Spring Festival in Beijing

Spring Festival (Chinese New Year to you and I) is the biggest and most important festival / holiday of the year in China. For some Chinese people it’s their one trip “home” in the year, so this time of year the entirety of China is on the move. The nation went on the move in the first week of February, but Lantern Festival (Feb 18^th) sort of marks the end of the festivities, so Beijing is starting to get back to itself. Unfortunately, I haven’t done any travelling over the festive period. On one hand, there are far worse places to spend Spring Festival than Beijing and actually it was good to avoid the crammed trains and planes and all the stressed, sweaty people that go with mass migration. On the other hand, it seems like everyone around me is travelling, and I’m going nowhere fast.  Not home, not travelling, not even leaving Beijing at the moment! Thinking positively though, I saw a different side of Beijing too, and got to do some of the touristy stuff that I’ve missed around the city.

China is famous for fireworks. I know this, you know this; what I hadn’t realised is just how prolific they are. The entire week was like living in a fairytale warzone, bangs and glitter all over the city. Official statistics are that over Spring Festival there were 2 deaths, 388 injuries and 194 fires from fireworks – and that’s just the reported ones in Beijing alone! I’m pleased to report that I suffered nothing worse than surprise from a cracker falling on my nose, though a former roommate of mine wrote off a down jacket from cinder burns. For New Year itself there wasn’t an official firework display as we’d have it back home, anyone and everyone can buy them and set them off pretty much anywhere, so that’s what happens! The one that exploded down the drain was quite entertaining... At New Year (2^nd Feb) the hostel set some off at midnight – we all stood round, watched them explode and dodged the fallout of the crackers. All you really have to do to see fireworks this time of year though is look out the window. The hostel was busier for Spring Festival than I saw it at actual New Year and Christmas (mostly because everywhere was closed and backpackers have to have somewhere to party!) so it was a really fun atmosphere, and the fireworks literally just stopped going off yesterday.

For New Year’s Day (Feb 3^rd) we went to Chaoyang Park International Carnival. I can’t think what I was expecting (except for a throng of people, but it’s China – that’s a given) but the number of end of the pier sideshow “hook-a-duck” style games and thousands of stalls selling really weird tacky stuff wasn’t precisely it. It was a fun day though – Claire and I went with four guys from the hostel and we spent the best part of the day wandering around, trying to win stuff and sampling random food from the stalls. I could’ve done some jugglers or acrobats… lanterns, dragon dances – anything a bit more stereotypically ‘traditional Chinese’ than inflatable mallets, but heyho. 

The day after, in search of something a little more ‘cultural’ Claire and I went to Dongyue Daoist temple fair about a twenty minute stroll south of the Workers Stadium. 

Daoism is cool. It’s Buddhism with fire and brimstone – around the edges of the temple were rooms with statues illustrating exactly what will happen to you in ever department of Hell. ‘Department’ of Hell no less – you have to love how insidious bureaucracy is in every facet of Chinese life, both now and afterwards!! My personal favourite was the room with one poor guy having his tongue cut out by an astonishingly red demon and another guy whose intestines were just falling out of his mid-section. Nice. The temple fair was a funny combination of devotion – people lighting incense and reflecting quietly – and travelling show. We caught the second half of a puppet show, missed some acrobatics and were invited to try and win ourselves some manky looking giant cuddly toys. There were loads of souvenir stalls too; choice examples were posed cockroaches in glass jars, nodding dog style plasticine models of your face, and anything and everything with a rabbit theme. FYI, it’s now the Year of the Rabbit.

After that, we decided we’d had enough of culture for a few days, so the next thing of note I saw/did was go to the Temple of Heaven on the last day before going back to work. It was good to get out into some greenery for once – Temple of Heaven, apart from the temple, is a huge park all filled with cyprus trees. It was surprisingly peaceful, even filled with tourists. It just made me realised how much I need the outdoors in my life! Chinese people and parks have a wonderful relationship that I think I’ll muse on at a later stage, but the best thing about my visit to Temple of Heaven was just wandering round outside. I didn’t bother going into the temple itself – people watching is way more interesting! I think the best bit was chatting with a tiny old Chinese man who was writing English riddles on the ground in water.

I’m back to the grindstone now (as you can probably tell from how far away from events this was posted!!) – more to come as soon as I can! 

