Over the moon

Well, after working a full eleven and a half hours every week for nearly four weeks now, I think it’s high time we had a holiday. And, what do you know, it’s 'National Holiday' time. Not only that, but we'll be celebrating the 'Mid Autumn Festival' shortly too!

Not a moment too soon.

Teaching’s tough. Okay, the hours in front of students don’t sound a lot and we can have up to five hours off between lessons, but with the preparation time, the time spent tweaking things and the constant feeling that I could be doing this better, I for one am exhausted. There’s the frustration too, of giving a lesson to one class and it going down really well and then giving the same lesson to another class and it falling completely flat. Why does that happen? What should I be doing differently? And, considering I’m only a pretendy teacher in the first place, should I be worried at all?

Perhaps, perhaps not. But it’s doing my head in so I’ll change the subject.

The Mid Autumn Festival (or ‘Moon Festival’) happens annually on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunar calendar which, this year, falls on 6th October in the good old western calendar.

It’s the time when the moon appears at its brightest and largest. In the west, we call it the ‘Harvest Moon’ and, in fact, the ‘Moon Festival’ is pretty much akin to our Harvest Festival (or ‘Thanksgiving’, I guess). As the other name suggests, we’re also bang in the middle of autumn by lunar reckonings.

(It’s all a bit ironic really since there’s more chance of seeing the sky raining blood and frogs than of being able to actually see the moon through the constant grubby white cloud cover.)

So there’ll be no “We plough the fields and scatter…” for us this year. Instead, the traditional thing to do is simply gaze at the moon (if you can see it), sing Moon Poems and eat (you see a pattern developing here) Moon Cakes.

Sure they sound like something you eat to get stoned, but these are little buns filled with lots of delicious things like sesame, red bean and lotus seed pastes, melon seeds, coconut, walnuts, almonds, minced meats, dates, little salted duck egg yolks, ham, dried flower petals, orange peel and plenty of sugar and fat. The cakes are decorated with symbolic clouds, moons and (I’m not quite sure why) rabbits. Think of them as a kind of rich fruitcake or plum pudding and, to be frank, you’ll still be nowhere near knowing what they’re like.

The main thing, though, is that we get next week off work. This isn't actually anything to do with moons and mid autumn but is the so-called 'National Holiday' to mark the founding of the People's Republic of China on 1st October 1949.

According to Chinese custom, we’re leaving holiday preparations to the last minute. But the plan is to go west to a town called Kangding, a place rich in Tibetan culture although not quite in Tibet itself. The journey, let alone the destination, is meant to be spectacular as you rise about 3000 metres into the Daxue Shan mountain range along treacherous winding roads before dropping into a vast plain nestled among the peaks.

I’ll keep you posted.

Let me show you around

Can I show you my apartment? First impressions aren't too promising; it's a big old block of concrete flats basically. But make it past the dubious smells in the hallway and up one flight of stairs and, hey, second impressions aren't fantastic either!

Really, I can't complain. It's a very good sized apartment by either Chinese or British standards and a damn sight better than a lot of places I've lived in before.

The kitchen's a bit basic: two gas rings and a combi microwave that I've still got to get my head around. The most adventurous thing I've cooked in four weeks is a Pot Noodle (but, rest assured, they do a higher class Pot Noodle over here). One day I'll get round to cleaning the wok that came with the place, but so far I've not had an hour free to do so. And, while we can get a fabulous full meal - including beers - in the village for less than a quid each, wok cleaning is not high on my list of priorities right now.

There's hot and cold running water. In fact the cold never stops running but that's not really a problem. And I'll post a picture of my kitchen cockroach when I catch him (so far he's been a bit camera shy).

The living room and combined dining area is spacious and airy; I tell vistors that I brought the Sixties style furniture over from the UK but I didn't really.

