Apologies for the lapse in blogging – our lives seems to have finally settled into a routine over the last few months.  We’re still enjoying our adventures, although they’re not as geographically diverse as last year!  Here’s a few highlights from the last few weeks:

• Laura has come over from the UK and spent four weeks here with us in Beijing – she’s now travelling across China before heading into south east Asia.  Duncan arrived last week – he’s quit his 9 to 5 at Vodafone and has decided to relocate to Beijing.  He’s currently crashing with us until he gets a job and an apartment sorted – I think he’s starting to get into the Jing of things.
• Laura and I took a trip to Tianjin – an unremarkable city to the south of Beijing.  The remarkable thing however was our trip on one of the worlds fastest trains – it took just 30 minutes to travel 100 miles.  The train was cruising along at 334km / 210 miles per hour.
• Last weekend I spent the afternoon watching Jeannie playing rugby with the rest of the girls from the Beijing Devil’s team.  She’s becoming a local celebrity with recent features in many of the ex-pat mags.  I’ll scan them and post them here sometime soon.
• We took part in a charity bike ride – 66km of hell cycling near the great wall.  The hills were horrendous and by the end of the 3 hour saga my arse felt like it was going to fall off.
• I’ve been to a football game (those of you who know me well realise what odd behaviour this is).  We live just 200 meters from the local stadium so we spend an evening watching the local Beijing team take on a team from Japan.  Beijing won 2-0.
• Last May weekend was also a holiday here too – we spent the monday in a local park having a picnic and playing frisbee – which attracted great attention from the natives.  We topped off the evening by going 10 pin bowling.  I feel 15 again.
• I’ve bought a guitar.  No readers, I can’t play one.
• Last night we went out with friends from the Migrant Children’s Foundation for an amazing supper at a local Iranian restaurant.  The food was amazing – check out the photo of the platter.

That’s all I think… all in all life is good – especially now the summer has finally arrived.  We’re bobbing along most days at 28 degrees or above, my skin is finally starting to loose its winter pasty-ness (as in pale) I now need to loose the winter pasty-ness (as in Cornish) from my belly.

 

It’s gone on long enough: I’ve been in China for six months and existed on a vocabulary of roughly five hundred Chinese words plus a handful of characters to get by. My ineptitude is beginning to make me feel like a social pariah in expat circles (all my rugby pals are fluent or close to it, the gits) as well as severely limiting my ability to befriend local people. It makes me highly envious when I see a Westerner and a local happily chatting to each other in Mandarin and I feel rather rude that I’m unable to do the same after being here for so long. So I’ve finally bitten the bullet and shelled out hen duo qien (a shed load of money) on a course of Chinese lessons – see, they’re paying for themselves already.

Before I continue I should point out that, up to now, I have made at least some effort to learn:  every ‘China veteran’ we met while we were in South East Asia recommended that learning a few words and characters would make life immeasurably easier, not to mention ingratiating us with the locals (they weren’t wrong either – we arrived from northern Vietnam via a fairly remote border crossing and my first few days are a blur of gesticulating with hotel owners and playing ‘guess the meat’ in roadside restaurants. So I took their advice, downloaded a series of self-study podcasts, and spent many an hour lying on rickety Vietnamese beds learning the basics.

Unfortunately, though, the language course I selected had some strange priorities when it came to deciding the most useful words and phrases for its students to master. For example, by the time I crossed into China I had reached lesson twenty-two, and I knew how to say, ‘No, I would not like to come back to your place for a coffee’ but I still hadn’t been taught the phrases ‘I want a hotel room’ or ‘can I have the bill’. Or even ‘yes please’. Consequently I formed some odd preconceptions and was almost disappointed when nobody tried to chat me up immediately after I crossed the border.

The other problem with self-study pod casts is that, if somebody answers my perfectly crafted questions in any way other than I’ve been taught by the robotic voice of my podcast, I haven’t got a clue what they’re saying. On top of this, (due to the afore mentioned fact that most Beijing expats speak decent Chinese), once I’ve rattled of the two or three sentences I’m comfortable with, the person I’m addressing assumes that I’m all but fluent and often launches into a happy flow of Mandarin to which I can neither understand nor respond. This is a particular problem in taxis and I have perfected the art of lasting for ten or fifteen minutes pretending that I fully understand their one-way conversation through a series of smiles, nods and vague grunts.

