...it's all broken biscuits really......

Above: Tea Plantations nearby
Left:Wulin Square






Well Dear Reader,

A bit of a progress report on my experiences in China so far!!! I'm in a city called Hangzhou, in Zhejing province. The province itself is pretty small compared to others in China but has got a population of 44,000,000. Hangzhou itself houses about 6,000,000 of the buggers! It’s huge and really picturesque, it’s supposed to be where the Chinese come on their holidays. I was here 5 years ago but the place has gone and got itself a make-over Llewellyn Bowen style. All the old stalls have gone and everywhere's scrubbed up well.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of cycling since I’ve been here and I’m kinda sussing the place out slowly. I’m out everyday, with my thermals and wooly, for a few hours. Me and Don went around ‘Xi Hu’ which us westerners know as ‘The West Lake’ which is MASSIVE. Took us 3 hours to cycle around, it’s about 2 miles wide and it’s really popular over here. But however cycling around the city really does open your eyes. They’re mad drivers over here, far worse than Thailand. My technique for riding on the city streets is pretty simple, look ahead, put your foot down and don’t let anyone in………..and try not to let anyone run you over. Driving or riding around is a bit like a cross between Grand-theft auto and ‘Chicken’, you know where you try and hold your nerve when cars are coming towards you? Well it’s like that, my first technique was just to follow the packs of cyclists around and copy what they do, but the other day whilst practicing this the guy on the bike in front of me got his foot run over by a car. So the traffic is mad but not really fast so it’s not as dangerous as it looks…it’s like organized chaos I think, cos no-one seems to get road-rage by getting cut up. There are bike lanes everywhere but its quite common for a car to just come down. Anyway it keeps you on your crushed toes.

You’ve got to understand that because Hangzhou has only a few westerners then the place isn’t geared up for us foreigners. Hardly any of the Chinese people in the shops speak any English and there are very few signs written using the western alphabet and 99% are in Chinese symbolic characters. My Chinese name is Ma Ming which translated means ‘Bright Horse’!!! How about that then? So I’m learning a little bit of the spoken language, which is great but is quite aggressive and loud. Ask someone for directions and they shout them at you as though you’ve just invited yourself around to theirs for Christmas dinner. And it's all broken biscuits really. A lot of the spoken word has around 5 different meanings depending on how you pronounce them so ‘ma’ for example means ‘mother, hemp, horse, swear, scold’ ‘Huo Shi’ can mean different things too including ‘nurse’ and ‘beard’, so for example if you had a friend whose mother had a nurse that you fancied (bare with me), depending on how you said ‘Wo xihuani ni da ma huo shi’ you could either mean ‘I like your mothers nurse’ or ‘I like your horses nurse’ or if you get it really wrong you could be complimenting your friend on his mums facial hair without knowing. So as you can see the language is a bit of a nightmare but it’s a good laugh to try it.

Walking around a bit you see all sorts of stuff, there’s a shop near Dons that sell live chickens, ‘Happy’ shops all over (email for explanation), in Thailand if you saw the word ‘Happy’ on a shop it meant you were able to get phone credit there, here it’s…..errrrmmm………. a bit different.
But the place is really pretty and there’s loads going on.

The western folk over here are a great laugh, they’re from all over world and many of them are studying, teaching or have proper jobs. Because there are so few of them they all stick together so you’re guaranteed a good night when you go out.

Went to Jer Jang University the other day with a mate of Dons, Dave who teaches there, and it was the size of Rochdale. 28,000 students. There was this massive tower-block the size of The Civic Centre in Oldham and that was the admin building. What’s all that about? The students must live on campus, go to their classes from 10am til 10pm including weekends, there was no uni bar, no grafitti, no traffic cones, no hung-over people…… and get this, at 11pm every night the power is switched off to the dorms and the doors automatically lock! From the second hand experience that I’ve got of uni life, I didn’t recognize it. Here is the weirdest thing…..the students loved the place, Dave was telling me that they go to lectures that they don’t need to go to…they buzz off education….I’ll tell you this country will take over the world.

But it is cold at the mo, ‘Baltic’ is to come in January. We’re having a Christmas party at Dons this year, it’ll be the first time that he’s been here for Christmas so we’re trying to organize it so it’s as western as possible, so we got the turkey sorted out, the guests, the games, all we need now are elderly relatives to fall asleep and break wind after dinner. And the bonus is…..no Queens speech!!!!!!! Halelleujah! I’ve been put in charge of entertainment so we’re having a pub quiz and sing-a-long no matter what.


Anyway I’ll stick a Happy Christmas blog on before Monday and let us know what y’all have been up to.

Cao Ni, Pi Yan (Chinese for peace and love to all…honestly)

Ma Ming