bighairylaowai.com

Summer in Chengdu progresses like the JinJiang, the river that flows through the heart of it; an indolent, viscid drift deviating reluctantly around sluggish bends. Just occassionally, the stolid current will squall over a decaying bank of rubbish and human faeces, or to persist with the analogy, an anecdote.

1. Wrath of the Golden Yeti
A nation of dreamers, subjugated and censored by the greater logistical might of a neighbour regarded as coldly bureaucratic and soullessly pragmatic; limitless creativity bursting out in performing arts; a tradition of oral story-telling; isolated by geographical features from the rest of their continent; a resulting psychic symbiosis with the land itself; the irresistible onset of an international religous movement subverted by a far older native mysticism; crudely romanticised by Americans (whose philanthropy towards non-oil rich sovereignties is known the world over) - which country do the previous generalisations suggest?

If you’re still reading, two should spring to mind, Ireland and Tibet. And as I’ve learnt in Chengdu, Tibetans share the proclivity for a few drinks and then acting as mad as f*ck. After laying out generalisations about 5 countries in the space of a single paragraph, I’ll use the standard Brent (Office reference #236) get-out clause and say I belong to two of them, OK, and one of those owned a third for a fair while, so yeh, not larfing at them, but larfing with them, at us…
Read the rest of this entry »

Wake up to the mid-morning bustle of the vegetable market in the alley outside your window, and the dull drone of the kong tiao (air conditioner). Do not lie in further. You could; the invasive hammering of the drill on the main road until late, the intermittent squeals of a dog spanning the night, a subsequent, aggravated series of yells, the impassioned chorus of several roosters at dawn, the crash of stalls being set up soon after and the babble of the early morning, all leave you in a fug. Fall out of bed, and drag somnambulantly to the shower. Don’t linger. The hot water will fade within a couple of minutes, and if you’re unfortunate the passage of your neighbours’ waste through your semi-open, communal drain will suffuse the 4 foot square chamber with an acrid tang of sh*t and piss.
Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a sweater. This damp affliction is borne both of my physiology (a lumbering 100kg +) and personality (regrettable tendencies to be swamped by anxiety and to lend disproportionate emphasis to the scrutiny of others). Some would question my choice in coming to China, a land where foreigners are especially rare and invariably elicit a broad spectrum of astonished reactions, and Chengdu in particular, an intensely humid basin, circumvented on all sides and smothered by a thick canopy of smog. Being the sweltering height of the summer, my routine has consisted of dashes between kong tiao (air conditioning) vents, shorts and loose open shirts at all times, frequent swims, frequent loads of washing and naps during the claustrophobic hours of the mid-afternoon. As such, I have crept towards living nocturnally, save the necessity of my 3 hour teaching shifts every morning.

So upon the telephone jarring me out of one of my Sino-Siestas on a particularly hot-wet-towel day, and being invited out for an afternoon stroll, I began to have unpleasant premonitions of overwhelming moisture. To the majority of callers, the offer of an excuse of some teaching emergency or personal mission, and the promise of meeting at a more temperate time, 3 feet at all times from the breath of kong tiao. However, the caller was the attractive N-, whom I had met 2 weeks previous.
Read the rest of this entry »

The way was clear only briefly. A single shrill cry of laowai! brusquely interrupted my daze, another of Tom! confirmed my mistake of walking past the first grade classroom on the way out. A trickle of them scampered over and grabbed at my legs, clung onto my arms and tugged at the hem of my T-shirt, followed by the crash of another thirty pair of feet. I was engulfed within moments. My arms were being squeezed to see just how big they were, my sideburns were being violently pulled and patches of stubble pinched and ripped at. One student was hanging off my daypack, drawing me backwards with his suspended weight. The few cries of Tom had given way to laowai [old outsider], which swiftly gained the synchronicity of a chant, Lao – wai! Lao – wai! As the first few had clambered on me, I feigned difficulty in walking, but as the Lilliputian load increased I became absolutely immobilised. I searched around for help, but I was met only with the shamelessly broad grin of their Chinese form-teacher. Gulliver had been subdued by 40 rampaging Chinese five-year olds.

