gefaltete Kraniche

Es hat heute den ganzen Tag geregnet. Deutsches Herbstwetter und ich habe mich in meine Schuhschachtel verkrochen, die ganz klamm war.

Packen, Ordnen, Abhängen. Abends war ich mit Shigeru, Masayuki, Yuki, Kousuke und Keiko zum Grillen in Masayukis Atelier verabredet. Dazu kamen ein paar Holländer, die gerade einen Stand in der Designmesse aufgebaut hatten. Eine Frau wird in dergleichen Woche, in der ich von Osaka aus nach Shanghai fahren werde mit der Fähre nach Peking fahren. Wir verabredeten uns in Peking.

Als ich mit einer der letzten Bahnen nachause kam, wollte ich mir auf dem Heimweg noch eine Milch in einem Conbinie mitnehmen; dort stellte ich allerdings fest, dass dies die letzte Milch sein würde, die ich in Tokyo kaufen würde und liess es vor Schreck bleiben.

So kanns kommen.

Ich hatte heute einen Termin in einer sehr berühmten Bibliothek wegen meiner Borges Arbeit. Ich wollte mein Projekt vorstellen und um Hilfe bitten, eine Bibliothek zu finden; aber wegen der allgemeinen Hektik, Abbau zweier Ausstellungen, Packen, Verabschieden, Aufräumen, Krankenversicherungs-nachweise suchen etc. war ich nicht gut vorbereitet. Ich hatte keine Papiere zum Dalassen dabei, mein Computer lief nicht richtig und in dem super geordneten Büro räumte ich alle Papiere, die ich in meiner Tasche dabei hatte auf den Tisch. Kurzum, ich tat, was man von einem Künstler erwartet, aber eben leider nicht unbedingt schätzt.

Meine zweite Einlage fand heute in einem Fotoladen statt, wo ich meine Dias abholen wollte, aber den blöden Abholzettel nicht dabei hatte. Auch hier wurden Vorturteile bestätigt, aber diesmal nur gegen Ausländer im allgemeinen.

Eigentlich waren es kleine Performances und ich war froh, abends mit Edda, Andreas und Chintzia Lachpartner zu haben. Als Chintzia mich fragte, was ich denn in Deutschland machen würde, gab ich meine Standartantwort: dasselbe wie vor 2 Jahren: mich auf alle möglichen Jobs bewerben, vom Zugbegleiter bei der deutschen Bahn über Stipendien bis sonst wo hin - da meinte sie, sie habe sich auch mal bei der Bahn beworben, als Zugbegleiterin in den Nachtzügen nach Italien... und da leuchteten bei mir einige Bingo-Lichter ...

Ich kam wieder mal mit der letzten Bahn nachause, heute kaufte ich aber meine letzte Tokioter Milch im gewohnten Conbinie...

Morgens trabte ich zur chinesischen Botschaft, um mein Visum abzuholen und dann aufs Amt, um mich abzumelden. Der Beamte wollte mein Ticket sehen, das ich natürlich nicht dabei hatte. Er fragte mich nach der Telefonnummer meiner Schiffahrtsgesellschaft, die ich natürlich ebenso wenig im Kopf hatte, wie den Namen. Also setzte er sich ans Telefon und suchte in dem Telefonbuch nach der Schiffahrtsgesellschaften und rief kurzerhand an und fragte, ob sie am 12.10 eine Deutsche nach Shanghai eingebucht hätten... In Deutschland wäre man scharf angesehen und nachause geschickt worden, um das Ticket zu holen...

Dann musste ich endgültig packen. Für die kommenden Stunden lag mein ganzer Besitz in meinem Zimmer und wollte in meinem Koffer ein Plätzchen finden. Um 19 Uhr war ich dann soweit und wollte mein Nummernschloss neu stellen. Leider war ich bereits etwas müde, und wegen dem bevorstehenden Okonomiyake Essen schon unkonzentriert. Was soll ich lange drum herumschreiben:
Das Schloß war verstellt, der Koffer zu und ich wusste die zuletzt eingegebene Nummer nicht mehr.

