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Well, he actually popped up on Thursday, and it was delightful to see him after an 8-month absence. Anyway, enough of the fnar-fnar Carry On Humour, if you know the eponymous Woody then the previous has been a lame contrivance, if you don’t, then Paul Woody / Woodrow Woodcock is a Rugby-Playing, Trust-Managing Fellow-Islander who deigned to visit my sh*t-hole province (his words, in case this e-mail is intercepted by the Great Fire W*ll of China) for a weekend whilst on a 6 week placement in Hong Kong.

On a fiercely humid evening I left Ole, Eva and Si-Jiao sitting languidly outside Dave’s, watching the traffic coast past in the dusk. I wandered along the riverside until I hit the plush haven of all Yank package tours, the Jin-Jiang Hotel. The 10 Kwai Airport Bus was nowhere to be seen, but taxi drivers were hawking for business, and would charge 10 kwai a pop if they could fill up their cab. My addition made three, and while we awaited a fourth I crossed the road to buy a welcoming present to Mainland China for Woodrow, a bottle of beijio and a couple red bulls. By the time I had come back, my place had been usurped, some expletives were directed at the trailing taxi, but fortunately the airport bus had pulled up.

I welcomed Woody with open arms. Unfortunately one of these arms was holding a bottle of beijio that I had neglected to properly screw the cap back on, so I showered myself and a large portion of the floor with the filth. I think the desired impression ‘making a go of it out here in China y’see! was supplanted by smell like a tramp and lack the requisite chimp-skills to screw bottle tops on. Beijio is naa-sty, and sparks me into sheer blank idiocy like nothing else. Not to sound too Chavish in boasting of drinking exploits, but that may well surprise a lot of people who have witnessed previous displays of blank idiocy. For 5 kwai (30 pence) you can buy half-a-litre of spirit whose a.b.v. varies in the high-fifties. It would be an interesting social experiment to introduce it to the UK binge-drinking culture. Special Brew would go bust within minutes, of that I am certain. It has the consistency of syrup, and as it burns its way down your throat, shock just judders up through your skull as your stomach turns queasily. It is also the source of the worst hangovers known to man. You wander around for the following day totally apart from the current of human activity, locked in your solipsistic little world, severely questioning the validity of your lifetime’s actions, regarding their outcomes with contempt, conjuring regrets, dashing hopes, questioning why you should have ever had nourished these hopes during your aimless existence, extreme cynicism regarding your extreme cynicism, suspicion of your friends and what reason or necessity they have for being in your confidence and a strict avowal that such damaging transitive hedonism will never follow again. This is no exaggeration. Cheap stuff though.

By the time the bus pulled back in, the night had been lost, only recoverable in mortifying flashback form the next day. Thankfully, I was spared one of Eva’s meticulous drunken logs, delivered after every night of excess in painstaking detail for maximum cringe-effect, as he had decided to have an early night. I introduced Woody to the hood, notably cigarette man and wife, hotpot parking attendants/promoters/door staff (all the same 2 guys), the guards and of course the ladies from hooker den #1, #2 and #3 on the 25 yard alley to my apartment. We met Ole at The Shamrock, ate some noodles, bought some water and hailed a pedicab to take us 300 yards to my apartment. Connect the dots however you want to, I certainly can’t. Woody had the option of the sticky leather couch on a night of extreme hoo-midity, or the second bedroom, whose bed I had ruined by jumping onto when I was stinking drunk. He chose the second option. A plank of wood under the lower part of the bed was smashed in two, so although his torso was perfectly flat, his legs trailed sharply away to the floor. Ideal sleeping conditions, particularly considering the anaesthetizing effect of the fusty bed sheets that I fetched him from the filthy pit of the 2 foot wide utility room. Conscious that I had performed the acts of hospitality with all the magnanimity and graciousness of a Chinese host, I retired to my humble air-conditioned (I forget, the air conditioner was bust in the second bedroom too) abode and lay down on my exceedingly horizontal bed.

