The greasy arm of the law

Well, it had to be expected didn't it. Italian justice and real justice seldom mix in the same circles. After the biggest match-fixing scandal in Italian and possibly European football, a controversial World Cup win softened the hearts of Italian magistrates and the hardness of the prosecution's outlook was dissipated. Juventus were stripped of their two league titles of the last two years and sent down to Serie B (though the prosecution had argued for Serie C) as were Fiorentina and Lazio, all with pre-emptive heavy points deductions. AC Milan remained in Serie A (against the wishes of the prosecution but with a 17-point starting penalty for the current season and a 30-point penalty for the previous season). While there were whimperings from journalists with vested interests - "what did the fans do to deserve this" (nothing but their teams benefitted from deliberately dodgy refereeing) and AC Milan squirmed to try and make the UEFA Cup, saying that the lowest ranked team from Serie A now in the UEFA Cup did not have a Euro-worthy ground, many around the world thought the punishment of the guilty four was too lenient. However, it was tough enough to not be too heavily criticised.
But then came the appeals. AC Milan had it's seventeen point penalty cut to eight points and was allowed to qualify for the Champions League - no more talk of the UEFA Cup from the club owned by the richest man in Italy. Fiorentina and Lazio were allowed to remain in Serie A but with heavy points slashed off their start to the season and Juventus had it's points penalty also cut.
Now, we have the appeals' appeals (huh?). AC Milan's punishment remained unchanged, but all the other three clubs have their points penalties reduced even further. The original judgement in July was queasy in how it let sentimentality creeep into its verdict. But this? It's almost as big a scandal as the one it presided over in court. The Italian body politic is rotten to the core, but it seems the cheating in its football doesn't just occur on the pitch. Of course, the authorities don't care - they have lakes of chutzpah. Even the crooked football directors got light jail sentences. If there is any justice in the world of football, UEFA should shun the bid from Italy for Euro 2012, even if the pitches in Eastern Europe aren't as good nor the facilities so sparkling. UEFA officials should put up with a bit of roughage - it's good for the soul.
UEFA's already doing pretty well against the G-14 of the biggest clubs in Europe. G-14 are hypocrites and law fiddlers as big as any found in Italy. Some while ago in the last twelve months, I read the rules of membership for this elite club of 18 members. One of the stipulations was that if a member were relegated, it's immediate expulsion would follow and re-admittance following any subsequent promotion would be considered by the other members. Now, when I access its website, it provides me with minimal information and outsize format with no scroll tabs. The BBC says Juventus is still a member of G-14. But Juventus were relegated. It's bye-bye surely to the Old Lady from G-14? No, because the members were so cocksure that none of their clients would get relegated (bit hairy inviting in Bayer Leverkusen, then) that the possibility was never considered. Now it's been made fact, they've obfuscated and kept Juve in. It was a big mistake to keep Chelsea out. The wealthiest club in the world not in the G-14, is a snub Chelsea were never going to take. And now in co-operation with UEFA they're dividing and conquering , bringing Barcelona and Ajax and several others into open confrotnation with the body supposed to guarantee their interests. If you can't flush the scum out of Italian football, at least the destruction of G-14 will go some way to keeping European football pure.

Paradox

As I continue to be laid up, a curious phenomenon alternates itself. Since I am resting most of the day (plus the difficulty in getting to the kitchen), for long stretches running into days, I am not at all hungry even when eating little. At other times, when reading or listening to the radio and with little body activity, I feel an instinct towards being peckish just to give my body something to do, instead of pure engagement of the mind. Most odd indeed that neither one nor the other prevails.

Correction

Yeah, well that didn't work, but I could pass it off as a conception of most of the material in Extras. When I said filligree (spelt filigree), I was not thinking of ornamental gold or silver wiring, but filligree, killigree, kedgeree (the word I was striving for, but it still doesn't fit in context), whatever, as some cat or dog chowder probably composed of fish though that last detail is incidental. I took a wild guess hoping that filligree meant what I thought it did and that no-one would notice. Unfortunately, I, at this late hour, decided I had to know what filigree was and it wasn't what I had wanted. The point still stands. Gervais and Marchant have to shape up their comedy if their - BBC2 dog - pedigree is not to become poodle pies, ready for export or simply taken to the vets and destroyed.

