The Festive Season 2005

Well, it has been 2 months since my last confession and I have committed many sins in that time. I am sure you are all dying to hear about them.

In my last instalment, I told you that things had settled into a routine. True, but then I blinked, and now the first semester is almost over. This is my last week of teaching and then exams start next week. I have been really (well quite, at least) busy over the last month with teaching, Christmas parties and preparing for exams. Throw in a few illnesses, and you have my excuse for not emailing for so long.

So, it is always best to start where things left off. In early November, I took a weekend trip to my old city, Yancheng. The purpose was to say goodbye to my Chinese friend, Lizzy, who was leaving to live in Australia with her husband, Piers. I was accompanied by Nick & Katie, a young pair from England, and Betty and her boyfriend (to whom she has given the English name, John). Yes, John is the boy, from the last email, who Betty “dated” at the public bath house.

Have I told you about Nick & Katie? I think I have. They are both 21 (well Nick just celebrated his 22nd birthday), geography graduates from Durham University. They are teaching at a middle school here in Huaian. They are both very attractive young people, and both have lovely personalities. We all assumed they were a couple, but, in fact, they are just friends. Actually, Katie has a boyfriend who is in Huaian visiting her at the moment.

Anyway, back to the story. The 5 of us went to Yancheng for the weekend. Nick & Katie and Betty & John got a hotel room each, and I stayed with Lizzy. The purpose of inviting Nick & Katie was to take them to the “Kiss Bar”, which was a reasonably cool bar the foreigners frequented when I lived in Yancheng. It was the only bar which played any decent English music, a phenomenon which is also missing from the bars in Huaian. The Kiss Bar did not disappoint and a good night was had by all. Since then, there have been many nights out with Nick & Katie, and also Bill (the American) and Irish Mark.

The usual routine is that the evening begins at Bill’s place with a few beers and maybe a few shots of Baijiu (particularly foul tasting and exceptionally potent Chinese white spirit, which the Chinese call ‘white wine”), then on to the Scarlett (O’Hara, from Gone with the Wind) bar in the hopes that there might actually be some people there this time, then to the “Red” bar or “90210” bar (the first name is given because the internal decor is all red; the second after the show “Beverly Hills 90210” because the actual name of the bar is 0517 bar, the numbers being the telephone code for Huaian), then to the “Boss Club” (the dance club with the bouncing dance floor), and finally to the “Last Chance” bar, so called because it is a dingy little underground place, but the only bar which is still open after midnight. Sometimes we skip the Last Chance bar and head for an all night BBQ meat place. The nights also usually involve a few interesting trips in a sanlunche (pedal cab), and there have been occasions were drunken bike riding has featured.

Anyway, the stories about the parties and nights out are probably better told by pictures than by words, so I will send some photos along shortly.
In my last email, I told you that I was enjoying riding my bike around the city and to and from the southern campus where I teach. Of course, I also told you that the weather was starting to get colder. Well, winter has definitely hit since my last email, and the bike is not getting much use at the moment.

I was having some problems with my bike for awhile. It had a distinct shake in the back wheel, particularly when going down a hill (or slight decline), and I could also feel a thump every time the wheel went round. I think there are some proper bike shops in Huaian, but usually you just pull over to a man on the side of the road with a cart containing some bike repair supplies. One such man performed some makeshift repairs to my back wheel. It cost me 1 Yuan or about 6 cents.

Unfortunately, the bike was not much better, and in fact, the shaking and thumping was getting worse. So, about a week later, I went to another street repairer. This time I was told I needed a new back tyre and tread as mine was about to blow. Bike tyre blow-outs are a very common phenomenon in China. I think this might be because of the pressure on the tyre when “dinking” someone. So, the new tyre, tread and labour cost me 30 Yuan ($5). This solved the problem, but the bike has not had much of a workout since then because of the cold weather.

I have had a number of illnesses and injuries in the last couple of months. The first was a lovely little UTI (if you don’t know what that is, I’m not telling you), probably from a public toilet or shower. I have also had a couple of colds, a 48 hour stomach bug, migraine headache, a sprained ankle and now a lost voice. Some of these are probably from the fact that I am completely fatigued trying to keep you with the partying of “the young ones”.

