Kilroy was there: china

Highlight of the month was flying almost 1000 miles west from Shanghai, over lush tropical vegetation and terraced rich paddies. Shrouded in yellow mist, and stepping off the plane into thickly hot air, I arrived in Chongqing city. It's far enough up the Yangzi river to feel like a Chinese version of Heart of Darkness, but already sports freeways and flyovers performing physical contortions crazier than in Monaco. A monorail system whisks some of the 5-million-strong population from Chongqing's 'Technology & Economic Development Zone' to department stores and new skyscrapers in the centre. The city really felt like the physical manifestation of China's 9% annual GDP growth.

I've been here to write a book chapter on Chinese urbanisation and economics for http://www.dynamiccity.org/ based in Beijing. My boss Neville won't be parted from his dog Lulu, and has an obsession with Chinese women which may partly explain his plans to stay here until 2008. Most jokes in the office revolve around Belgians or smoking crack, said in a mild Dutch accent or occasionally a South African one when Nico joins in before swearing at his computer and putting his headphones back on. Learning a few words of Mandarin has been a total minefield: 'ma' means 'mother', but get the tone wrong and it's 'horse'. Even after two weeks in Beijing I still couldn't say the name of my road (GuLouDongDaJie) with the right tonal inflections to avoid my taxi driver first laughing in my face then getting out of the car to decipher my map in the car headlights.

I've been living in one of Beijing's remaining hutongs: old dusty lanes not yet demolished to make way for yet more towerblocks and freeways. Many Chinese themselves apparently like the towerblocks - considering them 'modern', and with the utility of private bathrooms - and there's maybe an argument they're necessary in a country aiming to urbanise 80% of its population but needing to do so in a way which doesn't deplete more of its scarce arable land. Or...

[before]

[during]

[after]

Anecdote-wise the most bizarre one is probably from the first weekend here when I went snowboarding with Phil (who drove to Mongolia in a Ford Fiesta) a couple of hours north of Beijing. Across parched fields and in sweltering sunshine we reached Nanshan ('south mountain') ski resort, which was actually a smallish hill with some grey snow slowly turning to water. The security guards at the deserted gate asked what we'd come for, but the staff cranked up the chairlift for us, and five workers carried on obediently shovelling one small snowdrift into another one. We had the whole slope to ourselves, with some of the workers stopping work as we attempted a few 180s and crashed into the grass verge (grainy video here and here). On the way back into Beijing our bus got stuck in a traffic jam between the fifth and fourth ring-roads, and I had a quick snooze remembering the seaweed kebab I'd had for lunch.