Counter-intelligence - that's this government

Yesterday, counter-intelligence officials said that Britain was now the number one target for al-Qaeda (presumably outside of North America, that is). Bravo, Tony. You're struggling on for ten years to secure your legacy, but it's arrived a bit early, so you can bog off now to do your retirement after-dinner speeches. Al-Qaeda may be implacable in their hostility to Western values and are more of an umbrella ideology than organisation, but they still need footsoldiers to carry out atrocities. For them (and the USA with its client states), it's war and, of course, the thing about war is, if you feel strongly enough about something, you'll go and fight. Muslims across the world were outraged by the wholly gratuitous invasion of Iraq, which they saw as such. If the Coalition of the Foolish had not done so, we could have focused our energies in Afghanistan in permanently rooting out the Taliban and terminally weakening al-Qaeda (both suffering serious organisational disruption in December 2001 with the Western intervention). Instead, the build-up went towards Iraq and now we are fighting in Afghanistan battles of such ferocity that could all have been avoided with careful care and attention immediately after the fighting in Dec. 2001. It would have taken decades to bring Afghanistan up to a stable democracy (something it's never really had) with that approach, now it may not be even possible. So, well done, Blair, you've made the British people even less safe.
Watching Extras on BBC Two last night, once again, it failed to live up to its billing, namely as a comedy. It would be less painful to have teeth pulled. Without anaesthetic. It was so infuriating last night that I had to mute it for long periods. The simple fact is that so little of it is credible. OK, you can see Ricky Gervais' character getting that lucky big break - it happens, but far, far too many situations are simply not believable. In real life, they would just not happen and so they are cringeworthy, but they are not funny. Richard Pryor said, in an interview a few months before he dies, as to what makes good comedy "Use truth first, the comedy will follow." But that is not applied in Extras. Time and again, the rule was violated. The Office was hilarious because while making you cringe, it was believable that there were such characters, in such a situation and that they would act in this way. The best parts of Extras usually come from the 'Stars' appearing as themselves and being eccentric or unpleasant, as if their real personas were coming out, but last night Jonathan Ross was just about credible (if a little scary with the male bonding, which could have been followed up), but Robert Lindsay was so over the top, it was rubbish - and I'm not criticising either Woss or Lindsay because they could only do the best with the lines they had. Robert de Niro was totally wasted. There was also a few running jokes through the series, but again they would only be funny if they were they could be imagined as possibly happening; alas no, they were as stock as the sitcom that Gervais and Stephen Marchant are parodying. Gervais is a funny man and he and Marchant have some pedigree, but if they're not to end up as filligree, they're going to have to really raise their game for their next outing, instead of the sloppiness that was evident here.

Hydro challenges of the future

So, the conferences are over and parliament has come out of recess. The silly season, is, apparently, officially over. Seeing the prime minister at his monthly news conference (one of the few unquestionably good things he has been responsible for), it is clear that Blair leads his party from the front - in going bald. He maybe no shrinking violet, but he cannot arrest any shrinkage in his hair acreage. As his follicles recede on both sides of his head, the surviving central lollop of hair looks like the dust thrown up by a dragster speeding across a pink desert (a rubbery one that throws up brown dust). The Labour Party will be in catnip with Gordon Brown's rich locks.
The main challenger to these two heavyweights is David 'Dave' Cameron. The curtain twitchers that form the grassroots of his party should be worried about him, not for the modernising, centrist efforts, but because, for a man so fixated on presentation, his facial features are as shapeless as his policies. Cameron's face is just a quivering amorphous blob, possibly a blank canvas for people to project whatever impressions they personally desire upon, but when he smiles it is like a shimmering ripple in a saucer of milk.
Just to show I'm not criticising all the leaders of the big three parties - Ming Campbell QC, you're alright.
Getting away from the Westminster effluence and to effluence in general, it seems in the future, in the south-east, water won't have merely passed through nine different humans before it reaches you, it will probably have been sewage in a previous form as well. Turning sewage into pure water? That sounds like turning lead into gold. But we will need a bit of H2O alchemy if we are not to run thirsty by the middle of the century. It seems that sewage water is just purified water that currently runs straight into the sea anyway, so our consumption of the liquid that you see coming out of rusting pipes near beaches will be keeping sea levels down to boot.
The University of Sussex is today running a blog-athon trying to get a national survey of online life to examine current attitudes of daily life. I might have been tempted to go on to their website, but I've said pretty much all I want to say here now, so I'll think I'll give it a miss.