Ich bekam einen kurzen Schreianfall, der die Aufmerksamkeit meiner Mitbewohnerin Mina weckte. Und während ich wie Rumpelstiltzchen durchs Zimmer hopste und mich über meine Dummheit ärgerte, machte sich mein Volunteer für alle Fälle daran, systematisch Nummernkonstellationen zu prüfen, und: NACH 20 MINUTEN WAR MEIN KOFFER WIEDER OFFEN!

Uff, mir fielen ganze Gebirge vom Herzen und ich beschloss, das Schloß nicht mehr anzurühren und einfach offen zu lassen (wenn mans eh so schnell knacken kann...)

Mittlerweile habe ich mich in und von Tokyo verabschiedet, war zwei Tage in Toyota, um meine letzten Habseligkeiten zu packen und bin am Biwasee gelandet, bei Yuko und Hiromichi.

In den vergangenen Tagen habe ich noch leckerst japanisch, chinesisch und koreanisch gegessen und es ist so, als würde ich gerade Geburtstage für die kommenden Jahre feiern. Der Abschied fällt mir nicht schwer, ich weiss, dass ich die meisten Menschen wieder sehen werde. Nur der Abschied von meinen Vermietern in Tokyo war seltsam, sind mir die beiden doch sehr ans Herz gewachsen und vielleicht auch, weil meine Oma während meines Japanaufenthaltes gestorben ist, habe ich Obachan als meine Oma 'adoptiert'. Als ich am Donnerstag Morgen abreiste, richtete sie mir noch meine Jacke...

Gestern fegte wieder ein Taifun über Japan; Yuko und ich igelten uns bei ihr zuhause ein und gingen dann ins Kino, um 'LOVERS' zu sehen, einen chinesischen Film, der wirklich ganz das war, was wir gerade brauchten, Action, Tragik, tolle Bilder. Die herrlichen Herbstszenen sind in der Ukraine gedreht worden und ich sehnte mich danach, auf einem Pferd über die gezeigten Ebenen zu galoppieren. Später konnten wir das Online-Radio-Interview anhören, das wir mit Hiromiche am Vortag aufgenommen hatten, und das aus unserer Unterhaltung über Flirten entstanden ist. Anfangs leitet Hiromichi auf Japanisch ein, aber dann reden wir Englisch, voila, der Link zu den beiden Sendungen:

• http://homepage.mac.com/carte/numa/numa107.mp3
• http://homepage.mac.com/carte/numa/numa108.mp3

Meine nächsten Tagebucheintragungen werde ich wohl in Deutschland ins Netz stellen müssen, da ich nicht weiss, wie ich in China zum Schreiben komme - ich freue mich aufs Wiedersehen

Auf bald!

On board.
The ships' engine is humming rythmically, the sun is shining and the wind is blowing my hair around my head. Japan bids me fare well with a wide sky and great clouds.

Unexpectadly I get a better cabin that I had booked on board of the ship from Osaka to Shanghai. And while I am sitting on deck and watch the Japanese landscape pass by I know that this is exactly the right speed for my mood and my moving back to Europe. I am glad that the other European on board has left me in peace after chewing my ears with his boring philosophy on travelling. It is good to be on my own with my thoughts.

The opening hours of the cafe-restaurant are strict and a speaker informs when there is time to eat again. It gives the feeling of a youth hostel.

While observing the sunset, Marlene Dietrichs song 'Wenn ich mir was wünschen dürfte' (If I had a wish for free...)comes to my mind. Two days ago, in Yukos house we had seen a movie ('The night porter') where this song had appeared. I am not sure what I wish for right now. My time in Japan already now seems like a dream. SO many wishes did come true..

The persons I met during the last 1 1/2 years and experiences I made cross my mind. I remember Yuko telling me about this book which is quite popular in Japan right now. In it, women are divided into winner dogs and looser dogs. The author claims that the woman who lives traditionally as a house wife actually is the winner dog, who lives a good and comfortable life, while the business woman will miss a family life later and has no time to enjoy life. So for the author the business woman is the looser dog, struggeling every day and suggests that she should call herself 'looser dog'. Am I a looser dog?

