Chris the crazy Canadian was planning on coming down for a visit today, on his way out of the country. He’s heading home to Calgary, more than a year after he left, older, wiser, and with one special change made in his life. Although he says he is not, he is a Browncoat.

Chris, there are Calgary Browncoats who you can contact, if you’re feeling like you need to talk to someone about your obsession (I can hear him saying to me now, “Charlotte, I’m not obsessed!!” I know better. He may never talk about it, but in fact, all he can think about is Firefly.)

But here’s the thing. Pat the Aussie is heading home in one week. Pat the Canadian has made the huge decision to move back to Canada, after having set his sights on a life here in China. Good luck to you, my friend. At any rate, he’s heading home a few days after me. Apple is moving to Urumqi, and within the week, Dushanzi will be back to the ghost town that it was when I first arrived. All of the teachers will have gone home. All of the students will have gone home. I’m leaving myself in less than three weeks.

And I find that, instead of looking back on the year and contemplating how it’s all coming to an end, I am actually looking ahead, thinking about all the things I will do when I get home (first thing: Latte at the airport at 8am!), and about my next plan for travel.

The year has just gone so quickly, and I will never never EVER forget my experiences here. People in China often ask me, “are you used to/accustomed to “this place”? (Interesting, they don’t often say, “are you used to China?” They say “this place”.) The answer when I was fresh off the plane was initially a bright smile, saying that everything was new and strange, but very cool. Soon, my answer became, “yes, I am used to everything.” I think back on that answer now, and think “no, four months into it, you really weren’t used to it.”

I think I was truly “used to it” in about May. Then I started thinking about going home, and all of a sudden, my perspective changed.

When Michael Rose (long time readers will remember Michael, the guy who was here when I first arrived – I have an excellent guest blog entry from him, which I will post soo) was preparing to leave, something strange happened to the way he behaved. Michael, I know you’re reading this. All I can say is that now, I understand.

When Michael was preparing to go home, I saw him go through many stages of attitude. He was a very open person, so I think that a lot of what he was going through was right there on the surface. I remember, first, about a month and a half before he was due to leave, he went through a euphoric phase, where he was listing all of the things that he would do when he got back to a Western country. Then a month before he left, I think he started to realise just how much of what he was looking forward to was NOT in China. He began to get easily frustrated with things, and impatient with people who he usually treated with the utmost of civility. I think, he was just impatient to LEAVE.

At the time, I wanted to just tell him to CALM DOWN, and give the people around him some slack. I couldn’t understand why he was so grumpy.

Well, now I can. Since I booked my flight home, I’ve been thinking more and more about what I will do on my first day home, what I will do on my first weekend, what I will do next year. And I find myself getting irritable at people here. I find myself getting frustrated with just little, tiny, silly things that had not bothered me all year.

Things like, STILL meeting new people (my inner demons are saying. “you’re going home, what’s the point of meeting any new people!?”), and having to be gracious and attempt to be charming. My inner angels mutter at me, “they might be the 100th person to ask you “do you like China?”, but you’re one of the first foreigners they’ve ever asked?.

Things like having people stare at me where ever I go. It bothered me first, but then I got over it. And then I started going into “go back home” mode, and thinking how nice it will be to be ignored when I walk into a shop. Thinking how nice it would be to be able to walk down a street without people exclaiming when I walk past. All of a sudden, people pointing at me, starring, strangers who say “hullo!” to me, people muttering “Laowai” (semi derogatory word for forienger) to their friends as I go past – all of a sudden, I find myself getting unduly angry at China as a whole. Instead of being the “lovely” person that people first knew when I came to this marvellous country, I’ve become a grumpy old scrooge who just wants to be left alone.

It’s such a bad thing, that everything has become such an effort. I’m sick of the effort. Getting back to Australia and regaining the independance that goes with the total language comprehension. Language deserves a blog entry all of its own, I think. But not today.

