Birthday & New Year Celebrations; Winter Holiday & Chinese New Year
Xin nian kuai le, gong xi fa cai – to all!
That means Happy New Year and hoping fortune (money) comes your way.
Well, there is so much to tell you all, so, if you are busy at work, this email will either give you a much needed distraction, or really annoy the crap out of you! But if you don’t want to read about my adventures in China, then the delete button is always at your disposal, but be warned, there are some good stories buried in the depths of this epistle. If you just want to skim for those gems, then look for these key words – Auld Lang Syne; Chinese Tibetan medicine; burn cream; small wooden bucket; wood fired bath; public showers; bitch; and driving in China!
So, in my last email, I told you about my trip to Shanghai and Christmas celebrations in Yancheng. Before, I tell you about my recent travels, I would like to tell you about my birthday and New Year’s Eve (by the Western calendar). For ease of reference, I will call our New Year’s Eve “NYE” and the Chinese New Year “CNY”.
My birthday is 29 December. In Australia, my birthday always falls in the summer/Christmas holidays, so I have never been at school or worked on my birthday before. However, in China, there is no holiday for Christmas, and my birthday fell on a Wednesday, so I had to teach 2 classes on my birthday! Fortunately, it was not too taxing, as I was giving the final exams the next week, so my classes involved going over the material which would be in the exam, which I had already written the weekend before.
Birthday celebrations are often not a big thing in China, because traditionally everyone’s birthday is New Year’s day (CNY). Everyone is a year older on CNY. Some Chinese people don’t even know their actual birth date, or they only know the date by the lunar calendar, which changes every year. So my friend, Betty, for example, knows that she was born on 11 June in the lunar calendar, but that date will be sometime in July in our calendar, depending on when CNY day falls. This makes working out the actual age of a Chinese person quite difficult!
But I know when my birthday is and I made a point of telling my students the week before, so, on arriving at my first class, I received a lovely bunch of flowers and then a card from my 2nd class. Also, some individual students in other classes, gave me small gifts or cards. I had also received a few care packages from home before Christmas, so I was feeling well loved.
That evening, I invited 13 students and Max to dinner. We went to the “Little Donkey Hot Pot” not far from the college. Hot Pot is quite an event and an experience. I strongly recommend it to any visitors to China. It originates from Sichuan (Szechuan) Province and is meant to be very hot and spicy. Basically, you have a very spicy broth boiling in a big pot set into the table, you order the meat & vegetables etc that you want and then throw it all in randomly to cook. Everyone then uses their own chopsticks to pluck things out of the broth. It is usually a very lengthy and messy affair, but very enjoyable. Anyway, as the name suggests, the specialty of this particular hot pot restaurant was donkey, so we had donkey meatballs, and pieces of donkey meat, in addition to many other interesting and delicious items.
There were only 4 male students there and they thought they would challenge me to a drinking contest, so we did a lot of gan bei with little glasses of beer. Of course, they do not realize that I am an old hand at drinking beer, and the beer in China is very weak, so they succeeded only in getting themselves drunk. When they realized this, they moved on to Max (who is a pussy when it comes to drinking) and some of the hardier girl students. (Most Chinese women, at least those that I have met, do not like beer and don’t usually drink any sort of alcohol with regularity).
Anyway, by about 9:30pm, I judged that the boys had probably had enough, by the fact that Jordan wanted to fight the man at the next table who apparently said something he did not like. So, I paid the bill (in China, when you invite people to dinner, the host pays – it cost 400 kuai, which is a fortune here, but only about $65 to feed 15 people, including the beer and OJ) and we had a very entertaining walk back to the college with lots of singing and laughing. The students walked me to my apartment, then all left, apart from Betty and Meggie who, with Max, came to my apartment to listen to music and get into the real drinking – well, I did anyway! Betty had bought me a birthday cake, so we tucked into that, but the Chinese cake is like a plain sponge cake with very sweet mock cream icing, so not all that appealing to me. Meggie left around 10:45pm, Max around midnight and Betty stayed the night at my apartment.
The next morning, I woke up to a winter wonderland. It had snowed overnight and Yancheng was all white. So, although I did not get a white Christmas, I did get a white birthday! I had to go to class at 10:00am, and it was quite a treat to walk to work in the snow (it snowed for most of the day).
On Thursday, John & Gay, from Melbourne, took me out to dinner for my birthday. Gay had procured a little toaster oven from somewhere, and picked up ingredients for a chocolate cake in Shanghai; so she gave me a chocolate cake, which, although a little dry, was a great improvement on the Chinese one.
Friday was New Year’s Eve. I met some of the other foreigners for lunch at one of our regular haunts. There were another 2 bunches of flowers and ANOTHER cake (the Chinese cake). Luckily, I am friends with Betty the sweet tooth, and she managed to polish off most of the left over cakes.
Friday night, was a combined birthday celebration for me and Mandy, from Canada, whose birthday was the next day, as well as NYE. The foreigners and a few Chinese friends met at another hot pot restaurant down town. My friend, Diane, had bought me 2 bottles of Australian red wine, so I enjoyed most of one bottle, which was a lovely change from weak beer. (Yes, I did offer to share it with other people, but, much to my delight, there were not many takers!)
After another lengthy hot pot session, a group of us went to play a game of ten pin bowling. It was very fortunate that the restaurant, bowling alley, KTV and the bar are all in the same complex, so we did not have to go far.
We then retired to the “Sunshine Bar” for some drinks – back to the weak beer. There was a live band, as usual, playing Chinese songs very loudly. There were a few others in the bar, but it was mostly just us foreigners. It was a bit too loud and you could not talk much, so a small group of us decided to divert to KTV for awhile. KTV stands for karaoke TV and obviously is a place you go to sing karaoke, a very popular past time in China. You rent a private room with your own karaoke machine and TV, and buy your snacks and drinks to take in with you. We had a good old time singing really old songs, really badly. By the time we left KTV and went back to the bar, it was about 11:30pm and there was no-one left in the bar except for the staff and the other foreigners, who were all up dancing. The band had gone home, so it was DJ music.
We were all gearing up for midnight. We had asked the bar staff to stop the music one minute before midnight, so we could do the countdown and sing Auld Lang Syne. They said “Meiwenti” (No problem). However, the very loud music failed to stop, our watches were not synchronized, so we had about 3 different countdowns which you could not hear above the music, and at midnight the DJ put on a very strange techno version of Happy Birthday – presumably for Mandy’s birthday. The staff then came out with a big stuffed animal thing and presented it to Mandy. She told them it was my birthday too, so they went away and came back with 2 small stuffed animal things for me! Eventually, we all joined hands anyway and jumped around happily shouting Auld Lang Syne above the music – no-one knows the words anyway!
So, the party started to dwindle after about 12:15pm and Betty and I left about 1:00am, leaving only Dan, Mandy, Jen & Hanlon to party on, but by the looks of Mandy, she was not going to last too much longer.
So, that is Christmas, my birthday and NYE in a nut shell. All in all, a very interesting experience!
The Monday after NYE was a holiday for the whole school. In fact, there was a 3 day holiday for NYE – January 1, 2 & 3. I kept trying to tell everyone that January 1 & 2 were a Sat & Sun and therefore there were no classes, so how could it be considered a “holiday”, but nobody wanted to listen to me. So, anyway, I did not have to do my one class on Monday morning.
Classes resumed on Tuesday 4 January, which was the start of my 3 days of giving final exams to my students. Actually, the 2 weeks of exams was not due to start until Monday 10 January, but the foreign teachers are allowed to give their exams earlier. I was puzzled as to why this was the case, and my enquiries revealed that the foreign teacher’s classes are often considered to be unimportant and therefore it is best to get them out of the way so the students can concentrate on the real exams. I was a bit offended by this, and decided that perhaps next semester I won’t bother preparing for my classes! Especially my Advanced Writing classes!
In typical Yancheng Teacher’s College fashion, there was absolutely no flow of information regarding what was expected in terms of the final exams. I am sure the English department would not even have known if I didn’t give exams. On making enquiries, I found out that the final examination was usually worth 70% of the overall mark, whilst the other 30% was for some vague concept of class participation. Pity I was not told that earlier. I had already given my Advanced Writing class 4 writing assignments during the term worth 60% of the mark, so their final exam was only worth 40%. I hardly know one student from the next, so it is a bit difficult for me to give them a mark for class participation!
My 3 oral English classes were pretty easy. I gave them a topic the week before and told them to give a 1 minute prepared speech on the topic and then I would ask an impromptu question about the topic. I marked them in class as they spoke – 100% for their final exam.
I have 2 audio-visual classes and 2 advanced writing classes, so I wrote 1 exam for each subject. However, lack of experience as a teacher is responsible for me not realizing that if I was only going to write 1 exam, both classes should have the exam on the same day. Of course, this did not happen, so the later class in each subject got a bit of an unfair advantage – oops! It also seems that cheating and plagiarism is not frowned upon as seriously as it is in our school system and, given there are so many students in the class with them all virtually sitting on top of each other, it was a bit difficult to stop the furtive glances at their classmate’s paper. And it seems most of my students do not understand the instruction “Absolutely no talking during the exam”, as many of them continued to whisper to each other despite my warnings.
