China in recall 3 - 31st July 2006

By my calculations this date marks a year of being single. I think I’ll have an “ironic party” later tonight on my own. Feel free to turn up but for fucks sakes don’t patronise me.

China in recall 2 – 29 July 2006 - There goes my bowels

I’d been in China for nearly 3 weeks and eating and shitting were rapidly becoming two of my favourite pastimes, usually in quick succession and most of the time in that order. My latest move to the Sichuan province, home of the tastiest and spiciest food in the whole of China wasn’t really helping matters and I had taken the consumption and excretion of foodstuffs to unprecedented levels. My mouth had rarely been so happy and my arse had rarely been so busy. These were trying times.

The barmen at Sim’s cosy guesthouse in Chengdu are great fun and I spent many a night with these fellas. Itay, the Israeli hiding out in China to avoid the war and Scott, a Tasmanian dude, probably trying to avoid Tasmania were all the fun you could need and on the night before I left for the North a guy called Steve, who used to work at the bar there came down and we decided to hit the town for the night. With the state of my arse I decided to play it safe and stay off the “dump-rings” and go for sushi at Sumo’s instead in a bid to try to keep my guts in for the forthcoming trip. Of course, as usual the irony of trying to eat raw fish to avoid getting the squits was somewhat lost on me.

We set off to the Ba Bi club sometime around 11pm. Crap fact alert – Chinese is a tonal language so any slip up in tone gives you a completely different word, and apparently if you say “Ba Bi” to a Chinese person in the wrong tone you will in fact be saying “Your father’s minge” – Getting a taxi was a minefield best left to the professionals. The guys let me do the talking because ‘m yellow. Oh dear.

At the club my bowels were, to my relief still pretty stationary and we danced the night away. At one point I heard some Akcent, a Romanian group I love and the night turned into the usual dance-obsession that I’m known best to my mates for. Itay spent the whole night underneath a crazy Chinese girl and spent the next day complaining that he didn’t dance enough, while Scott and Steve and I complained we didn’t get enough. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side.

At the end of the night, Steve gave his number to some Chinese girl and we left back on the cab back to Sim’s. It was 6:30am when we got back. The sun had been up for a while and people were beginning to get up and go to work when we slumped on the sofas in the bar. Itay’s 12 hour shift was about to start and he was none too happy about it. The rest of us decided there was no point in him going to bed or even getting changed so we sent him straight behind the bar to get us some Captain Morgan and Coke. By the time he had poured the drinks we were all asleep on the sofas.

At 9:30 in the morning I opened one eye and looked out over the scene. Itay was battling to stay awake, Scott was asleep on the next sofa and my French mate Thibauld was on the stools at the bar. “Fancy a beer?” he said. It would have been rude not to. As we all stirred we each found our way to the bar stools where the talk of last night was the buzz. I ordered some cokes and we sat cracking the tops open with a lighter. Times were good.

Then I decided to take a fart. Not wanting to be rude I had to warn the lads of its arrival and to give them a progress report on the way out. Better out than in I say.

So I let rip. “Ooooh it’s a nice one.” I said. Then I stopped in my tracks. “erm maybe a little TOO nice.”

“I think I’ve just shit my pants”

As I peeled myself from the barstool and headed to the bogs, the lads knew a new legend had been born in their midst. When I came back from the shower they were still laughing.

Weeks later when I arrived back in the bar Brad, an Aussie who I had never even seen before said “Oh YOU’RE the guy who shit himself at the bar? Pleased to meet ya son!” and bought me a pint. Wicked!

China in recall 1 - 26 July 2006 - A long train ride

It had been a week since I arrived in the bustling, smoggy metropolis of Shanghai to hide amongst the 26.5 million other yellow people and still I was getting nothing remotely looking like the relaxing holiday I had made the break to freedom for. The monotone grey sky was broken erratically by tower blocks and ignited in places by neon candles reaching for the heavens. I remember seeing smog clouds drifting overhead, thick, cloying and black and thinking they looked like chariots of death.

After 4 days spent trying to find a cup of tea in Shanghai, (“All the tea in China? Someone’s obviously already given it all away!”) I decided that the Bund and Nanjing Donglu had seen quite enough of me. Panda Jen was leaving to go to Vietnam and I decided I needed to get to somewhere else and find a bit of peace so I asked at the hostel desk if they could book a train ticket to Chengdu for the next day regardless of class as long as I just got out of Shanghai. The pretty air hostess in my room came from Chengdu so I decided it seemed a bloody idea to go there. I’m not shallow or anything.