Out of action

There was a Greek general in the 1920s who was petrified of getting out of bed because he believed his legs were made of glass or sometimes sugar and would shatter were he to use them (unsurprisingly, he was not a successful general). Though not sharing his thoughts, that is how I feel, at least in one foot, since I had an operation on it last Thursday. I was warned by the doctor to put as little pressure on it as possible (hence the glass/sugar analogy). When that is unavoidably the case and normal pressure is imposed, I usually, out loud, exclaim my pain, in the manner of a Shakespearean character declaiming "I am slain." So, for the next three and a half weeks my blogging may become irregular as I live at the bottom of the house and the internet connection is at the top. Climbing a spiral staircase is not easy in my condition.

New member

Oh, mustn't forget. Welcome to the nuclear club North Korea, even if you have gatecrashed the elite powers. Remember, respect the rules and no rowdiness.

Way out West (behind Bethnal Green Tesco supermarket)

During the weekend, I was thinking back to the previous one, the date of the Wild West party. Held at Lynny's pad, all the usual suspects were there barring Mark, Joel, Simon, Maria and Anna (and I believe Mark got a job and moved to the Channel Islands just to avoid dressing up for this party). There were new faces: Lynny's new flatmate, Lara; Miriam's Canadian friend, Lacey; and friends of Lara, Alex and female companion. With the arrival of Mr Goff wearing a poncho/rug slung around his shoulders, we formed a triumvirate of Alex's though to little effect. I accessorised most of my outfit in Mongolia, including Levi 501s and bull belt buckle. Lynny had a superb outfit as can-can girl/whore with even a mini water pistol in her garter. When we went out on the town (not to a club as I hoped, dressed as we were) to a karaoke pub (though none of us performed), I left my cap-gun eight-shooters back at the flat. The police can shoot you dead for carrying a table leg (too blind that they can't see it's not a sawn-off shotgun, but not too blind to get a head shot), so what would they do with imitation guns?!? At the flat, there were drinking games and inevitable hoe-downs, Tom surprisingly proficient at the latter. It was all great fun, catching up and whatnot and, unlike the later Chalet parties, had a deeper intimacy as everyone knew everyone else. I look forward to the next event (when I will try to recycle as much of my outfit as possible).

Blast from the past

As I'm up here, I'll relate another story from last week.
On Thursday night, I saw a figure from my not-so-shadowy past. It was on a programme called the Seven Man-Made Wonders of... Kent and Sussex (I think, the BBC was parcelling out the division of the country according to its regional news desks). If you include 'Seven' and 'Wonders' and then state the region, it makes it a bit redundant to add 'Man-made' since the likely audience will know the reference to the ancient world and be aware in any such context that the original wonders were noted because they were man-made.
It was hosted by vivacious blonde TV weathergirl Kaddy-Lee Preston (I know a few stories about her). She ran the rule (something many men would like to do to her) over such places as Dover Castle, a preserved Roman villa, a Victorian viaduct, Brighton Pavillion and Leeds Castle. Closer to home, she got to see the creepy waxworks, vast drydocks and rope-making halls in Chatham Dockyards.
But it was at Canterbury Cathedral that my attention rose to a new, more personal level. Kaddy (as she is known to south-east England) entered the cathedral grounds, what seemed rather pointlessly at first, on a horse; it was only with memory that I saw the link since pilgrims coming to Canterbury, when approaching the city, slowed down their horses to a canter, hence the name. And who should be her local guide to the cathedral, but Bridget Bree.
It was a little curious since I had only seen Bridget worshipping at New Frontiers City Church on the outskirts of Canterbury, yet here she was acting like a trustee of the Anglican headquarters. Bridget was even allowed to show Kaddy and the camera crew inside the upper part of the tower, out of bounds to the public and point out the trapdoor in the vaulted ceiling that allowed workmen to come through and continue work on the upper reaches of the interior of the tower.
I know Bridget personally for when I used to go to City Church while at university in Canterbury I went into a home group (worshipping get-together in mid-week with some other church members, you are allocated a church group by one of the elders - there are many home groups in City Church) with her, quite a few times at her family house, even with a barbecue for one meeting. Bridget was also a very expressionistic person, partly from translating church services into sign language for deaf people and this is quite a photogenic way of presenting. I haven't seen Bridget in little over a year now, but I'll have to find out how she got this gig on the BBC.

