So, anyone who reads the comments from my last post would have seen that a very good friend from Australia seems to have taken offense at that last entry. The one about my first thoughts on car horns being “indicative of some inherent rudeness that the chinese have as a race”. I believe she may have referred to me as an ‘arrogant Whitie [making a] further small-minded superior judgement.’

Please understand that this was not my intention at all! In fact, I’ve been assiduous in NOT prejudging ANYTHING I see here. I make no judgements, unless to say “wow, that’s cool, I like that”, or “what a better system!” (For example, public transport here is top shelf). And as Leng does acknowledge later in her comment, I do go on to say that car honking here is NOT to do with rudeness but, for the most part, with POLITENESS. Please do not think that I am being racist with the comment in the earlier blog entry.

The Chinese are far from rude. They are a warm, friendly bunch, who always have a smile for me, the westerner whose Chinese is limited to things like “I want 3… whatever these are” and “how much is this?”. Most of the store keepers seem to know who I am, and I think my reputation has spread beyond my social sphere, to the point where I hear “audaliaren” (chinese for Australian) as I walk on the street.

In other news, Mushuk is growing rapidly, my webcam is up and running (so anyone with MSN version 6, put me in your contacts: catmac420@hotmail.com), and I start teaching tomorrow, so have little exciting or exotic news to share. I’m not nervous yet, but I’ve got five hours of class tomorrow. Ask me then whether I want to go home.

I watched Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon with Yang Yan Hua (Robin) the other day, and she told me that many of the desert scenes therein were actually filmed near Karamayi, which is only 1 or 2 hours from here. Yet another thing for my “to do” list! I’m told that they also have camels in Karamayi. It’s one of my goals for this year to ride a camel in the desert… But that might have to wait for Kashgar, where I think I shall go in the week I have off next spring.

till next time, preciousnesses!

Charlotte

Yesterday, I saw a guy with a motorbike and side carriage, with more passengers with him than I could comfortably fit in my Honda Civic. Even with all the junk taken out of it! He had two people dinking behind him, and one guy in the side carriage. It got me thinking about how rare it is here to have a car. Or even a license.

In Australia, it’s one of those coming-of-age rights of passage, to get your Learner’s Permit, and then your Probationary License. I got my “P’s” on the morning of my 18th birthday, at the earliest slot for the test appointment. Didn’t beat around the bush.

But here, getting a license is expensive, and buying a car, even more so. To buy an old bomb in Australia would cost, what, maybe a couple of grand? In China, that’s more than many people make in a year. I’m earning waaay above average for a school teacher, and could barely afford a car after a year’s wages.

So instead, people ride bikes, take buses, trains, horses, taxis, trailers pulled by tractors, anything at all. Everyone who’s anything owns a bike, and market stall owners transport their wares on those three wheeled bikes I told you about before. It was such a novelty to see them when I first arrived, but now, they’re quite normal.

I’m not sure whether it’s BECAUSE so few people can drive, or whether it’s a deciding factor in people deciding not to get a license, but the roads here are quite scary. Did I mention that before? Bears repeating, at any rate. Pedestrians and motorists alike, they leave NO margin of error in driving/crossing the street. When I first arrived here, I thought that the copious usage of the horn was indicative of some inherent rudeness that the chinese have as a race, that buses would honk even when overtaking. But I slowly began to realise that instead of it being a “get out of my way, you fucking prick!” type of honk, it was more like a “hello, just wanted to let you know that I was overtaking, just a friendly reminder!”, or perhaps a “hey there mr pedestrian, you’re not in my way, but I just wanted to let you know that I’m behind you, so don’t stray too far on to the road. Thankyou for your time,” kind of honk.

Or perhaps I just have rose coloured glasses on?

Taxis here are quite cheap. To go anywhere within Dushanzi, it only costs 5 yuan (AU$1), and to get to the next town over, Kuytun, only costs 20 yuan or so. I was glad of cheap taxis this evening, cause there was a torrential style downpour!

I went out for dinner with Michael, his friend Owen (cute Uyghur guy, who’s heading off to Beijing University in a couple of days – he has a lucrative scholarship to China’s top uni, and speaks fluent English with only 5 years learning, and no overseas travel – Genius level person), and Owen’s brother, Yiliham. Just as we were finishing the meal (yummy Kebabs, at Ckandar’s parent’s place) it started P!SSING down! But not before I got some nice pics of Ckandar – He’s leaving to go to school in his home town in a couple of days – he was just in Dushanzi for the summer…

The downpour was SERIOUSLY tropical – it got to full strength in the space of about 5 seconds, and was shortly thereafter punctuated by flashes and rumbles of thunder and lightning. The night market at Dushanzi is mosly outdoor, but there is an undercover area, to which everyone in the crowded place flocked, and there we stayed, yelling over the din of the rain on the tin roof. Very cool.

I reckon Owen is one of the coolest people I’ve met since I arrived here – he’s keen on life in general, and although he works so hard at school and stresses so much about it that he has a stomach ulcer (no hot food for him!), he’s a cheerful soul. It’s just plain unlucky for me, then, that he’s heading off for Beijing day after tomorrow. He may stay there for the Spring Festival (Jessie and have plans for Beijing and the Spring Festival, aka Chinese Lunar New Year), so perhaps I’ll see him again then!

