A bathing ape, platinum plus

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Photos:

…..I am back in China, after a quiet uneventful flight from Adelaide & a six hour wait at Changi airport, while not a preferred option, is waiting in more style than at some other airports I can think of. Plenty of shops to browse, free internet access, music videos on the big screens at the Hard Rock café, coffee bars & a butterfly garden, where beautiful tropical butterflies are disturbed in their sleep by visiting nocturnal bipeds with cameras & flashguns. The wait ensures I won't land at Shanghai's Pudong Airport in time to wait in its clean, modern but less well appointed surroundings until the following morning to catch the bus to Yangzhou. A five hour hop from Singapore to Shanghai is intended to give me an early start & a midday arrival back at the school.....

.....the Mag-Lev train from Pudong Airport is sleek, modern & smooth but there is no real sensation of travelling at the 300kph indicated on the electronic display at the end of the carriage. Then it's into the subway system where the suitcase doesn't always fit through the turnstiles & escalators seem to only travel up. Carrying the suitcase, backpack & violin down two or three flights of crowded stairs or up escalators not working in the humid, Shanghai heat, is yet another character building exercise.....

.....it's nearly 30C by 8am. My (Chinese) mobile phone has decided to request a PUK code. I can't even access any numbers in it. Maybe I can get a couple stored in my Australian mobile. Ah, the battery has run out of charge. I foolishly decide to "just" get the problem fixed at the nearest China Mobile outlet. I get a ride on a taxi motor-trike. The driver takes me to the Unicom Office. "Zhonguo Yun Dong", ("China Mobile"). He points at the Unicom office but finally gets the message, it's not the right one. We set off again.....

....."Duo yuan, dou shao fenzhong?" ("How far, how many minutes?"). Six minutes. I'm not convinced but in the end it's around that time. Even in what appears to be the main office of a national company they can't fix the problem as I bought the phone in Yangzhou. After six weeks away I have forgotten the phone number anyway. I give up & return by taxi. Damn, another ¥12, or around Au$2, the minimum charge in Shanghai. It's ¥7 in Yangzhou.....

.....when asked the departure time of the next bus to Yangzhou I could swear the lady at one of the many ticket offices in the incredibly crowded Shanghai bus station said "Qi dian ban", ("7.30"). That would be 7.30pm another nine hour wait. I ask again, my heart sinking fast. She had said "Shi yi dian ban" ("11.30") & this time repeats it in English. Only an hour or so. Still long enough in the unlit, hot, jam-packed confines to allow me to join my fellow passengers in a long, neck-stiffening doze for four hours or so.....

.....three trips to the school administration office in the sticky afternoon heat & I finally get a maintenance man to repair the front door lock in which the key will not turn, only to have the replacement key break at the first attempt, leaving Erin to turn up just as I am about to kick the door in. She shows me her solution to a similar problem at her quarters & the technique to break out part of the window frame to release the catch & enter through the window. I must be making a good impression on the new Foreign Teachers, if not with my gymnastic skills, with my expressive range of Anglo-Saxon epithets. After I finally get in I note that there is water dripping from the bathroom light fitting & several things have been misplaced during the apartment painting & seat cover cleaning exercise in progress when I left the school. My vocabulary is almost exhausted but the new paint looks nice.....

.....it must be Angel's peverse sense of humour to employ a two young American teachers called Landon & Brandon. They form a trio with Bret. There are three older teachers, two in their forties, George from the UK & Steve, who has been living in England but originates from Walvis Bay in Namibia. Then there's Evie, from Cyprus, Lisa, from Canada & Mike, from the USA who spent a year travelling the Carribean in his boat before coming to explore China. There's a chance he might now be the oldest teacher here but sadly, no, he is a year younger than me. Damn it!!! He is, however, a writer, in the process of publishing a book about his recent travels to China. I'll be picking his brains.....

.....finally, after three trips to the China Mobile office here the phone is working. I can phone friends, student's parents etc. I now know (from the internet) that the "PUK code" spontaneously requested by my phone is a "PIN Unlocking Key". I get the girl who unlocks it to write down what I need to do if it happens again. It's all in numbers & Roman letters so I don't need a translation.....

.....we have several massive thunderstorms but only a few heavy showers of rain in this sub tropical summer. The humidity requires two showers a day though.....

.....the skyline of Yangzhou around the school has changed even in the six weeks I've been away. More clusters of high rise apartments are springing up just over the New Bridge, the rubble has been mostly cleared from the levelled suburb just south of the school & massive construction work is underway next to the bridge, on the same side as the school, almost certainly the new Canal Cities convention centre.....

