Prelude:
This is the first in a series of blogs that I will record while in China.
I will travel to China (after a 3 day sightseeing stay in Hong Kong) to take 4 week intensive course in teaching English as a foreign language, with the view of staying on in China and getting a teaching job.

Here, I think it is important I point out that I will arrive in China very much a naive Englishman abroad.  I have never been to China before.  In fact, I have never even been to a foreign country on my own before!  Therefore, as well as pointing out some of the more obvious cultural differences I will encounter, this will also be a record of how I come to terms with them and some of the more subtle differences between China and home.

I hope to update this space as regularly as possible and any comments would be well received.

The Last Supper.
Roast beef.  Yorkshire puddings.  Roast potatoes.  Parsnips.  Carrots.  Brocolli.  And of course, gravy... us northern boys love it.  Now, I know I said I was naive to the Chinese culture, but, having not even landed yet, I think I can safely say there won't be a spread put on for me quite like that.  Mum did herself proud today, and it's made me think of some of life's more subtle pleasures that will no longer be available, or won't be quite the same at least, in the Far East.

I've watched the football scores come in for the last time in a while.  I've heard the Coronation Street theme tune boom from the front room for the last time in the forseeable future.  Seeing friends for the last time in a while are blurred following a goodbye, lager fuelled, night out.  The only thing that's left to do is to bid farewell to my family.

Taking all of that into consideration, I've just started to get nervous for the first time.  The whole trip seems to have been hanging over me for ages, and just like that, it's now upon me.  Only one restless sleep away actually.

Naturally, I will be taking things with me that will remind me of Good Ol' Blighty, but I very much doubt that listening to my favourite Oasis album will have the same ring to it when I'm travelling through the unfamiliar surroundings of the Far East.

All that needs to be done now is the usual, but unpleasant, stress of last minute packing before the usual, but unpleasant, stress of actually getting to my destination begins.

Travelling on my own has been playing on my mind for quite some time now, and I've tried to get as prepared as I can for it.  Once I have finished my three day tourist stay in Hong Kong, I am expected to travel to Zhuhai (where I am staying at the Gateway Language Village to take the teaching English as a foreign language course).  This involves taking a ferry from Hong Kong to Macao, a bus from Macao to Zhuhai and then a catching a taxi to the GLV itself.  So, basically, two or three hours of nerves and uncertainty in a country completly alien to me.

Anyway, I hope to write in Hong Kong, so you'll hear from me before then.  And as my father has so rightly pointed out "I won't be going anywhere if I don't get packing!"

Speak to you soon,

James. 

I have always maintained that the majority of the best food I have had in China has been from the cheaper restaurants, or, more often than not, the street stalls. Therefore one of the real features of the housing estate that I live in (called Hu Po Shan Zhuang) is the small street about two minutes walk from the block where most of the teachers are based. Imaginatively named “Eating Street” by Hu Po’s English speaking contingent, the street is bustling with life every evening and is full of different things to try.

Muslim noodles are freshly prepared in front of you, spicy meat is diced on boards and stuffed in piping hot bread that has been cooked in an oil drum (the Chinese name for these sounds remarkably like the name of a classic James Bond actor. “Two Ro-Ja Moore’s please.”) countless pans of dumplings are steamed, and piles and piles of bright red crayfish are messily devoured by all comers.

However, it was on this usually jovial street that Sara, Gavin and Tom encountered quite an incredible outburst of violence.

Deciding that getting some seats in one of the eateries might be a little cooler, we began nibbling away at some plates of fried rice when an odd, split second of silence was immediately filled by commotion and, looking beyond Sara’s shoulder out of the window, Tom and I could see people rushing to see what was going on. ‘Dad-running’ outside with everyone else full of rice, we went out onto the street to see more and more people becoming involved in a violent brawl. Violent not just because of punches and kicks being thrown, but because about 10 yards in front of us three women emerged from an eatery brandishing beer bottles that they soon launched into the air.