The next day we planned to take a day trip out to Qingcheng Hou Shan, and would leave at 8am sharp. However, a lazy recuperative morning followed by a visit to Ole’s pad (the surprising collection of photos that he sprung on Woody convinced me that they had become fast-friends) meant we arrived at the base of the mountain around 1pm. I constantly gripe about the temple - statue - pagoda repetitive blandness of Chinese tourism (a la Scooby Doo backgrounds - thanks Peter Kay) but this place was amazingly beautiful, under visited and serene. Weeks before, Eva and I had visited Qingcheng Shan (the front mountain) and had been under whelmed at just such banality, but on our free tourist map, we had seen that Qingcheng Hou Shan (the back mountain) had less temples, apparently more greenery and a steeper ascent to a peak that was artistically rendered as being enveloped in deeply kung-fu meet-your-nemesis style mist. But after starting our climb from the surprisingly large and picturesque stockade town at the base, our path passed under the boughs of deeply fecund sub-tropical vegetation and alongside a wild rocky creek pulsing with clean water, which occasionally tumbled down over immense waterfalls into shimmering pools of untainted blues and greens. Over-egging the pudding? No, just plain stunning, more impressive than anything of the like I had seen in Australasia or as yet in China, save camping at 4500 metres in Songpan.

It was, and by this point you should expect this of the Sichuan summer, intensely hoo-mid, notable in the scratchy white waves of lost salts ebbing through my shirt. Though the occasional sign prohibited swimming, the area was so under-visited (and you can always take the ting-bu-dong! laowai option) that it was not an issue, but the shortage of time was. For an hour or so, we followed close behind a Chinese couple on the way up, spouting various profound comments about Chinese inter-personal relationships; the quality of her ar*e, that her guy was a plug and must therefore have a lot of money etc etc, until upon catching them up, they freely initiated a conversation that not only made us realise that their English was of an excellent standard, but that they had a reason to show us that their English was of an excellent standard… Sheepish. I will have to rid myself of the notion that I can jibe at 99% of the people I meet to their face if I so choose and have them understand nothing - could cause problems back home.

As expected, temples and shrines proliferated at the top, but they were not without character. I motioned to take a picture with a monk, but he immediately cowed with a somewhat disturbing schoolgirl smile and wandered off down the path, though his brethren were laughing and jeering at his bashfulness. I allowed him his dignity, changed my mind and began to pursue him which incited his homies to further heights of exhilaration. As I write this, it seems as though I have become a member of the David Brent school of chilled-out-entertainers and will be shunned on my arrival home. That and the rampant terrorising of small children. Think its a bit different back there.

In the temple adorning the summit, a gnarled ping-pong table sat in the corner, and invited a game to sharpen up after a particularly lofty, exacting section of steps. Enquiries were made; a game could be played, but being China, would only be procured by buying 3 bottles of beer. After 3 hours of arduous step-climbing on a smothering day, well it was really holding me at gunpoint there and we agreed. As we perfected the beer in spare hand technique, Woody asserted himself over the flimsy uneven netting. It was fun, but felt a little like one of those tick-box moments, ping-pong at 3000 metres? Check. In a Daoist monastery? Check. Beer? Check. Lots of monks, temple paraphernalia, wisps of incense and people generally going about their devout business? Yep. That ping-pong table probably takes a pounding every day of the week from laowai, and was the result of a moment of entrepreneurial genius from Mrs Mountain Top Beer. Which begs the question - who carried it up? Every few minutes on the ascent, you must step off the path onto the embankment to pass a local carrying supplies up the stairs, their necks bent under a cane balancing two baskets equidistantly at the side, filled with basic foodstuffs,beers, or souvenirs for the multitudes of cheap tacky stalls that intermittently line the ascent. Flutes, pipes, ceramics, wooden samurai swords, necklaces, all you can imagine and more, and probably with the effects of altitude on the logical brain, their best chance of selling any of that sh*t. But to carry a ping-pong table? Mrs Mountain Top Beer must be wearing the trousers or at least have caused a huge ruckus over some slight to get her hubbie to carry it up. To confound the Bernard Manning-ness of that last statement, most of the carriers tend to be taipos (old women) which rather puts my wheezing, gasping shell-of-a-man efforts to shame.