The sprained ankle was definitely from too much partying. It involved an interesting mixture of red wine and sprite, a congo line, and a fall from the raised dance floor of the Red bar. It was quite a serious sprain and, of course, I did not treat it very well, so it is still lingering on just a bit. It involved a hospital visit and an x-ray, but no permanent damage has been done.

The UTI also involved a few hospital visits and these are worthy of mention. Now, as you know, or if you don’t you are about to find out, UTI’s occur in rather a private place in your body. In order to treat the infection, an examination has to take place. Betty accompanied me to the hospital. The hospitals in regional cities like Huaian are rather archaic places. This was the “2nd” hospital, but I have been to the “1st” hospital and can’t really say there is much difference between the two. Anyway, the “gyaeno” ward consisted of 2 relatively bare, cold, concrete rooms. In the first room, there was an old wooden desk with a computer on it, at which 2 doctors sit. There are no chairs for patients; there is no waiting room; there is no privacy. You just walk into the room, hand your registration paper to one of the doctors and state your problem. So, while you are trying to tell the doctor about your delicate condition, there are other patients constantly walking in and out of the room, handing bits of paper to the doctors and blabbering away in Chinese. The two doctors are also blabbering away to each other, or the nursing assistant, or the lady who stands at the door checking your registration paper.

In fact, while I was there, one young woman came out from the examination room crying. She was met by a young man in the consultation room and the doctor was writing something in the treatment book and blabbering away to God knows who while the lady was standing there crying. I can only assume that they were a young married couple having a child and obviously being told that there was something wrong. I wanted to scream at the doctors to give the poor woman some privacy.

On the first occasion I visited the hospital, I was required to tell my problem to the male doctor. I told Betty that I did not want the male doctor examining me. Thankfully, that was not a problem.

I was required to pay a registration fee when I first arrived at the hospital. This entitled me to a hospital card and treatment book for the doctor to write in. After telling the doctor my problem, I had to go back to the payment window to pay another fee for the examination.

Then I was told to go in to the examination room next door. This examination room was separated from the consultation room by a flimsy curtain. There were other patients in various states of undress in the examination room and, again, people walking in and out. I told Betty to tell the doctor that I would wait until the examination room was empty and to ask the doctor to not let anyone into the room while I was being examined. This actually required Betty to stand guard at the curtain to keep people out, whilst sticking her head through the curtain so she could relay instructions from the doctor to me.

I can tell you that it was not a very pleasant experience being examined in this particular region by an unfriendly Chinese (female, at least) doctor with no bed side manner and being grunted at in Chinese to move forward on the cold, vinyl covered bench or do this or do that. Anyway, the experience was short at least.

I then had to go back to the payment window again, pay another fee to have the “specimen” tested. Then I had to actually take the specimen to the lab myself.

After the test results came back, the doctor wrote a prescription, then I had to go to the payment window again, pay for the medicine which was prescribed then go and pick up the medicine from the pharmacy and bring it back to the consultation room for the doctor to tell me how to take the medicine.

The medicine appeared to be all western medicine, although I was prescribed no less than 5 different medicines to be taken or used in various ways. I think I will leave that part of the story to your imagination.

The course of treatment took 10 days, then I had to go back to the hospital and repeat the same process all over again! Oh, my God! What a cultural experience. One that I am not keen to repeat!

Not long after this, the wind up to Christmas began. Like last year, I decided to make rum balls for my students and friends. I have several hundred students, so it is quite a time consuming process to make enough rum balls for everyone.

This year, I did a much better job of decorating my apartment. The only thing I did last year in Yancheng was to buy a pathetic little Christmas tree 2 days before Christmas. Well, I still have the pathetic little Christmas tree but I bought some new lights and ornaments for it and brought it out 2 weeks before Christmas. I also decorated my living room with tinsel hanging from the doors, coloured bells hanging from the lights and various Christmas decorations stuck on the walls. It provided a much more festive atmosphere, albeit a little tacky!

