Term two started rather unexpectedly with the reappearance of one of my College English classes from last semester. We’d been repeatedly told that the College English (which make up the largest population of students in first year) were divided amongst the teachers in such a way that each class would have a foreign teacher one semester and a Chinese English teacher for the other. This uncharacteristically sensible proposal means that all students should theoretically get the submersive, tangential full-english-speaking-lesson experience having a foreign teacher entails; whilst also having the equivalent length of time with a Chinese teacher.

As I mentioned before, “Western Teaching Methods” – as the department refers to it – are not always well received. Towards the end of last semester I lamented that I might have failed my students by teaching them in a way I would like to be taught, rather than the text-book orientated, regimented method they were used to. Many students specifically commented in feedback that they were afraid “not enough of the textbook was covered in class”. Not to mention the fact that having to do every lesson in English is an unfeasible ask to many of the College English students who, bear in mind haven’t picked English as their major, and are often at too low a level to benefit from this.
The textbook, boring and Americanized as it may be, nevertheless follows the exact structure the College English students will face in their nationally standardised CET-4 exam. It’s good practise, if you can engage them. The problem is that with three or four hour long classes per week, it seems incredibly sadistic to force them to endure textbook exercise after textbook exercise, class after class. In my mind, the whole point of a foreign teacher is to provide a broader learning experience: One encompassing some aspects of that teacher’s culture and thus providing a practical backdrop for learning English.

The tactic of providing students with one semester of chinese teaching methods and one semester of foreign teaching methods should take care of this problem. Students theoretically cover the exam templates in the textbook ad nauseam with their Chinese teachers, picking up on problem areas that can’t be explained to them easily in a second language. While their foreign teachers give them an applied basis for using the language and hone in on syntax errors.

So it was with some surprise that I walked in on the first day to be greeted by my class from last semester. Nevertheless – apart from the fact that my first “introductory” class was an absolute flop – I have plenty of reasons to be glad about this. Firstly, I obviously have some awareness of their ability and I need spend no time reactively trying to gauge what they have covered previously. More over, I can satisfy my indoctrinated desire to measure things with the least variability possible. I can now directly compare classwork scores and (possibly) exam scores to determine their progress and thusly, to an unknowable extent, my performance. But more simply than that there is a certain familiarity with this class that makes it easier to stand up each day in front of them. They are used to me: My accent and my worksheet style and my teaching style generally. And I am used to them: Their attitudes (each class interestingly seems to function as one beast and I have found one malcontent student seems to taint the whole class) and to some extent what they respond to and don’t respond to. There is a rapport there that will take time to build with my new classes.

In spite of these advantages the problems I’m alluding to remain: Having a western teacher is not necessarily advantageous to all or even most of the students. And this is something that was a concern to me last semester and definitely something I have to address this term.

The Plan I mentioned above is simply to be more proactive than reactive this semester. Quite frankly, by this stage in the game I feel I have a pretty good grasp of what my students need to have achieved before they can face the exam, as well as a greater ability to guess-timate their current level and what they can reasonably handle in a lesson. Consequently, I should be able to spend less time on lesson plans, outlining my intended curriculum from the beginning instead of basing each subsequent lesson on the success of the one that precedes it.
To this aim, I have achieved a draft schedule for the full 18 weeks of term, though I have yet to fully formulate and type-up my intended worksheets but I am at least working about two weeks ahead of this at the moment.

The reasoning behind this is not only to free up more time for things like Chinese classes – the amount of time I was spending on planning vs actually teaching was ridiculously disproportionate last semester; more than double – but also make me feel more confident in each lesson as well as instilling some confidence in the students that they can expect to achieve concrete objectives in a given time scale. It should also give them a chance to prepare (I emailed them the schedule at the beginning) although I am quite certain none of them do.

I’m also trying out a new technique this semester: The introduction of several three-week “projects” that consist of various reading and listening comprehension exercises, games and grammar stuff on the same theme, culminating in a class speaking exercise. This is born out of two theories – the first, inspired by that American teacher I met in Haerbin, is that the ultimate aim of each class should be to make it as fun and engaging as possible. Though this may not seem revolutionary, it is a mile away from the fruitless attempts I was making last semester to divide each 60-student class up by level and try to develop each “group” individually. As he put it, instead of catering to each level deal with the class as a whole but make it enjoyable enough that the top-level students won’t feel as though their time is being wasted. Meanwhile, the low-ability students will hopefully find this more accessible and be less likely to give up and tune out. This “project” model works both outside of the textbook subject material (while keeping with the template to some extent) and gives students the opportunity to speak – something they demonstrably enjoy and desperately want to do. Speaking is not a component of the exam, but I feel it nevertheless reinforces vocabulary and syntax because students are forced to think about what they say so much before they speak it. And anyway, what exactly is the point of learning a language never to speak it?

The second line of reasoning was that I should be attempting to get students used to the kind of process we take for granted at a western university back home that leans heavily on independent learning. Though students will happily read through their textbooks in their own time, I have yet to see a single instance of them doing any background reading outside this. To me this is an indispensable skill, and part of what makes university so satisfying. So I have deliberately picked project themes that are easily researchable and require opinion. Not to say that I am expecting them to do loads of background reading for each task – I just want to prompt them into looking for a small amount of material outside what we cover in class.

It is my hope that this will instil more confidence in them and… dare I say it… enthusiasm for English in a population that is traditionally reluctant to take English classes at all (they are medical – not English – students after all).

This requisite for their degree – this “forced English learning” – produces a greater hurdle to me than just pissed of students. Quite frankly, it puts me in the centre of a moral dilemma.

Let me explain: More often than not, my students conclude essays with clichéd, superfluous sentiments like “the coin has two sides” or “it is a double edged sword” and, worst of all, “in a word: Blah blah blah for another paragraph”. Clearly, someone along the line – and since most of them come from different middle schools, in different cities in China it’s likely, in fact, many people – have told them this is an excellent way to conclude essays in English. To me reading this is utterly grating! Cringeworthy! But the problem is this is obviously an established standard in Chinese English, and absolutely every single one must sit a standardised writing exam marked by a Chinese examiner. So what am I to do? Do I teach them good English, in the wider sense of this aim, or do I simply teach them to pass an exam?

The latter totally goes against my gut feeling. But the fact is many of them will never leave China. I mean, their learning medicine at a school so substandard many of them do not even have dormitories. Of course their degree will never be accepted abroad. If any of them have dreams of becoming a doctor abroad the best they can hope for is to get accepted by a foreign university. And since this is unbelievably expensive in Chinese terms, it’s unlikely many of them will get the chance. So surely, the best I can hope to do for them then, is to get them through this exam. And then, perhaps it is best I conform to this Chinese, albeit wrong, assumption of “good English”.

Thoughts?

Apart from the unmentionable service station toilets, the rest of the journey was considerably less dramatic, and once it got dark and everyone became quiet, I managed to find sleep as is my talent.

