Be scene, be herd

Let one day be a microcosm of Chinese tourism. That day will be the 22nd of May, 2010:

 

We arrived at the airport to find my name was misspelt on the booking system. We called the agent, who in turn called their man at the airport to deal with the matter. He consequently disappeared with my passport and my friend's ID for twenty nervy minutes, before reappearing with corrected tickets. We made it to our gate on the final call, and were directed onto a packed terminal bus. We squeezed on and waited, and waited. Apparently someone else was late. After ten minutes suddenly a wave of annoyance arose within the group: "It's freakin' hot," "Let's go!" erupted. Just then a young women strode calmly over, sat in the seat next to the driver and we left. "She must have been doing her make-up!" someone quipped. The flight gave us only biscuits and bottled water for the one hour flight, which no-one on the flight consumed because they knew that the food on tour groups would be poor, and so they were all keeping it for later. Once on the ground, we jumped on the bus and headed on our way to the parks. On the way, we were given a spiel for traditional Tibetan medicine to adjust to the altitude. My friend and I always wary of a sales pitch declined. We arrived at Huanglong park, the first sight of our three day trip. Though starting at a height of 3150 metres and going to a height of 3500 metres (almost as high as Mt Cook), we still insisted on not taking the cable car to the top, preferring to do it traditionally, on foot. Within half an hour my friend was hit by the altitude, first by tiredness, then dizziness and finally nausea. She shooed me onwards, saying she could rest while I could make the trip worthwhile, so I steadily strode toward the main beauty point at the top. Having just had a dry winter, the water wonderland was less than wonderous for most of the walk. The blue sky was suddenly darkened an hour up, and the chatter of the climbing masses silenced by a thunderclap: it began to snow on a warm day. That passed, and I got to the top, admired the beauty for two breaths, before heading back down to see my friend. Down, we climbed back on the bus. Another sell began: "On this trip, you'll have 12 hours of enjoyment, for what was a very cheap price..." Apparently there was a performance on the evening of the second day which we had to see for the price of NZ$64. We fluttered the tour contract in front of the tour guides forehead: There are to be no additional costs on top of the original cost of the tour. He said that it was strongly recommended we went and that money would go to charity. We didn't bend. He said at least one of us should go. We said we weren't going. He told us that we were the only ones not going (we weren't) and that our intransigence stood between the event making money to give to the needy. We just blinked but didn't give. And thus we would "miss out". The bus had to stop for technical issues twice on the way causing us to have dinner at 10pm. That night I shared a room with another member of the tour, who smoked in our room while I was in the shower.

 

But it was a great trip. Chongqing, the so-called western capital, and Jiuzhaigou were wonderful. Both were set in the southern spice belt of China, where dishes run red with chilli. I didn't meet a single dish that was too hot, enjoying every bite. My friend's family really took me in in Chongqing and really took to the region. The dialect was interesting, sounding like a Korean speaking French but with words strangely similar to Mandarin. If I knew the topic, I could almost understand everything; but soon as the subject drifted and the thread slipped through my fingers it became inpenetrable again. After learning a few key words, my general comprehension lifted to about the same level as the Cantonese I've been working on for months.

 

The star destination was a place called Jiuzhaigou, a place is regarded as one of the foremost natural treasures of China. We got there the day after the one I mentioned above. The park started at a height of 2500 metres and stretched to 3000 metres in places, higher than Ruapehu's summit. "Once you have been to Jiuzhaigou, you can't enjoy waters," they say and I can say that it is not an overstatement. This place certainly has beauty up to the level of the best sights of the Southern Alps with water colour only slightly paler than the Emerald Lakes of the Tongariro Crossing. A place drowning in beauty that exhausts the eye. But this is China, a place that democratises tourist spots. In New Zealand, many of our natural jewels are the preserve of the a-bit-more-than-able-bodied and the super-rich in their copters. In China, everything is boardwalked, gondolaed and staired. Jiuzhaigou had a bus fleet ferrying people from one visual splendour to the next. In this relatively remote place, these buses were more packed than any city buses I'd taken in Guangzhou. This allows the elderly and the young to enjoy the beautfy in a way that New Zealand could never do; but also opens natural scenes to the emotional pollution that an incorrigible human mass and their idiosyncrasies can bring to one's experience of beauty.

 

As mentioned we declined a performance on our last night, preferring to walk slowly around the township that supplies the park its accommodation. I ate some very authentic food (from sites that looked like refugee shelters), chatted with Tibetans and bought cheap. What in English we call Tibet, in Chinese is called Western Tibet; we were in an area thought of as Eastern Tibet. It was good to escape the group. Back at the hotel we heard that we would be getting up at 5:30am. We were doing this so that we could go to expensive stores before we flew back. One shouldn't complain: the reason the tour was cheap is because the tour receives a commission of sorts to bring tourists in. And it is rather slick, if not sickening. The selling actually starts on the first day when the tour guide tells us "expected prices" and that to buy outside of authorised dealers is dangerous. Then arriving at these shops we are hustled into theatres to be told: "Gold hair crystal: the beloved of the successful and rich. Bringing wealth to those who wear it." "Green crystal, the favourite of women," etc. in an attempt to mesmerise or guide the tired, weak travellers.

 

Mercury creeps

I've come back into my home with the moisture content in my clothes weighing more than that of cotton of which they were made. It was a day where I spent most of my time in an air conditioned office but the small time in between air conditioned places makes a big difference. The maximum temperature is now consistently scrapping past thirty degrees and the humidity sustains itself despite the heat. So far I haven't had any trouble with it - it's just the comfort factor of wearing pants and long sleeve shirts to and from work. Rumbled tumbled thunder intones from the murk. Now thunderstorms are sweeping the city so I've opened the curtains and turned off the lights to appreciate it. It is 2am with 23 degrees, and 100% humidity now.

 

My cantonese is very much on the up-curve. I could just hear words before, especially the Mandarin analogues (originating from a common ancient language there are words that are directly related but sound rather different). But now my mind is stringing words together and thus meaning is gelling together. I've overheard two phone calls understanding more than just the gist recently, and I've started ordering food and buying in Cantonese, even unwittingly to unfortunate service staff from other provinces who don't speak Cantonese natively - they understand, nonetheless. Poor Mandarin will linger in the margins of my mind. Lightning camera flashes explode from my hind. Internet cantonese radio chatters in the midst.

 

I don't know if I've mentioned the back alleys but now they're my highways. Chinese neighbourhoods, especially the older ones, have little lanes dicing communities providing the populace with ways to race to the main arteries of the city. The alleys themselves are a picture, a microcosm, of life, dotted with random shops, with the mandatory street seller plying their trade of fruit or pirated DVDs in front. It feels exceptional to have them mapped down to the very guy harking on the corner. I feel safe scurrying through there, occasionally seized by the moment to buy random stuff like loquats and mangosteens. Part of the way is along a stinky river which I no longer appreciate the stench of. It is just a pleasure. To walk past the meandering stream, wander through the muddling denizens is something I really might actually miss. In this increasingly steamy environment, a portion of the local men choose to do go without shirts, or at least do what can only be called a paunch-show, perhaps one can tell the temperature by the percentage who choose to do so.

 

I've been rejected for a second time for a credit card which is rather annoying, and now will go to the travel agency to buy a ticket for my next adventure: Chongqing and Sichuan in central China. It will work out as a time to cool down with temperatures merely in the low to mid 20s.

 

Cantopopped

I'm amidst an obsession. I can't stop listening to Cantonese, wanting to hear Cantonese or learning every scrap of Cantonese vocabulary. My ears seize passing words and suck their vital essences, for future reference of course. Bizarrely, or not so bizarrely, my ears are quite intuitively seizing the language. It is quite possible that my Mandarin brain has finally connected the dots and has united the language engine of Mandarin with the Cantonese vocabulary and knowledge that I've been diligently gathering for 14 years. I'll immediately recognise unknown words as cognates in Mandarin and understand the gist of what is being said. Natural phrases spoken rapid and naturally are hooked in by my senses and sensed by my brain: I know what is being said without knowing why I'm understanding it. It may be that I'm learning the language as a Mandarin speaker rather than as an English one. Or maybe I'm enjoying the best of both worlds. A friend noted: I don't have the same inaccuracies as a person not from the province, I can pronounce and "hear" the sounds that don't exist in Mandarin with the tones that don't exist in English.

 

One odd side-effect is that when I switch back to Mandarin, at first it is completely alien, and the a complete relief and flowing into my intellect without any problem with understanding. The problem with switching between languages has always been a problem for me, and to be honest it probably helps that I stay in one language. Chinese students have always integrated English with Chinese, so it is not hard to understand how they have no issue switching; or, for that matter, have such trouble dis-integrating their English from the pernicious influence of their mother tongue.

 

Cantonese is a dialect of Chinese relatively uninfluenced by the races that took the Imperial throne in the north. According to one of my early lecturers Mandarin was simplified because the Mongols, who took Beijing as their capital for less than 100 years, couldn't get their tongues around end-sounds. Perhaps the Manchus, who ruled the last dynasty of Imperial China before it became a Republic, also aided in the reduction of tones down to the mere four (or five if you count the neutral tone) that exist in modern Mandarin. Cantonese has six tones, or nine if you count the three represented by end-sound words. End-sound words are those where you almost aspirate a sound, but don't. Say "sick" aloud for example: we say SIK-kuh. The kuh sound is the air released from our throats. In Cantonese, and many other Chinese dialects, the air is not released. It is held. In this, it is similar to ancient Chinese: ancient poetry sounds better in dialects such as Hokkien and Cantonese simply because they are less adulterated, the similarity is greater, than Mandarin.

 

But that history is not an issue. The only issue for me is that I'm in Canton, the beat of this land is Cantonese and I'm finally starting to dance to its beat.

