06/02/02
We jumped onto the bus at 8 am and headed through and out of Beijing on a cool bright sunny morning. After a bumpy three-hour journey we were deposited at the side of a narrow sloping road, which would lead us all the way up to Jinshanling, and a ten kilometre stretch of The Great Wall taking us all the way to Simatai.
The approach to Jinshanling was spooky and surreal. We were the only people there. We walked past boarded-up shops and restaurants slowly being reclaimed by undergrowth, deserted houses so covered in fibrous fingery creepers it looked like they were having the life crushed out of them by giant spectral hands, and a silent funfair with rusting rides in the shape of giant animals, paint peeling, crying out in voiceless anguish for a pack of children to bring them back to life. My imaginary soundtrack to our walk up to The Wall was 'Ghost Town' by Coventry's finest, The Specials.
I guess the place must have once been a popular tourist destination, but hadn't seen any business in some time. I remembered the woman in the hostel the night before warning us that the walk from Jinshanling was long and tiring. Many tourists preferred the convenient on-and-off photo opportunity of Badaling. The 10 K's we wanted to walk saw The Wall slowly disintegrate, dangerously at times. This sounded perfect to me. Unfortunately for the long-gone funfair owners and restaurateurs, most tourists to The Wall seem to prefer the quick and easy these days.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah... Sometimes when you visit a renowned scenic spot or historical site, it proves to be a letdown. There are just too many tourists, and you can't see the place for the people; or it's being renovated and is covered in scaffolding; or it just doesn't look so grand as you'd seen it on TV or in the guidebooks. For us, The Wall exceeded our wildest expectations. As we ascended, stepped onto the walkway, looked around, it grabbed every morsel of air in our lungs and ripped it out.
This feeling of awe doesn't leave you. Every time you reach a high point or turn a corner, you see The Wall snaking in front of you for miles on end, or plummeting behind you into a stark ravine. The barren brown conical mountains of Simatai dominate the landscape with their sheer slopes ahead, the smaller hills of Jinshanling surround you and, for as far as you can see and on every ridge lies The Wall, a coiled snake, a whipped tail, an outstretched leg, a wisp of an eyelash. Sometimes it sits like a superimposed image against the blue sky in front of you, sometimes it looks like a bomb has exploded below, as you clamber down and over a crumbled mass of sandstone boulders.
Tranquil, tiring, affecting, memorable, the quiet hush of the windless day, the blue sky, the dry barren hillsides, the deserted watchtowers, the curve and snake of The Wall, brought about in us an almost spiritual calm, a sombre hush like that inside a cathedral. Not even the gangs of persistent postcard-hawkers tugging at our sleeves for half the way could bring us down. The Wall could have been some kind of alien temple, left behind aeons ago to a long-forgotten god.
Even the descent full of rogues and cheats couldn't spoil our mood. We had to get off The Wall at the Simatai gate then descend to the bottom, where we'd pick up our minibus again. As we tried to leave we were stopped by two 'guards', barring our path down the narrow slope, a sheer drop to our right, a sheer cliff face to our left. The men demanded 30 Yuan each from us, in order to enter Simatai. We explained that we weren't going up to Simatai, but were, in fact, heading down to our bus. No matter, we still had to pay. Then we turned a corner and were confronted by a deep ravine, the only way across a rickety rope-bridge. Of course, another two men were on guard to extort five Yuan each to simply get across it. After all this, we were half an hour late for our bus which, surprisingly, was still waiting for us at the bottom of the hill.
Frauke
When I think of The Great Wall in my dotage (not long now...), I'll most likely always associate it with a lovely German girl called Frauke. She was the only other passenger on our bus wanting to tackle the ten kilometre hike from Jinshanling, and not just continue on to Simatai and ascend from there.
Serene, dreamy blue eyes, the same colour and shade, I noticed, as the fragile blue sky above us as we walked The Wall; a serious, soft, pale face; neat, blonde hair, swept back in a ponytail; easy-going attitude; relaxed and interesting in conversation. We walked and talked about books, Europe, politics, travel.
Frauke had been working in Shanghai, for a German law firm, had finished her stint in China and was now taking the chance to see some of it. She came from Hamburg, but lived in Berlin. She described and contrasted the two cities to me: in Berlin the people are more uptight, trying too hard to be cool, fashionable, whereas in Hamburg people are more relaxed, not so worried about being cool as much as enjoying themselves. I got the feeling Frauke’s personality was stuck somewhere between the two cities, but her heart was in Hamburg.
