Jingdezhen

Photos: Spring Festival, Lushan and Beijing again!

arendse_worldnomad — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 15:36:00 GMT

More photos from travels.

Spring Festival Holidays: Hard-seating it to Kunming and Jianshui

arendse_worldnomad — Tue, 9 Mar 2010 19:37:00 GMT

We had a months holiday for Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) and went travelling around southern China where it's warm! I tried to keep a travel journal and it worked for the first 9 days or so, so parts of this is taken from that and parts of it is me trying to remember what we actually did. We first went to Kunming, capital of Yunnan priovince which borders Laos and Burma.

30/01

It's half past 10 in the evening and it has so far been 7 and a half hours into our 32 hour journey to Kunming. It doesn't take much more than that to get a good insight into low budget travelling, that is, hard seating! We have both managed to get window seats which would mean relatively easy sleeping if it weren't for the fact that the window won't shut properly so cold air is coming in and blowing in my face. The noise is also tremendous whenever we pass another train. I have attempted to stuff the gap with my jumper but it's uncomfortable to have to constantly lean your arm on the window ledge. There's also no space to move or even stretch your legs a little because so many people are crammed onto the bench. As for the rest of the carriage, I guess we are pretty well off. Everywhere is cluttered with people, people standing in the aisle, peering over the seats to get a look at us. There are people crowded and squashed in the gaps between the carriages, and squatting on the filthy floor. Your not supposed to smoke in the carriages so they all smoke in these compartments instead, but as there are so many of them the smoke accumulates and drifts into the carriage, making the air thick with it. One upside to having a window that wont close! According to the man sitting next to Katherine who speaks really good English we are in Hunan province, but it's dark out so I can't see much, and don't know how much the landscape has changed. I desperately need the loo but can't be bothered to get up as it takes a good ten minutes squeezing through the crowds and past the numerous trolley women, and then a long wait before a disgusting hole in the ground. Quite a good start to the trip but I suppose inevitable, at this point am just glad to get out of teaching and finally be on holiday!

31/01

Morning has finally arrived, it seemed to take it's time coming, and is greatly welocomed as we only fell asleep around 5 in the morning. One of those sleeps you're grateful about getting out of, even if your still tired! Judging by the time I'm guessing we are in Guizhou province. I'm quite fascinated by the diversity of the vegetation, although it's quite hard to judge, because as everywhere in rural China, most of it's covered in paddy fields. On the one hand you have the subtropical lush green shrubs and palm trees, though not quite so green this time of year, and the soft green pine trees covering the hills much like that of the landscape back in Jiangxi. Then, at seemingly random intervals, there are wide hilly pastures from which jagged pieces of rock jut out, and coarse, burnt brown vegetation grows sparsely over the dull earth, much like the shrubs you would find in high altitudes. The mountains are truly peculiar - many of them stand completely isolated and are better described as big lumps sticking randomly out of the ground than mountains or even hills, as if a giant had lumbered through and shovelled large mounds of earth into piles with a giant shovel. Then in other areas they stand packed closely together and form true ranges. Many of them, althouh smooth and rounded in all other aspects, sport sheer cliffs of bare white rock, as though a massive hammer and chisel had hacked parts of it away.

Guizhou is one of the poorest provinces in southern China, and looking out from the train this becomes evident. The few areas which aren't either paddy fields or vast wilderness are made up of clusters of shabby houses seperated from one another by narrow dirt tracks. Further outside of the villages peasents trudging through muddy fields and yanking at reluctant buffalos is a common sight. Common also to the landscape now are the numerous tombs of ancestors, as well-kempt and trimmed as children. They are stuck in between rice the rice paddies, surrounding the base of the hills and sometimes placed high up in the mountains, the flat slabs white flecks in the sea of of green and brown.

We arrived in Kunming that evening and because we only stayed there a night I won't say too much about it as I can't really judge. The Hostel was awesome, the barbeque amazing, the nightlife dodgy and the city as a whole quite western. But thats very superficial. As we couldn't get tickets directly from Kunming to Yuanyang, our next planned destination, we decided to do a stop over in Jianshui. Once again, as we only stayed there a night, I don't feel I can really judge it, but I guess this was my impression of it.

02/02

Jianshui is located in good view of distant mountains. It has a definite subtropical feel, with dusty roads and palm trees growing from odd corners, and scooters cluttering every street. The centre of town, where we are staying, is made up of hundreds upon hundreds of old traditional houses, aligned along a messy net of wide and narrow cobbled streets. It felt like it was truly an old town, and the beautiful structures gave it a definite charm, but as in Kunming, nobody seemed particularly surprised to see us, showing that they probably get a lot of tourists during the high season. But what I liked best about it was the biggr sense of chaos that Kunming so lacked, but altogether not overwhelming. It was a lot of fun sitting on the wall of the Chaoyang Gate that we had climbed up of, and watching the busy life below us pass by. We wandered down a random little street in search of a lake we could see from the gate, but when we found it discovered that it was impossible to walk round. This street seemed quite a bit more out of the way, and less touristic, but it's possible that it's just because it's the wrong time of year for tourist-spotting. Had a very good lunch at another random little restaurant, trying to make sure that the bill didn't amount to anything too high. We tried this strange tofu thing that they grill and dip in a spicy sauce and which was surprisingly good; I think tofu is growing on me finally! Definetely also had the best barbeque so far in China last night, and I know that Xinjiang is famous for the best, in which case I'm seriously looking forward to it cos if thats second best Xinjiang must truly be amazing!