In a nutshell, the self-study isn’t really doing it for me and I wouldn’t want to put a language partner through the pain of an hour’s worth of my tortured muttering just yet, so last week I attended my first one-on-one ‘Intensive Spoken Mandarin’ lesson (intensive being the operative word).

Despite dark warnings from expat friends that Chinese language schools are not all they should be, my inexhaustibly cheerful and enthusiastic teacher immediately proved her worth. She performed minor miracles by forcing me not to speak English, at all, for two full hours, and drilling Mandarin words, phrases and pronunciations into me by asking me to repeat them again and again. If I screw up the same word three times she makes me sing a song, which is a remarkably strong incentive for both of us to work hard.

At the moment the characters are the bit that’s killing me – who decided it was a good idea to have a different symbol for every single word? – and it is tempting to just learn just the basics and leave it at that. But considering how often I’ve have a laugh over a bad Chinglish translation or strangely pronounced English word since we crossed the border (my personal favourite: ‘cripples and retards toilet’), it is only fair that I put the boot on the other foot and learn to make myself understood.

Although New Year’s eve waslast night, I got my first taste of New Year celebrations, Chinese style, on the way home from work last Monday: I was in the process of crossing the dual carriage way to get to my bus stop, and something rolled into the road and hit my foot. ‘That looks a bit like a firework’ I thought, but, being in the middle of a dual carriageway, I didn’t stop to investigate. Turns out it was a firework - about ten seconds later it exploded into a shower of blue and green sparks that lit up the road and sent a couple of cars swerving onto the grass verge. As I tottered towards the bus, eardrums ringing, I spotted the culprits -  group of old ladies huddled outside an aparment block lighting roman candles on the side of the road. The one in question had misfired, but not to worry, they had (literally) hundreds more where that came from and it was only a bit of practice for the main event.

For the past week or so, in the run up to Chinese New Year and the beginning of Spring Festival, Beijing’s skylines (not to mention the Beijing pavements and main roads) have been illuminated by some pretty impressive DIY pyrotechnic displays, so we were expecting something spectacular on the day itself. But not quite as spectacular, or terrifying, as it actually turned out to be.

Last night, to see in the Year of the Tiger, Beijing turned into a marginally less traumatic version of the Western Front. From the early afternoon, the streets began to empty of traffic. People would sporadically pop out of their apartment blocks to throw a string of extremely loud firecrackers onto the pavement and watch them take out a couple of dogs and maybe a tourist, and by late afternoon almost every shop, bank, kiosk and restaurant had closed its doors to allow the staff to go home to their families.

By the time we headed out of the apartment in the early evening there were rocket launches happening on evey corner, the sky was a sea of sparks and the air was think with the small of gunpowder. We stopped on the corner of our road to watch a group of guys letting of ffirecrackers until I took a direct hit to the eye, at which point we decided that underground travel might be the safest way to get to the Hutong we were headed for so we legged it to the subway. As usual, we were the only people who seemend to show any nervous reaction to the carnage: there were kids, old people and small dogs everywhere and none of them so much as flinched, even if they were actually holding a screaming, blazing heavy-duty firework as it went off (which seemed to be standard practice).

Apart from bleeding eardrums, we arrived safely at our friend’s apartment for a new year’s eve celebration which was authentic in every way apart from the fact  75% of the guests were westerners: two girls were churning out homemade jiao zi (meat dumplings that are the equivalent of Christmas turkey) and a tray kept appearing laden with shots of bai jiu, a very popular Chinese liquor which tastes like soil and acts like liquid nitrogen. As midnight approached we’d drunk enough of it to make jumping down onto the rickety balcony to get a better view of the fireworks a good idea.

