One Student's Year In North West China

Wrapping Things Up

2009-10-09T19:42:00.002+08:00

This is just a very brief post to say thank you to everyone who followed my blog while I was away, who sent me letters, pictures, coffee, cards, words of support and kept me going when things were looking really quite bleak in Xinjiang. I recovered from my illnesses, came home in July, and spent the summer as a couch potato, the effects of which I'm now trying to reverse back at the uni gym.

It's wonderful to be back :)

Feeling Chesty in the Qi

2009-06-07T13:13:00.001+08:00

Last Saturday I had an annoying dry cough; by the evening it had got worse, and by the time I came home from supper I was feeling a little ill. Turned myself into bed around 2330 and proceeded to have a night of mad dreams, frequently waking up covered in sweat, hot all over. Sunday came and went in a relatively uncomfortable headachey fevery sweaty way. After my shower Sunday night I went to bed and shivered most of the night, in what felt like the opposite to the previous day. All this time I was coughing, and coughing up phlegm. I woke on Monday morning at 0430, just a few short hours after going to sleep, with nothing in my stomach, zero blood sugar, and a desperate need for the toilet. When I reached the bathroom however, it became obvious I was going to pass out, immediately post flow as it were. Brilliant. Stopping myself from passing out, and with my ears ringing, I quickly drank some water and got some sugar in me before returning to bed but unable to sleep until about 0630. Now the fun begins.

Feeling better, but not much so, I decide to go and see a doctor. This is, after all, about the first time I can remember being unwell for more than 1 day (operations not counted). Usually I have a short burst of illness, it goes, I get better, simple. So this time, on Day 3 of feeling bad, I wanted to know what was up. My friend Bruce took me to a hospital, and helped me get set up (when you arrive you need to buy a special record book, which is just for the doctor to chronicle your symptoms and his treatments; it comes with a swipe-card too, which is then personalised to you, enabling you to get test results etc) and book an appointment. I say book, you basically pay a couple of yuan and get a ticket with a number. It was 1400.

When we got to the 3rd floor, we found all the departments closed until 1530. Yes, a 90 minute break in the middle of the day. What? Apparently if we needed treatment at any time of day we could go to the emergency dept, but they wouldnt have specialists or anything ... so we had to wait an hour and a half for the doctor to come off his lunch break, and then see other people who came in the morning and who now had X-rays and godknowswhat needing reviewing. Finally, it was our turn. The doctor conducted his examination in English and Chinese, looked at my throat, listened to my list of symptoms but didnt listen to my chest or take a temperature (strange no?) or BP reading ... before ordering me a blood test and an X-ray, and telling me to come back with the results (before 1900, since that's when they close shop).

First you have to pay - this isn't the NHS remember! - and then you take your receipts with you to the various testing depts. Blood test on the second floor, a five second jobby, nothing traumatic, though I did question why the woman doing my blood test was herself hooked up to a drip. X-ray on the first floor, again a quick thing, though they said the prints would only be ready after 1810. Drat, why so long? Bruce and I collected my blood results after half an hour from a swipe-card-operated machine, and then he had to leave for a meeting. At 1750 I decided to chance it, and went early to collect my X-rays. They'd been sitting there for god knows how long! Damn it, I could have been doing something other than sitting on a bench feeling ill because I was hungry but there was nothing to eat in the whole hospital (no coffee shop, nothing). Up to the doctor, who looked at my results and told me I had "lung disease" though I'm fairly sure that his English translates to "chest infection" because I damn sure do not have lung disease. Whatever, there were streaky lines across my lungs, not good.

Despite previously telling him no drips (the Chinese LOVE drips but I happen to believe if I can swallow there's not much need for one, and certainly people in the UK get ill and get better all the time without ever having a needle put inside their veins), he prescribed three drips over three days and some other medicines besides. First of course, I had to buy the medicine ... down to the first floor again. Here there are three counters, A, B and C. At counter A I was able to pick up some of my medicines and pay for them. At counter B they told me to go to counter C, where I paid for the medicines from counter B before going back and collecting them. Then I had to go back up to the doctor to show him I had the right meds and for him to tell me how and when to take them ... 麻烦 (ma fan) is the Chinese for "troublesome" or "hassle" and it definitely applies to their hospital system. So, the result, one drip a day for three days, one antibiotic tablet twice a day, four cough medicine capsules twice a day, and some horrible disgusting powder that I am still not quite sure about four times a day. Oh and because it was after 1900 (he was running late, hmmmm here's a thought, dont take 90 minutes off in the middle of the day) I had to go to the emergency dept to get started on my first drip.

To say I was nervous is an understatement, but I knew it was something I had to get on with, so I went. I'm not sure what caused my initial reaction but about 5 seconds after the drip needle was inserted my heartrate shot up, I started sweating uncontrollably, and everything went white and ringy. Of course the nurse had left the room by then. About five minutes later and my panic attack was over, the only discomfort remaining being the numbness alternating with pins and needles in both hands. And even that stopped, leaving me feeling quite alright for the remaining hour and a half that I sat with a needle in my hand. Finally it was over and I could go home, via something small to eat, and get some sleep. The next day's drip was a lot better (I told the nurse about my ordeal and she said it was because the liquid went into me too fast, so she squeezed the bag a bit to limit the air inside, and I felt a lot better, but the drip did take twice as long and being hooked up to a drip for 3 hours wasn't much fun either). By the third day of treatment I had become quite used to it though I remain a little aghast at the lack of hygiene considering these people do this day in day out - sure they wear masks, and spray everything with some kind of antiseptic, but they dont use gloves (yeah they're playing with needles and not using gloves), and I've sat right in front of them as they take the needle out of a patient next to me and excess liquid shoots across the floor. Is it any wonder I didn't want more of this?

I went to see the doctor again on Friday. This time there were no blood tests or X-rays, just a quick consultation, a repeat prescription minus the drips (phew) and told I can go to class again whenever I want. I guess I must be getting better. My breathing is a lot easier now, and I'm not coughing up that much any more. Hurray. Now if I can just stay well for another 44 days I might be able to leave China in July.

(Total cost of meds - 150rmb for blood test and x-ray, 285rmb for one set of meds, 285rmb for another, something like 285rmb for the third, approx 1000rmb in total)

Idio (ma) tic

2009-05-30T14:04:00.000+08:00

The Chinese have an idiom for just about everything, and they use them a lot. Indeed, if you want to get anywhere really serious in China (as a foreigner I mean) with your language, you probably need to know a good few for everyday use. I know barely any, because they can be quite hard to learn (four words to represent whole concepts, with underlying stories, etc) and because we just don't seem to be taught them so often. I digress.

Here's one of them: 将错就错 (jiang cuo jiu cuo) which means "to leave a mistake uncorrected and make the best of the situation" ... I think this is supposed to convey a sense of chivalry and ability to let things slide - the example in our books was of a boy who had his birthday; his sister brought him a cake, but he was leaving his room, so he placed it carefully outside a friend's, and thought he would collect it when he got back; however, when he returned, the occupant of the other room was celebrating HER birthday, and was eating the cake he'd left; rather than fix the error and complain about them eating his sister's gift, he just said he'd seen someone leave it there and run off, thus 将错就错.

I see it in a different way around me (a most comic way I should add) - the Chinese inability to ask for advice or help with their English, and just plough on regardless of error. The Foreign Language Club at my uni has been organising "trails" (I think they mean trials) for an English speaking competition ... the title of the last debate was "Culture Smart or Science Intelligent?", and while I get the general idea ("Which is more important - Culture or Science?"), it somewhat amazes me that they didnt even think to ASK for some advice on this, and instead leave their garbled Chinglish on a sign for all to see ...

And let's not forget the student(s) who ask me to help them with their English, notably one guy I saw on Monday. He asked me to speak into his MP3 player so he could record my voice and get good pronunciation for the aforementioned speaking competition. I took a look over his work and asked, "Do you want me to read this as it is, or correct the mistakes first?" ... He came back with, "But I did it all myself, there are no mistakes". After a bit of yes there are, no there aren't-ing between us I said, "Look, you asked for my help, do you want it or not? If you're so sure there are no mistakes in this, why ask me to look at it and read it for you?" ... ah, he saw the light, and accepted my help. Sheesh, I go to Bruce every week with questions! My Chinese is far from perfect. Why would their English be any different?!

Most impressive however, are tshirts. I am really writing this whole post because of tshirts ... Here are some crackers (and if I can find out where they are, I will try and get some, though may not be able to wear them in Britain (in public)).

"I AM A CAT PERSON" (printed around a fish skeleton outline)

"FUCKER" (yeah, just that, in yellow on a purple tshirt)

"IM FUCKING AWESOME" (plain blue print on a white tshirt)

"KING OF AFRICA" (back of a leather jacket, with a map of Africa. kid had no idea)

"I AM NOT BLACK (I LIKE BLACK)" (first line in massive white letters on a black leather jacket, second line in smaller white letters underneath)

"GOODNEWS DELIVERIES"

"IN THE SHOCK"

and the best one yet, seen about an hour ago ...

"HALIBUT COD FILLET PLAICE" (and some other fish whose names i forget, printed in a list running down this girl's pink tshirt

Seriously guys, learn when to ask for advice about this kind of thing. Mind you, there are some really stupid Westerners going around with dumb "Chinese" tattoos, which is probably worse than a tshirt, all things considered.

The Great Firewall of China

2009-05-18T23:00:00.001+08:00

You might have heard about it, China's systematic blocking of certain websites. Earlier this year, someone somewhere in the world put something up on Youtube criticising the Chinese over their management of Tibet. Almost overnight, the GFW blocked Youtube in its entirity. There is one way round it, you can use a special proxy site and watch a certain amount (usually around 5 minutes) for free every 8 hours (or pay 1.50 euros to receive more access). This is ridiculous.

And now, this week, Blogspot has been blocked (at least from my home connection, I've not tried on other connections or other computers), which makes updating very tricky. I am currently using a proxy site to bypass the so-called firewall, but it is hassle and I'm not even sure it will work when I come to actually POST this.

It's annoying that I should have to resort to this kind of thing, though I'm probably (in part) one of the reasons for it happening in the first place, it's not like I say very positive things about this country. Here's one more negative - China, you fooled the world into giving you the Olympics, and you are currently successful in pushing your economy Westward, but if you ever hope to free yourself from this ridiculous "developing country" ball to which you have chained yourself, and integrate properly with the so-called First / Civilised world, you will have to relax your grip on the population and let them see what the world really is.

Or, here's a start for you, let Chinese people see the real CHINA. The China that prevents mourning parents from visiting the crappily-built schools that collapsed in the Sichuan earthquake last year (while other surrounding buildings remained upright) which form the last place their children were seen. The China that wants to keep an entire town in a semi-destroyed state to create a national site for people to visit and remember the tragic natural disaster which killed thousands (in part due to rushed, poor Chinese architecture). The China which is closing its citizens' eyes to anything they don't want them to know about. The differences between the Chinese higher "education" system and that found in Western countries (seriously, tell me of a European country which requires you take a politics exam in the knowledge of your nation's history and government - according to their version! - and then uses THIS mark over the academic exams to determine where in the country - ie how close to Beijing! - you can study). The China where a "Teaching University" not only has rules on the lowest height permitted for students, but also rules against disabled candidates attending university to become teachers (because a "teacher must be perfect"). The Chinese government which is running scared.

In my gym there's a guy who wears a tshirt saying "I love China more than ever" ... well I hate China more than ever. The more I hear about how life works here the more I will be happy to leave. In 64 days' time I will be on a plane to Dubai, and then home. I know expense scandals, two ongoing stupid wars, and a healthcare system with a questionable future awaits me, but when I compare general life to this, I cannot wait to be back.

More Happenings From Chinaland

2009-05-12T13:03:00.002+08:00

The Chinese reaction to Swine Flu (sorry, Type A H1N1 Influenza) is to aggressively quarantine anyone suspected of having it, or of having been in contact with someone who may have had it. Also, to lock up all of Shanghai's Mexicans, regardless of whether or not they have even BEEN TO MEXICO in the past so many weeks ... So basically, having failed miserably to warn the world about Bird Flu and SARS, neither of which thankfully got off the ground in a big way, the Chinese pendulum now swings to the opposite side. I'm willing to bet that, like the word for "logic", traditional Chinese has no word for "middle ground".

In other news, I went to the post office to send a parcel to my girlfriend and the following conversation took place:

[In the room where you have to buy the boxes, opposite the International Counter itself]

Worker: Go to the counter to check you can send all that in one box. ("All that" is a DVD, an item of clothing, and a letter)

[At the counter]

Worker: You can't send this all together.

Me: Why not?

Worker: This is written stuff, and these are articles. You can send the letter on its own and the items in a box.

Me: Why? I've done it before! Look, I'm not blaming YOU, but every time I come here there is some problem and the workers here all say "Oh it's just the regulations", so today, right now, I would like to see these regulations please.

Worker: (perplexed) I'll just go ask my supervisor. Wait a moment.

[She comes back after a minute or two]

Worker: Just a moment I have to make a phone call.

[Another minute passes]

Worker: Okay you can send them all together.

What the hell was that all about? I'm going back with a Chinese friend and I'm demanding a copy of their regulations now, this is ridiculous, I'm willing to bet half the stuff they've told me is just made up by someone who simply didn't like the aesthetics of whatever it was I was doing (writing addresses in red ink for instance) ... In future I'm just going to hide letters with my articles and sod them, I can even declare a letter's presence on the customs form, since I'm almost certain they don't speak / read English at the International Counter.

What a barmy country. Im home in 71 days.

Swine Flu

2009-04-30T15:25:00.002+08:00

Okay, so it's not here in China (yet), but if news from the UK's officials is anything to go by, it will be round the world in a matter of weeks rather than months (thanks to air travel, mass movement of populations, and so on). Joy. They also said that's just a "maybe" and we'll have to wait and see - don't you just love certainty? - and finally that of the many viruses out there, if you were to choose one, the strain of Swine Flu that seems to be emerging in people outside of Mexico is one of the "better" viruses with which one could hope to be infected. Beautiful.

As and when it does hit China, I am sure the spread across the country will be RAMPANT, thanks to the behaviour of the average Chinese (about which I have blogged previously and at length - think spitting, coughing, sneezing, and so on, all without protective measures like tissues). And I wonder how the Chinese medical system will cope. Actually I don't wonder very much about this at all - those who have money and insurance might be able to get themselves SOME KIND of medication (whether it's on par with Western stuff is doubtful), and in the worst cases there might even be hospital beds (clean? You must be having a giraffe!) and life support systems (in Urumqi, I'm not holding my breath).

The British Embassy kindly sent an email round to say that at the moment there's nothing to worry about, and if there IS a pandemic, there will be no arrangements made to repatriate British citizens (makes you wonder why we paying taxes at all really when our politicians have just given themselves a pay rise but our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are ill-equipped and citizens in a country with a crap healthcare system can't even get a free or discounted emergency ticket home should a disease reach pandemic proportions).

Anyway, I'm rambling a bit; to conclude, I have just 84 days until I leave this country. I hope Swine Flu can wait a little longer to spread itself, but at the same time, if it happens it happens, and I'll just have to deal with it if it happens to me ... now, can anyone send me some Tamiflu? Pretty please?

[[Actually, if it reaches mammoth proportions I wonder if they'll shut the uni down ... in which case Mum, sack off your trip here and I'll be back home ASAP, assuming transport still works!]]

Tree Planting in China

2009-04-24T15:05:00.001+08:00

In Addition to my Previous Post

2009-04-24T15:01:00.002+08:00

Following on from the daytrip with XNU, I should add:

1) it was lovely of them not to tell us there'd be cameramen and film crews following us all day, taking our images without permission (did I mention that before or did I forget?)

2) I was speaking to a bloke in the gym, a fourth year Pakistani medical student at the neighbouring medical university and he told me in his first year there they did exactly the same trip, well the tree-planting anyway, complete with photographers and film crews.

Sodding China, all the bloody same.

A Day Out With Xinjiang Normal University

2009-04-20T23:15:00.003+08:00

Last week our teacher told us we were planting trees on Monday. Tanya and I thought she meant just us and a couple of other students (from our class and from others), mainly because we asked her and she seemed to tell us that it was just a chosen few while the others had class. Well, in China, if they say something, NEVER EVER BELIEVE IT.

This morning we got to the school gate and found a coach full of students, from at least four different classes, hardly the "select few" we'd been led to believe. Then it transpires we're going to a power company first, then a consumables company (Maiquer for anyone who knows / cares), then lunch, and finally tree planting in the afternoon. All this accompanied of course by some man (does he work for the uni? who knows?) wearing his CCP lapel badge oh so proudly. Let the fun begin.

The trip to the city / town where all this was taking place took about an hour (though of course no one told us about any of this prior to our arrival in the morning - we thought we'd be planting trees on campus for heaven's sake), and it was getting hot (well in my books it was, almost everyone else on the coach including Marta and Tanya were wearing coats and scarves - it was AT LEAST 20C at this point, that's definitely WARM at least), the A/C wasn't switched on on the bus at any point during the day - stupid Chinese (this is not the first time it has happened).

Anyway this smaller town looked AWESOME compared to Urumqi. I saw a double decker bus (I know! In China! WTF?), the streets were noticeably less crowded, as were the roads, there was visibly less litter, and at a traffic-light-controlled roundabout they had the nifty countdown thing that tells you how long the lights have until they change (also present I might add in a small city in Jiangsu province, maybe 1/10 the size of Urumqi or less) - why the hell is Urumqi so backwards if it's the largest city in this region?!

The trip to the power company (TBEA) was okayyy, nothing special; they tried to give us a quick tour round their show-off room, and they started with an intro in Chinese and English before saying they'd hand over to one of their younger employees who'd just come back from finishing his degree in the USA. Poor bloke, first up he tried to use a mic which actually distorted his voice to the point even I couldn't work out what he was saying, and secondly he was asked (politely) by the group to please talk in Chinese because (surprise surprise) they were 90%+ non-English speakers! Crestfallen, he handed back to his boss who conducted the tour in Chinese while I swam around checking out the scale models of their power plants and so on. There was a video presentation, some questions and answers (during which he asked where we were all from and upon finding out I was English tried to strike up a conversation - awkward? Somewhat, considering I really didn't know what to say!) ... Leaving the building we found a whole workforce apparently putting on a dance for us, until I realised it was just the daily workers' exercise (they troupe you outside, play some silly marching style tape, and you exercise in time to the music - to be honest, while it looks ridiculous due to the wholly Communist overtone of the music / idea in general, forcing people to at least stretch a bit and take some exercise isn't exactly a bad thing, right?)

On to the Maiquer company HQ (or something). Maiquer is a major bread and milk producer in China, for those who don't know. Shame their tour was so crap, it consisted of seeing one largish room filled with merchandise, then outside to a corridor leading down one side of a building - entering this, you had to cover your feet, but it was obvious they didnt clean the covers very well because my first one had chewing gum on it, the dopey girl giving them out thought I was being thick when I held it up and tried to tell me what to do with it, I had to actually hold the chewing gum up to her eye so I could get another cover, seriously they breed retards in this country. Anyway the corridor was just to show off some adverts but actually we were walked through there so fast we hardly had time to notice. We could just have skipped this and gone straight to the cafeteria where they sat us down to drink some milk samples (out of date? Tanya and I thought so, judging by one of the labels), and one of the employeers stood and talked for a long time about the company (he even kept going when it was obvious no one was listening) ... some way through this I took the liberty of going to their toilets. You have to take your shoes off and wear a pair of company-provided sandals (so glad I had my socks still on) to keep the room clean. Not much point though, it stank horribly and looked grotty - I hope they treat their food with more hygiene! *bleurgh*

Lunch was a restaurant affair, heaps of food, way too much, the Chinese tradition of feeding-your-guest-too-much-to-show-hospitality definitely in action there, though from my point of view it just screams WASTE, which is really quite unacceptable given that this nation still defines itself as "developing" and should therefore not be wasting anything! Don't get me started on this. Anyway it was edible and I wasn't sick, my company was good (a Korean family and two Kyrgiz students) and we had no problem making conversation at least!

The final stop of the day was tree planting. We drove out to a dusty field in the middle of nowhere save for some rather large impressive newly-built structures, were given an intro on how to dig the holes, fill them in slightly, plant the tree, complete the filling and move on, and were then issued with shovels, gloves, and some name cards (on which you were supposed to write you name, nationality, the date, and any message you wanted to leave, and the whole thing could be hung on your tree when you finished) and a pen. Bottled water came round later, which was great because by this time it was the hottest part of the day, and even Tanya and Marta were feeling it (jackets off and scarves being used as hats) ... I paired up with a Kazakh girl I didnt know (she's in another class) and we got cracking. She turned out to have some English, but we kept mainly to Chinese for the sake of conversation / learning, but she was good company :) The first hole we dug was great (they had marked out holes in white chalk, to show the rough size needed) but we'd neglected to find a hole with a tree next to it, so there was nothing to plant after all our effort! We moved on to another hole (with a tree this time!) and dug it properly, planted it, and filled out our name cards before taking photos and naming "our child" (Nick by the way, so it can be Nikita or Nicholas depending whether you think it's a boy or a girl we planted) ... Our next tree was much easier, the hole was ready-made but needed neatening up, but there was no digging at least :) Our second tree-child is Chris for anyone that cares (Chris for a boy and Christina for a girl) ... we planted one more, but the effort involved was so much less than for the first two that we didnt fill out cards for it and subsequently never named our third baby tree (aww how sad).

Off home on the coach, where we basically sweltered and tried not to die as the A/C still failed to materialise. Luckily going home seemed quicker than the morning's journey. I'm now at home and have realised I have a very basic sunburn (nothing peeling or burning hot skin just an itchy red) on my forearms. My neck seems to have escaped this time, but I'm going to hunt out the E45 now and invest in some sunblock when I visit the supermarket tomorrow. That's about all, when I put the pics on the computer I'll see about uploading a couple here :)

(Oh and despite the Azerbaijani muppets being there, there wasn't a single incident of ADHD hyperactive disrespectful disobedient nonsense from any of them, all day ... the mind boggles)

A Class Act All The Way

2009-04-17T21:26:00.002+08:00

I've not blogged in a while - this is either because nothing's been going on, too much has been going on, or I've become terminally lazy and bored with everything and lost my will to journal events that will probably only make me angry when I read them again. However, I've summoned the strength to do just that, right now, for your benefit. And by benefit I mean "read this, and if you have an inkling of sense you'll never ever come to Xinjiang Normal University".

I've complained about the Stanleys before; but now I realise I've been slightly wrong - the root of the problem lies with three Azerbaijani students (two brothers and one sister). They are a nightmare. The youngest one (16?) cannot produce anything other than a monotonous non-stop tirade of sound when asked to read out loud (ignoring punctuation and even omitting a rest between paragraphs, let alone sentences); the middle sibling (Gulaga, I feel it's okay to mention his name since he writes it on EVERYTHING - the board, the desks, maps on the wall, the windows, you name it) is probably the most annoying possibly-ADHD person I have ever met, and he lacks social skills and a suitable mental age to boot ("teacher teacher pick me pick me", or simply not shutting up when the teacher is talking, or walking round the classroom in the middle of lessons, or - like most of the other students - dashing out when his phone rings to answer a call ... all this from a 17 year old dressed in a suit and carrying a briefcase, playing the man about town), and finally the oldest one, 18 I am told ... he seems to be the most normal of the three but this isn't saying much. He still lacks an attention span or any kind of common manners or courtesy that should be shown toward a teacher / in a university environment.

This week I've had the pleasure of seeing all these Central Asian students packing up their bags and preparing to leave about 10 minutes before the end of the lesson because they figured we were done with the interesting part of the class and the teacher's a bit of a pushover (she is, I have no idea how or why she puts up with so much shit from the class - someone told me on Monday she threw some chalk at these kids ... I said if I was the teacher I would throw the KIDS out of the window and be done with it; I went further to say if I was their teacher they'd all be dead by now, and I'm not kidding.) They need high-speed lead injections to their brains, the sooner the better.

It's not just these younger ones who can't pay attention either though - this week also saw an older woman in the class (I estimated 40+ though my friend says I'm being a bit harsh) committing such an act of duncery (I made that word up but it's rather nice I think you'll agree) that I actually turned around and reprimanded her. Gulaga had just spent a good couple of minutes embarrassing himself by answering the teacher's "What is the abbreviation for this type of train in China?" with "They are green", and I thought after the fairly obvious correction by the teacher there'd be no one else misunderstanding the simple question, but nooooo I was wrong. Behind me, this behemoth of a woman (seriously, she could do with losing a bit of weight) tries to answer the next question (identical but about a different type of train) with "They are white" ... I actually turned round and exasperatedly half-spat the words "ABBREVIATION not COLOUR" in Chinese ... god, would it kill them to listen? And if they don't understand could they just keep shut like I do most of the time?

While I'm on the subject of keeping shut, would it be possible for them to close their gobs while I'm being asked to read out loud? It would be the least they could do.

The worst thing about all this is not that their Chinese is better than mine (after all I kind of expect that from people who learnt all their Chinese in China and who havent had to go to high school because when they got here with Daddy from Azerbaijan he arranged for them to come straight to uni via an admissions contact of his so they wouldnt have to "do Biology, Chemistry, Physics, all those HARD subjects" as the youngest of the three put it) but that this is supposed to be a better class than I was in last semester!

Then again, what do you expect from the university who has not only managed to lose an exchange contract with a British uni (as far as I know, after just 2 years of sending students here, Newcastle has cancelled the exchange, or at least not offered it for this coming year), but also lost a contract with the US State Dept for English teachers (because they treat them all like shit, literally, and they simply wouldn't stand for it). Apparently Anniwar, the useless sack of crap who was supposed to be in charge of the foreign exchange people, has now been moved to a different department (but not sacked for some reason), so maybe there is hope for the future; however, as long as the university keeps allowing un-vetted foreign nationals in on the basis that they have money alone, and until it learns what a university ought to be like, I doubt very much that anything is going to change.

Rant over, I'm off to sleep. This week has been less than exciting. Next week I get to plant a tree or something. See how THAT goes.

DAYS TIL I AM IN THE UK: 95

Milk

2009-03-20T20:11:00.002+08:00

Milk comes from cows.

Cows exist in China (they must do, they eat enough beef in this corner of the world).

Ergo, milk exists (and must have existed for a long time) in China.

Why then is milk not part of the diet, not involved in any cooking processes, and only a relatively modern addition to the Chinese supermarket shelves? (Also, could they get their act together and start selling it in something more than a 243ml BAG WITH FOIL-COVERED HOLES FOR STRAWS? Oh and UHT milk in cartons does NOT need refrigerating until it has been opened - if you've opened all the milk cartons in the supermarket already, I want to know what's going on!)

Someone please explain :) Thanks!

Guess You Had To Be There ...

2009-03-19T00:25:00.002+08:00

In the last week I have seen:

* A girl, about 4 years old, squat down outside a clothes market, spill the contents of her bladder on the pavement, not wipe (or even be offered one, the mother was just watching impassively from a distance with the other child), and happily jump up and run back to join them before they walked off, fresh urine gracing the pavement.

* A toddler, about 2 years old, squat and relieve herself on the floor of a restaurant in which I was eating (actually I didn't SEE this, I heard it from where I was sitting, the splash was quite audible thank you - I leaned over the table to check I wasn't imagining things, and the yellow puddle was more than a giveaway). The mother / co-proprietor of the restaurant just said to the grandmother to get the mop. In she comes, I don't even know if the mop was damp let alone wet, there certainly wasn't a bucket to accompany it (the Chinese havent got a clue what mopping is really like or for) and she "mops" the urine up, except it's not really mopping is it? It's just SPREADING it across the floor to evaporate faster.

* Finally, this week I have seen a grandmother sitting outside on a step, grandchild in lap, now you would have the child on a knee or something right? Or sideways? Or facing you? Or anything really, EXCEPT facing out, one leg on each of your legs, the split trousers (remember my rants on them?) gaping open exposing all to the elements and anyone who happens by. I don't know whether the grandmother was making the soothing "shhh" noises they use to encourage their kids to go, and I don't want to know.

I've been told urine is sterile at the point of exit; true or not, you wouldn't clean your pans with urine just because of this, and you would certainly balk if someone had a slash right in front of you, in a dining area no less.

This is foul, disgusting, backwards, dirty, horrible, filthy, unhygienic, irresponsible behaviour, and I cannot see why it is happening in a major city, in a region which borders on at least 7 other countries. What the hell kind of impression do you get of China if THIS is the first place you see, and THESE are the people who live here? I could understand if it was a village maybe, but a fairly developed city of 2 - 3 million people, with cars and internet, chain stores, internationally sourced goods?

Can you imagine Birmingham, Nice, or Dusseldorf with people like this? China needs a kick up the arse (and possibly one to the crotch).

Some Random Musings on Today and Tomorrow

2009-03-12T14:39:00.003+08:00

I'm really quite uninterested in my birthday but for anyone who cares, it's happening tomorrow, I will be 22, and no it is not the first birthday I have had in China so this is yet another reason for it not being special. I will be going to my favourite place in Urumqi - the Texas Cafe - where one of the staff is also celebrating their birthday (a little older than 22 I am told), and from there I don't know, I don't have concrete plans because it seems to be a bigger deal for everyone else than it is for me, and I'm happy enough if I just sit down with some friends and chat.

In other news I woke up this morning, picked slightly at an irritating small scratch that first made itself known on the inside of my left nostril two days ago, and promptly leaked enough blood to fill up my left palm before I made it to the bathroom. Bloody marvellous (pun intended). Still that'll teach me to pick at wounds, as if I didnt learn my lesson 8 years ago.

I then got my timetable confused and went to the wrong class, which happened to be the one not taking place today, so I've missed today's lessons completely. Drat.

