Chengdu taxi rides and getting dressed up. Twice.

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The year 2009. One year ago, I had no idea I would end up living in Chengdu and teaching English. Last year has been a year of surprises. It has also been a year of changes, going from dangerous levels of boredom in the workplace to enjoying my job again, leaving the relative security of a well paid job in favour of seeing the world, and of course going from traveling through crazy places to living in one, amongst others... So what better way to welcome the new year than with a new blog entry?

As it turns out, the Christmas and New Year's celebrations in Chengdu were massively cool. Obviously Christmas is a time for family, but as I'm on the other side of the world I was a little worried if Christmas would be weird. Well, it was wicked. A group of us got together at Kjersti and Luxi's place, and we all brought some small presents along to give to each other. Kjersti even managed to arrange a turkey 😊. I made punch, we all finished it and then we went out partying. Pretty good way to celebrate the 25th of December if you ask me.

As I've now technically stopped traveling and started living abroad, I have been thinking about what to do about my blog. I have enjoyed writing it, and there are still a few entries worth of past adventures left to immortalise on the world wide web. But what to do when I've blogged about all my travels and posted all my photos? My conclusion is that a slight change of format will be required. Instead of a 'travel' blog, it will become more of a 'living abroad' blog. When traveling the world, one experiences many random and often completely ridiculous things. When living abroad this is still the case, and entertaining experiences are still worth blogging about. The interaction with the students is one of the best parts of my job now, and funny or otherwise noteworthy comments will be making it into my future blog entries.

For example, one of the students translated a Chinese idiom directly into English, and asked one of the other teachers: "What kind of person can be described as an iron cock?". When he had stopped laughing and had brushed it off with some comment about not being able to walk around outside, the student explained what she meant. An "iron rooster" or "iron chicken" is someone who is stingy or tight-fisted, because you can't pluck any feathers off them. Right.

Another example of randomness abroad is taking a taxi. In Chengdu, they are a breed apart. Once you wave taxi down, you brace yourself for some crazy driving and for --depending on the length of the journey--, one or more moments where you reconsider your mortality as a human being. The traffic here still makes me laugh every time I take a taxi. It's the sheer stupidity and utter disregard for personal safety exhibited by the majority of the road users that baffles me. People simply do not look. Ever. Not when they cross the road, not when they unpredictably turn, not when they absentmindedly glide into another lane with a car in it. On an average taxi ride you see electric bikes going down the wrong side of the road at night without lights on, people cycling into the road seemingly without ever considering to look if there is a car or a bus or whatever that could run them over, people crossing the road on green lights and still almost getting hit by buses, taxis taking the cycle lane to bypass red light cameras and many many more entertaining idiocies.

Which brings me to the use of the car horn... Yes it is hugely over-used, but yes it is also necessary as a means of letting your fellow road user know that you are there. They won't have seen you because they won't have looked. For example, when some air head is slowly making his way into your lane with no idea that you are there, honking the horn is the only way you can let him know that you are there and that you would prefer it if you and your vehicle escaped unscathed. The only way to reduce traffic noise here would be to re-educate the entire population on road safety, starting with teaching people to look where they are going. With the most populous country in the world that could take a little while.

To give them some credit though, taxi drivers are perhaps the only road users that do look where they are going, but they compensate for that by driving like lunatics. Sometimes though, just sometimes, you get a rare gem of a taxi ride...

It was a random September evening, I was still living in a hostel and I had not yet succeeded in my mission to check out all the good bars in the city. Zack and I had met two English girls who were traveling through Chengdu, and they came out with us one evening to see what 'Cafe Paname' was all about. As we were waiting for a taxi, we saw one of the new taxis approaching. It was available, but did we really want to splash out those few extra RMB to ride in a newer car? Seeing as we weren't in the mood to wait ages for the next one just to save a matter of cents (in real money), we took it.

After the four foreigners (us) got in, the driver quickly changed his Chinese folk music for something he deemed a little more appropriate. This must have been his foreigner CD, and it started off with some emotional singing with an underlying ridiculously inappropriate funky base track. Later I was to hear the soppiest rap song ever written, and our laughter confirmed to the driver that we appreciated his choice of music, for the wrong reasons or not.