This was the clamorous moment of comprehension. I had employed a consciously nonchalant, intriguing spiel detailing my future plans the length of the Australian East Coast, but only now, on the first day of a 6 month contract, did this pretentious pontification mean anything. My employers termed themselves as a School of English, and from the images on their website, I assumed that these modern offices in the central business district would house corporate work. The logo, coloured with cold blues and whites, depicted two businessmen, stiffly postured, their fore-arms allowed the liberty to share a deeply formal, unquestionably symmetrical handshake. The days would require preparation, I would need a vast bank of technical knowledge to satisfy the demands of these motivated learners, but having garnered the respect of these gentlemen, it would transmute into nights of being showered with Beijio (56% proof clear spirit) at expensive, neon-soaked Chinese bars, all the while their behaviour expressing to me Yes. We respect you as a teacher, and believe we have achieved the optimum symbiosis between the hungry student and the wise, generous teacher. Indeed, your tender years that we so doubted at first, belie the strong current of sagacity within. Ha ha. But enough of such matters. Let us drink and prove ourselves to be so very crazy at such times.

Instead, I was informed that I would be teaching 24 lessons a week in a Chinese Primary school. Average class size: 50.
Read the rest of this entry »

Ole tells us in his blog that one of the highlights of living in China is the surprise of having semi-competent English speakers (no, he doesn’t mean me) spontaneously greet laowai with the refrain Welcome to China! Happy every day! I’ve heard the Welcome to China! part a lot, addressed to the unsuspecting roundeye whether or not he has lived in the country for a day, 6 months or 50 years. I have not encountered the Happy Every Day! coda until today. It is the upbeat denouement of the first e-mail from my first Chinese pen-pal, a stand-out participant in a summer-camp where I supplied the occassional guest-spot. She is the 13 year old cousin of one of the scheme’s teachers (referred to as the teacher’s sister - this one child policy is playing havoc with the semantics of familial address), who requested that I help her out with a writing-piece for a competition, and also e-mail her. Considering this side-gig pays me more than 3 times the hourly rate of my standard contract, and that I am a lazy feckless whitey with reams of leisure time, I could not reasonably refuse. I even gave her a magazine about Channel Island Sport featuring the Siam Cup, to which she makes one of the two generic compliments of Chinese youth, cool and handsome.

Its fortunate she didn’t use the second option, as I could have gotten into trouble publishing personal correspondence with a 13 year-old girl featuring the term handsome on the internet.

********************************

John:
Happy to meet letter to you!

Your friend: V-

So, the evil empire graciously permitting its employees a 3 day holiday (read - could not attract any potential students), I took the cue and shot off to Emei Shan with Caligula and the boy. Emei is one of the 4 principal holy Buddhist mountains in China, and offers a rewarding, atmospheric ascent to its 3099 metre peak and several fascinating cultural sites on the way. More importantly, it is infested with monkeys. My Chinese experience has shown me that monkeys are the base currency of universal humour. See mancub, they wanna be like you (ooo), wannna talk like you (ooo), walk like you (ooo ooo ooo) but are stupider and clumsier, while there’s none of the taboo of laughing at mongloids, Farrelly Brothers style. Oobee do. It suited one of my classes to change my name to monkey, and whenever I held up a picture of a monkey in an animal vocab lesson, it drew peals of laughter. And I just thought it was an example of British irony. What other word could you spontaneously utter, aside from flange to liven up the dullest of dinner conversations, job interviews or court proceedings? I would have ticked the Emei Shan box at some point anyway, but stories from travellers of these Tibetan Macaques jumping out from the trees to steal from hapless climbers, hopping around temples and battling with government appointed old-women-with-sticks for mountain supremacy made me approach the trip with unconcealed relish. Monkey relish! See how funny that was?
Read the rest of this entry »

A fairly painful looking injury happened in a class this morning. To drum the requisite 6/8 new items of vocabulary into little kids, I often play a TPR (Total Physical Response) game to finish with. It involves sellotaping flashcards (have a word with yourself) which is teaching-speak for A4 sheets bearing large, colourful pictures, at various points around the room. Oh, little jokes along the way - where to stick this one? Maybe on your head a ha ha, or no, I’ll stick it on the window. What, why is it not sticking? O bless me the window is in fact open and I had not noticed the fact that this window is open as I am such a clumsy feckless laowai. Brings the class down that one.
Read the rest of this entry »

My friend Ole (n) is one in a million. Maybe a million and a half. That’s roughly the population of Santai, a relatively small county in Sichuan province, and he’s the only one who needs to shave daily, celebrate Xmas and sit while he sh*ts - he’s the one resident whitey. Although he has constantly visited Chengdu, I have never been out to Santai until 2 weeks ago, and have since been again.

