I promise, this is the last mention I’ll make of Chicken Soup, but the latest batch… WOW! I think it has something to do with the way the chinese cook BBQ chicken, they use more spices than in Australia. My soup is thick, tasty, and a tad spicy (as in hot), and just what is needed in Xin Jiang weather. Which, I might add, is not so cold at the moment. Lows of only -15, and getting up to the sweltering temperature of -8! Positively balmy, time to get out for some sunbathing!

A LITTLE LATER

Ack, spoke too soon. It may be only about minus 8 outside, but there is wind, a rare thing for this part of the world! Clear skies abound, but because of the wind, powdered snow off the nearby mountains is racing through the air, turning into seemingly razor sharp airborne ice shards. Dave the Canadian downstairs scoffs at my lack of cold weather tolerance – he being a Calgary-man (Calgarian?), he is well used to conditions like this, and much much worse. I feel like such a wimp!

Leaving for Beijing in ONE DAY!!!

So, class is all over, most folk have gone home for the holidays, and I’m left here in Dushanzi, revelling in the copious amounts of sleeping in that I’m now able to do. My little corner of Dushanzi has turned into a ghost town, almost. All the college students have gone home, and so now the buildings on either side of mine are almost deserted. The silence is brilliant, and is accentuated by the fresh snow that fell yesterday.

The only place in this little area of Dushanzi which is still going is Chuang Xin highschool, where exams are on this week. Thusly, while all of my friends in the primary school have gone home, Robin is still hanging around, and we’ve been keeping each other company, before we both head off to Urumqi on Friday, where I’ll take the train to Beijing, and she will take the bus to Korla, a bit to the south in Xinjiang. I’ve been slowly bringing Robin up to speed on essential movies on the “everyone must have seen” list (you know the one, it has classics like Indiana Jones, Star Wars etc), but I fear that the Western humour is lost on her, and if it’s lost on her, it will be lost on many. This is why, I suspect, the chinese seem to like slapstick comedies more than intellectual ones – the intellectual ones are either poorly translated, or just do not mesh with the Chinese interpretation of humour.

Here’s another interesting tidbit that I picked up today. Robin and I were walking back home from dinner (when you can get a meal for two, with a bottle of beer, for less than 2 Aussie dollars, why bother cooking?), and I began to whistle. Robin laughed at me, saying “you just like a boy!” (sic). It turns out that girls are not supposed to whistle in China – it’s considered unladylike. I guess when I really think about it, it’s not the most ladylike thing to do in the West either, but I’d never really considered the matter. Robin, I think, is picking up on the nonconformist in me, because she started to whistle tunelessly along with me. So funny.

Apologies for the lack of news. My life has literally been sleeping and cleaning for the past few days. If you want adventure, see Pat’s blog – there’s more than enough adventure there for both blogs (if a certain lack of spelling Aah, Patty, ya know I love ya, but christalmighty, where did you learn to spell?*grin*)

Beijing, here we come!

Love, Charlotte

I told Erin about Lux last night. That got him to talking about something that happened in the hotel where he works a few nights ago. Someone passed out drunk on one of the sumptious couches in the lobby, and his friends didn’t help him get back up to his room, or to his home, or whereever he was staying. When someone in the hotel came to wake him, turns out the guy was dead. Alcohol poisoning.

See, here’s the thing. Chinese men tend to drink a lot of Baijiou (see entry The Joy Of Power Cuts), and they never drink it mixed, they always drink it straight, and you can buy it in any supermarket/cornerstore/street kiosk, a 500 ml bottle of full strength 40% alcohol spirits for less than AU$6. There seem to be no liquor licensing laws here. I can see very well how, if you drank it fast enough, you could end up drinking so much before the effect kicked in that you finish up in a coma and dying. Chinese beer is so much safer – if you try to get to the point of alcohol poisoning, you stomach will be full to the point of exploding before you get near enough into your system – Chinese beer is notoriously weak, but in a good way. It also only costs about 80 cents for a long neck. Marvellous stuff.

So anyway, apparently the people in the hotel tried to call the dead man’s friends to get someone to come take care of the body and affairs (it’s only now that I think to ask myself, why did they not call the police? Surely that’s the first thing that one would do? Perhaps the police have a different function here. I must ask Erin) but none of the man’s friends or family would come deal with it. I think it’s so sad.

At least Lux was loved and cared about by all who came into contact with him. This anonymous chinese man seemed to have noone.

“Respect my chain of command, gorramit!”