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You’ve all known for a while that I’m just crazy over Joss Whedon’s Firefly. You may have gathered that they have begun filming at Universal for the MOVIE!! There is a flurry of online activity, cast members posting blogs, Browncoats in the LA area getting to be extras, so I thought I’d just post this entry.

For any who are interested, but not yet aware, the official Serenity Website is now live. It’s been breaking sign-up records, a testament to the power of an online community, and to the incredible resource that an internet savvy fan base can be for the producers of a show. We are an unpaid, volunteer army, ready for guerilla marketing exploits.

Now, I know that many of you think I am a geek, and I am the first to admit that my geekiness is fully developed. I’m just one stormtrooper costume short of being fluent in Klingon. So, I’m asking you to click on the link below, if you’ve not already followed it from somewhere else, and have a snoop around. Read the blog, and marvel at the fact that this site is only four days old, and already has 4350 members.

Serenity: The Official Movie Website

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So, this week I had the last two official contact hours with my students – written exams for Kindergarten 3 and Kindergarten 4. The end of the year has kinda taken me by surprise. I knew it was coming, and I had been looking forward to it in some ways, but now that it’s here, I feel like there should be something more, like I should be doing more teaching, or something…

There were Children’s Day celebrations a few weeks ago, where Pat and I were asked to go dance with the kids at a special gala concert. The whole thing was put on film, and since then, I’ve had people saying “oh, yes, I saw you dancing on TV!” I’m a TV star. Just call me a Big Damn Hero…

On Children’s Day itself, the school had a massive sports day, which I was expected to attend. I woke up that morning, and thought to myself, “eh, it’s a sports day, I don’t have to be RIGHT on time, do I? I can be ten minutes late or so…”

So, I arrive at school about ten minutes late, camera in hand for happy snaps galore, and I get nabbed by King as I was about to go through the center doorway of the school.

“Charlotte, don’t go that way!” He said urgently. “Come round the side.”

So around the side I go, and I’m so glad that I saw King when I did, cause if I had have gone in the center door, I’d have walked right into the podium for the school awards ceremony. I was late for a TOTALLY formal occasion. Some children were doing a ceremonial flag raising – grade 3 kids, I might add. Raising a flag, doing the ceremonial march, as if they were in the military. Kinda scary.

I was given a look of disapproval by the head mistress, a lady who can make you feel as big as a bug with a single look. I felt so bad. She’s a lady I totally look up to, and I’d hate to think that I’d disappointed her.

At any rate, once the flag had been raised, and the Chinese national anthem had been sung, 5-8 year old children saluting left right and center (actually, I think I’m supposed to only say, Left), something interesting happened. Kang Laoshi came to give a little speech, and then the names of some children were read out. All these kids were amongst my best students in grades two and three. They all went galloping up to the podium, and then an equal number of students’ names were read out, these ones corresponding again to my good students, but only grade one kids. These children ran out, and the first group tied red scarves around their necks.

I asked Guo Laoshi to explain to me what was going on (fortunately, King the SHHH-man had gone away – ever time I asked him a question, he shushed me!), and she told me that it had to do with the children at the school who wore red scarves round their necks.

I’d seen some kids wearing red scarves at school, but I’d just assumed that those kids who didn’t wear them were just not wearing their uniforms properly. It turns out, though, that the red scarves actually signify membership in the Young Pioneers, which is essentially a youth branch of the Communist Party.

I was trying hard not to think about Hitler Youth at this point.

So, the second group of children to be called up, about 8 in total, were the children who had just been admitted into the Young Pioneers. I gather it’s a bit exclusive – you have to be invited to join, and can only do so after showing “excellent academic achievement and leadership skills”

I have about 180 photos of happy smiling kids from that day. The sports day was a huge success. What I love most about this kind of event is that the parents, instead of sending their kids in in sensible sports clothes, dress their little darling girls in their Sunday Best Finery. It’s all lace and frills and sparkly shoes.