I'm sure I'd felt something clicking between us. On the bus back to Beijing, as the driver swore uncontrollably in a thick Beijing dialect at the slow-moving rush-hour traffic, and Tam delighted in his new-found Chinese skills by translating all the swear-words for the benefit of the other backpackers ('He just called that car driver a mother-fucking cunt!'), I tried to summon up the courage to ask Frauke out. Even just ask for her email address. Something, anything, that would mean that day, that feeling, hadn't slipped through my fingers like Simatai sand. As I procrastinated, Danuka seized the moment and, as well getting Frauke's email address, invited her to the celebrations we're planning for Danuka's birthday tomorrow night. Frauke promised she'd come.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
A Tea Ceremony at The Forbidden City, sponsored by Nestlé
05/02/02
Our hostel is located in an anarchic warren of ramshackle backstreets somewhere behind the south gate of Tiananmen Square. Turn left out of the hostel, walk through the atmospheric little streets, and you find yourself in a colourful, noisy, wonderful street market full of shoppers, bikers, rickshaw men, street vendors, students, medicine shops and restaurants. Red lanterns bob in the breeze; multi-coloured ticker-tape flags flutter above your head; red and gold New Year lucky hangings and pictures adorn every door. People grab at you, follow you, invite you into their shop or to their exhibition, which always seems to be on its last day and so has reduced prices especially for you. A hum of 'CD-DVD, CD-DVD' and 'Hello watch! Hello wallet!' follows you like a cloud of mosquitoes. Thumping Chinese dance music provides the soundtrack.
Turn left at the end of this bombardment of sound and colour, and you head towards the hub of the city, Tiananmen Square. The contrast between the warm, packed, noisy market streets and the wide-open space of the square hits you like a cold blast of air from a crypt as you approach. The busy streets give way to stern, stark, self-important government buildings and statues, each of them surrounded by acres of space on the massive square. A towering, phallic, white obelisk rises in ungainly fashion like an unwanted, embarrassing erection. A squat, wide, pillared building sits surrounded by vending stalls and guards, and is the home to the embalmed corpse of Chairman Mao. The most eye-catching building on Tiananmen Square is the entrance gate, called 'The Gate of Heavenly Peace', a grim misnomer if ever there was one. The gate, in its original form, was built in the fifteenth century, but destroyed and then rebuilt, like so many of China's cultural 'relics'. In 1949, Chairman Mao had stood up there and announced to the clamouring millions China's revolution, his legacy to crush their demonstrating descendents with tanks.
The centre of Beijing is an unholy triumvirate of architectural jumble. Here and there, you have the rebuilt or renovated relics of China's ancient history, colourful pagoda roofs and temples nestling quietly in tree-lined parks; in between lie the government buildings, humourless, ugly ducklings, ostentatious and masculine; all around this hotchpotch are thrusting, pushy high-rise shopping malls, office blocks and skyscrapers. This confusion of the old and the now, the ascetic and the political and the practical, the uncomfortable bedfellows of art, politics and business, left me unsure as to whether I thought Tiananmen Square and its environs fascinating, ugly or crude.
This confusion was intensified after buying my ticket to The Forbidden City (40 Yuan, off-season). I wish now I hadn't looked at the back of the ticket, but I did, to find out one of the most famous of China's historical and cultural landmarks was sponsored. By Nestlé. All images I had of Chow Yun Fat gliding over serried rooftops vanished in a flash. Pictured on the back of the ticket were twenty-odd children, all wearing the red neckerchief of the Communist Party's version of the Cub Scouts, all of them smiling inanely, each one holding up to the camera, for maximum product exposure, a different Nestlé drink.
Our hostel is located in an anarchic warren of ramshackle backstreets somewhere behind the south gate of Tiananmen Square. Turn left out of the hostel, walk through the atmospheric little streets, and you find yourself in a colourful, noisy, wonderful street market full of shoppers, bikers, rickshaw men, street vendors, students, medicine shops and restaurants. Red lanterns bob in the breeze; multi-coloured ticker-tape flags flutter above your head; red and gold New Year lucky hangings and pictures adorn every door. People grab at you, follow you, invite you into their shop or to their exhibition, which always seems to be on its last day and so has reduced prices especially for you. A hum of 'CD-DVD, CD-DVD' and 'Hello watch! Hello wallet!' follows you like a cloud of mosquitoes. Thumping Chinese dance music provides the soundtrack.
