Lijia Zhang's Blog, page 20
January 28, 2023
December 30, 2022
Wanderlust
2022: The Year of Travelling Not So Dangerously
I am sitting on the roof terrace of my co-working and co-living hostel in southern Morocco, sipping mint tea. The joyful sounds of children playing football on the narrow streets drift in, and the haunting Adhan – the Islamic call to pubic prayer – is floating in the air. In the distance, the sea sparkles like millions of little diamonds in the brilliant sunshine.
My heart is filled with contentment, joy and gratitude. How lucky I am to be in this wonderful and warm place while London, where I am usually based, is freezing. How lucky I am to be able to travel freely and frequently.
As 2022 comes to the end, I look back to the year and have to congratulate myself. In terms of travel, I have done particularly well: I had 10 trips abroad this year, covering six new countries: Malta, Georgia, Armenia, Gibraltar, Israel and Helsinki!
I started the year in Malta: I took my daughters there for Christmas and the New Year.
At the end of February, I headed to Morocco for a surfing and yoga retreat in a village called Taghazout, where I am currently staying. After everyone left, I travelled around the country on my own and enjoyed the experience immensely.
In April, I travelled to Italy for a week, at first attending a film festival in Pordenone, a small quaint town outside Venice, as a panellist, and then participating in a Sky TV debate about the Ukraine war in front of a large audience in Bari, in southern Italy.
My second trip to Italy, three weeks later, was also a mixture of work and fun. I started in Parma, in the north, then Milan, then Udine for another film festival! After that, I made my way to Tuscany to join a ‘working party’ at an eco wine yard, organized by my Italian journalist friend Pio. I didn’t realize that I was the main speaker at the party/gathering until the day before. All excellent fun!
In June, my twice-delayed trip to Georgia (the country) finally materialized. Like the Moroccan trip, it started off as an organized trip – a hiking trip to the Upper Caucasus Mountains. It was tough: rain, challenging terrain and long hikes, but I loved it.
After that, I travelled around the country on my own, meeting all sorts of fascinating people I have been introduced to. I also hopped over by train to Armenia.
I would say this Georgia and Armenia trip was the highlight of my travel this year. Both countries are fascinating, culturally rich and off-the-beaten-track; people from both countries are very hospitable, and things were not always easy when travelling in those parts of the world. Interestingly, challenges always make the travel more rewarding.
In the summer, I went to Munich for an old friend’s wedding and travelled around southern Germany for a bit, taking advantage of the cheap train deal.
Soon after that, I spent three pleasant weeks in southern Spain, mostly staying with a friend. I did carry on working while away.
I would have content with the amount of travel for the year. However, when an American friend who is based in Amman told me that he might have to move to Africa for another project, I decided to visit him before his move. I also fit in Israel, a country I had long intended to visit.
Then, I realized I still got some airline credit. So I squeezed in a long weekend in Helsinki.
Now, as planned, I am back in Morocco for three weeks. I love to spend the festive season somewhere sunny and warm.
I did travel more than usual in 2022, partly because I am in between book projects.
Where did I get my travel bug? I guess I was beaten by it when I was still stuck at my rocket factory, unable to see the great world beyond. Now I am out of my confinement, I just want to make the most of my freedom.
There is an old Chinese saying: Read ten thousand books and travel ten thousand miles. I love both reading and travelling with equal passion since both are great ways to broaden one’s mind and enrich one’s life. When you travel, you encounter other cultures, which allow you to look at your own with a fresh perspective. And you meet all sorts of interesting people, which is always a source of immense joy for me. Of course, you try new foods when you are abroad, another attraction for a foodie like me. So I guess I’ve become a wanderlust. I love this word – you wander with lust.
The sun is sliding behind the western hills and the air cooler. I am going to join the others to play volleyball on the beach, while watching sunset. I look forward to the New Year and many more new travels!
December 21, 2022
Co working hostel
SunDesk – The Best Hostel in the World
SunDesk, the name says it all: a desk in the warm sunshine. A co-working and co-living place, catering to the needs of modern nomads. I didn’t know such a thing existed until this spring when I met a Spanish friend who stayed at SunDesk in Taghazout, Morocco. She was finishing her Ph.D. dissertation.
One evening, she invited me to join her at SunDesk’s weekly BBQ party. I was wowed. What a great place and a great idea. Being a digital nomad is a romantic idea, but if you stay at an ordinary hotel, you may not meet another soul for weeks on end. At SunDesk, you’ll have an instant community. It functions like a normal hostel, but there’s an office where you can use the facilities or use the space to work. You can’t chat here. If you’d like to chat, you can go to the roof or the terrace. (there are two levels up there.)