His big brother is staying in Dushanzi, and we’ve decided that we shall be each other’s language coaches – he speaks just enough english to facilitate my learning from scratch, but not so much that we can fall back on it with any amount of ease. I’ll let you know how it works out!

So, My kitty finally has a name. He’s called Mushuk (mooSHOOK) which is the Uyghur word for “cat”. It’s simple, easy, and it’s not going to offend anyone, as people feel insulted if you call a cat after them here – they don’t like cats too much…

I’ve got my hours for teaching. I’m going to be teaching all four of the Kindergarten classes, three lessons a week for each. So 12 lessons of kinder every week. I expect weekends will be spent sleeping. In addition, I have one first grade class – four lessons a week, and one college class (ie tertiary), for four lessons a week. Tomorrow will be spent planning a schedule for lessons, and working out how in hell’s name I’m going to teach things to kids who don’t speak the same language as me. Any suggestions, comments, hints or tips, please direct them my way (catmac42@yahoo.com). I’m so very relieved, that I have no middle school classes – stress city, I’m told. But Michael has plenty of middle school classes, the poor lad. I guess they figure that seeing as he has a TEACHING DEGREE, he can handle himself better, and I reckon they’re probably right.

It really hit me today that this trip is not just about the adventure to China. It’s about a job, and it’s about doing the job well. Kang Laoshi took Michael and I to the primary school today to meet the headmasters and other teachers. It was a whirlwind visit, and the names came as a bit of a blur, but I did meet the other english teachers – three younger people, about my age and younger, freshly graduated from uni. They have English names like King, Sunny and Apple, which makes one wonder – are they projecting a chinese notion of what names should be (ie Green Summer Flower) into an English framework, not knowing that they don’t really work, or do they know exactly what they are doing when they choose names for themselves, and want to be distinctive?

Michael told me a funny story of one of the high school girls he taught briefly (he was filling in for someone else) – this girl had given herself the English name of “Easy”. As in “hi, I’m Easy”.

As English teachers, it is partly our responsibility to give these kids English names, and Michael has a set of kids from one of his classes named after Simpsons characters – Bart, Lisa etc. So what shall I call my kids? Hmmm, names spring to mind like, Buffy, Willow, Xander (I already gave this name to Ckandar at the market, who’s name probably has the same origins as Xander – Alexander, as FreeSoup (I think) pointed out), then I shall move on to things like Mal, Jayne, Simon, Kaylee, Inara etc. For the most creative and intelligent child in the class, the best name shall be given – Joss.

*Charlotte runs around the room, laughing maniacally, arms flailing, fingers twitching*

Ahem.

The weather here has for the most part been mild and sunny. I’ve had to out to get an umbrella to sheild myself from the sun – the brollies here have UV Protection ratings on them, and have reflective coatings on them like a tent to keep the heat out. Pretty freaky. But the advantage of weather like this is the outdoor restaurants. The Chinese are a social bunch, and with these delightful 80 cent long necks (I promise I’ll stop talking about them soon!), dining out is a pleasure. Here’s one of a nice little joint that Mick, Robin and I went to the other day:

You can see how nice it is at this time of year. The meal we ate here cost us 12 yuan – about $2.50. I felt guilty…

It’s so very green here in general – there are trees and grass throughout the town (grass that people so law abidingly avoid walking on, mostly), and sprinklers seem to be running all day. It’s the sound of summer, the summer of my childhood before drought and water restrictions, and the sound of fun. On weekends, they have a couple of big fountains around town, which turn on to be coordinated with music. They’re these fountains that you can walk through when they’re not on – more like holes in the ground, and no pond for the water to gather in. When they turn on, families come out with their children, and the kids all attempt to run though the raised platform where the fountain is, during the brief time when no water is spurting out, between songs.

The demograpic in Dushanzi is very much slanted to young children. It’s almost as if there was a baby boom here five or six years ago – the mere fact that there is only one grade three class and FOUR kindergarten classes suggests that people have begun to decide that Dushanzi is a nice place for a family.

And it certainly seems that way, at least now, during summer. Though the apartments generally only have two bedrooms, for the Han chinese people (ie the majority of the population), that’s all they need, what with the One Child policy and all. I can sort of see the benefits of having the size of your family planned for you – you know that you will only ever have one child to care for, so you have little uncertainty in your life. Of course, time will tell as to whether this generation of Only Children will grow up to be a population of spoilt adults, becoming the bane of global political scene. Who knows?

I got an email from my brother Michael today, asking me for any sordid details that might be forthcoming, or at least for any juicy goss about handsome men. The conclusion that I have come to, at least for the moment, dear reader, is that all the men here are either too young, or married. They get married here awful early – around 23, 24, so I’ve pretty much missed the boat on that score. I’ll just have to find myself a toyboy… NOT!

Speaking of which, I was walking on the street today to meet Shasha, and a young man on a bike (charming smile) slowed to ride beside me as I walked. He began to try his english on me (very common), and asked if we could be friends (quite innocent, I’ve had plenty of kids ask me this – I think it’s a common thing which has been taught in class). He was cute too. I thought, ok, nice college boy, maybe 22, it’ll be good to meet some chinese people close to my age. Imagine my disappointment when I discover that he’s only 17. Grrrrrr.