I woke up sometime later because it had got cold. In my sleepiness I assumed we were in Haerbin. Outside it was snowing and it could have been anywhere, even home. Winter does that to everywhere. In actuality we must have been six hours away still. It’s a funny feeling, uplifting yourself from a place that you like and feel you could give more time to. Even though you are excited about where you are going. I have so many friends who have spent months at a time just travelling through places, whole countries, spending only maybe a week at a time in a town. I have only been at it for three weeks now, and I feel as though I have better idea of China’s airports/railway stations/ bus stations that the towns themselves. You feel stressed about leaving the day before you have to and it’s horrible to have your concerns realised in cattle lorry bus journey. So I was thinking there and then that maybe we should go back to Changsha after New Year and regroup. But the snow was perfect here with no houses around it and I was reminded that we had wanted to go to Haerbin so badly; that we had worked so hard to get here. I was still excited about it somewhere. And would you believe that while I was staring out the window and mulling things over with sleepy insight, I saw a shooting star! How’s that for a sign. Time to cheer up and stop moping.

We arrived in Haerbin sometime around ten the next morning. It was a busy little city far removed from the perfect, untouched snow for miles and miles on the way. The architecture was immediately more Russian looking, as we’d been told, but it still felt distinctly Chinese in its chaotic bustlingness. After failing to negotiate a fair fare we paid over the fence for some guy to take us to the hotel, feeling too shell-shocked after the bus to try and find it ourselves. We’ve carried this illusion that now we can speak a bit of the language we won’t continue to get ripped off at every opportunity, but the end result is now we just get ripped off in chinese. It doesn’t matter if you can contest the issue, if you can swear and moan – we don’t look the part. There’s no point getting frustrated or taking it personally: it’s just the way it is. The prevailing attitude amongst Chinese people is that Westerners are rich and most of the time, comparatively, they’re not wrong.

We’d had some difficulties finding hostels in Haerbin and had booked into an Ibis because we could do it all online. A little more expensive than the rest of the places we’d been staying, we were nevertheless glad to have a great en suite and central heating! But we were annoyed to find the “24 hour bar” was in fact a vending machine (seriously) and we would have to wait until lunch time to brave the great outdoors and go looking for a restaurant. Not exactly news we wanted after close to twenty hours on a bus.

So we spent the morning feeling rather bitter and I think Steve has really had it. I mean, not only does he have to put up with everything that is wearing down on me, but he has that added (self-inflicted) sense of duty to look after me. And when little things go wrong he seems to take it much more deeply and more personally – as though he has somehow let me down or failed. But after some lunch we felt much better and so we explored the pedestrianised area leading up to the river. I tried some Russian food (a bit limited if you can’t eat meat but they did a veggie borsch) and resisted buying a shlapa because they turned out to be too expensive. The whole of Haerbin is lit up with fairy lights and littered about are beautiful and usually funny ice sculptures ( including a Toy Story one!). At the end of street, you could get down onto the Songhua river and walk right over to the ironically named Sunny Island. All along the river there were various structures for children (and 22 year olds) to play on like giant ice slides, giant ice slides for sledges and giant ice slides for bikes. This isn’t even the main display for the ice festival, these are just the ones done by the residents, but they are still impressive and left me wondering what the ones you have to pay for must be like.

The cold was not too bad, with my army coat and everything. In fact, it was so cold that there was hardly any wind, so it seemed easier to protect yourself. You noticed the light-headedness of all your blood going to your heart before you noticed the real numbing coldness. We decided an hour at a time after dark was reasonable and sufficiently manly and everything, before you really had to go for coffee to warm up. Usually in Starbucks Bar – a place to remind you of how good the Chinese are at doing knock-offs. The marker became when our scarves became solid as our breath turned to ice – when that happened it was time to turn in.

I’m pretty glad of my ex-army jacket. It seems to amuse others no end that a foreign girl was wearing an over-sized PLA handout. But it didn’t seem to insult anyone and it certainly is practical. It’s like a giant duvet with sleeves.

The next morning was spent trying to track down tickets to get back to Beijing. Which was surprisingly hassel-free. I think we have reached that eye of the storm that is New Year’s itself, when people have finally got to where they are going and will spend a few days there before going back home. We got turned away at CTS (China Travel Service), but they advised us to go to a nearby hotel. There we successfully purchased the tickets in full chinese, but the lady seemed shocked that we were willing to accept a hard seat. At this point I was ready to accept a standing ticket so as not to get the bus back home so getting a seat was sheer luck.

In the evening we went to Zhongshan Park, which we thought was the ice-festival proper but we found out later this was only the sculpture exhibition. Still, this was what I’d wanted to see. It was like an otherworldly place, where everything; castles, bridges and pagodas; were built from ice and snow. A Narnia lit by Chinese lanterns. And the sculptures were astounding. Crazily intricate and stunningly lit up. It really was beautiful. It was only a pity it was too cold to stay longer.

On a clearer day we headed out to the tiger park not far from the city. Determined not to get ripped off again, I waved goodbye to anyone who tried to take us for more than 40RMB and eventually found someone on the meter who restored my faith in humanity. The tiger park itself was better than I expected. To some extent I’d been preparing myself for small enclosures and mangy, sad looking tigers. But actually they’d set it out more like a Safari Park, with big fields for them to play in adjoining smaller “huts” for them to escape to privacy. We were taken around in a caged-coach, Jurassic Park style, with a bunch of Pakistani and Chinese students, who reacted as though we were in genuine peril, screaming their lungs out every time we saw a tiger. The tigers, unfazed by the yabbering food bus, approached audaciously each time we got close, before surmising there was nothing for them and proceeding to watch us travel on with bored expressions. Most of them were very fat, probably something to do with the fact tourists can shell out 100-2000RMB for everything from chickens to cows to throw at the catties for “real tiger eating experience” as advertised on the ticket. But it is obvious that they are well-looked after and quite used to noisy guests poking and shouting at them. Most of the tigers were Manchurian Tigers (apparently), beautiful big orange tigers that have high breeding success at this park. Less in number were the smaller Siberian tigers, which avoided the celebrityness as much as possible by hiding in the huts and staring out at us with fed-up blue eyes.

Our taxi guy waited for us (with the meter off!) and took us back via the ice festival park on the other side of the river. From the road we could see it was bigger than the one we’d been to, but we’d been told it was 300RMB so we decided to give it a miss. It all looked a bit Disney Land anyway. Obviously we tipped the taxi guy what he would have made waiting for us. Maybe this will inspire future generations of genuine taxi drivers. I think it’s just really them taking a chance that people will pay more just to get out of the cold, I really shouldn’t take it so personally.

Later, in “Starbucks Bar” we met another group of teachers from America and England. It was refreshing to meet other teachers and remind ourselves of the job we have to go back to and they confirmed our suspicions that each of the ice-sculpture parks were more or less the same, only differing in size. I’m surprised how expensive Haerbin is compared with the bigger cities we’ve been to. I guess maybe this is the only real tourist revenue they get. We exchanged tips about teaching and the American guy gave me some advice about controlling my homework club a bit better.

On the last day we tried the “International Cinema” – afterall, we could only endure so much outdoors. But it turned out to show American films dubbed in Chinese! As this is the first cinema we’ve tried on the mainland, I have no idea if this is the norm or not. But I find it very funny. Everything in China is subtitled anyway because so few people can speak Mandarin, so it seems an unnecissary effort to then dub everything too. I hate watching dubbed films, because it looks so unsynced, it’s crazy that people prefer this. So we spent the rest of the day strolling around the shops and Russian cafes so Steve could show off.