Photos: Yunnan

arendse_worldnomad — Sat, 6 Feb 2010 23:58:00 GMT

Rice terraces and Mekong river cities

Christmas in Gansu

arendse_worldnomad — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:09:00 GMT

As Christmas only seems to exist in theory in China (tacky Christmas decorations and santa hats are ubiquitous - still are, incidentally - but no one actually celebrates it when it comes to the big day) we had planned to spend it with all the other volunteers in Tianshui, one of the projects up in Gansu. This involved yet another battle with the school in letting us go (they initially wanted to take us to see the bird life at some lake, and then, of course, they were 'concerned for our safty') and another 32 hour train treck to Lanzhou.

We never got as far as Lanzhou though because the train stops in Xi'an, and two of the other volunteers were already there visiting. So three of us jumped off the train early, and within 20 minutes of being there we truly felt we were back in Xi'an. First, the taxi driver to the Hostel, which was literally round the corner from the train station, decided to get out of the cab and start chatting to other cab drivers for about 10 minutes, subtly attempting to get more passengers, and then charged us more than double the right fare, for a ride that took more than double the the time it ought have taken. At least we found a decent Hostel this time, and about an hour after having got off the train, at midnight, we went off for a club. That's another thing about China, you don't bother changing clothes, putting on make-up, or even showering after 20 hours on a train before going out because everyone thinks you're stunning anyway.

Xi'an was pretty much the same but with less tourists and much colder, however we did already begin to see a fair amount of northern China's notorious Winter pollution the west is so raving mad about. The sky was constantly dull and the horizon hazy and unclear.

The next day we met up with our friends studying in Xi'an, and had a nice stroll around the muslim quarters, marvelling at how unbelievable easy it was to haggle. They even spoke English! That evening, after dinner, our friends took us to the soup kitchen they volunteer at, where we all felt a bit useless and out of place, but nonetheless gave a helping hand in handing out baozi (steamed stuffed buns) and soup to the homeless. We got talking to some of the foreigners who run the place and it was really interesting to hear about how they had started the kitchen. It's the first soup kitchen to be opened in China.

That night, same ole same ole, went out and stayed out a bit too late beacause we got up too late the next day and very very narrowly missed our train to Tianshui, so had to get another one. As it was so late the only tickets we could get for the next train were standing tickets, which for the beginning of the journey was severely uncomfortable. We were squeezed onto the overcrouded train and had to stand in the corridor between carriages, occasionaly being able to squat on our luggage but due to the food carts passing through every other minute even this was virtually impossible. This involved quite a bit of intuitive thinking as we basically needed to stand on top of each other to avoid being run over by the cantankerous trolley women. Gradually however, some friendly Chinese took pity on us and one by one we sidled into seats and by the end we were all sitting more or less comfortably, chatting with randomers and staring out at some truly spectacular Gansu scenery. This was all on the 24th so Christmas for me, and I can't think of a stranger, more uncomfortable or more eventful Christmas ever. We arrived in Tianshui that evening and very nearly got into the Christmas spirit as the two person flat gradually filled up with 11 of us as more and more people arrived.

Gansu is the poorest province in China, and it's easy to see why. The landscape is dry and desolate, and when you chance upon a vegetable patch it is also dry and desolate, and you wonder why anybody bothers trying. The earth is shades of brown and grey and covered in a layer of grey dust, and at this time of the year, sporadic patches of white ice and snow. If it weren't for the snow, looking out, you would think you were somewhere in the middle east. It's basically a vast frozen desert. Despite the emptiness and dull colours it really is earily beautiful. It seems an endless wasteland of jagged and rocky mountains. The sheer cliffs are punctured by rounded entrances to dark caves, some made by animals, others humans; a daunting thought. And there's something positively thrilling about seeing a lone motorcycle speeding off on a narrow dusty road which twists it's way further up the mountains. It makes you want to be out there, until you see the occasional lake, frozen over solidly and you remember how cold it is!

Tianshui is a city thats sort of split up into too cities by a large plane of dry paddies. It's reasonably big, with a population of about 3 million, but it doesn't seem it because you only ever see half of it as the other half is in the other end. We didn't ever get to see particularly much of it so there's not that much more I can say. It is surrounded by the usual mountains, these terraced in anticipation of the brief wet season and dotted with the occasional small house.

Had quite an unfomfortable nights sleep squeezed onto a sofa with 4 other people, and was actually quite glad to wake up. Despite the luxury of central heating the houses still don't feel that much warmer than the sub zero temperatures outside. We had organised a Secret Santa for all the volunteers there and from mine I got some mittens, two CD's by Chinese boy bands (love 'em, but I'm still a bit embarassed to say so at least!) and a bunch of other random stuff. In the afternoon we went for a big Chinese banquet as a kind of substitute Christmas dinner, where we amused and possibly scared the waiters a bit by singing every Christmas carol in the book and ordering too much beer. It was quite amusing to see people trying to act sober on phones to parents after not having spoken to them for months. In the evening we went to a bar and then to a club but by this time me and some of the others were so exhausted we decided to go home and have an 'early' night. For some reason we never made it that far and instead went to some random reastaurant and got the worst jidan mifan (egg fried rice) I've had so far in China and played 'never have I ever' with tea. Twas a good but strange Christmas!

