Ronald McDonald says: Explosives are Fun!

Well the Chinese New Year is rapidly approaching (Feb 18th I believe) so the red lanterns are starting to assemble and the markets are rife with kitschy things on the theme of pig.

Even everybody's favorite meat sandwich peddling clown* is not immune to the charms of the festive season



Here's a few scenes from my recent trip to the Imperial Palace at Shenyang (basically a holiday home for the Qing Dynasty, which as you all know, puts it at about 400 years old)













Qingtastic

As usual, there's piles more. Get 'em here

So, despite the fact that the forces of fate seemed to be arraigned against me having a holiday, I'm off to Beijing tomorrow to see what I can make of it. Not sure where I'll go or what I'll do right now, but rest assured it will be blogged. oh yes.









*apologies if you in fact prefer some other meat sandwich peddling clown.

Stupid Seismic Shennanigans

So apparently there's been ANOTHER freaking earthquake that has set the repair of China's internet back by like 3 more weeks.

I estimate my current speed of internetting to be about 15 kbps, which allows me to view about one page per hour. The rest of the time is spent hitting refresh and becoming enraged (and yes I'm on holiday and I have nothing to do so I sit and get angry at inanimate objects when I should be studying Chinese or something).

Without the internet I am reduced to reading the 2+2=5 Chinese news, and actually having to go outside to find out how cold it is. Its barbaric.

Fortunately, should my new plan remain unthwarted, I will shortly be leaving this country for a while, giving it time to get its shit sorted out in my absence.

Get to work brave ocean-going cable repair persons. And if the Eurasian Plate could just sit still for a few months that'd be great.

Winter Month Novelties

Well I'm still kicking around Liaoyang trying not to go crazy or spend all of my money on DVDs of dubious origin. My winter travel plans have received a swift kick in the nuts from ol' lady fate, but more on that later.

It snowed pretty heavily yesterday, but that didn't stop me, Martin and Andreas from heading up to Shenyang for the day to enjoy such exotic treats as Subway and Starbucks coffee. The main highway was closed so we had to take the 'old highway' which, from where I was sitting (directly over the bus' rear axle), felt like a series of potholes strung together with a few handfuls of ruts, bumps, furrows, ditches, depressions and random protrusions.

Upon arriving in Shenyang, we got into a taxi with a driver who decided that the best way to overcome the language barrier was to communicate entirely in whistles. He did eventually ask (in Chinese) if we were American, and when I replied that I was from New Zealand, and my buddies in the back were German, he was moved to stop whistling, and start shouting 'HEIL SHITLER', over and over, complete with salute. Oh how we laughed.

Anyway, taking advantage of Shenyang's greater embrace of capitalism (a KFC on every corner!) I went camera shopping, and bought me one of these puppies which is pretty much the coolest toy I've ever owned.

It came with some image stitching software, here's some initial messing about:

My school



The Park where I do Tai Chi (I was playing with manual exposures on this so its a little dark)



You can click for embiggenment, but be warned that they're freakin huge (bout 5800x1600).

Anyway, I am getting out of Liaoyang shortly, I will hopefully update soon on the where and why, with pictures.

I shouldn't really laugh at this but...

Here's a text message I received from one of my students yesterday, apparently concerned about whether they'd passed my class or not:

Hi ben .I feel my Orcal speak english examle can not get fourthy

The student didn't attach their name so I can't reply and tell them that their Orcal english got fourthy just fine.

This probably isn't a shining endorsement of my teaching abilities is it?

I'm a little concerned

I'm planning on crossing a national border or two in the next month, and I'm a little worried about my passport. If you were a customs agent (especially one unaccustomed to looking at white faces, because, face it, we all pretty much look the same), would you believe that this guy (circa 2004, my 'dangerous fugitive' phase):



was one and the same as this dashing windswept individual?



better carry a razor and a pair of scissors with me just in case.

Scarier than Santa

is how I would describe hurtling down a highway in a crowded bus on a night when the fog is so thick you can barely see the tail lights of the car ahead. Knowing the relaxed attitude that some Chinese have to concepts such as 'lanes' and 'working headlights', with the a pinch of the old 'x' factor (what's that up ahead? an overturned truck? a donkey cart? someone attempting an ill-advised u-turn?) you can see why I was kind of nervous.

Its times like this that I take comfort in the fact that in a country of 1.3 billion people, the odds of this particular bus being involved in a horrific accident are pretty slim.