As we prepared to catch the train I wondered what Haerbin was like in summer. It’s a picturesque little town in winter but everyone seems so hard-boiled and unfriendly compared to the other places we visited in China. But maybe this was just a winter thing; with everyone already getting into hibernation mode, it must be difficult to suddenly be inundated with tourists.

Still, I felt that we were leaving having seen everything we’d come for, that we’d managed to tick off all our boxes. Especially considering it being so near to the end of our trip and so expensive compared to everywhere else we’d been. And suddenly I felt excited to get back to our homely little hostel in Beijing and spend New Year there.

I feel tired and harassed and that discombobulated way being in an airport for hours and hours leaves you feeling. Xi’an seems a mile away, and I must admit that I’m having difficulty trying to evoke the enthusiasm I had for it right now. I must tell you that sometimes writing this seems a terrible effort. Not just setting time aside and floundering with failing internet connections, which is an expected annoyance now; but trying to convey my genuine reaction to something minus all that processing and refining that seems to come automatically with hindsight. Because it is simply impossible for me to write this at the time, and often even close to the time. So I feel that often the impression I create here is unavoidably diluted. It is an unfair representation, like skipping to the conclusion of an article. And when you think of all the books you read that seem so convincingly in the present tense, so that you are literally discovering at the same rate as the characters, or at the very least you have this sense of being told in real-time; when in fact this is completely not so… well I think this is quite a feat.

So you will have to excuse the somewhat impassive retelling of a series of adventures that were really quite emotional in actuality. We arrived late Saturday night after our flight was delayed by about 30minutes, grateful to find our prearranged pick-up (just some poor taxi guy) had held out for us. On first appearances, the Jasmine hostel was beautiful. On the outside it was made up of a courtyard of stone archways, which were all eerily lit by traditional Shaanxi cut-out laterns. The room looked like a glossy Ikea display, with glass panelling and a backlit wall, but this proved to be really impractical with it being winter and everything, and the first night I couldn’t get warm even with all my thermals and my hoody still on.

Consequently, I woke up late the next day so Steve and I decided not to travel too far out. Currently, Xi’an is divided into two parts: the city proper, which is contained inside the new city walls, and the suburbs which are mostly residential areas outside the wall. The city itself is tiny, and it turned out we could walk from one end to the other within a few hours. Because of this, the roads in Xi’an were particularly mental, even by Chinese standards (as an aside, we have decided that driving styles in China are easily regionalised, and Xi’an’s is driving on the pavements), and most destinations were easily reached by underpass.

We headed straight for the Bell Tower, a Tang Dynasty structure in the centre of the city. In fact, it literally looks as if the city was built around it. As it remains marooned on the only roundabout while the busy Xi’an traffic spins round and round it day and night, and, bar its neighbouring Drum Tower, it looks distinctly out of place amongst the four shiny Buchanan Streets that spread out from it at each compass point.

As the name suggests it contains many ceremonial bells, and a giant bell, taller than two people, used in the past for waking the city in the morning, but now rung every hour. A little to the south was the Drum tower, similar in appearance to the Bell Tower and containing a giant drum used for marking the night. Both buildings were beautifully ornate and filled with ornaments and furniture from different periods in Xi’an’s history. But I felt kind of bored and disconnected from it somehow – “templed out”, as the Xiangtan bunch call it. A kind of fatigued fed-upness that comes from trying to fit too much into too short a time. I’d seen so many artefacts from so many different dynasties and it was becoming increasingly meaningless. Without any sense of time period or purpose you can only appreciate furniture on the aesthetic level… and the minute I start doing that the minute all the ambition I had in the world becomes squandered in trips to Ikea (probably with kids and the whole shebang). And since I already hold a dangerous penchant for trips to Ikea (I’ve mentioned it twice already!) my body assumes a kind of unconscious counter mechanism (perhaps involving pheromones) which manifests itself in a obstinate and vast disinterest in furniture.

Luckily for me (and him), Steve possesses the most acute sensibilities for predicting and placating oncoming Cally-onslaughts, and, acknowledging my faux enthusiasm for “stool, with back” he admitted or pretended that he was beginning to feel we were trying to do too much all at once, and suggested we spend some time just wandering around and trying to get a feel for the place.

Now, Xi’an is famously the start of the Silk Road, a major trading artery, reaching out as far as Alexandria. The Journey West (or Monkey Madness, which Steve insists was the dubbed British version flogged as kids TV when he was growing up but which I don’t remember at all) is the stories of a Daoist monk who asked the Emperor permission to travel West in India to learn about Buddhism (which at this time people had only heard of from foreigners who ventured into Xi’an, the then capital of China. When he returned successful, not only did Buddhism blossom within China (albeit with a Daoist slant involving GODS and stuff), but so did the Emperor’s desire to expand the trading routes within India and other neighbouring countries. Over the centuries, Xi’an has become a mongrel: it’s spirituality, art, and; best of all; cuisine taking influences from India and the Middle East. So in the spirit of taking it easy and getting to know the place, the next leg of our adventure became a culinary one.

The best place for food was undoubtedly the Muslim Quarter. South East of the city centre, this area is markedly lower than the rest of the city which has been converted into skyscrapers of flats upon flats. The Muslim Quarter retains its traditional architecture, and is a maze of hawkers and little markets and everywhere is food food food. From hot chestnuts, to sweet warm apple juice, everything for winter can be bought from the stalls. But unlike the rest of China, Xi’an has a famous fondness for bread. This is where the best of it can be found, from intricately decorated flat breads, to kebabs – cai/rou jia mo – smothered in a kind of crispy pitta bread (veggie ones too!). I’ve racked up five months of missing bread. I’m ashamed to tell you how much I indulged.

But Steve got one over me. Xi’an is beginning to enter noodle territory and one of the restaurants here (suitably called One Noodle Under The Sun) is famous for its four metre long folded noodle.

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I took one look at the picture in the menu and decided it was far too wide to even attempt that length, but Steve; being a man and all; felt obliged.

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Most famous of all of Xi’an traditional food is yangrou paomo – a kind of mutton broth which you crumble pitta bread into. We almost tore up the lonely planet trying to find the restaurant they recommended for it when we could probably have wandered into any restaurant on the Muslim Quarter, but Steve assures me it was worth it.

Some days into the trip we began to realise we would be leaving soon for Beijing so we made the urgent pilgrimage to excavation site of the first Qin Emperor’s tomb on Li Mountain. Though everywhere offered tours, including the hostel, Lonely Planet seemed to contain pretty accurate advice and, mixing this with advice from the Australians we’d met in Shanghai, we decided to take the bus up for only 16RMB either way and pay entry of 110RMB. Mostly successful, our only drawback was trying to find the bus stance (which is directly opposite the train station, not the bus station) amongst the beginnings of Spring Festival Rush. But oh it was worth it.

Having been somewhat of an aspiring archaeologist/palaeontologist type thing as a child, I’m kind of proud of the fact that, without really deliberately trying to, I’ve managed to see some of most famous archaeological wonders in the whole world. Not bad for 22. My 10-year old self would be immensely proud of me, and maybe that’s not to be scoffed at.

