This christmas marked the most westerners I’ve seen together in one place (not counting tourist spots like Dunhuang). The morning after the Christmas Concert in Dushanzi, Michael and I hopped in a cab and headed off for Kelamayi for the big western chrissy dinner that was planned for the dixaine de foriegn teachers up there. Our boss, Kang Laoshi, very kindly paid for the cab, as we’d missed the last bus up the night before. Which was might nice of him, cause it’s a two hour cab ride. And slightly safer in the snow and ice.

After wandering around a little in Kelamayi, we ended up having to be met by Patty (one of the crazy canadian blokes) to get to his place, me having never been there, and Michael being directionally challenged.

It was wonderfully relaxing to just be with westerners and not have to worry about leaving Chinese people out of the joke when we babble on in English (although there was one Chinese person at the do, the wife of one of the American teachers, but her english is practically flawless). We ate chrissy dinner potluck style in Chris and Pat’s apartment, interspersed with constant international and local Christmas phone calls in and out of the westerner’s apartment block. I called my family from an apartment downstairs, first phone call pretty much since the “hi, I’ve arrived safe and sound” five months ago. Twas nice.

Much mirth and merriment was to be had, and then out came the instruments for what started out being christmas carol jamming that deteriorated (in a good way) into just plain music jamming, with old classics like The Lion Sleeps tonight. God, it’s good to play music with folk.

That night, however, was the fun part. There’s this awesome little bar in Kelamayi called “Culture of September”, which has enough atmosphere to do the funkiest place in Melbourne proud. They’ve got a stage set up with a nice little mixer, and a house band who provide guitars etc for basically an open mic session every night. People get up on stage, and the house band jams along. SO much fun! Some of us westerners got up for a spell, me on fiddle and the others on guitar and singing (Pat christened the band on stage, “The Ni Hao Lawais” – The Hello Foreigners, much to the mirth of the audience), and we played some Ben Harper and some other folky stuff. Here’s the stage set up. Sweet! Or as we now say, “tian de!” (sweet in chinese):

Beer flowed freely, and the other people playing live music rocked da house. It was just SO great to hear live music with real guitars that I could partly ignore the midi backing tapes that some people used.

Oh, and HEY! I met a real live District Attorney, except he called himself a Prosecutor. I’ve never met DA in Australia, let alone in China, and now I meet a Uyghur DA. Cute too, by the name of Arken (don’t forget to roll that R!). I totally love Uyghur and Kazak names – another Kazak dude I met went by the English name of Sully (gangsta name, I love it! Especially for a bank manager!), but his Kazak name is Sirik (swallow the last i, so it’s almost “sirk”, and the first i is really short. And a tiny roll to the r). I got to talking to Sirik the Kazak Bank Manager, who studied Economics and Management at Shanghai business Uni, and he clarified plenty of things about Chinese economics. Like, all four pillar banks are state owned. How inefficient can you get? They can’t compete on interest rates (lending OR deposits, which are controlled by the state), so they have to compete on services, which would surely become costly. But I suppose it all depends on what your goals are. Low unemployment certainly seems to be a goal here, cause there are stacks of folk doing jobs that just seem utterly redundant, like having two girls in peach coloured french maid outfits standing at the door of a bakery to open it in unison for a customer, while chanting something that I’ve not yet been able to make out, but is probably something like “welcome to our establishment, we hope you enjoy your stay”.

Another thing Sirik told me about was the similarities between the Kazak and Uyghur languages and faces. Across the table from Sirik was the hugely handsome Uyghur, Arken (gee, crush much there, Charlotte? See the top left hand photo in upcoming happy snap montage. I’m really not as ditzy as I’m coming across, honestly…), and I think that perhaps Uyghurs look more western, while Kazaks might have higher cheek bones and may be more easily mistaken for Han Chinese. But of course, generalisations aplenty there, so I think I might give up on trying to distinguish racial groups. Sirik says that he can guess, but he’s not often sure. I guess it’d be like trying to identify an italian from a greek. Equally difficult to pick is whether they’re speaking Uyghur or Kazak. Sirik said the same phrase in Uyghur and then in Kazak, and while I could hear slightly different words (every so slightly different), I knew that there was no way to identify exactly what language they were speaking. It just sounds Arab. I’ve heard people speak Farsi, Hebrew, Uyghur, Kazak and Uzbek (that I’m aware of so far, and not just in China – not many Jews here!), but I can’t identify any sounds so far that can help me pinpoint what language it is. They all have that cool gutteral sound, and rolled r’s. I love middle eastern languages.

