Two nights out dancing, a wedding and a trip to Xingyang

---

We've had a very busy week and are both fighting off head colds as well. Last week we attended a school 'ball'. We were 'told' to be at the basketball stadium at 7pm but of course when we arrived there was nobody else there. People starting drifting in and at 7.30 the school bus arrived full of nurses from the local hospital. The ball was to celebrate Nurse's Day and to allow the young male teachers to meet young unattached ladies! We were herded into the stadium which was decorated with candles in plastic buckets and a disco ball in the centre of the dance floor. The electrical cord from the disco ball was strung across the floor and all night people kept tripping it! Safety regulations in China are nonexistent....

The nurses sat along one side in a row and the music started. It was provided by a karaoke machine and also came with an attached screen upon which couples were shown demonstrating ballroom dancing steps. We were introduced to the 'leaders' of the hospital and also met some 'leaders' of our own school whom we had not met before. They had all been out for a meal and were quite drunk and very loud. The Chinese cannot drink much alcohol without becoming noticeably drunk. For the rest of the night I had to dance with these men - one charming man spent his time dancing with me chewing gum in my face! The music was all ballroom dancing style and we soon found that the Chinese take their dancing very seriously - they all know the steps and are good dancers - even the young people though they told me that they prefer to dance disco style. Thankfully the men I was dancing with were too drunk and unsteady on their feet to notice my lack of ability.

Meanwhile all the young male teachers had arrived and were literally pushed across to the nurses by the older men there. It was funny if somewhat embarrassing to watch. They are so incredibly shy that most of the men couldn't pluck up the courage to ask the nurses to dance and they ended up dancing with each other, as did the ladies. We are talking about people around the age of 24 years! As you can imagine it is a hard task to encourage our students to talk aloud in English if their teachers are that shy. Anyway I was stumbling around the floor with the drunks and Jerry was made to dance with all the nurses. None of the men had their wives with them for Jerry to dance with - men socialise here constantly without their women. The nurses didn't want to dance with Jerry either but basically had no choice. We managed to get half a dance together before we got into trouble for dancing together and were separated. It was such a funny night and eventually finished at about 9.30 when all the nurses were led back onto the bus and driven home.

The next night we were taken out to dinner by all the Grade 1 teachers. There are 7 young female teachers and Carl who is their boss. Carl is only 30 years old and great fun. He has an adorable daughter called Shiny who repeats everything you say in English. She stands out on her balcony in the morning and calls out to us as we go past - "hello Lilly, hello Werry!" We ate at a restaurant in the city and the usual enormous array of food was ordered. They were all very excited to be there - it meant a night away from school for them and they were determined to enjoy it. All the female teachers drank sweet tinned milk with their meal, though I opted for orange fanta. It's the first time I had seen adults drink milk but they said that they are still young and need to drink it to be healthy. The Chinese all drink hot water all the time as well to be healthy.

Jerry and Carl were drinking beer and at the end of the meal all the female teachers wanted to ''gan-bei' (cheers) with Jerry so asked for a glass of beer each. The glasses were tiny but the youngest teacher had 3 and was nearly sick! At the end of the meal thankfully they asked for takeaway boxes and the food was tipped in and given to the youngest teachers to take home. They had collected money to pay for the meal but didn't have enough to cover the cost when the bill was paid. Jerry was able to put a 100 Yuan in to cover the remainder which they accepted gracefully. Once outside all the young ladies asked Mr Chen to take them dancing - they were obviously trying to make the most of their night out! They are all very formal together even when they are having fun.

So we ended up out dancing two nights in a row! This time we went to the local dance hall/disco which is a skating rink during the day. Jerry had a great time with all the young ladies _they didn't take it seriously at all - but it turned into a night of 'teach the foreigner how to dance' for me! The men at the club were all serious dancers and kept coming to Carl to ask his permission for me to dance with them. The ballroom dancers were still on the screen and a few people were singing karaoke at 10 Yuan a time! I actually had a fun time - at least these guys weren't drunk and were mostly patient with my lack of skill, though I had my elbow yanked into the right position frequently and they kept pushing my shoulders back. I was rather handicapped as I was wearing my walking boots! We left about 9.30 pm when the disco started, much to the disappointment of the ladies.

