Mini-adventure part 2: Xi Tang and Tom Cruise

After a blissful three days in Shanghai it was time to pack again and move on to the second place on my list, Xi Tang. Xi Tang is a small ancient water town about an hours drive from Shanghai. The town is so small that there is not a train station, and the bus station is an old lady with an umbrella and a box of cash by the side of the road. She was incredibly surprised to see me as I am fairly certain I was the only non-Chinese tourist in the whole town.

I had only been in the town for about half an hour before getting myself into trouble. There are no taxis in the town so I jumped into a small tuc tuc thingy armed with the address of the hostel. Immediately the guy driving hatched a plan. He began by quoting me a huge number and looked really disappointed when I called his bluff, next he tried to get my to stay in a different hotel from the one I had booked telling me that mine was closed. I had heard about this particular rouse and so I didn't fall for it. I grabbed my bag and tried to walk off, he grabbed it back and started yelling at me. I rarely get a chance to use my less-than-friendly Chinese so I yelled almost every bad word I could think of and he backed off looking very surprised. Eventually a policeman appeared and I explained all. He did not seem surprised and took over, taking some books from the hotel and keys from the guys tuc tuc and then walked me to my hostel. He was a very nice man who seemed to just keep apologising the whole time we were walking. Finally we found my hostel and I checked in.

The girl in the hostel spoke no English at all but we managed. The hostel was in a small courtyard down a long alley, had I not been with the policeman there was no way I would have found it.

Xi Tang proved to be a beautiful ancient town all set along a series of small canals with charming bridges. The whole place is really small and I walked about the whole place in a few hours having seen everything. The vast majority of the little shops and alleyways were full of touristy trinkets that can be found all over China, regardless I found a few small things that were unique to Xi Tang. Bamboo cups of all sizes being an example, I bought 2 for myself and 2 for Josh as a gimmick present although I actually really like them.

I found out fairly soon that the place is still very proud of having had Mission Impossible 3 filmed there. At several points about the town there were big pictures of Tom Cruise with backgrounds matching the one in the picture. I also came across many signs outside of restaurants saying TOM ATE HERE or TOM'S FAVOURITE RESTAURANT. I haven't actually watched the film but I am now a little intrigued.

I spent lots of time in Xi Tang having my picture taken or going for meals with the Chinese Students staying in my hostel. I think they appreciated the opportunity to escape their teacher as she was a very bossy and very scary woman. Not someone I would want to mess with (and I thought I was a strict teacher).

I went with some of the students to a bar on the largest of the bar streets, 6 of us walked in and took the population of the bar to a huge 7! I suspect we may have woken up the barman when we opened the door. A few hours in there and we were basically running the place, I taught the barman mixing drinks and the students uploaded all their music onto the music system for him. Close to 20Gb of iTunes stuff although most was KPop so i doubt it will come in too useful.

Xi Tang is beautiful and worth  visit if possible but two days there was definitely enough time.

Mini Adventure Part One; Shanghai

October the First, or National Day, is one of the biggest holidays in China so everyone gets a minimum of a 4 day holiday. from my job I get a week. Not satisfied with my limited holidays this year, I set about to extend my time off. In total I manged to get myself, with some serious negotiations and pouting, 14 days with no classes/kids/lesson planning. So I decided to visit some of the places in China that I haven't managed to get to yet.

My first stop was Shanghai, by far the easiest place to fly to from Kunming, with our new snazzy airport there are about 15 flights a day between the two places. I spent a whole week in Shanghai back in February so I felt like I know the place fairly well. I stayed in the same hostel, which I am still convinced is one of the best hostels I have stayed in in China. The beautiful Rock and Wood hostel is amazingly comfortable with a huge bar which was great for meeting people and chilling out. With Shanghai being so hot and humid the air conditioning was a god-send! 

Shanghai was a fairly quiet three days with much shopping and wandering about.  The weather was cripplingly humid and very hot . Walking a few miles in the heat was enough to reduce me to a  miserable puddle poured into a chair.

I revisited some of the places I saw in February; Nanjing Road, The Bund, several gardens and shopping areas. I got a little carried away in the Marks and Spencer's End of Summer Sale. I ended up having to buy a fair amount of more summery clothes as the heat had taken me by surprise. Otherwise with Shanghai being the first place on my mini-adventure list, I was perfectly happy to just sit and chill.  