The guest room cum study is attached to the bit where I dry laundry. This room will probably get shut down for the winter as there's no central heating in the place so I'll be conserving whatever heat I have in the main living area. No kidding, we'll be wearing our coats, hats and gloves in the classrooms come December and probably at home too.

Next, my bedroom, again without any heating beyond a bloody thick duvet...

And finally, to the bathroom which is kind of rudimentary. Extensive use is made of open pipework which means that all kinds of odours can efficiently be shared throughout the whole building. Everything you need is here, it's just a bit rough - not to say mouldy - around the edges. Still, now that the leak from upstairs has been fixed you no longer need to wear a baseball cap to take a pee. Which is nice.

Old git

For the first time in my life, someone gave up their seat for me on a bus yesterday. It was a young kid from my school. I like to think this is a clear demonstration of the excellent manners Chinese children have and the high esteem in which they hold their English teachers.

If in doubt, clap

The Chinese have this wonderful convention whereby if anybody claps then everybody claps. It avoids those weird John Redwood moments when you're not quite sure what's going on but you can look like you're in tune with it all, a part not apart. Rather embarrassingly, our classes clapped when we were first introduced; but, using this convention of clapping back, you don't really feel a complete tool at all. You clap them for clapping you (and then they clap back).

So it was today as well. After a few attempts which had been rained off, we were officially presented to the members of the school by Mr Hu and Mr Yin (our bosses) and various other school VIPs.

I'd imagined it being a bit like the May Day parade at Red Square with us looking down on the goosestepping battalions and up at the fly-past of Mig jets.

It was slightly lower key than that but there were hundreds of kids in military ranks before 'us dignatories' (I've never been one before - have I spelt it right?) and a detachment of white uniformed cadets who raised the Red Flag with great ceremony. We listened intently to the speeches and clapped each one earnestly (see what I mean about clapping?) until it was Mr Hu's turn to speak, half in English and half in Chinese. He introduced each of us by name and we each stepped forward and bowed respectfully to the school. And everyone clapped again. God, I love this place.

Bloody tourists

Yesterday Bick and I went to Leshan, a city about two hours' drive south of Chengdu and home of the world's largest stone-carved Buddah. Begun in the ninth century AD, it took Buddhist monks eighty years to create; one and a half hours, however, was too long for us to wait in a heaving maelstrom of humanity to take the stairs from its head to its very big feet.

It was probably a question of expectations. In our minds' eyes it had been meant to be a day of peace and reflection, a chance to stand back and wonder at the devotion that had gone into creating one of the world's amazing man-made artifacts. But from the moment we got out of the taxi it was clear that Bick's much looked-forward-to meditation session was not going to be on the agenda.

One hundred and five quai is a lot of money to your average Chinese person; and now that we've been here a month we, too, are more in tune with the Yuan than the Pound or Dollar. We're being paid a good wage for China (the equivalent of about $300 a month) and a hundred quai is about a full day's wages. Steep.

Still , having come this far, there was no turning back so through the gate we went.

We wandered for about an hour and, to be honest, were mighty impressed. Nestled in lush green foliage, weird statues and carvings entertained our way toward the main prize: the mightly Buddah. Some pieces may have been more modern than ancient, but other parts were quite staggering. Climbing, climbing, climbing, we came upon a typical Chinese archway through which was a courtyard beyond which were a thousand steps at the top of which was a Buddah statue in the shadow of its own pagoda-like roof. On each side of the stairway, thousands of red-ribboned padlocks had been fastened to the rope handrails, each one with a prayer for good things to happen. A mist of incense followed you as you made your way up the steps to the top before you could look back without giddiness to survey the jungle below.

Sadly my photos don't do the carvings from the caves there justice but I do love the shot of the twigs in the crevice of a rockface; we saw these all round the trail but I'm afraid I don't know the significance. Answers on an email please.

The place was gorgeous; Bick and I picked our own ways through and hardly met a soul as we wondered just how far away the main prize was.