 

In defence and attack

It is a line that I've heard many times since I came here but it really does hit a nerve: "Your Chinese is fine; why would you need to learn more Chinese?" It isn't the inquiry itself that is grating but the tone: bewilderment. I struggle not to shriek when I hear such, isn't it a good thing that one seeks to improve one's self as a natural desire? Shouldn't only the opposite, the desire not to learn, be the really bewildering thing?

 

Interestingly, the query has been asked of me twice in the last week, both in different ways: the first, inappropriately, by a language teacher, and secondly by a colleague. The colleague actually went about it the best by enriching the initial question with follow up questions and statements that validated it: "But surely you come to a point when you should be happy with what you've learnt." Perhaps, we all do reach a point when we, for any field, cease inquiry, cease to ensure that progress has been made. It is a point; however, I'm lusting after Chinese language. And being in China makes this all the more irresistable.

 

On Monday, I went to karaoke with some of the office staff and a couple of teachers. The some of the office staff were knocked back by the fact that I can actually speak Chinese well; they hardly knew this because in the office I refuse to speak Chinese except when inquiring about Chinese words I hear or see. This adherence to a professional principle, to never speak Chinese to students or usual staff, has probably hindered my progress. But I refuse to bend. Most of the students I teach on a regular basis have intuited that I have an unknown level of Chinese, but the staff were mostly in the dark. I sang a complete song in Cantonese for the first time. It'd caught my ear while listening to a collection and then I could only channel my past frustrations through full throated renditions of its plantive lyrics. One of the desk girls came over and proposed singing along with me for a few other Cantonese songs to which I agreed: I struggled immensely, not having practiced to the same extent as my chosen song.

 

Today, I have class with my new teacher and I've overprepared myself in all honesty. I met her through a colleague and then after thinking through how I'd best learn, presented on paper what I thought would be a good system of study. She approved of it so thus I'm facing another phase for my learning: having a teacher. This might be cruel wording: my school does, in fact, offer us a teacher; but she is untrained and of the wrong temperament to be a teacher of any strong impact. We do learn words and have a Chinese environment for an hour before she disappears again for another week.

 

Outside of class, I'm finally using more Chinese too with a regular dinner companion, a local, who not only doesn't mind me using Mandarin but occasionally fires a few Cantonese phrases at me to keep my awake. It all gives me hope that I might actually have some hope of tidying up my Chinese.

 

It is hard not to think about language when you are an English teacher. Even when I conduct our placement tests I am absorbing language from the pure beginners, who ask me whether I can speak Chinese in Chinese in an interview to determine their English proficiency. There are also the echoes of questions I ask: I ask English and a perfect translation of it is emitted in Mandarin or Cantonese as the interviewee considers how best to answer. Sometimes it is a bizarre mixture of both:

"What movies do you like?"

"Gongfu movies," the reply comes.

"What kind of movies are they?" I ask even knowing Gongfu is the Chinese word from which we get Kungfu.

"Do you know Chinese Gongfu?" they ask.

"No, what is that?" I deny and ask.

The student looks to the ceiling considering how to explain for a moment; after that moment passes and still no explanation comes I thought I'd better help.

"Do you mean Kungfu?"

"No." Oh dear, are you sure?

"Do you mean fighting movies?"

The student pauses: "Maybe,"  looking not sure where I was coming from.

"Do you mean kungfu movies?" I ask again, with a kungfu pose.

"Yes. Maybe."

 

And maybe many rascally shtudents can't help but speak Chinese on school grounds, which to me is galling: Don't you want to learn English?  Wouldn't you rather keep this as a haven of English than pollute it with the ease of your mother tongue? The answer is yes, since for most people, English is an obligation to be accepted, and hopefully avoided. Probably since I have such a strong discipline about not using Chinese myself on school grounds it generates a rather blinding impulse to eliminate all those who dare enjoy the luxury of speaking in Chinese. In Taiwan, I barely spoke English in the language building and was better for it, after all. One student, though speaking "English", adds Cantonese sentence endings to everything: "Really aaaarr?" and thus drives me nuts. I'd be concentrating on an explanation for another student when the "laaaaaar" from afar hits my tympanum with such a thud that all thought and speech comes to a crashing halt forcing me to stride up to the student and beg her to show some restraint.

 

Language is a nourishing liquid that surrounds this school of fish; it is what we oblivously swim in regardless of where we are. Let's all enjoy the crashing waves or the smooth waters of lakes.

 

Spring rolls

"Does it often get this hot in winter?" I sweatily asked a student in mid-February, which is often considered part of winter in the northern hemisphere.

"We don't have winter," was the response. The not-winter period featured rather cold, damp periods punctuating by warm summer stretches. Now deep in March, the humidity has been low at times and high at times with temperatures in the 20s. In such conditions with a breeze, it feels like a sheet, fresh from the drier, is caught on your body, flapping around, but without the air resistance. I guess this must be Spring. Many of us in the office have simultaneously developed sore throats. My theory is that the far-flung sandstorm shredded our throat linings, ever so subtly. My body has been playing tricks on me as it grapples with the demands of living in this warm, dirty, pressurized metropolis.

 

"This is a subtitle. This is a subtitle. This is a subtitle. This..." ran continuously across top of the big LCD screen in English on the biggest shopping mall as I waited across the street. Postmodern, perhaps. Time hasn't generated much traction lately: it runs through my fingers like dry sand and street dust. The milestone of the fourth month in China past two weeks ago, but I didn't had the accompanying unease as at the end of the third month. This time has featured the whirlwind arrival and departure of my sister; increased responsibility at work; plans for travel forming for both June and July and some clarity appearing for what I may do at the end of my contractual year. In terms of the latter, I'm placing myself well to be promoted to a senior teacher before the end of contract, whether it be in my own centre or another. In my own centre, I'm arguably the academic head (although with the imminent arrival of a new director of studies, that may change).

 

With my Chinese learning coming back into focus once again, I'm enjoying the prospects of the next month...

 

Tiger Tiger Water Water

The water crept in some time on Monday night. I thought they had taken a hose to the hallway and the water had somehow seeped under my front door; but the bathroom hadn't dried from my shower; the kitchen seemed far from dry too. My passport on the coffee table had its corners curling throughout Tuesday; before I realised that moisture had swamped this city. Today we stood around the staffroom telling each other of our various aquatic home disasters.

 

The weather in this topsy-turvy month has been the biggest feature of life. The day before my Chinese New Year break was bathed in brilliant sunshine; the dust smog had vanished; if one were to photograph Guangzhou for a tourist guide, this was the day. Then I went on holiday and the temperature crashed from the mid-twenties to below ten degrees. It remained that low for the whole holiday period and then the first week back. The classrooms cold, the teachers wearing beanies and coats, students remaining at home, and mice were even heard stirring. And now we're swimming and warm, the mid-to-late twenties. My energy has surged like the temperature. My last class I was absolutely wired.

 

The second biggest feature was the coming of the Year of the Tiger. It roared into action in the cold. In the day before New Year's Eve, I was at a loss with how I was going to spend the festival. In a supermarket queue, which was miles longer than it had ever been, I texted a friend, to ask, to be presumptious and beg, for a chance to share his family's new year. It was a big request but after consulting his family, he said yes. It was a great day. I'm eternally grateful. We had lunch at his grandmother's place where they accommodated my eating preferences well; his father is a keen drinker and seemed rather glad at my arrival. He'd raise his glass ready to clink at every opportunity. Thankfully that was lunch and he had to drive. Dinner, however, there was no restraint. We went to a restaurant and he brought cognac. Needless to say, his glass was often raised; and I was obliged to do what I needed to do for his arm to rest again.

 

The Flower Market is a Guangzhou tradition at New Year. In the lead-up, there are several streets that sell flowers, kumquat trees (tiny grape-sized oranges), peach flower trees and dahlias. The sign outside my apartment says they should eliminate superstitions, but the fact that the "quat" part of "kumquat" sounding similar to the cantonese sound for "auspicious" all means that they sell like hot cakes. Oddly though at an occasion called a Flower Market, the number one thing to buy on the night of new year's eve is a toy windmill. That is because the spinning of the windmill turns and pulls the luck in. My friend's cousin wanted bought one for me, which I gaily and drunkly ran down the street with.

 

The year turned but the weather didn't. I rested a day and then I walked the city exploring two mid-river islands. One thing that is useful to know about Guangzhou is that it sits amid the Pearl River Delta. The whole area is riven with many rivers and islands. My district is a large island although you'd never know it until you looked at a map. Another island was completely taken by the colonial powers after one of the Opium wars and has a large number of colonial buildings. Another was covered with mansions and tree lines roads. Walking them was wonderful.

 

But now in sweeps the work and the wonders of a busy life. My sister arrives in Guangdong shortly and more exploration awaits me at every week.

 

The walk home

There are some regular parts of life that are pretty much identical day-to-day. Your gnattering thoughts might differ; the weather might be different; but essentially the action is the same. Until, of course, some unexpected incident knocks you off your regular orbit.

 

I exited my school building for the second to last time of the lunar year and headed to the intersection to wait with the chattering pedestrians chomping at the bit to cross. One of the heads in front turned randomly, and then took a second take on spotting the tired white guy, me, standing jaded behind her.

"Welcome to Guangzhou," she said in correct but heavily accented English.

"谢谢" I thanked nonchalently in Mandarin. Her ears pricked up and immediately turned and launched into Cantonese, saying that my Mandarin was very good. I said in Cantonese that my Cantonese was not. She took a few misfiring sentences to switch her thought processes into Mandarin and then talked rapidly and clearly in Mandarin with the usual personal questions that traditional Chinese ask. I said I didn't have a wife or children to one question causing her to assume I'd left them in New Zealand, or Australia as she liked to refer to it despite my stating that they were two different countries.

"The milk in Australia is good and the air too."

"Yes," I said not bothering to halt her. She asked a lot about my educational background.

