Below Belief

This morning we are up early, anxious to be looking our best for Isabell. For some reason we feel something is expected of us today and so we’d better look smart. This is difficult to achieve with few clean clothes and a ragged beard, but the thought is there. We spend the day traipsing round the Purple Mountain which is, for the Nanjing people, the equivilent of one of our stately homes. There are museums, temples and craft shops and a hugely impressive mausoleum built for Dr Sun Yatsen, the man who led the Kuomintang Nationalist party in the early 1920′s and who is hailed by many as the founder of modern China. Unfortunately his body was pinched and now resides, perfectly preserved, in Taiwan where the Kuomintang party sought refuge in 1949 from the newly formed PRC. And their leader’s body was not all they pinched, when they left they took with them the entire gold reserves of China. Good skills.
Ours is a day of interesting but exhausting walking. We learn a lot about Isabell and she a lot about us. She thinks Llew is very handsome – particularly in sunglasses – and can’t understand why he hasn’t got a girlfriend. Is there no end to this man’s powers? She has a boyfriend too. Today is the day I take my first real experience of proper Chinese toilets. These consist of a hole in the floor and two foot-plates, and usually, but not always, some sort of flushing mechanism. The ones in the hostel are, I’m assured, relatively clean but nevertheless the smell of ammonia is overpowering. The appropriate etiquette is something that must be experimented with – I certainly don’t get it right on my first go. Balancing over a stinking hole is not one of the easiest nor pleasant things I’ve ever done. But even this unpleasantness is beaten later by the sight of Llew scrubbing his underpants clean. It seems he has only brought one pair.
We eat in a very simple, basic, restaurant with Isabell. The food is delicious and prepared so quickly I wonder if they have all the dishes on the go all the time. The cook is a large-bosomed middle-aged lady who is very keen to check we are enjoying her food by sitting around watching us eat. Evidently foreigners are a rarity. Later we drink some beers in Jack’s Place while Isabell drinks tea and tries to determine the type of Chinese wife which would most suit Llew. This turns out to be one who cooks good Chinese food and doesn’t understand any English.
In a piano shop, bizarrely located two doors down, I am forced to play for Isabell, having foolishly revealed that I played earlier on. I manage to draw quite a crowd and it is good to know that with Llew’s singing ability and my playing we could always busk our way around China if we run out of cash.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 1997 at 1:53 pm and is filed under China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.