At the moment, I’m thousands of miles from that hamlet in pretty much every way and I’m looking at my left foot, which apparently is not full broken, but one of the bones in there has been ‘chipped’. ‘What do you mean, “chipped”?’ I asked the NHS nurse. ‘Like a coat of paint. Nicked, if you will,’ she replied, and sent me away with instructions to ice it, load up on pain pills and maybe be more careful next time. To be fair, the poor foot has taken a real beating—the big toe was broken in a particularly forceful high speed ski crash when I was seventeen, and then I managed to fracture the fifth metatarsal in the autumn of my first year. The combination of the foot, the pile of coursework and job applications sitting in front of me and the sleet forecast for the next few days suggests that my immediate future does not hold anything terribly exciting.
Which is why I found myself reminiscing about my flying visit to Beijing and the Great Wall a couple of months ago (fondly, I might add). Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, and the Wall itself were all spectacular, of course; they’re famous for very good reasons. But one of the most enjoyable afternoons I spent up north was in that hamlet straddling a minor motorway—a lazy, sweet afternoon that could have only happened by accident.
We were on the road from Beijing to Simatai, where our traditional Chinese guesthouse was nestled at the foot of the crumbling Wall, and had managed to pack an unlikely number of people into the back of a rattling van. Jess, Prudence, Pae and I were squashed into the very back row, whose batik print-upholstered seat was dubiously attached to the rest of the car and had a tendency to fly loose and launch us all into the air every time we hit a bump. At two and a half hours into the drive, I could feel the metal framework digging into my spine (the cushions were long gone) and my arms had grown tired from awkwardly propping up my book in front of me. The others felt much the same way, and when the van slowed to a crawl, and then shuddered to a complete halt, we all gave an inward groan. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why there would be traffic in, well, the middle of nowhere. A herd of goats or sheep had perhaps escaped. Maybe there was a dead cow on the road (a dead cow apparently held up a train in Lincolnshire for four hours the other day—they’re bigger than you think, and surprisingly hard to move apparently).
Our driver, a wizened little Northern woman whose head was wrapped in a balaclava, grumbled something, put the car into park and hopped out. She returned a few minutes later and informed us that, up ahead, there had been a car accident. And not just any accident, either, a four-car pileup. How four cars managed to collide with each other—we’re talking a head on collision—on a clearly divided road with such minimal traffic was beyond me. At any rate, the mess was blocking both sides of the motorway, bringing everyone, northbound and southbound, to a dead stop. This being rural northeast China, there were no policemen or tow trucks in sight. The van, with the late afternoon sun beating on its roof, was marooned in a tiny but impenetrable sea of cars and lorries for the time being. Around us, we heard car doors being flung open and then slammed shut as people spilled out of their vehicles to observe the wreckage, take guzzles of water or tea in the open air, or just weave leisurely through the stopped traffic and take a look at the surrounding village.
Gorgeous day for a four-car pileup
I could feel a bruise blooming on my spine where one of the vertebrae had been pressed up against the metal skeleton of the seat, my limbs were stiff and prickling from being folded up for so long, and it was a beautiful summer afternoon, so I, too, opted to clamber out of the van. Prudence and I ambled down the motorway for a hundred metres or so and scoped out the village shop, where we were greeted by two grinning and wrinkly old men and a jolly elderly woman with great fanfare and much laughter. What were the chances of foreigners ever having set foot in that shop, let alone two blonde girls who spoke a smattering of funny-sounding Chinese? we wondered. As the massive fan in the corner blew around warm air, we slowly scanned the aisles, our sandals lightly slapping at the concrete floor. ‘My God, everything here is so cheap compared to Shanghai!’ I exclaimed, examining a tube of toothpaste that cost 5rmb. ‘I feel like I should do a massive shop, as long as we’re here.’ I realised what a loser I sounded like—was that how I got my kicks and giggles now, a bargain on toothpaste?—and put it back. It is easy to forget, though, that Shanghai, which those of us who live in the West consider one massive bargain, really is the most expensive place in mainland China.