By the way, if you want to listen to a conversation between Yuko, Hiromichi, me and their cat Shima on flirting-please click on the links in the the diary entry above.

Shanghai - What a promising name for a city!

Of course my ship does not pass the famous strip of Shanghai, the Bund, but never mind. The harbour for passengers is unspectacular and I feel rather like an item than a traveller. The building is just a hall. I do not have any Chinese money and when I ask for a bank a worker points to a tall building some blocks away. There. In that building. And so I am walking around the streets and try to keep the building in sight. Somehow I fit in the picture of the streets with all the people doing their business. There are no other white Europeans around and I pull my suitcase as if it was my business cart. Finally I find the building and can change the money. Next to the bank ther is a hotel and a cab is standig right in front od it. A guy working for the hotel calls the taxi driver for me. But it is a red taxi.

I had been warned not to take just any taxi, but a yellow or green one, where the driver is wearing gloves. The other ones were bad, not reliable... I had no chance, took it and felt like a girl that had not done what the mother had told her (never talk to strangers!). I watched Shanghai passing by through the window, amazed that I WAS there, which was HERE.

Then I through myself into the city.

In the morning I first visited a fascinating animal market, where you can buy all sorts of insects, turtles in every sizes, gold fishes and much more. Just a couple of blocks away is the Museum of Art in Shanghai, where I visited the Shanghai Biennale after.

From a truely Chinese market I entered again the international art world with some well known artists and new Chinese works. Here, like everywhere else is the problem of what to do with all the video works. In Shanghai they had built a kind of long tent with different compartments, one after the other. Already the sight of them drives away every wish to get deep into the works. With all these new courses in curating and so on I wonder why nobody has some new ideas in presenting video works in a better way which makes you actually wanting to see them.

After the biennale I strolled down to the Bund and enjoyed the famous sight of Shanghai.

In the evening I met Mahiro and Waca in my hotel lobby. It was great to meet Mahiro again in this different surrounding. He also acted as my postman, bringing me the cable I had forgotten as well as the last letters which had arived in Tokyo after my departure. We went for a wonderful dinner and talked about the souveirs I would be carrying back to Europe on my hips. I had eaten so much over the last weeks that I sometimes even thought:

Oh my god! Again eating!

I wanted to buy stamps and wondered where I could get them as tomorow was a sunday. Wacas friend looked at me in amazement: But stamps are like food- you need to be able to buy them every day! Of course the post is open on a sunday!

This is Shanghai.

Eastlink gallery, which I wanted to visit has moved somewhere else. The tea pot museum-was not to be found at first, then it turned out that also this museum has moved, but without trace where it went to and I could only see the empty rooms through the window. I imagined a thousand tea pots being wrapped and taken away; well I hope somebody is having a thousand days with tea served in a different pot every day.

The city is changing so fast that a brand new guide book or a local to help is necessary to avoid that you are running around in vain.

Slowly I moved back to the hotel where I met Mahiro and Waca again for a last coffee before heading to my train. The inside and the outside of the trainstation was like day and night. The station was new and very clean and seemed like another world again. Later when I got on the train I was even more amazed. My soft sleeper (the other option would have been the hard sleeper...there is no first and second class in communist China...) was modern, clean and like a neutral travel capsule shooting me north...My suitcase was too big to put anywhere and had to stay in the corridor.

Arrival in Beijing. I had mistaken the number of my compartment and my bed number with the arrival time when I called my fathers friend Yuke to tell him when I would arrive in Beijing. So I was 1 1/2 hour early and wanted to call Yuke, my fathers friend. But for this you need to find a telephone... I was sent around the station in all four directions untill finally I found a phone for which I had to buy a phone card which I could not use again during my trip as it turned out later. Finally Yuke came to pick me up and first of all we talked about when I wanted to fly back. I wanted to fly friday, but then he said, there was the possibility to go to Tenjin with him and then I should not miss this or that sight so finally I decided to fly back to Europe on tuesday.