Oh, and one other thing about Uyghur – apparently the grammar is closer to, and in fact quite similar to, Korean and Japanese. It bears NO similarity to Chinese grammar. That means that probably Turkish and Japanese have similar grammar, if we are to beleive what we hear about Turkish and Uyghur being relatively similar languages.

Whew, and on that note, I shall sign off. More about my next trip to Kelamayi the next day, later. Need sleep…

Oh, but first, promised montage:

Clockwise from top left: Me and Arken-the-handsome-prosecutor; me and Krystal, gorgeous friend of Sunny’s, and english teacher in Kelamayi; The foreigners, or most of us – I think one or two are missing; boys indahouse: Stu the Aussie, Chris the Crazy Canadian, and Rob the pom, showing their unadulterated coolness…

Night all. More in a bit…

Ahhh, Christmas eve. A time for midnight swims in the pool, relaxing at the beach, sun bathing… Oh, wait, wrong hemisphere.

Talk about yer ultimate White Christmas! It snowed here on Christmas Eve. I’m so impressed.

So, anyway, today was the big Christmas concert, and I’d not realised to what extent it really was put on in Michael’s and my honour. The boss cocky of the college got up and did a little speech at the beginning, and his words were translated into English by one of the students at the college. As it turned out, EVERY time a song or segment was introduced in Chinese, it was then translated into English, basically for the benefit of Michael and myself. At least, that was my impression. Anyway, the boss cocky vice chancellor guy (who I sat next to at dinner later that evening, nice bloke) specifically thanked Michael Laoshi and Charlotta Laoshi (they can’t end words with consonants!) for being in Dushanzi during Christmas. It was really nice.

I ended up playing the song “have yourself a merry little christmas” for my segment. I’d decided that the bar chords were too hard for me, so I eventually begged Eric (aka Django to some!), the guitar player in my college class, to play the guitar, and I played violin and sang. Man, it sounded frikkin GREAT, and I wish that I’d set him up infront of a mike here at home while we were practising, so that I could stick in an Audio Blog entry. All week, we’ve been joking about how cool we are with our rock music, and the catch phrase heard most often between us is “ROCKSTAR!!!” He’s such a hoot, and a tremendous muso to boot. I totally hope that he’ll come round more often to play. I reckon he’d pick up the feel of irish power folk in no time, with his Jazz abilities. Here we are, thinking ROCKSTAR to ourselves:

This photo totally captures Eric’s personality – always a smile and laugh to be had. Michael points out though, and rightly so, that it doesn’t quite capture the “John Lennon” aura of cool that surrounds this guy. He really is ace, and the more I get to know him, the ace-er I think he is.

Just incase any Browncoats are thinking that I’m slipping when it comes to “Django”, I’ll say here and now, he has a girlfriend, and there is no bigger turn off as far as I’m concerned, than a girlfriend-ified man.

The cool thing about this pic is the chick in Kazak costume in the background. I totally love her dress, the way it fades from light to dark. They come in reds and greens and purples too, and the skirts are full circles. I’m SO getting myself a couple before I leave – minus the gold glitter sequins, they’re totally part of my fashion sense.

Anyway, back to the concert. Eric and I played brilliantly, I have to say, and our performance was only marred by one totally insignificant technical problem. NOT! God, the sound engineers forgot to turn on Eric’s guitar mike, so there was NO guitar sound coming out the front. Which meant that essentially I was singing this song by myself, acappella, and then playing fiddle with NO backing. I was SO dissappointed, especially for Eric’s sake, cause we’d put a lot of work into learning and arranging a version that would have done any live band in Melbourne proud.

The other acts in the concert experienced surprisingly little technical difficulties, all things considered. Most of the acts were from the Primary School, and most of the Primary School kids are my students, so I was sitting there in the front row, absolutely enchanted by my kids dancing in their beautiful costumes. (An aside – the front row is the VIP row complete with a long table and replenished cups of tea for VIPs. It being Christmas, Michael and I were VIPs, and I was sitting next to Kang Laoshi and the College boss cocky). Here’s a pic of what seemed to be almost all of my favorite girls, dancing in their adorable little duck costumes:

I don’t expect you guys to “Awwww” too much, cause none of my photos did any sort of justice to the pure saccharin sweetness of the adorability of these kiddies. I sat there with this silly grin on my face the whole time, and I put this photo in the blog more for my own sense of posterity than anything else.