Having let that cavalcade of posting be digested, I'll now move on to Mongolia in full. This is the land where British English can still be seen, but is fading faster in favour of the American dialect (and dialectic) than seemingly in Beijing, where still in the Forbidden City signs still reference autumnal months as Autumn and not just there. The British English ideal was promoted in Mongolia by Soviet Russia (not all bad then, the USSR). But English as a whole is growing in Ulaan Baatar though there are still confusions (one shop sign read "COMPUTER DRY-CLEANING").
Back from China, Altaa and I spent less than one day in UB before heading out to the countryside. We had little time since Altaa had to be at work on Monday and it was Wednesday before. No problem it seems on the surface, but we were going to Lake Khovsgul and just getting to Khovsgul region's capital, Murun, would involve driving around the clock. We were packed tight into the minibus, five to three seats and it felt that my legs were set in concrete, so immovable were they. The journey took nineteen hours, leaving at 5pm. At around 4am the driver took a ten minute nap (the only time he slept) and then we were off again. There were breaks every few hours to get out and stretch legs for about ten minutes or so. Once in Murun, we had lunch, bought some supplies and saw another free-wheeling cow, walking down the middle of the road and lowing at the insolent traffic that passed it.
We arrived in Khatgal, the southernmost and biggest town on Lake Khovsgul at 7pm Thursday. By more luck than design we found the guesthouse, I wanted - Nature's Door. This was an environmental set-up, so conscious of preserving the purity of the lake that they had organic composting toilets in which all waste is removed and taken to a composting site outside the national park we were in (I guess they don't use solar-powered trucks to take it though); guests help the process by dumping a few scoops of the self-service sawdust on their waste after they finish.
Altaa and I chose to spend our nights in a ger, a Mongolian tent, rather than the dorms of the brick guesthouse. Being off-season, most of the food on the menu list was off the menu, so we had to make do with what they did have. Next day, we walked by the lake, saw this adorable kitten crawl out of this ramshackle shack and it fell in love with us and tried to follow us, and found this family who were willing to take us out onto the lake. Now, Lake Khovsgul is big. It contains 2% of the world's fresh water and to put this in perspective, all of the rivers in the world combined contain 0.5% of the world's fresh water. The curvature of the earth meant that we could not see the end of the lake, which is more than 200km long. The man took us out in a no-frills but effective speedboat for two hours and we could really admire the size and scope of the place with its beautiful tree-lined coasts. In the centre of the (southern part of the) lake, tumultuous waves crashed on the prow and we were refreshed by the spray. As the boat hurtled along I gathered up some water from here and we drank this pure water, straight from the lake - it had a bit of a tangy taste as I was using an empty orange juice bottle.
That night I could really appreciate the constellations in the sky though I wished I knew more about the patterns of the stars. The next morning, Saturday, we were off back to Murun. While looking for a jeep in Murun to take us back to UB, we met this Japanese man, Yoshchi, who with no ties, business or romantic, holding him back in Japan was exploring Mongolia by himself. I, at least, had a Mongolian translator always close by. Yoshchi was a true pioneer. He had quit his job to enable him to take several months off to see Mongolia. He liked the frequent mutton dishes he could not get back in Japan. We banded together as a threesome to get a discount on the journey back (20 hours).
On Sunday night, Altaa and I went to a mutual friend's place (Andre and Bagalmaa) for dinner, with fish from Lake Khovsgul. It was Bagalmaa who had helped Altaa in delaying the start of her teaching job. We saw their new baby and swapped anecdotes.
The rest of my time in Mongolia not much happened. I filled up my spare time in the day and with Altaa at night.
And now I'm back in the UK, which brings this all up to date. All posts will now be more recent.

