as they did during World War II with all the dubious banking stuff. However, it may maintain military neutrality.
ICELAND will save money. It’s only fair to the millions of people and various British coucils, police departments and civic services that got wiped out when the Icelandic economy went poof.
INDIA will get organised. Ha ha! This is the joke one, like ‘I will spend more time with my friends and family’. No, but really, we need to get more organised. We could ask China for a little help.
BURKINA FASO will learn something new. But it just needs to take the lead; developing nations can use a little time and space to improve themselves, and they can also use all the help they can get doing it, but really, everyone will have to work on this one.
NORTH KOREA will spend more time with friends and family. Relationships are not easy, and they need a lot of work, and you have to make a real effort to communicate your feelings. Calling up people and threatening to nuke them doesn’t count.
There, see? It’s not so hard when you share the work.
Happy 2009.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Good riddance, 2008
Most people I talk to seem to agree that 2008 has been a ratty, perfidious, thoroughly avoidable year, and many of them have sworn never to repeat it. It’s been particularly frustrating because much as I’d like to quietly strangle the thing, hide the body, and move on, I can’t, because some really nice things were interspersed among the many really godawful things.
Petrol breached the $100 per barrel barrier, but mobile phones got cheaper and better. Sarah Palin came perilously close to the Presidency of the United States, but Barack Obama actually got it. The Chinese government cracked down on Tibetan protesters, but democracy came to Nepal and Bhutan. Over 400 sq kms of the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica melted into oblivion, but Sariska National Park’s tiger population is looking a bit better. The global economy felt a bit queasy and then suddenly had to be taken to the ER, but we all became just a little more invested in the health of the planet. I lost a grandmother, but gained a nephew, whose facial structure I look forward to discovering whenever it fights its way out of his cheeks.
So there it is: A year I’d rather forget, but must grudgingly admire.
All this wouldn’t be so aggravating if it weren’t for my mother’s voice echoing in my head, telling me how everything and everyone is a mix of good and bad, and nothing and nobody is perfect, and that I’d better learn to take the good with the bad, and not throw the baby out with the bathwater. (She doesn’t think much of my own theory, which is that if the baby’s been in there long enough it’s probably going to be wrinkly and waterlogged anyway so it’s best to throw it out too as a precautionary measure; you don’t want to risk any kind of mould.)
2008 drove me to consult a Tarot card reader for the first time in my life, at a restaurant, greatly encouraged by a glass of wine and a giddy friend. The format was to fork over Rs 200 to a mean-looking lady with green eyeshadow, who laid down the following rules of engagement: You were allowed to ask one very specific question, to which she would answer Yes, or No. I asked if a friend of mine would be all right in the coming months. She flipped a couple of cards open and, scanning the room over my shoulder for more suckers, said, No. Could you explain what the cards mean? I asked. No, she said firmly, if you want explanations, come to my studio and pay Rs 2,000. I thought the whole deal ungenerous at best, and between you and me, wouldn’t be shattered if her fortune-telling business went the way of Lehman Brothers.
All in all, it’s been a hell of a ride. My mother rolls her eyes and mutters things about the mid-thirties, and I tell myself that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, although I really believe that Martin Amis is more accurate when he writes, in a bleak little book on love and gulags called House of Meetings, that “What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker and kills you later”.
Let this benighted year, declared the International Year of Planet Earth, the International Year of Languages, the International Year of the Potato, the International Year of Sanitation and the International Year of the Frog, cede to 2009, the International Year of Astronomy and the International Year of Natural Fibres.
I have big hopes for 2009. Here’s to that.
Petrol breached the $100 per barrel barrier, but mobile phones got cheaper and better. Sarah Palin came perilously close to the Presidency of the United States, but Barack Obama actually got it. The Chinese government cracked down on Tibetan protesters, but democracy came to Nepal and Bhutan. Over 400 sq kms of the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica melted into oblivion, but Sariska National Park’s tiger population is looking a bit better. The global economy felt a bit queasy and then suddenly had to be taken to the ER, but we all became just a little more invested in the health of the planet. I lost a grandmother, but gained a nephew, whose facial structure I look forward to discovering whenever it fights its way out of his cheeks.
So there it is: A year I’d rather forget, but must grudgingly admire.
All this wouldn’t be so aggravating if it weren’t for my mother’s voice echoing in my head, telling me how everything and everyone is a mix of good and bad, and nothing and nobody is perfect, and that I’d better learn to take the good with the bad, and not throw the baby out with the bathwater. (She doesn’t think much of my own theory, which is that if the baby’s been in there long enough it’s probably going to be wrinkly and waterlogged anyway so it’s best to throw it out too as a precautionary measure; you don’t want to risk any kind of mould.)
2008 drove me to consult a Tarot card reader for the first time in my life, at a restaurant, greatly encouraged by a glass of wine and a giddy friend. The format was to fork over Rs 200 to a mean-looking lady with green eyeshadow, who laid down the following rules of engagement: You were allowed to ask one very specific question, to which she would answer Yes, or No. I asked if a friend of mine would be all right in the coming months. She flipped a couple of cards open and, scanning the room over my shoulder for more suckers, said, No. Could you explain what the cards mean? I asked. No, she said firmly, if you want explanations, come to my studio and pay Rs 2,000. I thought the whole deal ungenerous at best, and between you and me, wouldn’t be shattered if her fortune-telling business went the way of Lehman Brothers.
All in all, it’s been a hell of a ride. My mother rolls her eyes and mutters things about the mid-thirties, and I tell myself that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, although I really believe that Martin Amis is more accurate when he writes, in a bleak little book on love and gulags called House of Meetings, that “What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker and kills you later”.
Let this benighted year, declared the International Year of Planet Earth, the International Year of Languages, the International Year of the Potato, the International Year of Sanitation and the International Year of the Frog, cede to 2009, the International Year of Astronomy and the International Year of Natural Fibres.
I have big hopes for 2009. Here’s to that.
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