On the plus side of it all the weather is LOVELY - sunshine, warm, snow melting away, spring in the air and so on. If only Urumqi had a skydiving centre it would be perfect.

Back To School

2009-03-06T20:59:00.002+08:00

Blah, I've been back less than a week and I've already taken today off ... well it was just reading class, and I suppose I can do the catchup at home; I've moved myself permanently into Intermediate Group 1, which is still (I think) slightly larger than IG2, but (I'm guessing) more productive! The listening work is pretty simple (I think not only has my listening improved, not only is the audio quality a LOT better, but the stuff we are listening to is just EASIER) - I wonder how long this will last, the rest of the class isn't complaining just yet, but their Chinese is better than mine and they must surely be as bored with it as I am (last semester I was bored because I didn't understand enough despite three attempts at listening, now I am bored because I understand 95% of the tapes first time round), plus the teacher takes the lessons really slowly, she doesn't seem to grasp that the material is simple and our Chinese is actually alright by now. *SIGH* ... she also asked a very dunce question of me:

(going round checking people had been noting down words' meanings in their own languages)

her: oh good, good, you looked it up, good. oh, harry, did you look this stuff up? (there is no writing in my book you see)
me: er, sorry? (I didn't understand the word for looking things up, maybe I had forgotten it)
her: did you look these up?
me: "look up"? I don't understand (obviously this was in Chinese)

(she goes to explain it. someone shouts out "did you use a dictionary")

me: *perplexed and a little annoyed that the teacher can be so dense* but the words are given in ENGLISH! i AM English!
her: oh so you understand them all, ah yes i see.

GRAH! WHAT THE HELL?

Apart from that, classes seem to be okay. Chinese people this week have suddenly decided they must ask me "Are you American?", instead of asking where I come from. This invariably results in me telling them exactly where they can go. It's not so much that I mind being called American, it's more that they have the gall to just assume; I don't go around asking if they are Tajiks or Uzbeks for heaven's sake. Another thing that will not score you points is going "WHISSS WHISS" at me in an attempt to get my attention - I am not you dog, you backwards bastards. [The latter happens mainly in markets, not school, though I wouldn't be surprised if next week they all decided that was a decent way to act.]

Oh and in happy-making news, I got my exam results for last semester:

Grammar - 77
Listening and Speaking - 78
Reading - 84

I'm not sure how I pulled off the listening and speaking mark either! Those are all percentages, so they need to be multiplied by 0.85 for conversion to Newcastle's scale, which gives me 65.45, 66.3, and 71.4, a combined conversion of 67.7, not bad considering I swapped to IG1 briefly before the exams but took IG2's exam because I didn't think I would be able to pass IG1 at that time, and didn't revise very well for the IG2 exam anyway :) Makes me think with a bit of effort this semester I might be able to achieve something!

So there you go, I'm back into uni, life continues, oh and it's just 137 days until I leave China. Woop!

Seasonal Change

2009-03-02T20:32:00.003+08:00

It was light at 0900 this morning. What?

It was still light at 2000 this evening. What?

I didn't feel my legs turning to ice as I walked outside. Eh?!

Clearly, changes are afoot.

PS yes I am aware this happens every year. Thank you.

Chinese Driving License

2009-03-02T20:16:00.002+08:00

I wish I knew what they had to do to get a license in China - from the looks of things on the road, not a lot besides rudimentary grasp of what pedal does what and how to turn the steering wheel. Being quick on the brake helps avoid jail, ergo most of them are quite good at that. A lot of people have automatic gearboxes which makes me think they don't actually know much about their cars (for the record, I don't know about how a gearbox really works but I do enjoy the control I have when I drive a manual car over how the engine performs in a given situation) ... the buses are manual-drive and some of the drivers clearly don't know what they're doing, feels like they are taking off in 4th gear sometimes (they may be).

But what gets me the most, and it could just be Urumqi drivers, is reversing. They have not got a clue about going backwards (which is funny considering everything else I say about China and Urumqi is basically saying they are very good at being backwards). Bay parking? Not a clue how to line up. Reversing round a corner? Inch by sodding inch. Part of the reason is they don't think the rear window is very important and it's often blacked out, blocked off, with lots of luggage on it, etc. The other part is, well I'm throwing a wild guess out here, they simply don't get taught about it.

So please, anyone, information on driving licenses in China?

A What A Beautiful Morning

2009-02-28T10:40:00.002+08:00

I love waking up. For a few minutes (or however long I spend in my room / house really) I can be not in China. I can use the internet and be someplace else. I can read a book in English. I can think in English or French or just not Chinese for a bit, before I have to go out and face the world.

Well I would be able to if it wasn't for that bleeding idiot on his damn horn again. Seriously, unless you are dead and slumped over the horn, get out of the damn car already.

Days until I am back on British soil: 144 and counting.

My Holiday Part Four - Shanghai Again

2009-02-26T20:10:00.002+08:00

While the weather continued its assault against China we took a 5 hour bus back to the big smoke, Shanghai, where we'd decided our last night in China together was going to be spent somewhere really nice.

* To look at from the outside, the Shanghai Hilton really isn't that elegant. Fortunately, appearances are deceptive and one should never judge a book by its cover.

* When you are a numpty and book a room for the wrong bloody night, it helps to be apologetic and offer to pay any changing fee they may have, but it also helps to have booked the Executive Room and thus appear somewhat above your actual status ;)

* To anyone wondering, yes it was a little expensive. No, it was nowhere near as expensive as you'd pay to stay in the New York, London, Paris or any-other-Western Hilton. Score.

* I don't really know what to say about this bit of the holiday - it was an indulgence in luxury for us both. Staying in the Hilton with a good view of the city, working A/C, windows that opened, 33 floors up, eating out first at Jin Mao tower (the world's highest bar is still Cloud 9 on the 87th floor, a dizzying height which that night put us ABOVE the clouds that hovered low over Shanghai), and then again in Windows Too (a much more down-to-earth establishment both physically and where price is concerned) before coming back to the hotel and crashing out on the bed that (and I quote, almost verbatim I am sure), "can sleep 3 adults" with its multiple pillows and thick soft mattress before having to get up early and make the most of the Executive Lounge breakfast (om nom nom, this was a most satisfying venture).

* Our last day together was just yesterday, but it feels like months ago already. I won't go into grand detail but there were tears and despite the fact we're over halfway through this academic year, my year abroad, the next four and a half months still stretches on into forever. I'm back in Urumqi now and really I'm wishing I wasn't. But I am, and that's how it has to be for the next 140ish days, so I had better crack on with some work and in the words of Lucy, "Learn the Chinese. Learn it good."

My Holiday Part Three - Anhui [Tunxi, Huangshan]

2009-02-26T19:55:00.003+08:00

The weather forecast did not look good - rain, rain, a bit of thunder perhaps, and then more goddamn rain. But we had a hostel booked, and Huangshan is supposed to be one of the most beautiful sights in China, so I was determined Lucy and I should at least TRY to see it.

* We moved out to Anhui Province, to a town called Tunxi about 100km from Huangshan (Yellow Mountain), which is what we wanted to see. The bus to Tunxi was about 3 hours, during which time we took in the changing views, as more mountains appeared, and the changing weather, clouds greying up the skyline until we were among them and the beginnings of rain. Architecture changed as well, bringing with it some of the local Hui style buildings, tall and white with black edging and flat roofing which made me comment that you can tell what the climate is like in most places by observing buildings - sloping roofs often mean rainfall, flat roofs often mean drier climes. How wrong was I.

* Arriving in Tunxi we made the discovery that the taxi drivers immediately within the bus station were a) stupid and b) thieving bastards. Having been informed by the hostel that the ride should be no more than 7 rmb, these guys were determined not to use their meters and instead wanted 35 rmb. We haggled for a while, me telling them they had meters and if they were taking us they would damn well use them, them saying it was up to us to haggle. Enough. "Jog on", said we, and followed their directions to the entrance of the complex where taxi drivers were taking people using the meter. The first bloke we met took us and it cost just 5 rmb. Shame he plonked us down at the wrong end of the street, and we had a nice little 10 minute walk with all our luggage along cobbles (the aptly named "Old Street") before reaching our hostel for the next three days.

* The first thing to mention about this hostel - it was FREEZING. They couldnt give us the room I'd booked either, a double-bedded-thing, so instead we had two twin beds in this gigantic room with an A/C unit that failed miserably to raise the temperature even a little. I am by nature quite warm-blooded, and even I found this chilly. Lucy is a cold little creature, if the temperature dips below 10C she gets goosebumps (or so it seems to me) and the room must have been getting close to zero. Brr! But the bed was quite comfortable, the shower worked nicely, the toilet was western and it was clean enough. They had a bar (a little expensive but hey) and some wonderful swallow-you-whole sofas; you could drown in them they were that comfortable.

* Local cuisine was, simply put, oily. We found just one dish that wasn't too thick with oil, and that was because it was a hotpot of soup - better than most I might add. Still, c'est la vie. We made bookings for the next day to go to Huangshan despite the threat of crap weather, and then shivered ourselves into bed. At some point (I forget exactly when) I put a wash on, and then had to deal with the ultimately crap A/C unit that didn't heat nor dry my clothes, and the lack of a tumble drier. By our third day in this hostel, just before leaving, some of my clothes were dry enough to be packed and possibly worn.

* Our trip to Huangshan was a washout. Literally. The skies opened and torrents of rain poured down upon us. The bus ride to Huangshan was about 1 hour, and having bought some provisions (thinking we'd be there a few hours in some reasonable weather) we took a minicab to a destination that was not Huangshan itself but some scenic rivery type place. Ah well, they said we'd not see anything in Huangshan that day anyway what with all the rain and mist. We lasted an hour. After this time we were soaking wet and wanted little else than to be back in the hostel despite the rubbish air temperature back there, and so we just took another bus back and holed up for the rest of the day while I waited for my shoes to dry out and Lucy napped. To anyone who is unaware - Lucy is an awesome napper.

Aside: waiting for the bus back, a bloke pulls up in his car and asks, in Chinese, "to where?" ... I tell him Tunxi and he says, "OK, 150, get in" ... I counter, "Yeah the bus is 15 each, we'll wait" ... "85", he says, "There are no buses now" ... "Oh yeah? Well they [I gesture to the Chinese behind me] say there are, and I know there are, and we'll wait thanks" ... At that moment a bus shows itself and indeed the going rate is just 15. In one way I can't blame them for trying, but I wish to hell they'd just piss off and leave me alone, simply because I have white skin I really don't need their hawking like I'm just some other foreigner who wandered into China without Chinese or local knowledge.

On the plus side we DID get to see part of where Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was filmed, something that definitely got Lucy's interest, so I suppose it was a win!

My Holiday Part Two - Zhejiang [Hangzhou]

2009-02-26T19:50:00.004+08:00

Following on from Lucy's arrival and our first night in Shanghai, here is a brief summary of what happened when we went to Hangzhou (in neighbouring Zhejiang Province).

* Day two was spent getting to Hangzhou. Maybe we should have gone to Shanghai South Railway station (I thought there were more trains from Shanghai Railway station though) or got the bus, who knows, we ended up at Shanghai railway with 4 hours before the next train to Hangzhou (this around 1130 as well!) and all our bags so half our afternoon was spent in the waiting lounge just chatting, fidgeting, reading, taking photos and playing games ... great, come to China, sit in a waiting room. But she didn't seem to mind :) Arriving in Hangzhou we finally found the taxi queue and it was long. Not as long as it took to get to our hostel though - the driver missed the destination and we found ourselves walking up a road with no real idea where the place was; luckily we were only a few minutes off target.

* The hostel in Hangzhou was lovely - we had a great room with a four-poster-bed, a showerhead which looked like the sun was raining on us, and A/C that really worked! Cheaper, and better than the hotel. What more could we want? The hostel had a deal with a local restaurant and we got 10% off our meal, so of course we went there the next night as well (though for some reason on that occasion one of the staff felt the need to come over to our table and attempt to talk with us. Actually not with us. Just with Lucy, his first words in English being, "Are you very beautiful?") ... one thing that surprised me was all the restaurants shut at about 2200, which was a bit awkward if you wanted a late meal ... and there were no local shops either. Hmm.

* Our second day in Hangzhou took us to West Lake where we dallied for a long while on the causeway, stopping frequently to admire the views and just hang out together on benches. With your back turned few people notice you are foreign, and so we enjoyed some quiet time. Lunch was reasonable, and then we took a walk to Long Yin Temple (I think that's the name anyway) - should really have taken a taxi but I thought it was closer than it was. Ah well we got exercise at least! And the day was beautiful for walking. We had just enough time for a quick (45 minute) look around one section of the complex, a place I'd been to in 2006, and then they were closing the gates. A young couple gave us a lift back to the hostel for free (they said they were going to Shanghai anyway and the man's logic was that if he was in England I would do the same for him, which is true), which saved all that stupid haggling with rip-you-off-given-half-a-chance "taxi" drivers.

With bad weather approaching, we set out the next day for Anhui Province.

My Holiday Part One - Jiangsu, Shanghai, and Lucy's Arrival

2009-02-26T19:17:00.004+08:00

I've been off for a couple of weeks - trying to get some relaxation away from Urumqi (to be honest, once you've been here 6 months, anywhere feels more relaxing / just plain better) ... My first week away wasn't the MOST enjoyable - I think I stayed a couple of days too long at an old friend's place and ended up feeling quite bad about it - not because he wasn't hospitable but because our views on some things differed greatly and after a couple of arguments there really wasn't much else to say. I should just have left. Well I suppose you live and learn.

At least I got to see ONE of my former Chinese students, and maybe I'll see more in July before I come home; and as you've maybe read, I had a drab day in Suzhou, culminating with a couple of hours in a smoky internet cafe half-heartedly updating this blog among other things, before I spent an inordinate amount of cash on some alright coffee and read a book for a bit.

The night before Lucy arrived I really couldn't sleep. It didn't even matter that I'd been out with some friends for a meal and then to a bar, where we'd stayed until I was nicely tipsy. My sleep was fitful and inadequate; sure I got my head down but when I woke up it still wasn't enough. Oh well no time to complain - Lucy's coming to China! :) I forgot the location of our hotel for the first night and spent a frantic half hour working out where we were supposed to be - fortunately I got the information just in time to leave for the airport, taking the bus because it was cheapest and to save the thrill of the Maglev for when I was actually with Lucy (the thrill mainly being hers - I've ridden it at least 4 times before). I think from here in I'll keep things short else you'll be here forever:

* She arrived. Sounds obvious doesnt it? But it's true and it made us both very happy. Within minutes we were bantering like we'd been apart 6 minutes not 6 months. Also my handdrawn "Welcome to China" sign with her name (in English and Chinese) went down well :) Maybe I will post a photo of it later.

* The hotel was adequate. I hadn't gone overboard for the first night, and if the thermostat had worked better we would probably have given the entire place 9 / 10 (clean the carpet and I'd give it a 10) but with the stuffy air inside the room and no way to fix it, my rating sinks to about 5 / 10. I don't know what Lucy thinks, but I'm guessing she mostly agrees. We spent the first day slumming in the hotel room, strolling around the Bund (the Pudong Development Bank interior is still wonderful), sampling some "normal" (ie: cheap, standard-for-Chinese-people) food and then flopping out because the A/C was still crap and the windows didn't open.

Well you win some you lose some, right? And hey, we still had each other :)

I Cannot Wait ...

2009-02-16T15:29:00.004+08:00

I am holed up in a smokey Suzhou net cafe as I type this, the weather being abysmal (overcast, rainy, a bit windy) and my friends (who were going to meet me in this city) busy with their first day back at uni ... bah, I will have to see them in July before I come home. Suzhou is supposed to be beautiful; I imagine some days it is, just not today. I've seen only Western-style places and I'm really somewhat bored. I can't even go back to my host's house (in a town 30 minutes away) for another couple of hours because he and his wife are at work. Ah well. In better news, I have ordered an air ticket back to Urumqi for the 25th, and will collect it (and pay for it!) tomorrow, before doing not-very-much for the rest of the day and then going out with my French friend Pascal in the evening ... before Wednesday morning which will undoubtedly be the highlight of the last six months :) I'm a mix of impatient and nervous and until Wednesday I have a feeling that time is going to slow down for me and everything is going to feel like it takes forever ...

Hours until Lucy arrives: approximately 44

Which is 44 too many.

For now I'm off to a coffee bar to sketch some stuff and maybe write a brief letter before heading back to Wujiang and supper and another night with freezing hands because it's not cold enough down here for the local govt to put heating of any sort on so I've got used to a 20C house in middle-of-winter Urumqi and I'm having a hard time getting used to the iceblocks on the ends of my arms now. Vive Wednesday!

Make Your Mind Up

2009-02-07T19:30:00.003+08:00

Apologies if I've said this before (I've not checked) but here's something that really irks me, and it's on my mind because someone in class raised it today. People here often blame something I think of as "useless" or "backwards" on China being a "developing country". Well here's the problem: YOU HOSTED THE OLYMPIC GAMES. You might not have done a very good job of it (urgh, don't get me started on Chinese mentality, one example springs to mind of a stadium that was less than packed despite propaganda saying all tickets were sold out; someone complained and the organisers' response was, "Okay tomorrow there will be people, we will find as many uni students as possible, they will be there, and they will be chanting GO GO BEIJING, GO OLYMPICS GO!" When countered with the obvious, "But that's not very spontaneous or exciting" they nonplussed reply went something like, "There will be people there, they will be chanting, they will be excited, what's the problem?"), but you hosted them nonetheless.

China defines itself as a developing country. It leans on this crutch wherever possible. Its schoolchildren are raised to counter queries about the retarded aspects of life here with that as a standard response. I call bullshit. That or China needs to stop lying and accept that it cannot be a developing country if it has hosted the Olympic Games (on this note please do not get me started on why the UK has it for 2012 - yes we are technically "developed" but I think this is a false appearance and that a country really ought to be able to look after its own before taking the masses of others for a sporting event; granted we're not as bad as China though!)

Well it's that or someone in the IOC needs to admit they made one hell of a mistake giving China the games!

Normal Service ...

2009-02-02T18:06:00.002+08:00

... will resume whenever my computer gets a new charger, at the earliest tomorrow, at the latest on Feb 18 (though Lucy will probably not look too kindly on my jumping on the Mac immediately after she arrives in China, so let's be realistic and say Feb 19 while she sleeps off the jetlag ;) ha ha)

I have written to Apple informing them of my disappointment with some of their products (as well as asking a lot of questions), and I am waiting for the eBay seller whose goods (a 3rd party Apple-compatible charger) were supposed to arrive days ago and who is still evading my question "to which address did you send it?" ... I am NOT a happy bunny.

"Winter Wonderland" (Marlene's Visit Part 1)

2009-01-12T22:06:00.004+08:00

Those were the words Marlene used to describe Urumqi on our walk back to my flat after her arrival. Yay, I have a guest, even if her views on this city are slightly different to my own ;) Before I get too many raised eyebrows, Marlene's a fellow student of mine from back home, though she chose to spend this year in sunny (and temporarily cholera-ridden) Haikou, the capital city of Hainan Island in the south of China. (To be precise, off the coast of the mainland, but not Taiwan!) ... Most of the last five months has been a pleasant 25C for her, so arriving at 0100 on Sunday morning, the balmy -15C of Xinjiang was quite a shock, but fortunately not enough to put her off the place!

In the last two days I've done more than I probably do in an average week - that either says something about my extreme laziness, my empty routine, or the fact that when fresh eyes are present there is suddenly more to do and see. Following her arrival we got a taxi back to my place ... let me pause here to tell you about taxis from Chinese transport hubs:

1) When you step out of the airport (most commonly), there will be Chinese people trying to "advise" you not to take a taxi and instead come with them, because "you won't get ripped off, it will be cheaper than a taxi" - tell them NO THANK YOU. Lots.

2) When you get a taxi, it doesn't matter how fluently you speak in Chinese and know the local area (I have been here 5 months, I know exactly where I live thank you and I can tell the driver with 100% accuracy where I need / want to go, especially when that place is my HOUSE), they will just smile and nod and think "okay so he speaks Chinese" but assume you came in from another Chinese city, because you're at an airport. This is bad because he then thinks he can rip you off.

3) When the taxi driver pulls out of the airport, he might need payment for his entrance fee to the airport. This is usually quite cheap (5RMB or so), so even if he's ripping you off, it's not by much. However, the then thinks it's okay not to use the meter - even when you shout at him in Chinese to use it - instead, he "calls his boss" (yeah right, he rings his mate on the CB radio to tell them he has foreigners in his cab, ha ha), and says if he doesn't use the meter, you'll get a better deal. This can be avoided if you know how much a journey should cost and tell him that if he doesnt use the meter he will get just X RMB, the value it ought to be. Finally, yell at him, and make sure he understands in no uncertain terms that you want the meter ON, RUNNING, and that this is not an optional situation.

The chap eventually got the meter running properly (instead of in "scam" mode) and had a laugh about how I was no fool to the system and couldn't be tricked by him. Awww what a shame, buddy, I suppose you think this paints a beautiful picture of life in China when the first thing tourists encounter is one group after another of thieving bastards ...

So back to the main theme, we arrived at my flat around 0200, and were supposed to have hot chocolate and go to bed, but of course ended up talking until about 0430 ... c'est la vie. A lazy morning followed, and I think we were finally out of the house by 1300, to eat lunch (丁丁炒面 for anyone remotely interested) and then onto the post office via a card shop (Mum I have sent Nana a card, I apologise if it is late and I definitely apologise for the conduct of China Post who made me mess up the outside of the envelope because writing an address (or even a return address!!!) is not allowed in red according to their "regulations" - one of these days I am going to go postal (excuse pun) on them and their crappy regulations that mess up EVERYTHING). From the post office we went to a China Mobile to top up Marlene's phone but to our complete lack of shock discovered that branch couldn't do it (not big enough, didnt have the right equipment, or just staffed by imbeciles, who knows?) so we'd have to go to another location (argh, China, in the words of a drill sergeant I once knew, "SORT YOUR SHAGGING LIFE OUT!").

We finally found the other store and then it was no problem to top up her phone; our next stop was a large shopping centre, but today's exhibition of stalls were mainly food based. Word to the wise, Chinese sausages come in all manner of shapes and sizes, most of which are unappealing and the smell of which will most likely make your gag reflex work overtime. Also, salespeople are doubly (if not triply) annoying when they wear a microphone and speak into a loudspeaker despite their stall being tiny and everyone else doing the same thing; we got out of there pretty quickly! The next stop was a large market (Xiao Shou Men, or however it is) to hunt down some thermal leggings and see if we could get Marlene some boots. We succeeded in finding leggings, gloves (Marlene now sports some pretty ladybird mittens), sampling some fried food (friend apple waffle turned out to be alright!) and trawling stalls for a good hour or so in the hope of finding cheap corduroy trousers (we didn't). Aside, Chinese people think "hello, hello" means "come here and look at my stall", which is annoying - best policy, just ignore them.

We stopped off at the same restaurant as before for a lag maan dinner (Marlene's first), and then home for hot chocolates, watching a film (to anyone reading, see Wall-E, it's good!) and bed before 0400. A good first day for Marlene!

Things I Have Seen (And Will Forget If I Don't Blog Now)

2009-01-08T22:55:00.002+08:00

At the gym this evening, in the showers:

* Two men alternately sharing a shower because there were none left. JUST WAIT FOR IT TO BE FREE.

* A grown man having soap rubbed on his upper back and shoulders by another grown man, also in the shower. WTF?

* A man (mid-fifties I would say) brushing his teeth in the shower. Frothy mouth, spitting on the floor and everything.

There is a reason I normally try to go at off-peak times. There are lots of reasons my sandals have become part of my shower gear.

Tai Da Le (太大了)

2009-01-07T23:13:00.002+08:00

The title of this entry "tai da le", means "too big", and is something I hear a lot when discussing China with Chinese people. It usually starts by me saying that I prefer England to China because (diplomatically) I don't like big cities and English cities are smaller than Chinese ones. This usually leads the Chinese person to smile (maybe even laugh) and make the comment "中国太大了" ("China is too big").

I can see an obvious solution to this problem, which would also please the Dalai Lama and countless Uyghurs in this region ;)

Funny how no one in China seems to draw the same conclusion (ha ha).

Shrapnel

2009-01-07T22:58:00.002+08:00

For the benefit of those not from the UK, "shrapnel" is what we affectionately call our lowest denomination coinage, since our 1p and 2p pieces are brown (another term is "coppers"), small, and have (I'm almost positive) been used in terrorists' bombs over the years as a cheap and ironic way of damaging / killing while implying the reason for the trouble in the first place lies with England (the Queen is pictured on our coins) ... I digress for the sake of clarifying this entry's title.

In Australia, they don't have 1c and 2c pieces. Everything is in denominations of 5c. This is because the government down under realised the very smallest coins were basically pointless and not worth carrying around. This is sensible, Britain should follow suit. We should also have plastic money, a better health service, and Christmas in the summer ;) But China takes it to a whole new level.

* At the top there is the Yuan (元) (also called the Ren Min Bi 人民币, or People's Currency as it literally translates).
* Next comes the Jiao (nicknamed the Mao) - there are 10 Jiao to a Yuan, effectively every Jiao is a 10p piece, and every Yuan is a pound in this system.
* Finally there are the Fen, 10 fen to a jiao, effectively these are the "pennies" of the Chinese system.

However, because economies work differently, the fen is basically useless. Even today with a crashing pound and the world market in a crisis, one fen is worth just £0.001, or 1/10th of a British penny. When I came to China it was worth even less than that, but that's a story of happier economic times. Anyway, 1/10th of a penny will not get you anything, even in China, even in Urumqi (one of the cheapest places going I believe). The only time one encounters this phenomenon is in supermarkets, and I HATE it. If my bill was 99 Yuan, and I gave 100, I would get 1 Yuan change. If it was 99.50, I would get 5 Jiao change (the Jiao are actually worth something you see, and theyre relatively easy to keep track of, since theyre almost 100% in note form), but if the bill is 99.01, I will get a few Jiao and an irritating Fen or two for good measure. The Fen come in denominations of 5 and 1 (remember there are 10 fen to the JIAO, damn it!) and they are small coins made of cheap metal, the kind that feels like plastic.

In an otherwise 99.9% note-based system, this is just ridiculous. The government would do well to just get rid of this part of currency since it serves almost no purpose, and the coins must be worth more than their stated value, which might as well read "fuck all".

Welcome to 2009

2009-01-07T00:53:00.002+08:00

Oh boy, it's been forever since I journalled. I'm sure lots has happened, but in the interests of cutting down a ramble, I'd like to keep this entry short (that's so I can make more specific, detailed, and possibly ranty entries in just a moment) ... I hope everyone's (Western) New Year was enjoyable and that there are peaceful and successful times ahead for everyone. I would also hope that everyone had as good a New Year as I did - this is probably the first year in about the last four (definitely the last three) that I have had a better-than-mediocre time. In fact a couple of my more recent New Years have been downright abysmal. If Jibby is reading this, I'd like to apologise for terming last New Year better-than-mediocre ... it was fun ... but if you take "sitting around drinking with one friend" as "fun", then this New Year was four times better ;)

Yup that's right, I sat around with four people and we drank. Ahhhh there's more of a story to it than that I suppose. When I arrived in Urumqi I stayed in the Mai Tian Youth Hostel (which by the way is very nice, and affordable too!) ... having no other plans, and not wanting to go to a smokey Sino-Western bar, I wandered in about a month ago and asked if they'd be having a party, with some of the international guests who would be there. No problem. Ace. A day or two before the party, my friend (Chris) who works there, rang me to arrange the time. Thus, I arrived at 2030 (an hour late) and the place was dead. Just the receptionist. Wow, some party this will be! Chris, when we got him on the phone, said that he was out skiing with some foreigners and that he was sure he'd said the party was on the Thursday. Er, nope, you even confirmed it in Chinese to me, Chris!

No worries, we (I was there with my friend Bruce, also Chinese) will sit around and wait for you if you won't be long. A couple of hours (and a free beer) later, still no sign of them. What the hell? It's 2320 and we hear from Chris that they've stopped skiing and are trying to get a taxi back to the hostel. So we wait. 2345, they finally have a taxi, they'll be there just around midnight, yay. And so it was that at midnight (Beijing time) I found myself in the company of an Israeli, a Frenchman, an Aussie, and a Chinese ... sounds like a bad joke, doesn't it? Of course the beer being free, we started to amass a bottle-collection and talk freely among ourselves - most of the evening became an "identify the wrongs one can observe here" discussion (as you may imagine from my previous entries, there was a lot to say - hence my want for a more detailed blog to follow!) ... at 0200 we celebrated local New Year with a small clinking of glasses and a return to drinking.

0430 and it was time to hit the road ... slightly worse for wear I must admit, though not staggering or feeling nauseous. Even if I had been, the -15C night air would probably have helped sober me up somewhat. I got in around 0450, and was asleep by about 0500. Not a bad night one might say!

(I then woke up at 0740, gave Lucy a call as I'd arranged, and kept her on the phone, probably talking incoherently about nothing in particular, until just after 0800, or New Year GMT, at which point she prudently decided I should go back to sleep, and Skype agreed with her by cutting us off).

Interesting thing to learn from this - the Chinese, although they have their own New Year (coming up, Jan 25 I believe) celebrate the Western New Year on Jan 1st. So I got to go back the next day and do most of the above all over again, hurray!

Things I Will Never Get Used To (and don't see why anyone should HAVE to))

2008-12-27T09:32:00.005+08:00

There is a full-on rant in this entry. I have just woken up (you will see why) and, not for the first time, I am PISSED OFF.