Picking the age of a chinese person is not an easy thing. Often, I’ve met very young people and have mistaken them for older.

Ah, well, it’s time for bed, preciousnesses.

Until next time, Charlotte

So, I went out to my favorite restaurant tonight, to grab some take away food cause I was lazy and didn’t want to cook. The people inside are so very friendly, and I think they are perhaps a little proud that The Australian has chosen to be a regular in their place. After a bit of mime and dictionary usage, they understood that I wanted some food to go, and five minutes later presented me with the dish that they knew I liked, the Five Coloured Chicken Threads dish. Unlike chinese food at home (which comes in little plastic boxes, for the non aussies out there), the genuine chinese just dump the food straight into a plastic bag. If they like you, they’ll double bag it to prevent leakage (they like me!).

When I got home, I jumped online as I was waiting for Michael to finish whatever it was he was doing in his apartment (I’d taken on the responsibility of introducing him to The Fifth Element, as he’s NEVER seen it before, and he calls himself a scifi buff!), and who should be on Messenger but the Charming Matthew From Edinburgh, the delightful host of this here blog. Snaps for Matthew for the blog, by the way! *snaps*

After copious amounts of teasing about his accent, though I’ve never actually heard it, I went on to make him exceedingly jealous over my yummy food. He suggested, at this juncture, that I take a photo of it, so that he could at least SEE how yummy it looked. So I did. I was so pleased with the result that I have to share it with the world, not just Matt. So here it is:

Matt said that it looked like maggots, but I tell you what, it tastes like heaven-in-a-bowl!

I’m getting better with chopsticks!

Are you jealous yet?

I’ve had a stack of questions from people about how the food is here. So I thought I’d fill you in. In a word – EXCELLENT.

In this area, you can get two broad food types, I gather – Chinese and Uyghur. They are both YUMMY as!

I’ve become a convert of Eggplant, having met this sensational dish called Hong shao cie zi which is basically wok fried eggplant qith fresh tomatos, spring onion and peppers. Yummo. Food here is so totally removed from the greasy “chinese” food we get at home – it’s freshly prepared whether you get take out or otherwise. The eggplant dish is so hot, you have to blow on each chopstick-full for about ten seconds, and even then, it’s HOT! Not to mention spicy. That’s one thing I’m going to have to get used to – the spicy food. You know how in australia, they put heaps of capsicum in the food? well here, it’s not capsicum, it’s hot peppers, plus chilli peppers if the mood takes them. There’s also another dish which michael and I discovered by random pointing at the menu, which literally translates (sort of) to “five coloured chicken threads”. Basically it’s chicken cut into long strips, with other long thin strips of what might be cabbage, pepper, carrot etc. It’s tasty as. I’ve found a nice little restaurant, where the staff are friendly, and try a little english when we attempt our chinese (this is rare – generally chinese people just do that silly western thing when faced with someone who doesn’t understand – they speak louder: a pointless and often intimidating thing to do when the foreigner has very little grasp of the language).

Another thing that westernised chinese food does not have is copious amounts of brothy, soupy food. We Aussies like our beef and black bean sauce nice and thick, thankyou, but it’s common for chinese people to have noodles or some such with a stack of liquidy broth. It takes a bit of getting used to in the mornings, cause they have something like that for breakfast. I’m starting to wish I’d brought some Vegimite with me (for the non australians, vegimite is a “vile” looking black salty substance, which you spread thinly onto bread or toast. A favorite breakfast/snack food).

So. A description of my restaurant experience: You go into a restaurant, sit down with your mates, and are immediately given chinese tea, either in hyper thin plastic cup in a little solid plastic cup holder, or for the more classy joints, in a ceramic cup with a little lid to keep it hot. If you’re with a chinese speaker, you let them order for you (at least, I do!), and if you’re with no native speakers, you (I) point to a dish and say “la, bo la?”, which means, “hot, not hot?”, or “is this dish spicy?”. once you’ve ordered your food, you sit around being starred at by the natives (one gets over this very quickly, and good will can be generated by smiling at the starrers), and then the food comes, along with a bowl of rice each, or if it’s a large group, a large bowl of rice with a zhao zi, spoon. There are no serving spoons for the food dishes – you grab some disposable chopsticks, and take what you want from the dishes, and bung them ontop of the rice. either that, or you just go straight from the dish to your mouth with the chopsticks. I’m SO much better with chopsticks now than i was before.

You can expect to get a good chinese meal, three dishes, for 3 people for no more than 10 quai (10 yuan) each – there’s about 8 yuan to the USD, and about 5 to the AUD. So about Aussie $2 for a totally filling meal.