So the exams were over by Thursday afternoon and I then spent the next few days marking audio-visual and finalizing the marks for Oral English. I had planned a trip to Shanghai, so I left the marking for Advanced Writing until my return as I did not relish the fact of having to mark 85, 250 word expository essays, together with identifying transitions in a paragraph. I found the transitions section of the exam difficult to mark, given that I’m still not sure I know what constitutes a transition. Basically, if the student identified a word or a phrase as a transition, I generally marked it as correct with a few exceptions. Can anyone tell me if “and” & “or” are transitions? I think they are, but I decided not to let them have “and” & “or” because they are just a bit too obvious. That is my rationale anyway, and I am sticking to it!
Quite frankly, it really did not matter what I put in the exam, or how I marked it, or what results the students ultimately received. At the end of the day, I had to hand in a sheet of paper with the students’ names and student numbers and their final result. If I did that, the department was satisfied!
So, on Wed, 12 January, while my students were studying for and sitting their REAL exams, I went to Shanghai for a few days with Max & Diane. Max was flying back to America on the 15th for the winter holiday, Diane wanted to visit Shanghai before she left to go home to Australia, and I had arranged to meet my Uncle. I won’t bore you with the details as I wrote at length about Shanghai in my last email.
I finished marking the Advanced Writing exams by the Tues of the next week, and then spent the rest of the week pottering around waiting for the term to end. I could have left earlier if I had wanted to, but originally I was going to go straight to one of my student’s homes when she had finished her exams.
But plans changed and I ended up leaving on the Saturday with Piers and Rachel (both from Melbourne and teaching at a middle school here) to go to Beijing as they got a tour package for a price that could not be resisted – 1430 Yuan for return flights from Nanjing to Beijing, 4 nights accommodation, food, entry fees, guide, etc – that is about AU$250. We had to get ourselves to Nanjing, which is about 3-4 hours by bus from here, but that was no problem as Piers & Rachel have guanxi with a rich family in Yancheng and they gave us one of their cars and driver to take us to Nanjing. It was snowing/sleeting most of the way there, so I was grateful that the driver was a fairly cautious one (for Chinese standards).
We stayed in Nanjing for one night and then left early the next morning for Beijing. We were picked up at the airport by the tour guide, Emily. Her English was very, very limited, but we were not promised an English speaking guide and, luckily, Piers speaks Chinese so was able to do a reasonable amount of translating for us. The hotel we stayed at was quite a way out of the downtown area of the city and was of a pretty low standard, but it had beds, a TV with the English channel, a western toilet and a warm shower, so what more is needed? The only other person on the tour was a 40 something Chinese lady from Nanjing. She and I shared a room but she had no English and I’ve got no Chinese so our conversations were pretty limited. I spent most of the time we were at the hotel in the room with Piers and Rachel, drinking local beer and watching TV.
So for the next few days we were ferried around to the different tourist sites in Beijing. On the afternoon of our arrival, we went to the Summer Palace, which was the summer residence for the Emperors of the last dynasty, the Qing dynasty. The grounds and gardens of the Summer Palace are quite magnificent. It is built on a massive lake, which is apparently man-made, and we were very excited to find that the entire lake was frozen. There were signs saying not to walk on the ice, but we ignored those signs, as nobody else seemed to be obeying them.
We spent a few hours there and then visited a Chinese Tibetan medicine hospital. When we arrived, we were hurried into a small room and had to wait there for 45 minutes before someone came to talk to us. We were then given a spiel on Chinese Tibetan medicine by a well spoken man before another doctor arrived to give us a “free” consultation. Apparently, a doctor who practices traditional Chinese medicine can diagnose your medical problems simply by taking your pulse and looking at your tongue. The doctor did not speak English (apparently, although I suspect he did), so he had another English speaking female doctor/nurse/translator with him. I was volunteered to go first. When I sat down, I was asked my age and the doctor took hold of both my wrists. I was then asked to stick my tongue out, and there was such a look of shock and surprise on the doctor’s face that I thought he was going to fall off his chair. “Gee, something is not good here,” I thought to myself. Through the translator, the doctor told me that, although I might not have any symptoms, I was in moderate health and my blood and energy circulation were not working well enough and my metabolism was slow. This later problem, he said, accounts for me being overweight. (This is not really news to me!) He prescribed 2 different medicines, one to improve my liver function. Then he said that my freckles result from the poor blood and energy circulation and he would prescribe a medicine to “beautify my face” and take away the freckles. Well, you can imagine how well that one went down. I asked the translator to tell the doctor that freckles are considered a sign of beauty in my country and I did not want any medicine to remove my freckles. He kept on insisting that I needed one of the other medicines, but I was hesitant at 420 Yuan for a bottle that lasts 1 month. He prescribed a medicine for Rachel to improve her kidney function and told her that she would be “cured” (of what we are still not sure) in 1 month. I asked whether I would be “cured” of my weight problem in a month if I took the medicine, but the question was avoided. Eventually I gave in and paid $70 Australian for what amounts to “diet” pills for weight loss. I have not started taking the pills yet, but will let you know if they have a miraculous effect!
The next morning, we headed out early for Tiananmen Square. The weather was bitterly cold: minus 10 degrees. There was no snow during the time we were in Beijing, although the temperature was always below 0 and all the lakes were frozen. Anyway, I was well rugged up with thermal underwear and various layers, but the hands and face felt like they might fall off.
Tiananmen Square is a huge concrete expanse set around the Chairman Mao mausoleum, a few old city gates and in front of the gates to the Forbidden City. It really is quite massive, but I think could use a few trees and garden beds to spruce up its appearance a bit. As it was the middle of winter and f…. cold, there were not too many people milling about the square. We wanted to go into the mausoleum to check out the Chairman, but unfortunately it was closed. So the next stop was the Forbidden City.
The Forbidden City is the city palace of the Emperors from the Ming & Qing dynasties. It is so called as it was off limits to all but the Emperor and his elite for 500 years. The buildings which are there today are mostly post 18th Century as the Forbidden City was ransacked and destroyed many times as well as going up in flames quite a bit. We spent a few hours wandering through the Forbidden city. Piers translated what he could from our guide, Emily, and there were a few English signs so we were able to determine a bit of the history. I was quite surprised at the lack of English signage, and also very surprised at the sparsity of the furnishings in the rooms. As magnificent as the ancient architecture is, it got a bit boring after awhile as there was nothing much to look at in the rooms. And again, too much concrete and not enough trees. There was one garden area, but given it is winter, the trees and garden beds were all bare. Of course, it is still worth a visit, but my recommendation would be to go in spring. If you visit, don’t miss the climb up the hill out the back gate of the Forbidden City as this affords great views over the whole of the Palace, the only downside being the air pollution.
Next we took a lovely stroll around Beihai lake, not to far from the Forbidden City. After lunch we visited the drum tower, but rather than seeing the drum, we were herded into a small room, given a spiel about the fortune lion and pressured to buy jade. I resisted the temptation.
Next we took a pedicab ride around the old “hutong” area. “Hutong” means “narrow alleyways” and it is where a quarter of Beijing’s residents live in “siheyuan”, which are old walled courtyards. We tried to hire an English speaking guide, but it turns out she had less English than Emily, so the lack of information about the hutongs was a bit disappointing. We stopped to go inside one house and had a cup of green tea and a chat with the residents. It reminded me a lot of my visit to the “recycled” house in the township outside Swakopmund in Namibia, except that the standard of living here is a lot higher than in the black townships of Africa.
The next morning was another early rise for the drive out to the Great Wall. On the way, we stopped at a huge jade factory, and this time I was tempted to purchase. We went to the Badaling section of the wall which, of course, is the most heavily touristed area and also the most artificial section of the wall. The restored section winds through the hills for about 1 km or so in each direction, before disintegrating into its natural ruined state, but you cannot explore the more authentic sections of the wall here. Despite the fact that this section is artificially restored, you cannot help but be impressed by the wall. I was most surprised at how steep it was to climb. I had mistakenly thought that you might have to climb some steps to get to the top of the wall and then it would be relatively flat, like a city wall. Alas no, the wall winds its way up and down hillsides and is very steep in some places. We were hoping to see snow on the Great Wall, but in hindsight it was probably a good thing that it had not snowed for awhile, as it would have been extremely slippery and dangerous with snow and ice. Anyway, we “climbed” the wall for a few hours, stopping to take lots of photos. Unfortunately, the views of the surrounding countryside were once again hampered by air pollution, a common theme in China. Very unpleasant and not good for photos, but not much that can be done about it.
In the afternoon, we were treated to a very unusual event! We were taken to another hospital, this time, apparently, specializing in burns. Again, we were taken into a room and given a spiel about 2 different products – one a herbal anti-inflammation patch and the other a burn/rash cream. The unusual event was the extraordinary length the salesperson went to convince us of the authenticity of the burn cream. He placed a big steel chain in burning hot coals until the steel on the chain was red hot. He then had 2 assistants hold the chain out and he ran his hand over the chain so that it burned/scarred the skin. He showed us his hand. It was authentic! Plus we could feel the heat coming off the chain. Then his 2 assistants quickly rubbed the burn cream into his hand. He told us that the pain instantly eased once the cream was on and, if he continued applying it for a few days, the burn would not scar. Then, he tried to flog the cream off to us. It was all really a bit sick, and Rachel actually felt sick so she had to go outside. That left Piers and I in there thinking to ourselves, “You really shouldn’t have burnt yourself, coz we are not going to buy the stuff”. The guy did not look very happy when we declined to purchase. Sicko!