My confidence wasn't exactly bolstered when I felt the bus go over a curb and a shopfront loomed out of the mist towards the front of the bus. The busdriver, who must drive this route dozens of times a day, had gotten lost. We were about 20 minutes out of our way. Fortunately, he had in his passengers a team of enthusiastic volunteers who were only to keen to help him with such tasks as:

- wild speculation as to where we might be (I think I saw a tree back there!)
- Using a sleeve to smear the condensation around on the inside of the windscreen
- Delivering detailed (though varying) lectures on precisely where the driver had gone wrong
- and of course, most importantly, taking turns at hurling abuse out the window at similarly lost and aimless vehicles.

All while the driver attempted a tricky and basically blind three point turn amongst about five other vehicles attempting the same.

Anyway, I made it home, alive and only an hour late, and had some Korean BBQ which kicked ass. All in all a good day.

Scary Santa

Nuff said

New Years and Old Internets

Welcome to 2007 everybody.

You may or may not know that an earthquake off the coast of Taiwan on Boxing day destroyed the cables that provide internet services for the 1.3 billion of us living round these parts, so for the last week or so I've had a wonderful trip down memory lane, internetting at speeds reminiscent of the mid 90s. I've come to the realisation that most webpages these days just aren't designed for viewing at a startling 1kb per second.

I'm assured that the finest network repair technicians in all of China have donned wetsuits and are working on the problem now, but it will be late January until they are back to speed, so I probably won't be putting much up here.

On the other hand, there probably won't be much to write about, I am officially payroll ballast until the start of March, as my classes have finished (as far as I'm aware anyway, getting a definitive answer on that issue has been difficult. For all I know I'm supposed to be teaching right now.) As it is snowy and freezing outside, I'm basically confined to quarters for the next few weeks, working on my Chinese and going crazy (probably at the same time).

Come the end of January I've got a week in Beijing, followed by a train to Hanoi and a few weeks there (including Vietnamese New Year - Tet, which should be fun), which I'm pretty damned pumped about. Expect plenty of photos and blather then.

xin nian kwai le!

Gifts

First up here's a great blog post about christmas in China, from the 'far better China blog than mine' Adventures of the Humanaught

And now, on with our irregularly scheduled programming:

My first christmas in China was a cocktail of:

• Beer and Fried Chicken with Anshan's American/Cameroonian community
  
• Lasagne
• Haggis
• A wet bed

Yep, courtesy of Lucas, I am now the proud owner of a can of Scotland's finest tinned haggis:



Apparently Lucas swore to his mother that it would come in handy here in China, and couldn't face the thought of her seeing him unpack it when he returns to the US next week. We decided it should be passed on to some other lucky English Language Teacher when I leave. We have started a Chinese Canned Haggis gifting tradition.

Returning to my apartment later in the evening, I discovered a less welcome gift, courtesy of Chinese plumbing. A pipe in the ceiling of my apartment had burst, a pipe that just so happened to be directly above my bed. After stripping back my sodden sheets, I discovered that my lower most mattress, that sits on the plywood bed base, was reasonably dry.

Upon this mattress is writ: "Extra firm steel springs for strong and firm body support" Basically its a quilted slab of granite (it also says "Fashion Peality and Fashion Beauty" and, for no discernible reason, "email" and "www.com"). So my bed last night was that, a sleeping bag, and my living room floor (or as I like to call it now "the room that isn't full of water of unknown cleanliness and origin").

This tale has a happy epilogue: This morning I was awoken by workmen coming to inspect my pipes for imminent explosion (which was well timed because the entire left side of my torso had gone numb, half an hours more sleep on that mattress and I might've lost a limb). They insisted that I leave my keys with them so they could lock up afterwards, promising to leave them in the security office. When I returned from class that morning, under-dressed for the barrage of snow that had showed up a day late, the security office was locked and my keys nowhere to be found, so instead of lunch I got to stand around in the snow cursing under my breath and fighting to keep starvation, exhaustion and hypothermia at bay (not to mention a severe outbreak of melodrama).

So there you go folks, my christmas gift to you is a happy heaping helping of schadenfreude.

I wish you all a

Observation: Getting up at 7am to work on Christmas day sucks. I much prefer the traditional gluttony and getting stuff.

Scenes from a Shenyang Shop

Taken with my PDA, so apologies for the poor quality





PS: Not a pet store.

Santa, Me, and the Qing Dynasty

Today I went to Shenyang, capital of Liaoning Province. Lonely Planet's write-up on the city begins "At first glance, Shenyang may be a hard city to love."

Sounds about right. 3.5 million people, none of whom seem to be in the traffic policing or town planning trades.

Anyway, Shenyang does have a pretty good Jiaozi (dumpling) restaurant, and a supermarket/wholesalers called 'Metro' that stocks western treats these eyes have not seen in many moons. Here is my swag:



Yes that is the original Transformers series in its entirety on DVD. Well spotted. Only $2 US as well.