Only in Nanjing, where a vast consumption of beer was undoubtedly to do with quite a large fist fight breaking out outside a bar, have I ever seen any real kind of violence in China, which has proved to be quite an unbelievably safe country so far. I thought Nanjing was purely a drink-related one off, but even then I was shocked at three things. Firstly, the fight basically seemed to go on until everyone was tired out. Secondly, items at hand are quick to be introduced, with everyone wincing and groaning in this particular instance when one lad was conked over the head by a road sign. Finally, despite full-blooded and lengthy effort put in by all, there was absolutely no blood at all.

So it wasn’t entirely unexpected when bottles began to rain down from one side to the other but there were a few seconds where I feared the trouble might have escalated toward where we were when a couple of bricks started to be thrown at windows. Scooter alarms began going off, shouts and screams became a little more anguished and one man was put through a large table WWF-style.

So, what happened next? Everyone got tired. The police started to turn up, those involved sauntered off and, except for the two rival eateries that were contemplating quite how to start clearing up the mess their business had been left in, everyone else returned back to their meals amid a few chuckles. And no blood. Incredible.

* * *

From one fight that I was witness to, to quite a different one that I was very much a part of…

The weather has become very humid here and this seems to have brought out, among other creepy crawlies, a lot of cockroaches. New teacher Pete has been unfortunate to have had his fair share of problems with them over the past couple of weeks, and seeing an almighty one crawl across his living room floor, I remember thinking I didn’t fancy any in mine and Gavin’s apartment. This was not just because of the unpleasantness of the little things, but because of the way I knew I’d react.

So, after staying up later than I’d expected following a night of bowel-related problems, I was not very pleased to see a cockroach the size of a dog – that’s what I’m going to claim anyway – scuttling across my bedroom floor.

It was at this point that I reacted as I expected I would… like a girl.

After collecting myself, there was a brief stand-off where both insect and man froze awaiting the next move. I sprinted for the kitchen to grab the dustpan and brush to try and trap it, only to return just to see a glimpse of it’s behind as it disappeared behind my wardrobe. Swearing vehemently, I picked up everything from my floor, threw it on the bed that I wouldn’t be returning to for a fair amount of time, and pulled all of the drawers out from the bottom of my wardrobe as I didn’t want a little nest being formed in my clothes.

About twenty minutes later, Gavin returned from the pub to see me in an upturned room, sat on the edge of my bed, sweating (70% upheaval; 30% cockroach fear) and clutching a dustpan and brush while staring at the corner of my room. “Erm… are you alright mate?”

Following repeated unsuccessful attempts with a torch and the handle-end of the brush, I was left alone on cockroach night watch. Deciding that the room wasn’t dark enough for it to come from behind the wardrobe, I turned all of the lights out except for my bedside light, which was left shining towards my wardrobe. About fifteen minutes of silence passed before there was movement. Horror movie-style, a large shadow showed itself across my ceiling as I laid still on my bed, with jerky insect legs quickly jutting up and down as my little friend showed itself on the floor. Waiting until it got close enough, I bolted from my bed, swearing and lashing out with the sweeping brush. Despite an attempt to take refuge in a pair of my shoes, I emerged from my bedroom with a dustpan containing a cockroach, a dustpan that was promptly emptied into the bushes outside.

Returning to my bed victorious by knockout, many would argue that, with the time being half past three, my insect opponent probably would have won on points had it gone on much longer because I was well and truly tired out for work at nine the following morning.

The below is a short article I wrote about the social side of EF school Hefei and it details a recent two day trip to nearby Nanjing I took with Gavin, Rich and Masha:

I have found the teaching side of things to be very enjoyable, not least because there are plenty of things to do that help to break up the threat of monotony. 

To begin with, the language barrier and the cultural differences made every day of my first few months in China a challenge, however subtle those challenges may have been.  From conquering ordering beef fried rice to getting taken to entirely the wrong place by a frustrating, confused taxi driver, there were highs and lows.  Still, everyone I have met here has been through them and it helps being in a teaching community as everyone helps one another through.  We are a pretty sociable lot, so meals, nights out and football matches are aplenty, as well as there being trips organized by the Chinese staff at the school all year round… the last one to Tianzhu Mountain ended with a mass water fight on river rafts, making for a slightly squelchy trip home. 

