Letter from Discovery Bay – June
Brought to you by the restorative power of the hug
A duck that sparkles…
… is still a duck.
A tank that’s a duck is still a tank.
Two weeks ago I marked the 30th Anniversary of the violent suppression of thousands of peaceful demonstrators in Tian An Men Square, Beijing. Friends who knew me at the time will remember the things we did to try to communicate the tragic happenings to friends and colleagues in China but there is still widespread denial of what actually happened.
It was a desperate time, and I try and mark it every year. This year, however, I was extremely cautious at doing so: my passport was in at the Chinese Embassy awaiting approval for a visa for my trip to Beijing and I didn’t want to rock the boat and jepordise my visa, which sums up in effect the approach of global governments and organisations towards China. It’s hypocritical but at least I’m not the only one, I suppose. There are people who don’t let politics affect them one way or the other, and they seem to be able to shield their eyes and block their ears from the trials of others as they blithely go about their business. Perhaps this is an essential characteristic for someone who spends their working life being posted around the world. Maybe being bored by politics and history is a self-defence mechanism, I don’t know. Still others see their most egregious and hurtful assertions as merely hypothetical pub banter or locker room talk. It’s hypothetical because they don’t see themselves affected by it. I have learned to stay away from these people.
I’ve been watching the Anti-Extradition Law protests from a safe distance here in sleepy Discovery Bay but felt unable to say anything publicly. People familiar with the conduct of totalitarian regimes will know why I’ve been uncharacteristically silent. The proposed Extradition Law casts a frightening shadow over all of us here, most of all native Hong Kongers, of course. You’ll have seen the reports about the massive demonstrations in Central and Admiralty on the news. Those demonstrators were brave and well-organised to support each other as they faced tear gas and even rubber bullets. There are all sorts of rumours about the composition of those policing the demonstrations which are rumours so I’m not going to repeat them here. The next photo in the gallery shows how China Daily, the English Language Chinese government newspaper reported last Sunday’s demo.
I was deeply equivocal about my trip to Beijing, the first time I’d been there since March 1990, and not just because sometimes memories are better left as such. Starting from having to give a whole set of fingerprints before even passing through immigration at their airport, it’s all incredibly intimidating. There are cameras and checkpoints everywhere and your baggage is scanned as you enter any metro station. The previous watchfulness has only been emphasised by the use of state of the art technology, given a friendly, protective consumer interface by being translated into hundreds of languages at the Immigration Desk. Still, we went to the Great Wall of China at Mutianyu and the Summer Palace – a place I didn’t ever visit as a student because of my inability to ride a bike at that point – and, of course Tian An Men Square. I remember talking my way past the security guards on a bleak Remembrance Day 1989 and standing looking at the Monument to the People’s Heroes, alone in the vast square as a chilly breeze whistled around me like the voices of ghosts in the dust.
We went on a trip down memory lane and visited some old haunts. In my day, the now-bustling suburb on WuDaoKou 五道口was all fields, of course, but now it’s a bustling interchange on Metro line 13. We also had lunch at the now TGI Friday’s at the Friendship Hotel 友誼賓館 and even stopped off at the Beijing Languages Institute, which is now called the Beijing Languages University.
Beijing is unrecognisable since my days as a student. Later, when I worked there we spent hours in traffic jams as they ripped up the earth to rebuild a modern city with seven ring roads. It looks like Seoul but even more vast and expansive, and it took a while for me to find my bearings but eventually I found the block where this youthful picture was taken 35 years ago. Oh the memories that came flooding back! Such shenanigans! It was quite overwhelming.
In other family news, Eliza is back from Edinburgh, where she’s found a flatshare for her second year in a building that looks like this. She also has a new French beau, and the drive from Edinburgh was an opportunity to learn all about him, often in French. With that and the beautiful Cumbrian scenery around the M6, what was there not to like? It was a stressful way to spend a weekend though and I think next time I’ll try only to drive one way.
One highlight of my trip home last month was singing the Beethoven 9th Symphony. I’d been waiting my whole life to sing that and I was not going to pass up the opportunity to sing it with my beloved BYMT Adults. I think we acquitted ourselves well and I’ll never again be frightened of top As. As you know, I have a horror of imposing myself on people, and was frightened that I’d be seen as parachuting in but I need not have worried. It was truly wonderful to walk into rehearsal the evening of my arrival, bleary and disorientated from my overnight flight and be greeted with hugs and waves and smiles. It meant the world to me. Thank you so much for being so kind.
I’m hoping to come and sing with you again in November but I have yet to see whether it will be possible. Obviously I’m jumping at the chance to sing the Mozart Requiem again as you know it’s my very favourite choral work – but I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to learn the Sea Symphony from scratch – but I’ll have a go in the summer choir hiatus. Our St Mark Passion concert looms on Sunday though it might well be disrupted if there’s another big demonstration in Central. Singing with the HKBC is a new and very different experience and I’ll be interested to see what they’ll be working on next term but I’ve been invited to audition for another long-standing Hong Kong choir that might be a bit more friendly. They tend not to sing long major works but their work has been very well received and a section of the choir even sang at Carnegie Hall so I’m looking forward to that hugely.
It was difficult to tear myself away from Beckenham and return here at the end of May, such was the overwhelming generosity of your welcome. I met lots of old friends (some for the first time) and some new ones, and several of you opened your hearts and homes to me. This introvert with an extrovert face was bowled over by your love but all of that reminded me of how much I miss my home and my friends, so it was bittersweet, really.
James and Eliza will be arriving tomorrow and we’re off to Cambodia the day after my concert. We’ll be spending a few days at Siem Reap seeing Angkor Wat and then off to Koh Rong Samloem, an island off Sihanoukville which, I was warned by one of my Twitter friends is a building site of nascent casinos, being built by Chinese investors.
The dogs haven’t seen James since October and they’re going to be beyond excited to see him again. They are both popular here among the dogs and Aunties and keep being invited to doggy birthday breakfasts. They even had party bags (doggy bags?) at a party last week.
Raffles is now losing a bit of weight, having prospered rather too well on the new Dogsday food and Oscar is well in himself, though he does seem to be losing his eyesight and some of the muscle tone in his hind legs, which means that perhaps he finds it difficult to balance and he trips over rather a lot. I can empathise. It seems to be catching up with me too at the moment. I realised the other day that what I thought was good skin was actually an inability to see myself up close in a mirror, and I seem to lose the use of my legs if I’ve been sitting down for a while. I hope this last thing is just temporary. I managed to do my normal 5km yesterday with a strapped knee but I gained a couple of kilos over the weekend in Beijing, which need to come off immediately. Maybe constant vigilance is necessary after all.
I’m currently planning a trip back to the UK in late August to take Eliza back to Edinburgh. I think John is planning to come too but he doesn’t have much holiday left so it might be that he comes with me for a week and I follow him back here later. We haven’t booked anything yet but I’ll let people know when we do.
This newsletter and more photos and posts are available on my blog, of course, at MsAlliance.me. To access the Upclose section, the password is Open Sesame (including a space between the words) But you knew that!
That’s enough from me for now. Wishing you all health and happiness.
Gita x