Uyghur food is a bit arabic, but not in the westernised sense. They have lots of yummy breads – I’ve tasted the Uyghur bagels – YUM! they’re thick and heavy, and all they need is a bit of toasting and some sundried tomato cream cheese, and voila! you’re in New York! But these bagels are native to the Uyghurs – rumour has it that they INVENTED them. They also eat a lot of mutton. You can get more meat from a mutton than from a lamb, i’d imagine. The chinese seem to turn their noses up at the mutton, and the lack of Pork (Uyghurs are pretty much entirely muslim), but their food is delicious. I’ve been to the Ughur night market, where you can get a shish kebab (called Koro, or something) for 1 yuan, so you sit down, buy 20 each, with beer (at about 3 yuan a bottle, for 600 ml) and the flat bread that we know as nan, which is also called nan(g?) here. The Uyghur people are vastly friendly towards westerners (or at least, to Australians – the aussie involvement in the second gulf war was assiduously and deliberately downplayed to the international media by aussie politicians, and for that, I am so very grateful!), and the children at the night market were happy to come along and practise their english. I went there with Robin (chinese girl, english teacher) and micheal the other day, though, and got the distinct impression that Robyn was not comfortable there – I think there are very real tensions between the Uyghurs and the chinese. But as the night wore on, and I got more beer into her – it’s my goal to de-inhibit her – she loosened up a bit. I’ve secured her promise to come with me to the local pool hall and play some pool – this is a game that seems to be generally reserved for boys here, and I think it’s time to shake things up a little.

Today, michael and I went in search of the rumoured coffee place, where they serve REAL coffee. I’m glad that I didnt get my hopes up – I ordered a cappucino, and got a luke warm, sweet milk with coffee and a bit of froth ontop. I think I can stick to freeze dried nescafe. But then again, coming from Melbourne, noone’s coffees will ever be good enough (non australians – Melbourne is australia’s coffee meccah)

It is my goal to be able to cook chinese food by the time i leave here, but this has been hampered my my lack of gas connected to my apartment. A gas tank arrived outside my door today, but there are no pipes for connecting them to my stove, so I shall have to wait a little longer. I even have an eggplant and several tomatoes for trying my hand at hong shao qie zi, too. I’m all ready, but there’s no cooking wih gas yet…

Love to all! Charlotte

I can go home now. I’ve seen a yak. I got a photo. My work here is done.

Just kidding.

Wow, what a few days! I’m currently reeling from the AU80c longnecks that they sell at the night market here (don’t worry, I had strong macho men to protect me for the 10 min walk home), so forgive the spelling mistakes… This place is amazing! I’m having the BEST time! But let’s start from where I left off last time…

SO. After spending a few nights in Urumqi (wooloomootchie), Mr Kang (they call him Chairman Kang here – he used to be the head of education for this entire region before he “retired” – now he’s “just” the headmaster of the local tafe and private school…) and I hooked up in Urumqi with a school excursion from Dushanzi, made up of about 40 bright kids between the ages of 15 and 17. We were headed for the South Mountain on the first day. I had NO idea what to expect – Mr Kang’s spoken english is nowhere near as good as his written english, and we’d done NO writing in our time together – all I knew was that we were going to a mountain, and then staying “somewhere” not in the mountains that night, and then the following day, we’d go to Tianshu. This last bit suited me fine, cause from my Lonely Planet guide, Tianshu is one of THE things to do around Urumqi.

Anyhoo, I knew NOTHING about the South Mountain, so it was all a bit of a pleasant surprise. we drove from Urumqi for about an hour and a half, through landscape that I would soon recognise as the norm for that area – neat feilds of corn, potatoes and sunflowers, all of them almost ready for harvest – you know that healthy look that well grown corn has (waaaay higher than an elephant’s eye!), and sunflowers with HUGE big gorgeous flowers, looking like they are about to burst? That was what it was like. Just beautiful. But that’s not the half of it. The roads here are all lined with what I think are a kind of oak, or maybe birch. they’re tall and thin, but when they get bigger, they branch out a little. The effect is of some sort of pastural paradise. I asked Shasha (one of the english teachers on the trip, more about her later!) where the water came from to keep all of this green (we are, after all, on the outskirts of the Gobi here…), and she smiled and basically told me that they have all the snowmelt that they want during summer, Urumqi essentially being in the pass between two snow capped mountains, where snow stays even during summer time.

We kept driving through this farmland, where the houses are mostly mudbrick and there are as many donkey carts pulling produce and hay etc as there are tractors and cars, until we reached the base of a large set of mountains – South Mountain. At this point, cars (apart from our bus) were replaced by Kazaks and Uyghurs on horses. Seriously, I only saw three petroleum propelled vehicles by the time we were halfway up the mountain, and they were all attached to our entourage – two buses and a car. After much honking of horns at the horseriders, and gravel road ALL of the way up, we reached our end point – the place beyond which the bus could no longer go – we’d already the mountain river three times on the way up, but the forth one was just too much for the bus, and after getting out and consulting with the locals, the bus driver decided that trying to get across the final stream was just too much.

So they parked the bus, and we all hopped off – into this picture of eastern european landscape, steep slopes on either side, green grass that looks freshly mowed, but which is kept cropped closely by the sheep, goats and horses. After crossing the stream, jumping from rock to rock, we came to a little Kazak and Uyghur (weegurrr) village, made up entirely of Yurts – round tents richly decorated inside with tapestry and cushions. The only form of transport up there, apart from our buses, seemed to be the horses, whose saddle blankets were colourful and detailed, and reminded me of south american cloth.

I headed off with some of the students and a couple of the teachers further up the river, where there were some cute little waterfalls, and a steep narrow canyon with conveniently sedimented rock on either side – perfect footholds. We climbed around for a while, took some photos (I seem to be a vast novelty for these people – all the kids wanted photos with me!). Fortunately, my photos include more of them than of me:

After all of this marlarking, we headed back down for some traditional Uyghur food – rice cooked in a HUGE wok (about 1 m in diameter!) with chopped veggies and mutton. It was not too bad at all, and i’m getting better with chopsticks… Here’s me in the Yurt, with a bowl of horses milk infront of me (SOUR!!!). On the right is ShaSha, who’s nearly finished her masters in teaching, and has read more classic english literature than I have, and on the left is Kang Laoshi, my boss. He’s a top bloke, even though he’s not smiling in this pic!

