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Every so often I look back at my previous blog posts and I feel like I'm reading something from someone else, that is the rate at which my mind changes. Last update I was talking about how I love teaching and I want an easy life. To an extent this is true but I'm seeing why I love teaching, because it's a nice job and because it involves not doing a whole lot. It's piss easy and that's pretty cool.
However now I'm feeling like I want a bit more. Maybe I would be ready for a proper job. For I have realised that I love this country and I love learning Mandarin, and these are things I can't really deny in the future because they have been true for a long time. I have been wanting to come out to China for many years, I have been interested in the culture ever since I got hooked on martial arts and other crap around that area since watching Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. I started studying Kung Fu, then read up on Buddhism, made quite a few Chinese friends, learnt a bit of the language, then I left it for a while (yet still pursued the eating of Chinese cuisine) and eventually came out to China. While I haven't loved every minute of it, overall I am loving this country. I still want to go and see other countries around the world, but given the fact I've always been interested in this country and have developed a greater interest in this country since being here, I think it shows that this country is something important to me and something I should pursue. Also I can't believe how much enthusiasm I've had for learning Chinese and how quickly I've picked somethings up. I've just never been that enthusiastic or fast learning enough with anything remotely academic before in my life and never thought I would be. It's almost as if I was Chinese in a past life and want to regain the knowledge I've lost through entering into another life. That's not to say I'm amazing at studying Chinese, there're people out there who've picked up a lot faster than I have, but relative to my previous self, my studying with regards to Chinese is absolutely amazing! I have confident moments in Chinese and I have very non-confident moments. Some people I can't communicate with at all, the fact that a white person is opening and closing their mouth to them means that I am speaking English, it couldn't possibly be any other language, and so they can't even begin to comprehend what I'm saying, despite the fact I am actually speaking in Chinese. In other situations I am great! Last night a few of us from the dorm went out with two girls to some disco, I stayed out with them for a very long time and they don't speak a word of English but I was able to do all the translation tasks my friends and the girls requested of me, hold a decent conversation, told them whatever I wanted to and call them a variety of Chinese insults which they seemed to love hearing from a western mouth.
So I'm thinking at the moment, perhaps I should look into following a career that relates to Britain and China together. I would love to live in this country for longer but I need to be able to go home every so often and that requires money and so I'd need a better paying job. I'd also like a job that has better long-term prospects and security, teaching doesn't really have that in this country. I've had a feeling in the back of my mind for a while that teaching English in China won't be such an easy ride in the future as China becomes bigger and more powerful, so it would make sense to pursue other careers. But I now have a much clearer idea of what I want to do for the time being. I know it involves China and Britain as a whole, I know that it will pay well enough for me to go home two or three times a year and that it will have better long term prospects. It feels right and the signs of fate haven't blocked me looking into this so far. With previous inquiries I've made about other possible career paths there's always been something stopping me. So far with this one, so good!
Gosh I have a lot to update on in this post! I want to rant a bit about China and also update you briefly on my recent travelling ventures.
OK with regards to travelling, a few weeks ago I went to the Pagoda somewhere on West Lake. The pictures will basically tell the story as soon as I upload them, but to conclude, it was OK, looks very pretty but when I got inside it was pretty dull and small. Nothing special really. I climbed an endless set of stairs to the top to see a decent view significantly obscured by the small open spaces that were the windows. Whilst around there I bumped into some other Chinese tourists, I think they were a family or a bunch of friends or something like that, they seemed so happy to see a foreigner and insisted I pose for some photos with them. So being the great foreigner I am I stood there and posed alongside them. Also one or two of them were pretty girls so I insisted they take some photos on my camera too. After the Pagoda I wandered through a museum for some dead poet from many centuries ago, that was pretty but dull, then I went to some strange museum which had the same sort of presence as most brothels. Pink lights and just a plain dodgy aura. I wandered inside and was just pretty confused as to the whole experience. I think it was meant to be a scary museum, yet the brothelesque pink lights made me feel quite comfortable. Occasionally though I would walk past a hidden heat sensor in the corridor and this would trigger the sudden movement of a wax model (complete with sound effects) that was hidden in the dark, thus making me jump. Then I came across some plain horrible wax model shows; people being decapitated, chopped in half and doing what seemed like incredibly obscene acts to be doing with a tiger. So I left that museum after a very short while. So I saw a bit more of West Lake and it was a very hot day and very humid, I'm not sure if I've ever sweated so much in my life, I sweated so much that once I produced the ticket from my pocket that allowed me to enter the Pagoda and museums it fell apart in my hand because it had been soaked with sweat. Dear god I was hot!