Okay, I realise the Chinese don't have a proper concept of the weekend like we do, and that Saturday isn't a day off anything very much for most people, and that 0915 is not particularly early for a lot of them, and that it's my fault for going to bed late if I'm annoyed at being woken up now, but here it is:

WHEN SOMEONE IS LATE TO MEET YOU IN YOUR CAR, DO NOT SIT OUTSIDE SEVERAL BLOCKS OF FLATS AND JUST BEEP YOUR HORN LOUD AND LONG AND INTERMITTENTLY FOR SEVERAL MINUTES (often more than ten) YOU DUMB SONOFABITCH.

AND YOU, THE LATE PERSON, GET OUT OF BED, GET DOWNSTAIRS, AND GET TO THAT CAR AS FAST AS YOU DAMN WELL CAN, YOU INCONSIDERATE, SLOW, LAZY ARSEWIPES.

This happens several times a week and it is not only annoying as hell (because it invariably wakes me, yes even me the one who can sleep for Great Britain, from my slumber) but is the mark of an incredibly backward society. Car horns are for alerting drivers to danger; they are not there to express annoyance when stuck in traffic jams (every country has these morons though), and they are certainly not there to get your friend out of bed when he's late in the morning.

Exams

2008-12-23T20:11:00.003+08:00

See below this post for another post I only just uploaded (can't have the praise for my Mum go unnoticed!). Yesterday marked the start of my exam season, and today marked the end. Yes, just two days. Argh. Last week I was supposed to revise myself silly but I just couldn't find the motivation and ended up doing not as much as I'd hoped. This led to lastminute cramming, and a bit of worrying, but ... that's my own fault. So how were they?

Listening - awful. My worst area by far. I barely heard some of the dialogues, and just guessed most of the answers. I'll be lucky if I got even 20% correct. I wish they'd give us individual tapes, I might stand more of a chance then. Incidentally, anyone in first or second year at Newcastle care to comment on whether or not they've started to do that back home? We complained about it last year, European language students all get that opportunity, why should we be made to sit in a big room and listen to one tape at the front which is played just twice when other students get to play it as many times as they want in their time limit? Hmm.

Speaking - considering I didn't have a clue what was going to happen, I think I did alright. You choose a sheet (without seeing the content, there are 2 to choose from) and then have a few minutes to prepare. Unlike the UK though, you are preparing in the same room as other candidates who are taking the exam. It's annoying, but that's how it is so deal with it. First you have to read a passage, then answer questions on the passage. The third part involves completing sentences using the stuff provided in brackets as a guide. And the final bit is 4 questions, you choose one and just launch into an answer. I don't know if it was recorded, there was the teacher's phone on the desk but I'm guessing that was in case she got a call and not because she wanted to record my answers, but on a related note, it would help if the teacher showed some INTEREST in the student while they are being examined and didnt just look at her lap when the bumbling English idiot stumbles over some words in the passage. Still, I think it went better than Listening by far.

Last night I slept for about 4 hours. This was nowhere near enough (not my fault per se, I just couldn't sleep it was infuriating), so today's exams were tedious. Not SO hard, but tiring and an irritation to say the least.

Grammar - three or four sides, lots of questions, just hammer through and answer them. Based on the books you've been using all along, so just hope stuff you looked at comes up and you can make educated guesses at the stuff you don't know!

Reading - as with grammar, and much the same; really you either know something or you don't. It's all in your books. I was lucky enough to have skimmed over a couple of passages this afternoon which came up in the exam. Without them I don't know if I would even have known what the passages were about. Real planning would have been to actually revise all the (MANY) passages we looked at. Ah well, I got lucky, hurray for me.

So exams are over, and I'm monstrously tired. But before I complete this post, a word on taking exams in XNU. It's a disgrace. I know this doesnt happen with the Chinese students, because they are behaved, and their teachers come down on them like a ton of bricks if they step out of line, but with all these foreign bastards, it's a joke. Whispering and casual glancing at papers is rife, as are stupid childish antics that I would expect from a 13 year old trying to be the "cool kid" and not a 27 year old mother-of-three (so I am told) ... Guys came in almost an hour late. Lucky for them the exam was 2 hours long and the paper was short enough that it could be completed in under an hour with ease. At one point I saw this imbecile sitting in front of me turned round about 170 degrees just looking at my paper. I glanced up, gave him a look, and told him (verbatim) to "fuck off", before folding my paper up and hiding my answers from his nosy gaze. Some of the teachers are just as bad, either they'll not tell people off immediately for talking, or they'll just walk over to someone and then give them an "alright-I-caught-you-using-your-electronic-dictionary-so-just-stop-using-it" nod and it's like some huge joke to the student. The uni must be seriously hung up on getting these foreigners' cash because in the UK it doesnt matter where you come from or who you are, if you're cheating (even a bit) there's a disciplinary procedure and you can fail the module or even be asked (read told) to leave the uni.

No wonder people don't trust some Asian countries' exam certificates. It's an absolute joke.

Supplies

2008-12-23T20:03:00.003+08:00

No, not that old joke about the guys who organise an army camp and leave it to the Chinese guy to do the food (email me if you need your racist curiosity satisfied).

Instead, here's a collection of things I have courtesy of my Mum. Over the last few weeks I've received about a dozen parcels, and credit is due. This is a brief list of the stuff I have left (some things have been eaten of course, or used as small presents to friends).

* 9 cuppa-soup sachets, three different flavours
* 5 and a half white chocolate slabs, various brands
* 2 packs of Rolos (I ate the other one in just one sitting I was that greedy)
* 6 packs of Polo mints
* 1 pack of Fruit Polos
* 14 sachets of hot chocolate / coffee drinks
* 7 sachets of Fybogel for my poor insides (let's hope it works)
* 2 packs of stock cubes (and then some)
* TOO MUCH CINNAMON, STOP SENDING IT! (I mean that in a good way, but really, three or four boxes is enough for now!)
* Multiple packs of chewing gum
* 24 Werther's Originals (plus a couple in my jacket pocket for use in exams today)
* A couple of ready-made reheat-style meals.

So, other Year Abroad students, as they say in cards, I see your parents and I raise you my Mum.

Season's Greetings

2008-12-21T20:14:00.004+08:00

One nice thing about Urumqi (possibly China as a whole, I'm not sure about the more Westernised parts) is that Christmas and New Year are Ronseal Events, that is to say, they do exactly what they say on the tin. None of this Christmas-sales-in-August nonsense that the UK goes in for, no tinsel up in July, and certainly no October mince pies (though I'm rather partial to a mince pie, if anyone would care to send me some I would be more than happy). I started to notice these decorations going on display in very late November, if not early December, which seems a reasonable time-frame in which to prepare for a present-giving event you've known was coming all year anyway! As for New Year, well that's not even so important here, they just go through the motions, the really important event being Chinese New Year (or Spring Festival) which takes place around a month after the Gregorian one. I digress. Next to my gym there is a fast food store, the owners of which have seen fit to wish everyone all the best for December 25th. Sadly whoever got the coloured pens that day didnt know how to spell. Happily, this makes me smile :) I hope you do too.

I hope that's clear enough to read; if not, Merry Chirstmas everybody!

Another classic, not festive though, is this one, proudly declaring that the store either does, or wishes everyone else to "Sweve In Sincerity" - this isn't just for Christmas (or even Chirstmas), it's up all year on the store front, and I still don't know what it means, because I've been lazy and not translated it. Answers on a postcard.

And finally, my own festivities, Chanukah is upon us :) Hurray. I may be a terribly unobservant Jew, but I do like Chanukah. Unfortunately with various exam preparations (my exams are tomorrow and Tuesday), and vast amounts of time being spent at home (not necessarily revising but not doing Chanukah-related stuff either), I only got round to making my chanukiah this evening. Originally it was going to be made of beer bottles, except I don't drink very often so I'd have to have 8 beers this evening just to make it possible ... Instead I have a series of empty tuna tins with plastic bottle caps superglued inside, and one tall tomato tin for the Shamash (lead candle, which must be raised above the others). I am aware of the equation [ plastic + fire = noes! ] so I am sitting here with the makeshift chanukiah in front of me, to prevent such an occurrence. It may have cut my finger (washing one of the tins out) and be a little more basic than what I've used in the past, but it's doing the job. At the moment, it is looking very good :)

And in other news, Lucy finally told her parents that she's going to visit me in China in February, so I no longer have to keep it a secret. 59 days to go! (I have waited quite some time to say that!)

It's Hip to be a Cat

2008-12-18T12:56:00.002+08:00

Ouch, bad pun in my title (you'll see), but not as ouch as Lusya, Tanya's kitten (cat?) who followed some meat out of a window which happened to be on the 5th floor of a building and ended up on the pavement below. Two trips to vets later and Lusya's been X-rayed a number of times (the first lot done by incompetents who didnt see any break, and the second by an apparently much better vet who managed to show a distinct fracture), and had her hip put back together with metal plates, yay for surgery! She's doing okay now, despite some interesting wound management (they didn't fully close up, instead she's had a swab sewn in - what? I thought that just HELPED infection? it has something to do with fluid buildup I'm not sure - and Marta's been giving her injections three times a day, until last night, because today she goes back to the vet and they'll examine her / hopefully close her up properly for a few months until they need to remove the metalwork) - but she's chirpy enough and doesnt seem at all bothered by the whole healing process, apparently feeling no pain in the op site, but with no apparent nerve damage either (she can definitely feel tweezers pulling at the fur around her foot!) - kittens' pain self-management must be awesome.

There is one funny side of this - she sometimes has to wear a protective collar to stop her licking at her wound, and the Chinese for this collar is an "Elizabeth", a direct reference to the ruffs worn in "olde England", which we all thought was really quite amusing.

Oh wait, not as amusing as this (not cat related, and I got her permission before posting) - Marta lost her phone. Hmm, that doesnt surprise me anymore, but HOW did she lose it? "In the toilet at the uni". I could see where this was going before she even finished the story. See, they don't do seated things here, they have squatters. And poor Marta left her phone in the back pocket of her jeans (big mistake anyway, thieves love that), so while she was taking her trousers off, the phone slipped out and fell into the ceramic basin, slid down it and plooooop! Right into the vertical hole, where everything else goes. Nice one, Marta!

No way to get it back (and would you want to, even if you COULD?), but at least is gives a classic Tale of Urumqi for my blog :)

Circadian

2008-12-13T10:22:00.002+08:00

For once, not a complaint anyone can really do much about, so it's more of a factual observation. For this entry, and any others in future, times are given in Beijing Time (BJT) which is 2 hours ahead of local time (XJT), due to Beijing's somewhat controlling nature. The passage of the sun is destroying my ability to feel right some days; class starts at 10, so on an average day I try to wake up around 0815 so I can potter about the house getting my stuff together, go and have breakfast at my leisure, and maybe walk to school if I'm not too late (catch a bus if I am). Right now official sunrise is about 0915, so I'm getting up in the dark. It's impossible. My whole body is just screaming "stay in bed, go back to sleep, idiot, the sun isn't even up!" ... I can only imagine what it will be like in January when sunrise is around 0945 according to online predictions I have read. I realise this is nothing compared to people who routinely work night shifts at their job, but it's a new infuriation to me ;) Then of course there'll be the happy midway point in about May when the sun rises at an appropriate time and sets likewise, followed by the month and a half where I'll no doubt be complaining that there's too MUCH sun in my day. Haha, no winning here :P

Summing Stuff Up In One Word

2008-12-12T20:35:00.002+08:00

A nondescript (read I'm not entirely sure what I was eating) piece of fish tried to kill me today by wedging at the back of my mouth and choking me. Fortunately I managed to breathe in just enough to knock it down the right pipe and I'm here to tell the tale. I'm also here to tell you about two things - Urumqi's buses, and Chinese pop concerts.

When I travelled on Shanghai's buses (or in fact, on any of Shanghai's public transport vehicles) I immediately had to give up personal space, and get used to having my face in close proximity to several people's armpits / chests / faces / other body parts. Here the problem is less pronounced, but still exists, especially at rush hours (whereas Shanghai has PERMANENT overcrowding on public transport) ... I can think of three solutions:

* Use more buses. Clearly there are too many people for some routes, so put more of those buses on the road.
* Change your bus style - another reason they appear horribly crowded is for the most part there are only rows of single seats and a massive aisle space for people to pack into. Put more of the double-seat styles on the road and limit the number of "standers" and you'll find it a lot nicer.
* Invest in LONGER or TALLER buses, like other countries. Another way of maximising the amount your vehicle can carry. Maybe make them WIDER too.

Oh, and at some point, whenever you reach "developed country" status (instead of leaning on your "progressing" crutch, despite having hosted the Olympic Games, honestly what a ridiculous farcical situation), your population will have to learn some basic manners and common courtesies such as saying "excuse me", queuing rather than barging, and not coughing / spitting / sneezing on the buses.

This is irrelevant to my post, but I dearly needed to exercise my complaint gland. What's INTERESTING about the buses is that on the more well-funded routes (the buses from different routes, or maybe their parent companies, I'm not sure, are easily distinguished by colour and state of dilapidation) have TVs on them, at the front, broadcasting songs, adverts, and insane drivel. This brings me onto point two, about Chinese pop concerts.

Sometimes they show these on the TV - the singer is modern enough, snazzy haircut, silly designer clothes, a dancing troupe surrounding him / her putting down their funkiest moves (often not so funky, but what do I know) ... and the audience going wild. Except here's the thing. They are cheering / clapping / whatever FROM THEIR SEATS. The entire auditorium (many thousands) is seated and the people remain in their seats, waving these giant lance-looking wands above their heads in time to the music. Maybe 10 000 people all cheering and waving these things together. What on earth is that about? Where's the freedom of expression? Where's the liberty to get up and dance / mosh / whatever these kids call it?

Ahhhhhh yeah.

China.

Disruptions

2008-12-08T22:59:00.003+08:00

I've moved back to Intermediate Class 2 until my exams (which take place in two weeks), mainly because the exams are all based around the books and vocab we have been learning, and if I take Intermediate Class 1's exams I will surely fail, having been in that class a mere three weeks or so. If I stay in Class 1 and take Class 2's exams I will have to do double work at home. Ergo, I've moved myself temporarily back into Class 2, so I at least stand a reasonable chance on these papers (except listening, I really think I am going to fail listening, and this worries me).

I headed along to room 417, where we used to have class, only to find we've now moved to 511. No problem, I nip up the stairs and after a couple of attempts in which I walked right past it, I find this new classroom. It's tiny. Maybe some of the class dropped out or were moved, and this meant room 417 (which really was quite big, easily seating 50 I would guess) became obsolete for the remaining few. I don't know. Either way, we're now in this small room. A couple of things happen when you downsize your classroom - it's warmer (yay, don't want to be cold in Urumqi), and it's noisier because things are so much closer. Allow me to paint a picture. This classroom has two columns of desks in it, two desks wide, so each row is 4 desks, and there are maybe five rows. A total of 20 desks. An aisle space about one and a half people wide, if that. There's a small space at the front for the teacher, and a whiteboard propped up against the window. There is no extra space; this is SMALL.

So what happens when there are eight students in the room, and one person comes in late (door at the back by the way) - anything this person does to change the atmosphere becomes immediately noticeable, that's what. Joy of joys the latecomer (seriously, why do you turn up half an hour late, and just barge your way in? It's not cool, clever, funny, and it certainly isn't mature), is the annoying kid (I refuse to call anyone who barely looks 18 an adult here) who doesnt bring any books and thinks he can just chat to his neighbour. Except there's a problem. This isn't the big room in which your piddling chat sort of murmured away in the corner. And your "mate" (who is actually hardworking and should have the balls to tell this idiot to piss off) isn't next to you, he's across this aisle. Oh, and you're not being discreet at all, in fact the sound of your voice is in direct competition with the teacher (who, bless her, is a really good teacher, but not so hot on the discipline and just tries to talk over this dick). Well, after about 10 minutes of this, I'd had enough. Actually I've had enough for a few weeks now, because so many of these damn Kazakhs are rude and discourteous, and I've wanted to just turn around and give them a mouthful. (One guy I know, an American in the Higher Class, told me in his first year here he actually got in fistfights with a couple of them over similar behaviour).

I turned around in my seat and, looking straight at him, said: "Will you close your mouth?" only it wasnt a question, it was a statement. I turned back. There was an audible silence. I'm the guy that sits quiet in class and speaks only when it's to answer a question. Then he speaks, in heavily accented (and by the sound of it, shaped by too much American gangsta music) English - "What you say to me?" ... on the second prompt I turn around again, and put it a little more forcefully, "Will you SHUT UP" and in return I get "Woah, what he say? [To me] Heeeeeeey, this is not America, this is Wulumuqi" - two things to note here, first of all I am NOT AMERICAN. DON'T GET IT WRONG, ESPECIALLY IF YOU KNOW I AM BRITISH. I can take it as a misconception, but this fool knows I'm not from that side of the pond. And secondly, I don't care if this is Urumqi, we're in a school situation, not in your back yard, homie, and I'm here to learn not smoke dope with you and your smacked-up crew. Oh and thirdly, with his manner of speaking he reminded me of someone I used to know (Mum, you know exactly who I'm talking about), and this just doesnt go down well. Seconds from making my next move (a response in Chinese, to make sure he understood, and failing that a response from my fists), and with the classroom quiet as anything now, save for this squirt's goads in whatever he thought was English, and something changed.

Nargiz, one of the bubbliest girls, bright too, and a friend of mine brought about by her younger brother speaking reasonable English and thus we have lunch together most days, turns around in her seat and starts giving this kid an earful. In Kazakh. Fast, loud, to the point. He starts arguing back, perhaps he figures she's just a girl. But then she gets up, and she's easily as tall as, if not taller than him, she comes out from her desk and goes round to him, and argues him right back into whatever cave he crawled out of (because I sure as hell wouldn't want to think people like that come from wombs), just in time for break. The bell goes, he leaves (and didnt come back for the remaining three lessons) and I am totally indebted. After that, she and a couple of the others told the teacher they didn't care much for this guy, that his first impression is bad, and that he's always smoking weed (why does this not surprise me?) - and when I said thanks, she said not to mention it because if I dealt with him there'd be trouble (I think she could see where it was going to go) but if she handled it there wouldn't be ... local knowledge I guess. The next three lessons were silent, it was awesome.

All I can say is, he'd better not be coming back to those classes until I'm back in Class 1, where, to put things fully in perspective, there are a lot more students (anywhere between 25 and 40 depending on the class), and in an average class there is no competition to hear the teacher. Teacher speaks, you listen. Simple as. Why can't it all be like that?!

In other news, I am thinking about compiling a list of current prices and useful places for people to go, something to help next year's students (if there are any, someone mentioned problems with the Urumqi-Newcastle connection), this sentences is partly a reminder to myself to actually do this, and partly a request for people to say what kind of things they think should be on this list :) Customer participation and all that.

Have I Made A Mistake?

2008-12-02T00:50:00.002+08:00

101 days into a 333(ish) day project is probably not the time to be having second thoughts. Or maybe it's just normal, I dont know. I had thoughts like this earlier on (anyone reading my blog must have been blind not to notice), maybe I reckoned they would subside by now. But no, it STILL riles me when something ridiculously "normal" and "simple" by any other country's standards can be messed around horribly in China. Today features that bastion of Chinese idiocy, the Post Office. Again. Yes, it's not enough that I had troubles with them in the past (and the last time I was in China as well, both the PO and Banks seem absurdly run) - it seems they are destined to cause trouble.

I want to send my friend something very simple. She like brown pens (and has probably twigged I am talking about her just now), and I managed to find some brown felt-tip-style drawing pens in Urumqi. Dead cheap, so I got her two. I myself have identical pens in purple and green, and my housemate has one in red and one in purple too - they're nice to use, if anyone wants them ... well I'd offer to send them to you, but as you'll see, that might be harder than I first thought. I decided to take a risk. I put them in an envelope, just a normal brown envelope. So there's a sheet of paper and two slimline brown pens in an envelope, which has been sellotaped shut because otherwise it just wont close (and also because the system here is not to use lick-and-stick envelopes. Peel and stick is probably a development reserved for next century) ... "Two to England" (yes, Great Aunt Judith, I have finally sent my reply to your letter! Mum please pass that along. And yes, Marilyn, your mail is also on its way!) and "one to America" ... Oh what's that? You can't send it? Well why not? Oh because it's not a letter? Yeah well that's none of your damn business, if I want to send 2 pens in an envelope, what's it to you? Yeah you have your regulations but they are ridiculous. Why is it that I have been to about 12 other countries and NEVER had a problem with their postal service? Just CHINA.

She got her boss. Who was equally useless, just repeated the situation. The solution is to buy a box. Yeah, a BOX to send 2 pens. I asked her, "What? So if I want to send my friend a small present, it has to be in a box?" and the answer was a resolute "yes" which means two things:

1) China Post has a racket on boxes and is using them to keep profits up (heaven forfend you should use another box, also things have to be packed in front of them, yet another bane of my existence)

2) The system is (as I have stated before) seriously retarded.

I left, livid, and am still ragey. Also, I still have an envelope with two brown pens in it :( Sorry Lari.

The actual point of this was - every time something like this happens, I question my decision to learn Chinese (even more so than normal, my original reasons for choosing it no longer existing), and I am seriously put off the idea of having ANYTHING to do with China. Ever. So I lose even more motivation for yet another day, and all I can think is, "This is a poor excuse for a country and I want nothing more than to come home". Yes it's needlessly complainy and I can think of a lot worse places to be, but sadly, I can also think of a lot BETTER places to be.

My Century

2008-11-30T15:32:00.002+08:00

Einstein once made the observation that a minute spent on a hot plate could feel like an hour, while an hour in the arms of a hot woman (presumably looks and not temperature) could pass in a moment. I've now spent 100 days in China (not a cause for celebration) and it feels like an eternity. I'm not even 1/3 of the way through my adventure (roll on December 11), which is really quite depressing. I suppose I'll feel better when I get a small break - one of the major problems is that all of our classes are Chinese here - in the UK I would study maybe three or four different topics per semester, and I'd have a workload for each of them which would mean I'd be busy, but at least I could change subjects if one was getting a bit boring, or if I'd worked for five hours solid on it ... here though, what is there to do? Learn vocabulary (writing it out lots, looking at flashcards, etc), practice a bit of grammar, do some reading, but it's all basically the SAME - look at Chinese characters for EVERYTHING. No wonder I am suffering a lack of motivation and severe apathy towards my course.

Then there's exams coming up and I found out I at least have to PASS (that's getting 40 on a Newcastle scale which I think means getting about 47 on the Xinjiang Scale, at least if my maths is halfway correct) - so I've decided to enter myself for the lower intermediate class, not because I think I'm really that level but because all the exams here are based on the books we use, and I've only been in higher intermediate a week or two so there'll be loads I don't know. Also, because maybe, deep down, I think my level probably *is* closer to that of lower intermediate (I just don't want to go back in that class). So I don't want to do any work, but I do want to pass these exams / improve my Chinese (by osmosis?) - it's a bit of a Catch 22.

On the plus side I went out the other day - taught a bit of English in the morning, fun fun, I even have a job offer for my winter break, if I'm around I can have a class of my own in my friend's school, maybe 50 students he said, and he'll make sure I'm paid for this work. Hmm beats sitting around doing nothing else! I have other winter plans of course, so it all depends on availability but I definitely intend to take him up on this offer. After teaching, I went out with my friend Doris (I dont know where they choose their English names either), who is coming to the UK next year to do a MA in Teaching English (she's currently completing a BA in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language) ... we went shopping for flashcards and then some stuff for me to send people at home - I can't really say much more or it'll spoil surprises but I got myself something nice as well and I feel good about that.

Oh and I picked up all 4 seasons of Prison Break on DVD for a total of £2 - and even that was probably a rip off because we didn't haggle but hell if I'm complaining. So far, so good - perfect quality episodes and I'm kind of hooked, approximately three years after everyone else I know :P That's about news for now, I know it's not terribly interesting, but there ya go.

Weather Report

2008-11-24T18:37:00.003+08:00

I want to see if this HTML sticker thing works ... it's a weather report (that should update itself when the page loads) from a website with access to local information courtesy of Urumqi Diwopu Airport. If I like it, it may become a feature of the blog, so you can see what I put up with here. That being said, although it is GETTING cold, from the accounts gathered from everyone who was here last year, it is nowhere near as bad as last November / December.


Plan your trip Local Radar Detailed Forecast

Things I Have Seen

2008-11-21T01:30:00.002+08:00

Some things from the last day or two that stick in my mind:

* The Urumqi Splatter

Okay, let's imagine you have a blocked nose, or a slight drip, or something similar. It's winter time, most people will be having this kinda problem around now. How do you deal with it? Tissues? Hankie (a personal hate of mine but hey) ... Not in Urumqi you don't. As with other places, I imagine this is a popular method, but I've only seen it here, so it's the Urumqi Splatter. Take your thumb and forefinger. Pinch your nose a bit, and lean forward slightly (or lots, if you are worried about spray) and exhale forcefully through your nose. This may be done over pavement, roads, or (if you're classy) flowerbeds and grassy areas. It saves tissues and to some extent therefore the environment. It remains absolutely disgusting and I never want to find myself doing it. Do the people here seriously wonder why chest infections and colds and general illnesses spread so rapidly? It's because you all lack basic hygiene, common sense, and civilised behaviour.

* Strange Child

I saw a kid today, scuffling through some leaves like most of us do, crunching away, then he paused and let out some kind of cry. The only thing I could think of was "Pterodactyl". Why a child felt the need to make such a scream, I dont know. Only in China.

* Change of Scenery

I've voluntarily moved myself up a class - I'm now with people who have been learning Chinese considerably longer than I have, in fact I think one of them was with LAST YEAR'S Newcastle lot. The reasons for the move were (a) my friend said she wanted to move and didnt want to go alone, (b) I agreed with her points for wanting to move - the pace of the class was sluggish, the atmosphere in the class was often disruptive, and (to a lesser extent for me) the material was too easy. Now personally I thought the material to be okay for me, but the pace to be the main problem. Anyway, I've spent about a week in the higher class now, and the material for grammar and reading really isnt SO hard, just a lot of vocab to look up, and the pace isnt so much faster but the ATMOSPHERE, now that is different. This class is larger, maybe double the other class, and yet it's mostly quiet, the questions are sensible, there's no misbehaviour, in short .... it's just a good atmosphere! And this, I've found, has helped my learning considerably. I prepare for classes more, the words are sinking in better, and I've had just as much chance to practice in class, despite the larger size. So, I've decided to stay - I think I can hack it. The listening is hard, but ... I'm sure I'll get better (I'm going to buy a radio and listen in the evenings, lord knows the TV is useless, I don't even watch English TV in the UK so why I would start here I dont know). My teachers worried this morning that I would flunk on the exams, but I said that's okay because Newcastle really dont care. So they asked if I care. And I suppose, actually, I dont. As long as my Chinese improves, I dont give a damn about some exam result in China that no one will look at in the UK.

* Homesickness

This has subsided since last weekend, when I was DISMAL. I spent a day just sitting in the house, mostly on my bed, watching English and American movies and TV shows, feeling like doing NOTHING even though I had plenty to do. Sunday was better, I got out the house and saw a friend for lunch, but still didnt want to DO anything. This week I feel heaps better, though I still wish I was at home, and I'm trying to work out where my life is ever going to go :(

That's about it for the time being. Next update when I can really be bothered, lazy creature that I am!

A Friend In Need ...

2008-11-11T20:32:00.003+08:00

A combination of what I think must be lack of sleep, poor dieting habits, and the change in weather (combined with the social effects of cold temperatures such as more people using buses ergo more germs being shared in close proximity for prolonged periods) have recently conspired to take their toll on my body. This afternoon demonstrated to me that having friends and a small network of known places around a city, or on a particular route can be invaluable.

I've not been feeling so well, on-and-off for a couple of days. A couple of weeks ago at the gym I felt quite bad but continued my workout and came away feeling much much better - you know the sweaty, dizzyish start-of-illness phase ... well that workout must have done something (sweated it out?!) because I perked right up. However the weather changed recently, from being just a bit cold to starting to snow. Apparently it's late for this year. Well equally late is my uptake on buying winter clothes; the problem is I was told it would get cold but there were just no SIGNS of it. In fact on Sunday afternoon I looked out of my window around 1500 and observed the builders working away next door, and I thought to myself "wow they must love this weather, they can build later into the year" ... about three hours later, sitting in my room, curtains closed, and I heard Marta on the phone to someone telling them it was snowing. "Snowing?", I thought, "Not when I last looked!" ... But she was right. In those three hours about two or three centimeters of snow had fallen!

Monday I went to school, my layers being a thermal top, tshirt, and jumper. Not even a very thick jumper at that. I was pretty cold. The weather warmed a little in the afternoon, and also it helped that I came home in my gym clothes, mmm tracksuit bottoms, so I didn't feel the FULL effects. Nonetheless I didn't feel 100%, and I couldn't help thinking the weather was to blame. I stayed up late last night, and woke this morning feeling tired and with an aching neck and shoulders (could have been part of my gym workout yesterday but really I was hitting the chest so those parts shouldnt have hurt so much). After a lie in (okay I turned off my alarm instead of putting it on snooze, I'm so lazy) I rushed my waking up, and didnt have enough time for proper breakfast. I made it through my first class, but only just, I was definitely zoning in and out, just about to conk out on the desk, luckily the teacher didnt ask me anything! ... In the break I went to the shop and did something very stupid (but necessary) - I got a can of Red Bull, a bar of white chocolate, and a cake. I thought it was a jam roll but it turned out to just be some kind of sponge roll without the jam (boo, China, do SOMETHING right goddammit!) ... these were devoured over the next two hours (while I had a reading test, only got 66%, so room for improvement think I).