Emperor Qin Shi Huang, good old fashioned despot that he was, left behind such a legacy. The first man to unify what we now call China, his army was immensely forward thinking in terms of mass production of weapons and weapon and armour design. After forcefully unifying the many states within China, he immediately began altering history and academic books in his name and began a rule of tyrannical extravagance and over-egged bludgeoning of dissidents, as is the want of all Royalists according the factual accounts of all CPC scholars. Either because he felt he was in for a karmic usurp in the afterlife, or because he thought fit that he should rule in heaven as well, he began preparations for his tomb like a pharaoh, several years before his death. There is a huge amount of controversy about how many years construction took, and how many men were recruited to work on it (and their unfortunate fate on its completion) but the area around Qin’s mausoleum contains three distinct pits in which life-sized statues of Qin’s soldiers (presumably modelled on real men) are buried. The smallest pit, pit 3, contains all the officers: grandly dressed and taller than the other statues. It also contains two chariots complete with horses. These however, were the least well-preserved of all the pits. However, it is still clear from the remains that the horses were extravagantly decorated, either with real armour or with metal replicas when they were buried.

Pit 2 is larger, and contains several military figures including archers, cavalry and infantry men. Because they are placed in their own pit, it is assumed they represented the military guard. Pit 2 is extremely well-preserved and many of the complete soldiers have been placed in glass to protect them. You can even seen the remnants of paint still on them, which shows all the soldiers were painted to look real, in flesh colours and with the Qin military colours on their clothing.

Pit 1 is the most impressive though, spanning the length of maybe about 5 football pitches. It contains the main army and is still being excavated. It is estimated that about 8,000 figures will be found in pit 1. The whole area was divided into columns built from mud and wood which separated the soldiers and is responsible for their preservation. The fully excavated ones have been stood up in military formation, as it is imagined they stood when they were buried. But much more memorable are the ones still have buried in the mud because it almost looks as if they are crawling out! It is really clear here that all the statues are individualised. Their bodies are made from a set of maybe 7 different stances and dress but their faces are all totally different, making the headless ones quite disturbing. You’ve got to wonder if the soldiers appreciated they’d be immortalised for all time in this way when the craftsmen were painting their faces. Unlike the Egyptians, Qi left no record of his reasoning behind this incredible build.

Actually it’s the tomb proper that has been passed down in legend. Ancient Chinese historian Sima Qian wrote that the first emporer was buried in palaces that contained wonderous treasures and rivers of mercury. The outer part of Qi’s tomb can be seen a little distance away from the warriors as a grassy pyramid. Based on the size alone, it is quite possible that a palace replica has been built here and then buried in much the same way as the warriors. Exavation probes have revealed dangerously high levels of mercury under the ground here adding some weight to the legend, but whether its due to this or out of secret respect to the first emporer of China, the government refuses to let any one excavate the site. So maybe we will never really know what treasures lie under there.

After that, Steve and I felt a bit emotional and we decided to mull it over a blow out in a not at all tacky terricotta themed bar near South Gate.

I’m torn between South Gate and the Muslim Quarter as to which takes presidence as my favourite place in Xi’an. During the day, the street that lines the wall on either side of the south gate is filled with stalls selling art of all kinds. From the Western styles we’re used to, to the traditional Shaanxi styles. It’s beautiful and bustling and full of wonder.

For our last day in Xi’an we headed outside the city walls for the Shaanxi museum and the Great Goose Pagoda (where the oringinal Budhist texts brought back by the monk in Journey West are contained) to get some perspective on everything we’d seen. The Shaanxi museum is a fantastic museum which holds a chronological expidition on all the relics that have been dug up from Xi’an and the surrounding areas, going as far back as the Neolithic skulls and tools that are still being exscavated. This gave me a brilliant chance to get to grip with the different dynasties and work out their order, their acheiviments and their architecture. It really helped me put in place everything I’ve seen so far. The Great Goose Pagoda was a suitably tacky tourist-grabber affair and we decided to avoid trying to get up it in order to save money.

I leave saying goodbye to the hostel cats feeling that despite its size, I’ve haven’t spent enough time in Xi’an: haven’t really got under the skin of it, haven’t really gotten to know it as a modern city. But I guess that’s something I should get used to on a bullet stop tour like this. There’s still so much of the language and the culture that I haven’t got a grasp on and which keeps me removed from life here to a certain extent. Rushing through means I get to sait my geekiness but I don’t know that I get a genuine sense of the culture. And everywhere in China is so different. I feel a little overwhelmed by it all, like I’m looking at it all through a glass case. It’s a wee bit like sitting in an airport and watching the people going to different places, feeling spaced out, and hoping you get where you’re going ok. But I have to stop lingering in Xi’an and put myself firmly in Beijing for ultimate history geekiness.

Ps. We eventually found a train ticket booth attendent who was willing to deal with us and who genuinally spent a lot of time searching for Haerbin tickets for us. But we now know they are sold out. So in Beijing our initial mission is to secure bus tickets. I believe that it can be done.

More photos…

The flight to Shanghai took only a couple of hours and we flew with China Eastern. Despite what I’d been warned about domestic air travel in China (or perhaps because) I was pleasantly surprised with how comfortable and smooth the journey was. We even got a meal on board! I was working on the basis that an EasyJet equivalent would be the best we could hope for, so I feel a lot more confident about the rest of our journey now.

To add the excitement we got the MAGLEV to the centre of town: a magnetic bullet train expensive enough to mark our arrival into Shanghai.

But good news about the hostel, which turned out to be considerably better than the hotel I’d stayed in last time. Character would never have been something I’d have considered important and I always think it’s funny that you’re asked to rate this on hostel sites. But character is definitely something this place has. The whole lobby area was filled with well-loved tack, photos, books and notes from the people that have stayed there previously, passing on advice and wanderlust to everyone to come there after them. We’d booked a dorm but the place was so quiet we had the room to ourselves. And most importantly the showers were fantastic. Only there for a couple of days before heading in land to Nanjing, we’d decided on a sort-of spontaneous itenary for Shanghai. That is to say, we didn’t really have a plan beyond getting our coats and tickets. This had worked well for me last time round and I was keen to take in as much as possible for as little money as possible. So day one we headed straight to the cloth market and negotiated our coats (I was very well behaved and resisted getting anything else), before wandering along past Yu Yuen Gardens and around the Bund. Following the advice in Lonely Planet we headed on to Beijing Rd in search of a ticket office but to no avail, and then wandered down Nanjing Rd to the foreign book store enjoying the colonial buildings and the giant neon rabbits set out for New Year. Then, as it got dark we headed into Pudong (with a not-so-quick stop off at the fake market) and blagged our way into Hyatt to get to the top of the Tsing Mao for free (again). I seriously misjudged where to get off the subway, thinking it would be Century Avenue, and we ended up having to walk about two miles to get there. Those buildings are so huge they never look like they’re far away from you. That turned out to be our undoing and we literally crumbled into the lovely big sofas in the hostel bar. There we met a bunch of Australians coming down almost exactly in reverse from us, who gave us some excellent advice about Xi’an and Beijing.