This week I have been on holiday, it is one of several annual week long national holidays that the Chinese seem to love having. I like having holidays too, but I've got to say it's incredibly stupid putting 1.2 billion people on holiday at the same time (well that's a huge over estimate, of course not the whole of China goes on holiday at these times, just most of them, but that's still quite a lot of people). So picture this, the entire nation on the move to go and visit relatives and other touristy places. The results is no spare seats on trains, hotels being fully booked, in some cases every single hotel room in a city will be fully booked (as one friend unfortunately found out when he travelled 12 hours to Xiamen and so had to come back), massive traffic jams and huge masses of people congregating in public transport hotspots such as Guangzhou train station. Yes on the first day of this holiday I decided to go to Guangzhou with Wade (a South African guy who works here) and Jess (one of the Chinese members of staff who basically sorts out our financial stuff). We were all out partying the night before as it was the last day of work, until about 2am and for some reason us three decided to get a 6am bus to Guangzhou! Gwah! I was quite tired, but that didn't bother me too much as I didn't have to do any work. We got to Guangzhou and our mission was to basically go to some strange shoe market where Wade could buy some trainers for his huge South African feet, they don't seem to have big enough shoes in Huizhou. I also wanted to see Aussie Jo, but this seemed unfortunately impossible due to the inconvenience of the city being rather large. Wade and I basically spent hours wandering around this shoe market and around other clothes markets nearby. One such market was basically a gangster style clothes market (the sort of clothes black rappers like to wear) and as a result there were vast amounts of black people in this area. Every so often you'd see a white person but mainly black people, and they were buying in bulk, biiiiig bulk to sell off at a later date I guess. We didn't do much else in Guangzhou apart from eat in McDonalds (a tradition I have developed since being in China, whenever I go to a new city I must go and eat at McDonalds). I hated Guangzhou that day. It was soooo dirty, there were people everywhere and when we wanted to go home we had to wait about 3 hours for the next available bus. The only time I've seen more people in one certain area was in Shanghai around about new years eve and Chinese new years, and here at Guangzhou bus station where we were waiting, there were huuuuuuuge amounts of people and then when we finally were called for the bus we joined what was just a mess of people. In England we would form queues because we're stupid like that but in China they seem to think it is far more efficient to just have about 200 people crowd around each other and charge for the bus when the gates open. And this area was pretty damn small, probably about 6 times the size of my bedroom, so it was quite crowded. Oh, also in Guangzhou I paid 80RMB for a nice new gold Rolex with diamonds, but unfortunately it keeps stopping and I have to keep resetting it! Still, it's pretty, so despite the fact it keeps stopping I still wear it. Plus it gives me an excuse to say "oh I'll just check my Rolex" and "my Rolex says the time is..." when people ask me what the time is. Also it makes me look rich, classy, cool and sophisticated. If you want to be like me then lemme know and I'll arrange for you to have your very own (Chinese) Rolex for a very small price.