"I didn't complete my school; I gave up half way. Out of my group of students only I didn't finish school," she informed me.

"Oh," I said.

"Yes, I had a problem with my brain."

"No way ba," I said taking what she said as the usual phrase Chinese use to say they weren't predisposed to study.

"But then I saw a doctor and I was better again."

"Oh... that's good."

"I'm studying now again. I'm half-way through."

"Oh, that is good."

"After my husband died, I knew I wasn't going to marry again."

"Uhuh," I said not knowing how that fits in.

"He was a bit like you, open and happy."

"Is that so?"

Then she talked about cars and the Nobel Peace prize. I'm not sure how it was that she brought up the Nobel prize, but we arrived at a corner near my place. We'd walked in the same direction I was starting to worry that she would follow me as far as I was going to walk, to my apartment if necessary.  I was loaded with thoughts that this was some sort of trick to ask for money. Or some elaborate prostitution solicitation. Or a marriage offer. I stopped at the corner and she completed her thoughts about Obama and the Nobel Peace prize. She asked if I was going to the right; she said she was going straight. I said it was a pleasure to have met her and bid her farewell and she did the same. We parted and then after I had walked 10 metres, she released a loud "Bai bai!" I reciprocated with just a little less enthusiasm and kept walking.

 

So she was just kind-hearted. Or still marginally mental. Anyway, I can thank her for an interesting walk home.

 

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Xiaogang Park at 6:30am

Twisting and turning, bothered thoughts at the dawning, I rolled out of bed and put on the rain-pants I had mysteriously brought to China and onto the streets I went, searching for the apparent East Entrance to Xiaogang. The pavement renovation on Changgang East had been completed: I was free to break into a jog at will. Oncoming eyes were no less starey-starry at this time of the morning. I passed through the park gate: Khuuurrrk phut!

 

In a city of over ten million, the early risers number in the hundreds of thousands. The welcoming cheerleaders were the old and not-so frail, moving in synchronicity. I broke back into a jog and passed a back/front clapwalker. It was the second time I'd been to Xiaogang Park: the first was completely accidental even though the map I always use clearly shows there to be an extensive park barely 200 metres from my school. It is large enough to lose one's self: Khuuuuurk phut!

 

I walked a bit as I approached a bridge. My hope that that the torrential rain had cleansed, temporarily, the river of its stench was in vain. Above a bird was making a rough morning call. Or was it coughing? Have you ever heard a bird cough? If there should ever be a bird coughing, it'll be in Guangzhou with the air as it is. I charged back into a run and tailed a backward walker. His steady pace backwards meant that he could spend some time scrutinising me as I eventually pulled passed him: Khuuuuurk phut!

 

I passed the barbeque area and approached the badminton courts when my ears snared the familiar hollow tap-tap-tap of a ping-pong ball. I've been hoping for a ping-pong table for a long time and shot up the stairs for a peek. Passing the tables, there was a man sternly standing straight, sword in hand, ready to swing; Cantonese opera screeched from a 80s tape deck somewhere yonder as his onslaught failed to eventuate. A bare-chested runner bounds past: Khuuuuurk phut!

 

Those buildings are on my left again. Full circle I must have come! It was not the last time I would see those buildings on my left either that morning: Khuuuuurk. I stopped for a moment. Something wasn't right. I turned around slowly to spot a hunchbacked woman on a park bench. Phut! she spat into the bush. I turned back on my course and ran towards where I hoped the way out would be. The sun had risen and my twilight muddle had nicely brought me to the day.

Down is the new Up

I should have known last Tuesday: the clapping girl outside the fashion shop had lost her mojo, and I was half-way to losing mine. She had been paid to clap all day long to create an atmosphere conducive to sales, but her listless, arrhythmic beat would only be able to scare away the pigeons, if there had been pigeons. Me? I'd sustained a packed working week before launching myself headlong to Fuzhou and back in a busy three days off to see a friend, and then I was back at work, bleary-eyed staring at the clapping girl staring at me. I marched on to get a hot chocolate at a rather neat cafe, but the writing was on the wall: My immune system had sustained a hit; I had a cold, sniffle; and I was going to be out of order for a wee while. I struggled through Tuesday, slept through Wednesday on my first sick leave; and the was launched down to Shenzhen for training, heavily drugged, for Thursday and Friday. That all didn't mean that I didn't ace the test at the end of the training but by the end of it all I was as sick as when I had started and back at work, without a semblance of working order. In such situations, the body is great; it secretes adrenalin; I act nuts; the students smile; class dismissed; let me collapse on my desk.

 

Now, I'm back on the verge of health and ahead of me is a nice period: Despite the sickness and the medication, the bootcamp in Shenzhen was rather inspiring: I've been given a boot (in the arse) forward. I think my teaching is already exhibiting a sharpness it didn't have before the training. Ahead of me is Chinese New Year, where not only will I have a chance to taste the sweet nectar of travel, but also do what I want to do: study! Since finishing my first novel in Chinese since arriving, I have got a third of the way through another. I have a colleague who is rather dedicated to teaching me Cantonese. (She plopped herself down to be last week and declared we were going to speak Cantonese and used the same methods she'd use to teacher her super-beginner students; for the first two students it was painful listening and then sudddenly I could understand, intuitively everything she said. Cantonese is fun.) Ah, sickness sucks, but life can be nice too.

 

All this should not miss what happened before the cold struck: I landed in the city of Fuzhou, home to a high school friend of mine. The nature of China, Chinese culture and the vicissitudes of life abroad came floating to the surface. It is interesting where your thoughts lead you. I'm yet to understand what I think of all that I heard and felt.

Not a way to die

You know when someone abroad is busy: silence prevails in most of their correspondence; blogs are not updated; e-mails cease. With the ray of sunshine that temporary Facebook access has given, a general busyness has consumed me. I've been rather in my stride at work. I've been on top of things, rollicking in my task but it is tiring me too. I've been slowly developing cold symptoms.

 

It has been wet and cold for a while now, but it is about the same as mild coldness we have in NZ in late Autumn. I'm thankful for my big umbrella. Christmas did go better after the last blog was sent. I had a nice Christmas Eve party (where a lot of institutional gossip was spilt) and the Christmas party wasn't bad either. I spent most of Christmas day at home calling home and when I bought myself some shoes as a gift.

 

New Year was quite well spent too with a rough and ready New Year party that doubled as a farewell for the fellow I'm replacing. I reverted back to my role as a teacher for a moment there when some "students" (from another school) started asking me questions that I couldn't refuse. They rewarded me with the Chinese phrase: "To receive a day of teaching, you must treat the person as your father for life." When I heard the phrase come up (I hadn't heard it before) I cringed. I was desperately thinking what the "fu" at the end could mean, other than father, but nothing came and then they clumsily translated it in its glory, with innocent smiles. Apparently as part of treating me as a father, I'm going to be treated to the divine korean cooking of one of them. That can't be all that bad.

 

Not everything has gone smoothly though, and last night's happening really took the (expensive) cake. Many of my friends have suggested I'm paying too much for my apartment; and though I find it comfortable, it has to be conceded that it is not the best. Late last night, for example, it tried to kill me. I entered my bathroom in the all together after midnight and shut the door, only to have the whole metal handle disintegrate in my hand. I was incredulous for a moment until it dawned on me that I'd arrived in a peculiar situation: apart from a narrow window, the door is the only way in; the remains of the handle provided no way to open the door; I was thus effectively locked, naked, in my own bathroom. The bathroom window only lead to my laundry and then out into the outside air, eleven floors above the ground. I tried to see if I could fit through the window, and without a reorientation of my skeleton it wasn't going to happen. I had few implements to work on screws and joints with and while evaluating and testing a few options, I was starting to consider the rather horrid situation I'd be in if I couldn't get myself out. It was cold. The only heat would be the shower and then as soon as the shower ended I'd be freezing without a towel; no-one was coming; no-one at work knew my landlord so without getting the attention of anyone in the building; I could yell out the window, but I'd never heard voices, ever, in my apartment. The sound pollution is pretty bad outside I could be yelling out the window for ever; but vibrations travel well within the building: I could bash the ceiling until someone who happens to be taking a midnight pee is motivated enough to notify the front desk staff of the noisy neighbour below, who'd have to figure out who it is, contact my landlord sometime to get into my apartment with a key sometime and set me free. Or, perhaps with a few tools I could bore my way through the door with a pair of nail scissors - at least the action would keep me warm. The remaining stub of the door handle had a square rut that if turned could set me free: I plugged a pen into the hole and turned it, only to have the unfortunate pen dismantle itself under the pressure. My next victim were the nail scissors: I put them into the rut, opened them as wide as I could and turned; the blades twisted inside, and though the inner axel turned a little it wasn't enough. I sat back down and thought through it again. There really wasn't anything else I could do; I was cold, tired and had been stuck in the bathroom for between ten and twenty minutes. I returned to nail scissors, the only technique that had shown any promise, and after a few more moments of twisting at different angles, I pulled and the door popped open. This strangely mirrors another bathroom experience I had about twelve years agoin Japan.

 

I've been in this kind of queer dilemma situation before. It is weird: you aren't in imminent danger; there is no charging bull; but you are required to somehow "do something" to resolve it, because there is no going forward and no going back.

 

I'm on the verge of my second escapade outside of Guangzhou, heading up to see my high school friend in Fuzhou. My first trip out, to Shenzhen before Christmas, went like clockwork and I hope this one likewise is a piece of (quite expensive) cake. I'm looking forward to stepping into another world again; a place devoid of the Cantonese tongue.

Merry?