And at midnight, everything went crackers. The sky turned into a riot of noise and colour as milions and millios of fireworks exploded across the city to bring inthe new year. Being seven stories up, I have no idea how many of them were part of organised displays and how many were DIY jobs, but they couldn’t have looked better. Seeing a city of sixteen million illuminated by the multi-coloured blaze of a billion fireworks is not really something you can describe very well, so I shall let Jamas’s photos do the talking - as always, the Chinese outdid themselves.

Happy New Year, China.

 

Not wanting to tempt fate, but it’s been a remarkable easy couple of weeks.  Before Christmas on average I’d have one or two ‘bad china days’ a week – where something pissed me off – be it a bureaucratic process for a trivial means, or just general the rudeness and lack of manners of Beijing’s masses.  Somehow, however the city feels different now we’re back.  The air is clear and crisp, the sun is shining and I’m pretty sure – but don’t quote me on this – that the lady in the police station even smiled when we registered our papers.  We got our internet connection installed today and the engineer was 15 minutes early.  What’s going on China?  You’ve changed.

Perhaps the upbeat mood in the city is because it’s Chinese New Year this weekend (imagine Christmas 10 times over).  As I peer out over Beijing this evening I can see the sparkle of fireworks all over the city as our fellow city dwellers practice ahead of the main event on Saturday.  Jeannie and I will be heading to Houhai – a huge lake in the city surrounded by narrow Hutongs and open-air beer houses.  We’ll be filling our bellies with dumplings and watching the fireworks over Beijing’s ancient drum and bell towers as we welcome in the Tiger Year.

Our Zodiac looks promising for 2010 – we’ve been told to “express our talents” and in return a “long-awaited opportunity will knock on your door”.  The prediction also gave us permission to party.  Lots.  Next on the list: find a talent to express whilst partying…

 

They’re not alone – our festive countdown has also well and truly begun: today is our 309th day away from home and it’s also our last day here in Beijing.  In 4 hours we’ll be on a plane bound for Blighty.  We’re coming home three days early thanks to the ungrateful sods who dish out drinks and peanuts for BA.  Striking for 12 days?  Really?  Has the UK gone French whilst we’ve been away?  This last minute change in plan has forced me to brave Beijing’s minus 5 chill to finish collecting tat to offer to loved ones as gifts (chairman Mao fridge magnet anyone?).  The shopping malls are decked out with trees and fake snow, the shop assistants are dressed up as Santa and the Chinese interpretations of Christmas hits blast relentlessly from tannoys all over the city.  There’s even a life-sized wobbling Santa model which has be causing much amusement – guys stand next to old saint Nick and put on their steeliest poker faces whilst their wives take a snap for the family album.  Then there’s the kangaroos wearing Santa hats…

We’re ready to depart: we’ve packed our rucksacks, our apartment’s been stuffed into boxes and Jeannie’s just landed an awesome new job for January.  We’ve even got a plan for 2010 – we’ve coming back to Beijing, we’re going to spend more time exploring China then take a two month break to travel some more before finally returning to the UK in September.  So we’ve not quite finished this traveling malarkey yet.

We need to shoot, we’ve got a plane to catch.  Before we do, I thought I’d share an interesting stat from the blog with you. I bet you can’t guess what the most popular search term people have typed into Google to find our blog. It’s actually quite ironic given what we’ve been up to over the last year.  Got it yet?  No? Here it is:

“alcohol ruins life”

Try Googling it, you’ll find us.

Merry Christmas.

Last weekend we went on a Christmas shopping mission to Panjiayuan, Beijing’s most ecletic antiques market, which houses a truly amazing array of tat ranging from the very expensive and interesting to the truly shit. Here’s a small selection of what you can find: first editions of Mao’s Little Red Book, teapots, old propaganda posters, fake Ming pottery with suspiciously neat chips and cracks, fireworks, silk prints, dragon puppets, cookery books with titles like ‘100 Ways with Dog’, Brownie cameras, gramaphones, more teapots, calligraphy sets, Chairman Mao waving arm alarm clocks, wthnic minority fancy dress outfits, Jinseng, jade jewelry and a plethora of other stuff recovered from heaven knows where – I wish I knew something about antiques. James was supposed to be doing his Christmas shopping but I somehow ended up buying four large sackfuls of crap which will undoubtedly end up on YOUR mantelpieces after Christmas, so watch out if I run at you with a teapot-shaped present, it cost 30p and will look hideous in any location except on a shelf along with 3,200 similar teapots, where it looked antiquey and cool.