A note on Uyghurs: they are without a doubt amongst the handsomest race amongst the Chinese population. They have the best of the “halfie” looks (most of them), along with the best bits of the Arab looks. With a little bit of high cheek boned russian thrown in for good measure. Of course, there is the odd one who has all the worst features of these racial groups, but by-and-large, they are a fine looking folk, and very friendly.

After a day of frolicking around the mountain, it was time to descend again, and on reaching semi civilisation again (ie mudbrick huts and donkey carts), we arrived at a hotel that was more like a dorm room for the night. To give you an idea, my pillow was stuffed with what felt like grain husk… I didn’t care, I was knackered, on top of having a slight bout of intestinal difficulty (quite normal with a change in climate and diet, i’m not fussed), so I was off to bed. But not before a quick stroll around the small town where we were staying, where the open air skating rink was still open at around 11pm.

The next day, we all piled into the bus again, and started out for Tianshu (spelling varies here), which literally means Sky Lake, but translates to Heavenly Lake. The ride up there was smoother and more picturesque than the ride up the south mountain – we were beside a river almost all the time, which at the moment is only taking up about 1/4 of the flat river bed that it runs through. I can imagine that during the spring, the river would be full and fast. There are trees growing in the middle of the river bed, and they are shored up by a neat little circle maybe 2m in diameter of chicken wire filled with large river stones, I guess to stop the trees from being swept away in the spring snow melt floods. The effect is that of a well kept park, with all of the grass cropped short (by cattle), and Yurts lining the river on either side. The only problem is the rubbish. This place had rubbish everywhere – plastic bags, bottles, cans, papers. Rubbish hoppers, presumably for the Kazaks and Uygurs, were full and overflowing, looked like they’d not been emptied in a while. This was a real pity – cause the place is so beautiful otherwise.

The lake itself was like a swiss postcard – from where we arrived from, the mountains surrounding the lake pretty much drew the eye to the snow capped peaks that were higher up the chain of mountains, perfectly framed by the lake and other mountains. Just beautiful.

I saw my first yak here by the shores of the SkyLake, it being unfortunately a tourist yak, where people could dress up in Kazak costume and sit on the yak to have their photo taken. That was one incredibly long suffering yak. It was also white, which I would guess would be a special thing (like the albino camel i saw on the Discovery show about the Gobi Desert. V cool. But why yabber when I can SHOW you? The lady shown on the yak is, unfortunately, not a Kazak, but one of these tourists who dress up. It’s still a pretty pic, however!

One interesting thing about the waterfalls coming off the lake was that a couple of them looked distictly man made. There was actually a sign with an english explanation for this: There was a general during the Ming Dynasty who built the cataracts with his soldiers, so that they could essentially control the flow of water coming down from Tianshu. So that makes the whole man made thing more bearable, that it was a man made thing several hundred years old.

This all sounds a bit like a remote paradise, but the only problem was the FLOCKS of people up there. They were EVERYWHERE. Check out all the people at this serene looking pavilion:

Anyhow. I felt incredibly happy that I’d arrived in Xin Jiang province when I did, or else I would have had to have organised all of this excursion by myself. It just fell in my lap. Like everything else seems to have. I’m in Dushanzi now, and am having a marvellous time. I shall write shortly about my experiences since I arrived, but if this email gets any longer, I’ll be linched by some when I get home.

I miss you all, and hope that the Aussie winter/northern hemisphere summer is not treating any of you too badly. The weather here is PERFECT.

I’m in an internet cafe in Urumqi, the weather is sunny and mild, and i’m a happy camper!

So, where did I last leave off? Ahh yes, the internet cafe in Shanghai.

After we left there, I was (as I think i mentioned), STARVING! My guide took me to a Sechuan restaurant, where in the middle of stinking hot Shanghai, the tables had a huge gas cooker in the middle, and a large pot filled with meat and raw veggies was put ontop of it, and brought to the boil. I’m going to lose SO much weight here – the food is so hard to grasp with chopsticks, so by the time I’ve been eating for half an hour, I’m either bored with the idea of food, or it’s all just too much effort for what the food is. I’m keeping an open mind about food in general, and have adopted the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy with a vengeance. After we were done eating, it was a pleasure to walk out again into hot humid shanghai – the restaurant had been even hotter…

John then took me to a “party” with his friends, which was really just three of his friends in another restaurant, with good aircon (you starting to see where my priorities lie?), and they were eating a HUGE pile of prawns, wearing plastic gloves. There was Japanese beer on the table, and somehow the subject came up of Japan. John said that he loved japanese beer, but HATED the japanese people. I asked why (surely they could not still be harbouring resentment from WW2?), and sure enough, it was because of the atrocities caused by the japanese during the war. The particular quoted was that the Japanese managed to kill 200,000 chinese civilians in nanjing in only 3 (days? weeks?). I then made the mistake of saying “yeah, but the germans managed to kill 3 million jews, and jews of my generation are not (as far as I can tell), wholeheartedly bent against the germans”. Bad move. Note to self – steer clear of discussing politics with chinese people. The conversation continued for a little longer about how bad the japanese where, then there was a moment of uncomfortable silence. But then the conversation was steered to less controversial subjects…

