Barefoot on Sand: a walk about walking

I was in Shanghai recently and went for a walk. I realized that my gait could be improved if I let my arms swing more loosely and made more of a point to get posture and muscular control right. I have both taken and made tours on all sorts of subjects and about a crazy assortment of places but it was a revelation to make a walk where the subject of the walk was the physical act of walking itself. Arriving in Xiamen I had a hunch I should continue with the experiment and take advantage of the cities clean beaches. I resolved to walk barefoot on sand for an hour as an experiment. 

I began at this tall statue, the emblem for the Golden Rooster Film Festival, the Chinese equivalent of the Oscars. The festival is held in Xiamen annually and is an excuse for the film industry from Shanghai and Beijing to have a few days of gorging themselves on seafood in the sun. On the other side of the water, the Taiwanese version is called the Golden Horse and this got me thinking about Golden animals, prestige and films. It sparked the idea for a film festival of my own which might well just happen: The Golden Cockroach! If only for that, this walk was a success as it gave me a name and concept for a future event.

The walk began with the shoes coming off and the ever so slightly smelly feet coming into contact with the warm dry sand. Starting from a standing position, I spent time feeling the weight passing down through the feet and the spine reaching up, getting a sense of relaxed verticality. When walking, there is so much else going on that it becomes much more difficult to focus on these basics so it is good to start off with good posture. I found my feet became much more sensitive and alive when in contact with the sand released from the prison of shoe ware. This in turn gave me more feeling about where precisely my weight was distributed. 

I set off along the beach leaving a trail of footsteps behind me. I settled into a rhythm that let the arms swing fully and lungs breathe in the sea air. Focus was more up and outwards as the sand didn't present obstacles or contain sharp objects that might damage the feet. It was only after a while that I looked down and I realized I was not alone. There are worms living in the tidal area of sand near the shoreline. I'm not sure if it's the same ones, but I was once convinced to try eating worms dug up from the sand here. To be precise, the skin of these worms, set in jelly with a hot sauce smeared over it; it's a local delicacy. All I can say is I tried it once and won't be touching it ever again.

The walk continued and I was in luck, the tide was right out so I could pass around the rocks and continue a long way, walking solely on the sand. The angle of the sand sloping down to the water makes the weight falls more onto one foot than another. This gentle asymmetry made me more aware of what I was doing higher up in the body, I could feel it all the way up to the neck. 

After a while I became more sensitive to the differences between coarse sand and fine sand, dry sand and wet sand. Each behaved very differently underfoot. I never would have expected to have found so much variation. These subtle changes in turn improved my posture as I was getting so much more sensation in my feet than I normally do when wearing shoes. It would be possible to do this for five minutes and experience this as information but doing it for longer was so much more rewarding as it becomes ongoing and sustained feedback. If you want to correct bodily habits, retrain bodily use, this longer sustained work is almost certainly more effective. It requires time and repetition for it to get inside your body and become second nature.

While the focus of this walk was on the act of walking itself, I was not on a treadmill, I was still walking somewhere. The sound of waves is quite good for letting go of chatter but thoughts keep popping up regardless. One thing that kept coming to me, for instance, was that I always used to hate the two towers in the distance, and now there's a new one currently being put up. They are dumb landmarks, notable only for their height, which turn into screens for kitsch once night falls. This mild irritation with them as they symbolize the wrong turn the city of Xiamen has taken, is perhaps why I ended up lived in one of them for a while: so I didn't have to look at it.

It's ironic that just as I was about to finish, I walked past a beach stall selling plastic sandals. I had gone further than anticipated and the hour walk turned into 90 minutes. I could already feel the skin between my toes getting worn down by the abrasive sand so I understand why people spending longer on the sand might want footwear. What this barefoot walk did for me, however, was to make me much more mindful of walking surfaces and gait. The first thing I did when I got home was to go through my shoes and make a careful analysis of each pair, seeing how it impacted my walking. This walk about walking was, therefore, not so much a performance as a really useful exercise. I will surely try it again and most probably also use it when teaching.