I think that Chinese children must be cuter than Australian children. I don’t ever remember going “oooh, they’re so cute!” to the same extent as I do here all the time. Perhaps it is because these kids and I get along so well. I seriously can’t walk down the hall way without literally wading through hordes of children who want to engulf me in their group hug. When I’m in a hurry, I feel so bad about having to detach the little hands. I think I have to teach them the phrase “not now” or “sorry kiddies, I’m in a hurry!” just so that I can get to where I’m going on time…

After the concert, there was this bizarre photo shoot thing on the stage, where Michael and I were plonked in the middle of different groups of students, while parents snapped cameras all over the place. Wow, it was like, paparazzi, dude! The western celebrities, get your photos now! It was so funny, every time I went off the stage to get my violin and go home (Eric and another one of my students, Sky, were waiting to help me carry fiddle, guitar, flowers chocolates, christmas presents from students etc), another group of parents and kids would accost me and push me back on stage for more photos. After about five minutes of to-ing and fro-ing, I ended up making a comical dash for side stage, to the mirth of my kinder kids. Did I mention how cute they are?

I walked back through the snow (white christmas!) with Eric and Sky, discussing in broken english and chinese the live music scene in Kelamayi and Dushanzi, and the wussiness of many Chinese girls, who don’t drink beer and don’t like pubs. Eric told me that he actually had a gig that night at a local pub (“what!? why didn’t you TELL me!?” I cry) but that his girlfriend has come down from Kelamayi for the weekend, and she does not like pubs, so he would maybe have to cancel the gig. I’m attempting to not think “she’s all wrong for a rockstar like Eric”, because that would not be charitable, and would be a personal step backwards for me. Ahem.

This evening, I finally met properly the college leaders, at a big Christmas dinner held in our honour, in conjunction with a birthday feast for the Boss Cocky, who’s birthday is on Christmas Day. For those of you who don’t know, I hate eating fish. Basically anything that comes out of water, fish, prawns, shell fish, crabs, I can’t stomach them. Only problem out here in Xin Jiang is that if someone wants to throw a big impressive dinner, they buy the most expensive foods possible. Being THE furthest place in China from the ocean, the most expensive food would have to be seafood. Yuk. But I dismembered my crabs, and forced down a litte seafood to be polite. One must be polite. I also finally tasted some good Chinese dry red wine. Although, it’s been so long since I had red wine (apart from the episode with the vinegar in a wine bottle!) that I’d be ill equipped to judge whether the wine was any good!

I think I’m all written out. More to come on Friday – Mikey and I are heading to Kelamayi tomorrow for the big westerners chrissy dinner. Should be a blast.

Clear Skies, and a merry christmas to you all!

Charlotte

All my life, I’d heard about Chinese dumplings, and thought that they sounded yucky as. The descriptions alone could put me off.

But since arriving in China, I reckon I’ve had a change of heart. I think it was the name as much as anything else that put me off, so from now on I shall call them by their Chinese name – Jaozi (jao/zuh-). Since Sunny introduced me to Jaozi several months ago, I’ve been more than happy to partake in the yummy treat…

Anyway, I wax lyrical over Jaozi today for a purpose. Today I was invited by the headmistress of the primary school, Leo Laoshi, to learn to make jaozi with the grade three class. The grade threes are the kings of the pond, the big fish in the small kingdom, cause the school only started up three years ago, and they were the first generation through. So they being the most responsible, and having fulfilled their part of the bargain with Leo Laoshi (ie be good for a change, and we’ll have jaozi in December), they all got to make jaozi.

I arrived maybe five minutes late, to find the grade three classroom a hive of activity, looking more like a home ec class than a primary class room. The tables were already COVERED in freshly made jaozi. It turns out that Jaozi are basically ravioli on a larger scale, and there are many different ways to seal them off. Suffice it to say, it’s much harder than you’d expect to make a beautiful jaozi. There’s folding and squeezing and tucking and more squeezing and folding involved, and the whole room was filled with kids proudly showing off their jaozi to their friends and other teachers, before moving on to their next small dough and meat masterpeice.