The whole time I struggled to articulate my feelings about Shanghai. Coming again with Steve fills me with a refreshed excitement and I wonder if the first time round I was simply underwhelmed by the grandiose colonial houses and western-style bars – after all, I didn’t come all the way to China to see London. But coming here again, be it a combination of homesickness, or just feeding off Steve’s enthusiasm, I find them kind of comforting in a familiar sort of way, and definitely beautiful. Without dismissing that I’m lucky to be in China at all, Changsha is undeniably goldfish bowl.

A city that has grown from a small fishing town in maybe only a decade or so, and which consequently lacks any kind of natural evolution or consideration beyond short-term urban planning, has few of the awe inspiring sights one might assume of a country as ancient and disparate as China. Now it’s just a city of empty houses. Prime, 6-star, giant properties, invested in but not lived in, and built in the style of various European countries as though to inspire thoughts of beauty and history, (whilst nevertheless having none of either) all brand new and built for the sole purpose of sustaining China’s worrying familiar property boom. No one seems to realise that once everyone from the cities has moved to the countryside it will cease to be so. Changsha is not exactly beautiful.

So maybe I’m a little starved of old things. And maybe I feel more at home in a big city than I realised. But either way Shanghai doesn’t leave me as cold as it did the first time round.

It’s certainly an advantage coming here a second time and having some awareness of the price of things and we can afford and what we should avoid. Last time I got kind of pissed at how “exclusive” some places are. The Cloud 9 bar for instance has a minimum spend of 150 kuai. Xintande is littered with shops like Prada which have security staff standing guard outside in case you should dare to look longingly in the windows too long. It all makes you feel a bit uncomfortable. Like you’re scummy and you’ve wandered on to the wrong street or something. And when you wander further west into the old town where people live in shanties and piss in the streets you’ve got to ask who can wander into these areas. But being able to recall some places we visited last time round that are more within our price range makes it less intimidating and I don’t feel so excluded. And don’t get me wrong, it’s not like London snobbery, people are generally very friendly and even the scary security guards are happy to give you directions.

Day two we braved the main railway station and managed to get Nanjing tickets without any difficulty but were told we could only get Haerbin tickets 5 days in advance. We headed to the centre of town to meet Nancy, my roommate from SCP, and Jenny and Wendy some of the other teachers for sushi and asked their advice. They suggested we might have more luck the further north we went, giving that people might feel less pressure to get tickets early the less distance they have to travel. But I’m less optimistic about leaving it so close to Spring Festival. The time line we’ve planned for ourselves is cutting it pretty close, and that week is bound to be the maddest, craziest rush of the whole break. Beyond flying though, which is out of the question financially, I really don’t know of any other way to get there so we just have to suck it up and keep trying.

It was great to see Nancy though and listen to her chat excitedly about her plans to study in New York next year (she’s waiting to hear back about a scholarship).

Afterwards Steve and I head to a theatre just across the road from our hostel because I’m determined he see the acrobatics. It’s a different show from the one I saw last time but just as good. This one is supposed to represent Shanghai life and ends suitably with 6 stunt scooters who drive around inside a big wire ball – at the same time! – all hooting their horns of course.

Three weeks to exams. I’m losing sleep.

What is this – habituated exam stress?! Am I really that worried about how my students will do? How much of them failing (IF they fail) am I accountable for and how much is them?…

Maybe the change in weather has reverted my body clock to UK time?

I cannot sleep at night and I want to sleep during the day. When I do sleep I have this recurring dream. Not exactly the same dream you understand but always in the same location. Which is here I think. I am a teacher but for some reason I also have to take Mrs Buchanan’s maths class.

It’s more frightening than it sounds.

I think it is winter here. It’s hard to tell. Changsha seems to have only two seasons: an unbearably hot summer and an unbearably cold winter. Autumn was marked by a strange cycle between these; one day hot and one day freezing. But now it has been cold for at least three successive days and we have also seen the beginnings of snow. The cold here is a strange one I don’t understand. It is warmer than back home, still above freezing. But the cold here is less bearable somehow. It starts in your spine and spreads outwards, and there doesn’t seem to be anything you can do to protect yourself. It’s a proper east-coast cold that I’m not used to.

The cold comes with some advantages though. Backstreet is suddenly filled with exciting new foods to try; all extra spicy to keep you going. In particular there are a whole litter of hotpot stands set up, which is a kind of hot spicy soup that you cook everything in. Also these amazing banana cakes which are literally bananas covered in dough and stuck in an oven. And millions and millions of different types of oranges, newly ripe and pennies to buy. My favourite are these tiny varieties that are about the size of your thumbnail that you can pop straight in your mouth like a little sour sweet.

I’m champing at the bit again and counting down the weeks until I get time off for Spring Break. I feel really guilty about this. Teaching wasn’t my reason for coming here but it is my first priority. Nothing has spurred this on. If anything, the politics have settled somewhat and I’ve become better at anticipating how I’m expected to behave. I now have an assistant in my class aswell. A second year student. Her official job is to translate my instructions to students with poorer English and report student concern to me. But in reality it is quite clear that she reports back to the department on what I am teaching. I have no real issue with this in itself, but I would prefer some constructive feedback from either her or from the department. I feel this is less an evaluation of my ability as a teacher and more a check system to ensure I don’t start propagating sensitive or anti-communist sentiment during my lectures.

Either way, I haven’t heard anything from above so I can only assume that they are happy with what I am doing.

But the real test will come with the exam. Yesterday I gave one of my medical classes a feedback form and most of them provided valuable opinions , (there were a few “My English teacher is so fashion! I hope we be friends” and so on) but overall there seems to be a lot of concern about how little textbook work we have been doing. This is clearly a reflection of the middle school systems. I have been following the textbook in terms of topic, they have been getting some exercises from the textbook to get them used to the format used in the exams, and I have been making sure that they are up to speed on any of the vocabulary. But my view has been to teach the units in a wider context of British culture and life and so I told them right at the start to work through the textbooks in their own time, seeing them as a supplement to the worksheets and lectures I was giving them in class. And so now I am worried I have gravely disadvantaged them for the exam. Not so much in content, which I feel I have covered adequately, but in attitude; as though they are now so convinced they are unprepared they will panic and fail.

The problem is not a failure on their part to study. They have plenty of self-motivation and you can regularly see students in the classrooms as late as 11pm working away. It seems to be more that they simply will not work through exercises at their own pace but will rather wait for my specific instruction as to which exercises to do and when.To me this is silly, the answers are at the back of the textbook and we have precious little class time as it is. Up until now, I saw no point spending time going over the answers in class, working on the basis that they would report problems to me as they came up (this expectation was covered in the objectives at the start), that students who wanted to learn would faithfully work through them and students that didn’t would copy the answers out the back. But it seems they will do neither. I assume they are used to just going through the textbook with their teacher in middle school and working outside this is simply mindblowing. And even if they are working through the textbook, there is a definite hesitance to ask for help or report any problems. Of course there are obvious benefits to doing it my way but if the students are used to a certain system in learning then it may be difficult for them to adapt. I’m annoyed at myself for only noticing this now; too late. It is too tempting to compare my teaching with my experience of being taught, but the expectations and styles are different here and I should have adapted to that more. The students are not used to, and the environment here is not conducive to, the kind of independent learning style teaching we expect from university. I assumed they would be sick of the stringent middle school routine and enjoy finding things out for themselves. But now I think it would have been much better if I had held their hand more, issued a reasonable amount of studying as homework and then checked that they had completed this every class. Even though I am halfway through now, there is still a huge deficit between my own expectations of myself, and the school’s expectations.

