Howling Pigeons of Long Hu

China to Turkey to England ...

2007-11-08T00:39:00.000-08:00

And here we are in England setting up our own private English lessons, and home tutoring for overseas students.

Take a look at our NEW WEBSITE

It's called English Torq. That's because we are living in TORQuay. And we teach ENGLISH. (And people TALK in English.)

Where Now?

2007-07-30T02:54:00.000-07:00

From October 2006 we will be working in Istanbul, Turkey.

When we first told people in Australia we were going to China they usually responded with something like, "Going to China? That's weird!"

And going to Turkey: "Turkey! Where's that?"

See my blog about Turkey.

Then when we said we are going to work in the UK - "doesn't everyone in England already speak English?"

And from August 2007: - the UK. See my blog about our adventures in Britain.

Howling Pigeons??

2007-07-18T13:00:00.000-07:00

This was my first foray into blogging. Then I backtracked to fill in the posts before that.

("Howling Pigeons of Long Hu" is a remake of my blog "China Time" because of Blogsource closing down.)

Airline Restrictions

2006-09-04T01:57:00.000-07:00

Despite all the stuff we sold, gave away, threw away, and sent in boxes to Turkey ... we still had overloaded suitcases to travel back to Oz with. And we were not totally sure how (if at all) the new security measures would affect us.

As we arrived in Shanghai in the pouring rain, the departure boards were full of delayed and cancelled flights from Shanghai to Hong Kong - where we were to catch a connecting flight to Perth. At the Dragon Air counter there was a huge queue, and as a result we ended up getting shunted into "the Elite" channel where there was no one waiting. Maybe this was why they paid no attention to our overweight luggage or the number and sizes of our carry-on baggage (even though there was a sign warning that the limit for hand baggage was 5kg). The attendant was too busily engaged instead getting us booked onto a different flight, because ours had in fact been delayed.

We practically flew through customs and security, no questions asked. The new plane was also delayed, but only by a few minutes, and the gate number was changed after we had waited for a few minutes - but that didn't phase us.

The flight to Hong Kong was uneventful. We went to the transfer desk and got our seat allocation for the flight to Perth - Row 59! Phew, must be a full plane for us to be that far towards the back. Usually a bumpier ride, but theoretically safer ... and easier to reach the loo when you need to etc. But the departure lounge was half empty. And then when we got on the plane and pushed our way through the people stuffing their baggage into the overhead lockers at the front of the plane and made it to the back section, we were the only ones there. We laughingly asked one of the attendants what we had done wrong, why we were banished to the back all alone ... and he told us they were just balancing the weight in the plane.

How rude!

But then he told us that we should be ready when the seat-belt sign went off because there would be an unholy rush for the empty 3- and 4-seat rows, which we were closest to. Sure enough, with our hands ready on our seat buckles, we were the first to jump into the empty rows, and ended having a good sleep on the 7-hour flight down to Perth.

At Perth airport things were very casual - there wasn't even a quarantine beagle on duty sniffing bags. Once again no one asked questions or wanted us to open bags, and we were through in a jiffy.

I hope the flight to Turkey in four weeks will be as easy.

A Day in Paradise

2006-08-28T01:49:00.000-07:00

All this time living just down the road from "Heaven on Earth", and "The Venice of China" - to mention just a couple of the tourist plugs for Suzhou - we had never quite got around to visiting there.

Now the owner of our private school has just bought herself a new apartment there, and so we were all invited to a "come-see-my-new-apartment-and-farewell-peter-and-ruth-and-welcome-christian-and-leo-(who-has-been-here-for-a-while-anyway)-party. Yes, really.

We went by train, and when we got out at the station in Suzhou we were pounced on by a (some) English-speaking lady and her husband who wanted to offer themselves as our guides for the day. Well, it was a very hot day (42degrees and muggy) and they had an air-conditioned van, so we accepted the offer to be chauffeured around all day rather than try to find a map and catch buses or taxis - we weren't even sure what we wanted to see anyway.

First they took us to one of the parks - Calming Garden, I think it was. We paid our way in (parks are not free in China) and wandered around in the heat, looking for shady spots and breeze.

And trying to avoid the tour groups with the MEGAphones ... Hmmm, "Calming garden ..."

At the end of the park there was a larger section of water, and - to our surprise - we realised our tickets entitled us to a short boat trip back down the waterway.

Then our guides took us to the "Number One Tourist Spot in Suzhou - Tiger Hill." It was, of course another park with an entry fee, and a hill to climb with a tower on it. It claims to be 2 500 years old - yeah, whatever. The tower looked very old and definitely had a slight lean. The opening time for climbing said tower apparently ended moments before we arrived. Another guide offered us a ride to the top of the hill in an electric cart - we decided it was worth the price, and we all got the definite impression the ride down the hill was include ... but as soon a we dismounted the cart abandoned us and took off back down the hill.

The heat was intense and the humidity oppressive. We sat in the shade for a while, and then wandered back down the hill.

Oh, and the tiger? Something about the chap who was buried here (2 500 years ago), when he died someone saw a tiger here ...

In this park and the previous one there were some signs that offered some special interest:

And the always curious bins:

Our giudes told us that number three tourist spot would be the canal, but first we went for some lunch. They took us a to nice little restaurant where we ordered five dishes - including a Suzhou special "boneless" fish for 100 kuai. Well, the fish was nicely done in a sweet and sour sauce with all the bones removed (except head and tail), but considering the whole meal (for five of us) only cost 200 kuai it was a very expensive dish. (Soon be back in Oz, real fish and chips!)

Time for the canal - "number 3, canal", they kept saying - and then they stopped and told us to get out. "Canal?" we asked - because it certainly didn't look like it. "No, that's next. This is a silk factory ..."

Well, it may be a while before we see yet another silk factory - do they have silk factories in Turkey?

The bit that always interests me is not this part (above) where they spin 6-8 strands together, but where they make doonas (quilts) out of the "double" cocoons - the ones that have a male and female insect inside.

She starts with this tiny cocoon and stretches it over a frame, and then a bigger frame - its incredibly strong.

And then four people get hold of this scrap of silk and stretch it to double bed size.

After several layers of that, you have an amazing doona.

We escaped without buying any. Then it was time to go to the canal! We drove down some incredibly narrow alleys to get to the canal, but the little man our guides were supposed to be meeting wasn't where he should have been, so we went back and drove across to the other side of town to find a canal ride.

Not the sort of problem to expect in "Venice" ...

By now we were very tired, and tired of the hot weather, and pretty much out of cash. And so the offer of a ride in a canal boat (not a gondola) for 68 kuai each lost its appeal. It was time to go to the party in

The Apartment

The apartment is in the Suzhou new Singapore Industrial District, the fifteenth floor of serviced apartments belonging to the Crowne Plaza, right on the edge of the lake with views of the (man-made) islands.

The Crowne Plaza itself is in the process of being knocked down and rebuilt - a little thing they seem to like doing here in China - so there was a lot of construction equipment and noise nearby, after all the place is brand new.

There are fountains built in to the edge of the lake, and we were looking forward to the show in the evening - as were many others who gathered - but apparently they heard we were coming and decided not to do the show.

Still the view is specky. Don't think I'd like to live here - nice to visit and see.

And a good time was had by all. (At the party ...)

Soup and Shatter-Bread

2006-08-22T01:50:00.000-07:00

Yep, that's what I had for lunch today.

I can't take it any more. I can't face any more Chinese bread with that sickly sweet coconutty smell (and sweet taste). I can't face any more Chinese street food, nor funny bits of various animals. Its just not nice. I want something plain, a little bit savoury, familiar.

Yes, the soup is still in a Chinese packet, but it just tastes like "cup-a-soup" ... a little thinner, more watery, than back home.

And the shatter-bread? Well, if you buy the bread-sticks - the only non-sweet bread we can get most of the time - we buy several at a time because we have to travel to a big supermarket to get them, and they don't have any preservatives or whatever ... so they go hard as rocks in no time. Who needs croutons? Just use shatter-bread.

Ok, I admit it. I haven't been out of the apartment for two days and I'm a little bored.

Putting them up and tearing them down

2006-08-21T01:52:00.000-07:00

Or doing things in the right order

I like sewing, I like turning a flat piece of material into something someone can wear. I like cooking too, turning some powders and liquids and 'goo's into a nice rubbery piece of cake that looks nothing like the ingredients it started off as. With everything, though, I have learnt by hard experience, you need to do things in the right order ... otherwise you end up un-picking and un-doing and doing over.

Jian Kang Lu,

our street, has always had a charm of its own. The first time we were driven down this street my heart sank - what a grotty place, the back-side of town! The road surface is bumpy, the pavements are 'splooshy', and a whole lot of people live and operate their businesses on the narrow pavement area making it necessary to take your life into your hands and walk on the road. And there are dozens (literally) of pink rooms with friendly girls who pop out to invite you in.

But what was always unusual about this street is that for the most part of it there were actually three rows of big, shady trees. One row of younger trees were on the edge of the street, and then two rows of huge trees separated the car lanes from the bike lanes. Over the summer at least it gave it a real "green leafy" feel, despite the decrepitity of the rest of the street.

Our apartments nestle at the corner of this street and Wu Ai Lu - and for our first four or five months here WuAi Lu was just a construction sight, closed to most traffic, most of the buses were redirected down Jian Kang Lu. Suddenly they finished resurfacing WuAi and planted instant big trees and it was a nice place to be.

When we head to work we tend to go out to Jian Kang Lu to catch a number 40 bus - infrequent though it tends to be, because it takes us directly from our gateway to the front door of our office.

Last summer we stood baking on the pavement in front of the construction wall where they were building some posh new apartments next to the bus stop. Then they finished and knocked down the wall, and we stood and shivered through winter next to the instant garden they planted there, (complete with underwear trees). The buses would come bouncing into the stop over the rough surface, splashing muddy water from the puddles all over the myriad of cyclists clinging frantically to their vehicles as they clanged and bumped their way through.

Then they re-bricked the pavement by the bus-stop! I spent several happy hours over several days waiting at the stop and watching the little men (especially one particular one-eyed elf-like man) lugging the pavers from where they'd been dumped and carefully laying them in a neat pattern.

Then they put up a new bus stop sign - instead of the old bit of tin wired onto a power pole.

And then, oh joy! They finally gave us a bus shelter! After nearly a year of standing around in the weather, we finally had a bus shelter.

But I wasn't quick enough to get a photo of it, it was only there a few days, then it was gone.

That's where it was. Now we were all back to standing in line in the shade of the power pole like this lady is. I waited with her, and the bus finally came and we climbed aboard. But this was the day they started cutting down the trees in Jian Kang Lu. They hadn't closed the road, but there were trunks and branches and leaves and great gaping holes in the road, not to mention the heavy machinery that was doing the work.

The bus-driver - apparently taken by surprise by this development - found the road ahead blocked, but then he saw a space on the extreme left of the road (yes, they drive on the right here - mostly) so he wormed his way over there, and drove down the pavement for a bit. Then the bus jammed a bit between a couple of tree-trunks. Undeterred the driver scraped his vehicle onto the left-hand bike lane instead. Finding this blocked too, he headed back to the extreme right-hand side - through several muddy holes and over a heap of dirt - and drove on the pavement there for a while. Of course he wasn't the only one meandering back and forth. It was peak hour traffic and apparently no one had known they were going to start digging up this busy road today.

Of course its much worse now. They still haven't actually closed the road - as far as I can tell - but the buses have quit coming down here. I am so glad we are not living right on Jian Kang Lu, the noise at night time would be very hard to sleep through, we are three buildings back from the road and the machine noises are mostly drowned out by the dogs barking, squeaky bike brakes, doors slamming, doorbells ringing ...

All that you get used to. But I am totally puzzled by the lack of coordination between departments. The people who do pavements and bus stops obviously have no language in common with the people who do roads and drains. This is a level of incompetence I really only thought was possible in the west.

Cheek by Jowl

2006-08-19T01:53:00.000-07:00

All of a sudden the "heat wave" has passed. We can turn off the air conditioners and open the windows - at least for part of the day.

And rediscover our neigbours.

There they are, just a few metres away. And over here as well ...

Everywhere you turn - people, people, people ...

Last night I spent some time in the bathroom ... and the people were all still there. The man downstairs walking between the buildings shouting "Wei! Wei!" (hello) into his phone, and the baby in an apartment that was wakened by this and started to bellow, and the dog that decided its owners and everyone else should know that something was going on. A few metres away, in the next building, someone had come home at 2 am without a key apparently. Each apartment has a strident doorbell that screeches "Avon! Avon! Avon!" when you touch it. (Except ours which is, thankfully, not working, again). The occupants of the apartment were asleep, or maybe out, or possibly dead, but the person at the door just kept on pressing that bell, again and again, and even I finally fell asleep again despite it.

Our students often use their country's overpopulation as an excuse for many things, including poor study habits ...

and falling asleep on the job ...

The real problem is not the number of people in the population, but the lack of concern they show for each other. It's not that hard to talk quietly on your phone at 2am, and to not spit all over the pavement, and to not push when you are in a queue, and to look out for other people when you walk past them ... all those little courtesies we were taught as youngsters.

The owl and the pussycat

2006-08-14T01:54:00.000-07:00

Our daughter-in-law, when she was much younger and still 'the girlfriend', often ate at our house but didn't like to eat her vege's - especially her "greens". Just for fun, we always kept a few green "icy-poles" (lime flavour) in the freezer to make sure she kept to a balanced diet.

So when you see an ice-cream with this wrapper:

What flavour of ice-cream do you expect?

If you didn't know that ice-cream came in "pea" flavour, then you obviously haven't been to China. Or maybe you are in China but not game to taste this delicious (and cheap!) dessert!

And this is not one of the best ones. Last year in Zhengzhou we often bought pea-creams that had chocolate, nuts and sultanas in the middle.

Maybe this would have taught young Jenn to eat her greens!

Owl and pussycat? Who needs a pea green boat when you can suck on one of these beauties...

of Blains and Blawn

2006-08-08T01:56:00.000-07:00

I was at the office, slogging my way through a five-and-a-half-hour stint with one business class, and badly in need of a (second) cup of coffee ... and for the second time that day I found that the bottle on the water machine was (still) empty, so I headed down to the other end of the office to fill my cup from the other machine. [Had there been a spare full bottle next to the machine, I would have replaced it - but I didn't fancy carrying (or rolling) one from the other end of the office.]

As I stood at the other water machine, I noticed Manager Mark slaving away at his desk, working on next week's timetable, and so I mentioned in passing that we could do with someone with 'muscles' to replace the water bottle in the teachers' office.

At the end of my lesson I returned to the teachers' office to be greeted with this sight.

What are these clazy laowai doing?

Well, apparently neither of these chivalrous males had ever before changed a water bottle, nor even watched one of the skinny little office girls do it, nor applied their problem-solving skills (blains) to thinking about how it is done.

They attacked the full bottle with great gusto, removing the plastic cap and blue collar, and then stared in amazement at the open, naked bottle neck, wondering how on earth they would up-end it onto the machine. So then they looked longingly at the empty bottle,

still wearing its little blue collar, and wondered if they could somehow get the water into the old bottle.

They hunted around and found a plastic folder, which they twisted into a funnel, and voila! Great problem-solving skills, guys!

(P.S. For those that are not familiar with the term, "laowai" is a general Chinese term for us foreigners)

Ringing in my ears

2006-08-08T01:55:00.000-07:00

Last night I was having trouble getting to sleep. My ears were ringing. I felt like I had been at a rock concert or something. Then I remembered.

Talkative Taxi Driver

I have to travel out of town a-ways to teach in a couple of different factories. One of them sends a car - makes the whole 30-40min trip quite relaxing. For the other, I must take a taxi. I had a couple of bad experiences with drivers from the inner city getting lost on their way out there. So now I have a regular taxi booked by the Chinese staff at work. I climb in the back, and relax all the way there going over my lesson notes and enjoying the scenery.

There is always a line of taxis there waiting when its time to come back. At the end of my two hours of teaching there I am tired and hungry and I just want to get home for tea.

As I emerge from the guard room at the front of the factory the drivers are standing around in a group, discussing me. No, I'm not paranoid, they really are. By the time I've taken a few steps towards them the front driver has the door open ready for me and the engine running, and all of the drivers are chanting the few words of Chinese that I know and use when I tell them where I want to go. So, no need to explain anything - just laugh and agree, get in and go.

Several times the driver of the front taxi was a little lady who can barely see over the steering wheel, even when she sits up straight in the seat and doesn't let her back touch the seat-back. She drives tentatively and makes me a little nervous, but at least she is quiet.

Last night I stepped into the waiting taxi which had the door open and the engine already running, and smiled at the driver. We were a few metres down the road when he got conversational.

He wanted to practise all of the English words he knew, and he wanted to teach me a bunch of Chinese. We "discussed" where I come from, and my job, and his, and where I live. He pointed to things we passed and said their names in (very bad) English, and how to spell it, and how to say it in Chinese (with a Wuxi accent). All of it was shouted at the top of his voice. We went through the days of the week, and numbers - he missed "seven", but I decided I didn't care.

About fifteen minutes into the trip he patted his hand against the ceiling of the cab and yelled "langa!" He was staring at me, questioning. I looked from him to the road ahead and back to him frantically, wishing he would also look at the road. "Long?", I asked, and suggested, "You mean 'tall'?" Silly me. "Langa, langa! L-Ooow-N-G!" he shouted. Obviously I didn't look convinced, because he turned on the cabin light and opened a tiny notebook from the dash, and started flipping through it. Again I was watching the road ahead hoping nothing jumped in front of us while he read the scrawls in his notebook. I decided I would not disagree with him again, and stared out of the window wishing he would just stop talking. "Short! S-H-O-R-T!" he was shouting at me. I agreed with him, and tried hard to repeat the Chinese words he was throwing at me. Finally he was tired too, and started "singing" (loudly) instead.

We were still a couple of hundred metres from where I wanted to get out, and I had my briefcase and a CD player to carry. He started practising words again. "Stop! S-T-O-P!" he bellowed. "Ting che," I said quietly, wanting to show that I knew at least a few words of Chinese. He took me at my word, and stopped straight away. For a brief second I thought about telling him I didn't want to stop right yet, but thought better of it, I would rather lug my stuff the last bit than put up with any more shouting in that small space.

This morning my ears are feeling better. And tomorrow I will be out there again catching one of those taxis.

Happy No More

2006-07-30T01:41:00.000-07:00

This week I said goodbye to my best little friend, Happy the Hamster. After an illness of several weeks she is finally gone.

In Loving Memory of Happy

I remember the first time I saw her. (Wedding Anniversary and a Hamster.)

We were in Zhengzhou, hurrying through the streets in the sub-zero winter weather, on our way to celebrate our wedding anniversary at a restaurant. And I saw her.

I stopped to watch this tiny creature running for all she was worth in the icy wind, in her little blue wheel which was clipped onto the side of a cardboard box. Peter said, "I leave it up to your conscience."

Well, what would your conscience have told you?

Very soon she became quite tame. (mentioned in Semester End) She was the softest, gentlest little creature, and never ever bit anyone (not even Marilyn) no matter how you handled her.

But pets come with special problems, like when she escaped into the wall on a couple of occasions, and disappeared down the drain one night. (Hamster down the drain.)

And it gets worse if you want to travel. Travellers cannot afford the luxury of pets - even tiny ones. We went to Beijing and Qingdao on the train, and there was no one to look after her (and I didn't trust her to look after herself) ... so she came with us. First I crochetted a warm woollen bag that I could slip her tiny cage into it and carry it nonchalently onto the train. (New Year 2005 have hamster will travel.)

Here is Peter modelling Happy's bag on his head ...

Her little cage is on the table behind him. And so we went, and she was fine in the daytime - sleeping away in her warm little nest. Here she is on the train to Beijing. (You can see her bag on the table.)

In Beijing we stayed in a "Hostelling International" place, in a dormitory room with wooden bunks and wooden locker under each bed. It seemed like the perfect place for Happy to spend her active nights while we slept.

But between her desire to rearrange all her "furniture" during the night, and run in her wheel, and exercise her teeth on the edge of the door she managed to get hold of ... and the box acting as a huge sounding board, it turned out to be a bad idea.

We brought her with us when we left Zhengzhou (Leaving Zhengzhou) and our good friends in Wuxi, Leanne and Ryan, did a wonderful job of looking after her while we visited our family in Australia.

When we moved into our apartment here in Wuxi (New Home Wuxi), she really got going in the hamster wheel I brought back from Australia for her. And then she took up residence in the glass cabinet in our living room - Happy's New Home.

Now the cabinet is empty. So sad. I keep thinking I hear a little noise and I look over there ...

Bye Bye Boxes

2006-07-28T01:42:00.000-07:00

I've been a bit busy.

That would be a first for our time in China, generally things are pretty laid back and easy-going. But it was time to face the music and deal with the junk. Who would believe how much stuff you can accumulate in just two years!

And then you realise that you are moving to a new country and you are allowed 20 kg of baggage each - plus hand-baggage.

Peter (hubby) always has these great ideas about how we should travel with loads of hand-baggage, the way all those other annoying people do. (You notice this when you are waiting to get into your seat on the plane and they are stuffing things into the overhead locker.)

So you stack on all the clothes you can, including a couple of coats, and a coat over your arm - complete with pockets full of stuff ... yes, I know its summer here (and stinking hot) but it will be cool on the plane and its winter when we get to Oz.
And then you are allowed to carry "reading material" - just how many books would they allow us to carry for a 10 hour flight?
And then there is your actual hand baggage - some people seem to stagger on with a full-sized suitcase.
And I can have a handbag as well.
And a brief-case - maybe.
And then there is the lap-top. In its bag, with its bits and pieces.
And an umbrella - can I stuff things into that?

But even with all that, we still have a bit of a problem. We originally came out with a large amount of excess baggage - a whole 40kg - and just gritted our teeth and paid because our travel agent had misled us about the allowance, and it was the middle of the night, and there nothing else we could do (other than abandon our bags in the middle of the airport lounge). And then we have been back to Oz twice, and each time taken empty cases and returned with full ones. And then there is all the wonderful stuff we have bought so cheaply here!

The little people on the streets that collect the rubbish and scour the neighbourhood for recyclable materials have had a bit of a treat lately as we have been depositing all sorts of useful bits and pieces in their way. And then we have sold some stuff, and given some away.

But in the end, there is more than 20kg worth that we want to keep and take to Turkey. We tried all sorts of possibilities. You just can't send things from here to Turkey by regular means. In the end we settled for a freight company called Seven Seas. Its going to take them ten weeks to get our boxes from here to there. By camels, maybe?

That's all of it. Three boxes, 30kg each. They were very efficient about getting the boxes to us here in Wuxi, from Shanghai - they came complete with sticky tape, permanent marker, and paperwork (in English!) that made no sense but had to be filled out anyway.

We asked them on the phone how they would get the boxes down the stairs from our 5th floor (no elevator) apartment, and they replied "manpower", so we expected a little man (or two) with one of those trolleys that can bump down stairs. On the day it bucketted in rain, and we watched anxiously for the truck from our balcony. No sign during the morning when they were expected. Finally in the afternoon a man came trotting down the driveway - parked the truck way out on the main road - and panting up the stairs. He stared in disbelief at the three heavy boxes - what did he think " three 30kg boxes" would look like? - and phoned his mate in the truck. Mate brought the flat-bed trolley. And the two little men lugged the boxes down the stairs one by one to the waiting trolley. I was glad there was nothing really breakable in there!

Five more weeks here, and five weeks in Perth before we see that stuff again!

Hey! It's me!

2006-07-16T01:43:00.000-07:00

The 'K' buses (the ones with working gear-boxes, and airconditioning) these days in Wuxi all have TV sets installed - those little flat-screen thingies - two of them, one near the back and one behind the driver. Usually the sound is turned right down low and its just a Chinese babble, and someone else's head is generally in the way so we don't even bother to try to watch it. Occasionally we hear an English word or two and our heads jerk up to take a look - usually it's an advertisement from the opposition English language school here in town. But the other day Peter and I were sitting on the sideways seats just behind the driver, and I glanced up at the TV because I had a clear view of it ... and saw myself on TV. We both had a good laugh, as did the guy sitting opposite us who noticed what we were amused about. It was actually an advertisement for our English language school - a very brief one, and was of course immediately followed by a much longer, more interesting, advertisement for that other school.

Essences of life

2006-07-11T01:45:00.000-07:00

A friend asked me if we can get vitamins and health supplements here in China. I admit I had never really tried - I guess the sight of things like "lizard on a stick" suggested to me that the meaning of "health supplement" is blurred here.

I have never worked out what one would do with one of these - lick it? wave it like a fan? - nor what the desired effect might be. I've read and heard how generally the idea of the medicine is that you take on the characteristics of the creature you are consuming, or that is being waved near your fevered body.

Obviously here every possible condition is covered.

But, to be fair, you can buy what look like regular 'western' health supplements. Today I was in the shopping centre, and was attracted to what appeared to be a small health supplements shop because it had a sign bearing a large American flag and a picture of Uncle Sam. There were bottles of pills, and a poster with pictures of pills ... but all the labels were in Chinese, the attendant only spoke in Chinese, and the only other clue was another sign announcing "American beet products". I dunno.

So I wandered across to another health shop, and walked up and down the shelves looking for something I might recognise, some clues. There was something for babies' nappy rash - judging by the pictures - and containers with pictures of cows and the word "colostrum" - more baby stuff.

Then I found another English word: Yak Essence. But who wants to be big and hairy? And which part of the yak ... I went further and finally found something familiar - a bottle with a picture of a kangaroo. It must be something Australian! And English words too: Essence of Kangaroo.

I still dunno, really.

The Pig Knows

While we are into essences. Have you ever eaten a pig's nose?

I thought about it.

Though, I must admit, not for very long. At least these noses are vacuum packed ... do you know what they smell like out in the open freshly cooked?

When we are at work in the city during the day we often duck down an alley as the quickest way to a Starbucks during our break, and as usual in these alleys there are a great many food vendors along the way keeping out of the way of the police. For the last few weeks there has been one particular stall that we hurry past because the aroma and the sights are ugly. It sells all the yucky parts, the inside bits, and it always has at least one pig face ready cooked for a hungry customer. And its all sitting there out in the open catching whatever the atmosphere chucks up at it.

We were in the supermarket this morning, and it was packed - being the summer hols and all. The freezer was full to over-flowing with frozen chicken bits, and people were (as usual) pawing their way through it - no gloves, no bags, no tongs ... just reach in and grab. It did overflow, some unprotected chicken pieces clattered onto the floor. Remarkably (because usually anything on the floor is readily discarded) the thoughtful patron bent down and retrieved the pieces and returned them safely to the freezer.

That Rascally Panda

2006-07-05T01:47:00.000-07:00

And caring for animals the Chinese way

Yesterday we thought we should visit the pandas before we leave Wuxi. After all, maybe they don't have pandas in Turkey ...

It was a normal summer day - miserable hot, insufferably humid. We got up early in the morning because all the information we could gather said it was best to visit in the morning. So we snagged a taxi in the morning rush-hour, and stepped out of its icy air-conditioned interior into the hot soupy air outside XiHui public park. There was Chinese music playing, and a huge crowd of older people dancing slowly around in a big circular area outside the park. We stepped up and paid our 45yuan each, and went into the park. Here were more groups of people exercising together (or pretending to be statues) - surely they didn't pay that much money each just so that they could do this inside the park instead of outside.

It was apparently "national bad taste" day - no, I jest, its like this every day - because most people were in singlets and boxers, or pajamas, with stockingette anklets and slippers on their feet. But let's cut to the chase and get into the zoo!

Some people were in the zoo gateway arguing about the price of their tickets or something - I don't know, establishing a relationship with the gatekeeper maybe? It seems to be another necessary part of Chinese culture.