After the obligatory ‘ni men shi na guo ren?’ (‘where are you from?’) conversation with the shopkeeper and his two friends/relatives/whoever they were, we strolled back into the open air to take a look at the wreck itself. Sure enough, there were three cars and a lorry all smashed together, doors bent off their hinges and windows shattered, glass thrown all over the tarmac and glittering in the sun like razor-edged confetti. There were plenty of people milling around, very much without urgency and very much without any idea what to do. It was clear that none of them were policemen or tow truck drivers, which meant we weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Fine with me, really. As we wandered on packed-dirt lanes through the rest of the hamlet and watched kids weave unsteadily on their bicycles, trailed by a couple of loping dogs, I personally thought that it couldn’t have happened on a better afternoon. Above us was a thrown-open blue sky, and the air, drier than in Shanghai, was both gloriously hot and fresh. The mountains of Hebei, steep, high and jagged, were a deep green where they rose around us from all sides. With traffic brought to a halt, the only noise came from the chatter of those waiting idly for the jam to be resolved, the birds and cicadas in the surrounding trees and the occasional bark of a dog (and to clear this up for those less informed about life in modern China, no, I did not eat dog whilst there; end of discussion). This far out of Beijing, the air was sweet and clean, and this, along with the stunningly blue sky, brought to mind the myriad summers of my youth spent at Lake Tahoe, high in the Sierra Nevadas. The lazy summer afternoon: it’s the same everywhere, really.
This is how I spent a lot of summers too, minus the whole being Chinese thing
We made our way out of the village and back to the van; unsurprisingly, no progress had been made in moving the pileup. I ducked back into the car for a second to pluck my book off the seat and then sat myself down on the roadside, where I spent the next hour trying to make sense of Haruki Murakami and munching on the dried sweet potato sticks I had bought at the shop (which pretty much everyone I knew seemed to find distinctly unappealing). To my left a few men stood with their hands tucked behind their backs, heads turned to the pileup and watching to see if anything would happen. To my right, another handful were engaged in a lively card game in the middle of the road. There was an atmosphere almost like that of a carnival, or a 1950s American block party.
Haruki Murakami: writing for crackheads since 1979
Eventually the owners of the cars and lorry found a tractor to tow the mess off the road, and a lone policeman even showed up. He didn’t do much, as far as I could tell, mostly waved his arms around without saying anything. As people hopped back in the cars and started to weave through the stopped traffic, slowly untangling the mess, chaos reigned briefly. Cue much inching forward and braking abruptly on the part of our balaclava-wearing driver. I was blissed out and full of fresh air and sun, however, and hardly minded as I was alternately thrown backwards and then jammed into the seat in front of me. I knew we’d get to Simatai in the end.
There was something so simple and enjoyable about those hours spent on the northern roadside that I can still remember it all in vivid detail, even as I’m cocooned in my duvet up here in Scotland and watching the icy rain fall outside my window. A dozen job applications, a few hundred pages of reading and a daunting five thousand-word essay on Malaysian political and economic involvement in sub-Saharan Africa await me. I wouldn’t mind a warm, sunny afternoon waiting for a traffic jam to clear.
A few brief things:
-Last Saturday, when Zoe was visiting from Glasgow (yay!), we were walking up Alexandra Place when we saw a girl riding a unicycle. I kid you not. She was pedalling her way down the pavement perfectly steadily, and her face gave no indication that it was anything other than completely normal. I, personally, have always wanted to learn to ride a unicycle, so this blew my mind.
-In preparation for my little holiday in Krakow, I am teaching myself to read Polish. I don’t know why we even bother using the same alphabet.
-We have a pair of regular buskers here in St Andrews: the accordion guy, who's usually somewhere near the Subway, and the flute guy, who stations himself outside what used to be a wine shop (thank you, recession). Even though I've never given either of them money, I've always liked the accordion guy because for some reason he reminds me of Christmas. The flute guy is also okay, I guess. My issue is: does he EVER play any other song than the Beatles' 'Yesterday'? Walking past an abandoned wine shop on a grey, drizzly day to hear a particularly mournful rendition of 'Yesterday' is the definition of 'downer'. Maybe if he played something a bit less depressing people would be more inclined to throw him money.
-Winter has come to the UK so early this year that it is cruel. When I say ‘winter’, I don’t even mean my definition of winter (10 degrees, overcast and a slight breeze), I mean SNOW. Well, not in St Andrews, but quite close by. I’m already wearing my heaviest sheepskin coat, but I haven’t yet brought out the ski socks, gloves or hats. I’ll confess that I’ve worn my black fleece-lined jodhpurs, though. It’s not obvious that they’re riding trousers—they just look like thick leggings with black patches on the inside of the knees—and they’re just so warm. Needless to say, whenever I speak to someone back in California and they tell me how it’s been NINETY DEGREES! (somewhere around thirty) and sunny, I want to throw something breakable at the wall. I do love you, St Andrews, but I also love vitamin D and looking as though I live above ground.