The crossing

Whereas one found all the ancient buildings in Beijing a much of muchness eventually (so what must it have been like before the early communists razed plenty to the ground), that could never be said about Ereen, though there were a few interesting Muslim-looking minarets. Throughout our entire time in Beijing, countless Chinese had talked Mandarin at Altaa, to our embarrassment, thinking her Chinese, but here in Inner Mongolia, Altaa could find people of her own language. She arranged the border crossing. As we drove towards the Chinese checkpoint, the Communist Party Headquarters loomed blandly classical, isolated and embossed against the streamingly flat desert background and blanketting, cloudless, light-blue sky.
It was seven people to three seats in the back of the jeep as we crossed the border. This had to be repeated as we had to get to get out at passport control, once for China, once for Mongolia. What impressed me at the duty free on the Chinese side was the 3 litres (!) of Jim Beam whiskey one could buy, firstly for its size and secondly because it busts the quota of liquor one can take into Mongolia or China. We finally reached the Mongolian border side only for our vehicle to be proverbially beached, since the Mongolians operating the barrier were on their lunch break. We walked across and gor in a taxi to take us to Zamyn-Uud, the Mongolian border town.
Zamyn-Uud has the standard dried-up park water feature, typical of ex-communist countries who could no longer afford the bills to keep such extravagance in operation (and looking at Zamyn-Uud, one wonders where the water would come from, with the Gobi on all sides). The town also has that Mongolian civic trait of cows walking about, free as you like. Hindus revere cows, but Mongolians are traditional nomads who can let their flock wander wide and still find them, but I wonder if these town cows are independent. Zamyn-Uud has some pretty one-storey houses, their colours reminisecent of Venetian fishing villages, but there is not much to see, apart from the widly over-the-top nouveau architecture of the train station. One of the billboards on the station portrays Zamyn-Uud as a gleaming metropolis, sprouting steel-and-glass skyscrapers by a sparkling blue oasis that camels mooch around. All in all, simply hilarious with the reality surrounding one.
Our train went on for so long that we had to dismount the platform to reach our carriage. Once moving, things were a little better. Taking sloping corners around the hills, the full glorious sweep of the train was joyous to behold as it curved along the rails, gushing like a river winding through the landscape. We were in coach B, the second to last carriage, but there must have been enough carriages to fill the alphabet, certainly the Roman one and it required a double diesel to pull the train. Despite getting sleeping berths (luxury service), the train was fairly ramshackle with a very short bed and incredibly stiff furnishing (for example, once the window had been pulled/wrestled down open, I realised immediately that it would be impossible to close. Duly, that was the case and though a makeshift curtain at night kept the dust out, the cold still billowed through). But however old and rattling the train was, incongruously there a small flat-screen high definition TV affixed to the table showing the latest movies (all dubbed), the best of which was a Korean comedy that sadly was only half-way through when the train pulled into Ulaan Baatar the next day.

Beijing - Final Chapter

It came to Monday - our last day together in Beijing. Altaa and I went to a seafood restaurant next to the hotel in the morning. Maybe having spicy lamb for breakfast was not such a good option, but I couldn't have told it would be so hot from the picture, which just showed lamb in a frying pan. As I said, it was primarily a seafood joint and one of the tanks held a nightmarish lobster slowly scuttling about, but the weirdest tank held a fish swimming energetically upside down, gills flapping away. Perhaps it was mocking its fate.
After wandering in so many shops and malls around Beiijing, it would just so happen that we would find some new clothes and shoes for Altaa in the last hour while we were using up time until a minibus arrived at the hotel to take us to the bus station. Moreover, the shop was part of the parade directly opposite the road the hotle was on.
Waiting at the bus station for five hours wasn't fun, but the minibus dropped us off then and there didn't seem anyone official around saying when the sleeping bus - a King Long - would leave. The bus, left at seven, packed to the gunwales, as many Mongolians were taking bundles of clothes, tightly compressed in bags that looked like enormous balls of string, back to sell in their country. By coincidence or not, Altaa and I had beds next to each other (three beds abreast in the coach, one up, one down bunks). Made for Orientals, the bed was a bit short and I couldn't stretch myself out in it, but it wasn't so bad. We stopped off for a meal about midnight and then continued again, to Ereen, the border town, just as dawn was breaking.