The Browncoats are in mourning. We just got word that one of our own, a posting board regular and friend, Luxlucre, died today. Diabetes related. He will be sorely missed by all of us – he was an active member, and a kind and generous friend to all.

He made us all laugh and cry with his filk, and his Firefly themed South Park characters, and he always had a kind greeting in the ‘loon.

Lux, mate, we’ll miss you.

Finally remembered what one of the subjects of the lost blog entry was – I meant to put in a plug for Patty-the-crazy-Canadian’s blog. He’s off travelling around Yunnan province, where I would guess the weather is considerably warmer, and he has some interesting stories to tell. So if you’re looking for China travel adventure stories, and are not getting them here cause I’m too busy talking about chicken soup, copy and paste this address

http://madmaninchina.blogdrive.com/

or follow the link in the side bar on the right hand side.

Clear skies,
Charlotte

This week has been breezy and happy, that whole end-of-term feeling you get, when teachers have no more things to teach, and its post end of term exam time, so classes are spent playing heads-down-thumbs-up, Simon Says, singing songs, and drawing pictures. I have an obscene amount of gorgeous kiddy works of art that I have to choose from, to put on my Kiddy-Art wall of fame in my kitchen. I’ll have to put in a photo of it one day, cause it’s just gorgeous – riotous colours and that sweet innocent look that only children seem to be able to capture.

Today I officially had two classes, but out of the whole kindergarten of 120 kids, only 5 showed for class. I gather this is normal for the end of term here. So no class for us, we sat in the staff room, and I learnt the chinese for “I’d like to buy a train/bus/plane ticket to beijing”, and other useful things like “what time is the next available bus to ______” and “take me to the bus station”.

I also had a meeting with Sunny, Apple and Leo Laoshi (the head mistress – a quick aside here: Leo Laoshi has that utterly in control, totally organised, completely confident, all in a quiet, gentle authoritarian way, air about her. Once, I had class with the grade ones, and my teaching partner couldn’t make it for some reason, and not surprisingly, the class started to get out of hand, cause I employ the good-cop-bad-cop teaching method with the grade ones. Order cannot be kept when only the good cop is present. I ended up carrying through with my threat to get Leo Laoshi, and when she came in, the kids shrunk into their seats with a look of awe on their faces. I was expecting her to bark something at them in Chinese, but when she spoke, it was in a voice so low, it was almost a whisper, not menacing in any way, but in a way that made you think “I’d feel so bad if I disappointed this lady”. The effect was just magnificent. I have so much respect for this woman.) So anyway, this meeting was to arrange my extra classes for next term.

You see, they’ve decided that they want me teaching primary school full time next term, with no college classes, which suits me fine – college is not only difficult, but I have to pull lessons out of my rear end for a class which has such radically different levels of english proficiency that it’s nigh on impossible to cater to all of them. So instead, I’m going to be teaching ALL of the primary school classes, taking on Michael’s job, along with a cut down Kindergarten schedule. I’ll be working the same amount of lessons every week, but essentially fewer hours, because college classes are longer than primary school classes. So to sweeten the deal further, Leo Laoshi tells me that because all of the teachers and parents and school leaders are so happy with the job I’ve been doing, and because the grade ones, twos and threes will supposedly be more work for me (I’m not so sure about that, but we’ll see), they’re gonna give me a pay rise, even though I’m working fewer hours – about 40 minutes less per week. How’s that for a vote of confidence!?

On another note, I have positive news to report. I now have many of the younger teachers at the primary school, even those who don’t speak english, saying “tiende!”, and some of them have even started to say “SWEET!” God, but they’re a hi-larious crew. I am convinced that even though I’m not teaching my college kids anymore, many of whom are my age, I’ve landed in the Best of All Possible Worlds here (as Candide would say… French literature, anyone?) – many of the highschool and college teachers are a tad older and a tad stodgier, but the primary school folk are young, or young at heart at the very least. One has to be to teach kids, I’m sure.

Tonight is the big end-of-term banquet for the primary school, always a delightful affair, and then tomorrow, everyone starts to head back to their home towns for Spring Festival. I have one week before I take the train to Beijing, but in that time I fear, Dushanzi will shrink into almost a quiet little ghost town, with all the college kids and teachers gone, not to mention it being the depths of winter. Actually scratch that, it’s Spring Festival, everyone who is out of town will be coming home, too. My friend Owen, who has been studying in Beijing, will probably be home by tomorrow or the day after, and I’m hoping to spend plenty of quality time with him before my Beijing trip. Michael has already left town, gone on his big round China trip to Shanghai and the tropical South to escape the winter, and when he comes back, he’ll only be here for a day or two before heading to his new job in Kelamayi. He left yesterday, and already it’s strange not to have someone living just across the stairwell.