Next Stop; Xi Tang
 

Birthday cake in the eye!

I know my birthday was a while ago but thanks to the unpredictable nature of the Chinese internet providers (or whoever it is that plays with the connections) I can not always update when I would like. At the moment it seems to be OK so grabbing my oppertunity with many more posts to come in the net few days.

This year my birthday was a school day, which is never great but I was lucky enough to be teaching one of my favourite classes in the evening. The class was nearing the end of the course so I decided to take ten minutes of the class and get a birthday cake. Typically birthday cakes in China taste awful; but the one I bought from the local bakery was not too bad. it still had the several inches of cream on top and loads of candied fruit but the sponge was chocolaty and full of cherries. And not too bad at £6 for a cake which fed 15 people easily.

The kids had been warned so turned up to class armed with a huge variety of weird and wonderful presents. I recieved everything from a teddy bear to two gold fish, they were so excited it was really sweet. Sadly the fish met the usual fate of goldfish in this country (in prticular in my house) but they hung on for a whole week first. Paul made me a small plasic gun which he had spent, according to his mother, a whole week putting together.

There is a silly Chinese tradition of slapping cake into the face of the other people eating it, especially the person whose birthday it is. The kids looked genuinly dissapointed when they clicked I was aware of this and attacked them first. Stu came into the class and joined in (I am sure just for the cake) and the kids loyal to their fvourite teacher covered him in birthday cake.

After the cake, parents came in and gave me all sorts of alcoholy presents. it truely was a profitble year. 4 months later i am still getting through the wine.

After class and cleanup we went to the usual box standard night out venue that is Moondog. It had been a busy week with several leaving parties, so my birthday night was a fairly quiet affair. Not always a bad thing.

Shanghaied in Nanjing, or should that be Nanjinged?

If you are reading this without having read the first half tut tut! In a nut shell, Shanghai, great but I am now very curious about Nanjing, of which I have only heard good/interesting things.


Outside the hostel



One of many departure areas

Holiday Market

The bullet train was remarkably cheap at £8 each way, booked with a days notice. All I had to do was go and pick them up from office 18p in the train station. The high numbers should have been a clue as to the sheer size of this train station. I remember being amazing at Beijing West but Shanghai West makes it look a little pathetic in comparison! I have seem smaller airports (although I admit, Southampton airport was a long time ago). I spent quite a long time in awe, staring at the rows and rows of ticket windows, each of which seemed to have a hundred people waiting at it. I eventually found the one I was looking for and settled down for a lengthy wait. 20 minutes later and armed with tickets, I began my search for the right gate. It truly is an unbelievable size, there are 15 security scanners before you can even get into the departure waiting area, or rather one of the departure lounges/waiting areas, I think there are 6, each one containing 50+gates and platforms. Makes Bristol Temple Meads weep!



Small shopping area I found by accident

Anyway, the train was very exciting. I got lots of funny looks when I took a photo of the speed display, I was impressed and felt it had to be immortalised onto my camera's SD card (I much prefer says film but it doesn't really exist any more), and three hours flew by. I arrived into Nanjing, without having booked a hostel so I was a little nervous wit it still being Spring festival and all, I showed a taxi driver a small leaflet I had been given and he seemed to understand. First impressions of Nanjing were not great, on the outskirts of the city is the factory belt which the taxi driver raced through, however closer to the center of the city things changed completely. buildings are built in the more traditional style so are very pretty and well kept and the roads are lined with trees not painted (as they are in Kunming) and flowers. The hostel itself is right on the river by a huge holiday market selling all kinds of sparkly and flashing stuff. It's not really my thing but the Chinese go nuts for it. I managed to get a bed and set off on another mini adventure. I had no map, no Lonely Planet and no clue where I was going but that made it that little more interesting. I found that Nanjing has the remnants of an old city wall and in front of the wall is a street build to look like it is about 500+ years old. It failed slightly with the TV screens everywhere and the KTV (karaoke for those who are not familiar with this method of inflicting pain on foreigners) but the over effect was interesting. again lots of photo opportunities for the Chinese (who will take pictures of anything if it stays in the same place long enough) and some great people watching for me.


