Andy Smart's Blog, page 9

TOURISM: ARE YOU A TWAF ?

Definition: /twæf/

Noun (countable): abbr ‘taking without asking first’. A twaf, some twafs: meaning someone who takes photos of another without asking for permission or consent. Normally used in derogatory terms for someone who is impolite or has no manners.

Verb: to twaf someone, you have been twaffed!

Adjective: used to describe behaviour rather than label, for example, “That was really twaf of you!”, “Are you always this twaf?”, ‘A twaf moment!’

Laos

Yesterday Ev and I spent the afternoon chatting to these two monks Kamseng and Nang outside a temple, helping them with some English vocabulary they were practicing from their note books. They told us that a lot of guys become a monk at an early age for four years before they get a job as it’s one of the only ways to get an education. It costs fifty dollars a year which is mega expensive for them and their families will spend years saving the money up for it. Monks are a common sight in Luang Prabang. Some frequent the internet café, so maybe online either side of you with their orange robes and yellow sashes, mostly playing computer games.

Weird! So we’re sitting there outside the temple when a great big party of around twenty tourists show up and they start taking photos. I guess you just have to get your monk shot in right?

“Do you mind moving out of the way so we can take some of these two guys?” asks an outspoken man, armed with his giant black Olympus super deluxe power-shot with interchangeable zoom lens hanging around his neck.

“Sure buddy” I reply. Ev and I leave our seats and shift to one side. The pack proceeds to gather into formation, creating a crescent shape around the two unsuspecting monks. Some even get down on one knee to get a better shot.

“You know they never asked the monks” notices Ev. “Do you think they mind?”

For a painful few minutes, the sound of snapping shutters becomes unbearable. Finally as the show grinds to a halt, Ev and I return to helping them with their pronunciation.

“What you got there?” asks one of the tour group, staring down our backs.

“Just some English practice” grinds Ev in an unusually short sounding tone.

“Hey that’s really interesting can I help?” he asks in a minimal effort to make contact with his subject matter.

“Yes” says Kamseng. “How to say this?” This draws the guy right in, leaning over us in order to get a better look. As he holds up the little book, Ev and I also get closer to see what the word is.

“Masturbation!”

Lost for words, the gentleman quickly withdraws stony faced. “I don’t think I can help you with that one buddy” while Ev and I contort in an uncontrollable laughing fit.

                                   Taken from ‘Just Turn Left at the Mountain’ by Andy Smart

I know how it feels. As a Westerner living in China, someone can casually try and snap you at any time and it really gets your back up to the power or ten. TWAFs can come from any country any time anywhere! So I’m at Beihai Lake in Beijing and this Chinese couple come walking towards me. One of them then holds up their mobile and takes a snap. They then take a look at the shot and start laughing. The other day I was on Line 10 of the Beijing subway when a guy sitting opposite slowly started to move his phone in my direction. Holding his phone up I could see that he was covertly squaring up to take a photo of me. No doubt the picture would be instantly messaged to as many friends as possible as a source of much entertainment

“Look at the laoai!” (A slightly derogatory term for ‘Westerner’.)

I guess the fact that I could see his reflection mirrored in the glass behind him was a bit of a give-away, so staring as hard as possible with arms folded, I cast a look of daggers carrying the message ‘Attention clearly unwanted!’ As the penny dropped that he’d been rumbled, he slowly moved the phone away as casually as he could like the strange interaction had never taken place. The reality is that these are only a couple of examples of the many. It’s happened on countless other occasions including people walking past in the street when I’m eating outside various restaurants, from table to table inside restaurants, on buses and just plain old walking down the road. One can never get used to a TWAF moment!

At the wedding in Eastern Mongolia 2007. One of the many amazing shots we took that day.

The Perfect Photo

Back in 2007 on my first trip to Eastern Mongolia, my friends and I came across a Kazakh wedding about to happen. Of course we were invited in, just to have a look around before the main event. Inside the ger was this enormous spread of food laid out on coloured sheets on the floor; quite a sight! More and more people showed up, followed by more people, in the end it was packed out. From the beginning though, this short and unexpected event maintained a surreal kind of vibe. Almost as soon as we arrived we were asked to take photos. Of course this is every photographer’s dream right? Normally it takes time to get to a situation where someone will trust you enough to take their photos, but there we were being hassled by the locals to just keep on shooting.

I have always had issues with taking photos while on the road, especially those times in Tibet and SE Asia and this experience led me and my friends to frequently discuss this issue and the ethics surrounding it for the rest of the trip.

Why do you take photos while you are on the road?

1. As a reminder of where you have been, of the great times you have had and the amazing places you have visited.

2. To capture the essence of the culture or place that you come upon; the uniqueness that you have not previously experienced and is so different from your own; easy!

