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Published: December 15th 2010
Temple
Old part of the city, Muslim quarter in XianGreetings all,
I've finally got around to starting up a working, operational blog. As I have a terrible memory, I'm hoping that it will help me to record some memory of the world around my for my own security...then when I'm old, withered and entrenched in my own senility, I'll be able to read the Chinese section of my life's adventures and learn something of what my feeble mind failed to register. So for all those with too much time on their hands, or for those who have a despairingly sick fascination with the day to day drudgery of my life, here's a little window into
my world. Go ahead, have a peek...
Life here is pretty relaxed and it's generally a really healthy lifestyle. I've never eaten so much...we get fed three times a day...all really healthy food and A LOT of it. I'm starting to like the continual green tea, well some varieties, and the Chinese seem to have a constant supply of healthy snacks, i.e. bowls of fruit, dried fruit, nuts and seeds.
Minle...the town itself...is pretty well looked after. There's a pretty much ever-present layer of snow n ice covering everything, however after each
Sarah
We found an ace Japanese restaurant in Xian new snow fall, the residents or workers of every building hit the surrounding area at the crack of dawn and take to clearing the snow with brushes and shovels, as a matter of obligation. Each building has a notice designating the rotor. The main roads get cleared pretty quickly by people-power, and a team of luminous-jacketed folk head out with pick-axes to manually hack at icy areas on the main roads.
Visually, it's a mixture of the old world and the new. There are a couple of biggish supermarkets where you can buy most things you'd need (although 'western' branded goods are not so common), a few electrical stores and a couple of computer shops. You can also find a number of karaoke places (though the 'English language' section of the song library is limited to about 20 lyrical masterpieces such as 'Every sha-la-la-la-la, every shoo-bi-do-do, still shines...' and other similar nauseating classics. Frustrating for a karaoke veteran like myself...though I will be using all my unconsiderable influence to address the problem. Many people wear quite fashionable clothes here, although the town is a different place to the innumerable villages in the surrounding area.
At the same time,
the streets are full of seed, fruit and bread vendors pulling their little carts, traditional shoemakers, monks, chickens, donkeys and carts and the like. The butcher's shops just have a few animals hanging off meat hooks, and as there is no seperate slaughter-house, the farmers deliver a sheep or two at a time, and it is killed on the street in front of the shop. The cows here are huge hairy horned beasts, that look more like buffalo. The other day I saw one being slaughtered in front of the butcher's shop, and a crowd of adults and children had gathered round to watch its throat being slit and the blood pouring out onto the road...it's pretty graphic. Everywhere, on sunny days, you can see groups of old men all dressed in dark slacks, some with hats and wispy beards, sitting on little stools they carry out with them and playing cards or chinese chess.
It's pretty cold...hmmm...this week the temperature has been hovering between a maximum of about -8 degrees and a minimum of minus 19 degrees...so if you've been whinging about your freezing tootsies over in blighty, button it! Still, there's usually no cloud cover and lots
of sunshine so that makes a massive difference.
The schools are pretty bare out here and I've been spending a lot of time at village schools in the sticks. Some of them have been right in the mountains,though we can't get up to the more remote ones at the moment as it's Winter and they won't take any risks with the roads so will wait until spring. They normally have a coal-stove in the rooms with a pipe leading out through the wall, though it isn't always fired up and often the door is left open. Everyone wears their coats indoors all day long! The teachers sometimes don't have tapes, equipment or even electrical sockets to plug in equipment. The schools receive money according to how many students they have, so the ones in the villages survive on smaller budgets. The children are so sweet though and absolutely fascinated to see a foreigner. In most lessons they learn by rote, so everywhere you can hear classes of children chanting things together, repeating after the teacher. There was a VSO volunteer here before though, Noreen, who seemed to have a lot of influence on the teachers, so many of them
Joaquim
Our lovely Portuguese classmate studying Chinese in Xian. He retired, then came out here on his own to learn a bit of Chinese. are already teaching using more participatory, interactive methods.
The village houses are really sweet, made from a mixture of mud-bricks and modern bricks. They have little courtyards in the middle of each home with a kind of well where they pull up a length of hose and a tap from underground. Each village used to rely on a little private reservoir for water, but things are starting to modernise now. Having said that, there's nothing in the villages but chickens, donkeys and old men n women, and everywhere you go around here there's just miles of (mostly wheat) fields...with communism, everyone is allocated their own plot of land to farm, and I'd say around half of the local people are farmers. There are big piles of wheat stalks outside every house, which people burn in a little stove hole in the wall of the house. This hole leads to a cavity in the inside of their beds, and so at night the fires heat up their beds so they're all warm.
Our home is a more modern apartment. The bathroom/kitchen are pretty grotty and we've got solar powered heating with the water so it can take a couple
Yinzi
Our Chinese teacher in Xian at IH of days or so to heat up every time you refill the tank...thus, getting used to being smelly more often and occasionally washing in cold water again...wakes you up pretty quick!
The biggest problem has been the banquets...these evening dinners get arranged regularly, where I have to join important folk for work-related dining. They're a customary obligation to show respect to guests. The dinners usually last for at least 2 n a half hours going on 4 and involve a lot of courses followed by innumerable toasts and then drinking games which are the local custom. This week, I had 3 banquets 3 days in a row...Wed, Thur and Friday. People play this complex finger game here where you shout numbers at each other in Chinese and hold up different numbers of fingers to predict the total from you and your opponent's fingers. It's quite fun and incredibly noisy. We've procured special permission just to 'sip' or to switch to tea, due to our 'cultural differences' . The local men all drink baiju, which is a white spirit made from wheat and tastes pretty grim so I don't touch it. They drink it in continual shots as they play
the finger games and some can happily sink a couple of litres between a few of them of an evening. Glasses of red wine are 'necked' in a similar fashion. Actually, a little experience of this custom has largely put me off drinking😊
Sarah already has a fan. A Middle-school girl collared her on the way to work and asked for her photograph. She then turned up to meet her the next day, and took her off to a professional photographers so they could be photographed together😉. We rarely eat together during the week, as she is working in a junior-middle school in town and it's customary to eat with your colleagues. Still, when we get home we don't have to cook, so we get the rest of the evening to chill out and watch the next episode of 'Outrageous Fortune' on the laptop😉 People used to stare at us open-mouthed everywhere we went, but now they just stare at us! The people are really warm, smiley and friendly and are always laughing.
After years of running around like a madman at work every day, doing this job in the countryside has been a breath of fresh air.
The butcher
At home in Minle. The cooking section of the kitchen is unheated...icy cold! The pace of life is far less frenetic and I feel a whole lot more relaxed. I'm learning to communicate in Chinese...slowly, slowly...although I often find that I'm using the right words but noone can understand me until I've said them three times. The pronunciation is tricky.
That's all for now. Until the next thrilling installment😊
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Edwinner
non-member comment
You dirty blogger!
Great to see some piccies of where you are mate! The one's of X'ian bring back memories! (Did you check for my Zippo in the Muslim Quarter)? Looks quite striking where you are! Always wanted to make it that far west! Who knows though! Might get round to it whilst you're still there! T'would be grand! Like this blog you're using! It's set out a bit better than that one I used! Like how you can drop the photos into the text! Although speaking of those.....who were the Terracotta "Warriers"? Were they the Fighting Farriers Emperor Qin used to mess up the enemy cavalry?! :~) (Tut tut!! And you an English teacher)! ;~) You be able to get on Skype this weekend mate?