Beijing is actually quite a small city, in spite of the 14 million inhabitants, and today I managed to cover 27km of it as I prepare for the Singapore marathon, the tunes of the Vaughan Williams concert from the night before ringing in my head. Signing up for a marathon takes no time at all, but training for the Singapore one on December 3rd is changing my life but also giving me a marvellous excuse to explore Beijing at a snails pace. During the week I run the 8-12km practice laps on the newly built but unopened road behind Jian Wai. On Wednesday a bald Chinaman crossed lanes to run alongside me – there is a comforting comraderie amongst long distance runners. These mid week runs are part of the 1018 km that I should have run over the course of the 18 week training under the guide by Hal Higden, an American marathon expert. The first thing I did when I opened the curtains at 06.30 this morning was to guage how much harder my lungs would have to work because of the pollution, with the grey concrete dust and car fumes hanging like a dry mist. I set off to head due west towards Tiananmen Square and the huge portrait of Mao hanging on the walls of the Forbidden City. The 5 ½ km run passed quickly, my focus sometimes lost by the look of total bewilderment that I got from the hordes of tourists and missing a step as I saw a blind man, hand outstretched, with a map for sale trying to catch tourists as a child might try to catch a snowflake. I turned due north along Taipin gqiao dajie and witnessed the devastation of the hutongs, the old communities which evolved rather than were planned. Opposite the new Westin Hotel two old men sat waiting without expectation for a bicycle to need repair and I popped into a plastic-plant infested restaurant in the hutong for a pee, the bemused young workers trying to make the place look like a country inn. Further north a prostitute sat readily in a red dress in a barber shop, the cunning disguise of venues for a quickie, watching a band of lads digging the road randomly, an old man opposite fixing his grey roofed hutong with incongruous red bricks taken from a building site nearby. Heading due east on Di anmen xidajie at some 15km my pace held as I fought past the tourists disgorging at hou hai lakes, tasting the cement and dirt as I passed under the third ring road towards Chaoyang park. The eastern part of Beijing is a mess – the roads are dug up for new sewers for the new buildings being built, a scene perhaps reminiscent of London after the blitz. Some 2hours 40 mins later I was back in SOHO, the 27 km enough to explore the central part of Beijing, and the Beijing dirt masking my teeth in readiness for breakfast. One of the places that I ran past was the Forbidden City Concert Hall where on Saturday night I heard one of the first choral works sung by the International Festival Chorus and Orchestra (IFC). A Chinese orchestra played some of Britain’s most famous pieces including R. Vaughan Williams ‘A Sea Symphony’, W. Walton ‘Orb & Sceptre Coronation March’ and E. Elgar’s ‘Pomp and Circumstance – while a predominantly British choir sang with a visting baritone, Andrew Rupp, and soprano, Gillian Webster. I spoke with Nicolas Smith, artistic director, and he told me that the goal of the IFC is to cultivate a Chinese audience that appreciates western classical music, and that he sees this is happening quite quickly. At the beginning of the show the rather plummy sounding announcer had to remind the audience to not get up, talk, eat, drink, or otherwise disrupt the performance, but this made little difference to both the western or Chinese audience who seemed to suffer attention deficit disorder. One of the choir members commented that the Chinese orchestra hadn’t really “got into the spirit” of ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ but we felt sure that it was not a silent protest at this patriotic tune being played in the gardens of the palace where the British had demanded of the emperor that China open it’s markets, and had eventually sacked part of the city when he failed to do so. Fortunately the transgressions of the past seem to have been forgotten, and British business is increasingly welcome in China. I attended a British Chamber event to launch the Convergent Media Forum at which the Rt Honorable Margaret Hodge, Minister of State for Industry, was present. The big news was of course the Government curtailing media rights, but she assured the representative from Reuters, tangentally of course, that conversations with the Ministry of Information had been ‘positive’. The UK is now the 4th largest investor in China, but I just can’t see where all this money is going to, and have resolved to start digging for it as EASTWEST needs more business. One chap that I met both at the IFC and the BCC event, Alan Babington Smith who has been here for five years, commented that China is full of potential, but it is never going to be easy. As I move into the 9th month of being here I am disappointed that I haven’t managed to move forward faster, but know that much like the marathon there is no substitute for putting in the time and the distance. This week I received my resident visa, a rather smart gold embossed brown passport, which means (hopefully) that I can stay in China for any length of time upto a year. This at least is progress because now every 30 days I won’t have to keep making a run for it. This week I will go to Shanghai which should be good fun, and then I plan to go to Mongolia for the golden week holiday (1-8 Oct.) While EASTWEST isn’t making me any money in China, I am having a smashing time exploring.