We had decided to all go and visit Dingxi, another project in Gansu, the next day so we all got on yet another train, thankfully this time with seats. It SNOWED when we were leaving, but the initial excitement wore off quickly as we got into the longest and most terrifying taxi journey of my life as we drove past 2 pile-ups. I know this isn't impressive compared to what has happened in Britain. Nonetheless, we got to the train station in one piece and then on the train and away.

Dingxi is a tiny city, especially by Chinese standards. It has a population of around 400 000, and is situated between four or so low dusty mountains. It does seem quite desolate but its size and isolation does have its appeal. I loved how almost no matter where you go it always seems no more than a ten minute walk before you are in the middle of nowhere, and one of the buildings the girls worked in was pretty much the last stop before you were there.

So 8 of us once again managed to squeeze into a two persons dorm, this one considerably smaller than the previous, and headed out that evening to make the most o Dingxi's nightlife. This consisted of one small bar/club, where we sat transfixed watching a comedy act made up of an old man dressed in a pyjama suit and a fat woman dressed in tradiional Chinese clothing three sizes too small for her. As with most clubs in smaller Chinese cities, it started to die down at aound 12, and by the end of the night it was just us and the staff sitting and playing drinking games. Eventually they turned the music off and lights on, the cue for us to go home.

The next day we went our seperate ways; the Tianshui girls went home, and the Dingxi girls stayed as the Jiangxi lot went off to Lanzhou. We were planning on going to visit the last project in Gansu, a small village called Tianzhu, but when we got to Lanzhou the only tickets we could get home were for very early the next day, so it was impossible to get back from Tianzhu in time. I was truly gutted because it seems like an awesome place; it's really tiny, consisting of about two or three roads and is really close to the border with Qinghai, a province bordering Tibet and is therefore mainly Tibetan. Tianzhu therefore has a large Tibetan minority. We had planned on eating Yak's meat and buying Tibetan scarves and learning Tibetan swear words from their roommate, and were really disappointed that we couldn't go.

That and that it meant we had to stay a night in Lanzhou. Last visit didn't exactly make me fall in love with the place, and this visit even less so. I don't know how much I described it last time, but even in Summer it's not exactly a scenic city. You can see the full extent of what China is doing to the environment when you are reaching Lanzhou train station. It seems it's all there is half and hour before arrival, power plant after power plant billowing out vast clouds of grey smoke that engulfs the sky. You can feel it when you get off: your throat soon goes raw and there's dust in your eyes, your lips are chapped and your hands dry. The horizon is non-existant and the mountains that were clear last visit are invisible behind the thick haze of smog.

And when the lonely planet is fucking useless for finding hotels, and most of them wont take foreigners, things only get worse. We were actually contemplating either staying up all night or sleepiong in the train station when we finally found a tiny hotel for 50 kuai (5 pounds) a night for a double. This place has been dubbed 'the Brothel.' There were no showers and the toilets disgusting (but then thats standard in China) and we had to ask 5 times before they gave us the keys to our rooms. Needless to say, despite wanting the holiday to continue, this final night had us positively longing the train that has almost come to feel like home, back home.

Photos: Gansu, Christmas and New Year (my birthday)

arendse_worldnomad — Wed, 6 Jan 2010 17:04:00 GMT

Signs you've been in China for almost 4 months!

arendse_worldnomad — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 20:07:00 GMT

Signs you've been in China for almost 4 months: here are some.

You've got a bunch of random names in your contact list on your phone, such as Coral, The Director, Head English, Edith, Jode, Kobe, Mike, Mike 2, Mike 3, Mike 4, Mike 5 and Mike's Friend, Nan, Nan 2, Orange, Simi, Student, Student 2, Student 3 and X to name a few. Many of the names I don't even remember getting and I don't remember who they are and possibly haven't actually met in person. It also makes it reasonably confusing when people text you form about a million different phones (ie Mike) and you constantly have to ask who is texting you.

You crave cabbage. I'm not even kidding, you lie awake and night and you crave that amazing cabbage dish you had the other day. The Chinese could make dog shit taste good and they probably do.

You just bought a big red hoodie with fluffy linings and the word 'Smile!' and a picture of teddy bear on it. Chinese clothes are either really trashy with lots of fake diamonds and fur and the word 'addedas' or ' Diorr' on them, or incredibly cute with lots of fluffy linings and pictures of hello kitty and a random text in absolutely terrible English, and phrases such as 'Smile!' and 'Be Happy!' on them. At a certain point you simply stop fighting and just embrace it!

Your English gradually starts to disintegrate, and you start speaking authentic Chinglish. This doesn't necessarily mean you speak grammatically incorrect (although it's part of it) but mainly you start using odd words the Chinese love to use, such as 'seldom' and 'convenient' and 'delicious'. So you'd say 'the noodles are more delicious than the rice' and 'warm clothes are convenient in the winter'. You also stop noticing when other people speak bad English; not too great when you're an English teacher.

You wake up first thing in the morning and Westlife's 'My Love' or Avril Lavigne's 'My Happy Ending' is already stuck in your head. This is mainly due to KTV where because you're foreign people expect you to know and like that kind of music, and you will inevitably find yourself with the mike in your hand at some point during the evening, blurting the words out to a song you haven't ever heard before but because it's so bad you can more or less guess what the tune's like. And unfortunately it gradually starts to stick.