The next day was the train trip. I wasn’t due to leave until 6pm, and john had stuff to do, so I had the day to myself. I wasn’t going to stray too far from the hotel (heat, fear of getting lost), so I walked down a few streets nearby. I had to cross one busy road, and discovered the trick of it – find a chinese person who looks confident and careful, and stick close to them. it’s like that old game of Frogger, where you have to dodge traffic. westerners would fare poorly without a chinese guide of some kind, i think. Either that, or they would have nerves of steel or thick nappies. I stopped at one point to buy a pair of sunnies from a street vendor (the type who’s wares are laid out on a blanket with string attached to the corners for a quick getaway from cops), and gathered a modest crowd of onlookers, all wanting to help with translation (or in one case, offer me a lift on a tree wheeled bike). The street vendor looked positively dazed to be faced by this big westerner wanting to buy her stuff. I felt kinda sorry for her – she was dirty, and looked kinda pathetic. I’d have bargained a big more fiercely, but AU$7 for some sunnies is decent, and that’s what capitalism is all about – my utility versus the vendor’s… we were both happy with the deal, i think…

The train trip began as the scariest thing i’ve done in my life. John took me to the station, and we hauled my HUGE bag on board, only to discover that it would not fit on the top racks, and the five people I was sharing an open compartment with didn’t want it in their area. John and an old man argued for a while – well, in chinese, it seems like they’re arguing ALL the time, and I gathered later that they were having a civilised conversation, the old man suggesting that we get the bag looked after by the carriage attendant. So we did. John called her an angel, and told me to always “beleive her”. i think He meant “trust”.

The train left, with John waving from the platform, and me feeling forlorn on the train, miserable because I thought the old man in my little area of the carriage thoguth that the big westerner was being too much hassle. “51 hours of this?” was my thought. I felt totally unwelcome in an area that I’d paid for, and what’s more, i was on the top bunk of 3, with NO head space at all.

But gradually, I became a bit more comfortable, and I think it was the children who were the ice breakers. they were very curious, and all came up to me saying “halloo!”. there were a few other young people (ie under 30) in the carriage who were eager to practise their english on me, and so over the next 2 and a half days, I made quite a few friends, and may even have become somewhat of a celebrity on that particular carriage.

The landscape that we passed through was fascinating (which was, after all, why i’d opted for the train and not the plane), and I saw the land turn from city to lush country with patchworked feilds of various crops, to land that looked more like rockbank – greenish, with straggly grasses and bushes, to desertish land, bits of grass here and there, to full on desert, plain rocks and small hills that looked like they’d been recently heaped there by a mining operation, like a slag heap. they were natural, though. just amazing. that was over the first and second day. half way through the second day, I was told that we were entering the Gobi Desert. I don’t think I’ve really left it! The view became flat flat flat, with craggy, dry looking mountains in the distance, which approached so quickly that i realised that most of the time, they were just small, very sharp hills…

food was a problem in the beginning of the trip. by the time i got on the train, i’d not eaten since breakfast, and then, i’d only had about 10 bites of noodle and 2 eggs. I was utterly hungry, but had a spot of difficulty getting food once on the train – every time a food cart went by, I was unprepared, and it went by so fast that by the time i clambered down from my bed, or raced back to where my wallet was (dont worry, sara, i could see my bag at all times – in the top rack!), the food cart had gone. I think that on the morning of the second day, the people in my little compartment realised that i’d not eaten the whole time, and offered me a peach. My god, I was so grateful (by this time, i’d not met the other english speakers), cause i’d not eaten in about 26 hours. Starved, I was. Very good for the figure, though, i’m sure. The next time the train stopped at a station, I was prepared, and jumped off to grab some dried noodles and fruit. That’s pretty much all I ate on the train, except a few slurps of beer (80c for a long neck! cool!), which i felt like a philistine drinking straight out of the bottle (I had no cup!) so I stopped drinking it…

The last day of the trip, although I felt happy and confident with the people on the train, I was ready to get off. I think an overnight train trip would be fine, but 2 nights was just too much… I think I shall fly home… The other downer of the last day was that I woke up and went to the toilet – the toilets were these wierd little arabic numbers, where you squat, and there was no toilet paper. Who was it who told me to bring loo paper? whoever it was, they’re a saint. I had mine with me, and made GOOD use of it!. Anyway, I was snoozy after a sleep, but at least had the presence of mind to take my wallet to the toilet with me. but then mind presence fled, and i left the wallet in there! with my visa card and bank card in it, and all my cash (300Yuan, about au$75)! I went back to bed, and was woken by a shake on my foot – the lady who was in the the compartment next to mine had gone to the loo and had found my wallet! but three men had been in it before me, and all the cash was gone. but at least the cards were there. Note to self – split eggs into multiple baskets.

anyhoo. I spent no time crying over spilt milk, so to speak, and at least the cards were there. I’m keeping positive, can you tell?