There are 4 different classes of train ride in China. At the top end of the scale is what is known as the soft sleeper. Just cheaper than a plane ticket this form of transport is favoured by rich Americans who want to stay as far away as possible from the riff-raff and still convince themselves they are roughing it by travelling by train at all. A step below that is the hard sleeper. Much akin to sleeping of a plank of wood, this class is slightly cheaper and favoured by most backpackers and the Chinese middle classes so is the hardest class of seat to book.

On the lower end of the scale comes firstly the soft seat. Not an altogether bad option for relatively short journeys, the passenger sits upright and breathes in the smoke and airborne bacteria of the locals, for whom phlegm seems to be a thing not to be hoarded and kept up ones nose but instead shared around with the community at large, usually with a loud and proud *HOCK* followed by a *SPLAT* on the floor of the train aisle, then spread around the floor with the sole of ones shoe.

One step lower than that is what is known as the hard seat, a seat with the padding of my shoulder blade (yes only my ex-girlfriends will get THAT reference) sat at an angle of about half a degree from the vertical. This type of class, probably known in Chinese as “The Sardine Express” is only bettered in value by something called “Standing class”, a fate so horrific given the distances in China that it’s usually reserved for people in the advanced stages of rigor mortis and those with individuals with masochistic streaks. Like me. One guy at my hostel came from Karachi to Shanghai on standing class, a journey of 5 days. The mind boggles…

When me and the Panda got back from Bund it seems the train had run out of the class of my choice (I’ll leave that to your imagination) so the guys on the hostel desk had had to book me onto the next best thing. Ironically as the Panda headed towards Vietnam, I headed towards Chengdu, home of the Panda by hard seat.

At about 6am on the 25th, we said our goodbyes and hugged, and I realised that was the first time I’ve had actual bodily contact with a female for months. I could have cried.

The train left Shanghai South station at 0851 headed for Chengdu in the Sichuan province, the last stop on the line, a distance of about 2500km as the crow flies. Spanning 4 provinces in a straight line, with access to a population of 25 million on the Shanghai end, 11.8 million on the Chengdu end and God only knows how many in between, the rail operators had decided in their wisdom that this route wasn’t nearly profitable enough and should include an arc to the tourist trap of Xi’an to pick up more passengers. Taking the total distance to maybe around 4000km, this trip took a nice round 37 hours or, to put it in perspective, three times longer than going from London to Edinburgh by train. With Shanghai straddling the east coast and Chengdu nearly slap bang in the centre of the country I started to realise just how big this country actually was and how futile it would be to plan to go to any more than one province with my remaining month.

The train ride started off easily enough from Shanghai. Being the first stop I got a seat without a problem and was pleased to find it was not just made out of wood but also included a flimsy piece of fabric too, which had become discoloured from the ubiquitous cigarette smoke and mottled with unidentifiable stains of dubious origin. As the carriage started to fill up I couldn’t help thinking it was a bit like taking up residence in the bastard lovechild of a forensics lab and a zoo.

With my confidence at a low ebb from the events of last month I found the thought of interacting with Chinese families with hand gestures and my phrasebook for 37 hours daunting rather than quite funny as i usually would so I managed to avoid that for the first 2 hours before my natural urge to fall asleep on transportation kicked in. Andy here’s one for you mate - I never told you that the last time I took up driving lessons I feel asleep at the wheel did I? Well I did. I always fall asleep in moving vehicles. That may explain why I failed my driving test earlier that month then…

With an uneasy 3 hours of sleep in the bag, I awoke as stiff as the chair I was sat on and thought to myself “Hell that’s 5 hours down, I haven’t spoken to anyone and I’m not TOO uncomfortable. It’s just like having sex really. I can keep this up for another 32 hours” - how wrong I was.

First contact with the Chinese was made about 5 hours and 3 minutes into the trip, me feeling as groggy as hell, still trying to blend in to the yellow background and hoping that no-one would suss me out. But they just wouldn’t let it lie would they. Hand gestures and no progress for 32 hours wiped me out.

Looking back through my journal, which I picked up in hour 16 to begin to catalogue my despair I pick out the following words of great wisdom, penned at 13:22pm on the 26th of July

We’ve been winding through the verdant mountainscapes of the Sichuan province for about an hour. Some of the peaks and valleys are breathtaking. The scenery is accompanied by a soundtrack of Chinese language muzak which just alters volume randomly which is really distracting because you can’t tune your ears to filter it out and the Chinese in my carriage are pretty similar in their approach. After 2 weeks of being hereI still can’t pick out a single word of this language. Maybe I’m a spastic.