You gain a considerable amount of basket ball knowledge. For example, I can now tell you that Kobe Bryant is a famous NBA player for the Lakers who won the MVP (most valuable player) award 3 times in a row. I also recognise the names of Michael Jordan, Lebron James and Yao Ming, which I wouldn't have been able to do before coming here. They are completely obsessed with basketball here and are really good at it too. I've found that if there is a group of boys at the back of the class who clearly aren't listening you can simply shout out 'Kobe Bryant' and it immediately catches their attention.

You just bought a bunch of posters of Chinese boy bands and singers, despite the fact you haven't actually heard any of their music and even would particularly like it if you did. Most of them are truly awful, basically the Chinese version of Westlife or the Backstreet Boys, but the part that really shows how much China has addled your brains is that once you have heard it a couple of times you actually genuinely start to enjoy it!

You start expecting free drinks when you go to bars, and get a wee bit annoyed and disappointed when they don't come. It is far too easy to get free drinks here when you're foreign. Once when we were in a bar in Xi'an, we were standing around for quite a while because we were too stingy to buy more than one beer each and weren't getting quite that buzzed, so Katherine and I went 'right! we want free drinks!' and walked through the bar area, and I must say it took us a whole 30 seconds - and I'm not actually exaggerating here! - before some random guy started offering us free drinks. It's not always that great though, it means you can't drink in moderation as everyone is trying to get you to drink.

I must thank Katherine for this blog entry, it was her idea: I just nicked it.

Photos: SUPERHEROES!!!

arendse_worldnomad — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:54:00 GMT

The Students

arendse_worldnomad — Tue, 1 Dec 2009 15:03:00 GMT

I did a class on superheroes where I got the kids to draw their own superhero and then write a story about them. I then took them in at the end of class, they are truly hilarious so here are some of them! Photos of some of them are in the gallery, SUPERHEROES.

'It's an egg called "an egg." It's a month old. It had a life a really life, a important life for it. But now it hasn't it. It lived under it's mother a month ago, but now it lives in the stomach(e) of a man. It had a dream once, but now it's dream has been broken before it borns. It can say nothing, do nothing, think nothing, ago, now and in the future. There is just a dream in it's mind. A dream which can be never finished. No one can remeber the egg, even it's dream. It just wanted to be out when it's alive!'

I then asked them questions about their superhero: 1. What is their name? 2. How old are they? 3. What are their superpowers? 4. Where do they live? 5. Who do they live with? 6. Are they good or evil?

'1. He has no name! (But you could call him "stupid") 2. He has no age! 3. He could think he is a superman anywhere...It's his only superpower... 4. He could live anywhere...Because he is happy to be. 5. You could say, a cat calls him "stupid." 6. If you think you are a Superman you will become what you think you are...a superman!'

'His name is outman. He is 2x10^4 years old. He can carry very heavy things like a building. He lives alone. He is good. One day, he become crazy, because he suffer from cold. That's too bad. Then he attack us, so many people attack back to him, too. Then I make him be good person. He thanked me a lot.'

'My superhero is Harry Potter. In Harry Potter he is in his twenties. His superpowers are his braveness. He lives in a magic world, and he studied in Hogwarts. He lives with Royan's [???] little sister, and his sons and daughters. He's a good man. One day, I met Harry in Hogwarts. I knew I should support him, because he could solve the whole magic world. I tried to greet Harry every time. Gradually, we became friends. We smiled, finding the sun rising again.'

My personal favourites:

'His name is super pumpkin. He is ten years old. He has a broomstick that can take him everywhere. He lives with other pumpkin. He lives in the mountain. He is good. He helped me clean the room quickly, and he makes the world clean. He is very cute but naughty.'

'When he meet bad man, he will make some gas to let the bad man down. His name is Super DaDa. He lives in W.C. He can make trees grow quickly. He lives with other DaDa.'

This one is just scary:

'My superhero is Mao Zedong. But he was dead. He lived in China, maybe he lived with his wife. My superhero is him because he founded PRC. He was a good man but he used some wrong ways to let people have a difficult life,[no shit!] but all of all, he was a really good man, and he will be my superhero forever. I wont forget him.'

As is this one:

'His name is Adolf Hitler. He was 56 years old. He was lived in Berlin. He is good. [wtf?!!] He can control all the world. He is a little ugly, so I can't draw him. And he was died.'

(They are totally deluded when it comes to political views. China seems like such a modern and western country in so many ways that you don't realise that the government actually has a really strong grip on what they're told. You can buy magazines and newspapers such as The Economist and The Gurdian in Beijing and Shanghai, and the bbc website isn't blocked for some reason, but the problem is mainly that they actually don't want to hear anything other than what they're told by the government. They believe that its the western media thats wrong. Katherine did a lesson where the kids had to design their own country, and one of the questions about the country was 'will there be a death penalty?' Almost everyone said that there would, and the one's who didn't hadn't understood what the death penalty was; as soon as they did they changed it immediately. We then actually told one of the students about some of our taboo opinions, such as we don't think there should be a death penalty and then brought up the Xinjiang riots. It was over text and the reply was, 'Xinjiang... Two leaders of the groups as tools of western world. They are just against us. And we caught some of them that actually did that and killed them all according to our law.' When we then told him that we didn't think they were told the whole story, he replied with 'God knows if your media had you people fooled.' It's incredibly infuriating, there's just no arguing with them! And as you can see, they still idolize Mao and Hitler. It's not really their fault though, it's just because of all the bullshit the government spews out and lack of freedom of press and so on. All the Chinese newspapers that are in English and all the English tv channels are all packed full with propaganda.)