.....Dr. Wang, Principal of the school, drops in to welcome the returning & new foreign teachers & regales us with some of his inexhaustible supply of anecdotes. He tells of the time in the 1980s when he took some foreign visitors to a park, closely followed by Communist Party officials who informed him that foreigners were not allowed in the park & tried to usher him & his guests out. He described his protest at being moved on even though he is Chinese & was eligible to enter, followed by the bemused foreigners being left outside the park while he was taken away in a police vehicle. It's a good thing that he was released & that China has changed since those days.....

.....a group of boys, probably around twelve years old, are roaming around the Da Run Fa for something to do on a summer holiday afternoon. One says, very loudly, "Lowai", ("Old outsider"), mildly deprecatory but pretty ubiquitous for us, the representatives of the outside world in Yangzhou. I can now turn the tables by saying, "Who told you I was a foreigner?" That stumps the ringleader, a cheeky but quite likeable kid who has inadvertently left himself wide open to retaliation by wearing a t-shirt bearing a typically Chinese display of seemingly random English words, "A bathing ape, platinum plus". I ask if he knows what an "ape" is. His friends think it's funny, my translation,"houzi" or "monkey", is close enough.....

.....naturally the new teachers, in the same situation I was in last year, are impressed that I appear to be able to communicate in Chinese. I explain to them that saying, "I don't understand", "Can you repeat that please", "What did you say", "Sorry, I don't speak Chinese very well" or "Dui, dui..." ("Yeah, yeah..."), without always having a clear idea of what has been said, does not always constitute a conversation in the generally accepted sense.....

.....my space is only 2 steps from my desk last year, on the other side of the Grade 3 teacher's office. I have a new group of Chinese teachers to get to know. So far they all appear very friendly. The Chinese teachers follow children from Grade 1 to Grade 3 then start again with Grade 1, so my colleagues from last year have all gone. The English teacher Su Yin Hui (Suzy) will be teaching Grade 4 this year. I have 2 classes in Grade 4 (two that I taught in Grade 3 last year) & four new classes of Grade 3's. Due to an increased workload for everyone we all take six classes this year instead of five. I hope I'll always have the right lesson plan for the grade I'm teaching.....

.....Saturday evening & a meal with the Foreign Teachers on Saturday to celebrate the end of this week's induction & training doesn't result in a full turnout but in the end 11 turn up. It's difficult to get a private room this Saturday before the start of the school year but we end up at (yet another) amazing Sichuan restaurant on Siwanting Lu. Three of the young American teachers have not returned from Nanjing where they have been studying for a further certificate that the government requires. Some other teachers have other arrangements. It is difficult to get a private room but Rainy finally manages it. By the time I arrive Shen Yue is ordering far too much food & a fair bit ends up in two daibao (doggy-bags) to be put in the communal fridge at the school. Hot, spicy & thoroughly dericious, a few drinks & table service all for around ¥36 or Au$6 each.....

.....sadly Angel unable to make it. She is in hospital for more operations for a detached retina, in the other eye now.....

.....it's Sunday & my student Tianyi (George) is very happy to see me & seems contented with the bag of presents from Australia. I also give his parents a photo book about Adelaide & an ink drawing of Norwich cathedral which I bought in the UK & had framed this week for ¥20. The couple who run the picture framing business are used to me now & were happy to see me too.....

....the timetable for next week's classes have finally arrived, a good thing as we start teaching tomorrow after the big opening ceremony. I hope we don't have to wear the full suit.....& tie..... I expect the Chinese teachers will.....

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Photos

Butterfly Garden
Butterfly Garden, Changi Airport, Singapore

Over China
Over China en route to Shanghai

Over China
Over China en route to Shanghai

Military Training
Military Training at the school

Military Training
Military Training at the school, east versus west?

Military Training
Mums watching their kids

Dinner for teachers
Dinner for teachers at a great Sichuan restaurant, Lao Ma Mi, in Yangzhou

Dessert
Fruit sculpture, Lao Ma Mi, in Yangzhou

More construction
More construction, the Canal Cities Convention Centre (I think!)

More construction
More construction, the Canal Cities Convention Centre (I think!)

Comments

[Michelle Norman]

Love this
Hi Dave - this is the monarch butterfly - common all over the world - a true cosmopolitan fly by night as it migrates across thousands of miles. I have grown the plants in my garden that the caterpillars feed on and raised a whole brood!! cheers

[Laotou]

Entymologically challenged
thanks for that bit of erudition - I thought it looked like something I'd seen before but anyway, it's beautiful. I wish the tropical butterflies here in Jiangsu would stand still a little longer.....

[Kate]

blog vs inbox
It is lovely to see the accompanying selected photos with the blog. I would still love to receive the text version in my inbox (thank you for that special consideration) but would it be okay to stick me back on the regular mailing list with the link for this blog, for those times when I don't have to be stingy with my downloads?? Thanks, Dave. PS do you have a link for the week of around 6/9? I seem to have missed that one ...