The funniest thing I saw was that the inspectors and guards on the train would, in between their duties of selling tickets and mopping the floor every 30 minutes of spit and noodle boxes, would supplement their income in the most hilarious manner.

Every hour or so, a different member of the staff team would go into the storeroom and get out a box of completely random objects then would suddenly transform from mild mannered ticket inspector into the worlds loudest salesman, touting his or her wares the length of the train, making very sure to stop at every single bay to give the full spiel at about 120 decibels.

Goods on offer during my ride initially included what I’d imagine to be standard train sales stuff like socks and quiz books. As the ride drew on and peoples minds started to become a little more detached from their sanity, the items for sale became stranger and stranger, and the lengths to which ticketers/sales gurus would go to became more absurd, until finally one guy comes down the aisle with a gyroscope and a piece of string and proceeds to demonstrate for no less than 15 minutes a show in which a tightrope walking gyroscope with flashing lights sang a bloody annoying ringtone version of Happy Birthday. Now I’d seen it all.

With this guy at the helm, the Chinese bought enough gyroscopes to make me never want another birthday again in my life. As the carriage filled with smoke and the sound of good tidings to the aging I knew I would not get another minutes sleep on that god-forsaken trip.

Fugitive

So there I was in Suicide City, exhausted and unmotivated while those around me killed themselves. Not a bad start to the summer holidays I thought. As a younger man with my whole life before me and a CV to fill this job seemed perfect. Things have changed a bit now though and having taught 6 days a week for a year, spending summer teaching 6 days a week had somewhat lost it's appeal. It's been nearly a year since I had a holiday in which I didn't have to work.

The company I worked for is one of the biggest English teaching companies in the world and to get a job with these guys is pretty prestigious. Flight was thrown in and accomodation too. After a day of teaching they paid me half the cost of my flight back and the other half was withheld until the end of my contract at the end of summer.

After a day of teaching I realised that I had made a mistake. What the hell was I doing teaching kids in my holidays!?! Two typhoons hit town and I pondered my choice as the rain lashed down and the wind tore through the alleyways, blowing the plants in the balcony over and ripping down the metal fence that seperated us from our neighbours. In the morning I had made up mind.

On Tuesday morning, I had 2 lessons to teach and a plane to catch at 12:25 to Shanghai. As I made my way to the streets to find a taxi, checking over my shoulder dragonflies fluttered in my throat and I kept repeating the Chinese for "To the airport please!" which must have sounded to the taxi driver like an order for special fried rice from his perplexed expression.

By 10:30 in the morning my first lesson was under way at the school. I was on my way to the airport. My Boss must have had a fit. By the time the lesson was over at 12:00 it would have been too late for him to track me down. I was on the flight to Shanghai.

And so a new adventure begins....

Welcome to Wenzhou - goodbye cruel world!

It's been a good while since I wrote anything substantial, in fact the last entry was sometime before I began my job at an independent school in the UK, a job that now hangs precariously in the balance. For a while I was busily contented, a physics teacher teaching in a cushy little number, getting paid to do a job I loved to bits for rich kids and getting paid good whack. More on this story later.

I pulled in to Wenzhou, a city of 7 million south of Shanghai, on the evening of the 11th of July and boy was I glad to be out of the UK. With all the trouble that's been going down back home, this trip couldn't have come at a better time.

My director of studies here has been great so far and, realising that I had just arrived after a 15 hour trip he decided to let me rest it off and find my feet here in the city before the work starts tomorrow.

So I slept pretty much the whole of the first day and found myself awake with nothing to do in a strange city the next day much to my delight and relief. So long had it been since I had free run of a new city, anonymity and the associated buzz of travel that I'd forgotten just how good that feels. The little village in Kent where I've been living these past few months was beginning to feel claustrophobic, what with the nearest town being 6 miles away and me failing my driving test on the last day before I left.

I spent a good hour on the balcony listening to Romanian pop music (O-zone to those of you in the know, and also a slice of the prolific podcasts. Cheers Cata and Charma!) just getting up the courage again to walk out of the front door, so institutionalised had I become. China is a vast beast of a country, full of yellow brothers, who I confess all look the bloody same and the thought of being surrounded by people who look the same but don't understand me brought back memories of Vietnam some years back but a bit more daunting.

