Simon Lewis: Comrade Hack

The photographer wanted to take pictures of Beijing duck so I took him to this new ‘Imperial’ restaurant I’d read about.

It was one of the most over the top places I have ever seen. As we walked in, robed greeters shouted, ‘the honoured guests have arrived!’ and we were shown into a dining room made out to look like a hall in the Forbidden City. Except there were goldfish beneath the glass floor and a waterfall ran down one wall. The chairs were bright yellow thrones and as well as cutlery there was a flywhisk and something like a sceptre at the table settings.

But never mind the décor, it was the staff who were really striking; all were tricked out in full historical gear complete with elaborate headgear, long fake nails and the like.

We went for the cheapest set meal, about fifteen quid each, which turned out to be pretty good value considering. With some ceremony we were presented with a whole plucked duck, including its head of course, and given a brush and a pot of what I think was its blood and asked to write something on it. As we were going to take a picture of the thing we asked the guy just to write ‘duck’ on it in Chinese. They took it away to be cooked and then brought out an endless succession of courses, starting with fried duck’s webs.

Our waitress said ‘the Emperor of the Tang Dynasty is greeting you!’ and three heavily costumed people came up and bowed; a Tang Dynasty Emperor, the Empress, and a foxy concubine. The man’s hat looked like the top of a Doric column and the queen’s headpiece like a gold pagoda. I guess we should have taken a photo or said hello back but I think we were both a bit shell shocked and unsure how to play along.

Never mind, they just smiled dreamily and continued in stately procession, greeting all the diners. When they left, I though that was the end of the shenanigans, but no, later on we introduced to some Song Dynasty royals, and after that, Yuan, Ming and Qing.

Of course you see pictures of Imperial finery but the full magnificent haute couture silliness of the costumes doesn’t come across until you see someone dressed up in them and trying to walk. It’s as if every dynasty tried to outdo the last in impracticality and colour contrast. Actually what it reminded me of was the most recent Star Wars films; the look of the Chinese court was obviously the inspiration for the dresses of that Queen wotsefarface.

It was all very well done, I have to say. I’m seen attempts at this kind of thing before but they’ve always looked a bit shabby – the robes cheap, and trainers visible beneath them. Not here though; the footwear was period, and the staff must have had deportment lessons. The ‘Imperial family’ had just the same kind of glassily benevolent look that the Queen manages. There was, I felt, a Walt Disney kind of figure behind this, a strong character obsessed with realising his fantasy.

When the roast duck finally came we were quite relieved (though no longer, sadly, very hungry); at least it meant the photographer could do some work. A chef skilfully evicerated the thing for us on a trolley. I’d have thought that would make a great photo, but, partly thanks to the transparent plastic gloves the man was wearing, the pictures looked like illustrations of some grisly medical procedure.

Our waitress plucked pancakes out of the bamboo steamer, slathered them with plum sauce and put on the duck shreds and spring onion and rolled them up into packages. To be honest I’d rather roll my own duck pancakes. But that’s the Chinese idea of luxury – having lackeys hover just behind your shoulder waiting for the moment when they can spring forward and do something for you. It made for some good photos anyway.

It was fun but I think we were quite glad to get out of there. The greeters carried the photographer’s tripod out for him and as we left shouted, ‘Their work over, the honoured guests take their leave!’

We went to a bar round the corner. It was called ‘The World of Suzie Wong’s’, and it was done up like an opium den, with rose petals floating in stone ponds and the like. And just over the road from that was a housing estate of high rise blocks. There was nothing special about the blocks of course, but the entrance to the estate was a giant Proscenium arch, faced with marble, with full size figures of Roman warriors in niches and topped with an equestrian statue. Theatre, kitsch and pastiche – sometimes Las Vegas has nothing on China.

The guide photographer was here. He took my advice and bought a fold up bike. He was diligently riding to all the places on the list I had emailed him which made me feel a bit guilty as I dashed that off in about ten minutes.

