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Published: June 28th 2014
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http://s251.photobucket.com/albums/gg311/draftwrite/ …..Love China Day #1. One of the nuts holding the very useful lockable carrier on the back of my scooter has fallen off. It's loose & rattling. I pull up at one of the makeshift bike & tyre repair “shops” at the side of the road. A couple of armchairs, a selection of rusty tools, some old tyres hanging from a faded sunshade. The old fellow gets up from the chair & is surprised when I am able to explain to him in Chinese what the problem is. He roots around in a box, returns with a screw & nut & quickly fixes the problem. “Duo shao qian?”, (How much?). “Yi kuai”, (One yuan). That's about 18 cents Australian, or 10 pence in England. I try to give him ¥2 but he resists vigorously.....
…..Hate China Day #1. As I still haven't been able to make contact with whoever it is at China Net that cancels accounts & refunds money I decide they should come to repair the little router-internet connection device-box-thingy, which hasn't been working for about 2 weeks, leaving me, once more using the school's internet. The guy finally arranges a
Foreign Teachers, Teppenyaki, Yangzhou
Official end of year dinner, with Dennis, the foreign teacher's cook. time to come, quickly establishes the box is indeed faulty, installs another &, within 10 minutes of his departure the lights on the new one cease to flash & I reconnect to the school's at least partially functional system, again.....
…..Love China Day #2. I realise Selene, who interviewed me for the radio show, is probably a good person to ask regarding Chinese musicians who might want to play a mixture of music with a couple of foreigners, ie: Steve & myself. She quickly returns with a suggestion of a guzheng player who is interested in playing more than just Chinese classical music. Steve & I are going to try out the new Secrecy bar/restaurant in the new & buzzing Hong Qiao, (Rainbow Square), area near the Slender West Lake park. Selene & the musician, Chen Yun, arrive with their partners. Shen Yue just comes to listen to the show. As people are being introduced Chen Yun suddenly lights up. She remembers being interviewed by Shen Yue, previously the host of an arts programme on Yangzhou TV, when she was a teenager, 20 years ago! Yes, in China it is possible to have a small town of 4 million.....
…..as a postscript to the last episode, in the West of Yangzhou I bump into my German friend, Stefan. We have a cup of coffee together &, having been in the Secrecy restaurant on the same night, he mentions that he spoke to the guzheng player's husband & discovered that HE works with Klass, our Dutch friend.....
…..Hate China Day #2. While her husband stands nearby a woman is apparently adjusting the dress of a very small toddler near the checkouts at the Da Run Fa supermarket as I go to pay for my goods. But no, she is facilitating his urge to pee on the floor. Only a little but … I just stand close by & stare at them … for a very long time. First they just laugh & wave, then look confused, then walk away, laughing again, but very nervously. I ask them whether they are animals or people. Evidently they're pretending not to understand my accent or are wondering if it's just a rhetorical question.....
…..Love China Day #3. I am at the end of a row of e-bike shops. The further you go down the street the stranger the bikes &
scooters. Leopardskin paint jobs & seats, Mad-Max style scooters & home-made customised monstrosities. I'm in search of an air horn. If you've read previous blogs you probably know why. ¥80 for the horn & they offer to fit & wire it in for another ¥100. About $30 all up. The bike has a horn switch on each side of the handlebars so I ask them to leave one connected to the existing horn & the other to the air-horn, which fits nicely out of sight behind the front fairing. While people regularly travel the wrong way down the bike lane I don't have a problem with it IF they stick to one side & look where they're going. There seems to be an increase in the number of people doing this 2 & 3 abreast. I love the look on their faces when they glance up from their conversation or texting thinking a cement truck is approaching.....
…..Hate China Day #3. We get several days of appalling smog. It's summer, you can't even see where the sun is in the sky &, at its worst, nothing beyond about half a kilometre is visible at all. It's debilitating, depressing &
Graduation, Yangzhou University
Elaine & Grace, preparations & Shao Kao with friends afterwards. worrying. Recent rains seem to have cleaned the air a bit. There's a lot of talk about fixing the issue but the problem is on a scale not seen before in human history. Then they can start on the water & the soil.....
…..Love China Day #4. If you had a load of about 30 live geese to sell, how would you go about it? In China you can take them on your electric flat-bed trike, stop in the bike lane halfway up the Wenchang bridge, over the Grand Canal, get them all to sit in the bike lane, very calmly, & wait for customers. Such a pity I didn't have my camera, (I can't rely on the phone camera to give me a decent picture in these circumstances).....
…..Hate China Day #4. The (cableless) cable guy arrives, eventually, after numerous text messages, to investigate why the China Net internet “service”, not great in the first place, has now stopped working altogether. He checks the little router box, shakes his head, pulls another out of his bag, connects it & leaves. Within 10 minutes, (I kid you not), it's not working. It takes another 3 days of calling
& texting to get a, by this time, irritated little man to come back, perform some shoddy wiring, connect another box & stump off, pulling half my mosquito net off the door.....
…..I agree to help Elaine & Grace with their graduation performance at the university. All I have to do is accompany their songs on the guitar on a big open air stage, in front of about 1,000 people. It's a big deal for them though. I have no idea that on the big day it will involve going with them to a make up parlour in Shi Dai Guang Chang, (Times Square), in the city centre & waiting for about 40 minutes while they are heavily layered for the stage. Luckily I take the book I'm slowly reading & no one takes much notice of me after the initial surprise of seeing a man, & a foreigner, there. Their attention is diverted by Grace, furiously rehearsing the lyrics for her first ever singing performance!.....
.....in the end Grace's song is a show stopper. She puts everything into hand gestures & facial expressions. The audience love it. Elaine's dance routine before the singing is also a cut
above the other performances so, by the time she returns to do her songs, she is already a star. Tears afterwards, of course, as they finally say goodbye to their teachers & “tong xue”, (classmates). Then we retire to an open air “shao kao”, or barbecue eatery to celebrate with heavily spiced lamb skewers, eggplant, chicken wings etc. Oh, & beer.....
…..Elaine seems to have found, or been found, by a nice guy, Agan, who I met at one of our rehearsal sessions. She will return to Hainan where they will get married sometime in the next year or two.....
…..everyone, well, the foreign teachers, are leaving, to various location in China or to return home. Some won't be coming back, a pity as this has been probably the best group we've had, very few personality clashes. I'll miss all of the departing teachers & hope we'll be able to keep in touch. As an “old hand” now in China I find I am supplying maps & information about places to visit, much as the experienced teachers did when I first arrived.....
…..now, I have to go & get my gear packed for the trip to Tibet.
Dong Fang Hong, Yangzhou
Getting ready to start another last supper, at Mama Nancy's... I leave for Shanghai on Sunday. The train leaves Shanghai station on Monday morning. It takes 1 day, 7 hours to get to Xiling, in Qinghai. We then have to change to the high altitude rail line from Xiling to Lhasa, another day's trip. I still don't know how many people will be going, our bunks are spread all over the train. Still, the lessons for the next part of my Chinese & Spanish study officially start on the 30
th of June so I've copied the material onto my tablet, printed things & generally made sure I have things to do. Plus bought another 16Gb card for my camera. I'll let you know how it goes.....
…..Love or Hate? Quote of the week, from an accused murderer & cannibal in Tennessee, (!), “I hug the people I hate so I know how big to dig the hole in the backyard”.....
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Kate
non-member comment
I like the stories you tell but if I were living the life you describe I don't know how I would cope with all those [probably forever] goodbyes. x