I think language exchange is important because...

I have literally no idea what Sichuan people are saying when they speak to me. "But you speak Mandarin!" I hear you hark. Well, let me break it down for you: I speak putonghua (普通话, the way you're supposed to speak) whereas Sichuanese people speak gibberish (ok, sichuanhua 四川话, but it might as well be gibberish). Not only do they have a ridiculously frustrating accent (I now know why northerners hate southerners all over the world), not only do they put different tones on words when speaking putonghua, not only is it a completely different language where characters are pronounced....wrong, but they actually believe that the two are similar. No Sichuan. No.

Let me provide you with an enlightening example.

The sentence "你是哪国人?" means "What country are you from?" in English.
In Putonghua it's pronounced            ni shi na guo ren (with various tones)
In Sichuanese it's pronounced             ni si la gui zhen (with various, different, tones)

Yah. Not the same.

Sichuanese pinyin even has it's own Wikipedia page. It disgusts me.

But, I'm learning. I feel I have to as, although literally every Chinese person I met understands what I'm saying, in typical Chinese fashion, I, too, must understand them. On their own terms. Or f off.

CHATTING WITH THE NOODLE-SNACK LADY

On the other side of the coin, there are a lot of students who are willing and able to practice their English as often as possible with us foreign teachers. Most of them use the medium of the 'English Corner' which happens once a week, and is actually quite fun and interesting. This week we had a mini-party for 中秋节 (zhongqiujie, Mid-Autumn Festival), which was almost cancelled due to 4 hour non-stop torrential rain, but was happily relocated to an indoor location. As the teachers we provided the snacks, the chat, the convo and unfortunately a little bit of entertainment. Luke got to read a poem in English. I had to read mine in Chinese. 'Nuff said. Although, apparently my reading was 'good' and several of the students have contacted me on QQ to say they'd be willing to be language partners. Hopefully I can nick some photos and videos from one of the students soon and put them up.

Some of the other, more fluent students actually come around to our residential area for chats, especially some of the kids who are close to Andre. We've gotten to know them a little and they're mostly very sweet - one of them took Luke to get his tooth done and another bestowed the internet upon me - and often welcome. There are also the girls who live down the way, who by Chinese standards would be classed as 'bad girls' - they stay up late, go out (and drink I may add) and some of them even smoke. They're pretty cool, they even taught us how to play Chinese poker. I believe Ma jong lessons are next on the list.

QQ is amazing btw, if you don't know about it. It's basically the Chinese version of MSN, except it's actually in fashion and if you don't have one you are officially a social pariah. I had about 50 people add me in one day, and some of my junior 1 students seem especially keen to try out my Chinese typing skills. Well, in as limited form as possible. I'm not that cool just yet. 

In my spare time I like to...

I don't know if I've mentioned this before but a good friend of mine, Charlie Q (cba to type his last name) is living in Chengdu city whilst studying at Sichuan University. This gives me great and plentiful opportunities to go into town as often as possible...meaning when he doesn't have class and my teaching schedule allows. So weekends.

And go into town we did, last weekend to be precise. We stayed overnight at a great hostel called The Loft, which is super westernised and awesome and serves omelettes but more importantly also serves Long Island ice teas and is actually a little bit nicer than my actual accommodation in Xindu. 1-0 to Chengdu. We also went out clubbing. Aaah clubbing, I sometimes miss it, but on the whole, not really. Well, I miss the dancing, but not the staying up late. I'm too old for that ish and clubs tend to be full of youths. In China, they're also full of crazy, somewhat desperate, and very drunk Chinese girls, as well as some members of the Public Security Bureau. I assume it's easier to bribe intoxicated officials than sober ones.

Yeah... Luke got all the ladies

The 'entertainment' (I use that word very, very lightly) is also - rather unfortunately - provided for you, which means that at almost every hour, on the hour, the stage is cleared, raised, and taken over by the only-black-guy-in-town-and-therefore-honorary-T-pain singer and several rather scantily clad eastern European girls who are clearly here on some sort of 'cultural' exchange and were obviously lured into the disturbingly synchronized dance-world of Chengdu with the promise of horribly weak made-up cocktails. But it was still fun to watch.