Next morning we visited the Temple of Heaven Park, which is Ming dynasty architecture. There were many impressive aspects to this park, not the least of which was the hundreds of oldies/retired people who flock there each day to do taiji, play cards, sing, dance, kick around those little happy sack things. I can’t believe how fit and flexible the oldies are! Another treat was the echo wall – 65 metres in diameter – a whisper can travel clearly from one end to the other. It was amazing!
Around lunch time, we were dropped at Wangfujing, one of Beijing’s main shopping/market streets and given a free afternoon. After browsing the markets, the 3 of us headed for Pizza Hut as we were dying for some western food after the awful food that we had been eating for the last few days. (A downside to a cheap, all inclusive tour package is that the quality of the food is sacrificed!)
And that is it for Beijing. The next morning we headed to the airport and flew back to Nanjing. In Nanjing, Rachel, Piers and I went our separate ways. Piers headed back to Yancheng, Rachel to Shanghai and then onto Australia and I stayed in Nanjing for a few days with one of my students, Michelle.
I had visited Nanjing briefly on 2 previous occasions, but wanted to spend a few days here as it is a very historical city. Nanjing was the capital of China on a few separate occasions. Also, the infamous “Rape of Nanjing” by the Japanese just prior to and during WW2 occurred here. (You might know the city as Nanking, which is the spelling under the previous romanisation system – just like Beijing used to be Peking). Another event of historical importance which took place in Nanjing is the Taiping Rebellion which occurred in the mid 19th century. The leader of the Taipings believed he was the brother of Jesus Christ and had been sent down to exterminate the demons who were personified in the Qing dynasty. He amassed an army of fanatical supporters and actually succeeded in overthrowing the Qing dynasty for 11 years, before the foreign powers sided with the Qing and slaughtered them all.
I visited the Taiping Rebellion Museum, but there was a distinct lack of information in English and a curious (?) absence of any reference to the Christian origins of the Taiping. I also visited the Rape of Nanjing Memorial which was excellent and very informative. However, like most Chinese cities I have visited so far, the city itself is fairly characterless, with little of its ancient architecture left, apart from a few small areas, and crowded, dirty and polluted. A saving grace of Nanjing is Purple Mountain, a forested hill over which are scattered historical sights like the Sun Yatsen Mausoleum and Ming dynasty tombs. You can wander the forested paths and, for a little while, escape the noise and the pollution of the city.
After 3 days in Nanjing, I got on a bus and headed a few hours south east to Yixing, a county of Wuxi. There I was met by my students, Meggie and Jordan. There is not a lot to tell you about Yixing. It is just another small city with nothing particularly interesting about it. Yixing is situated on Tai lake, but the city has done nothing to make this part of the enormous lake attractive. There is a town about 20 minutes out of Yixing which is famous for its pottery, especially teapots. So we visited that town in the afternoon. It is a very ugly, dusty town, but there is lots of pottery to look at and I indulged in a lovely teapot set.
In the late afternoon, Meggie and I got into a minivan for the 45 minute drive to her village in the foothills of the surrounding mountains. Now, Meggie had warned me that her village was pretty rural and I knew there would be no shower at her home. However, it was not until the drive to her village that I found out about the toilet situation.
I did promise my friend, Anthony, that I would stop writing about toilets in my emails, lest I dissuade him from visiting me in China. However, Anthony, I am sorry, but this is a story that must be told. And it should not dissuade you from visiting because this is a private toilet and one you will never have to experience!
Anyway, Meggie’s village has maybe 100 or so people. The houses are all double storey concrete, so quite large, but freezing cold and devoid of almost any furnishings. When you walk in the front door, you enter a big, bare room with a table and chairs. This is the dining room. Off to right of this room, there is a door to another big, bare room containing 2 beds, a wardrobe and a tv. This is Meggie’s parent’s bedroom. At the back of the first room, there is a door leading to a hallway. From the hallway, you turn left to the internal staircase, which leads upstairs to another door which leads to an outside balcony. Off the balcony are 2 rooms, one of which is Meggie’s bedroom; another big, bare room with a bed, wardrobe and desk. At the bottom of the steps is a little alcove with a thin sheet hung up as a curtain to give some “privacy”. This is the toilet. The toilet consists of a small wooden bucket in the corner of the alcove. Oh shit! I had to go! I confined my business to number 1’s in this toilet!
At the back of the hallway is a door leading outside and then another detached room about 5 metres away. This room houses the kitchen and bathroom, with a traditional wood fired stove and bath tub.
On arriving at Meggie’s home, we immediately sat down for dinner. After dinner, Meggie suggested we have a bath. Oh shit, again! The bath, as explained previously, is in the detached building out the back. It was a small stone tub set into a raised concrete ledge and heated by a fire underneath. The bath is behind a walled off alcove, again with another thin sheet offering some limited privacy. Meggie said she would go first and “show me how to do it”. She invited me to sit in the small alcove with her and watch. I said I did not need to watch and could probably manage to work out how to take a bath. So her mother got me a stool and I sat outside the curtain while Meggie bathed. However, she declined to actually close the curtain so I got a full view anyway. It was very strange, sitting on a stool, talking to my student as she took a bath, with her mother doing the washing up in the sink on the wood fired stove and her father behind the wall putting more wood on the fire to heat the bath!
And then it was my turn! Fortunately, her father left the room and I was allowed to pull the curtain across. So I undressed and climbed into the bath. Problem – I am too big for the bath so I have to sit on the edge and just put my legs in and splash water over myself. “How is it going?” Meggie calls out. “Alright” I reply, “but I am too big and don’t fit in the bath”. Silly thing to say really, because next thing both Meggie and her mother are poking their head in to get a look at the foreigner in the bath. “She’s very white”, Meggie translates from her mother. The water starts to get a bit cold, so Meggie’s Mum stokes up the fire. It is amazing how this bath works. Almost instantly, I feel the stone bath and the water heating up and it actually got too hot very quickly.
After the bathing experience, Meggie and I headed up stairs to bed. It was about 7:30pm but there really is not anything to do in this village. Much to my horror, there is another bucket which Meggie brings upstairs into the bedroom, so there is no need to go downstairs to go to the toilet in the middle of the night. “I don’t think I’ll be needing the toilet at all,” I thought to myself. It was bloody freezing though, and the cold often triggers the need to pee! By the early hours of the morning I was desperate to pee and eventually got the courage, while it was still dark, to get up and use the bucket. So I bared my bottom in the freezing cold weather and squatted over the bucket, but performance anxiety then hit me and I was not able to go!
After breakfast the next morning, Meggie & I headed to the Shanjuan cave. There are no buses to her village, so we had to get into the back of a small, 3 wheeled trailer thingy (I can’t even begin to describe it) for the bumpy journey into town and transfer into a minivan. We spent a couple of hours at the cave, which was nothing particularly special as caves go. We then had lunch at a very dodgy looking restaurant near the caves, before getting in another minivan, then a bus, then a motorized pedicab to get to Tianmu lake. This is another gigantic lake in the Yixing county area. After paying our 50 Yuan entry fee, we spent a couple of hours strolling around the lake. The highlight was visiting the giant teapot! There were about 3 other tourists at the lake as, again, it was the middle of winter and bitterly cold. I am sure the lake is quite magnificent, with lots of water sports, in summer. However, once again, photos of the lake and the surrounding countryside were hampered by the ever present air pollution.
In the late afternoon, we headed back into Yixing city and stayed in a hotel for the night. The next morning, Jordan met Meggie and I at the hotel and his Uncle, who owns a car, drove us to Jordan’s village, which is on the banks of Tai lake. We took a walk through the village, across the peasants’ (the Chinese use this word to describe farmers) vegetable crops and along the banks of the lake. We then headed back to Jordan’s home, which is similar in style to Meggie’s home, but with a western toilet! Jordan had invited 3 of his school friends for lunch, which turned out to be a very lengthy banquet shared with his mother, father, 2 aunties, 2 uncles, a cousin, and Meggie. The uncles were drinking beijiu (potent rice wine), whilst I was required to drink a lot of beer with Jordan and his school friends.
After several hours and what seemed like hundreds of dishes, we said our goodbyes and Jordan’s uncle drove Meggie and I into Wuxi (one of the bigger cities in Jiangsu Province). We checked in to a hotel in the city and then Jordan’s uncle dropped us at the Lingshan Buddha, about half an hour from the city. The Lingshan Buddha is an 88 metre high bronze Buddha and temple complex overlooking Tai lake. Very kitch and touristy, but worth a look.
Later, back at the hotel in Wuxi, I received a phone call on my mobile. It seems word had spread that the foreign teacher was in Wuxi, and one of my students called and wanted to meet with me the next day. Her name was Yvonne. She asked me whether I was on my own at the hotel and I told her that I was with Wang Jing, a student from class 4. Yvonne then said that she knows Wang Jing and then said, at least I thought she did, “she is a bitch girl”. I said “I’m sorry. What did you say?” She again said, “She is a bitch girl”. I decided to ignore the comment, although I was not very impressed that she was calling Meggie a bitch, and arranged to meet Yvonne the next morning. After ending the call, I told Meggie that I thought Yvonne had said she was a bitch, but perhaps I was mistaken. Meggie did not know what a “bitch” was, so I had to explain it to her.