And the school’s expectations are still unclear. Sometimes I feel the president wouldn’t care if I was teaching surrealist painting so long as I loyally continued to be his dancing monkey at the regular social status events. Tomorrow is another such affair; some stupid luncheon I have to attend and pretend to be interested in who people are at the expense of my morning class. I should be happy to get a free lunch but I always feel so morally compromised.

The second thing I feel guilty about is my impatience at what is genuine kindness from the students. Now that exam time is approaching, they are beginning to demand more and more of my time for extra practise or simply to talk about their concerns. Which I don’t have a problem with in itself except that now I get phone calls all throughout the day, sometimes from students I’m certain aren’t mine asking “teacher, I would like to practise my oral English with you”. Part of me is annoyed at myself for not taking the opportunity to spend more time with the people who will undoubtably teach me the most. I mean, you come all the way to China to then just shut yourself off from the people - you’ve got to ask yourself what is the point of that. But at the same time I’m so aware of my position as a teacher who is the same age as my students… I don’t want to compromise my proffesionalism by becoming pally pally with the students here that I teach. And quite frankly sometimes it drives me crazy. I mean, I need time to myself sometimes, and there’s no kind of system were I can arrange “office hours” so they can come see me when I expect them. And on mass instead of in drips and drabs throughout the day.

And the English association, who I’m trying to distance myself from anyway, have decided that now would be the perfect time to put on events for their English festival and so they will call up and demand our participation in various things like song competitions and lectures sometimes the same day they expect us to be there! But the thing I find hardest is the students who want to show their appreciation, either just for the classes or for any extra curricular work you have done, and very often this is by buying you gifts or taking you to dinner and all sorts of things that you really don’t want them to feel like they have to do but to which they simply will not take no for an answer. Last week the students took me for a barbecue further out into the countryside to say thank you for the homework class and I felt horrible because they spent so much money getting the whole thing organised. A few days later one of the women who was in our tour group CAME TO THE SCHOOL and insisted Steve and I go to her home in the city for dinner. We were there six hours and they spoke no english. I felt awful because she was being so kind, but the whole experience of trying to communicate was utterly exhausting. They are going to nice me to death! I swear.

So all in all I am looking forward to being able to escape for a while over Spring Break. Steve and I have planned out a comprehensive itinerary. We get about a month off, and we are making full use of it – heading East first to Shanghai to get some good winter coats made, travelling back across the country to Xi’an. From then we head North to Beijing but stay only one night and from there go straight to Harbin on the Siberian border. I am strangely excited about this. Originally this was just a half-baked idea because Steve wanted to practise his Russian. But it seems remarkably easy and cheap to get the train there from Beijing, making the whole thing look like a small detour rather than the 10,000km journey it is in reality. We’re veteran train travellers now so the 9 hours is like, pffftt nothing. This way we can out most of the New Year celebrations considerably cheaply – as oppose to staying in the capital – but we’re close enough to return (hopefully painlessly) in time to spend a traditional style New year’s day in Beijing.

So far so good, but I need to make clear the problem of travelling during Spring Break. Spring Break is a family time in China and its their most important festival. In that sense, actually being in really tourist orientated places like Xi’an will be remarkably painless and this is probably the quietest time to do any sightseeing. But travelling from place to place is likely to be extremely problematic and will no doubt get worse the closer we get to New Year proper (Feb 3rd). Spring Break is the one time a year people will make a point of being with all their relatives, and given the size of the country and it’s side-splitting population, we’re probably talking like the largest domestic migration in the world. I’ve been told to expect to camp outside the stations to get train tickets, that the price of travel and accommodation can increase tenfold, and that each year a reported 4million punters leave ticket counters at the stations empty handed.

To make matters worse, I’ve learned that you cannot buy train tickets more than 10 days in advance (which does explain the massive queueing: I did wonder why it seemed everyone was stupid enough to leave buying tickets to the last minute). To some extent, we’ve overcome this problem a little by flying some of the journeys (Steve is particularly upset. For someone who travels so much he’s awfully afraid of planes). This has proved to be cheaper than getting the train in a lot of cases and has the advantage that you can book in advance. But there at least 4 legs of the journey we must do by train, either because there is no airport or because it is simply too expensive. The two stages I’m especially worried about are Haerbin – Beijing, getting back in time for New Year’s day, and the Beijing – Kowloon train that will take us home shortly after. I sometimes wonder if we’re being crazy, but I am so anxious to start seeing things again that I really think we must do it. It would be silly to waste such a long period of leave.

I’m trying not to let my excitement and worries over this impinge on my classes. I have no doubt in my mind that I want to do a good job here. Yeah I came here to fund my travel and I came here to learn but I’m aware all the time of my importance in my student’s minds, even if the school doesn’t extend the same feeling, and I don’t want to let them down.

Anyway hopefully hold tight and I’ll have some more interesting adventure updates rather than meditations on teaching.

Is it a little sad that I came all the way to China to talk about work?

But out of a combination of politeness and impotence we found ourselves, at some hour of a saturday morning I would still have called “friday night”, being shepherded onto a bus full of our non-english speaking companions for the next three days. After saying our hellos and introducing ourselves to the best of our ability (an interesting thing I’ve noticed when you speak very little of a language is that insist on bombarding your listener with utterly pointless drivel you’d never dare part with in english. Just because you can.) So after I’d made it clear to everyone on the bus that I was from scotland, a twenty-one year old English teacher in Changsha, who has a mum, a dad a brother, and two cats and was wearing red; and that my companion Steve was also from scotland, and an english teacher in Changsha who had a mum, a dad, a sister and no cats, I promptly put on my headphones and tried to sleep.

I’m a particular master at sleeping on moving vehicles in broad daylight and we were probably around six hours into the journey before I regained consciousness.  And almost immediately I found my excitement at getting away again. The scenery outside had dramatically changed. Nevermind that we were completely out of anything resembling a city, the plants and even the ground was noticeably different from Changsha. Everything looked less tropical and more hard-wearing. We were surrounded by small mountains and rocks jutted out that looked dark like slate. In fact, it didn’t actually look so different from scotland to be honest. The one thing that reminded me we were in China, apart from the driving, was the occasional glimpse we’d get of a river or loch - bright turquoise and misty looking in a way I’d only ever seen in Hangzhou. I can only guess that this is to do with the amount of lime in the water or something. But its beautiful, in a eery sort of way.

The second reminder came much later, as much of the journey became tunnels. A mark of chinese efficiency: if a mountain gets in your way, go through it. Soon we started seeing evidence of civilisation: of farms and little shanty houses. And later of slate stone-dash houses complete with their own slate piled pagoda roofs. onto the ground. Similarly as we started to climb the mountain, the farms became terraced so no amount of land was wasted.

