London

As I write this it is September 29th, which means that tomorrow is the day when I will register at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) for a one-year MSc program.  

It's the start of term.  During the past month, I have done all the things that someone is supposed to do to prepare for the start of term.  I have searched for and found accommodation in London.  I have moved into my room, and decorated it.  

I have done food-shopping and stocked my cupboards in the house with useful foodstuffs, the kind that you use for cooking rather than idle snacking.  I have joined new Facebook groups and met new people from my university at social events organized by the university.  I have arranged a student loan.  I have had a haircut.  I have polished my shoes.  

The one thing I am waiting for is the beginning, when something new will start, and perhaps lead me to somewhere unexpected.  This is all that I am waiting for.

I am living in London for the first time.  I grew up always thinking of London as the big city, which is odd, as there were big cities that were much closer to my hometown, but for some reason they never counted.  Only London excited my imagination at that age, and I remember traveling up here, either with school trips or with my family, and feeling an exquisite combination of fear and pleasure.  The fear came from London's size - what if I got lost?  And the pleasure came from the foreknowledge that each trip would deepen my familiarity with the city.  I would uncover new, undreamt of things, become a little more worldly…perhaps contact with London would make me into a different person.  These were the thoughts that used to fill my head, and I used to take great pride in the pieces of London-lore that I had gathered during earlier trips, taking every opportunity to flourish them in the face of my (as I then saw them) more provincial classmates.

If anything, London provokes me more now than when I was little.  It's a city of extremes that do not resemble any of the Chinese cities I know.  LSHTM lies in Bloomsbury, an area which reinforces my sense of the UK as a country still steeped in, and in love with, its feudal past.  Apparently, large chunks of Bloomsbury still belong to the Duke of Bedford, and many of the road-names testify to this ownership - Bedford Square, Russell Square (the surname of the Duke of Bedford), Keppel Street (maiden-name of the mother of the 5th and 6th Duke), Tavistock Place (the Duke of Bedford also had the courtesy title of the Marquess of Tavistock), Tavistock Square.  There is something despotic about the image this conjures up of some aristocrat arbitrarily naming things after his kith and kin.  Of course, these roads would have been named many years ago, and these are hence historic, rather than modern privileges that are being represented, but it's nevertheless interesting to compare with hutong names in Beijing, which for the most part reflect their popular origins - "Sheep Market Hutong"; "Red Gate Hutong"; "Willow Tree Well Hutong"; "Money Market Hutong". "Colour Glaze Factory Hutong".  

Still in Bloomsbury, but a few steps down the social order, you see traces of an elite intelligentsia, whose members would have included the Bloomsbury Set.  These were the people who actually lived in the gorgeous townhouses, and often came from minor branches of the aristocracy themselves.  Many of them made unique contributions to science, or culture, or politics, and so they are remembered with statues, and small, blue, round plaques.  

And then, right at the bottom of the social pile, were the people who were in Bloomsbury on sufferance.  Tradesmen and poor people.  In some cases, institutions were set up to address a social problem among these groups, for example, Thomas Coram's hospital for foundlings, but looking around Bloomsbury, you see few places where poor people would have been welcome.

For me, the garden squares in central London symbolize this exclusion perfectly - these are little, landscaped gardens in the heart of the city, surrounded by railings.  Originally, only key-holders could get in, and to be a key-holder, you had to be a local resident, and therefore rich.  In spite of being "public" spaces, they were not open to the public.  Most have since had their railings removed, but some still remain as they were.

I don't know if Bloomsbury is still a quasi-feudal district, but it still retains its aura of glamour and money.  And the sense of Britain's aristocratic, hierarchical history is so overpowering that it is easy to imagine that nothing has changed in Britain's social order in the past 300 years.