Yes, that is a booty, in you face

Oh, and did I mention there were topless dancers?
There were topless dancers.

We also saw exactly 2 cultural monuments, Tianfu Square that houses the statue of Mao, and some guy called Wang's Memorial (3 if you include the outside of the city stadium). There are many things to see in Chengdu, so as my passport has been confiscated and will not be returned till after the upcoming holiday, I guess I'll be seeing them all....really soon.


But anyway, Xindu is way better than Chengdu. It's sort of the quiet, residential district on the outskirts of town, but it still has its features. Well, 3 main features, those being the Buddhist monastery, the park that you have to pay to get into aaaaaaand my apartment. 4 if you include the jiaozi restaurant. Anyway, all those things are super beautiful - including my apartment - and even Charlie and Martin who came to visit from the big city agreed. Here are some pictures as proof.

Outside Xindu's Baoguang Temple
No photography allowed inside

Photos from inside the park
This was taken just before the Lion King stampede moment

Although, at one point there was a weird Jurassic Park/Hunger Games moment when we were going into the park and a herd of old Chinese ladies broke down the barrier, knocked over the receptionists and almost stampeded us to death. We had to climb up some really steep side-stairs to escape. Charlie almost didn't make it. It was terrifying.

Chengdu 1 - Xindu 2

The prodigal child returns

Two and a half weeks into my long-term dose of China and, in a shocking turn of events, things have been going pretty smoothly until today. And of course, when I say smoothly, as always, I mean smoothly for China. Basically, we had a bit of a mix up today at the medical centre but.... hey ho, we'll try again another day. For 7 hours. In my usual manner, I'm gonna go ahead and skip the usual blog padding of 'how it feels to be back in China' (I made the choice to come here, I've lived here before, about the same really) and 'what are the people on your course like' (I have made some friends I would like to visit but, as most people are new to China and speak no Chinese with a few exceptions, added to the fact that I'm an anti-social cow, I wasn't really part of the 'gang') and get to the good stuff.

The first two weeks were quite intense and managed to seem both long and short at the same time. The first week was the TEFL course, which consisted of 5 days of never-ending 9-5 lessons with a few American guys informing us of various teaching practices, test answers and China-living tips of varying degrees of usefulness (there was a lot of chat about something called a Class Monitor, which I'm sure I'll get on to at some point), and ended with a test that consisted of just about nothing we had covered. Don't worry, we all passed. The second week consisted of a teaching practice at a local secondary school in Beijing which - despite the initial minor hiccup of wow-these-guys-are-not-as-good-at-English-as-I-was-expecting - was a lot of fun and actually went quite well. Who knows, maybe it went some way to influencing my future career path...

Teacher Edi

Teacher Luke (who also works with me now in Chengdu)

Teacher Faye 

Teacher Fran

Me, Faye and the practice class! 

Unfortunately, there are no touristy photos of Beijing this time around. We were out in the sticks (a place called Shunyi with exactly 1 very awful nightclub) and besides, you've seen them all before now anyway. And when I say sticks I mean it - the hotel barely had enough Wifi to go around, hence the lack of posts.

But you want to know about my new place, right? Well, the school I know very little about so far except that it's called Xindu No.1 Middle School (because Charlotte and Leela will want to look it up) and that it's the second best school in Sichuan, which is pretty good by anyone's standards really. Oh, and they have class from 7:45 am till (wait for it) 9:15pm. No words. No words. I have been informed I won't have to teach past 5pm. Wonderful. Apparently I'll be taking on the Junior 1s (year 7/8 equivalent) which should be nice as that's the age group I had practiced on during my week of teaching and I really enjoyed that level. Some of them may never have had a foreign teacher before and may not have an English name yet (or may just have a gender inappropriate/just plain awful one that I can change for them). In any case, it means that I can break them in how I want, which is just perfect.