Friday night we met Mel and Renee at the outdoor eating area for our weekly meal. The young couple who run the stall are always very welcoming when we arrive. It was a particularly bad night for beggars and we saw them everywhere. We always give them something, particularly the elderly or crippled. There were two young men, one without feet and the other with badly twisted feet dragging themselves along the footpaths. It's so sad to see and most of the locals treat them with contempt. Another very sad sight was a mentally handicapped man wearing nothing else other then a pair of filthy underpants which he held up with one hand as the elastic was gone. His other hand was in his pants fondling himself. It really upset the girls. There is no such thing as social security here. Another old lady had an argument with the stall holder next to us (I think she had been begging and was told to leave). She got very upset and ended up standing in the middle of the road shouting at everybody when they went past - we presumed she was telling them not to eat at that food stall! Another night when we were eating there a fight broke out between a table of men and one of them threw a beer bottle which narrowly missed Jerry. It's certainly never boring in the city on Friday night!

On Saturday we braved the local bus station and purchased tickets to Xinyang in Henan Province - two hours away across the mountains. We had driven along part of the road before on our days out with the school and had been wanting to travel it again as the scenery was very beautiful and the little villages along the route very poor and rural. The drive through the mountains was great though a bit slippery in places as the road was dirt and there had been rain the previous 24 hours. When we arrived in Xingyang the bus dropped us in the centre of the city and kept going - we only hoped that at the end of the day we would be able to get home again! However we managed to find the railway station and eventually found that there was a train leaving for Guangshui late that afternoon.

In the city we saw the first Muslims we had seen in China - they were plucking ducks on the footpath - the lady was wearing a short black headscarf. The further west you go in China the more Muslims you will find. The city was very quiet - certainly in comparison to Wuhan - and the streets were clean. We spent the day just wandering around and exploring the shops. The hills around the city were planted with tea and it was obviously the main industry judging by all the shops selling tea. Even all the small shops had large metal bins full of bulk tea for sale. There is some very interesting tea here - all the Chinese people carry containers like jam jars (glass with screw on tops) which are a quarter full of large tea leaves - and quite often dried flower heads - and then water which they keep topping up. We had lunch at a street stall - an omelette wrapped around a savoury pancake full of what tasted (and looked) like grass! It was actually delicious. We discovered a calligraphy art shop which had really delicate paintings for sale. Both the girls bought one - very detailed ink drawings on rice paper, beautifully framed - for under $15 each. Jerry and I plan on visiting the city again - if only for the scenery on the way. I would love to travel through those hills when they are covered in snow, which they definitely are during the winter months. We did all decide that we could quite happily live there though and we've certainly never said that about Wuhan. We left late in the afternoon for the train trip home which took an hour. The main mountain that we passed was Rooster Mountain (about half an hour from Guangshui) which was developed as a hill station resort by American missionaries in the early 20th century. You can climb to the top of the mountain and we'll do that before we leave. Chiang Kai-shek’s former residence is here and open to the public. I think that the first walk we went on with the teachers was on the other side of this mountain (it was certainly in the area) but I haven't checked with them yet.

The next day we had been invited to a wedding feast at a local restaurant. We couldn't find out much about it except that we were to catch the school bus at midday. We thought that we should be a little more formally dressed then our jeans so dragged out the 'wedding' clothes. Upon arriving at the restaurant we were met by the bride (a teacher from my staffroom) who was dressed in a white western style dress with a corsage of red flowers pinned to it and another in her hair. Red is the traditional colour for weddings here. We were ushered upstairs where groups of quests were seated in separate dining rooms. There must have been at least 100 people there in five or six different rooms. We were then told that the actual ceremony had been only for the family that morning and we were attending a feast for friends only. The staff kept bringing out plates of food, a lot of it was based around wheat and rice. There was a sweet pink coloured rice which we were told is the rice they make their alcohol from and a runny porridge made from wheat husks.