And then there were those making the best of the opportunity to make some money.

And there was The Panda Enclosure, with absolutely nobody standing anywhere near it.

And there was Mr Panda himself, flopping around and disconsolately chewing on his bit of bamboo. He was obviously hot and thirsty, but there was no water evident in his enclosure. And the door was closed to prevent him returning to his inside room.

Of course he's not the only panda the zoo has (on loan), but you have to admit that the other ones look more like foxes than pandas, even though they are called (red) pandas.

So we hung around and watched the panda for a bit - a little bit of a breeze started to blow, so it was a good place to be. Very soon people noticed that the foreigners were looking at something and came over to stand next to us, point and laugh at the panda, and talk loudly about us.

The breeze did not seem to be reaching the panda, he was panting, and he could also hear/smell someone on the other side of that door behind him. He kept getting up and putting his head through the hole in the door, making sad little chittering noises. A woman appeared at the hole, laughing and teasing him a bit, and gave him a piece of watermelon to chew on. But he dropped it, and couldn't find it again.

He sat on his big hairy butt, looked across at us, and gave a big sigh. A whole year in this zoo, poor boy.

While we were there and the breeze was helping things along, we decided to wander around the rest of the zoo. But its not a good place for animal-lovers to visit.

The monkeys are always amusing. They had rocks and a climbing frame, and a big space to run around in, and some greens to eat. There were some cute babies, and some very sick looking monkeys among them, and - as in many of the enclosures - cats helping themselves to the animals food.

Everywhere was old, grotty, poorly looked after. There were broken things not mended, sick animals not taken care of, and the zoo is built in the old style - concrete and bars.

We came to the bear pit, right up near the edge of the zoo - can you imagine living in these houses right next to the bears and listening to them at night?

As soon as we arrived, the normal crowd gathered. Now what do you think these black bears are so interested in? (Obviously they have lost interest in the drink bottle someone threw to them.)

The little boy! Throw down the little boy ...!

It would be so hot down in that concrete pit, with only a puddle of stagnant water, no shade, and the doors closed to stop them going inside.

Enough zoo. Let's go home and play with my hamster.

Bedraggled

2006-07-01T01:48:00.000-07:00

I'm wet. Well, damp. Kind of 'tacky' really.

Some of it's sweat, and some of it's rain - along with all the chemicals that probably come down in the rain in the place like this.

I hate this weather.

Sometimes our thermometer on the kitchen window drops all the way down to around 30 - at night, and in the first few minutes after a rain shower. Like now.

But it doesn't really give you much idea of how it feels.

Its so hot - it's like breathing hot cotton wool - and any clothing that isn't natural cotton, loosely woven if possible, may as well be a plastic bag.

So here is my going out gear - sandals, and a brolley. Not a good combination really. Sandals to keep my feet cool, brolley to keep me dry (on top of my head, at least).

Slip-on sandals can be hazardous at the best of times, but as soon as there is water between my foot and the sandal I am in real trouble. (I can not wear those stocking-type anklets a lot of the women wear, and I'm sure they only make this situation worse.) And while an umbrella can be a useful weapon for maneuvering through a crowd, when you are trying to cross a busy, splashy road and the wind is getting under it pulling in all directions and trying to turn it inside-out, it tends to block my view of the traffic and distract me from the task of avoiding being hit.

It's m' burthday

Well, it was my birthday, on that very very hot Tuesday. It has become traditional (well, it's happened a whole twice) for birthday people to be feted with a cream cake at our office. But it was my day off, I didn't want to go in to work just to have a bite of cake. And, as I said, it was soooo hot. So, new tradition - some purty flowers!

You might notice that there are some with stamens loaded with orange pollen, and some without. That's because we noticed when we were given some of these sweetly smelling blooms as a house-warming when we first arrived here, that if you let the pollen get away it leaves greasy yellow stains on everything, and ruins clothes - I had to bleach Peter's shirt after that. So the one still with pollen has only just opened and hasn't been doctored yet ...

Hot Pot

And then some of the chaps from work went out for 'HotPot' to celebrate. It was a nice time.

New Threads

But the best bit was going down the road to the tiny little shop that sells cotton materials, and buying some cloth to make myself some new threads.

Yeah - I made that one at the back and I'm making the other.

And today (Saturday) I went to work in my new check shirt, feeling like I was just the ant's pants (or the bees knees, or something).

But the time I puddled my way home, I was nevertheless quite bedraggled.

Kindy Graduation

2006-06-24T01:33:00.000-07:00

Oh, I feel old. In my day you didn't "graduate" until you were at least leaving high school. We certainly didn't "graduate" from kindergarten - um, I don't think I even went to kindergarten.

But today I got to go and be a judge for the English competition at the kindy graduation. It was kinda fun.

Every time I arrived at kindy to teach I saw the tiny tots practising their moves for this show. They have such short little arms and legs, but they can really wiggle those little hips of theirs!

Of course, the little Apples were just the cutest, they sang and the kids in the back row shook their little maraccas.

And then there was a class play about Miss Mouse whose parents wanted her to get married, and she wanted to marry the strongest man - she tried the sun, but the cloud was stronger, and the wind was stronger than the cloud, and the wall (a cute, sturdy boy!) was stronger than the wind, and it turned out that the boy next door was stronger than the wall ...

Then some amazing little kids did nursery rhymes, told stories, and sang songs, and I was one of the five judges. Here is one of the story-tellers - somebodies' mothers stayed up many late nights making costumes...

Two little girls came out to perform the "ABC Song" - I had seen them practising this at the kindy and they were pretty good. But one of them suffered from costume failure - her tinsel head-dress came off half way through the act. She picked it up and stood there holding it with her lip stuck out, refusing to do any more. She and her partner were not the winners.

And then they all got back into their little tartan school uniforms to do some songs and poems and to graduate.

It was hard to be a judge, because - despite the microphones the children were using - there was so much noise from the peanut gallery at the back of the hall we could hardly hear the kids who were performing. That was a bit sad.

I hope the rest of their education goes well for them, I've done my bit.

The Last of the Little Emperors

2006-06-23T01:33:00.000-07:00

A school principal told me in my early days of teaching that I would burn out in five years ... After fifteen years of exuberant teaching I was well past burnt out - crispy. So a sight like this could be enough to seriously mess with what's left of my mind.

They are four years old, and kind of cute, definitely clever, and they love "Lucy Laoshi", their visiting foreign teacher.

These lucky kids attend the "Duke English and Art Kindergarten" which certainly is a cut above any other Chinese schools I've seen. Talk about a "print rich environment" to bombard the little sweeties with important learning from every possible angle.

If that was your classroom door, would you be afraid to enter? And for the little tikes who just need to be excused, there is a sign (on the back of the piano) to make sure they ask right.

They have books and toys and learning aids, and tiny tables and chairs to sit on. And upstairs there is a place to sleep.

Duke Kindy is a delightful and amazing place, and the kids are the cutest. But yesterday was my last lesson there. (Except for the English competition on Saturday which I am going to help judge ...)

Good bye kiddies ...

We are going to Turkey.

Are you even listening? We have been offered a job in

Istanbul!

Love Wuxi. Looking forward to Turkey.

Gas Day and Mrs Nosey is back

2006-06-11T01:34:00.000-07:00

Do you remember reel-to-reel tape recorders?

And did you ever manage to play a tape backwards?

There are days (here in China) when I am convinced that Chinese is really English played backwards. Maybe its just the strange sound of the local Wuxi-nese dialect. Or maybe its because Chinese has so many "ch-" words and English has a lot of words that end in "-ch", and that combined with the tones that sound unnatural to the English ear gives it that weird backwards feeling ...

In any case, just as the blind become good at hearing, smelling and feeling, so those of us who suddenly find ourselves deaf, dumb and illiterate have to develop unusually keen skills of being observant.

I noticed that we needed more shampoo ... so when I was in the shop I picked up a new bottle:

Now to the untrained eye (mine, obviously) it looks like a perfectly normal bottle of shampoo from a familiar brand. But I had forgotten ... shampoo has four characters and then three

whereas conditioner has four characters and then five. Who says I can't read? (Shampoo on the left ...)

The point is, for the last couple of weeks there have been signs and stickers and all sorts of stuff telling us that something was going to happen. We always pay attention to those bright pink stickers and signs, and if we find one with our apartment number on it then we take it and scan it and email it to our contact person in the office. There were no apartment numbers on any of these notices, but they just looked important.

There was a lady who knocked on our door one evening and gave us a very official-looking manilla envelope with a window in it and a whole lot of papers inside - she pointed to the gas stove, something to do with the gas, and we phoned our liaison person and she spoke to her ... then we took the mysterious envelope to the office and the landlady came in and collected it.

We also noticed that there are suddenly impromptu cook-top shops all over our local neighbourhood. On every corner, every spare bit of pavement, and even in our apartment complex, people have laid out a display of stove-tops, and people are crowding around and buying them. There was even a man with an old grotty-looking one on the back of his bike riding around calling something out - either he lost his dog or he was selling the stove ...

On Friday our contact person told us the time had come. On Saturday "they" would come and change our gas over to Natural Gas, and (so as not to miss the man arriving) the landlord would be in our apartment from '6 or 7am' to wait for him. Yeah, right! They just want to have a third go at catching me in the shower!

I couldn't help it, I was up at 5am on Saturday. It had been daylight for an hour already, and the noise had started - doors banging, people shouting, machinery noise, setting up the cook-top shop just next to our building etc. It was about 7 when 'the man' arrived - but no landlord yet. The man read our gas meter, which is in a most extraordinary place.

Its right around behind that little cupboard - the poor little man had to get a kitchen chair, and climb right up on the kitchen bench to get back there and see it - it took several goes before he would believe me that was where to find it.

He read the meter, handed us one of those tiny tissue-thin bits of paper that serve as receipts in China, and stuck a whacking great sticker (with Chinese words on it) across our stove.

The landlord's son arrived - he knows a little English, and when we told him the man had been already that put the wind up him and he raced off to sort things out.

After that the coming and going started - workmen, landlord, landlord's son ... and Mrs Nosey.

Not being madly interested in all the carry-on, I had settled in front of the computer to do some work, and suddenly realised there was someone looking over my shoulder. Just then Peter came into our office too.

"What's Mrs Nosey doing here?" I asked.

"Workmen left the door open, and she just sidled in! She's amazingly good at sidling!" he replied.

I looked at Mrs Nosey from next door. Her mouth was hanging open and her face was all screwed up with the effort of trying to make some sense of what was on the screen.

What on earth was going on in her mind ???

I can't work it out. Is this considered rude in China, or not? People here are ultra-paranoid about being robbed. Most people live in their own little jail cells with barred windows and doors no matter what floor they are on. So - do they think its okay to just wander into someone else's place? Or is it just that we are foreign so it doesn't matter?

I asked a student about it in English Corner. He told me that when he moved into a new apartment someone had just walked in one day ... he seemed pretty indignant about it too.

Weird Wednesday

2006-06-08T01:36:00.000-07:00

I'd like to think I would be able to just get used to being stared at.

At least no one pulls my hair and tweaks my skin like African kids used to.

But mostly its just a bland inscrutable stare, and I've been practising my own blank look in return.

For those brave, clever individuals who feel the need to show off the fact that they have noticed the presence of a foreigner (like we are hard to see in the crowd), and who have "learnt English" in school to the extent that they announce their discovery with a "Hellooow" over their shoulder, I try to always respond with a cheery "Hellooo!" back again. I know I probably shouldn't 'encourage' them, but at least I can walk away feeling reasonably good about myself and not grouchy.

So, yesterday (Wednesday), standing at the bus stop ...

Everyone who passed me - walking or bike or scooter - looked at me and smiled!

It was just so weird. I checked my clothing, over and over - everything was done up, no spills, stains or tears ... I tried to tame my hair - rather a wild half-grown-out perm at present. Still, they kept coming past smiling at me.

Another young chap went past, a smile on his face, and I could swear as he went on his way I could see his shoulders trembling with laughter.

I checked my clothes again, patted my hair, rubbed my face to make sure I wasn't smiling, then took my back-pack off and held it in front of me just in case there was something that needed hiding still.

If you are reading this and waiting for the punch line - there isn't one. I still have no idea.

Teaching Gibberish

2006-06-05T01:37:00.000-07:00

I remember one of my very early attempts at babysitting. I didn't know much about kids or how to talk to them, and I was minding a toddler who kept falling over - and every time he did I would say, somewhat inanely, "Oops a daisy!" It was no big deal, except that by the end of the session the child had learnt his own version of the expression, much to his parents' puzzlement when he continued to repeat it over the next few days.

After that I realised that it could be quite amusing to teach strange and wonderful sayings to small children for them to repeat back to their unsuspecting parents ...

But what about when my students are already adults. Would it be too naughty - ?

We were doing some work on idioms today, always a difficult topic. My students learnt, amongst other things, the expression "deep pockets" as in: "Ask Tom for the money, he has deep pockets." So they understood that the expression meant "wealthy, able to afford it."

But then they were talking about a boy at university, studying hard to get a good job so that in the end he would have deep pockets ...

no, no. no

Not only do I not feel inclined to go back over it all again to correct it, but I am suddenly tempted to teach them lots of other fun stuff.

Oh Wise Ones

2006-06-04T01:38:00.000-07:00

You know how much I value your opinions and your knowledge of this great country and its culture ...

So this evening about 9pm we had another one of those mysterious visitations at our door. More gifts:

Someone we didn't know, they had a whole lot of little red bags and seemed to be giving one to each apartment.

So is this still to do with Dragon Boat day?

Or is this something to do with the gongs and Buddhist ceremony I think I can hear somewhere in the building?

Or is it just that we are such nice people and they really really like us?

Whichever - my hamster will be pleased about the nuts, and the apple core, and even the seed of the other fruity thing. Oh, yes, and I'll let her chew through the cardboard box too.

Oh yes, I forgot. There was also a red sausage (which got missed in the photo), included doubtless for its colour rather than its shape or taste.

There's the rub

2006-06-03T01:39:00.000-07:00

An old woman on the bus today wouldn't stop rubbing me. And its not as if I was wearing my soft old "scrubbed denim" jeans that (I thought) made the old men want to rub my thighs.

I was just crossing the road when I saw the bus approaching - it would be nice not to have to wait around in the oppressive heat for a bus this morning. But, of course, ten o'clock on a Saturday morning is a busy time, and the bus that lurched to a halt in front of me was packed to the doors. Even though it was a 'K' bus (air-conditioned, supposedly) the warm breath of the multitude aboard nearly forced me back down the steep stairs as I pressed my plastic IC card against the reader and reached for a handhold. The driver revved the engine and jerked the bus into motion once more over the uneven surface of Jiang Kang Lu. I tried to smile back at the staring faces, though I hardly know why I bother.

A lady and her small daughter sharing one of the high inward-facing seats near the front slid down off their perch, preparing to exit by the front door at the next stop, and an elderly woman and a middle-aged one indicated the spare seat between them to me. As smoothly and gracefully as I could muster on the bouncing bus (ie, not very) I dragged myself over, slid my backpack onto my lap, and clambered up onto the seat.

The old woman on my left was obviously extremely pleased to see ... touch ... rub me. She chattered happily - I didn't understand a word - all the time rubbing her gnarled old hands up and down my arm and side. She paid no attention to my repeated "ting bu dong" -ing. ("I don't understand", for those of you in places where you know what people are saying to you ...). I'm not even entirely sure she was speaking Mandarin, a lot of local people like to carry on in their own "Wuxi Hua" local dialect.

I gently patted her on the leg, and told her I am from "Ao da li ya" (Oz), and the woman on my right was concerned that maybe the old woman or the rest of the bus hadn't heard it, so she announced in a loud coarse voice that I was from Oz. They then proceeded to loudly discuss me. I set my face in a bland smile and stared out the window ... The old woman got off at the next stop. Maybe that was what she was trying to tell me.

Breaking all the rules

Last week I was on a bus ...

The driver was crazier and angrier than any I've seen for a while. Usually I am amazed at the lack of road rage, at what these drivers just put up with from other motorists - overseas he would at least be yelling and using finger gestures. But this driver had really had enough, and he started yelling at some idiot woman in a little green car who was stuck at an angle between two lanes, fiddling with her mobile phone. It was so dramatic and unusual, and he looked a little embarrassed after, I almost burst out laughing.

The bus stopped at the next stop, the one before mine, and a frail-looking elderly lady staggered on, aided by her middle-aged son. Seeing there were no other empty seats, and knowing I was about to get off, I stood up and went to the back door, indicating to the old lady she could have my seat. Well! I must have put a wrinkle in the space-time continuum and upset the laws of nature, because there was such a fuss. The driver actually got up out of his seat and came back and started shifting people around. He wanted the old lady in a seat occupied by a younger person - I guess I was the wrong person to give her my seat - and the son to be seated very close to her. Meanwhile a loud discussion broke out among the people toward the back of the bus, who (as far as I could tell) were trying to explain that I really only got up because I wanted to get off the bus ... OK Time to use that bland facial expression again.

Look How Far I've Come

2006-05-26T01:19:00.000-07:00

With our new recently-purchased scanner, Peter has been able to go through our old slides and negatives and transfer them into digital format - a great little activity for those long China evenings when there is nothing but Chinese movies on the TV, and the DVD player has quit working ...

So here's a little gem from 1971 when I spent some time in Papua New Guinea (that's just north of Australia) trying to discover whether I was suited to cross-cultural living ...

I remember this day. I was proudly wearing my new "scrubbed denim" jeans (which had a lovely soft-feeling surface), despite being told that such style of dress was unacceptable in this culture. When this picture was taken, I felt like I was the only one who was properly dressed. But when I stood up again after the picture, some of the older men kept coming up and rubbing their hands up and down on my thighs. I felt pretty uneasy about this, but presumed that (like me) they appreciated the texture of the material. It was a little later that I understood that showing the shape of my thighs (even inside jeans) was as good as being undressed, and this was why the old guys had become so excitable ...

And its interesting to compare it with this recent photo taken with the local (Chinese) women. I am older and wiser now, maybe... !

Show Time

2006-05-25T01:19:00.000-07:00

Today is Thursday, but I am happy and relaxed - and I even had a deep dream-free sleep last night - because I don't have to teach the kindy kids today!

I did it on Monday instead.

They were having a teachers' conference. Teachers from seven other kindies had come to see how it was done. I knew I should say, "NO! No way!" when I was asked to do a short demo lesson - "only 10 minutes" - but I am kind-hearted, and Ruby (the principal) pleaded with me, said it was very important to her, and I like Ruby. But inside I still knew it was a bad idea ...

I slept fitfully the night before, with dreams full of short people and finger puppets and sock snakes ...

Against my better judgment I took along my guitar as well. I had foolishly mentioned to Ruby that I have a guitar, and she had been keen for me to use it.

It was an exceptionally humid morning - not terribly hot, but very sweaty feeling, and threatening to rain. I set off in the taxi clutching my bag of goodies and my guitar, and with my stomach knotting and unknotting itself. The taxi ride was, as always, far too short, and I arrived far sooner than I wanted to be there.

The staff all looked exceptionally smart in their brand-new pale pink t-shirts - I felt clammy and crumpled before I even started. There was a camera crew hanging around near the front door - I smiled bleakly and sidled past them, stepping lightly over the huge pictorial world map on the floor, and then up the wooden stair-case with a different word and picture on the front of each step. I noticed Ruby had corrected the spelling error on one of the posters after I pointed it out to her - everything was perfect. Sure enough, the camera men were following me, and I tried not to puff too hard as I reached the top of the fourth flight of stairs.

I knew that I was to "warm up" in the first classroom, and then they would call me into the other class just before the demo. So I headed into the first classroom. All the little sweetie-pies were still sitting at their little grey tables finishing breakfast. They were wearing their tartan uniforms and were suffering in the humidity about as much as I was. The little girls kept grabbing at the crotch of their hot white tights and trying to hoist them up in very un-lady-like fashion. I waited while they finished up, each throwing their little metal mug into a big blue bucket and then pulling their chair into the circle. The teachers handed me a tiny grey chair so I could sit and wait. I noticed that for some reason the children were on coloured plastic stools instead of their usual chairs.

I went through all the usual songs and rhymes with the class - the kids had a lot of fun, and I was beginning to relax and enjoy myself. They loved singing "Alison's camel has 10 humps", and I taught them "She'll be coming round the mountain" with my guitar. Then I let some of them sit next to me and have a try at playing the guitar - when I put the guitar on their knees their eyes were barely visible over the top - which they all found highly amusing. Several times the children in the circle forgot that they were sitting on stools instead of chairs and suddenly disappeared over backwards - I found it amusing, but they didn't seem to think so ...

Then Ruby appeared and said, "Its nearly time, come and have a rest ..." and I went and stood, sweating, in the hallway for a while.

Then I headed into the classroom . The kids were just getting seated on their little chairs. I settled on my tiny chair at the front, and, as instructed, started with "5 little ducks" so that the lesson would be underway and the kids relaxed when "they" came in to watch.

Well, oddly enough, the kids DID noticed the fifty or so people - and cameras - that poured into the classroom a few seconds later. And they were completely spooked. I ended up doing a solo with the ducks, dragging the five finger-puppet-wearing participants back and forth across the front of the room with the help of the nervous Chinese teachers. I decided that I would move on to the camel song because I was confident that at least the kids would join in properly.

And I was right, I had their attention focused back on me, despite the huge TV camera being held at knee-height (their face level) and moved along the row, inches from their pudgy cheeks. But the song is long, by the time we had gone from "10 humps" down to "no humps ... so Alison has a horse of course!" I was sweating and exhausted in the worst possible way ... and my audience was beginning to look bored.

Quickly settling the kids, I grabbed the guitar and launched into "Yay-yay-yippee-yippee-yay ..." I could feel that my hoarse, tired voice was out of tune, and my guitar had gone slightly out of tune since the first class. After the first couple of messed-up sounding verses I was oddly distressed to see them all tromping back out - I wanted to call them back, "no, don't go, I haven't finished, I can do better ...!" But sanity prevailed and I let them go.

When I got outside again it was raining and there was a cool breeze blowing - where was that breeze half an hour ago?

Now it will be another week before I have to come up with some more new ideas to entertain and hopefully teach the little darlings.

Socking it to them

2006-05-19T01:20:00.000-07:00

You know when you travel on Singapore Airlines, especially if you travel on one of their delightful night flights, they remind you that you should not take your shoes off during the flight ... your feet swell, and then you can't get your shoes back on, so I'm told. And then they come around and give you a little plastic bag containing an "Amenity Kit". Inside the kit there is a little toothbrush and a tiny tube of toothpaste - great idea - and a pair of socks.

The socks even have a special non-slip section - so you can slip them on and pad around in them - ? Without taking your shoes off - ?

Obviously I have been missing something here. There is some other purpose for these socks. Maybe they are not socks at all. We have been on a few Singapore flights now, so I have quite a collection of them.

Time to teach the Little Emperors a lesson

So when yet another kindy lesson swung around, and I was searching for a new and interesting way to keep them entertained and maybe even teach them a few words of English along the way ...

How about some sock puppets? A few well-placed buttons, and voila!

One friendly little snock sake - er, sake snock, Sooky the sock snake ... or some such.

And did the kiddies love it? They squealed with delight, and some of them even held up a pudgy finger for the snake to 'bite' or maybe it was more of a suck. Sooky tried to give some of them a kiss on their peachy little cheeks, and they weren't too sure about that.

But then, when they discovered that I had a whole lot of Sookies in my bag, and I let a few of them try putting their short little arms inside and terrorise their classmates with them, it was too good to be true.

Sssssso. Did they learn any words? Aw, what does it matter. They had fun, ay.

Common Sense

2006-05-15T01:22:00.000-07:00

Part of the fun of living in a culture that is totally different from our own is the difference. Every day we see things that make us shake our heads in disbelief - like every time we venture onto a roadway - and shrug our shoulders in resignation - like when we try to 'join a queue', in this place where a large proportion of the population "just don't get it" (either by choice or inexperience).

But every now and then we are pleasantly surprised by a little something, and we wonder "now why on earth don't we do that back home?"

We chose a rainy day to go shopping last week - they were all rainy - and I carefully slipped into dark coloured clothing rather than the white jeans I was wearing. We headed off armed with our umbrellas - useful for protection in a number of ways. It was pretty splashy out there, and the umbrellas only really keep the water off the very top of our heads. On the bus we were marveling at the wetness underfoot, the floor was positively sloshing from the drips of many feet and umbrellas.

But as we entered the supermarket, the water on the floor was noticeably absent. And not just because of the generous and effective doormat by the entrance. Just inside the door stood a little lady with a shopping trolley full of plastic bags - who knows what her motivation was, maybe she was an exceptionally clever person whose job normally would have been to mop the floors - opening the plastic bags one by one and holding them out to customers as they entered to pop their umbrella and/or wet raincoat into. She was dexterous and efficient, causing no hold-up whatsoever, and the floor was dry and clean.

Oh, here's Wuxi city on a dry day ...

Messing About in Boats

2006-05-14T01:23:00.000-07:00

In my first ever English class in China I let each of the students ask me a question (in their very best English), and one of the things they all wanted to know was: What is the best thing about China? What do I like about China - why I came, what I came to see and experience. I told them the people are surely the most interesting thing about this massive country. They wouldn't believe me, acted as if I was lying, kept asking me again and again. I'm still not sure what the "right" answer was, maybe "the temples"??

So, in our trip up the Yangtse River - which we have found out really means "alligator" river, while the Chinese actually call it "Chang Jiang" - 'because it is so long' ... we really wanted to see the people who live in/on/around/next to/by the river.

We were a little surprised that we saw no one swimming in the river, not a single naked urchin - although one of the other passengers said they saw a couple of small boys. Would that be because of the alligators - of which we saw not a one.

We saw lots and lots of bridges, magnificent and amazing structures thrown across all sorts of divides. This one spans the river at Yichang, where we stopped to look at the temple.

This magnificent red structure is one of the many we cruised under.

This one is ready for the river when it rises. And obviously the owner of the piece of land next to the bridge decided to raise the land rather than lose it.

When you look along the gullies and through the bridges, there are more bridges.

Some just span valleys that are too steep to traverse otherwise.

I felt quite excited when I saw this one, because I have always wondered how on earth they build the bridges - a bit like the spider that used to spin its web right across our back yard.

But of course all of the bridge builders are simply making it possible to avoid the river and the alligators. We did see some people living on the river itself.

The harbours of the cities are full of all sorts of little boats zooming around. And when the big cruise ships loaded with wealthy tourists dock, the little people race to line the pathway and the pontoons with goods to sell. Some of them have learnt the phrase "maybe later" and probably have no idea what it means because they call it out to the tourists as they hurry past to board their tour bus.

There are a lot of different types of local ferries, picking up people from the water's edge.

There are speedy ways to travel, like the frequent hydrofoils.

The cruise ships come in many varied sizes and shapes - we even saw one that was like a huge dragon - and they seem to huddle together for protection.

In the smaller gorges we saw a lot of these little high-speed boats, they look like they might be jet boats.

And then there are the family sized boats, pulling in their fishing nets.

The river was remarkably clean, considering the amount of use it gets. And, of course, its kept clean the way cities and streets are - people picking up rubbish.

Its a magnificent river, and the three gorges project is a phenomenal undertaking. Of course most Chinese people have never been to see it, could never afford a cruise like we went on.

Gorgeous Gorges

2006-05-08T01:26:00.000-07:00

I had been looking forward to some clean mountain air to fill my lungs with ... but of course the river is heavily used for transport and so is full of diesel-fume-belching vehicles. Still, smog causes beautiful sunrises!