Mr Kang (my boss) was not able to actually enter the train station to meet me (sars, and renovations), and I had no money at all to pay a human pack horse to help me with my baggage (it would have only cost me about $1), so I lugged all of my stuff up and down stairs to the station entrance, and Mr Kang was mercifully there. He’s a stocky man, about 65 (I would have said, maybe, 57 max, but he told me 65), who’s english is good enough to get by. He only began to learn at the age of 60, so he’s doing a stellar job, only problem being that he smiles and nods when I think he has not understood. I get this impression from the fact that I told him that all my money was stolen, and he smiled and nodded, and said “ok, ok”…

He took me back to the hotel (SHOWER!!!!), and then today, we went around Urumqi. This place is awesome, and less intimidating than Shanghai. There is a freeway running through which goes from Turpan in the south east, through urumqi to somewhere else. ONe of the guys on the train told me that it was funded by the world bank, and looking around here, I believe him – the least prosperous parts of this place look in better nick than those in Shanghai. I’d say there has been a lot of money injected into urumqi in the past few years – trainstation renovations, street widening – there is scaffolding everywhere, and new buildings and facades everywhere as well. The wide streets are lined with trees, and there is a sweet little park outside my hotel, which looks more like a tame-ish forest. I think that with my spare afternoon – Mr Kang is working – I will go to the park and read.

Last night, I decided to be assertive, and told Mr Kang that I was HUNGRY! (I’d not eaten since my morning noodles, cause my money was stolen), so he took me for dinner at a big swish looking restaurant, and fed me yummy tomatoes and scrambled eggs, and chicken stomachs with veggies. yum. no, really, it was delicious. I only wish he hadn’t told me that they were chicken stomachs! Anyway, Mr kang got on his mobile phone, dialled a number, and passed it to me. It was Michael Rose at the other end! The guy who’d organised for me to come! who’s teaching english now in Dushanzi! It was great to talk to him, and it looks like I’ll meet him in the flesh tomorrow, cause Mr Kang is taking me to TianShu, or The Heavenly Lake, which was HIGH on my Urumqi to-do list. There is a school excursion going there, and Michael says that he was contemplating going, and now that he knows that i am going, will almost definitely be there. Finally, after months of emailing backwards and forwards, I meet the man himself in the flesh.

I have to say, it was refreshing to talk to someone and not have to talk at 30 wpm, and be sure that they’d understand every word…

anyway, back to today. Mr Kang took me around a few Uyghur markets today – a veritable bazzarr of middle eastern wears. Jewellery, clothes, scarves, animal skins, and a whole stack of stores selling ornate knives in sheathes – very 101 Arabian Nights. This is a very Muslim area – instead of all the signs being in PinYin and Chinese, they’re in Chinese and Arabic. Just before, from out on the street, I could hear a derabouka being played. This place is totally a china – persia mix. I’m glad/annoyed that I had no money (went to the bank AFTER the markets) – I’m not sure I have ANY more space, and before I start buying cool exotic stuff from the Silk Road, I’ll have to ensure that I can afford to send it home…

I regret to inform that my camera was not working (flattery battery) during the train trip, so no graphic explanation aides are forthcoming. but NOW i have batteries and a charger, so I have no excuse…

Here is a happy snap of an Urumqi street outside the little enclave where my hotel was:

Here is a nice pic of the park just outside my hotel and the main street:

That’s all for now, preciousnesses. Will probably email from Dushanzi, unless I find something sooner. and apologies for the rushed descriptions – there was so much to catch up on!

Love to all, Charlotte

I’m boiling hot. Shanghai is possibly the hottest, most humid place i’ve ever been, with the exception of melbourne on that one day last january where everyone was just wilting. I remember, it was 2 days before imogen left…

But despite all that, Im having the BEST time in Shanghai. This place is incredible. it’s busy, bustling, and fascinating.

I was met at the airport by “John”, my guide, whose family lives in Dushanzi (but his brother lives in Beijing, doing his 4 years national service – I think) John’s english is WAY better than my chinese (not too hard!), and with the help of a dictionary and copious amounts of writing things down, we get by. He took me to the hotel where he works, which i get the impression is run by one of the (or THE) petroleum companies in Xin Jiang. It has aircon which seems to struggle a little, but gets by, and a god send of a shower, which sucks by aussie standards, but it sprays out cold water, so i’m happy!

On the way to the hotel, as we got closer and closer into shanghai (pudong airport is about an hour to the south east), the view from the car window began to change, from beautifully landscaped freeways (they drive like maniacs here, and make copious use of car horns!) to roads with more and more bike riders. All sorts of bikes – two wheelers, vespers, scooters, and those cool three wheeled contraptions that you see in postcards. They’re basically a guy in front, pedalling, and in the back, there’s a little trailer ontop of the two back wheels, which generally hold: a) veggies/wares etc b) a person, c) a whole family or d) all of the above plus two live geese trussed up with heads sticking out, looking hot. I’m serious.

The floating population is very apparent here. people need a permit to work in a particular province (i think), and if they don’t want to work there, they can either apply to move elsewhere (must cost money!), or they can just move, and basically be homeless. They’re called “floating population”, and I think that they don’t appear on population estimates etc.