James, myself and the teapots will all fly home in 10 days so I’m well and truly on the final countdown at school: I spent this morning having flashbacks to my childhood as I taught my classes how to turn a piece of white paper into an over-sized snowflake…strangely enough it’s still a highly satisfying activity…you never know quite how it’s going to look until you open the folds of the paper and find all those nice, symmetrical curves and edges. I’m also teaching them ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’ but, in the interests of having an easy last two weeks in the classroom, I’ve elaborated somewhat on the ramifications of not being good – in my version Santa will still come, but he’ll attack you in your sleep. ‘Not being good’ is defined by talking in English class.

This weekend’s activities include dinner with the rugby girls followed by a pie and ale night on Saturday. The pies are cooked by an Australian chef who used to be the personal chef of thge Dutch royal family so I’ve been on a starvation diet for three days. Mmmm, pies.

Right, off to class, see you in a week or two, and start clearing that mantelpiece (I’m taslking to you Grandma, time to relegate the teletubby sculpture to the loft)…

We’d been warned by a few friends that Xi’an is a shitpit who recommended no more than flying in, visiting the warriors sharpish and flying straight out. How misguided they are – Xi’an’s a cracking little town to kill some time. The city is an old provincial capital surrounded on four sides by huge city walls and it’s home to a number of ancient attractions such as the obligatory bell and drum towers, a buzzing muslim quarter which only wakes up in the early evening and China’s largest mosque. The tranquil grounds and pretty snow covered pagodas make this mosque unlike any other you’ve ever seen. We spent many hours tottering around the narrow streets and eating plenty of delicious street food, however we weren’t here for the food…. booo.

We took a ride to Panda sanctuary two hours outside the city, home to 18 of the loveable bumbling bears. The previous night covered the enclosures with five inches of snow, but this didn’t stop the pandas from rolling around, having a good scratch and eating. What a cracking life. The highlight of the centre was two cheeky year-old pandas who were having a riot in their enclosure, bounding around in the snow, standing on their squat hind legs and providing much amusement by getting their big bear bums stuck in trees before falling to the ground with a thump. No wonder they’re endangered.

Of course, we’d come to Xi’an to visit one of China’s most popular tourist attractions – the Terracotta Army, which did not disappoint. We stood at the end of the main compound and looked across to see over 2,000 life size warriors with horses and chariots staring back at us, a most incredible sight. I learnt a couple of interesting facts – firstly they did not just excavate the site and find thousands of warriors standing there in formation. Oh no, 2000 years had taken it’s toll on the warriors for they were discovered in broken heap of millions of pieces. So far since they were discovered in 1974 they’ve managed to reconstruct 2000 warriors out of the estimated 8000 on the site. My second factoid is that emperor Qin (who commissioned the incredible army) was just 13 when he ordered their construction – it sounds to me like someone never got over playing with toy soldiers. The surreal highlight of the day came when our guide asked if we’d like to meet the farmer who found the warriors. I had visions of a mechanised wax model in a poorly assembled reconstruction of the discovery, but how naive of me. Mr Yang, one of the farmers who found the army is now employed to sit behind a desk whilst tourists shuffle past and gorp. How very Chinese.

We rounded off our stay in Xi’an with a drunken night in a terracotta army themed bar, drinking until the early hours with an interesting mix of travellers, ex-pats and a shitfaced mongolian who spoke pigeon German. The following day we returned to Beijing to give Matt his departing gift from China – the once in a lifetime opportunity to eat chilli-fried ducks heads. As we sat there crunching on the beaks and picking out the brains a local businessman came over to say hello. He was so impressed to see ‘whities’ eating this local delicacy that he invited us out for drinks. It looks like to get ahead here you just need to eat some head. Sorry. Appalling. Couldn’t resist.