Home Sweet Hostel

XinNian Kuaile! Happy Chinese New Year! I’ve successfully managed to jump straight from actual New Year to Chinese New Year without a single blog post, so since it is Spring Festival, my office is closed and it’s time and past to update.

So, what have I been doing in January? Well, I moved to Beijing for my new job and since then I’ve been working. Working, working, partying, working a bit more then wondering why I get to Spring Festival ready to collapse! I haven’t found an apartment yet (mostly because I haven’t had much time to look – I work long days) so I’m living in the SanLiTun Youth Hostel. The last time I lived in a hostel was in 2006 the summer I was volunteering in South Africa. It was fun back then and it’s fun now. The hostel is really friendly, reasonably comfortable, reasonably cheap and well placed for walking to the subway for work and the best bar street in Beijing for play. I also know the menu backwards and upside-down by this point. The downsides of living here are the lack of privacy – I’m in a six bed dorm room, my diet is the opposite of healthy, and I’ve thrown myself into a work hard, play hard lifestyle which is not exactly sustainable for my body, soul or wallet. It’s damn good fun though.

Sanlitun Youth Hostel seems to be the unofficial home of every TTC or i-to-i teaching intern in China, both past and present. I’ve seen people come through from my internship; I’ve made friends with someone from the internship before mine who lives here too (Claire, my doppelganger – she’s English, redheaded and loves books too) and a whole load of new recruits from the next internship have been staying here for Chinese New Year. They’ve been eagerly tapping Claire and me for information…we should’ve charged 10yuan a head and put on a lecture!! Ah well, hindsight eh. Actually, ever other person here is a teacher and from the ones who aren’t, most have done some at some point. Everyone else is just travelling. Lucky buggers.

It’s a funny cycle really – there are a few of us who are more or less long-term residents here – and everyone else is passing through. There are upsides and downsides to this. I’ve met loads and loads of really cool people from all over the world, but they leave and I get a completely new friendship group every ten days or so. It’s sad in a way, but liberating in others; the problem comes when I’m hanging out with my friends who do stick around… they’re around for all my adventures and, just like brothers, they take great delight in Remembering Things. Oh well. What happens in Beijing…

Speaking of people, the hostel staff are all really cool. I’ve made friends with Rui Rui (Jane) who teaches me a bit of Chinese every so often, makes a damn good Tequila Sunrise and we gossip about the current crop of guys in the hostel. Rong, Candy and Alice are also nice, but I don’t have as much chat with them. The cleaning ladies I know by sight and to say nihao too – they’ve perfected the art of the dirty look when I stumble along to the bathroom  after a night out, but when I was poorly a couple of weeks ago they were really nice to me. There’s a dog and a cat and a rabbit that live here too. The dog is a spoiled fluffy white footstool, but relatively cute despite that. The staff absolutely love him but as he has a thing for the socks of backpackers we (the residents) are on our guard around him. The rabbit is a bit mean and the cat seems to have disappeared.

It’s not as hard as you might imagine, living in a hostel, although I do rather miss privacy and choice over whether my bedroom window is open or closed. Now I’ve moved into a room with Claire, it’s even more fun and, I assume, just like having a college roommate except on a larger scale. Actually, the hardest thing (except for getting early nights – they don’t exist) is being around people who are travelling. I have a huge green eyed monster on my shoulder all day (no, not Claire!) from work and all the cool things there are to do and see in China, then I come home and people are heading off to or coming from everywhere I want to go. Upside I’m getting so many ideas for when I do get the chance to travel, downside I do feel a bit stuck here in Beijing.

Once the website I work for is launched, I’m hoping to have time and money for weekend trips out of Beijing, and then I can actually put my eponymous blue dress/backpack on and tell you about travelling around China. For the moment, I’m limited to Beijing and my next offering will be the story of Chinese New Year 2011, what we did and what was cool… 

Christmas and the end of teaching

The countdown is on until my last class… no, hang on just a minute - the countdown is over! I got a text Wednesday morning, just as I was snoozing the alarm (again), to say that class is over and not to come in, so I finished my stint as a TEFL teacher two days early! I’d said goodbye to everyone at Kindergarten 1 on Tuesday, so at least I got one set of goodbyes in properly (even though like the mug I am, I’d forgotten my camera). So, since I now haven’t got emotional stories to tell about my last day as a teacher I’ll tell you about Christmas instead!

