Christmas in China (and a mini trip to Guangzhou)

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Felt absolutely dog tired when we woke up this morning after only finishing our Christmas party at 10.30pm last night and then not being able to sleep until 3am. When the alarm went off at 7.45am I was close to pretending I hadn’t heard it and just staying under the covers until lunchtime. But my conscience always gets the better of me and so we get ready and make our way to the school for another long day of lessons. It’s not so bad though because as it’s so close to Christmas, it’s a great excuse to do Christmas activities and watch Christmas movies, so it’s one of the easier days that we’ve had. But still, it’s quite depressing when I check my facebook at lunch time and see that pretty much 90% of the people I know are bragging about finishing up for 2 weeks of holidays. However, we’ll be the ones laughing in a few weeks time when we are getting ready to go to Bali for 8 days (just you wait my pretties!).

Before we know it, it’s home time and time to get organised for our trip to Gunagzhou for the evening. We are mega excited about it as we haven’t ventured outside of Shunde since our fateful trip to Hong Kong last month. This time we’ve paid that little bit extra for a nicer hotel, so hopefully it pays off (and by extra, I mean 26 quid). Once we’ve packed and got organised, we head out in search of a taxi to take us to the train station. What we didn’t bank on is that it’s the one day of the year when apparently every single chinese person is going to their families house for dinner, so we end up waiting about half an hour for a taxi in the freezing cold. I get annoyed after 5 minutes, after 10 I am cursing under my breath, and by 20 minutes I’m about to hijack someone’s car. Greg, the usually calm and collected one of the two of us then starts to lose the plot too, so Shunde high street is faced with two irate Scottish people frantically flapping their hands at any taxi that passes, and then cursing loudly when they zoom by us.

By chance I happen to notice a taxi pulling up at the opposite side of the road and two people getting out. Greg plays chicken with the traffic to reach it before it drives off again, and basically I think the look on his face suggests to the taxi he had better not even think about leaving without us. The taxi driver is actually really cheery and we have a little conversation in hand gestures before heading off to the train station, which only takes about 10 minutes and costs about £1.80.

The train station is also extremely busy and we have to wait another 10 minutes to get served which doesn’t help my little restless legs. When we get to the front of the queue, we find out the next train isn’t for another hour which really tops off our mood. So much for a relaxing night away – hopefully things don’t continue on this route…. We have no choice but to buy our tickets and wait, not one of my biggest virtues and Greg can see I’m teetering close to the edge of tantrumsville so he suggests the one thing he knows always cheers me up- getting something to eat. There’s a little shop just at the entrance to the train station so we head back out to get something to eat to waste a few minutes and to cheer me up. On the way out, the same taxi driver who took us here is standing outside with the other touts, and asks us if we need a taxi even though he must realise he just dropped us off. Seriously, sometimes I’m amazed at how smart but stupid they can be at the same time. Anyway, where was I? oh yes- food! Next to the shop I spot a tiny little stall with a window and what looks like a big pot of soup boiling away merrily. It looks like exactly the kind of thing we need on a cold night, so even though I have no idea what’s inside it, I immediately order a bowl. We watch as the man pours a concoction of sauces, then spring onions, then soup into a bowl before topping it off with freshly boiled noodles and then some kind of meat mixture. It tastes amazing, and all for 10 yuan- 1 pound. All is good with the world again, and disaster averted for now.

Thankfully the train is on time and we arrive in Guangzhou only 10 minutes later. Now all we need to do is find the hotel and we’re laughing. The metro is easy to use as everything is signposted in English and we’ve already researched which station to get off at, so although it’s at the other end of the city, we manage to make our way there without incident. Greg takes a photo of an amusing sign on the subway which states we are not allowed balloons apparantly. When we get out of the subway, we realise we’re not sure which direction to go. We take a gamble and end up on the correct street, but still no idea as to where the hotel is. There are no street numbers anywhere, so we walk a few blocks before asking in a shop if they know where it is. The lady in the shop points us to go to the right, so we do. After another block, we stop at another shop and ask the guy where it is and he points to the left. So it is obviously in between where we are, but yet we haven’t seen any signs…. We go back again, keeping an eye out at the shop names until we see a set of stairs leading up into something that could be either a KTV karaoke room, a restaurant or possibly a hotel… We take a few steps back from the pavement and look up to see the name of the hotel there in colourful shiny lights, hurrah! Thankfully the lady at reception speaks English and she directs us to our room, which is really spacious and has a window! The only thing is that the bathroom in our room has see-through windows….. Not sure I’m a fan of that concept when having a wee, but then we notice there are blinds you can pull down, and that’s exactly what we do.