The next morning, we met Yvonne at the hotel and then headed down to Xihui park for a few hours of pleasant strolling through the park, climbing to the pagoda and a cable car ride to the top of the mountain. Meggie and Yvonne shared a cable car carriage and, whilst she had her alone, took the opportunity to question Yvonne about the conversation the evening before. Apparently, Yvonne did not know what “bitch” meant and had said “she is a “sweet’ girl”. Apparently, pronunciation is one of her weak points!
In the afternoon, Meggie and Yvonne accompanied me to the bus station and I got on a bus for the 4 hour journey to Huai’an where I would be spending the next 2 weeks and the Spring Festival (CNY) with Betty’s family.
There were 6 days to occupy before CNY. Betty’s family have an apartment in the city and a home in a “countryside” town about 20 minutes from the city. We spent most of the time in the city apartment watching movies, playing cards and ma jiang (mahjong) with her school friends, sleeping and eating. It was very relaxing, if somewhat boring at times, especially when we spent time with her friends and the conversation was entirely in Chinese. One night, Betty invited 7 friends over for dinner and we stayed up the entire night playing cards and ma jiang. We went out for breakfast at 6:30am the next morning, then came back and slept the entire day. Whilst it was good for improving my ma jiang skills, my 32 year old body rebelled against me for the next few days!
Some other highlights of the pre-CNY holiday were the eyebrow pluck and facial at a friend’s beauty parlour, and a night out at the local disco. It really is such a different culture. Nobody drinks alcohol at the disco; they are all there to dance. This is unheard of in Australia! I got out on the dance floor and was surprised to find that it was a bouncing floor! After my initial surprise and hesitation, I actually found it was ok, because you don’t have to do much work; just bend your knees a bit and the dance floor does the rest! Of course, a bouncing dance floor probably would not work in an Australian night club – it would be too dangerous with all the drunken patrons throwing up from the constant bouncing!
Whilst there is a shower at Betty’s city apartment, unfortunately, it is a solar heated shower and, therefore, there is no hot water in winter. Accordingly, for the next 2 weeks, I had the dubious pleasure of visiting public showers/bath houses every 2nd day. This is an experience I was not looking forward to! I had previously discussed with Betty the westerners preference for privacy when bathing, but communal bathing in China is very common and a much enjoyed social event! I had also discussed with Betty that, as a white foreigner, I already get a lot of unwanted attention and I was not relishing the attention my white naked body would attract in the public shower. The Chinese people are a very curious bunch!
Well, I think I will keep the rest of the details of the public bathing to myself. Suffice to say that, whilst it was a somewhat humiliating experience, and the naked Chinese women were curious to stare at the naked white woman, by the end of the 2 weeks I was starting to get used to the communal bathing and may even come to enjoy the experience in time, although having my body scrubbed by a naked Chinese woman is still a bit disconcerting! Mind you, that was probably less embarrassing than when Betty took the loufer brush to me and started scrubbing away. “I think I can manage on my own” I said.
So, on the morning of 8 February, CNY eve, Betty’s father picked us up from the city and drove us to the countryside home. We had a big lunch together and then Betty showed me around her home town. Betty’s family has lived in this town for generations and, whilst they used to be quite poor, Betty’s father has worked hard to earn money and is now a bigwig in the town. Her family is considered to be “well off”, although they are by no means rich and probably would struggle to be considered middle class in our terms. On our walk around the town, Betty pointed out the homes of her relatives - the town is full of them.
The town itself is nothing to write home about. It is quite small, and pretty unattractive. Like most towns and cities, I am always disappointed to see the rubbish on the streets and polluting the waterways.
In the late afternoon, Betty’s mother realized she had forgotten some vegetables she needed for the next day so Betty said we would go back into the city and pick them up. However, Betty’s father was playing ma jiang with his relatives and did not want to drive us in. Betty told her mother that I can drive and asked to borrow her father’s car! Her father, quite understandably, said “no”, so Betty’s mother secretly arranged for me to drive her son-in-law’s car. This was a beaten up old van with a very stiff clutch and crunching gears. Of course, I don’t have an international licence which permits me to drive in China, and they drive on the other side of the road to us, not to mention the fact that they don’t appear to have any road rules, often drive in the middle of the road, overtake in very dangerous circumstances and have to share the extremely potholed roads with thousands of pedestrians, bicycles, motorbikes, pedicabs and a multitude of other small, motorized vehicles. The horn in this vehicle did not work, so I had no way of warning vehicles of my approach. Needless to say, it was a pretty hairy, but somewhat exhilarating drive.
By the time we got back from the city, Betty’s father had already eaten, so we ate dinner alone with Betty’s mother. We had a quick shower in the bath house owned by one of her uncle’s and, when we got back, the town was quiet and her parents were in bed. So we settled in to Betty’s room to watch the CNY gala on TV. This is a 5 hour long concert featuring many of China’s famous singers and other entertainers. Fortunately for me, it was being televised on the English channel, so had English subtitles and translations of the entertainment.
At midnight, Betty and I wished each other a happy new year and then went to sleep to the sound of lots of firecrackers in the street. So, like many a NYE spent in Australia (except for a couple of notable exceptions), CNY was a bit of an anti-climax. No massive fireworks displays, no dancing dragons, no nothing! Apparently, contrary to what we are led to believe, CNY is mostly a time for families to get together to eat and watch the CNY gala on TV. Apparently, the celebrations that we know are mostly confined to the big cities, and more particularly, southern cities like Hong Kong. Betty told me that her family usually set off fireworks (as opposed to firecrackers, which are set off on the ground and just make a lot of loud noise) on CNY, but her grandfather had died the previous year and, according to custom, the extended family cannot “celebrate” CNY by decorating their homes or setting off fireworks for 3 years.
The next morning, Betty’s Mum brought us breakfast in bed. The traditional CNY breakfast is jiaozi (dumplings) and tang yuan, which are sweet little glutinous balls. Traditionally, the whole family (or the women at least) pitch in the day before to make the dumplings, but Betty and I were on our hair raising drive at the time. Also, the dumplings often have coins hidden in them (a bit like our Christmas pudding) and the more coins you collect, the better your fortune for the coming year. Unfortunately, our dumplings had no coins, so I guess my fortune is stuffed!
After breakfast, Betty’s sister came over to visit with her little 6 month old daughter. On CNY day, the children are given “red pockets”, which are little red packets filled with money. So I put 20 Yuan in a red packet and put it in the baby’s overalls. Very cute! Then, Betty, her sister, niece, cousin & I went around the town visiting all the relatives. By the time we had visited everyone, the niece’s overalls were stuffed full of “red pockets”. We then went to one of the aunt’s homes for another big meal and played ma jiang all afternoon. Around lunch time it started to snow heavily, and the town turned into a lovely little winter wonderland. We had the necessary snow ball fight before resuming the ma jiang match. The stakes were high – 1 Yuan/round (less than 20 cents).
And that is it for CNY! The Spring Festival lasts 15 days, and the last day is the lantern festival. The lantern festival should be around 23 Feb and we will be back at school, but hopefully there might be a lantern parade and some celebrations in Yancheng to attend.
After a sleep in the next morning, we headed back to the city apartment and another few days of doing nothing much. As I was getting a little bored, I suggested to Betty that we do a short trip, so we caught a bus with one of her friends to the seaside city of Lianyungang in northern Jiangsu. This city is surrounded by mountains and is home to the Monkey King from the famous novel “Journey to the West” which we saw on our televisions as the series “Monkey Magic”. On arriving at Lianyuangang, we went straight to the mountain, Huaguoshan, where the Monkey King lived in a cave, and spent most of the day climbing the mountain and exploring the caves. It was lovely natural scenery. Not as spectacular as Huangshan, which I had climbed over the national day holidays last October, but definitely worth the climb. The only downsides were, once again, the air pollution obstructing views from the top and the lack of information or English signage about the history and culture.
That night, we stayed in a small hotel on an island which is accessed by road over a pier like structure, which must have been at least 2-3 kilometres long. The island is a summer tourist destination, but in mid-winter it was very quiet. It was raining the next morning, but Betty and I paid our 5 Yuan to walk on the beach. This is the first time I have seen the sea since being in China, so I was not going to miss out. The beach was, of course, deserted, apart from some massive sand sculptures which must have been made for CNY. The sea was brown and rough, but is apparently blue and calm in summer. The beach itself was reasonably big and sandy, but nothing in comparison to Australian beaches. However, it is one of the most famous beaches in China and I could see that it would be pretty appealing in the oppressive heat of the Chinese summer.
We had lunch in the city, before catching another bus back to Huai’an that afternoon. It was raining for my last day in Huai’an, so I spent the entire day in bed, getting up at 5:00pm to meet another friend of Betty’s for dinner! After dinner, we had a wonderful foot massage – 15 minutes soaking in hot water and 45 minute massage. It was devine!
The next morning I caught a bus back to Yancheng, and here I am now, spending the last few days of the holiday washing clothes, showering in private, developing my photos and writing this book. I am not sure when classes resume – possibly Monday; possibly not. As usual, the school has given me no information, so I guess I will just play it by ear.
Happy New Year to you all. If you were born in the year of the rooster, you must wear red underwear for the entire year. Ok?