Actually, I lie. It’s not exactly an emotional story, but I shed a wee tear as I was walking home on Tuesday – I really enjoyed Kindergarten 1. I don’t think I’ve really been a very good teacher and I don’t know the names of any of the kids or teachers there (I actually feel a bit terrible about that), but I do know the kids have had some fun, which is half the battle with learning a language. It’s also been good to have a place where I can indulge my inner four year old, just be silly and have a good giggle. There’s nothing like making kids laugh, and it’s such an escape from all the stress of being an adult!! Having my last tutoring session on Monday was a bit emotional too, even though I’ve only been doing it for a few weeks and I was more scared about starting that than kindergarten. I’ve actually taught Mingyu something – she’s a dab hand at naming colours, the rainbow song and the rudiments of artistic colour mixing. Teaching hasn’t all been peaches and cream, but what can I say? I’m an optimist even in hindsight and fortunately I’ve had a light teaching schedule with enough variety to keep me on my toes. Distraction is the better part of enjoyment, or something to that effect.

So yeah, Christmas.

This was my first Christmas away from home, and we went to Beijing to meet up with Niamh, Will and Mark. Steph and Laura have both been really homesick and missing the build up to the festive season, but as the last few Christmas’s I’ve worked in retail (stressful!!) and there aren’t any kids in my immediate family to wind up with sugar and threats about Santa, I haven’t been massively homesick and I’ve managed to enjoy the novelty of being away from home. Having said that, I’m not missing next Christmas home for love nor money! Christmas isn’t big in China, at least away from the bits with Westerners it isn’t, so I took it upon myself to be Festive, with a capital F. I made advent calendars for the girls (I got bored after doing theirs so I haven’t had one) at the start of December, and when I got two packages from home – mince pies and Cadbury’s from the utterly awesome Hannah Fry and wrapped up stocking fillers from my wonderful Mum – I decided that everyone should have something to open too, so I made stockings for the six of us last week. That put me in such a festive mood!

We got the train on Christmas Eve morning, at the ungodly hour of 7.05am, and after a stupidly long, boring journey, during which I got told I look like Naomi Watts(!), we arrived at the hostel mid afternoon. The boys had already arrived, and after we’d filled Steph with medication (she’s not been well) and Niamh arrived, we had some sustenance then went for a foot massage. Heaven. We got our backs and shoulders done while our feet were soaking, I could hear things crunching away but it felt so good!! When it got to cupping on the feet I was less jazzed but at least I didn’t get it done on my back too – Laura came away covered in polka dot bruises! (Not painful apparently. Hmmm!) We went for the most amazing Italian food after that, I actually can’t believe how much I’ve missed pesto and the chocolate lava pudding was frankly to die for. Then came the bars… after which Laura and I rolled back to the hostel at 5am - I dished out the stockings and fell happily into my bunk.

The only plan for Christmas Day was “eat, drink and be merry” – I think the stockings were a good start for that. Steph and Laura knew they had them but it was a surprise for Niamh, Will and Mark. The looks on their faces were just the epitome of Christmas – no wonder Father Christmas is jolly, I had a smile on my face all morning from that! I put on my new green silk dress, discovered the potent combination of Irish coffee and admiring looks – it’s a nice dress - then we went out for Christmas dinner. It wasn’t turkey and stuffing by any means, but hey it was interesting. Deliciously creamy mushroom soup, smoked salmon on hash-browns(!), steak or lamb chops and cheesecake or a mini chocolate soufflé with free wine and cocktails. Everyone was getting a bit homesick by the time dinner was done with – I’d arranged to Skype home and my granny, so I headed back to do that. It was lovely talking to home, but watching Mum open her present from my brothers and me set me off and I had such a cry… what a relief that was! Sometimes you just need a good weep. After that clearing up shower, I decided that a sure route to being merry was getting merry, so I headed back out to do just that and you know what? It worked. I had a great night.

Boxing Day was a whole other story – my hangover was fully proportional to the fun I’d had, but pretty much everyone was in the same boat so we all had a quiet day and got the train home in the evening. We went out for a meal and drinks on Wednesday night to say a big goodbye to the Handan family (now that was emotional) and Charlie cooked yesterday too. That pretty much brings you back up to speed! It’s New Year’s Eve and I’m getting the train up to Beijing to see in 2011 and get ready to start my new job. 