My little grade one kids were wandering in and out, not permitted to actually make any jaozi, but allowed to watch and absorb the merry atmosphere that the room had. It was a happy moment. The English of some of the grade threes is truly awesome – they can carry on half conversations in English, and with my limited Chinese abilities, we had a great time, saying “mine’s better than yours” (wode bi nide hao!). Nice kids, I hope I get to teach them when Michael leaves next semester. God, in just three weeks, he’ll be gone, and quite where he’s going is anyone’s guess – I think he doesn’t know too well himself.

But back to the subject at hand. Next monday is Jaozi day, like Ash Wednesday is pancake day in Australia. The story goes that if you don’t eat jaozi on Dec 22, your ears will fall off. I guess this has something to do with jaozi looking suspiciously like ears – little half circles about ear sized, with little squashed folds on the outside.

So I’ve been told that if I want to keep my ears, I’d better eat jaozi on Monday. I’ve never been one to take a risk like that, so I guess I have no choice other than to gobble up jaozi next Monday.

From what I understand, “Filk” is when you take the tune of a song and make up some lyrics of your own. Anyone who knows the Buffy Musical off by heart (or at least the tunes), you HAVE to visit this site – it’s taken the Buffy songs, and put in lyrics to suit Lord Of The Rings.

Legolas and Gimli singing “I’ll Never Tell”, all about their feelings for each other (“am I dating someone elvish?”) was just brilliant. Check it out.

Once More With Hobbits

On other fronts – life is uneventful here, if even colder than before. It’s quite deadly outside. Things are gearing up for the end of semester, and even the Kindergarten kids get an end of semester oral english exam. I’m giving my college kids their oral english exam next week, and then with the remaining three lessons, I’ll give them the option of no class, or watching movies. I would bet that they’ll want to watch movies. Any money. Any class at Melbourne Uni, and the students would all say “no class, let’s sleep in!”, but I suspect that at least SOME of them will turn up for movies…

I’ll let you know.

My Firefly boxed set arrived today. I was singing Danny Boy at the top of my lungs in my apartment, when I get a tentative knock on my door, and I open it to find Kang Laoshi standing there with a box.

I catch a glimpse of “amazon” on the side.

My eyes widen, I gasp a massive gulp of breath, and then start jumping up and down. Like, literally. I was jumping up and down. I think Kang Laoshi must think I’m crazy. I said, “do you KNOW what’s in this?!?” All he can say back is, “may I have the box?” Poor Kang Laoshi, I think perhaps I’m a bit too western at times…

I excitedly rip it open, crying “ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod!!!”, and by this time, Michael has come in from his side of the stairwell, and sees my excitement. I’d already shown him my ratty-as copy of Serenity, and he was interested in seeing more, and I do my best to get everyone in the room swept up in my euphoria.

So now I have a happy few hours of exploring extras, and getting Michael hooked on Firefly. My next goal is to head over to Kelamayi to get the Canadians there hooked. Hear that, boys? You’re next on the list!

Hooray for Amazon dot com and international shipping. It only took 14 days to get here, that’s not bad!

Here is the requisite naked kitty shot. Posing with everyone’s favorite crew. He is so excited about the DVDs being here. Can you tell? He thinks that AB and NF are such hotties. I agree.

I’ll be in my bunk, err, on my couch.

Charlotte the square-eyed.

I’m so sorry that I’m giving YET another post about temperature, but I’ve never in my life lived somewhere so cold. Also, my life this week has been bordering on utterly uneventful. Ask me next week, when I’m doing two christmas concerts in 4 days.

Michael mentioned this to me recently. It’s actually COLDER here right now than it is in Antarctica. FRIKKIN ANTARCTICA!! I just looked up average temperatures for various bases at this time of the year. Average December temperatures are between around 0 and -10C. We’re having average temperatures here of between -10 and -20, at a guess. It’s seriously cold. I will NEVER again complain about living in Melbourne, and Ballarat (one of the coldest places in Victoria) is a walk in the park compared to this.

But I may be overdramatising the severity. Due to my complete lack of experience with negative temperatures, anything under freezing is quite a novelty, so I have to crow it to the rafters.

I’ve not actually become so cold that I’m feeling those negative temperatures too severely. They make good cold weather clothes out in Xin Jiang.

But how about that? It’s warmer in Antarctica right now than it is outside my window!