I met with my friends - Anwar and Ava - and together we decided to go shopping for some winter clothes for me. This is related to the title of this post, there's really no substitute for some local knowledge and experience when it comes to things like clothes to protect you from winters where the temperature regularly hits -20C ... I'll cut this a bit short, we went to a dept store, found some jackets I liked, then went to another one just to compare them. The second place was closing down, but it had only recently gone bankrupt so neither of my friends knew it wasn't fully stocked with goods! So back to the first place where I got a jacket (hurray!) ... It's a bit puffy, but very light, filled with down (90%) and feathers (10%), with a couple of pockets and a hood too ... and room for some winter clothes like a jumper underneath. Wearing this, we all headed to Da Bazaar (Da means Big in Chinese, I am not speaking "ghetto" thank you very much), to see if there were thicker trousers and maybe some more jumpers I could buy. We had tea in a Uyghur shop (Anwar's choice), a bowl of soup with some noodley type bits of pasta-esque stuff in it, a tiny bit of beef, and a couple of eggs, nom nom nom. Tasted good anyway! Then we browsed some stores (and I made my mind up, I want some corduroy trousers, when I have time to go search for ones in my size / the right colour). We got to some second hand stores (with some nice looking clothes, I want to go back) where everything was significantly cheaper, but I started to feel (again, and not for the first time today) not quite right. I told Anwar and Ava that I just didnt feel so great and maybe we should call it a day. To be fair it was about 1820, time to be going home really.

Heading for the bus my stomach decided it would play nice for a bit, but once ON the bus (and with a good 20 - 25 minute journey ahead of me) it started to act up. I could feel gurgles and cramps and I knew this was not going to be pretty. After about 15 minutes (yeah I managed to hold my composure that long!) I told them I felt sick (I didnt want to tell them which end it was actually going to come out of) and they asked the guy sitting in front of us - we were standing - if I could have his seat. He obliged. I guess he didnt want me to be "sick" on him. Sadly, within a few seconds of sitting down it became apparent my bowels just were not going to hold. This was going to get messy fast, and I didn't want to be around for it. Kind of a shame that, it being my body and all. I told them I had a brainwave, I would go to the gym (it was right opposite the next bus stop) and just use the toilet there. They were really concerned for me, asked if I needed one of them to go with me, but I think the people at the gym know me well enough by now, so I thanked them but said no, I just need to get there fast.

Getting out the bus, I realised I didnt want / have time to take the underpass (ie "safe" route) across the road, and would instead have to go with the ordinarily riskier method of just crossing the six-lane road topside. The traffic thinned a little (or my eyes have just got good at spotting gaps in the traffic flow) and I made it across in record time. I got to the lift to the gym just in time. In time to see it ASCEND that is. Aaaaaaargh, what the hell was I going to do, about to colour the pavement a new shade of Urumqi brown (the other shades including mud, dirt, and winter grunge). Think calm thoughts. I ran out of the lift waiting area and gulped down fresh air as I tried not to think about the possibility that I may need to drop trow on a street corner. Thoughts of my brother, Mark, and his time in India filled my head. The time he'd had a bug so bad he had literally 5 seconds to jump to the roadside and squat. This was getting ridiculous. The lift was at the 6th floor and not coming down. By the time it reached the ground, I'd been joined by another man, who watched as I implored the lift's occupants to vacate quickly because I was feeling ill. I dont even know if what I said to them made sense, all I knew is there were toilets on floor five and I need them yesterday already. Reaching the fifth floor he had the decency to let me out first, and I rushed to the receptionists. Luckily my English student (Gu Li) was on the desk, at least I know her better than the others. I managed to blurt out "Gu Li I'm just in to use the toilets, I have a really bad stomach ..." before she nodded and watched as I sprinted down the length of the gym to the mens room.

Ah but what a dilemma when I got there. Where to put my coat and bag?! This was a brand new coat, I did NOT want to be leaving it on some crappy (literally) floor! Fate must have been smiling today, as one of the gym instructors (one of the nicer ones in my opinion, not at all hindered by his lack of English) entered the room, obviously about to go himself. He saw my situation and instantly offered to take my coat and bag. My brain overrode my bowels for one brief moment and I was able to ask "but what about paper?!" seeing there was none in the cubicle. "Don't worry, I'll sort it out" ... ahhhhhh thank heavens. Inside the cubicle, memories of the Great Train Ride came flooding back - longterm readers will remember my ordeal with the toilets on the Shanghai-Urumqi express train. Another squat toilet. But really, what other option was there? And you know what, it's REALLY not that bad. It could definitely be worse. If there's one good thing to come of today, it's finding out definitively that I will never be put off in future by using squat toilets. But I will definitely be carrying tissues ON me, it was just good fortune that the gym instructor went through my belongings and found my half full pack which he passed to me under the door. I emerged several minutes later, my quadriceps burning, my stomach still not quite right, and my Britishness returning with disgust for their lack of soap (what I need to carry THAT with me now?)

The point of all this is, you never know when you are going to need / want / appreciate a friend, contact, or just place you are known. Especially when your world is turning brown fast.

[[This happened about an hour ago. Since then I've had to go again (felt ill on the taxi ride home, but luckily my flat has a "normal" WC), and I'm just going to stick to lots of plain food, plain warm fluids, and get some decent rest, hope this passes. Mum, thanks for the smoked salmon, cheddar cheese, and so on which all arrived today, but I don't think I'll be eating them for another couple of days! ^_^

EDIT: all conversations in inverted commas here actually took place in Chinese, but since my audience is mostly made up of non-Chinese speakers I've put everything in English!]]

A Lazy Update

2008-11-09T10:58:00.002+08:00

It's Sunday morning and I should probably be doing some kind of work ... but I'm taking some time to stay in bed a bit longer and generally laze if not sleep in (the Chinese for which is 睡懒觉 in case you were wondering, I know you weren't), while I try to recall some of the week's events. Also, there's no way I can leave the house right now - Marta went out last night and hasn't come back, and my crappy excuse for a main door key broke off in the lock yesterday evening (fortunately i was able to salvage the actual key part so the lock itself is still okay to use). Lucy had a front row seat to that event, being on the phone to me at the time; I could not believe that the key just sheared off in the lock. Oh wait, I COULD believe it because this is CHINA. That's fast becoming synonymous for "I've never seen this happen before, in quite this way, but it doesn't surprise me that it's happening to me here". I recall this happened the last time round as well, Sam and I came to the conclusion that "Nothing is impossible, you just haven't seen it yet" meaning you had to be in China to witness such an "impossible" event. Whatever the chances of it, having your front door key snap off in the lock is a damned irritation. I want Marta to get back here soonest so I can go and get another key cut, but since she was (presumably) on the lash last night I might be waiting some time.

I don't think so much has been going on recently. Or maybe it has and I've just not taken it all in - this is a problem when trying to document your life, some things happen that may be considered amazing or abnormal to people who don't experience them, but when you live it everything sort of blurs into "normality" ... I suppose one thing I look forward to every week is my Tai Qi class - not only is the teacher really good, but it's free (well for the students anyway, apparently our school pays the teacher, but free at the point of consumption is basically free as far as I'm concerned!) ... Every Thursday afternoon for about 90 minutes we knacker ourselves. I personally think the teacher's idea of a warm up is more work than the exercise itself! A quick run (no, that's not the knackering part) followed by several stretches, mostly for the legs, though after this week I will be adding some arm stretches too, and then some exercises. The first is okay - put your arms out to the sides and goose-step 10 - 15 paces (each foot, so 20 - 30 total). Then it gets a bit harder. With your arms still out to the sides, step forward, as you do so bring your leg up to kick your outstretched hand (same side). Do 10 - 15 paces. Finally, repeat but kick the opposite outstretched hand. Do all of these twice. Sound hard? Well it was to begin with, but now, about a month later, I am finding I CAN do this. Then there's some kicking practice, and a couple of routines (ah, I dont know the Chinese for any of this, I'm useless), which looked complicated when we first saw them, but are less so now we've done them a few hundred times. I can't wait to add breathing to it all, slow it right down and get a work out (holding some of those positions will be "fun"). This week was extra fun though because the teacher decided it would be good for us to box a little. So out came the gloves (I've never worn boxing gloves before) and some training. I would like to do more of this, I have a feeling for all my time in the gym my punches are still weak. Or maybe they're not. I should find someone to experiment on ;)

So Thursday was enjoyable. However, by Friday I found myself so knackered (I seem to have been burning the candle both ends for a few weeks now, I'm trying to regulate my body clock to something sensible but it's not happening so easily) that I stayed in bed most of the day, getting out only to shower and go to the gym (not for a workout, as I normally would, but instead to teach one of the receptionists some English - for free? maybe. Why? Well I wouldn't ordinarily, but since I'm in the gym on a Friday mostly anyway, it's not a problem to spend an extra hour there before / after working out which would otherwise be spent at home doing nothing). This week was slightly different though, because the Tai Qi from Thursday managed to strain my right tricep - all those punches! - and the inner side of my left thigh - all those kicks! I don't recall doing anything much on Friday apart from that.

Saturday I got up stupidly early (my friend texted me the wrong time to meet, fortunately I decided he had made a mistake and got up when I felt was suitable, but it was still early!) to go and give a talk at an English school. Well to be precise, a Uyghur school for teaching English. It's called NSP (Never Stop Program) and the guys that run it are now friends of mine. I'd offered to give a talk, about me, about England, about anything really, and play some language games with the classes, so I did. My morning session lasted 3 hours. That's a long time for a relatively unprepared class. The guys had got all of their morning students together, there must have been easily 150 people in the room, most of whom had reasonable English but had never used it with a foreigner before. So they were understandably delighted. We had lunch and then I was going to go to the gym but I needed time to digest (lag maan goes down slowly) so I did another hour in the afternoon, mainly questions and answers from the guys' more advanced students. It was fun, but wholly tiring! And to top it off, of course I went to the gym later, not going to miss THAT!

Coming home from the gym my key sheared off in the lock and I think that pretty much brings me full circle for the time being :)

Oh and Mum, I know I never reply to your emails and I've not written anything to you in a while, but thanks for all the letters, the bank card, the aid package and so on that have arrived this week :) Dad, I've written you a letter but it'll have to wait for posting. Lucy I'm in the middle of a letter to you. Other people, I need to write more I know!

Thank Yous and a General Update (October)

2008-10-24T23:38:00.003+08:00

I tried posting a special Thank You blog last week (when I received certain goods in a yellow box) but this website didnt seem to like the idea of me uploading photos ... sorry, Mariamelia, I got your parcel, the coffee and card were both very warmly accepted! Now all we need are some filter papers for our cups, we don't have a machine or anything fancy for this non-instant (ie: proper!) stuff ... I'll email you photos when I dig your address out - I've hidden it somewhere, oh no! The Rio card is on my wall though - my collection is growing (thanks Mum, Lucy, Sheila) and it really takes attention off the filthy walls (which I am NOT cleaning because they are covered in some kind of plaster and it will just come off). I've rambled. The point is, THANK YOU :)

In other news, I can't remember where I got to last time with this blog, so apologies for repetition.

* The heating came on - yay! - the evening of October 14th the pipes finally started to warm up and by the 15th they were well and truly hot. Now we've kind of got used to the ambience, the temperature varies depending on the time of day, the pipes will be hot at one point and drop down to just warm at others, though we're not really sure how it is determined ... sometimes it's tropical (especially in my room, which is very small) and other times it's just NICE. I like nice. Sorry mum I know it's a silly word, I shouldn't use it, but I just have, twice. Anyway, we're not freezing yet!

* The weather on the other hand is definitely pushing that way. Frost in the mornings on some of the plants and the ground, puddles that ice over a bit, a distinct chill in the air, and a certain need to wear layers of clothing and keep moving in an attempt to stay warm. I've even bought gloves! Yeah, it took me that long. But there was no need to worry about prices, as usual Xinjiang came through with some mega-cheap stuff, in fact of the two pairs I bought the cheaper one is probably the warmer (though made of woolly stuff, so not great when it gets wet) - these are basic winter gloves, not going to stop the supercold temperatures we will face later in the year, but great for now. RMB 7.50 (that's something like 70p, my how the pound has fallen, but still it's cheap) - in fact there are some I have considered getting for other people ...

* I've started my Tai Qi classes at the university - I enjoy them way more than learning Chinese, but I suppose I know why I am here (grumble mutter groan complain) ... still, it's nice to have this break for an hour or ninety minutes on a Thursday afternoon. The warm up is the worst bit, I don't mind the gentle jog or the basic stretches we do, but some of the more advanced stretches are beyond me at this early stage. Having jogged a bit, and stretched your legs and back sufficiently, stand upright with your arms at ninety degrees to your body, hands all the way outstretched, parallel to the ground. Now walk along but as you "walk" be sure to kick your outstretched hand with the foot of the same side. A real kick, a nice smack sound. I can barely touch my hand and that's with leaning forward a bit. My teacher (and his student of three years) can both kick their hands really quite hard and walk ten paces like this while making it look easy and graceful. And if you thought that was going to be a long way to come, try kicking the opposite hand while doing this "walk" ... it's HARD. Once that's over with though, we can learn Tai Qi, forms, movements, etc. I think breathing will follow soon, but I'm guessing you need to know how to stand and move a little before you can add breathing in (please, people with experience correct me if I'm wrong). I'm adding advancing in Tai Qi and general fitness / flexibility to my list of things to achieve before coming home.

* I bought slippers for the house. Despite the heating being on, our floor is COLD. Also it's dirty and this saves my socks getting covered in dust ... can I have a pipe now?

* Every time I go to the shops and read the Chinglish on the front covers (and insides) of various notebooks and paper, I crack up. I need to take a camera, some of this is priceless. My favourite today was either the one that read something like "I am XXXX, this is my friend, XXXXX, together we are the Piano Rabbits" (I'm as baffled as you are!), or the book which had lots of soppy stuff about love written on the front, along with a picture of a couple of love-heart sweets containing the words "YOU SLUT". Saw one for you two Lucy, but I thought you might be a bit upset they'd misspelt something terribly famous.

* I came top of my class for a recent test. What makes this worse though, is (a) "top" was only 81% (and there are some people there who must be better than I am) and (b) I didn't even know we were going to have a test, whereas some of these people DID. Oh, and (c) the teacher was going round helping people (wtf? it's a test!) - to my credit I wasn't among those asking for help, but she did come over and just force it on me. Oh well. I think if I score higher on the next test (which I KNOW about) they might consider moving me up a class, at least for grammar. I can hope.

* I've not written anyone letters for a while. This must be amended. Hopefully by Monday I will have something to put in the post for a number of people ... no promises though!

That's it for now I think. Anything else happens, it'll just have to wait.

Various Happenings from the Last Few Days

2008-10-09T19:44:00.005+08:00

i've given up trying to remember what happened recently and when, if it was that important i'd be writing about it ... here's some events from the past couple of days though.

My Residency Permit

Getting this piece of golddust was like ascending Everest, or attempting to find Nirvana. Seriously, the Chinese system is shit. About two weeks ago we applied for our permits (this was after getting the temporary permit from our LOCAL police station) from the main office in Urumqi. This took two days, because on day one we were turned away at 1330 when everyone buggered off to have lunch. At the same time. I got annoyed about it in a previous blog, so I'm not going to waste breath here. The receipt they gave us said to come back on the 30th of September, no problem, so we did. Only it was closed. So we went the whole of our week off school without our main form of ID. What would have happened had we needed to leave the country in a hurry for whatever reason, I don't know. We went back the other day (October 7th) to get them ... easier said than done. First we needed to take a ticket to determine our place in the queue (and hope the chinese would play nicely!) - but which one? Miss Stone-Face on the desk was very little help but she did show me which ticket I needed, and so Marta and I got numbers 4007 and 4008. Fortunately the queue was at 4003, and moving relatively quickly, so we didn't have too long to wait. While sitting there Tanya turned up and took ticket 4011, so at least she wasn't too far behind us. Approaching StoneFace I handed over my receipt. She didn't seem in a good mood, so I didnt bother with pleasantries, I'm growing quite calloused to public service officials here, if they're not interested in being polite, neither am I. She found my passport and then motioned me to her colleague at the next counter (literally 6 feet along the desk), who took my receipt, ran it through a machine, stamped it, and gave me two of the carbon copies back before telling me I needed to pay the 400 RMB fee at the bank next door. WHAT?! Do it over the damn counter, woman. (Tanya said the last time she did this, she just paid over the desk, none of this bank malarky). But that's how it works, so off we went and got one ticket for the three of us at the bank. It didnt take too long to get to our place in the queue (about 15 minutes) and there was minimal fuss with the actual payment. Back to the PSB, where the bank-charge woman stamped our receipts AGAIN, and then motioned us back to StoneFace. This is a really good example of Chinese stupidity. Finally we got our passports pretty much chucked at us by this unpleasant dour woman, and with that we were free to go, legal residents of Urumqi, Xinjiang. At last.

Buying a Mattress (YAY)

I think everyone will be pleased to know that I finally found time (and could be bothered) to go and buy a mattress. I didn't think it would make THAT much difference - given that I've got used to sleeping on my makeshift bedding for the past 5 weeks - but it really does. And it was worth the slight hassle involved. In Urumqi there is a GIANT SHOPPING MALL - more of a market place but I digress - it's ridiculously large, the building from the outside is impressively massive in itself, and inside it stretches on as far as you can see ... not just this, but the site is split over two sides, it's incomprehensibly huge. Our first attempt, we went in the wrong side, and spent a while browsing what looked like very upmarket stores, not at all what we had been led to imagine it was like. We tried the other side however, and found an emporium of low-cost high-quality goods, all of which can be haggled over (joy). Although I found a mattress stall very quickly, I didnt have the exact measurements for my bed (d'oh!) and I couldn't risk it being too long, since my bed is a TIGHT fit in my room ... So we had to come back the next day, except I left my measure-strings (I dont have a tape measure, so I cut lengths of string, one for width and one for length, clever eh?) at home, which necessitated an extra taxi journey. Oops. Finally we made it, and I found a mattress I liked - in retrospect I could have had the cheaper, slightly more compressible one, but I didnt think it would fit on my bed, and this one felt nice so I just went with it. Like I say, my back is much harder and stronger than when I came here. They didn't hike the price up massively like friends said they would - actually they seemed really quite nice. There was some mild haggling, but I actually asked first if I could negotiate, and the owner of the store agreed, but within reason. We came to 550 RMB including delivery. Fair enough really. I was prepared to pay more than that overall!!! :) Getting it in the house was a struggle, because there was some car jam created by my driver arriving outside my flat, so he had to leave sharpish (in fairness I told him it was okay and I could manage) - but I underestimated the weight of this thing! I was struggling it inside when an old man came in the stairwell and offered to help; I turned the offer down because the guy was OLD, we're talking late 70s early 80s here ... but he insisted and together we got this thing inside my house (he offered to move it to the bedroom but I said a firm no, because my room wasn't tidy enough to get it in there, and also because he had more than helped!) - but the surprise came when I went to the stairs to get my water bottle, and picked up his bags for him. The old guy gamely walks with these HEAVY bags of shopping at least twice a week from what I can work out. Each carrier bag must have been about eight kilos, minimum. And this guy is not even uncommon around here - certainly the older generation in China knows how to look after itself!

Long story short, my room is now a lot more comfortable, the mattress is covered, I have a second, Chinese style thin mattress, also covered on top of it to make it cushy, and a duvet on top ... it's all bright colours (orange bunnies on the duvet and bright pink flowers on the Chinese mattress) so my room feels a lot warmer, and of course I now enjoy spending time in here. Viva Winter.

Settling Down A Bit

I sometimes got really homesick being here. It's never happened before, so I'm quite unused to dealing with it. But anyway, yesterday I had a wonderful day, which made me forget (mostly) about not being with people I love in England. As I went to my first class, a Chinese girl stopped me and asked if I spoke English (I love it when they ask that, as if they think I'm not a native speaker, I get a kick out of saying that not only do I speak English, I AM English) ... she wanted help with something, so I said okay (not even sure what she needed help with!) but please meet me after my class. 1200 and she was there, almost on the dot, thanking me in advance - haha, I didn't even know what I was supposed to be doing! We found a classroom that wasn't being used, and she introduced herself (Ava) and explained the situation. She's an English student, and there's a national English competition taking place, but to select people from each province there are obviously local rounds to take part in. Makes sense really. There are 3 parts to this competition - a prepared speech delivered from memory, an impromptu speech (not sure how it works), and a Q+A session at the end. Everything is done in front of an audience (both Chinese and native English speakers), and a panel of judges (of course!). She needed help tweaking her prepared speech before the competition (at the weekend!!! So soon!), and would I please assist? Haha, sure! I thought I was going to have to translate an email! Phew! Turns out there are no native speaking foreign teachers at XNU this year / semester, so unlike other universities she'd desperately been trying to find a foreign student. I spent an hour sorting her stuff out - her topic was nice and abstract so there was a lot of imagery to work around ... and finally it was done and she was happy, but would I also do her friend's work? Yeah, alright. Fortunately her friend (Annie) had chosen a much more literal topic and the writing was more straightforward, I only had to spend about 30 minutes smoothing it out and making sure she understood why I was changing bits and bobs. Mint, job done. They thanked me and I've now made 2 new Chinese friends (yay) - I hope they do well this weekend!

I then had lunch with another Chinese friend, a guy I met in a mobile phone store when I was buying my Xinjiang SIM card, who I had given my number to (wasn't sure about it but I figured I needed friends!) ... and so we met for the first time in a month and a half, and it turns out I made a really good decision giving him my number. The guy (Fei) is really nice. He's local, so I'm guessing he knows all there is to know about Urumqi, he's patient with my Chinese, and he's easy to get along with, which is good since I'm meeting up with him partly to improve Chinese and partly to help him with his English ... We had a really good lunch, and have plans to make this a weekly thing, with some topics to discuss so we can focus our learning. After this, as if I'd not done enough already, I went to the gym, had a good workout, and generally felt much better about being here. So maybe I'm settling in after all.

Thanks and General Appreciations

I'd like to thank some people without whom my trip so far would have been pretty much unbearable. Sorry if I miss you out, this is being done off the top of my head:

Mum - for the numerous letters, photos and aid parcels (more on that next post). I've not received your cake yet, but I live in hope!

Lucy - for writing at least 10 sides of A4 every time you send me a letter, which comes at the ridiculous cost of £1.22 each time (I wonder how the recession will change that?!), for the emails, texts, and long phone calls, even the ones that wake me up in the morning.

Nana - I know you don't read this, but your letters and that phone call are all very much appreciated. :) I've replied too!

Mariamelia - for the comments and postcard that now forms part of my growing wall decorations! My regards to your daughter, wherever she's got herself now ... !

Fiona - who would have thought I'd still be in touch with someone I lived with for just 3 months in first year at uni? And who would have thought the same person would be sending me coffee and chocolates from Northern Ireland to China?! If I've got money next summer (and I hope I do), I'm coming over NI for sure, let me know if there's something Chinese you want! I can't wait for your parcel :)

My Postman
- Zhou Qi Ming is a godsend. The guy calls me when there's a package for me, arranges a time to meet me at the depot, has a chat, speaks nice and slow, helps my friends out when they don't know where their depot is (because the postmen scribble Chinese on their missed-call slips), and seems easy going with a sense of humour!

Anyone Who Is Going To Send Me Stuff - I can't wait! Thanks in advance!

Desert Tripping in Tulfan - A Short Photo Sequence

2008-10-09T13:48:00.004+08:00

i wanted to include a shot of the wind farm, but blogspot had a hard time understanding me, so i gave up. here are just a few photos from our day out in turpan (tulfan) and the surrounding area. sorry the quality is a bit low, i had to compress them for uploading. if you desperately want to see more (and i have some really good ones, i might upload them specially later) in hi-res, let me know, and i'll see what i can do about sending some e-mails.

vineyard

comic donkey picture. no idea why.

raisins, very popular in this region and famed for their quality, along with the grapes from which they are made.

houses cut into the hillside, really impressive stuff.

hillsides in the afternoon autumn sun, slight editing with the use of a camera mode, but otherwise authentic

sunset, a beautiful end to the day

So Much Has Been Happening Part 2: Discovering Urumqi and a Trip to Tulfan

2008-10-06T19:53:00.005+08:00

Okay, a lot of other stuff happened in the last 14 days or so, but unfortunately I've been so lazy I didn't write down even snippets of what went on, so I've forgotten a lot of events. Oh well, here's some stuff I CAN remember!

We've just been on an 8 day break (back to school tomorrow, supposedly, more on that later), and one of the things we wanted to do was go to Tulfan (aka Turpan), the lowest point in China and one of the hottest summer destinations (literally, they recorded a temperature of 59C there once, that's one of the hottest temperatures on earth let along China), but in autumn and spring it's supposed to be very nice. How convenient for us that it's autumn now (though some days it really doesnt feel it, far more summery). However, we had thought we might want to stay a night there, and see the place properly, so maybe having our passports back from the PSB would be useful. That and they were supposed to be ready for collection on the 30th, which is quite long enough without my main form of international ID thank you very much! So on the 30th we went to collect them. Now to his credit, the taxi driver did try and tell us when we got into his vehicle that the office was closed, but we had our receipt and we were sure this meant they'd be open to return our passports. After all, why issue a returning date on the receipt if you'll be closed? Banks don't tell you to come in on Christmas Day or a Bank Holiday do they? It's stupid. So off we went; when we got there however, the place was clearly closed. Despite Anniwar's sage advice that "the 30th is not a holiday, but you have the day off uni", we were once again disappointed and appalled with the Chinese system. The lesson to be learnt here is NEVER TRUST THE CHINESE ON ANYTHING THEY SAY, DO, OR PRINT. What made it worse is some people from Marta's class had been back before their due collection date (knowing that the place would be closed) and their passports had been ready for them. This is a seriously messed up country.

With not a lot else to do, Marta and I took a wander around the local area, the PSB office is not in our neighbourhood and we were curious to see what was to be seen ... not a lot really, what with it being a holiday and all. Drat. We did find a nice restaurant though, and it was exceedingly cheap (I'm going to be used to having meals for about 5 RMB and find myself totally out of my depth when I get back to England - "what? that costs how much? i'll have you know in CHINA i could eat for a tenth of your price, good day sir!") ... and then we went for a stroll. But quickly wished we hadnt. We took a gander down a small alley kind of road, hoping it would lead out the other side to another main road to see what there was, but no, it was a dead end. And this was kind of awful because it meant coming back down the same alley to get out. The alley that contained seriously dilapidated run-down buildings, small shops selling tatty looking veg, TV and electrical goods shops thrown in there too (as if to highlight the difference in the quality of goods, the veg being poor, the TVs looking actually very nice), animals in dire states (the treatment of cats and dogs in China is for the most part abysmal - the 2 cats in this alley were tied on cords that wouldn't even let them get off the box they sat on unless they wanted to be hanged, and the rabbits down the end of the alley were in a cage that just about kept them off the ground which was covered in their urine stains), but the worst sight was probably the man with disfigured hands (a lot of people seem to have strange mutilations, most likely from some kind of radiation poisoning) dejectedly sifting his way through a skip of raw throwings-out and general crap (literally in some cases). It was disgusting.

We left the alley quite quickly, but it didn't get better. To one side of us was a restaurant with a load of dogs chained up outside, and as we walked by it was obvious that (a) they were on chains all day long, poor things, (b) the restaurant was most likely one that served dog, and (c) a beautiful large dog was being taken inside the restaurant. We got a taxi home and didn't feel so much like exploring again that day.

Later in the week we took a trip down to Da Bazaar (the Grand International Bazaar to give it it's full title), on the recommendation of previous students and also because we wanted to see where we could get some delightfully cheap stuff for winter, even if we didn't buy on the spot. Well, Nikki, I have to say I'm disappointed. This isn't a dig at you by the way, but maybe you and I get our kicks out of different things, possibly the fact you never left Europe before you came to China the first time gave you different perspective. Also I don't know if you've ever been to the Middle East (or indeed WHERE in the Middle East you might have been to get the impression that it was akin to the Bazaar) ... well anyway, I digress. I personally didn't like it so much. It just felt like every other damn place I've been to in China where they have a large market. Lots of people, lots of shouting, lots of haggling, lots of watching your wallet and phone, rows of shops selling the same old stuff that you probably don't want to buy anyway, and lots of people using their halting broken English to attract your attention. It was like ShangYang market in Shanghai but ... dare I say it ... worse?! True, they had some good stalls, the mens's clothes section on floor 3 will get another look later in the year for winter clothes, and the alcohol store will also be revisited because of it's ridiculously cheap foreign imports (assuming they are real! but they look it) ... but in general the atmosphere was horribly samey, just like all the other large Chinese shopping places I have been to recently and in 2006. Worse though, was the proliferation of beggars. I thought beggars in other parts of China were bad, with their approaches and touching (nay grabbing) you, but here it's not their approach (which is actually non-existent) but their appearance. These people REALLY NEED HELP. Deformations and disabilities abound. It's horrible, and shocking to see a society that just doesnt care, especially in this area because I always had this view of Muslim communities that there's a sense of just that - community. Sticking together a bit in your area. Charity laws in Islam. Who knows, whatever I thought, I'm not seeing it here. And what's even worse is that my giving these people any of my money isn't really going to CHANGE anything for them. It might make things better for a brief moment but it isn't going to lift them out of their misery and poverty-stricken lives. Really, I came away from Da Bazaar with a very negative impression of things.