I can’t believe I’ve only got two weeks left of being an intern; there’s so much I haven’t told you about! Let me start with pomello, since I’m eating some as I type and everyone should know about pomello. It’s a citrus fruit we first had at Andy’s house back in the day when his fiancée made hotpot for us. I think it’s known as Chinese melon, but I can only ever sing the name to the tune of ‘mellow yellow’ and that’s part of the charm for me. Pomellos come sized like coconuts – big ones, small ones, some as big as your head – and are yellow on the outside, have a soft, white pithy layer inside half an inch thick. They taste a bit like a combination of grapefruit and lemon, but not as bitter as that makes it sound – just a bit tangy and refreshing. YUM YUM YUM.

Ok, now breakfast is done with, I will crack on with the serious business of blogging about being an intern while I still am one!

Not before time, as I get to the end, I’ve had a break through with teaching. One little lassie, who usually bursts into hysterical sobs at the sight of me, didn’t cry for the FIRST TIME! Not even a whimper! I can’t go as far as to say she smiled at me, it was more of a blank look, but still she joined in as we sang the alphabet and I think that is something of a triumph. I also brought out the big guns of ‘the wheels on the bus’ which was surprisingly successful. ‘1,2,3,4,5 once I caught a fish alive!’ turned me into the Pied Piper of Handan as I led thirty odd toddlers marching around the classroom and one of my evening classes greeted me with a rendition of ‘Red and Yellow and Pink and Green’ (the rainbow song) as I was taking my coat off, and my private student liked that one too. Ah, the power of music… !!!

I seriously can’t believe I’m the same teacher who was ready to throw up at the thought of kindergarten! Having said that, I’m definitely ready to have a break from teaching now and re-engage my brain. In the New Year I’m moving to Beijing to work for a new travel company, so I’m both excited and almost as scared as I was before walking into the classroom for the first time. I don’t think ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’ will help me much in an office, but if there’s one thing this internship has given me, it’s the knowledge I can do all kinds of things I didn’t think I could. It hit me this week as I was being driven home from tutoring just how lucky I am. I don’t know why coloured lights at night (and shiny things in general) induce an inflated sense of wonder in me, but they do. Maybe it’s an echo of the excitement of going to see the Christmas lights when I was little; maybe I’m just a magpie in disguise. We were driving along the most beautifully illuminated avenue and I did a bit of blessing counting. I can hardly believe that this internship ends with the year. It’s had its ups and downs and frustrations, like everything else, but it’s actually been brilliant for me, even though teaching has turned out not to be my thing.

This might seem a bit of a jump, but I’ve always thought that whatever it is you have to do, being dressed for the part is half the battle. For teaching I wear two jumpers and leggings under my jeans, and the kids are all wrapped up like mini-Michelin men. It’s getting cold here but so dry that we’ve no snow and lots of static electricity! No more high-fiving for me – the shocks were getting ridiculous. Anyway. Sometimes it’s enough to be wearing matching under-crackers or my favourite ‘give me a job!’ earrings, which I bought in Istanbul. I have to say, I really didn’t think that my school hockey coach’s advice “Look smart, play smart” would be one of those phrases I would end up living by, but hey ho, I didn’t think I’d be a teacher in China either and look what happened! Imagine, therefore, just how good it feels to own two perfectly tailored and beautiful silk dresses. Oh hell yes!

I’d mentioned to Swallow that I fancied getting one made, so a couple of weeks ago so rang and asked if we wanted to go to a tailor’s that she knows. Obviously, the answer was yes. The shop was behind yet another branch of KFC – I swear it’s bizarre how we’ve ended up navigating by fast food joints – and with four of us, plus employees and another couple of customers inside, you couldn’t swing a chopstick. Hung up on rails around three walls were made up garments for you to try on for style and fit. Below the clothes were hundreds of rolls of the most beautiful silks in every colour and pattern under the sun. Dress-making heaven. I ended up buying (investing) in two dresses and a top, which we picked up last Friday, just in time for Laura’s birthday night out. Some of our Beijing friends came down for that and we met up with Denise which was fun. I wore one then, I’ll wear the other one at Christmas. 

