Now please fellas, no more flies in the soup. 

Eats

Eating is an ongoing theme here, as indeed the world over. Now that I have expressed that platitude, lets waken you up a bit. (I learned platitude and its meaning from a professor making reference to particularly bland university submissions which I suppose were my norm). Donkey meat, rabbit, sow's ear, Peking Duck, sea weed, water chestnuts, persimmons, dumplings, fritters, shrimp, Mao Zedong's Favourite (whatever it was), all measure of vegetables - my large intestine has seen them all. Sometimes it feels as if everything is lodged there at the same time. Some of the best ice lollies I have ever eaten are in my system right now. You can buy a dozen for $1.50 CDN. Fruit is abundant, mangos expensive but water melon a bit more reasonable. I negotiated my first market purchase the other day, recognizing I was being hoodwinked at the first merchant and moving on to a second where I paid half the price. Last Friday I was invited to a Korean Restaurant where amongst other things the fish was great. I met some foreigners on the Monday for lunch and again it was pig out time (you must to keep face). Meals are communal around a circular table where all dishes are shared and each person digs in with their own chopsticks. No individual servings or plates, as is our custom. I have not dropped too many things with my sticks recently so I am mastering the art. To-day is the May Day holiday which stretches into a full week for some. Trains and buses are choc-a-bloc. Hic.

Gazing Off into the Revolutionary Future

Gazing off into the revolutionary future

Yong Chao, Poster Boy

The host father, Mr Xu, known by everyone as Yong Chao, is a good fella. He is a mixture of many things but the image of him that predominates in my mind is that of a revolutionary poster boy. I noticed in my first few weeks that in almost any photo he would show head up with his gaze off into the future, rarely looking into the camera directly. He is a happy man, likes to sing from time to time, a bit impulsive, knows his history of China very well, curious about many things. Above all he has taken a big leap, I hesitate to say chance, hosting a foreigner in his family. At one and the same time he is a bit conservative but also expansive and open minded. He does not drink or smoke and always wears (even on days off) his uniform which his particular tax office does not require, but which most tax offices do. Few of his colleagues wear uniforms. It is refreshing to see him in his undershirt around the house if only because it is a new look. We have been close to thirty five celsius this week (and I came to the north to avoid the heat!!) and he suffers in the heat. He is hardy, rides his bike like a real trooper and eats like a horse. He puts real effort into learning English. I do not know if it will change job prospects for him since he is already well placed in his office. He used to be a teacher and this shows in his attention to detail and liking of information. His impulsive nature has shown on a couple of occasions. The only time I have gone on the bus on my own we had a chance meeting on the street corner as I headed off. He had not thought it out and was stopping the right numbered bus (just the wrong direction) before I pulled him back. Another time (coming home at night on our bikes going at record pace he told me (we are a little competitive in that regard) he continued into an intersection with oncoming traffic and had to jump off his bike to avoid a collision with a taxi. I, the wise foreigner, had thought discretion was the best part of valour and held back. He seems to love his daughter very much, perhaps because of an illness when she was younger.

The Right Side of the Law

Scots of a "certain age" will remember Eric Caldow, captain of Glasgow Rangers Football Club. I recall team photos of him sitting bolt upright, hands on knees with silverware at his feet. Recently at the photo exhibition I sat next the deputy mayor in just such a pose. Bobby Orr style for North American ears. Well not only that but I also was part and parcel of a banner presentation the other day. It was like winning a championship. Here is why. My adventure to Beijing in which I did everything from ticket buying to train travel on my own, went well. That is until within 400 metres of home. I got a taxi from the station and was able to direct the driver to my unlit street but did not know how to get him to advance. I was sitting behind so hand gestures were no good. He dropped me at the far end. No problem until I realized the rolled up painting I had bought in Beijing was on the back seat of the car and he had driven off. Next morning I attempted to go to taxi lost and found (it does not exist) and unwittingly found myself at the police station, Traffic Division. They were all in civil clothes. Only one uniform appeared after I had spoken to a good dozen people. My little five minute inquiry of non-existent taxi lost and found snowballed into a major operation for the Lao Wai, foreigner. I feared my family might get in some trouble since I was asked many questions and had to produce residence permit, passport etc. Most was good humoured and only at one point did it feel like a grilling. To cut a longer story short, many policemen did not sleep well that night. They moved heaven and earth and stopped taxis all over the city (there are 4,000). Next day around noon the call came through (my homestay host father was at the police station himself, not in trouble but for a discussion), the painting had been found. It is tradition for a banner to be presented to the police in exceptional cases. We ordered one for a presentation to be made next morning. A car was sent for us and five or six photograpjhers were present. The banner was exchanged. Guess what, the colours are in those of my Scottish team Motherwell! I made this point and got a good laugh from the senoir officer, who is a football fan. It was certainly a banner day.