I descended the fire stairs with critical thoughts spiralling down with me. We had our school and work Christmas parties today and the latter, held after a long day, I was always going to be easily annoyed. I was rather exhausted, hungry and the backroom staff were too busy to start the staff party on time; so we waited a bit longer and then eventually they informed us they were ready. We proceeded into the party room and were greeted by a pile of food. The only foods I could eat were plum tomatoes and cake, neither of which were giving me any feeling for the dinner my stomach needed to keep me even slightly content. Then we did a secret Santa. We'd been told about this just days ago and I hadn't had time to get a gift so I grabbed the authentic DVD I bought a while ago (which was the same value as the maximum budget for the secret Santa). I got my gift, which was the equivalent of a $2 shop gift, little photo frame. The other foreign teacher left - it was his second to last day and he couldn't be bothered hanging around. The backroom staff made their own circle and were raucously laughing in Cantonese and Mandarin, and I decided to get out. I spoke to my "pick-me-up" students and then headed off to get something nourishing in my stomach.

 

It wasn't a bad day though, but needless to say, it was never going to have a spirit of any kind, let alone something lofty like the Christmas spirit. I worked from 9:30am with three classes and then switched to Christmas party mode. The organisation was less than optimal: the principal thought the opening would be in one place; I was directed to another, and I had to do the speech to open the event. Then once I'd finished the speech I marched to my room to teach two hours of continuous lessons for writing letters to Santa and New Year resolutions. It was revolving doors of groups: a group came in and once they were finished, they headed out and another lot came in.

 

And then finally that stage was over. I chatted to a few students but then suddenly got caught in a swirl of cameras: For a brief moment in the early evening, I became one of the most photographed figures on the planet. (I was lucky that Obama had already left Copenhagen.) In student crowds, photo fever is a fast-moving contagion; it just takes one teacher to surrender his likeness easily for the whole staff body to be open game; and once you pose one time, other meeker students raise the courage, and their cellphones, to yank you around with one arm and raise their peace sign fingers with the other; and besides, I'm a soft touch. Since the assembled mass included a lot of "friends of students" it was important to stay present with the attendees, talk to the unfamiliar faces and also do what management here would include as "customer service". (I don't want to criticise this cold way of talking about students because members of the teaching staff do neglect this side of things.)

 

Regarding the situation at the end of the party, being the noisy person I am, I'll probably mention, politely, a few of my concerns to the school manager. Politely because she is probably part of the problem. The real Christmas day is still six days away and I'm about to venture out of my city for the first time. I'm hoping to be refreshed!

One moon

If one week took a long time to pass, the last three weeks must have shot past because it doesn't feel like that long since I arrived. Time milestones often don't really amount to anything significant other than a number and the end of a first month is hardly any reason to crack open a bottle of Chinese whisky; so let this just be a title to a blog, and let it at least trigger some appropriate, although premature, circumspection.

 

One of my original goals was to get my Chinese on the tracks and, although it is not great as I would have wanted it, it is definitely on its way - I'm reading The Reader, in Chinese. My plan to establish myself a mandarin life external to my English school loop hasn't even set itself up in the starting blocks, which is rather disappointing, but I haven't even really tried. I'm far too comfortable and routine now. I've completely revived my classroom teaching and am leaving my own stamp on the school, slowly but surely. Teaching in itself is a joy, anyway.

 

Some of the students are truly energising. There are two young men who do nightshift at their jobs and come in bright-eyed and busy tailed at the surreal hour of 7pm to start their days with English lessons. One was a complete beginner when I arrived - I was there for his introductory interview - who has probably the best smile of any student. He chats in a basic way quite happily with me now (I haven't been teaching him - just talking to him from time to time); I've tried to buy his briefcase bag off him for the last few nights but he is only just figuring that out. The other exudes the greatest exuberance for learning of anyone in the school; he doesn't stop smiling, even when he told me he was assaulted on the way to the school! Both have only just made their first steps toward learning the language yet look forward without fear. Talking to each is a great way to end a day,  a shot of human delightfulness that, at the end of the day, is the best way to head home on.

Discovery 100

My discovery for the day was that a 100 yuan bill can survive a washing machine wash. This is good to know since I'd already spent  100 yuan having it fixed by two repairmen. I called one; he came; I put money in my chest pocket in preparation for payment; he pulled the machine apart; said it needed a controlling unit replaced; said that would cost 370 yuan plus; I called my landlord; was told to get a second opinion; the second one come; he turned the knob and it immediately worked. I believe the first one's dismantling incidentally fixed whatever problem it had. I had to pay both a 50 yuan door-service fee, something the landlord thought was high. So after a huge delay I washed my clothes, impulsively throwing in the shirt off my back, and today, ironing, I found my 100 yuan wrinkled but intact. They have paper money here so I'll take it as miracle.

 

But more significant a discovery was that my stamina is up to classroom teaching again. I did have a good day at the school with three near perfectly executed lessons in a four hour period. I enjoyed two of them immensely: one was a complete creation of my own and it fell into place perfectly on "the opening night". (I'll perform the same lesson two more times later this week.) Taking a lesson for the first time is a little scary and I did all three lessons for the first time today. The rest of the week will be easier now that I have a feel for those three which make up 50% of the rest of my lessons for the week. Every week should follow this rough pattern: Intense preparation on Sunday and Monday before teaching the first lessons for the first time on Monday and then having time to breath throughout the week.

 

The shrill whistle of the human traffic conductors is my alarm clock in the morning. The traffic, as chaotic as it is, can organise itself more or less with the subtle direction of the traffic lights. Pedestrians at major intersections, however, cannot manage themselves. (And I say this without any hint of irony.) Hwwwwweeeeeeeeeer! the whistle sonically torpedoes wayward walkers should they drift across the road without the green man as they usually do. They generally halt their steps in the face of the uniformed challenge. Four sunglassed conductors are required to hold the people-mass from seeping across the road. Of course, soon as they signal the non-cars to proceed across, the cyclists are unleashed rocketing like missiles through the churning intermesh of flesh and feet, often carrying twenty full water cooler bottles on the back of their bikes. At some time the conductors retire, the river banks are breached and chaos floods the streets once more until the evening falls and the conductors return to shoulder the burden of Sisyphus again.

 

People mountain; people sea. The population here, of course, can only boggle the mind of a Kiwi. The population density is double that of the densest part of Auckland, except maintained over an urban area three times greater. In my eleventh story room there is a telling view. Though I have great views from two of my windows, from two other windows I can get a scale of this large apartment building where I live: it is mostly occupied, a huge number of rooms; and it looks over a mass of old crowded buildings, all packed to the literal rafters; and in the not-so-distant distance, there are more apartment buildings, most of them labyrinthine, floor upon jaded floor, of identical floor plans, and doorways leading to rooms of the same or thereabout dimensions, accommodating a family with two parents and one point one rather overgrown children, who are usually in their mid-twenties. On an early Sunday morning I woke up and headed to the markets. Within my walk of barely five hundred metres, I passed close to five hundred people, all going somewhere on this beautiful Sunday morning. There is nowhere I can go apart from my apart-ment that I can part from the hustle-bustle of the neverending fanfare of life here.

Touch

It was after the scalp massage, hairwash and the shoulder rub that I thought that I might genuinely be late for work. It was hairdressing, you see, but not as I had known it. I'd spent about 20 minutes in there without the blades of a barber's scissors even getting close to my scalp. I was sitting there having a shoulder rub, chatting to the masked gentleman rubbing my shoulders about all manner of things. Of course the relaxation momentarily disappeared when I spotted the hugest cockroach started climbing the wall, but soon the rub again released the anxiety and the world, I and the cockroach became one again.

 

The hairdresser emerged from his grotto later and chatted with me while he removed my laterally surging hair. According to my friend, barbers never used to chat to customers; so perhaps, it's a pleasant cultural appropriation from western barber culture; perhaps, the barbers in NZ could learn from the nimble fingers of my masked friend too. Either way, the barber was a good chat, and he enjoyed testing out my cantonese.

 

I did in fact get to work on time. And that day built to be a stressful one: observed by the boss on a class I'd never taught, but it went well enough; I'll credit student enthusiasm as the element that made it a good lesson. To be honest, after rushing the planning on a hectic day, I -thought it'd be a disaster. I'm par excellence one-on-one but classroom teaching will take some getting used to again. "Why are you shaking?" my students often ask. They have always asked that and the answer is simple: that's the kind of person I am. I've always had what the doctor calls a benign tremor, and the tremor is more severe in moments of anxiety, and I feed on my own nerves.

 

I have around me two very good, professional teachers, who don't have a heart for the job. They are efficient, knowledgeable and in some respects, good models to follow the example of. They control themselves with ease in front of the class and generally deliver good lessons. But they carry an element of annoyance at students. Whether it be style or personality, they sometimes release a sneer which is quite astonishing. The only other teacher loves students and loves teaching. He has vowed to know the names of all 400 students of the school. His lack of pedagogical polish is made up for in his sheer gusto for people. He and I are the only people who circulate in the student iLab (the area where the students take online courses) to aid and to chat with students. He and I are the only people who'd linger after class to aid students. It is technically the responsibility of all the teachers to go to the iLab but it doesn't happen for the first two teachers. That responsibility was given by the boss for whom many staff have already expressed their dissatisfaction with the management of. I have no objections with ideas of the boss: most of the points that the staff have issue with are things I'd generally think are appropriate things; it is seems apparent though that it is a matter of how changes and policies were delivered; there was no buy-in at all; perhaps, no buy-in even sought; they were just stated and that was that. A simple policy of no Chinese in the classroom and in the staff room was delivered; but the Chinese-literate teachers still use Chinese in the classrooms (this is against my religion); and when the wolf's away, the sheep do indeed come out and chat in Maaaandarin in the staffroom. And Cantonese. Which is fine by me. Incidentally.

 

On Thursday, I finally got out and about to a scenic area: White Cloud Mountain. As all decent mountains in China, it was staired; but it was still a good walk. It was good to head up and up. Looking back at the city revealed that Guangzhou was just White Smog City. Interpretations of some photos suggest that there is in fact no Guangzhou at all.