Speaking of Christmas, we had our Lilac Christmas dinner yesterday – more weird food! We went to a hotpot restaurant (the same dish we had when I first ate pomello) which was lovely. Swallow played Santa and handed out Christmas presents from the school. I got a woolly hat, which is really cute and typically Chinese in that it’s adorned with sequins that don’t even vaguely go with the colours of the wool! Steph and Laura got scarves, the guys all got gloves. The hotpot was delicious. If you haven’t tried it, do. Everything is cooked in a pot in the middle – there’s a spicy side and non spicy side – and everyone has an individual bowl of sauce that you dip the things you’ve taken from the middle pot into before you eat them. As well as nice normal things like mushrooms, cabbage, broccoli, sweet potato, strips of ham, tofu etc, we had the obligatory weird addition: cow’s stomach. It’s rubbery and looks like a brown brillopad; nicer than live shrimp, but not much in it.

Until after Christmas then guys, have a good one!

My China

I’ll never forget the “pinch-me!” moments I had at the top of the Great Wall and walking down East Nanjing Road to the Bund in Shanghai but anyone can go there and do that, that could be anyone’s China.  My China is a glorious paradox, it’s like nothing (and nowhere) else. It’s chaotic and still, beautiful and repellent, completely alien and welcoming, the big touristy sights and the corners of Handan where foreigners are a spectacle.

My China is brilliantly lit in the night by fireworks, lanterns and neon. Everything seems to have a fine coating of dust, sugar or sequins. It’s a place with synchronised dancing before work, a shower that plays jingle bells when it’s hot, an ancient and toothless man pedalling a bike-van delivering rocking unicorns and black cotton buds.

In my China I’ve got the couple at the market’s outdoor kitchen stalls who make the best fried rice in the world, the taxi drivers who know exactly where I want to go and manage to take me a different way each time and the granny who lives opposite, laughs whenever she sees me and worries that I’m not wearing enough clothes.

My China is full of plans and even more memories. There’s the gut-wrenching fear I felt walking into Kindergarten for the first time, hiding a grin at four year olds confidently shouting ‘TORTURE’ instead of ‘talk show’, laughing so hard at two teams of ten year olds racing to mime the sentence ‘I want to go the washroom!’ that I fell over.

I’ve got a fair few nights with patchy memories and hilarious photos because of the word GAMBEI! And I’ve got several memories of endurance train riding… the crush of humanity, dodging being hit in the face by luggage, the jokes, the aching and the numbness, practicing Mandarin with curious passengers, climbing over people to get to the toilets, being used as a back rest by a series of fat women and the utter joy of getting off after eighteen hours!

My China is a place to say ‘yeah, why not?’ to all kinds of things. I have represented the UK at a sporting event… the opening ceremony of an international Tai-Chi competition! I’ve eaten cold donkey sausage, frogs, cheese flavoured sponge cake, watermelon mashed potato and jam cake, chicken hearts and live shrimp whose antennae twitched on my plate after I’d decapitated them…  

It’s a place where Cadbury’s chocolate, teabags and Skype are more precious than gold. It’s in haggling for silk dresses, dodging bikes and phlegm, the peace of my local park, empty, on a cold Sunday afternoon, the glow of finding really bizarre things in common with people and innumerable moments with friends I’ll never forget. The good, the bad, the weird, the infuriating, the dull, the touching, the hilarious and the strangely sticky… they’re all part of MY China.

Kindergarten Revisited

Sometimes, I hate my job! I was heading up the stairs to my last kindergarten class, and as I rounded the corner I saw, on the emerging landing, a small boy gleefully weeing on his friend’s shoes rather than the bucket so placed for the purpose. OH MY LADY GAGA. I’m developing strategic tunnel vision and deafness and can ignore the stares and phlegm hacking of adults and kids using the toilet pots in the corner of the classrooms pretty successfully … but there was just no escaping this!

There are some things you just don’t get used to – hence the tunnel vision – and fair enough, I’m the stranger here. It is wearying though. It’s a hard sensation to describe, on one hand I never want to leave – on the other hand, I can’t wait to be finished. I’m still here making the best of things, but in my heart of hearts I just know I’m not cut out to be a kindergarten teacher. Actually, scratch that. I’ve always known I’m not cut out to be a kindergarten teacher. TTC and I-to-I have just given me four and a half months of confirming that... thanks… Having said that I wouldn’t want to forget any of this experience, however harrowing it sometimes is, so here is what happens in my Kindergartens.