As we levelled out onto an even plateau the houses became more frequent and more sophisticated, and eventually we started seeing roads and shops and streetlights. And soon after we pulled up and were ushered in to a small and comfortable hostel which I never learned the name of. The whole trip took about 9 hours so we still had a good part of the afternoon left to explore. I had been hoping we’d be given time off to do our own thing but it appeared we had a stringent planned itenary to keep to.

I needn’t have worried. For two reasons, having to submit to chinese tourism was not a problem. Number one, Feng Huang is tiny. It falls on two sides of a small river and is made famous by its ancient wooden houses that climb out onto the river on stilts, and its faithfully remastered Old Town; a maze of stone buildings, some entirely preserved and others retouched in the same style. In particular it is famous for its North Bridge, an entirely untouched structure, thousands of years old, that connects both sides. It comes from a time when all chinese towns were encaged for defence and possibly, although I could be mistaken, connected to the South Wall that surrounded all the ancient cities in the Han Dynasty.

So, contrary to Hongzhou, there was no need to spend inordinate amounts of time on buses. We walked to everything. And as we walked, I sucked up the beauty and strangeness of everything.
The second reason was that I really didn’t care about any of the sightseeing activities planned. All of them involved visiting houses of people I’d never heard of; a writer, a duke, and some other rich family who lived here respectively. So it really didn’t bother me at all to be shepherd through these at an awesome pace with someone shouting out explanations in chinese. In fact, I was glad to be outside staring at the buildings again. I took photos of roofs and maze-like little side streets. Roofs and side-streets are ubiqious in China, but I never get tired of photographing them. Much to Steve’s dispair.

All the stores there sold many Miao goods such as bags, and decorated combs, and foods I haven’t seen anywhere else; like flattened pigs faces.
The tour was concluded with a lovely boat tour up the river and under the North Bridge. We discovered that one of the guys in our group, Jerry, had spent some time in Canada and consequently spoke excellent english. He translated some of the sights we had seen that day and we politely pretended to know the famous figures they commemorated, all the while taking in the spectacles around us, awed by the sheer incomprehensible physics of the stilt houses, and the soothing calmness of the turquoise water lapping at the bow of our little boat. (It’s Jerry’s photo above by the way. Since obviously I don’t have a wide angle camera).

Left to our own devices for dinner, we wandered happily round the town and enjoyed some street food and dried kiwis which may have topped my Favourite Dried Fruits Of All Time list. (MMMMmmmm so delicious). We bumped in to a wee group of Americans who we discovered were also here teaching and spent a little while braving the pubs on stilts exchanging experiences.
As it got dark, we met back with our group for a Fire Ceremony. A traditional Miao dance ceremony that involved drums, dances and a massive bonfire. Given that it was still technically the 5th in UK time, we decided to take this as our bonfire night. The ceremony also included a series of tricks and shows including some acrobatics, a guy that climbed a ladder of upturned knives! and a man who ate fire! Absolutely none of which impressed Steve the cynic but had me looking away in fright more times than I’d like to admit. Jerry narrated for us, explaining each of the dances and what they were traditionally for – keeping away ghosts and bringing in the new harvest etc. He also explained that his girlfriend was Miao but that she never practised the rituals or wore the traditional clothes. He was unable to explain why but it was clear to me that the Miao faced a great deal of persecution from the chinese. People react to them in ways that remind me of how some people speak about Polish people in Glasgow. There’s a clear historical racism there that’s summed up in comments like “be really careful of your bag because the people there are all theives” and such like. At the same time it was clear that such ceremonies are practised as much for tourists as for tradition and no doubt like-wise with their queen amadala style robes. It seems likely that many will have abandoned their small-town roots for the big cities and a more modern life if they were able. I don’t know whether the ones who have stayed do so to honour their roots or because they like that lifestyle better, or whether its simply easier than trying to integrate with a people who clearly hate them. Maybe the tourism is just that lucrative.

Either way, it was difficult to talk to people about the Miao. Lonely planet describes them as a tribal people who originated from Laos and Thailand. This made me wonder if they were the Hmong people in my Dr Siri books that were largely wiped out from these countries during the war and so who may well have migrated to China. But it was impossible to find out any more information about them in English.

Day 2 started at a more reasonable 7am. We were ushered onto the tour bus and taken on a mystery journey to what turned out to be the Miao village. Again, much of this is preserved and a lot of it is just farm land. But some of the land had clearly been set out for tourism. Past the farm and shanty houses, we came to a massive natural dam from which the water serving the farms came out in only the smallest, trickling waterfall. As we climbed up to the top of the cliff, the water widened out into a huge loch.  It felt like home again – apart from the near-summer temperatures in november. We took these boat/raft things across to the other side, and climbed further into the  mountains, past greater waterfalls and into a cavern that was lit with green lights all the way up to the peak. It was a nice change from visiting temples crushed into cities. Nothing here had really been altered or changed, just used. As though the Miao had looked at nature and decided it had been built to purpose. On the peak, and all down the mountain face, their village was littered around, made out of sand and stone like Tatooine. Here we were treated to a traditional Miao dinner which was more bean based than the chinese diet I’d been living off of, and even more spicy if that’s possible. On my right, Jerry’s girlfriend ate whole tiny chillies and tried to suppress her laughter. 

Afterwards we were free to walk around and explore the village proper, but we couldn’t speak to the people beyond gesturing. So we took more photographs of roofs and  haggled for some pretty things and tried to guess their history.  Hard-boiled girls of about nine years old approached us now and again with jewelry and sweets and threaten us for money. As opposed to the Chinese, they seemed completely unphased by our pallid white faces. I asked them for a photo and their faces instantly soften as they gleefully obliged. I gave them some money to thank them, and they happily went about their way to the next couple, singing songs in a language I didn’t recognise.

 Afterwards, we found the bus waiting for us at the base of the mountain and we got back to Feng Huang for a free afternoon exploring. As a treat we found a stilt cafe that served real coffee (!), and sat over the river watching the sun come down. The walls inside were covered with post-it notes and bits of scrap paper covered in drawings and writing in another language. Leaving a post-it note for someone with your number on it in a tea shop seems to be a Hunan tradition, and even the ones in Backstreet seem to have at least one wall dedicated to little coloured pieces of paper. But I have never seen anything like this. It was more covered than my room walls come exam time. And all of them were white. I can only guess that people wrote their memories and messages and advice for other visitors to Feng Huang. So we faithfully added to the list, and I drew my view of the North Bridge from there.

After dark we wandered down to North Bridge to investigate the hawkers and food stalls there and I had a delicious spicy tofu thing. We met up with the Americans again, and headed to the river to cast out little paper rafts filled with candles (and wishes) to see how far they would go. They joined half a dozen other little wishes before setting themselves on fire and we stayed to watch them sinking slowly. I’m not sure if that’s bad luck or what. Maybe that’s what’s meant to happen. Then against my better judgement, all of us navigated the stepping-stones (in the pitch black at the deepest point in the river!) to the side for a drink and a chat and some KTV-avoidance.