After a day of rest and doing not much in Huizhou apart from a bit of shopping I then went to Shenzhen just to see what it was like. I didn't venture far from the bus station in Luohu, I didn't really have to. I mainly went there to check out the amazing shopping I'd heard of and as soon as I got out of the bus the Luohu market that I'd heard so much of from internet reports was pretty much on my doorstep. So in I went to have a quick look. Good god this place was insane. People would actually grab my arm and drag me to their stall asking if I wanted a Rolex, DVD, MP4 player or whatever. My goood, everywhere people just pounced on me. And when I asked the prices of things I was shocked! For example I asked the cost of a t shirt I saw that I had seen the other day in Guangzhou being sold for 55RMB, in Shenzhen it cost a total of 180RMB....That's before you attempt to haggle it down but still, Jesus Christ that 's almost 4 times the price!!! I saw nothing that I wanted to buy, atleast for the prices that were advertised anyway, and I was growing pretty tired of the whole shopping area and felt like going away, but then alas I spotted a massage place and for 98RMB I could get an oil massage, aahhhhh how could I resist, I was traumatized from being physically dragged by shopkeepers, stressed out from the hugely over priced cost of things and tired from all the walking so in I went. I intended for only a 98RMB oil massage but they were really pushy. They asked me if for another 100RMB would I like 2 people to massage me and I said no, they kept on pushing and I kept on saying no, then they asked if I wanted a manicure or pedicure or whichever one it is that is meant for your hands. I have no idea why I said yes, it wasn't even that great, although my nails were in prime condition afterwards, but I ended up paying another 30RMB for that. Then they kept on telling me I'll have to pay a tip aswell! I was quite firm that I would not be paying them any tips seeing as I have been for many massages in China, some very good ones aswell and never had to pay a tip. I even made up some story and explained to them in Chinese that I was a student from England and I was just here for one week staying with my friend who lived in Shenzhen and that I'd learnt Chinese when I was in England through practicing with friends and that I didn't have much money to try and get away with not paying the tip. I even dumbed down my Chinese to pretend I didn't understand the concept of tip in Chinese but somehow I was too weak and I ended up paying the woman 10RMB for a tip. Grr! Then I left the mall and walked up the street a little bit. I found a DVD shop and after that haggling and walking away bought a DVD for the price I was after, it was a boxset and she was charging 95RMB and I got it for 65RMB, I still think I probably got ripped off but it was a lot cheaper than I'd expect to pay in England so no problem. Then as I was walking out of the shop this old woman approached me. She told me in Chinese that there were some beautiful girls upstairs in the building behind us and would I like to go and see them. What for I wandered? Then she demonstrated by doing some sort of motion with her hand that was most obscene. As tempted as I was I decided to turn down this offer because there were many people staring at the strange foreigner being offered the services of prostitutes, including a policeman right infront of the old lady!!! The Policeman didn't seem to bat an eyelid either, he just acted as if all was normal. So I said no. Then I went on a quest to find a McDonalds! Along the journey I was approached by another woman asking the same thing!!! I said no again. Then I found a McDonalds and satisfied the tradition of eating at McDonalds in new cities. Then I decided I was bored and couldn't be bothered to go off and find things to do so headed back to the bus station and was approached on the way to the bus station by two different men asking me if I wanted to go up and see these beautiful girls and have a massage and maybe a bit more etc etc, and again I said no! For a start there were lots of people looking at me and I would have seemed like a filthy foreigner had I accepted these offers, I was bound to get ripped off and possibly end up in trouble, plus I knew of a place in Huizhou where I could go for that sort of stuff far cheaper. Not that I would or anything.