Here’s for of my favorite grade threes. These four girls are the top for English speakers in the school, and I absolutely adore them. I’ll miss them terribly when I go. Left to right is Ellen, Kristi, Katie and Rose.

My remaining three weeks in Dushanzi are beginning to be booked solid with dinners with folk who have been kind to me over the year. And on top of that, I plan to go up to Tianchi (you remember, the mountain lake I went to when I first arrived) for a few days with some close friends. We’ll hang out by the lake, avoid the tourists, ride some horses, play some music, and generally have a good time.

Then it’s off to Borla for Mushuk and I. Borla is about 8 hours away by train, and Mushuk’s new family live there, in a SINGLE story house with an outside area. I’m delighted to report that Mushuk will be in more danger of wandering away and getting lost than he will of being a putz and falling out of buildings. In Borla, I’m looking forward to visiting a Chinese farm, milking the odd cow (I promise to put my hair in plaited pigtails and get a photo taken…), drinking some FRESH milk for the first time during my whole time in Xin Jiang…

I’ll keep you posted.

Cheers for now!

Charlotte

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The next day after the Sunday Market, we found ourselves at a bit of a loose end. We’d seen all within Kashgar that we had wanted to see, and yet our flight back to Urumqi wasn’t flying out until Tuesday. We eventually decided to hire a driver to take us out to the Mor Pagoda, where it is said that the great Buddhist monk, Tripitaka (you remember, the calm guy dressed in yellow in that old Japanese TV show, Monkey? Except that I think that Tripitaka was actually played by a woman in the show, to make him look younger and more virtuous).

There are many versions to the story, but here is the one that I like.

Long, long ago, in the far east of China, the old Buddhist scriptures had long crumbled to dust. All that remained were imperfect translations into Chinese of lesser scriptures, and those were kept by corrupt and lazy monks who cared less for the teachings of Buddha than they did for filling their stomachs with the fruits of others’ labour. Buddha was aware of the problem, and asked one of the Chinese lesser Buddhas, Guan-Yin (a patron of compassion and caring) to do something about the problem.

“I have three full baskets of Scripture on Earth, waiting at the Temple of the Thunderclap for someone to collect them,” he said. “Could you find a pilgrim to travel the hundred thousand leagues from China to India and back?”

Guan-Yin thought to himself, “I guess I could go get the scriptures myself, but then the Chinese people will not really appreciate them.”

Instead, he found a young and devout monk, Xuan Zang , who had joined the priesthood in search of enlightenment. Xuan Zang was the ideal candidate for the job felt keen betrayal and disillusionment when he saw what the far Eastern Buddhist religion had become. Guan-Yin convinced the Emperor to send the young monk on the quest to far off India, and at this point, Xuan Zang changed his name to Tripitaka, which literally means “three baskets” in Sanskrit.

Along the way, Tripitaka picks up his traveling companions – Monkey (the handsome man above on the right), Pigsy and Sandy.

At any rate, the claim is that on his way to India, Tripitaka stopped at the Mor Pagoda, which was once a temple, to rest and pray after the arduous journey across the Taklamakan Desert.

So. We hired a car and got ourselves a handsome young driver, a guy whose name now escapes me. He was slow to warm up, but once we got him talking, he was cheery company.

You’ll remember that the rain had been pouring down a few days before, turning any surface previously covered with dirt into mud. The road out to the Mor Pagoda was generally pretty good, and the sun was shining. The air was warm and soft, and our Han Chinese driver was impressing us with his language skills – he spoke fluent Uyghur. In my part of Xin Jiang, this is utterly unheard of. Most Han would subconsciously consider learning Uyghur to be beneath them, and not even bother to learn as much as I’ve picked up (I can’t say much, but it’s more than many Han who live here). So imagine our surprise to hear the driver respectfully ask the Uyghurs on the way out to the Pagoda for directions.

