BEIJING off the bus

There's this wonderful book by Timothy Krouse, a must-read for journalists, The Boys on the Bus. It's about how we the media develop a herd mentality, a common, agreed narrative or understanding, even among rivals, of what the story is. That's the effect of being “on the bus”. Getting off might give us another perspective.

A chance encounter with Mark, my editor when I was one of the presenters of the BBC global morning news programme The World Today, had me thinking as well. He'd told me of two sides of the place he's seen-- the Nihau (hello) side, and the other one where they were, shall we say, heavily monitored going after stories outside the Olympic compound.

I'd initially turned down the invitation to dinner at a Belgian restaurant in Chaoyang because the work was piling up. But I needed to load a programme onto my laptop--- a 2 hour plus download--- so I called back, said “yes I can after all” and left the notebook with Matti, the brilliant Finnish Chinese-speaking computer expert in the tech service office at the press centre.

My Singaporean friend Geraldine had told me that when I got the taxi, call her, give the driver my mobile phone and she'd give him the directions in Chinese.

I thought this was a good chance to get off the air conditioned shuttle bus.

Chaoyang is lively and cosmpolitian. Dinner at a Belgian in Beijing was heresy I know but you can blame Gerri and Lesley whom I joined there. The waffles were as good as any I'd had in Brussels and I did come away with excellent suggestions for Chinese cuisine.

I got a grumpy driver on the way back. I hailed the cab, Geraldine spoke to him in Chinese and I was on my own. She told me she'd told him to take me near to the swim complex (the bubble wrap building I call it) which is itself near the media centre.

My taxi driver seemed affronted that a paying passenger would get into this car. He seemed to grow progressively more irritated by my presence. He motioned to me to get out of the car as soon as he caught sight of the bubble building, far from it in the middle of a highway. He berated me in Chinese. He rang up my total on the metre.

I refused to leave the car, pointing out that I wanted to go further on. Well, I say pointing out but in fact is we couldn't understand each other. This seemed to infuriate him more. He drove a little closer, spoke to a traffic policeman at the roadside, then racking his brain for an English word for his moron passenger almost shouted “here here”.

I held up my media pass and pointed to it to it to try to make him understand that with it we could drive right up to the press centre. He was having none of it.

I paid him 40 yuan (about $7) and got out but not before telling him he was rude. He did not understand me. And I suspect that if he did, he wouldn't give a shit. Water off a Peking duck's back.

In no time I had laughed it off. I was on the outside, with real people (radio talk for interviewees who are not reporters or correspondents) just as confused as they were about which gate to go through into the Olympic Park. Past families on a night out taking pictures. Beijingers love flashing V signs while being photographed.

I passed guys hawking tickets for the swimming and athletics. Others selling water or Coke. A homeless man rummaged through a dustbin for food. Those who live in Beijing say they'd been cleared off the streets for the Olympics. I was still a long way from base so I hopped on a Biejing transport bus crammed with people. The driver waves his white gloved hands impatiently at us and told us to move down inside. We squeezed tightly together.

This was a different bus from the one I'd got used to here. I was only scratching the surface of Beijing but it was great.