More of Beijing

On Friday of my Beijing time, Altaa and I visited the majesty of the Forbidden City. However, after gaining access proper, it was a bit of a cop-out as several of the central halls including the landmarks Gate of Supreme Harmony and Hall of Supreme Harmony were encapsulated entirely in scaffolding and green net mesh with the tawdry consolation of having a picture of what we were missing painted on the front. The sweep of the courtyard before the Gate of Supreme Harmony, when it was empty at closing, was breathtaking, mind. The Forbidden City is itself vast (and used to be bigger until the communists in their rashness paid some destructive attention to the 'outer' outer walls in the 1950s) and deserves at least half a day to explore instead of the two and half hours we did it in to make it before closing. Tiananmen Square before the City isn't as great as people say. I've seen massive squares in Russia, Romania and Mongolia, but Tiananmen keeps getting broken up by monuments such as Mao's mausoleum, preventing one truly appreciating the scope.
Next day we went to the Great Wall via the Ming tombs. The resting places of most of the Ming emperors might be a World Heritage sight but there isn't much in the way for the tourist. We were shown (as everyone is) the layout of the complex holding the first Ming emperor to be buried here, but apart from the gate, the temple and the Spirit Tower, the tomb itself is under a massive earth mound. With the example of Egypt, it is probably best to keep tourists away from sensitive, ancient tombs with threats such as condensation from so many people breathing, but it doesn't therefore make it much in the way of a tourist site.
The Great Wall at Badaling is almost purpose made for sightseers, though it was originally built to keep out or deter the Mongols (and here was I with a Mongolian girlfriend). There were rundown, more authentic parts of the Great Wall, but I wanted the real deal i.e. what most people see. If I wanted to see ruins, I could go to any tumbledown place. One needs to be fit to ascend the Great Wall, prompting Mao Tse-tung to say to be a real hero, one needs to climb the Great Wall. There a good many steps. We reached one high watchtower, but it went only a little further before coming to a dead end, sealed off where part of the Wall had crumbled away. So we had to double back and use an auxiliary road to rejoin the path and reach the true peak of the Great Wall. From there, one could dimly see Beijing in the distance, beyond the mountains.
On the outskirts of Beijing are many curious sights. On our way out, we saw one of the Olympic stadiums under constuction and another hall for the Games - the stadium from outside looked like a tightly compacted spider's web or the craziest rollercoaster you'll ever go on. Further along, there was also a fairlytale castle that was only half-painted leaving huge swathes of patently unfairytale grey concrete, the result of a failed attempt to build a Disneyland for China, unfortunately (or fortunately) the company building it went bust and, anyway, it's far too much outside Beijing for most people to easily reach. We also went to a Chinese medicine clinic and a jade factory on the trip, the latter being the better of the two, with exquisite carvings.
The next day we went to the Temple of Heaven Park, where the Emperors used to pray once a year for good harvests. One of the few religious sites the early communists didn't vandalise (surprisingly, even refurbishing it), it has received many a foreign dignitary - Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon, George Pompidou and the Prime Minister of Estonia (all their photographs displayed in a hall, Pompidou looking particulary tickled pink). There are several venerable buildings all over the grounds, but I still preferred Beihai Park.

