Dancing Queens and Mob Scenes
China is still here, and so are we.
Day by day and experience by experience things get a little easier. A little.
The markets are a constant exercise in patience, body language and miming. That being said you can buy groceries, meat, vegetables and fruit to last two or three days for about the price of a six pack in Canada.
The traffic is still absolutely mind boggling.
I have come to the conclusion that Asian drivers get a bad rap in Canada; they're not really bad drivers they're just driving according to a different set of guidelines. Notice I said guidelines and not rules. Yesterday we were in a mini van on our way to attend an information session at a local high school when the driver pulled out to pass another vehicle going over a bridge on a double yellow line; the vehicle he was passing was a police car.
'Nuff said.
I'm not sure if the lights aren't synchronized properly or if people just ignore them, but you can fully expect to stop dead entering an intersection, even if you have the right of way, due to other traffic turning left in front of you.
I'd be mounting a machine gun on the hood of my car.
Our days generally go something like this; get out of bed and perform our ablutions, decide whether to have porridge or boiled eggs for breakfast (we haven't found any cereal yet, nor have we found margarine, butter, jam or bread that isn't purple or doesn't have something inside of it), next we check our e-mail and wait for the phone to ring to tell us when the taxi will arrive to take us to 'work'.
Once at work we may study, read over teachers notes for the afternoon classes or we may go shopping to the market. At lunch time we generally head home for a break. In China everything stops for a couple of hours in the afternoon, this is generally considered to be 'nap time'and it's an idea that I am going to strongly recommend Canada adopts.
After the lunch break we head back to the office and at about 4'o' clock we go to class. Yesterday I taught my first full time class and I think it went quite well. Not perfect but certainly a passable imitation of an English conversation class.
We now have a primary school class from about 5 to 6 p.m so we are all helping out with the button-cute monsters.
They are adorable and draining.
Around 6:30 we head home for supper and will sometimes go out with the other teachers or lie low, read, play on the computer and then head to bed.
The next day it begins again.
We have no T.V and so far I don't miss it but I'm really glad I brought some CDs from home. Chinese pop music makes me want to stick my head in the oven.
If we owned one.
There is a brand new supermarket and indoor shopping centre a couple of blocks away from our apartment. We go there for packaged goods like noodles, tea, biscuits, juices and toiletries. Every time we go into a store we are followed around by the staff. I'm not sure if they are fascinated by us or if they think the 'foreign devils' are going to start filling their pockets with goodies. They try really hard to be inconspicuous but fail miserably, you know the type; you look at them and they pretend to be fascinated by something on the shelf.
I've already told Cathy that the next time this happens I'm going to play a little game, I'm going to go the end of an aisle and when the staff member turns the corner to come into the same aisle I'll go around the corner.
I know, I know, it's childish, but it will at least amuse me; even if it amuses nobody else.
I finally found some tape.
Thanks to everybody who offered to send duct tape though. Apparently it doesn't exist in this country. Imagine the business potential for a multi purpose McGyver type product such as duct tape over here.
On second thoughts, perhaps not, they'd probably use it and a couple of egg cartons to build a thermo nuclear device.
Last Thursday we had our first real brush with traditional Chinese cuisine. South African Malcolm invited Cathy and I to go to a restaurant that he had been wanting to eat at, and because it meant no dishes or cooking we said yes. The restaurant is a sidewalk café type of place where you make your selection of food from a table of possibilities near the front door. Trouble is the selection was awful...actually make that offal...literally.
We had a selection of small intestine, fish bladders, brains, tripe, undistinguishable bits and pieces, liver, chicken gizzard etc. Luckily there was some regular beef, shrimp and fish as well, so we opted for those choices. They were kind enough to offer us our choice of fish, after we had made our selection they took the fish out of the shallow grave....I mean tub, and slammed it on the ground to lightly stun it before it was tossed onto the grill.
It's amazing the difference 10 minutes can make.
One minute you're swimming around your tub with your mates, the next you're slammed on the ground, and 8 minutes after that you're being picked apart with chopsticks by hungry foreigners.
Cathy had to be shown how to eat the periwinkles properly. The manager had been watching her struggle with them and came over to offer some advice. She sat down at our table and began to demonstrate how to eat our food. Apparently Cathy had been doing it all wrong by eating the whole thing out of the shell; you're not supposed to eat the sphincter. This started a running joke about periwinkle 'clap' that continues unabated.
Sunday night, after dinner with 'the gang' at a local Brazilian themed restaurant (I skipped the halved, flame broiled baby bird and opted instead for the chicken gizzard...big mistake) we went to a recommended club. The theme is partially strip club and partially cabaret. There was a band belting out unintelligible Chinese pop songs (remember that oven?) and every three or four mind numbingly tedious and sappy sounds a dance troupe would take the stage.
The dancers were all very attractive and athletic young Asian women who dressed in tiny costumes and gyrated to more 'hard core' pop music. Very entertaining I might add. No clothes were doffed but it didn't really matter.
Yeah, actually it did, but c'est la vie.
Monday, we attended a high school information session (mentioned earlier) to promote the school and the English language programme. Malcolm and I ended up working together to talk to one class while Suzy and Cathy addressed another. After 20 minutes we switched.
Malcolm and I walked into an auditorium containing about 500 students to thunderous applause. We sat at the main table on the stage and fielded questions about our home countries, likes, dislikes, marital status, and favourite sports. After about 20 minutes we left and I was quite literally mobbed by students.
Girls were asking me to sign their hands and shirts and boys were asking me to sign pieces of paper and their T-shirts. It was very odd, but it demonstrates the insulation of these kids from everything non-Asian. In all likelihood they have never seen a foreigner in real life before and rather than treating us as oddities, as the older generations seem to do, they are fascinated and intrigued by us.
I felt like I was a member of a rock band signing autographs for adoring fans, luckily there was no screaming or fainting as that would have stretched the boundaries of credibility further than possible.
China is a country of fascinating anachronisms. Ox carts share the road with BMWs; outdoor markets (where animals are hung on hooks and weighed on measuring devices where the vendors wrist is the fulcrum), share the street with modern day supermarkets with electronic tills and bar coded products, old men in traditional straw hats carrying buckets on wooden beams across their shoulders walk the same pavement as yuppie businessmen in Armani knock off suits with their ears glued to their cell phones.
Imagine a country where a 125 cc motorcycle can be equipped with lights and sirens and called a police bike. I'd love to have that cop chase me on my R1. I could pull over and wait for him to catch up and then wheelie away when he gets too close!!
Just remember you can spit your bones on the floor or the table but stirring your green tea is considered impolite.
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