I'm just putting this one up for the note written at the end:

'His name is OPTIMUS PRIME. I don't know how old is he. He has the strongest power. He is a superhero. He always helps the people around him. He lives in America. Actually, he is a car. He is so good and great. Arendsa, I like you very much. You are a good teacher. You're so lovely and kind. I hope you can know. We all like you. Our favourite teacher is you!'

Yay! I love teaching!

School starts at 7:20 in the morning and lunch break is from 11:45 - 13:40. School finishes at 17:15, and then some classes have evening classes from 18:40 - 21:20. This is every day of the week except Sunday, and sometimes they have tests and exams on Sunday mornings. What the hell was I ever complaining about?!! I dont exactly know how much homework they get but I'm guessing its a lot seeing as whenever we ask the students what they do in their free time the standard answer seems to be 'we have no free time.' It makes you feel quite guilty when they text you and ask 'What are you doing now?' and all you can say is 'Umm, marking! Learning Chinese!' When you're actually watching Grey's Anatomy. However, because you gradually come to think of them as study machines it actually comes as a relief when they come out with boob jokes and create the superhero 'Sex woman,' (which I then shamelessly had to correct to 'sexy woman' two or three times). It reminds you that they're actually teenagers like anywhere else on earth. Unfortunately I wasn't there to witness this but it sounds absolutely hilarious: Katherine said that when she was walking past the basketball courts a group of students started shouting 'Beautiful teacher! Beautiful teacher! Make love to me! Make love to me! L-O-V-E, L-O-V-E!' We don't think they knew what they were actually saying which just makes it so much more funny. They all think you're incredibly beautiful and kind and generous and lovely; it's not really something to be particularly flattered about, it's just because you're foreign, but I'm still almost positive I'll come home with a head the size of a basketball. People with self-esteem issues should come to China!

Gallery: Nights out in Shanghai and Jdz

arendse_worldnomad — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 00:01:00 GMT

Living in China

arendse_worldnomad — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:48:00 GMT

This may sound quite strange, but for most of my time in China it's as though I haven't really been aware of where I am. You'll be going around, doing your usual routines and then suddenly something will happen and you'll go, 'Oh my God, I'm in China!' You tend to get very sucked into the whole 'China is brilliant, everything is happy and good here,' kind of atmosphere, and then you'll see something like the national day military parade which I mentioned before, and you'll realise you're in a communist country and that this atmosphere is slightly due to delusion.

The military parade was in theory for celebrations of the 60th birthday of the Communist party, which fitted in nicely with the government's wish to show off their newest top-of-the-line nukes and tanks and all of the like, which of course are for 'safety precautions only.' You won't understand the full irony unless you heard the meeting we had with some heads of a school a few days prior, in which they repeated again and again that they want peace and peace with our countries and universal peace and so on and so forth.

I'm still not really sure what is acceptable to do or say here. Obviously we don't walk around with Free Tibet t-shirts, but I was trying to get my classes to have discussions, which is extremely difficult because they are all painfully shy and when their English isn't brilliant it becomes close to impossible to hear/understand what it is they are saying, so I wrote up on the board 'America is better than China,' to which I got the reaction I had hoped for and they all began protesting violently against it. I didn't think this was such a big deal, and I still don't think it was a major issue, but when Katherine and I decided to set up an English club we had to talk to the Head English Teacher to help us set it up, and everything was fine but then he said, 'according to the policies of our country, no sex, no politics! No sex, no politics!' I don't know if that sparked from my rebellious lesson planning.

Aside from the political differences, there is also the utter and wonderful randomness to be found here. It's extremely common for people to ask for your phone number, even if you have literally just said 'hello', and 'I am a teacher' to them. This results in many bizarre and often illegible texts from people you don't quite remember who are. I have a student who calls himself Willim, who texts me asking for advice with peer pressure and the like, (which I find rather awkward but the chenglish and again, randomness of it is also quite amusing), and Katherine has a bankers clerk, who when she asked whether it was acceptable for Chinese to have had more than one boy/girlfriend, replied by saying something along the lines of 'before marriage no sex lives' and 'I am vigin boy.' She hasn't texted him since.

Then there is our flat, which apparantly is also just a normal part of living in China. As I have said before, our accommodation is incredible, better than I ever hoped for, but there is a tendancy for everything to break. We were warned of dodgy sockets and were told that we would be getting numerous electric shocks throughout the year, but despite many of the sockets not being properly attached to the wall, that hasn't been a problem. But everything in our flat leaks: the kitchen sink, the water pipes beneath the kitchen sink, the air conditioner, the bucket we used to mop up the water from the leaking air conditioner, the kettle, the washing machine, the fruit bowl; then water leaked from our flat through the ceiling to the people living below us, and now one of the gas pipes is leaking, so we can't use the stove. We didn't have hot water for a month because the heater turned off during one of the power cuts, (which we weren't aware of, we though it was broken). And our toilet got blocked, which is always a pleasant experience. We have had a repairman in on four different occasions; to fix our air conditioner, water supply, hot water supply, and our landline, and then our host and her husband turned up one evening in their pyjamas to unblock our toilet. I was mortified. We now need to get another repairman in to fix the leaky gas pipe.

I love living in China, there is never a dull day.

Photos: Our project (Photos of JDZ)

arendse_worldnomad — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:48:00 GMT

Gallery: Beijing

arendse_worldnomad — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:44:00 GMT

Great Wall, Summer Palace, and the Mix!

