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)
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