200 Today

Google Dickens

Had he lived as long as some of his books, Charles Dickens would have been 200 today. We've been running lots of events in China over the last few months, including a writing & photography competition called Our Times, a series of salons in ten cities, some film screenings and earlier today took part in a global 'read-a-thon' with 24 countries reading an extract from a different Dickens text, one every hour from Albania to Russia. More on that here.
And tonight I MC'd a birthday party at the Ambassador's Residence, attended by Beijing's literati. When the buffet was served, I resisted the temptation of saying 'And you can ask for more'.


It's also my brother-in-law Nick's birthday, and he writes books too - crime novels, nine to date. It's not really my genre, but they're pretty good. See www.nickwastnage.com/

OK

Frantic today, so just time to post this snap of a restaurant I passed this morning. Wonderful.

The Art of Science

Forgot to say, went to the Science Museum yesterday with friends. It's near the Olympic Stadium and is suitably olympic in size. Science museums the world over seem to be geared specifically for children (as opposed to art museums which are for adults). It was choc-a-bloc full of them, rushing from one button-pushing experience to another. About half of these worked which is about average I think. Still, there was some good 'interactive' stuff, including a moon walk simulator which our kids loved. But I'm not sure how much I really learnt. Maybe it's not about learning these days, maybe it's just / all about the 'experience'. Actually, the best gallery for me was the (somewhat pompously titled) Glory of China permanent exhibition: where one could learn all about - or experience - China's great inventions over its 5,000 year history: silk farming, porcelain, paper, gunpowder, kites, movable type, compass, seismographs, water clocks, the great ships of the 13th century, tea, etc. Impressive.

Beijah

This evening I was invited by the Jamaican Ambassador, the very cool Courteney Rattray, to a night of reggae music as part of both Bob Marley birthday celebrations (he would have been 67 this coming Monday) and the 50th anniversary of Jamaican independence. It was at the small but perfectly formed (if overly smokey... the normal kind) Yugong Yishan club, near the Forbidden City.

I brought my mate Martin along, who knows a thing or two about Jamaican music. Turns out that China played a key role in the history of ska and reggae through Leslie Kong (aka 'The Chinaman') who became the island's leading producer in the 60s. He recorded Bob Marley's first single, One Cup of Coffee, in 1962, Jimmy Cliff's first hit, Miss Jamaica, and loads of others incuding Desmond Dekker. He was also one of the original shareholders in Chris Blackwell's Island Records.

Anyway, it was a top night and we had the pleasure of meeting not only the Director of Kingston's Bob Marley Museum and various Toasters, but also the Ambassadors of Surinam and Cape Verde Islands. That's not something you do everyday.

World Wrap Up Warm

Coldest day of the winter so far: -14C it said on my iPhone this morning, and I believe it. We have a little ritual over breakfast, looking up the temperatures in half a dozen places: Beijing, London, Bangkok, Tokyo, Yakutsk and the North Pole. Yakutsk is unbelievable: it's only 1,500 miles north of Beijing but it's regularly -40C or -50C. But Beijing is cold enough. Numbed face cycling into work; it's the wind that does it. Spare a thought, though, for these poor fish swimming around in the only bit of the pond which hasn't frozen over. And Europe, which is experiencing the coldest temperatures and heaviest snow in decades.

Groundhog Day

This week has been very very samey. Twelve hours at the desk each day, no external meetings (though lots if internal ones), trying to progress everything for the upcoming festival, returning home knackered & goggle-eyed... and then each morning starting again seemingly from scratch. 

Funnily enough, today is Groundhog Day - if not in China then certainly in North America. I never heard of it until seeing the film, with Bill Murray playing his usual hapless lead. But what exactly is Groundhog Day and what's it got to do with a large rodent?

According to folklore, if it's cloudy when a groundhog emerges from its burrow on this day, then spring will come early. If it's sunny, the groundhog will supposedly be scared by its shadow and go back into its burrow, and the winter weather will continue for six more weeks. I love stupid stuff like this. It's a big event in Punxsutawney apparently, where (good old Wikipedia tells us) "The Pennsylvania German dialect is the only language spoken at the event, and those who speak English pay a penalty, usually in the form of a nickel, dime or quarter, per word spoken, put into a bowl in the center of the table". On the news tonight, they showed the top-hatted town elders holding up a non-plussed looking groundhog and proclaiming in semi-serious tones to an audience of several thousand that "There will be six more weeks of winter". The bowl must have been chinking though, because I understood every word of that. Wonderful.

Sussex 50

Sussex University, my alma mater, is currently celebrating its 50th anniversary. The Chairman of the British Council, Vernon Ellis, took part in a celebratory talk the other day, which prompts a post.

Sussex was one of those early '60s 'plate-glass' (as opposed to red brick) universities along with UEA, Essex, Kent, Warwick etc, although in truth Sussex was a lot more brick than glass. It had a fair bit of student radicalism in the late 60s, a few famous arts alumni (writers Andrew Morton & Ian McEwan, tennis star Virginia Wade, musicians Tony Banks of Genesis, Mark Hollis of Talk Talk, and - gawd-save-us - Billy Idol), won University Challenge a couple of times, and is ranked 11th in UK. An average university then.

I was there from 1979-83. It was an intensely formative experience for me. Not academically (I studied Geography simply because it was my favourite subject at school, a mistake really, I should have studied History)... but in all sorts of other ways. I met a like-minded friend, Andrew Cox, on the first day and together we formed a 'group', started a fanzine and a cassette label and I also hosted a campus radio show, all in the first ten weeks. It was a great time for music; Brighton was (and still is) a good place to be; I enjoyed my year abroad (again, not academically, but in myriad other ways); I made life-long friends in Andrew, Julie and Peter; and somehow got a degree.

Neither of these two hairy dudes is me, though I did have 'big' hair then. You can see the library in the background, on the left would have been the Student Union building (where I saw a few bands) and the Gardener Arts Centre, and to the right would have been the pond, into which a few of us jumped fully-clothed after a Hawkwind concert. Ah, student japes...