Of Tibet, expats and folk music
Hi there, this is Owen and this is my podcast for Friday 22nd May, 2015. I hope you are all well and that you had an enjoyable Labour Day on May 1st. Unfortunately I didn't go anywhere. I stayed in Kunming for the long weekend. The weather here has been hot and a little wet. The temperature reached 30 degrees for the first time this year. It seems that the rainy season has started a little early though. Last week was very rainy. Local people say it doesn't usually start raining until June. And as for spring fruit, well strawberries have come and gone. For about a month people sold lots and lots of strawberries on my street. Now the strawberries have gone and we have dragon fruit, mangoes and papayas. For a time I was enjoying the strawberries. They were cheap and tasty. But then I met a woman who works for the government in the local food safety department. She warned me: “You shouldn't eat four things in Kunming: spinach, celery, peaches and strawberries”. She told me that all four contain dangerously high amounts of pesticide, chemicals to kill insects. So that was the end of strawberries for me. Now today I'll be telling you a scary [1] story. This story has been discussed a lot by the expats [2] here. Then you'll hear about a survey [3] which was done in the ex-expat [4] community. And finally I want to tell you about a concert I went to.
So first of all, I'm going to tell you a scary story. It's about a US citizen who moved to China this year. She moved to the south of China just across the border from Hong Kong. She got work as an English teacher there. For her Spring Festival holiday in February she decided to go to Tibet. Since 2008 it isn't so easy to go to Tibet. You need to organize your trip through an authorized travel agency [5]. The travel agency will apply for a special visa for you. And if you want to go outside of Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, you need another visa and you need to say exactly where you will go. When you arrive in Tibet you will have a local guide who follows you around. Basically, independent travel is not possible for foreigners in Tibet at the moment. So this American woman booked her trip through an agency and then in February travelled to Lhasa by train. Tibet was the last province in China to be connected to the Chinese railway network. The line opened in 2006. When it opened the Chinese government said that it would help the modernization of Tibet. Critics, however, said that it will lead to more Chinese power over Tibet. On the train to Lhasa the American woman sent text messages to a friend in China. In her text messages she criticised Beijing's Tibet policy. She wrote: ”The Chinese are destroying [6] Tibet's culture. Soon there will be more Han Chinese than ethnic Tibetans in Tibet.” When she arrived in Lhasa she wrote her friend another message. She wrote: “Lhasa is beautiful except for [7] all the Han Chinese. Later, at 11.30 at night, two policemen knocked on her hotel room door. They told her that it was just a routine check. Then they asked her: “So how do you feel about Tibet?” At this point she knew that something wasn't right. She replied: “It's very beautiful. I like it.” The policemen became intimidating [8]. They told her to be serious with them or it could be bad for her. Then one of the policemen said: “We know about your text messages.” Now she knew that she was in trouble. The government authorities had read the text messages she sent to her friend about Tibet. The next day the police told her to leave the country. She flew to Nepal and from Nepal to Hong Kong. From Hong Kong she returned to China and travelled back to where she was working. Everything seemed fine. A couple of weeks later, she went back to Hong Kong for a day to meet a friend. When she wanted to come back into China and she arrived at the border [9], the border guards scanned her visa and told her that it was cancelled. The border guards took her to a room. There they told her that she wasn't welcome in China. In the end she wasn't even allowed to go back to pack her things. All in all, a very scary story. It's very frightening [10] to think that you can get deported [11] from this country just for sending a critical text message to a friend. Tibet is of course a very sensitive issue [12] here. I have a Chinese friend who went to Tibet recently. Her friend, who works for the police, told her not to send or post any messages critical of the Chinese government while she was in Tibet. Apparently [13] they have systems which check all messages for keywords.