Traffic Division who can now get some sleep! 

At home prior to the banner presentation to Xingtai Police 

Banner Day

This has been a banner day so far. Not only have I worked out how to post photos from here but I have also had made a banner for the local police department. Yes me, for the Chinese police. Imagine. Everyday brings surprises and things that just blow my mind. The boy versus girl skipping races of the restaurant staff this morning was priceless, the recovery of a lost painting a saga (next post, stay tuned), a visit to a hillside lake this afternoon and finding I can post photos afterall with relative ease. And I started out the morning with a hangover from the Korean restaurant last night. I have not been drunk for quite a long time. Can anyone confim the photos show on the blog? Thanks in advance.

A recent trip to Beijing. This is the exterior of the Forbidden City

Parisian like canals in Xingtai 

Snow White

As I learn Chinese I correct many mistakes in my notes . One relief has been to find correction fluid here in Beijing where I have come for a couple of nights. To run out of the invaluable liquid would have been a travesty. It is better for me to have a neat but incorrect notebook than correct but messy. Browsing a bookstore last night I came across the brand name Snow White and all seemed well in the universe. Beijing is certainly not the rest of China. Case in point would be it took two hours in Xingtai to find envelopes and a birthday card and white out may not have graced the city. Beijing will make a great host city for the Olympic Games. It is modern and the wide boulevards are a delight. The tiled sidewalks stretch for miles. Foreigners are aplenty when compared to Xingtai where after five weeks I have still to come across a foreigner outside of one arranged meeting. Here I am inconspicuous. Or so I thought. At the chinese hotel I took a shower in the morning. Only just under the water, I heard a knocking. I had all my possessions with me because the clerk on each floor keeps the only room key. Turns out showers are a no no in the morning and the eagle-eyed clerk had called the manager. He explained with gestures that water in a thermos is there for washing face etc. Oh dear. The true purpose of the basin I had peeed in the night before was revealed. I had some reason to justify my action but to hide my embarrassment I had to wait for the maid to be preoccuppied before covering my tracks with a quick emptying job at the washroom! Any more faux pas in store?

Just Peachy

The blossom all over Xingtai and surrounding countryside is at its peak at the moment. In my attempts to learn Chinese inevitably I get things wrong and for a while I have been trumpeting the peach blossom to friends but in fact it is mostly pear blossom. Whatever. The street alongside where I live has a pink blossom which may be cherry or apple but the different kinds make for a pleasing blend. After my visit to Bailin Temple we went to an orchard with canola (bright yellow) flowering underneath the trees. Yesterday in a return to the same area my host mentioned that many young people go to the orchards to "get acquainted." Certainly getting privacy in such a densely populated country is not easy. We stopped at an oil "horse" as I would describe the well rigs and to get there walked through wheat fields. The local peasants were working hard, even though it was Sunday, but the constant honking of traffic on the highway meant that even this rural corner was noisy. Villages are everywhere and take up a lot of land so rural in this area does not mean away from it all. Mid-week other friends took me overnight to Yingtan, up in the hills where the sky is genuinely blue and the village quiet. The marvelous light red-pink stone and very solid construction and intricate layout of the village alleys make for a photographers delight. I have met so many people that I can't even list them all. They have invited me to all kinds of things of which I have only mentioned some in these postings. I think this homestay project is really off and running. One last thing. I love the attempts at English in all kinds of places. This caught my attention. "Famons Brand Wine. Foreign Wines Competent." Another sign mentioned "Hairtail" What the heck is that?