 

My flat-warming is approaching on Tuesday and I'm already thinking about how to amuse all my colleagues. They're a good bunch but we've always got the problem that on every day of the week, there are people working. Tuesday, I and two others have day off but we're all on the next day. They are good people and I'm hoping that release from the mental shackles of the workplace is enough to allow us a chance to be just people.

 

An interesting phase.

Where it's at

Ah, time. In the scheme of things, this should have been the hardest week of all but it was pretty smooth. I agreed on and moved into an apartment; did my first lessons; had broadband installed; sat through endless bureaucracy and have settled into a nice routine.

 

Moving in was a little bit of a crisis in itself. Working late into the evening and then settling into my home without bedclothes nor crockery, I was a little bit panicked to get some of the necessities of life. Fortunately I have a massive supermarket close to my place that has everything.

 

Just 100 metres from my apartment is a daily food market with the freshest most wonderful vegetables. The long eggplant I had yesterday was as close to perfection as you can really get in life, art or the sciences; there were mushrooms galore; the choi-sam came with a gift: when I put it on the chopping board, in the corner of my eyes saw something dark moved under a leaf; lifting it found a creature that moved like a little like a worm, one end of it stretched into a pointy tentacle that reached out into the direction it wished to go, placing it and peristaltically creeped ahead. It was leech. The first I'd ever seen. The only drawback is what a colleague referred to as WAT (white-added tax); some of the prices sound dubiously high (by chinese standards) and usually I just refuse - they may expect bargaining but I'm hardly in the mood.

 

Tomorrow morning will be my first real chance to explore my unpolished gem of a neighbourhood. Tomorrow will also entail having a lesson observed by the boss. Since she grilled a senior teacher just yesterday, I'm hoping (a) that everything goes dreamily; (b) that if it doesn't she shows some leniency for someone finding their feet in our system.

 

It's nice to have proper home.

353

353: This number is one of the first things I see when I descend into the subway each morning; It is the number of days before the start of the Asian Games in Guangzhou. I arrived at 363 and thus it gives a me an in-your-face reminder every morning of the time as it passes. Ten days it has been and ten days that have been crawling by regardless of happiness and frustration.

 

Yesterday, I would have begged for euthanasia to escape from the bureaucratic hoops to be leaped through to become a resident worker. It all seems so needless really but then I'm obviously oblivious to the benefits of the system of forms, of going from one small office to another, of photocopying and of Chinese triplicate (not real triplicate, because you have to do the same form more than three times).

 

But now with most of the process done, I'm on the verge of moving into my new apartment and settling down properly. Once there I can buy a pantry worth of food and spices; I can invite people over (my current room is no good for guests); and I can walk to work in 10 minutes. I can't wait to get over that line. My landlord seems a good man (that being said, I thought my last landlord in NZ would be decent when I first met her) and has been very patient and helpful as we went through the steps.

 

I've got a Cantonese teacher now and after one lesson, boy does my head hurt. I think I'll have a ferocious learning curve ahead of me but will hopefully get the hang of it soon. By the end of it, a reasonably spoken sentence would half stick and half go astray. The most peculiar thing is that after chatting in Cantonese, Mandarin seems so, so easy. It is as if the brain turbo-charges to cope with the Cantonese so that when the Mandarin comes it is even easier than usual.

 

Real work is about to begin! My flurry of blogs may be about to cease. While I was dropping some documents into my school's head office in the north, one of the teacher liaisons came up to me and suggested I be head of the social committee for my school and around for Guangzhou. I suddenly thought of the shock of a full schedule, my obsession with language, my move and suddenly I felt I was rather not feeling like it. But we'll see...

Red, white and green

 

As someone with a rather experimental tendency when it comes to food, it is a delight to have such an excellent variety here in Guangzhou. I live near a very average small-scale supermarket, and yet I can get the most delicious things: mangosteens, dragon fruit and chinese mountain yams. They have plentiful beans and mushrooms; nuts and grains. Cooking dinner (and leaving some for lunch) is never a problem.

 

And you need to keep healthy in the city. Pressures push us everywhere, and sometimes it surges us places faster than we could ever imagine. Well, that is the case on the subway at rush hour. My lord! When everyone needs to catch the train at the same time, you'll catch it whether you like it or not, and if you don't catch it, you won't be catching anything for half an hour. There is a logic there that can be understood after close study of the physics of sunspots, solar flares and the solar wind. Fortunately, on Tuesday when we did go at rush hour the surge was strong enough for both me and my orientation friend to squash onto the train.

 

And even when you're not at peak the pressure remains: Beep; beep; beep; SHRIEK! That was the sounds transcribed in Jiangnanxi station on Tuesday night as a girl did a feet-first long-jump style leap to make the train before the fourth beep announcing the rapid shutting of the doors. She and her trailing shoulder bag made it by millimetres before the jaws of the doors drew shut. Fortunately the door on the other side was shut for she would have passed right through at that speed.

 

The general foreigners here are a strange bunch. I noticed this in the past too. As a person who makes eye contact with pretty much anyone with their eyes up coming the other way, I reckon that foreigners avoid my eyes much more than the locals. I think only one pedestrian foreigner has done anymore than dash their eyes away. I gave him a polynesian chin-raise with a polite smile; he smiled back.

But then, apart from my colleagues (who seem like a good bunch), I think I'll try and give foreigners a polite distance anyway. I went to meet a relation of a friend last night and fell right into a pocket of westernism, swedes, germans and a British-born chinese playing a game of Risk with beer; it was strangely uninteresting.

 

A week has passed since I arrived and it feels like at least a month. I'm on the verge of agreeing on an apartment; my work is falling into place (I'm chomping at the bit to begin, in all honesty); the weather is still rather agreeable; and I'm watching a horror movie on public TV: Awesome.

After the early faze

Last night I got home and struggled to sleep for the first time. It was nothing to do with jet-lag or unfamiliarity; it was excitement and anxiety after my first day on site at my school. And I should have slept because I was knackered. I haven't worked in so many weeks that to sustain concentration, to constantly deal with people and absorb copious acronyms and institutional knowledge was rather taxing. On the subway last night I felt too tired to do anything. I could have fallen asleep so heavy were my eyelids. This morning, though, I woke after the sun for the first time since arriving, meaning that I'm not far from running on Chinese time.

 

My workplace has been an enjoyable discovery. My workmates, both foreign and local, have been very easy to get along with. The school already had one Canadian, one Brit and one American so I add another flavour of English. In the two branches I've visited this week, I'm the only antipodean. The majority of foreign teachers are Americans. The students are cute. I'm still about two weeks away from my actual teaching but it has been good to be amongst it all. I do feel part of the team.

 

I'd like to officially retract that dreadful title that I bestowed upon Guangzhou: Guangzhou is not the arsehole of China. On Tuesday I went to a similar place to that which I visited in 2000 (can't be sure it was the same) and what a change has occurred: The people are probably less foreigner-struck than when I was in Shanghai two years ago; It is a great deal cleaner; Beggars are not on every corner; The people, aside from the service, have been great to chat with. Last night while I was waiting for my food at a local eatery, a young man (Lin Huangjie) sat down on the neighbouring table also waiting, we started a nice conversation and though he had some interesting thoughts about the difficulties of learning English, he refused to speak with me using English.

 

Yesterday may also mark the time that my Chinese study was reignited. Ever since my birthday the heat and fire of my study have been weak; even being here I didn't feel interested in pushing myself to learn. Two colleagues and I enjoyed a lesson with the visiting teacher. It was better than I had imagined although my demands of a lesson will probably see me seeking another teacher to supplement my studey. There seems to be a slight issue inherent in the class. When it was just my two colleagues in the lesson, the less proficient of the two was quite inhibited by his more fluent classmate (the Canadian is a very unrestrained speaker). And now there is a newer, more fluent fish in the pond; apparently he was even more affected. The teacher took me aside at the end of the lesson to let me know about this and we discussed teaching methods to deal with it.

 

I managed to make my first vendetta though as part of my quest to bring a good service culture to China. A colleague that I went apartment hunting with and I went to a "korean" restaurant. We ordered and within ten minutes my dish came - I didn't start waiting for the other order to come through. Ten more minutes passed and I grabbed a waiter and he grunted that he'd check. We chatted and after another ten minutes I grabbed the same waiter and asked him again where the dish was; he grunted again and headed to the kitchen. Then suddenly all the waiters swarmed over to our order sheet and then to the table next to ours where a lady was eating a certain Chicken Curry Rice that we'd also ordered. The orders were somehow confused and became the one. After about ten minutes the dish arrived. I told my companion that I'd like to raise hell / a complaint on payment, but mainly for the purposes of language practice and making a not-to-subtle point. But it didn't end there: after finally starting our meal, I asked for some tissues; they came but when the same waiter delivered them he added a charge that was even more of a red rag to a bull. When we went up to pay, I camped us at the till and explained how dissatisfied we were and how it was completely unacceptable. The staff scurried around; signals came back and forth from the kitchen; and even when they refused to recognise any obligation on their part to show any goodwill, I stayed camped at the till. The boss came out and said: "We're very busy here and these things happen, sir." I continued telling him that this was not good enough. He appeared to be starting to crack. But we decided just to pay the bill and tell him that we'd mention the service here to our friends in our language school. After leaving the restaurant, I felt myself rather untactful and suddenly much better ways to reason them into the ground appeared to me. God save the next restaurateur who crosses me.

 

Cantonese has been on the menu too this week and it has been good to be in the environment to hear it and learn it. When I walked with an agent to help me find an apartment, he'd always talk to the landlords in cantonese and I caught quite a bit of it. And the basics comments are all immediately understood. But, boy, I've got a long way to go (and a year to do it).

 

I've got a well-timed day off today. Whoever designed the schedule for new teachers had it pretty much right. I'll have another two days of "work" and then another day off on Sunday.