So, to continue: Altaa came at 5.50am on my third day in Beijing. I had been worried that she might not make it since the last time I phoned her she was having trouble at the border over a signature. We took it pretty easy for the morning. Later on, we went to Qianhai Lake and after a big lunch of delicious fish and fried rice (the fish came in square pieces in a clear container holding several hot stones), we rented a pedalo to go on the lake and we messed about romanticallly. There was a tiny rundown island on the lake with willow trees and dilapidated pagoda-sheds, I secured our mooring and we ventured in, but barely a minute later, the lake authorities turned up in a speedboat to tell us to leave the island. We then walked into Beihai Park with it's massive North Sea Lake and crowning glory of a gigantic Buddhist stupa/dagoba on a big island (for a lake), the Jade Islet. We leisurely walked through the park though our legs were quite tired, having been walking most of the time since we had left the hotel. On the stupa island we walked up many steps and through many halls and temples to get near the base, but it was closing time and we weren't allowed to see the elevated Buddhist sanctuary nearby, so we went around the other side, scaled the barrier and walked up the other steps. Altaa was caught and taken away, but she at least saw in the sanctuary; I hid at the back, safe, but all I could do was appreciate the tiles with Buddha carvings on the wall and the smoggy skyline of the city, before going down surreptitiously.
At night we explored the business and commercial district that I had done previously by myself. One of the sights was Hongmen night market, a row of stalls, several dozen in number, lined up along an effectively pedestrianised street, offering such goodies as impaled squid like toffee apples! One would not think Beijing was the capital of a communist country, for, in addition to all the big Western/international brands festooning the buildings, the commercial district really lives up to its distinction with plenty of homegrown large companies operating out of here.
Along the ordinary streets there were plenty of itinerant hawkers, but one of the things about China that badly irritated me were the hawkers of the spitting variety, who seemed to take casual pleasure in raising to a near artform how disgusting they could be.
Walking back roughly the same route as before, I was again, like the previous night, offered a woman. This time the pimp was a woman herself. To add insult to injury, it happened near the grounds of a church. The first time this happened as I walked by myself, I shot back indignantly to the offer, "I have a girlfriend." This time I just needed to glance towards Altaa, who was a little ahead of me, to make them back off.
Walking around central Beijing was seriously tiring and henceforth we made great use of the subway.

Night on the town

So to continue with my China expedition. After surviving my first night on nutritional cereal bars, for my second night with jetlag cleared up, I went for a meal on the town. Going for a nearby (well, 15 mins walk) restaurant as suggested by Lonely Planet, I found the architecture and ambience pleasant and I got a window seat overlooking the street, though the scene was nondescript. One option from the illustarted menu was turtle soup with whole baby turtle floating on top, like a corpse dumped in the East River (they really should have weighted the feet), though I must confess I've never been to New York. Another was spewed cradmeat. Crab or crad, from the picture it certainly looked like something I might spew (or, then again, stew). I plumped for Spicy Fried Duck, a dish that when it arrived, left one in no doubt what you were eating, with the fried ornamental head still attached. For drinks, I was tempted by half a litre of Swell Fun, but became rapidly untempted by its prohibitive price and went instead for something forty times cheaper, namely 500ml of Tsingtao beer. I coped manfully with the chopsticks as I dissected my duck. However, with the serrated edge revolution bypassing chopstick development, I resisted looking rustic for as long as possible, but with a drumstick remaining sprawled on the plate, I eventually had to resort to my fingers.
After dinner, I went exploring the streets now it was night, to see how Beijing lives after dark falls , though the poorly-lit alleyways I decided to forgo. Mind you, it is an odd way to orienteer, to do it post-sundown, even with a Beijing map to hand. Passing a street display of trinket-sellers at the roadside, out of the corner of my eye was, I thought at first, was a small statue, but its rocking motion confounded that and on direct sight was an adorably cute three-year old, sitting squat on the pavement, wearing a gold-coloured vestment, with a metal railed barricade as protection from the road. A little further along were more toddlers mingling with their parents doing the hawking.
A nigh full moon shone over the moat of the Forbidden City, the former residence of the emperors, while a hundred strong dance class practised solo yet co-ordinated moves in the courtyard at the City's rear entrance to elegaic music. Take that, Falum Gong!
The inevitable Pekinese dogs were a delightful sight and though they weren't the only representative of their species, big dogs seemed to be in short supply; there was even a poodle as a guard dog for a shop. The only cat I saw was a sweet little ginger kitten looking for scraps in a restaurant garden, both on empty tables and off.