My association with the Kwan Yin Chan Lin Zen Centre in Singapore goes back to the summer 2006, when I first attended a Dharma talk. They belong to the Kwan Um Zen school founded by Zen Master Seung Sahn, who wrote some of the best books on Zen, and on Buddhism, that I’ve yet read (YMMV, of course). On that occasion, as I wrote, the Zen Master was accompanied by a Buddhist nun: a Polish woman with whom I had a brief but very interesting conversation after the talk.

I’m just made contact with her again via Facebook, and we’ve exchanged a few messages. She mentioned that the Kwan Um School have a meditation centre, Mu Sang Sa. It looks very peaceful. What’s interesting, for me, is that it happens to be in the South Korean city of Daejon. Daejon’s the only place I’ve been in Korea - I went there for my first job as a freelance internet consultant, and it was that trip which convinced me that I had to leave the UK and move to Asia, though it took a couple more trips and some exposure to Singapore to actually bring the move about. Guess I have some sort of Karmic connection with Daejon…

As it happens, I’m already contemplating a trip to Korea in September; depending on the prices, I’m thinking of attending the LIFT Asia Conference. If I were to go, I’d been thinking about combining it with a visit to the Golgulsa Temple to see some Sunmudo. Maybe a trip to a zen centre at Korea’s “Silicon Valley” might also be an option….

新年快乐, everybody!

The Straits Times today described the incoming year of the Rat as “a year of renewal, a year in which it is good to embark on change. Or  change of direction“.

Well, I hope so. Today I paid for my flight to Beijing. I’m on leave for most of the next two weeks, during which time I’ll be frantically preparing for the new job - and, in addition, trying to sort out what I’ll be doing when I come back to Singapore in the summer!

I’m really looking forward to spending time back in the ‘Jing; apart from the job, I hope to use it to effect a general repositioning career-wise… I hope the year of the (Stainless Steel?) Rat will be auspicious!

The Qianmen district of Beijing is one that is very dear to my heart - although sadly, I now have to write that it was very dear to my heart. It’s gone now, replaced with an identical copy of itself.

I’ve mentioned before why I liked it so much. I spent many summer nights there, getting lost in the narrow, wandering, alleyways, drinking beer and eating delicious food in tiny little restaurants where staff bantered with customers, and everything was great as long as you didn’t look in the kitchen.

On my first trip to Beijing in 2004, my Norwegian friend Stefan and I stood around watching the card games in the street, and stayed around until the only people left were the locals, who would be walking around in their pyjamas because of the heat.

In 2005, I hung out with Fei from Xi’an; we dived into the old courtyard buildings, looking at the different architectural styles, and chatting to the migrant workers who paid extortionate rates for clapboard rooms that had been thrown up in the courtyards. Everywhere we went, we encountered a warm welcome. With her, I had a really enjoyable evening in a tiny dumpling shop, where we were quizzed and teased by the rest of the diners.

In 2007, I went back to find the area reduced to rubble, surrounded by hoardings. The new “walls” were graced with huge pictures of the future Qianmen; it looked like Second Life.

I guess I’ll see the reality for myself next year. It sounds like it’s appalling. I’ve just found an article about it in the online journal China Heritage Quarterly. An area that once was part of the jianghu (in my interpretation of it - see my About page):

he previously privileged occupants of the Inner City during the Ming dynasty were forced to move elsewhere, often to new residences in the Outer City. As a result of this brief southern migration Qianmen flourished, as erstwhile residents of the Inner City relocated their roots and businesses to the south. In addition to its already existing reputation as a mercantile centre, the area also soon became a new entertainment district which residents and visitors, many of them scholars from other provinces who were in Beijing to sit the civil service examination, could dine out at the many restaurants that lined the streets, find lodgings, purchase luxurious goods, or attend a performance of the opera.[1]
Fig.1 The demolition of buildings in Qianmen district in January 2007. [Kelly Layton]

Equally important for social life in Qianmen, and for its status as Beijing’s entertainment district, was the commerce in brothels catering to the varied sexual appetites of their male clientele. Indeed, according to the local historian Zhang Jinqi (and many salacious accounts in ‘apocryphal histories’, yeshi), it was here that the Tongzhi Emperor (r.1862-74), during one of his late night incognito excursions to escape from the frustrations of court life and his libidinally frustrated eunuch retainers, contracted syphilis whilst fulfilling his own concupiscent urges, from which he would eventually die.

has been transformed into a sanitised, commercial zone of shopping malls disguised in “authentic” Qing-style buildings.

OHO’s redevelopment of the area of Qianmen promises to be a new, faux-Qing-style pedestrian shopping mall, a place where Beijing’s residents and tourists may engage in lifestyle practices that dabble with history whilst never really having to come to terms with it.

Of course, the life will all be gone, and the community dispersed. I guess I can only be glad that at least I saw it as it was.

I wrote not so long ago about “Jiulong”’s pictures of Beijing, and in particular about the picture of Qianmen. It stirred a lot of memories about an area I remember with a great deal of affection, and it seemed to strike a chord, as that post got quite a lot of hits for some reason. I was writing about the community of the area , and my concern about the redevelopment of the area. Sadly, it seems that my worst fears are true. An article in Beijing Newspeak reports the intimidation, cheating and violence that have been used to evict the residents, who are being resettled far from the area. Of course, I’ll go back to visit when I get to Beijing again, but it seems I’ll only find a tourist Potemkin village at best. How very sad.

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