The Three Shadows Curator Tour

Three Shadows Photographic Art Centre in Jimei, to give the place its full title, is one of the better art spaces in Xiamen. It is an offshoot of the main gallery in Beijing which is one of China's dedicated photography galleries. They were having an opening and I was invited, somehow, so along I went. Rather than a drinks reception and hobnobbing, as it the London way, an opening here means something far less fun: the curator's tour.

Thirty of so of us shuffled around the space, dutifully stopping in front of the artworks to drink from the fountain of culture. This tour, like practically every other, took place in the afternoon, not evening. These events are timed so that the artists, team and patrons go to dinner afterwards. If there is any fun to be had, it is later at the dinner: you have to earn it by attending the tour in the afternoon.

As we were going around the exhibition I saw one photograph that I recognized as there is a friend of mine Yingmei in it. Not that you'd recognize her in the pile of bodies. This connection brought to mind the fact that artists here are not typically paid for the inclusion of their work in an exhibition, the money goes towards running costs, the space's owners, the exhibition curators and the shipping of artworks. Artists might be invited to the opening, be offered a room for a night or two and can join the opening banquet. For artists selling artifacts this is just about understandable but for performance artists like Yingmei or I, it doesn't work at all. I was, in fact, once invited to give a performance for a British Council sponsored exhibition at Three Shadows but even for a live performance as part of an exhibition with that sort of institutional support, they refused to pay any fee. Needless to say, they didn't get their performance, but I'm sure the curator's tour was wonderful.  

The sound came out of a loudspeaker that was connected to the microphone via bluetooth. Being placed behind the audience the voice was dislocated. This gave the tour a weird touch that everyone tried to pretend was normal. In retrospect, this was the most interesting aspect of the tour and it is something that could be explored further. Just imagine the voice walking off on its own tour, the curator and their voice heading off on opposite tangents.

The basic frame of the curator's tour was educational: it was to help you understand the artworks. It's unidirectional which is to say, there were neither questions nor discussion. When I come to think of it, the tour might have been for the benefit of the curator more than for anyone else. It builds their public profile and shows everyone that they are doing something. 

The final thing to note is that the tour went on far too long. Three Shadows is rather typical in offering these 90 minute tours for openings, but you can see the same thing in art spaces all over China. This tour was an old one from back in 2016 but I went on a curator's tour just the other week in a different art space and it was exactly the same. Sadly the loudspeaker was not behind the audience this time round but it was, otherwise, the same package.

Engeki Quest Macau: a gamebook to explore the city

1. I’m sitting in a busy tea restaurant in Macau, figuring out the menu and talking with theatre producer Erik Kuong. It’s the first time we’ve met since Covid so there’s a lot of catching up to do. Some old men sitting opposite us flick through newspapers and literally shout to one another. He hands me the book Engeki Quest with a faint smile. Do I open the book? (go to paragraph 3) or do I keep talking theatre with Erik? (go to paragraph 2)

2. We talk about what we have been doing and about the changes that have taken place during Covid. We talk about live events and face to face encounters and how there is a generation who have got used to living through their phones. We both wonder how to persuade them to put the phone down for a moment, step outside and go and see live shows. This leads us rather neatly to the book Engeki Quest, which is a sort of outdoor show for an audience of one. (go to paragraph 3)

3. I open the cover and start reading: it is a book about Macau. More specifically, it is a book that will guide its reader around Macau and tell stories at the same time. Unlike conventional tour books which take you on a fixed route from one point to the next, Engeki Quest is written in a “choose your own adventure” style. This means each paragraph is numbered and instead of reading the book from start to finish, you are offered many choices in the text and have to flick forwards and backwards as you go. (go to paragraph 7) 

4. I’m brought to the steps at the foot of St Paul’s where tourists compete with one another to take pictures of themselves in front of the famous facade. I quickly leave them behind and find a quiet space to the side where I’m brought into a story of Japanese migrants coming to Macau to escape the persecution of Christians back in Japan. It’s interesting to be given an identity and asked to imagine the space from someone else’s point of view. To now read about Praça de Luís de Camões (go to paragraph 6) If you’ve already read it (go to paragraph 8)