Xin nian kuai le, gong xi fa cai – to all!
That means Happy New Year and hoping fortune (money) comes your way.
Well, there is so much to tell you all, so, if you are busy at work, this email will either give you a much needed distraction, or really annoy the crap out of you! But if you don’t want to read about my adventures in China, then the delete button is always at your disposal, but be warned, there are some good stories buried in the depths of this epistle. If you just want to skim for those gems, then look for these key words – Auld Lang Syne; Chinese Tibetan medicine; burn cream; small wooden bucket; wood fired bath; public showers; bitch; and driving in China!
So, in my last email, I told you about my trip to Shanghai and Christmas celebrations in Yancheng. Before, I tell you about my recent travels, I would like to tell you about my birthday and New Year’s Eve (by the Western calendar). For ease of reference, I will call our New Year’s Eve “NYE” and the Chinese New Year “CNY”.
My birthday is 29 December. In Australia, my birthday always falls in the summer/Christmas holidays, so I have never been at school or worked on my birthday before. However, in China, there is no holiday for Christmas, and my birthday fell on a Wednesday, so I had to teach 2 classes on my birthday! Fortunately, it was not too taxing, as I was giving the final exams the next week, so my classes involved going over the material which would be in the exam, which I had already written the weekend before.
Birthday celebrations are often not a big thing in China, because traditionally everyone’s birthday is New Year’s day (CNY). Everyone is a year older on CNY. Some Chinese people don’t even know their actual birth date, or they only know the date by the lunar calendar, which changes every year. So my friend, Betty, for example, knows that she was born on 11 June in the lunar calendar, but that date will be sometime in July in our calendar, depending on when CNY day falls. This makes working out the actual age of a Chinese person quite difficult!
But I know when my birthday is and I made a point of telling my students the week before, so, on arriving at my first class, I received a lovely bunch of flowers and then a card from my 2nd class. Also, some individual students in other classes, gave me small gifts or cards. I had also received a few care packages from home before Christmas, so I was feeling well loved.
That evening, I invited 13 students and Max to dinner. We went to the “Little Donkey Hot Pot” not far from the college. Hot Pot is quite an event and an experience. I strongly recommend it to any visitors to China. It originates from Sichuan (Szechuan) Province and is meant to be very hot and spicy. Basically, you have a very spicy broth boiling in a big pot set into the table, you order the meat & vegetables etc that you want and then throw it all in randomly to cook. Everyone then uses their own chopsticks to pluck things out of the broth. It is usually a very lengthy and messy affair, but very enjoyable. Anyway, as the name suggests, the specialty of this particular hot pot restaurant was donkey, so we had donkey meatballs, and pieces of donkey meat, in addition to many other interesting and delicious items.
There were only 4 male students there and they thought they would challenge me to a drinking contest, so we did a lot of gan bei with little glasses of beer. Of course, they do not realize that I am an old hand at drinking beer, and the beer in China is very weak, so they succeeded only in getting themselves drunk. When they realized this, they moved on to Max (who is a pussy when it comes to drinking) and some of the hardier girl students. (Most Chinese women, at least those that I have met, do not like beer and don’t usually drink any sort of alcohol with regularity).
Anyway, by about 9:30pm, I judged that the boys had probably had enough, by the fact that Jordan wanted to fight the man at the next table who apparently said something he did not like. So, I paid the bill (in China, when you invite people to dinner, the host pays – it cost 400 kuai, which is a fortune here, but only about $65 to feed 15 people, including the beer and OJ) and we had a very entertaining walk back to the college with lots of singing and laughing. The students walked me to my apartment, then all left, apart from Betty and Meggie who, with Max, came to my apartment to listen to music and get into the real drinking – well, I did anyway! Betty had bought me a birthday cake, so we tucked into that, but the Chinese cake is like a plain sponge cake with very sweet mock cream icing, so not all that appealing to me. Meggie left around 10:45pm, Max around midnight and Betty stayed the night at my apartment.
The next morning, I woke up to a winter wonderland. It had snowed overnight and Yancheng was all white. So, although I did not get a white Christmas, I did get a white birthday! I had to go to class at 10:00am, and it was quite a treat to walk to work in the snow (it snowed for most of the day).
On Thursday, John & Gay, from Melbourne, took me out to dinner for my birthday. Gay had procured a little toaster oven from somewhere, and picked up ingredients for a chocolate cake in Shanghai; so she gave me a chocolate cake, which, although a little dry, was a great improvement on the Chinese one.
Friday was New Year’s Eve. I met some of the other foreigners for lunch at one of our regular haunts. There were another 2 bunches of flowers and ANOTHER cake (the Chinese cake). Luckily, I am friends with Betty the sweet tooth, and she managed to polish off most of the left over cakes.
Friday night, was a combined birthday celebration for me and Mandy, from Canada, whose birthday was the next day, as well as NYE. The foreigners and a few Chinese friends met at another hot pot restaurant down town. My friend, Diane, had bought me 2 bottles of Australian red wine, so I enjoyed most of one bottle, which was a lovely change from weak beer. (Yes, I did offer to share it with other people, but, much to my delight, there were not many takers!)
After another lengthy hot pot session, a group of us went to play a game of ten pin bowling. It was very fortunate that the restaurant, bowling alley, KTV and the bar are all in the same complex, so we did not have to go far.
We then retired to the “Sunshine Bar” for some drinks – back to the weak beer. There was a live band, as usual, playing Chinese songs very loudly. There were a few others in the bar, but it was mostly just us foreigners. It was a bit too loud and you could not talk much, so a small group of us decided to divert to KTV for awhile. KTV stands for karaoke TV and obviously is a place you go to sing karaoke, a very popular past time in China. You rent a private room with your own karaoke machine and TV, and buy your snacks and drinks to take in with you. We had a good old time singing really old songs, really badly. By the time we left KTV and went back to the bar, it was about 11:30pm and there was no-one left in the bar except for the staff and the other foreigners, who were all up dancing. The band had gone home, so it was DJ music.
We were all gearing up for midnight. We had asked the bar staff to stop the music one minute before midnight, so we could do the countdown and sing Auld Lang Syne. They said “Meiwenti” (No problem). However, the very loud music failed to stop, our watches were not synchronized, so we had about 3 different countdowns which you could not hear above the music, and at midnight the DJ put on a very strange techno version of Happy Birthday – presumably for Mandy’s birthday. The staff then came out with a big stuffed animal thing and presented it to Mandy. She told them it was my birthday too, so they went away and came back with 2 small stuffed animal things for me! Eventually, we all joined hands anyway and jumped around happily shouting Auld Lang Syne above the music – no-one knows the words anyway!
So, the party started to dwindle after about 12:15pm and Betty and I left about 1:00am, leaving only Dan, Mandy, Jen & Hanlon to party on, but by the looks of Mandy, she was not going to last too much longer.
So, that is Christmas, my birthday and NYE in a nut shell. All in all, a very interesting experience!
The Monday after NYE was a holiday for the whole school. In fact, there was a 3 day holiday for NYE – January 1, 2 & 3. I kept trying to tell everyone that January 1 & 2 were a Sat & Sun and therefore there were no classes, so how could it be considered a “holiday”, but nobody wanted to listen to me. So, anyway, I did not have to do my one class on Monday morning.
Classes resumed on Tuesday 4 January, which was the start of my 3 days of giving final exams to my students. Actually, the 2 weeks of exams was not due to start until Monday 10 January, but the foreign teachers are allowed to give their exams earlier. I was puzzled as to why this was the case, and my enquiries revealed that the foreign teacher’s classes are often considered to be unimportant and therefore it is best to get them out of the way so the students can concentrate on the real exams. I was a bit offended by this, and decided that perhaps next semester I won’t bother preparing for my classes! Especially my Advanced Writing classes!
In typical Yancheng Teacher’s College fashion, there was absolutely no flow of information regarding what was expected in terms of the final exams. I am sure the English department would not even have known if I didn’t give exams. On making enquiries, I found out that the final examination was usually worth 70% of the overall mark, whilst the other 30% was for some vague concept of class participation. Pity I was not told that earlier. I had already given my Advanced Writing class 4 writing assignments during the term worth 60% of the mark, so their final exam was only worth 40%. I hardly know one student from the next, so it is a bit difficult for me to give them a mark for class participation!
My 3 oral English classes were pretty easy. I gave them a topic the week before and told them to give a 1 minute prepared speech on the topic and then I would ask an impromptu question about the topic. I marked them in class as they spoke – 100% for their final exam.
I have 2 audio-visual classes and 2 advanced writing classes, so I wrote 1 exam for each subject. However, lack of experience as a teacher is responsible for me not realizing that if I was only going to write 1 exam, both classes should have the exam on the same day. Of course, this did not happen, so the later class in each subject got a bit of an unfair advantage – oops! It also seems that cheating and plagiarism is not frowned upon as seriously as it is in our school system and, given there are so many students in the class with them all virtually sitting on top of each other, it was a bit difficult to stop the furtive glances at their classmate’s paper. And it seems most of my students do not understand the instruction “Absolutely no talking during the exam”, as many of them continued to whisper to each other despite my warnings.
