Outside the tall, glass building the colourful neon sign is brightly shining: ‘KTV’. I’d often pondered what was inside but had never actually ventured inside until a little while ago. I assume that KTV stands for kalaoke - no joke, they really do the L/R switch, like eating Indian cully and going to see the new Hally Pottel movie - television or something.

When I think about karaoke I think about a half-drunk man or woman blearing the theme song to Gilmore Girls in front of a room of people in a dusty hotel. But I guess that since then karaoke has come a long way, especially in Asia.

In fact, it’s the most surreal thing I’ve seen so far in China. You enter this building and it’s divided into lots of little rooms of various sizes. The whole place looks incredibly high-tech and like something from the future. It rather looks like an alien spaceship out of a seventies TV show. Inside the little soundproofed – or more or less soundproofed – rooms are groups of friends singing and enjoying the free drinks and buffet (yummy, chicken feet, hearts and tongues, just what I’ve always wanted…) that come with the entry price of around 30/40 yuan per person.

I never really saw the point to karaoke to be honest. But it is actually quite an appealing thing to just go there with two friends and sing along to corny songs – ‘Where You Lead’ – at the top of your lungs. I don’t know why, but you can just unwind a little bit when doing that. It’s an outlet for emotions and I suppose this is also why it’s appealing for a lot of people in this part of the world. And they got computer technology that slightly modifies your voice to make it sound like your singing quite well.

I’ve been watching too much of a TV-show called ‘Doctor Who’ lately (because it’s incredibly good). It’s a science fiction show with aliens and things like that who try to take over/destroy/enslave the world through different kinds of crazy and creative plans and schemes. And I think there may just be a group of aliens harvesting the power of 1.3 billion karaoke singers to jumpstart their spaceship.

Or maybe I just need to stop watching Doctor Who for a while.

I‘m terribly embarrased about something. For you see, there is something about which I have not been very truthful. Some people might outrightly call it lying but I think lying is such an ugly word. I’ll just call it twisting the truth, though even that has a negative ring to it. How about an ‘imaginated version of the truth’? Yes, that will work. And besides, when you hear my reasoning for it you’ll totally understand anyway.

I’ve been telling some people about a Belgian girl I met named Linda who I have traveled a bit with. Now first of all I did indeed meet a Belgian girl and technically we traveled together a little bit. But her name was not Linda. And in fact, there were two Belgian girls but I cannot with full certainty now recall their names.

No, the true identity of Linda has remained hidden until now. It all started three months ago in a club near the Hong Kong border. Me and two friends went to a hotel there for a supposed party. The party was a bit of a bore as there was only a handful of people. However, among these people there was someone that caught my attention. His name? Eros. Yes, I know, a rather peculiar name but you can also applaud it for its uniqueness. Actually, his Chinese name is Zhang Jia Yi or 张佳毅.

Well, there we got to talking after a few drinks. And well, now, three months later we’re still talking. In fact, one could say we’re now a couple. I’m not sure why I’ve created the persona of Linda until now to keep it hidden and not just come clean with the truth of it right away but I suppose it’s because of the reactions. And because I’ve also been waiting to see where it was all going and if it was going to turn into something serious. Well, most of the traveling I did in the last few weeks was with ‘Linda’ so I thought it was time now to lift the veil. Sorry for the whole thing.

Anyway, now you’ll probably want to know some more. Linda (I’m sticking with the name and female gender here because of people from my work coming across this blog and I don’t want them to know) works in Guangzhou. She studied to be a director in Beijing and directs a Chinese TV show which I really don’t understand. Besides that she also teaches. However, every now and then we hit a little bit of a communication barrier because her English is actually quite poor. So it’s really speeding up my learning of Chinese. But despite she knowing that I don’t really intend to spend more than a year China she still stays with me despite my warnings.

So to just clarify again. I’m not suddenly straight. Linda is just a codename. This is the second of a series of stories about my travels in China.

Across from me sits a woman in the chair that is just too small for her. Her bottom spills over into the next seat to the great annoyance of the person next to her. The expression on her face is one of study as the looks at me. Not unlike the look your face would produce when trying to read a sign on the highway which is too far away and when you need new glasses. Besides her sits a man, who I presume to be her son, who is also looking at me, in his eyes the same expression as the woman.

Next to this man sits another man on a bucket. The train we are in is so full that all the chairs are already taken. Why this man took a bucketload of buckets into the train is something I don’t know but they turn out to be a convenient chair. The bucket man glances over at me every now and then. The family on the other side of the train compartment makes no secret of their curiosity. The younger children point at me and then at their nose or ears or eyes.