But really, sometimes regarding taking photos of people, it can go beyond this. Yes, these are people you are photographing; they have feelings and dignity. I don’t know how often you have someone take your photo without asking, but when it happens it really gets your goat up. It’s kinda sickening and lame arse seeing someone sticking their telescopic lenses so close to a local that it becomes more than intrusive. Often its people who have little or no money and whose daily life is a struggle that we can never comprehend.

I remember one time when I was walking by the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa. That day it seemed to be teaming with people carrying all sorts of really high tech photography equipment all over the place, snapping away at close range like they were in some zoo or something. Not one of them ever tried to have the briefest of interactions with the people they were shooting. Indeed, most people never even seemed to ask.

I wonder why not? I think it’s because without thinking they are really unable to or unwilling to ever try and communicate with the people they are so quick to snap a lens to. Sometimes if I ask I get a glare or a simple shake of the head. Maybe in never asking a TWAF can avoid this so they always get your photo. For me when someone says no, I suffer for hours feeling like a right idiot, that I never spent any time with them and how completely undeserving I am to even be entitled for one picture.

Look deeper into yourself when your about to get that shot.

Why are you really taking that photo?

Is it so you can show people what a deep relationship you developed and the bond with the culture you had so quickly raced through?

Is it all about getting that perfect photo? That shot that defines what kind of traveller you are. Without even bothering for one second to communicate with your subject then your photos are a lie and you are a fake! Remember that when you post your photos on Facebook!

Back to the Kazakh wedding though. Of course we were never going back to that place, we had digital cameras and they live in gers in a mountain range. They didn’t want our photos, just the act of someone taking their photos and the family posing proudly in front of the lens. It was like saying, yes, you can have your perfect photos, but you’re here for only one reason and that’s to seem like our personal photographers. They had no interest in getting to know us whatsoever and the tables were clearly turned around. In fact once they were done with us we were totally ignored. OMG they had used us! Afterwards, although we had got our perfect photos we all felt kinda small about the whole thing and it dwelt on our minds for a long time afterwards. If I’ve ever posted those photos, it’s always been in the knowledge that our ‘subjects’ had little or no regard for us.

I have a new hobby now, so watch out! It’s taking photos of TWAFs while they are in the process of taking their photos. I don’t care about their names or where they come from and I don’t want to get to know anything about them. Of course they can’t complain that I never asked them; they never asked their subjects either right? It’s a no lose situation!

Maybe I should do a follow up interview or two in order to really look deeply into what motivates a TWAF in the first place?

Beijing Guo Shi Jade Museum

Don’t Stand Next to the River-Side Tower: Nantong, SE China

In June, now going up the wall for something interesting to do or for going somewhere, I hit the road again to the city of Nantong in the Jiangsu province. This time I choose to fly, though these days I do wonder about the safety of using local flights around China. For the umpteenth time this year and with a double blast of deja-vu the flight is delayed once again and we are told that the “plane’s breaks are not working.” As a ripple of worry spreads through the passengers to be, I am sure that this was just a little bit too much information for us. I mean how do they know that they will work until we are landing? Hmmmmm….Ahh Chinese domestic flights never fail to put the wind up you.

Nantong is pretty close to Shanghai and the opposite vibe to that ‘out there’ feeling of Jilin. Set on the Yangtze River, it’s a sleepy but very pleasant place. Here you can see 24 hours a day shipping going up and down the river in huge numbers. It’s quite an amazing thing to see. From the temple at the top Lang Shan (Wolf Mountain) it’s quite breathtaking. I guess the Yangtze is one huge artery for China as from west to east it spans the entire breadth of this vast country.

As I’m walking alongside the river the sky goes unnervingly black. The wind suddenly dies and the atmosphere transforms into complete stillness while the level of humidity noticeably rises. Within minutes the very beginning of a two day typhoon hits. This area is the northern most part of Typhoon Alley after all and basically a corridor between China’s East Coast and Taiwan stretching up to Japan. Typhoon season is normally between May and late autumn. If you live in this area you may well experience over twenty five typhoons in one year. In 2009 there were thirty nine typhoons that moved in and out of the zone.

The weather descends so fast that the only cover I can get to in time are some table umbrellas and benches next to a small hut selling ice cream. The storm is so immediately fierce that all myself and a number of others can do is huddle together under one umbrella with the canopy down as low as it can go. Clutching each other and attempting to weigh down the benches, I am sure we are all wondering if we’re going over the side and into the river. For well over the longest hour of my life we watch in fear and people scream as the remaining benches and umbrellas all get blown away and swept off the pier. It is as if everything in the area is being sucked up by some giant vacuum cleaner from above. On top of that, the rain is more than fierce and to say it’s hammering down is the absolute understatement of the decade. It’s even coming upwards vertically, the force of the downpour is so strong. All the while the water level around us rises like some giant warm water carpet around our thighs before cascading past to the Yangtze. As the water rushes past, we are continually battered by the rubbish and detritus that is carried by the tremendous current.