Going north to where my house is in Manor House, things are very different.  Green Lanes, which is the main high street, is a continuum of Turkish grocer's, Turkish cafes, Greek restaurants, and small shops selling discounted goods.  The shops do not seem to operate on the same opening hours as much of the rest of the country.  You go for a haircut, and quite naturally fall into conversation in Spanish with people waiting in the queue, as if that is one of the official local languages.  Or perhaps there is no official language, since you are just as likely to hear Turkish or perhaps an Indian dialect.  You sit in a cafe, nibbling baklava, and a 10 year-old boy begins wailing at the door, clutching one hand in pain, while an old man standing next to him in a faded suit takes the boy's other hand in his hand, and pats it sympathetically.  The situation is mysteriously resolved by the appearance of another man from the kitchen, whom the boy seems to have an unholy fear of.  The scene plays out in a language you don't understand, according to rules that don't make sense, and you realize you may as well be in a foreign country.  Meanwhile, the owner smiles at you indulgently, as if to acknowledge your incomprehension, and to let you know that it's OK.

I wonder if this is a modern manifestation of the eighteenth century divide - the rich in their squares in Bloomsbury, and the poor living undocumented lives elsewhere, both sides practically unaware of the other.  Or is it that the people in both places are leading precisely the lives they want to lead?  

Capital of Scandinavia, September 2013

I had been upset that morning, but as I stepped into the Ostermalms Saluhall my mood immediately lifted.  Before my eyes was a high-ceilinged hall, filled with food-stalls, and bright, smartly-dressed people having lunch.

The food is one of the things I had been looking forward to about this weekend in Stockholm.  I love dishes like pickled herrings, and cured salmon with potatoes, both of which I think of as classically Swedish.  The trip didn't disappoint, yet what delighted me more were the unexpected quirks associated with eating.  A classic breakfast is knackebrod (crispbread) covered with butter and cheese, however one must use a special wooden knife to serve the butter - a metal one would not do.  Similarly, contrary to pretty much every other place I have visited, in Sweden one serves crisps after dinner, not before.

There are other unexpected ways in which Sweden asserts its character.  During a visit to the Stadshuset - one of the city's key landmarks and an undeniably beautiful building, not to mention the site where the Nobel Prize dinner is held every year - the guide informed us that anyone can get married there, including gay couples, and non-Swedes.  It is open to all, and the wedding ceremony is free.  He warned, however, that the waiting list is extremely long.

This reminded me of the system for renting houses in Stockholm, which is tightly regulated by the government.  From what I understand, to rent a property, you need to enter your name on a government-managed list.  The longer your name stays on the list (in other words, the longer you are willing to wait), the better the property you can obtain.

In both cases, the government is intervening to disrupt the market.  Instead of people getting desirable things (a cute wedding venue, a smart flat in central Stockholm) through money, they get them through patience.  The unstated sub-text is that patience is sometimes a more valuable attribute at the individual level than the ability to amass or hold onto wealth.  I like this view, since societies need both patience and wealth to function, and the former is a lot more evenly distributed and a lot easier to acquire.

I only played the sightseeing tourist in Stockholm for one day.  The city is a jumble of rock and water - 14 islands at the meeting point between Lake Malaren and the Baltic Sea.  It is practically impossible to escape the sight of water.  And the buildings in the heart of the city - Gamla Stan, Kungsholmen, Skeppsholmen looked, to me, remarkably homogeneous, as if they had all been built around the same time, with none of the higgledy-piggledy quality that I am used to from London.  For both these reasons, Stockholm has a beauty that I recognize as European, but is also quite different from anywhere else I have spent time in.  Perhaps this is the face of Scandinavia...

Thank you to Yvan and Andreas for spending the weekend with me, and for showing me so much of Stockholm.

Daoyunlou (道韵楼）

About two hours east of Chaozhou, there is a small village called Sanrao.  You can get there by local bus, but you have to change once on the way.  There are no tour buses.

I arrived there, and got a lift on a motorbike to the edge of the village.  When the guy dropped me off at my destination, he gestured at the building, shrugged and said, "You came to see this?  For us, it's just here.  We never come to visit this place."

Daoyunlou is a communal house of a type that was typically built by the Hakka, an ethnic minority in southern China.  It is not the biggest in the country - those are a few hours down the road, and UNESCO-listed - but it is still impressive, and it is apparently the largest such octagonal building in the country.  It was constructed over 400 years ago, and even in the 1960s as many as 600 people lived together in this space.  There are still around 100 people who live here and call it home.