Me and my fellow travelers are in the train on the way to the Chinese city of Guilin. The 12 hour train ride which was supposed to be 10 hours is proving to be an interesting glance into Chinese life. There are people standing in the pathways, in the smoking area. Some are sitting on the floor and someone has perched herself on the little wash basin next to the toilets. All around people are munching on the snacks they brought or get boiled water for their instant noodles from the dining car. And all the while the air conditioner strains to keep up with all the radiating body heat.

I’m tempted to ask where they are going and what they’ll do there. Are all these people in this train to go on holiday? Or are they going back home? Why are they willing to endure this sneak preview of hell to get to their destination? I’m too shy to ask since previous incidents with people laughing at my Chinese. So I suppose I’ll never find out. Also, if they find out I can speak a few words of Chinese I will not get a second rest on this train.

And just when you think now it’s really full the train pulls into a station. You look out the window at the dozen or so people standing at each door pushing to get in and you think how on earth are you all going to come in here? But they do, somehow. And everyone stands a little closer together. Some of these people need to stand up in this train for all of the 12 hours of this journey.

For the first two hours in this train most of my thoughts consisted of ‘oh my God this is madness’. When those two hours were over I thought I’d quite like to read a book so I get up, climb over some people, crawl underneath some other ones, navigate through a jungle of bags, buckets and let’s not forget garbage. Finally, I reach my bag. I look around me to see if I’ve hurt anyone and notice that every single person in this train is staring at me. So I do what anyone would do. Wave and say: ‘good evening!’. Which had the absolutely wonderful result of suddenly making everyone realise they were rudely staring and in the blink of an eye everyone looked away.

And at last, dawn comes. And with dawn comes the arrival of the train into the otherworldly landscape of Guilin.

This is the first of a series of stories about my travels in China.

Or at any rate, that is what Hong Kong calls itself. I haven’t much time so I need to be rather short today. What I will give you however is pictures! So open those sleepy eyelids and gaze upon what is arguably one of the world’s most interesting cities.

The highlight of my two-day trip was without question my trip to the island of Lantau, an undeveloped island only 30 minutes away by ferry from Hong Kong’s main harbour. It’s the home of the 24 meters tall Buddha and the Po Lin monastery. But also of an incredible natural beauty and a lot of open space. And I regret only having a few days there, but I will certainly go back and go on a hiking trip in October as the weather will be cooler. Anyway, I’ll leave the rest of the pictures to tell their own story.

Look inside the post to see the pictures.

In the morning I will be leaving to Hong Kong and then through the rest of China for a couple of weeks. I don’t know how my internet availability is going to be so it could occur I can’t update for quite a while. So don’t worry about that and just keep coming back and keep the comments coming.

One takes two kilos of flour, 10 eggs, 3,75 liters of milk and 4,5 tsp. of baking powder and then proceeds to vigorously mix the ingredients until pain in the arm forces the stirrer to rest. After recovering continue stirring – if needed use the other arm – until the mixture is smooth of texture. Leave the concoction to rest for several minutes and use this opportunity to rest your tired arms also. If company permitting it is best to do this scarcely dressed as mixture sent flying around the room and the heavy stirring can cause mess and sweating.

When the preparer of the pancakes has sufficiently rested and dried up in close proximity to the airconditioning proceed to turn on the fire to a high level. The heat produced by the fire will instantly cause anyone nearby to turn into a trickling sweat-fountain. Add butter to the pan and bake pancakes. Flip pancakes carefully and avoid pan slippage due to sweaty hands. All the while, make sure not to emit sweat into the pan as salty pancakes don’t please the palet of any man. Also I would like to interject that any man that enjoys a piece of bacon or other such products on a pancake should be sent to the insane asylum.

Proceed to bake 40 pancakes of a medium size. Have a mop nearby to dry and sweep floor of sweat and mixture-spills. Nobody ever said pancakes were a clean affair.

Eat 10 pancakes for dinner and save the other 30 for the next day when they will be taken to 20 hungry children aged between four and seven. Explain to children how pancakes are created. Hand the children various sweet substances and demonstrate how to give the pancakes facial features such as eyes, ears, mouth and nose using a combination of the following: sugar syrup, strawberry jam, chocolate cream, blueberry cream and chunks of mandarin.

Convert the pancake into a roll and proceed to put it into the mouth. Now, instruct children to follow the above procedures and enjoy the spectacle.

One girl whose name shall remain unknown for privacy reasons put the tube of chocolate cream to her mouth and emptied its contents into it. Then as I told her not to do that she opened her mouth to protest and the chocolate – or what was called chocolate but had no semblance to the taste of it – dribbled all down her dress, chin, neck and hands. Another put the pancake to her mouth and had the chunks of chocolately mandarin fall into her lap.