I also decided to hold Christmas parties, at my home, for my Grade 1 students. I have 6 Grade 1 classes, each with between 30 – 36 students. Accordingly, I had to have 3 separate parties in order to fit them all into my home. The first party was held on Saturday 17 December. I spent about 200 Yuan on soft drink, orange juice and snacks like popcorn, chips, biscuits and chocolate. I mistakenly thought that the snacks would last, at least for 2 of the 3 parties. Alas, it was not to be. About 25-30 students from 2 classes came to the Saturday party and stood around the table and scoffed the food and drink until it was all gone. One student asked me what “the program” for the party would be. (In China, it seems there is always a “program” of singing, games, performances, etc). I told her that this was a western party, that there was no program and we usually just drink, chat, listen to music and dance spontaneously at western parties. She responded with “Oh, it sounds dull”. I did try to teach them a few Christmas carols, but, needless to say, the first party was a bit of a fizzer.

So, Sunday morning, I went out and spent another 200 Yuan on more drinks and snacks. Then I frantically searched the internet for some easy Christmas party games. I sent a message to the class monitors of each of the next two classes and asked them to organise a few students to “do a performance”. Another 25-30 students arrived for this party. Whilst they again ate me out of house and home, the party was much more of a success. They enjoyed singing the Christmas carols, some of them did their own performances and they fought over the presents I gave as prizes for the games.

So, by the third party for the remaining 2 classes on Christmas eve, and after spending my final 200 Yuan, I was quite an old hand and the last party was the biggest and best of the lot. It was quite an exhausting week though, especially having to clean the apartment after each of the parties. The little shits were into everything too – photos, books, cupboards, DVDs, the computer ….. no respect for privacy; no please or may I.

The week before Christmas also involved many nights making rum balls, and a huge night out for Nick’s 22nd birthday mid week. His birthday was on Tuesday, 20 December. We started at his place with a few beers and party games, this time involving the drinking of alcohol, of course. Betty and I gave Nick some fireworks for his birthday so we went outside to set those off. That was pretty cool. Afterwards, we took a box of beer to the bowling alley and played drunken bowling. This involves having to drink for every pin you fail to knock down. If you get a spare or a strike you can make the other team drink. (Remember, most of these guys have only recently finished University!) We were the only people at the bowling alley, but it was fun. Later we went to the Boss club until it was closed and then to the all night BBQ for a late night feed. I got home about 2:00am and then had to get up to teach the next morning!

Christmas eve involved another party and big night. The young foreigners wanted to hold a Christmas eve party. They talked about it being the biggest party Huaian had ever seen. They were going to put up fliers at all the colleges and invite hundreds of Chinese people. Of course, they are all talk and no action. The party was held at Irish Mark’s place. The only foreigners in attendance were the usual suspects (Bill, Mark, Katie, Nick & I), Katie’s boyfriend, Simon, and Glen for a short while. There were a handful of Chinese people there invited by the others. Luckily, I turned up with about 25 students in tow and actually made the party! It was a western style party and essentially BYO, so a few of the students did not like it and left pretty early. However, many of them actually enjoyed themselves, even without a “program” and stayed until “curfew” time. A few of them even breached their curfew and came to the dance club with the foreigners.

Although Betty did not come to the Christmas eve party, she stayed at my place that night so that I was not alone on Christmas morning. I made pancakes with eggs, bacon and maple syrup for breakfast. Later we met other foreigners at a restaurant for Christmas lunch. There were 12 people altogether, 10 foreigners and 2 Chinese. The food was plentiful and very tasty, although disappointingly all Chinese food. I would have killed for some turkey and ham and roast vegetables.

I did take along some rum balls and short bread and timtams which had been sent to me and those items were a welcome addition to the Christmas meal. I also organised a couple of Christmas games which were childish but a bit of fun. I got home mid-afternoon and talked to the family on the phone and then spent the rest of the afternoon and night relaxing and watching movies.

I had a bit of a spooky experience the next morning. I had been leaving the Christmas tree lights on all through the night in the days before Christmas. I left them on Christmas night too. But when I woke up on boxing day morning they were off, never to work again. Now the spooky thing about this is that the same thing happened last year in Yancheng. The lights stayed on all through the night until boxing day morning when they just stopped!

Back to work on Boxing Day. No holiday here given that Christmas day fell on the weekend.

The next Wednesday night, Betty’s beauty salon friend invited us out to dinner with some of her “friends”. These were 4 of the most unattractive Chinese men I have ever seen. They were all much older than the beauty salon friend, and I am guessing that she is the mistress of one of them, who I have been out to dinner with before. But these men were not only physically unattractive, but also disgusting. There was spitting and snorting happening right at the table, not to mention the slurping and other noises while eating. The dishes they ordered were revolting as well – dog, duck’s blood, cow stomach and other internal bits. Betty told them that I would not eat dog so they asked her what I liked. She told them lamb, so they ordered a hot pot of sheep insides! She then told them that foreigners don’t usually eat the insides of animals and so finally they ordered me some plain slices of beef. This was an authentic Chinese dining experience that I could have done without.