And there are plenty of opportunities to do so. Apart from the fabulous breakfast, the hostel also offers optional lunch and dinner. The food here is the best in Morocco. In Taghazout, the dining options are limited. You’ll find similar dishes in most of the restaurants in the village: Tajine, couscous, bean soup and Moroccan salad, as if there’s a law demanding them to do so. Here, different dishes, rarely seen in ordinary restaurants, are provided every day, such as runner beans salad or cooked eggplants.
Over lunch or dinner, you can’t help but chat and socialize. It’s a great joy to talk to people from all over the world, each got her/his own story.
Upon arrival at SunDesk, you are invited to join a WhatsApp group – your instant nomad family. Someone may invite you to an outing or dinner. On my first day here, I went along to a drink at a fancy bar on the seafront to watch sunset. I wouldn’t have known there was such a perfect spot to watch the orange sun slowly sliding into the sea.
People are invited to share their skills. One night, a trained yoga teacher led a yoga session on the roof top; another time, an Italian artist cooked hand-made pasta for us all – the best pasta I ever tasted.
Already, I am looking forward to returning to SunDesk. When I do, I’d like to offer a life-writing workshop. In such a place, you feel like making a contribution.
My heart-felt thanks to SunDesk.
December 13, 2022
review of The Madness
The Madness
By Fergal Keane
Fergal Keane is blessed with a magical pen, under which flowers can blossom, as the Chinese would say. I think he is one of the few journalists who write like a poet. In fact, I think Keane does write poetry. The limpid prose and his unflinching honesty made this book, dealing with difficult subjects of trauma and addiction, so compelling.
The book, part memoir and part war reporting, explores his own demons and the ethics of war reporting. Some war correspondents, himself included, are addicted to the dark glamour of war reporting for its thrill and heroism.
Keane, a veteran journalist with the BBC, is renowned for his dispatches from war-torn zones in South Africa, Rwanda, the Middle East, Iraq and Ukraine. He is particularly good at bringing out the human aspects of the conflicts with novelist attention to detail. He reported the downing of MH 17, noticing the bodies from the Malaysian jet scattered in the sunflower field in Ukraine and a toddler on the roadside, covered by a flimsy sheet.
“I felt guilty that I was acclaimed. But not enough to reject the awards. I needed them. They were my substitute for self-worth,” he confesses.
Among the war-torn regions, one has to mention Rwanda where the author was shocked by the scale and brutality of the genocide: more than half a million Tutsis were killed, often hacked to death, by Hutus.
In 2008, twenty years after first witnessing the horror, he agreed to testify at a Rwanda genocide trial. The ghost from the past caught up with him and pushed him over the edge. He sought help and was diagnosed as a sufferer of PDST – post-trauma stress disorder.
He dives into his family history for the roots of his twin addiction – to alcohol and war reporting. His father was a talented actor, but alcoholic and sometimes violent. His father cast a long shadow in his childhood.
Unlike his father, Keane did manage to stay away from the booze. A few years ago, when he came over for dinner with his adopted Chinese daughter, he brought a pack of non-alcoholic beer. (A couple of bottles are still gathering dust in my kitchen.)
The other addiction proved to be harder to quit. “If I feel self-loathing I start to need to escape to war, the ultimate land of forgetting.”
I had the pleasure of meeting Keane in China some twenty years ago: I served as his fixer while he came to Beijing for a reporting trip. But this was not the case he gave me a free copy and I returned the fabour by promoting the book. I bought my own audio edition. I decided to write this little review because it touched me.
If I had read the book, I am sure it would have been a rewarding experience, but listening to it was very special. Keane read the book himself. Listening to his silvery voice, with an Irish touch, I felt like he was telling me the story from the bottom of his heart. An intimate experience.
Hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.
December 6, 2022
Divine Melody choir
On Sunday night, braving the chill, I attended a charity concert titled ‘Divine Melody Choir’, organized by Engage with China, an educational charity aimed at building up China literacy in the UK. Held at Holy Sepulchre Church, a stone’s throw from St. Pauls, the performers, led by conductor and soprano Wang Chen, delivered an outstanding show. The familiar melodies made me home sick. Of course, I
https://www.chopsticksclub.com/content/engage-china#:~:text=A%20programme%20to%20upskill%20all,be%20afforded%20in%20their%20lifetimes.
wouldn’t not miss the opportunity to see such a good show and show my support to ‘Engage with China’ – I am one of their cultural ambassadors. Run by two old friends H.J Colston and Teresea Booth, ‘Engage with China’ tries to upskill all British children on China’s past and present. Such an admirable course. Thank you for a memorable evening.
December 2, 2022
On Jiang Zemin
Conversation on Jiang Zemin
I had the honour to be a contributor to the Conversation on Jiang Zemin organized by ChinaFile and the Foreign Policy Magazine. Thrilled to be among such distinguished company!