In the end it was a battlefield of half-to-fully devoured corpses of pancakes. Sticky tables, hands and faces all around. Somehow I got jam or syrup into my shoe and for the rest of the day my feet and shoes sounded like unrolling a piece of tape.

But regardless, the pancakes were a huge success. Let’s hope they forget about them quickly and never want them again. Today, we’re taking twenty kids to the pizza restaurant Papa Johns and making pizza. Thankfully, we won’t need to clean that up.

I‘m afraid I don’t really have a story to tell at the moment. No bland, uninteresting social critique or observations of Chinese culture but just a plain old summation of plans, recent things and the whole recent situation. So someone expecting any of the afore mentioned can just close this window right now.

I’ll skip the apologies about my lack of posting if you don’t mind because we’ve all seen that before. Been a little busy so in a situation like that I’d rather have a nice Tsingtao – Chinese beer brand – and nod off watching TV. I’m sure we can all understand that, right? Which is kind of what my plan was for tonight also but due to a nagging sense of responsibility here I am giving you the down low (do people still say that?).

The main point was of course my birthday and many thanks for the birthday wishes. I really appreciate that small gesture. My birthday was spent in a rather unusual way for me actually. And this is going to sound really bad. Because you see, for the first time this was also really a full workday for me (seven and a half hours of teaching/assisting). But regardless of that it was a good day and I got a truckload of presents which is always appreciated. I haven’t invertarised everything quite yet but when I do I’ll be sure to present you with a full list.

Right now the Magic English summer camp is going on so that’s quite a lot of work at the moment. But it’s a lot of fun and I’m actually doing things of which I think: “Wow, guess this is not just for kids”. We took them to the crappiest dinosaur museum I ever saw. The paint was peeling off the wall, the dinosaurs were falling apart and the moving dinosaurs all kind of sounded like cows that were being milked. But kids have enough of an imagination to enjoy it regardless of that. And for the adults there it was actually just kind of funny to see such a crapshack. Tomorrow a trip to the beach is planned and two days after that we’re going to Papa Johns to make pizza with the whole group. And a few days later…

It’s all done! Then it’s time to go traveling. The Tibet plan already went down the drain and a lot of other plans I don’t have yet. First it’s to Hong Kong for two days, then to Guangzhou, then to Guilin (which always looks absolutely stunning) and after that try to kind of go off the beaten track and find some more of the pure China that I know still has to exist somewhere in this landmass with 1.3 billion people.

Right now that’s all I have time and inspiration for. I will try to get some nice pictures up of the summer camp and of course you’ll be kept up to date of any travel plans.

So last night I had my first enounter with a tropical storm, or a typhoon as they’re called in this part of the world. You may also know them as cyclones, hurricanes, tropical storms or as the Australians call them: Wet Willies or something similar. This one hit Hong Kong and Shenzhen head-on last night at around 1:00 in the morning. It wasn’t a full force storm and it was a little bit on the weak side they tell me.

At about 12:30 I go to bed and wake up a few hours later to the sound of howling wind and torrential rain. Nothing to worry about, right? On the 23rd floor you generally don’t experience floods anyway. This morning I am woken up by Sean who tells me to get out of bed. It was 8:30 so I unwillingly complied. So I throw my legs over the bed and onto the floor and what do I hear?

Splash. ‘Hmm, normally the floor doesn’t go splash’, I think to myself.

So I get out of bed and the whole apartment is just absolutely flooded. About 5-6 centimeters of water just lying there across everything. My room and the other bedroom were a little better off. But you know, in a situation like this it really just takes a few minutes to sink (haha, little play on words there) in.

The odd thing was that I got up at around 3:30 to go to the toilet and nothing was going on. So in the space of about 4 to 5 hours about 150-300 litres of water managed to seep in through the balcony window doors. How on earth is that possible?

Thankfully, damage was limited (though the floor is starting to get a bit lumpy) and the electricity switched off in the night which is really fortunate. Or it could have ended a lot more dramatically (it’s China, you don’t know about such things). And after about 2 hours of squeezing towels and mops into buckets we had it all dried up. But for the next few hours I will be blowdrying all the wet books.

More pictures inside the post.

Once again the most dreaded moment is nearly upon me. Only eleven days until that fateful day. The birthday. It makes one wish one was born on the 29th of February so it would only happen once every four years. Unfortunately such luck is not bestowed on me. Although I did win 10 RMB scratching fa piao (a sort of receit with a scratch card game built in which you get wherever you can eat) the other day. That probably cost me my supply of luck for the next year.

The one thing that is so ironic about birthdays is that people actually expect you to celebrate becoming a year older. All you are is one year closer to death! Should a birthday not be a day of mourning instead? Instead of congratulations people would offer you their condolances. Imagine all the designers suddenly required to design all these new birthday cards saying: ‘Many condolances on another gloomy birthday!’