I was sitting in the front, and when the driver asked me if I liked the music, I of course gave him a big thumbs up 😊. This was when he revealed to us that he was actually a rude boy in disguise, by turning up the volume to a fantastically embarrassing level. We were, after all, in a taxi. I was intensely trying to fight my urge to stick an elbow out of the open window, it just felt so wrong pimping around town with music blasting and all my limbs safely tucked inside the vehicle. We were all laughing of course, right up until we stopped at some traffic lights with the music still blaring out the windows. The next car along gave me a look of blank amazement, which I semi successfully tried to return with a look of 'I'm in a taxi and I'm still cooler than you'. Whatever that looks like. As it turned out, this was probably all just a cunning ploy by the driver to take us the long way round, as the ride was noticeably more expensive that it should have been. Still, it set us up perfectly for a night in Cafe Paname 😊.

Shortly after one of the best taxi rides ever, I finally ended up moving out of the hostel. The staff were really cool, and were actually the main reason I stayed there when I was paying a few kuai more each night and when the hostel didn't have any real chill area. Still, If I hadn't stayed at that hostel who knows what my life would have been like now. It was through the hostel that I met Luxi, who's room I was to occupy for the 6 weeks she was traveling through Europe with her boyfriend. Through Luxi I met Kjersti, and through Kjersti I ended up meeting a large chunk of the people I know who study at the university, including my current house mate.

My new place was pretty frugal at best, and when I moved in there really wasn't much furniture at all. Kjersti bought most of it during the 6 weeks I was there, but it was the heating that was my main source of discomfort. Or rather, the lack of any heating (or insulation) in the house. It seems to have been designed to blend in with its environment, it's freezing when it's cold outside, and I bet it would be a little oven in the summer due to the lack of an air conditioning. Shortly after moving into my new place I landed myself the job that I'm still happily working now. In fact, the very same job that provides me with the computer I'm using to write this entry. Nice.

Having signed the contract and roamed the shopping district of Chengdu for a cheap work shirt with sleeves long enough to accommodate my arms, I was ready to start work. Before I could get on with teaching however, I still had the Web English Halloween party to attend the night before my first day of work. I went to a market with some of my new colleagues and students to pick up an outfit the day before, and partly due to having no ideas, partly due to me thinking it would be funny, I ended up leaving the market with a flowery apron and an old woman's head scarf as my outfit...

It was an evening to remember, that much was for sure. It was also actually a really good laugh, and I got some credit for showing up as a housewife the evening before my first day of work haha. I have also never been more photographed in my life, and if that wasn't enough, the outfit was completely worth it even if only for the completely confused looks of passers by on the street. The fact that they almost certainly didn't have any idea it was Halloween wouldn't have helped them explain what on earth a man in his mid twenties would be doing walking around in an apron and a headscarf, accompanied by a caveman and a brain donor. Needless to say the night ended a little on the late side for me to be completely fresh the next morning under normal circumstances, but the excitement of starting a new job took care of any residual hangover style feelings. Besides, everybody was still recovering from the night before, teachers and students alike 😊.

After the housewife incident, it didn't take long for the next fancy dress party to rear its weirdly dressed up head - Kjersti's birthday 'bad taste' party! The same market was visited, this time with a different group of friends but with similar time and money pressure. I walked away with a yellow street cleaner cap, a nauseating black and orange tie and a keyring which said 'kiss me baby'... At home I turned it into an outfit with a blue polo shirt and by shaving my goatee into a horrible line. Bad taste through and through. The evening was once again a roaring success, punch was involved, nobody was hurt. For the real 'low down', check out my photo albums, going at two for the price of one today.

Photos:

Around Chengdu & my last few days in The Loft

And then we got dressed up. Twice.


I'm off to pick up a certain shoveling accessory on my way home to help me take care of the cat that is living in my house for a week while its owner is away. What a funny but demanding animal, but that's a whole different blog entry all together.

Take it easy.

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Comments

[amerie]

Chengdu taxi rides and getting dressed up. Twice.
Chengdu, I reckon is a nice place, though I haven't been there yet, but some of my friends were able to live there for a couple of months and they thought Chengdu was a nice place.

[Paul van Veen]

Thank you...
'dangerous levels of boredom in the workplace'.... Thank you, Mark. I'm still here. But I'm going to NZ and Aussie in two weeks!! For four months, whoohoo!!