On a little aside, when I went to the toilet at this restaurant there was a sign with a picture of a little man slipping over on a wet floor which read “Beware of Landslides”. Got to love Chinglish!

The next night was my 33rd birthday. It was quite cool to have an Irish guy there saying turty-tree and turty-turd all night. Because it was a week night, and I am getting old and had the start of a cold and sore throat, it was pretty low key. We just went to a restaurant for dinner (pizza and steak – a western restaurant that has been here since the beginning of the year and none of us knew about it!). “We” being the same foreigners as Christmas day, Betty and John. Afterwards, the young ones, and me, went roller skating. There was no drinking involved this time though. We saved that for the next night, Friday night, which was another 2:00am affair ending with drinking games at the Last Chance bar.

Finally, it was New Years Eve. On Saturday morning, I met the young ‘uns at the bus station and we went to Nanjing to celebrate NYE there. We checked into two rooms at the foreign students’ dormitory of Nanjing University. We started the evening with some Jack Daniels in the foyer of the dormitory. It was our intention to try to meet some other foreigners and join up with whatever festivities might be happening in Nanjing. Alas, most of the people staying in the foreign students’ dormitory appeared to be Chinese. The few foreigners that were there did not seem particularly friendly.

Later we went to an expat bar down the road. It was completely dead in the bar but we stayed there for quite a few drinks anyway. As it got closer to midnight, we decided to move on to somewhere with a bit more atmosphere. Katie and I were keen to go to the public square as we were sure that there would be lots of people and fireworks. The boys were not so sure and convinced us to go to a dance club instead. So, we ended up at a place called Scarletts. It was extremely crowded and stinking hot inside. We arrived around 11:00pm and had to push and shove our way through the crowd to try to find a spot with some breathing space. In the melee I managed to have my wallet stolen from out of my pocket. I knew within minutes that it was gone, but couldn’t do anything about it.

Then Katie and her boyfriend Simon had a bit of a tiff, and Katie stormed off, so I went to try to find her and bring her back. The other boys were all well inebriated and had no idea what was going on. Katie and Simon made up, and even though the three of us did not want to stay at the club, we thought we had better stick with the other boys. The club was mostly full of Chinese people. There were probably 30 or 40 foreigners but, again, not particularly friendly. You couldn’t really move, so we were just bunched together sort of swaying to the music. The countdown to midnight was in Chinese and then they played some techno Happy New Year thing. No auld lang syne and impossible to get one going. I kissed everyone and wished them Happy New Year. Bill tried to snog me, but I wasn’t having much of it. I would have snogged Nick on the other hand, but he was very inebriated and not really “with us” at midnight so he wasn’t interested in kissing anyone.

We stayed there for maybe another hour and then we went back to the hotel and got a late night feed of Chinese dumplings. I was sharing a room with Katie and Simon. The boys were in another room. The boys decided to gate crash our room and do a naked streak. I have some interesting photos! Unbeknownst to us at the time, the boys then went back out again to another bar for another few hours.

So, New Years Day was a late sleep in; check out of the hotel at noon; a quick check at the bars to see if my wallet had turned up (no luck); lunch at an Indian restaurant (mmm, curry) and then back on the bus to Huaian.

And that, my friends, is it. You are now completely up to date with my life in China. I have now almost completely lost my voice, which tells me that I am really getting much too old to try to keep up with the partying of these youngsters. So, I intend to spend the next few weeks in a much quieter fashion than the last few. Although …. Simon is leaving to go back to England this weekend… and then Glen and Roger will leave soon after that … and then it will be Chinese New Year….

Stay tuned! Take care.

love
Meagan

PS – It has finally decided to snow today! It has been pretty cold for the last month, but it has been very dry. This morning was bitterly cold and on the way back in the bus, it started to snow. Well, sort of. It was more like icy rain with bits of white flakes. Not enough to cover anything and it just melted as soon as it hit the ground. Still, it’s a start!