A Russian Abroad: bubble tea

A post to celebrate reaching 2000 views! I sincerely thank each and every one of you for taking time to read my posts. May my ramblings and incoherent observations have filled revision breaks (as this post is doing for me now) and contributed to highly anticipated bedtime reading.

In the awkward few days between Christmas and New Year when no one if ever sure exactly what they are supposed to be doing, I was lucky enough to be able to meet Count Nikolai Tolstoy while assisting with filming for a Russian documentary. Relation to the great Leo Tolstoy of War and Peace, although he has resided in England all his life, he provided a surprising but reassuring pro-Russia stance (and subtlety pro-Putin stance) which the western papers seem to savagely try to prevent with an overall policy of hostility to Russia. In light of recent events in Paris, it was also interesting to hear him speak about a censoring problem he encountered with the British government - a place where we maybe take freedom of speech and of the press for granted:

Tolstoy wrote a book called Victims of Yalta about the fate of the Russians found in Western Europe in 1945 when the war ended of whom about 2 million were handed back to Stalin by the British and Americans, and then were inevitably killed or died in Gulag camps. He was the first person to write about this and followed with a second book in which he described his realisation that the Prime Minister at the time Harold Macmillan was the person chiefly responsible. Court action followed (sparked by Lord Aldington - an accused accomplice) and Tolstoy was tried for liable action; his phone was bugged and he was then fined £1.5 million (a sum three times more than any other up to that point in British legal history) but only eventually ended up paying £57,000. The censorship was eventually condemned by the European Court of Human Rights but it took 12 years altogether with the trial finally ending in 2000.

Another book he later wrote titled The Minister and the Massacres was also censored in every single library in Britain - the libraries were all ordered to remove the book (although some did refuse). Interestingly, it happened in 1998 which was exactly 200 years since the last book had been censored in Britain - Thomas Pain's The Rights of Man. Tolstoy then explained that he was preparing himself to go through it again, given that he received permission from Yeltsin (after the fall of the Sovietv Union) to look through secret archives in Russia and had photocopied them all meaning he now has more information about exactly what happened. As a result he is in the process of writing a book to really show what happened in a way 'the british government will not like...and they will probably get up to the same mischief.'

It seems there is just as much censorship if you touch something sensitive in Britain as there might be in Russia.

Food for thought.

I'm unsure of how to link my remaining thoughts into a coherent piece in which each flows effortlessly into the other - a sure-fire high-scorer in an exam situation - so I will number them and hope that you don't feel cheated every time my thought comes to a clumsy, abrupt halt.

1. A couple weeks ago (as a self-confessed muso) I went to a music research seminar about communication in music and what exactly it means to 'communicate through music.' After the presentation of the basic research that had been conducted up until that point among students at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, a conclusion was made that music had to make the listener/audience feel something and the way to accomplish that is essentially for the performer to know and understand the music as thoroughly as possible and then be able to portray that.

Thinking about how music is enjoyed in other cultures, for example, as a way to bring members of the community together singing traditional songs and dancing to traditional music, or to come up with new ways of playing music and new types of music to play, the whole concept of a westernised classical concert suddenly seemed completely and utterly absurd. Is the most enjoyable way to enjoy music really to sit in stiff chairs with limited leg room while trying not to cough or rustle the pages of your program which you read when your mind begins to wander or.... god forbid.... clap in the wrong place? Wouldn't it be more enjoyable to be surrounded by the musicians or to be able to hum/sing (depending on how confident you are) along to our favourite parts without looking like the local crazy person who somehow managed to blag their way in through the front door?

Tell me I'm living in a dream world trying to rattle social norms which have been around for years but music is a wonderful medium in which to bring people together whether communities, friends, families or strangers, and it is a unique language which can be understood by all. Why do we then feel the need to educate ourselves within the constrains of a hard wooden chair and making sure to keep sufficient room between us and the stranger providing us with the music. How much can someone really communicate to someone sat metres away with their head buried in pages after pages of sheet music and half the sound being blocked by a music stand? Music is an art for sharing: if you want to join in... play along, sing, dance, smile, laugh, and cry but having a pained look on your face after 60 minutes on a hard chair is not what I want to spend £10 on.

2. After a article on the front page of the Epigram (the Bristol University student newspaper) (December) and a protest organised by a 3rd year demonstrating growing feelings of irritation and exasperation among the student body fuelled by the university's apparent lack of sincerity and candor when it comes to spending, I discovered some surprising truths about 'senior management' at the university, which made me reflect on what I value the most in terms of education and what it's really worth.

