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Shao Kao, Nantong
Magnificent chaos …..Steve, Ben & I wait while a driver does a 15 point turn in a bike lane. The pantomime appears to be over. Ben thinks it's clear to go through but no, just as he makes a move the car lurches forward again, stopping within millimetres of his bike. The driver winds the window down, seems overjoyed at seeing three foreigners & yells, with a huge smile, “Welcome to China!”.....
…..I manage to get a cheap laugh with one sentence in my Grade 8 textbook, about what side of the road to drive on. I ask what side you drive on in China. Unanimously they tell me “the right”. I refute it, citing trips to the city where people do drive on the right, but also on the left, & in the centre, sometimes go from one to the other. I also tell them in Australia we have traffic lights where cyclists as well as car drivers have to slow down for yellow, stop on red & can go on the green light whereas In China e-bikes & cyclists at least go on green & also on yellow & red. I didn't see any point in mentioning those white lines
Wedding, Nantong
The flower covered entrance to the catwalk at which, in some countries, cars are obliged to stop for pedestrians.....
…..summer is pretty well here. It's still reasonably pleasant, low 30's as I write this but probably mid 30's by the time you read it. It's already humid &, in mid-May, the fan was on & aimed at the bed last night. It's not a problem to add blankets in the winter but when you've removed the last sheet & it's still too hot the fan must go on.....
…..a mandatory part of the languages degree is that you spend 2 trimesters studying at a university in the country of your major language choice. For me that means at some stage I'm obliged to go the UNE's (University of New England's), sister uni in Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi province & one of the ancient capitals of China. It's a pain because I'll need to take effectively a year off work, though I may be able to find some tutoring, or even better, paid musical employment, at least here in China. I'll also need to organise it around a requirement brought in by Labor in 2013, that even for online part time study, you still need to
Wedding, Nantong
L-R; groom, bride, mum do at least one unit while resident in Australia, a rather stupid requirement as, rather than working here at no expense to the Australian taxpayer.... One of those mining jobs, 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off would be great for studying, (& my bank balance). I suspect they're not easy to come by. Anyway, there are likely to be a number of preparations to be made.....
…..2 days off at a time for the kids to do internal exams in the middle school is a godsend, especially when studying & my own exams are approaching. As usual the timetable means that the slowest class misses out on 2 lessons that week, the 3 most able ones get an extra lesson!.....
…..theory & practice do not often seem to coincide in my life. One of the reasons for studying Spanish as a second language for the Languages degree was that, apart from having an alphabet I can recognise & words that often bear a comforting similarity to the English ones. Among my colleagues are Sofi, from Argentina, Mike, an American who was married to a Mexican lady before she sadly succumbed to cancer, plus Roger, who speaks some Spanish.
Wedding, Nantong
What a backdrop... The idea was to spend time conversing with them in Spanish & speaking like a native within a few weeks. Unfortunately they, particularly Sofi, are usually busy with private classes or other activities so, in my 10 minute interview with the tutor on Skype this morning with the lecturer in Australia, I had to tell her, “Estoy un poco nervioso”, (I'm a little nervous). I'm pretty sure I wasn't speaking like a native.....
…..but I got 90%! There has to be a mix up of scores.....
…..a Chinese teacher has a daughter who is to be married. Could I play a song at the wedding? “Just one song?", I ask!. A hesitant response, “you can sing 2?”. Well I did used to do 4 hour gigs in Australia. "Yes, no problem". The wedding is in Nantong, almost 200m east of Yangzhou. They give me a lift there on Friday afternoon, in a new BMW. In the end they get me to play 4 songs at yet another lavish & cheesy extravaganza, a huge restaurant, 25 tables each of 10 people, a flower covered bower at the door through which the bride is escorted by her father, along an
Wedding, Nantong
The Namibian contingent elevated walkway to the stage, to be greeted halfway by her husband to be, singing karaoke on the way. They then walk hand in to the stage & stand against a backdrop of greatly enlarged wedding photos until, finally, (about time), drinks appear & they are toasted as the food starts to arrive.....
…..there's wine! Not too bad either & a vast improvement on the usual choice, between orange juice, drinking yoghurt or the industrial strength solvent known as baijiu, (white alcohol). I have to go & sing my songs at this point as there was no microphone stand previously, when they had planned for me to go on. No matter, even though they were all getting into the wedding feast many still joined in the chorus of “Hey Jude”, the “Na na na na na na na” which could pass for the Chinese word for “there” (“nà”).....
…..the people at my table are friendly enough even though, in the racket of the proceedings I can only understand about half of what they're saying. Then a girl sits next to me. She is studying Business English at university in Nanjing. That's easier. Two couples from Windhoek, Namibia also
Wedding, Nantong
Namibian dance display arrive. They are studying in China. They were very interested to learn I'd lived in next-door Botswana, more so when they found out it was in the late 1970's, before they were born.....
…..the wedding ends, like all Chinese weddings, on an abrupt &, to foreigners, unseen signal when, usually with chopsticks delivering a mouthful of food, everyone suddenly rises & encourages you urgently to leave, as though the place is on fire. Despite the lavish offerings, many of which I did not partake, mainly because of the confirmed or suspected pork content, I find myself back at the hotel, hungry, so I take a $1.50 taxi ride to a collection of Shao Kao, (barbecue), restaurants we'd passed a couple of kilometres down the road. I don't know if the photo can really show the magnificent chaos of a Chinese Shao Kao. Good stuff though, & easily identifiable!.....
…..I am accommodated in a fairly upmarket hotel, (more upmarket than I would have booked for myself!), & in the morning Zeng Rong, the mother of the bride, arrives in a Porsche Cayenne with the driver who'll be taking me back to Yangzhou. I suggest they take me to the
Wedding, Nantong
Really, it's the lighting, not a camera malfunction bus station & I can just take a bus back but of course, being China, they won't have a bar of it.....
…..he's apparently a professional driver. We get lost on the way out of Nantong & again on the way into Yangzhou. He tells me that, being a German car, the map on the screen in front only shows the major roads. Cars with maps produced in China show the smaller roads too. Apparently he can't download these maps or they're not compatible with the Porsche system, (I'm not sure which). I learn, from observation that a dual carriageway has, not 2 but 4 lanes in each direction. There are the 2 obvious ones but also the much narrower emergency lane which would otherwise be a waste if not used as an overtaking, (undertaking?) lane. The fast lane is frequently occupied by slow traffic leaving the slow lane for faster cars. There is also a “decision” lane, where your vehicle straddles the white line for however long it takes to decide which side you prefer to drive on, while people squeeze past, on either side. All these can be negotiated while on the phone, answering or dialling, leaving
Wedding, Nantong
The groom, singing, advances to meet the bride a shortage of hands to hold the wheel during necessary & frequent applications of the horn.....
…..despite heavy traffic near Taizhou I didn't see one accident, although the crash barrier in the middle had obviously received a few heavy impacts in several places.....
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