To cap it all, we were about 100 yards from the Riverside Tower. This basically is a giant 50-foot metal spike and attracts every lighting bolt in the area to come down ear splittingly close right next to us like some air strike. Who on earth dreamt this one up? No one who lives here that’s for sure! I seem to remember someone told me sometime ago that hiding under an umbrella is not really top of the pops when it comes to thunder and lighting. As each bolt comes down with a simultaneous ear splitting crack, that tiny bit of common sense is ever present and I wonder if the next one will barbecue us all.

The scene after is immediate devastation; the fun fair down the road is completely destroyed and I can only think that this happens all the time here. Taking full advantage of a brief lull, I get back to the hotel sharpish passing scenes of carnage along the way.

 

A Hard Graft for Mr Ding & Mr Huang

Fruit & Veg in Beijing: January 2013

Some text has been translated.

Although there are plenty of supermarkets in the big cities in China, most people still buy their groceries from open air markets, stalls and fly pitchers at the side of the road. For these guys life has a simple pattern; work work work followed by work with maybe a few days off for the Spring Festival every year and then it’s back to work!

Huang Chang (right) & Ding Guang You (left) are always smiling.

Take my friends Ding Guang You and Huang Chang who have a fruit and veg’ stall opposite the car park near our apartment complex. Like most stalls, theirs is a rag-tag construction of heavy weight tarpaulins designed to keep things cooler during the super-hot roasting summers and repel the cold during the bone chilling winters. They also serve to protect from the dust and rubbish which gets blown about all over the place by the ‘Beijing Da Feng’ (big wind). No wonder people wear masks here.

This winter is a cold one and with temperatures plummeting to minus ten Ding and Huang are there as usual, wrapped up in their thick winter coats with their hoods up. Ding is from Henan/Xinyang and Huang from Shenyang. Their stall is set up so that near the cash desk a make-do bed has been fashioned between crates and boxes, insulated with old sacks and padded blankets. I have a feeling these guys are there for so long that most of their life is spent here at the side of the street.

As usual Ding and Huang are in fine spirits. “We get to work at six every morning every day” smiles Ding, the joker of the two. “In the evenings we start to finish at eight thirty.

“What? I’m still dreaming at that time!”

“It’s a normal time for us. If we have to get new vegetables must get up much earlier and go to Qinghe market before we set up our shop.”

“You mean you put it up every day?”

“Well we can’t leave it here” laughs Ding.

I ask if there are any days when they don’t work because it’s too cold.

“We always work through the winter. This year there has been only one time when we couldn’t open because it was the coldest day.”

“How about holidays; you must get time off?”

“We will have a week off for the Spring Festival. My family don’t work so I come to Beijing because my hometown is poor. Often people leave for different places for work. If they make a small business the money is not enough for the whole family to survive. This is why Beijing is better but I only get this one chance to see them every year”.

To add to it once a month the ‘authorities’ descend on the small stalls and shops who don’t have a licence. I watch from the apartment as thirty ‘officials’ pull up and do a thorough check on all the stalls in the area. For Ding and Huang this day is not so bad as only the fruit and vegetables that are in boxes on the pavement outside are removed. These are loaded up onto the back of a flat-bed lorry and taken away.

I always buy my apples from Ding and Huang’s place now, really appreciative of what they go through in order to scrape a living together.

Chinglish

Hello and welcome to the amazing world of Chinglish; the laughably bad Chinese – English translations you find all over China. There are also many examples in neighbouring countries but generally China leads the way in its bizarre Gold medal winning interpretations.

Chinglish is more commonly found on signs, in menus and magazines. Even big companies can make critical errors having not bothered to hire a native Western speaker to do the translation for next to nothing.

When you are in China, never waste an opportunity to record Chinglish and make your friends split their sides round the table in the evening. If you are feeling down and miserable Chinglish is something that is guaranteed to put an instant smile on your face. I place a bet on that one.

Enjoy.

From the Taige Hotel: Dunha, Jilin

“Yirenbao treasure of the foot: Utilize the point to calm the nerves calmly. Reflection area that stimulates the sole to be corresponding. Impel the body endotoxin to discharge outwards. It is tried to dispel the voyage. Energetic job of next day input.”