Most of the time, away from the main cities, the fumes weren't so bad - it was just plain misty, as you would expect with mountains and rivers.

The mountains are steep and rugged, even though a large part of them is now hidden beneath the water. (At this place there was a cablecar, you can just see the cars above the wisps of mist.)

Often it was hard to see the tops of the surrounding mountains through the clouds and mist.

All along the river the houses were built up away from the water, everyone is getting ready for the final stages of the river flooding when the dam is finished in 2009.

There are frequent signs, telling where the water will rise to next, in October (the lower sign) and where the final level should be. The lower levels read 156.3 metres (above the original water level) and the upper ones are 175 metres.

It was fun to look at the houses and judge which ones - still inhabited and with delightful gardens down to the water's edge - were in fact doomed and the owners were just trying to use up the last moments with one last crop.

We saw whole new cities perched on the tops of mountains - the original city lies beneath the water, a rather eerie thought that makes us think of the movie "Waterworld".

This city is preparing for the next rise, this open area is where they have removed the buildings in preparation.

Doomed Bridge

We had to get off our large cruiser for an excursion through the "lesser gorges". As we rode a ferry boat under this magnificent bridge we were told it was built in 1988 but was destined to be demolished very soon - as soon as its replacement higher up was finished - because the final water level would be only ten metres below the bridge (preventing ships from passing under).

Monkeys Sink Ferry

The ferry was fully loaded, and the loud speakers were blaring information about the gorge we were passing through. A bilingual guide was walking around on the deck talking to each English-speaker in turn and explaining what was coming up. We were all staring hard at the river banks looking for the promised monkeys.

Suddenly someone saw one. A shout went up, and to my amazement everyone rushed to that side of the boat. I was imagining the headlines in the papers ... but, really, the ferry didn't seem to list at all.

All the same, when I later caught sight of these monkeys I quietly pointed them out to Peter, but no one else.

River Raft Rides

We had been told (but were unable to confirm it on our Chinese language itinerary) that we would be taking raft rides. As we reached the end of "Misty Gorge" and the river was narrower we were bundled into these smaller boats - it was the closest we came to a 'raft'.

They called this one "Emerald Gorge", and the water certainly was an amazing colour.

The waterway was quite narrow, and echoed the strange sounds of the "ethnic singers" that were around every bend with their megaphones.

Here the air was much cleaner, the water crystal clear, and the scenery glorious.

All-in-all it made for a delightfully relaxing day out.

Chongqing

2006-05-08T01:25:00.000-07:00

Chongqing is the end of the line for the cruise ships - or the beginning if you choose one of the quicker cruises coming down-river.

It is "one of the three furnaces on the Yangtse River", being surrounded on three sides by mountains that prevent breezes. So its hot and humid. They will tell you that the girls have exceptionally beautiful skin, because of the humidity, and they are all very slim from endlessly climbing up and down hills. Likewise the men are supposed to be strong, healthy and naturally handsome ...

Going ashore involves crossing a long series of pontoons and gang-planks - at least until the river level rises. The air is misty, and there are warning signs about slippery roads and paths because of the fog and rain.

The roads are narrower than in other Chinese cities, because there are no bike lanes ... because there are no bikes (well, actually, we did see ONE) and no trikes and very few motorbikes. Besides being narrow, the roads were windy and hilly, and quite tricky to negotiate.

The taxis are all bright yellow, being manufactured right here in Chongqing. In fact, the vehicle industry is very strong here, and we passed a great many ships loaded with cars, vans and trucks on their way down the river.

Our tour guide told us that until 1980 this (27 metre tall) monument in the city centre was the tallest building around, because nothing was allowed to be taller then it.

Now it is dwarfed by skyscrapers. She also told us that because the tall apartment buildings are built on the hillsides, many of them get away with having no elevator even though they are about ten stories high (the law says anything over seven stories must have an elevator) by having a walkway joining the building to the roadway on the hillside at about the fifth floor which then counts as the first floor.

It was still the May holidays when we were there, so the city was extremely crowded.

We found a quiet shady spot to wait for our bus. These men were apparently carpenters sitting around waiting for work. While we were there a lady came by and quite a few of them picked up their saws and went with her.

These two likely looking lads were part of the local army of carriers who make up for the lack of trikes and motor-trikes that are used for transport in other flatter cities.

The loads they can transport on their bamboo sticks are quite incredible.

And when the load is just too heavy they can share it with a friend.

We saw many other things being transported on peoples' backs as well. This man had a TV to move.

There are several old prisons in the hills around Chongqing where the revolutionary martyrs spent their last days during the civil war. They are very dark, sad places with lists of names and old photos.

And of course the torture chamber still with the implements and the furniture that were used.

Yichang

2006-05-07T01:28:00.000-07:00

It was hot and humid in Yichang, and the tour group had not really got to know each other yet, and the last thing we wanted was to stop and see a temple ...

We went for a bit of a walk along this pathway cut into the river cliff - we saw pathways like this all along the river in the next few days.

Then we were all glad of a chance to wash our faces and hands in some fresh spring water that we drew from a little well with a metal bucket, and then we rested and watched a bit of a shadow puppet play.

Dam it all

We went to see the dam - still being built, not due to be finished until 2009. We were expecting to be very impressed. We had even been told we would see a lot of military personnel there (and even a missile) protecting it.

But what with the murk, and the crowds (it was May holiday Tuesday), it was a bit of a damp squib. Even our guide was quite overwhelmed by the crowds and didn't attempt to show us much or explain anything - we didn't even try to go in the museum place - she just gave us a few minutes free time and then we wandered through the maze of buses in the parking lot until we found ours.

I don't have any idea what was the significance of these tall fellows. They were blowing around crazily in the wind. There was also a big blow-up chap a bit like "Bob, the Builder" who was walking around mingling with the crowd but we didn't get near him.

Lock up

To get from one side of the dam to the other the ships (and there are hundreds of them) go through a "two-way five-step lock". We boarded the ship on the lower side, and so we had the pleasure of this three-hour process.

Here we are just entering the first of the five locks. You can see the water level on the outside (left) and then how high the water will be once it rises on the other side of the gates.

Entering the first lock was the slowest part. Eight boats/ships crammed in together.

And then the huge gates slowing closed.

The ships each tied up to the bollocks in slots in the sides of the lock. As soon as the water started to rise (quite quickly) the place was filled with an eerie screeching sound of these bollocks sliding up in the slots.

Three hours and four more locks later, and more than a hundred metres higher, the ships come pouring out of the lock.

Yep, imagine what the fumes were like inside the locks!

May Holidays

2006-05-06T01:29:00.000-07:00

Awesome!

If you are "doing the China thing", and you haven't done the "Three Gorges thing" - because maybe you are not sure if its worth it - then

DO IT!

Its well worth seeing.

The mountains are spectacular, the gorges are awesome, the river is relaxing, and the whole dam thing is mind boggling. Its a place where the Chinese are very proud of themselves, and with good reason.

We took a Chinese 4-Star Cruise. We saw other tourists on the 5-Star foreign cruises ... and sometimes felt a little jealous (our cruise was booked on our behalf and we probably would have gone for one of those if we had been making the choice) ... but really when you come to see China it makes sense to be surrounded by Chinese people rather than a bunch of overbearing "foreigners" - ay?

We had wondered whether we would be able to understand the tour guides - sometimes its better (more relaxing!) if you can't! - but at every place we were provided with a bilingual guide. Here (with the microphone) is "Dexter" who was the "River Guide" on board the ship, and when we went on shore excursions we had a "Local Guide" who had some English.

And everywhere we turned there were the Chinglish signs explaining things and keeping us safe.

(that says: Climbing the Cloud lader can exercise your body but Please care security)

We weren't really sure what boat we would be on - we had a printed itinerary but it was in Chinese - we just knew we had to meet our guide at Hongqiao airport and show our letter and we would be taken care of. Except they weren't there, so we just got on the plane and went to Yichang. There we met our guide and our group - mostly Chinese, including a family from Wuxi, and two Japanese women - and we were taken to a restaurant and a small tour of Yichang before heading to our ship.

When we finally arrived at the dock about dusk there were several ships tied up. There was a very exciting looking ship shaped like a huge dragon, and another quite high class ship, but we were told ours was not visible as it was moored on the other side of these. So we were led onto a pontoon and through the lower deck of another ship and then onto ours, so we didn't get to even see the outside of it until the next day.

The following day I was standing at the rail watching a whole lot of foreigners stepping off our ship onto the shore, and wondered why I hadn't noticed them on board before - then I realised they were coming from their ship which was moored next to ours, walking through our lower decks to reach the shore.

The Oriental Emperor is not a very big ship, but comfortable enough. We had a nice little cabin,

with all we needed, including TV (and CCTV 9, just in case we were missing those exciting programs while we were away from 'home'). No fridge, just a flask of hot water twice a day.

And our own ensuite.

There was a nice big bar / ballroom where onboard activities took place.

And the dining room was like a fancy Chinese restaurant with tables for ten or eleven and a 'lazy susan' in the middle of each.

These are our new friends from Wuxi. Its funny, no one seemed to have names ...

And the food. All Chinese, but good quality. Only about one spicy dish at each meal. Breakfast ... the meal that most causes contention between east and west ... was buffet style and had at least some concessions to the 20 or so foreigners aboard: There was toast, and coffee, and 'orange juice' (well, "Tang" really).

Holiday Expenses

2006-04-28T01:06:00.000-07:00

My life is a holiday. At least I try to keep it that way. We decided when we came to China we would not work too hard, just enough to keep our heads above water. Primary School teachers in Western Australia are not well-paid in terms of how hard they work, nor in comparison to teachers in other states, but with both of us slaving away week by week you'd have thought we could have been "comfortably off". So as we watched ourselves sliding further into debt year by year, we hoped that running away to China would at least put a stop to the endless spending. We would just need to work hard enough to get by.

So 51 years old, and 30 years married, we declared ourselves "semi-retired" and spent a glorious year working 10-days-on then 4-days-off, but only 15 (or less) lessons a week, and travelling around China on those long weekends.

This year we have stepped up the pace a little: we are now each working up to 20 hours a week. We earn a little more money and even save some. But now with only two days off each week, and rarely two consecutive days, and only one day off together (if we're lucky) ... we are missing those long weekends of last year.

May Holidays

Everybody says its best not to travel on the national holidays, everywhere is so crowded and everything is so expensive. But we are doing it anyway.

We are going on a cruise on the Yangtse, to have a look at the Three Gorges Dam. With a tour group. Well, it was arranged by our office liaison person, and being deaf, dumb and illiterate we just have to do a certain amount of trusting. Whatever happens, and however it turns out, it will be an adventure. And it will be a change from teaching the little emperors. (For a whole week I will not have to sing "5 little ducks" or "Open, shut them". I'm not even going to take my finger puppets with me.)

We booked the tickets and we paid the bill, and when the costs were all added up, there was an extra amount on the bill: 400 RMB each for being foreigners. Because they can, of course.

Five Little Ducks

2006-04-21T01:08:00.000-07:00

I was teaching my little emperors again ... and it was the second class of the day.

The kids in the first class were brilliant. I had told the story of "Little Red Riding Hood" to this amazing class of four year olds. One little girl was actually wearing a little red jacket with a red hood, so I chose her to play the main part. I had masks on sticks, and I got kids to come up and act it out, repeating simple sentences - these kids are so good. They loved it when the big bad wolf had to growl, and it was even better when Little Red had to scream. And then 'the worker' in the forest heard her and came running ... I couldn't afford to let him get too violent so he had to say, "Go away, Wolf!" - and they thought that was amusing too.

Then I took a little break in the hallway - I was exhausted after an hour of enthusiastic teaching, and my voice was nearly gone. It sounded like a riot was happening in the class I was headed to next. The 'B' class of four year olds. Last time I took that class I ended up just sitting there staring at them - after teaching them "Open, shut them" (which they found highly amusing) all my other tried and tested ideas had failed on them and I was unable to think of anything else that would "work". And the teachers in this classroom didn't seem to understand what I said, so I couldn't say, "Could you explain to the children that they have to stop laughing and screaming if I am to tell them a story."

I went into the classroom - some of the children were seated ready for me, but there were some boys fighting in the corner, and another little boy was crawling under a bookshelf in the reading corner. I said, "Hello!" as cheerfully as I could muster, and they all laughed, some of them falling off their chairs onto the floor to do so. I sighed and sat down on the tiny wooden chair at the front to wait for the teachers to settle them down. Then I launched into my Red Riding Hood story, with pictures, that had gone down so well in the other room. I couldn't get more than a few words out before the riot started again. I sat and waited, and when things were quieter started again. After several attempts, I thought maybe I'll just shout my way through this ... but my voice just cracked and no one paid any attention. So I sat and thought some more.

I decided to move onto the next part of my lesson. I would try to teach the song

Five Little Ducks

I had some finger puppets in my bag, five little white 'ducks' - well, actually one of them was a bright red parrot, but I figured they might not notice. I slipped the puppets onto the fingers of one hand, held them up and started to sing. To my amazement, things began to quieten down. When the ducks went "over the hill and far away", I put my hand down behind my back, and then while everyone was now watching my other hand being "Mother Duck said, 'Quack! Quack! ...", I flicked one of the puppets off my fingers onto the floor behind my chair. When I brought my hand back out in front with "Only four little ducks came back!" I had everyone's rapt attention. Even the teachers. I realised this may be the first time they had understood me.

One of the teachers said something to the others and came down to the front of the room. She leaned over and peeked behind my chair, and then nodded at the others - clever girl, she had worked out where the other duck went!

I had to repeat the whole song several times - they seemed to enjoy it just as much every time. And then I chose some children to each have a puppet placed carefully on their tiny grubby finger - they seemed incapable of doing it themselves, they expected me to do it for them - and another child who could prove herself capable of saying "Quack!" correctly got to be "Mother Duck". I sang the song and led them around the room and 'far away' where I persuaded one of them to stay (the class teachers soon got the hang of this and came and stood to hold onto the lost ducky) while the others 'came back'. Of course this scenario had to also be repeated several times to allow as many children as possible to have a turn.

I had survived another lesson at the Kindy. Next week its the five year olds. Then its the May holidays. So I don't have to face that class for another three weeks!

Press What?

2006-04-20T01:10:00.000-07:00

Due to timetable restraints, it was the first time in weeks we were to have a "DAY OFF TOGETHER", so we were rather looking forward to going somewhere together for a change.

But then in one of the boxes (9-11am) on the whiteboard timetable appeared this message:

ALL PRESS.

"Ok, I pressed it and nothing happened", Peter wrote below it. And we were left to wonder what it meant.

Over the next few days, with careful questioning we managed to extract the information that what it was referring to was a

Press Conference

We still don't know whether our Chinese boss

hadn't yet planned what would happen, or
had made plans but didn't want to tell anyone, or
had made plans and presumed we are all mind-readers ...

whichever it is, it is certainly the Chinese disease that leaves us foreign experts so frustrated so often.

We were told to wear ties and dress up a bit, and to be there at 9am ... but it was only by chance that one of us decided to confirm that "there" meant "here" (no where else having been mentioned at this stage, the night before as we were leaving work), only to find that it meant "Oh, no! Of course not! In the hotel down the road and round the corner ..." After some more questions we found out the floor number - which was actually the wrong one anyway.

We dutifully showed up, appropriately dressed, on our day off, but the press didn't. It was about an hour later that they dribbled in with cameras and notepads.

Do we have to say anything? "Oh, no, of course not!" ... and then as the camera turns ..."Ok, now they are asking this question, could you answer it on camera please ..."

Well, it seemed to go well enough, despite all the lack of information and misinformation.

Morroco looks nice

2006-04-14T01:11:00.000-07:00

So we were thinking that Morocco might be a place to try next. Some people there must want to learn English and pay us lots of money to teach them.

But information is a bit scarce.

Anyone out there can tell us anything about Morocco?

You know, Casablanca, and all that.

So. What do you know?

Winning at Charades

2006-04-07T01:14:00.000-07:00

Its so much easier if you can go into a shop, see what you want, and pick it up and take it to the checkout to purchase it. But here sometimes the simplest of things are not apparent in the big shops, the ones with checkouts.

I have a sewing machine - because being able to sew up a little something, to make or to fix something, has always been part of me, part of who I am and what I do, and I found it very frustrating when I couldn't. Sure, there are lots of little people out there on street corners and in alleys, eager to do my bidding for very little cost on their little treadley machines. But then I have to explain what it is I want, and sometimes I just want to try this or that.

When I came to do my first little sewing task on my new machine it was very difficult because I had forgotten to buy any dress-makers' pins. That, I soon realised, was because I had not seen any in the shops. You can get needles, though, so I completed the task with needles clumsily holding my seams together.

Elastic. I could really do with some of that, it has so many uses. But I hadn't been able to find any of that either. Oh, for a "Spotlight" store! I looked up the Chinese word for 'elastic', and promptly forgot it, and wandered past the big fabric warehouse place in Wuxi. There are lots of little shops all kind of jammed together, and the ones on the outside have a little glass counter with a few small reels of thread and packets of needles.

There was a friendly looking lady at one of these counters, and very eager to sell me something. Everything I looked vaguely towards she dragged out and laid hopefully on the counter. Peter made "stretchy" motions with his hands, and some fine elastic appeared. I tried "bigger/wider" with my hands and the type I needed also appeared from somewhere deep down behind the counter. So we tried for "pins", but kept coming up with needles. I grabbed a piece of paper and drew a pin. The lady and her companion looked a little startled at first, and a discussion between them ensued. Finally the light-bulb came on and they brought out a packet of pins.

A thousand pins. Do you buy them by the "jin" (half kilo) or by 20's or what? She seemed reluctant to break open the packet, so in the end I bought the lot.

Oh, No!

2006-04-07T01:12:00.000-07:00

We have a few DVDs. Well, quite a few.

They are not all in this picture, of course. We have some at work that we use for work. And we have given a lot away. And those tartan and raindrop folders are bursting full - its not at all obvious how many are in there.

But we need them, really. The boxed sets are some of our favourite series - the stuff you watch while you have dinner, just something short and light-hearted. The rest of them are movies that you watch once and then tuck away for a rainy day, or else 'bin' them if they are no good at all (a lot of them go that way!)

They are cracking down

And now that rainy day seems to be here, we might have to re-watch some of those movies. All of our favourite (and not-so-favourite) dvd shops have been closed.

Feeling Fishy

2006-04-02T01:16:00.000-08:00

"What do you want for lunch? I'm thinking I might go grab some baozi."

"I don't feel like baozi."

Ever since my last upset stomach which was immediately after eating the Wuxi specialty dumplings - xiao long bao - with their lovely sweet juicy meat, same as in the rou bao (meat filled steamed bread-rolls) that Peter is so fond of. I don't know if the dumplings caused the upset, its just that anything that has been tasted coming and going no longer has any appeal ...

"What do you want?"

"I want fish and chips. You know, a piece of battered fish, and you break it open and there's all that succulent white fish inside ... "

Not fish that is in the middle of a lazy-susan and you reach out with your trembling chopsticks to grab a piece and lift it carefully across to your tiny bowl without losing too much on the way ... only to find that you've picked a piece that consists almost entirely of bones.

Off Peter went, and I rummaged around in the cupboard and found a tin of tuna, and made myself some fresh salad with lettuce and tomato and cucumber. He hadn't returned, so I got on with my lunch, and cleaned up the kitchen a bit - still no Peter. I was beginning to wonder if something could have actually happened to him.

Finally he came home and proudly handed me a red plastic bag. "Very fresh!" he commented as I put the bag on the kitchen counter and watched it proceed to jump around - not quite the fish and chips I'd had in mind!

"Its okay, the guy scaled it and removed the stomach." Obviously the fish wasn't too pleased about that! "I'll fillet it for you, and you can have some lovely fish just like back home."

He took it out of the bag, and it must have caught sight of the knife. It leapt around and splattered blood all over the place - it would have gone out the window and landed four floors down if we hadn't quickly closed the window.

Well, yeah, he filleted it, and I fried it - but the bones seemed to still be an inherent part of the flesh. It was very tasty, but hard work to eat. The second fish I decided to steam whole, and it tasted good too. I don't think I've ever had a bonier fish, though.

Day of the Dead

2006-04-02T01:15:00.000-08:00

The day of the dead came early this year - at least here it did. I am told it is supposed to be on April 5th.

I came home from work, and they were busy building this house.

Such a beautiful little house, all made of paper. There was even furniture, which was carefully placed inside, piece by piece. And lots of paper bags and big pink parcels, also placed inside. Then little scraps of paper were scattered in and around the house. A number of piles of paper had already been burnt at spots around the house. They carried on and fussed so - someone would put a parcel down here, and then someone else would pick it up and put it somewhere else, then then another person would come along and pick it up and put it down a few times. And they walked round and round and in and out of the house checking everything and adding more sticky-tape here and there.

Finally it was time - well, it was almost dark. The Buddhist monks came out - there were about eight of them - and loaded their bits and pieces into their expensive-looking car and motorbikes. Then they played their music, fireworks were let off, and the house was lit.

It only took a few minutes to reduce the whole flimsy structure to a pile of ashes. By then the monks were in their vehicles and away, leaving the happy family to clean up ... assured that their dead rellies had lots of new gifts ...

Little Emperors

2006-04-01T01:17:00.000-08:00

I didn't come to China to teach little kids - I have done that for years and years and years ... hmmm, too long ... in Australia and I came here for a change. I love teaching corporate classes, real people, big people, people I can relate to. I know kids are people too, but in a different way ...

But suddenly I am back teaching kindergarten again. Ooh, hard work. The all-singing, all-dancing, all-piano-playing Lucy Show. Its very hard to teach the little tikes without becoming the performing monkey - well, clown more like it. And don't the children love it!

They phoned me and asked if I would make sure I wore bright coloured clothes. Hmmm.

All the little emperors (5 yr olds, 30+ to a class) were dressed in uniform, a sort of beige tartan. I have seen a lot of people wearing coats and scarves of this exact pattern and colour, there must be a factory around here that makes it. All the little boys and little girls in the same ridiculous clothes - rather reminded me of the Von Trapp family ...

Well, how hard can it be, to keep the little blighters entertained for an hour or so? All sitting around in a neat semi-circle on their little wooden chairs, eager upturned faces ... and there is another bigger, but still very low, wooden chair for me out the front. And they are watching and waiting. What on earth are they expecting?

I launch into telling a story - the three bears, and Goldilocks (the girl with yellow hair - "yellow!" they whisper back with something like awe, but more likely they just suddenly recognised a word I said.) Of course this is made a whole lot harder with the language barrier - at this stage I don't really know if they are understanding any of it. The little girls are fascinated - or at least well-behaved - but the boys are getting restless already. Time to really get into character. So I'm on my feet, doing actions and voices - and they are loving it of course. They did warn me that today was "photo day" and they are certainly taking lots of pics of me prancing around. I try to get them all to join in with the repetitive voices bits: "Someone's been sitting in my chair ..." and all that, but nothing doing there.

End of story, I'm exhausted, brilliant performance, Lucy ... I flop back into the little wooden chair and glance at the clock. Aaahh! 20 minutes gone! And there are the little eager faces - now more excited - looking for more.

I have a teddy bear in my bag. We practise saying "Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear ..." rhythmically until we can all do it just right. And then I teach them the rest of the rhyme: "Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, turn around..." We do the actions, line by line, then cumulatively until we have done it all. We stand up and do it again, and I choose some little girls, and then some little boys to perform it for us. Then we do it all again.

The clock has dragged its hand around another 20 minutes. My throat is sore and I hate Teddy Bears. Oh look, there's a piano. I remember a kid's song or two from teaching in Australia. So how about we learn "I'm going to Kentucky" because that's easy to play and we can all prance around being "Senorita"s. The children get very excitable, especially the boys, and they are not at all interested in learning the word "Senorita". I have been sitting at the piano to play and then leaping up and coming back to the circle to demonstrate, then back to the piano. Let's get back to the wooden chair and settle things down.

I can't believe it - still 15 more minutes! I'm dying here. Then I remember - "Open, Shut them ..." kids love that little hand song from Play School. And it saves the day. Every single child learns it off by heart and has to have a chance to stand up and perform, they are all so pleased with themselves.

Only a minute left, and the Chinese assistant comes up to me and says, "I think its time to go to the other class now." Aaaaaaaaaaah!

As I launched into the story for the second time, feeling like a veteran, I realised they had not saved the best til last - this was the second class for so many reasons. The Chinese teachers were working hard in the background, removing disruptive kids from the circle and seating them off to the side at various spots. The kids still loved the story, and the teddy bear rhyme with actions worked quite well - but I was getting better at it now and it went even quicker. "Senorita" was a bad flop with this crowd, "Open, shut them" was brilliant ... and I still had 10 minutes left!

It felt like the end of a hard day's work. Next week will be different, because next week I won't have these two classes, I'll have the four year olds. What on earth can I do for two hours with them?

Little White Lies

2006-03-30T00:51:00.000-08:00

The high school was told there would be a foreign teacher available to take the classes, and as the campus is a fair way out of Wuxi the high school is offering accommodation for the teacher as part of the deal.

There is no teacher - not yet. He is still in Australia. But the high school keeps asking when the teacher will come and teach.

So in the meantime my Peter has to fill in for a month. He is not about to go and live out at the school, he will have to commute.

That's okay, they said, there is a regular city bus that goes from Wuxi right to the school. It will take about thirty minutes. And he will be paid for travel time as well as teaching time.

So yesterday we decided to take the bus and time it. It took us 10 minutes to walk to the bus stop in Wuxi, (then we had to wait about 5 minutes). The bus stopped a mere 17 times (yeah! seventeen!) on the way there over bumpy out-of-town roads. The seats were all taken, we had to stand for most of the 40 minute ride. When we got off the bus we looked around and tried to guess which of the buildings was the actual school - they said the bus stops right outside. Well, it wasn't quite visible from the stop. It was down the road, around the corner, and along there over that hill - it took us 18 minutes at a fast clip.

When we got to the school it was a magnificent place. Wide open spaces - the sort of campus where a bike would be really useful. Again, a good 6 minutes walk from the front gate to the nearest teaching block. The teacher who greeted us was mildly amused that we had arrived by bus - how very traditional Chinese of us, she said.

So, on a good day - no rain or wind, no bags of books or materials to carry - it was an hour and a half trip, without allowing for getting-ready time in the classroom. And of course an hour and a half home again. That's a lot of overtime pay. If they stopped and thought about it long enough they would find it will cost them less to pay for a taxi than to pay for overtime ... saving an hour each way.

Of course the story that it was only a half-hour trip came from someone who never goes anywhere on a bus, and never walks further than the car park to the office.

Dying Day

2006-03-24T00:53:00.000-08:00

That was strange right from the start. It was 6am, and Peter was already up - what could have got him out of bed? Then I heard the band. The indescribably bad brass band, hopelessly out of tune and out of time - with the beat and with each other - clawing their way from note to almost the next note ... There were several drums playing along, trying to keep up with each other and with the other instruments. I heard them torture something that resembled "What a friend we have in Jesus", and then - was that "Unchained Melody" ... well, there were a few notes there.

Another funeral, I suppose. No wonder Peter was up and at the computer reading the world news. I had a novel by the bed which I had almost finished, so I switched on the bedside lamp and got into it.

At seven-thirty, with an final agonised sigh, the music died. And at precisely the same moment the lamp went off, and the computer ... the power was off. Quickly, have a shower before the hot water cools, and go toast some bread over the gas.

When the power finally came back on late in the afternoon I was out at work but Peter was home. I was travelling back to town on the work bus when Peter rang. "I don't want you to panic when you get home and find the computer is gone. The power outage did something to Windows and the whole thing has crashed ... "

That was three days ago. And now here I am, back from the 'dead'!