On one hand I am very excited about China and Beijing, but something is also drawing me back to Europe. I want to see my friends and start to work on my new projects...

After I checked in my cheap hotel I wandered to the Forbidden city. Maos image decorates the entrance. I buyed an audio guide and are led through the palace by her majestys spy, Roger Moore.

I like the Forbidden city especially as a mental space. A no go place within Beijing. What would the first emperors think if they saw all the tourists wandering around?

What I liked the most was the marble way, which runs all along the the main axis of the palace grounds. This street was only to be used by the emperor and mostly he was carried over it. Wherever there are stairs there were great carvings of dragons in the marble.

After a fantastic Peking-duck Yuke brings me back to the hotel, but I am starving for a movie and decide to go out and buy a dvd ...I even find two movies of my favourite, Myazaki Hayao and buy them, but when I try them out in my hotel, they are both not working AT ALL. What a disappointment.

But instead of getting angry I put on my shoes again and return to the shop. I want to change the dvdy. After some moments of disbelkief, the lady says it is ok and I go to choose two more movies (for everyone who knows me knows how long this might take me...) anyway, I got 'Lovers' and 'the piano, both dvds were checked carefully before taking them; and, of course the shopkeepers just put the other dvds back into the shelves...

But my new choices were working and my good night movies were ensured.

In the evening, after one day in Beijing, Shanghai feels like a light version of China, just to be able to get used to the new country slowely...

Beijing is more rough, more northern, the weather is cooler and... it is just overwhelming

Today I was invited to join Yuke on a tour to Chengde, where the Chinese emperor had his summer palace. Beijing must be a kind of hell in summer, hot and dusty and so it is no wonder that the emperor moved his whole lot to the mountains for a couple of months every year. Not an easy undertaking in a procession of around 2000 persons. Of course he was carried all the way, which took us by car 4 hours. The emperor needed four weeks for this journey which we made in 4 hours...

The first thing I noticed when we arrived in Chengde was that we had arrived in autumn, in the late autumn with this intense light I am loving so much and with the chill as soon as the sun is out of sight.

The summer palace was great, but somehow not really taken care of. It looked a little forgotten or better first forgotten and then quickly brushed up to make some money with the tourists(mainly Chinese). Later we took a suicide bus-tour around the garden. I hope at least the driver was having fun!

Everybody else was looking up and down the serpentines just preaying that nothing would come into his way...a deer did and got a bad shock when seeing us approaching...

In the evening we warmed up with some more fantastic food(again) and then we looked for a bar and: we found a place where everybody was sitting on swings. It was great and my next apartment must have a swing somewhere- I instist on that!

In the morning we visited two really fantastic temples. Fantastic, but kind of dead, because not in use. This always makes me a little sad, not because of religious feelings, but by this the temples are kind of grave yards of well, of the belief or whatever... difficult to explain, but saddening anyway. Then we drove on over narrow streets and with the crazy driving practise of the Chinese. The horn is the only thing that keeps the traffic going... and then we were there:

the great wall and it surely is a great wall, standing in nobodys land, very majestic.... Hard to explain.

The hills and mountains around were brown and many trees have already lost their colourful leaves, the wall reminds of the back of a dragon, sleeping within the hills, maybe sleeping for too long and so has merged with the ground or been over-blown with the sand and earth from the desert Gobi. The only really annoying thing are the souvenir sellers. They accompany each tourist, just walking with you however long you are walking and then, suddenly begin to offer T-Shirts, postcards etc. They are really irritating and even if you would like to buy postcards or whatever, the way they do it does not makes you buy...

Then we drove back to Beijing. After we had eaten and left the restaurant it had rained a little. The dusty air was clean and everybody was happy. Rain in this season is rare. In my hotel I put on a dvd, the 'piano' and was carried somewhere else again.

My new hotel is close to the Lama temple and so this is the first sight to visit today.