So the exams were over by Thursday afternoon and I then spent the next few days marking audio-visual and finalizing the marks for Oral English. I had planned a trip to Shanghai, so I left the marking for Advanced Writing until my return as I did not relish the fact of having to mark 85, 250 word expository essays, together with identifying transitions in a paragraph. I found the transitions section of the exam difficult to mark, given that I’m still not sure I know what constitutes a transition. Basically, if the student identified a word or a phrase as a transition, I generally marked it as correct with a few exceptions. Can anyone tell me if “and” & “or” are transitions? I think they are, but I decided not to let them have “and” & “or” because they are just a bit too obvious. That is my rationale anyway, and I am sticking to it!
Quite frankly, it really did not matter what I put in the exam, or how I marked it, or what results the students ultimately received. At the end of the day, I had to hand in a sheet of paper with the students’ names and student numbers and their final result. If I did that, the department was satisfied!
So, on Wed, 12 January, while my students were studying for and sitting their REAL exams, I went to Shanghai for a few days with Max & Diane. Max was flying back to America on the 15th for the winter holiday, Diane wanted to visit Shanghai before she left to go home to Australia, and I had arranged to meet my Uncle. I won’t bore you with the details as I wrote at length about Shanghai in my last email.
I finished marking the Advanced Writing exams by the Tues of the next week, and then spent the rest of the week pottering around waiting for the term to end. I could have left earlier if I had wanted to, but originally I was going to go straight to one of my student’s homes when she had finished her exams.
But plans changed and I ended up leaving on the Saturday with Piers and Rachel (both from Melbourne and teaching at a middle school here) to go to Beijing as they got a tour package for a price that could not be resisted – 1430 Yuan for return flights from Nanjing to Beijing, 4 nights accommodation, food, entry fees, guide, etc – that is about AU$250. We had to get ourselves to Nanjing, which is about 3-4 hours by bus from here, but that was no problem as Piers & Rachel have guanxi with a rich family in Yancheng and they gave us one of their cars and driver to take us to Nanjing. It was snowing/sleeting most of the way there, so I was grateful that the driver was a fairly cautious one (for Chinese standards).
We stayed in Nanjing for one night and then left early the next morning for Beijing. We were picked up at the airport by the tour guide, Emily. Her English was very, very limited, but we were not promised an English speaking guide and, luckily, Piers speaks Chinese so was able to do a reasonable amount of translating for us. The hotel we stayed at was quite a way out of the downtown area of the city and was of a pretty low standard, but it had beds, a TV with the English channel, a western toilet and a warm shower, so what more is needed? The only other person on the tour was a 40 something Chinese lady from Nanjing. She and I shared a room but she had no English and I’ve got no Chinese so our conversations were pretty limited. I spent most of the time we were at the hotel in the room with Piers and Rachel, drinking local beer and watching TV.
So for the next few days we were ferried around to the different tourist sites in Beijing. On the afternoon of our arrival, we went to the Summer Palace, which was the summer residence for the Emperors of the last dynasty, the Qing dynasty. The grounds and gardens of the Summer Palace are quite magnificent. It is built on a massive lake, which is apparently man-made, and we were very excited to find that the entire lake was frozen. There were signs saying not to walk on the ice, but we ignored those signs, as nobody else seemed to be obeying them.
We spent a few hours there and then visited a Chinese Tibetan medicine hospital. When we arrived, we were hurried into a small room and had to wait there for 45 minutes before someone came to talk to us. We were then given a spiel on Chinese Tibetan medicine by a well spoken man before another doctor arrived to give us a “free” consultation. Apparently, a doctor who practices traditional Chinese medicine can diagnose your medical problems simply by taking your pulse and looking at your tongue. The doctor did not speak English (apparently, although I suspect he did), so he had another English speaking female doctor/nurse/translator with him. I was volunteered to go first. When I sat down, I was asked my age and the doctor took hold of both my wrists. I was then asked to stick my tongue out, and there was such a look of shock and surprise on the doctor’s face that I thought he was going to fall off his chair. “Gee, something is not good here,” I thought to myself. Through the translator, the doctor told me that, although I might not have any symptoms, I was in moderate health and my blood and energy circulation were not working well enough and my metabolism was slow. This later problem, he said, accounts for me being overweight. (This is not really news to me!) He prescribed 2 different medicines, one to improve my liver function. Then he said that my freckles result from the poor blood and energy circulation and he would prescribe a medicine to “beautify my face” and take away the freckles. Well, you can imagine how well that one went down. I asked the translator to tell the doctor that freckles are considered a sign of beauty in my country and I did not want any medicine to remove my freckles. He kept on insisting that I needed one of the other medicines, but I was hesitant at 420 Yuan for a bottle that lasts 1 month. He prescribed a medicine for Rachel to improve her kidney function and told her that she would be “cured” (of what we are still not sure) in 1 month. I asked whether I would be “cured” of my weight problem in a month if I took the medicine, but the question was avoided. Eventually I gave in and paid $70 Australian for what amounts to “diet” pills for weight loss. I have not started taking the pills yet, but will let you know if they have a miraculous effect!
The next morning, we headed out early for Tiananmen Square. The weather was bitterly cold: minus 10 degrees. There was no snow during the time we were in Beijing, although the temperature was always below 0 and all the lakes were frozen. Anyway, I was well rugged up with thermal underwear and various layers, but the hands and face felt like they might fall off.
Tiananmen Square is a huge concrete expanse set around the Chairman Mao mausoleum, a few old city gates and in front of the gates to the Forbidden City. It really is quite massive, but I think could use a few trees and garden beds to spruce up its appearance a bit. As it was the middle of winter and f…. cold, there were not too many people milling about the square. We wanted to go into the mausoleum to check out the Chairman, but unfortunately it was closed. So the next stop was the Forbidden City.
The Forbidden City is the city palace of the Emperors from the Ming & Qing dynasties. It is so called as it was off limits to all but the Emperor and his elite for 500 years. The buildings which are there today are mostly post 18th Century as the Forbidden City was ransacked and destroyed many times as well as going up in flames quite a bit. We spent a few hours wandering through the Forbidden city. Piers translated what he could from our guide, Emily, and there were a few English signs so we were able to determine a bit of the history. I was quite surprised at the lack of English signage, and also very surprised at the sparsity of the furnishings in the rooms. As magnificent as the ancient architecture is, it got a bit boring after awhile as there was nothing much to look at in the rooms. And again, too much concrete and not enough trees. There was one garden area, but given it is winter, the trees and garden beds were all bare. Of course, it is still worth a visit, but my recommendation would be to go in spring. If you visit, don’t miss the climb up the hill out the back gate of the Forbidden City as this affords great views over the whole of the Palace, the only downside being the air pollution.
Next we took a lovely stroll around Beihai lake, not to far from the Forbidden City. After lunch we visited the drum tower, but rather than seeing the drum, we were herded into a small room, given a spiel about the fortune lion and pressured to buy jade. I resisted the temptation.
Next we took a pedicab ride around the old “hutong” area. “Hutong” means “narrow alleyways” and it is where a quarter of Beijing’s residents live in “siheyuan”, which are old walled courtyards. We tried to hire an English speaking guide, but it turns out she had less English than Emily, so the lack of information about the hutongs was a bit disappointing. We stopped to go inside one house and had a cup of green tea and a chat with the residents. It reminded me a lot of my visit to the “recycled” house in the township outside Swakopmund in Namibia, except that the standard of living here is a lot higher than in the black townships of Africa.
The next morning was another early rise for the drive out to the Great Wall. On the way, we stopped at a huge jade factory, and this time I was tempted to purchase. We went to the Badaling section of the wall which, of course, is the most heavily touristed area and also the most artificial section of the wall. The restored section winds through the hills for about 1 km or so in each direction, before disintegrating into its natural ruined state, but you cannot explore the more authentic sections of the wall here. Despite the fact that this section is artificially restored, you cannot help but be impressed by the wall. I was most surprised at how steep it was to climb. I had mistakenly thought that you might have to climb some steps to get to the top of the wall and then it would be relatively flat, like a city wall. Alas no, the wall winds its way up and down hillsides and is very steep in some places. We were hoping to see snow on the Great Wall, but in hindsight it was probably a good thing that it had not snowed for awhile, as it would have been extremely slippery and dangerous with snow and ice. Anyway, we “climbed” the wall for a few hours, stopping to take lots of photos. Unfortunately, the views of the surrounding countryside were once again hampered by air pollution, a common theme in China. Very unpleasant and not good for photos, but not much that can be done about it.
In the afternoon, we were treated to a very unusual event! We were taken to another hospital, this time, apparently, specializing in burns. Again, we were taken into a room and given a spiel about 2 different products – one a herbal anti-inflammation patch and the other a burn/rash cream. The unusual event was the extraordinary length the salesperson went to convince us of the authenticity of the burn cream. He placed a big steel chain in burning hot coals until the steel on the chain was red hot. He then had 2 assistants hold the chain out and he ran his hand over the chain so that it burned/scarred the skin. He showed us his hand. It was authentic! Plus we could feel the heat coming off the chain. Then his 2 assistants quickly rubbed the burn cream into his hand. He told us that the pain instantly eased once the cream was on and, if he continued applying it for a few days, the burn would not scar. Then, he tried to flog the cream off to us. It was all really a bit sick, and Rachel actually felt sick so she had to go outside. That left Piers and I in there thinking to ourselves, “You really shouldn’t have burnt yourself, coz we are not going to buy the stuff”. The guy did not look very happy when we declined to purchase. Sicko!