Away from the school, there is plenty of opportunity to see more of nearby China as, for the majority of the year, we have two days off every week to take advantage of.  Just a few weeks ago, a couple of the other teachers and I had enjoyed a few post-work beers (when all the best decisions are made) and decided to get up early the following morning and travel to nearby Nanjing.

Nanjing is one of China’s major cities and only a two-hour coach ride away from Hefei.  With transport being cheap and very accessible in China, this was easy to arrange the following morning and, before hangovers had properly taken hold, we were on our way.

I would argue that for those people who haven’t traveled very much before, having the opportunity to do this sort of thing with a few teaching friends is a good way to sample youth hostel life and meet other travelers before you start thinking of branching out and traveling across China for longer periods of time.

For us though, Nanjing acted as a refreshing respite from Hefei as there are plenty of things to see and do.  In just two days, we took in the sites of Purple Mountain, peered around the Presidential Palace, enjoyed back massages (which included the towels covering our backs being set on fire!), wandered through the excellent Yuhuatai Park area and experienced the Nanjing nightlife.  I have also visited the Nanjing Museum and the interesting Taiping Heavenly Kingdom museum on a previous trip and there is still the Memorial to the Nanjing Massacre to visit when it re-opens later in the year, so it’s a city I intend to go to again in the future.

However, with Shanghai, Hangzhou and Yellow Mountain all places that I have yet to visit nearby Hefei, I intend to continue making sure I take advantage of the opportunities the flexibility of this job provides.

As I'm sure I've mentioned in previous blogs, the tendancy for the Chinese to mistake foreigners for born-entertainers is something that has to be dealt with every now and again.  Therefore, when I was asked what I would like to do as my performance for my primary school's 'show' I wasn't entirely shocked, although this isn't to say I was any less fearful.  After the knee-jerk reaction of blurting out that I'm unable to play a musical instrument and it was probably to everyones benefit that I didn't sing or dance, I found out that what they were actually asking me to do wasn't quite as bad as I had anticipated - I had been scheduled to teach a lesson on stage with my Grade 3 class in front of the watching parents.

Although getting up is sometimes a bit of a strain, I have really enjoyed teaching both of my primary school classes during the week.  The six lessons I teach are only 40minutes long and are usually high energy and fun because of the enthusiasm of the children.  Although I have only been teaching them for a few months, I have noticed how much my Grade 3 class have improved in particular.  Their pronunciation and confidence seems to have improved every week of late and seeing that sort of development gives an enormous sense of satisfaction.  It was to be with Grade 3 and I that would 'perform a lesson' on stage and I had great confidence that the event would pass without disaster after practicing with them what we would do in the couple of lessons prior to showtime.

What was a disaster though, was the 'dress rehersal'  that me and fellow primary school teachers Doug and Rich had to endure. In short, I have never seen so much milling around by people with microphones in my life (particularly while nothing was being done to keep the children entertained) and the whole thing was a complete shambles. Sitting uncomfortably for around three hours while very little happened, it was impossible to imagine that the following day could possibly run smoothly, which would have been a shame for the children who were dressed brightly and all looked nice.

Rich and I managed to leave the 'rehersal' behind with about an hour to spare before we were supposed to be at a meal to celebrate Gavin's birthday.  Although accepting that we had to be at the theatre and ready to perform by 830am, Rich and I had also accepted that a messy night was also in front of us and this was an accurate assesment to have made.  Bai jou and beer later, a merry band of us (Gavin, Min, Rich, Og, Tom, Dirty Rich, Sara and I) rolled into a cowboy-style bar, with Gavin, Rich and I doing our worst to convince the Chinese people that their foreign counterparts thought nothing of getting up on stage.  Gavin ended up singing a song in Chinese while Rich and I encouraged some of the giddy onlookers to sing along.  The Chinese nightlife can quite easily be considered as tame in comparison to what we are used to at home, although the sharing of drinks and constant 'gambei-ing' (the Chinese equivalent to 'cheers' which usually mean you have to drain whatever is in your glass) is an experience in itself.  This particular night was far from a tame one though, with the majority of us going on to a club where plenty of crazy dancing and Whiskey was on the agenda.

