Cicadas

What a cacophony of sound. I have never heard anything like it, not even the frogs in the pond beside our house in Nova Scotia. The cicadas go through a life cycle incubating or whatever in the ground for 14 years before metamorphising. They then make up for their subterranean exile and rise to their lofty perch in the trees. For a month only! They are so deafening they drown out all else. Nature sure seems to have come up with an exercise in futility with this one. Probably what the junior, middle and senior students in my classes are saying about my teaching.

My Beijing hosts for the visit to a cavernous Peking Man site 

The Tibetan Buddhist Lhasa Temple in Miniature at Chengde

Colinfucius Say

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. So teachers take students swimming in sea. Many cut feet and ankles turn Yellow Sea into Red Sea. Chinese very happy to see national colours in water.

Friendship Hotel

I have just come from extricating a student's tape from the tape machine in my room. She wants me to play it in class to-morrow. Celine Dion gave the tapedeck indigestion it seems. Not only would I surely have lost the student's admiration for the duration but it would have jiggered my technical wizardry at oral class to-morrow. Whew! So now I have one week under my belt as a teacher. The Junior "B"s oral class is daily, supplemented by video sessions with middle and senior levels. Adult company employees from Wuhan will be here next week so the summer camp will take on a new feel. One teacher will even have to double up in rooming arrangements. One constant is the Russkie presence at the Friendship Hotel across the street. Better go. The humidity you can cut with a knife. I need a beer. Who cares if it really just dehydrates you.

Meatballs

Bill Murray may be better known for the cinematic spoof on summer camp than he is for Lost in Translation. No matter, he was a Canadian in the wilderness. This is not the wilderness although the marshes, waves and sea mist do give it a wild feel at times. So far teaching at summer language school has gone well. However I have only one class under my belt to date. Junior B is up next in a couple of hours. It will be bigger in size than Senior which I had yesterday. Salon, free discussion in the evening, is where it should all hang out. I will need to pace myself, there are businessmen from Henan coming next week and the workload will go up. Since this is a summer seaside resort the atmosphere around town is pretty festive, especially with the large Russian element. Some students have travelled 36 hours by train to get here. I have unpleasant memories of one eight hour trip so I can just imagine. Accommodation for teachers is fine but bare bones for the students. Looks like my visa shenanigans are just about over. Should be in Beidaihe for a month then back to Xingtai for a fortnight. Swim anyone?

Imperial Summer Villa, Chengde (my hotel room, top shelf) 

The scenery on the way to Inner Mongolia 

Whispering Pines

I have wished to give my Ottawa residence a name for a while. The pine trees and dragonflies here have given me inspiration. Thing is my backyard is full of Japanese lilacs and not a pine to be seen. The diesel fumes wafting in from the street don't lend themselves to the name either. How about Moon Breezes or Rumbling Waters (tummies more like, given the good food the tennants serve up from time to time).

Xanadu

I think it was the female Australian singer-turned-actress of twenty years ago (I forget her name perhaps fortuitously) who released Xanadu, the album. The palace of Xanadu was in fact the reidence of Kublai Kahn the Mongol tribal leader who ruled over the largest nation the world has ever known Not only was China subjugated in its entirity by foreigners (the only time to date if we exlude Microsoft) but the Mongol empire stretched all the way acoss the Steppes to Hungary. I was just in Inner Mongolia, a short train trip, well not so short at their speed, from the ruins of this palace. It seems exotic to say "I survived Mongolia", hence my sffort. The seven and a half hour trip from Chengde to Chifeng must be the best bargain in my travelling career. It cost just under three dollars and I would have paid a hundred. The scenery was superb, the weather great, the friendship making with PLA soldiers and a female student a great way to pass time, and there we have it. Chifeng apparently hosts equestrian events in the Olympics and I have been invited! Horsing around will come naturally although horse trading will probably lose me my shirt to the wise locals. Did I tell you about my fly on the wall listening-in to a conversation in the John Bull pub in Beijing? Some high flyers lead by a know-it-all Canadian were talking multi-million dollar financing for a new coal mine, provided one party could prove the geology to the other and win over the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region administration . I know the co-ordinates for this Bre-Ex type find. Any bidders?

BITE

After several frustrating days things are looking up considerably. I left Beidaihe at 5.30 am the other day to catch the minibus from Qinhuangdao on the coast to Chengde in the mountains. It is site of the UNESCO World Heritage Imperial Summer Villa. This dates to the Qing Dynasty, late 1700s, when the Emperor built his "Fleeing the Summer Heat" getaway. It has 72 designated beauty spots and it is larger than the Summer Palace and Forbidden City combined. In the minibus the longest-legged one (me) got the wheel casing seat which meant minimum flex for legs. In addition the woman in front was sick which over seven hours of bumpy ride was nothing to be ashamed of quite frankly. At one point we all were required to alight (relief) while the vehicle negotiated a muddy hill. Next we drove up a riverbed, not across as might have made sense. N.B. there is a fight outside as I type but if it does not measure up you will hear no more about it. The rule of thumb on the trip was to turn right at every fork and there were many let me tell you. All to-gether it was a great venture which I would repeat (remember turn right at every fork, see its easy, only one left but I won't say where) since it offered blue sky, open country, fresh air (all at a premium to date) and a stretch alongside a high ridge topped by the Great Wall. At times surroundings evoked the vineyards of Burgundy with tree lined country roads and tiled roofs to boot, at others the slopes of the Swiss Jura or in some places the foothills of the Rockies. Wooded areas could also have been Foresty Commission Scotland and the heat, corn and peasant villages had much in common with Mexico. Just like BITE (Beijing International Tourism Expo) the week before, you could travel the world and not leave China! Next Up: Mongols and Kublai Kahn

Imperial Summer Villa, Chengde, Built to Flee Heat of Beijing 

Rough Ride in Bus Up a River Bed on Way to Chengde 

Disgruntled

This was in my head two days ago but since I have had a good couple of days (of the more you put into it the more you get out of it variety). So for the sake of chronology here is the post. Until now my posts have been on the positive side. In teacher training they say watch for the fascination, frustration, friendship progression (with the midnight run home a common ending). I have experienced everything except the midnight run home. Frustration in part consists of the following: a recruiting agency where integrity is at a modicum; spitters who have gargantuan throat clearing and know no bounds or gender limits; train ticket offices that consistently oversell tickets so that each car has ten to twenty people standing and despite having a seat I have stood four or five times now; pickpockets who as yet have not victimized me although in Beijing I escaped a female decoy with her male partner trailing me; retailers who consistently try to take advantage; to-day it was batteries being sold at three times value, fruit at six times value and my favourite lollies at twice value (was I born yesterday?). The hotel also almost doubled its price because it is July so I decamped. Happy Canada Day incidentally to Johnny and Jane Canuck. In Beidaihe I purposefully gave business to an islamic restaurant. The waiter befriended me then blatantly ripped me off. I returned and after a ten minute discussion his duplicity was fully exposed. He tried to blame the owners. My friends warn me to beware of Chinese on the make and I have really seen a lot of attempts. Driving habits are atrocious. I just witnessed (was there, heard or saw or arrived before the police) five accidents. I have seen two close calls in vehicles I have been in (China close calls, not Canadian). The visa shell game of " We want our citizens to learn English, please come teach, but only on a long term contract will you be legal" is wearing. Going from hotel to hotel because only some accept foreigners is also a drag with heavy cases (foreigners have to fork over more at the more expensive joints). So there you have it. Not always a happy camper.