After watching the citizens downstairs practising tai chi in the park for a while and the children running and skipping on the metal and concrete playground for a while, the stomach took over and I decided to take a walk to the noodle bar down the road, a place the ex-pat teachers call "the Muslim" because it's run by Chinese Muslims and has a picture of Mecca on the wall and everything. Damn good handmade noodles with beef reminded me of the only good thing about Kuwait - eating - and I remembered just why I was here.

Parting with about 50p for that slice of culinary paradise I decided to go and get lost around town, see what else was different from home. Marching straight out I walked over to Wendi Lu (the road that the school is on) and spent about 10 minutes trying to cross the bloody road. If it wasn't for years of travelling, the chaotic roads would be a shock but the Chinese all seem pretty tame compared to the Kuwaitis and Africans who really are maniacs! They drive slower here but with the usual lack of respect for red lights and road markings.

As I walked past the school and up Wendi Lu, I felt a bit of a weight lift off my shoulders, that weight of responsibility that I'm not really used to carrying and I lost myself somewhere in the Chinese experience. Through the polluted air I heard cars screeching and Chinese people yelling things at each other, then the sound of an ambulance siren cutting through the smog.

As I walked on a little further I saw a dazed looking man in the road, sitting with his butt on the kerb gazing vacantly into space. Just as I drew level with the man the ambulance pulled up and a female nurse jumped out and ran over to the man who continued to gaze vacantly into the air in front of him.

She grabbed his left arm then, saying something in Mandarin, pulled out a gauze swab patch from her bumbag and proceeded to wipe away some blood. I stopped and looked over to see what was going on and a few doors down the road the door of the cosmetics shop had opened and a couple of assistants had come to the door. Other than that we were the only audience.

When I looked a little closer I noticed a fair sized gash, not life-threatening, but not insubstantial about a third of the way up his forearm where he had slit his wrist. It was probably about 5mm deep, I guess it's what the doctors call a 'cry for help' cut. I always expected from the movies that dudes like that bled all over the place, spurting blood on all and sundry, but (as Cata knows - stand in the corner!) I'm bloody squeamish so I'm pretty glad it was a cry for help myself.

I don't think the nurse was impressed though - after she had cleared up the mess, she proceeded to just shout at the guy, a surefire way to stop him doin it again! I smirked and walked off smiling that at least it hadn't got that bad yet.

The next few days have been without event really, unless of course you call the typhoon this morning an event.

Being next to the sea, this place is pretty prone to the odd typhoon, and it's quite a relief that it cleared away most of the humidity in the air which was startin to feel way too stifling for me. Last night the wind blew and it pissed down all night. I woke up and our balcony on the top floor here (I was afraid the whole top floor would be blown off the building - if you saw the building you see my point) had been completely rearranged, the metal grille separating the two balconies blown clean off the wall and teetering over the edge, just waiting to fall off and go through a windscreen seven stories down (see what I done there Will) The balcony was flooded and so were all the streets. And for some reason my ipod packed up as well. Useless piece of shit.

Tonight we went out to the Japanese restaurant around the corner. I'm still hangin with the ex-pat crowd at the moment mainly cos my yellow brothers really think I'm one of them and it's very hard to mix without even a tiny bit of the language. I think this is going to be a real challenge of a trip to break out actually, and I've been looking to perhaps start working in Vietnam soon to try to give myself a fighting chance on that front.

I thought it was pretty brave of the Japs to open a restaurant here. On talking to the Chinese there seems to be institutionalised hatred of the Japanese government from small children upwards, due to years of invasion and oppression, and the Japanese restaurant does it's business mainly in broken Chinese and Japanese. Big up them!

The food was pretty good, though I'm getting quite into dumplings and noodles from the place around the corner (where the orphan boy that we call "Noodle Boy" works - he's great!) and so this place had a lot to live up to. They also didn't have a toilet, which was a shame because I'd finally been able to recall my first full sentence in Chinese "Where is the toilet?" only for them to point at the sink in the corner, which was situated in the window to the street. I decided to hold it.

Work starts tomorrow, and the thoughts are flowing thick and fast. Watch this space?

Trouble in paradise

Things have gone badly wrong for me this week. I failed my driving test, I lost my phone and I have pretty much been sacked. Still trying to find the funny side of this one, but I'll post up here what happens next, which I think will be an escape to China where I may stay for a few years. Chill though it's not Gary Glitter stuff!