It wasn't to be long before Rich and I were on a stage again.  Although heavy headed, we immediately recognised how smoothly the primary school perfomance ran and it could not have been further removed from the debacle we sat through the day before. The children all performed well, wearing colorful costumes and giving their all, they were a credit to their school and parents. My performance with Grade 3 went reasonably well, with the students, for the most part, speaking clearly in English during the games and activities we did to showcase the type of things the students learn at the school with their foreign teachers.  One thing that was a little dissappointing was how subdued they were, but this was purely down to nerves and the artificial classroom setting they were in.

Around 20 minutes after leaving the stage behind, I was sat with Doug and Og (who had surfaced to come and cheer us on) fearing the inevitable of having to grace the stage again.  Doug and I knew that one of the acts included some children dressed up as bears and dancing, not least because of how ridiculous the bear-wearing children looked - the costumes were ridiculous, they looked like nothing more than giant dancing poos.  So, in a final weird twist to a pretty abnormal hangover, I found myself following in the footsteps of some dancing poos in front of around 200 highly entertained people.

Away from the primary school shenanigans, there have been a couple of noteworthy things that have happened at EF school - the school where I am based for the vast majority of my teaching.  Last week saw me complete my first full course of teaaching with my HF2A class,meaning that I have taken them through a full text book and taught them for two hours every week for six months.  A small class (there are only 9 of them) they are a really nice set of children that are full of personality and I had no qualms about keeping them as my class and leading them through the next text book in the months to come.

How energetic the teaching is sometimes required to be at the school was typified by the 'fun day' we put on for the Children's Day that is celebrated every year in China.  The theme of the day was Olympic Travel, which required all of the teachers to do 15 minutes of activities on a city that has hosted the Olympic Games.  As it turned out, I ended up teaching about London and playing balloon volleyball with the groups that came into my room, with other teachers encorporating other Olympic events (such as the long jump, basketball, ping pong, football and archery) into their frantic lessons.  A Kung Fu show was put on in the school's reception area twice during the day as well, which was quite interesting to watch.  Once again, teachers were beckoned to join in and try and copy the moves of the two girls who were showing off their skills and Gavin, Tom and I found ourselves in the middle before long, all of us reliving our days spent on Street Fighter as we made total fools of ourselves punching and kicking in an unbalanced manner.

The days seem to be passing by pretty quickly at the moment, which I suppose is a sign that I'm enjoying things and that there will be plenty more to write about during the summer months. 

With the Great Wall of China, beautiful park areas, Tiannanmen Square, Beijing duck and acrobats among some of the highlights, my four days in China's capital city – accompanied by my housemate Gavin and his girlfriend Min - were definitely some of the best I have spent in China

Day One:

After shaking off the tiredness caused by an early, but necessary, flight from Hefei, the three of us arrived at Beijing airport in high spirits, anticipating a hectic, but memorable four days to come.  For Gavin and I though, our excitement was quickly, albeit momentarily, replaced by intrigue as we walked through the airport to collect our luggage.  Both of us were guilty of gawping at the number of ‘lao wai’ surrounding us.  This was certainly the most foreign people I had seen in China since I left Hong Kong in late September and it remained quite a strange sensation watching them wander by throughout the rest of the trip.

After finding and settling into our hostel, it was decided that our first port of call should be JingShan Park and BaiHai Park which were both relatively close to the Qianmen area of the city center.  Both parks were beautiful with great scenery to admire as we wandered round.  One of the main reasons for us choosing to go to JingShan Park was because it overlooks Beijing's Forbidden City, which provides a great sense of perspective of how big the ancient city is.  As the trip evolved, it turned out that a trip into the Forbidden City was unfortunately beyond our time scale, making the view from the hill in JingShan Park even more of a memorable one for Gavin and I.