We circled back to the bottom along the even less populous return route, this time at a higher elevation above the creek and pools along a series of boardwalks. Towards the bottom, offers were made to carry us down by duos of stretcher-bearers. I reasoned that I would perhaps be heavier than 2 full baskets of noodles, cucumbers or even the ping-pong table (that day must have made Mr. Mountain Top Beer the pimp daddy of Qingcheng Hou Shan, spoke of in hushed tones by every local as the day he carried the ping pong table up to the temple). Even if it were free I wouldn’t take it. The stairs are anything but uniform, and occasionally shrink to such a length that only clown-walking (respective feet splayed parallel to the step) is able to negotiate them. Allied to the fact that China did not seemed prepared for my arrival and I seem to break everything it offers me - the bed, a running machine, an office chair, a classroom door - I didn’t feel comfortable risking their lives or mine.

We sat on the back seat of the bus on the way home. As per normal on all internal bus trips, a badly directed Chop-Socky flick with massively overwrought acting was playing at the front, but the true source of amusement was one seat ahead. A fairly prissy looking young lady, despite lack of eye contact or spoken communication, had obviously taken a fancy to Woody, and he anxiously informed me She’s just shifted onto my leg! She had leaned over from her seat back into the central aisle, which Woody’s leg was occupying by virtue of being the middle sitter on the backrow. She proceeded to pull out a mirror and apply further cosmetics to an already embellished face, and then from her handbag drew out an A5 (or so) modeling shot - which she then retracted, but then brought out a number of times, the mechanics reminding me of when a vending machine struggles with a note and withdraws and extends repeatedly until the decision is made. This apparently unknowing display was clearly for the benefit of the middle-sitting honkey. After this initial show, she pulled out a chunky brown envelope, and to a round of barely suppressed giggles, performed the same repeated action, but this time with a framed version of the exact same modeling shot - as if to say she had been teasing us with the simple, ungarnered print, and that the frame was some kind of commendation of her well-regarded beauty within China. Only professionals get frames you know. There is an intriguing strata of young moneyed women in Chinese society that pays for its own (or Daddy does more likely) photographic sessions and then puts forward these shots to any new acquaintances to achieve instant merit points.

Home, a shower, then a filthy takeaway dinner which produced 1 eatable dish from 4 and an immortal quote from Woodrow - massively eager to meet the whitey I had brought to the hood, the pleasant waitress began to offer Woody her friendship, to which he incredulously replied You want to be my FLIEND? I expected him to put a lampshade on his head, make slanty eyes using his index fingers and to stick his front teeth over his lip. You could say that it was an innocuous mistake made while he was trying to processing her Chinglish, but I prefer to take the firmer stance and say that the actions of P- Enoch W- must never be forgotten.

And then to the Chengdu nightlife. Bars proliferate in Chengdu, though the Western orientated ones line Renmin Nanlu only. A big night will mean traveling to the south west of the city though, to a glossy, neon soaked Nightclub complex comprising of 2 big clubs called Mix and Babi, and various smaller ones filtered in. A Chinese nightclub is invariably arranged concentrically. In the centre a bar serves to all four sides. Next out is the dancefloor, or walkways to the dancefloor. This is enclosed by a rim of small circular high tables. The outer boundary is a series of semi-enclosed enclaves containing plush lounge seats. They are usually a step’s elevation up from the hoi polloi and bathed in soft purple; enough light for the beautiful people to barely be seen at their exploits. If you are invited there you are fortunate, but normally you will be asked back to the smaller tables fringing the dancefloor. And as a roundeye you WILL be invited. This confused me at first. A stained T-shirt, 3-quarter shorts and filthy 9 year old trainers (as comfortable as the day they were bought), a maniacal beijio grin, a sheen of sweat from beijio inspired activities, and an aimless stagger occasionally breaking in to actions hilarious only to a man unable to remember his own name - what possible face could be obtained from drinking with that? But drink we always will, as the laowai always benefits from skewed perception. We are still a novelty in this country, particularly way out west, and as such there is no template for our personalities or standard modes of behavior, or even if there is, there are plenty of trailblazing nutters (ahem, Pat) out here to have made it an extremely off-kilter one… and this (going off digressively) is a reason that whitey’s standards drop so massively. We have light workloads, relatively large disposable incomes and are not judged aggressively in our actions as our peers would do at home. I remember a squat, drunk Frenchman wandering around Carols Too (a bar), performing dump-tackles on anyone who took his fancy, and being wildly cheered and applauded by several Chinese men from the balcony. There is also a plug Italian whose dancing resembles something from a 50’s musical about sailors, but is always surrounded by women, purely because the energy and expressiveness of his dancing conveys confidence and that confidence in a whitey means something good, but it is never inferred that it is totally misplaced and that he is in fact a d*ck.