Housing in Handan is divided into what you might describe as gated neighbourhoods which all are semi autonomous. They mostly have a kindergarten, exercise equipment and an open space for the old people to loiter, a shop (or at least street food sellers pitched at the gates) and X number of blocks of flats. The Lilac Education Group, who I work for, is owned by a big housing company (which, incidentally, we appeared in a commercial/promotional film for a few weeks ago) and they have four kindergartens as well as a primary school and the Foreign Language School where I do my evening classes. I work in Number 1 and Number 2, Laura has Numbers 3 and 4. Kindergarten One is around the corner from Zheng Tong Xiao Qu – the neighbourhood where I live - about a ten minute walk away. From the outside, it looks like a duplo castle blown up to gigantic proportions; there’s even a turret. Kindergarten Two is a half hour taxi ride away and is like a primary coloured fortress.

I don’t think I’ve said much about taxis so far have I? They are an integral part of our life here, so I’d better remedy that. There are two kinds – the modern blue coloured ones whose starting charge is y6 and the red ones at y5 where you take your life in your hands and hope the car isn’t going to fall apart! As we’ve one working bike between three of us and buses are incomprehensible (though much cheaper – anywhere for y1) anywhere we want to go beyond walking distance or as a group, we go by taxi. I have found that much as there are two distinct colours of taxi, there are two distinct breeds of driver. Firstly, the ones who are dour, silent, refuse to understand where we’re asking to go and drive you the longest way possible kind; secondly the ones who are chatty, laugh good-naturedly at our fumbling Mandarin and drive you the longest way possible! It’s everyone for themselves on the roads, with lots of horn honking to let people know where you are since lane discipline, traffic lights, queues and donkey carts, push bikes, electric cycles, mopeds, pedestrians, potholes, U-turns and staying on one particular side of the road are all negotiable factors. In one of the most delightful bits of physical irony I’ve encountered, at the bottom of ‘Model Civilisation Road’ (on my way to Kindergarten 2) is an eight lane crossroads with no lights, or lanes. Chaos!

I arrive, in an I-hate-the-morning rush, and go straight to my first class at K1 or fish out my assistant at K2. On Mondays (at K1) I have three classes of the eldest tots, using ‘Hello Melody!’ book 5 and one class who use book 3. With Hello Melody 5 I have taught such gems as: “On the road, I see a car./I see a car go Ba! Ba! Ba!/On the road, I see a lady./I see a lady in a taxi.” …and… “It’s so hot. It’s so hot./In the desert, it’s so hot./Lots of eagles, lots of rocks. Camels going for a walk.” Riveting stuff. It’s pretty much the same in each class – I walk in, get handed some flashcards then the teachers, if they’re good (and at kindergarten 1 they mostly are) help keep order and translate when my mimes and didactic instructions fail. If they’re not massively interested (Kindergarten 2, take a bow) they chat in the corner, play on their phones and laugh in my face when I ask for help in getting through to fifty uncomprehending (and therefore bored) five year olds.

There’s lots of drilling, saying words at different volumes and in different groupings (half the class, one table, individuals, girls only). Unfortunately, the kids are too young to understand most of the games which spring immediately to my mind, so I’ve got a few which work and we stick with them. I play one where I put the flashcards up, have a student come to the front and cover their eyes and listen to the rest of the class shout out a word. They have to pick the right card from the line up and say the word for a high five or a point, depending on how competitive we’re being. There’s a fair bit of singing too, but again, only songs with the simplest words get through – Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes is WAY too complicated!

Although after all these weeks some kids still cry as I walk into the room, mostly the kids are adorably glad to see me, which is always nice. It’s really satisfying to make kiddies laugh; who knew that peek-a-boo, a rogue wiggly arm and pretending to stomp on a flashcard of a cockroach would set me up as a comedian in my own estimation?!! I’ve had some absolute comic howlers from these babies in return which makes the mornings pass quicker too – one lesson I had to teach “give me a kiss!” to a class of four year olds. They get excited when they get the hang of new stuff, and the boys especially shout new words at the top of their voices so I had thirty kids absolutely bellowing at me to kiss them. What it is to be popular eh?! Another one went along the lines of me: “talk show! TALK show! T – alk sh-ow!” kids: “torture! TORTURE! TORTURE!!” … close enough kids, close enough I thought. Oh that memory makes me smile! I’ll leave it on a high there and revel in the fact I don’t have to go back until Monday!!

