Wanderings of the laowei

---

We've been considering over the last couple of weeks: should we request to teach the second semester here, or another semester at another institution? Our current contract only runs until the end of December and six months is a long time to travel without any paid employment or routine so we'd like to do either one, but which?

On the one hand, Tai'an is just beginning to feel nicely homely, and if we decide to move on it means we're halfway through our time here already, which is a bit alarming. We're getting to know and like a lot of people here, we've found someone nice to teach us Chinese, we know how the buses work... if we stay then we can get further into the local culture, make more progress with the language, etc etc.

On the other hand, feeling at home is hardly what we came here for. I know I like to feel at home in a place and automatically make headway towards that state as quickly as possible in a new situation, but surely I should resist the urge right now. Staying would be the best step for someone who wanted to make China, or TEFL in China their life, but do I want to even be tempted down that path? We came with the intention of getting some breadth of new experience rather than depth.

So at the moment we're thinking of moving on at the end of the year. We just need to get off our behinds and write to some places.

Leaving the teaching aside (it's going quite well- as far as I can tell- but my head fairly rings with it at the moment) a couple of noteworthy things happened this weekend so I shall now proceed to relate them:

On Saturday Chris, Emanuel, Laura and I headed down to the Overseas Chinese hotel down town. Two weeks ago all the foreign teachers in Tai'an were summoned and taxi'd over and directed to a rather nice tea room on the second floor. There were a couple of speeches, a plaque was unveiled, and we were informed that we had just attended the first meeting of the Tai'an English Speaking Club (or something that sounded like that anyway). Every second Saturday morning we were to have the room with free tea and mini-golf. (Sign in the hallway: Long put: 15yuan. Throw the iron, 20yuan.) OK, we thought. Nice. The tea's great and the golf... makes an interesting change.

This week it turned out to be just us, an American lady named Barbara who seemed very nice, and some Chinese people from the local TV station. We chatted a while and drank tea and the TV lady- whose English name is Susie- asked us to give her the English words for some technical things. We got 'dubbing' quickly and explained that in general we prefer subtitles for TV programmes or movies. It took us a little longer to twig 'voice-over', and when we finally got it Emanuel launched into his rendition of one. I lost track of it mid-flow and noticed that Susie was trying to catch my attention, so I wandered over. She asked me if I would be free to do a voice-over for a company video that morning. Say what?

I was handed five stapled-together A4 sheets covered in Chinglish and was asked if I would be prepared to read them aloud for the sum of three or four hundred yuan. The voice-over would be for an organic food company and would be used alongside the Chinese-language voice-over they already had. Why not? I thought to myself. I said I would prefer 400 yuan and that my husband had to accompany me (I don't care how friendly and genuine they are, I'm still not getting into a car alone with strangers in a strange country). Both conditions were met. We arranged to meet up with the others later and off we went, me reading the script hurriedly and correcting as I went:

"Local Farmer's idea and method of traditional organic agriculture has been developed over the past 5000 of year is used widely even now. "

I wish I had taken my camera. We pulled up by a tall blue shiny building. This was the new office of the television company, Susie explained that the new building was almost but not quite finished, and so we would today be using the old office. A one-story crumbly concrete building was indicated. This was much more like what we were expecting.

"Since the company started organic vegetable cultivation in 1994, selection of farms mostly located in the 'Wenyang Plain' location, away from the city and the mining industry there are fresh, clean air here; soil loose, fertile, organic matter content higher, water and feritilizer maintance capability strongly."

Inside the soundproofed door was some equipment I naturally didn't recognise, some wobbly chairs, a plywood newsdesk and a painted backdrop of the city at night. On the desk was a microphone. I had to sit at the desk and read into the microphone. I was allowed to correct the English if I liked but they only had the studio until 12 o'clock. Moreover, the nice lady who had done the translation was in the room and told me it had taken her four weeks' evenings' work to bring it to the current peak of perfection. So then I felt bad marring it with my biro.

"The initial thing for pest control in organic crop production is take appropriate measures to establish reasonable agricultural crop production systems and the healthy ecological environment, to improve the capacity of natural biological control, complemented by appropriate biological, physical control techniques."

I dutifully read it all out in my best bedtime story voice, and in the end I only had to break the recording four times: Once because I mispronounced the name of a Chinese fertilizer company ("Qinguan Bao of pieris rapae main categories, all of the larvae of Spodoptera, spraying, it will produce a highly decomposed body similar to the smell of evil"), once because of a misprint, once because I asked to stop so that I could work out what the English was supposed to mean, and once because they wanted the last line repeated with more feeling:

"Tai'an Taishan Asia Food Company Ltd is determined to provide people from all nations with healthier organic food."