6. I set off and this route offers so many choices that I quickly become conscious not only of the path I was following but also, as in Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken, of what could have been if you had taken another path. Gentle but persistent rain starts to fall and this gives the walk a greater sense of purpose still. Most sensible people are now under shelter; continuing to walk in this weather is a commitment to finding meaning. If you’d like to read about the route around the Ruins of St Paul’s (go to paragraph 4) if you’ve already read it (go to paragraph 8)

7. The book takes me on a short walk outside the restaurant that introduces the overall theme of amnesia. The instructions are clear enough that I know where I am going while the stories are suggestive enough that they colour the way I look at the street and the buildings surrounding me. There are four separate routes that can be followed; I completed two of them. To read about the route around the Ruins of St. Paul’s (go to paragraph 4) or Praça de Luís de Camões. (go to paragraph 6) 

8. This type of journey could be done using a phone rather than a book but there is something rather engaging about it being in book format. It encourages us to put the phone away and concentrate on the here and now of walking in the city and imagining a story. It is best to do this alone as that gives you space for reflection. You have to be an active participant, not just following the instructions but looking curiously around you, using your imagination and making your own connections. As such, you get as much out of Engeki Quest as you are willing to invest in it. Will it lure the lost generation back outside? Probably not. Will it add some enchantment to Macau for those in search of it? Quite definitely.

The Completely Lost Tour: a three day walk to the heart of nowhere

The Completely Lost Tour was an elaborate form of a Way-Losing Tour that took place a few years ago but which I'm only getting round to writing up now. Rather than just spending an afternoon drifting from place to place, getting progressively more and more lost, the concept here was to spend three full days traveling blind. 

It began more or less like any other way-losing tour, the only real difference being it started not in a city centre but at Bicester, a semi-rural train station in Oxfordshire. From there we heading off on foot... somewhere. We walked down country lanes and around housing estates, over fields and alongside a canal. At some point we walked into Bicester Village a shopping mall trying to pretend to be a village. It seemed popular with Chinese visitors who have an appetite for a perfect past that never actually existed.

The canal turned out to be interesting as we somehow got talking to a boat owner who invited us onboard. We slowly chugged along and heard some wild conspiracy theories, nodding eagerly all the way. You meet some curious people when you open yourself up for it on events like this.

The real challenge came when it started to get dark. The village we had stumbled into didn't have a B&B and we had a rule of not using our phone to check maps or call for services. We did find a pub that was open and started talking to people. Through one of them introducing us to another, we got ourselves invited to spend a night in someone's home. They sometimes rented rooms out to people and we ended up paying a reasonable price for a large comfortable room in a period building. 

It strikes me now that when traveling in this way it becomes more important to talk to people as that is how you find food and shelter. This in turn, makes the landscape a far more populated one, rich with stories, opinions and ideas. That is how travel was conducted more, in the past, whereas we now use technology and money to make our way. It was a worthwhile experiment but if I were to repeat it I would probably try and do it somewhere warmer and dryer, perhaps in a country I know less well. I also wonder what would have been the outcome if I were very different to the people we met. I put on my best accent and presented myself as the nice gentleman and it worked. In other circumstances I would have to play it differently and I suspect some people would have a harder time working this crowd, but that's just speculation. The real proof only comes from trying it for yourself. So maybe I should set out to get completely lost in Vietnam or Bulgaria and see what happens.

The Taiwan's Indigenous People Tour

The Taiwanese Indigenous People's Tour is a guided tour that takes place in a part of the National Taiwan Museum, a grand neo-classical structure built by the Japanese when they were the colonial power in 1908.

There were in fact three guides all offering the same tour to a large group of visiting foreigners. I tried to figure out which would be the most interesting guide by looking at them closely. I finally picked the lady on the left.

The tour was focussed on the pre-history and anthropology of Taiwan. There were the usual types of artifacts you would expect to find on such a tour augmented with photographs of excavations and maps. The exhibits themselves were relatively sleepy, the bread and butter stuff of a middle of the road museum.

Where the tour started to get interesting was in the fault lines: the guide was ethnically Han Chinese and spoke English and Mandarin. Language is a complicated, not to say divisive issue in this context as there are indigenous oral languages and then the mix of Mandarin and Taiwanese, also known as Minnanhua. The relative status of these languages, that is to say who knows them, when, how and why they are used, starts to open up a number of points within the exhibition and society more widely.