Nihao/Zaijian

The leaves have fallen, the heating’s on, and it’s getting dark. It’s been a week for change. Our Canadian big brother Andy has properly moved away from Handan to the south of China to be closer to his fiancée Nancy. Great for him, I’m sure they’re going to be really happy, but sad for us. At least we’ve got our other big brothers, Charlie and Kan, and our disreputable uncle Dan. As a Lilac Education veteran, Chinese speaker and thoroughly nice guy, Andy made our first couple of months in Handan welcoming, reasonably easy and fun. It’s the end of an era, but there’s plenty of new stuff on the horizon fortunately and the weeks are slipping by…

Family has been a bit of a theme for me this week! I’ve had plenty of chat and support from Team Wilson back home, and I’ve been extending my network in China too. I was watching a movie on Friday night – pj’s and duvet on the sofa, lovely, when our granny-neighbour who lives across the hall knocked on the door and invited herself in for a chat. Apparently she was calling round to tell me that we needed to pay for the heating to come on, but once Swallow had dealt with that down the phone Grannylady stuck around for a good twenty minutes and we had a very stilted ‘conversation’ which was mostly (I think) her exclaiming incredulously that I wasn’t freezing in my pyjamas when she was wearing two pairs of thermal leggings and trousers.

On Saturday I met Swallow’s family. We’d arranged to go shopping for a winter coat while Steph and Laura are away for the weekend. Steph’s in Beijing on a very romantic sojourn and Laura’s in Shangqui visiting our friends; I could’ve gone to Shangqui too but I just want to be rid of this frickin’ cold and I didn’t think a weekend of boozing, fun as it’d’ve been, would help… Anyway. Stupidly early for a Saturday I got up and headed out to meet Swallow in, what is for me, a new bit of Handan. I tried on more coats than you could shake a stick at in various shops – some that looked like I’d strayed into the kids section the arms were so short, some hideous puffer jackets (very warm apparently… but I’d rather freeze than look like the Michelin man) until I eventually found a nice black one. I also had a look at thermal leggings in the style of Grannylady, but I’m going to wait until desperation kicks in before resorting to that! I also got some Chinese medicine for my cold, then we went to Swallow’s house for lunch.

Swallow lives with her husband (who wasn’t in) and son and mother-in-law. Her mother-in-law’s dad (I think) comes for lunch and dinner so I met him too. I’d met her brother and uncle earlier in the day. Swallow’s son is 3 and a complete little monkey! He decided that he likes me, so he didn’t want any of his food – he wanted mine! Luckily for him he’s a cutie and I have mellowed around rugrats. Shame that it’s very expensive for Chinese people to have more than one child (I believe you can pay to avoid the one child thing, but don’t quote me on that…) because that kid could seriously use a sibling. We had duck, dumplings, smoked tofu with cabbage and egg/cabbage soup if you’re interested.

I got a bit of an interrogation along the lines of are my parents at home? Are they happy for me to be in China? why aren’t I married? When do I want to get married? When do I want a baby? (the answers to which are: yes, yes very, the only man who has ever asked me to marry him is a middle aged fisherman from Cape Town – self explanatory I think… and not yet, I’m only 24). The cultural norm for women here is still live at home until you’re married then have children, so I suppose I’m a double oddity both by being a foreigner and being young/female and having no housewifely aspirations.

Today I went out to lunch with a family who want me to teach their daughter. They invited Swallow and me to a restaurant where I had the most delicious dish I’ve had in China so far, the weirdest one and the first one to make my flesh creep. The delicious dish was beef with peppers in a sesame/black bean sauce. The weird dish was a watermelon, jam and mashed potato ‘cake’. Yeah. Seriously. The flesh-creeper was live shellfish. The poor things were in a bowl of ice and red wine so they were dormant and drunk, but I still had to rip their head and guts out… I feel funny just thinking about it again. I had to have two out of politeness. Bleurgh. I need a gin and tonic, stat.

I’m going to teach their daughter twice a week starting at the beginning of December, and I’m going to be seriously busy until then! This week I’m going teach Kindergarten in the mornings, Steph’s classes in the afternoon then going straight from Primary school to the evening classes. I need to plan something fun for next weekend as a reward, but in the mean time I’m off to the drinks shelf – there’s got to be something to make myself a stiff drink with…