Here’s the link.
https://www.chinafile.com/conversation/jiang-zemin-1926-2022
December 1, 2022
commenting on Covid protests in China
Last weekend, protests broke out in multiple cities across China against excessive lockdown measures.
I’ve been busy writing and commenting on this extraordinary development. Since 1989, there have been plenty of protests, typically farmers demanding proper compensation over grabbed land; workers demanding better pay. Occasionally there were protests against environmental issues. Such protests tend to be regional, instead of national; economical driven instead of political and usually in small scale. Mass protests like we’ve seen in more than a dozen cities against one issue and against the government were unprecedented.
On the morning of the 28th of November, I had an interview with NPR’s Morning Edition. BBC’s renowned journalist and presenter Laura Trevelyan heard me and requested to interview me on BBC World Service TV. In between, I was taken to Sky News’ office in Milbank for a panel discussion. My fellow panelists were Dominic Waghorn, Sky’s former China Correspondent and hugely famous political scientist Francis Fukuyama. I am pleased to say it also went well.
The next day, CBS came to my house for an interview. It took them over one hour to set up the lighting and a good half hour to interview me, but the final program was just a few minutes long. Well, I guess that’s just the nature of TV.
Here’s the CBS link.
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/china-protests-echo-scenes-at-tiananmen-square/
November 28, 2022
NPR interview on the protests
“Rise up, rise up, those don’t want to be slaves!” Many of you are aware that anti-Covid/government protests have broken out in many cities in China. It is remarkable and extraordinary in an authoritarian country where public protests are banned. Here’s my interview with NPR’s Morning Edition, the equivalent of BBC’s Today program.
November 17, 2022
the shrinking role of China’s Public Intellectual
Long ago, I fantasized to become a public intellectual but I was dragged out of school at 16. Having long given up that dream, I still care about the public intellectuals and I am deeply concerned about their shrinking role in China. Here’s why.
November 8, 2022
Movie Return to Dust
Return To Dust
What a joy to watch a decent Chinese film, a rare joy! Time and again, I am disappointed in one Chinese film and then another. But not this one. Return to Dust is not one of those. It is a gem, a beauty and it is quietly powerful.
It is a heartbreaking tale of a couple in rural Gansu, set in the harsh landscape of the loess plateau in China’s northwest. The film opens when the couple, both having passed the bloom of their youth, starts to live together as husband and wife in a mud hut. But they are strangers. The marriage is conveniently arranged by their siblings who are keen to get rid of them. The Third Brother Iron Ma is the poorest man in the village with a donkey as his only possession and Guying has a disability – having trouble controlling her bladder, possibly the result of mistreatment by her brother and his wife.
Against all expectations, a tender bond slowly develops between them, which grows into deep love. At first, they hardly talk to each other and become chatty as they grow comfortable in each other’s company. There is no kissing or hardly any sign of physical intimacy. (save the time he gives her back a good rub when they soak themselves in the river to rid of dust.) Their way of showing affection is to press a wheat into each other’s hands and make a wheat-shaped flower print.
The rhyme of the film is slow, just like the pace of life in rural China, where people ‘rise when the sun is up and rest when the sun is down,’ but there’s never a dull moment.
The two leads delivered a stunning performance, especially Guiying, whose eyes convey so many emotions, resignation, anxiety and quiet strength. She is certainly no fool, despite her appearance. When she first sets her eyes on him, she sees him lovingly feeding corn to his donkey and she decides that he is a good man. And he is. He takes such good care of her that this invalid becomes the envy of women in the village.
I love the contrasts in the film, her frail frame vs her resilience; the beauty (the cinematography is stunning) vs the natural harsh environment and tenderness vs hardship.
Their love story is woven with broad social background with a relocation project going on as part of the poverty alleviation project.
The film also explores the theme of fate. At one point, whiling weeding, Guiying accidentally cuts a wheat sampling into half. Upset, she shows it to her husband. Iron Ma tells her not to worry, saying it will now be a fertilizer for other samplings. “It’s fate,” he says.
Before a tragedy strikes, she laments to her husband: “I am so lucky. Before when I was being mistreated, I never got ill; now I eat well and live well, I got sick.”
Being the poorest living in the bottom of the society, they are vulnerable with limited agency. The only thing they know is to work hard and together, they achieve plenty of success. Ultimately, they don’t have control over their fate.
In the last shot, the house, which the couple built with their blood and sweet, is being demolition, turning into dust in the big mouth of a bulldozer. He is going to move to a modern flat in the nearby town.
The film became very popular among the Chinese audience until it was banned, possibly because it does not present a flattering image of rural China. I think this is absolutely insane. As the West turns increasingly hostile towards China, this is exactly the sort of film the Chinese authorities should promote: a well-told story that people from outside China can relate to with hard-working and lovable characters like Iron and Guiying.
I went last night with a friend and both of us melted into tears. Do go to see it when you can.