Also I forget to mention on the day I went to Shenzhen, as I was walking to the bus station in Huizhou I was stopped by 3 buddhist monks on the street. They offered me this gold thing in a red envelope and said in Chinese that it's a gift, no cost. How nice! Some Buddhists want to give me a gift, this will be a really nice souvenir! How can I turn it down! So being the dumb foreigner I am I accepted the gift. Then they asked me if I could write my name in Chinese on this little form that other people had filled out. So I wrote my name down in Chinese, then they asked me to write "Ping An" which means peace or safe or something like that, so I wrote it down as best as I could copying the way other people previous to me had written it. Then they asked me to tick these 3 boxes. So I ticked them, being very happy that they'd given me this free gift and that some buddhists would now know my name. Then I finished that all off and said thanks bye! And as I turned to walk away they stopped me and said in Chinese "OK, now give us money." And i went "What?", I couldn't believe it, they'd just told me it was a GIFT, so I explained to them I had no money. They weren't having any of it and they asked me to check my pockets. So I showed them my right pocket as being empty and they were like "What about the other pocket???" so I showed them that pocket as being empty aswell. Luckily they caught me on a day when I was going to a new city and when I go to different cities I tend to take my pouch wallet with me that I can tuck down my trousers and it remains very well hidden from the likes of thieves and buddhists. So I proved them (despite lying) that I had no money apart from 2RMB in change that was laying in my pocket. They whacked some bracelet on my wrist amid all the fuss and everytime I tried to give them the gift back explaining I didn't have any money they'd make some strange buddhist gesture with their hands as if to say NO. Then when I was able to prove to them I had nothing but 2RMB on me, they took the 2RMB and the little gift they gave me and went off leaving me with 2RMB less and a nice pretty red bead bracelet thingy which I almost threw on the floor with anger, but thought better of it because I had intended to buy one of these in the near future anyway. I honestly couldn't believe this, and I have no doubt that they are real buddhists as well, I am certain they weren't fakes, for this is the way China is. Even in China the buddhists monks - people I'd read lots about, respected a lot and really wanted to meet - are lying, selfish, money hungry animals. This put me in a bad mood, just like other relgious folks I've encountered in the past who take their religion too seriously and approach me off the street requesting a donation so that I don't go to hell or something like that. Because of these buddhist monks I now have less respect for Chinese buddhists and less respect for China, well done guys.
Wow this is a long post. Now that I've updated you on all the hot gossip in my life I can move on to talking about how much China pisses me off. The Buddhist thing is a great example, I mean Jesus Christ, I honestly believed they wanted to give that as a gift to me but no, they are liars, using their respected position in most peoples eyes and my innocence as a weapon to gain more money. And what's this money going to go on? Well, I've been to two buddhist temples in China since I've been here. Each time I've seen computers, mobile phones, tvs, satellite dishes etc etc, I'm sure I've even seen some buddhist monks smoking too. Now people are allowed these things if they want, but it does go against the buddhist way of life I'm sure, especially if they want to live in temples, if they go to live temples isn't it so that they can escape the material world? Idiots.
This is the way I've noticed a lot of China is. Just bullshit. I've ranted about England enough before for people to know that I also don't like England and by moaning about China I'm not comparing China to England and saying England is a better country. I'm simply saying these things piss me off because I want to say it. But no, China might not have that. How many websites do I try to access every day that are blocked by the government? Wikipedia for example is completely blocked, no access allowed. I've heard of people sending emails to friends back home moaning about certain aspects of China in their emails, and when they're friends have received them those parts of the email have been marked out with Xs. This is just an example of how closed minded China wants it people to be. They're not allowed to learn outside of the box, this is simply not on. Their school systems are awful. For example, English is a very important subject in their curriculum, yet they only study reading, writing and grammar at school. They don't practice speaking or listening at all. How can they place such emphasis on learning a language if you're not gonna teach them to speak it???????? And then their exams in English are multiple choice, they don't give their students questions where they have to think for themselves and demonstrate opinions or imagination. As a result this leads the serious blowing of minds when kids arrive in English schools and are taught by foreign teachers. Ultimately such an important part of the national curriculum is for no apparent reason, teach them all the hard aspects of a language minus the most practical parts of language thus rendering the skills they have acquired completely and utterly USELESS. That is unless they practice in their limited spare time with friends, family or foreigners, or go to an English school. This removes a lot of their free time, for children in China to even think about enjoying their childhoods this is completely unacceptable. Their education system is very flawed. I don't know much about it I'll admit that but I know enough of it through experience to know that their government fears the thought of them thinking outside of the box. The result of this is that pretty much everyone I speak to has the same opinion on everything. For example; China good, Japan EEEVVVVVIIIIIIILLLL. Yes, Japan committed horrible atrocities in Nanjing that are just beyond evil. But for crying out loud, this was 60 years ago. "Oh but Japan hasn't apologised.." YES THEY HAVE "Oh but in their school history text books they don't mention anything about the Japanese rape of Nanjing" ONE SCHOOL BOOK OUT OF MANY, MANY, MANY. Thinking outside of the box seems impossible for the Chinese, it's just not something to comprehend. This results in incredibly sensitive issues such as Japan and the completely separate country of Taiwan. Yes China, Taiwan is a separate country. Deal with it. The mindset that lead the Japanese to do such horrible things to the Chinese is here in Chinese minds today. Japanese at that time were educated to think that China was nothing but animals and was the only thing standing in the way of Japan ruling the world. China thinks of Japan as evil, the majority of Chinese people I speak to openly hate the Japanese and use the term "ruben guizi (Japanese devil)" as a widely accepted insult for anyone that bothers them. Some people will take great offence to this insult, because it is so insulting to be called a Japanese person, let alone a Japanese devil. This is really racist! China is being racist to a country that hasn't (so I've heard) been involved in any war for the last 50 years.