Turnstiles - the ones they have on the Tube - seemed a little out of place. But through them we went in order to get to Buddah's Paradise. I kid you not. Buddah's Paradise is a ramshackle collection of concession stands selling tea and tat beneath big Pepsi umbrellas. From nowhere - or from everywhere more likely - there were thousands of people milling around sucking lollies. Gradually they were drifting up yet more steps to yet more tea stalls until we finally caught a glimpse of a big head, a big Buddah's head. We'd arrived. We joined the throng and pushed and jostled in true Chinese style to press ourselves against the barrier and look down on this wonder of the world.

Look, of course it's impressive, magnificent, stunning and "how the hell did they do it....?". But the spirituality meter was reading Zero. There are steps leading down each side of the carving to its feet (which up to twelve people can clamber onto at once, by the way) but you'd have had to spend an hour and a half in the scrum to reach there: the statue's sole, I suppose.

So we took our snaps and fled.

(Note to self (or anyone else thinking of taking the trip): try taking one of the boat excursions. At least you'll have a pleasant little jaunt on the river and you will get to see the full height of the statue without any of the pushing and shoving.)

On the way out we were fleeced again, this time in a restaurant. The view from its balcony was spectacular and it even had a shabby elegance clinging to a cliffside but the prices on the English menu were some 200-300% more than we're used to paying in Cheers. It left a bad taste.

And my point? I suppose I just wish I'd got here sooner - as a traveller rather than as another bloody tourist.

Tip

As a rule, I'm a complete idiot when it comes to giving tips. In restaurants I'll always leave one whether I've had good service or not. And I'll also leave one even if there's an automatic service charge. It's stupid but I hate the idea of being thought of as being 'tight'. And, hey, the waitress was probably doing her best and it's the bosses I really blame, etc. etc. Taxi drivers are the same: why on earth do I give them more than they've asked for? All they've done is drive me from A to B which, doh!, is their job! I've even tipped a plumber for coming round and fixing a leaky tap. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

No such problem in China though. We had a really good meal the other night in Chengdu and, like you do, we left a modest tip and thought no more about it as we left. We were a full two hundred yards down the street outside when we heard "Hallo! Hallo!" being shouted behind us. Here was our waitress clutching the twenty yuan note desperate to give it back. It's simply not the done thing here to leave tips. And I, for one, am very glad that that's the case.

Finger lickin' good.

Shanghai revisited

"Shanghai revisited." That's what we call a "metaphor". We haven't literally revisited Shanghai but we are looking back at time spent there as though we were visiting it for a second time.

Yes, children, here we go again...

Shanghai was a tale of two cities: one I liked and one I didn't care for too much. We had arrived at Pudong airport surprisingly fresh after about thirteen hours on the plane. According to our body clocks we'd just been through a normal night and, personally, I'd had a good night's sleep. Thank god I don't smoke anymore though: thirteen hours would have killed me!

So we went to the carousels to wait for the baggage; mine came straightaway but others weren't so lucky. Quite a few of the British Council teaching assistants arrived to discover their bags hadn't followed them. It would be nearly two weeks before they were reunited with their stuff. That's really not what you need when you arrive, tired, in a strange country where the temperature is over 35 degrees and the humidity is palpable.

Met by people from the British Council, we were bussed swiftly to our accommodation - a compound about 40 minutes' drive on the bus from the centre of Shanghai. We're getting used to this: cities in China are just so huge that the forty minute drive is quite normal.

It cost 2 RMB to get to the centre, about 13p by my reckoning, and by 'centre' I mean right in the shadow of the Jinmao and Pearl Towers. Naturally they were our first ports of call and a trip up the once tallest building in the world was de rigeur. We blagged our way into one of the fancy restaurant bars near the top to sip green tea and sit back to reflect on finally arriving.