BaiHai Park is very close to JingShan, so it seemed natural for us to continue our walk there.  Slightly quieter than JingShan, I thought our exploration of this park to be slightly more enjoyable.  However, this could be because our time in this park provided me with a candid cultural moment.  The park surrounds a huge lake on which hundreds of people had hired boats to go out on.  The hiring of a rowing boat was soon on mine, Gavin and Min's agenda, but on the way over to enquire we became distracted by a nearby small crowd of people.  They were surrounding a group of children, watching them as they practiced writing Chinese characters on the tiled pavement using thick calligraphy brushes that had been dipped in water.  Occasionally being corrected by their parents and being cajoled to write more difficult things by the man who owned the brushes, it really was a charming moment that brought home to me where I was and how privileged I have been to see some of the intricacies of a fascinating culture.

Our day was finished off by enjoying Beijing's most famous dish - Beijing Roast Duck.  The restaurant we ate at had been recommended to us and it soon became clear why.  Consistently incredibly busy, the Quanjude Duck restaurant doesn’t take reservations to be fair to demand. Hence, a long wait lay ahead.  After an hour sitting hungrily on the winding steps of the restaurant lobby, Gav, Min and I were shown to our seats and prepared ourselves for Beijing’s most talked about delicacy. 

Although it didn’t disappoint, with crispy skin, soft meat and a variety of spices and salad being available for us to wrap up in pancakes and dip in plum sauce, I think the event of eating Beijing duck took precedent over how memorable the actual meal was.  The duck was cut in front of us by a chef and served to us throughout the meal in stages, with there being a lovely duck soup to finish the meal.  Furthermore, after paying the bill – definitely the priciest I’ve seen in China – we were given a certificate that proclaimed us to have devoured the 115,215,891th duck the restaurant has served since it was established in 1864.

Day Two:

Day Two didn’t start very well as it proved to be a real hassle getting to the Summer Palace, which everyone we knew who’d been to Beijing before had spoken of as one of their definite highlights.  Gavin, Min and I were all quite tetchy upon entering the park as, first, our taxi driver seemed determined to try and con us by taking us on a blatantly absurd route to the entrance, and then, when trying to buy a few bottles of water from a busy shop, the shopkeeper tried to play dumb when giving me the wrong change.  Not a good start.

When entering the palace the first thing to walk through to progress is a number of walled walkways.  With the palace being extremely busy, these were quite infuriating to walk around, not least because of the heat.  I imagined that if you could take an aerial view of the masses of people snaking around the opening parts of the place it would resemble something like a massive human ant farm.  Once we had broken free from the more built up area of the grounds, the palace became much more tolerable, although the “We’ve had enough” mood had already set in by then and we decided to make our way back towards Beijing central while the day was still reasonably young.  The Summer Palace had left us feeling disappointingly under-whelmed, but it had a lot of things working against its favour (the heat, being very busy, the con men we had encountered before entering the grounds) so I’d like to go back there again if I’m fortunate enough to visit Beijing again before I make my way home.

A bit fed up after finally returning to the Qianmen area of Beijing, Gavin, Min and I took stock and decided what else we could do with the rest of our day over a bowl of recommended Beijing-style noodles (zha jiang mian).  These were hot, thick noodles beneath a cold salad and accompanied by a thick bean sauce and, despite not sounding anything like as grand as the previous night’s Beijing Roast Duck, they were absolutely delicious.

Almost next door to the restaurant we were eating the noodles was the Lao She Tea House, which puts on a show that encompasses all of the different types of entertainment Beijing, and China, has to offer.  Therefore, we decided to book some tickets for the evening show, thinking this to be a nice way to round off the day.

However, before we settled in our seats for the show, our next destination was to be the Temple of Heaven.  Quite late on in the afternoon, the temperature had dropped and so had the hustle and bustle of people it seemed, which seemed to fit nicely with our more buoyant, noodle-aided mood.  The Temple of Heaven was spectacularly big, dwarfing the people peering up at it, and the surrounding grounds were beautiful, making the whole area a lovely one to visit.  How tranquil the surroundings were (when entering the grounds we walked down a long pathway with greenery acting as tall walls on either side of us as we approached an archway where musicians played traditional swirling oriental music) was compounded by me falling asleep on one of the benches – much to the amusement of some of the locals, according to Gavin and Min.