Observations on China

Ten years ago (2013) the Preen Team paid a visit to China. I made notes.

China

(By an expert who has just returned from a two-week holiday)

The food is disgusting – off the scale revolting. Made me want to stop eating. Worst since Bosnia.
Not everyone hawks and spits but when they do it is with a vigour and volume that is both impressive and nauseating.
Not everyone is boot faced, many are friendly and smiley.
No one speaks English. (Not too much of an exaggeration)
Our guide in Inner Mongolia learnt English by listening to the BBC World Service.
Chairman Mao looks sallow and diminished tucked up in his mausoleum on Tiananmen Square.
I looked out my hotel window in a small town and at a glance saw 17 cranes making buildings. They don’t build one tower block they build ten in a group and set up a brick factory at the heart of each to aid production.
The pace of change is eye-watering and given the resulting pollution that is both metaphorically and literally true.
The Great Wall and the Terracotta Warriors are two of the greatest sights to be seen on the planet – right up there with Angkor Wat, Petra, Iguazu Falls, 59th St Bridge into Manhattan, Carnival in Rio – take your pick.
And the tobogganing off the Great Wall was spectacular – ask Scarlett. (We liked it so much we climbed back up and did it again)
The Chinese don’t understand what Westerners want and why we behave in certain ways – they don’t care. They don’t need us.
No one except the Chinese can stop the Chinese from becoming the most dominant nation on earth.

Welcome to hell

I dug out an old hard drive and found these notes about a trip I made to Sarajevo in the summer of 1993. At the time I was working for ABC News, we used to travel there quite often. This is what it was like. I’ve corrected a couple of typos, but it’s essentially published as I found it.

SARAJEVO

Summer 1993

Driving down snipers’ alley the graffiti on a wall reads ‘Welcome to Hell’. Well, if this isn’t hell you can certainly see it from here.

On the way from Sarajevo airport to the city centre the first check point you encounter is manned by a bunch of surly Serbs, who search your car and keep you hanging around as they indulge in a spot of journalist intimidation.

The debris of numerous flattened buildings testifies to some heavy fighting nearby. It’s not a place to loiter and certainly not a good place to get a flat tyre, but what the hell, we did it anyway. A flak jacket does not make trying to jack up several tons of armoured Land Rover any easier. Our Serb inquisitors were not inclined to help and were about as animated as a flak jacket.

The next check point, just a few hundred yards away is Bosnian and altogether more welcoming. They may be losing the real war, but they are certainly on the winning side in the media war, so a few more journalists are always greeted with a smile. This open arms welcome does have some embarrassing consequences. On the rare occasions that water and electricity are available, one of the first buildings to receive them is the Holiday Inn, where the world’s media are entrenched.

As you reach the city centre, the images of the shattered buildings are familiar because of the extensive TV coverage, but it is still a shock to see them for yourself. The destroyed Olympic Stadium, home of Torvill and Dean’s 1984 triumph, and the gutted tower blocks. There is hardly an unbroken pane of glass to be found. When peace comes a new expression for wealth will be coined; as rich as a Sarajevan glazier. Every park in the city is now a cemetery. And every cemetery is full to overflowing.

It’s wise to drive quite quickly into the basement car park of the Holiday Inn as there is a sniper who likes to target the hotel.

The scene in the half-light of the car park is like something out of a Mad Max movie. Every inch of the garage is crammed with white armoured vehicles, most of which look rather beaten up, that is except the BBC car that looks very sharp with a bright yellow logo. It made me feel proud to be a licence payer. No vehicle seems to be the same, though most look-like hybrids of the Land Rover.

Ours was pretty dreadful. After about 50mph it would start to shake violently, which added to the discomfort of sitting in the back. The seating consisted of foam cushions, which merely seemed to help propel your head towards the bolts that hold the armour together. This, combined with the absence of air conditioning, made for an unpleasant ride. But why am I complaining, at least we had some protection.

Our other form of protection was the ubiquitous flak jacket. It is the foreign journalist’s constant travelling companion these days, as the press becomes more and more of a target. This must be a fact that fills certain politicians and other disreputables with a perverse sense of joy. Like the armoured vehicles, no two flak jackets look the same. Ours are made of blue Kevlar, with a ceramic plate inserted in the front and back. They are very heavy and make you sweat, not to mention curse, as you trudge the 172 stairs up to your hotel room. That is if you were unlucky enough to get a room on the eighth floor.

Conditions in the hotel could best be described as primitive, but at least we had electricity and water for a few hours a day. The trick was to leave your bath tap on and the plug in, and if you were lucky, you would be rewarded with a bath full of cold water to jump into in the morning.