The gate was blocked by a tourist bus and really the masses of buses and people can be a little frightening; but the feeling of this place is too strong to be swept away by them and it is an active temple- the monks are sitting under the smiling eyes of a statue and reciting. The visitor is and stays a visitor and even the chattiest groups get a little silent. The Confucian temple which my guide book recommended to visit was much quieter and I could warm up sitting in the sun for a while. There was not so much to look at.

By the way: my skin is suffering here. It got used to the humidity in the air in Japan and here for the first time I needed to put on some cream as my skin got so dry.

Then I went on; first to the old tea shop in the old city, where I bought some green tea to take home. The shop assistant was a young Chinese with bad teeth and a real smile. He asked me where I was coming from and when I said from Germany, he said he was looking forward to the world cup in 2006.

My next stop was Red Gate gallery. This commercial gallery, which shows Chinese art is set in a beautiful old watch tower and the director is also taking care of a residency program I wanted to see.

So when the gallery closed we went to Chaoyang, an area set a little away from the city where the studios are. And it seems really out of the city. The compound is closed, the taxi driver blew the horn and then the doors opened. The art spaces could have been in NY or Sydney or in some other part of the world, the athmosphere was good, but this village in a city seemed to much like a monastery for me.

When I came back to my hotel, I found a note from Talea on my door. We had met on a BBQ in Tokyo and had discovered that she too was taking a ship from Japan to China and that we would be in Beijing at the same time... her place was really close to mine and so I went over and got lost. But it was not bad- I was striving through the Hutongs, just regretting that it was already dark. The feeling was good. Even though it was cold, a lot of people were playing games on the street or just hanging around. Finally I met Talea and had dinner together with her room mates.

Yuke picked me up early in the morning and we drove to Tenjin, the 4th biggest city in China, his hometown, a huge harbour city. It was a short drive and the first thing he wanted to show was a colourful bird market, but it was gone since he visited the last time. Nonody knew where it might have gone to. This is a familiar encounter in China; everything is on the move, where there is a building today, might be a building site tom orrow. It is also fascinating to see how fast a place can change and how deeply.

The concession in Tenjin is a fascinating place. All these old houses built in European styles and then in communist days these big houses have been used by masses of people and most of them look really run down(some quite pictoresque in that state...). So we moved on to his parents who were just about to prepare Bause, a kind of Giosa(for those who know Japan)-it is minced meat put in dough, a kind of Chinese ravioli. His father was making them and they were delicious, but. had to be eaten with raw garlic...tasty, but don't ask what kind of taste I had in my mouth for the next days. We spent the day with meeting Yukes friends, one of them owns a factory for optical tools. His firm was western, especially as it was so clean and quite a contrast to the life in the city.

My hotel room was on the 17th floor and old with stains in the bathtub. I liked the old athmosphere and the breathtaking view out of the window.

We took a stroll around a touristy street with dozens of shops and then, of course we ate again- and how! There is a new restaurant in Tanjin, called 1928. It wants to revive the happy times of 1928, before the Japanese invaded and before the communism, the cultural revolution etc. The restaurant is enormous. The waiters rush around on roller skaters and there is a stage, where various performances were shown while we were enjoying our food; all of them were performances like they were put on stage in the 20ies.

Amazing.

After a good breakfast I went to the station to take a train back to Beijing. There were masses of people standing around the ticket booth, all really diferent to the clean and civilised station in Shanghai; it was kind of a struggle to get a ticket. And then I had to realise that I had more than an hour untill my train was going to depart. I looked around the shops in the station and bought a Chinese tea flask. It is not a thermos flask, but a plastic bottle, which every Chinese carries with him or her to have green tea at hand. The tea leaves are at the bottom of the flask and as green tea can be brewed several times, the leaves stay and hot water is added again and again. I had a tea bag from the hotel with me and got hot water from the tab in the huge waiting room. Many Chinese had cup noodles with them and just 'cooked ' them with the hot water.

