Richard comes to Beijing about twice a year to drink average coffee, read the local English newspapers and have a few amazing conversations – and that’s about it. In England he is just another Geordie (a person from the North East of England), but here he is maotouying (猫头鹰), or Owl.
It is 7pm here in Beijing and I head over to a small café close to Renmin University to meet Mr Owl. He is wearing a black fedora, a blue dress shirt with white stripes, a tie with a bamboo and panda pattern, and a big old moustache. He is no neckbeard, rather a 74 year old retired maths teacher from Newcastle. You might wonder what brings him here, at first I thought it must be work. Not quite.
What is immediately clear to anyone who meets him is his health and his smile, and the way he loves to meet new people. You are left curious to know his secrets to happiness and longevity, and what keeps him coming back to Beijing. Many people his age spend their days watching TV, but not this owl.
I first met Richard back around 2012 at my uni, Beijing Foreign Studies University, where I would always see him around lunch time sitting at the red tables, hardly ever alone. “The tables” was the place to be, red hot with energy and conversation. He is an extremely sociable individual, and people seemed to be drawn to him and make the trip to the tables just to chat to him. Of course, most of us were at the tables to study Mandarin or just to get some sun. Back then I had assumed that he was a teacher, and at the time he was in fact teaching some students one to one, and his wife and daughter were still based in Beijing.
Today I am meeting Richard to hear a bit more about his life, and what keeps him coming back. I order us two lattes and Mr Owl starts telling me his story. Carol Richard Walker, Mr Owl’s real name, was born in Gateshead in 1942 – a war baby. Growing up in coal country, he says, “we didn’t have lots of money when I was growing up”. He went on to study at the University of Newcastle, UK, majoring in math, physics and chemistry, going to class on foot – 10 miles a day.
Richard spent all his working life teaching and he is very much a born teacher, as he says “I like to encourage people to learn”. After graduation he started his career as a maths teacher in a grammar school in Gateshead. In those days he was called an assistant master in his department and stayed there for about 5 years, then moving to a catholic school in Wallsend as the head of the maths department. Wallsend was originally built by the Romans, at the end of Hadrian’s wall, to keep out all those unruly Scotsmen. I find myself wondering about his ancestors, perhaps they were Anglo Saxons, people who wandered in search of greener pastures. As it turns out, Richard’s maternal grandmother (Anderson) was Scottish, from the Lowlands. I feel that Richard carries these northern genes, hardy, playful, quick to chirp, with some of those famous vagabond tendencies.
During his late 40s the urge to wander hit him, and it hit him hard. His marriage was failing, and as he says “when the other person no longer loves you, there is no point to force it”. He let his wife have the house, and packed up and boarded a plane to Zambia. This is when his new life as a travelling owl started, and he has never looked back.
Richard has fond memories of his two and a half year stint in Zambia, he calls it his “best job ever”. Teaching mostly maths and physics and a bit of English, he says he learnt so much while in Zambia. At the time he received a tax free salary from Britain, plus a salary from the Zambian government. Independence and valuing international friendships is what he says changed most about his outlook on life. He also adopted a new diet, a far healthier one than back home in England. Small dried fishes, porridge made from “millie meal” (similar to grits), and mostly fresh produce (not owning his own refrigerator). He dug a ditch in the garden, and had a cement base put in, creating his own duck pond. This added duck meat and eggs to his diet. No crisps, chocolates and not even any beer. A big change from the traditional British diet he was accustomed to back home.
He speaks fondly of all the people he met and the friendships he gained while in Zambia. There were muslim Indian businessmen, Mr Ong from Burma, two Tamil teachers from Kerala, and many others. His closest friends were a catholic family from Ireland, who had just signed up for their second contract in Zambia. They had a fridge where he kept his butter and a few other “luxuries”, and he would often go to their place at night to play cards and chat. Then they made him godfather of their 2 children, and the friendship became deeper.
All good things come to an end, and when his contract ended Richard returned to good old England. After 6 months spent working in London’s Enfield, he got a job teaching maths in Cramlington, in England’s North East. At 50 his school made him a deal, he could retire early with a lump sum, half his salary and them continuing to pay his pension, insurance etc. Richard took the offer and the lump sum and once again bought his own house. It looked like he would spend the rest of his days here, relaxing and perhaps taking up new hobbies.
Not being one prone to sitting still, he soon became restless and felt himself drawn back to the field of education. He went back to college and earned a TEFL certificate, and went off to Sana’a in Yemen on a 1 year contract. In those days every man carried a pistol and a curved knife, and many also had an AK47. It is here where he developed his “filthy habit” of smoking shisha (hookah), one which drives him to search for establishments with shishas here in Beijing. The love of shisha, as well as the habit of chatting in sweet smoke filled establishments, is a legacy of his time in the Middle East. Having had to no pubs to go to, cafes and their lovely shishas was a natural compromise for this Geordie geezer.
After Yemen, Harbin and its freezing winters welcomed Richard for a year. The classes were mostly made up of teenagers, motivated and fantastic to have as he remembers. He tells me how his eyebrows and moustache were covered in ice shortly after going outside. Even back then money was never his motivator, as he was on a British pension and he was merely suffering from an acute case of wanderlust. It was in Harbin that Richard developed a fascination and appreciation of Chinese culture, and where he realized how willing many people are to strike up a conversation with a foreigner.
Again he went to shisha smoking Yemen for another year. Here he made his first gay friend ever, and remembers it as an enriching experience. Embassy parties were the only place where a foreigner could drink and relax a bit back then, and he remembers those times as some of the best in Yemen. Richard tells me “travelling is a bit like taking a hit, it pulls you up, you have vitality again”.
Then he jumped to Poland for 6 months only, somewhere close to Gdansk, before coming to Beijing. Beijing would be the start of a new chapter in his vagabond life. It was while teaching in the Xidan area that he met his future wife. He was 60 and she was 49. They quickly fell in love and got married, and had a daughter. I remember Richard often speaking of his daughter back in 2012. She is his pride and joy, and his reason for living these days. Richard says he would love to buy her a guzheng, his favourite Chinese instrument, and let her learn to play it back in England. Perhaps the sound of this ancient Chinese instrument can temporarily calm his urge to live in a foreign land.
I feel that his need for constant movement, whether it be walking to the local volunteer center in Newcastle or boarding a plane to Beijing, is what keeps him young. Constant movement keeps his joints well oiled, and his mind sharp as an owl’s beak. Conversations with an array of people keeps him filled with curiosity and teaches him new things each day. In Beijing he meets people with a genuine interest in meeting strangers and talking about any topic under the sun. You can meet that sort anywhere in the world, but Beijing is a special place and you need to come here to see for yourself. These meetings are his elixir of longevity. He certainly does not come for the coffee or the journalistic flare of the China Daily. I believe that Richard keeps coming back to Beijing, like a migratory bird, because this city is his fountain of youth.
Age is just a number, and youth is an attitude.
Love the shisha so much too
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