At night the hotel provided a meal for all the journalists, and while it was vile, that they were able to provide it at all was little short of miraculous. Occasionally events interceded to take your mind off the quality of the food. One evening the assembled war hacks were putting on the nose bag when there was a loud bang as an uninvited bullet hit a window. A wonderful scene ensued as all the journos dived to the floor and hid under the tables. A few moments later everyone got up looking a little sheepish, and ever so slightly embarrassed. The other wonderful thing about the hotel restaurant is that although this is a city at war and under siege, the waiters still wear bow ties.

In our bureau there was a guitar at hand and some fool delighted in singing all the San Francisco songs substituting the word Sarajevo. So, we had:

‘If you’re going to Sarajevo,

Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.

If you’re going to Sarajevo

You’re gonna meet some gentle people there.’

And of course, we had the altogether more tasteless:

‘I left my heart in Sarajevo’.

Working with Americans as I often do usually yields a good crop of the latest jargon. This trip was no exception, and I was rewarded with some idiot being labelled a ‘brain donor’ by our fearless producer. She also described a particularly macho cameraman as suffering from ‘testosterone poisoning’.

However, a little light relief does little to compensate for the sense of unease about certain aspects of this job.

Berin and Delila are two kids who made big headlines in January when their parents were killed by a mortar as they all queued for water. We went to see if anything had been done for them as a result of their media exposure. Their uncle, who looks after them, was rightly indignant that although most of the major TV organisations had been through his living room, nothing had been done for the kids. We filmed Berin and Delila being put to bed and were told that this was the sixth time that this scene had been shot in recent months. Sometimes I feel a little uncomfortable with my job.

A feeling that was reinforced when we heard of a famous CNN correspondent accepting a lift from the UN only to leave his cameraman in the middle of Bosnia alone with his equipment and no transport, just so the reporter could claim all the glory by getting himself on television. The cameraman had to walk 40 miles unaided through central Bosnia carrying his camera.

As the Americans would say, ‘This is serious like a heart attack.’ It’s times like this that I wished I believed in Karma and the correspondent would get his just desserts. It’s just occurred to me that this guy was recently featured in Hello! magazine, so if Karma doesn’t get him maybe the curse of Hello! will.

Although the city is under siege, it is extraordinary the lengths that people still go to, to lead a normal life. Women are mostly well dressed and wear make-up, couples walk about hand in hand, and amazingly people swim and sun-bathe by the river, just out of the gaze of the surrounding Serbs. Given the unreality of their situation, a little normality however it is grasped, must be important to the poor bastards who can’t leave this beleaguered town.

The only way in or out of Sarajevo is on UN planes, christened Maybe Airlines by the journalists. You get yourself on the manifest and maybe you leave and maybe you don’t. It always seems to me when I leave vile places like Sarajevo that there ought to be a time of decompression when you come out. So that rather than being bombarded with all the necessities of life that you are forced to do without like water and electricity, you are allowed only a degree of water, a few hours of electricity, just to acclimatise yourself. Of course, this doesn’t happen, and I wouldn’t have given up that shower in a Zagreb hotel for anything in the world.

My band has a gig at Vauxhall Variety

Shameless plug

My band is playing at Vauxhall Variety on Saturday 21^st August. The event is at Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, just behind Vauxhall Cross. We amble to the stage at around 5.30pm. We’ll be playing some rock & roll and blues for your delectation and delight.

I’m joined by guitar wrangler Les Davidson (Joan Armatrading, Shakin’ Stevens, Sniff and the Tears) and on tenor sax by Mr Tim Sanders (Eric Clapton, Stones). On drums is the mighty Chris Sharley (Krissy Matthews Band, Sassafras).

This will be a really fun event with all kinds of acts, sort of Vauxhall’s Got Talent.

Stop by if you can and let’s hope the sun is shining.

Art in the Arches

Covid has given retail a right royal kicking. With people stuck at home, many have swapped their shopping habits from the high street to the internet. Where Amazon and the rest have benefited, shops from Debenhams to our local gift shop Max & Melia are shuttering. Take a walk through the City of London and you’ll see a retail graveyard. Even Piccadilly, in the heart of the West End, has space to rent.

Unfortunately, the same is true in our neighbourhood. Vauxhall styles itself as The Vibrant Place though some of its vibrancy has washed away as shops and restaurants close. The same is true of empty railway arches at Vauxhall Cross. To be fair two places I always liked, Counter Vauxhall Bar and Brasserie and the motorbike shop Metropolis, closed before the pandemic took hold.

*Picture by Roxanne Dewar (Bucket and I thought this was the best)*

Vauxhall One, the local business improvement district, does huge amounts to keep Vauxhall clean and green and they commissioned a series of murals to paper over the empty spaces.

*Not art, just me and Bucket having a snoop*

The artists have done a great job, but in many ways I’m ambivalent about the whole project. The pictures brighten up the place but I’d far rather there were thriving businesses in their place.

For art we can go to the Damien Hirst Gallery on Newport Street or Tate Britain just over the river.

But don’t let me put you off, take a stroll to Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, and look at what the artists have achieved. Some of the paintings are exquisite.