Settle down now!

 

I've had a day here now: I've been approached by hawkers; eaten my first street food; smelt that funny "Please let that be anything other than sewage?" odour that wafts out of drains in the city; and been pushed in front of by little old ladies. Yes, if the sign after customs hadn't said it already, I'm indeed in China.

 

The hotel was almost a joke the moment I arrived. The internet didn't work; the TV was misconnected; the clock is perpetually 11:40; the bathroom light blew within minutes; and though the room had a kitchen, it was short of almost everything. An intercom call brought a worker up to attend to all of the problems. Before I left New Zealand, I had been pleased to see that I had a breakfast provided with the room, and had a picture in my mind of a small scale buffet with some nice warm Chinese breakfast food, rice porridge, perhaps. In the morning, I descended to the lobby, hungry since about 4am and was faced with an unattended reception, so I asked the doorman who dialed a staff member. A sleepy-eyed receptionist came down and informed me that breakfast would come with the room cleaning people at around this time. So I headed back to the room to find two processed, packaged cakes and a bottle of orange juice: A let down of sorts. But it is a room and now that I've done some shopping, figured out how things work, slept well and had a wander around, I'm at least comfortable.

 

My neighbourhood is reasonably uninspiring, but it has a good supermarket nearby (with some organic products!) and it looks like it has a reasonable cafe opposite (stocks wine too, NZ labels only, buy them by the bottle at ridiculous prices!). The trees are pleasingly verdant; a big difference from the limp, grey "greenery" of Shanghai and Beijing when I visited. I haven't yet had to take any evasive action while crossing roads. My new shoes have now really met Chinese pavements, too, which really is the fastest way to depreciate an asset ever.

 

I headed out at noon on my first tentative journey into the subway network, emerging at the famous Guangxiao temple and then heading over to the shopping strip of Beijing Road.

"May I ask you a question?" I was asked in English by a young woman as I waited at an intersection.

I thought that there was no harm in allowing her the pleasure of a single question with me: "Hăo!" I assented. Her face collapsed: "Oh. You speak Chinese. Nevermind. I was going to ask you if wanted a guide," she replied in Chinese, disappointed and walked away.

 

Oh and the most unbelieveable sight of the day? Definitely the men selling tiger paws on the footpath. Actually, that might be the most extraordinary thing ever. I'll have to think back to all the wackiest things I've ever seen in this country. I also found a rather outstanding spelling mistake on a sign ("STSRBUCKA").

 

From tomorrow onward my world will become a bit more routine with work beginning. But not real work, just starting the settling in process and visa requirements etc. It should be fun!

Final daze

And so I'm amid the slow process of airport transits – definitely away from where I started from, but still a seeming eternity from Guangzhou and my welcoming party there. It is only eight in the morning and I have four hours to kill till my connecting flight. And I'm in Starbucks, which of all places will be home for this time, drinking an Americano. And though they claim to have free wireless broadband, it seems not to be accessible anywhere in the terminal space I'm confined to; this'll probably be sent once I'm in Guanzhou.

It was a long day on Friday, day of the flight, which could have gone smoother, but I can thank my lucky stars that, so far, I don't seem to have forgotten anything. Both Thursday and Friday proved that even with plentiful time to prepare, my brain still managed to leave many tricky tasks till the last moment; but still leave just enough time to complete everything before a rush to the airport. It is always the way.

The pre-big trip anxiety only hit me on the drive to the airport in fact, showing that this drawn out lead-in really did rob me of the nervous energy it would have otherwise provided for at least a week preceding departure. This meant that I slept well the night before I left. But now, it has dawned on me properly: I'm starting a long adventure from which the relaxation of home is as further away as it will ever be; my feet will always feel in the air till they're back on home soil; I'll have curious eyes on me every day; and I'll have a long time to adapt to my new city and to connect myself in with the Chinese world.

Airports always play on my nerves as I subconsciously think about all the things that can go wrong, wrong entrances I could go through, forms that could be filled out incorrectly and wrong places to go and fruit and pocket knives I could accidentally stow in the wrong bag. I may have done something wrong already: I'd packed a bottle of Ginger Liquour in my check-in luggage to act as a gift or, if no recipient becomes obvious, for my own consumption in Guangzhou. Last night I went to duty-free where I took forever to make the decision of buying a NZ-made gin (gin being another spirit I seem to enjoy). However, the man at the desk told me I could only bring a litre of alcohol into Hong Kong. I didn't even think of the combined volume of the gin and the liquour in my bag; that puts me up to 1450mls of drink, and a bottle of the size in my check-in does show up on the scan of luggage meaning that I should declare or face a potential fine. Fortunately it wasn't the most expensive bottle, should it be taken off me later.

The flight to Hong Kong, from whence I write this, was very smooth. (500) Days of Summer was the best movie in the entertainment book and it was worth the watch (I do like everything Gordon Joseph-Levitt, if that is his name, is in though).  The Last King of Scotland was probably good except for being constantly obscured by my ever lowering eyelids; Forest Whitaker makes you forget that he really isn't Idi Amin; I didn't see the end though – the curtains came down. I had a few short patches of sleep but otherwise cruised through the flight peacefully half-awake/half-asleep. The Other Man was my movie of the dozy morning, clunking its plot along but getting at peace with itself by the end.

If the delays and my fall at Cathedral Cove were some sort of karmic stop-signs telling me I had made the wrong decision to come to China, there have been plenty of other interesting personal coincidences telling me that this enterprise is right. As I boarded the plane, walking through Business class, I looked over at a passenger at the same time as he looked over at me. We both recognised each other immediately. He had been one of my students six years ago. Although he was a native of Qingdao (on the northern coast) and had been staying in New Zealand for most of the time since, he had started a company near Guangzhou in the last two years with a family friend. He visited me later in Economy with his business card and said we should meet later.  It is always nice to have these lucky meetings.

And of coincidences and decisions, back in Auckland Airport waiting an hour to leave, I bought a hot chocolate and read in my freshly delivered Forest & Bird magazine about the degradation of waterways due to dairy farming. I pondered an interesting resolution: to be dairy-free for this whole Chinese endeavour, where realistically possible. My flight meal was already vegan (the airlines smartly give a vegan meal to all who have moral qualms about food), which brings me back to the huge Americano to my right (a really, really long black). I've been popping Raw Cacao beans as if they were candy. Such a principle would gladly avoid the generally horrid milk in China and keep me away from foreign temptations. But we'll see. I'll probably be offered a slice of cheesecake somewhere and scoff it without any moral restraint at all, and probably have my expectations let down with a tremendous clatter (in terms of western food here, things that look like a duck, don't necessarily quack or taste like a duck).

And so as I sit in the bastion of capitalism and epitome of a soulless café, I sit and ponder whether I'll find a cheap voltage adaptor soon before my cyber enjoyment runs out. And wonder how softly I'll land into Guangzhou, the erstwhile "Arsehole of China", and my home for the next year.

Gourmet

In the lead up to my departure, I've been enjoying food and drink. I doubt whether this is the best strategy: indulging in all the things I enjoy could lead to the feeling of deprivation once on Chinese shores. But not mind that, I've had fun.

Avocados so plentiful and creamy; yoghurt so smooth and rich; cheeses: gouda, blue and brie; chocolate from mid-dark to the darkest night; coffee brewed and prepared to its astringent best; breads light and pure; raw cacao beans; macadamia crunch; dainty ports drunk at the wrong part of the meal; manuka honey spread on beautiful toast bread; gin and tonic, hitting the spot; crepes thin and well filled with the sweetest filling; falafels and tabbouleh so morish and satisfying; milk so white and full; pure organic juice from any fruit; sandwiches with gherkins, beetroot and egg; hummus with garlic and golden kiwifruit scooped with a yellow plastic spoon.

Blogger is one of the websites that are not necessarily accessible in China. This blog was sent via e-mail, the only way I'll be able to continue on this site. And perhaps with such wonderful foods mentioned, I'm best if I don't see the foods listed once I'm in a place where they are no longer obtainable.

The long and winding road

In June I got the news that triggered thoughts of flying away, and now, five months later, here I am with less than a week left before departure. It has been a rather trying time. I'd thought I be gone long before this time - I've been unemployed for six weeks - but there can always be reasons for such things.

Though I've been denied time with my sister in the UK and travel in Europe with my friends, I've gained in terms of time spent with my mother and friends here and the new connections I've made with my extended family. I've had time to contemplate, as well as explore my country and prepare for my trip.

This being a rather large endeavour for me, it has been nice to have time to adjust to the idea too and think about what goals I have and how I'll carry them out.

To the root

With my new life postponed temporarily, there was plenty of time for distraction. My zeal for Chinese study ebbed once the immediacy of my departure faded, so where was I to go?

I happened to accompany my mother to a family get-together and was immediately struck by the need to have my lineage down on paper. This may not be an issue for many people but my immediate family, excluding my father's recent lateral extension, is rather tiny - I have no living cousins; but beyond that there are thickets of relatives most of whom were vague to me. I've also not been diligent in the past to follow the exact in's and out's of our family; and for whatever reason, our family has always seemed to do its own thing.


Despite us already being a long way into the information age, I believe I might be the first person to put the full power of the world wide web into the search for ancestors and relatives. And there have been more than a few surprising discoveries: the Auckland museum had a photocopy of my great-great-great grandfather's diary; his grave was a mere fifteen minute drive from home, but he was born on Jersey of the Channel Islands c.1823, coming over on a boat, the Merchantman in 1855. And our family history on that island goes back almost to the Norman Conquest!


I visited my only uncle last week on a trip to Waihi. I'd only met him once before in my memory (due to distance and a family disagreement I never really got to know him). It was a fascinating meeting. He naturally looks quite similar to my father but in terms of interests and attitudes, he is very different; we talked widely on all manner of topics. I'm tempted to go on a Coromandel genealogical jaunt to meet people and visit the dead. In fact, a Dunedin visit may well be due too.

