Erotic Hiphopers

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Photos:

.....an incident from the Shanghai Expo I had forgotten about. As we made our way out of the cattle stall maze, through the metal detectors & then for the final frisking with a metal detecting wand the woman checking asked what was left in my pockets. Having taken all metal items out for scanning I looked again. Only a few papers. Oh, & a small book that I had been given by a friend. It was from a Buddhist temple. She looked with interest then called another security officer. I couldn't follow the conversation so I just said, "Hao bu hao?" (Literally, "Good not good?"). "Please wait". Not many other options available. This dangerous or subversive or maybe profane piece of literature was handed to superior officer who read through it, albeit at speed, before deciding it was not a threat to the Expo or the country in general before waving me in.....

.....I hope my newsletters give a reasonably balanced view of life in China & don't avoid the inevitable negative aspects of living here. I think my most enduring impression though will be the random acts of kindness which mark so many interactions. As my student Tianyi (George) & I go out to practice English at the Ge Garden his dad hands me a bottle of water as it's quite hot today. In the teacher's office someone will invariably bring food & offer it around. It's usually dried biscuits, fruit or cake, sometimes really tasty, sometimes weird, but it's the thought that counts. People will often give spontaneous gifts, from a small blue-dyed, white patterned handkerchief to more elaborate, magnificently packaged boxes, like the 2 foil packs of green tea from Larry's Dad (he's one of the students I tutor). They are nested in silk lining of a cream & gold box with a padded, printed top. I also found the cute socks with "toe-fingers" that the English teacher, Miss Su, presented to Kelly & me during the winter. Sadly, as usual, they are far too small for my feet so I presented them, in a random act of kindness, to someone with smaller feet.....

.....having been invited to two parties for students this weekend I have had to decline as I am intending to go to Nantong this (Friday) afternoon, returning on Saturday evening. It's only around three & a half hours east of Yangzhou.....

.....I was told this week that Yangzhou is the "third city". Surely not, I thought, though maybe in Jiangsu province. But even in this province it's certainly not the third largest city. On enquiring further it turns out that China grades its cities as First, Second, Third tier. The megacities of Shanghai, Beijing & Guangzhou are definitely first tier. The list of second tier cities includes nearby Nanjing & Suzhou, along with Harbin, Tianjin, Shenyang. Yangzhou therefore, with a population of less than five million & a quiet, historic city rather than an industrial powerhouse, is in the third tier.....

.....If anyone is interested enough this article might give you an idea of the scale of cities in China:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_the_People%!s(MISSING)_Republic_of_China_by_population

.....I decide to go to Nantong as I have been told I can get silk shirts & ties there cheaply as Shen Yue, mother of one of my students, will be staying with her parents there this weekend & will have some time to be my guide. I've never been to Nantong &, with a guide even for a small part of the time it will be a good opportunity to see the place & maybe pick up a bargain.....

.....Nantong is a port city on the north side of the Yangzi estuary. With a population of six or seven or eight million, (depending on your source), it is completely dwarfed by its neighbour on the south side, Shanghai. It turns out to be a surprisingly clean & tidy place, not as old & historic as Yangzhou but with, this weekend at least, a blue sky. Priceless.....

.....Shen Yue recommends a hotel next to the Nantong TV tower. It's modern, clean & cheap enough at ¥160 (under Au$30) a night. The big plaza near the river is remarkably free of crowds until the evening when the formation dancers descend on it in droves. I'm only in the city from Friday afternoon to Saturday evening, not long enough to see all the places of interest but I am taken to Langshan, (Wolf Hill) a complex of Buddhist Temples accessed by a cable car. Left to my own devices I would walk to the top, even though it is quite hot & humid, but Shen Yue, typically for China, is not wearing suitable footwear for intensive stair-climbing.....

.....I also manage to catch up with Wenyi, (Enya), the student who kept in touch after talking to me on the train to Harbin. She is studying in Nantong & had time off to share lunch & explore some of the markets & shopping streets with the indefatiguable Shen Yue. The latter was very pleased with a beautiful velvet dress found at a street stall, with matching shoulder wrap-around, for only ¥50, or around Au$8.50.....

.....searching for silk shirts & ties requested by my son was to have been an easy task but, shirts are only available in short sleeves (summer stock) & the only ties to be found seem to be in more expensive boutique style shops. A quick look into the kite museum & my time in Nantong is almost up.....

…..in case you're wondering the title of this week's newsletter comes from a t-shirt slogan in an upmarket boutique in Nantong. I tried to explain to Shen Yue why I burst out laughing, to the great surprise of the shop assistant standing by the door. Explaining the inexplicable is never easy. It's not the badly drawn image, it's missing one letter out of the second word of the legend, "Erotic Hiphopers".....

.....back to school & more chaos. Instead of continuing our review schedule this week ready for exams the following week the whole system has been turned around, on the fly & with minimal notice of course. If all the issues had been sorted out in advance it would have been acceptable but at this late stage the Foreign Teachers are not happy. Now we'll start exams on Wednesday but not continuously through the day as previously, but only during our scheduled classes. Also, as the Chinese teachers are not prepared to cover the classes while we do the testing we'll be responsible for class discipline while testing kids at a desk in the corridor! Now, what videos can I show Grade 3 kids with minimal English skills. I have Ghandi? Men who stare at goats? Slumdog millionaire?.....

.....what? Another Email. After reading the Foreign teachers' complaints we may yet go back to plan A.....


Photo & video opportunities missed this week:

.....the man on the scooter, in heavy traffic, carrying two large sheets of plate glass across the footboard, projecting about thirty cm. Each side. He had the good grace to ride with his legs outstretched to indicate the edges with his feet. It appeared to be a very elaborate but unreliable method of achieving a vasectomy.....

.....sitting in a small, hole-in-the-wall cafe in Nantong on Saturday afternoon, run by a couple of men from Chongqing, hearing the sound of a contemporary Irish band on TV in a live performance from a castle somewhere in Ireland, getting into full swing as the food was delivered.....

.....my white trousers, still white after a meal at a hotpot restaurant I hadn't been to before. Despite the oily sauce, slippery noodles & a vegetable a little like a potato cut into curved chips that tend to slip out of the chopsticks when you pick them up, not a mark on the trousers. The tablecloth wasn't unscathed but still, that's measurable progress in nine months.....

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