Turn left at the end of this bombardment of sound and colour, and you head towards the hub of the city, Tiananmen Square. The contrast between the warm, packed, noisy market streets and the wide-open space of the square hits you like a cold blast of air from a crypt as you approach. The busy streets give way to stern, stark, self-important government buildings and statues, each of them surrounded by acres of space on the massive square. A towering, phallic, white obelisk rises in ungainly fashion like an unwanted, embarrassing erection. A squat, wide, pillared building sits surrounded by vending stalls and guards, and is the home to the embalmed corpse of Chairman Mao. The most eye-catching building on Tiananmen Square is the entrance gate, called 'The Gate of Heavenly Peace', a grim misnomer if ever there was one. The gate, in its original form, was built in the fifteenth century, but destroyed and then rebuilt, like so many of China's cultural 'relics'. In 1949, Chairman Mao had stood up there and announced to the clamouring millions China's revolution, his legacy to crush their demonstrating descendents with tanks.
The centre of Beijing is an unholy triumvirate of architectural jumble. Here and there, you have the rebuilt or renovated relics of China's ancient history, colourful pagoda roofs and temples nestling quietly in tree-lined parks; in between lie the government buildings, humourless, ugly ducklings, ostentatious and masculine; all around this hotchpotch are thrusting, pushy high-rise shopping malls, office blocks and skyscrapers. This confusion of the old and the now, the ascetic and the political and the practical, the uncomfortable bedfellows of art, politics and business, left me unsure as to whether I thought Tiananmen Square and its environs fascinating, ugly or crude.
This confusion was intensified after buying my ticket to The Forbidden City (40 Yuan, off-season). I wish now I hadn't looked at the back of the ticket, but I did, to find out one of the most famous of China's historical and cultural landmarks was sponsored. By Nestlé. All images I had of Chow Yun Fat gliding over serried rooftops vanished in a flash. Pictured on the back of the ticket were twenty-odd children, all wearing the red neckerchief of the Communist Party's version of the Cub Scouts, all of them smiling inanely, each one holding up to the camera, for maximum product exposure, a different Nestlé drink.
The Forbidden City is so-called because for many years no one was allowed into it, except by royal decree. The Manchus destroyed it in the seventeenth century and thus it's another re-building job, from the eighteenth. There are 9,000 rooms apparently, but most were forbidden to us, either locked up or protected by red rope barriers; perhaps it was because it was the off-season. As we walked through the giant white courtyards, surrounded by mazes of pagoda rooftops, we at first enjoyed the peace, quiet and relative lack of tourist throngs, then began to get quite bored. In fact, we were dying for a cup of tea.
We found the Imperial Tearoom in an ornate, geometrical rockery with stone pathways, whorled limestone and ancient, gnarled pagoda trees. Here we were introduced to the traditional Chinese Tea Ceremony. Utensils:
One Teapot.
One Pouring Jug.
One Smelling Jug.
One Drinking Cup.
The crockery was decorated with pictures of dragons (to represent male) and phoenixes (female), which changed colour ingeniously from black to red as hot water was added to the utensil. Method:
1. All utensils are warmed with hot water.
2. Hot water is added to the pot then poured away. This cleanses the tea- leaves.
3. The pot is filled with hot water again and the tea left to infuse.
4. The tea is then transferred to the pouring jug.
5. The tea is poured from the pouring jug into the smelling cup.
6. The short, squat drinking cup is then put on top of the taller, narrower smelling cup, the whole lot flipped upside down, so the tea falls into the drinking cup.
7. Then you run the warm, aromatic smelling cup through your fingers and inhale the sweet fumes.
8. Then you drink once from the drinking cup for health.
9. Then once from the cup for wealth.
10. Then a third time, for happiness.
We left the Forbidden City full to the brim with tea, and wobbled our way through the side streets back to the hostel.
In the evening, after booking our tickets to the Great Wall, Danuka and I failed to catch up with the others who were going to the theatre to watch the Beijing Opera. We were hopelessly lost for a while, until an Irish theme bar appeared, offering over-priced Guinness. A strange trade-off: swapping fake Chinese culture laid on for the tourists for fake Irish culture laid on for the ex-pats. But at least the music was better.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Beijing
04/02/02.
