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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…
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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.
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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.
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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.

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John:
Happy to meet letter to you!

Your friend: V-

Lessons 7 & 8 : Pat and the role of the round-eyed laoshi (teacher)

The first 2 periods were not quite as smooth this morning, a consequence of the DVD remote playing up. Though still possible to play DVDs, you need it to activate the Chinese subtitles, and although this is an English lesson, there’s no way they can follow the audio. Cue lots of fiddling with batteries, points of contact and swapping batteries from student’s MP3s. Awkward.

Maybe I could have sent this as a single e-mail but I was very conscious of the overall running time. Sweet Jesus let it end.
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Lesson 1 : The Set Up
Chamone. This is the first of 12 vignettes to update people on what’s happening out here. This is not some stylistic invention to prod people into reading past the 5th word, just a result of my passive resistance against the various and manifold evils of my company. This is my week off, but its not, thanks to Crazy Pat (more of whom later) who has landed me with an extra 12 lessons instead. Its a typically broken promise on the part of North America ESL (MUCH MUCH MORE OF THAT LATER), and while I would be happy to help out a reasonable, rewarding employer, this just feels like anathema. So following in the bare footsteps of Ghandi, I have decided to display my emotions in a non-threatening, stoic manner. Namely, a 3 minute spiel Hi I’m J-. Can you guess where I’m from? No, not America, though yes I do seem a little tall and may have eaten too many McDonalds. Can you guess my age? No I am not f*cking 30. So here are some new words. [writes on board] Zombie, monster, blood, infection, bite, epidemic. Well done. Who can connect this DVD player? Cle - ver! Now here is a British film called Shaun of the Dead. [presses play, draws breath]
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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.
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Top o’ the morning. What a f*cking way to start a day. Just tried to put down a deposit at the internet cafe with a 50 kwai note, and the guy mimed to me, ignominiously shaking his head and holding the note at arms length, that it was fake. I’m fairly decent on spotting them normally, and upon finally escaping this nasty beijiu hangover, I recognise that its glossy, near fire-retardant surface and bright, blotchy colours are tell-tale signs. A standard Chinese 50 is inked with variagated greens that run the spectrum and occasionaly lapse into blushing pinks and aquamarines. This counterfeit one seems as if it has been set at by one of my students with leaky felt-tips. On one side of the standard fifty, an elderly, benevolent Mao is austerely simpering, gazing out into the far distance. On the other is the vast majesty of Lhasa’a Potala Palace, built into an immense escarpment. Its not for me to point out the irony of these two images sharing the same note, as I possess neither the inclination nor the political astuteness to do do. Everyone’s familiar with the T-I-B-E-T controversy already and there are a multitude of political blogs and Hollywood actors outh there pontificating upon the same issues by rote. The 50 kwai note is a nice symbol to consider though.

I was slipped the dodgy one late last night by a taxi driver after a few drinks. It must be the easiest way to ship fake notes out, drunken laowai getting out of a taxi at night. I’ve been ripped off five quid!
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Euufff. That’s the sound of having just had my first tough week in China after 3 exhilarating ones. I suppose the honeymoon with the kids wears off eventually, perhaps the big hairy laowai novelty that has veiled my ineptitude thusfar won’t last forever. One particularly wet Wednesday, 8 x 40 minute periods and 10 hours in total spent at the school will cause sweat-soaked Nam-style flashbacks for years to come. The kids weren’t allowed out into the pouring rain for their morning exercise or break-times, so they were confined in their classroom for the 12 hour duration of the schoolday. They were absolutely seething with aimless energy, fighting, shouting, chasing, playing with toys, throwing putty, smearing eachother with chalk, all-the-while the great white baboon was standing shell-shocked in the centre vainly trying to catch their attention… Apocalypse Now.
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The following was my first attempt to transform wildly disparate, invigorating first impressions into something coldly formal and journalistic.
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Somewhere on the way up to Cairns I met an eternal backpacker, an Irishman who had lived out of a bag over 4 decades and across the span of every continent. He had briefly taught in China, but told me little that was insightful, aside from the most popular joke in China, and suggested it to me as an ice-breaker for my upcoming classes. How many steps does it take to put an elephant in the fridge?
1. Open the door.
2. Put the elephant in.
3. Close the door.
How many steps does it take to put a giraffe in a fridge?
1. Open the door.
2. Remove the elephant.
3. Put the giraffe in.
4. Close the door.
Although the British media was constantly informing me that all kinds of social, political (I refuse to use the term socio-political) and economic (the same with socio-economic) barriers were falling, apparently China was still locked in the tyrannical grip of end-of-the-pier music hall humour.
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Well, this is the first despatch from Chengdu, from a conservatively sized internet cafe of about 150 or so, and what an incredible week and a bit, seems to have lasted far longer the way everything does when its all new and diverse, like Xmas day when you are a kid, but to the power of 10. To the Chinese guy chainsmoking 5 inches from my face and staring at my e-mail, well if your english is that good then you’ll understand me when i call you a tw*t.
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