It took 45 minutes, about which the studio was very happy, and I got 400 yuan. I felt oddly guilty; I know that some of my students worked over the holidays in a local factory as full time grapefruit peelers for 600 yuan a month, and recently Laura has taken extra hours teaching stone-faced middle schoolers for about the same extra money each week. Whereas muggins goes and gets picked up just because she's got an English accent and make it in less than an hour... I insisted on picking up the tab for dinner that evening for Chris me Laura and Emanuel but it only came to 54 yuan between us, and that was with beer. Oh well, if I get any more work out of it I'll go mad and treat everyone to a cup of coffee- that would probably come in at more like 130 yuan...



The other interesting thing was a walk Chris and I took on Sunday. It was a beautiful day, the first day it's been genuinely chilly. A real bite in the air and the air crisp and clear as you like. We headed on up the mountain and decided to turn East off the main path along a side track. We walked along a level path through avenues of trees with such brittle autumn leaves that they sounded like windchimes above our heads.

The path turned upwards slightly and we came out at a group of buildings. They were abandoned. There was a stripped-out theatre, a toilet block, a basketball court... the path turned to concrete and ran on up the hill through the buildings. We followed.

More buildings. Lots of little ones in rows. One or two larger buildings with tiled alcoves and great counters with stoves that reminded me of the Pompeian fast-food corner shops I saw on my school trip to Italy. Some of the little buildings were inhabited, with Jerry-rigged electricity and faded-out curtains pegged over the empty windows. The odd bare patches of ground were planted out in cabbages or cotton plants. It was so quiet. We kept climbing.

We found a stone stairway looking just like the ones we had already seen on official routes. A tangle of signposts greeted us after the first flight of steps, but these were deciphered as being on the theme of 'fire hazard area: no smoking' rather than 'no trespassing: you may be shot', so we continued.

We climbed for about an hour. Then gradually we began to run out of 'up'. We realised we were climbing not 'the' mountain but one of the 'mountainlets' that sit about it. Then we found a door.

Next to the door was a signpost explaining that this was the Sanyang temple. On the door was painted the tao symbol. Behind the door was a temple on three stories up the mountainside and around a courtyard. In the courtyard was a garden. In the garden was a gardener, planting cabbages. We asked if we could come in. He said yes, please come have a look around, that's what it's here for. He explained that his dog was in fact only very friendly and enthusiastic and not at all anything to be scared of.

While we looked about, explored and imagined, two more groups of people arrived up the hillside. Both were bringing offerings to the gods. Various statues sit inside rooms of the temple, draped in red and gold cloths and with fresh flowers at their feet. People bring incense, flowers, vegetables and fruit, kowtow to the statues and ask for favours from the god. I asked one of my students afterwards about the theory of this, and she said that the god doesn't mind too much what you bring or how much, but does require that you are sincere.

The path went no higher, so we headed back down, it now being about 4 o'clock and the sun beginning to sink. Down was naturally much quicker than up and we were back on the main road by 5.15. We sank into chairs at a cheerfully busy restaurant and demolished a plate of sweet and sour pork and a strange but tasty prawn dish that Chris ordered in mistake for aubergines.

Who knows what we'll find next time.

---

Photos

Mountainside
See- clear as you like. Leaves just on the turn. My favourite weather.

Mysterious chalet-type buildings
Confusingly they reminded us most of the bottom stories of Victorian terraces.

Curiouser and curiouser
We formed the working theory that it must be a derelict holiday village. But we haven't yet found anyone in Tai'an who knows anything about it.

Arial view
The curious buildings from the path overhead.

Steps
A lot of the steps were boring modern granite, but these sat right on the bare bones of the mountain and were made of whatever would fit into the rock.

Chris by Amy
On a rest stop

Amy by Chris
Cheerfully puffed.

Tai'an from the air.
Apparently it's a small city. Well, it may be by Chinese standards, but it looks to me more like one of my Sim-cities when I've got to the money-coining, map-filling stage.

Door
Temple door.

Plaque
This is the modern plaque for tourists, hence being in Chinese and English. The ancient tablet it mentions stands on the other side of the doorway. At some point it was smashed but has now been carefully stuck back together. The main Taishan museum we visited some weeks ago mentioned that many of the mountian's artifacts had sledgehammers taken to them during the Cultural Revolution and have been restored over the last decade. Perhaps this was one of them.