You may already have the feeling by now that I don’t have any particular desire to celebrate much. ‘Why this depressing post?’, you wonder. Well, I’ll let you in on it.

Shopping. I went shopping. Now usually I find that quite an enjoyable experience but it was shopping of the wrong kind. Shopping for a birthday present. You see, I’m part of a twin and that means on my birthday it’s also my sister’s birthday. I wanted to get something Chinese which would also be kind of funny yet something useful so not like a crappy statue. So I went to Dong Men shopping center, which is a shopping mall the Chinese way.

Wander through one street and you find a whole street of butchers, turn left and you’re suddenly smack in the middle of a maze-like womens’ shoe temple (which it took me 15 minutes to find the way out of) and take a right and you’re suddenly in the Starbucks (I have developed a sixth sense to finding these unconsciously). And all the while all the sales people see you as a dollar sign with legs or a walking, talking wallet. I seriously don’t need womens shoes (though I did see one lovely pair) or ‘sexy DVDs for sexy boy’ (that one was good for my ego, actually).

All of this was a rather roundabout way of coming to a rather solemn point. Why do people need all of this? China is experiencing the biggest economic growth in the world at the moment but is the nation as a whole becoming happier? I doubt it. I would almost wager on the opposite. You may think that you own a house, have a nice job and lots of wonderful possessions but the fact of the matter is that those things own you. They limit your freedom and cloud your vision. Now I realize that this makes me a little bit of a hypocrite as I also indulge in non vital luxuries but never for the sake of the indulging itself. I suppose being confronted with the gap between rich and poor here that has me thinking seriously about these issues.

I was pondering something while looking at the hordes of people passing by the Starbucks branch. If you gave these people the choice between buying happiness and a new flat screen television which one would they choose?

Iam always making tiny improvements to this website as an ongoing project. Until now I’ve resisted the urge to give photography a strong presence on this website. For me it’s always been about telling the story and the photos were just something to add some colour. And of course to tell their own story.

On the other hand I’m seeing some interesting and beautiful things which I wanted to share. Usually I kept my pictures strictly on Facebook but with the downfall of Facebook, Flickr and other similar services also slightly wobbly (and not to mention slow) I decided to succumb to the photos. While I will still keep them off the front page those looking for it can now go to Photos in the menu at the top. Also, clicking the title of the post on the front page will show images in newer posts in full size. Enjoy!

So after two days of actual physical regurgitation – or vomiting, for those of you not familiar with the term – I thought it was time for one purely of words. You’ll notice I have been a bit lazy on keeping you updated and that’s due to several reasons. I’ve touched upon this slightly in the past if you recall. It’s hard to tell an interesting story now and then without becoming boring or repetitive.

But also because the things that baffled you in daily life here every now and then start to become more mundane. The stop-and-go driving of the traffic, people staring at you on public transport and seeing someone driving a bicycle with four matresses tied to the back of it just become part of the every day. When I say it like that it sounds like I’m already bored of it but I certainly am not. I still find it quite fascinating to watch the struggle that life for a lot of these people is.

One of my favourite pasttimes remains Chinglish signs – I found one the other day that said ‘please fall down here carefully’. Unfortunately my camera’s batteries had no more juice left in them.

So you may have noticed me mentioning vomiting up there. Well, I don’t know what caused it but Tuesday night after class I was feeling terribly drained. So I went to bed early but as soon as I was lying down I had to get up and get to the toilet to do the first one in a series of stomach-emptyings. Things were kind of going black in front of my eyes so I managed to put my head between my knees until it calmed down. I was sweating like a madman but eventually it calmed down. Two days later now it’s thankfully a whole lot better, but I’m still a little bit weak and the thought of any food other than white rice, bread or fruit still makes me gag.

So as I said there really isn’t much to report on. Holidays are only three weeks away with the summer camp starting on the 24th of July and after that my trip to Lhasa if all goes as planned.

Especially now. If you’ve heard about the unrest in Urumqi it wouldn’t surprise me if the permit regulations for Tibet were also made more strict. Though on the other hand I doubt the Chinese government would want to lose the revenues from all the foreign tourists streaming into Tibet. But I can’t reserve that yet anyway because the permits are on a short-term basis. The casualty of this has also been Facebook, so excuse me for not replying to anything on there for the moment. In other words, it’s being censored.

Also, let me try and get some pictures up here. And once again my apologies. I’ll do my best to update more.

Bah, I just cannot come up with a clever, interesting way to bring you cold, hard facts today. So I will just be blunt and come out and say it: I got a job. Yes. I know what you are thinking. ‘You?! Work?! Don’t make me laugh.’ Well, I’m not lying. After 22 years it was bound to happen. In fact, I think I’ve delayed it quite long enough now.