His departure was precluded by a MASSIVE clean out of his apartment, and I’ve NEVER seen the place as clean as it is now. Before the new teachers arrive in February though, I think I might just give the place a quick once-over: there are mucky spots that boys are just blind to. And the near-squeaky cleaness of next door spurred me into a cleaning frenzy last night. I’ve just received a package from my mum with some of the most precious commodities a foreigner could wish for in China – Kraft peanut butter, Orthoxicol nighttime cold and flu tablets, and the Big One… CHEESE! Real CHEESE! A WHOLE kilogram of it! The arrival of the cheese means that I shall be using my fridge quite a bit more now, and it is an insult to good Aussie cheese to put it in a fridge that had not been cleaned out since summer time. To be perfectly honest, the only thing I had been using the fridge for was to freeze my cat’s food, but since the cheese arrived, I moved my fridge back into the main part of my apartment, instead of tucked away in the small outer kitchen (mostly an insulation area for the rest of the apartment. I think it was once an open balcony, but is now walled in). It’s been thouroughly cleaned in honour of the cheese, and that then prodded me into further apartment cleaning activity. Whole sections of this place are sparkling now. Tea towels are washed, old sponges thrown out, week old dishes washed (I even retrieved a dish from the fridge which looked like it’s own ecosystem. Yuck) and now I’m feeling all domestic. I think I’ll go to the market and get some veggies to make some soup, just the way my mum makes it. The soup that takes days and days to cook, over a slow heat. I miss my mum’s soup, especially in this weather. Mmmm, soup and fresh nan. Can’t think of anything better. Except of course, cheese.

So I shall end this blather, and hop on my bike.

Tara! Charlotte

PS, Apologies for the loss of the Jan 5th blog entry – it was lost in Matt’s server change. Matt has been amazing, spending SO much time updating and transferring the blog over to a new system. Many thanks to him. He tells me that the earlier blog entries, pre november, will be transferred in shortly. If there is anyone out there who happened to archive the Jan 5th entry before the blog went down for maintainance, could you please let me know!? It was a happy entry. From now on I shall archive every entry, just in case.

Today I just had a day of “I hate China, I wanna go home”. I guess it happens to everyone at some point – it has to.

I have this wierd flu bug which is not making me all snotted up or sore throated, but I have the worst headache, and my joints and muscles are all totally sore. I’m bad tempered, it’s New Year’s Day, and I’m just grumpy. I want my comfy bed at home, instead of the wooden plank that I’m sleeping on here (wooden plank with this wierd hard packed straw, covered by a doona and then sheets, but it’s still hard as rock). I want some warm weather, and I want people who don’t just push past, but actually make an effort to allow people past. There’s no personal space here.

Then to make me even more shitty, I went to the post office today to post off a package to my family, only to discover that if I wanted it to take any less time than three months, I’d have to pay about AUD80!! Four hundred yuan to post about 20 cds in soft casing, and a small gift for my folks. And then ontop of that, I’d have to go to the police station to get permission to send the DVDs to my brother, which chances are I wouldn’t get because they are most like pirated, or at least some of them.

And do you wanna know WHY the frikkin post office is so expensive? Because they have SO many people working in there, seemingly doing nothing useful. I guess the full employment goal is being taken into account, but consumers bear the weight of it, which would lower demand for postal services, thus making it an all round less profitable enterprise. I may have been heard quietly grumbling something along the lines of “f#ckin pseudo-communist bu!!shit d!ckheads”. I was in a really bad mood, and don’t usually have to put up with such crap.

I ended up throwing my hands in the air and saying “bugger this!” and storming out of there, a bewildered Sunny and Apple in tow. They’ve never seen me in a bad mood, cause I’m rarely IN a bad mood. I’m generally a happy person, but the mix of feeling shitty and sick, piled on top of exhorbitant postal prices just left me spitting chips, and poor Sunny and Apple bore the brunt. Then I went into the TOTALLY crowded supermarket to get some coffee, and my mood only got blacker having to dodge around people blocking the aisles who just made NO effort to move to either one side or the other, and just stood right in the middle.

And to top it all off, I have no aspirin left, and have no clue as to where to get any in this town…

GRRRRRR!!!

I just can’t wait for summer to get here. Now that we’re into 2004, it seems like we should be getting into the decline of winter, but I know that it’s only going to get colder before it gets warmer.

Perhaps I shouldn’t blog when I’m in a bad mood.