When I went there it was early afternoon and dripping hot.  Daoyunlou was silent, but felt alive.  There were motorbikes parked in the central courtyard, and chickens pecking between the grass.  Occasionally a door opened and a man would emerge, get on his motorbike and zoom away.  When I climbed to the top storey, I could hear the hushed sound of babies crying, and scolding parents.  Then silence again.  I was the only visible person.

I stood at the top, hot and out of breath, and it seemed to me that this building was a UFO that had been dropped here, and that the local people had not noticed, that in fact no one had noticed, not tourists, not the government, not local historians.  In truth, Daoyunlou is not by any means undiscovered - at the tiny visitor centre in the middle, I had been shown a short, Chinese-language documentary about the building, and the only reason I knew about it in the first place was because of a few lines in the Lonely Planet - but it is perhaps the first time I have been somewhere with such apparent historical value, and felt like the only person who thought it was in any way special.

I started to wonder about what makes people start and stop valuing things.  For some undefined period in its 400 year history, Daoyunlou had meant a great deal to the people who lived there.  It had been a home, and a fortress, and a community.  They had built it from nothing, embellished it, and filled the space with their lives.  They had passed it on to their children, who in turn had passed it on to their children.  Now, everyone is leaving, and the building looks tumble-down and unloved.  How did this happen?

At this point I entered the realm of pure speculation, far removed from the realities of life in Daoyunlou, which I do not understand, never having spoken to the people who live there.  Nevertheless, I speculated.  What if the original owners had been removed, and the space handed over to outsiders?  What if the outsiders felt completely disconnected from the building's history, and therefore did not value it?  What if the outsiders had been treated as custodians rather than owners, and had therefore been denied the chance to invest in the building, both emotionally and financially?

This may not be the history of Daoyunlou, but it is certainly what happened elsewhere in China, and it could explain how something that had once been a source of pride could, in a short space of time, become a ruin.  When an object is stripped of its sentimental value by being confiscated from its owner, and when economic value is denied, what other value is there?  All that is left is an object's most basic utility - a house as somewhere you live and nothing more.

The value of any object is not fixed, rather it depends on the sense of ownership that someone has towards it.  Even the rarest and most unique objects lose their value in the hands of people who do not know how to treasure them.  I fear this is the legacy that China is still dealing with.

Chaozhou

My first impression when I arrived in Chaozhou at midnight was the motorcycles, which made me feel like I was in the middle of a beehive.  I had arrived without a hotel booking, and as it turned out, a local police regulation meant that only hotels with a 3* rating or higher could accept me, a foreigner.  I had already been turned away several times, and was feeling discouraged, so I decided to just sit by the main road in the old quarter (牌坊街).  Motorcycles whizzed by as I drank a glass of warm milk in the only slightly less warm night.

The motorcycles caught my attention because in most Chinese cities the car is king.  For some reason people in Chaozhou have stuck with motorcycles, and this not only makes the traffic more fluid, but also lends the city an unexpectedly youthful, carefree air. 

Chaozhou is a city of just under 3 million people, which is small by Chinese standards.  Yet its impact on Chinese culture - especially outside mainland China - is disproportionately large.  In Singapore, one in five ethnic Chinese come from around here, in Vietnam, the proportion is even higher.  In fact, people from Chaozhou have established communities pretty much everywhere - Thailand, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, USA…there are fair odds that the "Chinese" community in your hometown comes from here.  

Chaozhou's importance to the diaspora was one of the reasons I had sought it out.  For the people who left long ago and planted new communities elsewhere, Chaozhou was almost certainly the place they knew best in China, and perhaps the only place they knew. Much of what they took away with them in terms of language, culture, customs and traditions had its roots here.  What people outside China think of as Chinese, may in fact be Chaozhou-nese.  I wanted to see what such a place was like.

Chaozhou is an old city.  By the Han River, there is a temple to an official from the Tang dynasty, who was exiled here when Chaozhou was still an uncertain, uncivilized borderland.  That was over 1100 years ago.  There is a city wall that is largely intact, and a moat, and an old quarter, that still lives and breathes, dilapidated but intact.  The old quarter has not been substantially redeveloped, or even renovated, so it just quietly continues to decay, as it has done for decades.  This is almost miraculous in China, the old quarter having escaped the twin perils of demolition and Disneyfication. 