Next morning we visited the Temple of Heaven Park, which is Ming dynasty architecture. There were many impressive aspects to this park, not the least of which was the hundreds of oldies/retired people who flock there each day to do taiji, play cards, sing, dance, kick around those little happy sack things. I can’t believe how fit and flexible the oldies are! Another treat was the echo wall – 65 metres in diameter – a whisper can travel clearly from one end to the other. It was amazing!
Around lunch time, we were dropped at Wangfujing, one of Beijing’s main shopping/market streets and given a free afternoon. After browsing the markets, the 3 of us headed for Pizza Hut as we were dying for some western food after the awful food that we had been eating for the last few days. (A downside to a cheap, all inclusive tour package is that the quality of the food is sacrificed!)
And that is it for Beijing. The next morning we headed to the airport and flew back to Nanjing. In Nanjing, Rachel, Piers and I went our separate ways. Piers headed back to Yancheng, Rachel to Shanghai and then onto Australia and I stayed in Nanjing for a few days with one of my students, Michelle.
I had visited Nanjing briefly on 2 previous occasions, but wanted to spend a few days here as it is a very historical city. Nanjing was the capital of China on a few separate occasions. Also, the infamous “Rape of Nanjing” by the Japanese just prior to and during WW2 occurred here. (You might know the city as Nanking, which is the spelling under the previous romanisation system – just like Beijing used to be Peking). Another event of historical importance which took place in Nanjing is the Taiping Rebellion which occurred in the mid 19th century. The leader of the Taipings believed he was the brother of Jesus Christ and had been sent down to exterminate the demons who were personified in the Qing dynasty. He amassed an army of fanatical supporters and actually succeeded in overthrowing the Qing dynasty for 11 years, before the foreign powers sided with the Qing and slaughtered them all.
I visited the Taiping Rebellion Museum, but there was a distinct lack of information in English and a curious (?) absence of any reference to the Christian origins of the Taiping. I also visited the Rape of Nanjing Memorial which was excellent and very informative. However, like most Chinese cities I have visited so far, the city itself is fairly characterless, with little of its ancient architecture left, apart from a few small areas, and crowded, dirty and polluted. A saving grace of Nanjing is Purple Mountain, a forested hill over which are scattered historical sights like the Sun Yatsen Mausoleum and Ming dynasty tombs. You can wander the forested paths and, for a little while, escape the noise and the pollution of the city.
After 3 days in Nanjing, I got on a bus and headed a few hours south east to Yixing, a county of Wuxi. There I was met by my students, Meggie and Jordan. There is not a lot to tell you about Yixing. It is just another small city with nothing particularly interesting about it. Yixing is situated on Tai lake, but the city has done nothing to make this part of the enormous lake attractive. There is a town about 20 minutes out of Yixing which is famous for its pottery, especially teapots. So we visited that town in the afternoon. It is a very ugly, dusty town, but there is lots of pottery to look at and I indulged in a lovely teapot set.
In the late afternoon, Meggie and I got into a minivan for the 45 minute drive to her village in the foothills of the surrounding mountains. Now, Meggie had warned me that her village was pretty rural and I knew there would be no shower at her home. However, it was not until the drive to her village that I found out about the toilet situation.
I did promise my friend, Anthony, that I would stop writing about toilets in my emails, lest I dissuade him from visiting me in China. However, Anthony, I am sorry, but this is a story that must be told. And it should not dissuade you from visiting because this is a private toilet and one you will never have to experience!
Anyway, Meggie’s village has maybe 100 or so people. The houses are all double storey concrete, so quite large, but freezing cold and devoid of almost any furnishings. When you walk in the front door, you enter a big, bare room with a table and chairs. This is the dining room. Off to right of this room, there is a door to another big, bare room containing 2 beds, a wardrobe and a tv. This is Meggie’s parent’s bedroom. At the back of the first room, there is a door leading to a hallway. From the hallway, you turn left to the internal staircase, which leads upstairs to another door which leads to an outside balcony. Off the balcony are 2 rooms, one of which is Meggie’s bedroom; another big, bare room with a bed, wardrobe and desk. At the bottom of the steps is a little alcove with a thin sheet hung up as a curtain to give some “privacy”. This is the toilet. The toilet consists of a small wooden bucket in the corner of the alcove. Oh shit! I had to go! I confined my business to number 1’s in this toilet!
At the back of the hallway is a door leading outside and then another detached room about 5 metres away. This room houses the kitchen and bathroom, with a traditional wood fired stove and bath tub.
On arriving at Meggie’s home, we immediately sat down for dinner. After dinner, Meggie suggested we have a bath. Oh shit, again! The bath, as explained previously, is in the detached building out the back. It was a small stone tub set into a raised concrete ledge and heated by a fire underneath. The bath is behind a walled off alcove, again with another thin sheet offering some limited privacy. Meggie said she would go first and “show me how to do it”. She invited me to sit in the small alcove with her and watch. I said I did not need to watch and could probably manage to work out how to take a bath. So her mother got me a stool and I sat outside the curtain while Meggie bathed. However, she declined to actually close the curtain so I got a full view anyway. It was very strange, sitting on a stool, talking to my student as she took a bath, with her mother doing the washing up in the sink on the wood fired stove and her father behind the wall putting more wood on the fire to heat the bath!
And then it was my turn! Fortunately, her father left the room and I was allowed to pull the curtain across. So I undressed and climbed into the bath. Problem – I am too big for the bath so I have to sit on the edge and just put my legs in and splash water over myself. “How is it going?” Meggie calls out. “Alright” I reply, “but I am too big and don’t fit in the bath”. Silly thing to say really, because next thing both Meggie and her mother are poking their head in to get a look at the foreigner in the bath. “She’s very white”, Meggie translates from her mother. The water starts to get a bit cold, so Meggie’s Mum stokes up the fire. It is amazing how this bath works. Almost instantly, I feel the stone bath and the water heating up and it actually got too hot very quickly.
After the bathing experience, Meggie and I headed up stairs to bed. It was about 7:30pm but there really is not anything to do in this village. Much to my horror, there is another bucket which Meggie brings upstairs into the bedroom, so there is no need to go downstairs to go to the toilet in the middle of the night. “I don’t think I’ll be needing the toilet at all,” I thought to myself. It was bloody freezing though, and the cold often triggers the need to pee! By the early hours of the morning I was desperate to pee and eventually got the courage, while it was still dark, to get up and use the bucket. So I bared my bottom in the freezing cold weather and squatted over the bucket, but performance anxiety then hit me and I was not able to go!
After breakfast the next morning, Meggie & I headed to the Shanjuan cave. There are no buses to her village, so we had to get into the back of a small, 3 wheeled trailer thingy (I can’t even begin to describe it) for the bumpy journey into town and transfer into a minivan. We spent a couple of hours at the cave, which was nothing particularly special as caves go. We then had lunch at a very dodgy looking restaurant near the caves, before getting in another minivan, then a bus, then a motorized pedicab to get to Tianmu lake. This is another gigantic lake in the Yixing county area. After paying our 50 Yuan entry fee, we spent a couple of hours strolling around the lake. The highlight was visiting the giant teapot! There were about 3 other tourists at the lake as, again, it was the middle of winter and bitterly cold. I am sure the lake is quite magnificent, with lots of water sports, in summer. However, once again, photos of the lake and the surrounding countryside were hampered by the ever present air pollution.
In the late afternoon, we headed back into Yixing city and stayed in a hotel for the night. The next morning, Jordan met Meggie and I at the hotel and his Uncle, who owns a car, drove us to Jordan’s village, which is on the banks of Tai lake. We took a walk through the village, across the peasants’ (the Chinese use this word to describe farmers) vegetable crops and along the banks of the lake. We then headed back to Jordan’s home, which is similar in style to Meggie’s home, but with a western toilet! Jordan had invited 3 of his school friends for lunch, which turned out to be a very lengthy banquet shared with his mother, father, 2 aunties, 2 uncles, a cousin, and Meggie. The uncles were drinking beijiu (potent rice wine), whilst I was required to drink a lot of beer with Jordan and his school friends.
After several hours and what seemed like hundreds of dishes, we said our goodbyes and Jordan’s uncle drove Meggie and I into Wuxi (one of the bigger cities in Jiangsu Province). We checked in to a hotel in the city and then Jordan’s uncle dropped us at the Lingshan Buddha, about half an hour from the city. The Lingshan Buddha is an 88 metre high bronze Buddha and temple complex overlooking Tai lake. Very kitch and touristy, but worth a look.
Later, back at the hotel in Wuxi, I received a phone call on my mobile. It seems word had spread that the foreign teacher was in Wuxi, and one of my students called and wanted to meet with me the next day. Her name was Yvonne. She asked me whether I was on my own at the hotel and I told her that I was with Wang Jing, a student from class 4. Yvonne then said that she knows Wang Jing and then said, at least I thought she did, “she is a bitch girl”. I said “I’m sorry. What did you say?” She again said, “She is a bitch girl”. I decided to ignore the comment, although I was not very impressed that she was calling Meggie a bitch, and arranged to meet Yvonne the next morning. After ending the call, I told Meggie that I thought Yvonne had said she was a bitch, but perhaps I was mistaken. Meggie did not know what a “bitch” was, so I had to explain it to her.
