Monday 27 January 2014

A weekend at the beach

When I was posted to Beijing, our Embassy had access to a beach house in the sea side resort of Beidaihe. It was all very basic by the standards we were accustomed to at home but the resort's history as playground reward for the Communist Party's favoured members was well known.

There were a few weeks in summer when the climate encouraged a visit. This involved a train trip from memory of about three hours each way so at best we got to make one or two weekend visits in a year. Once there the accommodation was not exactly glamorous.


I suspect the sleeping arrangements might be more up market nowadays than on this visit in 1981.


There was no surf but the beach was quite pleasant. Goodness knows what I was doing here. Perhaps trying to bury the photo?


5 comments:

  1. Apart from the verandah decoration, the house looks quite Australian. The obviously gay man on the beach could be from San Francisco, or Sydney. The look in both cities was the same.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Andrew, the resort pre-dates the Communist era and I think many of the buildings then extant were designed and built by Europeans; hence the western influences.

      Delete
  2. Victor

    Whose were the chairs and umbrellas and who brought you there?

    And were are the Chinese? Not, I think the people in the background. Hard to imagine you blending into the crowd...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Marcellous, you are testing my memory! The house belonged to the Embassy (from my recollection) and I assume the chairs and umbrellas were owned by the Embassy and stored at the house for use by the visiting staff and family. Whilst we 'workers' mostly only visited on weekends (and then only across a period of the summer months) non-working family could and did spend the entire week(s) there.

      I can assure you there were many Chinese there in those days - apart from locals - they were on holidays awarded to them by the Party. Judging by the shadow on the beach, possibly we foreigners were there early in the day with the Chinese holiday makers only appearing a little later in the day; afternoon into evening. There was a similar phenomenon on the beaches in Hong Kong where I lived 1977 to 1980.

      Delete
  3. brought you = brought them
    were are = where are

    ReplyDelete