To break up this slightly negative tirade, I also found a couple of DVD stores this week. Thank god. I was wondering where all the fake DVDs in Urumqi had got to. Now I know at least 2 places where I can waste some cash on some semi-decent copies of movies of TV series' I may want to see. Anyone want anything? I can have a look for it and maybe get you it if you pay me. It's silly-cheap though. Around 8 - 10 RMB for a DVD, usually this DVD will have anything from 4 - 12 films on it, not all of them in great quality, but hey, you are only paying about 80p what do you expect! In Shanghai a lot of the DVDs were similar price and perfect quality, but this isn't Shanghai :P

Ah where was I, yes, negative things ... our trip to Tulfan wasn't REALLY a negative experience (actually very positive) but some ASPECTS were less than good. Tanya made the bookings for us all, through some company whose brochure she had acquired from somewhere - 220 RMB for a day trip to Tulfan, excellent. Meet at 0820 by her gates, where we will be collected? Great. So at 0820 we're standing there and no one has phoned. We call the company and they said something about meeting later. Er, right? How about now? 0845 someone turns up and takes us to some buses, about a mile away. Why not just tell us to meet you there?! We pay our 220 RMB and get on a coach. It drives to the Sheraton and we have to get off and board another coach (so why not tell us just to meet at the Sheraton?! Idiots, we could have had another hour in bed!) ... We set off on this coach and the tour guide comes round and says it'll be another 110 RMB each if we want to go INSIDE the attractions we are due to visit today. Sorry what? 220 wasn't enough? And what's this about attractions, I thought we were just going to Tulfan?! Ah no, we have it all wrong, this is a day out seeing various sights AROUND Tulfan. And to get into those sights we ... yes yes we need to give you 110 RMB. Thanks. So now we have bugger all money left to do anything else with all day, and I ended up lending Marta ANOTHER 100 RMB. That's not a complaint by the way, Marta's Mum, it's just a statement of fact. For anyone planning to come to China, read what I said above about NEVER TRUSTING THEM ON ANYTHING, THEY WILL RIP YOU OFF AND THEN SOME. THERE IS ALWAYS SOME STUPID HIDDEN CHARGE, SOME COST YOU DIDNT KNOW EXISTED, SOME THING THEY JUST "FORGOT" TO TELL YOU ABOUT. That's a complaint.

Well, to cut things short, so I can get back to complaining again, the day out was marvellous. We didnt understand the guide very much (hence us overstaying 20 minutes at the first location, a big vineyard with underground tunnels, much to the annoyance of the rest of our group), and she did talk A LOT - all the way to Tulfan she was reeling off information over a microphone, while the coach (which had no suspension at all) bumped its way for 2.5 hours from Urumqi to the vineyards. She was actively encouraged (I'm sure) every time she finished a massive speech about the area, by the Chinese people on board clapping enthusiastically at her fluent knowledge. Oh well, it's her job, it's a tour bus I suppose we ought to have expected this! The weather was very good - blue skies, 30C, could have done with more breeze, but made for spectacular views, and I think an excellent time was had by all. Not to labour a point though, but I would like to return to the whole not trusting the Chinese tour people thing. We were having lunch at some place, a very basic affair that couldnt have cost more than 3 RMB each, and for which we probably paid 20 as part of our package deal, and the guide started to kick up some fuss about us 3 eating. We hadn't paid or something. Tanya was busy with some problem that had arisen on the phone concerning some Russian students in another part of Xinjiang, Marta didnt know what was going on, and I had only the vaguest of ideas but I was hungry and just kept eating despite the guide. She rang her boss and put him on the phone to me, so I asked him what the hell she was on about? Not being allowed to eat when we paid the same 220 as everyone else. Well you should have seen her face change as soon as I said "not allowed to eat" - "oh no no no no, that's not what I said", she started out with ... "well what DID you say?", I queried, but was unable to understand her answer. Anyway, this Australian professor was there with a former student (Chinese) and they said the guide was just being stupid and that we'd all paid the same money, and not to worry about it, they didnt understand what she was on about either and they were fed up because there'd been talk of honeydew melon that hadn't shown up (there was a reason for this we found out later, but not a great one, and the guide said she'd buy us all some later, but that never happened either) ... tsk.

I took my pleasure that day in the landscapes and the times we were allowed off the coach to get away from some of the Chinese (except this one kid who took to trailing me a bit and talking some English, though a lot of the time it was hard to understand him). The sunset was brilliant. The ruins out in the desert were delightful. With the exception of the tour company attempting to rip us off, the day out was well worth it, however next time we do something like this we're going to get a group of five and hire a jeep plus driver for the day - which apparently can be got for about 400 RMB total, as opposed to the 990 RMB we ended up giving as a threesome going on this tour - and having a customised day out to ourselves. But you live and learn and as experiences go it was a good one. I've now seen Asia's second largest wind farm, some vineyards, underground tunnels, gorgeous sandy orange mountains against powder blue sky, clear night skies (wow), and houses cut into the landscape like I wrote about in an essay back in Newcastle but never actually SAW before

It really was fun.

EDIT - i tried to upload pics, but it wasnt liking it. maybe i'll post just a picture blog as my next entry.

So Much Has Been Happening Part 1 : National Day Awards

2008-10-02T10:22:00.003+08:00

I've done it again - I've left blogging for so long that I don't know where to begin any more ... damn. I'm currently in the middle of an 8-day break, which is really strange because: (a) in order to give us this break we had classes at the weekend, to make up for what we would "lose" during this holiday, (b) we've only been at uni for a month and already we're having some kind of half-term time off, and (c) perhaps most annoying, our next proper break isn't until January 15th. I don't count the one day that we get off for New Year's Day. What this adds up to is that this weeklong holiday (for National Day? The PRC is 59 years old now) is our last break for the next 14 weeks. By UK standards that's a ridiculous length of time not to have a break while in education. By the standards of other countries close to China, however, it's pretty normal, as my friend and classmate Tanya (she's Russian) confirms. Anyway, while I'm on this holiday I thought I should update the blog, and see what's been happening in the past 10 days or so (from memory, so things might not be totally chronological). Also, it's quite long, so I think these updates will have to be in sections.

National Day Foreign Experts Award Ceremony

When I was brought into the corridor during a lesson-break to have a chat with one of my teachers, I really had no idea what he was on about when he said that a few of us foreign students (one from each country?!) would be having a party ... I thought maybe Xinjiang Normal University had finally got its act together and was organising something for its foreign guests to do so they would get to know one another ... well, I was wrong. But as it turns out it wasn't entirely bad. The downside to being invited to this party was the question of attire. I was told I couldn't wear casual clothes at all, it was a formal thing. Damn, why did I leave all my smart clothes back in the UK - oh yes that's right, because I am a STUDENT and not some kind of ambassador businessman. Smart people will say I should always have at least one set of good clothes with me, and pedantic people will add that I am an "ambassador for Newcastle University", but to be honest, when I was packing these were not on my mind. More pressing was how I would lug my life around Shanghai, on a train, and across Urumqi. And to that end I kept things as light as possible. So, cue me having 24 hours to find "good" clothes, having just decided on a weekly budget, which would now get shot right down because of this impromptu party that I wasn't so much invited to as told to attend.

I'll cut my frantic searching short by saying that I tried the "normal" shops first, and didnt see anything I liked especially and that it was all quite expensive by Chinese standards (though cheap as chips by Western views). I wandered desolately home and on the way I saw a building I'd never been in (but passed many times). Turns out it's a huge indoor market, so I spent some time trawling round there - they had everything, jackets, coats, gloves, shirts, food, crockery, you name it. Eventually I found a stall with some good quality trousers at a reduced price (which meant the owner wasn't willing to bargain over them, which I thought was a shame because they could have been cheaper - yes, China has made me that tight already), but two pairs of good trousers (sort of thick, like denim, but not quite like jeans), one brown and one black, for 100 yuan (about 8 quid). Not the best deal in the world but not the worst either, and look I was pressed for time here, I still didn't even have a shirt or good shoes!

The shirt I acquired from a supermarket, for 40 yuan, yes yes it's most likely a phenomenal rip off, but I didn't have the time to be running around markets or whatever finding the "best deal". It took about 30 minutes to buy it though, because there's no place to try on the item you want to buy, and the store muppets were so gormless they didnt measure me until right at the end, when all I had been asking them to do before was measure me, so I could see what Chinese size I was. Really, shopping in this stupid country gets me down. It did in 2006 and it does now. I really hate it. The shoes were a story in themselves, after trying some local stores and not getting anything I wanted (I actually had to argue with one shop assistant who kept giving me sizes smaller than UK 9 that I COULD NOT FIT IN THE SIZE 8.5 SHOES BECAUSE I AM AT LEAST A SIZE 9 AND STOP GIVING ME SMALLER SHOES THEY WILL NOT WORK), I took a bus about three stops further than I'd ever been before, just to see if there was anything I could see, a bit of an adventure and also because my local area wasn't offering anything decent by way of shoes. I ended up in a place called Bei Men (北门) or Northgate if you want a literal translation. I wandered around a bit there, not seeing anything great until I chanced on a military surplus store. Heck, if theyre anything like in England, you can surely pick up something half decent looking which will also double as casual shoes AND be alright for the beginning of winter (ideally I wanted a pair of Converse (or lookalikes) but they didnt have my size in any stores) - I was trying to save money here, I don't need / want three pairs of shoes for different things, I just wanted one all rounder that would stop me using my gym trainers as casual wear. Anyway, I went into this store, and they had some alright looking stuff, and it was all dead cheap compared to my budget and what I had seen in other places. They didn't have smart shoes in this first store, but they had boots, and I was thinking ahead for when winter comes, should I just get some military boots, slightly large so I can whack two layers of socks in them, and be done with the funny looks I might get? So I asked to try them on ... and the woman had to (oh no) get off her arse and go out to a storeroom and come back with a pair of boots for me to try. Well, they fit alright, but I suddenly realised they weren't quite what I wanted for a formal dinner, and also they would need some breaking in, which is fine but takes time and hurts and I didn't want to be doing it now. But for 185 RMB it was worth bearing them in mind. I said I didnt want to buy them. Or rather that I wanted to buy them but I had no money on me, I was just looking. This SERIOUSLY PISSED OFF the women running this shop, but I've become quite callous when it comes to shopping in this damn country - if you run to "assist" me when I enter your store, I will leave. If you get offended at something trivial, I will leave. I HATE "customer service" in the UK, I've worked for companies where you have to "greet" (even if this is just acknowledgement, like "hey") the customer within X seconds of them entering the store, and then approach them for a sale after a couple of minutes. They at least had some "research" behind their methods, but it was still annoying as hell for both us and the customers I'm sure. Here it's a bit like that, but there's no slowly slowly approach, it's full on pouncing on the customer the minute they enter. Or, as with this case, feeling really put out if the customer doesnt want to buy after you've helped them find something in their size. What? Like you were doing so much before? I came in your shop and you were SAT ON YOUR BACKSIDE WATCHING TV. I think that's what annoyed her most, is she had to get up. So I left, because I couldn't be bothered with her attitude, and if I want the boots maybe I'll go back there.

Maybe. Except when I got out of the shop I looked down the street and it was another case of Chinese idiocy - they don't put one store selling an item and then the next store a distance away so there is some kind of competition and maybe someone will make a profit. No, they take a store selling an item / type of item and then put seven of them right next to each other. So I basically had my pick of all the military surplus stores, right down this road, and I felt really not bad at all about ditching the first one because in some of the others the people were a lot nicer! It actually happened that in the second store I found a pair of shoes that would have been good, but the bloke didnt have my size (shame, because he was really nice). And it was actually the LAST store I got to that said they had my size, but fetching my size came with a strict proviso. If they fit me, would I buy them? (the implication being that they wouldnt go fetching them for me just to try on, maybe the store down the other end had telephoned everyone to say watch out for the white bastard). By this point I was quite sure I liked these shoes, and I NEEDED some for this dinner, so I said yes, they got my shoes, they fit, and I bought them. 85 RMB for a pair of shoes that feel like slippers on the inside, look smart enough on the outside, and will probably be fine until the weather gets much wetter and then I'll need something a bit more waterproof and above the ankle, like boots.

So now I had my "formal" wear, it's a shame we don't have an iron so the shirt had the lines from where it was in the box, and I didnt have a smart jacket or jumper but you can't win them all. I went to the dinner with a shirt that had box-creases, trousers that were brand new, and shoes that passed at a glance for formal wear. Was it worth it? Sort of. The award ceremony itself was OKAY (it was the Tian Shan awards for outstanding contributions by Foreign Experts for the economic and social development of Xinjiang Region), the reason we were there was because one of the lecturers at XNU was receiving an award, and we were foreign students (so, maybe they thought the next generation of people to potentially receive this if we helped Xinjiang later in life), but there were some rather simpering speeches made, notably by one of the award recipients (a Brit I think, though his accent was strange), who has either been brainwashed, had a VERY PRIVILEGED look at Xinjiang, or was simply paid to say some nice stuff, who knows, he sounded sincere anyway. That aside, it was really the entertainment and food that got me. This meeting was held in the Sheraton, and it didn't disappoint - courses upon courses came to our table, tea and wine flowed freely (though they kept filling the glass only about 1/3 of the way up, which was annoying because if I'm going to have wine I want a full glass, not to have to keep asking for more), and there were several Uyghur dances and songs performed. All the while I was chatting with newfound foreign student friends, and it was actually a very good night out (Nikki I know you are reading this, Gregg says hello).

I didnt have my camera, so I cant put photos up, but maybe there'll be a couple from the night, because one of our teachers was there with a v snazzy camera and he took some group photos while we were at the table together. It was interesting, and kind of worth the rushing around buying clothes ... well I think that's enough to write about for the moment, I'll keep updating throughout the week.

Christmas Come Early

2008-09-24T22:16:00.002+08:00

Well, not quite! But almost ... just a very brief entry to say that I am still okay and I will update more next week (when I have the whole week off for a holiday), and a special thank you to people whose mail has got through to me so far, most recently to Mariamelia. We had to find the postal depot because we were at class when it arrived, that in itself was a bit of an adventure, more on it when I write again, but it came through intact and now both you and I and everyone else knows that the addresses on my entry titled "CONTACT DETAILS" actually work when printed off and stuck to envelopes / packages / etc.

My unsubtle hinting here is that I could really do with some mail, just because I like it, and also because I want to decorate my walls a bit - so if anyone fancies sending me a postcard or a letter and some pictures or anything really, please just go ahead and do it :D I will love it (whatever it is) and you may even be able to poach my free time to receive a reply of sorts! :)

Pissup in a Brewery, Anyone?

2008-09-17T23:27:00.004+08:00

*There was an alternative title to this post. I'll leave it up to your imaginations, suffice to say it was clean but very much taking the biscuit*

Will it never end? Seems like we get a couple of days when things run smoothly, and then everything hits the fan again. Two examples from the past two days.

POSTING A PRESENT ABROAD

How hard can it be to find a post office with an international service? This is a big deal - every other country I have been to has a facility for international postage in every post office, regardless of size, location, or how often this function is required. Sending a package to another country is as simple as going to a desk, filling out the required forms, and watching your post disappear into the black hole of the post office backroom. Here, it's enough if I can find a place that's open when I want it to be. Doesnt help that on the most recent holiday (Mid Autumn Festival?) the post offices stay closed but the banks open. Kind of like an odd bank holiday. So my second attempt to send this parcel was scuppered by poor timing (my first was ruined by the post muppet telling me that the present - a mug, yes you guessed correctly Lucy - was for drinking tea, and the letters -rolled up inside the mug for convenience - were for posting; actually I thought this was quite insulting and I wanted to hit the bloke square in the face for being so obnoxious, I was already having a crap day). Anyway, finally the post offices were open and I thought I would get this sorted once and for all. I went in and was informed there was no international service at that office. Honestly, what is wrong with this stupid place? I asked where I could find a branch to send my package and they said Hongshan. I asked if that was the one near the Xinhua Bookstore and they said yes, take the 101 bus (yes, yes, I know THAT). So I took the bus, it was the middle of the day, blazing hot, and I wasn't feeling good at all. But I got there, and it was a lot cooler inside, and then the fun began again. Turns out they don't have an international service. And after I got quite frustrated with them, it turns out they aren't the Hongshan branch, it's another 2 stops up the road. Gaaaaargh. I asked why they couldnt just have an international service in all branches like in England (or anywhere else for that matter) and was told (in English), "Ah, but that is your country and ... this is China" (yes, it IS China, which is fast becoming synonymous for "difficult" and "hopelessly slow" - aptly I learnt a very good Chinese word this week, 乱 (luan) which means "messy" or "disorganised".) Feeling even worse, I went to the Hongshan branch, where (after a LOT of hassle, rewriting my address on the parcel, and filling out various customs forms - acerbically I might add, the frustration by this point becoming tangible) the package was good to go and all that remained was the small matter of RMB 86 to pay for it. WHAT?! GBP £7.00!!!!!!! for a small parcel?! Gobsmacked, and with no other option, I paid for this service, but really, that is extortionate. I think post day is going to be a once a week, maybe once every ten days affair, and will mainly be limited to sending letters, certainly nothing much bigger if that's how much I'm going to have to pay!

On the plus side I wasn't required to show my passport (a first, maybe?)

OBTAINING A RESIDENCY PERMIT

It has been about 10 days since we got our temporary residents' permits, which took about 18 days from arriving in China (there was a 30 day limit, it wasn't exactly optional, but the process took forever). Now we need the permanent ones (apparently we have another 30 days to get this sorted, good, we'll probably need it), which are both a sheet of paper and a sticker in the passport (I think). This morning we finally got the uni to give us all the necessary documents for this permit, and off we went to the PSB office. For the record, our handbooks state that a member of the international school staff should accompany us, but I didn't see anyone offering, and like most other things I'm beginning to suspect it was a load of mouth and not much trousers. We got to the PSB offices at about 1220, took a ticket when we went in and noted the number ... 1070 ... the display was reading number 1032 or something ridiculously far from our turn, and as usual a massive crowd of people was aimlessly shoving and trying to plonk their docs on the table first (despite this numbering system, it would seem the Chinese attitude of "just barge and shove and get in front of everyone else" has infected foreigners now) ... so we decided to go for lunch and see what the numbering system was doing when we got back. about 45 minutes later and it was all the way up to 1042. hardly an improvement, and quite frankly shocking - if these people would actually QUEUE and follow some sort of discipline, I'm sure it would have gone a lot quicker. And finally, at 1330, the guard from the front door comes along and starts making a cut off point, because the office stops working around then (WHY?!) and informs us they will reopen at 10 the next day, please come back then. So we are skipping classes (I sent my teacher an apologetic text, explaining this), just to get this stupid bureaucractic rubbish done, when it should have been sorted weeks ago, we should have had more assistance, and it certainly shouldn't have taken longer than today to finish.

In brief, I would suggest the following changes to improve efficiency and keep people happy:

* Make your postal service, just that.
* Do the same for your banks (remember the hassle we went through earlier?)
* Work proper hours, and don't send everyone off to lunch at the same damn time, that's what SHIFTS were invented for.
* Research, and subsequently enforce, the idea of queues in public offices (at least, if not everywhere)
* University, if you say you are going to provide a service, provide it.

As soon as we have this stupid permit sorted, we are going out to celebrate in a small (but very nice) restaurant near our house. And we're taking at least one of our teachers with us, we have two absolute stars to thank.

More Culture Shock?

2008-09-11T19:46:00.003+08:00

... where to start?

I have no idea how to begin this post, or even what it will be about. Quite a lot of things have happened recently, and I'll try and put them in some order. At the end I think I will include some observations of life around here, because there are some things that need to be said.

We started classes on Monday and the pace of work here is definitely faster than anything I've been exposed to before. Firstly, there was some confusion over our timetables - on paper I have about 24 hours a week (maybe 25), which is about double my lessontime in the UK (because all my courses in England require me to go away and research stuff and learn around topics, whereas here there is direct tuition and you go away and learn the stuff that is very relevant to the books, words you dont know, etc). So that alone came as a bit of a shock. But I discovered some of the lessons are optional (those on Chinese culture for example) and some are repeats (there are 2 culture lessons a week, one is taken at a slower pace, but both are optional and there is no test, it's purely for information and enjoyment). Some are optional but I will be attending (the HSK lessons, for example, more on that when I've actually had one - tomorrow? the teacher didn't turn up to the last one). And some are just nondescript, we were supposed to have a "Second Learning Class" this afternoon, but no one showed up, so we got the impression it's optional. We can ask tomorrow. At any rate we think it might just be a homework class, in which case sod that, I can do homework at home, as the name suggests. So my workload is now down to about 20 hours a week, hurray. But what a 20 hours!

This week alone I have been introduced to somewhere between 70 and 100 new words, new uses for words I knew, or combinations of words, and I've been expected to learn them within a day of seeing them. How it works is, my grammar and language teacher will go through a passage with us from the book. We'll see the new words, say them, use them in the passage, have things explained, etc. When we come back the next day, we have a test on these words. So you have about 24 hours to learn however many new words are being given to you, approximately 30 per lesson. We've had two lessons this week. Yup, that's right, twice this week I have had to learn 30 words (pronunciation, written form, meaning), and be tested on them. It was really brought home when the teacher got two students to go and write words she called out on the blackboard. I did not want to be shown up, so I got down and learnt the words! How much of it stays in my head is another matter, I'm guessing this pace is too intense to store EVERYTHING, unless you are recapping and using the vocab constantly. And even then you have to remember how to write it all. Yikes.

The same goes for listening class, all new words have to be learnt, and the reading class, and so on. This amounts to a LOT of new words. It doesn't help that sometimes I know some of the words in the list but don't know what other words in the book mean. I'm constantly using a dictionary to get the meanings of just about everything. Talk about being thrown in the deep end. Oh and my listening is rubbish. I barely understand the tapes when they are played, the people speak so fast. Talking of fast, that's one thing the day is not. Classes are two hours each, with a break every hour (about 5 or 10 minutes), but that's a lot of classtime. 0930 - 1130, 1140 - 1330, break for lunch, and then some days I have a class from 1600 - 1750. I imagine in the winter that last class will see me leaving university in pitch black and minus 20-something Celsius. Brrrr.

Thinking of "university", this place is WEIRD. It's not at all what I imagine an institute of higher education to be like. Perhaps the languages courses for foreigners recruit differently, I don't know. All I can say is the behaviour of some members of my class (notably the Kazakh males - the girls are really good students and I don't tar them with the same brush at all) is simply unacceptable. They turn up late for classes (three of them trooped in 50 minutes late today), are rude (one of the three walked past the teacher, who was telling him off, and just muttered "yeah yeah yeah"), and basically behave like they are in some crap middle school. Take for example the guy in Marta's class who was asked by the teacher to remove his chewing gum because they were doing pronunciation; he refused, the teacher insisted, so he opened the classroom door and spat his gum into the corridor. In the words of one of the teacher-trainers who will be working here for the next 2 years showing Chinese teachers how to teach Western-style, "I would have made him go out there, pick it up, and put it back in his mouth". Excuse my French, but too fucking right.

It's got to get to a head some time. I don't want to be in a class with these people really. Theyre not disruptive all of the time, but being even a BIT disruptive is inexcusable at a university. And getting up in the middle of a class to leave the room to use your phone ("sorry teacher" - yeah? if you are so sorry don't bloody well do it, moron) is bang out of order. Why the teachers don't take a firmer stance, or just kick people out of their classes, I do not know. It's even written in our handbooks (which we now, have, long story) that such measures can be taken. And yet for some reason they don't. If it goes on like this much longer I think I will be having a word with my teachers or writing a letter to the head of the school. These guys can go in their own damn class and maybe the rest of us can get on and learn.

In other news, Marta and I finally got our Temporary Residence Permits (YAY), and will soon have proper ones stamped into our passports (hope they look nice) ... and we were also given the International Students Handbook, which we should have got when we arrived, but our college forgot (how convenient). This book tells us how to do EVERYTHING from getting our residency permit to getting a dining card for the school canteen. In short, having this on Day 1 would have made things a lot easier for us. Still, we have copies now, that's what matters.

Penultimately, could someone please tell me if they have ever encountered something like this in child-raising around the world: the children here, up to a certain age (I assume whenever they know to go to the toilet on the toilet and not in their pants) have trousers that have been manufactured with a split around the middle, which allows the kid to squat / be held by their parents and urinate / defecate freely without soiling their clothes. This is bad enough, but when a parent is holding their child over paving and there is a grassy plot five meters away, one has to wonder about the workings of the Xinjiang mind. I've not seen it elsewhere in China so I don't know if it extends to other countries nearby, or other provinces, or what. I know nappies are expensive (and wasteful?) but there are things like terry-cloths, right? It's really brought home when you walk down the street and see a kid run out of a shop, squat himself down on the steps outside, pee, and then get up and run off again. I hope winter comes soon because they can't keep their kids like this when it's below zero. Disgusting. Simply disgusting.

Oh and finally, to Mum, Aunty Anne, or anyone else not technologically inclined, you can all leave comments on this blog (which will centralise things for me and save emailing everything) by clicking on the comments link, the grey bit underneath each entry that says how many "attempts to shut me up" have taken place. You don't need to be a member of blogger or wordpress or google, you can leave your name or remain anonymous, it's up to you, but I do like people commenting and I do (occasionally) respond! :)

CONTACT DETAILS

2008-09-08T19:23:00.005+08:00

I hope by now everyone has recovered from the mammoth amount of updating I did in the last couple of days ... I'm sorry for the verbal diarrhoea, and it will probably stop now I have a regular net connection. Today was my first day at uni here, and I'm sure there'll be a blog about it sometime later, maybe at the end of the week when I can better judge how things are going - suffice to say I feel quite a bit out of my depth right now!

Maybe it's because of this that I would really appreciate some kind of contact other than email or blog-comments (though these are much liked!) ... and possibly something to put up around the house or create an illusion of being elsewhere (anyone who wants to send me Western shower gel, deodorant, a pair of casual trainers UK size 9, or some nice coffee is more than welcome! Chocolate never went amiss either.) So, I made some address printouts. If they load up you should be able to just save them as images to your hard drive, and then print them out to stick on items of post. I personally think a better idea is to print one copy and then photocopy any further ones, because photocopier toner is far less likely to smudge or become illegible if it gets exposed to wet (rain, snow, it's all possible here!)

EDIT - SECOND LAYOUT DELETED BECAUSE IT WAS INCORRECT! IF YOU SENT MAIL USING THIS LAYOUT DONT BE SURPRISED IF IT DOESNT GET TO ME. REALLY SORRY EVERYONE!

The telephone numbers are so the postmen can call us if we are not in when the mail arrives (honestly, I have no idea how it works here, we don't have a letterbox or anything - I don't even know where to go if I'm not in when post comes, and if I'm at university then I don't see how I'll be able to answer my phone even!). When I gave Lucy my address I also included the Pinyin (ie: transliteration of the Chinese), but I don't think this is necessary as long as people are printing the characters and they are coming out clearly. You may need to resize in Word or Paint or whatever you use - just make sure it looks CLEAR! If you are absolutely pedantic and worried no one will be able to read it, you may add the following to the address.

Yes, it's quite a lot smaller. But that's because I don't think it's 100% necessary (and also because when I was sizing it, it was supposed to fit alongside the Chinese and still be able to go on a postcard!) ... Anyway, that's how to get in touch with us, sorry it all looks a bit complicated, and also I'm not sure if I should have put the address on backwards (you know, Country, Region, Street, House Number, Room Number) - I don't think it will make THAT much difference. Lucy, by the way, your letter to me still hasn't arrived, but I got impatient and want everyone else to start trying to send me things and we'll find out how this system works (or doesn't). On that note, would people mind telling me if the postcards I sent to them have reached their destinations? I posted them at least 10 days ago now.

Bureaucrapcy

2008-09-07T13:28:00.000+08:00

Not a spelling error there, sorry, just a rubbish pun. Honestly, the amount of stuff that needs signing and photocopying to get anywhere in China is ridiculous. I bet they lose half the stuff we give them anyway, and why nothing is done electronically is beyond me. In order to register for a temporary residence permit we have to do the following:

1. Get forms from XNU
2. Make sure we make 4 photocopies of all the documents
3. Fill them out and take them back to the International Office for the school stamp
4. Take them to the Police along with copies of our landlady’s ID and rent contract
5. Don’t forget passport photos!
6. Obtain a residency permit from the local police station
7. Take it back to the University
8. Have it signed and stamped, and take it to the main Police office in the city
9. Here, they will issue us with actual residency permits (not sure, don’t ask) and include a stamp in our passports.

So, why can’t we just go straight to the main Police office? And why did we only get told about these other forms (specific to the University, regarding living off campus) after we had been to the Police station with our landlady’s ID and rent contract? And why is there no one to help us fill in one of the forms which is completely in Chinese? This is madness. The local Police office pretty much just waves us past the gate security now, we’ve been back so many times (and still have to go back again). I have about 15 days left before I am considered an illegal resident in China. I have no desire for this to occur, let’s hope some people pull their fingers out for us and get us these residency permits. I bet they don’t allow entry to China though, so if I want to travel internationally I will need to get another visa from someplace – or just not travel internationally. I hate the Olympics and all the heightened security measures that surround them.