By the Skin Of My Teeth

Yesterday was a visit to the Bailin Zen Buddhist Temple, much visited in this country. Its former Abbott testified at the UN against, surprisingly, Falun Gong. Its current Abbott who is a former Tianamen Square student leader, granted me an audience arranged by my hosts for the day. The Abbott speaks fluent English, is only 38 and studied at the country's second ranked university in Beijing. It was a fine twenty minutes. Zemin, the recently retired Communist leader, had been at the temple and his photos adorned the walls. Afterwards my hosts and I were invited to eat lunch with the monks. I have been eating way beyond my limit so this looked like a chance for a parsimonious meal. Wrong again bucko. The rules are silence at the meal and push forward one of two bowls if wanting a refill. Great, no pushing forward rice or veggie bowl for me. Would you know it, my dish was piled higher than people closest to me and I was given an unsolicitted refill from a monk who emptied his cauldron. To top it off the noodles, which come at the end, were boiling hot. Being a slow eater at the best of times and having been requested to leave nothing uneaten I knew I had to make post haste. The monks were ravenous and I had a hard job. Of course they all finished well ahead and only the dishwashers noises drowned my slurps. Fortunately I just got in under the wire for the signal for the procession out. I was nearly out on my ear the first day in the order!

Canal

I am so, so busy. This is a recycled post to my homestay agency website a few days ago.
As I write this I am ensconced on top of a man-made hillock crowned by a Chinese pavilion. The neighbourhood is typical in this worker city but the canal and spring green brighten up the residential zone. The weather is warm for early April, close to 30 celsius although it has moderated a bit to-day. After three weeks with my homestay family I feel extremely comfortable with how things are unfolding. To-day I meet a student who has graduated from a prestigious university in Shangai and although this was arranged for me I am happy to go with the flow. Very little here seems to involve me swimming against the current. Shopping for dishes this morning with Mum (who works part time at a clock factory) and daughter who has classes only later on, was pleasant. I have sorted out in my mind the next photos I wish to take, not least any of a number of restaurant crews who turn out to do musical drills on the sidewalk. They are all in the costume of their establishment and in their early twenties I would say. They are well synchronized and do elaborate gestures. You would pay for this show back home! I wonder if they compete against other complements elsewhere across the city? If they don't they should. This week-end its up off the Hebei flat plain into a stone cabin in the local hills. Yippee.

Colinfuscius Say

Colinfuscius think of much merriment when no sleep at dark early morning. Colinfuscius visit another Bhuddist Temple (I have misspelled Bhudda all my life so why change now and by the way how should Colinfuscius spell misspell?) in hilly place to listen to priestly monky man. Velly Velly wise. Monky man say life is bitter like the tea lotus position monky man serve to foreign visitors. Visitors must find their own way to happiness despite bittery taste of life water from silver gold leaves. Chinky girl learning English know we say leaves not leafs. Colinfuscius not know why we speak illogic. Colinfuscius not drink bittery water again for all the tea in China.

Scatology

I'm not a dad, right, never had kids. Some things must be escaping my attention. The other day I posed for several photos at a rural village we visited. In several I was given one of the young boys to hold. He cried of course but then seemed to warm up to me. I noticed that my arm got warm too, the main reason being that there was bare bum resting on it for a while. Earlier I had seen another mother holding her little boy to pee although at first glance he appeared to be fully clothed. What is happening here is that young boys wear pants with the equivalent of a fly with no zipper at the back. Discretion says I don't try too hard to give you a photographic illustration of this phenomenon. As for the toilets, in our house we have the squatter. Takes me back to France twenty years ago. My aim is pretty good, just have to watch I don't let too many mao (coins) fall down the hole. Also, now the shower switches from one bathroom to another on April 10th when the complex shuts down its service and we move to solar energy. The shower head is screwed on directly above the squatter drain . I think I might opt not to use it since I have visions of it falling where it should not. I think I will wear out my welcome in another manner if the welcome is still intact, which all joking aside it seems to be.