Teaching

arendse_worldnomad — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:33:00 GMT

I'm beginning to understand why teaching is often described as being the best and the worst job in the world. When a lesson goes well, you can be sure to walk out of the classroom happily and be bright and satisfied for the rest of the day. If a lesson goes badly, all you want to do is run out the classroom as quickly as possible with your head down and go hide under a rock. It can be difficult to predict how a lesson is going to go; a lesson plan which has worked perfectly with many classes can suddenly crash with another, and it is ALWAYS your fault if it does, not the students'.

Despite the relative success of my first lesson, teaching has not been a smooth affair. For quite some time I felt that the kids were learning absolutely nothing, which isn't a major problem - the problem is mainly when they don't seem to be having a particularly fun time either. I did a lesson on describing emotions a few weeks back, and when I asked this one girl how she felt at this particular time, she said she felt sleepy. I then asked her why, expecting that she would say beause she had to stay up doing homework or something of the sort, instead she said 'Because it is boring.' Burn!

Lessons continued like this for quite some time. Recently, however, I think they have turned around quite a bit, and I am hugely enjoying teaching. For us it truly is an extremely laid back job. We only teach nine hours a week whilst most other people teach 16, we don't have to set homework or tests, and therefore don't have anything to mark; we literally just walk into class once or twice a day, teach them whatever we want since we don't have a syllabus to follow, and walk out again. I usually do a little bit of teaching at the beginning of the lesson, and then play a game with them. Games are always best when the class is enthusiastic and really start to get competitive. Games in which you get the children to draw or put a silly hat on them are hilarious because everyone starts laughing and it's extremely difficult to stop yourself from laughing too much.

Katherine and I have a great deal of fun reading what the kids have written when we take in work. We did a quiz with them last week on how good their English was and what they would like to study in English, and some of the answers were hilarious. When asked whether they thought the past lessons had been too easy, too hard, OK or too boring, many of them simply put, 'The past lessons have been too easy/too hard/OK/too boring.' I had explained that they had to pick one. Then when asked what they would like to study in English, some of Katherine's students had put, 'I would like to study these things in English, Maths Physics.' Some simply put: 'Spoken English.' I think they were a bit confused. Many were exactly the same, obviously copied frantically from the person next to them as soon as I asked them to hand it in to me. Overall the quizzes weren't hugely helpful.

The students can come out with some quite funny stuff. I was teaching them sickness and health and I got them to create dialogs between a doctor and a patient. Most of them went something like this:

What the matter with you?

I'm not feeling well.

You have a cold.

No.

You have a fever.

No.

Do you cough a lot?

Yes.

You must take some medicine.

I don't have any money.

One boy said to another, 'I think you have H yi N yi' (H1N1) to which he protested violently, 'No, I don't, teacher, it not true.' I was trying hard not to laugh too openly. Of course, this is assuming they actually understand that they're supposed to make their own dialogs and don't just copy straight from the board.

Porcelain!

arendse_worldnomad — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:09:00 GMT

Jingdezhen is the porcelain capital of China. Pottery has been made here for over 1700 years. As mentioned before, many of the street lamps and traffic lights are made entirely out of china, and there are whole streets with nothing but china shops. At first this didn't interest me at all, it had even started to become rather irritating to constantly here about the fucking porcelain, as if anyone has actually heard of Jingdezhen it is namely because of this.

Then last Sunday we invited a student over to our flat and she surprised us by bringing two large boxes - one for each of us - containg an entire coffee set made out of the finest porcelain.

We had then promised a students mother that we would give her son private lessons, but as we had refused pay she insisted on taking us to her porcelain store and had us pick out anything we wanted. That same night we went home with a tea set and some plates.

We have since also had two other students promise to bring us some china, because they have a family member who owns a shop. Everyone here knows someone who owns a porcelain shop, and they are incredibly generous with it. All this has lead me to really love the porcelain, the stretlamps really are quite beautiful, and they make the otherwise unintersting city quite picturesque in my eyes.

People are reasonably used to foreigners around here, again due to the porcelain, which attracts many students and teachers alike. Still, this doesn't mean that we don't attract a small amount of attention, and have shouts of 'Hellooo' and 'Meiguoren, Meiguoren' ('American, American') trailing after us. On a good day this doesn't matter, on a bad one this can be quite irritating. People tend to assume that you are either French or American, as there are a few students and professors from there over here, working at the porcelain university or the Jingdezhen University. Despite this considerable amount of foreigners, we only ever see any when we go to KFC, somewhere we have gone too many times for my liking because students always insist on taking us there again and again. We always avoid them as best we can, although we secretly want to speak to them. But seeing as we are almost always with some Chinese people when we see them it would be odd to leave them to go and talk to foreigners.

Gallery: Xi'an and Lanzhou

arendse_worldnomad — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:27:00 GMT

National day holidays

National Day holidays: Lanzhou and Xi'an

arendse_worldnomad — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:37:00 GMT

The week after Xinyu we left for our weeks language course in Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province. We met up with the Xinyu boys and set off on a sufficiently unpleasant 32 hour train journey in a train that was later to be referred to as a 'soviet tin can' (courtesy of Richard). The water boiler was actually heated by coal.

We arrived in Lanzhou early Monday morning just in time for our first lessons. All the other volunteers had arrived at least the night before and stayed in a nice Hotel, making it an interesting greeting as we walked into class late and smelling of a Chinese train.