Massacre Memorial

On day 2, I set off to find the Massacre Memorial. It is the free museum/memorial for the Japanese Massacre of the People of Nanjing in 1945. 300,000 local people were killed in less than a week and the memorial really hammers that home. It is a creepy place that is packed with survivors memories and hundreds of grisly photos, the whole thing is built on tne site of one of the mass graves so at random intervals there would be a glass panel in the floor to a few uncovered bodies. Nanjing has held on to it's history better than Shanghai, the difference in the two places could not be more obvious. Huge sections of Nanjing are built in the traditional style with lots of very strong historical importance, on the other hand Shanghai regularly knocks down old buildings in favour of the next tallest skyscraper. Two very different cities and I loved both.


And China says it doesn't have a pollution problem?!



View from my bed, overlooking the square

A few days in Nanjing was enough, I loved it and I would quite happily go back but it felt like a small town after the previous 4 days in China's biggest city. On my last day I stocked up on yet more souvenirs and presents for various people back in Kunming and decided on a whim to go and see the view from the city wall/gate. Many cities in China still have city walls as almost all of them would have had them centuries ago, few however have been preserved and looked after in a way that doesn't make them look like they were built last year, Nanjing in no exception. I have been to the wall of every city I have been to that had one, Xi'an being the only one I can remember that was complete. Nanjing has only the southern part in tack and unfortunately due to the bad weather I was only able to go to one small section and have a look. On the top of the wall I could see nothing what so ever, the pollution on my last day was so bad that I could barely see the end of the wall a hundred meters away. It made for some atmospheric pictures I suppose.

Nanjing felt like a mini holiday inside of a holiday, and i thoroughly enjoyed my flying visit to this incredible city. Back to Shanghai for a  few more days of sightseeing and maybe a little more shopping?
Then it is back to Kunming and straight into work on Wednesday, I still haven't worked out when exactly it is OK to start planning my next adventure but I hope it is soon. 



Shanghaied for Spring Festival!

Busy Bund

A joke which no-one in Shanghai actually seemed to find funny, but I still used at every possible oppertunity.

However, the rainy season has started and I am awake horribly early so I figured I should probebly get round to updating this trip/holiday/living in China blog thing. I apologise it has taken so long but I have been busy, not necessarily true I have been busy enough to have forgotten all about Shanghai updates. Better late than never I suppose!
Spring festival (Chinese new year) seems like a really bloody long time ago now, loads and loads has happened since then and yet I woke up the other day and nearly had a heart attack when I realised it was May already.
 
 
 
 

Finance Center

My trip to Shanghai was a little welcome break from China and the craziness that is Chinese New Year. I have heard it is the biggest human migration on the planet with millions and millions of people desperately trying to get themselves, their grandparents and a box of fruit onto trains and planes. It is chaos! No other word comes close. I flew the day before New Year itself and I think the whole of Kunming was in the departures lounge with me! It is a 3-hour flight from Kunming to Shanghai (just to give you some scale, that covers about two thirds of the country. China is a just little bigger than England) and I landed a little after eight in the afternoon. I soon discovered Shanghai has one of the simplest underground metro systems I have encountered and before I knew it I was in my hostel. A beautiful new building hidden down a little alleyway in a busy part of town, a 5 minute walk to the subway and then 4 stops to the Bund. Fairly central and amazing!



Most people I met in the hostel were in a similar situation to mine, living in china and in desperate need of some home comforts and a break from the China norm. I met people who were living all over the country so we swapped noted on where was a good place to live and where was hell on earth. I also added several places to my “want to visit eventually” list, which is not getting any shorted the longer I live outside on England.

World's highest observation platform

The city itself is a huge modern metropolis where absolutely everything has a record for something; tallest building, tallest viewing platform, biggest indoor market, longest shopping street, longest underwater tunnel, fastest train and so on. I began forgetting them and getting them confused on about the second day in the city. It is amazing but unfortunately, the novelty of records wore off fairly quickly when standing in the fourth queue of the day. Regardless, the vast majority of Shanghai is spectacular!