15 Minutes of Fame

Yong Chao, Mr Xu, invited me to attend a propaganda day for his place of work on Saturday morning. He works for the Tax Fraud section of local government. We duly pedalled to the main square of Xintai City, parked our bikes where you get a wooden pendant as a receipt and must pay a nominal amount. We ascended some steps to the central plaza. Here we found a couple of hundred employees deployed in front of a stage. On either side were booths with info on each section's function. We arrived from the side but caught the attention of the back couple of rows of civil servants. Meanwhile I was introduced to some flunkies and was just about to get my camera out to capture them in their fine uniforms and with their colourful banners when out of no where I was surrounded by about ten cameramen, several with zoom lenses. I had no inkling they were coming but had no alternative but to suddenly conduct myself as though I were a dignitary. I was given a red and yellow cap with chinese characters and posed for staged shots. Apparently I now was a walking billboard urging the populace to pay up. So for the next ten to fifteen minutes, for no other reason than that I was a Lao Wai (friendly old foreigner), I was a celebrity. At one point I was in a reviewing line behind a local leader to whom much deference was paid so I quickly backed away not to in any way steal his thunder. My picture has already been on the internet and probably to-night I will hear it has made some newspapers. We all have 15 minutes of fame sometime. I think I have used mine up. I then was driven away in a chauffeur driven car but that is another story.

What's Making News

Yep, my photo made the front page of the Xintai paper. Upstaged Stephen Hendry (relegated to mere sports) who lost in the final to a Chinaman at the Beijing China Open World Snooker. Elsewhere, because Bo subscribes to China Daily I get all the world news and good internal coverage. What has caught my attention you ask? First off, the leader of the Kuomintang (Taiwanese ruling party) visited the mainland for the first time in 49 years. The recent promulgation of an anti-secessionist law (a la Chretien) has moved this whole file very much to the front burner. Will they really go to war? Hard to believe. Incidentally on a week-end visit to a village the host family said I was the second foreigner in their home, the last being the Japanese occupiers in the Second World War! Secondly, Korea and China promise to create a big stink on the world stage after yet again the most recent Japanese history books make no mention of the atrocities committed by Japanese troops in the said countries. Thirdly, Hu Jintao, president of China, now has full control. He is at one and the same time head of government, head of the Communist Party and has just now assumed the leadership of the military. I wonder if he shines his own shoes? Mine are a tad dusty after visiting the village. Maybe I should visit him in the Forbidden City. You don't still die if you are a foreigner and do that, do you? This is the dry season. I have seen no rain in three weeks.

You Never Stop Learning

Since in part I am here to teach here are some thoughts so far on the education scene. My first day in Shijiahuang as I settled in to the new country I wandered over to a nearby plaza. The city is bustling and supposedly one of smokestacks but frankly it is doing a major remake and is quite pleasing. The afternoon was sunny and I took some photos of school children flying kites. I sat down to absorb some more and before long the kids had noticed and the first "Hello" came floating over. To my amazement these ten year olds were soon clearly enunciating complete sentences. What is your name? Where are you from? I was soon surrounded by twenty of them eager to pose their own question. An adult offered to translate but really there was little need. Many kids apparently start at age eight, others eleven learning English and they seem to progress rapidly. The Chinese teachers themselves must be good because some of the pronunciation is very clear. This was a good first impression of school. I am told kids are worked very hard here and depending on age may be in classes in the evening and on week-ends. They also have homework which keeps any budding delinquents off the streets. Last Friday I went to the modern looking Xintai University. Very spacious with fountain and ponds. Not so well equipped on the inside. However about twenty second year english majors met with me on their one afternoon free of classes and just wished to natter. I have also been exposed to a private language institute which was preparing the next day to have the state assess whether it would be licensed. They phoned me up (by way of foreigners I had met the day before) and invited me to evening class. As it turned out they wished me and an Australian to act as judges for a debate. Lo and behold after stellar judging and more than 200 points awarded to both teams (they debated the use or overuse of the internet) the teams were tied. The teacher was very keen to have a winner but we felt a tie was honourable and the teacher deferred. To-day I solved a mystery. Periodically I hear music wafting on the air. Turns out it comes from a nearby school yard where the whole school of about 1500 kids fall in on the parade ground and go through drill. Unlike our schools where several grades are represented all these kids seem the same age and height. It is impressive to watch them in unison. As for my learning, I have learned to pass other bikes on the outside where possible. This dipsy doodle procedure payed dividends when I just managed to avoid a fine spray of spit from an old gentleman the other morning, which was aimed curbside.