On the way here we noticed a Turkish restaurant nearby, so we decide to go in for some dinner. It’s quite nice to have a change, as we eat a LOT of chinese food and I haven’t had anything like this for ages. The only thing we’re concerned about is if they serve beer, as many restaurants in China don’t sell alcohol. When the waiter comes over to take our order, Greg tentively asks if they have pijon (beer) and the answer is the one we want to hear. I order a spinach and cheese pide (basically a long pizza) and Greg has an Adana kebab. We are keeping our fingers crossed it isn’t a Chinese chef trying to do his take of Turkish cuisine, but it actually takes really authentic and we’re impressed (a bit of a challenge these days when we’ve eaten at so many amazing places). By the time we’ve finished its quite late so we decide to take a rain check and head back to the hotel to enjoy watching some TV in our lovely room and comfy bed.

The next morning (or afternoon should I say) we drag our asses out of the most comfiest hotel bed ever and make our way into the heart of Guangzhou to explore more of the area. We catch the metro to the main shopping district area and first things first, go in search of some lunch as we are starving. It’s difficult to focus on shopping when my belly is rumbling, but that doesn’t stop me pining as we pass each and every shop. The problem is that we are having trouble finding anywhere to eat at all. The only place we can find is a Chinese fast food chain, and they don’t have menus that are in English. Eventually we stumble across a little Korean BBQ place and it has a menu in English, so we make our way inside. I order a noodles and dumpling soup dish and Greg orders a black bean noodle dish. We definitely picked the right choices as my soup and dumplings are absolutely delicious, and exactly what I need to warm me up on a cold day.

Once we’ve filled our boots, we head back out onto the main street to have a peruse of the shops. Two seconds later we reach a junction with a street branching off to the left, and lo and behold this happens to be where about 50 restaurants and street stalls are laid out side by side! Never mind, our lunch was delicious anyway so we try not to look at what’s on offer as we walk on by. We keep walking in the direction of the river so that we can head to Qing Ping market which apparently has lots of interesting things to see, including live scorpions and all types of other weird and wonderful things.

Ten minutes later we check the map to discover we are actually walking away from the river in the completely wrong direction, so we turn back around again. We check the map again 5 minutes later and for some reason we still seem to be going in the wrong direction! It ends up taking us about half an hour to finally get our bearings and start heading in the right direction, but we’re not too bothered as we don’t have any time restraints and it’s quite interesting to see all the little side streets with their shops selling knick knacks and fake designer North Face jackets and Gucci bags.

All this wandering around is making us thirsty, so we decide to stop off for a coffee at a nice looking coffee shop. It’s one of the few ‘luxury’ items that we treat ourselves to these days. It sounds strange that it is a luxury item in the first place, but a cup of coffee costs the equivalent of 5 large beers, so it’s definitely not cheap (notice how I compare the monetary value in beer and not anything else lol). The coffee is worth paying the money for, and we manage to while away another 20 minutes or so enjoying doing very little at all. As we’re about to leave, we notice a wall next to the stairs adorned with loads of old pictures from the second world war. We stop to have a look and Greg remarks jokingly that one of the pictures looks like Hitler. On closer inspection we see that it actually is, and then we realise that every single other picture is of him and the SS, so it looks like we’ve stumbled upon what seems like a nazi coffee shop! (well, they did do a ‘mean’ cup of coffee. Oh how terrible am I….)

Continuing on with the day’s travels, we walk to the riverfront which is bustling with lots of street food vendors selling corn on the cob, chicken skewers and fresh sugar cane. As we walk along in the sunshine, we are approached by 3 guys dressed in Santa suits who wish us a merry Christmas and hand me a balloon on a stick. I feel like a bit of a numpty as I walk along the street with my balloon but it’s a nice gesture and we wish them a merry Christmas back. We head towards Shamien Island, which is an ex-British/French colony separated from the mainland by a serious of bridges. Back in the days they used to have guards standing on the bridges so you couldn’t cross either way and it was totally separate from the mainland. If only we could get there then we’d be laughing, but we totally misread the map (again) and end up in the wrong direction (again). We retrace our footsteps to where we started and realise it’s actually straight in front of us, doh. I don’t think I’ll get a job as a navigator anytime soon. As we venture across the little bridge, we see lots of old British and French style architecture which is different than all the other buildings we’ve seen. It seems the Chinese are a fan of it too, as we see at least 3 couples with wedding dresses on all having their photos taken in front of the buildings.

Once we’ve had a nosy around, we head on towards Qing Ping market, as this is where we are hoping to see lots of unusual things we can buy. The market itself is HUGE and takes up about the equivalent of 1 square mile. Most of the shops near the front are spice and nut stalls and so we venture further in to see if we can get a glimpse of the weird and wonderful…. But it never materialises! We must have missed the live animals section out as we wander around for an hour and see nothing. Nothing apart from a few full-size stuffed reindeers of course! Slightly disappointed, we head back towards the subway so that we can make our way to the Canton tower and then home.

As we get to the entrance of the subway station, it looks suspiciously like it’s closed. We tentavely walk down the steps and sure enough are stopped by a guard who directs us back upstairs, but then there is no other indication of where to go and no signs. We can’t see any other entrance but then spot another guy trying to go into the subway who is also refused. He turns around to leave again and asks directions from the guard on the way, so we figure he must know where he is going. So our stalking mission begins… We try to be as discreet as two white foreigners can be, but I think the guy has clocked we are following him. Let’s hope he is definitely going shopping and hasn’t decided to take a detour into the toilet or anything. We might look a bit creepy if we followed him there too. But as luck has it, he IS headed for the subway and we arrive a few minutes later.