In total I spent 6 days in Shanghai and 3 in Nanjing (which I will come back to), which was enough time for me to realise I really love the city. Maybe not as much as Beijing, which has a nice mix of new and old, but still I had a great holiday. Some of the highlights were the insane market from which all presents were bought at rock bottom prices and the Shanghai World Finance Center, which is not the tallest building in the world but is home to the highest observation deck in the world standing at a stomach churning 475 meters. To ensure you don’t eat from some time the designers put a glass panel (like the one in the spinnaker tower, Portsmouth) in the floor so you can look past your feet to the ground hundreds of meters below. The lift travels at a whopping 25 miles per hour to get you to the 100^th floor in a little under 20 seconds. My ears popped twice!

When not doing battle in the busy markets, I would just wander off and see what I could find. It was almost impossible to get lost as subway stations appear when you desperately need to get back or you think you are so lost it would be impossible to ever find your way home and it turns out you are two stops from where you are staying. An amazing city! The home comforts were everywhere, Marks and Spencers, bookshops, H & M, bread that does not taste like cake and a decent club sandwich in the hostel. I left with my batteries fully charged and ready to take on China for another year (6 months at least).

During my stay in Shanghai, I met many people who raved about nearby Nanjing so I did some research and discovered a bullet train (300 km/h) could get me there in three hours. So I booked and jumped on a train the next day.  

Christmas Pt 2

After a few days in Beijing we flew to Xi'an for New Year. I was planning on trains but i couldn't get tickets, so we flew.

Xi'an is an old walled city in the middle-ish of China, home of the Terracotta Warriors. I was there about three years back when i was travelling so I very vaguely knew the city, always handy when going somewhere. We even stayed in the same hostel as I did, the Han Tang Inn right next to the city centre. Well our first night was in a very posh hotel around the corner as we had turned up a night early. It was a huge room and very impressive but freezing cold, however the beds were very comfortable so we were happy to stay in them.

The hostel itself was also very nice, clean, well looked after. a few things had changed since the last time i was there but three years is a long time in hostel years. New Year in Xi'an was very very quiet, there is a Chinese TV program that has become very popular, its almost a variety show with lots of music and silly mini shows and sketches. (similar to a children in need style program.) Well there is a much longer version for Chinese New Year which last several days and many people will sit and watch the whole thing, so i wasn't surprised to see people sat watching nearly 12 hours of it. The hostel was full over the New Year but the bar was very quiet, we were bought a beer at midnight and were given several more from others in the bar. Dad went on a mine sweeping mission and we finished all the discarded beers. In Chinese culture saving face is very important, so you cannot turn down a beer regardless of if you want it or not, so lots of drinks get wasted all the time. Dad attempted to put a stop to this waste and we finished most of the unwanted beers.

So a quiet night but it was not without perks.

New Years day we went on a tour with the hostel to the Terracotta Warriors. we were put on a mini bus with about 8 other people and a very nice tour guide. She had been telling us about the history of the Warriors and Xi'an and would throw random test questions at us to make sure we were listening. The warriors visitors centre consists of 3 pits currently (one more under construction) a museum and a few little other shows and cafes. Pit one is the biggest and three the smallest so we visited in reverse order, it actually wasn't too busy so we were able to wander about and take as many pictures as Mam wanted. in the middle of the visitors centre was an old style 360 film, it was basically 15 screens and projectors showing the building and hiding of the Warriors. It was a very low budget film that was good fun to watch, it showed the initial war, the capturing of the slaves, the sculpting of the warriors, the hiding of them and the eventual destruction of them by the following emperor.

We were all taken for lunch and then back on the bus back to the hostel for about 5 pm.

Xi'an has an old Muslim Quarter near the centre of town which has been turned into a mini shopping district, its all very similar souvenir style things but much bartering was done and Dad had a great time. It took Dad ages to barter with one guy over the price of t-shirts, eventually they settled and the guy ran away. eventually he came back clutching Dad's t-shirts but we had no idea if he was coming back at all, at one point Dad was yelling about selling the shirts from his shop himself. They defnatly did not know what had hit them when we went shopping.




Like i mentioned early Xi'an has a city wall which was restored in the 80's, its 12 or 14 kilometres all the way round with 4 gates, North,South, East, and West to get on and off. You can hire bikes and cycle all the way round. We only walked one quarter of it but that was plenty, the wall itself doesn't look to change but the city below the wall was interesting to look at.

