The Chinese Feast, Beijing, 2005

B A L Á Z S T U R A Y - THE CHINESE FEAST On blazing July nights in Beijing thousands and thousands of people hang around with seemingly no purpose in the streets. Most of them are looking for the opportunity for entertainment between the all day drudgery and the few-hours sleep when it is cooler late in the evening, at night. The lucky ones, who do not have to travel for hours every day to their homes far from their working places, peacefully loaf around in the dusty, blazing, noisy and often dark streets shaded by scrubby trees. Some dance in parks with waddling movements characteristic even of men at dance lessons to the melody of the actual pop song. Dancers in track suits, house-coats, carrying small bags and shiny leather mobile-cases or wearing traditional Chinese clothes move in the dark. Some perform their karaoke song in front of a television set in the street for the pleasure of their audience. In Chinese fashion, most people go out to have dinner. The well-to-do visit spacious, well-lit restaurants with their business partners, friends and family, while the poor prepare dinner on their cooker in front of their house. Except for the kitchens of the poor, the act of cooking can never be seen. I was staring at moving shadows of the Beijing night for hours on a large window, where clumsy employees had stuck a foil of imitation bamboo wood. The shadows came closer with their woks and huge kitchen tongs only to be swallowed in the light of the romantic artificial park. Just like on the focusing screen of my wooden camera, sometimes I saw them outlined sharply or blurred but huge depending on the speed of their movement and the distance. It was dinner time. The first pictures were taken when the guests arrived. When the first groups passed between the stone lions at the entrance of the restaurant, the kitchen was quiet, peaceful. Shadows of heavy, sculpture-like figures were cast on the window. When the orders reached the kitchen the blurs and silhouettes burst into activity, long caps, bowing figures, huge colanders filled with smoking hot pasta took shape on the window. Flames burst out under the pans, a thick, spicy, steamy film settled on the window. Later as the work got quicker and the water was boiling only fragments, torsos, a waving head and a half cut cabbage were apparent. When dinner was ready only the empty kitchen, like an abandoned stage without scenery, remained in the night. The people watching the photography and the performance – perhaps thirty-forty altogether, some of them peasants from the countryside wearing undershirts – continued on their way, some turned to the direction of the television, where the karaoke was still going on, some turned into the nearby cook’s stall. Finally all disappeared among the shadows of the night.