Because when you suddenly come to the conclusion that the swim trunks you’ve been wearing and still consider ‘new’ are already nearing their fourth anniversary being wrapped around your legs it’s probably time to get some cash-flow towards a new wardrobe.

So let me tell you some more of what the job entails. It’s two and a half hours in the morning and the same again in the afternoon with a break in between. The little creatures I will be teaching are called ‘kids’ and they’ve generally been alive for around 3 to 4 years. Let’s hope they stay that way after I am done with them.

For 30-40 minutes each day I will teach the two different classes. So it’s not like I have to take care of these talking poop-machines all by myself. Heavens no. Besides teaching them those 40 minute classes I will assist the other teachers, help them tell their story, their lunch and make sure nobody breaks any limbs and play with them during playtime. Coincidentally, how can you possibly say ‘play with kids’ without sounding like a pervert? Seriously, I don’t know. But of course you’ll hear much more about these adventures once it’s September, because that’s when I start.

And until it’s that time there is something else I am excited about. I am however not yet entirely sure how that is going to turn out because of the permit I need to do it, but I like to think of myself as one those optimistic types I can find so annoying sometimes. Here it comes. Lhasa, Tibet.

That’s where I am planning to go in August. The maximum temperature of 26 degrees, 0% humidity and gorgeous mountain scenery are the main reasons for why I’d like to go there. Maybe once I know more definitely that these plans will come to fruition I will let you know more. Right now there are just too many ‘ifs’.

So, stay tuned.
Coming soon.

Engnese, you’re wondering, what the hell is that? Well, you might have heard of the expression Chinglish. That means Chinese that has been really literally translated and will generally provide some amusement while reading warning notices or labels. ‘Do not use lift while on fire’, ‘Please take good care of your luggage’, ‘Taking care to deep water, not to take water please.’ And many more much more hilarious ones, but these are so far the ones I’ve seen and the ones I can recall.

But the thing is, I’m pretty much doing the same thing now but the other way around. I will probably translate the few things I can into Chinese so literally that it will seem quite hilarious to Chinese speakers.

I was practising with my Chinese teacher on the different combinations of letters recently and I was going through the list trying to pronounce them (rather loudly I guess). There is one combination that when pronounced means ‘fuck’ (ri), and I managed to turn ‘can I try this on’ into ‘take off my clothes’. So that had some people turning around looking at me rather oddly. And for example the word ài, ái, āi, and ăi respectively mean love, cancer, dust and short. Only the tone at which you say it really determines the meaning. Just imagine saying to someone ‘I cancer you’. Though of course you will largely be able to tell from context what someone may mean.

But it is coming around alright. I can now read a few Chinese characters (I’d say around 30-50, only 3450 to go for a basic newspaper) and ask ‘is this the bus/train/ferry to Timbuktoo?’. Though it will be a while yet before I can have a proper conversation, and least something’s improving.

One thing is definitely not getting any better. And that is the weather. Today we have a scorching 34 degrees with a wonderfully high humidity. My face turns into a leaking sieve and water runs down your back right into your hmm hmm (it rhymes, in case you were wondering what it is). And for some goddamn reason the swimming pool is closed! On a Sunday! There is probably a good reason for it, however, my Chinese is not good enough for that just yet. Especially because nobody here seems to understand that speaking slowly and using simple language might help the foreigner understand you. But she probably said something along the lines of ‘my apologies, kind sir, currently we are in the process of using a combination of chemical compounds and hydrosophilogicalistic filterising whatchamecallems to purge the swimming pool. The reopening of the swimming pool shall take place at the hour of 3 or 4 of the current day’. Instead of the Chinese for ‘open 4 o’ clock’.

Sorry for the lack of posting this last week. You try coming up with a mildly interesting story every few days. It’s not as easy as it looks!

Satan, Beelzebub, Diabolo. Evil has many names. But from the abyssal depths of hell’s furnace a new terror has risen. Its terrifying visage and screams can turn the courage of even the bravest men and women to stone. When this demon tormented me the first time it was still without a name. Since, however, this new more powerful evil has come to be known by the name of:

George.

While this hellspawn cannot breathe fire, command vast armies of demons or crush a man with superhuman strength it has an ability far more horrid.

It is called (if you ask me, I’m no doctor) Attention Deficit Disorder. Or possibly Spoiled Chinese Brat Condition.

Let me sketch you an image here. In a class of seven children you have this devil walking about. You are trying to teach them English. While you try to make it as interesting as you can of course it’s still school. Some parts will be fun and some parts less fun. Through use of your voice, gestures, faces and things like that you try to keep their little minds fixed on you. You play games, sing songs (off key, of course), act a little goofy. And remarkably these tiny things keep them happy.

