MANCHÁN MAGAN'stales of a travel addict
IT'S SEVEN DAYS today since Ulysseswent out of copyright and I had no intention of honouring it with my own Dublin odyssey when I set out last week. It all started as I was gorging innocently on a veggie burrito at the Mero Mero México stall in the Temple Bar market. I was practising my spanish with Gustavo Hernandez, the Guadalajaran owner, chatting about his new salsa verde when a group of hungry Chinese students came by bemoaning the fact that Mexican hot sauces weren't hot in the right way, the Sichuan way. Gustavo pointed them towards his scorching pickled habanero chillies mixed with ripe mango. "It's about subtlety," I said. "Like the nettles and chia seeds in Gustavo's salsa. Chinese don't understand that."
"I am Manchu, not Chinese," the boy said. I thought the Manchu ethnic tribe had been subsumed by the Han long ago, but the boy shook his head. He and his friends had come over from Birmingham to see their ancestors in the Chester Beatty Library. The current exhibition China through the Lens of John Thomson: 1868-1872, he heard, had fine portraits of Manchu women and elders.
A Viking Splash Tour let out a roar on Dame Street and I told them how the garden in front of the museum may have actual Viking ships buried beneath it – it's thought to be the location of the original Dubh Linn (black pool) of Dublin. They smiled politely and drifted off towards what Lonely Planethas called "not just the best museum in Ireland, but one of the best in Europe".
I was curious about the exhibition and followed later. China is the future of the world, yet our understanding of its past is often confined to the stylised scenes of oriental ink drawings. Maybe that’s what so startled me upon entering the room, to be faced with large crystal-sharp photos taken 140 years ago but with the immediacy of 20th century photojournalism. It felt like one was actually with John Thomson when he took the photographs of landscapes and buildings. More arresting still were his portraits of street peddlers, orphans, monks and curious concubines. Somehow, despite the awkwardness of the camera equipment and the fear it instilled in locals, Thomson managed to put his subject totally at ease, capturing intimate moments. We get to leap back five generations to experience China when it was still cocooned within its 4,000-year continuous culture. We look into the exhausted, defiant eyes of a rough labourer and the lavishly-dressed child-bride with a smile revealing both fear of the bodily ordeal ahead and sadness at losing her family.
The Chinese students invited me to come eat with them after. They had been recommended some restaurants: the Hi Lan on Capel St, Good World on George’s Street and ML beside the Pro-Cathedral off O’Connell Street. We chose ML and settled into a sumptuous meal of whelk in soy sauce, soft-shell crab, chilli squid and sea bass. It was by far the best Chinese meal I’ve had in Ireland, but most of these dishes weren’t on the English menu. I wondered would I ever be able to order them again just by poking randomly at the Mandarin menu. I mentioned this to the waiter and he handed me a card with teachmemandarin.com on it – a Dublin company offering eight-week courses in common mandarin phrases and chinese characters. The eighth class is held in the ML and participants must order their meal in Mandarin or go hungry. The next course begins on Tuesday in the Harcourt Hotel. If I wasn’t going to Laos I’d be there.
My new friends got the bus to the airport and I waved them off, having gone from Dublin to China via Mexico and back all in a single day. Yes!
* Teachmemandarin.com (course begins January 10th)
* China through the Lens of John Thomson: 1868-1872runs until February 26th, cbl.ie