Problem Solved

2006-03-24T00:52:00.000-08:00

Peter sms-ed me when I was teaching a corporate class "i have 2 go to work now. the appt is full of workmen."

I figured it would be a good idea to use the facilities in the factory before heading home on the company bus. As I came through the Kang Xing Yuan entrance, I could see the lights on in our apartment, and as I climbed the 64 steps I could hear their voices and work noises.

I entered our apartment, and no one even noticed. They were all in the bathroom. The washing machine was in the middle of the main room, along with everything else out of the bathroom cupboard, off the shelves, towel-rails, hooks. I wandered hungrily into the kitchen - I'm pretty hungry by 7.30pm - but work was continuing in there too. I grabbed the kettle and a soup packet and found a spare power point in the main room to plug in and make myself a cup-a-soup.

Around 9.30pm they emerged, smiling, out of the bathroom, replacing the washing machine but leaving me to do the rest. I wandered in to admire their handiwork.

This is what the little man I had seen squatting in the bath for the last two hours had been doing:

Not pretty, but we hope it works. Apparently they worked out that the pipe coming out of the hot water system and into the wall had sprung a leak, and we have been filling the wall with hot water for several months ... our electricity bill is witness to that! So they cut it off:

There's the offending article in the middle of the wall. Then they re-routed it up through the ceiling and across to the bath, then also along the wall to the sink ... I wonder if that will work as a heated towel rail ... And then they drilled a hole through to the kitchen and put a pipe through there too (after I told then the other day I definitely did want to have hot water in the kitchen!)

That's a pretty scary-looking pipe arrangement in the bath. The landlord got onto his phone and had a conversation with our liaison person. I waited, expecting the house phone to ring again, and his wife kept flapping at him telling him to hand the phone to me. But he refused - he was muttering something to himself and beckoned me into the bathroom. This was his big moment, time to use the word he had heard on the phone and was practising under his breath. "Gent-a-lee!" he explained, lifting the tap handle up and down a few times. "Yes, gently, always gently!" I agreed, and he looked very pleased with himself.

We had a phone call today from the person who had been on the phone, wanting to make sure we had understood his message ok. She told us to "Always open the pipe softly".

Yeah, we'll do that!

It's in the walls

2006-03-20T00:54:00.000-08:00

So on Sunday mornings people wake up and say: "Its boring today, lets go visit the foreigners and have a look around their bathroom and kitchen."

They were upset that we were changing the locks and promised to never do it again, always to tell us when they're coming and only to come when we are here. So eight oclock Sunday morning I get a phone call:

"The Landlord is coming today."

"Ok. When exactly?"

"Maybe ten. Maybe thirty."

"Ten minutes?"

"I don't know. This morning I think."

Time for a 20 second shower and pull some clothes on at least ...

Of course the sound I could hear outside in the stairwell was 'them' already here. They rang the doorbell and came in for a look. As usual, no water leaking anywhere in here. They went into the kitchen and looked at the tiles above the sink, chattering and pointing - I could feel another hole in the tiles coming on, more cardboard and sticky-tape.

Out came the mobile phone and a long conversation. Then the house phone rang and I answered.

"They are going to turn off the hot water in the kitchen. Is that okay?"

"Well, no, not really. Is this temporary? When will they turn it on again?"

"You will still have hot water in the bathroom. Just not in the kitchen."

Memories of last year at LongHu filling a bucket in the shower and lugging it to the kitchen to do the washing up. "Tell them its not okay. I want hot water in the kitchen ... do you want me to hand the phone to them now?"

"Oh no, its okay. Goodbye." I hung up and we all (me, landlord and wife, plumber) stood silently staring at each other with twitching nervous smiles. Finally the landlord's mobile rang.

More pointing, chatting, walking in and out of the bathroom and kitchen. Then the landlord made another phone call on his mobile. I waited. The house phone rang.

"Everything is okay. They will come back next week and fix the hole in the wall."

"So I still have hot water in the kitchen? And the bathroom?"

"Yes, everything is okay. They will fix the wall next week."

They all smiled and waved goodbye as they slipped out of the house slippers and back into their shoes and disappeared down the stairs ...

There is a big hole in the stairwell wall now, right through the slimy paint stuff that has gone so soft you can smear it with your fingers, through the plaster, and jaggedly into the red bricks this place is built with. There is a little water oozing out of the bricks and trickling very slowly down onto the floor. But the wet area on the wall is not so big now, the paint around the edges of the old damp patch has dried and is flaking off.

So what was that? What did having hot water in the kitchen have to do with anything?

A visit to the market

2006-03-19T00:55:00.000-08:00

It was our day off, and neither of us really had the energy to go travelling, so we decided to visit the tourist market area in town, Nanchang temple markets.

I didn't have much purpose, there was nothing I was aiming to buy. I resisted the urge to have a ride in one of these blow-up animals ...

As always I was drawn to the part of the market where they have all sorts of cute little animals, like these chinchillas, or Russian hamsters.

Maybe a plant instead. My last one, a touchy-feely shy plant (one that closes up when you touch it) seemed to have come to an end over winter.

I like plants with personality - like my old shy plant. But something about this one particularly appealed to Peter. So it came home with us. On the bus.

Someone's been sitting in my chair

2006-03-14T00:57:00.000-08:00

Well I knew the latest "drainage problem" would be a saga, didn't I? We were not totally surprised (though a little annoyed) to come home and find cigarette butts in the toilet. We know the landlord has a key and we expected that he might be letting the plumbers in during our absence - although, honestly, there is no water leaking or visible at all inside the apartment. And in the process of fooling around in our tiny bathroom they managed to break the door off the bathroom cabinet - well, these things happen.

After our previous (two) experiences firstly of the landlord actually unlocking the front door with his own key and walking in on me in the shower, and then another day ringing the doorbell and getting us out of bed in the morning (just because I said the words "we should be ready for the angry mob to return"?), it was with great trepidation that I stepped into the shower yesterday morning. The water had warmed up and I was just beginning to relax and enjoy myself ... yeah, the doorbell rang. Peter (in his pajamas) held them off at the front door until I could get out of the way and decent. So I did rather expect that they would be back later in the day after we went out to work.

When I came home I knew they had been in again because my key wouldn't work at first - they do something to the lock that means you have to turn the key around six times before it engages and opens the door. At first it was not obvious that anything else had been touched except that the lid of the little floor drain in the bathroom was open - understandable. But I remembered leaving the computer on when I went out, and it was off now. Then I tried to turn the air conditioner on - because of the complications of fiddling with controls in Chinese we usually leave it set how we like it and just switch off the power - and couldn't get it sorted for a while because someone had been adjusting it. I nearly tripped over the stool next to the phone - someone had been using the phone.

But the final straw was when I came to do a load of washing - and the washing powder was all used up! What was the "plumber" doing? Did he bring over a load of washing to do in my machine, or did he just fill his pockets with washing powder and take it with him??

I did notice yesterday that the stairwell wall outside apartment 102 is as wet as it is outside ours ... I probably should be doing my civic duty and ringing their doorbell (late at night and early morning is apparently the approved time) and pointing out to them that they also have a problem.

Don't get me wrong, its all part of the fun. We have spoken to our liaison person and asked her to speak to the landlord - who, by the way seems really nice and unlikely to be guilty of detergent theft! We don't want to have to change the locks, but it looks like we are going to have to.

The Three Kingdoms

2006-03-11T00:58:00.000-08:00

We visited the Three Kingdoms yesterday. It was not as difficult as we expected. We just hopped on a bus and when it stopped and they turned the engine off it was time to get off.

Talk about a boring job. He probably thought he was going to be a movie star, and instead he got the gate prize. This place is the local Hollywood.

Everything is ticky-tacky - this ship almost looks like a pop-stick model. But then we found the real pop-stick models.

Anyone who can take these props and turn them into a believable scene in the movies has earnt my respect.

The warriors were taking a lunch break when we got there.

Obviously when you are a movie actor you have a lot of time on your hands. These chaps were amusing themselves feeding the goldfish.

There were some very bored-looking actors in and around the actual scene that was being filmed. Some of them (on the red carpet there) were practising their spear moves.

The stage hands were responding to calls to move imitation braziers and stone blocks around.

For this patient little soldier it was all getting to be too much, and that rubber armour is so heavy.

But we had fun looking around.

Sticky-Tape Saves the Day

2006-03-07T00:59:00.000-08:00

Marvellous stuff, sticky tape - or adhesive tape, Sellotape, Scotchtape, Durex, 'bonding strip' (Buzz Lightyear) - it has many names and so many uses.

When we were kids one of my favourite toys was a cereal box, scissors and sticky tape. My brothers and I made the most amazing creations. There's not much you can't do with it - temporarily, at least.

In Zhengzhou we noticed wide sticky tape all around the skirting boards and window ledges in our apartment, keeping out the icy draughts.

I have even seen a bus here in Wuxi which relies on sticky tape to hold the windscreen in.

So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that when the mob came to fix our drainage problem and they made a big hole in the tiles on the outside of our bath, they fixed it with a piece of cardboard and some sticky tape.

They said a lot of things yesterday, and I understood a word here and there - including "ming tian" meaning "tomorrow". So I guess they will be back today. I had better make sure I have finished using the bathroom ...

Angry Mob No. 2

2006-03-06T01:03:00.000-08:00

Today we have a "day off", so at about 9 am we were luxuriating in bed, enjoying a bit of a sleep-in. I was just commenting how lucky I was not to be caught on the loo last night - not like last time when the landlord let himself in just as I stepped out of the shower (yes, we always put the snib on the door now) and I said we had better be ready in case the "angry mob" returns this morning.

"You had to say it, didn't you!" bemoaned Peter as instantly the door-bell rang. I went to the door bedraggled and barefoot, (yes, clothed) straight out of bed - a non-verbal way of telling people they are disturbing us.

It was our friendly neighbour who had taken such an interest in our last water-related problem with the water-heater. She, and her kid, and husband, and another, were on their way down the stairs and felt it their civil duty to get us out of bed and inform us that the wall in the stair-well is wet. Apparently they all figured that since we don't speak Chinese (I know she knows this) it would make things clearer if each member of her mob spoke to us at the same time while gesticulating towards the damp wall.

Someone has even taken the trouble to write something by scratching in the soft wet plaster. That's helpful.

Women's Day Fun

2006-03-06T01:01:00.000-08:00

I presume its International Women's Day. I noticed there was a lot of something going on in the courtyard below our kitchen window. I could see some tables set up, and there was a long, thick tug-o-war rope laid out. When the band of lady drummers started their little dance it was too much for my curiosity, I had to go and see.

I tried to stand to one side and stay out of the way, but I am way too noticeable for that. A guard came and challenged me (I think) and I tried to explain that I lived just 'up there' - then my landlord and his wife showed up (they had just been in our apartment looking at our "drainage problem" a few minutes before) and explained to the guard who I was.

So then the team of drummers came and made friends with me. We had a great time together!

One lady was obviously the organiser. She got all the women lined up like school kids - I kept explaining "ting bu dong" (I don't understand) because I didn't want to be in the line!

After some long-winded instructions which I really didn't "ting de dong", she gave them all little green slips of paper and they rushed off to line up at the various tables.

There was a chopsticks and marbles competition:

It was a race between two women, while another one timed them with her mobile.

Then there was a hoopla:

Then an interesting one I have never seen before - blow the ping-pong ball across the top of some glasses of water:

And then, instead of "pin-the-tail..." they had "Stick-the-nose...":

The lady in charge finally noticed me, and having had it explained to her who or what I was, she insisted on taking me into each queues and pushing me in front of the other patiently waiting women so I could have a go. I won fair and square on the ping-pong ball blowing, and won a prize of a packet of pickles. With the pin-the-nose she took my hand and directly led me to the right spot, and I "won" again.

Then someone with a huge video camera turned up - maybe from a TV station, I guess. They put the blindfold back on me to do it again for the camera ... and obviously it occured to them it was a little daft tying a yellow scarf around the face of someone you are about to photograph, so they lifted up the bottom edge to show part of my face. I won again, because I could actually see!

I had a go at hoopla, and won a little bottle of chocolate soy drink, I think. And then they insisted I try the marbles and chopsticks. They were pretty amazed that I managed to pick up any at all, so despite the fact that I didn't beat the lady next to me (I was glad I wasn't that good!) they gave me a prize for that too.

That's my prizes. I can read "preserved szechuan pickles", and the drink shows a piece of chocolate in something milky. But the other two - ? Tofu maybe.

Hey, it was fun. They were all so friendly and cheerful, it didn't matter that we didn't understand each other.

Drainage Problems

2006-03-06T01:00:00.000-08:00

Its obvious that we have drainage problems. When we go out of our apartment and down the stairs past the wall that is adjacent to where our bathroom floor must be, there is an ever-increasing damp area -which is already peeling the fresh paint they applied after the last problem we had a few weeks back.

But inside there is nothing in evidence, everything looks normal on the surface.

So last night the doorbell rang. Its always a bit of a worry when the doorbell rings without the intercom having rung first. I was relieved firstly that I had just left the bathroom after trying to deal with the upset stomach I have had for a couple of days, and secondly that Peter answered the door because this would obviously be an exchange in the Mandarin-charades language which I was too weary to be involved with.

There was quite a mob that had gathered - who they all were we had no idea. They came rushing in and straight into the bathroom - obviously expecting to find something (like when I was driving our old HZ Kingswood and a valve broke and I opened the bonnet to release the seagull I was sure must be trapped inside.)

They left with puzzled looks and confused mutterings. No doubt, though, we have not heard the end of this.

The Shopping Game

2006-03-03T01:06:00.000-08:00

Sometimes in English classes we play a "Shopping Game" as an interesting way to practise the sort of language you need to go shopping.

But in "real life" (if that's what this is) we play shopping games every time we venture out.

We like to try new things - which is pretty well everything here - and so yesterday we decided to try a different shop. Not down the back alley to the grubby little Sunny supermarket, not buying off the street vendors with their knee-high displays of produce. Let's go to one of the big shopping centres which we haven't tried yet. "RTMart".

So we went into the shop and wandered through the ground floor section with clothing and other household goods, picked up a couple of things to buy, and then wanted to find either a checkout or a way to the food section. After some fairly lost, aimless wandering we remembered that in a similar store the way out was tucked away in the back corner of the store, out of sight. Sure enough, there was the secret escalator to the second floor.

Pretty food

Obviously we were out for adventure, because when we found this in a section marked "handmade goodsand foods", we actually bought it.

The child in me told me there had to be lollies or something sweet, why else would you make pretty flowers ... I didn't realise how scary the thing on the bottom right corner there was until I opened the pack. We didn't stop there, we also bought one of these:

I remember from home economics lessons that you don't put raw meat next to anything, including vegetables, so maybe it was worrying about this which made me miss the other obvious points.These could not possibly be actual peeled prawns. Real prawns are not that colour, nor that perfect. Besides, prawns are not sold peeled here. I have a clear and recent memory of a refined young Chinese lady in a restaurant selecting a prawn with her chopsticks and placing the whole thing, shell and all, into her mouth but leaving the head protruding from her lips, chewing thoughtfully for a while, and then delicately leaning forward to spit the shell, tail, head etc onto a plate.

Underneath the pretty flowers and stuff it was all carrots. The other things - well I recognised the seaweed, and capsicum, and - were they snails, or duck's tongues? (I have heard that people eat them, but I'm not sure what one looks like) And the 'prawn' dish was almost entirely onions underneath. At least that had some taste. With both dishes I could not seem to entice any taste into the food (adding herbs, spices, sauces etc) nor out of it. I suppose if I was fond of hot, spicy chili I could have made a tasty meal. Otherwise, I found everything there - even the pretty flowers - had no taste at all, they might just as well have been sweet.

Pick an aisle, any aisle

And then there is that special game foreigners can play, being a people-magnet. Many times in a market-place we have taken pity on stalls that are getting ignored - simply standing there for a few seconds will draw potential customers from all over.

Somehow its a little more frustrating when the game is played in supermarket aisles with trolleys. We wanted to buy a glue-stick in the stationery aisle. All of a sudden, half the store realised they had the same need and were reaching across and around us, pushing our trolley here and there in their desperate attempts to grab some glue for themselves.

The maze

These shopping centres are carefully designed to foil any attempt at theft - it seems to be most peoples' greatest fear, that they will somehow be robbed.

On the way in, we did the right thing and stowed our back-packs in those little lockers where you press the button and a tiny flimsy piece of paper pops and out floats away on a puff of air - this is the way back into the locker so it needs to be guarded with your life. The locker popped open and I entombed my bag after carefully removing and pocketing things (like my glasses) I might need.

Our shopping completed, we came through the checkout - and I caught sight of the sign announcing the toilet, which I really wanted to visit before we went to lunch and/or caught the bus home. But ... I had forgotten to take my pack of tissues out of my bag. My galant husband said, "wait here, I'll go get it out of your bag in the locker". As I saw him disappear down the escalator I had the first feeling of foreboding - there was no 'up' escalator in that section of the store. Also, there was a security check between me and the toilet - I had to pass between those things that set off alarms and show my receipt to get out (and I didn't have the receipt, Peter did).

Of course, we'd have done much better to nip back into the store and buy some tissues - as we told each other some 20 minutes later when we were reunited after Peter had been downstairs, finally got his bearings and discovered the right set of lockers, realised he couldn't get back to me with the bag and had to stash it in a new locker, worked his way through the ground floor store, up the hidden eslcalator and through the maze of crowded supermarket aisles, and pushed past the customers at one of the check-outs. Oh, and when we finally both got down the escalator there were also conveniences on the ground floor that would have been a lot easier to access ...

All part of the fun of the game.

Gadding about

2006-02-24T00:42:00.000-08:00

I had never been to a "tea house" before, I hadn't realised they were so different.

My friend, Charlotte, and I were going out for lunch together, and wanted something close to where I work. Well, there is one nice restaurant just down the street, but it was totally packed. So we looked around, and there, just over the street, was this upstairs place, called Shui Xiang Cha Lou ...

As we climbed the steep stone staircase there was a strong smell of incense - my friend momentarily thought maybe we had walked into a temple instead of a restaurant. Inside it was a bit dark, with old wooden floor-boards and dark wooden furniture. We were met by the usual bevy of eager waitresses, and we saw that there was a buffet style meal. Charlotte inquired and found that we could have a meal for 48 yuan, so we agreed and we were taken to a table. We left our coats and went to the food bench. There we collected a tray each and a series of tiny plates and bowls which we filled with local delicasies, and so we headed back to the table.

On the table had been placed various little bowls of nuts and seeds, and a cup of tea each. So when they came to ask us what tea we wanted, we said we were quite happy with what we had been given. Oh, no, they explained, that is your welcome tea, and it is free. The food is also free. But you must buy some tea!

So we looked over the list, and sure enough, the cheapest cup of tea was 48 yuan. So we chose a cheap cup of tea each and got stuck into our little bowls of food. The tea arrived in a drinking glass - it always amazes me, this Chinese way of serving hot tea in a glass with no handle. It was green flower tea - it looked like there was a round clod of grass floating in it. But it was very nice, probably the nicest green tea I've ever tasted. And the food was ok. And the place was interesting. I recommend the "tea house" experience, though its really good to have a Chinese friend with you - this place was not really set up to accomodate western tourists.

Peter and I went to Lake Tai (or Tai Hu) today - about time, after being in Wuxi for nearly six months. Getting there was quite easy, we caught the number 1 bus at the bus stop closest to our apartments, and when it stopped and the engine was switched off, we were there.

We paid our 70 yuan, and were told (in English) that the price included the bus ride and boat ride. "Yellow bus", a pointing attendant told us as we went through the gate. We climbed aboard - mmm, padded seats. That's unusual! The bus took us to the end of the peninsular known as "Turtle Head Island". We followed the crowd - there really weren't any recognizable (English) signs other than "toilet". Well, we stopped there, and when we came out the crowd had moved on and we weren't sure quite where to head. There were some boats, but we didn't know which one we should go to. Then we saw an entrance sign (yeah, in Chinese, one of the symbols we can read ...) and an attendant quite a distance from the boats. We showed her our ticket, and she tore a chunk off and pointed to where there were several boats. As we got closer to the boats another attendant pointed to one of the jetties. As we walked down the jetty and looked enquiringly at a group of attendants another one was pointing to the right boat. You see, international understanding.

We went across to the Fairy Islands (I think) and wandered around. One of our students had told us there were monkeys here, but we didn't see any. It was pleasant, very Chinese. We bought some corn on a stick - it was that or tofu, there didn't seem to be anything else available other than some expensive-looking restaurants.

This was rather interesting:

What do you reckon about those chains? Well, as we got closer we realised there were hundreds of padlocks on the chains.

They all had inscriptions and dates. Some of them were heart-shaped and two interlocking hearts were part of the inscription. While we were there a couple came out of the nearby building and added a padlock to the chain. Sweet, ay?

Ping Pong Telling

2006-02-21T00:45:00.000-08:00

You know when the bank closes and they shunt all the customers out and close the doors, but then the bank employees stay on and work a while ... Have you ever wondered what they do in there?

I always thought they counted money and stuff like that.

No, they don't. They shove a table into the middle of the big open space, and put a row of those "Next Teller" notices across the middle of it, and play table tennis.

As seen in Wuxi Construction Bank after hours.

Bus Antics

2006-02-21T00:44:00.000-08:00

Travelling around by bus is always a bit of an adventure from the beginning when we wait with the crowds at the stop, to clambering on, getting there safely, and getting off again.

A bus driver approaching a left-hand turn - always a difficult manoevre in China - got over excited when he saw that the lights were about to change against him (traffic lights here have a countdown in seconds so you know when to make that desperate dash). Lucky for him the whole left side of the road was momentarily clear all the way up to the road where he would turn left. So he planted his foot, tore off up the wrong side of the road and spun the bus at speed into the street on the left. Somehow he didn't roll, but realising he was going rather fast he stood on the brake and brought the bus to a screeching halt just around the corner.

An older gentleman, one of the many on the bus who were standing up and clinging desperately to the high handles, was facing the back of the bus and the force of the turn flung him helplessly onto the lap of another passenger. A woman was thrown forwards so that her forehead was pressed hard against the side window, and it took a few moments for her to be able to stand upright again and check whether her head was bleeding because it obviously felt like it should be.

And no one even turned to look. The person who suddenly had a man on their lap did not turn their head. No one looked at the woman who had banged her head, only the smudge on the window paid attention to her plight. No one said anything. Life continued as if nothing had happened.

The End of the New Year

2006-02-13T00:48:00.000-08:00

Last night was the end of the Lunar New Year, and here in Wuxi it was definitely time for fireworks. Actually there have been fireworks going off sporadically day and night for weeks, but last night it was the grand finale. Everyone was out there lighting fireworks and enjoying everyone else's display. We wandered the streets, stopping here and there to avoid the kind that shoot small missiles, or just to watch.

In one narrow street there was a group letting off fireworks on the sidewalk - just small ones. Then they decided it was time for a bigger one, so they placed a carton in the street - this was a box about a 60cm cube. Someone lit a fuse and then stood back as it shot round after round into the air; there were at least 100 firework tubes in the one box. As the smake drifted away they brought out a bigger box, this one about a metre cube. As they took the top wrapping off we could see that there were not as many tubes in the box, maybe only about 60, but they were much bigger. They lit the fuse of this one, and this time the fireworks were shooting so high in the air that we had to step right out into the street to see up into the sky where they were bursting.

I am sure they let off big fire-works in Perth. But we are not allowed anywhere near it. It is so much more fun being close - even if the loud bangs are a bit deafening.

Chinese New Year in Australia

2006-02-12T00:49:00.000-08:00

We met up with our friends who had been in Wuxi with us in Perth to celebrate Chinese New Year at the Jade Dynasty Chinese Restaurant in Perth's "China Town".

Walking around Northbridge and looking at the shops with Chinese writing and seeing signs of fireworks having been let off in the streets was a confusing feeling as we were just getting used to being out of China for a while. It was a big restaurant with about 300 patrons, many of them children, most of them Chinese. We were part of a group of 11 and our table was right up near the red-curtained stage, so we knew we were in for a treat.

A few minutes into the meal, after the first one or two courses had been placed on the lazy susan in the middle of our large table, a group of musicians took there place on the small stage with drums and cymbals. The drumming started and everyone waited eagerly. Soon we caught sight of a number of brightly costumed lion dancers coming in through the door of the restaurant.

There would have been about eight of them, maybe more, all different colours. Inside each costume were two young dancers, one for the head and one for the hindquarters. The head was proportionately large for the body, with huge eyes and long-lashed eyelids that opened and closed. The front dancer held the lion's head high above his own head and worked the eyes and the large flapping mouth.

The restaurant patrons, especially the children, had little red envelopes that they were putting money into. As the lions danced around the children would put the red envelopes into the lion's mouths. But the game was for parents to lift the children high on their shoulders so they could hold the envelope as high as possible and tease the lion to come up and get it. The head dancer would then have to climb onto the hind dancer's shoulders or head to reach. The dance progressed and as the children were lifted higher and higher the dancers became more and more acrobatic. One young lady (in her 20s maybe) at a table near us climbed high on a table and teased one of the lions mercilessly. With one gulp she was 'swallowed' as the head dancer suddenly popped the head of the costume right over her and took her inside.

Once or twice we were able to glance under the dancers' costumes and noticed the young people working and sweating there - bearing in mind that it was a hot summer's night in Perth. Some of the young people were of Chinese origins, others were not. At one stage we were beginning to feel concerned as some of them looked so distressed with the heat. And then we noticed one of the lions had collapsed on the floor. But as we turned around we soon realised all of the lions were sinking to the floor, and the parents were lifting the children onto their backs.

And all the time the drums and cymbals played on with only slight changes in rythm to indicate a new phase in the dance. Finally the rhythm changed and the weary dancers worked their way back through the restaurant and out the door.

Back Home in China

2006-02-10T00:50:00.000-08:00

Back in our comfy little apartment after a whirlwind two weeks in Oz.

I can't get over how easy the travel was. Nothing went wrong. No delays, no lost luggage, I didn't get vacuumed for gun-powder-residue even once, and Peter walked through the security doorway without setting off any alarms.

The hardest part was the three-hour stopover in Changi airport, Singapore, coming and going. Mind you, they try to make it very pleasant - they certainly have beautiful orchid gardens and plants on display. But the best thing about Changi?

mmmmmmm! aaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!

The free leg massagers. We noticed one of these on the way to Oz, and sat down for a good squeeze - we couldn't believe no one else was using them, there had to be some reason, like someone would come along asking for money or something.

On the way back we went looking for them, and at first thought they had been removed. Then we saw this one trying hard to hide behind a pillar. After five hours in a plane seat (and not looking forward to another five hours) the squeezing and vibrating was sheer bliss and relieved our aching legs.

All my bags are packed

2006-01-25T00:21:00.000-08:00

Off to sunny Oz today! And I'm sitting here packed and ready too early.

Not that there was much packing to do. Just a change of clothes inside my case, which is inside Peter's case. We figure we will be able to fill both cases coming back, even though we only have two weeks to buy up big on the Vegemite and Metamucil. Yes, folks, those are the two things we crave and can't seem to get here.

We decided to book a taxi from here straight to Pudong airport - with two of us travelling it's not much more that the cost of bus/taxi + train + taxi/bus + train ... not to mention the incredible hassle. So had we been taking the regular bus-train thing we would have been long gone by now and already pushing our way through crowds. As it is, I find myself with time on my hands.

The next two weeks I will be relying on an internet cafe. So I guess that will keep me fairly quiet, blog-wise.

Standing on Ceremony

2006-01-21T00:22:00.000-08:00

This time the fireworks sounded closer than usual, so I was curious enough to look out of the window.