And here's me, Santa, and a 400 year old Qing Dynasty Palace.



It was -16 degrees celsius today. Pretty nippy. I still haven't broken out my 'last resort' duck-down jacket yet. I'm saving that for when it gets cold.

LOOK AT ME! BUSY AS A BEE!

When I signed on for this job, I was promised that I would have access to a kitchen, with microwave, stove etc. While these things were provided, the fact that they were all covered in about an inch of filth and dust meant that I haven't really taken advantage of them (except for one time I tried to make popcorn and the kernels BURST INTO FLAME. Those of you that know me well will have seen me make popcorn under the most extreme circumstances of intoxication and lack of sleep, and that has never ever happened before).

Anyway, 3 months in, I'm starting to get pretty sick of eating at the cafeteria and the same three restaurants day after day. Not to mention mishaps like accidentally ordering stomach, or pig liver like I did today (the perils of buying food from small blurry photographs). So yesterday I decided to roll up my sleeves and, arming myself thusly:



I made an attack on this:







Three hours later, I arrived at this:



(I have no idea what that cabinet thing on the right is for. The only english on it is a button saying 'ozone'. My current theory is that its a Doomsday Device of some sort)



He cleans! But will he cook? time will tell. A few more brushes with surprise organ meals and I'll be in there every damn day.

PS: If you don't get the title reference, you need to watch this

My favourite mistranslation so far

On the vertical row machine at the gym:

BASE SUPPORT ANGLE OF BODILY PART, SELECT PROPER STATION.

USE UNCONFORMITY ANGLE TO EXERCISE, POSSIBLY RESULT IN BODILY DAMNIFY

I sure hope I selected the proper station.

Further musical and culinary adventures

So yesterday I was informed that there was to be an English speaking competition at the school that evening, and that I was invited to attend (andohyeahcanyousingasongforustoo?that'dbegreatthanks). The topics the students had to choose from were "Success through Brain Power" (which all of about 3 students opted for) and "what happiness means to me". A lot of the kids seemed to have copied from the same book/website/whatever so most of them were pretty boring, a notable exception being when one girl ended her speech (“what happiness means to me”) with "If god calls on me to die for the motherland I will do so without hesitation".

okay...

Anyway, I was asked to do a song, and managed to belt out my trusty version of 'Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town' despite the school band's well meaning but woeful attempts to play along and to mic my acoustic guitar (resulting in some ear bleeding feedback, but not deterring the mic holder in the least, until I pretty much swatted him away).

All that out of the way (one of my students won), I was invited to dinner with the rest of the English Faculty, where I was asked "what kind of food do you like?" I gave my standard "whatever, I like to try new things" reply. A phrase to be used with caution in China.

Amongst the more standard delights of pig skin jelly and sheep's blood cubes, there was a plate of these guys:



Silkworm Pupae. Not bad. Pretty much just confirmed my theory that anything deep fried and appropriately spiced is edible. The taste was kind of peanuty, but not very distinctive. The shells were crunchy. I find it helps not to think about the words 'worm' or 'pupae' too much whilst eating.

The highlight of the dinner (deep fried insects aside) was the presence of the English Department's Party Secretary (I didn't realise we had one, but, you know, Communism) who was chastising everyone for not properly draining their beer glasses when toasts were made. Some rules need to be enforced. I of course didn't need reminding of this particular protocol.

Journey to Peter Burger

You know sometimes, when you're sitting in your warm, comfortable apartment, talking to westerners via the internet, listening to western music (the latest Mint Chicks album. It's great. Buy it), you can almost forget that you're in China.

Then you decide that you need some lunch so you venture outside forgetting that its ten degrees below zero and that the three high schools across the road are getting out for lunch so there's a million kids on the street all shouting 'hello!' at you and a taxi driving on the footpath tries to kill you and some store down the road is letting off dynamite to celebrate something or other and when you get to the burger place for an ultimately unsatisfying but occasionally necessary fix of western stomach-filler some old lady tries to elbow in front of you in line (and you let her) and they're playing that one Richard Marx song at full volume on a loop so by the time you get your order you're praying that whoever it is he is right here waiting for would just show the hell up already and then on your way back to your apartment you almost slip on the cruddy black stuff that used to be snow that's built up on all the footpaths.

China - every day's a carnival.

What's in a Name? (Round Two)

Have you ever thought about how funny it would be if you went to some far-flung country and found out that your name meant something rude/offensive/funny in the local lingo?

