Blue Sky seen in Yangzhou

---

…..a quiet week this week, consolidation. Getting over the cold from last week. Taking the cough medicine I got from Dr. Wei & making an arrangement to meet at the Yangzhou no.1 Hospital to use the Chinese system of “guanxi” (loosely equivalent to “it's not what you know, it's who you know”) to get an appointment with a doctor who can treat my affliction. It's a little after the event though as I'm much improved, just a residual cough & a slightly husky voice so I may save the opportunity for another time when I need more urgent assistance. I get some fresh ginger & honey at the Da Ren Fa to augment the tea & lemons to finally finish off this bug.....

…..Kelly & Elizabeth return from taking part in yet another marathon, the Shanghai event. The Bund, the historic area along the west side of the Huangpo River is still undergoing a facelift for the 2010 Shanghai Expo, as it was when I was there & it's hard to see what it really looks like. They were impressed with the scale of the city (it's hard not to be), some of the skyscrapers in the city centre, about which Liz commented that some of them were, “the sort of thing she had seen when Kelly was doing his architectural training, thinking that no one would ever actually build them.....”

…..the Grade 3 teachers are very happy when I walk into their office today with a big bag of cakes as a thank you for their assistance last week while I was struggling to test the students in English. I forget the little sign I've made in Chinese characters saying, “Thank you for your help” but take it in later. The message is clear in my badly spoken Mandarin & the universal language of chocolate, cream & cake.....

…..Emily, the new Aussie teacher, is also improving from the same bug that I've had. I think all her medicine & visits to the clinic probably stalled the recovery process. I tell her about the brilliantly coloured kingfisher I spotted near the dormitories, where they've cleared all the derelict lotus leaves from the waterways. She quickly grabs her camera on Monday after lunch & we both go to have a look. Sure enough it's there. Not close enough for a really good photo but I'll keep my eyes peeled.....

…..my laptop has suddenly decided not to connect to the Internet. It's not surprising that you can feel cut off from the world the instant the internet, your email & websites like, in my case, ABC Radio or Photobucket, are not easily available. Of course I can go & sit in the cold, desolate Foreign Teacher's office to use my school computer, & I do. However apart from the cold & desolation it's worse than watching paint dry at times when the system is not cooperating.....

…..Larry the team builder is due to travel to Shanghai to fly out tomorrow but the roads are closed because of the fog, which clears later in the day.....

…..I thought this week would be uneventful, just continuous, monotonous coughing & nose blowing, which appears to be improving. Then I ate something at the cafeteria which didn't agree with me which compounded my misery for a day & kept me off all but a little fruit & yoghurt. After fixing that the strange symptoms continue. I now feel as though I have been whacked across the back with what used to be known, in the days of feet & inches, as a lump of 4 by 2. Every time I cough I get hit again! I go to sleep at 8.30pm on Thursday, a sure sign that I am not feeling great. Friday morning I decide to go to the school clinic. I write down a few helpful words first, Tong (Pain), Bei (Back), Kesou (cough) etc, & head off. I stupidly put both my beanies in the wash this morning. Fortunately it's very mild, the wind is not strong & has lost it's cutting edge & the sun is almost out (behind the haze).....

…..after the 3 female doctors at the clinic (who speak just a few words of English) have listened to the stethoscope & my symptoms they decide I should go for a chest x-ray. They call Rainy in Administration. I insist we should go after my class (I only have one on Friday morning) but no, she calls Gyu to stand in for me & we are off on the no.4 bus to Yangzhou no.1 hospital. We make our way into the teeming masses of the sick & Rainy navigates me through the process. First, get a book. ¥1 or about Au18c for a little notebook in which the doctor can write your history. On the front cover is a very pretty Chinese nurse superimposed (a popular graphic technique here, often executed very badly) on a background of the Slender West Lake Park & holding in her outstretched hand what appears to be a badly deformed pigeon.....

…..to another counter. The girl behind the desk in a white coat has a computer, blue ink pad & stamp, a pot of glue, (used to glue the computer printouts to the other paperwork, & various leaflets. We then go to one of a row of small rooms upstairs. The hospital appears to be a badly maintained 1950's building. 2 men are working on a grubby air conditioning unit lying on the floor. In the room are about half a dozen Chinese people crowded round the doctor's desk. Naturally they all look when I walk in. Rainy says something to get me ahead of the queue. No one seems bothered. Interested though as the doctor examines me with the stethoscope & through Rainy asks all the gory symptoms of my ailment as they all look on. I was thankful it was only a bad cold & they were distracted from my symptoms by the air conditioning repair man walking through to open the window & climb through onto the roof to do something or other.....

…..considering the number of people in the hospital after paying ¥80 (Au$16)at another desk equipped with a computer & a glue pot I don't have to wait too long for my x-ray. Again I am ushered in as the last patient is adjusting their dress on the way out. A return trip to the little doctor's room upstairs pronounces my lungs healthy & results in another page of notes. We then go to the counter for the medicine. I heard “Si shi kuai” (¥40) which sounded OK. I tell Rainy I have that much in my wallet. I misheard the first part, “Si bai si shi kuai” (¥440). Ah, that's another story. I tell her I am not THAT sick & only want some simple cough medicine or similar. We abandon the exercise & go back to the school clinic where I get double the amount of medicine for ¥70.....

…..on asking what happens when the “poor people” get sick I was told they still have to pay. It's possible they were offering me more expensive “Western” medicine but even so, with x-rays at ¥80 plus any medicine it would appear to be a big outlay for the average Chinese person. Rainy seems quite impressed with the Australian system, where the government subsidises the medicines to make them more affordable.....

…..Angel confirmed at the staff meeting this week my theory that our hot water is trucked in from the nearby power station cooling towers & that it is coal fired, not nuclear (in response to an extension of my theory suggesting that we turn the lights off in the bathrooms to see if we glow in the dark).....

…..the pain across my back has been downgraded from being hit with a lump of “4 by 2” to a “medium stick” - much better & I feel it less because I'm not coughing as much.....

…..tonight one of our students, whose parents invited us on a previous occasion to a palatial restaurant for dinner, have repeated the invitation, this time to Lu Xin Yang's (Jason's) 10th birthday party. I had a preconceived, rather Aussie idea of a 10th birthday, involving kids in the backyard or maybe a park, fathers standing around a hot barbecue prodding bits of meat around with a fork in one hand & a beer in the other, while mother does the real work in the background. Wang Quan Hui (his class teacher), Su Yin Hui (Suzy), (English teacher), Gyu (the Indonesian lady who shares administration of the Foreign Teachers), another teacher whose name escapes me, & I are all invited as honoured guests. We wait at the main gate for our chauffeur.....

…..we are driven in a very plush “people mover” that appears to double as an aluminium smelter judging by the temperature in the back. The driver has his window down but there's a furnace blast coming through the vents in the back. Suzy in particular is finding it hard going especially as it takes ages to get through the traffic to the far side of town.....

…..we are poured out of our taxi into the chill night air in front of yet another opulent restaurant. There are 11 or 12 round tables, each seating about 10 people, full table service (as always in China) & an endless supply of dishes, meat, poultry, fish, vegetables, soups, fruit, rice. etc until they are piled atop one another to fit them all onto the spacious rotating section in the middle. The kid's table, with a number of my students among them, all seem happy to see their teachers (!) & get on with having a good time & demolishing the food brought to them. There is a dynamic MC & a request to do a song. Without an instrument I enlist the kids who gladly help out in an enthusiastic, if decidedly unmusical, version of “Hello, Goodbye”, which must have appeared to the audience as Chinese Opera does to most of us). We are treated as very valued attributes to the children's lives & taken around all the tables to toast & be toasted by friends, grandparents, aunts & uncles & others. I am perfecting the knack of appearing to drink baijiu (“white alcohol”, the spirit that doubles as lighter fluid) while actually keeping my lips closed. Unfortunately you still get to taste it however. I believe by the end of the evening my host has had a few. It would have cost a packet, even in China. Our host is a Party Secretary, from what I understand, at Yangzhou Municipal level. I don't think he or his family will need to worry if they need medicine at any time.....

…..Saturday morning &, although not 100%!r(MISSING)ecovered, certainly on the way. The Power Station is CLEARLY VISIBLE, as is the BLUE SKY! Too good to miss. I take out the bike & go for a slow ride, only slightly faster than the average Chinese cyclist without an electric motor. I go north, then head west for the city, over the Orange bridge, stopping to take photos on the way. The gardeners here are phenomenal. All spare land space seems to be used to grow things to eat & people are busy everywhere digging, cutting, raking, hoeing... I don't yet know how the vegetable plots are allocated. There are small quantities of huge strawberries for sale by lone sellers under ragged, red parasols all along the road to Yangzhou city centre. I end up eventually at Shou Xi Hu (Slender West Lake) Park & take a walk to some of the parts I haven't seen before. I finally shoot (with the camera) a hoopoe. A keen Chinese photographer with a classy looking Canon SLR camera comes to show me the photos he's just taken of the same bird. It makes up for not being asked to be in anyone else's photos today, very unusual.....

…..I get back in time to take the guitar case I bought back to the music shop & show the broken zip. Without a word the young shop assistant runs up the stairs & brings a new one. I ask if he wants to see the receipt. Bad move. He doesn't understand & thinks I need a new one. “Mei guanxi”, (No worries). I lookat a few instruments & get back JUST as Peter & Nelson are heading out for some dinner. Nelson's main interest is Korea & the Korean language. We go to a small Korean restaurant he knows & eat very well for ¥20 each, or a bit over Au$3 (including a drink of course). We buy a couple of DVDs each from a nearby shop, that's another ¥20 each & get a taxi back to the school. An early one but as I'm in recovery mode not a bad thing. My back pain downgraded again, to a hit with a small stick.....


Great photo, audio or video opportunities missed this week:

…..The man on an old electric bike with half a dozen geese quietly enjoying the ride in a basket on the back while 2 more sit in the basket at the front.....

…..Wang Quan Hui eating long noodles, like spaghetti, with chopsticks, without slurping OR spilling any on the tablecloth. How the hell does she do that?.....

…..me, a complete barbarian, at the same table, trying to cover the evidence of my ineptitude with chopsticks by clever placement of the various bowls & dishes....

---