The next morning, we met Yvonne at the hotel and then headed down to Xihui park for a few hours of pleasant strolling through the park, climbing to the pagoda and a cable car ride to the top of the mountain. Meggie and Yvonne shared a cable car carriage and, whilst she had her alone, took the opportunity to question Yvonne about the conversation the evening before. Apparently, Yvonne did not know what “bitch” meant and had said “she is a “sweet’ girl”. Apparently, pronunciation is one of her weak points!
In the afternoon, Meggie and Yvonne accompanied me to the bus station and I got on a bus for the 4 hour journey to Huai’an where I would be spending the next 2 weeks and the Spring Festival (CNY) with Betty’s family.
There were 6 days to occupy before CNY. Betty’s family have an apartment in the city and a home in a “countryside” town about 20 minutes from the city. We spent most of the time in the city apartment watching movies, playing cards and ma jiang (mahjong) with her school friends, sleeping and eating. It was very relaxing, if somewhat boring at times, especially when we spent time with her friends and the conversation was entirely in Chinese. One night, Betty invited 7 friends over for dinner and we stayed up the entire night playing cards and ma jiang. We went out for breakfast at 6:30am the next morning, then came back and slept the entire day. Whilst it was good for improving my ma jiang skills, my 32 year old body rebelled against me for the next few days!
Some other highlights of the pre-CNY holiday were the eyebrow pluck and facial at a friend’s beauty parlour, and a night out at the local disco. It really is such a different culture. Nobody drinks alcohol at the disco; they are all there to dance. This is unheard of in Australia! I got out on the dance floor and was surprised to find that it was a bouncing floor! After my initial surprise and hesitation, I actually found it was ok, because you don’t have to do much work; just bend your knees a bit and the dance floor does the rest! Of course, a bouncing dance floor probably would not work in an Australian night club – it would be too dangerous with all the drunken patrons throwing up from the constant bouncing!
Whilst there is a shower at Betty’s city apartment, unfortunately, it is a solar heated shower and, therefore, there is no hot water in winter. Accordingly, for the next 2 weeks, I had the dubious pleasure of visiting public showers/bath houses every 2nd day. This is an experience I was not looking forward to! I had previously discussed with Betty the westerners preference for privacy when bathing, but communal bathing in China is very common and a much enjoyed social event! I had also discussed with Betty that, as a white foreigner, I already get a lot of unwanted attention and I was not relishing the attention my white naked body would attract in the public shower. The Chinese people are a very curious bunch!
Well, I think I will keep the rest of the details of the public bathing to myself. Suffice to say that, whilst it was a somewhat humiliating experience, and the naked Chinese women were curious to stare at the naked white woman, by the end of the 2 weeks I was starting to get used to the communal bathing and may even come to enjoy the experience in time, although having my body scrubbed by a naked Chinese woman is still a bit disconcerting! Mind you, that was probably less embarrassing than when Betty took the loufer brush to me and started scrubbing away. “I think I can manage on my own” I said.
So, on the morning of 8 February, CNY eve, Betty’s father picked us up from the city and drove us to the countryside home. We had a big lunch together and then Betty showed me around her home town. Betty’s family has lived in this town for generations and, whilst they used to be quite poor, Betty’s father has worked hard to earn money and is now a bigwig in the town. Her family is considered to be “well off”, although they are by no means rich and probably would struggle to be considered middle class in our terms. On our walk around the town, Betty pointed out the homes of her relatives - the town is full of them.
The town itself is nothing to write home about. It is quite small, and pretty unattractive. Like most towns and cities, I am always disappointed to see the rubbish on the streets and polluting the waterways.
In the late afternoon, Betty’s mother realized she had forgotten some vegetables she needed for the next day so Betty said we would go back into the city and pick them up. However, Betty’s father was playing ma jiang with his relatives and did not want to drive us in. Betty told her mother that I can drive and asked to borrow her father’s car! Her father, quite understandably, said “no”, so Betty’s mother secretly arranged for me to drive her son-in-law’s car. This was a beaten up old van with a very stiff clutch and crunching gears. Of course, I don’t have an international licence which permits me to drive in China, and they drive on the other side of the road to us, not to mention the fact that they don’t appear to have any road rules, often drive in the middle of the road, overtake in very dangerous circumstances and have to share the extremely potholed roads with thousands of pedestrians, bicycles, motorbikes, pedicabs and a multitude of other small, motorized vehicles. The horn in this vehicle did not work, so I had no way of warning vehicles of my approach. Needless to say, it was a pretty hairy, but somewhat exhilarating drive.
By the time we got back from the city, Betty’s father had already eaten, so we ate dinner alone with Betty’s mother. We had a quick shower in the bath house owned by one of her uncle’s and, when we got back, the town was quiet and her parents were in bed. So we settled in to Betty’s room to watch the CNY gala on TV. This is a 5 hour long concert featuring many of China’s famous singers and other entertainers. Fortunately for me, it was being televised on the English channel, so had English subtitles and translations of the entertainment.
At midnight, Betty and I wished each other a happy new year and then went to sleep to the sound of lots of firecrackers in the street. So, like many a NYE spent in Australia (except for a couple of notable exceptions), CNY was a bit of an anti-climax. No massive fireworks displays, no dancing dragons, no nothing! Apparently, contrary to what we are led to believe, CNY is mostly a time for families to get together to eat and watch the CNY gala on TV. Apparently, the celebrations that we know are mostly confined to the big cities, and more particularly, southern cities like Hong Kong. Betty told me that her family usually set off fireworks (as opposed to firecrackers, which are set off on the ground and just make a lot of loud noise) on CNY, but her grandfather had died the previous year and, according to custom, the extended family cannot “celebrate” CNY by decorating their homes or setting off fireworks for 3 years.
The next morning, Betty’s Mum brought us breakfast in bed. The traditional CNY breakfast is jiaozi (dumplings) and tang yuan, which are sweet little glutinous balls. Traditionally, the whole family (or the women at least) pitch in the day before to make the dumplings, but Betty and I were on our hair raising drive at the time. Also, the dumplings often have coins hidden in them (a bit like our Christmas pudding) and the more coins you collect, the better your fortune for the coming year. Unfortunately, our dumplings had no coins, so I guess my fortune is stuffed!
After breakfast, Betty’s sister came over to visit with her little 6 month old daughter. On CNY day, the children are given “red pockets”, which are little red packets filled with money. So I put 20 Yuan in a red packet and put it in the baby’s overalls. Very cute! Then, Betty, her sister, niece, cousin & I went around the town visiting all the relatives. By the time we had visited everyone, the niece’s overalls were stuffed full of “red pockets”. We then went to one of the aunt’s homes for another big meal and played ma jiang all afternoon. Around lunch time it started to snow heavily, and the town turned into a lovely little winter wonderland. We had the necessary snow ball fight before resuming the ma jiang match. The stakes were high – 1 Yuan/round (less than 20 cents).
And that is it for CNY! The Spring Festival lasts 15 days, and the last day is the lantern festival. The lantern festival should be around 23 Feb and we will be back at school, but hopefully there might be a lantern parade and some celebrations in Yancheng to attend.
After a sleep in the next morning, we headed back to the city apartment and another few days of doing nothing much. As I was getting a little bored, I suggested to Betty that we do a short trip, so we caught a bus with one of her friends to the seaside city of Lianyungang in northern Jiangsu. This city is surrounded by mountains and is home to the Monkey King from the famous novel “Journey to the West” which we saw on our televisions as the series “Monkey Magic”. On arriving at Lianyuangang, we went straight to the mountain, Huaguoshan, where the Monkey King lived in a cave, and spent most of the day climbing the mountain and exploring the caves. It was lovely natural scenery. Not as spectacular as Huangshan, which I had climbed over the national day holidays last October, but definitely worth the climb. The only downsides were, once again, the air pollution obstructing views from the top and the lack of information or English signage about the history and culture.
That night, we stayed in a small hotel on an island which is accessed by road over a pier like structure, which must have been at least 2-3 kilometres long. The island is a summer tourist destination, but in mid-winter it was very quiet. It was raining the next morning, but Betty and I paid our 5 Yuan to walk on the beach. This is the first time I have seen the sea since being in China, so I was not going to miss out. The beach was, of course, deserted, apart from some massive sand sculptures which must have been made for CNY. The sea was brown and rough, but is apparently blue and calm in summer. The beach itself was reasonably big and sandy, but nothing in comparison to Australian beaches. However, it is one of the most famous beaches in China and I could see that it would be pretty appealing in the oppressive heat of the Chinese summer.
We had lunch in the city, before catching another bus back to Huai’an that afternoon. It was raining for my last day in Huai’an, so I spent the entire day in bed, getting up at 5:00pm to meet another friend of Betty’s for dinner! After dinner, we had a wonderful foot massage – 15 minutes soaking in hot water and 45 minute massage. It was devine!
The next morning I caught a bus back to Yancheng, and here I am now, spending the last few days of the holiday washing clothes, showering in private, developing my photos and writing this book. I am not sure when classes resume – possibly Monday; possibly not. As usual, the school has given me no information, so I guess I will just play it by ear.
Happy New Year to you all. If you were born in the year of the rooster, you must wear red underwear for the entire year. Ok?
posted by Travelling1972 | 2:31 PM
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