There is a favourite spot for drawing white circles and having smokey noisy ceremonies - and today there is another white circle there. A little stack of straw was tied up ready to be lit.

But the noise that had drawn me to the window came from further over where there was a group of people letting off fireworks and standing with their hands over their ears.

I am not sure if they were sheltering from the continuing drizzle, or just trying to get as far away as possible from the smoke, noise, and cloud of scraps of red paper.

Then they were each handed incense sticks, and the little bonfire was lit.

Each person leant over the fire to throw in some tiny scraps of paper, maybe to light the incense sticks and then they lifted one leg as if stepping right over the fire and continued on around it to the doorway.

It seemed a little strange at a time like this for a workman to have left his ladder in the doorway just where people needed to get through. But as I watched each person walk carefully along the ladder, standing on the rungs and not between them, and then the last person picked up the ladder and took it in with him, I realised the ladder was all part of the ceremony too.

I would love to know what it all means. Anyone?

Wet wet wet

2006-01-20T00:30:00.000-08:00

Its been raining for ever. Well, at least for the last four days - without even a pause.

Last year we tried to get used to the idea that winter in China - besides being at the "wrong" time of year from our point of view - was dry, whereas summer was wet. And in Zhengzhou winter was very cold and very dry. Even the snow felt dry, like fine sand, impossible to make any kind of snowball.

But right here right now it is winter and it is thoroughly wet. On my day off I stayed in the apartment all day, there really wasn't any point in going out.

The schools seem to have mostly closed for the Spring break, and the streeets are full of people jostling their way around puddles and between cars and bikes, and poking each other with umbrella points. New Year is just over a week away, and everyone is frantically buying up armloads of big colourful boxes and gift-bags full of specially-displayed treats to give to and share with friends and rellies at New Year.

It's really cold as well as wet. Everyone is bundled up in thick padded coats, little kids wearing so many layers they look like stranded starfish on a beach, hardly able to move their limbs. In Zhengzhou many buildings had thick padded blankets to push past in their doorways at this time of year. Here they mostly just have heavy duty wide thick plastic strips that flop back and give you an almighty "thwack!" if you are not careful when following someone else through a doorway.

The wind has got in on the act too. The icy blast swirls around buildings and down alleys, giving no clue as to which way it will push you and your umbrella next. Every now and then it seems to blow directly up from the pavement threatening to fill the skies with myriads of Chinese Mary Poppinses each clinging defiantly to their umbrella handle.

New Year is an excellent excuse to let off lots of fireworks, a pastime the Chinese seem to be particularly fond of. And obviously there is a need for plenty of practise beforehand, because already they can be heard all over the city at irregular intervals day and night. Unfortunately the rain has put a bit of a dampener on this activity too. Not to be beaten, the people who live below us in our building decided the stairwell was a good place to let some off. Several times we heard the door creak open, some scuffling sounds then a hurried creak and door-slam, and immediately the stairwell was full of loud sound and acrid smoke.

So yesterday I had to finally leave the apartment and go to work. Obviously a twenty minute walk through the rain and wind would be neither pleasant nor sensible. But a taxi-ride seemed extravagant as the buses were running. I didn't relish the possibility of a long wait for the infrequent number 40 bus that goes from outside our apartment front gates to our office front door. So I decided I would go just around the corner and catch the old beaten-up but more frequent number 3.

As I stepped out of the shelter of the Kang Xing Yuan entrance arch I almost regretted my decision at once. But I bravely dodged a few puddles and avoided some umbrella prods, safely reaching the roadway. I waited for a car to pass, then gripping my little blue umbrella down over my shoulders I headed out to the middle line. I chose my spot carefully so the cars coming the other way wouldn't hit any puddles as they swished past me.

The wind noticed me, and came roaring down Jiang Kang Lu and up under my feeble umbrella, flipping it inside out and reducing it to a tangled mess of wire and plastic in my cold wet hands. Safely across the road I stood dripping on the pavement and considered whether to chuck the battered remnants of my umbrella into the gutter and run (haha! yes, right!) to the bus stop. However, after a few moments I discovered that once I had untangled the wires a little the whole thing was quite happy to resume its normal umbrella shape and once again offer me some protection from the continuing drizzley rain. So I went on round the corner where I found that the bus shelter was crowded with elderly Chinese folk and I had to wait in the rain alongside some neat petite Chinese girls with their tidy, well-behaved umbrellas. The fact that there were so many people waiting was an encouragement - at least I hadn't just missed a bus, one should be along very soon.

Getting off the number 3 I still had a bit of a trudge through the blustery wet streets to our office, and I arrived with wet feet, trousers splashed up to the knees and (unbeknownst to me) the bottom half of my jacket at the back soaked due to the inadequacy of my umbrella. I readied my teaching materials and then had to sit and wait a while for the taxi (which had got stuck in the more congested than usual traffic) to take me to the factory 45 minutes away where I would teach.

By the time I got out of the taxi the wetness of my jacket had seeped into my other clothes, leaving me with a embarassingly wet backside. Well, I just had to make sure I didn't turn my back on the class.

Home for the holidays

2006-01-17T00:31:00.000-08:00

Someone was asking, " How do the Chinese celebrate their New Year?"

Well, apart from letting off lots of fireworks, everyone tries to go home for the New Year.

We are going to do that too. Home to Oz for two weeks. We will arrive in Perth on January 26th - which is our special National Day, "Australia Day". There will be fireworks, thousands will flock to Perth and have a picnic on the Swan River foreshore to see the big display.

We will visit our house, our family home, in Rockingham, south of Perth. Even though it's a five bedroom house, it has always been full of people. We built it when our kids were small, and they grew up there. It has a lovely big kitchen where there was always plenty of food and good fellowship. We rarely had to wonder where our teenagers were - they were mostly at our place along with their friends. I would cook bucket-loads of food, and in no time the fridge would be empty again. It seemed everyone had "fridge rights" at our house.

And then our son and his wife and kids lived there too, and we came to China.

But now it's empty. The kids have all moved on and so have we.

So it's time to go say goodbye to our house. But also to visit our kids in their homes and to impose ourselves on them for a bit ...

Trained Monkey

2006-01-15T00:32:00.000-08:00

This is how ESL (English as a Second Language) teachers sometimes feel in countries like China. "Come on," they say, "Sing a song or do a dance..." We are trained to teach, but we are asked to perform.

Understandable though. We see some kids who have been learning English in school for years, and never actually met a real live English speaker. Some kids are terrified - but then we don't know what the adults around them have told them about us "Laowai". Other kids are just dying for a chance to try out those phrases they have been mimicking from their Chinese English teachers. And they want to hear someone "say something" in this language they have been learning, hopefully something meaningful.

Which still doesn't really explain why they ask for a song or dance. Except maybe that they are taught English in the form of little songs with dances. It's a good way to practise and learn, as long as they realise it's not 'real'. I have stood there and listened to "Dear Teacher" belted out in their piping voices, it was almost enough to draw tears to my eyes ... imagine our children back home singing this to their teacher.

But, back to the monkey. Poor little chap. Look at how his little feet are on top of each other to get away from the cold pavement, and one little hand is tucked away while the other keeps a watch over the chain that is likely to be yanked again at any moment. My family had a pet one of these when I was a child (in Nigeria) and he could be quite vicious. But he loved mashed potato and would pop it into his cheeks and jump up and down making monkey noises ... like maybe it was too hot.

This photo cost three kuai. They were using this little chap to beg on the street. Anyone who paid him any attention was then asked for money.

Public Hanging

2006-01-13T00:35:00.000-08:00

I am tired of waiting at the bus stop. And now the weather has suddenly become a lot friendlier, soaring to the dizzy heights of 10 degrees most days. The road at the front of our apartments (where I usually wait for the bus) is not a very nice place to wait, even worse to walk - what with the "splooshie pavers" (see previous post 10/10/05), and the narrow sidewalk being full of workmen cutting, welding and spray-painting metal frames, not to mention the ladies in the red-light "hairdressers" shops calling out.

The road at the back gate of the apartments has been recently re-surfaced, and there are proper bus-stops with shelters, and railing between the traffic-lanes and bike-lane, and garden beds and trees with marble seats around them ... it's quite a pleasant place really. It's a good place to catch a bus, they are very frequent - unlike the ones I have to wait for on the other road - but they don't go close to our office.

So I have taken to walking to work along the back road quite a lot lately.

Hmm. Just when I thought it was safe to walk on the pavement. Apparently they haven't quite finished putting in all of the fully-grown trees.

Its rather interesting to watch. And it's not like they don't let you get up as close as you want to have a good look. A new truckload of trees had just arrived, and the crane was to lifting them over the barrier between the car section of the road and the bike section, and dropping them near the prapared holes in the side-walk.

There was an army of little men waiting to bind up the trunks with rope - it seems to be a special rope of something like plaited grass. Then then popped them in the ground with fertilizers and irrigation tubes, and propped them up with four poles. Another worker came along and fitted marble edging around each bed and voila! Instant old trees.

I suppose the odd thing is the way no one except us weird foreigners seemed to pay much attention.

You'd think even from the point of view of personal safety people would be a little more interested. Have they really seen it that many times before?

Or are they just being inscrutable?

Bottom of the Canal

2006-01-13T00:34:00.000-08:00

We were walking along the alley by the small canal. At first all we noticed was a red helmet that kept bobbing up over the bushes in a most curious manner. So we went to take a closer look - being the curious foreigners that we are.

Part of the canal has been temporarily dammed up so that they can dredge out the next section. The workmen needed some water in a bucket, but the canal water was just out of reach, so they made themselves this dandy little scoop out of a helmet and a bamboo pole.

Then they returned to their task in the bottom of the canal that had the water drained out of it.

So that's what's at the bottom of the canal. Just imagine if you fell into the canal...

Good Food

2006-01-13T00:33:00.000-08:00

Chinese food is great, interesting, different - different from "Chinese" food in Australia. Sometimes we just need a familiar taste, we get to craving something like a piece of bread (without that weird sweet taste all the "bread" here has), or a bowl of stewed apple and custard ... all those old favourites from long ago.

We purchased a little oven recently. Just big enough to cook some bread and maybe a roast or some biscuits, a few old favourites.

We search the shelves of the various shops that sell some "western" foods or ingredients. We have bought endless packets of white powders and brought them home to try out to see what is flour (self-raising or plain?), or baking powder, or sugar ... we accidentally bought "m.s.g". instead of sugar once.

So Peter was very excited when he found this supply of custard powder, so we will never run out!

Oh, and that's our new oven too.

We also finally found some baking powder ... but only in the same size as the custard. And some vanilla flavour - but it's a tin of white powder, not at all what I'm used to using.

I did manage to make some scones. And this is my first batch of bread rolls.

And those funny little ball things are a fruit, but I don't know what it's called. Inside they are sort of translucent white, with a biggish black seed - quite nice.

Despite all that we went out to lunch today. We have found that Champion Pizza do my favourite spaghetti bol (well "Italian mince noodles"), and they have an incredible pepper steak which along with a fruit salad plate and a glass of wine is only 22 kuai (less than $4).

Mmm sooo tender!

Learning Chinese

2006-01-08T00:36:00.000-08:00

When we first came to China people wondered how on earth we would manage without being able to speak Chinese. Well, it's not hard - "point, grunt, wave money" will get us almost anything we want.

But it is frustrating finding ourselves "deaf, dumb and illiterate". And despite the efforts of many "English as a Second Language" teachers, like ourselves, we do not meet many Chinese who can hold a conversation in English in the marketplace for instance.

Last year we picked up a scattering of mis-pronounced words, it was hard to find anyone who would actively help in our language learning and our time was heavily taken up with teaching English rather than learning Chinese.

So it has been delightful since we came to Wuxi to actually have a few Chinese lessons. Our teacher is Shoresun, one of the delightful young ladies who work at our office.

And she doesn't confine our studies to the classroom. She took us out to a restaurants to help us learn some of those tricky food words. (Although sometimes when you know what it is called you still don't know what it is...) And she went with us for a lovely afternoon at Li Hu. It's a delightful park with a lake ("hu") where people like to have their wedding photos taken.

And a great place for art students to get in some practise.

But, back to the learning Chinese.

It is, of course, a tonal language. We have tones in English, but they are mostly used to express our emotions, to indicate a question or the like. We try to copy the sounds we hear - well, it's simple enough: "ma", "ma", "ma", "ma" ... except that those are all supposed to sound different.

"Your tones are all the same!" laughs Shoresun.

It's all in the eyebrows, and chin, I think. If I make my eyebrows go up and down, and push my chin down into my chest, at the right moments, then I can produce some different tones.

And I have stared and stared at those characters - the little squiggly things that are writing - and I can remember some of them. Not just what they say in Chinese (with the tone!) but what they mean in English. I can even draw quite a few of them. Sometimes I recognise some of them in a sign as we travel down the road.

I was feeling quite proud of myself the other day with my little pile of cards that I have "learnt" measured up against the unlearnt ones. But then I remembered how far I still have to go. Imagine, if you will, sitting down to eat a plate of food - well, several platefuls. After ploughing your way through the first one or two you start to feel quite pleased with yourself ... and then you look up and notice that you are trying to eat a whole whale, and you have just been nibbling on the end of one flipper.

Well, yes, I am feeling a little daunted.

Trees Bearing Fruit

2006-01-04T00:39:00.000-08:00

At the bus stop. Again. Nowadays its a much more pleasant place, despite the weather. Instead of the narrow uneven pavement there is now a wide brick-paved sidewalk. And the construction site wall is replaced with a magnificent garden bed. There are neatly trimmed bushes and shrubs, green grass, and fully-grown trees still in their plastic-and-rope wrap.

What kind of trees can you plant fully-grown, and be confident that they will flourish so well? You can always tell a tree by its fruit, and these ones are already bearing.

Obviously they are Underwear Trees.

Dried stuff

2006-01-04T00:38:00.000-08:00

When we saw them harvesting the corn last year, we were hopeful of buying some - but to our amazement they seemed to put it all out to dry. First they dried it on the cob, then they scraped it off and left the kernels drying on the pavements.

Then there were cabbage and lettuce leaves laid out all over the place - on roof-tops, pavements, even hanging from washing lines. And later canola plants, and so on.

This year we are in the city, and so we see much less of these kinds of arrangements. But I think the lady who lives across and down from us must be a country girl.

She does all her washing - lots and lots of it - in the sink on her balcony. And she has herbs growing in pots on the edge of the balcony. In the summer she often laid out various fruits and little fish on large flat baskets to dry in the sun. The apartment seems to have two floors, she appears on the balcony above too, cleaning everything there meticulously and putting foods out to dry. In this photo the man is laying out what looks like large fish on the rails to dry.

You can also see on the third balcony up, someone else is also drying some leaves on the ledge.

But recently we were amazed by the developments on the second balcony. It looks like they are making beef-jerky, there are poles with strips of meat hanging to dry. They have been there for several weeks. And now:

Well, we have to admit, we are somewhat intrigued. How can you dry such large pieces of meat, and why would you? And what about the smog dust that settles on everything ...

Mind you, back in Zhengzhou we often saw a field full of noodles hung over lines drying in the dusty air by the main road.

And then, walking down the alley the other day we saw that this lady is not the only one who hangs out large chunks of meat to dry.

Makes you pause before you bite into your next dish of meat.

Cosy Curtains

2006-01-02T00:41:00.000-08:00

After the first two months here our electricity bill was a horrendous four hundred bucks. And now it's winter, and we find we need the heater on most of the time when we are home in the apartment. One of the delightful things about this apartment is the lovely spacious main room. Another is the large kitchen with it's wide spread of windows. Add to that an open door way between the kitchen and main room, and there is no way to keep this place warm.

It occurred to us that if we could close off the kitchen area then maybe we could keep the main room warm. Sure, that's easy, just go buy some curtains and curtain rods ...

First we took a photo of our doorway and window next to it.

Then I measured it up and drew a picture of the doorway with curtains in it and the measurements written in. Armed with these and the words "chuang lian" (curtain) we found a tiny shop with curtains hanging all around and a lady busy sewing. She was most impressed with our preparations, got straight onto her mobile and ordered the quantity of our chosen material, and told us it would be ready "ming tian" (tomorrow).

As you can see, there was considerable excitement when we returned to pick up the finished articles. Its moments like these that make it all so much more fun.

So, it was easy really. Easier than making them myself.

Spooky Alley

2006-01-02T00:40:00.000-08:00

Its one thing to pay a few dollars to take a spooky ride in Side-Show Alley at the Royal Show, its quite another to find yourself down some dark alley in the backstreets of a Chinese city, not being sure which way is home.

Which is what Peter did one night. He decided to trust his sense of direction, and turned off to find a short-cut home along the bank of one of the many canals. But it got narrower and darker, and took a great many twists and turns, and when he finally emerged on a main road he was totally confused about where he was. Not realising he was only a few metres from our gate, he walked all the way back along the alley and came home another way!

So today as we were walking into the city, we decided to put that ghost to rest, and headed off down the Spooky Alley. And what an interesting little place it is by daylight.

This little home along the edge of a small canal reminded us of Happy the Hamster's nest, full of things she has brought home in her pouch.

Living on the waterfront, be it ocean, river, or canal, is as popular in China as it is overseas, even though it's usually best not to look too closely at the quality of the water itself. And what could be better than a home that actually floats on the water.

It's all very picturesque, but it makes you wonder what it's really like actually sleeping somewhere like that on a cold winter's night. Our apartment doesn't float on water but it's warm and cosy.

Further along we came to a section with shops. They all look very open and friendly in daylight, especially this little bakery.

Decisions, decisions! The cakes we can buy here (though we rarely have!) are often beautifully elaborate, and coated in thick layers of imitation cream.

Along the canal there are regular traffic bridges as well as a number of the classical little humpy footbridges. They always have steep steps up and down again, with a narrow ramp section for people pushing bikes or motorbikes.

We really enjoy living in Wuxi, there are so many interesting sights, even just wandering around the back streets.

Family Vehicle

2005-12-30T00:01:00.000-08:00

I was waiting at the bus-stop, again. It was a relatively quiet day, cold but not too windy. I noticed a wheelchair coming my way in the bike lane. My attention was mostly drawn by the little chap in the bright red track suit who was ensconced on his grandmother's broad lap as she was pushed along in the wheelchair. Like so many Chinese youngsters this time of year, he was so rugged up that he was like a starfish on the beach, and he just lay there. I was smiling at him and trying to catch his eye - as one does with these placid youngsters - and I glanced up at the proud grandmother who had such a firm hold on him. It was only as they drew alongside me that I noticed the grandfather - probably the owner of the wheelchair - on whose lap they were both sitting. He had a grey wheezy look about him, and I wondered how on earth he breathed or whether his poor old heart could pump blood along his crushed veins.

Then I saw the daughter - mother of the child, I suppose - who was pushing the wheelchair, taking her family for a walk in the brisk air. She was brown-skinned from hours of outdoor labour, obviously as strong as an ox, but also proud and happy. She gave me a broad gap-toothed grin as she passed and strode on down the street to ... I wonder where she was taking them?

Once again, I had didn't have a camera ready, so I drew a sketch from memory:

Our Thirty-oneth

2005-12-29T00:03:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we celebrated thirty-one years of marital bliss.

Peter totally surprised me first-thing in the morning with a large parcel, elegantly wrapped in two plastic bags sticky-taped together. I shook it ... no rattle. Not heavy enough for a book. Couldn't smell any interesting chocolatey smells, and anyway it was too light for that too. Or so I thought.

This is the biggest box of chocolates I have ever received! And the lightest. 36 little cardboard packages, each containing two tiny Hershey's kisses. The whole thing comes down to 375 grams of chocolate. American made, maybe, but definitely Chinese packaging.

So then we hopped aboard a bus and went into town together. We got off near the centre of town and walked north. That's when we saw

The Big Chook

I know chickens like to scratch around in the dirt, but this is ridiculous.

We escaped from the chicken and went on up to a shopping centre we hadn't visited before. Its English name is "Trust Mart". Now there's an interesting concept in the Chinese market place. The centre was big and spacious and there were no crowds at all, so we spent a pleasant couple of hours browsing around. We even managed to find some apple-drinking-vinegar which we became very fond of in Zhengzhou but haven't been able to get here. Mind you, it wasn't nearly as tasty as the stuff we got last year.

Enough of that, we decided to cross the road and catch a bus back to the city centre rather than walking as it had begun to rain. We were at one of those huge intersections which takes a good minute to walk across, but fortunately there was an underpass. So we headed down the steps along with other pedestrians. Once you are underground things are often confusing, but there seemed to be only one tunnel to walk along and we were relieved to emerge once again into the clear air. Our instincts were right, the tunnel had taken us in the wrong direction and we were now on the corner diagonally opposite where we wanted to be. There was nothing for it but to head over land across the intersection.

Back in the city centre we decided on lunch in Pizza Hut - the creme-de-la-creme of restaurants if price is anything to go on. What would you think if you had to pay sixty or seventy bucks for a lunch-sized pan pizza? But it was nice. Sometimes you just need a little bit of home! Real mozarella stringy cheese, and not a chopstick in sight.

We were about to leave after our delicious lunch when I suddenly remembered the washroom facilities at Pizza Hut are usually well worth visiting too. A tall sad-looking Chinese employee held the door open for me as I entered the "ladies", and then stood around leaning on her mop handle while I relaxed on the clean white western-style loo. As I left she stepped into the stall to mop and wipe everything down for the next customer. At least she had waited til I was done - in some of the Chinese-style public conveniences if your stall door doesn't lock over-enthusiastic cleaning staff will reach in and start mopping while you are still busy ...

To complete our happy day we then crossed the road and enjoyed a dessert and coffee at Starbucks.

Yeah, 31 happy years ...

School Christmas

2005-12-26T00:08:00.000-08:00

They thought it would be nice for the children at the "bilingual" primary school to be visited by some foreign teachers during their Christmas celebrations. So we were told to prepare some activities to do with them, and we were to spend a couple of happy hours visiting their classrooms and bringing Christmas cheer.

Well, the arrangements were pretty bodgy - we were seriously misled as to the age of the students, and number of classes. So I found myself being physically pushed into the centre of a classroom full of five-year-olds - I had an activity prepared for older children who had possibly learnt a few more words of English and some self-control. As I stood in the centre of the classroom I saw that the desks (which I had hoped to use for the activity) were pushed back against the walls, and the little darlings were sitting around on chairs screaming (literally) with excitement. Their rosy cheeks were sticky and grubby from eating lollies all morning - most of their normal food has very little sugar - and they were as high as kites.

I had to do a quick think on my feet, trying to dredge up an "activity" that could be done safely - for me and them - in this situation. It had to be something that required no language skills, and very little space ... and I was coming up blank. One of our lovely office girls was with me, and she had a CD player and a CD - I had no idea what was on the CD (had not had a chance to listen to it) other than "Christmas songs". And she had no idea how to work the CD player which she had grabbed on the way out the door.

This was one of those "performing monkey" situations that ESL teachers hate. Someone somewhere sometime (and I hope, for their sake, they have already "passed on") gave the people of China the idea that foreign teachers like to "sing a song or do a dance". No chance, even if I could. So what did I do? What would you do if you had to survive for about 15 minutes in this situation?

Well I started with: "Hello" - it's the one English word they all know - and they chorused back, "Hellooo!" Then I tried, "How are you?" and they all screamed, "Ahmm fahhn, anda you?" Well, that is what they are taught in schools. I had a go at, "Merry Christmas!" "Merry Christmas!" and I was fast running out of ideas. The only other thing I was fairly confident they could handle was, "What is your name?" - so I went around the room randomly asking the little upturned faces and getting "My name is ...." Chinese names that I couldn't repeat accurately.

I asked Alice to play some music, and their teacher (in a tiny mousey voice) and I together managed to get them to understand musical statues. But after one little soldier nearly lost his front teeth (a lot of the little boys had toy guns with them) I gave that a miss. I tried getting boys and girls to "dance" separately - "now the boys" ... "now the girls" ... - but there seemed to be a great deal of confusion about which was which, I guess those two words weren't in their vocabulary yet. Listening wasn't a strong point in either language.

Some moments that will stay with me:

In one class I turned the tables and suggested one of them might like to perform. The teacher volunteered a little pixie-girl who she said had very good English. She was tiny for her age, but came confidently to the middle of the room where she sang and flapped her little arms and spun around, and they all joined in.

In another class I spied a spare tiny chair, so I grabbed it and sat myself in their circle. A chunky little man two chairs up made a big show of leaning away from me, almost squashing the kid next to him to avoid being near me. So I grabbed him and sat him on my knee. The other kids were greatly amused and he had the attention he obviously needed!

In one of the classes there was a little boy who had just spent a year in Australia - what a gorgeous little kid he was! He came out and tried to translate for me as the kids asked me questions ... yes, by this stage I'd decided that getting them to ask me questions was by far the safest strategy, at least with these students who were a year older!

One little boy - another cute chunky kid - desperately wanted to show off his extremely limited English. He kept putting up his hand, but then he would stumble and stall, or just say silly meaningless things. Finally he stood up and started reading out of his book. "I am a boy. I am a good boy. I am learning English ... I am slim..." At this point the teacher suddenly realised he had his book open and stopped him. "You are not slim. You are fat!" she scolded him.

In my sixth and final classroom they had some banger things - they shoot paper everywhere - to let off. Can you imagine doing that in the classroom in Oz? They wanted me to be in the middle of the room so that I would get showered in coloured paper, but I backed away nearer the door. The teacher and her assistant were struggling with several of these cardboard tubes, holding them high in the air and twisting the bottom of them to make them explode. The children wanted to be involved too, and were swinging on the teacher's arms and pulling on the cardboard tubes. I thought about how I would have insisted that everyone was seated in their chair with their lips buttoned and their arms folded at a time like this. There was mayhem and screaming, and finally to everyone's relief there was a loud bang and a shower of green and red strips of paper.

And it was over at last. We headed back to the principal's office. When we had arrived two hours before they had presented each of us with a paper cup of boiling hot Chinese tea, and instantly anounced that it was time to go. Our cups were still sitting there, so they hotted them up and we had a quick cuppa and headed home.

We were each presented with a generous gift for our little effort. There was a lovely little mug with a matching lid. And some pre-stamped postcards. And a little Chinese doll. And an electric jug.

I guess they had no idea Peter and I were married. Hmm. One already in the kitchen. One for the bedroom, and one for the study ...

A Chinese Christmas

2005-12-26T00:04:00.000-08:00

We decided that this year we would make our Christmas Day special by attending church, especially as it fell on a Sunday anyway. We had not attended church in China before - we have had considerable difficulty finding out when and where to go.

Church

The church in Wuxi is a big obvious building, but it is in a busy construction site - all the buildings around it seem to be being re-built or renovated. There is a massive hole in the ground right in front of it, and the air is full of the sound of jack-hammers. I suppose that eventually the church building itself will be out of sight behind some monumental sky-scraper building.

We worked our way along the hoarding around the site, and finally found an open gate with people streaming in. There seemed to be a service of some sort already going on in the church itself, and a large crowd was pressing into the doorway trying to see what was going on. There were also crowds of people heading into another building nearby which was labelled as church offices. Then there were other people sitting around on wooden chairs outside just having a cuppa. Others were just standing gawking at the construction pit and machinery. No one paid much attention to us, not even the other couple of foreigners we saw standing around.

After we had wandered around a little, a Chinese couple came up to us and said hello. They had been in Australia for a few years, and had just come back to visit Wuxi for a few months. They tried to find out for us when and where there was an English service - information we had was 10 am, but they were told by someone around it wasn't until 10.30. So we all decided to go across the road for a cuppa at Macca's while we waited, it gave us a chance to get to know each other a little.

When we came back we went into the big church - there were already a lot of people in there, but no foreigners and it wasn't really looking like it would be an English service.