The bride and groom came around to greet everybody - she had changed into a long red dress. She poured rice wine into everybody's glass and the groom gave all the men a packet of cigarettes each. Firecrackers were let off outside and the air was soon full of dense white smoke. All the guests asked for takeaway food containers to shovel the leftover food into and at 1pm everybody got up and left! We hadn't been there an hour! It was raining heavily by then and we ended up getting mud all over our clothes. I should have just left my jeans on... I gave the bride a present yesterday - some tea cups and imported chocolates though the teachers told me not to give her anything. The traditional present for a wedding is cash in a red envelope but it appears that the young couple have to return the money at some stage during their lives and as they wouldn't be able to repay ours the other teachers said that they would be embarrassed to receive it. It seemed such a waste of money - all that food, half of which wasn't eaten and all over in under an hour.

Last week Jerry and I went for a massage - Jerry has been having regular neck massages here and has noticed a big improvement in the mobility of his neck, still stiff from his accident at work last year. I went for a reflexology session (foot massage) and really enjoyed it. I shall certainly go again. The clinic is very clean and professional and a real family concern. Jerry gives English lessons to their daughter whilst he's being massaged. Total cost for the both massages was 45 Yuan - under $7. Later the same evening I went with Mel and Renee for a $3 facial as well - an evening of total indulgence for almost no money.

Friday evening we had our weekly meal with the girls and were very pleased to see our mentally handicapped underpants man had been cleaned up and given a set of clothes. We had debated about offering him clothes the week before but didn't really know how to go about it. Jerry and I arrived home that evening and found the young boy without feet curled up outside our school gates sheltering from the rain. We went and bought him some food and gave it to him, as well as some cash. Next day we bought him another meal of bananas, dumplings and bread and took it over to him. We were surprised to see him immediately throw the bread away and only eat the rest. He is no longer there so presumably has been moved on. Also this week we purchased a DVD player as our computer has lost it's sound and the school have told us we must repair it ourselves if we want to use it. We decided to put the money into a DVD player so at least we could watch movies on our large TV screen. However the first one we bought wouldn't allow us to remove the subtitles so we had to return it and buy another one twice as expensive! We'll appreciate it during the winter months though......

On Saturday we walked to a nearby Buddhist monastery. I wish to find out when they have their services as I would love to go back and listen to their chanting. I've never forgotten hearing the monks at a monastery we visited in Thailand. There were a lot of musical instruments, including a large drum, inside the Guangshui monastery as well as very large Buddha statues which seemed to be nearly copper in colour. The roof was hanging with colourful silk banners. Behind the main building we found a smaller, older temple with an internal bamboo ceiling. Melissa also found some monks curled up on their beds fast asleep! They woke up, looked at us and went immediately back to sleep. Sleeping during the middle of the day in China is very popular - everywhere you go people are fast asleep, heads on desks, lying on shop counters, or stretched out on chairs. Nothing disturbs them - I'm sure you could rob them and they wouldn't even notice most of the time.
The attitude to work is so different here - everybody spends a long time at work but most people (in shops and offices at least) don't work very hard. They sit on the footpaths out the front and chat, knit, play cards or mah-jong. Some will play shuttlecock on the footpath.

After we visited the monastery we kept walking away from Guangshui along the road, and spent some time chatting with the local people. We had a great 'conversation' with a tiny hunched elderly lady who was collecting flower heads from beside the road - maybe they were for use in medicine or tea. The fields are very busy at the moment - the rape has been cut by hand and left in bunches in the fields to dry. The farmers are now laying big sheets of plastic out and beating the dried stalks with wooden tools to release the tiny black seeds. The waste product is then burnt - the air is grey with smoke - and spread over the fields as fertiliser. Next the farmers are ploughing the fields with their water buffalo and wooden ploughs. Then the fields are flooded and rice is being planted. We've watched people planting it - backbreaking work as they are bent from the waist, nearly knee deep in sludge pushing small plants into the mud. And they plant it incredibly fast. We kept walking until we met a bus heading back to Guangshui, flagged it down and headed back into the city - and were surprised that we had walked so far! We always seem to cover a lot of distance during our weekend walks. Next day we walked through the fields again and ended up getting stuck as we manoeuvred our way through the rice paddies. Everything is so much wetter and muddier then it was a month ago because of the irrigation drainage used for the rice paddies! I love our weekends! School is going well though - all the students are starting to worry already about their end of year exams - the school year in China finishes mid year. The Grade 3 students have very stressful university entrance exams starting on 6th June - we will have more time off then as the school closes down whilst they sit for these exams. The students now have wakeup music at 5.40am in the morning as classes start now at 6am! What a life!

---