The language course was, I'm sorry to say it, rather useless. We had to stay with host families as all the hostels were booked full due to the national holidays. In theory this meant that we would be able to practice the Chinese we had learnt that day with the families. This didn't work out quite as hoped, as to begin with, by the time evening had come round and I actually saw the family I had forgotten most if not all of what we had done. The parents didn't say much to me other than 'Chi! Chi!' ('Eat! Eat!) at dinner, and I couldn't say much to them, so it pretty much ended with my host translating for the both of us. Nonetheless, I had a great time with my host Sherry (later to be christened Cara), tried my first hotpot which was AMAZING and subsequently had three times that week, and watched the National Day military parade with the family which was somehow dull, amusing and terrifying all at the same time. We also had a wonderful time playing Truth or Dare with Chinese characteristics, which basically winds down to boys kissing boys and girls kissing girls and boys occasionally hugging girls to many exclamations of awe from everybody watching.

After the language course, ten of us, the Jiangxi and Gansu volunteers, decided to go to Xi'an for the remainder of the holidays. This trip was probably the most eventful four days of my time in China. One of the volunteers had friends in Xi'an so we met up with them upon arrival and they helped us with pretty much everything. We stayed at a really fancy hotel because everything was booked, again, due to national holidays.

The first day was rather uneventful. We wandered round the city a bit and then went cycling around the city walls, which was quite an amazing experience. You may not believe me when I say this but it was actually nice to do a bit of exercise! We then had our first encounter with THOSE FUCKING XI'AN TAXIS. Basically, most of them are already full, and most of the ones that aren't refuse to take you for some unknown reason. Most of the one's that will then proceed to get lost and generally have no idea where they are going. So you can see how standing with your arm in the air for an hour puts you out of the party mood.

The next day we went to see the terracotta army. On the bus on the way there we met a bunch of Americans that were volunteering as teachers in Jiangxi! So we got there mobile numbers so we could contact them back in Jiangxi and possibly see them again.

The best part of our attempt at being cultural was by far the public stunts we pulled, such as pretending a volunteer was a famous person and taking photos of/with him and getting him to sign peoples chests, and playing human checkers with the Americans, gradually attracting a larger and larger crowd of Chinese curious to see what on earth the crazy foreigners were up to.

That night we finally went out for a long awaited night of clubbing. Nobody in the club was actually dancing but that didn't hinder us from getting up on stage and dancing. This didn't go unnoticed either, and it wasn't long before we were given a crate of beer on the house, simply for being foreign and actually doing what your supposed to do in a club.

We got back to the hotel late, and were told that the police had been looking out for us, and decided that a group of foreigners should not be staying out this late in a foreign city. We tried explaining that most cities in Europe were far more dangerous than any in China, but to no avail, and we were given a 1 o'clock curfew.

The final day was spent wandering around a Buddhist temple with some severe hangovers. By evening however we were cured and after dinner, one of our Chinese friends insisted on taking us to see the famous Xi'an fountains. We soon became part of the show, as after some goading from the lovely Chinese girl, we got in and started dancing around for the length of the show, in front of what was supposedly 1000 people. (Picture above - from now on, dancing in a fountain should be on any 'to do before you die' list!) Needless to say, a year in China will make you shameless. We then went to a club soaking wet and got our round of free beers again. Because of the 1 o'clock curfew, we were back quite early, and lets just leave it at we stayed up in one of the rooms till very early in the morning.

The next morning everybody but the Jiangxi volunteers had left, so they all missed our narrow escape from paying 2900 kuai (290 pounds - a lot for China) for damages, which was utter bullshit because all we had done was stain some sheets. Luckily, our amazing Chinese friend Yanggang was there to haggle his way out for us. At this point we just wanted to get out of that Hotel as quickly as possible and never look back again, namely also because of a couple incidents I have decided not to mention here. We could start swapping hotel stories with The Who soon.

A little late, but finally some news from China!

arendse_worldnomad — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:04:00 GMT

We started off in Beijing, I won't say too much about it because it is too long ago now and I can't remeber everything and it's not all that important. Suffice to say that we had an absolutely incredible time, went to see the Summer Palace, The Great Wall, and spent a considerable amount of time wandering around the Hutong and fumbling with bad Chinese. Had many an amazing meal; there was much clubbing at the Mix and getting drunk on the terrace of the Hostel together. We taught the Macarena to a bunch of Chinese people in this random little bar/club thing, which must have been a hilarious sight. It certainly was hilarious doing it.

Anyway, about four or five days after arrival and after saying goodbye to the volunteers going to Gansu and Xinjiang provinces, my partner Katherine, two other volunteers going to another part of Jiangxi province and I caught a train to Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi. The train journey took about 12 hours, but as it was an overnight train and it was already dark when we set off, it didn't really sink in where we were going until I looked out the window the next morning.

The landscape is very different to that around Beijing; the earth is a scorched red and the many hills are covered in lush, soft green vegetation. Numerous tiny, earth red villages are squeezed between huge stretches of nothing but rice paddies and muddy waterholes. It's a scene fom your typical image of China: the peasants wear stereotypical straw hats and push water buffalos steadily through the muddy fields, and fish in the little lakes.

It wasn't until arrival in Nanchang that the difference in temperature hit us, which piled on top of a 12 hour train journey was to say the very least uncomfortable. Our host and waiban were there to meet us as we got off the train, but after just a very brief introduction we got whisked off to the Nanchang Health Clinic for the most extensive health check - something we had dearly hope to avoid - I have ever had in my life, complete with a full body scan, blood and urine tests, ultrasound, and a number of bizarre procedures, the purpose of which I still remain clueless. We then set off on a three and a half hour car journey to Jingdezhen.