Beijing
We took the night train from Harbin to Beijing, in a six-bed 'hard sleeper' compartment, across from which were two hard plastic seats and a formica-topped table. Tam and I, unable to sleep, sat at the table most of the night playing cards. One month to travel around China, on trains, with only the Lonely Planet Mandarin Phrasebook and a vague plan of where to go!
I'm not sure if we were excited, or terrified, or both.
The next morning, we lugged our rucksacks out into warm, dry, sunlight-dappled Beijing streets and looked around in confusion: we were outdoors, and it was warm; what was going on? Getting carried away, we decided to walk to our Youth Hostel. Tam had a map, and it didn't look too far away. We found it easily enough; too easily, in fact. The girl at the desk told us we hadn't made a reservation. We showed her the receipt, and were told we were in the wrong hostel.
Back on the street, the taxi driver studied the name of the hostel then denied all knowledge of its existence. He asked his buddies. They conferred for a few minutes then corroborated his story: nah, this place doesn't exist... but don't worry, get in anyway! Forty-five minutes later, what looks like the same buildings are appearing then reappearing again and again. We were going round in circles. Clive, who is in Beijing with Tam, Danuka and I for just one day, before flying off to Dubai to visit his parents, swore at the taxi driver in Chinese for quite some time before he (the driver) suddenly cried, 'Oh! A-ha! That place!' and sped off in the direction he should have gone in the first place.
Not exactly an auspicious start to our tour. However, I had other portents on my mind.
The Watch
Before leaving Harbin, I'd made a promise to myself to put the ill feelings of the last few months behind me. I had missed her quite enough. It was time to start a new chapter.
As I went to chuck my bag under the X-ray machine at Harbin train station, it slipped from my shoulders, the strap tangling with the strap of my watch. The weight of the rucksack was too much for the watchstrap, which pinged and shattered, the watch falling from my wrist. The watch itself was undamaged, but the strap was knackered. The watch had been a birthday present from her, a memento of happier times. At first I felt upset and annoyed but, as I sat on the train mulling it over, I realised that it could easily be a good omen, that the last remnant of the chain, the chain of memory, the chain linking me to the past, to her, had been broken, and looked irreparable.
Philosophers, Fish, and Missing Persons
The hostel, which the taxi driver eventually found, was called the Far East International. I plug it shamelessly because it deserves it. Clean, bright, friendly, a nice blend of the old and the new. And cheap! You enter the place through a traditional courtyard to find cool tile-floored rooms with comfortable wooden furnishings and modern televisions and computers. A dorm room of four beds cost only forty Yuan per night. In the sitting room area there are round tables where you can write, and jasmine tea from which you can help yourself. It was so comfortable, we were afraid we would fall asleep and lose a whole afternoon. After some discussion, we decided not to waste any time, and headed straight for the Summer Palace.
The royal gardens of the Summer Palace have a chequered past. Favourite of the Emperor Qianlong in the 18th century, ransacked by the French and British in the nineteenth, to be rebuilt by the Dowager Cixi a few decades later, the area consists of connected parks, pagodas, temples and lakes and is magnificent and grand on a massive scale. Around every corner lies a garden, pagoda, river or ornate bridge, surrounded by forests, walkways, gnarled trees, statues, ancient pockmarked rocks and steps, steps and more steps. A long lake lies behind a colourful temple. A jade boat sits in frozen water. Paths of crazy paving lead you meanderingly through man-made waterways. In fact, water forms two-thirds of this royal retreat and lends the place a tranquil atmosphere.
My favourite place was the garden within a garden called 'The Harmonious Interest Garden'. Rather like The Mouse Trap, Hamlet's play within a play, the garden forms a microcosm of the Summer Palace as a whole, and is the crux of the imperial idea of harmony, philosophy, and a spiritual place of retreat. Small and compact, lacking the grand ostentation of other attractions in the park, it looks the kind of place where an emperor could hide away and lose himself in contemplation; equally, it would be perfect to steal away to with a concubine or two.
The garden consists of squat pagodas connected by stone pathways spanning inter-connecting channels of water, which were still more or less iced over at the time of our visit. Ornamental hump-backed bridges and leafless spindly trees completed the austere scene. Willows, bare and cold, let their thin bending branches fall and caress the icy water, as if weeping for splendorous bygone dynasties.
You could imagine the garden depicted in Chinese watercolour on rice paper, the droop of the willows accentuated, the curves of the bridges and angles of the paths intensified. I stood on a small bridge and let the afternoon sun bathe my forehead, willow branches brushing my cheeks. I felt calm in the sun. I remembered reading that, long ago here, two philosophers had stood in this very spot and talked, for some obscure reason, about fish. Perhaps they were wondering where the fish went when the water iced over in the winter.