Well, today I discovered this:



You'd think that in three months, somebody might have told me. Till now, I've been using this one:



But I think I'm going to switch. Also my surname 'Shaw' sounds a bit like 'xiao' which means 'Young'. (Respect and status in China are mostly predicated on how old you are.)

So everytime I introduce myself, I'm basically saying I'm young and stupid.

If the shoe fits...

To Everybody in the Southern Hemisphere

Enjoy your impending summer.






Also, in case any of you lie awake at night wondering "Why does Ben keep his hair so short?", here's your answer:



I'm embracing the crazy right now.

The drinking party. And the consequences thereof.

Copious quantities of seafood (including these)

+

Many many glasses of baiju

+

A massage from a burly Chinese Man

=

I doubt I'll be welcome in that particular bathhouse again.

The not-so-great wall of Liaohua

Well folks, I've managed to find a way back into blogger that runs at a reasonably usable speed (using about four different proxy type things in unison – I have no idea what any of it does, but seems to work.) So anyway, Internet police kicking in my front door and dragging me off to Internet jail notwithstanding, I should be able to post a bit more regularly now. Hopefully I can post the back-log of comments that I wasn't able to put up either.


And now, onto today's scheduled entertainment:


So I bought a bike a couple of weeks ago, as a handy means of getting round in Liaoyang, which is pretty flat and sprawling. Once you forget about such quaint western notions as 'helmet' 'lights' and 'road rules' its a nice way to see the city. For a change of scene, Paul, Andrew and I decided last weekend to head to Liao Hoa, which is a sort of village about 40 minutes (by bike) south of Liaoyang proper. So we set out, on a gentle incline into a slight, but persistent headwind. Me on my fancy schmancy mountain bike with such trimmings as gears and things, Paul and Andrew on the more traditional, fixed gear Chinese style workhorse. Suffice to say several kilometers and a bunch of gear changes later, I was glad I spent the extra 100 or so RMB.

We passed a small war cemetery on the way (not sure which war) which was fairly interesting, and the skeleton of a pretty huge stadium that they're building out in the fields. For what? I have no idea, there was a suggestion that some of the Football games in the Olympics might be played down the road in Shenyang, so maybe they'll be using it for training or some such. If so, Liaoyang's got some cleaning up to do.

Anyway, Liao Hoa.

There's a saying in China that you aren't truly a man until you have walked on the great wall. By this reckoning, I figure I'm now about 1/100th of man. Liao Hoa, in a typically Chinese attempt at getting the punters in, decided to build a sort of mini-Great Wall a couple of years back. Also in typical Chinese fashion, it seems that they sunk a whole lot of money into building the wall, furnishing it with a lovely asphalt car park, hedge maze, and crazy "Animals of the Zodiac Statuary Petting Zoo", then totally lost interest and/or ran out of cash. What this means is that you spend about half an hour wandering around the grounds of some Liao Hoa chemical concern, wondering just how much damage that smell is doing to your brain, and looking for one of about 5 nondescript and completely unsignposted roads that heads up the hill to the 'great' wall. Its kind of like stumbling upon an abandoned theme-park in the middle of a bunch of factories. In fact that's exactly what its like.

Enough chit-chat. Onto some images.

Residents of Liaoyang will tell you that Liao Hoa is very beautiful. It is a lot newer than most other places I've seen, but row upon row of identical apartment buildings, against a backdrop of smoke spewing chimneys, isn't exactly my idea of beautiful (those buildings in the foreground are under construction).



So here's the xiǎo cháng chéng (small great wall, if I may be allowed to invent Chinese names) in all its glory:



And speaking of things that are in all their glory:



Take that everybody who's never straddled a tank before.

There were some cool old A-frame houses up by the wall, but they were unoccupied and full to the rafters with rubbish. I'm assuming the owners moved out when the local government (or whoever built the wall) came to them and said “We're going to place these huge concrete dragons on your roofs. I hope you built sturdy”.



And, proving that I was not just being alarmist before, even large stone structures are not immune to the inexorable onslaught of the ladybug menace:



On the way out of town, we spotted this building, and its identical counter-part directly across the intersection. Impressive no? Oddly (and yet, increasingly unsurprisingly) both buildings are completely empty. I mean completely, bare concrete shells with a few supporting beams inside. Like so many things in this country, their origin and purpose is beyond the ken of a simple-minded Laowai like me.



Looks like wikipedia is down again in China too. The party giveth...

Tomorrow night: The great Chinese/American/New Zealander drinking party, at the best damn dumpling restaurant in town. The language barrier will add an interesting flavour to what promises to be a night of brain and liver damaging macho-posturing. There may be tales to tell.

Stay tuned Decadentwesterndogkateers.