The old quarter sets the tone for the city, which has a sleepiness that I like, and that made the word "romantic" spontaneously pop into my head at several points during my stay.  The river stretches slow and wide, like a yawn, and when I went there in August, the summer afternoon heat was heavy and overpowering.  By the river, things happen at all times of day, but slowly.  In the morning, people exercise in the shade; at lunchtime, they lie down and doze; in the evening, couples and families stroll, or husbands go night-fishing.  

The city is livelier elsewhere, but drowsiness still clings to it and gives coherence to the buzzing motorbikes, and the families drawing out the ritual of dim sum, and the bare-chested men doing pull-ups in the park, and the lovely silence of Han Yu temple.  

This makes it unlike other Chinese cities.  I hope Chaozhou doesn't lose this quality.

Hong Kong

Visiting Hong Kong is like playing pass-the-parcel: each time the music stops, you unwrap another layer only to discover yet more layers waiting to be peeled away.  This is my fourth or fifth trip to the city, so the music has stopped for me a good many times, yet I am still there, a child surrounded by layers of wrapping paper, but denied the final prize.

The layering is partly geographical.  The city follows the contours of the land, which consists of steep hills that plunge into deep bays.  The buildings on Hong Kong Island start at the water's edge, but the flat sweep of the harbor quickly yields to the Peak, and the buildings follow this ascent.  Standing at the bottom you have a double sense of being towered over - tall buildings that start meters above your head, so that you have to crane your neck just to see their base.

The hilliness combined with the large population makes every inch of space precious, and this pressure on land leads to some ingenious local solutions.  Hong Kong is the only place I know that has a double-decker tramline.  The trams are as tall as buses, but much narrower, which means they can nimbly weave in and out of traffic, without using up too much space of their own.  Then there are the walkways that loop and arch over main roads, forming aerial pathways between buildings that mean your feet never have to touch the ground.  And then, of course, there are the fabled escalators too, the longest in the world…

This physical layering is not what most interests me though.  There is another kind of layering, which is harder to perceive, and harder to describe.  The way you can suddenly turn a corner in a large shopping mall, and come across a grimy corridor with shops spilling over with Filipino goods, and as you walk down, you realize that all the people there are Filipino too, but before you have time to take this in the corridor is over, and you are back in the air-conditioned space of the mall again.  Or walking along Nathan Road, and passing the Indians who want to sell you watches, or cut you a pair of trousers, and wondering where it is they live, as you so rarely see Indians in other parts of the city.   

Most insistently of all, there are the visions that strike me as "Chinese", but of a faded, ramshackle China that is at odds with "modern" Hong Kong, or "modern" China for that matter.  The small, pokey stalls in Sheung Wan that consist of little more than a counter and a few shelves - no door even -  and the shelves crammed with bits of porcelain, and to complete the picture, a litter of kittens curled up in a small nook on the floor; the small storehouses packed with obscure, dried seafood, and men lolling around playing mah-jiang; the stretch of open-air food stalls in Stanley Road that are still open in the middle of the night for noodles and iced bean desserts.  

There is so much here that doesn't fit together, that exists separately and self-contained, and yet endures and remains on good terms with its neighbors.  

And one other surprise…another layer that I unwrapped during this trip…despite its hectic reputation, Hong Kong is full of places to relax, and what's more, no one knows how to relax better than Hong Kong people.  Whether it's the weekend family trip to have dim sum in a noisy neighborhood restaurant, or the outlying islands with their butterflies and their beaches, there are people everywhere, all the time, giving every indication of not thinking about work or money.  

Many thanks to Reejay for letting me stay with him over the past few days, for being such a kind host, as well as a good cook, and above all, for sharing his time.

congratulations

A friend, Gabriel, sent me this essay some time ago, and I have been meaning to share it ever since.  I want to share it because I agree with it, passionately, but also because it perfectly captures Gabriel's intelligence and anger, both of which I miss very much since he is no longer in Beijing.  So, with his permission, I am putting it here.  

