Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-wq2xx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T08:19:18.873Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Six weeks in Beijing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 December 2020

Edited by
Kim van der Zouw  and
Erik-Jan Zürcher
Get access

Summary

Letter 2: Beijing, 3 October

Dear Puck,

3 October, and no hotpot, eels or grapes. I hope that the weather in Holland is as nice as it is here; after a few rainy days, we have wonderful autumn weather again. Roland gave me your letter on Sunday 27 September, he had received it on Saturday. This means that a letter (dated Sunday) takes a whole week to get here, if sent via the Consul-General in Hong Kong. I think that it won't take more than five days if sent directly. It's great to have your news! I have made a note of the reopening of the Ned. Hand. Mij. as the ‘General Bank of the Netherlands’ for later in Hong Kong. I am writing everything down in my diary, including the most trivial things (such as the names of dishes I’ve eaten).

We are slowly starting to adjust to life in Peking. Our days are extremely busy, not only due to the events that Luxingshe is organizing for us, but also because we are wandering around all kinds of neighbourhoods, where we are learning and noting a great deal (and the big bosses at Luxingshe, who are not at all happy about this, are unable to do anything about it).

In the diary, we find out how this went:

24 September

Our first walk through the city, the two of us: went to the Xidan market and surroundings, strolled around everywhere and looked at everything, went into shops, bought a cookie from an old lady in a small hutong, et cetera. Interesting things everywhere, too many to write down. Toddlers in open-crotch pants, traditional Chinese pharmacies complete with (very expensive) Ginseng, weighed out in traditional scales; older women with bound feet, and to my great amazement, also a bare-breasted woman (suckling an infant), babies in bamboo carriages, et cetera, et cetera. Food abundant and very cheap by our standards. But we wondered how much one earns, for example, if one is selling tea on a stall, or one of the (sometimes very old) trishaw cyclists.

Whatever the case, people usually look well fed; in the smaller hutongs there is a great deal of poverty, which is not surprising.

Type
Chapter
Information
Three Months in Mao's China
Between the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution
 , pp. 35 - 82
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2017

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×