It became clear through questioning her that there has been a politicisation of Taiwanese pre-history from the 1990s onwards. This is an ongoing process of cultural de-sinification that has prompted a deeper examination of Taiwan's indigenous culture. What is meant by the term indigenous people is those who lived in Taiwan long before the arrival of the Han Chinese. This is significant as it becomes a way to mark a cultural difference between Taiwan and mainland China. This process has, to an extent, politically divided the country with a difference of emphasis between the two political parties, the more China friendly KMT and more pro-independence DPP. 

Having seen, through the tour, how indigenous culture has been accorded a freshly important status, the next day I noticed stores selling what looked like Taiwanese ethnic craft objects. These designs have been re-purposed and shaped for modern living and now adorn notebooks, handbags, sports shoes and so on. Indigenous design therefore seems to play a role in identity politics and fashion in contemporary Taiwan.

There was one quite remarkable map which showed the full geographic reach of the indigenous culture that the exhibition depicted. The map shows connection with the indigenous cultures across the whole of Austronesian even going so far in the other direction as Madagascar. There is one place, however, that was strenuously avoided on the map: mainland China. The omission is significant and so too the blurring of the map at the top. There most probably is sound evidence to support this redrawing of the map but, ironically, the manner in which it is done also struck me as something that I am familiar with: to the outsider it all looks like a very Chinese form of presentation.

Kitsch is like gold dust: The Golden Tour of Shenzhen

The Golden Tour has got interesting and found its feet at long last. The first performances have been given in Shenzhen and it is loud and lurid to say the least.

As so often happens in China, what happens around the show is just as incredible, maybe even more crazy, than the show itself. This one was a real battle to pull off. The festival as a whole had a lukewarm welcome from the authorities, shopkeepers and security guards, in spite of the fact it was publicly funded. The child-friendly events happening in designated squares were fine but the dazzling, enigmatic golden tour was barely tolerated.  

The audio side of the show broadened out into a celebration of kitsch. More specifically, songs which were already kitsch and were then given a DJ remix which made them only more kitsch still. What's more, there were examples from different countries, including China like the song below. While the music is terrible, it is not so much worse than what you might hear at many tourist attractions here. It was therefore safe to play, even though the intent was satirical. In the context of this gentrified neighborhood, however, the sound of vulgar Chinese music was particularly grating as it reminds people too much of the grannies who dance to it in public squares up and down the country.  

The text is where this one pushed the limits. Delivered with a broad smile, it consisted of introductions and commentary to various parts of this newly-built ancient town. The area is contradictory: it is presented as an historic walled town in the ultra modern city of Shenzhen. What's more, it was until recently a run down neighborhood for migrant workers where what little history that was left, was neglected and tumbledown. Since property developers moved in, it has been restored, augmented and turned into a model community. The neighborhood has a political significance too. It is claimed as the oldest settlement in the area and therefore the root of all culture not only in Shenzhen but the root of Hong Kong and Macau too. There are a lot of texts online that push this politicized archeological line. These were one part of the mix I auto-translated, turned into a speech file, then repeated the audio of from a set of headphones.  

So too were there out of date descriptions from official newspapers that flatly contradicted some of the contemporary narrative as well as plain marketing speak from the property developer which moved it into corporate branding, art speak and nationalism. Throw this all together and give it a kitsch veneer and you have The Golden Tour. I'm lucky I got away with it, to be honest! I delivered it in broken Chinese the first day and that was a harsh show but when done in English, with a child friendly smile, using official information only, it was just about OK.

I ended up being shadowed by security guards itching to stop it, having to do it with minimal amplification, off the main locations and constantly moving. Part of the problem with the neighborhood is that it has been accorded this political and commercial significance and that makes it far less amenable to public art events. The shop owners want the public that an art event brings in, but they don't want the actual art. The type of art that is suitable for this type of place becomes more and more narrow and official in style too. I saw the same thing happen in Shanghai's Xintiandi which has become a rather arid site of red tourism and shopping. Next, I will have to make The Golden Tour somewhere a bit easier to work in. It may be time to bring the formula to Europe, for example. After all, the soundtrack had plenty of Eurokitsch like this: