The Islamic Christmas lunch

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….. well, Christmas week has started off quietly. The band probably won't perform at the big show in the auditorium on Wednesday, it's not ready. A student carrying 2 drumsticks walks past as we are waiting to start our rehearsal tonight (Sunday) & Roger persuades him to try out for the band. Peter & I know it will take a while for him to settle in & a show in 3 days is far too soon.....

…..rehearsals in the auditorium for the Foreign teachers rendition of the 12 Days of Christmas. I manage to get towards the back & play some chords on the mandolin along with Cathy's attempts to follow the arhythmic singing, mainly so that I don't have to be in the main line up.....

…..the Siberian wind from the North West that threatened to sever my ears at the weekend has turned to a gentle easterly breeze & the weather is noticeably milder, especially out in the sun during the day as it does its best to shine through the haze. I have too many layers on as I go to collect two pictures from the framers & buy a few things at the Da Ren Fa. I have worked up a sweat by the time I return to school....

…..I had to have the lock replaced on my door but they only gave me one key. I have two copies made by the man who repaired my boots at the weekend. “Duo shao qian?” (How much?). ¥ 4 for two, or Au$0.70. Compared, as I tell him to his evident surprise, with approximately Au$5 EACH in Australia. I also buy a Chinese/English dictionary for my new student, George, as a Christmas present.....

…..for three lessons this week I have decided to do the nativity story, which most kids would not know, & make a Christmas card for Mum & Dad, discussing vocabulary related to these. Highlights; kids queueing up in class to be Mary & Joseph knocking on the inn (hotel) door asking for a room to be told, “Go away, we don't have any rooms”, or to be the 3 Wise Men riding camels to the stable. The Christmas cards bring out some interesting developments One really bright girl in the worst class (3/9), remembering the previous day's lesson, asks, “How spell 'Jesus'?” I write it on the board for her. Two minutes later she is back. “How spell 'Beth-le-hem'?”. My favourite is the two kids in one class who show me a strange drawing on the back of the card I finally figure out it is a bar code. The Chinese are born with a dominant business acumen gene & will take over the world.....

…..I see Kelly walking out of the Chinese teachers office with a large box. They have bought him a small oven as a Christmas present! I receive a number of cards from the students & notably from classes 3/8 & 3/10, signed by all the students, in addition to random offerings of cards, sometimes still in the wrapper & neither addressed nor signed. The Chinese teachers in my block promise a dinner in maybe a couple of weeks. I'll buy some goodies for them to deliver on Christmas Day.....

…..Christmas show for Elementary School at 2pm & repeated at 4pm as the kids from the elementary school don't all fit in the auditorium, even though it's the size of a large cinema in Australia. The Foreign Teacher's rendition of the “12 days of Christmas” is barely adequate rather than earth-shattering. Some teachers are more tone-deaf than I had imagined they could be. A little internal political struggle leads Gyu to hijack Cathy's rendition of “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” &, insists on a part in the proceedings at the last minute with only one brief rehearsal as we try it out on the auditorium stage. She finally sings louder & probably better than her rival to an audience of Elementary Schoolers who are largely tone deaf anyway while the Australians (Paul, Peter & I) continue to hold up the performance! The highlight is Mr. Deng & his team, which included Su Yin Hui (Suzy) & a couple of other Chinese teachers in hot pants looking, well, pretty hot, doing a Michael Jackson dance routine. He manages a short burst of the moon walk & I think, can I imagine my primary school teacher old Mrs. Bates in a show like this? The answer is..... “David, stand in the corner & face the wall”......

…..Christmas Dinner is, as expected, a bizarre collection of random impressions of a western Christmas as interpreted by the Chinese cook, Dennis, even before he starts the bottle of Baijiu presented as a gift, if gift is the right word for a quantity of foul smelling & tasting lighter fluid. Some large shrimps & still frozen Salmon slices, pieces of (very tender) beef, a selection of pizzas, some chicken wings, pistachio nuts, cheesecake & some chocolate brownies are accompanied by a pyramid of weak Chinese canned beer & a generous supply of Chinese red wine, a taste that will never be acquired by one who has lived by the vineyards of South Australia. Of course after the first bottle the taste buds are desensitised & you don't care any more! The ensuing session in the karaoke room desensitises the ears in a similar way. Kelly's & Liz's bread, their first attempt in the new oven, is a laudable effort though. Thus Christmas Eve comes to a close in a shower of pistachio shells .....

…..Christmas Day falls on a Friday this year so it is firstly my laundry day. I am up by 7.30, get a load in the machine & am about to get my breakfast & prepare to make some overseas phone calls when I spot Peter at the water cooler. Gizmo, his cat, allows no sleep ins. He comes up to swap the Christmas cards that Cathy mixed up in her hurry to get to Suzhou for the weekend & stops for a cup of tea & a chat about how surreal Christmas seems here today. He, I, Emily & Paul, the Aussie contingent, have agreed to go for lunch at La Mian. We laugh at the irony of going to have our Christmas lunch at a Moslem restaurant.....

…..it's cold but not desperately so. I take a trip over the bridge to the Da Ren Fa to buy a cake for the Chinese teachers in my block of the Elementary school. After a short conversation I realise I can't buy the one in the display, they will make a fresh one. How long will it take? 25 minutes. Too long, Christmas Skype calls to make to Australia. I buy a selection of cakes instead. The teachers are very happy to see me bring them in. Christmas Day is just a normal working day for them. We converse in our usual mixture of their basic English & my worse Chinese before I go to make my calls.....