The schedule arranged by the British Council was pretty intense. Having arrived on the Sunday we were down at the Bell International Language School bright and early on Monday morning for the opening presentations, orientations, lectures, seminars, workshops and discussions. Not always one hundred percent useful or interesting I think the timetabling could have been better and I don't think it would have been unreasonable to have given us a bit more time over the two weeks to explore Shanghai a bit more. But hey, it's all water under the bridge now. And I did come away from Shanghai knowing a lot more and having a lot more confidence in my ability to teach so they must have done something right.

The Shanghai I liked was the neighbourhood around our compound. Even after a couple of days it felt like 'home' to be walking down the highstreet or taking the short cut back from the school. We spoke virtually no Chinese but could get by at the roadside food stalls by pointing and miming and smiling. We'd also been warned that we'd get stared at and, sure enough, people just stop in their tracks as though this white face was the strangest thing they'd ever seen. There's not a hint of animosity but just curiosity; and if you said "Ni hao" the wrinkled brow would turn to a beaming smile.

On the other hand, a lot of people will shout "Hello!" which, again, is meant for the most part in a friendly way. But sometimes, to be frank, they're just taking the piss out of these "old foreigners". Gradually your ear tunes in to the different tone and you learn to either reciprocate or just keep walking.

I liked most of central Shanghai too. Taking the obligatory boat trip, I saw the happy mix of old and new along the grey green river as huge freighters barged past on their way to the sea. Construction cranes are everywhere as Shanghai builds towards the sky but the 'heritage' buildings are still there, especially along The Bund, their colonial grandeur now topped with proud red flags.

And then there's the old city where the narrow streets and original buildings have been retained and, so far at least, have defied the developers. Here's where you get your tourist souvenirs, your expensively packaged tea and your name written in Chinese hanging on a fake gold chain. But the further you go in the more interesting it gets with the sights and sounds and smells of the food stalls and, it has to be said, the drains!

All this was the good Shanghai: the hustle and bustle, the easy going pace, the homeliness of it and above all the friendliness of the place. But walk town the bustling shopping street of Nanjing Road and the 'hustle' turns to 'hussle'. Beyond the Chinese script, this could be any city in any country in the world with all the brand names you could just as easily see in Sheffield as Shanghai. Worst for me though, was that the friendliness I'd felt before had been hijacked by pimps and hawkers targeting the westerner and nag nag nagging him (hallo!) to come see beautiful girl (hallo!) come buy Rolex (hallo!) come buy this come buy that. I got taken in by a group of so called students who purportedly wanted to speak English with me and then said that they were down from Beijing to exhibit their paintings in a special show. Come, come and see because we have to go back to Beijing tomorrow. So along Nanjing Road we go, me naively thinking "well, I'm meant to be a teacher, after all", chat, chat, chat, up five storeys of an unprepossessing building and down a long corridor to an anonymous room decked with a hundred paintings, mostly with traditional chocolate box scenes. They seemed to have a remarkable grasp of English as they described in detail the symbology of each (and, it's just occurred to me, how one of the paintings was the last one painted by their late professor... oh dear, how dumb can I have been?). Now I knew I was being hussled to buy but still didn't grasp the totality of the set-up. Asked which was my favourite, the next question (or maybe imperitive) was "You must buy it. Our school is very poor..." I just wanted to get out of this little room full of impeccably polite strangers. Picking one that I really did like (which, in retrospect, I'm glad about) I handed over the money and fled, hot and flustered and full of anger - anger that grew the more I thought about every detail of the scam and the way that it tainted my entire experience of Shanghai.

Lessons learned (or is that 'learnt'?)

"Hi. My name is Patrick. And I like football."

So began my first lesson to Senior I Class 7A way back when, last Sunday . So too began my second, third, fourth and fifth lessons too - all the way up to lesson number 18. It was a good lesson plan and I wasn't going to change it for anyone.

So, I've been a teacher for a week and I got through it without getting the sack. On the contrary, we (along with all the proper teachers in the school) got a little bonus on Friday. Better still, one of my classes made a card for me, wishing me all the best for Teachers' Day (which is tomorrow, by all accounts). I find teaching so rewarding.