We finally emerged from the trees that cover the fertile land to the East of Kashgar city, obviously and suddenly reaching the end of the oasis that is the reason for Kashgar’s existence. At this point, the road swiftly and determinately became practically undrivable. I say practically, because our brave driver didn’t bat an eyelid at the dirt road, which alternated rapidly between dusty dry and foot deep bogs the size of yaks (oooh, the evil yaks that kept me from blogging, a curse on them!).

Not much further along the road, we see off in the distance, the indistinct double towers that make up the Mor Pagoda.

And of course, at this point, the road becomes utterly undrivable. I say utterly, and I mean it, because our driver gets out and inspects the truck sized bog ahead, with a dubious expression on his face. He is about to go and pick up some stones to chuck in the bog to attempt a crossing, much to the slightly incredulous amusement of we three westerners (“we only have to make sure we’re on the plane tomorrow!”).

But fate and Uyghur foresight is on our side. For who should come galloping up but a donkey cart with a young driver (again, handsome – what a great day! *wink*), with the cart set up with blankets to take passengers. We’d asked any number of folk for directions out there, and this enterprising young man had obviously predicted that we’d not be able to get past this point in the road.

So, our driver negotiates the fee, and all five of us jump on this cart, our legs dangling over the edges, as the most adorable donkey in the world tirelessly (or not so much – I can see where donkeys get their reputation for being stubborn from!) pulls us along the desert track to the Pagoda.

However, we cannot possibly expect all to go to plan. For what should happen towards the end of the trip, but the donkey cart get a flat tire!!

So off we all hop, within an easy ten minute walk of the pagoda, and saunter across the crusty desert, spirits high and full of amusement over the transport situation. Our two drivers tell us to wait while they go get the tire pumped up, but we just laugh and say that we’d prefer to walk. But off they go anyway, to get the cart up and running again for when we’re ready to go back again.

The desert floor was an incredible sight: it was snap dried after the rains, and the whole thing was a maze of cracks:

Once we got to the Pagodas, our drivers car and donkey had climbed the northern-most tower, and were beckoning us to follow.

Here you have to understand something about the Pagodas – they are essentially mud-brick ruins. I don’t know if they’re still hollow on the inside, but the elements have certainly shown signs of having taken bites out of these ancient structures. They are worn, and the sides of the Northern tower are showing signs of water erosion, like what you’d see somewhere where the vegetation has been torn away and the rain runs down in rivulets which become deeper and deeper as the water carries away the dirt.

So, initially I was quite appalled at the idea of climbing the structure, and contributing to the damage. But then curiosity, and the assurance by the drivers that it was quite forbidden to climb the South tower, got the better of me, I am ashamed to admit.

Debbie and I clambered up, with the help of the gallant lads (gallantry is alive and kicking in China – it used to annoy me and prick my pride, but I had since laid that aside in exchange for the assurance that I wouldn’t stumble on the steep slope, and a) get covered in desert dust or b) damage my camera) and before we knew it, we were viewing the Taklamakan desert from our private lookout.

What a view!

I’m wearing the scarf over my head cause despite how cloudy it looks, it was actually very glary, and I would have burnt like a sausage on Australia Day otherwise.

This photo, I thought, was brilliant not just cause of the view (in fact, not so much for its artistic value at all) but because it perfectly captures the three cultural groups represented, and in particular their attitudes towards photos.

On the left, we have the traditional Chinese rabbit ears shot from our driver. In the middle, there’s Deb, naturally posed to my eye, but smiling. Then on the right, we have the Uyghur donkey cart driver, composed and stern faced.

It’s hard to get Uyghurs to smile in photos. I’ve not worked out why yet. I’ll get back to you on that one.

After we’d done our Mor Experience, we sauntered back to the place where they’d parked the donkey, but the driver suggested that with a flat tire, one of us should go back on his friend’s motorcycle (who knows where the friend came from!). I’m not sure how it was decided, but before I knew it, my mum was perched on the back of this dirt bike, and then she was speeding away while the rest of us clambered back onto the cart. Oh, how Debbie and I laughed.