Also, by happy coincidence, this happens to be the day that France celebrated its first gay marriage, following months of violent protests that seemed to polarize the whole of society.  Congratulations to the happy couple:

Just as Eskimos have a ton of words for snow, Mexicans have them for “homosexual.’ Growing up there, no day passed without a new addition to the long list that included joto, maricón, machorra and volteado. There was no need to get used to it. It was, and sadly still is, everyday life for many. A cultural fixture, some would say. It comes with the package, with the passport – a frequent reminder that something that is part of one’s deep nature is wrong and, in most cases, sinful. Hell-worthy.  Tolerable at best.

Now, a few years later when -as Taylor Swift predicted- I am living in a big old city, in the core of the West,a haven for democrats and any left-wing of the world. One would think the mindset has evolved among people here. Isn’t it the newest trend to legalize same-sex marriage and slowly make it part of the Western platform? – Didn’t Hillary Clinton say “gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights”? – Well, efforts have certainly not been enough.

I have come to realize homophobia has been rationalized and renamed, while keeping its stance and pervasiveness. You see, at 27 I considered myself too old to go around convincing people the LGBTQI community was not a plague. I had conceded to remain in my corner and make as many efforts as my daily life would allow, but not much more other than that.

And still, like a bad guest at a house party, an acquittal told me – at my house nonetheless- homosexuals were not fit to be parents. “Marriage? – Yeah, another word would do the trick better, though. Children? Not my cup of tea.” I attempted to drop the topic in the name of civility to other guests.

However, after his insistence on talking about the topic, I ended up pulling an Ayn Rand on how I lived in a free country which, while allowed him to say whatever he desired, did not oblige me to listen and even less to engage in the conversation. I kept wondering, and still do, what the point of the whole thing was. LGBTQI parents have data and science in their favor. What’s more, we have millions of starving orphans that turn the situation into a priority and not a mere hypothesis. It is sad that thousands of children remain in foster homes as political hostages.

I was sort of forced to talk to this guy who calls himself my friend – although there is a discrepancy between us on such allegation. For him, it is alright if we hang out, drink, talk about sex and love (within what he considers reasonable limits), but at the end of the day, I am not and will never be good enough to raise a child for him. Suddenly, it was average-Mexican-city all over again. No point in making witty comments against such ban. At the end of the day, I’d still be a maricón who attempted to challenge nature to get his hands on innocent prey.

The next day, because life enjoys such irony, a French friend told me how it made sense that a million people protested in France against same-sex marriage. “They are not homophobic; they are just fighting for traditional values. Even gays in France don’t support the bill!,” he said. All I could wonder was who these so-called defenders were and whether they actually uphold such values they so deeply seemed to care about. “It would all be too complicated; thus, it might make sense to avoid the mess,” he said. He continued talking about the legal hassle it would be… Filiation, divorce, property and all sorts of law. All those big words that attempt to enclose our mundane daily life.

We tend to forget how much the world has changed in just the last 100 years. From women barred from voting to segregation and Alan Turing going through a chemical castration, among many other examples that unfairly remain unmentioned; the world –especially the Free World – has become a tiny bit freer inch by inch.

There is and has never been status quo. Was it necessary to change legislation to allow people from different races to marry in a bunch of U.S. states? Hell, yeah. Didn’t people have to change their mindset to stop saying “I believe you are the same than me, but please use another bathroom/room/school”? Yet, a week does not go by without listening to why I am not fit to be a parent, why it would be too complicated to allow me to marry the person I love, and even to hear arguments on why LGBTQI people should be considered disabled.

When I brought the topic on how I had been called unfit to be a parent, an American friend said my guest had been rude. Rude. That was the sole word he used. For him, the mistake was not in the content, just the setting. Dignity is still on the table for debate. Equality is still something we can opt in or out. Would there have been outrage had the topic been race, gender or national origin?

I do not pretend or seek to discover the wheel that will lead towards equality. It is a mere thought on how the attempt to rationalize such arguments validates the underlying belief that they and we are simply not the same; that there is, indeed, such thing as them and us. “Separate but Equal 2.0.”