With a vice-chancellor who, at a UUK (Universities UK) Conference, has already shown to be looking towards £12,000 fees, there seems to be less light and more ££ at the end of this tunnel. England is attached to a country where higher education is free for residents and positioned next to countries where it costs mere hundreds a year...one does have to wonder why higher education seems to be valued so lowly in England....or highly from a financial perspective. I have already ranted (in previous blog posts) about the lack of organisation I found yet tried to embrace at the University of Bologna (the oldest university in western Europe) which I had thought would have had enough experience to know how to effectively run such an establishment, however, I now wonder whether I completely missed the point of something they have kept sight of all along. The learning and sharing of ideas and opinions in a free environment, in a way that might develop and nurture a more curious and ambitious generation of intelligent and honest people.

3. I miss China. Known for being quite nostalgic at times, a glance over photos I took and receiving a couple messages from people I met there have made me really miss it. Especially the people and the food. People that were willing to talk even though they couldn't say a word in english and ignored the fact that my mandarin vocabulary consisted of ''I'm english and I'm a student' and the fearless noodle lady who managed to make something delicious which I have tried but failed to replicate on many occasions. With certain parts completely unaffected by western tastes, sticking to traditions and ways of life that they know and that have been passed down through generations, my £4.50 bubble tea half filled with ice from a shop on park street doesn't quite give me the same buzz.

(Literally - the one in China was full of chemicals I sure..)

That's everything for now.

I wish you all a very happy February,

A xx

Paris always makes everything better!

The man himself... (Tolstoy)

Recently I have been regularly asked the question 'what on earth where you doing in China?' much more than I had anticipated. Having applied for the three week Chinese language and culture program completely on a whim without really giving it a second thought, two months later I received an email stating that I had been given a place on the mandarin and Chinese culture course at Nanjing University, China. Flights booked within the seven day deadline, I had now committed myself to a 40 hour mandarin course with people I had never met in a country that I had never even thought about visiting.

When travelling and visiting new places, I much prefer to spend extended periods of time in one area in order to take in and understand as much about the people and culture as possible. Naturally, one can not do this with every place in the world in a lifetime and so I ended up limiting my preferred travel destinations to European countries. China had always been a completely strange and foreign land and I was happy keeping it that way.

I didn't expect to enjoy the trip so much. Well I didn't really know what to expect but I definitely did not expect wanting to extend my stay for as long as possible at the end (and that's not just because I wanted to have as much noodles and bubble tea as possible). In a city where the sound of the ice-cream van is really the street cleaning truck, where it's acceptable to sleep at any time of day on any surface and squatting is apparently the most comfortable way to sit (I still fall backwards every time I try), I slowly started to appreciate and really enjoy this new culture that I found myself in.

There is a beauty to the Chinese language that I had never appreciated or understood until I was lucky enough to spend these three weeks intensely studying the language and Chinese culture at Nanjing University. The language is simply structured without unnecessary changing of verb endings and it uses only words that are absolutely vital to the meaning of the phrase. I was won over by traditional Chinese philosophy, which points to the heart being able to think as well as the mind, although the debates during the lessons were intense with medics never ceasing to use science to prove otherwise and our lecturer suggesting that science is just another religion, which sparked even more discussions!
For a country with such a long history, it was sad to see and feel how much of it had been destroyed. Their "oldest" temples were buildings that had been rebuilt during the 20th century in tourist areas where we saw the expected authentic Chinese architecture which in actual fact had the feeling of a film set and had lost the 'sense' of history you often find when, for example, walking into an old church or castle in Europe.

I felt we were either treated like royalty or aliens. Outside of the olympics, which started while we were there, we were some of very few tourists, which resulted in constant stares (particularly at our height) and requests for photographs together - it was amazing to see that taking a photo with someone could make them so happy and excited. It's also hard to appreciate just how much people there are cut off from the western world - though attempts to show otherwise didn't go unnoticed with an abundance of western style shopping departments and brands. When we asked our favourite noodle lady to take a photo of us it seemed like she had never held a camera in her life...and this resulted in a very, very, very close-up picture of our faces.

The sheer number of people was also incredible. If you consider that London has a population of 8.5 million, Nanjing (which is just one of a group of big cities in China) has a population which matches that, not including 'urban' areas. So many people meant so many vehicles on very wide roads and with all their crazy driving - criss-crossing lanes and fitting entire families on one scooter - we still never saw a single accident!

Regretfully, my 40-hour mandarin course didn't mean that I was able to really converse with local people so I couldn't get a real sense of how it is to live in China without western influences, and anyone that could speak english well enough to explain to me had been educated in 'the West' so their view was slightly obscured to those who had never left the country and who, I feel, would have given a more realistic picture of daily life.

Back in the UK, I'm surprised to realise I really miss China. Upon my return I would hear people speaking mandarin and feel like I could pick up the odd words and at least understand the structure of the language while my stomach would be begging me for one more bubble tea and noodle lunch from our favourite street food lady. Maybe I'll be back sooner than I thought.