It was surprisingly difficult to find places to eat in Xi'an, I couldn't guess why. There was no shortage of street food and lots of very posh looking places but nothing in between. We found a small place on the same street as the hostel whose English Menu was 4 pieces of paper which were very old looking and ripped. The food was fantastic and the people who worked there were really friendly, they kept trying to bully their son into practising his English but in the three or four times we ate there he always look too embarrassed to say anything, Chinese or English! like I say the food was amazing and stupidly cheap.

After 4 days in Xi'an we headed back to Beijing for a final few days of shopping and site-seeing, Dad terrorised the people in the shopping market again and bough nearly a full bag of clothes for Tom not to mention the silly hats and gifts. I think last count was 14 hats but i may be wrong, it was definitely double figures. Combine that with a handful of DVD's clothes for Mam and Dad and a visit to a tailor and they were going home with a fair amount of stuff.

I gained lots too, Mam and Dad had brought out all sorts of stuff for me including a Christmas cake (which sadly did not survive January) and all sorts of clothes and things.

After Mam and Dad left I had a whole day on my own which was spent doing my own shopping and bartering. I left Beijing with a new superman jumper and several pairs of earrings. A fairly profitable holiday i would have said. I dont really want to go back to work anymore!

A thought accurs....

I realise I am still half was through my retelling of Beijing and I haven't even started on Shanghai, but there are no pictures up of where I work or what I do. Dad keeps telling me that things I take for granted are actually kind of interesting....of course if they are not just don't read it.

The school I work in moved locations back in July to a big snazzy new shopping complex, or more accurately the office building next to it. We now have ten classrooms with interactive whiteboards, which are basically a bog toy in the rooms,however I am not hugely computer savy so I don't rely on mine too much. between my computer breaking tendencies and my computers regular hissy fits we don't have a  great relationship. regardless they are great for the little kids as the are fascinated with them and will do just about anything i say for a go on it. Great trick once i figured that one out!

There are pro's and cons to every location, this one is very close to a huge shopping centre so we have food on our doorstep (although we are all bored of Chinese food at the moment), the school is brand new so it looks pretty amazing. Cons being that we have windows that we cant close (controlled by the building apparently) and the classrooms seem to be smaller so getting 14 kids in is a little of a squeeze. We just have to get creative and sit in big horse shoe shapes, tackle problems as they come up.

My classes are all pretty cool, I only have the odd kid I don't like. Which out of 100+ students is not too bad I feel. the vast majority of my students are in the CL level which makes them about 7-10 years old, its a nice age to teach as the kids can sit and work but still love to run about like maniacs which is always good for comedy value. I have bigger kids and smaller ones but far fewer of them, my teenage class is possibly my favourite. 10 teenage boys and 2 girls, classes are spirally out of control into the bizarre and just plain weird. last lessons involve a 20 minute argument about who was better Marvel or DC. I like to think i won but they are just so big and noisy I wasn't even a close second. My apologies DC, I failed you.

And then at the other end of the scale is the baby class, 9 incredibly cute monsters. they are very skilled in the art of the "butter-wouldn't-melt it wasn't me look." I caught one covered in paint the same colour as the hand print on by backside, still he tried to tell me it wasn't him. Like i say, very sweet monsters!

Generally I love my job although ask me at half past eight on a Sunday morning and i will not give such a positive answer. Weekends are killer and I always sleep very well on a Sunday night, but it is easy work. most of these kids will get excited about colouring or a word search so entertaining them really is easy, plus they are an amazing source of amusement. especially when they cannot say something or get it slightly wrong.
"knife, fuck, spoon"
for example or my personal favourite
"put your Dick in your bag" I have a student called Dick and the kids don't really understand why i giggle when they say things like that.
In a recent test i asked a 6 year old boy "what can you do?" and he panicked a little and looked about for inspiration before screaming "I CAN DO MY MOTHER!" Whole office fell about the place laughing.

Spelling mistakes in the worst possible place

So anyway, that is a very brief belated introduction to my professional life in Kunming.


I swear I am getting back to holiday but I lost focus slightly.