The sun was beginning to melt the ice on the surface of the ponds. For the first time in months, sticks and branches, which must have been trapped the whole winter, were finding freedom. Light reflected from the tiny air bubbles in the thawing water around the edges of the branches, forming sparkling angled patterns on the surface.
I walked back towards our agreed-upon exit gate, warm and calm for the first time in months.
This feeling soon evaporated when, on meeting Tam and Clive at the gate, I found out Danuka was missing. We waited at the exit for over an hour, hoping she would turn up. The scene after the Tiger Park, where we three men had abandoned Gina, Anita and her mum in the freezing cold, immediately sprang to mind. I knew we couldn't leave without Danuka. Would she be able to find her way back alone? Did she even have the address of the hostel? (I didn't.) Would she be safe in this strange city at night?
The Summer Palace covers a huge area, and our chances of finding her in there were virtually zero. However, we couldn't just leave without her. We had to do something. Moreover, we were now being harassed by a woman who was talking about the size of western men's penises, making obscene gestures like elongated elephant trunks with her arms and fingers (she was also trying to sell postcards). I set off for the temple area, Tam went back to the lakes, and Clive volunteered to wait at the exit gate just in case Danuka arrived there later, wondering out loud if he shouldn't actually just wait for her in the MacDonald's across the road.
After three hours of fruitless searching, and countless descriptions in bad Chinese of a six-foot red-haired western girl wearing a long green coat, it got dark and cold and we decided to return to the hostel and consider what to do next from there. The park had closed, so there was no way, unless she was sleeping or unconscious, that Danuka was still in it. We caught a taxi back, entered the hostel with heads hung low, to find Danuka sitting with Gina, Anita, and her mum, who had arrived in Beijing the day before, all of them drinking jasmine tea with knowing looks on their faces. Natasha had somehow got back via a bus, a taxi and a police car. Meanwhile, our karma, in the physical manifestation of four righteous, angry women, had somehow followed us all the way to Beijing.
Beijing
We took the night train from Harbin to Beijing, in a six-bed 'hard sleeper' compartment, across from which were two hard plastic seats and a formica-topped table. Tam and I, unable to sleep, sat at the table most of the night playing cards. One month to travel around China, on trains, with only the Lonely Planet Mandarin Phrasebook and a vague plan of where to go!
I'm not sure if we were excited, or terrified, or both.
The next morning, we lugged our rucksacks out into warm, dry, sunlight-dappled Beijing streets and looked around in confusion: we were outdoors, and it was warm; what was going on? Getting carried away, we decided to walk to our Youth Hostel. Tam had a map, and it didn't look too far away. We found it easily enough; too easily, in fact. The girl at the desk told us we hadn't made a reservation. We showed her the receipt, and were told we were in the wrong hostel.
Back on the street, the taxi driver studied the name of the hostel then denied all knowledge of its existence. He asked his buddies. They conferred for a few minutes then corroborated his story: nah, this place doesn't exist... but don't worry, get in anyway! Forty-five minutes later, what looks like the same buildings are appearing then reappearing again and again. We were going round in circles. Clive, who is in Beijing with Tam, Danuka and I for just one day, before flying off to Dubai to visit his parents, swore at the taxi driver in Chinese for quite some time before he (the driver) suddenly cried, 'Oh! A-ha! That place!' and sped off in the direction he should have gone in the first place.
Not exactly an auspicious start to our tour. However, I had other portents on my mind.
The Watch
Before leaving Harbin, I'd made a promise to myself to put the ill feelings of the last few months behind me. I had missed her quite enough. It was time to start a new chapter.
As I went to chuck my bag under the X-ray machine at Harbin train station, it slipped from my shoulders, the strap tangling with the strap of my watch. The weight of the rucksack was too much for the watchstrap, which pinged and shattered, the watch falling from my wrist. The watch itself was undamaged, but the strap was knackered. The watch had been a birthday present from her, a memento of happier times. At first I felt upset and annoyed but, as I sat on the train mulling it over, I realised that it could easily be a good omen, that the last remnant of the chain, the chain of memory, the chain linking me to the past, to her, had been broken, and looked irreparable.