I’m not sure that my mum’s been on a dirt bike since she taught my brothers and I how to ride my grandpa’s little 50cc. Actually, I’m not even sure if she rode it then. Snaps for her, I say!

We eventually got back to the place where we’d left the car, to find Sara (who had been waiting for at least 20 minutes, I’d say) being kept company by a car full of policemen. Not in any threatening way or anything, but she was utterly unable to tell them why she, a lone foreign woman, was waiting by herself by a car on a muddy road. So they stayed there, just to make sure that everything was OK. Nice of them. As soon as they saw us coming, and made sure that we were in the same group as Sara, they sped off.

We thanked our donkey driver for his services, and were preparing to fork over the agreed amount of money, when he began to attempt to negotiate for more dosh, using the obviously irrefutable logic that the tire was flat, and we should pay for it.

The cheeky thing, he was just trying to see how far he could push it. He grabbed me by the hand and dragged me over to the tire, trying his best to make me understand, and I just grinned at him had shook my head, saying with mock indignation in English, “no way, mate! It was probably already flat when you offered us the ride, and you wanted us to pay for it!”

Eventually, our driver had had enough of the cheeky young donkey driver, took the money that we’d agreed on from our hands, placed it on the donkey cart, and herded we foreingers into the car. As we began to drive off, we heard a massive yell behind us, and like greased lightening the donkey and his driver sped past us, in a last attempt to impress us with his prowess, standing up like a Roman chariot driver:

And on that note, my friends, I shall end this long running commentary on our adventures in Kashgar. We return to our normal Dushanzi programming shortly. Thank you and goodnight.

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I’ve been held hostage by evil genetically enhanced yaks from the Forbidden Zone, and have only just escaped with my life. They did heinous experiments on me, and kept me from writing more blog entries. I swear, it’s the truth. That’s another story though. For now, I want to tell you about the rest of my time in Kashgar…

One of the best things that Kashgar is known for is the Sunday Bazaar. It’s one of the biggest weekly markets in Central Asia. And to understand the scope of how big it is, you really have to be there. You can keep walking for hours, in a straight line, and still be at the market. Of course, that does include browsing time, but STILL! It’s quite something.

This is the place where you can buy practically ANYTHING. From cats to camels, knives to nails, pashminas to pigments, this market’s got it all. Thanks to Debbie for this brilliant photo:

This is all Chinese medicine – dried animals (lizards, snakes, starfish, scorpions) for grinding up and putting in food, mushrooms, and god only knows what else. Christine is big into the Chinese Medicines (or more to the point, she has a friend who takes her to all these places for checkups and massages and stuff) but I’ve never had more than a cough lolly. Which is not to say that I think it’s nonsense. But when I’m in a restaurant and I’m hungry and I KNOW that I like the Caesar Salad, I’m the type of person to shy away from ordering the Brazilian yellow tongued yak steak. If I’m sick, gimme the western drugs all the way! I know that an Aspirin will take away the pain, so I decide to refrain from ingesting ground up bat entrails.

Anyway, what Kashgar possibly best known for are the Pashminas and silk scarves, and the beautifully ornate Uyghur knives. If you see ornate knives anywhere in China, chances are they’ve been made in Kashgar.

And, it would not be a Kashgar market without the scarves. Shops and shops, rows upon rows of scarves of every colour, shape, texture, size… The only problem is making a CHOICE!

So. Shopping. By the end of the day, it felt like I’d bought a STACK of things, but when we had gone back to the hotel and taken stock of the day’s purchases, I’d discovered that I’d only bought two knives. Then it hit me – the illusion of having bought out the entire market stemmed from having done most of the bargaining for Sara and Debbie. At one point, I was bargaining for knives from one seller, and we had a huge group of amused Uyghurs gathered around, to watch the girl-foriegner go head to head with an experienced store owner. I have no idea how well I did, but we did managed to get him down to about a quarter or a fifth of the starting price. Who knows what his profit margin was, but we were happy, and he was marginally so, so I suppose we did OK.