I couldn’t believe the contract he was on every single picture he takes is automatically copyright the employer, so even if he snaps me on his camera phone, the resulting picture is not his intellectual property. He could see aliens land and film it and the film would not be his copyright so he wouldn’t be able to make anything from it. I was shocked. I can’t believe that’s legally enforceable.

But apparently that’s how a lot of photographers have to work these days. Digitalisation and picture libraries have made it much harder to make any money at the game. It used to be, if a magazine wanted a shot of the Tokyo Tower they had to send a photographer to Tokyo and pay him well. Now the mag just go to a picture library and choose one out of the million or so shots of the Tower on their files and pay about fifty quid, of which the photographer gets half. Very little travel photography is commissioned any more.

He showed me his portfolio, on his little Mac. He had just come from India(bureaucratic nightmare) and Madrid (full of thieves).

And before that he did Laos. He was asked to take pictures of Akhe tribespeople, so, being the conscientious fellow that he is, he went right into the jungle and hiked for days till he found some of the most isolated tribes in the whole country.

This one village he went to, they didn’t know what electricity was. Just to find some level on which to relate to them, he tried showing them his portfolio (all stored on his I-pod). He had a guide who was translating, saying things like, ‘Look this is the Eiffel Tower, it’s very famous, it’s in a place called France which is on the other side of the world. And the people were like, ‘whatever.’ Whether being shown the Taj Mahal or a flamenco dancer, they just looked at the screen blankly, bored. And the photographer began to think, they just didn’t know how to relate to photos, for them it’s nothing but a little patch of shifting colour.

He was getting worried. Not everyone was happy he was there and the atmosphere was awkward.

Finally, he came to the pictures that he’s recently taken – on the same trip, of another set of Akhe people. And suddenly everyone got really excited, and crowded round, or hurried to fetch their relatives. Every person in the village had to be talked through every picture so he had to spend the rest of the day flicking through these pictures until the I-pod battery ran out. The women in particular were fascinated at the slightly different ways their co-tribespeople did their hair or embroidered their black jackets or wore their jewellery.

Then the village head, not wishing to be out done by the tribe down the road, ordered everyone in the village to put on their best clothes and pose for group portraits. The kids were washed and dressed up and the women put on their finery, which is very beautiful, but it was a bit of a surprise when the men came out to pose holding cigarette cartons.

It turned out that factory cigarettes were status symbols. The cartons were kept unopened, on display, as a sign of a family’s wealth. They were the only non functional objects in the whole place. The village head had three. So, what, thirty packets of fags – worth about a quid – to show you had cash to spare.

It’s easy to romanticise tribespeople living in harmony with nature but God they are poor. On the same trip he saw a village that had just been completely abandoned. Everything that could be carried had gone but the houses and animal stockades were intact. The people had just had enough. They had upped sticks and set off to walk a few hundred kilometres down to the road to see if they could get on better as part of this thing called the modern world. Presumably their only hope of work would be as heavy lifters but they figured being on the bottom rung of modernity was better than where they were.

The Akhe are in China too, all around the Laos border, in Xishuangbanna. China is much more developed than Laos and there is no escaping the modern. I hung out with an Akhe guy in Jinghong, a few years ago, H. He had gone to the big city and made a business selling Akhe embroidered clothes. H cooked me shredded beef with mint, one of their signature dishes, and told me how worried he was about his village.

Xishuangbanna is the poor Chinese man’s Thailand, with a big sex industry, and all the village girls were working as prostitutes in the city. But there was nothing for the guys to do and they still did what they always did. So the girls would go back to the village after a couple of years and marry some local guy, but, H complained, they would have big city ways and a taste for money and the marriages never worked.

H introduced me to his Akhe girlfriend. She worked as a barmaid in the YES Disco, where she wore a red dress covered with sequins. Her high heel shoes were too big for her so she stuffed them with tissue paper. She stayed awake all night on Thai red bull. And she smoked, of course, factory cigarettes.