Due to our patrilineal system of surnames, there is a strange tendency toward of fascination. I'm as much a Willstead, Holt, Brown, Harris or Hipkins as I am Goudie, but the search for the origin of Goudie, Denize and McNarey seizes me as more interesting.
Oral history presents its own difficulties. Speaking to my father or uncle about their relatives brings up a plethora of nicknames, and that side of the family has a large number of people who use their middle-name as their main name.

Other than banal facts (like that I'm 1/16 "german" and I'm not as "scottish" as I thought I was), it does give one a feeling a fitting in the world; My sisters and I are the last descendents of the McNarey family in New Zealand. It seems two brothers came over in 1910, got married but all their genes now rest in our hands. Location, location, location was crucial for many of the meetings of ancestors, like a cosmic dance which only can only be appreciated in retrospect. And I now know the Goudie name may not have originated as I first thought, and have always said.

One of the problems with delving into the past though is the relegation of once living, breathing people to mere names. And in the mist of time, people are reduced to names and numbers. They are only proved by their source documents, not by the memory of them. The Goudie name is indeed an issue where my line becomes fuzzy after the last definite ancestor, a William Goudie in the town of Maybole in Ayrshire, Scotland. The only way forth another generation back is through his record of birth, but there is no record of a William Goudie born 54-56 years before the 1841. Are all the records there? There was a well-documented William Goudie (he obviously had a dedicated genealogist - it goes back far!), but his birthdate would make him a very young father if he were the father of my great grandfather! Then I was struck by the ages on the census: the older people have ages of a multiple of five. They were only estimates! I found a likely William Goudie, born at approximately the right time, but is it really him? And that is as far as the internet could take me. But in all honesty, William Goudies were a dime a dozen in Ayrshire in the late 1700s, early 1800s, without distinguishing middle names, and apart from going to Maybole and having a chat over a tea with my distant relatives and non-relatives, there isn't much to do. But the William Goudies are all people who presumably lived lives, had children and died to become a mere number.

But when the number is fleshed, a picture emerges: In the 1841 census, William Goudie was "55" years old, a widower for the second time and looking after two sons to two different wives, with the help of two female servants. His first four children had all died young. His youngest surviving son, Thomas Cuthbert Goudie, at the age of 22, came to New Zealand with his wife, Sarah Ann, on a boat, War Spirit in 1863. (I don't know why.) After the death of Sarah Ann on the North Shore, he went over to the Coromandel, remarried and up to the age of 68, he had 6 more children. The youngest, Andrew Joseph Goudie, had two children; and the youngest of those two children, had three kids, the youngest which is I.

The end of the end - 寿终正寝

At 6:05pm today I ushered my last student out the classroom door and ended my teaching enterprise that began 2:30pm Friday 22 July 2005.

I still remember that first day rather well: A week after my successful marketing meeting, I went to the client's office and then received each of my seven new corporate students for a fifteen minute Needs Analysis. The true scale of what I had gotten myself into became apparent: there were a wide variety of accents, issues and backgrounds and I had claimed that I could help them all effectively. Looking back, I can't say that I would have had the ability at that time to justify those claims; and still with the experience and knowledge that you can only get through teaching over three thousand hours of one-on-one teaching, it is hard to sustain. The lesson early is that you cannot fix; you instruct, support, motivate and facilitate the changing of habits, the learning of knowledge and the understanding and application of skills. And at first, some were quite happy with their English, but appreciated the amusement of a company-supplied teacher. Such encounters taught me the need to actively find out the motivations of the students and even be confident enough to confront students or get their managers involved. Another student had significant "fossilised" pronunciation issues (this means that the influence of his mother tongue is almost impossible to be removed). I learnt a lot about such conditions and recent students from Malaysia benefited greatly from the lessons learnt there.

At the end of that year, I was already positioning myself to jump back into the common pot of "employment" but missed out on my dream job with the Government security agency. That was a blow but the reason for me even looking was the conditions of my self-employment: I was struggling with the scale of the task; I'd failed to lure any other company into a contract; and I was only supporting myself financially with two full days of work a week. That finally changed in my second year almost a year to the day after I began: I found a new client. This was just incredible. After my second or third round of intensive cold-calling, I followed a name I had snared in a research call, and after my spiel I heard the most musical words for a cold caller: "You're exactly what we are looking for!" Apparently some Swiss employee was making noises about that company's responsibilities to seconded employees and that English support should be provided. And I came knocking at that time. With him came more.

This was the beginning of a rather magical period when I'd not only created myself a fulfilling full-time enterprise, but also had a juggernaut that threatened to drive me to my own expiration. My trip to China at the end of 2007 carried with it the dream and nightmare of weekly trips to Wellington, an excess of 30 hours of weekly tuition and no-one with me to handle that teaching burden. The Wellington lessons were a possibility that came from nowhere. My second client was just the Auckland office of an international company with offices throughout New Zealand. Two seconded Croatian workers in Wellington heard from their compatriot up in Auckland that English lessons were provided to them and they made some noise to have access to the same. And after a six month struggle to find a comparable tutor in the capital, they turned to their tutor up in Auckland. The suggestion sent me to cloud nine.

I was light with delight, but heavy with dread. As it turned out the dread was unwarranted: 2008 was a magical year, if only from a professional point of view. It was also the year that I finally felt fully in control of my powers, shaking off one of my perpetual self-doubts that I was not up to the job.

I would send one student out with a handshake and heartily welcome another one into the student's seat like a doctor would to patients. My mind would grasp a sentence and isolate the fascinating issue with it, scrawling it on paper for a graphical explanation. I had students explain the reason things are so with a perfect rendition of what I had taught. Naturally, a teacher's ego can easily go to far and take ownership of their student's learning when, in fact, it is the fruit of the student's talent and work that they have learnt. But I felt immense pride in these things I saw. And the friendships I made doing it were extraordinary: What other jobs can you help and chat with friends and get paid for it?

The decline when it came was not a surprise. Over the last New Year, I made plans in its anticipation. My industry, workplace training, is the kind that prospers in the good time and struggles in the bad. My income halved between 20 February and the 10 March this year. The dying phase has been an enjoyable time in that I've been able to travel, write and learn. While it was alive, this enterprise of mine, I hoped to breathe it back into life; and now, partly on a whim, I've set it aside, asleep, perhaps forever.

Naturally, this is just the ending of one phase of life. Another one is forming for me. But it is a time to look back on the passing of this entity. It was sad to leave both rooms that for quite some time have been mine. I could literally walk in and kick out those inside irrespective of title because I had it booked! I had my own cupboard with tea-cups, tea and books. They are now forbidden ground. I'll have the chance to see some of my students again first in my farewell and some in their home countries.

This has been a special four years and I will cherish it greatly.

Forum rules

These are the rules to a Chinese newsite's tennis forum I look at to read about the US Open:

请您注意
Please note:
自觉遵守：爱国、守法、自律、真实、文明的原则
Consciously follow the principles of patriotism, lawfulness, self-control, truth and civilisation.
尊重网上道德，遵守《全国人大常委会关于维护互联网安全的决定》及中华人民共和国其他各项有关法律法规
Observe online morality and follow the government's decision regarding internet safety and other relevant laws and regulations of the Peoples Republic of China.
严禁发表危害国家安全，破坏民族团结、国家宗教政策和社会稳定，含侮辱、诽谤、教唆、淫秽等内容的作品
It is strictly forbidden to jeopardise national safety, harm racial unity, national religious policies and social stability, including content with abuse, slander, ___ and ____ etc.
承担一切因您的行为而直接或间接导致的民事或刑事法律责任
You accept all the direct and indirect responsibility for civil and criminal acts caused by any of your behaviour.
您在新浪新闻评论发表的作品，新浪网有权在网站内保留、转载、引用或者删除
New Wave Net has the right to retain, republish, quote or delete the opinions you express here on New Wave News .
参与本评论即表明您已经阅读并接受上述条款
Participating in this discussion indicates that you have read and accepted the above conditions.

Considering the recent crackdown on Internet in China, especially Facebook and Twitter, some of these are clearly not window dressing. Some are humorous such as patriotism given as the first principle to adhere to. Civilised behaviour should really be more strictly enforced considering that on this particular site comments calling Selena Williams an orangutan (or gorilla) have been abounding for this whole tournament and probably every other tournament, without moderation.

Intermediate Tramping 101


On a crest of stress, I strode into two consecutive weekends out of town to play. To be honest, the preparation for both was an element in my anxiety, but the passing of both wound my mind down and relaxed my shoulders. The heart of the first weekend was the desire to do hard-out tramping; something that is not safe alone, but the number of potential companions are few; fortunately, longstanding leave was taken by one, and off we went.

The plan to trot through the Whanganui National Park was dashed by the immense impracticality of such an endeavour: it just is not a feasible tramp without a chauffeur. Plan B was to hop from forest park to forest park and that was what we did.

Completely incidentally the tramps went from easy to hard. The first walk was the summitting of Mt Pureora in Pureora Forest Park, which almost doesn't merit a mention apart from it marking the start. Oddly, I've been staring at this mountain for a while in my DOC brochure thinking it would be nice but it was a mere stroll. The biggest challenge of it was getting enough sleep the night after, as our cute cabin was also occupied by mid-age critical hunters and their leader, (General) John. John had trouble distinguishing between the hunters and the trampers in our hut and wanted to rouse us for the hunt by turning on the light and opening the curtains in the morning. He did, however, emphasise the need to make distinctions between trampers and deer when he had a gun in hand.