COOL! (No pun intended)

Requisite naked netkitty shot:

Oh, I introduced Robin to The Lord Of The Rings this weekend. We watched the extended edition of FOTR last night, and then the extended ed of TTT today, followed by Pirates of the Caribbean. Talk about your Orlando Bloom fest. During a much needed rest break (EIGHT hours of LOTR within an 18 hour stretch! Yay us!) we got involved in the requisite girlie discussion of who we thought was more handsome, Orlando, Viggo, or Depp, and I had to own to the fact that Depp will always hold a special place in my heart for being my first movie star crush, when I must have been about 8 or 9. He was on 21 Jump Street, and I was utterly smitten, but I think that Robin may be more of a Viggo girl. Surprising, I would have picked your average Chinese girl to go for the Elf, being more refined and less barbaric, but I guess it didn’t help that Elf is translated into Chinese as “little person”, as far as I could tell. Robin kept referring to our Lando as “the little person”. Not condusive to heart throb status. I felt the need to rectify the situation by showing her the swashbuckling Pirates of the Caribbean. Again, yay me.

I tried to get Michael into LOTR as well, but the lad seems to suffer from ADD. He sat there throughout the first movie (granted, I was a little cruel showing him the extended version when he’s not even read the books! Bad Charlotte.), and huffed and squirmed with impatience, and I kept telling him it’d get more exciting. And it did, by increments, but even I had forgotten how LONG the extended version is.

Then he ended up losing interest halfway into TTT (just before it was going to get exciting, I kept telling him) and trampled off to his apartment. I suppose it’s unfair of me to accuse him of ADD. He did last 5 hours of the 8, admirable for one who never appreciated epic fantasy.

Robin was utterly engrossed, though. I told her that the final chapter was being released worldwide in 4 days or so, and she made me PROMISE to let her know when I got my hands on a copy, so that she could come watch it with me.

I think perhaps the Chinese have more of an appreciation for epic fantasy and medieval tales – practically all of their day time and night time soaps seem to be these Chinese medieval dramas, with very cool costumes and stacks of swords. Some of them even come with English subtitles.

Sorry, need to take a moment…

Mmmmm, Depp.

Ok, moment taken, now, where was I? Oh yeah, epic fantasy and Chinese soap opera. Chinese soaps all seem to be based in the manor house of some rich Chinese noble or other, as far as I can tell, and usually involve a beautiful daughter and handsome suitor, who of course must be good with a sword. I don’t watch them much, but there are lots of horses, fun looking oriental costumes, and guys with swords and Kung Fu. Now all I need to do is learn to understand what they’re saying!

I’ll leave you now, with the parting thought of – mmmmmm, Depp.

I’ll be in my bunk (browncoat reference – and my DVDs STILL haven’t arrived!)

Charlotte

****Edited due to temperatural variation on directional dyslexia****

It has to be said, on this glorious, wonderful December 9th, that the official wait is over. The day is here, and the time is now, to say:

HAPPY BROWNCOAT DAY!!!

Now the only wait that remains is for postage delay, and then I’ll have the LONG AWAITED box set of Joss Whedon’s Firefly in my hands.

It may not seem like much to those of you who’ve never seen Firefly (there are three types of people in the world, Browncoats – aka Firefly fans, Browncoats who don’t know yet that they are Browncoats due to abominable lack of exposure to Firefly, and cretins – those who have seen Firefly and actually dislike it) but there’s a party atmosphere at the Firefly Forum. Much jumping up and down and rejoicing to be had.

Looking for a stocking stuffer? Make sure the stocking owner has a region 1, NTSC compatible tv/dvd set up, and get them the Firefly box set. They’ll thank you!

Oh dear. I had a little accident. I was going to cook some lunch last saturday, and I had a little booboo. Ahem…

I put some oil on to heat, and while it was heating, I sat down to play some guitar (I ended up choosing “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” for the Christmas concert), and was getting totally into the playing. Then I hear this distant rumbling, and I think, “oh my god! Earthquake!” I rush out into the main part of the apartment, and discover the kitchen filled from the ceiling to halfway down to the floor with thick black smoke, and the roaring I’m hearing is actually a flame from a MASSIVE oil fire that has taken control of my cooker top, from its home base of a by then destroyed Teflon coated pan.