However, this new evil is immune to these sorts of things.

As soon as you look away he will be running towards the door, towards the desk, be hitting another kid and other such acts of mischief. He’ll go through your bag, draw on you with a whiteboard market, rip up your flash cards and things like that. Generally you try to ignore it but sometimes when he disturbs the others you have to intervene. However, this behaviour is infectious. The other kids (except one, bless the patient little angel) will see him running about and almost start to think it’s okay. I’ve tried tons of tricks on him now (which include but are not limited to bribery and blackmail) but to no avail.

The sad thing is, the boy (evil demon) probably cannot help it.

In any European country or the US the boy would be taken to a doctor or whatever you take kids to for an ADD diagnosis. In China this is unheard of. And I can imagine, of course. It’s your only child and you don’t want to admit there might be a problem.

We’ve talked to the mother and the mother seems to hear this everywhere. However, the mother talked to the father and what kind of parenting technique is still quite popular here?

Bingo. Physical punishment. We heard from the mother that his father had given him a beating and you could tell from the poor little boy. He was jittery, almost scared. However, after one lesson of light improvement it was back to the same level as before; pure evil.

After the last lesson his mother came in and asked for the flash cards used that lesson. The mother asked George to try to say the words, but the poor boy just cracked under the pressure. In class – when I can get his attention – he can say it.

The boy started crying, the mother started shouting at him. And I could do nothing but stand there watching. The mother then walked away in anger and left the boy standing there, crying, saying in Chinese over and over: ‘She’ll never forgive me, she’ll never forgive me, she’ll never forgive me.’ The assistant teacher I had there managed to skillfully calm him down and take him back to his mother.

And even though the little demon torments me to the point of losing my patience, I actually feel sorry for him.

And with good things I mean good news. And with good news I mean no news. Remember the saying: ‘No news is good news?’ Well, I have no news. So that’s good, right? But on the other hand if people hear nothing they start to worry. So to recap: no news, all good, still alive.

Since going to the beach last monday – see previous post – the most interesting thing that has happened is, uh. Hmmm. Let me think. That’s right, nothing much. You know, after a little while you start to settle into a little routine and the things that once astounded you every day start to become more normal.

One thing that has happened that is rather annoying is the blocking of Flickr and Twitter because of the ‘hmmm hmmm hmmm’ anniversary. To me is seems rather pointless because there are so many alternatives nowadays. Especially when it comes to Flickr (which is a photo-sharing website). And I was just starting to enjoy reading celebrities’ Twitter feeds. Probably only a matter of time before Facebook also goes.

Anyway, sorry for the kind of radio-silence but hopefully I’ll soon have some more interesting things to tell. I could type up some bullshit story now but that’s only going to waste your time reading it and my time writing it.

And if you will now excuse me, I have more lessons to prepare.

Edit: I just ran into this on the Internet which is just something that you see every day here in China, but it’s always one of those cases where I don’t have a camera.

Last Monday morning I was asked if I wanted to take a trip to the beach that evening. ‘Sorry, I have to teach this evening’, I said. That wasn’t a problem they told me, because they weren’t leaving until about 9:30 in the evening. It was with Cindy and Danny and some other people. I teach Danny’s daughter 2 hours each week in a private lesson and I know Cindy because she is the one I teach for in the evenings. And they know each other because they work in the same field which is of course English lessons.

Danny organised this trip with a group she started which encompasses all sorts of teachers. Funnily enough, the ones they call English teachers really have quite poor English and I couldn’t understand half the time, they really only teach textbook English.

The plan was to go to the beach at night and sleep in a tent. When we arrived there I expected it to be near-deserted. But it looked so surreal it was almost post-apocalyptic. At 11 in the evening there were still so many people swimming in the dark water under the starry sky. All with their yellow floatation rings on because a lot of them can’t swim. Of course we all went swimming as well. The water was cool but not cold, clean and smooth and a very welcome refresher.

After about an hour or so of impressing Chinese people with swim moves I got a bit tired though. And scaring them by calling: ‘Shark!’ lost it’s effect after a while. And you can’t fight to try to push them underwater because they won’t go anywhere without their floaty flotsam anyway.

After that there was a barbeque which was pretty good and then at 4 in the morning you try to sleep in your Chinese-sized tent only to be awoken two hours later by the sunrise (which was quite nice, actually).

Whatcha think about the new colours here?

Diversity. It is something that here in China is either abundant or non-existing. On the one hand you have mall after mall filled with H&Ms and Starbuckses, but inbetween are spread the older neighbourhoods with cute little squares, green parks, family restaurants and little shops that sell everything from envelopes and lychees to bricks. So it rather depends on where you go. If you ask me, China – and especially its bigger cities – are quickly losing that which makes them Chinese. Sure, the writings on the buses and ads are still impossible to comprehend scribbles but besides that you could almost be anywhere.