We sat in a pew - this one had obviously been left empty because the floor there had been used as a toddler's toilet during the previous service - and Peter was having fun taking photos of a cute baby nearby. Suddenly a lady in the pew in front noticed us and started excitably explaining something to us in Chinese, she kept grabbing my arm and trying to drag me away toward the front of the church. Our Chinese friends realised she was saying we were in the wrong place, and we let her lead us right up to the front of the church, across to the other side, out a door and up some stairs.

The "English" service had obviously been going for some time - since 9.30 we found out later - and the tiny classroom sized room was packed. We were grabbed again and led down to the front where they found a couple of spare kindergarten-sized chairs for us to sit on. We were hard up against the piano, and right under the noses of the young pastor who was preaching in Chinese, and a Chinese lady who was translating into English.

And a movie

Our new Chinese friends said they had been planning to meet other friends and go to see a movie at the cinema - would we like to join them? Well, why not, do what the people are doing.

She phoned her friend who went to find out whether this new exciting Chinese movie had English subtitles, and the message soon came back that it did, so we decided to give it a try. Soon we were seated in a small cinema with a tub of multicoloured popcorn, right down near the front.

The movie was magnificent. There is no other way to describe it. Everything was extravagant, overdone maybe, very Chinese. And yes, there were subtitles - in Chinese. Our friends got up and took us back out of the cinema - we had been promised English subtitles. Well, unfortunately we would have to come back to the 3.30 session for that. We considered going in to a different small cinema to watch "Harry Potter" with English subtitles, but that would somehow spoil the experience. So we went back in and sat and watched it in Chinese. We were amazed how much we did understand, both of the spoken and written words, and of course we had our friends there to explain and interpret.

It seems that every Chinese person would like to be a super-hero, to be able to run at the speed of light, and to fly, and to fight by leaping and spinning, to appear and disappear. I have endured small amounts of Chinese movies on TV that are full of this stuff. But this one was so big in every way, and not just because it was on the big screen. It was like a peek into the Chinese psyche, and a reminder that our cultures are so very different.

Christmas Dinner

We came out of the movie with that funny lost feeling you can have after watching an epic - it had felt like about five hours, but apparently it was only two - and we were hungry. A friend in Australia had asked me what I would be having for Christmas lunch, and this was the moment to find out.

We went across the road into a food court - we had thought to eat there before the movie, but it was too crowded to get in the door. We are often in the city at lunchtime on a Sunday, and it is always difficult to find somewhere that's not too crowded.

We had a big bowl of noodles each, and a little plate of meat. It was very filling and satisfying, and different from any other Christmas lunch we've had.

Bus ride home

Well, the city was packed, far more than usual. We decided to catch a bus as close as possible to it's starting point, because the buses were all bursting full. As we approached one of the stops where there are buses heading in our direction, there was a crowd that extended out into the road, filling the first traffic lane. There was a bus just arriving, not one we wanted, and the crowd surged towards it. Then we saw down the street our bus approaching. We forced our way through the crowd and arrived just as it pulled up. We were almost the first ones there, but in no time there were shoulders and elbows pushing their way between us and the bus door. Being slightly taller than many of those around him, Peter managed to reach over their heads and grab hold of the rail on the door of the bus. A strange murmur went through the crowd as he pulled himself towards the door. I grabbed hold of the back of his jacket so as not to get separated, and was amused to see several other hands holding on there too.

We managed to get on, and grabbed a standing space quite close to the back exit door. The people just kept pouring on, and we just stood our ground and held on to our selected handles. Finally the bus rumbled off the mark and around the corner. At the next stop it halted only long enough to let one person leap out of the back door - the driver did not open the front door to let anyone on. As we drove on we heard yelling and someone banging on the side of the bus.

When we clambered out at our stop and climbed up to our apartment we felt like we had had a long day, but it was only about three o'clock in the afternoon. Plenty of time still to settle down and watch a good $1 DVD in English.

Shopping with Alice

2005-12-18T00:10:00.000-08:00

Doing "bookshop" is not fun. It's not hard work, it's just boring, and it makes my legs ache standing still for so long. But when there are not enough clients to fill our timetables with lessons that dazzle, we get landed with a few stints there in the bookshop. It's "performing monkey" time, just stand there and look foreign, attract attention, get prospective new clients so intrigued they just have to come over and have a closer look at us. While one of the office girls stands with us and does all the real work: - "Excuse me, blah blah blah..." The (hopefully) new client chats with them, occasionally glancing at the foreigner curiously - no idea what they are saying, but we smile and nod.

But it is fun to have some time chatting with whichever of the girls has also landed bookshop duty. Remember Alice? (She featured in "I love work"). She and I were doing bookshop together today, and neither of us had our hearts in it, I must admit. I casually asked if she knew where I could buy some knitting yarn - feel like keeping my fingers busy with some crochetting while we watch some of those six yuan (one dollar) DVDs on these cold cold evenings, and the blanket I started last year is too big to be fun any more (takes a whole ball of yarn to go around once.) Alice's eyes lit up - they sparkle with mischief on her saddest days - at a chance to go shopping, her favourite sport! She suggested that if I wasn't doing anything after bookshop she would go with me to find some.

What was even better, from her point of view, was when I suggested a couple of minutes before knock-off time that maybe we could go now. That set her to chuckling, and she slipped her arm happily into mine as we set off into the crowded street.

She had no idea where to go, but after all her sales training she was not at all averse to bowling up to the nearest startled pedestian and ask them if they knew. Apparently nobody did know, so we headed in the direction of one of the really big department stores, places I normally avoid, especially at times like Sunday afternoon. "Commercial Mansion," the three metre high words announced, and Alice stood there for a while and practised saying it until she got it right - I am often curious as to who the English names are put there for, is it really just so Alice can practise her English?

Once inside Alice started questioning people again, and we were pointed in the direction of an enquiries counter. At least I think it was. A big sign announced "Meet Your Every Demand". Hmm. I had some thoughts ... but I was fairly sure the two girls slouching around reading magazines behind the desk did not even know any English, Alice had enough trouble attracting their attention in Chinese to ask her question about knitting yarn.

Third floor, they told her. That was when I noticed the escalators. And the solid mass of people around the bottom of them. I am not fond of crowds, and by myself I would have walked back out of the shop. But Alice took my arm and we barged right in there, pushing with the rest, until we found our feet on the escalator steps. Just as well we were heading for the third floor, because as we came out the top of the first escalator we were in the hub of the crowd that spun around to the right and continued on up.

Once again Alice ran around looking for someone to ask for information, which is just as well because the only place that sold yarn was down a spooky little alley-way between a couple of shops that were boarded up for rennovations - it was not at all obvious that people were even allowed in that area.

The lady in the shop was looking down her nose at me, I am sure of that. I was obviously not her usual class of customer. This was a shop where they tailor beautiful suits for people, and I guess you could ask to have something knitted for you with the yarns as well. I told Alice it was really too expensive - I was glad the lady didn't speak English. Bold little Alice asked if they offered a discount, and chuckled a bit when she told me this shop did not give discounts. That was obvious enough.

It was good yarn though, Alice kept pointing out - I could see that. Not like the knotty home-made stuff I bought in Xiao Qiao last year. Real merino wool, apparently, and sold by the kilo. It looked like it would cost me about a hundred bucks for a kilo, but I had no idea how much I needed - I'm used to buying wool in ounces or by the ball. Eventually I was persuaded to buy a half-kilo, as this would apparently be enough to make a vest or the like.

Now I come to look at it, I have never bought a half-kilo of wool in a presentation box like this! There are four large balls and two half-sized balls, each in their own little plastic-moulded hole. And the box! What happened to stuffing it all in a plastic bag and tying a knot in the top? How will I know which ball to start with? How guilty will I feel if this project fails or remains unfinished? I don't even have a pattern, just a vague idea in my head ... is it okay to do that when the wool comes in a presentation box?

I guess I'll sit and stare at it a while longer.

Dangerous Streets

2005-12-15T00:11:00.000-08:00

When we were little kids we were taught how to cross the street:

Look right, look left, look right again. If it's all clear, walk straight across. Walk, don't run.

Well, I would spend my whole life on this side of the street if I tried to do that here. Of course, here we have to look left first - but also check to the right for vehicles going the "wrong" way. (I forgot the other day and blithely stepped into the path of a stealth scooter which swerved around me, almost onto the correct side of the street.) But also it's extremely rare for any street to ever be clear enough to walk straight across. It's still true that it's not a good idea to run. "Don't run, and don't stop," is good advice.

Some of our Chinese friends find it amusing that we always try to cross the street where there is a crosswalk. I'm told that it was only last September or so that it became law in China that drivers must not run into pedestrians on crosswalks. Not that they have to stop at a crosswalk if there are pedestrians crossing! Oh, no! Honk, swerve around them (but don't stop), threaten (by surging at them), flash your headlights at them in warning, but don't run them down.

Maybe they forgot to tell everyone the new law. But when all else fails there is a very general rule that everyone understands quite well: "Anything goes as long as you don't bump into anything."

When I travel to an out-lying district to teach on-site lessons to employees of a French company, they send a driver to pick me up from the office. This man has driving skills which I admire immensely. He arrives outside our office at the worst possible time, just when the two schools - a primary school next to our office and a high school opposite the office - are discharging their pupils. It is a scene of utter chaos.

Parents (and grand-parents) and excited children are streaming along and across the road in all directions, carrying school-bags and boarding all manner of vehicles - cars, vans, public buses, taxis, bikes, trikes, scooters, motor-bikes - eager to get home out of the cold wind. Vehicles are parked, and double or triple parked all over the place, some are trying to back out or do u-turns, while a flotilla of large public buses have stopped out in the middle of the road-way because the bus-stop is full of children and adults who are flooding out onto the road, pushing and shoving to be first onto the bus. There is a lot of honking - apparently without it no one would know where anyone else was - and an amazing amount of patience.

When things reach a stale-mate and no one can move at all for a few minutes, until traffic lights further down the street change maybe, the drivers just sit and honk or flash their lights and the pedestrians and two-wheelers continue to weave their way through the mess. The weird thing is that no one gets angry - no shouting, no waving of fists - as there would be for sure overseas.

In the middle of all this my big black car arrives, on the other side of the road facing the wrong way. He gently u-turns through all the mayhem, and stops at the kerb-side. He greets me and helps me do up my seat-belt , and then we inch our way through the madding crowd. After the first couple of streets in the city centre things open up a bit, he takes his right hand off the horn, and picks up the pace. He drives aggressively - no waiting around unnecessarily - and skilfully. He seems to know just how fast he can drive head-on at an obstacle, (other vehicle, pedestrian, red traffic light) so that he barely needs to change gears as he flits past. He plays a nice Chinese music CD as we travel, and ... I am learning to relax and trust his judgement.

This week Peter was not so lucky. He takes a taxi to an off-site class, and he had a taxi-driver who obviously didn't hear about the pedestrian crossing law. He ran smack-bang into the side of a chap riding his electric bike across a zebra crossing. Naturally it can be pretty serious for a tax-driver if he is involved in an accident, it could cost him his licence and his livelihood.

The taxi-driver jumped out (leaving the meter running) picked the guy up, and pulled up his trouser leg and shirt in the raw wind to examine his injuries. There was a lot of discussion going on, and a crowd gathered to watch the show - much more entertaining than TV! The driver rushed back to the vehicle and dragged out a packet of cigarettes and tried desperately to get the man to have one - but he just batted them away. Then he got more generous and started trying to tuck a hundred yuan bill into the man's clothing, but he continued to wave him off. This was worth much more than a cigarette, or even a hundred bucks! In the end the driver weakened, and gave him three hundred bills and some smaller notes - probably all he had - and the matter was settled.

It was hard for Peter to know what to do in this situation - should he jump out into the cold and hail another taxi, then he would have to pay the initial 8 yuan all over again. As it was a trip to work, he needed a taxi receipt to claim the fare back anyway. Finally the driver got back in the cab and drove him to his destination, and proceeded to charge him the full fare that was on the meter, despite the twenty-minute interlude at the crosswalk. Of course, the taxi-driver was feeling aggressive and very stressed, and when your Chinese vocabulary is limited to about ten stuttering phrases, it usually seems best just to give in and pay.

The taxi driver was very lucky that the police didn't show up of course. A friend of ours recently had a similar experience of being in a taxi that hit a cyclist, but on this occasion the police turned up and had to be paid too.

Stay on the path

So I have learnt to cross the street - lane by lane - even by myself. And I am even learning to be safe on the footpath. This is where bikes - and often cars too - are parked, so there is still a good chance of being run over.

Last week we saw the police "cleaning up" the city centre - strictly speaking motor-bikes are not allowed in the CBD - so the they were picking up parked motor-bikes and loading them onto the back of a truck to cart them away. How frustrating would that be? It's hard enough to find a parking spot for your vehicle without the hassle of having it carted away while you are busy.

It can be hard for the street-sellers too - those wonderful little people who deliver such cheap delicious treats to the side-walk - the police were carting them away too. Presumably there is some sort of payment they should make, or a licence they should buy. Or they just shouldn't park so much in the way. These people are always extremely mobile, ready to up-anchor and flit away at a moment's notice, but still a lot of them got caught.

Meat-on-a-stick is always great, they have little barbecues on wheels - you can just see the man on the left is fanning his fire. And then there is the fruit-on-a-stick - coated in a crackly caramel toffee, and often wrapped in edible rice-paper as well.

Sometimes there are the most amazing smells. Often there are people selling "stinky tofu" - fried fermented bean-curd - which has a strong burning toilet-related smell. They say if you can get past the smell it's delicious, but I haven't been game yet.

In the cinemas in Oz the advertising time often starts with "Can you smell the popcorn?..." I, for one, have always loved the smell of the popcorn in the movie theatre, though I'm not that interested in eating it.

Well that is nothing in comparison to the popcorn they sell on the streets. The delectable aroma grabs you as you come around a corner, and there she is, a lady with a tiny tricycle cart and a pressure-cooker on the back. She adds sugar and butter and flavours of your choice to the mix, and out comes the most delicious, crisp, fresh, irresistible popcorn ever. For three yuan she will hand you a large plastic shopping-bag full of it, and you set off with intentions to share it with all your friends and relations. But by the time you tie up the handles to board the bus as it arrives, you notice you have absent-mindedly already munched your way through half of it ...

Looking Up

My husband says I have a tendancy to fall in holes - well, I did once when we were walking on the beach and I disappeared into a hole and he had gone a few metres before he missed me ... but that's another story. Public health and safety have a whole different meaning here in China, and it really is each indiviual's responsibility to make sure they don't step into that unguarded open manhole, or trip over that welding mesh sticking out of the concrete, or stumble on uneven pavers. But in between steps, when I am sure it is safe, I like to look up from time to time too.

I am amazed when I am at my kitchen window in our apartment how few people coming down the drive ever glance up - not me, I always stare up at all the windows that have lights on and wonder who lives there and what their lives are like.

Quite apart from the wild beauty of Chinese electrical wiring, there are so many interesting things to see - plants, roof-top gardens, interesting architectural add-ons, and occasionally someone on the roof cleaning up and about to drop a piece of masonry or something ...

Here are some men demolishing a building in the city centre. Some of the work is done by a large machine with a jack-hammer fitting. But most, it seems, is actually done like this by little men with hammers and the like. On the ground an army of trike-rider men are sitting in their tiny trailers on pieces of cardboard or whatever they can find to make it more comfortable - talking, playing cards, waiting for there to be enough rubble for them to cart some away.

Down the bottom of the photo there is some woven bamboo. This is very thoughtfully there for my protection, because this is one of the main city thoroughfare walking alley-ways.

So it's good to be a little aware of what is going on over your head, as long as you watch your step, and look out for vehicles at the same time.

Waiting at the Stop

2005-12-10T00:16:00.000-08:00

Lately I seem to have developed a knack for missing the bus. Not that there are really set times for the bus to arrive - as far as we know - but I always seem to be just coming through the "Kang Xing Yuan" entrance archway as the bus arrives at the other side of the road. It's too far, and too dangerous, to run to catch it, and yelling - even if I knew the right words! - would be useless. It's usually about 20 minutes or so between buses, but sometimes we get lucky and one bus catches up to another so it may only be ten minutes. Of course it works the other way too, and recently I have had to wait up to 45minutes.

Twenty minutes is a long time to stand on one spot. Especially as the temperature this week has been dropping below zero, and there has been a bitterly cold wind roaring down Jian Kang Lu. It was enough to get me into my quilted, padded (duck-down), hooded, full-length red coat that I had specially made for me in Zhengzhou last year.

(This picture was taken in Zhengzhou last year the day I got the coat.)

The red seems to be an unfortunate choice of colour, although the Chinese may consider it "lucky". I had been feeling a bit down at the time, and knowing that bright colours can help to lift the flagging spirit, I decided to be bold. Due to my more than Chinese (ample) girth, I have regretted that decision many times, especially when the playful young ladies at work here call me "big red..."

My classes at the moment are spaced out such that I need to go in to the office and back twice in a day - unless I want to wander round town in the freezing wind, or sit around the office for hours at a time in between.

So, twice a day I have stood and glowed like a big red beacon on Jian Kang Lu for up to 45 minutes at a time ... stamping my feet and doing a little bit of a dance just to keep the blood flowing. Basically making a spectacle of myself, I suppose. Brightening the lives of the little men who are fixing the road.

The wall and the pavement are gone now.

The sidewalk by the bus-stop has always been treacherous. There is a new (unfinished) block of apartments just there, with a wall to protect pedestrians from the machinery and work around the flats. So this week the wall was finally knocked down, and the uneven pavers ripped up to lay a new sidewalk. In the meantime, us unfortunate people waiting for a bus are left stamping our feet and doing our little dance out on the road-way, among the bikes, motorbikes, and side-walk workmen with their barrows and dumpster-trucks full of bricks and sand.

So the workmen and I have got to know each other a little. So much so that yesterday as Peter and I went down to wait for a bus together I was met with a broad grin by the little fellow with the barrow. He's a likeable little chap - really quite short of stature - with only one eye. Because of this limitation he walks with a side-to-side wagging of his head, very similar to some cartoon characters. As I waited for buses he went back and forth and back and forth with his little barrow, carrying pavers from over there where they had been dropped off the truck to over here where the men were at work laying them. Each time he went by me with a pleasant half-smile and a bit of a stare, and I guess I stared back as I paused in my little feet-warming stomp.

The other men were not so memorable, though I have had lots of time to observe their paver-laying techniques. Having had a go at laying brick-pavers when we built our house in West Oz, I was quite impressed with the relaxed way they were getting on with the job. Despite having string-lines to guide, they seemed quite unconcerned about obvious but slight irregularities - until their supervisor, in his smart (clean) overcoat, showed up. He didn't get his hands even the tiniest bit dirty, but he did a lot of waving and pointing and picking up of the rubber-mallet to demonstrate the proper method, all the time speaking to them quietly and gently. It seemed obvious that he was speaking from his own experience.

One young man was driving a little dumpster-truck back and forth. This incredibly low-geared, slow-moving vehicle was obviously a big step up from the chaps who were pushing their barrows by hand. Although it could carry several barrow-loads at a go, it's speed was less than the walking pace of a barrow man. So this young man was showing off a little, laying back in his seat with his foot up on the dash and his hands behind his head, just letting his machine trundle slowly past as he had a good long stare and a bit of a leer at me. He was so busy watching my foot-stomping and my red coat that he didn't notice his truck had taken a bit of a turn and slowly went off-course, trapping a man with a flat-tyred barrow between his truck and the freshly-laid kerb edge, unable to hear the warning shouts above his engine noise. He then tried to back up, but by then the barrow had jammed under the vehicle and between the front and back wheels.

I was beginning to think that the number 40 bus I had missed might be the last bus ever to stop at this place - maybe there was one of those unreadable (to me) Chinese notices somewhere about - when another lady came and joined me. A moment later a number 3 bus came down the road headed for it's terminus about 100 metres away round the corner. She took off and ran around the corner to meet it as it began it's return trip. Unfortunately that bus wasn't going where I needed to go. And anyway, surely my bus would be coming soon ...

Visitors from Zhengzhou

2005-12-05T00:18:00.000-08:00

Last year when the college administration at LongHu found that we would not be renewing our contract for the following year, they asked if Peter would be willing to correspond (by email) with prospective new teachers. And so we came to get to know Jenny and Ian from the Gold Coast (Queensland, Australia) who later took our place at China Australia College near Zhengzhou. It was rather fun, after all the to-ing and fro-ing of emails, that last weekend they were able to use their four-day weekend to visit us here in Wuxi.

It was lovely to talk "Oz" for a bit, to use all the idioms and expressions we are comfortable with, without having to explain ourselves. And to compare notes about how things were, and now are, at the college at LongHu.

We went to see the "Big Buddha" again, because everyone who comes to Wuxi has to see that ( ... but if we get any more visitors we'll point the way and they can go see it by themselves.) This time it was a cool, slightly drizzly day. So the bus was much less crowded.

We got there just in time for the fountain-and-music show.

Then we climbed up and saw the fat buddha with all the naughty babies running all over him.

We touched the hand,

but didn't damage it ...

And we found out where baby braziers (crucibles?) come from. (Can you see the little one under there?)

Then we climbed up the steps to admire the view.

There are always people lighting candles, and there are large tubs of water under the dripping candles to keep everything safe. But someone manage to set light to the wax floating on the water, and there was a funny incident to watch from our vantage point as a man ran inside to get a fire extinguisher, which he handed to this young girl before getting himself to a safe distance.

As we headed out of the Ma Shan area we were assaulted on all sides by desperate salespeople huddled in their little shops nearby, desperately wanting to sell a few artefacts or souvenirs to over-generous tourists. We are not at all sure what punishment we avoided at this shop:

So finally we all headed back to our little apartment. After climbing all those steps, Ian and Jenny slept soundly despite the hard bed. It is a special two-sided mattress, with a hard side and a soft side. The hard side is just wood with cloth stretched over it. The soft side has a thin layer of foam under the cloth.

The next day we wandered through the wet city of Wuxi, and Jenny bought herself a new coat. Then it was time for them to catch the sleeper train back to Zhengzhou. Overnight, while they were on the train, the temperature dropped dramatically both here and in Zhengzhou - winter arrived!

No more tin

2005-12-04T00:20:00.000-08:00

So Wuxi used to be a tin mining town. And now the tin is all used up - hence the name "Wuxi" meaning just that.

When you visit Wuxi you can see the hill where the mine was from most places in the city. And it is now the place for a lovely park. We visited there during our October break when there was a lantern display in the park. We weren't quite sure what to expect from a display of lanterns, we certainly weren't expecting these magnificent wire and silk models.

There were other attractions too, like this stall selling lollipops. They were made on-the-spot from hot toffee quickly shaped into intricate designs from the Chinese zodiac. Little darling here really couldn't wait and wanted to get his hand onto the unfinished still-soft confectionary. Which he succeeded in doing moments after the photo was taken.

Warning, warning.

And then there was the chair-lift, which looked like it could be fun, despite the misty, rainy weather that day.

I always imagine the worst - especially in a place like this where public health and safety are handled differently from our own country. So I was very careful to read all of the instructions before I handed over my money for a ride.

And I didn't frolic once. And I'm glad it didn't stop half-way because I definitely would have felt some panic despite their instructions.

Too hard to read? Here is what it says:

1. Please line up to buy tickets and get into the chair lift one by one. Keep the ticket for check when going out. Otherwise you have to buy the ticket again. Children under 1.2m should buy half-price tickets, while children over 1.2m should buy full-price-tickets.

2. Anyone who have heart disease, high blood pressure, mental disease, vertigo disease, acrophobia, acute infection disease, or is the drunk, the disabled, a kid under 1.2m without parents-companion are not allowed to take the chairlift in order to avoid any accident.

3. When sitting on the chairlift, the behaviors such as smoking, squatting, standing and frolicking are forbidden.

4. Any explosive, inflammable, toxic and dangerous articles as well as handbags over 5kg are not allowed into the chairlift.

5. Don't little and damage the facilities. Passengers have to pay any damages.

6. Don't feel panic when suddenly stopped in the middle way or any technical problems occur, please follow attendants' instructions.

7. When the chairlift is coming into the station, please follow the attendant's instructions to exit the station. Don't stay in the station to take pictures.

Thank you for your cooperation and hope to see you again.

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Time to change the beds ...

04.12.05 at 3:37 PM CST

You've got to hand it to them - the Chinese know what they are doing when it comes to gardening. Not that their methods would work so well in the harsh Australian environment, but they are certainly masters of their own domain.

We plan ahead. We plant tiny trees, and dream of the day when they will be tall enough to give us some shade. We try to plant a garden bed with some plants that will look good in winter, and some for summer too.

But not here. Gardens are instant, complete with fully-grown trees. The planning happens elsewhere, and the trees arrive on the back of a truck with their foliage dragging behind on the ground and their root-ball all tied up with rope. They are hoisted into position with wooden supports on each side and their trunks bound with rope, supposedly to protect them from the shock of being moved.

The road at our back gate has been under road-works for the past few months. Until a couple of weeks ago there was nothing to see except piles of dirt and heavy machinery. Now the road service is laid, and lines are painted, barriers are up, and the gardens are in place too.

Elsewhere, this is the time of year to change the beds. Armies of gardening staff pull the summer shrubs out of garden beds, bind up their roots and put them away until next year, and pop the winter bushes into place. They give them a bit of a trim - bushes and hedges are generally trimmed into interesting shapes, they could be Chinese words for all we know - and voila! The winter garden is ready.

... and paint the trees.

When we noticed last year that the big trees along the sides of the roads were all painted white up to about a metre high, we presumed it was for ease of visibility - especially as the light poles are similarly painted. Then we noticed acres of tiny trees - probably the ones that will later be transplanted when they are fully grown - all with their spindly trunks also painted white. Well, maybe someone was bored and thought it would look nice.

Now winter is upon us, and we noticed that they are doing it again. All the trees that are not bound up with rope - or in some cases what looks more like white plastic - are presently having their trunks painted white. Even the forests of tiny trees away from the road have all been thoroughly sloshed with the white liquid. It does look rather neat, but we are guessing it is some kind of winter protection - only guessing, because no one seems willing or able to tell us why it is done. Maybe, from their point of view, it has always been so, it's like asking why the sky is blue, it's not something to be questioned.

Colour comes in pots

Then there are the glorious flower displays. Sometimes the gardeners will arive with a truckload of already flowering plants, and pull them out of their pots to place directly into the ground. But mostly the displays are just made up of plants still in their little plastic-bag pots attractively arranged.

Sometimes they will even build a wire model, such as a dragon, and put the flower-pots into it at all sorts of angles.

Drippy Drama

2005-11-25T22:49:00.000-08:00

I stumbled across the apartment from our bedroom to the bathroom at four in the morning, being careful to open my eyes only the barest slit in order to preserve my sleepiness, hoping that I could easily slide back into bed and off to sleep again. But then I heard it, that tiny noise ... there was definitely something dripping.

Remembering our experience in LongHu when a burst pipe in the apartment above resulted in icy cold water dripping into our bedroom in the early hours of the morning, I had learnt that it is usually worthwhile checking up on dripping sounds. Opening my eyes a little more, and turning on the bathroom light, I noticed that the hot water system was dripping onto the washing machine. No big deal, back to bed and worry about it later.

But the damage was done, I couldn't just go back to sleep. I lay there and wondered what I should have done, and soon I was up again. The water was definitely coming from the water heater and not from the ceiling above, and it was dripping quite fast from at least three different spots. The bathroom floor was already puddled and slippery. So I put down towels and turned off supply taps and tried again to sleep.