Its always welcome to get out of the city in much the same way as its a pleasure to get back to it. Your bus extricates itself from the encircling tangle of ring roads marking the liveable city, passes through the wheezing chimney stacks and factory yards of the industrial belt and enters into everyone’s image of China proper. The horizon expands until it is boundless, and you are among the wide open farming plains. Vigorous, fecund vegetation strives above the competitive mass and arches shoots across the bows of its neighbour, swamps buildings, infests dividing hedges and threatens to dominate. Narrow, labrynthine chasms are cut into these imposing fields, through which families knowingly weave in order to tend their crops. As the city is left further behind, small hills approach and become rolling mountains, little brothers of the great ranges that enclose the Sichuan basin. Those nearest are pocked with swathes of trees, those in the middle distance coloured with lifeless dull blues, those behind shrouded with the layers of mist that characterise all landmarks in this province to a degree.
Read the rest of this entry »

The following are extracts from blogs that I have encountered. Dear God, this is why I was worried about the loneliness of the long - distance blogger. It really is the worst kind of sixth-form poetry, a strong example of a muddle as opposed to a mystery, with a well thumbed thesaurus by the deskside. Shoot me if I should display such symptoms of rabid poeticising. Got to be a joke.

******************************************

Extract 1: Of Venice
They say there is a place between Heaven and Earth.

However, this place brings patience and consequence. In the far heavens, a rain cloud gathers and drops herself on a corner of the sea. The boatmen, like all boatmen, talk amongst themselves, in the way only boatmen can. There is a little breeze, a jovial pint of sea salt with a touch of a mandolin. Longs shadows pontificate on their existence, rising and falling with the coming dusk.

Extract 2: Of China
The streets are quiet, hushed. Like a patter of rain, the sounds of rolling wheels and a light breeze through the trees. The clack-clack of keyboards, the random sick cough, and the squeal of an old bus coming to a stop, the doors rattling open, and the sound of a paint chip falling to the ground.

I see bikes outside the window. Wagon-bikes, sport bikes, motor bikes, garbage bikes, speed bikes, dirt bikes, police bikes, silver and black and red, smudged by spots of dry mud; they lean against curbsides, old bricks, white tiled walls, and lightpoles. The people walk by, the mother with one small bag of groceries, the man carrying a white sack of grapes, the pair of girls holding hands, and the older woman across the street selling socks, shoe fillings, and toy trinkets. I forget the memory, reclaim it, but decide that more will come and release it.

I’ve always had a downright disregard for blogs. Some detail verbatim the acts and occurences of their daily life, and their reactions to them, as if they are the only person who has eaten a hamburger or been late for work or watched a particular television programs. Though this is naieve and annoying, it is a blessing compared to sophisticated bloggers who know we all live the same lives but feel that their sensibilites provide far more insight into life’s various mysteries and banalities, and egotistically believe that they can make you accept their perceptive dissection of day-to-day experience as your own, and resultantly imbue you with greater self - awareness. The waves of blog - parodies mocking the trivial, self-important pretension of the average Joe Blogger have had quite an effect of me.

The e-mails at the start of my trip were many and personalised, they became general and addressed to larger groups, and now I think its fairly obvious that they’re just one-off, impersonal discourses. But as long as China’s still got interesting things to offer up, and everyday it invariably does, then I’ll write it up. Hopefully it is interesting to anyone at home who reads it, while it is also enjoyable to put down my thoughts on the page. It should also keep me in contact with peeps from back home, although it feels more and more like a one-way thing.

I might do well to look back at the well-meaning hypocrisy of this despatch while I am preparing the tenth draft of went to work… then the gym… watched big brother… in six months time.