Of course, the spectre of the invading honkey can evoke equally indiscriminatory attitudes of massive negativity too, it is normally a male thing, and it is a result of a phenomena popularly termed as Yellow Fever. This phenomena relates, and I’m trying to sound as PC and inoffensive as possible here, to the myth that between the Laowai visitors and the local population, the strongest mutual attraction is between the laowai male and the local female. Mixed race dancefloors can quickly degenerate into c*ck-fights, skirmishes of various degrees founded upon such presuppositions. A few weeks before Woody’s arrival I was involved in just such an incident that threatened to be a little serious. A Chinese volleyball team, fuelled by booze, machismo, and the buzz of the day’s game had taken over the dancefloor and were acting as arrogantly and ignorantly as p*ssed up sports teams tend to on a big night out (pot, kettle yes yes). The self-appointed alpha-male had spotted his quarry for the night, and dragged her onto a podium where he danced and groped her. This was an obvious attempt to assert themselves over the roundeye dancefloor population, and being in a fairly happy world of my own, it was no affront at all. This dynamic was abruptly and violently unbalanced when the girl minutes later approached me on the centre of the dancefloor and began chatting. I wasn’t particularly interested, and was also aware in spite of my personal happy place, that this had the potential to be a ruck. So it threatened, as he and some teammates began to circle me a little ominously. Eva, in a place far different from mine, attempted to defuse the situation by latching onto the girl in question’s friend and sticking his tongue down her throat. Amazingly, this selfless act did nothing to deter the growing rage of our volleyball-playing friends. This girl, with no awareness of what was happening, continued talking to me in broken English. With half an eye on the fuming would-be and his posse, I continued to dance for form’s sake, but with no sense of rhythm in the first place and the added distraction, it began to resemble something that a middle aged Northern housewife at the Community Centre’s Wednesday ‘Line-dancing night’ would be ashamed of. Ole assured me he had my back, and while an ex-marine is always handy in a fight, and a straggle of English backpackers too, I felt that not only would it be us against a whole team of tall, athletic volleyball players but others would crawl out of the woodwork. Then the guy starts yelling something about foreigners at this girl, who starts yelping back, he clutches her upper arm and tries dragging her off like a caveman, which despite my general apathy at the time still wasn’t on, so I barred that. They turned their attention to what the other roundeye was doing with this girl’s friend, and as they circled him, Eva displayed his understanding of the sensitivity of the situation by grinning at these guys, effusively shaking their hands, turning attention to his cherie amour, tossing her in the air and catching her, and licking every bare patch of her skin that was on display. Surprisingly, these well considered actions only served to stoke them up further. The lead guy was confronting me, but only in a thus-far-and-no-further way; the bouncers were on the spot, but allowing this guy to provoke me as he wished, and it seemed as if they were more willing to jump on honky if he tried anything, which unfortunately for the guy, I never do. But the one moment he truly came into my personal space, I shot him a stern people’s eyebrow out of the blue - like a red rag to a bull, but still he was unwilling to initiate anything, as if there was a Plexiglas screen barring his stunted lunges. Eventually some of his colleagues sobered up a little and carried him out. Meanwhile, this chick, seemingly oblivious to everything that had transpired on her account, starts yammering about an ‘English exam’ she had in a week and so forth. Alll that bother cos you want a roundeye to help you out on your tenses? F*ck off eh. To balance the story anyway, later in the night we met a group of decent Chinese guys who we later accompanied to a 6am Hot-Pot breakfast.