In most guidebooks Jingdezhen is not exactly described as much of a scenic city. The beautiful surrounding countryside and iconic porcelain streetlamps and numerous porcelain shops make it seem as though it should be. Admittedly, our first impressions of the city were not entirely pleasant. It is right to call it scruffy and dirty; traffic is ubiquitous - which from my experiences in Beijing and Nanchang seems standard for China - stray dogs nibble at the rubbish carelessly thrown onto the streets and hens peck between the cracks of the broken pavement.

We were taken straight to our new home. Our accommodation is incredible: black leather couches, a tv larger than the one I have at home, two seperate bedrooms with double beds, a study with a huge desk and the most amazing spinny chair thing, a bathroom (with a wstern toilet!) and a tiny, dodgey kitchen complete a greasy wok and cockroaches. They even bought us a Christmas tree!

Everyone was extremely helpful and kind and welcoming, but this did not hinder the inevitable feeling of loneliness and homesickness that overcame the both of us for the first couple of days. We felt rather forlorn in our empty, whitewashed flat.

The first night we were invited out to a banquet at the school canteen with the headmaster of the school, where the food was delicious, but although we were given beer, we were only toasted about three or four times. This resulted in us becoming a little bewildered, seeing as much of the time on our training course was speant talking about how much we were going to have to drink. Even for lightweights like us, that first banquet left me rather confused and disappointed.

My first lesson was by no means a nightmare. It went surprisingly well, and I say surprisingly because from what I have understood from the other volunteers first lesson nightmares are standard. The kids were keen and active, and seemed genuinely excited and happy to have a foreign English teacher.

One of our more amusing stories of our China experience so far is of our first attempt to cook. We had been eating out at little restaurants for a couple of days, but since the only thing we could order was noodles, 'mian tiao,' we were getting rather sick of them. We started off by taking a deep breath and with our trusty bug spray at hand, stepping slowly into the miniscule cockroach den, and quickly killing all the roaches in sight. When we had decided on how the rice cooker was supposed to work (all the instructions were in Chinese), we popped the rice in and started chopping up all the vegetables. After not too long we realised that the rice cooker was doing absolutely nothing, so we decided to go old school and cook it in a pot. I turned on the stove, and, inevitably, nothing happened. It was at this point that we heard an odd hissing sound issuing from the sink. I opened up the cabinets beneath the sink to see water squirting frantically out of the pipes and all over the floor. After successfully turning off the water supply we agreed on continuing to cook and worrying about not having any water the next day. To get the stove working however we had to go downstairs and ask the lovely little old lady who lives beneath us to help. We soon had rice cooking steadily. I then thought it would be a good idea to make sure that the other stove worked properly before the little old lady left, so I turned the knob, just in time to realise that the stove was only precariously balanced upon the kitchen counter - it tipped - rice, boiling water everywhere, open flame dangling off the table... The little old lady then went off on a rant about how we were too young to take care of ourselves and how dare the school not give us water, although all of this was in rapid Chinese, and as we have later discovered, dialect, so for quite a while we thought she was screaming mad at us for not being more careful...

We went out for noodles again.

Despite warnings about how people would be extremely overprotective of us, given that we are at a new project and are girls, we had been given surprisingly loose reins ever since we arrived. We regularly go out into the city on our own and have also begun to explore more and more of the city center by night. Our freedom came to an abrupt end as soon as we decided to go and visit the two volunteers in Xinyu, another city in Jiangxi, some three weeks after arrival at our project. We simply wanted to inform the school that we would be leaving for the weekend, and ask them how we could obtain bus tickets. This resulted in a phone call from the head English teacher telling us that we couldn't go to Xinyu this weekend because they were 'concerned for our safety', but that the President was going on a business trip there sometime in November, and he could take us then if we wanted. We attempted to explain that it was Katherine's birthday and we really wanted to be with our friends for that, and then that we had to go to go to Lanzhou for our language course on our own the week after anyway, and that we didn't need anyone to escort us. 'Yes, but we are concerned for your safety.' We then told them that Kathereine had to go to Shanghai in November on her own as well, and that we were planning to go travelling a lot in our holidays, and that we didn't think that they would be able to escort us all around China. 'Yes, but we are concerned for your safety.'Finally, after a call to our rep Alicia (thank you again!) we were given 'permission' to go to Xinyu.

Xinyu is a smaller and much sleepier city than Jingdezhen. There is no rubbish on the streets and the air is clearer. Katherine and I were surprised to see how tame the traffic was compared to that of most of the other cities we had seen. Famous for it's many parks, it's all in all quite picturesque.

We left Friday afternoon and five six hours later arrived in Xinyu. Not much is needed to be said about the first night. Suffice to say that baijiu was involved and Saturday morning unpleasant. Saturday was Katherine's birthday and we celebrated with an incredible banquet and our long awaited, first night of KTV.

KTV is by far the strangest experience I've had in China so far, and that is saying a lot! A private room with a big screen tv, a small monitor for choosing songs, and a group of elderly Chinese men dancing to 'Uptown Girl' and singing at the tops of their uncomfortably shrill voices. Watching Katherine ballroom dance with the school headmaster to disco music is all that is needed to give you severe culture shock. It hits you when and where you least suspect it.

And ever since arriving in China, I apparantly love Michael Jackson, Avril Lavigne and Westlife.