I’m starting to realize that with Uyghur goods, I’m actually a better bargainer than a lot of Chinese people. I have my patter to start negotiations, and it goes like this:

Charlotte: How much is this _____?
Seller: It’s X yuan.
C (looking disappointed): Oh, dear, that’s more than I had imagined.
S (looking eager): How much would you pay for it, then?
C (uncertainly): Oh, if I told you, I’m sure you’d not be happy!
S (amused): No, no, I promise, I’ll not be angry. Try me!
C: No, really, you won’t be happy if I tell you!
Note that this whole section of the conversation is to force the seller into a corner – when I say the eventual price, which is around 1/5 of the initial asking price, the seller no longer has the option of using the indignant “are you kidding?!?!” response, cause they just promised to be nice about it. Sneaky?
S: Please, tell me what you’d pay for a lovely ______ like this one!
C: Well, I’d probably give you about Y yuan for it. (Y being about 1/5th of X)
S: Oh, goodness me, that’s too low! I can make it a little cheaper, if you like. Perhaps W yuan? (W being 4/5th of X)

The whole thing goes on until we agree on a price that’s about 2/5ths to 1/2 of X. I refuse to go higher than � of the asking price. I use all of the normal strategies, like walking away VERY slowly if they are not coming around to the lowest price, waiting for them to call you back, and like saying that I/my friend bought one “exactly like this in Urumqi” for much cheaper. That always does the trick.

One thing about the market that day. It all happened just after a massive dust storm, followed by several days of rain. So, imagine taking tones and tones of desert dust, mixing it in with water, and dumping it on the streets. The roads were covered in this fine slurry of mud. Mud everywhere. I’m sure it was very authentic, but my shoes did not approve.

And donkeys. Donkeys everywhere. Noone can afford cars, and bikes cost money, you just need to put a donkey in a field to fuel it. Donkey carts are the de rigeur transport in Kashgar, especially in the bazaar area. Look, I have a photo that demonstrates my two last points – Mud and Donkeys:

In fact, to give you an idea of the sort of things these poor donkeys can do, look at this! We were driving along at one point, and Sara and Debbie yelled out, “STOP THE TAXI!!”

This was a normal sight in Kashgar!

At any rate, the day was a marvelous success, with Sara and Debbie coming away with wonderful souvenirs, mostly knives and Pashminas. The knife sellers were happy with us that day!

I have to say, there are few things better for honing your language skills than traveling. Usually in Dushanzi, if I have something important to do or buy, I take Sunny with me to help with the translating. But when I’m traveling, that’s just not an option. So I have to pull out all the stops, remember everything I ever heard or learnt, and attempt to get by. It’s even better when one travels with a couple of companions whose Chinese is limited to “hello” and “thankyou”. Sara and Debbie were asking me all these questions, and most of the time, I had no idea as to the answer. So more often than not, sitting in the front seat of a taxi, I’d pull out the electronic dictionary (god bless Palm and Pleco Software! Michael at Pleco has my undying love and gratitude for developing the first really good quality Chinese-English English-Chinese dictionary with pinyin. I utterly recommend it to all who want dictionaries on their Palm pilots: http://www.pleco.com/ ). This had the double advantage of me practicing my Chinese while being forced to learn new vocab. This gorgeous little program even incorporates a flash card feature, where you can add new words that you’ve just looked up into the flashcard section.

I was telling Webmaster Matt about why I had not blogged in ages. I think the answer comes down to this – I can’t blog while my apartment is messy. And my apartment has been messy for WEEKS!

Soon to come, seeing as I have no class and no commitments till tomorrow evening: The Mor Pagoda (it’s a great story!), also known as one-of-the-places-where-Tripitaka-stopped-to-pray-on-his-way-to-India. I’ve been looking forward to telling this story. It was stacks of fun, this trip!

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