The political and national insecurities about China piss me off. I don't think I've met a single open minded Chinese person in China. Actually I've met one, possibly a few more, who were willing to consider the fact that Japan might not actually be evil. But what else about China pisses me off? Naive girls who think that going out with a guy for fun is dirty and evil and only marriage is acceptable, thus leading to a vast amount of unhappy marriages. Chinese men's open disrespect for women. The ease at which Chinese men gain a power trip or the sacrifices they make in order to save face. I've met some people I really like in this country but I've met so many people who are just like everyone else, they bore the life out of me. Innocent girls who have no idea of the real world and drunk men who are some of the most dis respectable people I've ever come across. So many people who think I'm amazing because I'm a foreigner and I'm here teaching English, if they just opened their eyes and stopped being so ignorant they'd see that there is absolutely nothing amazing about a foreigner coming over to China to teach English, infact they'd be amazed at how pathetic the majority of English teachers out here are. But this is the way China is, they are given an opinion, this is their opinion, it's not ok to think differently, this is the way they have to think. They're disrespectful to people, they're selfish, I HATE that whenever I go to buy anything I know I am being ripped off because I am a foreigner. I once tried to get in a taxi to go somewhere and I knew the fare would be 6RMB but the meter was broken and the guy told me that to go there would be 15RMB because he wanted to make money. Lots of people wanna make more money, me too, but I don't go around ripping people off. I hate liars and I hate the amount of liars I have to deal with day in and day out here. This country scares me. It's pathetic in a whole lot of ways, yet in being pathetic it is quite efficient at getting things done. Yet the efficiency through patheticness comes with consequences (for example huge disregard to health and safety on building sites, this may get things done a lot faster but a lot of people die and become injured or mutilated, thus rendered useless to China and forced to become the beggars you see laying on the street with one leg or no arms). If China is to become the next mega country that will rule the world then I am scared. A country that can harvest hate on such a grand scale and allow corruption to control everything can't be a very nice country to have as the world power. We've seen what happens when America hates people, what might happen if China gains this power and decides it's time Japan paid for what it did 60 years ago? Or decides it's time Britain paid for what it did 150 or so years ago? What could happen on such a grand scale for the sake of keeping face? What would happen if such a powerful country were to lose face?
I understand this might piss some Chinese people off and I do apologise. I love China, these are the things that piss me off about it. I could write a list about the things in England that piss me off and that would be a lot longer, but I can't be bothered because England doesn't interest me. China interests me a lot and I just wish that somethings were different.
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Now that I've finished reading this, I thought I'd add that Japan hasn't been involved in any wars lately because they weren't allowed to. Post WWII sanctions meant no developing a military beyond a "SDF" (Special Defense Force). So, they haven't really been able to go to war really. America said so. Then along comes Iraq. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with Japan, you could say. Bush sends 152000 troops. Blair sends about 8000. Koizumi sends *1100* ppl. 100 of those are medics. Do you think they really wanted to do that? So why did they? Yup, America said so.