Last weekend after going shopping and eating at the Pizza Hut we actually went bowling, does that sound Chinese to you?

Then the other day you visit an ancient Emperor’s tomb, see grannies dancing with hundreds at a time in the cute little square and eat home-made noodles at a family owned mini-restaurant. With chopsticks of course. And after you sit in the park eating lychees – which are in season right now.

I don’t have pictures of any of that right now. Every time I want to take pictures of any of that I don’t have my camera with me. Because some of it really is quite enchanting. But see what I mean? In this part of China you can really just experience it the way you want. But enough of that, time for a more personal story.

It’s a rather complicated one so focus please. Alright, ready? Well, there is this woman called May I do 4 hours of classes for each week and her English is really poor. We have massive troubles communicating. (Incidentally, what is with naming children after months here? I teach, in different classes, girls named April, May, June and July.) I took over these classes for May from Berry and a lot of the times changed. And to add to the confusion because of a holiday the weekend was moved to Thursday and Friday last week. So on Friday morning I send her a message: “Is there class tonight?” and get the reply “No class tonight, tomorrow ‘girls’ class 10.00 to 11.30.”

The next morning I show up at the arranged time and there’s nobody there. I see one of the girls for what we call the ‘girls’ class come in. But later I see one of the boys for the kindergarten class come in. Then another one. Then a few minutes late May shows up looking like she saw a ghost. Turns out she miscommunicated the time and class. I didn’t have the girls class but a kindergarten class. However, for the kindergarten class I had nothing! No lesson plan, no pictures, no materials, nothing! And while it wasn’t my fault these 7 parents all brought their kids here and think there might as well be a lesson. So I had to improvise on the spot for a 1-hour lesson. But the remarkable thing was, if they hadn’t know they wouldn’t have noticed, because it actually went really well!

Have to go now, need to make lesson plans for this week. Keep those comments coming. Also, check out some more photos here.

This weekend I made a little trip to a city nearby called Guangzhou (广州). Last week I met someone who lives there and he invited me over to show me around and some of the more historic bits of China. So after class on Sunday morning I took the train from Luo Hu to Guangzhou. It’s a pretty comfortable train ride actually and much better than I had expected. It went through some smaller cities, some nature, some farmland, some areas where you don’t want to be at night and finally arrived in Guangzhou.

Then, the searching began. Some 12,000 people all trying to take a train, and in the middle of that you need to find one of them. Needless to say I really didn’t even try. No offense, but even though it’s getting better, Chinese people still look very similar to me and it takes a lot of effort to identify one. So I kind of just stood there waiting (‘At the entrance to the KFC, you’ll see me’).

Turns out I was on the wrong train station. Oops. I needed Guangzhou East but my kind host had forgotten to mention that. He was at a KFC at that station saying (‘I’m at the KFC but I don’t see you anywhere!’). And yeah, KFC is everywhere here. As is Starbucks, McDonalds and all that kind of jazz. But with a quick metro-ride it was all fixed quite quickly.

First we walked around the city center a bit which was a tad like any other major city. You know; H&M, Gucci, Prada, Zara, McDonalds. Went to see a movie after that where I had the most disgusting drink ever. Carbonated iced tea with milk which had lumps of jelly in it that resembled chewy baby jellyfish. Yuch. Without the jelly it could have been alright but when you take the first sip the shock of those things was just horrid.

The highlights were definitely the old medicinal market and the surrounding area. They sold everything there from dried scorpions to snake skins to mushrooms the size of a good skippy ball. But let’s not forget the dried beetles, dried flies, dried frog-on-a-stick and such things. Anything you could possibly imagine: if you can dry it, it was there. They don’t like people taking pictures though so you’ll just have to trust my description of it. But I can just imagine that shopping list now:  ‘Darling, can you pop round to the shops for some dried bull’s droppings? I feel a bit of a cold coming up and that usually clears it right up.’

Do you know that scene from the movie ‘Le fabuleux destin d’Amelie Poulain’ in the haunted house? Well, in the old part of Guangzhou there was a big old house which they converted into a haunted house. My host took me there saying I had to see it. I thought ‘haha, a haunted house, ooooh, scary!’. But I had spoken too soon. This is with real trained people that scare you at all the right times and come running at you with fake axes. The people walking by outside probably thought: ‘Wow, listen to that girl screaming!’. But well, that was me. I never knew you could literally jump into someone’s arms from fright.