PANIC! Well, mild panic at least. I get down to below the smoke line, take the pan off the flame, too late to save the extractor fan, which is now a melted mess of plastic and soot. I look at the metre high flames in the frypan, and remember my highschool science teacher’s lesson about not putting water on oil fires (I remember that lesson so well, he demonstrated an oil fire and what happens when you add water, in possibly the most flammable school building I’ve ever been in, on a dry hot day. Talk about playing with fire!), and eventually grabbed a cloth that looked non flammable(ish) and blotted out the fire. By this time, my entire apartment was FILLED with smoke, so I went around and opened all the windows to let in the quite literally freezing air (it’s about minus 20c outside now), and dashed over to Michael’s apartment to share the story. The kitchen looked quite literally like a bomb had hit it – melted ceiling panels, dead and melted extractor fan, and the walls were pitch black with soot. I was dreading having to tell Kang Laoshi about my accident, especially because I felt like such a fool. I should know better, and I DO know better than to leave a kitchen stove unattended unless it’s on anything lower than simmer.

Michael and I were surveying the damage, when in the distance, I hear sirens. I say jokingly, “gee, I hope that noone saw the fire and called the fire department!” Michael and have a little laugh, but our laughing turns a little sour when the sirens get louder, and louder, and LOUDER, and all of a sudden, two big red firetrucks come round the corner. Michael and I both do that laughy groan of disbeleif of a bad situation turned worse, and he says to me “well, you’d better run down there and tell them that there’s no fire, before they kick the door in!”

So I dash down the three flights of stairs, fly out the door and head through the hole in the fence, armed with my new phrase “no fire!” as taught to me by Michael on the fly (which, as it was learned by an adrenalin pumped mind, has by now been forgotten). Imagine my surprise then, when the firemen head not for my place, but for the primary school across the street! My first thought is “someone told the firemen the wrong directions! How on earth am I going to explain this?!”

Then I see smoke pouring out of one of the buildings in the school, the kitchen, and lots of shaken looking teachers (the ones who live at the school) standing outside. The utter comedy of the situation hits me as soon as I see that the fire is not serious – the Primary School fire was an oil fire, just like mine, which must have occured at EXACTLY the same time as mine!!

And then Kang Laoshi is there, and people are asking me why I have soot on MY face. Robin was standing next to me, and I have to come clean then and there, otherwise let if fester. Kang Laoshi is looking vaguely shocked by the first fire, but I think the irony of the two identical and simultaneous fires within his domain strikes him as slightly humourous, especially as neither one was TOO serious, and noone was hurt (except for some pride on my part, and the cook who had left the oil fire unattended at the school). He goes back to my apartment with me, and sees my black kitchen, and shakes a finger at me in mock scolding “Charlotte, this is an important lesson for you!”

I reply “wo zhidao, wo zhidao, wo BENG!” (I know, I know, I’m STUPID). He tells me that the extractor fan will have to be replaced at my expense (fair enough, and comfirms my suspicions that there is no insurance on this place), and tells me to get cleaning…

It took me AGES to clean the kitchen, which was ENTIRELY covered in soot, floor to ceiling, windows, fridge, microwave, EVERYTHING. A bottle of spraynwipe analog, many newspapers and a ruined tea towel later, Michael’s comment about my kitchen was “wow, looks like you needed a fire, cause the place is so much cleaner now than before!” Heh, apart from the ceiling, which I tried to clean with a mop but gave up on, and behind the extractor fan where Charlotte the Shortarse couldn’t reach.

My new extractor fan arrived today, and was not as pricey as Kang Laoshi’s original estimate, so I’m happy. Looks like I may be able to afford a trip to Kashgar after all, this winter, on top of my trek to Beijing.

Mushuk wasn’t overly upset by the whole thing, except the stress of the repair man bringing in the HUGE box with the new extractor fan (the replacement only took about 20 minutes, cause the new one is identical to the old one, and all the hooks and holes were already made in the wall). Here he is at his most ecstatic. Apologies for the out of focus-ness, but isn’t he just ADORABLE?!? And he’s naked, too.

I find it amazing that a country with its roots so far removed from any sort of christian or pagan origins can still embrace Christmas. It’s comparable to Australians celebrating Thanksgiving. Yet they are decorating the school with christmas decorations, and planning a combined primary, secondary and college concert on Christmas Eve. I’ll be singing Silent Night along with the other primary school teachers, along with some other song that I’ll sing by myself and play on guitar. Better get practising, huh? When I first agreed to do a solo act, I’d been given to beleive that it would be just a small concert, for the primary school kids and some parents. Now it turns out that it will be as big as teachers day… Singing solo and playing guitar? HELP! Then they want me to “say best wishes” as Robin puts it – just say a few Christmassy things, and some greetings in Chinese and English. Robin said, and I quote, “you and Michael are very important, and some of the college leaders will be there, so it is important that you appear on stage.”