After that story you might wonder why foreigners want to live in this country. Well, no doubt there are a lot of reasons. But now I want to talk about some people who left. There was an interesting survey I read. It was done by an English language magazine in Beijing. They contacted a large number of people who used to live in China and who left the country. Not Chinese people, but foreigners who lived in China for at least one year. In this survey they asked them about their reasons for leaving China. They also asked them: What do you miss? And: Would you like to return? On the last point, 65% said they would like to return. Unsurprisingly [14], the most common reasons for leaving China were air pollution, food safety, education and career. I can understand those reasons. Pollution was the reason I left Beijing and I've stopped eating strawberries. Now what about the things that people miss most? Well, of course it's friends. In the expat community you can make close friends quickly here because everyone is in the same situation - you're all strangers in a very foreign country. And you end up with [15] a very international group of friends. But what was most interesting though in this survey was that people miss the freedom of China. Now, I can't be sure what these people understood when they heard the word freedom, but I think I know. China is not such a regulated country. For example, look at all the people selling street food or the bars, shops and restaurants that are open 24 hours a day. It sometimes feels like you can just do as you like. But as you heard from the story I told before, there is also a big lack [16] of freedom here. Generally it's locals not foreigners who have that lack of freedom. Sometimes it almost feels like foreigners are a little outside of the law here. According to the survey, the other things people miss are the strangeness, craziness and weirdness [17] of China. Most days you see or experience something different, something strange, something very Chinese – such as couples taking walks in the evening dressed in their pyjamas, or some of the ugliest and most dressed up dogs [18] in the world, or people walking backwards while thumping [19] their chests. It's an entertaining place.
Now I would like to talk about a concert I went to. It was a concert by a Welsh folk musician. His name is Gareth Bonello and his stage name [20] is The Gentle Good. Recently he spent six months in Chengdu. Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan province. Sichuan province lies north of Yunnan. While he was in Chengdu he learnt about Chinese folk music and literature. He then recorded an album with a group of Chinese musicians. The album tells the story of Li Bai, a famous Chinese. Li Bai lived from 705 to 762 during the second part of the Tang Dynasty. To this day Li Bai is very popular in China. On the album Gareth Bonello sings in Welsh. He is now touring to promote the album. When I saw him, he was joined by four young Chinese musicians. Two of them were playing plucked instruments [21], a Chinese zither and lute [22]. One of them was playing a bamboo flute and the fourth a Chinese fiddle [23]. Gareth was singing and playing an acoustic guitar. It was beautiful to see and listen to two very different musical cultures working together. And although I didn't understand the words, I thought it was nice to hear somebody singing in Welsh about an ancient Chinese poet. And I thought my Welsh father, Gerry, would be happy if I went.
As always I would like to thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you have any questions or comments, please write them in the comment box below. If you are listening to this on the app and would like to leave a comment, then please go to our website www.podclub.ch to leave a comment or question. My father Gerry will be back in two weeks. My next podcast will be on 19th June. I hope you will listen again then. Have a wonderful month. Bye!
Glossaire: Owen in China
[1] scary: frightening, something that makes you afraid
[2] expat: someone who doesn't live in their own country, short for expatriate
[3] survey: when you ask a group of people the same set of questions to find out what people think
[4] ex-expat: somebody who used to be an expat, but isn't now!
[5] authorized travel agency: here: a company which organizes holidays for you and which is approved by the government to do this
[6] to destroy: to break, to eliminate, to get rid of
[7] except for: not including
[8] intimidating: frightening, threatening
[9] border: frontier, the edge of (a country)
[10] frightening: another word for scary
[11] to deport: to send out of a country
[12] sensitive issue: delicate problem, something that people feel strongly about
[13] apparently: it seems
[14] unsurprisingly: it is not surprising that
[15] to end up with: in the end to have
[16] lack: shortage, when you don't have something (you have a lack of money = you don't have enough money)
[17] strangeness, craziness and weirdness: the way that something is unusual
[18] dressed up dogs: dogs wearing clothes
[19] to thump: to hit hard
[20] stage name: a special name that somebody uses when they are performing as an artist on stage (e.g. Sting)
[21] plucked instruments: instruments where you pull strings (like a guitar)
[22] lute: a musical instrument with a round body, a long neck and strings
[23] fiddle: violin