I appreciated that these guys had a righteous anger, although it was expressed in a nobbish way. You’re at the top of your sport and physically tip top, you’re buzzing after winning a game, and the girls you pick out shun you to speak to some uninterested, hazed-looking out-of-shape whitey. You see an awful lot of spods out here with absolutely smokin’ women, and your first reaction is yeah mate… as if you could do that at home…. so what was your motivation to learn Chinese? Because its such an intriguing, anciet culture? Hmmm…. Although a lot of guys are comfortable with their ladies and the opinions of others do not bother them at all, some, particularly younger guys react in a mock-show of absolute ignorance; you pass them and there is never the mutual laowai eye contact and grin or nod, but you’re certain from the unfailing consistency of their blinkered forward gaze and their almost impossible evasion of signalling awareness of the other roundeye that they are painfully aware of your presence and the opinions you are forming of them. This feigned ignorance is the result of two possible perspectives. The first is the straightforward, almost tacit agreement, yeah, dead right. She’d be a munter at home. I’m taking massive advantage of the laowai effect’. The second kind of ignorance, manifested in almost exactly the same way, but a little firmer in its tunnel vision and bold in its unheeding step, seems almost perversely to beg confrontation. It transmits as ‘I know what you’re thinking. But I have so adopted the values of a culture that truly appreciates sensitive, discerning gentleman like myself that the petty, superficial views of people like you mean nothing to me anymore, you big Fascist. So what if I used to like chemistry sets and Dungeons & Dragons. She’s smokin’ hot don’t ya know!

Back to Woody. Having him in our company, a respectable, upstanding laowai of mature years, whose status was further enhanced by introducing him as a Hong Kong businessman, we were invited to nearly every booth and table in the club. First you must toast the person who has invited you to their table. Then each of their companions in turn, or perhaps a group toast. It can get messy. The centre-piece of each table is a ludicrously expensive (several hundred kwai each, pricey considering my daily pay is just over a hundred per day) bottle of spirits. Currently, the Chinese vogue is for Chivas Regal Scotch. When a group buys a bottle, it is displayed (rather than stored) in a glass cabinet at the front of the club, with tags bearing their name and the level of alcohol left. It will be mixed in a jug with various things, though it tends to be Iced Tea. The oddest mix I have seen anyone subjected to was of Vodka and an isotonic sports drink. You can gauge the status of a group by tasting the repective strengths of the Chivas and the Iced Tea in the mix. All tables and booths are reserved a week in advance. Before I had been educated as to the rigid hierarchial arrangement of a Chinese club, I had previously wandered between these tables, grabbed the apparently unclaimed bottles, and brought this fortunate bounty onto the dancefloor to share with friends. I had no concept of the sheer disrespect and destructive ‘face’ theft I was perpetrating. But the drinks our posse were invited to have, with a Hong Kong businessman at our helm of course, were utterly genuine. It was lethal. I flaked out and left, leaving Woody mouth agape and dozing in one of the booths, presuming that Eva and Ole would sort him out. They did.

Saturday was extremely sedate, and our Sugar Woody was just throwing this strange multi-coloured monopoly money around (only kidding buddy, but Western money can go ludicrously far out here - I am living on around 2 pounds a day right now, but then again I’m getting paid 10). Waking up at noon spoiled our ill-conceived plan to visit the Panda Sanctuary. Lunch at a western establishment (Peter’s Tex Mex - a slice of redneck America in backwater China) was followed watching the Lions painfully capitulate to the Maori at the Shamrock. Woody had the opportunity to meet good ol’ Pat, who was escorting a massively bemused Chinese lady that seemed as if she had just reached the moment of true laowai perception. Yes love, he actually is a complete fool. We were honoured to record another classic Pat one-liner: I reckon Dire Straits were the British Rolling Stones. Making our excuses, we left and walked 100 yards down the road to Carols Too. We drank a great deal while playing pool, which resulted in the eternally nasty early evening hangover, as Eva and Ole were attempting to clean their palate. This was almost alleviated by the squeakiest voiced waitress in the world confirming our order of an item called ‘Fat Boy Hamburger’ which she reproduced in Pasquale-tones as Fet-boy hambuggah. Had to be there for that one I think.

After returning home, only a massive effort of the will got us back out again, for a balmy night in the Shamrock beer garden, with pleasant company and a scratchy yet welcome chat with Milesy via Woody’s mobile. In a further act of hospitality I left Woody to get to the airport for himself on Sunday morning, as I had to teach. Both pleasurable and strange to see a hometown friend in my sh*thole province, though for all this verbiage, the funniest moment of the weekend was probably Bernie Mac saying hhhhalf in Bad Santa.

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