I need to choose a song that is both simple and effective, not to mention christmassy. Silent Night is already taken by the Primary School teachers, because the first verse is appropriately non religious. I’ve been avoiding teaching christmas songs with overly religious themes to my college class, but I reckon that if I’m just singing it, and not translating it, I can go for one of the prettier, if more religious, songs.

I’ve always been leery of singing songs that talk about god, or jesus (in any other way other than “oh, he’s sleeping, what a good boy”), or how holy something is. I’m scared of Christian Rock music, am sure that buried underneath all the “love god, love jesus” thing is some insidious plot to turn our minds to mush. But Christmas songs are different. I like the story, I like the mood the tunes themselves put me into, that feeling of warmth that you get on a Christmas Eve, the lights at my house in Oz glowing gently on and off, the whole family home, and going to bed knowing that tomorrow is Christmas Day. I always used to watch Carols By Candlelight, back in the days when they’d regularly have Anthony Warlow and if memory serves, Hugh Jackman singing in either Sydney or Melbourne (am I mistaken about Jackman being in the Carols a few times? Aussies, help me out!). So Christmas Carols, no matter how religious in subject matter, take me to a time of happiness. Much like Crowded House music will make me think about summer and the beach.

So, I’m taking an opinion poll. Should I sing a gentle song like Away in a Manger for the concert, or something more like Santa Claus Is Coming To Town? Anything will be better than the horrid midi music that the Chinese like. I’ve been having difficulty adjusting to Chinese pop. I guess it doesn’t help that I’m a snob, and disapprove of sampling even in a live band situation. As far as I’m concerned, if you can’t do it on instruments that have at least some sort of non electrically enhanced acoustic noise (ie, you can still make some sort of noise, even in a power cut), you shoudn’t do it at all. The only instrument which is exempt from this is a Theramin.

Thus spake Charlotte.

See, Blair, this is what happens when I write about what I’m feeling and thinking. I go off into a ramble. Bad. Evil.

I would kindly ask that all celebrities posting to my blog, alive or otherwise, please keep their comments civil. Kofi and Bush, you can take your bickering out onto the front lawn, you’ll break something. (Did anyone else’s mother say that to them when they were play fighting? “take it out onto the front lawn?” Or was it just mine?)

OK, it’s that time again, for the Naked Pussy Shots. Mushuk and I had a helluva time on this photo shoot. He’s such a drama queen. The lighting was all wrong wrong WRONG! But over the next few posts, we will release some of the prints, in a collection we like to call, Pussy Galore.

This is him being coy behind a scarf. I suspect he was originally born into a Uyghur Muslim family, but he refuses to say.

Charlotte

Feeling a little disconnected from the world today.

School was wierd, college class was … interesting. I did teach them I’m A Little Teapot, and have threatened that anyone not paying attention will be forced to go up the front and do it by themselves. I don’t know how to approach teaching this class. There’s no set curriculum, so I’m pretty much winging it, but getting any of them except a few to actually get up and speak the language (shock! horror! a spoken English class!) is difficult. I’m starting to understand that Chinese (PRC Chinese, I should stipulate. Wouldn’t want Leng to get offended at me!) people don’t like to do things outside of the group. The group tour in Dunhuang began to alert me to that, but my college class is a prime example of the Chinese fondness for group activities. If I try to get one person to say a phrase, they’ll say it too quietly for me to hear (even though I get them to say it so that I can be assured that the pronunciation is correct), but once I get the whole group of 20 people chanting a phrase together, they are louder than 20 individuals, if you understand me. Heaven forbid that they should be individuals. They love to clap together (if I find myself clapping in time, I change my rhythm just to be different), they love to chant together (I hate group chanting. It reminds me to much of what they made me go through in school chapel), and they just prefer to do things in groups.

I guess that living in a place as crowded as the PRC, a school of fish is less chaotic than that school all going in random directions in the same small space.