…..at La Mian our Christmas lunch is a great meal, ¥20 for beef noodles, bai cai & a spicy meat dish with green peppers. We joke about the Americans & feel in a more Christmassy mood by the time we leave.....

…...Emily goes to buy her new laptop from the Electronics Mart, from the very persistent salesman who had been continually offering more extras while she was sorting out the finances over the last week. I ask the girl at the nearby camera stall (the one who located the flexible tripod for my camera) where can I buy some bags. I really want some of those elaborate looking, beautifully printed, thick paper bags that things are presented in here, in the absence of wrapping paper. She tells me to wait, runs off & comes back with 2 rolls of - wrapping paper! She won't even accept any money for them. I must persuade Paul to make his planned camera purchase there. Perhaps that's what she has in mind. At least now I have something in which to wrap the dictionary for my new Sunday morning student, Qiao Tianyi (George).....

…..the combination of Mr. Muscle, bleach & disinfectant I used to mop the floors has somehow combined to leave my rooms smelling like wet dog. I wish I had left the floors dirty.....

….. I head off to catch up with Dr. Wei for a cup, rather many cups as they continually top up the pot with hot water, of Oolong tea at a very comfortable chaguan or teahouse on Taizhou lu before the urge for sleep after another hard shift sets in & before an obligatory work function with colleagues in the evening. For the privilege of working seemingly random, morning, afternoon & night shifts, with little time off & insufficient rest, dealing with up to 70 patients a shift in the Paediatric Emergency unit the going rate is around ¥5000 a month or Au$830. That's roughly the same salary as mine, (for which I do less than 20 hours work per week, including lesson planning & special classes). I start to feel guilty. There is no real choice about where to work either. The staff are locked into insurance schemes etc. whose benefits will be lost if they step out of line. Two exams coming up on Monday after a full night shift. ...

…..Barry, the tall African-American teacher met a few weeks ago at the pool hall with his partner, Ping Ping, is celebrating his Boxing Day birthday with a series of “cultural exchanges”, coffee & free games of pool. Ping Ping has done a great job of organising it all. Peter & Emily are invited too but Peter decides he has too much to do preparing for next week. Emily & I go to the University Central Campus, south west of Wenchang Ge (the correct name for what has been referred to as the “Big Pagoda” in the past!) & the ever cheerful Barry meets us at the gate for coffee, biscuits & what could be described as a fruit salad in a mild mayonnaise. I quite like it. There are various students & teachers there from all over the place. We sit & talk with Harry & Nikhar, two Indian medical students, & speak to French, American & Chinese students & teachers. Daisy, from Urumqui in the western Chinese Uigher province of Xinjiang (New Frontier), an area about three times the size of France with about the same population as greater Shanghai, complains in a very American accent about how cold Yangzhou feels in in winter....

…..we go to the pool hall & find that Nikhar is an ace player. Vincent, the big chemical engineer from Alabama is also there while the other tables are occupied by mostly young male & female Chinese players. I have some Christmas phone calls to make to the UK & Emily has to get her new laptop ready for action so we leave quite early, around 9pm. While the fruit salad in mayonnaise was interesting even with the biscuits it wasn't that filling. We look out for somewhere to get some food on the way to the Wenchang Ge &, just past Briers, the overpriced & overrated pizza & pasta joint we find a little hole-in-the-wall eatery with three women cooking a selection of food in a big steaming pot outside. We choose a selection of beef, chicken, duck & vegetables from the refrigerated display cabinet inside & it is cooked & delivered to the table in large bowls in a spicy broth. I am a bit heavy handed with the hot chilli sauce on the table but it is certainly warming on a cold night & for ¥8 or about Au$1.25 each.....

…..after tutoring Qiao Tianyi (George) this morning in Yangzhou I dash back on my bike in the freezing cold, stopping off to finally buy a long sleeved vest from the Da Ren Fa, then for a bit of lunch at the school cafeteria, a couple of Skype calls to Australia then to teach my other student, Fan Zi Chen, (Jeffson), from class 3/8. After that it's off to episode 2 (actually 3, there was something last Tuesday I didn't get to) of Barry's Birthday Bash.....

…..firstly on the fourth floor of an office building in the city centre a “cultural exchange”. Mostly university teachers & students. The latter speak much better English than most of the people we normally encounter. Vincent is there & a host of Indian medical students, including Harry & Nikhar from last night's pool game. Some shared interests discovered, in music & photography plus some interesting craftwork (see the photos on the Photobucket link). The music students are surprised I played with Chinese musicians in Australia & know what a guzhen, erhu & hulusi are.....

…..the last part is to be at a night club in town from 9.00pm. I still have calls to make to family & friends in the UK plus some lesson planning work so I just go along with Barry's partner, Ping Ping, an American teacher, the Indian students & 2 Chinese students to a restaurant that specialises in rice porridge. You can laugh if you wish but like everything here it is a surprise, luckily a pleasant one. The “porridge” is ordered with whatever meat or fish you want plus vegetables & side dishes, green tea & a beer each for those that want it. As usual it only cost about ¥20 each, new friends - no extra charge. They get a taxi to the club while I get my bike & go back to the school. It doesn't feel quite so cold now & I find I can avoid most of the potholes on Qinyou road even without car lights to pick them out in the pitch black. Is it a sign that I've been here too long?.....

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