The next day was Colenso trig in the Ruahine Forest Park. I had once intended to stay there on the way back to Auckland from Wellington. The walk had a bodyslam of a start: straight up an insistent gradient. Trees frequently obstructed the path. Climbing through these became easier as we went, perhaps due to the familiarity of the task. Colenso trig was one of the first peaks on a range in the north-western section of the park. As we came through the tree-line and saw the grandeur of the whole set of mountains: their ravines, their snow-caps and their scale. We passed a tarn (a mountain lake) on the way up, before rising to the trig for a proper rest and appreciation of our view. It felt like a good challenge surmounted overall and we descending feeling proud in our ability.

We were the only ones in our huge cabin (more a batch, than a "hut"). There was a log burner there, on which I decided to test my skills. I've never started a fire by myself as I've never really been in houses with fireplaces or burners, but of course, the gist is well known: get paper, assemble kindling on it, and some dry thin sticks on them and should everything go according to plan, once there is ignition of these sticks, add bigger sticks. Easy? Well, it took me an embarrassingly long time but once done, we had our very own hot room. Coal sustained the heat long into the night. This experience served me well.

Our next target was the Kaweka Forest Park, just off the Taihape-Napier highway (Gentle Annie). We had planned our day from a DOC brochure, noting a high point Mt Kuripapango up which to ascend, then a track down to the Kiwi Saddle Hut to stay overnight deep in the park before looping around and back to our car on the second day. We aimed to leave early for this early but were completely foiled by a massive landslide onto the only road out from our hut. Lucky for us, trucks were already on their way to clear it but we were still delayed an hour and went on our way.

We found a carpark along Gentle Annie which had a sign indicating the mountain we wished to climb. We kitted up and set off. Compared to the previous day, the track did allow us a flat period to warm up, but the gradient was even steeper and harder than the previous day. I was genuinely running out of steam at one point. But patience rewarded us with the top of the ridge, but it was accompanied by a kicker: we had started from the wrong carpark. We had mistaken a carpark unmarked on our map as ours. Suddenly our original route didn't work so we decided on an alternative route, rested and prepared for a walk down to the hut. We were to be disappointed.

Though on our map, only Mt Kuripapango was marked as a highpoint, the track to the hut went much higher, one point being over a hundred metres higher. As soon as we marched onwards from our rest, we were greeted with curious patches of snow and fallen trees. The pines had been hammered here; at first I thought that someone had taken to them; then I thought wind must have dealt to them; but there was always an element of disbelief: How could wind have felled these huge trees as well as pulled so many branches down. The tree-traverses were more difficult than the previous day. Pine trees are not the most friendly trees for such; the mountain beech trees were far easier; but even they were cruel when, in what would be a delightful grove, the sheer quantity of little branches took away any scent of the path. The usual markers were scarce either due to tree-falls or a general lack. We employed all sorts of methods to determine the path, which time after time solved our navigation issues. Then we broke through the snow-line. Neither of us had experienced a backcountry track in the snow, and this added to our navigational problems. How do you know where to put your feet when everything is covered in snow? One foot is on a concealed shrub; the other falls down to the track. Time ticked onwards and how dearly we would have liked that hour lost to the landslide.

I should say that there were outstanding views. The Bay of Plenty was visible, huge mountains and valleys surrounded us. Earlier in the day I spotted my first New Zealand Falcon (Karearea), and now we were treated to a snowscape with mammal trails. We'd both done Kepler Track in Fiordland in low cloud denying us of views: here we had them.

But those were Heaven so it's appropriate that I tell you about Hell. Late in the day, tired from trudging and falling deep into snow, struggling to navigate with very few clues to use, we approached a mostly smothered cairn that marked an entrance into a patch of pine. We rested, looking up into the pine: the track terminated barely metres ahead with the carnage of pine completely blocking the way. I sighed and queried whether it really was the cairn to mark the trail. And it was responded that it really was. So we struggled forth. Each series of trees presented a near insoluble challenge: we were ascending uphill through a never-ending labyrinth of fallen trees without any markers to assure us that we were on "the right track". I was sapped. I'd already said on three earlier parts that I was a hair's breadth short of knackered, and as I hit the front to survey two possible ways through a wall of trees I sighed in resignation: This is impossible. I dropped my backpack down and took a deep breath before saying that I would quest forward without my pack. I broke a few pine branches and crawled into a little pocket and then scaled a narrow passage up to a little clearing, scrambled up to the next blockage, rolled over over it, fell waist-deep into snow and then crawled up to... another cairn marking the exit from the pine grove. Hell hadn't yet frozen over completely. We emerged from it with speed. There were suddenly constant stream of markers but were also treated to the inevitable setting of the sun. The darkness would come within an hour. I had a head-torch but it would mean nothing without markers should we still be in the snow. But then the snow relented and we were back to a rocky descending path. Markers lead us down and down: And through a gap in the trees at the bottom of the hill was a flash of white: Kiwi Saddle Hut awaited us. Simple elation!

We quickly set up in this basic hut, the centre of which was a tiny log burner. We may have been able to get by without heat, but it would have been nice to warm up with a fire. With my recent experience, I thought I'd give it a try, sacrificing my chinese magazine to attempt to get it burning. Page after page was reduced to cinders. It could have been the damp environment or I could have just been lucky the night before. We both gave it our best attempt: this fire was not lighting. I had just a page and a cover left when I decided to give it just one last try to assemble the perfect set up. I ignited the paper and it burnt well but slowly it started to fade again. I picked a leafy twig in a last move. We had been stripping the leaves off the mountain beech branches (on the assumption that they contained water and that would not be conducive to burning); this was proven to be a mistake when the leaves exploded into flames. I yelped and through more leafy twigs into the minature inferno, and then yelped for more wood. Suddenly the branches were igniting and then it was time to get the ax out to start getting some decent blocks of wood. And thus we had a warm, warm hut.

Really that the end of the trip, we slept, descended, drove back to the normalness of life. But there is a special mental space occupied when you are tramping in the mountains. It is so otherworldly that when you leave, suddenly a flavour is lost from one's palate.

Positives:

1. Our approach to staying on the track was accurate. Even though the track was concealed for long portions of the ridge by snow and pine material, often without any observable markers, we determined the route without fail.


2. The clothing we had was tested by a strong alpine wind and passed.


3. I started a fire despite limited means and slightly damp wood.


4. My fitness, though pushed to the limit, came through.

That all being said, I think our approach was rather lackadaisical: we both lacked equipment that would have made it easier and safer; we were planning a difficult walk off a crude map; and then there is the lingering question of whether we could have made an adequate bivouac in the snow?

This was something of a wake-up call. Though it will (likely) be my last rigorous tramp for quite some time, it might trigger me to make a few purchases to prepare for getting back into tramping when I get back. I'll also want to take a mountain safety course at some stage (they are run and they should be a necessity if we are doing that sort of thing). So what I intend to bring from now on to back-country huts:

Bring:

1. Fire-lighting material/coal in a moisture-tight container. Take something that can act as kindling as well as a fire source. A lighter or matches is, of course, a necessity.


2. Candles, both to use and to leave in the candle holders.


3. Gaiters. These aren't just creature comforts: Hikurangi should have taught me that without protection some areas are close to impassable. On this trip, a lot of snow came into my shoes, melting to water but remaining at a low temperature due to the outside temperature. This is not comfortable.


4. Off the main walks, all overnight tramps should be navigated with a topographical map. A compass is a nice accompaniment to this.

So, in summary, this has been a lesson in safe walking, a reminder that might save my life one day.

A Pincer Movement

The map has been drawn: The mist has mostly cleared from the next few months, just a few valleys and gullies yet to reveal their true contents. Around this scene, two fronts, a cold and a hot, have squeezed me terribly from both sides; with them, I'd fallen back, until recently, into an awful anxiety: My sleep, poor; tummy, contorted; shoulders, shrugged; my concentration, wayward; and this for almost three weeks. I'm glad to have reached the end of this track.

And busying myself as I had, somehow no great crises arose; well, until Thursday morning when I left on the bus leaving my car in the drive blocking my mother's morning commute. But that day was the day when finally I started to ease...

Reignition

Sometimes motivation is just like a switch: without it you might think you can achieve something, but several months later it becomes a mere memory; with it, action flows like breathing. And such is my ceaseless study of the Chinese language. In China, over a year and a half ago, and in the weeks after, again I found my stride and lifted my general level. And then the power dissipated in the competing demands of life.

Now, again, on the scent of an imminent trip, I've swung my mind into a complete state of lingual urgency: absorb everything, spare nothing: not even a single character. My listening has almost reawakened; I still occasionally am overcome by streams of language, but generally it all goes in. My vocabulary will be the hardest to reactivate but some promising signs have emerged already; I've been hearing four-character phrases that I haven't seen for ages and recognising them. Feeling I was being misunderstood by one of the many agents in China, I launched a comprehensive Chinese e-mail to clarify what is a major city and what is not, and why a position in a major city is of high importance to me. And reading, apart from a few rogue sentences, has been fine.

All in all, nothing will stop me till my direction changes, and that could be quite some time!

Where my heart is

Today I left my city-centre life and fell back to the suburbs. I'm the kind to get easily attached to a home. And my apartment was a fond place for me to live. It was the place that became mine so easily when I really needed a home; it was the place I emotionally convalesced from the worst trauma of my life; it was my base for the busiest part of my working life; and the launch-pad for my most prolific travelling. A home is so important to me that it was only when I found that I was leaving my apartment that I realised I'd also be preparing to leave New Zealand.

Last year winter had passed in the background despite the heavy rain. This year's winter has fizzled since June. It is so comforting that we have such mild winters. The prospect of a Chinese winter does leave me rather cold. I spent two holidays in the Chinese winter and felt dreadful each time. My only Taiwanese winter was blighted by some homesickness making the mild grey a darker shade of blue. In actual fact they'd only have the equivalent of a very mild New Zealand winter.

Perhaps, it is part of maturing that thoughts of seasons and of homes is what I'm thinking about most.