On another note, I have finally completed my medical examinations and been registered for classes even though I’ve not yet received my student ID. The medical exams were not great but not the end of the world either – we had to fast for about 12 hours beforehand (and people that know me know I can pass out when I’m having my blood taken even on a full stomach), and in the morning we had to spend some time at the uni taking some language tests for class placements … I didn’t do as well as I wanted on those tests, but I didn’t do so badly either. I’ve been put in an intermediate class, and I know at least one other member of the group, there are only going to be about 15 of us total, I hope the others are good students or I will have to do more complaining (both here and formally!) … The medical exams were simple though – a blood test (a quick confirmation of blood type and then a sample or two to be sent to a lab for overnight testing, things like, white / red blood cell counts, HIV, Syphilis, Plague, and so on), a urine test (blood sugars and so on), X-ray (mobile not static, they sort of move the X-ray box around and it scans you in real time), 12 SL ECG, blood pressure, heart rate, vision, and an abdominal / lower chest ultrasound. Apparently I have type O blood – this I did not know. Now it’s possible, but mum always seemed sure I had type B. And Marta’s blood also showed up as O, but she is sure she has type A … whether the Chinese test was botched or not, we don’t know … but at any rate, at least O can be given to anyone, so if we have to receive maybe it’s just easiest! The X-ray was interesting, the doctor refused to sign off my sheet fully until he had seen my ECG report (which came back with the notes, “sinus bradycardia with sinus arrhythmia”, which they ummed and ahhed over for a minute or so, made a note on the paper, and then he signed me off as “healthy”) – really great for my confidence, eh. Blood pressure was stupidly low on the first reading (94 / 48) and not much higher on the second (103 / 58) but that’s hardly surprising given that I usually have it quite low, and that I’d not been eating for ages. The tests lasted about half an hour, and we paid RMB 283 (about £22.50) for them all, came back the next day and collected our health examination booklets which have our photo and all the results printed on the inside – they look like little passports, and have to be taken with us if we go travelling, inside or outside China I am told. At least we got all the results quickly – next-day service in the UK? I don’t think so, you’d have to wait a week. But it would be free I suppose. Swings and roundabouts really.

Back to my classes, I’m not sure what all of them comprise – I couldn’t translate all the Chinese – but I know I have quite a few! First class runs from 0930 – 1130, second from 1140 – 1330 and third class from 1600 – 1750, all Beijing times. Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays I have all three classes (oh fun), Wednesdays and Fridays I finish at 1330 (woop) … altogether I think I have something like 24.5 hours a week, much much more than I am used to in the UK! Although all the classes are in Chinese (as far as I know), I think four of them are not language classes per se – two are in Chinese culture, and two are for the HSK – a sort of exam to show what level of Chinese you have, internationally recognised (I think) … oh and one, I think is homework session, it’s the only one Marta and I share.

Calming Down

2008-09-07T13:26:00.001+08:00

Following the debacle that was last week, I decided I just cannot get stressed about stuff – number one it gets me nowhere here, people just close off, and number two there is no point worrying my way to an early grave. It also helped that today has so far been quite perfect!

Okay, so the poison we put out for the cockroaches doesn’t seem to have done very much – there are no carcasses lying around anyway, and I think Marta said she saw one alive this morning. Damn it. I think the only solution really is going to be calling the landlady and telling her we want to get rid of this fridge and have a new one – they are clearly living inside it. That aside, we went to the university to meet Mr Deng, one of the teachers in our language department, a meeting arranged by our new best friend in the whole world, Zohra ☺ We took the bus (always an adventure) and it turns out it stops right outside our university, but we missed the stop and had to go one further, which meant a 10 minute walk back – oops, I’m sure we’ll get used to the timings of the buses though. We were early, and he was on time, but that’s better than us being late, right? And my, what a difference. This guy is wonderful. From the beginning you could almost feel the changes – his appearance, his nature, his mannerisms, all of them just exuded calm and professionalism, quite unlike certain other members of the university team. He listened to us, and our questions, and though his English was not perfect, and he had been in Kazakhstan recently (so probably thinking in all sorts of other languages), he was clear, concise, and most importantly, helpful. He arranged for another teacher to come in (again, professional looking, calm, collected), and she had a quick discussion with us, followed by a short Chinese exam for me (not sure about Marta, but I think they got that her Chinese isn’t quite as good as mine, and they asked if we minded being in different classes – not at all). I didn’t do as well in the short test as I would have liked but I explained I haven’t seen my books all summer and she said don’t worry within a couple of months you will get much better. Mr Deng is going to arrange a formal testing of our Chinese level, and will give us a call regarding the time and place – hopefully in a couple of days, so we can study a bit. He is also arranging for a Chinese student to meet us on Thursday or Friday morning, to guide us to the medical examination building, and help us with this process. The reason for the previous lack of assistance was apparently because the office upstairs (no guesses for who is in charge of that department) didn’t send our papers downstairs so no one knew who we were! But now they do know, it seems all of our college staff are on the level. Wow, what a difference this makes to our picture of China.

We then went to the Bank, where troubles began again (but only a little) – first, the taxi driver didn’t know where to go, and Marta kept saying oh he’s just going another way, but after we had gone for at least a mile in the wrong direction (I used a major landmark – Xinhua Bookstore – as a reference point), and I could hear him on his CB radio asking his boss and other drivers where the Bank of China was, while scanning out the window at all the other passing banks, I decided to correct him. Following my directions, we made it to the bank, though I didn’t notice him offering us a discount for the cost which was about double what it should have been! Once in the Bank, the manager met Marta and reviewed her paper slips, which she shouldn’t have been given (according to yesterday’s phone call), and told her she hadn’t got the right paper slip they were after, could she go home and look again, and give them a call – if she can’t find it she’ll have to come back and sign papers all over again, whew what a cock-up, eh? No bother, we’ll just go home after our other errands, and sort it out.

Stopped for brunch on the way to some shops, man I am loving some of the Uyghur stuff on offer here – it’s Middle Eastern really, warm thick pitta style breads filled with chicken or lamb or mutton or beef (not pork, these guys are Muslims remember), and some spicy, some less so (though even asking for “not spicy” can sometimes result in a bit of a mouthburn!) … and on the way to a shopping centre we saw a China Mobile store. This time I had my contract with me, and a much calmer demeanour, plus the assistant was more intelligent than the ones in the last store – she could understand what I wanted even from my garbly Chinese, and she managed to get me Caller ID Display activated on my SIM card ☺ Hurray! This day is getting better and better. A quick walk to the local superstore and we had soon managed to get Marta a memory stick, (Kingston, 2GB for about £16, is that value for money, anyone?) … sure, we could probs get it cheaper elsewhere but we really didn’t know where to look and there are some documents that STILL need printing and sending to Newcastle.

Next stop, Xinhua Bookstore (yes, the major reference from before) – but how to get into it??? The ground level seemed quite inaccessible so we got on a lift, and took it to the 6th floor, just to see what we could see … well not a lot. It was all dim lighting and almost immediately some policeman / guard / assistant came to see what we wanted … but we’d stopped on the 5th floor on the way up and I had seen what looked like a gym logo, so we went down a level, away from the shady upstairs area, and indeed it was a gym. Long story short, they let us look around, and I decided it had everything I wanted, and the price for a year was only RMB 1600 (that’s about £130, slightly cheaper than what I pay in Newcastle for a year) … then the bloke said I could have the membership fee for just RMB 800 … yeesh, that’s cheap! ☺ Of course I said yes, it’s on the same bus route as university, and at £65 for a year’s membership how could I refuse. They have showers there (so-so, but I’m sure they will do just fine after a workout), and one of the instructors was in the gym working out (a huge beast of a man, maybe only 5” 7’ but with about a 48in chest, all muscle) and he seemed really friendly, despite having very little English. So I think I will be in good hands when I go back. This just about made my day, as if everything else before hadn’t!

Leaving the gym, with my new membership, we wandered round the corner to Xinhua Bookstore, and straight into the wrong department – we went downstairs to the medications and cosmetics area, but this was okay because Marta saw something she needed to buy (need is perhaps a strong word, but she is so neurotic that perhaps it is an actual requirement for her to have some stupidly expensive cream of some sort). We then entered the bookstore, which comprises about four levels and sells almost anything besides books (sports equipment, pens, pencils, charts, posters, etc) and had a good time browsing – I was particularly taken by the bilingual anatomy posters (Chinese and English, but no Pinyin), but didn’t buy any … maybe another time. Also on my list of things I liked were the bilingual novels (Lucy, I may one day read Pride and Prejudice, it just might be in Chinese …), and the cheap cheap notebooks (most important book to have in the gym is a record of what you did the last time you were there), oh and the gluesticks (Prague book, sometime soon maybe Lucy, honey). Having spent ages looking around and buying very little, we left to get some water and go to the bank for Marta. As we exited, Marta decided she knew which way the bank was and started in completely the wrong direction, but refused to acknowledge she was heading the wrong way. “But noooo, we came this way in the taxi, and then we turned here, and so it must be this way”, she protested. No, Marta dear, you are completely wrong, we have to go this way instead, look I know I am right. (She is the girl who can’t even visualise an underpass to get to the correct exit on the other side, when the Chinese have these four-way subways, so why she thinks she knows best about this I do not know. Eventually, I asked if she wanted to put money on it, and she said the didn’t gamble, but that if I was wrong I should clean her room for a month, but if she was wrong, nothing would happen. That hardly seems fair or sounds like someone is convinced they are right but I agreed, and … you’ve guessed it … I was right. (Apparently this doesn’t make her wrong – she is such a poor loser, it’s shameful). So we went back to the bank to tell them we couldn’t find the slip of paper they needed, but as we were waiting in their lobby, Marta found the paper … joy of joys, we handed it to the security-guard-cum-financial-advisor, she signed it, and off we went.

This day had to get worse, at some point. It was far too good to be true. Lo and behold, gloomy clouds of difficulty began to form. We got home and settled down a bit while we waited for the clock to approach 1600 – no business gets done at the police station between 1400 and 1600 for some reason, everywhere seems to go on lunch siesta or something … we got to the station, and were quickly seen by someone who started to write down our registration details in a book, but yet again the Chinese were confused by middle names, and the fact that European passports have the dates written with the months as TLA’s (eg: JAN, FEB, MAR) and in French too (MARS, for example) … somehow we bumbled through this formality, and were then sent to another office, where a woman told us we would not get the residency permits without photos – grah, we should have known. Off we went to get passport photos (yes, we didn’t have any left at this point), and ended up in a Kodak store, but they didn’t take cards, so we had to go to a nearby bank (or two, because the ATMs I tried were “temporraly [sic] out of service”) – all the while Marta was stressing because she had now managed to lose her brand spanking new Bank of China dual-currency account card. The woman is a walking black hole. And yet despite losing shit all the freaking time, she STILL stresses when something goes missing. She’s already on some low dose of anti-depressant, personally I think a couple of sedatives here or there wouldn’t go amiss. So I’m being trailed by Little Miss Stress 2008, who is seriously annoying me by telling me to ask for this and that, or don’t forget this and that while I am talking Chinese (because hers is not so good, and she’s been relying on me a bit for the last couple of days I just seem to have got used to talking to people on her behalf), which is not helpful, because I can’t hear what the other person is saying, nor can I concentrate on what I am doing … so we finally get these photos made up (the shop manager took us into a room, took photos using a digital SLR, then put them on a computer, and they resized and edited them a bit before printing off some passport-photos for us … in the UK this would cost about £4 for four photos and take about three minutes. Here it cost us about £1.10 per set of four photos but the whole process took something like 20 minutes, by which time we needed to get back to the police because we had to be at home sooner than later what with having the internet installed tonight (we hope) … the police discovered another problem, we didn’t have a permission slip from the university to enable us to live outside of campus. Honestly this is just getting stupider and stupider, the amount that the international department doesn’t do for its students … so tomorrow, we need to go see Anniwar (AGAIN) and get this document, and make him send our registration off to Newcastle (we used the memory stick to get Marta’s documents printed off at last, that was one more positive thing to happen today).

So … *deep breath* … we set off home, I ran ahead and got a couple of bottles of water (two 4L things, enough for at least the next three days of house use) and a can of red bull (for me, as a reward for putting up with her so long), and then ran on to the house, catching up with Marta (slow walking, you see) just before our block of flats. Once inside she ran around like a madman, trying to find her card, cursing in Polish, and generally being scatterbrained while I tucked into some peanuts and let her get on with it – there is no sense getting in her way. She couldn’t find it. Seriously, she got this card yesterday and she has lost it already, despite having used it earlier. Then she tells me she must cancel it because Chinese cards are not as safe as English ones, and she doesn’t have internet banking (or the net, yet) to check if it has been used improperly, and she has XYZ amount of money on it, and so on … only she can’t explain over the phone who she is to the bank, so I had to, and they gave me their English-speaker who was very nice and gave us a number to call, except this number didn’t work. So Marta rings back, but then her phone is out of credit (“But how? You put RMB 100 on it just yesterday or two days ago??” “Yes, but I call England” … this is the kind of idiocy I am currently putting up with), so she has to use mine. She is currently somewhere in the region of RMB 4500 in debt to me, and she is wasting money calling England??? Bloody hell. Finally she is able to cancel her card, and I think tomorrow she has to go to the bank (AGAIN) to sign some more stuff and I’m sure she will want me to go with, but I am less than keen. To be honest I would rather have nothing more to do with any of her disasters – if she had turned up to Year Abroad meetings or listened to what I told her she wouldn’t have needed to print these documents out, if she had packed her own stuff instead of letting her mother do it she wouldn’t have left her Polish card at home, if she had paid attention to what I was saying about backup money etc she wouldn’t be borrowing money off me right now, and if she was just a little bit more careful she wouldn’t have half the stupid troubles she is currently facing. How she has managed to live in the UK and Belgium for periods of at least one year each, without dying (through stress or just carelessness), or falling victim to poverty is beyond me.

So yes, today has turned a little for the worse, but only for one of us! Now if the internet would just come along and get installed, it might be enough to get us back on a “positive” track.

UPDATE: The internet did come and get installed, but not in the way we had in mind. Bloke turns up (two days later than planned) and pulls out a router – mint, we think, here we go, something to get us back in touch with the world again … wrong. He explained that this was just a normal router, we’d need to plug in via Ethernet and only one at a time (instead of the wireless jobby we had ordered, which allows both of us to get online at the same time) … the wireless one will come in a couple of days (so, basically, they don’t have any right now. Seriously, what company have we gone with here???). Okay we say, let’s set this up and try. The problem, my computer is an Apple and the guy has never seen one before – he starts saying how it may not work because our computers are in English, not sure how that makes a difference. He doesn’t know how to set up an Apple, but he tries to give me the information that will let me – now I’m used to just turning the laptop on and plugging in, and automatic settings usually do the trick. Not with this box of tricks. I tried for the best part of a day (long after he left) with all sorts of fancy combinations of DNS servers, router IDs, passwords and account names (supplied by the installation “expert”) … but to no avail. A second man came and told us if we were desperate for a wireless box (we were – first up we PAID FOR ONE, second Marta’s machine’s Ethernet port is broken, and third we both have used wireless internet across the globe and not had a problem, hence wanting it in our house), we could go to another address and swap boxes if we talked to this man, Xiao Dou. Well, eventually we got there (the taxi couldn’t get close enough and then it was hidden round a corner … it was some poxy small room and Xiao Dou turned out to be a fat unhelpful man sitting in a chair untangling wires for a living. He ignored us while his minions ran around trying to find a wireless box, until another man arrived, and asked for the telephone number of the man who had sold my internet package. Crikey, there is no such thing as organisation in this place. He turned up and explained that the wireless router would be installed in two or three days (so why the second installation man had told us we could get a wireless router at this pokey place, we’ve no idea, all we know is we wasted 20 yuan on taxis that we didn’t actually have to take) … It’s now Saturday and we stayed at home waiting for this magical box to arrive, until about 1500 when I went out to the shop and asked if it was coming today because we can’t just sit in the house and hope someone arrives. The answer was that it would come tomorrow, sometime after midday. How helpful. And why not call us in future, so we’re not sitting around doing nothing! Customers foremost my arse.

Hopefully this will be uploaded from an internet café this evening, and then we’ll actually have a home network from tomorrow. Not putting any money on it though. [EDIT - it is being uploaded from our spiffing new wireless router in our flat, hurray)

Chocolate Kettles

2008-09-07T13:24:00.003+08:00

A very long entry, in which I lose the will to live. Also, if you are offended by rude language, don't read. The frustration is at points tangible.

Marta and I have just had an awful couple of days – today was probably the worst, because it was just an extension of the uncertainty of the last so long. The vast majority of people here are so unbelievably unhelpful, and when things are getting done, they take about ten times what they ought to … a few examples from the very recent past.

* SETTING UP A BANK ACCOUNT – you would think this was a relatively simple task, no? On Friday, Marta and I went with Zohra to the Bank of China to set up some local accounts. The first difficulty was finding the branch, because it had moved, without notice or leaving directions, to a temporary location about a mile away while its ordinary premises were being redecorated. The temperature, even early in the morning, was high, and neither Marta nor I had had enough water or breakfast – fortunately we were able to pick these up on the way. Having found the branch, we had a meeting with a man who appeared to be the bank manager (and also the security guard, who seemed to know as much about banking as all the clerks there, really it was weird), and it eventually transpired that we couldn’t open accounts today, even with Zohra being there to translate and all, no, we had to come back on Monday. Seriously. They have a day for people to open bank accounts, this is just odd (not to mention inconvenient). So, okay let’s come back on Monday.

Well, we went back on Monday, and oh my, I’m glad we budgeted some time for it – setting up Marta’s account (she wants one which can have USD put into it, but take RMB out, so her parents can send her money, because she’s lost her Polish bank card, which was her only source of money for a year – that in itself is stupidity) … it took at least 20 minutes before we were seen, despite being there bang on 10 as requested, and then a further 40 minutes (minimum) to even get to a stage approaching the opening of a bank account. Finally she was done, and luckily my account (a simple RMB-only job) took only a few minutes to get sorted.

The whole process took 90 minutes, to set up two accounts. What a joke. Even worse, tonight the bank phoned Marta and said they had forgotten to take back one of the (many) slips of paper that they had given her in the account-opening palaver, and could she please come in tomorrow to give it back? Yes, the afternoon is okay. Christ.

* REGISTERING WITH THE UNIVERSITY – so, you’re an exchange student, you’ve just travelled thousands of miles to be at your new institution, and you know damn well that the students who have gone to your place of study will be well-received, looked after, guided through all the formalities, etc etc. You expect the same in return? Well, don’t. Not if you come to XNU anyway. The entire affair so far has been nothing short of shambolic. If we didn’t have Zohra we would be absolutely lost. Anniwar was so vague last week, “oh you will come back on Monday to register for classes, have your medical examination, and so on, your college will take care of you”. Today we went back to ask some basic questions, like if a printer was available (Marta forgot to print off a couple of important documents, so we wanted to hook my computer up to a printer and get them sent off as soon as possible) – the answer was that our college would take care of it, for sure.

US: Oh and where IS our college???
HIM: It’s on the 4th floor of this building, you didn’t know this?
US: No we did not know this, we don’t know anything here.
HIM: Didn’t you talk to last year’s students?
US: No, barely, and not about this. (We expect this to be the kind of information that is provided when we arrive not passed on like some kind of chain letter!)

So, down to the fourth floor we go. There’s a room with a load of international-looking people inside, it seems to be the place to wait for some kind of registration … but we need to sit down, it’s been boiling outside again, and we’re virtually passing out. As we take a seat, maybe it looked like we were queue-jumping, because the bloke in the desk opposite got uppity, but we explained we were just sitting. Then we got chatting to a Japanese student, who had some English as well, and while this was going on some woman came over and asked if we wanted to pay the tuition fee. WHAT FUCKING TUITION FEE? We are EXCHANGE students. We tried to get this across to her, but she didn’t understand and then the main man in charge of the office, some fat bastard, told us to go to the 8th floor. “But we just came from there!”, we protested, but he jabbered off in Chinese at us, and then said “Hao?” (OK?) to which I said no, not OK and he just said “Good, not okay, go upstairs”, and basically shoved us out of the office, in front of everyone. Both Marta and I felt treated like shit, and totally confused about the whole situation. The Japanese girl has arranged to come back in the morning for some kind of language test, and maybe we will be there for it too (or maybe just to REGISTER, would be nice) … now, onto the medical exam.

* MEDICAL EXAMINATION – the university requires us to have something like a urine test, blood test, X-ray (possibly) and ECG, presumably to make sure we aren’t diabetic, HIV-positive, carrying TB, or about to drop dead from heart failure (I hope they check blood pressure too, because by now mine is absolutely through the roof). They require it. You would expect them to a) set it up for incoming students, b) have the facilities close to hand, c) give out information on where these facilities are located, d) all the above. Apparently (a) has been done, but without (b), (c) and (d), that’s quite useless. By hook and by crook, and through our multi-national foreign friends (both teachers and students, all of whom are being fucked around as much as we are) we discover that the medical centre is at a different location (someone wrote the address so we can use a taxi), and yes they require all the above tests, and it’s a good thing we didn’t have them done in the UK because they don’t recognise foreign lab results (or not without a fuss, anyway), oh and you can’t eat on the morning of your tests, they have to be “clean”, which makes me think they are testing sugars. The centre is only open for foreigners’ testing on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays, which means we have missed the boat for today, what with having eaten and all. Still, this gives us time to get the required passport photos, photocopies of our passports and visas, and medical examination fee together, as well as some food for immediately after the testing, because seriously, not eating and then going out in the heat they have here, and then having blood taken after 10 in the morning (plus a long wait if I know the Chinese system by now) is a little more than stupid. I will pass out, simple as.

It is unbelievable, and unacceptable, that a host institution does not have available someone (or some people, plural) to guide visiting students through their registration and help them set up in the university. The people who are available as standard are rubbish – it is only by chance that we have Zohra, who is patient and goes out of her way to help us. Without her, I don’t know what we would have done – packed up and left by now, I am almost certain.

* PRINTING – we need to buy a memory stick, transfer the files, and print them off someplace else, nowhere and no one here at the university seems to have a printer. Marta if you are reading this, you could have avoided this problem by just turning up to one of the year abroad meetings and / or paying attention to everything I told you about the process.

* HOUSE REGISTRATION – you want to live somewhere in China, you have to register with the local police. Local is the key word there. You’d think any old police station could register you but no, it has to be the one nearest you. Why they couldn’t tell us this before, I don’t know … so we spent ages this afternoon hanging around waiting for the police office on campus to reopen (they have some kind of afternoon break, from about local time 1200 til 1400, which is Beijing time 1400 til 1600, and most annoying really. They opened and it then took a further half hour to establish some kind of contact and then for them to tell us (via Zohra, on the phone) that we need to go to the police office nearest our house, now we are living in a different part of town … add to this the extremely lazy and unprofessional look of almost all the police stations I have seen here, and the picture is not a pretty one. Virtually everyone we are dealing with in this country is unhelpful, and worse, they can’t see they are being anything other than normal.

* MAIL – if people send us post, apparently the way we get it is someone comes round and rings our doorbell (no mail slots or anything), and then rings our telephone number (I will include them on the mail printouts when I get round to posting that) if we are not in (which we may not be, given that we have classes and hopefully some kind of social life developing) … so this is just one more crazy annoying thing that we have to contend with, living here. I hope nothing goes missing, maybe people can just send us postcards or letters, nothing too special to begin with, so we know the system works.

* CHINA MOBILE – I bought my SIM the other day from a China Mobile store, and they said come to a CM store in September to add on Caller ID Display function, an extra Y5 a month … it didn’t occur to me that that was only 40p and I should have asked for it there and then, but anyway, I went to a CM store today and I wasn’t able to understand a word they said to me, except the gist of it which was they couldn’t / wouldn’t / weren’t going to do it for me. Infuriated, I left.

* SHOPPING – we went shopping today, for other household goods. Slowly but surely we are turning this flat into something resembling some kind of Western home. If we could sort out the fridge (there appear to be a load of insecty-type things that live inside it, if we can’t clear them out or put poison down for them, I think we might just ask the landlady to buy us a new fridge, it would be better for the apartment anyway). I digress, we went to a department store because of the many things we still ought to have for basic living, a mattress for my bed is definitely high on the list. Currently I am sleeping on one side of Marta’s double bed because the mattress in her room is at least remotely comfortable (once you fold your duvet in half and lie on top of that) … Mine is a thin padding that covers my bed, which is a couple of boxes put crudely together in some kind of DIY fashion – honestly, it’s crap. And why my room, so small, needs a double bed which takes up most of the living space, I do not know. Point is, we went shopping, and got a mattress, and a pillow, and we then had to pay for these items immediately. But surely you check out with ALL your goods and pay at the main till? No, not here. So then we spent another 30 minutes in the store looking at other things while wheeling around these two products that we had just bought … incroyable. For the record, the “mattress” I now have really isn’t so great either, it’s some kind of thin thing again, but because it’s just me on the bed I am going to use half the bed for books and general storage, and the other half (nearer the door) for sleeping on, so I can fold this “mattress” in two and then wrap up in my duvet as well, to pad myself somewhat. It’s crazy.

* OLYMPICS – “Wow, you’re going to China in 2008? Aren’t you excited? Are you going to Beijing? Do you think you will see the Olympics?” … a number of people have asked me these questions a number of times. The answers are “Yes”, “No”, “Hell no”, and “Again, no” … Beijing is not a pretty city. At least it wasn’t when I went there for a week in 2006. The only nice bit was when I got out of the city and went to the Great Wall for a day, that was amazing and I would definitely go again (Lucy?) … Beijing being busy with Olympic fever just makes it an even less exciting prospect as far as I am concerned; it’s most of the reason I chose to fly to Shanghai in the first place. Visas were supposedly harder to get hold of and prices rose, flights became hard to find, and now even at the university things are put on hold while we wait for students to make their way back to XNU having been in Beijing – but of course no one tells us this until today, while we are stressing that our classes have begun and we don’t know where they are. Also, if term starts in another week, that could have been a week that I spent in England. I am not pleased.

* POSTAL SERVICE – I want to send a present to Lucy. I want to put a letter inside this present, the two must travel together, that’s how it works. So I go to the post office and try to get a box for the present. Yes I can have a box, says the idiot behind the counter. But we won’t send that. Why not? Because it might break. I’m sorry but since when has a post office made the decision not to send something in case it breaks? That’s the sender’s risk. And also, I would PAD IT OUT, I am not stupid. But no, “We can send the letter. But not that” … I cannot believe this country. Or maybe it is just this postal branch, I will try a different one and see what they say ☹ Sorry Lucy, no letter or present just yet, I’ve been stupidly busy getting frustrated with all the other rubbish that is going on here.

* REGRETS – do I have any? Oh yes. Not having even LOOKED AT the other apartment we were offered, because it was out of our price range (though realistically speaking it wasn’t, we just didn’t want to spend that much, but maybe we should have since it came furnished and was apparently very nice to live in last year). So if I could go back and do this all again, I would at least LOOK at the other place. On the plus side, living here is not SO bad, and I do like the grounds of the complex we are in, and everyone here is Chinese so there’s no chance we can speak English with the neighbours, and I am sure at some point (maybe when we have some classmates, a routine, a house that works somewhat normally, and some more contact with our Western friends who are having as much trouble as we are and who exert some kind of calming normality influence on me, I will stop getting stressed about everything. Right now, however, I just wish that I was at home, and that I had never bothered learning Chinese or coming here. Really.

Mum and Dad, if you’re reading this, yes I am actually that frustrated and depressed, and I’m sorry I haven’t phoned or texted but texts cost 49p each (from my O2 card, the Chinese one won’t send to the UK and if it does I don’t know how much it costs), so I have just been texting Lucy. We are due to have the internet installed tomorrow evening, so hopefully I will be able to get online regularly then and you can Skype me or I can call you, whatever. I miss almost everything back home, and you know I don’t get homesick easily (ever?) – all the events of the last few days have just made me want to pack up and go. I guess I will stick it out, at least a couple of months, see if things improve. It doesn’t help that Marta and I made this choice on a flat, but by local standards it is definitely (more than) good. I think that just makes it worse.

[EDIT – Today, Tuesday, I am much less stressed. See more recent entries]

Room 101

2008-09-07T13:24:00.001+08:00

Househunting was frustrating and haphazard. There was no formal support from the university, just Zohra’s assistance, which was able and her patience most abundant, but the method of finding a place to live here was just to go from one complex to the next and look for adverts … We had been offered a place that last year’s students used but had ruled it out on the grounds it was too expensive (not by Western standards but by the average here, which seemed to be a good way to go – after all, people are living here just fine, right?) … so the first place she showed us was in a great location, just 10 minutes (if that!) walk from the university, in the teachers’ complex, so nice and safe and quiet and scenic. Except the flat, it really wasn’t very nice at all … the bathroom wasn’t great, there was only one bedroom (the living room could be made into a second one apparently), and there was even a room that wasn’t being rented out (why? the landlord was using it for storage, quite cheeky I think, to expect us to pay for a house we can’t even fully use!) … So we moved on, the next place was too small, the next one didn’t want to rent to us, I don’t know why, until we found a housing complex with a lot of adverts, and one that looked good. So Zohra called the number and the results were sounding very positive. Then a lady who was putting up posters on the advert wall introduced herself as an estate agent and would we be interested in seeing a place in this complex? Well, sure … ! I mean, it’s a bit far from the uni, but there’s a bus service and it shouldn’t be too hard, right? So we made an arrangement to see this flat, but by that time Zohra had to go, she was busy in the afternoon, fine we can look at it ourselves and if we need her in the morning for signing a contract she will be around. Yay. So that’s what happened. We looked around, we liked it a lot more than the other houses we had seen – it wasn’t amazing but it wasn’t rubbish either, and we thought yes, we would be happy living here for 11 months. The rent is very reasonable, and although we have had to buy some amenities in the last couple of days, we’re still not breaking the bank over our living … however it has some problems too, like the little insecty creatures living in our fridge – I think some poison is in order there, or a new fridge, and the fact that the beds (mine in particular) are very hard – well mine is just some MDF with a thin padding over it! Oh and the toilet we thought was blocking, but it turns out it was our flushing technique (you need to hold the button down), and the shower method in this part of the country is crazy (you have the shower next to the toilet and just stand there, it will drain into the floor, it’s very … basic. Not to mention our shower doesn’t even fit into the holder on the wall, it rests on some makeshift line that the landlord put in … Oh and our washing machine is in the same room which makes it quite cramped. I think the bathroom is my least favourite part of the house. Maybe my own room, I don’t know I haven’t slept in it yet, I haven’t had a mattress! If I can find a decent gym with decent showers I will probably end up just washing there for the most part and maybe here just once or twice a week. Still, the place is habitable, and it will make me appreciate what I have back at home that much more, when I return.