I’ve still got the balloon I was given for free, but as we are about to get on the train, a guard stops us and asks us to hand over the balloon. I can’t actually believe we are being done by the balloon rule! And how we mocked it… He is deadly serious though, and holds it straight out in front of him like it could go off at any moment. Disaster averted it would seem, he lets us on our way once more. What we didn’t count on was the fact it is now rush hour and the place is absolutely crammed full of people. We’ve watched footage of rush hour in Japan where they actually have guards stuffing as many people as possible onto the train, and well it’s not far off the pace here! We end up being crammed onto the train, cheek to cheek (and I don’t mean face to face) with a total stranger and I can’t move my arms at all. It’s not the most comfy train ride we’ve ever had, and not exactly good if your claustrophobic.

After an excruciatingly long 10 minutes, the doors open, and people pour out of the train like water. I can breathe again! And I think I’ve lost about 3 pounds in weight. Another 10 minutes later we’ve thankfully arrived at the Canton tower. As we exit the subway exit, we catch a glimpse of the building to towering above us, all lit up in multi-coloured lights. It’s really beautiful and almost worth being semi-crushed to death to get here. We take a walk around and are fascinated as it changes different colours. By now it’s getting really cold again so we head back onto the dreaded subway and head back to Guangzhou south and then onto home once again.

Christmas Day

The alarm wakes us up at 9.45am this morning, which is far too early for our tired little bodies. But we know we need to get the turkey in the oven, otherwise we’ll be having sandwiches for Christmas lunch. It just dawns on me the task we have ahead, and I suddenly have doubts as to why we offered to cook for 10 people on Christmas day, including a pregnant lady, when we’ve never cooked a turkey before and we only have a tiny tabletop oven that doesn’t go hotter than 200 degrees.

So we crack on and remove the giblets from inside the turkey (wise advice mum) and get it into the oven to start cooking. Fingers crossed it’s ready in time and we don’t under or over cook it – I have a sinking feeling we should have put it in earlier but we’ll see.

We’ve already spent 5 hours prepping stuff on Christmas Eve, so the soup and most of the vegetables including the roast potatoes are already done, and I’ve also made my cake. Even still, I don’t feel like we’re very organised. But of course there’s always time to open pressies, so we make a cup of tea and sit outside on our sunny balcony to open them. I love the fact that when we are travelling and are away for Christmas’s and birthdays we always set ourselves a challenge to buy presents for a maximum amount of 20 quid each. It means we end up buying some cool, individual and meaningful presents for each other. Hopefully one day we’ll have a permanent address where we can keep them all, lol. Greg has bought me a cosy pair of slippers, a jumper from H & M and a Chinese mug. In return, I’ve bought him a hat and t-shirt from H & M, chocolate, a dartboard and portable metal chopsticks.

Back to the task in hand, and before long people are arriving for pre-dinner drinks, and we are still flapping about in the kitchen trying to get things done. Stress levels reach a climax when I open the fridge door and a bottle of tomato ketchup falls out and smashes everywhere (does that surprise anyone?). It’s the worst timing ever, but thankfully my friend Flower is on hand to help clean it up. We manage to get everything done and then we check the turkey and I say a little prayer of thanks as we can see it is cooked to perfection. Our carving skills are not going to win any awards either, but we get everything served, and soon we are all tucking into moist turkey, homemade rosemary gravy, roast potatoes, pigs in blankets, homemade bread stuffing, peas, sautéed cabbage, roasted carrots and then apple and cinnamon cake with homemade custard for dessert. And all with only 2 gas hobs and one small tabletop oven. Well, our time management skills from La Rosiere have certainly done us proud and helped us out. It’s probably one of the most Christmassy we’ve felt in a few years, and it’s been made even more so by the fact we’ve cooked everything by ourselves for the first time. Not a bad effort I think, and me and Greg somewhat nerdly do an under the table fist pump in smugness.

Christmas day wouldn’t be complete without a game, and I’ve prepared a little Christmas quiz to finish things off. We have a good laugh, and everyone seems to enjoy it (apart from our friend Mat who has a little granddad nap half way through). When Greg goes outside to take the bins out, we notice there are a few presents sat on our doorstep. It turns out our teaching assistants have left presents for us which is so lovely of them and we are really touched. They’ve given us some mugs and a Chinese lucky cat, and we’re over the moon.

Everyone leaves about 8pm, and I must admit I feel rather sad that’s it’s all over. Would I do it again? Yes, definitely, but now I can sympathise with mothers all over the world who have the mammoth task of cooking Christmas lunch! Well, time for a little amaretto and ice as a well-deserved treat… Merry Christmas everyone!!

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