“Yirenbao only for men biochemical product: The passion is lasting. This product is specifically designed for washing mans genitals. As the pure Chinese medicinal preparation, privacy protected life. Use when necessary so that the couple can live in healthier cleaner. Directions: Use this product on and around the pudenda by massaging for 2-3 minutes, then rinse with clean water and wipe with a wet towel. It can better effect to be used in bath.

Who will not feel free about something embarrassing? Yirenbao is made by high tech Azone process is the super concentrated Chinese medicinal preparation in dew form which will quickly kill the latent germ and promise you protection of your private parts.”

Hmmmm……..super concentrated huh? …….scary

Menu from the Exquisite Dish Restaurant, Beijing

Warm mix sea intestine

Delicious belly tip

Pickled chicken feet

The old Soviet Union to help duck

Scallion chicken longitudinal strain

Orange sesame shrimp halogen explosion

Since the fish sauce

Brine platter

Mushy pork

Ichthyophthirius pig meat (disturbingly is a disease found in freshwater fish)

Snail foire gras popcorn

Braised lake trash

Dry shrimp steamed rice baby food

Jane bacteria over the alter incense

Impregnable millet wings

Reference braised kanto through taste

Turtle lake boy secret

Double dong donkey pot (highly suspect)

Griddle bull frog (often on the menu in Beijing)

United steamed sausages

Tong Xinghui Hunan Restaurant Wine List:

The Great Wall Chateau Sang Gan Reserve Cabernet

Cowshed Mountain (treasure special pot)

Hole in the pit for six years.

The Great Wall gifted Portuguese park small area super selected dry red

Chang Yu optimization level Cabernet dry red wine

Taken from the menu in the restaurant around the corner

I was wondering what that unusual taste was……

More worrying was this DIY kit in the chemist next door :(

Living in the Shadows of Beijing

After years having the countryside on my doorstep in the UK I can’t believe the level of feeling I have for this place now but I do. I feel utterly at home here.

“I don’t know how you live there. I couldn’t do it” one of my friends said back in England, referring to the enormity of Beijing and its vast sprawl encompassed by six ring roads.

I love wandering the streets at night.

Putting the negatives aside, Beijing is one of the safest cities in the world. Of course there is crime; it’s an expanding city of over 21 million and still going strong after all. Relatively though, it’s a really peaceful place with no drugs or drug related crime anywhere. Consequently, you can just wander around the darkest tenement blocks in the middle of the night with only your imagination to make your heart beat faster.

Spring is coming and some of the windows are open revealing the life within the thousands of old apartments; a sensation I find compelling. You could wander around for hours and never get bored.

A darkened warren of passageways and dimly lit stair wells in sepia-yellow light; worn over the years and plastered with small stencilled adverts in Chinese characters. Dirty windows are protected by ornamental black iron bars of various designs, while bicycles in various states of disrepair fill up any space against the ground floor. This is standard Chinese life to the letter; simple; effective; practical and incredibly resourceful.

Ram-shackled corner shops merge with apartment blocks providing colourful illumination to the passer-by.

Down a narrow alleyway, an old-boy with a baseball hat squeezes past on his tricycle-cart laden with a collection of strung together plastic bottles destined for recycling. He parks up next to an apartment and clears his throat heavily on the corner before going inside.

One window is open at head height revealing a bare room with no pictures on the walls, just a bed and a TV. Somewhere the sounds of plates being washed catches my attention. There is an echo of children playing somewhere inside. Sounds are singular and detached rather than merging together in the usual daily cacophony. As a result, at night noises stand out prominently with their own unique signature. One can pick them out and catch them in the air even if they come from some distance away.

There is a wonderful evening stillness in this apartment complex and a woman greets a girl with pig tails in the middle of the road

“Ni chi fan le ma?” (Have you eaten yet?)

“The girl happily replies “Wo mei you!” (I haven’t) with a smile as she breaks into a skip.

A pack of playful dogs run by and disappear into the darkness.

A girl carries her baby sister past in her arms singing a song to her while her Mum follows closely behind

“Xiao chuang er qing qing piao dang zai shui zhong” (the little boat is floating in the water).

“Ying mian chui lai le liang shuang de feng” (and the cool breeze is blowing on our faces).

Through a college campus; there are many in this area. Another warren of darkened red brick apartment blocks. Each one is packed with dorms. Through the windows, wall to wall bunk beds are visible with the possessions of six or more people crammed in with little space. Some live together for years while they do their study. Often they have no heating and live in damp and unhealthy conditions.

I can disappear here. I can become nothing more than another of the shadows, vanishing and merely existing in thought; no judgement; no worry; nocturnal and in total freedom. I can live here. I can roam around capriciously, completely in the moment down avenues of black, silhouetted trees against yellow street lamps. At this moment I become nothing more than extreme peace and contentedness that has no reference in space and time.