Anyway, after a few hours of resting up at the hotel, John came back and, with his mate and collegue, “Tony”, who also comes from Xin Jiang (I think!), we went SHOPPING! it was night by this time, and a little cooler, but not much. they first took me by subway to a place which was, I’m sure, a michael and sandy heaven – an entire shopping mall of techno junkie stuff. It was called “cybermart”. I found a nice little digital camera by Olympus, but the mall were almost closing by this stage, about 8pm. They wouldn’t take visa (or were reluctant to – i’m sure the cash economy is thriving in Shanghai!), so I tried to go downstairs to the atm, to get a cash advance – I’d left EVERYTHING else from my wallet in the hotel, so I didn’t have my savings card. Anyway, for some reason I couldn’t get any money out. grrrr. So we had to tell them that we’d come back tomorrow. Here beganeth my stress about being able to access money, ill founded, in the end. So we had to tell the camera sellers that we would come back the next day.

Here’s the view from my hotel window, onto a seedy looking, positively wilting shanghai street:

We then went shoe shopping, and there were sales on in one of the department stores. The boys were very patient with me, as I think I went a little bonkers, being in shoe heaven. the shoes were SO PRETTY! my bonker-ness was short lived, unfortunately, when the sales assistants looked at my huge western feet every time I wanted to look at a shoe in my size, shaking their heads to say that they didn’t come in my size. oh well. I ended up buying some plain old sandals, and mindful of my severe lack of baggage space, left it at that. i’m starting to feel shoe madness take hold again though, and I think I will have to buy some more…

After the shoe shopping, I experienced what all the tour books say shanghai is famous for – the NIGHTLIFE! we went to a district which used to be old mansions (I think), which have all been converted into bars and restaurants, and sat there drinking YUMMY (expensive!) chinese beer, and attempting to communicate, and laughing over our efforts. Tony’s english is a little better than John’s, but we waded through massive language barriers, cause the only dictionary I had was my little lonely planet phrase book. Note to self： Always bring dictionary.

Regardless, I had an awesome time, lots of laughter, and I was given my chinese name, Xia Lu Ti, (pronounced shar-loo-t(ee)), which means Green Summer Flower.

This morning, I was woken by a missed phone call (which i discovered later was a wake up call from John) at 10 am – yes, S&G people, some things never change! After a shower on the cooler side of lukewarm, I headed down to breakfast. I’d forgottent the note to self, and had left my dictionary in the room. I was quickly surrounded by a gaggle of waitresses as we tried to work out what I wanted for breakfast – the menus were all in chinese. one girl knew the word for egg, and milk, and bread, and after a bit of mime, and a short wait, I was presented with a plate with a fried egg, sunny side up as requested, untoasted bread (wish I had my dictionary!) and a glass of warm milk (i was expecting cold! but it’s all good!) I headed back up to my room to wait for John, and when he got there, we set out again in search of a camera .

First stop was the Bank of China, where I had more luck with an ATM, using my plain old Bank of Melbourne cash card. Unbeleivable that that worked where Visa did not. We went back to the cyber mart, and first off bought me a cd-mp3-atrac player. for the non techno minded amonst you, that means a pretty whizbang machine, for about 60% of the price in australia. then we went back to the camera place and got the camera that i had my eye on. it’s not the world’s most sophisticated machine, but it will do the trick, and it has the right leads to plug into a computer. I hope. For those with the requisite machinery, I also got a cheap little webcam, so that if you have ms messenger and a webcam, you can talk to me and see me at the same time… Oh the joy!

It was impressive to see the boys bargain, I must say. Every price here is negotiable. They pulled down the prices, using tactics (i think) like, “the plug is wrong for the australian, and for anything other than windows xp, she has to install drivers, oh! the inconvenience!” Thusly, I got them for better prices than I’d get if i was by myself. Hoorah for natives!

Midday weather in shanghai at this time of year is … interesting. To be avoided, if one can. But if one can’t, one gets used to it.

I’m typing now at an internet bar a short walk Shanghai Station, where things look noticeably less prosperous. Houses are in disrepair, roofs are made up of mismatched layers of corrugated Iron (hot!) and planks, and kids follow behind as we walk. As a matter of fact, everywhere we go, people stare at the foriegner (ie ME!). I have seen NO other westerners in the street, and only a few at the bar last night. I’m not overly bothered by it, in fact, sometimes its cute to see a little girl staring up in bemusement, especially when all of a sudden she comes out with a “HALLOO!”. Plenty of people yell that out to me on the street, and provided it’s not by hawkers or kids attached to hawkers (“bad children”, john says), I grin and yell “HALLOO!” back. and if they stare, I just make eye contact and smile. At breakfast this morning, a large school group (yr 12s, I’d say) were herded in, and they all had a good gawk at the australian. So I looked at some of them and smiled, and had a chuckle when they broke off eye contact. I would say that they looked embarrased at being caught staring, but who knows? maybe by making eye contact and smiling, i’m committing cultural faux pas.. There is so very much that I don’t know about this culture, and i’m being very careful not to pidgeon hole any reactions I see. At least, not until I can understand the language and get things explained to me.

I’ll give you an update on that in 10 months!

Enough from me now. I’ve not eaten since the egg this morning, and i’m starving. (it’s 7pm now) I’m taking the 51 hour train trip tomorrow, so no guarantees about when I’ll be able to email again. Probably not till i’m in dushanzi.

love to all!

Xia Lu Ti, the green summer flower