In the morning we found the drips had continued unabated despite turning off taps. So we told our contact person at work and we were told the landlord would come in and fix the problem.

So the next day they all came. The landlady - sweet little person - and her tall thin husband, and son who actually knew a little bit of English. And the "professional man" who was to replace the hot water system. They chattered and argued amongst themselves, and there was coming and going, up and down the stairs. They discovered in the process that our intercom handpiece doesn't always work - and they seemed dissatisfied with our system of giving it a good hit every time. The doorbell also chose this time to stop sounding like a cow's last gasp, it gave up the ghost completely and fell silent. And the bathroom heater - one of those with heat lamps and a built-in exhaust fan - had never worked, but with winter well on it's way in they said they would replace that too. The electrician would be called, another professional person.

That's our front door, on the right, next to the troublesome intercom phone. The narrow little door with the imitation stain-glass window is the bathroom. So this little corner of the world is where everyone wanted to be.

So it was like living in Grand Central Station for a while. I was glad I didn't need the toilet - our little bathroom was full of people. The apartment door was left open for all the coming and going, and our neighbour happened by and was curious as to what was going on. She wandered in to have a chat with the landlady and the workmen, noticed me sitting there trying to do some lesson preparation and indulged herself in a good long stare. Then she asked the other people about me - I don't know all the words, but I do know the word for "understand" - and being reassured that I didn't have a clue she proceeded to wander into my kitchen and have a good snoop around.

I had to go out to work - at least there was a toilet I could use at work, albeit a "squat". By the end of the day's lessons I was feeling quite out of sorts, having had my whole daily routine - such as it is - turned around. It was so nice to come home to a nice hot shower. And what a difference! Instead of the previous barest trickle of warm water, we now have a gushing hot shower. But the dripping - now from the pipes - was much worse. We had buckets and containers catching the drips, and we had to turn off all the supply taps overnight.

So over the next few days they all came back again, and again. It took several attempts to fix the leaking pipes - they dug a big hole in the wall out in the stairwell - and then they had to keep coming back to check if it was fixed. A man came and put in the bathroom heater - mmm! warmth! - on another day. And then they all came back and took the intercom handpiece apart and fixed that. The next day they checked the pipes again.

Our brand new water heater, complete with shiny pipes and taps - no more rust stains on the wall and no more dripping!

Yesterday I had some sort of stomach thing - up late at night befriending the porcelain. So this morning - as I don't have a lesson till this evening - I luxuriated in bed, planning maybe a long hot bath, now that our water is all hot and gushy. In the end I got up about 10 and languished in the shower instead. The phone rang and Peter answered - it was our boss in Shanghai. As I started getting out of the shower and wrapped myself in one of our large bathsheets (unlike locally available towels), I was vaguely aware of a noise at the apartment door. Peter was still on the phone and I was almost wrapped when the whole bunch (including the neighbour!) burst in through the door. Apparently the water heater needed another check-up - ? And of course they needed to fix the door-bell which would of warned me of their impending embarrassment. And, yes, they were more embarrassed than I was.

Its all over bar the shouting

So I had never thought much about this expression, but I think I just found out what it means.

Another workman just turned up on my doorstep. He didn't ring the "bell", just banged on the door with the back of his hand. He was already quite upset, he had been shouting on his phone in the stairwell before he started hitting the door. He had a bucket and other equipment with him, and was apparently upset about the fact that the wall outside our apartment is all fixed. The other day there was a hole in it, then it was filled in with some black stuff that made the whole stairwell smell like vomit, then they plastered it over, then someone painted it in the same flaking grey as everything else - you really couldn't tell there had been anything there. (We have often been amazed by the ability of workmen in this country to erect buildings that look ancient, flaking and worn down from day one.) I was guessing it was his job to plaster the wall and someone had jumped in ahead of him, but I had nothing useful I could tell him, I hadn't even seen who had fixed the wall, it just happened. He was sniffing the wall (I guess he knows about these smells too) and running up and down the flight of stairs to the nearest window, and shouting angrily in his phone.

My caring neighbour could stand it no longer - you can only see so much through a peep-hole! - and she suddenly decided the outside of her door needed polishing. She came out with a cloth and wiped it down, said a few words to the workman, and then popped back inside. I figured there was not much to gain by leaving my door wide open and letting all that cold air in, so I pulled it to so he could check inside again without hurting his hand if he needed to.

Mrs Care-a-lot decided it was, after all, her business, and came back out into the stairwell for a really good go at him. The argument became increasingly heated and I was sure I would soon hear blows. Another man's voice (her husband?) tried to gently intervene a few times. Suddenly she pulled my door open and stepped inside - I have no idea what she hoped to acheive, she knew I was there - and then she looked a little embarrassed (a first for her) and closed the door.

All is quiet now. Hopefully if the saying is true it's all over now!

Well, almost

This whole drippy drama started over a week ago now. This morning there was another man banging on the door - then he apparently noticed the doorbell and used that. I was ready for the worst as I opened the door, thinking the angry ant was back. But here was another "professional man" from the water heater company, neatly dressed in the company uniform, nodding and bowing a little, shuffling his feet nervously about wanting to enter my apartment. He came in quietly and checked everything, ran the hot water, checked the guages, and then asked me to sign a piece of paper - in triplicate, I got to keep the pink copy. I was reminded again of why we so enjoy living and working here, the people are so gentle and polite. It's a pleasure dealing with them.

I love work!

2005-11-17T22:51:00.000-08:00

The place where we work is fairly unimpressive from the outside. The red and yellow sign is about our school - and there are similar red and yellow signs on posts right down the street to make sure people can find us. The biggish windows to the left of the sign above the red awning are our classrooms.

Once you go in and up the lift (or stairs) to the second floor, you are met by one or more of the delightful young ladies at the front desk. This is Alice, who is always smiling and friendly.

Down the end of the hallway - through the glass door and turn to the right - is the teachers' office. We are four full-time and two part-time teachers and this is where we sometimes get together, where we can relax, or do preparation, or go on the computer.

Then there is the resource room. This little bookshelf contains a wealth of useful materials. In Australia we had much larger resources collections in schools - but a lot of it was out of date and useless for so many reasons. This little stash is well-organised and maintained and all useful!

But what about the actual classrooms, the coal-face, where the real work happens? They are bright and airy, with desks and bright red and yellow plastic chairs to seat up to about 15 students in a class. That's because our classes are all small. Here is a kids open class - that's why there are parents present. They have come for a demonstration lesson to see if they want to pour their hard-earned cash into having their precious offspring learn English here.

But neither Peter nor I are teaching kids classes now - it's a really nice change after years of teaching kids in Australia! Gone are the days of playground duty, money collections, policy writing, anecdotal records about kids' misbehaviour, writing school reports - all the blah stuff about teaching primary school that have nothing to do with your actual teaching skillls.

We teach two main types of classes. Conversational classes are for individuals who want to improve their English, and they are privately funded. Business classes are funded by corporations who want their employees to improve their English. Corporate classes are sometimes in the classrooms at our centre, and sometimes we go to their workplace and teach there.

So, why do I love my job? It is such a pleasant, friendly place to work. Not only because of my work colleagues, but the people I get to teach are so wonderful to get to know.

Hitching a Ride

2005-11-16T22:52:00.000-08:00

I love watching the barges on the canal.

Its partly about the sounds. After the apparent mayhem of the streets with constant horns honking and pedestrians and cyclists weaving their way among buses, taxis and private cars, there just seems to be so much more order on the river. So I turn my back on the busy road and the traffic sounds are swallowed up in the deep throb of the boat engines - pitched so low that it is more of a feeling than a sound -and the gentle swishing of the water around the hulls.

At first it is not obvious that the tall majestic barges are one and the same as the water-level boats with water sloshing over their bows. They go down to Shanghai loaded to the max, and return sitting proud and high in the water.

So this boat - above - is empty, and this boat - below - is just as big but its full.

And then there are the barge trains - sometimes we see up to about twenty barges all joined together.

We were amused to see this at the tail end of a long barge train. There was a little runabout tied to the last barge, and then this fisherman has hooked himself on and is tagging along.

As each barge goes past we catch a glimpse of their lives. Sometimes we see lady sitting on the deck holding onto a small child. Often there are steaming cooking pots behind the wheelhouse. There are usually pots with plants sitting around, and someone hosing down or cleaning the deck. I saw a lady washing her hair, squatting on the deck pouring water over her soapy locks. And there is the ubiquitous washing hanging on the deck.

Hanging the Washing

2005-11-13T22:55:00.000-08:00

We see a great many interesting things, all of them different from what we see back "home". There are some really big differences, like the big Buddha, but then there are zillions of little everyday things that don't remind us of home.

The Grand Canal through Wuxi is only one street away from our apartment block, and we love to go and just watch the traffic up and down. Its just like the street, with lanes of traffic in both directions, and impatient vehicles wanting to overtake others, except so much quieter. Nothing to hear except the deep thrumming of the engines and the splashing of water.

In this picture, the boat on the left is heading towards us, but the wheelhouse is at the stern and because of the large load the driver can barely see where he is going. The person on the bow is responsible for waving a hand - usually holding a flag - to indicate to the man at the wheel where he needs to steer. With lots of bridges of various sizes to navigate under as well as other vessels to avoid, the lady on the bow is kept pretty busy.

Its a fascinating scene to watch, and it makes an interesting picture. (We have a large number of photos of the grand canal in our collection!) But this one is of particular interest to me because of the background. I worry about the washing hanging out of the apartment windows.

When I travel through a city with tall apartment blocks - and there are one or two of those in China! - I find myself looking up in fascination at the washing hanging way above my head. I think it takes a certain amount of nerve to be able to dangle your clothing out there like that, especially big things like blankets.

Our bedroom opens onto an enclosed balcony, with sliding windows at floor level and above, and a set of hanging poles that can be lowered and raised with a rope on a pulley. It's great, I feel totally safe - and so does my washing. Unfortuately, we are discovering that Wuxi's weather is very humid more often than not, and sometimes I do wish that we also had some outside hanging poles like most of the other apartments around here.

This is part of the view from my kitchen window - its always interesting! This is a fairly clear day, so someone has decided to use the trees in the courtyard for a temporary clothesline. At least this is within the apartment complex. On fine days the city streets in some parts of town are so full of washing lines that its harder than usual to walk down the pavements. Some people make use of road-side bushes and shrubs to air their bedding on. When we stayed in Qingdao last winter our hotel room overlooked an intersection which had a large roundabout. A thoughtful city administration had filled the roundabout with exercise equipment, which was well used by health-conscious city-dwellers every morning. And then on fine days the whole roundabout sprouted washing lines and wet washing. Can you imagine doing that in Australia?

I read in the news a few weeks ago that in Hong Kong there are now laundry police to stop people doing that, and they will confiscate washing hanging in public places. It seems a pity, there is something very Chinese about hanging washing all over the place.

The streets can be rather dirty, and the air may often be polluted, but the people here are generally meticulously clean. I love watching (from my kitchen) as they hang their washing. First you have to go out on your balcony and wipe everything down. The hanging poles themselves get very dusty, and the windows and window-ledges can leave dirty smudges on your clothes. Each balcony has black wrought-iron bars up to waist high, and if you hang washing outside on rails then the clothes will doubtless blow back and come into contact with this railing, and so this also needs to be carefully wiped down before you can start dangling clothes out there. There are a quite a few minutes of good, hard work to be done getting the area ready. And, if - as many still do - you wash your clothes by hand, washing day is all in all quite a busy time. I have nothing but admiration for the women who live here and who are so careful and neat.

Dying to get off the Bus

2005-11-12T22:56:00.000-08:00

I never catch buses at home (in Australia). Almost everyone has a car, the bus service is not that great and it's relatively expensive unless you have some kind on concession card. So when you do see a bus go past there are usually only a few people on it, all sitting politely upright on their seats, staring forwards. When someone wants to get on they wait patiently at a bus stop - they usually have an idea what time the bus should arrive - and stick their hand out to hail the bus when they see it. And when you want to get off you ring the little bell and the driver stops gently at the next stop for you. Of course, none of that happens here.

The bus service is brilliant - lots and lots of buses going to all sorts of places, and quite cheap. We can go almost everywhere by bus, and we pore over our Chinese map reading the bus numbers and working out how to get to where we need to be. A bus trip costs 1 RMB regardless of where you go, unless you get on a "K" bus - new, air conditioned, usually has an actual gearbox and clutch - and you pay 2 RMB for the same privilege. Most routes have both types of bus, its just the luck of the draw which one shows up when you are waiting.

Last year in Long Hu we caught a country bus to get to the city, it was only 2.5 RMB for the one hour of being bounced around into the city, and then we would go from there on the city buses. Country buses are great, there is a real family atmosphere.

They mostly follow a particular route, unless one or more passengers decide they would like to go somewhere else closer to where they live. And they don't have particular stops, you can flag one down anywhere you see one. And you can carry animals or pets if you want to. They have a driver and a conductor, and the conductor hangs out the window encouraging people to get on when things are a bit lean.

There was a bus station in Zhengzhou where the Long Hu country bus turned around, and we could buy a ticket there, go through the security screening and get on the bus - that cost 3 RMB, and apparently the bus station kept that money. Then any fares picked up along the route outside the bus station, the driver would keep the money (only 2.5) and use it to buy petrol. Sometimes we would be waiting on the road and the bus would be very slow in coming because he was creeping along trying to pick up enough passengers to get enough money to buy petrol on the way back.

In Wuxi, of course its all city buses, and they follow definite routes and stop at prescribed bus stops. However, as Peter discovered to his loss, they don't always stop at every stop if they can't see anyone waiting and if there are no passengers standing anxiously by the door waiting to get off.

Getting onto a bus can be a fairly physical experience, especially if the bus is already full and there are quite a few people waiting. Yesterday I was standing behind a bunch - can't really call it a queue! - of about ten people struggling to get onto a bus. I didn't feel an urgent need to be on in a hurry, so instead of leaning against the person in front of me I left a physical gap of a couple of inches. A man came hurrying up from behind me, saw my gap and shouldered his way into it.

Buses do not have two neat rows of seats and an aisle down the middle. There are various seats at different levels. On a K bus the back seats are up a series of steps, and at the front there are two high rows (over the wheels) facing inwards.

(This is a typical K bus.)

There is always an large open space in the middle for standing, and there are rails and hanging loops for holding onto. Often if you are standing there is very little chance of falling over despite the lurching of the bus because everybody is packed in so tight there is nowhere to fall. If you are lucky enough to catch sight of a seat to sit down on, then there is no guarantee of comfort. Some of the seats are over a wheel and there is nowhere to put your feet, its like sitting on a floor-level seat, knees up under your chin. If you do snag a seat and people are standing, then they will be hanging onto your chair-back, and leaning across you to hang onto the rail by the window - many of these people are two short of stature to actually hang onto the roof-rail.

We have learnt that if you have to stand, its best to be near a door - preferably the middle/back getting-off door. So the other day I found myself near the door, holding onto a seat back facing the opposite window. And the bus was crammed, I could feel bodies against mine on every side.The lady on the seat to my left wanted to get off, and had to struggle to clamber under the arm of the man next to me who was holding onto her seat-back. To my surprise he then pushed his child into the seat. There were slightly indignant looks all round - children travel free and are not really entitled to a seat, but people often do this for 'little darling'. I wasn't fussed, I didn't want to sit down in case I couldn't get off when it was my stop. Then the person on my right wriggled their way out of the seat to get off. I had noticed an elderly man to my right who was using a walking stick - by rights someone should have given him a seat already - and I motioned for him to take the seat rather than me. Before he could move a man came from behind me, wriggled and pushed his way around me and under my arm and plopped himself down on the seat, staring steadfastly out of the window to avoid the inscrutable stares. Nevertheless I read disgust on the face of walking-stick man. However, he can't have been all bad, because a little later he shifted over on his seat to give an inch to a woman to rest half-a-cheek on. I'm guessing he knew her, but not well enough to give up the whole seat.

This week I tried something new. I joined a group of expat ladies here in Wuxi, and went out to lunch with them. They met at a restaurant in a part of town where I had not been, so I took a taxi there because I wasn't sure how to find the restaurant. It was an interesting meal, I felt like maybe I was the only native-born English speaker because although these women were all 'foreigners' they were mostly from European countries such as Holland, France, Germany etc. I made friends with a lovely Dutch Chinese lady who was next to me at the table and who spoke excellent English as well as of course Chinese and Dutch. After the meal she came out to the street with me to help me catch a bus home. I wasn't totally sure which bus to catch and in which direction and where the bus stop was, and she helped me find the spot, made sure I had the right bus, and waited in the light drizzly rain with me for the bus to arrive. As always, so caring and generous. She was a little concerned for my safety on the bus, having had an unfortunate experience herself, and I was feeling a little out on a limb being in an unfamiliar place without Peter.

So when the bus arrived and it was a real clunker and packed full of people, I had a moment of hesitation - I almost turned around to say, "No, I'll catch a taxi." Then I thought, "I can do this," and I clambered up the steep steps and took my place right next to the driver at the head of the steps - because that was all that was left. I waved to my friend, the bus driver started the bus (this was one of those that turns the engine off every time he slows down or stops) crunched the gears, and lurched off.

A few metres down the road the person in the seat closest to the door stood up and started struggling their way through the crush to the back door to get off at the next stop. No one else moved and I knew I was riding the bus til the end of the route and I wouldn't need to push my way off, so I plopped myself down. The seat had no foot room, so I sat sideways until the next stop when I pulled my knees up under my chin to stop people trampling on my toes as they got on.

The engine in this bus was worse than most, and the driver was having a real struggle. It seemed like the bus was stalling of its own accord, and he was having difficulty restarting it. At each stop people were getting off, and now there were only a few people left. Besides me, there was a frail-looking little old man with a walking stick, and a number of dark labourer-type men, one of whom was fast asleep in a seat with his head lolling over into the aisle.

We arrrived at the end of the line and the driver stopped the bus and quickly opened the engine cover and started working on the engine. The little old man decided he would rather get off the front door as the other was a little crowded but the driver yelled loudly at him. He had a stick which was to prop the engine cover open with, and he waved it in the air at him pointing at the back door.

This was when he noticed sleeping man. A lot of people seem to go to sleep on the bus, somehow they just doze off despite the noise and the bustle. But this guy wasn't dozing, he was definitely out to it. The driver yelled even more loudly - obviously he was not having a good day. He walked up and banged his stick on the chair next to sleeping man. No response, not even a twitch.

I don't know. Maybe he was deaf. Or dead. I had to get off the bus.

Welcome to My China

2005-11-08T22:57:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was my 'day off' but I went into the office anyway for a Chinese lesson - which was cancelled because no one else showed up. So, instead of rushing back after the lesson to make sure I was at home to let the cleaner in, I had time on my hands and I thought I may as well walk home and look out for a hairdresser on the way. I know there are big, fancy hairdressers in the city centre, but I thought a nice little suburban one would do.

Coming down our street, carefully walking on the very edge of the pavement I managed not to step on any of the pavers that suddenly tip and splash very bad water all over your feet. I passed a young lady who was washing her hair on the side-walk - pouring water over her head to rinse out the shampoo into the gutter. I peered briefly into each shop that displayed a barber's pole, but they only had a few girls sitting around on a sofa or preening themselves on a chair in front of a mirror on the wall.

I was almost home, just before the knee-high fruit-stall under a canvas awning, and I noticed what looked like a genuine hairdressers. There were six chairs, each facing a mirror with a little glass shelf, three on each side wall. An imitation grape-vine (bearing huge plastic strawberries, tiny plastic bananas, and almost real-looking plastic mandarins) decorated the white walls, winding its way over and around each mirror. A lady was sitting under one of those hair-dryer hoods with her hair in curlers - this had to be a hairdressers!

"Just do it!" I told myself as I moved away from the knee-high fruit-stall, and down the step through the doorway.

There were startled looks all round. Two young men, obviously hair-stylists (longish dyed, styled hair) stood up, and came towards me. I indicated with snipping fingers that I wanted a hair-cut. They all looked quite concerned, and chattered excitedly amongst themselves. An older woman, presumably the boss started giving instructions to the two young men, and they invited me to come through to the back room. I did the snippy fingers thing again and tried to explain that I didn't want a wash, just a cut. But I wasn't getting through so I decided I may as well go on through, what's the worst that could happen?

As I stuck my head through the doorway into the back room there were more startled looks. A couple of girls were in there, lounging around and talking. There was one of those "lie-down-and have-your-hair-washed" sinks - an orange vinyl bed leading up to a black sink - and one of the girls was doing her laundry in it. Hurriedly she removed her wet underwear from the sink, and one of the boys grabbed a towel and wiped down the orange lounge. I lay myself down with my head over the sink and tried to think relaxing thoughts, still with my hand-bag over my shoulder and still clutching my umbrella in one hand under the plastic cloak they put over me.

I heard them talking and I recognised the words "ting de dong" which means "hear and understand". I chuckled and said out loud "bu ting de dong" meaning "not hear and understand", which I hoped would leave them wondering just how much I was understanding.

The young laundry girl did my wash. The shampoo bottle must have been nearly empty because she pumped and pumped it into her hand - I wonder if she had been using the shampoo to wash her clothes too. She massaged my head thoroughly with strong fingers. Suddenly she leaned over my face and smiled and said, "Welcome to my China!" I guess she had been working hard at remembering a few words from English lessons at school. I smiled and replied "Xie Xie! Thank you!" and felt a little more relaxed.

The wash was done and it was one of the boys turn to cut my hair. He showed me with his fingers how much he was intending to cut off, and I nodded, and he got on with it. He worked quickly and confidently and I tried not to worry about the results. I was glad he didn't do too much moussing and blowdrying. And at least my hair wasn't flopping in my face any more.

I managed to ask the cost in Chinese - aware that I should have asked before I started - and I thought he said 18. I fumbled in my purse and handed the boss-lady two tens. Said, "thank you" and popped the money straight into a locked box, and it was obvious I wasn't getting any change. I said my good-byes and headed out the door.

A little old man was coming towards me, I was half aware as I fumbled to put my purse away that he wasn't getting out of the way. I looked up and realised he was holding an enamel cup and leering at me hopefully. I popped a coin into his cup and he let me pass.

And I still had time to get home before the cleaner arrived.

Puddle Nuts

2005-11-06T23:02:00.000-08:00

What was I thinking? I looked to the left (I remember to look that way first now) to check for bikes and scooters coming that way, quickly checked to the right and took a little step back for the scooter that was heading down the wrong side of the road. Then I headed out across the bike lane after the fast bike and before the slow one, and out across the first lane behind that taxi whose driver was looking at me hoping for a fare from a foreigner, waited with my toes on the yellow line looking to the right and waited for the van and taxi coming that way, crossed the lane quickly before the big black car - then I went along the road a few paces to find the narrowest section of that long lake of a puddle, nimbly jumped over into the other bike lane (those who know me, stop laughing!) dodged around a couple of bikes and stealth (silent, electric) scooters, ducked under the loops of low-hanging tangled power-lines, stepped around the hole in the pavement... and I was at the bus stop, waiting for a bus to get me to work.

This is my street, where my home is. At one time I would have considered this street uncrossable, now I go back and forth several times a day - and this is one of the quieter streets. But it wasn't the effort of crossing the street that made me gasp and back up against the wall as far away as possible from the street. I had just stopped to think about how big and how muddy those puddles were. This was the most rain I had seen since we came here, and I wasn't really prepared for it. Sure, I had my umbrella with me. But what was I thinking wearing white jeans?

I saw a lady standing at the other side of the street, where I had been standing hesitating a few moments before. She was dressed sensibly like everyone else in dark colours, and she had two plastic bags of shopping which she set down at her feet on the ground. She seemed to be waiting for someone, and she was standing right out at the edge of the road past the bike lane. Just then the number 3 bus came down the road - it doesn't stop here and was going quite fast. It hit a puddle full pelt and a wall of muddy water washed over our lady on the road side. She just stood there, blinking with surprise. Well, at least it wasn't me in my white jeans.

Cute Curry Bunny

2005-11-06T22:58:00.000-08:00

A colleague at work mentioned this wonderful little curry restaurant down a dark, narrow alley in the city, so we decided to try it. We had tried in vain in Zhengzhou to find genuine curry, not just more peppers.

His directions were easy enough to follow. We found the alley and it was dark. In the distance we could see some twinkling lights (like Christmas tree lights). So we decided we would head down that far, and if that wasn't it then we would just come back. We weren't quite sure how to recognise it, we hadn't asked if there were any English words, we thought maybe our noses would indicate that it was the right place.

But there it was, under the twinkling lights, with "Curry House" printed neatly above the door. We were welcomed in by the eager staff, and shown to a table.

The menus didn't have any English words, but there were pictures and numbers, which was all we needed. The food arrived very quickly with a young waiter carrying a tray and a young waitress taking the plates to put them carefully on the table. The food was beautifully presented - we were particularly taken with this little tomato bunny - couldn't bear to eat him!

We had two different dishes and a couple of sides. The bowl of rice seemed to be just part of the deal - or maybe it was mentioned in the Chinese words in the menu. We were given a cup of tea as soon as we sat down, and every time we sipped from it someone would step forward and top it up.

I used to find it a little annoying, being constantly watched over like that, but I've got used to it and think its very nice - in fact if I'm in a restaurant where they don't do that I feel let down.

The meal only cost us about $4 each, and was thoroughly satisfying and enjoyable. I am sure we will be eating there again.

Through the Looking Glass

2005-11-05T23:03:00.000-08:00

When we first entered the college at Long Hu we were amazed to see a large mirror on a stand right near the entrance. In this photo you can just see part of it at the bottom of the stairs.

We thought maybe this had once been a ballet school or some such - why else would anyone need such a large mirror?

We also noticed the lack of a mirror - other than the tiny one in the bathroom cabinet - in our apartment; and other teachers had the same problem. I found myself checking my clothing before going to work by looking at my reflection in the TV. The students were maybe lacking mirrors in their apartments too - some of them had tiny hand-mirrors that they gazed into in class when they didn't feel like concentrating anymore. After a while these teenagers managed to break their mirrors, and I often saw them peering lovingly into a dangerous-looking shard of mirror. One day in Zhengzhou I came across a little shop that sold mirrors - the long thin kind that you hang on your bedroom wall - and I carried one home on the bus, carefully. That was the same day that Bea bought herself a long Chinese sword and brought that home on the bus too, that was another adventure.

It took us a while to find the mirror shop. We had been looking out for places where we might get one, and so we started noticing them. We noticed, for instance, that our favourite tiny dumpling restaurant down the muddy street in the village of Xiao Qiao ("Little Bridge"), while lacking in most facilities, nevertheless had a full wall-sized mirror - albeit with cracks across it (sticky-taped). We wondered where they got it, how they got it in there, and why they had obviously put all of their funds into purchasing the wall mirror rather than other furniture.

And we noticed that other schools we visited had similar large mirrors near their entrance. We would see staff and students alike spending considerable amounts of time preening themselves in front of the mirror, paying no heed to others coming down the stairs and wanting to get past - or wanting their turn with the mirror.

Fast food restaurants, such as Micky D's, have a joint (men and women) wash-stand and mirror outside of the public facilities. So, while munching into a burger and fries, we could often sit there and watch the young and the apparently egotistic admiring themselves and fixing up their facial blemishes.

The young people are particularly fastidious about their hair. I guess it irritates them fiercely that there are so many people with the same hair, and they just want to be different, individual. I am intrigued that anyone can spend that much time checking and re-checking that each and every spikey strand is pointing upwards at exactly the right angle.

