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Published: January 3rd 2012
Sorry to anyone who's getting this for a second time, I've been having trouble with the notifications for the blog getting through so I'm trying to do it via the Travelblog site. As usual you can just click 'unsubscribe' if you don't want to receive these... Photos:
[url=http://s251.photobucket.com/albums/gg311/draftwrite …..”I don't like China, oh no, I love her...” to paraphrase that great 10CC song, Dreadlock Holiday. I've had an “I hate China” day. The rules, written & unwritten, that govern interactions in any society are mostly hidden behind that still impenetrable Great Wall of Chinese. When they change, often arbitrarily, you are left with nothing to do but try to figure out what the new requirement is & try to comply with it before it changes again. This is just to buy a train ticket. More of that later.....
…..the screen on the damned e-dictionary, the new one, has self-destructed. It's only 2 months old. Now I guess I'll have to go to Shanghai to see if they'll honour the warranty. Unlike the last time it wasn't sat on (or dropped). I hope I'll have time on the way to Guilin next week, when we'll be going via
Shanghai....
…..things don't really happen at random on computers, there is always a cause & effect. However when the cause is not apparent but the effect, usually unwanted & inconvenient, is, then the word random springs to mind, along with a host of others not fit to be printed here. Suddenly, just after the devastating realisation that my e-dictionary has gone to meet its maker, or will soon, the facility to type Chinese characters on my laptop just disappears. Gone, not accessible, vapourised. Now translating messages, particularly from my friend in Hunan who speaks minimal English, is very difficult until I figure out what's gone wrong. If I could just quickly learn a couple of thousand characters more maybe I could manage.....
…..I discover at the fortnightly special class for my more competent Grade 8 students that two of them, Christina & Katie, are very interested, as I have been since my schooldays, in lettering. I show them some illuminated manuscript from the Book of Kells on the computer & promise to find them some Old English fonts so they can use it to write their English names.....
…..Apologies. An easy topic for today's lesson. They know
High School Christmas Show
Some of my troublesome Grade 8 studentsthe basics. It's just to extend “I'm sorry”, to give reasons & offer excuses or alternatives. I go around the class for some quick role play. (Pretend), “You broke my pen”. I'm expecting, “I'm sorry, I'll buy you a new one”, or, “I'm sorry, I didn't know it was your pen”. Gary, aka Suprman, replies, “Never mind”, That's OK Gary, but it's not an apology. “I'm Sorry”. “Yes, why are you sorry?”. ”I'm sorry because YOU mind...!!!”. I think he'll get an A in the exam.....
…..Christmas when you're overseas is often a strange time, missing family, unwarranted guilt about not being there, feeling of satisfaction at having escaped the hideous, overblown, commercial leadup to Christmas, not nearly as satisfying in China now that the checkout staff at the Da Run Fa supermarket, (& most other large stores it seems), wear Santa hats over their thick, black, unmistakeably oriental hair & ring up the bill to a background of cheesy Christmas songs, itranslated to Chinese or badly pronounced in English. (“Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells jingle all the way, oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open slee...” Before you ask, it's not a misspelling, just
Suzhou, from the hill
Hazy view of the city an interesting rhyming of “Way” & “Slee”, understandable when you consider the idiotic spelling of “sleigh”.....
….I agree to sing a couple of carols at the church, Catholic (as distinct from the Christian church! A very Chinese distinction).. Gyu, George & often Mike go on Sundays. It seems like a long service in Chinese, the liturgy accompanied at a comfortable distance of about half a beat, by an out of tune piano. I have a premonition before we get up to sing the carols while communion is underway. Yes, it happens, halfway through the first verse of Silent Night the lady at the piano decides to “help” by launching into the tune in the key written on her hymn sheet, which is not the key we're singing it in. I have to omit the words, “all is calm, all is bright”, while I step away from the microphone to hit the back of the piano. The loud thud & “Shut up”, through clenched teeth are not susceptible to mistranslation & I return to “yon virgin mother & child”, if not in heavenly peace at least in tune.....
…..other than that Christmas day is, for us, Skype Day, when
we try to contact as many family members & friends as we can manage, maybe venturing out for a coffee at Gloria Jeans or noodles at the Moslem La Mian. We've already had our Christmas dinner at school, on Friday evening. Dennis & Mona, bless them, do their very best to provide what western people eat at Christmas. A selection of pizzas, still frozen salmon, sweet pumpkin soup, some lamb chops & cheesecake. It's good for the teachers, catering & admin. staff to all get together & celebrate what Christmas should be about,
…..it's colder, ever colder but clear (for this part of the world, although probably very hazy to you). No sign of snow yet & no reports of it from Hunan province where we aim to be in a couple of weeks.....
…..as a prelude, almost a warm up, for the I hate China day I alluded to at the start, Miss Piggy, having mentioned weeks ago that she has tickets for a place in Suzhou that I really should see, tells me she has free time on the (western) new year weekend. With my students having exams I can nip down on Friday morning &
be back on Saturday ready to finally buy the train tickets for the first leg of the big Winter Holiday trip. Almost from the start it goes pear-shaped. I get a bus at 7:50am to arrive in Suzhou around 10:30am. Having already rebooked a room closer to her work, a Canon printing office, where she also lives, & studied the map of Suzhou to find the most convenient bus station I find she isn't there. “I just leave my work now” “I thought you had free time today”. “Yes, today, but I work at the night. Wait me 20 minutes”. An hour later she arrives. “It so far, why you not go to north bus station?” “Because this one is closer to the place you told me to book my room”. “Yes, I know, I know, but so far to go bus.....” I don't pursue it any further.....