Perhaps it is time to get out of my corner. As a really good Ally just said “I call for us to stand on the side of justice and to don't 'agree to disagree.' Let's stop being cordial and begin to strive for equality and justice.” The horrors of what intolerant people can do have been exemplified on several occasions. We shall not be victims of our destiny. Not even them can stop us now.

Performance

One of the strange caprices of working in China is that you occasionally have to take part in variety shows.  Usually, they are held to mark festivals, for example, the first one I ever took part in was in Xinjiang, and as I was working for a school, there was a special celebration to mark Teachers' Day.  We had only just arrived in China at that point, and were frankly bamboozled that we were expected to prepare some kind of sketch, or song, or performance to share with our new colleagues.  In the end, we hashed out a silent spoof of Titanic, with a lone trumpeter playing "My Heart Will Go On" in the background.  The Chinese crowd was restless, perplexed, polite.  We shuffled off stage, and took comfort in the fact that we could claim our performance was very Western, and therefore avant-garde.  I guiltily reflected that perhaps the reaction might have been warmer if I hadn't left the boat in the taxi.

Since Chinese New Year is the daddy of Chinese festivals, it's also the time when the most spectacular variety shows take place.  There are certain iron-clad rules to these proceedings: firstly, there must always be two hosts, one male and one female.  If the organization has a significant number of foreigners, it's customary for there to be a Chinese/Western split too.  Secondly, there must always be ethnic-minority folk dancing in flamboyant costumes.  Thirdly, it's bad manners not to take part.

The last rule causes the most headaches.  Our Chinese office manager received an invitation for us to take part in the China Center for Disease Control (China CDC) Lantern Festival sometime in early February.  Immediately, she started planning - you could see that for her this was a question of pride - if we were going to eat their food, then we were damn well going to earn it.  Yet, at the same time, she had to face the fact that our office lacks star material.  We simply don't have anyone with a secret, glittering talent for folk-dancing/erhu-playing/acrobatics.  What to do?

Usually, there are two responses.  The first one, which I like to call the "WHO response" after its most ardent practitioner, is to get all the staff up on stage together to sing a song while bobbing around in a somewhat rhythmic manner.  In 2012, they used this technique to perform "Puff the Magic Dragon", and in 2013, they did it again with "We are the World" .  The second one is "performance by nomination", whereby the office manager arbitrarily picks on someone, and tells them that they have to take a hit for the reputation of the office.  Given that most of our office was away at the time, our office manager opted for the second option.

So, here is what happened when my office manager nominated me to represent the office at China CDC Lantern Festival in February this year.  I have a small confession to make though - even though the office manager put pressure on me to do this, I had actually been preparing for this moment for 8 years.  In fact, very early during my time in China I learnt the social benefits of singing.  Way back in Xinjiang, I was puzzled to find that my students enjoyed listening to their foreign teachers' singing, and that, incredibly, this could be used as an incentive for good behavior.  Later came the discovery of karaoke, and the kudos that comes from knowing Chinese songs.  And then, for one whole year in the UK, I used pop-songs to teach myself new Chinese characters.  So in a way this performance was the opportunity my efforts had been looking for.  

And the reaction?  It ranged from the gushing ("Did you train professionally?") to the crushing ("you chose that song really well, because the singer is from Taiwan, and no one can understand what he is saying.  And you also, we cannot understand what you are saying").  At least my office manager was appeased.  And, at the end of the evening, the 55 year-old office manager and I did something that I thought only British teenagers did - we went round the nearby tables, and collected up all the unfinished bottles of wine, and all the unopened bottles of beer, and pocketed them.  

Two exhibitions

Last week I visited Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, which is the main modern art gallery there.  There was one exhibition of artists active in Latin America that I particularly liked - La Invencion Concreta (http://lainvencionconcreta.org)

Then, on Sunday, a friend invited me to another exhibition - "De Picasso a Barcelo".  The exhibition tried to trace the relationship between painting and sculpture among modern Spanish artists.  Each sculpture was presented with a painting by the same artist, with the idea that the one work could be used to inform an understanding of the other. (http://www.namoc.org/en/Exhibitions/201303/t20130328_178653.html)

Although this exhibition was in Beijing, and featured Spanish artists, it nevertheless reminded me of the earlier one.  Both were beautiful.