Oh and for those of you versed in English TV … yes, we are living in Room 101, address printout to follow for anyone who wants to send us mail to cheer us up.

Pre-Registration

2008-09-07T13:22:00.000+08:00

So much has happened since my last entry, life seems to have been moving at rocket pace. On Thursday, before Marta arrived, I went to the China Mobile store to see how I could top up my SIM card – turns out it would just be easier to buy another one, change my number and start from scratch. Okay, let’s do it … easier said than done. As well as having to explain everything to me (because I am pernickety and want to be sure I am not making a huge mistake), there was the business of setting up the SIM card, which over here means filling out a lot of documents and having copies of your passport taken; basically, the SIM becomes registered to you, none of this chopping and changing, even for PAYG cards. This is hassle, but there you go. Eventually all the documents were complete (I had to sign about seven different sheets of paper), and I was ready to go – but please do come back to a China Mobile store every time you want to top up (what? not online, or over a counter at a newsagents?) and definitely come back in about two days’ time to add on “Display Caller ID” which is an extra option over here rather than the standard we expect elsewhere. This service costs Y5 per month on top of the contracted amount (see below), and the assistant didn’t want me to spend Y5 now for about four days worth of service. The fact that Y5 is 40p didn’t occur to me until afterwards … So, how much am I paying for this SIM? UK readers might want to sit down, because the tariffs here are so ridiculously cheap.

Y15 per month (just gets taken off the card balance) which allows me 100 free texts to other Chinese mobiles. There were other tariffs of 20 and 30 RMB per month which gave 200 and 300 texts respectively, but I think here I will be calling more than texting. Add the Y5 caller ID display charge and I pay Y20 (£1.60) a month for the use of my phone. Calls are charged at different rates, depending on the time they are made – between 0900 and midnight they are charged at Y0.2/min (1.5p) and between midnight and 0900 this is reduced to Y0.1 … calls made to numbers outside of Xinjiang province are charged at a higher rate but this can be reduced a bit by dialing a special extension before the number, making the cost 0.39 at peak times and 0.19 offpeak, still dirt-cheap. The SIM cost Y100, but it came with Y100 credit on it, so effectively it was free.

Anyway, I had my phone up and running – ace. I went to the Post Office and got some touristy stuff sent off – might as well do the tourist stuff at the beginning, like postcards with pretty pictures, so Mum, Dad, Nana, Lucy, Lari and Jenna, you may get cards in the next few days … I don’t remember doing much else that day apart from waiting for Marta to eventually arrive, and when she did, watching my stress levels rise. She’s lovely but she’s an incredibly nervous, fretty character and it means more work for me trying to calm her down. She got into the hostel in the early evening, and took a couple of hours to sort herself out, having flown from Dusseldorf to Beijing and then on to Urumqi, where a taxi driver had ripped her off. What a great start for her.

We took dinner in the Kazakh place below the hostel – I say we, it was really me, she wasn’t so hungry – and then went out to see some Kazakh shops but for some reason they were all shut … instead, we bumped into one of the Chinese people working in the hostel, and he directed us to the Wu Yi Night Market, a big T-shaped affair, the horizontal bar of the T being food stalls (all remarkably similar, and quite unappealing I thought), the vertical section being miscellaneous stalls selling jewellery, clothes, knives, batons, exercise equipment, candy-floss, and so on. It was interesting, but a little samey after a while and of course neither of us could be sure our stomachs weren’t going to turn nasty at any moment. On our way out of the market though, Marta stopped to buy some melon (which turned out to be a good call, since it was very tasty) and my eye was taken by a cart with a load of rocks on it. Except these rocks smelt really good, almost like … no, it can’t be … that’s honey! Yup, it was solid honey – the stall owner broke a bit off for us to try, and it is the best honey I have ever tasted. I think I’ll have to go back to get some, it was that good.

We got back to the hostel and got our heads down quite fast because the next day we had made plans to register with the university and meet a teacher (a friend of the students who were here last year) who would help us look for a house which would be a real help to sort out before we start lessons.

Apologies in Advance

2008-09-07T13:21:00.002+08:00

Sorry to everyone that I haven’t been around recently. We’ve had very limited and infrequent access to the internet and all my bloggings have been stored on my laptop in Word documents while I wait for it to be installed at home. So, a special apology to Marta’s mum who thinks I’m lazy when it comes to blogging (there will be more than enough to read in just a bit!) … and to Mariamelia, who was worrying that I am in some kind of trouble – I’m alright, just deprived of electronic communication ;) And a big apology to any avid readers who will now have about 50 pages of my stuff to sift through.

Normal Service will be Resumed Shortly

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends

2008-08-27T09:04:00.003+08:00

So, you're about to arrive in a largish city, you've never been before, and you've only made tentative living arrangements in a hostel based on some information a contact gave you and that which you've been able to glean off the internet. A good start, eh? Well, I think I would have been absolutely lost had it not been for a couple of absolute stars - Korban and "Elvis" (I swear, that's what his business card says!). Korban is a Uyghur man, 41, who seems to split his time between Urumqi and other cities, on various business. He speaks English, but only because he's picked it up over the years from talking to people as he travels - he doesn't read or write Chinese and I suspect he's illiterate where English is concerned too, but that doesn't matter. Over the course of the 2-day train ride we exchanged small pleasantries and once or twice he helped me explain something to the Chinese passengers (though his vocabulary is varied - he didn't know the word "farmer" but instead knew "agriculture", which helped a great deal, but was surprising). On Day 2, as we chatted, he offered to help me find the hostel - and me, not being quite that big an idiot, said yes please (or yesplzkthx, to you Lucy).

We rolled closer to Urumqi and started talking about family; he has a wife who is 14 years younger than he is, and 4 children ... it can't be too easy being away from them all the time. And we also compared the prices of various things - it seems to be a popular topic in China - though it took me a while to work out he was on about money, because he pronounced "pounds" like "porn" and I couldn't understand how our conversation had taken such a nosedive. (I had visions of him trying to show me the red light district, which seemed out of character for such a man!) ... The passengers next to us were all Chinese (virtually no spoken English) and they had obviously heard Korban was helping me find my hostel - the only problem was he didnt know exactly where it was. However, Elvis had an idea, and fortunately it coincided with his route home, so he offered to take me to a taxi, explain to the driver where to go, and help me that way. I must have stumbled on the jackpot of good fortune here!

(Aside slightly, Lucy you will be pleased to know the leopard went down a treat with one of Elvis' daughters, who was pawing agitatedly at some man's face - he kept winding her up - until I said she looked like a cat, and made the leopard hand to "bite" her ... she saw the funny side, as did the rest of the berth ^_^)

We stepped out of the train and into an oven. It was disgusting, but less so than Shanghai - at least we had a breeze here. Readers of the previous post will remember my "ordeal" and the fact it left me a little dehydrated, well I tell you, I was straight onto the water - I stepped off the train and made a beeline for the kiosk before coming back to Elvis and his family, who I was to follow out of the station. If I thought the platform was bad, I hadn't felt anything yet. Outside, the luxury of shade was removed, and I found myself quickly baking, worrying seriously about the prospect of heatstroke. [I later discovered via the BBC that there was a freakishly high temperature of 34C in Urumqi on Tuesday - THIRTY FOUR DEGREES, that's ridiculous, my melting point is somewhere around 25C!]

I followed Elvis and his family until we were met by a man who wanted to take us to his car - I thought, maybe this is how taxis work here, until Elvis introduced the man as his 弟弟 (didi, pronounced dee-dee, or younger brother), and said that he would take us to my hostel on the way back to their house. At this point I could hardly believe my good fortune - not only have I just met someone who will help me to my hostel, but they will do it personally, and when we arrived wouldn't even accept payment ... I have his business card though, so if I think of something nice to do in return I have that option. Babysitting, maybe. :P

By the time I stepped out of the car at the hostel I was about ready to die. I'd tried drinking water, it wasn't working so well, I'd tried pouring it over my head, that wasn't helping much either. Short of diving into an ice-bath there really didn't seem much hope for me if I stayed out in the sun. I was literally wilting, so imagine my delight as I entered the hostel and was met not just by shade but airconditioned shade at that. 冷气 (aircon, or lengqi, pronounced lung-chee) the two sweetest words in the Chinese language! The inside of the hostel was spacious, clean, and the reception friendly - by the time I got up the stairs I was bursting with all the water I had taken on, and had to run to the toilet before checking in even.

Check-in took only a few minutes, while I decided what room I wanted (based on size, bed numbers, en suite, and of course price), and the validity of my visa was brought into question (why is the visa validity period zero days?). [Oh and I completely forgot to mention, everyone had their passports checked by a Chinese policeman while on the train - he went from carriage to carriage, and had a little electronic book to enter details of travellers, maybe even check them against some database, who knows, all I can say is I'm glad I had my passport on my person when he asked, as I was wandering around, not in my carriage!] - finally I had a room though. 4 beds, ensuite shower and toilet (WESTERN), TV, fan, nice bed (a tad hard but so what), wireless internet, etc etc - 55Y per night, that's about £4.35 ... China really is excellent value for money.

I stank. I absolutely, positively ponged. After more than 2 days in the same clothes though, what do you expect? Even sitting on an airconditioned train, I still smelt bad. So what was the first thing I did when I got into my room? Yeah that's right, establish that there is Wifi to be used, and get online to chat with friends in the UK. I'm that bad. Of course I did take the time to clean myself up later, and then set out for a bite to eat - there was a place doing Kazakh food right below the hostel, which one of the receptionists recommended, so I headed down there and tucked into a big bowl of meat (hot) and noodles (er, cold?), with some bread on the side, and a drink too - total price, Y15 (about £1.20) ... feeling nice and full I came back upstairs and my stomach began to gurgle. I doubt it can have been the food I just ate, that would be far too fast-acting, and besides I'd been feeling up and down with my stomach recently ... still, the call couldn't go unanswered.

And, to keep a long story short, that little episode last night marked the start of my 吃坏肚子 or "poor stomach brought on by eating something bad" - this morning my insides are still somewhat loose, though I suppose I should try eating something and seeing how it stays (or not), and I have some small cramps but at least I'm not vomiting, and despite a slight inability to regulate my temperature (I keep fluctuating between shivery and a bit warm), I'm not feverish. With any luck this will pass in the next 24 hours and my stomach will be made of iron before I know it.

In the meantime, between bouts of traveller's diarrhoea, I think I might try and get out to the local supermarket (conveniently next door) and see what they have by way of small dry goods to eat and maybe some medicine too (Western, not Chinese).

The Great Train Ride - Day 2

2008-08-26T20:20:00.002+08:00

Let's talk for a bit about the Chinese and how they travel. I've left this til the last day because to be honest it's not SO BAD that it will stop you taking a journey with them, but after 35+ hours certain things begin to grate, especially if you aren't used to them beforehand.

* Coughing and sneezing - it's fine to do this without covering your nose or mouth, regardless of status or education. If you do cover your nose or mouth it's okay not to wash your hands afterwards. This applies to anyone, regardless of whether they are ill or not. And it was nice to know that there were two passengers with colds right next to me in my berth.

* The contents of your lungs are made to be loudly and frequently brought up and spat out into a sink (if you are lucky, or if there are rules about spitting on the floor, such as on this train!) Gender is not an issue here, though it is mainly men that do it.

* Smoking is like a national sport, if it had been an Olympic event, the Chinese would almost certainly have had another Gold (if not the Silver and Bronze too).

Once you have got past all that, there remains only the mystery of the toilets to fathom out. How do they work? What is the bucket of water for? Why supply a toilet roll holder but no paper? How do I stop myself peeing on my trousers when in a squat position but simultaneously avoid getting my trousers on the (not so clean) floor?

They work by flushing water towards the hole at one end (at the base of a slope) and opening up a hole into which all waste may flow (and, I assume, be dumped onto the track below). Like I said before, you might as well just put a seat over the open track, it would be a lot simpler, and save the problem of when the hole gets blocked up. The bucket of water remains a mystery to me, though I did see people leave the room without washing their hands and I'm guessing maybe they washed them in this water, though why, when there is a washroom opposite, is anyone's guess. The permanently empty toilet-roll-holder ... I can only assume people either don't poo or they don't wipe ... or maybe they bring their own paper, I know I did! The answer to the last question is to wear shorts.

Anyhow, I woke up on Tuesday morning with an urge. I think everyone reading can guess exactly what that was and how it conflicted with my strong feelings about Chinese commodes. I held it down, but of course I was hungry so I went on the bread a bit, and had some more liquid because I felt a bit dehydrated. I made the mistake at this point of going out past the toilet cubicles (thinking hmm I might try it) and wandering into a dense layer of smoke. Here I got chatting to some Chinese, and it turned out one of them was starting at XNU next week as well! I didn't get his contact details because I was sidetracked by a tall, skinny, Uyghur man with whom I had chatted previously, only this time he wasn't about the chat so much as offering me a cigarette. I tried to decline but it turned out to be less of an offer and more of a polite insistence. A firm, polite, insistence. So, I had a cigarette. Woop.

A little interjection here - prior to this event I had not even noticed there was a small hole in the floor of the washroom (just 2 sinks and a mirror). At one station stop however, it became clear what this was for - following refilling the water tanks, some bright spark had come up with a genius method for cleaning the floors, namely to pass rapid-flowing water across them (they were some kind of lino) and this hole was the exit hole. This was fascinating to watch and I'm glad I hadn't thought about washing my hands or wetting my face at that moment! Small mercies, eh.

Thinking of small mercies, my stomach subsided a bit, and I went back in the carriage. A little later on, the same man came by, stood in the ante-room doorway and offered me another cigarette. I thought I was safe because you aren't allowed to smoke in the carriage itself, but no, he was practically putting it in my mouth and lighting it for me ... goddamn. So I had another cigarette. Cough. At some point later in the day, I forget when now, he gave me a third one. By this point I had given up protesting and was just taking minimal drags - he always finished before me anyway so once he left I could just stub out the remainder. But my, what insistence! I did like after the last one though, how he told me he smokes 60 a day (my estimate had been 30) and then inhaled deeply, exhaled a fancy plume of smoke, and patted his chest with a satisfied sigh. How he has not got emphysema or lung cancer by now is anyone's guess.

The smoking done with, I tried to concentrate on how I only had 3 hours on the train, could I hold my guts in until I reached Urumqi and the prospect of a Western toilet? ... No, I could not. Even having seen some of the previous offerings that remained too much of a challenge for the primitve steel pans to do away with (and, by the way Lucy, that offered proof that girls do poo), my guts were rumbling and I needed to go. However the worst was yet to come - I locked myself in the cubicle (the "nice" one, ie: it smelt less than the one opposite it), got my shorts out the way, made sure I had paper, and noticed for the first time the small handle about shin height which was obviously for the novice squatter to steady themselves. Aha! Mint, I thought, this won't be so hard after all ...

... how wrong could I be? Within seconds of squatting it became obvious that my lack of thigh strength was going to prove my downfall - with all the tension routed through my thighs, my stomach cramped up and I couldn't go. The irony of it all. Here I was, braving my steel nemesis, and I had stage-fright. Worse still, when I stood up, the tension in my stomach remained and hurt worse than before. So of course I tried again. And the same happened. Thoroughly disheartened, I left the cubicle and got some water in me, thinking maybe that if I pushed some liquid through it might ease everything up. A while later and I felt more the ticket. Shame this was just as we pulled into a station and the toilets were locked. Really, someone did not want me using this toilet.

Well, eventually we pulled out of the station and I holed up in the cubicle once more. Hurray! Victory! It may not have been much but it was something and man did I feel better; the only problem was my legs were cramping up fast and the cubicle, warm at best, felt like it was roasting while I battled to tidy up as the train hurtled along. To say I've had better days is an understatement. When I left the cubicle I could hear my ears start to ring, and it was all I could do following washing my hands to get a good litre of ice tea down me in an attempt not to pass out this close to our destination. But I had won!

Needless to say I felt immensely relieved after this, and my advice to anyone travelling on the trains is this - go to the toilet. Like the Nike ads say, "Just do it". It's not that bad, and it's far worse if you've been holding on!

I'm sitting in Urumqi now, relatively comfortable, but that's a story for the next post!

The Great Train Ride - Day 1 and Night 2

2008-08-26T19:23:00.002+08:00

This might be a bit sketchy, I wasn't really making too many notes as I went along ...

I remember waking up a bit during the night, but managing to go back to sleep alright, despite my initial semi-stress over the claustrophobic conditions of the top bunk, they abated and I was able to get my head down for some much needed naptime. Thank you Marcia for the earplugs they were a godsend, there was this grill on the AC unit above me that just wouldnt stop rattling!

Anyway, dawn came and brought with it more flashes of Chinese countryside. We were making pretty good progress but still officially behind time by about an hour; despite this, I was pleasantly surprised to see us arriving into Xi'an at 1200. In my head Xi'an was some kind of northern Chinese landmark, and would put us well on our way to Urumqi. That was until I got my National Geographic map of China out (thanks Marilyn!) and realised that yes, Xi'an is northern, but no, it is not very western, in fact it's kind of central as far as China goes ... but at least I knew where we were so I could follow our journey as we stopped at various places!

About this point you are probably wondering what on earth I did during this train ride ... When I wasn't writing a letter to Lucy, sleeping, playing with the games on my iPod, or trying not to think about the toilets, I was chatting with my fellow passengers. Of the whole train I think I was the only white person ... and though it transpired on Day 2 that some people spoke a modicum of English, they were certainly quite reluctant to use it, and I was pretty much left chatting Chinese. Yes, this was a great way to try and tune my ear to the language, and pick up some vocabulary or be corrected on my grammar, but it was an awful lot of brain-work in a very short space of time and I quickly found my head spinning somewhat. Anyhow, there wasn't a shortage of things to discuss, and if there was a lull in conversation it could quickly be filled by one of the aforementioned activities or by the passing of one of the many (almost continuous) trolleys brought round by the train crew (who I nicknamed the Smurfs because of their blue uniform) serving anything from ready meals to trinkets.

Sticking with the Smurfs for a bit, it was also in their remit to look after the carriages, as far as I could tell they were assigned their own carriage, maybe one between three (to allow for shifts, etc) and they had to do stuff like sweep the carpet, check tickets (and exchange them with customers for the relevant boarding card, a plastic ticket you kept instead of your own ticket until you left the train at which point it was re-exchanged), and last but not least, clean the toilets at every (or most) station stops. This also included locking them on the approach to a station, so people wouldnt flush onto the station tracks while the train was by the platform. God I do not envy those women - 5 days at a time on the train (Shanghai - Urumqi and then back again, followed by a week off), and the state the toilets could get into, well ... it just wasn't nice. I'm no real fan of second hand smoke but when it's covering the smell of whoever has just been in before you I know which I'd rather. Still, I didn't want to very much, and to this end I was avoiding eating the local food, knowing it would send me running straight to the stainless steel pit of horror. I stuck rigorously to bread and topped off with sweets every now and then, drinking juice or ice tea to keep on top of my fluids.

By nightfall we had passed Lanzhou and were heading into semi-desert. I'd been for a walk down the train, seen the Soft Sleeper berths, the dining car, and ascertained there were NO western toilets on the T52 / 53 from Shanghai to Urumqi. This only reinforced my resolve not to go. I think by this point I had broken my golden rule about sleep, and succumbed to a very nice slumber in the afternoon, headphones on, AC above me ... this didn't help my sleep much during Night 2, but hey, I seem to be getting used to this whole tiredness thing!

Throughout the night I could read the ever-scrolling message board opposite me, which had (in among the Chinese) such gems in English as: "NOW TIME 2043" and "TRACK NOW BE LATE", as well as regular updates on the train speed and external temperature. From this I gathered that we were no closer to making up our lost time, and would remain a full 90 minutes late until sometime in Day 2.

The Great Train Ride - Night 1

2008-08-26T16:57:00.003+08:00

I'm breaking my journey up a bit, because there's tons to write about ... Lucy I apologise that much of this is in my letter to you (a work in progress, I'm afraid), and also that I go on about toilets quite a lot. Actually I apologise to everyone for that, but it makes an integral part of a long train journey in China.

My insomnia only got worse on Saturday night; I went out for a meal with my roommates (yay, instant friends!), and we got back around 2345, and drank a couple of beers between us with the money we'd had leftover from paying at the restaurant ... so it was around 0100 when we got to bed. And 0230 (again) when I woke up, and found myself unable to sleep. I read a book, I tried getting some rest, but no dice, I was well and truly awake. This did not bode well with my plan to stay up all day until I got on the train and then kip for about 10 hours solid. Still, I thought this was the only way to cure my raging lack of sleep, so I stuck with it. By lunchtime I was knackered, and going out for a restaurant lunch with Marcia and Ieva was great but the sheer volume of food combined with Shanghai's humidity was seeing me to sleep something rotten. I persevered and entered a nasty state whereby my brain was desperate for a break but my body was forcing it to stay awake. This wasn't physical exhaustion, but mental tiredness and it was not pleasant.

Knowing that there was very little chance of there being a Western toilet on the train I thought the best thing to do would be to go before leaving the hostel ... prudent, some may say. Eventually, at around 1800 I decided it was time to make a break for the train station. I said goodbye to my roommates and headed off to the subway. The main station was 13 stops from the subway nearest the hostel, but at least I didn't have to change lines. By now I was in unfamiliar territory where tiredness was concerned ... as I walked from the underground toward the main station entrance I found myself wanting to cry, and without any reason why. Sure, I felt "alone" but nothing major in that, I'm used to travelling solo, this was, I decided, just my body wanting to lay down and snooze for half a day, to put itself in order. I must have fought back the overwhelming urge to just break down and let it all out 5 times in the next 2 hours - everything just seemed too much to handle. Sitting in the waiting room for 90 minutes (I got there early) with all these Chinese around me was an absolute killer, no way was I going to make a show there though! "Stupid foreigner, why is he crying, I don't know, let's stare some more" ... Not gonna happen.

And then, like a second wind, my train was called and I was on some kind of autopilot, tiredness forgotten, just the prospect of getting on the train and finding my bed. I boarded at coach 13 and then found my sleeping bunk was at the other end, typical eh? I had to squeeze with all my luggage past 10 other berths of six beds each to get to my slot, but I was finally there. My bed was, in keeping with this day of trials, the top bunk ... I'll digress for a moment to explain Chinese trains:

* Soft Sleeper - most expensive, 4 beds to a berth, the berth has a door (ooh privacy)

* Hard Sleeper - not actually that much less comfy that Soft Sleeper but six beds to a berth, the top one usually being quite tight, and no doors on the berths - they are like rooms off a corridor (the walkway) but without a moment to oneself

* Soft Seat - padded seats

* Hard Seat - no idea, don't ever want to find out, apparently only suitable for the shortest of journeys and even then I think Soft Seat is a good idea if you can afford it!

Well, the Soft Sleeper option for this train had apparently sold out (I went for a walk on the train, I think there was only one carriage for it, which explains it being full), by the time my friend came to book the journey, and Hard Sleeper was fine with me, so that's what I got. The top bunk was not as claustrophobic as I had previously imagined - there was space enough to prop oneself up and it was possible to sit hunched over. Luggage went either under the bottom bunk or on top of the ledges opposite the top bunk - one advantage of being up there, I could nip in and out of my bag at my leisure without disturbing anyone. Also it was closest to the A/C unit, which was nice, until on the second afternoon when it started recycling the smoking air ... ewww.

After a brief chit chat with some of my fellow passengers - limited English if any, but all very welcoming - I excused myself to use the toilet ... umm ... yes, if that's what you call a stainless steel hole in the ground. honestly if you're going to do that, why not just have an open hole to the track? Fortunately at this point all I needed to do was wee out all the water I had downed in keeping me awake and hydrated while I negotiated the Shanghai humidity, and bigger matters (ahem) could wait. I decided to get my head down; I explained I had been travelling way too much and my newfound travel-buddies understood. I felt a bit odd keeping all my clothes on for sleeping in, especially given that I was still quite hot and sweaty from having lugged all my stuff around, but then again everyone else was, so why break the mould? It was some disappointment that my sleep was quite broken throughout the night, but I managed the best part of 7 hours' sleep and awoke feeling not too shabby for Day 1.

Faithless

2008-08-24T08:24:00.004+08:00

"I can't get no sleep."

I seem to be suffering from insomnia at the moment. My body clock is entirely screwed up, and even when I have done loads and should be about ready to drop off the face of the earth with tiredness, I can't. Or not for long anyway.

Yesterday, following my nap in the afternoon, I did very little - I think I managed a trip to one of the local corner stores (part of a chain called Buddies, which is displayed in bright pink signing), a bit like a Co-op in the UK, and picked up a couple of bready-looking items and a can of "milky coffee" ... yes, a can. I took a picture to prove it but I've yet to upload the photo to my laptop, and in turn work out where I am going to store all the images for this year abroad. And how to put them into my blog if needs be. I came back to the hostel, and set myself up on the floor with my two bread things and my can of coffee, while I chatted with one of my roommates. I'm in a room with three other people, all of them girls about a year or two older than me, at various stages in their post-graduate education or travels. There's Anna (Polish), Ieva (pronounced Yay-vah, she's from Lithuania), and Marcia (Brazilian) - I don't think I need to change any of their names because I'm not about to say anything nasty about them ;)

Anyway, I chatted with Anna while I tucked into my sugary "lunch" at about 1600, not quite refreshed from my afternoon kip, but then not deathly tired either. After about half an hour she left to go explore the city while there was still light (good luck, it seems to get dark here very early despite it being summer - by 1900 the sun has gone completely), and I cotched on my bed, doing nothing very much in particular until the others came in and we formed some kind of cliquey laptop-using room, sitting on our beds tapping away. Anna came back from the pagoda she had been trying to see (unsuccessful, the light was too bad to take photos anyway she said), and we tentatively said that as a room we should go out to supper together, but a bit later of course, when we were all hungry ...

Around 2000 we set off, letting Anna lead - she's been staying here for a few weeks now, while she does an internship in the Polish embassy, so she knows roughly where good places to eat might be ... and about a ten minute walk later we wound up at a restaurant. It was clean, air conditioned (though annoyingly they turned off the AC unit halfway through our meal!) and the service very efficient - a little English here or there but for the most part a good chance to practice my Chinese (and for us all to have a giggle over some of the translations on the menu). Eventually we ordered - veggie dumplings for Marcia, and chicken dumplings with a beef stew for the rest of us to share. Suffice to say it was all very tasty and I'm still here with no ill effects the following morning!

We left around 2230, having paid Y74 between us, about Y18 (£1.50ish) each including drinks, with some change leftover to stop off at the Buddies on the way home and buy a couple of bottles of beer to pass round when we got in. We stayed up chatting until about 0100, at which point we were all quite drained and plonked ourselves into bed ... and this takes me back to the sleep issue. I had slept for about 3 hours in the afternoon, not long enough (I thought) to disrupt any nightly pattern, and certainly not if I went to bed late. I fully expected to sleep through til 0600 at the very least. But no, at 0230 I woke up. It couldnt have been noise, I had earplugs in, kindly donated by Marcia ... it was a combination of hunger (what? after the meal we had?) and needing the toilet (despite having been before going to bed??) ... the latter was easy to fix, the former less so, not having any food to hand. So I was well and truly awake. By 0330 I was in the same situation as last night, sitting up in bed reading a novel, hoping it would send me to the land of nod.

At 0700 I took a shower, despite my hunger being overriding - after all, I had neglected to have a wash the night before and I was beginning to pong somewhat. My ablutions complete (the shampoo I picked up didnt smell of coconut, much to my disappointment, it was a generic shampoo smell), I went out for breakfast, my hunger by now having peaked and fallen somewhat. I wanted to try steamed buns from the local place I ate at yesterday, and ordered 5 with meat fillings ... They turned out to be huge and the fillings less than desirable. Guess I won't be ordering them again ... oh well. Picked up a coffee-in-a-can from the Buddies next door, chatted in Chinese with one of the workers there, who recognised me from yesterday, and came back to the hostel. The air, even at this time of morning is heavy and the temperature hotter than I would like. Not to mention that as I walked back to the hostel the stench from the road really got to me, just as I had taken a bite from one of the buns ... I half wanted to vomit. Honestly, I will be happy to leave here - the company is great and the accommodation more than fine, but the city is just disgusting.

The plan for today is to try and stay awake until I am on the train this evening and then to curl up in a (hopefully air-conditioned) ball and sleep soundly until sometime in the morning. I think buying some snacks is prudent, especially given my tendency to wake up at 2 and want to eat, and I may think about getting postcards and a sewing kit to keep myself busy on the train - I have big plans for a pair of socks and an iPod cover in the making ... the train leaves at 2048 and arrives 42 hours later but there's some difference in the official time of arrival (centralised to Beijing's clocks, some 3 timezones East) and the (real) local time, so I have no idea what time I actually get in, nor how this will affect my already-screwed body rhythm.

Next post probably from Urumqi!

上海 (Shanghai)

2008-08-23T08:07:00.004+08:00

Well, I made it. After 2 flights, a stopover in Dubai, and a ride on the Shanghai underground system, I arrived at my hostel.

The flights were mostly uneventful, and I have to say Emirates are an extremely pleasant way to travel. Little touches made a lot of difference, for example the occasional (and not overpowering) injections of perfume into the cabin air supply to stop everyone smelling like long-journey, and the small pinpricks of bright white light that shine through the ceiling panels after the internal lights have been dimmed for passengers to sleep, that make up a night sky for anyone left awake ... unnecessary but a very nice touch. The food was good, and there was plenty of it, and the novelty of having a TV to hand was not lost on me :) That, and the 2 cameras mounted on the plane, offering a forward and downward view in realtime, delivered to your seat - I found myself just wanting to call "CUUUUUUT!" <-- skydivery reference.