My first haircut in this dark-haired country was a surprisingly pleasant experience. My hair is fading - faded - auburn, and naturally wavy, very fine and quite thick ... apparently exactly what so many of them would like to have, minus the occasional silver strand. Down in the village near the university there is a whole street of hairdresser's shops, so I just walked along and picked about the third one along, at random as I had no real basis for my decision. The guy who seemed to be in charge had a few words of English, and remarkably offered me the "no wash, just cut" option, which I was glad of. The whole business only took a few minutes - despite the obvious need for the chap cutting my hair to play with it for an extended period of time and for everyone round about to gather and discuss it. And it only cost me 8 RMB - just over a dollar. And I was very pleased with the result.

When (my 18 year old daughter) Bea was coming to the end of her time in China, she decided she wanted to change her hairstyle, so we asked our minder to take us to a hairdresser in Zhengzhou - she said she knew a very good one. I decided I may as well have another trim while we were there. Bea had a pleasant hair-cut experience, with the young staff all gathering around to play with her hair for a good fifteen minutes or so before being game to cut it. It only cost her about $4 (25 RMB) - not bad for such a classy establishment.

There was no one available immediately to do my hair, unless I was willing to have the best and most expensive one, that would cost me $8 (50 RMB) - I figured I could probably afford that.

Well, that was a different experience. After being clothed in a special gown, then having my hair washed - lying down on my back, a new sensation - and my head massaged, and then my ears lovingly and gently cleaned, I was seated in front of the mirror ready for his lordship to work his magic.

He wasn't cutting very much off, tiny fragments with each snip. I sat there watching the customer opposite me who already had a number 3 cut having his hair checked and individual strands scissor-snipped a millimeter at a time, then combed and blown and snipped some more - I couldn't understand the words, but it appeared the hairdresser said that it was all done but the client was unhappy so they went back to the sink to wash it again and then sat down to work on it some more. Meanwhile my man worked and worked at mine, millimetres at a snip. Finally he seemed to have finished - but it was only a pause, there were more stages yet. There was the teasing and the blow-drying (although my hair was already thoroughly dry) and the plumping out - I was beginning to be afraid of ending up like Mary Tyler-Moore. He continued for more than an hour, while Bea finished her stint and sat "reading" a (Chinese) magazine and smiling patiently.

In the end he did a reasonable job, once I got home and washed it and pushed it all back into shape. My next "do" in Wuxi on the way through to Oz for our holiday was a similar experience. This time I was treated to a shoulder and neck massage, and arms, hands, fingers for a good half an hour by a young chap before the master appeared and was ready to cut my hair. This one had his own special technique - he would take a small lock of hair and twist it, then snip into it two or three times with the point of his scissors. He did this over and over ... and over for an hour or so.

And now I am afraid because I really need another haircut. There appear to be a lot of hairdressers along our street - they have the turning stripey poles. But at night they have red lights, so do they actually cut hair at all?

Maybe I'll just grow my hair.

Meat-on-a-stick beats KFC hands down

2005-11-01T23:06:00.000-08:00

I must admit, there is a lot of Chinese food that I really don't like. Its not so bad here in Wuxi where the food is much more acceptable to the western palate - especially one that is sensitive to peppers. In Australia, like most people, I really enjoyed the food in Chinese restaurants, but that is not what they serve here, nor in Zhengzhou, and certainly not in the school canteen at LongHu.

So every now and then, we just feel tired of struggling to get through a plate of unfamiliar food, and we need the comfort of a nosh-up at a western restaurant, like KFC. Of course when we were in LongHu it was an hour or more on a rattley bus to indulge in such a treat. Here in Wuxi they are on every street corner.

In LongHu, though, the street food was great. So many interesting and tasty bites, cooked and served straight into your hand on a stick or in a bag. The meat-on-a-stick people had their little charcoal burners on wheels, and as the sun went down they wheeled them into their favourite spot, lit their little fires, and started blowing the flames with a hand-held fan as smoke billowed out across the street.

And then there were so many others. Pancake type concoctions, and sweet potatoes ready-cooked, and noodle mixtures, and "bai-zi-mo" hamburger-type food.

Of course many of these delicious snacks can be found on the streets of Wuxi at certain places. But they are also available in wonderful little permanent kiosks like this one.

The smile and the wave are all part of the friendly service. Gotta love 'em.

Beware of Happy Tunes

2005-11-01T23:04:00.000-08:00

No longer do phones go "Ring! Ring!" There seems to be an unending variety of tunes and sounds available as "ring tones" - people even pay money to avail themselves of a favourite tune. My old phone used to quack like a duck when I received a message - that was the only way I could get myself to pay attention to it when there were so many other little tunes out there.

Our kids were at first delighted when we got a 22 tune musical doorbell for our home in Australia. The novelty soon wore off, though, and although we never got around to changing it or getting rid of it we always knew when it did ring that it was a stranger who was not aware how cross we would be when we opened the door to someone who had dared to press that little button.

Here in China, even our land-line house phone plays an innocuous little tune. I usually sit and listen to the first few bars feeling quite puzzled, then I inevitably jump up and announce unnecessarily. "that's the phone!" Just can't help myself. The intercom, on the other hand, sounds like a phone. And when that rings it takes all my concentration to drag myself away from the silent phone to the doorway to answer the intercom instead, "Wei?"

In public, especially on the bus, there are phones ringing constantly, and I just ignore them now. So for my mobile I had to select a darling little annoying ring-tone: It sounds like an old fashioned phone ringing at first - which, of course, has me thinking muddled thoughts about answering an intercom somewhere - and then my pocket starts talking to me saying "Hello! Hello!" Then I come to with a start and realise its mine.

But all of these little tunes are actually quite harmless. Its the really big, wet bruisers that you have to watch out for. I was standing at the bus stop yesterday. The sight of a dainty lady in pointy heels trying frantically to remove herself from the roadway alerted me to the danger moments before I heard the first strains of "Happy Birthday..." A water truck came roaring down the middle of the road at break-neck speed, squirting a two-and-a-half car-lane wide spray of water over the road to - ? Well, it wasn't dusty that I could see. We did have someone express to us once that it was designed to wash the road.

I reckon it must be fun driving that truck, though.

Slipper Ceremonies

2005-10-29T22:37:00.000-07:00

I am afraid I have missed it - my time to join in the slipper ceremony has come and gone ...

I went totally barefoot for 8 years - inside, outside, everywhere. We were living on a tiny sandy island in the Torres Strait (between Australia and Papua New Guinea) and everyone went barefoot everywhere except the cemetery - for some reason that was the only place on the island where there were incredible "double-gees", big three-spiked prickles; we would wear plastic thongs on our feet to funerals, and come home a couple of inches taller with the layers of prickles embedded into the soles of the thongs. The islanders said that to wear shoes was like wearing a mask, hiding your identity (which can be seen in your footprints). But we never saw anyone reading the footprints in the sand. The fact is, most of the sand was too soft to leave decent legible footprints and everyone knows you can't wear any kind of shoes in soft sand without the sand ending up uncomfortably inside your shoes.

Here in China no one, but no one, goes barefoot. Except maybe that totally naked beggar man I saw lying by the roadside near Zhengzhou on a very hot day. And when you enter a home you slip off your shoes and walk in your socks or else slip into some slippers to pad around in. If you check into a decent hotel they will provide you with paper-thin towelling-covered cardboard slippers - more expensive hotels make the cardboard sturdy enough so you can actually slide your foot in and feel that there is something on your foot. Some people even wear their slippers down the street - like for instance if there is no bathroom in their apartment and they are going to the public facilities in their pajamas with their towels over their shoulders. Apparently, once a woman discovers she is pregnant she is entitled to wear her pajamas everywhere she goes. In fact, if the husband feels that it is a shared experience he can wear his too and they can go out to lunch in a restaurant and let everyone know what they've been doing.

When we moved into our apartment in Wuxi we were pleased to find that we don't have carpet on the floor as carpet raises a whole lot of special difficulties with keeping it clean. And we decided we would do the right thing and slip our shoes off every time we came in the door. There were two pairs of plastic sandals provided in the apartment - they seem to come as part of the furniture - but I indulged myself with a pair of pink and blue fluffy slippers from a department store, and Peter still has a sturdy pair of hotel slippers (from the Crowne Plaza in Zhengzhou). Sometimes, though, we still forget and do the Australian habitual thing of splatting around barefoot or padding around in socks.

We were asked if we wanted a lady to come and clean our flat for us on a regular basis. My first reaction was 'no thanks' - having a cleaner at LongHu had been mildly traumatic and we had been most relieved when the college had to let her go due to a shortage of funds. I figured with a cute little apartment like this I could keep it sparkling clean, no worries. I found that I could get the floor all mopped and clean in about half an hour. And if you walked barefoot you could feel that silky cleanness under your little pink soles. But within an hour or so the floor once again had that dusty feel. So I gave in and said yes, we would like someone to clean our apartment.

The office, our workplace, is always sparkling. The lady that cleans it is quiet, unobtrusive and efficient. So when they said she was willing to clean our apartment for two hours, twice a week, I was delighted. We let her in, and then go out to work or shopping or just for a walk along the canal, and come back to an apartment that looks like the happy little elves have been here. Not that we leave anything untidy - we don't really have enough stuff to make a mess around the place (another nice thing about this lifestyle, we have left all our stuff behind). Having made all the surfaces sparkle and gleam, she then can't resist putting everything that is lying around in neat rows - the shoes and slippers, the things on the dressing-table - it's so sweet. She is thoroughly worth the money.

But, I digress. What ceremonies are there involving slippers, I hear you mutter. Well, I didn't know about them until recently - and then, as I said, I was too late to join in. I thought someone was selling slippers out on the lawn we can see from our kitchen. That wasn't so surprising, people here do stuff like that. Sometimes on the edge of the pavement in the most inconvenient spot - so everyone will notice of course - people will set out their wares just where everyone is trying to cross the road, and remarkably there are people who stop to haggle over a price and buy. So I was watching this man in the apartments spreading his slippers in the sunshine on the grass - there were more than 25 pairs, many of them identical. Then the next day the lady in the apartment opposite ours put her slippers out. I am sure there are only three people that live there, but she also had about 20 pairs, again many of them were identical.

Now it is raining, and has been raining for a couple of days. And I have missed my chance to show off my slippers. I don't have many to show, though. Maybe next year when I have bought pink-and-blue-fluffies markII and even III, and I could get Peter a few more pairs.

Nipple-pinching mad-man

2005-10-24T22:39:00.000-07:00

A few paces down the alley behind our place there is a tiny restaurant where they sell the most delicious "jiaozi" - dumplings. Inside each one there is a meat-ball, and a spoonful of soup that has the sticky quality of oxtail but a sweeter taste. They are a tad too big to put into your mouth all at one go, but to try to eat them with two bites is a disaster of the splashy kind. And however you try to eat them, it has to be accomplished with chopsticks ...

Usually we buy half a dozen each (for a mere 9 kuai, or $1.50) in a polystyrene take-away dish, and devour them in the privacy of our own living room, or even sitting on the bank of the Grand Canal. Today we decided to eat in. This meant the added privelege of a bowl of soup - a clear soup, like greasy water, with pieces of chopped chives and some sprigs of fluffy purple sea-weed floating around - a slight salty taste, and not bad. And there was a tiny bowl to put soy sauce and/or vinegar and/or chili in, for dipping the dumplings. So, after putting sauce in my bowl, I wrangled my chopsticks around a dumpling and had it dangling over my bowl. I tried to bite it, it broke, slipped, splashed - and all the time the guy in the doorway never took his eyes off me, barely blinked. Seeing my attempts to reach the packet of tissues on the counter - the waitress was in my way - he slowly came over and held them out for me. I tried to believe he did so because he cared ...

They were delicious, though. Peter was happy - only his sleeve had been splashed - and I had made a firm decision that next time I would eat at home. Trying to ignore my be-speckled shirt, I headed off with Peter further down the back alley to the supermarket. We smiled at and greeted the people we passed, and wondered what was really in those delicious-looking pastry parcels on one stall. I saw a man come the other way with his brown pants pulled up too high - but not high enough to cover his white underwear that was pulled even higher and peeping over the waistband. The cuffs of his trousers were also rolled up revealing the other extreme of his winter undies. We passed him and walked on, but a little further he turned and came up to us, chattering incessantly in a mixture of poor English and some other language - if it was Mandarin we couldn't pick up on any words at all.

His social distance was all wrong, he kept leaning on Peter, and he was very "touchy-feely". I tried to move away every time he turned towards me. He carried on about being American, or having an American brother, or maybe we were his brother/sister/mother, and there was something special he wanted to tell us about Washington. He kept wanting to give Peter cigarettes, and after a number of refusals Peter gave in and accepted one for "later". We tried to walk away, but then he grabbed Peter's arm and started insisting that we go to see his home.

Now this is something that Peter has always wanted - to see into people's homes and find out how they live - and it was obviously too good an offer to miss. As we turned to follow the man, people round about started to look quite concerned, and some of them grabbed me by the arm and indicated with a twirling finger near their ear that the man was deranged. But what could I do, I wasn't about to abandon Peter.

So we followed him down a side alley - the crowd of onlookers growing all the time. He fooled around with his key, getting Peter to unlock his door for him. We stood in the doorway of his single dingy room, and the village people followed, becoming increasingly frantic in their attempts to draw us away. The room contained little more than a large bed, chair, and TV and DVD player. The man kept trying to offer Peter gifts, including a DVD with "sex" written on the front. He forcibly put the rest of his packet of cigarettes in Peter's shirt pocket, and then some nuts and some small pieces of money. He noticed I also had a top pocket in my gravy-splattered shirt, so he came across to me, thrusting a handful of nuts into my pocket and giving my nipple a hard tweak through my clothing as he did so. I grabbed his hand and thrust it away, removed the nuts from my pocket and put them in someone's bike-basket that was in the hallway, and left the room. The people standing about were looking genuinely concerned, so I pulled on Peter's arm and said loudly that I was going to the supermarket.

Of course, the friendly man followed us all the way there, grabbing Peter and whispering stuff to him, but I walked quickly ahead, grabbed what I needed at the shop and we headed back. We were very relieved when he left us alone at the corner where we originally met him. I don't believe I will be shopping in that alley again - although the rest of the people there seem like they are really sweet, caring people.

And I'm sorry, I don't have a photo of him. But I did draw a picture:

I thought you would be bigger

2005-10-23T22:40:00.000-07:00

We went to see "The Big Buddha" with friends visiting from Australia.

The adventure started with catching a bus from the main bus station next to the train station. As soon as we arrived at the appropriate bus bay people came from all sides with brochures and offers to drive us to MaShan to tour the buddha - with them as tour guides. Of course, westerners like us can be charged a much higher price than local people. But we had decided we would take the bus and so we repeatedly insisted that we did not want their offer.

We knew that the bus trip was about 45minutes long, and there were only a few seats, so it would be necessary to get right in there and push our way onto the bus - polite people have to stand up all the way. The bus arrived - an old boneshaker vehicle - and we duly elbowed and pushed our way on. Our friends, with Peter's arm giving them a firm shove from behind, got in ahead of us and snagged seats up the front of the bus. We sat in the very back on hard wooden seats. I knew that sitting in the back of a bus in China is not always a good idea - on bumpy rides you can become totally airborne - but they were already the only seats left. The wishful tour operators clamboured onto the bus as well, for one last attempt to gain customers. Then more people arrived, the bus was packed. The bus conductor climbed aboard - this is different from a city bus where you put your money in a container by the driver - and pushed his way among the crowd, collecting money, and giving everyone tiny flimsy tickets.

The bus set off through the city, stopping at a few places, unbelievably picking up more passengers. The young people near us were sitting on each other's laps and using each other's backs as leaning posts to keep themselves steady. The bus stopped right near our apartment, but we realised if we had waited there to get on we would have been squeezing on like these last people.

The trip seemed longer than an hour, and was indeed very bumpy - the roads out this way were under repair and so we had to drive along temporary tracks part of the way. A few times we were in fact airborne, along with those around us, and the wooden seats were not properly fastened to the back of the bus making it very painful to actually lean against the back of the seat. The people standing just in front of us on the crowded bus were leaning against our legs because there was so little room, we could not see through them to our friends at the front of the bus, we could only catch a glimpse of where we were out the side of the back window.

At one stage Peter received a phone call from the husband of our friend who was at the front of the bus, asking him to give her the phone, or get her to answer hers. The noise on the bus was deafening, between the cranky engine and the young people talking and laughing. Peter carefully stood at his seat - he could just see the top of her head at the front of the bus. "Lee-Anne!" he called in his best teacher voice. Instantly everyone in the bus fell silent - though she didn't actually hear him. In the moment of quiet he called again: "Lee-Anne! Answer your phone!" Probably no one on the bus understood what he said exactly, but they found it very amusing.

Finally we arrived and we once again assailed by tour guides and taxi drivers - we thought maybe we would refer to them on the way back.

So we paid our 88RMB each, and made our way up through the park to the 88metre tall buddha on the hillside. Along the way we passed the fountain area - there is a special display there at certain times, and we wanted to get up to see the buddha and back in time for the fountain show. Along the way there are a number of other smaller statues and buddhas. The fat one (most westerners think of buddhas as fat) had lots of tiny, naughty buddha babies climbing all over it, and was fun to see.

And then there was a big bronze buddha hand sticking out of the ground. Unlike tourist attractions in Australia where everything has railings and "look but don't touch", Chinese people like to touch and rub everything - for good luck - and there are always shiny worn patches at the favourite spots.

And finally we reached the stairs up to the big buddha itself. And, yes, it's big. But it didn't feel so big close up. Maybe because of the hill right behind it.

When you look at this photo you have to notice the people standing around his feet to get an idea how big he is.

We got back in time for the fountain show. And there was music and it was a good show. But I can't tell you, in case you ever get to see it, and I don't want to spoil it for you.

We left the park and went to talk to the taxi drivers - some of them had vans big enough to carry the five of us. They wanted 100 RMB - the bus trip was only 4RMB each. So we used our few words of Chinese to express our disgust and walked away. He came back with an offer of 80 RMB, and we walked again. Finally we agreed to 60, and had a much nicer ride home than on the way out.

Sheep Upstairs

2005-10-17T22:42:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure that I have even met the lady (man? person) who lives upstairs from us, but I feel that I know her really well. She is Little Bo Peep. And she has a flock of little pointy-footed sheep who hide from her. I have heard the sheep pattering away on the wooden floor - by the sound of their feet there are about three of them. And then she puts on her mother's shoes that are obviously too big for her and clatters around looking for them. Or maybe they shed, and she has to go around to every part of the apartment picking up their little bits of fluff ...

But, really, I am quite baffled. The only activity I can think of that would require as many hurried trips back and forth across the bedroom is ... no, I don't know. "She's tidying up", I suggest to Peter. But what, and why so often? Maybe every day someone (the sheep?) opens her undies drawer and scatters its contents to the four corners, and then her other clothes as well, and the rule is that she can only pick up one item at a time and carry it daintily back to its place - ?

The very first morning I woke up here I was intrigued, and a little concerned, that I could hear her humming, slopping around in slippers, and sweeping the floor. Concerned because, if such small sounds carried so well, what about - ? And that day she started renovating the apartment. For the next week and more we had to be up and out of our apartment about 7am, or not try to hold any conversations herein. When the noise of drilling, sawing (electric, that is) and hammering finally settled down we got to know her better : we know that she does not have carpet on the floor, and she does not take off her shoes when she comes in ...

Wuxi is so much noisier anyway than LongHu was, with traffic noise and all kinds of people noise. In LongHu one day I was startled to hear a cuckoo say "Cuckoo!" - because I hadn't heard one since I left England in 1970 and it hadn't occured to me that they are in China too. Peter was also startled because he had never heard one and didn't realise that they really do say "Cuckoo" just like their name and just like a cuckoo clock. And it was pleasant to hear them because, just like in England, they herald the coming of summer - after a very severe winter as we had that yeat in LongHu. The only other troublesome sounds in our LongHu apartment were when people outside cleared there throat (and spat) - people don't seem to do that quite so much here - and when George (upstairs) wore his cowboy boots, and then took them off one (Thunk!) by one (... ... Thunk!)

So its the little nearby noises that are much more of a problem than the outside "white noise". This afternoon, still feeling queasy from a few days ago, and regretting just slightly the delicious "jaozi" (meat dumplings) that I had so enjoyed at lunch time, I took a little Sunday afternoon nap. Well, for a few minutes at least. Aparently Little Bo Peep found a patch of wall where she had to hammer in some picture hooks for some of the pictures she found while tidying up. She was being thoughtful, tapping ever so gently, but aahhhh!

Its ok, I'm awake now. I think she's gone out. And the sheep seem to be asleep.

Happy's new home

2005-10-17T22:41:00.000-07:00

Happy the hamster has lived in various boxes and containers - more or less successfully, depending on how much she chewed her surroundings. When we came to Wuxi on our way through to Australia for our holiday we were concerned about our friends here having to look after her in our absence. So we bought her a proper little cage. But it was very small, and she is a lot bigger and fatter than when we first got her. So we have been looking for, and thinking about, somewhere bigger for her to live. We thought about buying an aquarium, many people keep hamsters and mice in aquariums.

But then one day we were sitting in our loungeroom here watching TV, which is next to the glass cupboard / bookshelf and Peter said "Why don't we put Happy in the cupboard. That way she would be up at eye level, easy to watch and interact with, she'd have much more space ... " The question was, how secure is a cupboard with glass doors and magnetic latches of the kind that you push to close and push again to release?

So we put her in there on the middle shelf which is glass. She pattered happpily up and down her shelf area, and stood up and put her tiny hands against the glass, and all seemed secure. But during the night Peter woke to the sound SPLAT! of the fat little hamster body hitting the floor followed by scuttle scuttle as she set off to explore. He got out of bed and approached her, and she stood up tall on her hind legs to say "Hi!" , like she does, and happily let him pick her up and put her back on her shelf. Apparently one of the glass door catches didn't work too well, and simply needed a piece of cardboard jammed in it ...

The next night as we were watching TV as well as our new hamster-cam, she discovered that the glass shelf doesn't quite meet up with the glass door. As is the nature of hamsters when they find any small space or crack, she immediately started pushing her head downwards between the door and the shelf. Hamsters are loose-skinned, their skin fits loosely because of their cheek pouches that go all the way from their mouths to their back legs, and they can sort of slide around inside their skin. In no time at all she had squeezed like a maggot through the tiny gap, and was swinging by her tiny back legs from the edge of the shelf. Then sproing went the door and splat she landed on the shelf below.

So now she lives on the bottom shelf. The shelf itself is laminated and extends out under the edge of the glass door - which she has not managed to unlatch since. It makes for a much more interesting bookshelf, having a hamster running up and down on it.

Buses, Taxis, and Feeling Queasy

2005-10-15T22:43:00.000-07:00

Peter has joined the gym and I have been thinking about joining a pool here ... but thinking about water quality is a bit scary. There is a pool nearby, just across the Grand Canal from us, only about 10 minutes walk away. Its right on the bank of the canal. It's not open in the mornings, which is a bit of a blob because that's when I'd most like to go swimming - no classes, and most other people are at work. Friends of ours here told us that the students at their school do swimming lessons there - that's a little bit off-putting. And they also said that they don't have a filter-purification system like we're used to, they simply empty the water and replace it every day. Well, that totally puts me off. Much as I hate chlorine, at least I know what it does.

Our sweet little Chinese teacher has warned us that we have a test next Tuesday and we should practise our vocab. The fact is, though, it's hard work. And we need to find opportunities to use what we learn. It's difficult to learn stuff "just in case" and then bring it to remembrance when the occasion suddenly calls for it.

But one thing we have found we need is; "Please get out of the way, I'm getting off the bus." People are understandably very protective of their little bit of space in a bus, even if it is directly in front of the door, and they are very reluctant to give it up unless they are sure someone is just passing through. So Peter is practising that one at least before he goes to the gym this afternoon.

Today is our day off, but I don't feel like going out anywhere - feeling a bit washed out after a couple of days of upset tum. On Thursday as we were finishing our Chinese lesson, I was about to head down to the street to meet my ride to the company where I teach, when our office receptionist popped in to say my lesson was cancelled.

So Peter and I wandered down the street instead for some late (4pm) lunch at KFC. I had a slight queasy feeling already, which I mistook, understandably at that time, for hunger. But after eating my KFC I had some more definite discomfort. Peter headed off to the gym and I stood at a bus stop to wait for a bus. Bad time of day for that, school kids all heading home, there were a good 40 - 50 people at the bus stop. A couple of buses I didn't want came, and about 10 people got on each, and a double-decker came and 30 or so squeezed on there. Then another bus ... but as fast as people were leaving on buses more people were arriving at the stop.

By this stage my stomach was complaining to me quite severely. You know, when you start to feel all sweaty and prickly, something serious is about to happen.

Finally a number 211 bus arrived, and the crowd I was with surged forward and started the usual pushing rituals ... I looked at the bus and there were already people standing up from the back of the bus to the front two or three deep. And I couldn't even remember the "get out of my way I want to get off" sentence for if I did get myself wedged in there. I didn't dare get on!

So I stuck my arm out and flagged a taxi instead. They are good and very reliable. Its great to know that whenever we look like getting stuck somewhere there's bound to be a taxi nearby. Nice little man driving - wanted to be friendly and chat with the few English words he knew, I was hardly in the mood! He was asking me something. I told him in my best Chinese that I was a teacher. He looked puzzled and tried his question again, pointing to himself and saying "China" and then to me with a "--?" Once again using my best Chinese I told him I was an "Ao-da-lee-ya" (Australia) person and he beamed at me.

The traffic was heavy and the trip was slow, with a lot of honking and jerky start-stop motions that are necessary to intimidate pedestrians and bikes in heavy traffic and help them remember their place and keep out of the way.

Then he wanted to know if I wanted to go to the back gate (where we had arrived) or the front gate of the apartment complex, and I assured him with a "hao! hao!" - good! good! - that just here was fine.

Yesterday I felt a bit better, and managed to teach a "conversation" class last night. Its funny, the evening classes (which this language school is mostly about) are all 6.30 - 8.3- or 7-9pm. But the building we are in (on the 2nd floor) has a gatekeeper who lives in a room just inside the front door of the building. And he goes to bed about 8pm. Regardless. Locks up the door, turns off the lift, and goes bye-byes. And no one can change his mind. So after lessons we have to make our way down the stairwell (no lights) to the basement and out through the car park into the laneway at the side.

So this morning I woke up feeling grotty again. Peter has been listening to the cricket, but he's restless so he's learnt his phrases and gone in to the gym, and to have a bit of an explore around the city. He just phoned me excitedly to say he wandered down a laneway where he hasn't been before and found a huge fabric warehouse setup that he is eager for me to look at with him next time.

So now I'm regretting the lunch I just had - but I was sooo hungry - and I might take a little kip and listen to our Chinese lesson tape and try to learn a few tones.

Sucked Out

2005-10-14T22:44:00.000-07:00

You may have heard of the expression "Sucked in", meaning of course I was tricked into doing something foolish.

Well, I am more afraid of being sucked out.

I had never seen these roll-up fly-screen windows before. Our kitchen window and the lounge-room window that opens onto the roadway (four storeys below) have no middle strut. When you close the plastic-framed sliding glass windows there is no frame that they shut to, they just meet in the middle. But there is a flyscreen, which you pull out of the two side frames and pull together until they magnetically hang onto each other in the middle.

So, normally, when the windows are open it looks ok, because there is still the flyscreen meeting across the middle of the open space. But every now and then the magnets in the flyscreen edge suddenly say "Nope, we're not doing this any more.." and they let go. And with an alarming zzzzzzrrrt!!! sound that makes me spin my head around to see what is about to get me, the flyscreen flies open. And suddenly there is this huge open hole, about two metres wide. I feel like I need to hang on carefully to furniture as I stumble across the room to drag the flyscreens back across the open space before I get sucked out ...