The very first lesson, I have to admit, was a bit ropey but, then again, it was only the third time I'd stood in front of a class and the first time it was one hundred percent for real. But over the week things have got slicker, I've not had to refer to my notes at all and, best of all, I've learned how to go with the flow, to teach 'off-piste' I suppose and not be constrained by a fixed-in-stone plan.

As for the kids, they've been great. Naturally some classes are more lively than others but they've all made the effort and the nightmare of a completely mute class just hasn't happened. Some classes even ended up in applause for goodness sake! There's a range of ages and abilities not only across classes but within them too which makes things a little tricky. But with a little encouragement, even the most reticent ones at the beginning have had the confidence to get up and say their piece by the end of the lesson.

We begin by introducing ourselves to each other and saying what we like. Happily they have all adopted English names for their classes; more happily still, they haven't limited themselves to the conventional Peter, Paul and Mary names either. I have a 'Cabbage', an 'Onion' and a 'Potato'; a 'Yummy', a 'Yoyo' and a 'Yuki'; 'Toyota' and 'Morgan', 'Angel' and 'Doom Freedom', 'Monkey', 'Bear', Arthurs 'One' and 'Two' plus 'Dolly', 'Daisy', 'Ada', 'Flora' and 'Nora'. Last, but definitely not least, I'm teaching 'George W Bush', 'Blair' and 'Napoleon'.

The lesson goes on to introduce them to a bit of my life in England. You would not believe the reaction a simple photograph of my Mum and Dad can have on a class - "handsome" being the most frequent response... Forget fancy teaching aids and your multimedia shennanigins, just show them a picture of my brother, Julian (whose name always raises a laugh for some reason), and the lesson takes on a life of its own. I did a different lesson in the middle of the week all about mobile phones which involved cutting up endless strips of paper so the class could piece together a dialogue; it involved laboriously putting the strips in makeshift envelopes and ensuring I didn't duplicate - or omit - any strips in any envelopes. It took hours to prepare but didn't have half the effect of an old photo of my Mum & Dad in their Sunday best on board the QEII.

Oh well. You live and learn.

Supersize me

Three weeks in China and I'm now an XXL. Life's been good but surely not that good: Chinese folk tend to be on the small size and so when I go to buy clothes I have to think big. I really didn't get this the first time, insisting to the baffled shop assistant lady that I was "M" not "L" (let alone "XL") and yet every shirt I tried on had my belly hanging out in a rather unpleasant way. (That said, there is a habit of Chinese men to roll their tee shirts up above their bellies but below the nipples - let's face it, that would just be undiginified - to cool down in the absurd heat we've been having recently.) Finally I got it; but god help anyone bigger than me. Do they do XXXXL?

Not going to the pub every night and drinking five pints seems to be doing some good as well. Curious, that.

Food-wise, I'd kind of expected to be surprised at how fantastic every meal was. But, not surprisingly when you think of it, some meals are good, some are pretty downright dodgy. It's like turning up in Newcastle and going to Fisherman's Lodge one day and the Greenmarket the next: there's a whole range of stuff on offer. Only once have I regretted a meal from the night before - but I regretted it for a full twenty four hours if you know what I mean...

Here at the school there's a canteen serving three meals a day which is really handy if a little unappetising. Generally we'll go to Cheers of an evening and giggle with the waitress as we navigate blindly through the menu. Bick's got more Chinese than the rest of us but even this is limited to things like "Beef?", "Pork?", "not too spicy" and "NO TOFU!". Somehow we're managing to get some pretty good meals on a good day; and sometimes we end up with a washing up bowl in the middle of the table with luke warm goo and fish heads in it.

But then there's "the Hackman's Place". The Hackmans were American teachers who were here last year and, we're told, they went religiously to this one restaurant in the village on the other side of the university. Sure enough, the food is a cut above the rest. Hell, it doesn't matter what you order, you're not going to go far wrong.