Blair (aka Freesoup-The-Lawyerly-Scourge-of-Canada) suggested I write less about my actual experiences and more about my feelings with regards to those experiences. Today is a perfect day to get started on that. I only had two classes at the Primary School, and in the afternoon, I dropped by to ask Sunny and Apple if they wanted to come out for dinner with me (I had a hankering for Da Pan Ji). Apple muttered something about being busy, and Sunny was looking after her class. It turns out that all of the teachers were going out for dinner, and noone actually invited me. I hate asking if I’m invited to that sort of thing, it’s a prick to my pride. It could well have been that it was a dinner to discuss some sort of school business, in which case there would have been no reason for me to be there, apart from the social aspect. My Chinese speaking skills are nowhere near where they need to be for me to be able to understand ANYTHING other than “are you cold” or “he is tall” or “that’s ten quai three mao”. My vocab is slowly building as I put in more effort, and I have been putting in the effort – I bought my first ever bit of software for my palmpilot the other day, online: a nifty little vocab learning app where it makes up multiple choice tests, and allows me to scribble on the screen, so that I can do the whole “look cover write and check” that I used to do in primary school. But that’s beside the point. I am frustrated by the fact that I can say things, or ask questions, but then not understand the answer.

So, all the teachers went out for dinner tonight, without me. Michael is off in Kelamayi visiting is ladyfriend, and I find myself with nothing to do on a Friday night. I was determined not to sit infront of the idiot box again, but I was feeling contemplative and solitary. So I went out in search of a bottle of red wine. Some westerner, think it may have been one of the Canadians in Kelamayi, told me that the Chinese do quite a good bottle of dry red. All the red I’d ever had in China tasted like grape juice (KoolAid, the Canadian boys called it. I don’t understand what koolaid is. Everyone on the Firefly board talks about it. Is it just softdrink that’s traditionally spiked at parties or something? Northern Americans, help me out!), so I went to the supermarket and found a bottle that actually had “dry red wine” written on the bottle in ENGLISH of all things.

I got it home, and after struggling with a cheap made-in-china corkscrew (figures!), opened it up to be greeted by a gush of lovely vinegar scent. “Hmmm”, I thought. “Perhaps my sense of smell has been warped by the cold. I’ll try a sip.” After the sip, I concluded that my sense of smell was just fine. I’d just bought a 28 Yuan bottle of vinegar. It was even brown. One ought to be philosophical about such things, so I decided that the best way of not getting grumpy and taking it out on Mushuk was to figure that it was someone trying to tell me that I should not drink alone.

Like the time when I bought a Chinese donut and dropped it before I’d had my first bite. Yep. Someone trying to tell me that I shouldn’t have that donut.

In a fit of inspiration, I took my fiddle down from the wall, and put on my CD of a cool Aussie band doing classic jazz covers, plenty of Django style guitar and Grappelli fiddle (not a word from you, FreeSoup. My parents are reading! . Determined to be a Jazz Master on the fiddle by the time I get home, I attempted to play along, but was demoralised by a) my current mood b) my lack of jazz talent and c) the deplorable over-talentedness of Nigel Whateverisnameis, the fiddle player on the CD. So I turned the CD off again, and flipped back to playing along with some Irish music. Stick to stuff I know.

I should get “disconnected” more often, cause I played better Irish fiddle tonight than I have in ages. Maybe it’s that tortured soul thing from whence all truly great artists get their inspiration.

On second thought, I think I’d prefer to be happy like I usually am, and be just a mediocre musician, than be a star and be miserable my whole life. Which is not to say that I’m miserable now. Just … disconnected. Here I am in my little Western apartment, with my western toilet and my cat who no longer understands Chinese, and China is happening just outside, but I am not fluent enough in its language to interact on any meaningful level.

Not to mention that it’s cold, and dark. That always gets me down. I could never live here for an extended period. The cold, and the short days, are enough to make me happy just to live the year here and then move on. Ireland is beckoning, and before you all jump up and down and say “well, Ireland is dark and cold”, let me point out that not only do they speak English in Ireland, but they also have that little thing called Irish Music, that I am utterly obsessed with. Remember?

And I think on that note, I should cut this ramble short.

Grr. Arg.

Oh. I’ve been thinking about your lack of comments. Either noone’s reading, or I’m just not controversial enough to incite your wrath. So I’ve decided to show some totally controversial images.

From now on, each entry will contain a picture of my naked pussy.

As in MUSHUK, you philistines. Get your minds out of the gutter.

What? He wears no clothes. He’s naked. It was an accurate description.

Here’s one he posed for not long ago. He calls this face “watchoolookinat?” He’s still working on Kitty Blue Steel. “watchoolookinat?” has been in the making for some time now, he’s pretty much got it down.