(Above - painting and sculpture by Andreu Alfaro)

(Above - painting and sculpture by Eduardo Chillida)

(Above - painting and sculpture by Picasso)

Four days in Spain

Cliches

What are the cliches about Spanish people? From a British perspective, I think they go something like this: Spanish people are romantic…hot-headed…spontaneous. I want to refute the cliches, but then the very first thing I see on exiting arrivals is a vending machine full of flowers, presumably for romantically-minded men who want to surprise their lover with a gift, but didn't think ahead. I later saw the same kind of vending machine at train stations across Madrid. Damn those cliches.

To my surprise, Madrilenos made the effort to talk to me in Spanish, and showed patience and humor when dealing with the language barrier. This attitude to their own language - recognition that not everyone speaks it, combined with the willingness to share it with others - contrasts nicely with experiences I have had elsewhere. For example, China, where I still come across strangers who insist on speaking to me in English, even though I speak Chinese well; and France (or rather, Paris), where people seemed to expect me not only to speak French, but to be able to do so at native standard.

I stayed close to Lavapies, which is the old Jewish quarter. I doubt there are many Jews there now, but it's still an area for immigrants: Chinese, Arabs, Indians and Africans if the shops are anything to go by. 

As with east London, it's the areas with the most ethnic mixing that have the best street art. It must be something about the experience of being an outsider that makes people want to personalize their local environment.

Toledo

[Stendhal syndrome, Stendhal's syndrome, hyperkulturemia, or Florence syndrome: apsychosomatic disorder that causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, fainting, confusion and even hallucinations when an individual is exposed to art, usually when the art is particularly beautiful or a large amount of art is in a single place. The term can also be used to describe a similar reaction to a surfeit of choice in other circumstances, e.g. when confronted with immense beauty in the natural world.]

Toledo is about 30 minutes from Madrid by the fast train. It used to be the capital of Spain, and it's still the religious heart - Toledo cathedral is the seat of the Primate of all Spain. It's easy to see why. Toledo is a quiet city, yet as you cross the cathedral threshold, the stillness is shattering. I stood, gaped, wondered…cool, pale and wordless in the cool, pale, wordless space.

I don't usually get excited about visiting churches (even if there is something chastening about the fact that for several hundred years the most impressive buildings in the West were monuments to faith), but there is something different about Toledo's cathedral. It could be the size - it's one of the tallest cathedrals I've been in; or it could be the color of the stone; or perhaps it is something else entirely, but it is the only church I can remember that has made me feel religious awe.

And then there is Toledo itself. It was full of textures that I don't see in China, and that I realized I hazily miss - cobble-stones, lattice, brickwork, beams - all of them under an El Greco sky. It made me wonder if Europe could somehow be conjured out of the right configuration of these materials, if "home" isn't, after all, just a question of carefully arranged sensory clues.

But, if you dig deeper, there are sides to Toledo that speak of a different past: arabesques, and the local Mudejar style of decoration are reminders that Spain only became fully Christian in 1492. In fact, the cathedral itself was built on the site of a former mosque, and until the middle ages, there were still communities of Arabs and Jews living in the city. And then, elsewhere, there are the dungeons that the Inquisition used - now turned into a museum housing a temporary exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci inventions, painstakingly re-created to scale.

Marathon

The Madrid marathon took place on Sunday 28 April. For one day, main roads were closed, as a 10,000 strong crowd of pedestrians took over the city. On the metro in the morning, three quarters of the carriages were filled with runners. Madrilenos lined the streets to hand out encouragement and carved-up slices of oranges.

I didn't see any fancy dress, which is one of the hallmarks of the London marathon (and perhaps British culture more generally - is there another country that enjoys dressing up so much?), but all ages and colors were on display. The most impressive were the men who ran 26+ miles while pushing children in strollers, but I was also stunned by the number of white-haired old men who took part, and clocked times of less than 3.5 hours.

Finally, thank you to Anton for letting me stay in his flat in central Madrid for several days, and to Alberto for urging me to visit Toledo.