That's not to say that there aren't pangs for the good old comfort foods.

We had cheese tonight.

It was like cutting up a lump of hash in Midnight Express. How did they get that past the guards??

Peanut butter is at a premium. Proper bread is to die for. Coffee? You'd better be prepared to dig deep. But no worries, McDonalds is here (and here and here and here...). KFC is here and Pizza Hut. Harry Ramsdens.

Okay, I made the last one up.

Happily I've not succumbed so far but I'm not so naive to suggest that there won't be a time when ONLY A BIG MAC WILL DO!

Take this weekend for example. We're debating about going to Dufu's cottage - once home of China's legendary poet - or to the giant Buddha statue at Leshan or to Chengdu's famous Daoist temple. But one thing is writ in stone: bacon butties at the ubiquitous Irish bar on Sunday morning.

Now that's what I call culture.

Make mine an extra large.

Goodbye blue skies?

I took this shot from the plane on the way to Chengdu thinking that it might be the last blue sky I'd see for a very long time. And sure enough, when we got here skies were a pretty grubby greyish colour and you could just about make out the sun beyond the murk.

But, as we turn toward autumn, the temperature is gradually falling and we've had a couple of torrential downpours. I was caught in the first of these, a refreshing kind of shower to take the sting out of the summer heat until, that is, the rainwater got in my eyes. Boy, did it sting!

Down the road (a couple of hundred miles) they'll be grateful for any wet stuff in Chongqing which has suffered its worst drought in years. Temperatures topped 40 degrees at the height of the summer and the glass panes on its skyscrapers began to crack. I believe that there too the worst of the summer is over although it'll take a while for river levels to return to normal.

But, after the rains, the skies have cleared here in Chengdu and we've had some beautiful days. No longer do we need the airco on constantly and there's even a little chill in the air of a morning as we head toward the back end of the year.

They don't put air conditioners in the homes in the north of China, just central heating. Down here, it's the other way round. I'm starting to wonder just how cold things could get...

Where am I?

Funny, you travel five and half thousand miles and you still have catching up to do. The idea was to write a blog every night with my witty and insightful, er, insights into life in China but now it's way too late for that. Hopefully if I plough on like nothing had gone wrong in the first place, I'll be able to drop in stuff about the last three weeks as we go along.

But then again, I am a bit drunk at the moment so who knows?

But then again, again, beer is only 20p a bottle. And it's really good stuff. We've tried Snow Beer, Qing Dao Beer and "If only I had a Chinese characters set on my keyboard I'd tell you" beer which is actually pretty good too.

Our 'local' is called Cheers. Well, it is now - if only in our tiny expatriate minds. For the first couple of nights they brought us a menu when we sat down but now they know better: a round of beers first and then the Chinese roulette (a much happier version that the Russian one) of ordering food.

"We" and "us" (before you think I've gone all Margaret Thatcher on you) are: Rachel from the UK, Hero from Japan and Bick & Nadia from the USA. And guess what, I couldn't have asked for a nicer bunch of classmates. Bick and Rachel kindly posed for me outside the school; the other chap in the other photo is Oliver, a Chinese English teacher (you know what I mean) who is looking after us. More of him later, no doubt.

It's taken a while, but the chopsticks are working now. For my first few meals in China I always felt like the runt of the litter: everyone else was digging in furiously and all I was managing was a single grain of rice rested precariously on two wobbly chopsticks. And all of a sudden all the food had gone and I'd have to look wistfully forward to the next mealtime.

Ah, there's so much to chew over now: how terrorists just had to threaten the weekend I was travelling, the deprivation of flying without hand luggage (apart from anything and everything you could grab in duty free), the two weeks in Shanghai where I truly became a teacher (ha, ha) and the arrival in Chengdu - my home for a year and, who knows, maybe more?

But, hey, I've made a start. Your guess is as good as mine as to where it'll end up.