…..after missing the bus stop where we are supposed to change I take the initiative. Taxis are not expensive here & it can't be far. I show the taxi driver the address, in Chinese & English. He drops me at the Green Tree Inn. There are 2 of them on this
Miss Piggy, Suzhou
A walk in the park same, long road. It's the wrong one. The receptionist tells me, with help from Miss Piggy, that it happens all the time, they can book me in anyway......
…..It turns out Miss Piggy does have free time but also has to work both Friday & Saturday night! She can catch some sleep at night but is dead on her feet & falls asleep every time she manages to get a seat in a bus or taxi. I send an SMS to my old mate Peter, who says we must catch up when I go to Suzhou. No reply. We try some “dericious food”, in a crowded little eatery open to the bustling warren of streets in an old part of Suzhou. The city is a messy tangle of old canals & streets, new developments, roadworks & alleys with no immediately discernible centre. No reply to repeated messages to Peter. Where are you? I don't know where you live & I'm not likely to just bump into you in a city of about 6 million.....
…..after dinner at an all-you-can-eat hotpot place that Miss Piggy knows, where we both eat way too much, she's off to work & I
High School Christmas Show
Some of my good Grade 8 students go back to my hotel room & just have an early night. Next day, (New Year's eve) she arrives, after work, in the morning &, after a trip to the north station to buy a ticket back to Yangzhou, finally takes me to the park that she has been so keen to show me. Trying to pre-empt any hitches today I get out the map. Where is it? She looks all over the map obviously with no idea where exactly it is. Finally she triumphantly points to a spot that looks close to what passes for a town centre. Hmmm, it must be one of the urban ornamental gardens that Suzhou is famous for. It's not that far from the bus station.....
…..after getting off the bus she starts looking at other bus timetables. “You don't know which bus, do you?”, I finally venture. “I know, I know”. What, you you know or you know you don't know....? Let's just get a taxi, we're so close it'll only cost the minimum fee, around ¥9 or about Au$1.50. When the taxi meter hits ¥35 I ask where on earth we are going. It turns out the place pointed out on
the map was the spot where we were to change buses to then head to the outskirts & this elusive park. We arrive as the meter hits ¥45. Yes, I am a little annoyed..... no, it's OK. She's such a sweetie you can't be angry with her for long.....
…..the park was by all accounts magnificent last week, the autumn leaves a blaze of colours. Today it's a riot of brown, ground, rocks, leaves, dust, wooden kiosks, every shade of brown you could possibly imagine, & a hazy view of Suzhou through the smog from the top of a steep climb up innumerable uneven steps to the top of the hill.....
…..Miss Piggy is going to visit her family in Jiangyan this (long) weekend so, after a late lunch very dericious noodles, off we go the bus station (North Bus station this time), & head off. Hopefully Miss Piggy will sleep in on New Year's day. Despite all it was nice to catch up with her again, pity I missed Peter, I was looking forward to seeing him again.....
…..by the time I get back to Yangzhou, sort out my things, upload photos & throw some washing
in the machine & turn Skype & QQ on it's getting close to 2012. I'm tempted to cycle to Ronnie's Australian bar just to see in the New Year then come back, especially as Mike, (normally in bed by 9pm!) is there & asking if I'm going to go. As I get my jacket he calls back. He's leaving. It's just too crowded & smoky. I think back to the awful days in Australia, (& England) when smoking was still allowed in such places. No hot water after 11.30pm at the school. The thought of having to go to bed with the stench of cigarette smoke on my clothes & in my hair is too much. 2012 can start without me.....
…..now, those train tickets. Here is a brief synopsis of the epic saga of how I bought the tickets to Guilin. This discounts several trips to the ticket office at the Da Run Fa to check on times & costs.....
1. arrive 10 days before the departure, (the nearest to purchasing in advance available in China). After making my ticket order twice in what I consider flawless Chinese I'm still getting a response I don't understand. Finally
High School Christmas Show
Some of my good Grade 8 students I get it. “Liu tian”, (six days). But you told me ten. Shake head, “Liu tian”.....
2. return on New Year's day, (don't you love China, everything's open every day), 8:30am, ready to buy my tickets, six days in advance. Yes, can buy today, 3pm. Don't you hate China?!.....
3. turn up at 3pm to a queue of around 20 people, all waiting for the 3pm tickets to various places. As I get to the desk I see Chinese ID cards. Uh-oh. I smell a rat. I almost complete the transaction & have my wallet out. “Ni you nide huzhao ma?” (“Do you have your passport?”). No, why? I never needed my passport to buy a train ticket before. “Need passport”. Plucked from the rich lexicon of the English language I find some old & venerable words, simple one syllable utterances almost certainly of Anglo-Saxon origin. They are uttered repeatedly as a thankfully uncomprehending staff & queue are probably wondering why I should be so put out at an arbitrary change of regulations by the government . I rail against China all the way back to the school.....
4. I finally return with my passport &, for
High School Christmas Show
Some of my good Grade 8 students good luck, George's & Jenna's. Finally I get the tickets. I tell the women at the counter, “You shi hou wo ai Zhonguo, you shi hou ta mafan wo”, (“Sometimes I love China, sometimes it troubles me”). I don't have a suitable stronger word than “troubles” to clearly express my feelings. Just as well. I think they understand, but then again, I'm never really sure. Gloundhog day finally ends.....
Happy New Year everyone!
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Peter
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David, I missed you when you came to Suzhou! You know why? You were texting an inoperational number. And I was a little inoperational myself. I'll be in Yangzhou for the week of the spring festival. How about you? Send me an email!