Day 3, we set out early again on an unusually misty morning to the South Bridge not far from the village. An English sign explained the wall had been purposely built to keep out the Miao, which places them in China, much earlier than the mass migration of the Hmong in the Dr Siri books. The wall stretched out at least as far as two hillsides on either side, but the mist seemed deliberately preserving some of its mystery. Climbing one peak was shamefully exhausting work, and as we reached the inner wall that would have contained a town at some point, our tour guide apologised she could only show us “such a small wall” while we looked at her incredulously. Waiting for us faithfully were Miao hawkers selling water and jewelry. Each of them looked about 90 but Steve and I decided they probably do laps up and down there every morning. As we headed down again, we entered the Barracks where a giant chinese chessboard was carved into the ground. Jerry explained this was used to keep the men from getting bored and was also believed to increase their strategic intelligence. I wondered at the size of the steps and how tiny their feet must have been! If one guy had fallen, they’d all have been down those stairs like dominos. We headed back for one last wee explore of the Old Town before the long journey home, and typically found a million crooks and crannies that definitely need more time.

Back in time for Tuesdays classes, I noticed how much I’d really needed time away. Politics that had been really depressing me only last week seemed suddenly small and unimportant. I’m able to remind myself that I came here to learn, and that means learning about the downsides too. And heck, if it’s funding my Indiana Jones moments, I can’t really complain too much about the work side of things.

See more .

But anyway, the classes themselves are problematic. Up until now, I was working away quite the thing, extending the textbook – because I had found that a) a lot of them work through the exercises themselves and b) the rest of them have an answer key for all the textbook exercises – thinking my classes were quiet because I’d given them something to really sink their teeth into. When one night my Homework Help group admit to me that most people find the lessons way too hard. So right now I’m rethinking everything. Starting prepared lesson plans from scratch and working hard to make them easier. Fluidity is really the only way to work this. Plan ahead and you’ll just have to re-work everything.

But that’s not to say I don’t enjoy it. I feel like I’m learning a lot, really pushing myself in a way that I didn’t expect to have to. But yeah, its a lot of work.

So when it comes to free time that could be better spent on learning Chinese for example, I find it awfully difficult to pull myself off the sofa.

Ah its just like being back at uni.. all those pressing things I keep putting off.

Steve’s making me feel guilty about my pinyin learning as well. He’s determined to learn the characters. And to be honest he isn’t wrong. Its stupid to learn half a language – to be able to speak but not read and write is debilitating. Even menus are an impossible hurdle.
And its a beautiful language… I always said, I’ll learn the pinyin first, then I’ll do characters. But what exactly is the point of learning everything twice? And knowing the characters gets around the problem of dialects. The number of times someone has blethered away to me in Changshahua, then upon my confusion proceeded to write the whole thing out in characters is unreal. The fact that I probably wouldn’t have understood them in mandarin is an aside. That tactic would have worked on any chinese person.

Despite the governments intentions, there’s still probably loads of little pockets of China where mandarin is still widely unspoken. Especially areas like out here, where people are farmers or labourers; anywhere there’s people who don’t have to go to school, there’s no real need for mandarin and no way of it reaching them. Even CCTV is broadcast with character subtitles! So the fact is lots of people just don’t bother to learn. Knowing characters would completely overcome this problem. And more importantly to me, knowing characters would mean I could get by for a while without Cantonese.

But its WAY easier said than done. And to be honest, Steve seems more suited than me to his rather autistic tactic of drawing out the same word over and over again, hundreds of times.
If I am to commit to doing this, it will be for the long haul. Its going to take a lot of patience. And I’m going to have to get used to not going for a laze after work!

But I mean, that’s not to say we haven’t been doing anything. We had a week off for National Week, and though we couldn’t really go anywhere far (we got our passports back literally the day before National Day), we did try and see a little more of Changsha and even ventured into Shoushan on one of the days. As it turned out, I was very glad we hadn’t arranged to go anywhere as even Shoushan was so busy we couldn’t get in to see Mao’s parent’s house. Can you imagine what it would have been like at somewhere more touristy? Can you imagine trying to pack into the 17hour plus trains during this time? Can you imagine trying to find somewhere to stay? On National Day even the stables would have been full. It’s crazy. The other teachers warned me but I didn’t realise how bad it was until I saw it for myself. It turns out that National Week is the only time everyone’s off. The chinese call it (ren shān ren hǎi) people mountain, people sea. You can’t move for all the people. And I thought the expo was bad…

So anyway, Rosco and his girlfriend Chikka also took us to see the Changshahua Opera. It was in this beautiful outdoor stage called Fire Palace just off walking street. I really like it actually, even if I understood nothing. Its a lot less shrill and long-winded than the Beijing opera on TV. I really like Ross too. He’s totally re-ignited my faith in expats. Scottish ones anyway. We had a bit of a run in with some Americans at a bar and he handled it like a pro. Chikka’s lovely too. So bubbly and kind. She took me shopping to give Ross and Steve “boy time”. We spent hours battling the crowds trying to find me some sensible “big girl” trousers, before she matter of factly suggested I should “do the exercises”. It makes me laugh sometimes how different things are here. Going round walking street with Chikka gave a me a whole new view of the place as well. There’s so many secret wee backstreets. So many hidden away bits, that the tourists just miss them. And its a shame because there’s so much to see.

I’ve also managed to see the girls a bit more often too. Sian and Willow even came into Changsha for Sian’s birthday. We ended up in KTV of all places! Dinnae diss it – we stayed all night.

Also, on one of the increasingly rare warm days, me and Steve finally hit the temple only about half a mile away from campus. It felt properly Indianna Jones scoping through farmland and nothingness to get there. And the whole thing was beautiful. Because it is so out the way, it seemed less tourist orientated than the ones in Shanghai. You didn’t have to pay to get in for starters. Outside, it had this huge stone courtyard that was really quite breathtaking, with beautiful carvings leading up to the main hall (see pic). They also had some Thai Buddhas, which have nine faces. Again, I feel there is so much to learn. Why does Buddha have nice heads? Why is he distinctly Chinese looking when he is meant to be Indian? Its hard to describe. I feel I am on the cusp of some sort of understanding… but without the language it evades me. Of all the religions, Buddhism is the most interesting to me… or perhaps not the most interesting but the one who’s values I like the most. There’s something incredibly humbling about being in a temple like that, with such intense crazy detailed artwork, and not really understanding what any of it means. I can sort of feel it, but I can’t touch it. I keep running around but all I want is to be motionless.

And I don’t have time. I really don’t have time.

More and more I’m starting to worry about The Job Thing. Now and then I get a wee update from Adam on his IBM start date. He’s in Korea now so he kinda needs some advance warning! I’m excited for him, but at the same time it reminds me that right now I have nothing to go back to. I mean, no plan.. nothing… it scares the shit out of me. I could stay out here but another year of the graduate market just looks bad. One year adds some shine to your CV, but two years? Forget it.  I could apply out here – for the shanghai or beijing offices, but my level of mandarin makes me pretty useless for local clients right now. I had all these intentions of interviewing here but for schemes back home… but I just don’t want to kid myself on when that might even not be possible. Fhhh. I just need to take some time out and spend like.. a day on it. Really think it through. Really put the work into applying. Hey! I’m in China! Wasn’t that one of my dreams? What happened to my overconfident belief in my own luck? Its got me pretty far really.

Its on the way forward…