There were a heap of other British students travelling to China, but they were all headed on some 3 week trip to Hangzhou, funded by the government (bar flights), for which I do recall receiving an email but of course the trip was of limited use / interest to me. Still, at least there was some extra company on the planes. By and large though, the trips were dull and I couldn't wait to get off the aircraft, although it has to be said, stepping off planes into an environment that is 30ish Celsius and humid (even at night, when we entered Dubai, it was like swimming outside in the air) is less than pleasant. Still, we were rapidly inside and air conditioned again (mmm, recycled air).

Shanghai wasnt much better - indeed, when I got off the Maglev (there's a high speed magnetic levitation train that runs from the airport to one of the city's metro stops, and only costs about £4.50, about 1/3 the price of a taxi ride) the first thing I did was find a stall selling water and pick up 2 bottles. Even having downed one of them, I found myself feeling a little funny on the metro ride across the city. Chinese metro lines are well serviced but very popular and at certain junctions (where lines connect, etc) the idea of personal space is lost completely. Stepping out into the area in which my hostel is located was a bit of a downer - it can hardly be said to be the most affluent of places. The hostel itself however is very good - air con, showers, toilet (both Western and Chinese, more on that later), food, a bar, computers, internet (wireless and free to use on their machines), etc etc. I'm in a mixed dorm of 4 people, I have a locker for my valuables, and it's costing about £5 per night, not bad at all! The only thing I would say is that having a shower is almost pointless, unless you can get out of the cubicle quickly, because the atmosphere is so hot and wet (even with the fan on in there) that even following a cold shower you find yourself sweating within seconds.

This being the case, I left showering low on my list of things to do. I paid for the accommodation, settled in a bit, and got some food and a beer inside me (the beer to try and send me to sleep a bit quicker), before having a shower (I had to buy soap from reception, not having brought any with me, d'oh!) and trying to sleep. I got about 4 hours kip before waking at about 0300. At 0400 I started to read, careful not to wake the other people in my dorm, but I think they are all heavy sleepers anyway. At about 0540 I had had enough and ventured outside, the smell of the local area no longer even getting to me (yeah, it's a tad ripe, so what), and got stared at by local people cycling by ... I tried unsuccessfully to order food in a small cafe type place, and then in the distance saw a corner shop, so I went for a gander and ended up buying some shampoo (I havent opened it yet, but I think from the pic on the outside it might smell like coconut) and a small flannel for travel washing on the train over the next couple of days. Then I popped next door to a larger restaurant eatery cafe type place and got a big bowl of beef noodles. Not the best dish ever but I had been hungry for hours by this point so I didnt much care. Later on I think I will try the dumplings / steamed breads / fried breads / etc ... it all looked quite decent and I'm not too worried about having caught anything nasty!

Even this early on in the morning the air is heavy and the sky is invisible, the veil of pollution and cloud being ominously low. I've come back to the hostel to use the internet, update this blog a bit, and maybe get my head down for an hour. I'm meeting a friend of a friend at 10 to get my train ticket to Urumqi, and from what I've been reading about hard-sleeper carriages, I'm not concerned at all that I will have an alright (if not a bit boring) ride. Other things to do over today and tomorrow are to find a torch (for things like reading when you think your nightlight will just disturb other people) and stock up on some food for the train - yes, they will have a dining car, but if there are things you really like (and there are) it's wise to buy them prior to boarding.

For the minute, that is pretty much all. If anyone would care to text me, I am still using my UK SIM card, the number is 00 44 (0) 7864 967 424 and I think I receive messages for free :)

The Night Before the Morning After

2008-08-23T06:44:00.001+08:00

By the time I upload this I will probably be sitting in a Gatwick Airport departure lounge. (EDIT - wrong, I am in a hostel in Shanghai)

This was my last full day in the UK before I head off to China – I barely slept last night, what with packing until about 0230, there’s always going to be that little extra something you could have taken, but for the sake of a year I really don’t think I’ve forgotten anything too important. The bare essentials – flight details, passport, money – are packed and anything that I’ve left behind can almost certainly be bought abroad if need be.

Following my late bedtime, I had the joy of an “early” morning – well, waking up at about 0830 is early enough when you’ve hardly slept. We left the house at 1120 and were at New Street surprisingly early (1130) which meant a full forty minutes before Lucy’s train departed. That was definitely the hardest part of the day, I think for both of us, but especially for her. Somewhat teary-eyed she drew further away from me as the train sped up – I hope if you are reading this now, kitten, that you are not crying so much! And that was that, I thought. Until I got upstairs from the platform and had to take a minute or two before seeing Mum to compose myself. But, like I keep telling myself, it’s only a year. Six months if she comes to visit in February.

Our train ride to London was uneventful, and once in the City we split up so I could see my grandmother by myself, and Mum could meet another relative. That took most of the afternoon, and by the time we reconvened in Victoria station I was knackered. Still, no point sleeping and feeling groggy on waking – better by far to stay awake until proper bedtime. With a little hassle (walking through Gatwick airport, changing terminals, getting a taxi) we made it to our B&B which is conveniently about a 6 minute ride from the airport … I suppose less convenient is its proximity to various flight paths. Still, I could sleep through an earthquake (apparently I already did). I have to say the booking-in process at this guesthouse was nothing short of bizarre. The woman who runs the show either takes heavy mind-altering medication, or has recently been lobotomised. Put simply, she does not make sense.

We arrived while another family were in the throes of booking themselves into their various rooms in this small guesthouse. Ten minutes later (after what one suspects was an undeniably long previous battle) the father of the family emerges triumphant with his lot’s keys. We enter the room, and there are another couple there – no problem, we’ll just wait our turn, it’s fine. The woman owning the joint had other ideas though – we were to go first, much to our embarrassment, after all the poor couple had sat there through the first family’s booking-in, and now ours. Oh dear. But before that even, the owner decided that any incoming phone calls took priority over her customers – surely a mixup in her brain where “customer service” was concerned? And she was quite, er, open on the phone as well (“Stop fucking ringing here”, and so on) – in front of us all, hardly what we expected, although I did want to laugh.

Finally, she got onto trying to book us in and blow me if her little brain wasn’t addled in some way or other. First she thought we were a foursome staying together. Then she got that it was two separate couples but couldn’t for the life of her work out which rooms we were to have (I think the issue of my Mum booking herself a twin room, and me a private separate room – not wanting to share particularly – confused the hell out of her). In the end she twigged it all, but the numbers on her booking sheet were all askew. She asked us if we wouldn’t mind putting down our car registration, and my Mum explained quite patiently that we didn’t have one. Finally she tried to write up the bill and wanted to give us an extra room despite us telling her several times not to include a third room because it wasn’t ours. By this point I was tempted to ask if she was retarded. Apparently it got better (I left then to move stuff upstairs) because Mum wanted the courtesy airport taxi – you get a voucher from her – booked for the morning, so there were no delays and no questions about it. According to Mum this woman thought we were trying to book a taxi for us and the other couple – despite the fact that we are two separate travelling pairs, and the rest of the people in the guesthouse, them included, are leaving at 0400! Oh, and she couldn’t get the other couple’s name right worth a damn.

It was bizarre.

We tried to get out to a pub for a meal after that, but the place was full, and I’m sure I’m correct when I say that in a pub, where people are seated at tables for their food (ie not eating at the bar), it is not the done thing to spy a four-seater table with two people at it and have the thought “oh right, it’s all about mucking in and getting on with it in a place like this, we’ll just go over there and sit on the end of that table where two people are happily having a conversation” … I protested strongly enough that we did not follow Mum’s ever-so-sensible-and-British-but-wholly-impractical idea, and instead wound up at a very nice Thai place. Mum was very pleased indeed, and a far better idea overall than eating at the pub.

I’m back at the guesthouse as I type this, the Wifi exists but the password doesn’t seem to be working, which is why I think I will be using Gatwick’s network tomorrow. I don’t think I’ll bother having a shower tonight, sweaty and disgusting as I may be, because I’ll only get ikky overnight. Up at about 0715 tomorrow morning, breakfast around 0800 and our taxi is apparently at 1000, which is ample time to try and at least get Mum online here before we leave for the airport.

Next update either from my stopover in Dubai or my arrival in Shanghai … Bon Voyage from me!

(EDIT - more on Shanghai and the story so far to follow soon. Turns out also that the woman from the hostel was not the owner and was also far more normal in the morning. Didn't stop her looking like what I imagine one of my ex-housemates would look like if he was a woman (*shudder*), and I don't suppose that helped.

Lastminute Changes

2008-08-19T15:47:00.002+08:00

Even the best laid plans go bad ... my idea was to arrive in Shanghai, hole up there for a day or so, and have a train booked with soft-sleeper carriage to Urumqi all ready and waiting for me to hop on and go. My friends in China were going to book one for me this week, and it was all going to go smoothly. That is, until this morning when she texts me to say that only hard-sleeper carriages are available and is that okay?

Having done some reading up on it, I have determined that it is just about okay - the real difference is not in the beds' comfort but the space and security per carriage. Soft-sleeper compartments provide you with 4 beds and a door for the cabin. Hard-sleeper gets 6 beds in the same space, and does away with the door. Still, if I don't take too many valuables with me, and I don't flash them about, I should be able to keep my goods quite secure. I think there is a hold for check-in baggage, which I may very well make use of.

It's all part of the adventure - I only hope I don't have to use my travel insurance within the first week! Next update will be either just before I leave (Thursday) or just after I arrive (sometime Friday). :)

Taking A Break

2008-08-11T12:54:00.002+08:00

It's just 10 days 'til I travel to China ... and instead of running around packing and worrying about money, I'm sitting in the foyer of a hotel in Prague, using free internet and waiting for the complimentary all you can eat buffet breakfast to start. This has to be the best way to spend the money I earnt this summer - the city is beautiful, the people welcoming, the food is great, everything is cheap ... what more could I ask for? :) And best of all, I've left all my work at home in England so I can't stress over all the Chinese I've forgotten until at least Thursday. Of course, then I'll be cramming characters and grammar back into my brain like nobody's business. Apparently there are no entrance exams as such when I get to XNU (Xinjiang Normal University), but I want to be put into a decent class if possible, however they work it. And, given that I've not spent my summer in China or Taiwan like some people, I think some hardcore cramming in my final week in England is about the only thing I can do to ensure some modicum of success.

But for now, I am relaxing in Prague. Happy Days.

Visas and Finance (for students who are yet to travel)

2008-08-10T13:55:00.003+08:00

This entry is for students in their First or Second year at university, who are have yet to make preparations for travel. It is information and opinion based on my own experiences. Take it or leave it. :)

THIS ENTRY IS STUPIDLY LONG. TAKE A SEAT OR PRINT IT OUT IF YOU WANT TO READ IT

It’s been ages since I updated this – my bad, too busy with work and sorting my life out … I believe I was going to cover Visas and Finance in this update. I would touch on accommodation but I really haven’t got a clue what is going on there at the moment. All I know is there is the offer of a year’s accommodation in the University dorms for £250 (inc gas, elec, etc) – but then you get what you pay for and I don’t have high hopes; even given China’s smaller-scale economy, £250 for a year will not get you that much. I think also that means sharing a room with someone else (could be really annoying for both parties) as well as communal showers, toilets, and curfews at night, etc etc, none of which I can really be bothered with. I would rather spend more on having an apartment and my own space! So, more on accommodation when I get to China. For now, here’s some info and advice on money and visas.

You can only get your visa within the 3 months prior to your departure – any more and it won’t be valid when you arrive (or they simply won’t issue one). Where you go to get your visa depends on your residence within the UK – Scottish (and I think Northern Irish) residents must go to the Edinburgh Consulate, residents of the North East / West, and parts of Lancashire must go to Manchester’s Consulate (see their website for exact details), and other residents must go to the London Embassy – quite a trek for some, and I believe there may be some issue of getting extra documents, (a medical check perhaps?), which don’t apply to the Consulates. Not wanting this fuss, I opted to declare myself as a resident of Tyne and Wear (which I technically am until Saturday) and go to Manchester; visa issuing times are from about 0930 – 1200 which means getting there early, as queues can form very quickly (especially with this being Olympic season). From Newcastle this meant taking the 0525 to Manchester Piccadilly, then finding buses running near to the Consulate … use Google Maps and search Google for local bus routes, stagecoach operate in Manchester and their buses are quite clear, you’ll want to get near to Denison Road (for the Consulate) which means going down Anson Road (I think) and asking the driver where to get off … in short, buses towards Rusholme tend to be going in the right direction – it was quite a lot of groundwork, so China had better be worth this effort! I got to the Consulate around 0930 and there was already a queue backing out of the door, and down the steps – it looks like quite a cottage industry on the surface, just a small room with a couple of windows, and a load of admin going on behind … Their building is quite old, and set in really goodlooking grounds, even on an overcast day, but it’s a shame this consideration for appearance doesn’t extend to their consideration for others. While at the Consulate I got talking to a couple who were trying to get their visas, but one of them was disabled, due to take part in the Paralympic Games following the Olympics. Confined to his wheelchair, his partner had to go and conduct his visa application on his behalf, because the Consulate didn’t have a ramp (even temporary, to put over their steps) to allow disabled access to the building. The staff seemed distant and unsympathetic, not even offering to come out and see him. I don’t suppose it helped that he was black either. Sadly, this seems to be typical of Chinese mentality – I think as a society they really are quite callous and uncaring, and while this treatment in the UK is seen as deplorable and disgusting, unfortunately I couldn’t get too surprised. Still, back to the visa process … They like you to have everything signed and prepared before you reach the window, but it doesn’t actually matter if you haven’t cut your photo out or attached it to the form or made duplicates – they CAN do all this for you. They will take your duplicate documents (University acceptance, etc) and you keep your originals. Processing takes at least a morning, you can get your visa the same day if you are willing to pay £20 extra (bringing the total to £50) – generally speaking your passport will be ready by 1130 or 1200, and that’s it. Sorted. It does look a bit odd though, it says I can enter anytime before October, but my stay is limited to 000 days. Yes, that’s right. Zero days. They do cover this a little by stapling a note to your passport saying the bearer of the visa must register with police within 30 days of arrival to obtain their resident’s permit and avoid illegal stay … ho hum I can see a deportation coming up. So that’s it really, go there with a heap of papers, hand over some cash, wait three hours, and you have a visa. Simple.

So, you’ve got your visa, you’re ready to go … Except that niggling issue of money. How to support yourself for a year? How much will you need? You’ve got your flights so you don’t need to worry about those costs, but what about when you are IN China? I took on board the advice offered in one of our pre-departure meetings, and the words of wisdom gleaned from the internet and my contact currently in Urumqi, and made some rough calculations to work out what to take. You will need cash for:

* Food
* Accommodation
* Travelling within (and possibly to the countries surrounding) China
* Supplies – toiletries, paper, pens, books, etc
* Emergencies

What I was keen not to happen was for the cost of a year in China to come to anything more than the cost of a year in England. So first I worked out how much I would need (including emergency money) for a year in England … somewhere in the region of £5000. Then I thought maybe an emergency in China would be more serious, and in any case if I take more money than is necessary, I can always stick it back in the bank when I get home J So I arrived at the figure of £6000, to more than cover me. This is roughly 80 000 RMB … I hope not to get through more than 50 000! Fortunately, through a mix of savings and work money I have this kind of cash – if you don’t, I can only assume you’ll need to find out if there are loans, bursaries, grants, etc available from LEAs, universities, banks, and so on … Once you have decided how much cash to take (almost certainly a four figure sum), there’s the tricky question of HOW to take it. Traveller’s cheques are safe but you don’t want to be walking around with a giant wad of them. Bank transfers are secure but cost a percentage of the transaction and of course you need an account at the other end, which may take time to set up. You need RMB to pay for things as soon as you arrive, but the limit on RMB coming into / going out of China is 6000 (approx £450). I spent a while asking myself all these questions and have come to the following decision – take it or leave it, I think it’s a good plan :P

* £450 in Chinese RMB (approx 5500 – 6000)
* £4500 (approx USD $8500) on a Thomas Cook Cashcard Passport (see below)
* £1000 in standard Traveller’s Cheques (probably converted to USD)

The RMB are for immediate use – taxis, hotels, food, train tickets, key deposits, and so on. As far as I know though, the only denomination available in the UK is 100 RMB notes (approx £7), which are great because you’ll only be carrying 55 of them, which can be hidden quite easily, but the drawbacks are twofold – if they go missing you have lost a lot of money, and secondly nothing actually costs THAT much so you will be forever changing them for smaller notes. £450 can go a long way in China! The £1000 in Traveller’s Cheques are my backup money – I hope not to use them, if they just sit in my suitcase all year and I come home with them I will not complain! They are guaranteed, insured, and never expire, what more could I want? Ah yes, that’s right, the cashcard. This thing has to be the best thing I’ve ever found for travel money … First I thought I would get a Nationwide account because they have 0% commission on withdrawals, no charges at ATMs, etc … but they won’t give me a VISA debit card for at least 6 months (stupid Building Society), and this is actually a better option … With this card you get:

* The ability to put up to US $9000 on a cashcard
* The ability to use the card anywhere you see the VISA logo
* Free transactions in restaurants, hotels, etc with a card reader
* Flat rate charge of $2.50 at an ATM …
* … but you can take out up to $800 at a time
* Insured and guaranteed same as Traveller’s Cheques
* A backup card in case the first is lost or stolen
* You can top it up again

Really, what more could I need? This is mint. Mint I tell you. So here’s the plan – set up a Chinese bank account (free ATM withdrawals in China, see) … and then keep drizzling money into it as and when it needs. It will cost me about £1.30 to withdraw £400 but then that money will probably last about 1.5 months in China, which means I’ll only have to make about 8 withdrawals (approx £10 - £12 charge total) from the cashcard the entire time I’m in China, and all other withdrawals can be made for free off my Chinese card, useful for day-to-day things. Happy Days, think I.

Make sure you get your finances in order early on – withdrawing large amounts from your bank/s means calling them up and arranging to collect the money about a week in advance. Ensure you have photo ID for everything, as well as statements to prove where the money came from. And don’t forget to tell your bank/s you are going abroad!

That’s about it folks, hope this is of some help to someone. I’ll let you all know how the money plan works when I get to China (only 15 days to go). Any questions, just ask.

Issues

2008-06-12T19:13:00.002+08:00

For some reason the formatting changes I am trying to make on each post (bold, italics, etc) are not working, and the whole text looks quite blocky. I'll try and fix this shortly. I am new to blogspot so be patient while I work it all out. Cheers.

(Also, putting a comment like "yawn" on one of my posts is neither constructive nor particularly mature. If you don't like what I am saying, or find it boring, either engage in some kind of criticism to improve it, or keep quiet.)

Travel Preparations (Part One)

2008-06-12T06:55:00.004+08:00

Before you get anywhere near jetting off, you'll have a couple of meetings to sort out what you need - you'll probably get a handbook with some useful information in it as well. There's heaps to sort out, and this post is only going to cover the following:

* Vaccinations

* Getting to China

* Accommodation

I am constantly reminding the girl who is travelling with me to Urumqi that "China is not like anywhere else". Whether this is in respect of people coughing their lungs up in the streets, the fact that a "Chinese" toilet is little more than a hole in the ground, or that mentioning you have a religion on a visa application can land you in hot water, it holds true - China is different, and you cannot be too careful. For this reason your handbook from SML will probably advise you to get a variety of vaccinations (or at least be up to date with most of them). The most common ones are:

Hepatitis A - quite a high risk in China, where it can be found in plenty of foods.
Hepatitis B - less of a risk (usually bloodborne), but if you end up in hospital and they don't have clean equipment, well you're just asking for trouble.
Meningitis C - most people have this before even coming to university. I think it lasts for about 10 years.
MMR - Measles, Mumps, Rubella - usually people receive one as a kid and one later on in life. According to my travel nurse, if I've had the second shot, I should be good for life.
Tetanus, Diptheria, Polio - none of these are nice, get vaccinated. Chances are, if you've been abroad any other time in the last decade you will have had these vaccinations.
Typhoid - waterborne, which in China means quite a lot of places (the tap water is not potable by any means).

Most, if not all, of the above can be obtained free of charge. With the exception of Hepatitis B (and possibly HepA), the above are all one-shot vaccinations (as far as I remember). Where HepB is concerned, a full course consists of 3 injections, followed by a blood test to ensure your body is sufficiently immune. If you are anything like me, your body will for some reason or other refuse to produce antibodies; if this is the case, a booster shot (or sometimes second course) may be prescribed, followed by another blood test. Not being immune to HepB isn't a massive deal, as above I said it is mainly bloodborne, so unless you plan to be shagging around or shooting up with people you should be okay ... But there is always the chance you will end up in a less-than-hygienic hospital, and if you're clever you'll remember the title of my blog. :)

However there are more serious diseases common in certain parts of China, and it is up to you to find out about them. Use a travel clinic, books, go online, and ask around. Of the more common serious illnesses that may be contracted in China, the following three are probably the ones you will hear about the most:

Rabies - "mad dog disease", carried by just about any mammal, and almost unstoppably lethal once symptoms develop. It is entirely acceptable to enter China (where the disease is prevalent) without any form of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PEP), but there are certain advantages to taking precautionary vaccinations. Number one, if you are bitten / scratched / otherwise come into contact with a rabid animal, a pre-exposure course gives you a little extra time to get to medical help (somewhere in the region of 36 - 72 hours I believe). Number two, it reduces the number of shots you require having come into contact with the virus. A normal course of Rabies injections is 5 shots given over a number of weeks. The pre-exposure course is 3 shots given in a 4-week period. Following this, should you be exposed, the post-exposure course is just 2 shots (instead of all 5). Cover lasts between 2 and 3 years, after which a booster shot is needed to keep the protection of the original pre-exposure course. From personal experience, doctors at the "Dog Bite Clinics" (yes they have them) in the large cities like Shanghai will have heard of PEP and know the correct procedure is to receive 2 additional shots only. Other locations, in smaller towns for example, may never have heard of PEP and will insist on giving all 5 injections. Fortunately vaccines like this are very cheap in most areas.
Japanese (B) Encephalitis - normally transmitted in tropical regions (find a regional danger map online), the chance of getting the disease even if bitten by an infected insect is quite low, but as I said above, you cannot be too careful. The first course is almost the same as the Rabies PEP, 3 shots given sometime over a 4-week period, and then a booster shot every 2 or 3 years. Side effects can be worse with this shot (my experience anyway), but severe reactions are incredibly rare. Unlike Rabies, no post-exposure course is needed in the event you get bitten by a mosquito or whatnot.
Malaria - tropical regions only, and I think the majority of people takes pills (if they take anything at all - I know people going to Haikou who are more "at risk" but will not be taking anti-malarial medication because of the side effects of prolonged usage).

Apparently a vaccine for Cholera exists. Apparently it is kind of useless as well - take it at your own risk (and your wallet's risk too I am informed). From what I've been told, if you are going to get cholera, you are going to get it. Lovely.

A word on costs - your GP can charge whatever the hell they want. In some cases you will have a wonderful practice where the logic goes something like "you are going to be at risk, therefore you need to be protected, therefore we will keep the cost as low as possible so you can be vaccinated and be safe". If this is the case, consider yourself lucky. A 3-shot course (Rabies or JapB Encephalitis for example) could cost as little as £6.50 (per 3-shot course). When I went to China on my GAP year I paid just £13.00 for those 6 shots.

Other practices take the "you are travelling, you are having some odd vaccination, it is your choice, so we will charge you a heap of money for inconveniencing us" - right now, I am registered with one such practice. I knew two people on my GAP year who were forced to choose between getting a vaccine or not simply because the full course ran into triple figures - if possible, change practice! I do not like the idea of not being protected against something just because I can't afford it. Fortunately I only need boosters for Rabies and JapB Encephalitis (one shot each), but both of those shots still costs £60 here. That's approximately 30x more expensive than at my last practice. You've been warned.

Remember to start having injections long before you intend to travel. Remember some vaccinations need blood tests and / or several weeks to be completed. Remember it is not very nice to have six or seven different vaccines running around your body all at once just because you left it a bit late. And remember to set aside a load of money for it all (if your GP is of the second variety especially).

Accommodation will vary from location to location - you'll be informed of what's on offer when you get your handbook. As for Urumqi, supposedly there is university accommodation (dorms / halls) for just £250/year. Yes, that's right, £250 for the whole year. The downside is that this year's students discovered the accommodation was that cheap because it was that bad. So bad they moved out as soon as they could. From what I have heard, there are plenty of refurbishments going on and the price has stayed the same, but I am reserving my judgement for when I arrive and see it with my own eyes. In the meantime I am seriously considering living out of the uni accommodation, not least because I enjoy my own freedoms and my own space. Yes, it will be more expensive, but it will still be a lot cheaper than the UK! And I can have a place to call my own. Be aware that if you go stay anywhere (hostels, hotels, even overnighting at some places) you may be required to register with the local police office (PSB - Public Security Bureau), and that not registering is something kind of serious. More on accommodation once I am out in China I imagine!

Part Two will probably cover things like Visas, Packing Extras and Money - but of course I've not written it yet ... so we'll see.

Choosing A University

2008-06-12T03:54:00.003+08:00

The first post in what I hope will be a year-long blog of my Year Abroad experience - here I answer the question I get asked not most, but quite a lot ... "Why on earth are you choosing to study in Urumqi???"

I don't know how other universities in the UK (or indeed the world) allow students to choose their placements for years abroad, nor whether Newcastle will change its policies in the future, so I can only comment and give advice based on my own experience. In my case, students in their second year of study were given basic information about year abroad posts towards the end of their first year (I seem to recall that anyway), and then more details soon into the first semester of their second year. Students taking European languages are offered a choice between studying at a university or arranging a work placement. Students taking East Asian languages are offered only study positions at affiliated exchange universities.

Choosing was based on personal preference versus available spaces at the host universities. Where this process was concerned, the main problem was its speed (or relevant lack thereof) and the onus on students as a group to sort out themselves and their destinations. If you have no prior knowledge of China, then the choice of 6 different universities could seem quite daunting. Information and Year Abroad (YAB) meetings came quite late into the year, as did finalising choices; with hindsight I can now say that everything has worked out okay, everyone knows where they are going and most people have received paperwork from the host institutions. But be prepared to feel like the SML is taking their time! As for how to choose, your opinions, personal experience, likes (and dislikes!), and ability to handle interesting / new / different situations will all affect your final decision, but here's how I came to mine (the six institutions are Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Chengdu, Haikou and Urumqi):

* I lived in Shanghai for a month on my GAP year, and found that while it is in China it is not terribly Chinese. No one really stared at you (something Chinese will do when something / someone is interesting or strange to them) which is a good measure of how urban the place is! Not to mention the pollution and size of the city (circa 20 million people) - I quickly grew to dislike Shanghai, so that was automatically ruled out.

* As the capital, Beijing is heralded as a political and cultural hub, and the quality of the Chinese spoken there is second to none. Indeed, 北京话 (beijinghua, or Beijing Dialect) is standard across China, in a fashion similar to Queen's English - or what it would be if everyone in England was taught to speak "correctly" rather than in their regional accents / dialects. For a linguist, studying at the Beijing Cultural and Language University (BCLU) would be a dream. However, I have been to Beijing, and my opinion was quite jaded by the dreary weather (it was February), the smog and pollution, the masses of concrete (Tiananmen Square is just a large concrete plaza), not to mention its proximity (as with Shanghai) to the sea, giving its summers a propensity for humidity - all these lined up to rule out Beijing.

* Haikou is based on the island of Hainan, south of the Chinese mainland. It is like Florida in terms of climate, but with (I think) more monsoons. It is humid in the extreme - and yes, your accommodation might come with internet included, and air conditioning units, but it is likely I would never want to leave my room, and that both of these things would become a necessity rather than a luxury.

* Moving away from the sea, the cities of Chongqing and Chengdu are both located in Sichuan province. The main problem I have with Sichuan province is not the geology (it was recently the centre of a whopping earthquake), but the food. People belittle my reasoning here, but Sichuan food is spicy. I cannot handle more than a korma, and certainly not any chilli dishes - a recent excursion to a well-known Japanese restaurant proved this when my girlfriend offered me a slice of chilli and I foolishly accepted. It is likely that I would be eating three times a day (minimum), which amounts to approximately 1000 meals during my time in China. To feel upset and discomfort one thousand times in the course of a year is not something I want to remember from my YAB.

* Finally, we are left with Urumqi (Wulumuqi) - a landlocked city, 2000km from the nearest sea, where the summers are hot and dry, and the winters are exceedingly cold (average of -15C). A city which, though heavily industrialised, is only a short journey from stunning views (the Tianshan mountain range runs south of the city, and Heavenly Lake is so close that when it freezes over in winter I am told people go en masse to skate on it). A city where the options for local travel are not to the traditional Asian destinations of South Korea, Vietnam or Japan, but the more untouched countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia and parts of Siberia (Russia). Yes, I am biased. But the city seems perfect for me, given the aforementioned choices - it is only 2 million people in size, it has a national ethnic minority (more on them in a later post), an ethnic language by default, and I will be forced to use my Chinese to communicate because English speakers are few and far between. Oh, and it's cheap as chips.

So, my advice to students who are given a range of options, but not much information, and are forced to make a relatively fast decision - get together quickly (use Facebook, set up a group to discuss issues), and then get your heads into some books or pick the brains of people who have either been to China and returned (fourth year students) or those of us out there. Read as much as you can, and ask as many questions as you can, because nothing is a stupid question - if you arrived in Chongqing and didn't like chilli but had neglected to ask, you might find yourself in for a horrible year.

(If anyone wants to contact me regarding Urumqi, please feel free. Either leave a comment on my blog or email me at h.l.joseph@ncl.ac.uk)