Philosophers, Fish, and Missing Persons
The hostel, which the taxi driver eventually found, was called the Far East International. I plug it shamelessly because it deserves it. Clean, bright, friendly, a nice blend of the old and the new. And cheap! You enter the place through a traditional courtyard to find cool tile-floored rooms with comfortable wooden furnishings and modern televisions and computers. A dorm room of four beds cost only forty Yuan per night. In the sitting room area there are round tables where you can write, and jasmine tea from which you can help yourself. It was so comfortable, we were afraid we would fall asleep and lose a whole afternoon. After some discussion, we decided not to waste any time, and headed straight for the Summer Palace.
The royal gardens of the Summer Palace have a chequered past. Favourite of the Emperor Qianlong in the 18th century, ransacked by the French and British in the nineteenth, to be rebuilt by the Dowager Cixi a few decades later, the area consists of connected parks, pagodas, temples and lakes and is magnificent and grand on a massive scale. Around every corner lies a garden, pagoda, river or ornate bridge, surrounded by forests, walkways, gnarled trees, statues, ancient pockmarked rocks and steps, steps and more steps. A long lake lies behind a colourful temple. A jade boat sits in frozen water. Paths of crazy paving lead you meanderingly through man-made waterways. In fact, water forms two-thirds of this royal retreat and lends the place a tranquil atmosphere.
My favourite place was the garden within a garden called 'The Harmonious Interest Garden'. Rather like The Mouse Trap, Hamlet's play within a play, the garden forms a microcosm of the Summer Palace as a whole, and is the crux of the imperial idea of harmony, philosophy, and a spiritual place of retreat. Small and compact, lacking the grand ostentation of other attractions in the park, it looks the kind of place where an emperor could hide away and lose himself in contemplation; equally, it would be perfect to steal away to with a concubine or two.
The garden consists of squat pagodas connected by stone pathways spanning inter-connecting channels of water, which were still more or less iced over at the time of our visit. Ornamental hump-backed bridges and leafless spindly trees completed the austere scene. Willows, bare and cold, let their thin bending branches fall and caress the icy water, as if weeping for splendorous bygone dynasties.
You could imagine the garden depicted in Chinese watercolour on rice paper, the droop of the willows accentuated, the curves of the bridges and angles of the paths intensified. I stood on a small bridge and let the afternoon sun bathe my forehead, willow branches brushing my cheeks. I felt calm in the sun. I remembered reading that, long ago here, two philosophers had stood in this very spot and talked, for some obscure reason, about fish. Perhaps they were wondering where the fish went when the water iced over in the winter.
The sun was beginning to melt the ice on the surface of the ponds. For the first time in months, sticks and branches, which must have been trapped the whole winter, were finding freedom. Light reflected from the tiny air bubbles in the thawing water around the edges of the branches, forming sparkling angled patterns on the surface.
I walked back towards our agreed-upon exit gate, warm and calm for the first time in months.
This feeling soon evaporated when, on meeting Tam and Clive at the gate, I found out Danuka was missing. We waited at the exit for over an hour, hoping she would turn up. The scene after the Tiger Park, where we three men had abandoned Gina, Anita and her mum in the freezing cold, immediately sprang to mind. I knew we couldn't leave without Danuka. Would she be able to find her way back alone? Did she even have the address of the hostel? (I didn't.) Would she be safe in this strange city at night?
The Summer Palace covers a huge area, and our chances of finding her in there were virtually zero. However, we couldn't just leave without her. We had to do something. Moreover, we were now being harassed by a woman who was talking about the size of western men's penises, making obscene gestures like elongated elephant trunks with her arms and fingers (she was also trying to sell postcards). I set off for the temple area, Tam went back to the lakes, and Clive volunteered to wait at the exit gate just in case Danuka arrived there later, wondering out loud if he shouldn't actually just wait for her in the MacDonald's across the road.
After three hours of fruitless searching, and countless descriptions in bad Chinese of a six-foot red-haired western girl wearing a long green coat, it got dark and cold and we decided to return to the hostel and consider what to do next from there. The park had closed, so there was no way, unless she was sleeping or unconscious, that Danuka was still in it. We caught a taxi back, entered the hostel with heads hung low, to find Danuka sitting with Gina, Anita, and her mum, who had arrived in Beijing the day before, all of them drinking jasmine tea with knowing looks on their faces. Natasha had somehow got back via a bus, a taxi and a police car. Meanwhile, our karma, in the physical manifestation of four righteous, angry women, had somehow followed us all the way to Beijing.
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