Back in Beijing I went to 789, the famous art space a little out of the city. It is an old factory building, built by east Germans in the fifties and now it id the hot spot of artists in Beijing. On the area there are various factory buildings, many of them turned into art spaces, studio-apartments, galleries, cafes etc. All of a sudden there are a lot of 'laoweis'-white-westerners. It is a little strange to see the familiar art scene around these buildings; you have to imagine a huge area, not just one or two buildings. Art and Design is mixed there and not always in the best way. What I want to say, that in such circles there sometimes is a strange athmosphere. It is a closed circle of coolness and attempted(and not always reached) boheme-feeling. I was surprised and even more when I wanted to drink a coffee in a cafe and had to discover that it was the most expenive coffee I ever saw in China. Welcome globalisation! I did not have a coffee but saw a movie instead (for the same price). It was a good choice.

In the evening I went back to my hotel, where I met Taleas roommates. We went for dinner together and it was great. Chinese Fire-pot. A soup which is cooked directly on the table. And Kaori was kind of my neighbour in Tokyo we realised...

Early around 6 my alarm clock woke me up to go to an antique market with Kaori and Kim. It was freezing cold and after 5 minutes I saw two fascinating bowls with painted bugs all over the inside and the outside. I was stupid and did not buy it...later they were sold of course... but it was a picturesque market and everyone of the three of us found something... but we were frozen, so we went to a local little restaurant andgot a soup with Chinese ravioli and dumplings to warm up again. But the day brought some more highlights with the visit of the Temple of Heaven. We could see some Chinese doing group exersises, some Tai-chi and others with fake swords and fans, but also just dances with music. The temple was nice, but somehow the Chinese temples and sights always make me kind of sad. Mostly they are only sights now, with no more meaning or function. Many of the survived the so callded 'Cultural Revolution' maybe only to attract foreign visitors and most of all foreign money. Often they are in a bad state. Many building were repetedly torn down and rebuilt...

But the afternoon gave me a better insight into what is actually going on in China. In Beijing a new museum for Urban Development has been opened recently. My friend Yuke has not seen it and so we went there together. It is a kind of propaganda museum to promote the new ideas and plans of the government. The different parts of Beijing show their next projects and the heart of the museum is a huge model of Beijing. Yes and on the models these new buildings and cities look nice and clean, but the reality is quite different. Many of the traditional Hutongs have been torn down and more will follow. This traditional way of living in courtyards, overcrowded in comunism and certainly not the best way to live for everyone (your neighbour can hear every fart), but definately worth while preserving and reviving.

On my last day in Beijing it rained and ironically this was my day to visit the summer palace. I took the subway and then the bus to get there. The subway is kind of rough (except from the stations in the inner city around the touristy spots). In the summer palace I wandered around the gardens and buildings, but the most amazing thing was the stone boat, ordered by Empress Cixi, who used the nautical budget to finance the palace and this ship made of marble was her only nautical contribution. Of course it does not swim, but just is anchored in the lake at the side of the palace.

In the evening I met Yuke, his wife and their friend John again. We went for a fare well meal and then- we went for a head-massage. I can tell you, this was heaven!

Getting my suitcase ready, having breakfast and then I threw myself into the crowd for a last hour before going to the airport. This hour was rich and strange. I found the scorpions, which are grilled on sticks. Some were already grilled, other sticks were ready for it-with the living scorpions hanging on the sticks on their tails desperatley trying to escape... of course in vain.

My next adventure was the check-in. I had not weighed my suitcase, but it WAS heavy. On my ticket it said that I am allowed to bring 20 kilos. I had heard of Air Chinas generosity with overweight, but when the scale said 36,7 kilos -cold sweat appeared on my forehead. But the lady at the Check-in issued my boarding pass and let me go with it. Hurray. After ages of waiting the flight of 10 hours was nearly over too quickly, even though the movies were only 3 and 4th class. And then the big bird spat me out in Frankfurt, with a delay of more than an hour. Three more hours to my parents place and then:

Tadaima! -this meand home and is what the Japanese would say when coming back to their house.