Rain. I thought I knew what it was. Generally described as water falling from the sky, right? Well, I changed my definition of rain to taking a shower outside. Saturday and some of Sunday it rained like this. After class on Sunday we were treading through water up to our ankles to get back home. When I was on the train I could actually hardly make out what was happening outside because the rain was just running down the windows as a curtain.

But the worst is getting out of a bus. The street here is generally the lowest level and they just turn into rivers with heavy persistant rain like that. And because there are so many buses they usually don’t get close to the bus stop. At one stop where I thankfully didn’t need to get off the bus stopped quite far from the curb. The doors opened and there is just this almost knee deep stream of water. All the people that needed to get off looked at it and you could see them thinking ‘Oh, fuck’. But bus drivers here are almost like robots. If you don’t get off the doors close and the bus drives off. So you see all the people that need to get off gather their courage and just put their fancy shoes and pants right into the water. I was afraid the same thing would happen to me but thankfully I managed to jump the chasm between the bus and the curb.

But I’m not complaining. Rather have the rain than the heat.

Yes! You see correctly, that’s Chinese. I’ve configured my computer to be able to type Chinese. I thought I would just try it for fun but it turns out it’s actually quite easy. You simply type in the Pinyin and according to the sentence you create it will automatically use the correct character. What’s the use in this, you say? Well, it’s fun and good for showing off, even though it just says hello most of the time. And it’s actually a good learning tool. I try to use it on the few Chinese people on my MSN list. Which they probably find terrible annoying, but bless their patience.

My lonely planet phrasebook is proving to definitely be worth the paper it was printed on!

But one thing that can still baffle me here is the amount of weird fruit in the supermarkets. The thing on the picture was quite tasty, but once you open it up it kind of takes your appetite away. It looks like snot with seeds in it. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? Also, lychees are quite tasteful but they don’t particularly look very attractive. Then there’s that kind of melon that looks like it should be classified as a dangerous weapon. It’s got these big spikes sticking out of it. And not to mention the dragon fruit, which is basically a kiwi on steroids.

Anyway, enough typing for now. Not all posts need to be huge and I need to prepare my lesson for later. Oh, one more thing, but I’m going to make it a bit more challenging for you. Alternatively; use this link.

我星期天去广州. 我去Shamian Island和Wet market. Should be fun, looking forward to it!

So yesterday to get all the affairs in order properly me and my friend Berry had to go to Hong Kong. We had to get up at six in the morning and head for the Hong Kong border – 30 minutes from here. After filling out the proper forms there we had to leave China while our visa was arranged, because it cannot be done while you are in the country at the moment due to weird political situations going on. So that was an excellent excuse for a quick trip through Hong Kong’s highlights. We only had until about two in the afternoon to rush through it so of all of Hong Kong’s sights we didn’t even see a handful.

First it was off to the Star Avenue (Hong Kong’s own walk of fame) to see some funny Asian names. Yi Yi Ping, Zhi Yu Cheng, Fuk Yu Man, Ching Chong Chinaman and similar. The only two I recognized were Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. Apparently Hong Kong has the second biggest movie industry in the world, second only to Bollywood. Never knew that, and actually never cared.

Then on the Star Ferry to the economic heart of Hong Kong. The Star Ferry is already 120 years old (but still quite seaworthy thankfully).

And then onto the bus through the crazy winding Hong Kong streets to the Peak Tram. It’s a tram that takes you up to Victoria Peak from where you have a gorgeous view of Hong Kong. It is one of those trams that is pulled by a cable, seeing as it’s a 50 degree slope. It actually costs quite a bit of effort just to keep your head up when going up at such an angle. So after a bit of posing for pictures we browsed the English language bookstore (finally found an English-Chinese phrasebook with Pinyin and Chinese characters, hallelujah).

Then back down the slope in a rather thrilling ride which resembled a slow moving rollercoaster. You keep thinking: “Hmmm, what if this cable snapped?” Especially since we picked a seat right at the front. But it was a wonderful experience regardless.

But then the rushing began. Into the metro and back to the border. We had to transfer halfway but we were chatting to each other and missed our transfer. So we get out at the next stop and traveled back. But with the ticket we had we couldn’t transfer there. So we had to go back to other way (where we just went by accident) and transfer there (which I already said we could do, but noooo). Then the visa-man was late with our passports by more than half an hour. It was already coming up to quarter past three and I had to teach all the way back in Shenzhen at half past five. So run through customs and the border (avoiding coughing or sneezing at all costs, they’re kind of worried about their pig flu). Jump the taxi queue a little bit and go home, grab the teaching materials and onto class.

The kids are in the picture below by the way. Aren’t they adorable? One of them had already left though. From left to right: Cici, Christina, James, Sally, Tom and Tina.

And me in Hong Kong of course. And a very funny Chinese contrast.