As for my living quarters, it's quite cosy now that I've scrubbed it to within an inch of it's life, unpacked, thrown out a load of old stuff, rearranged all the furniture, bought new sheets and lit some incense. Things to know: yes, I have a western toilet; I do have a curfew, but if lessons start at 7:45 I doubt I'll be breaking it too often; yes, I have all manner of internet and have even procured a Chinese simcard despite not being able to decipher a word of Sichuanese. Honestly, it's like a completely different language. Most of the people do speak 普通话 (ho ho, the Chinese lessons are back, putonghua standardised Mandarin), but one market lady got very angry and shouty with me when I couldn't work out what she meant by sisisisisisisisisisisisisisi. Yeah, may need to get a language partner.

Bedroom/living area

Very bad picture of my Kitchen.
I'm not retaking it - you know what a kitchen is.

Bathroom

I have friends! Yes, I am officially friends with the entire foreign population of Xindu district. In other words, 5 English teachers, including myself. For the first time, I'm not exaggerating/being sarcastic/throwing inappropriate irony about. We're literally it.

Left to right: Hubert (UK), Andre (SA), Chris (UK), Luke (UK)
And can I just say they made more of a fuss over this photo than any 13-year-old girls I know.

Oh, and Chengdu/Xindu itself. Xindu is a town in Chengdu btw if you're getting confused - it's the equivalent of saying 'I live in London' 'Where?' 'Croydon'. Well, if Croydon were Northwest of London. Anyway, it takes a bloody long time to get to the centre of town. Xindu itself is a nice little laid-back place, with a few good-looking, appropriately southern-China-feel locations around town. I don't have too many pictures yet (as I keep forgetting to bring my camera out and have consequently had to nick several photos from other people), but I promise a whole bloody montage soon enough.

At the "Tea house of Never Ending Tea"

Street food times

Oh, and I've talked about food before as well right? Sichuan food is meant to be the best in China, and so far it's been pretty good. Very spicy, so definitely my style. I may not have mentioned my rules however, which I kept having to remind the first-timers of every time they offered me something/asked me what something weird was. The main 2 are: 1) I don't eat things that I can't see e.g. buns with filling (unless someone else has eaten said thing and not died) and 2) I don't eat meats that I can't identify by sight or smell. Other weird stuff I can experiment with, but it can get...irksome to say the least when you remember that in China, not everything is how it seems....

WHEN 'GREEN' IS WATERMELON INSTEAD OF LIME* 

*Love the fruit, but seriously, in a sweet? Come on Asia.....

"North Korea"

Actually, we went to Dandong, not real North Korea, and we actually went about two weeks ago, so this is a seriously late post [sorry Martha]. Moving swiftly onwards...

Dandong is the small city that people go to so they can catch a glimpse of the Border between The PRC and DPRK. While not the most exciting place in the world, it provides a nice break [you know how I love those city breaks] from normal life and a chance to see something new. If you count staring a strip of land that you wouldn't know was a different country if someone hadn't posted half an army there as something 'new'. It's a nice little place though, and at only 4 hours away from Dalian, hardly an arduous trip by China standards.

The place towards which Martha is indicating is, indeed, North Korea

The river that separates China from Korea,
the city on the right hand side is Dandong

Martha also, god knows how, persuaded me to climb the Great Wall, once again. Dandong boasts the most eastern part of the Wall, or as the sign said, 'The most furthest eastern part of Wall end', or something to that effect. Renovated just so you can climb up one side and down the other, it's only real allure is getting a better look at North Korea and getting some exercise. It was a lot easier walk than the Great Wall at Beijing I might add, despite being almost entirely uphill.

The Great Wall...again

There aren't a lot of foreigners in Dandong, so
we were quite the novelty

We ate some dishes that were apparently of Korean origin. One was a type of 冷面 [lengmian, cold noodles] that looked like a bowl of pond water, but was actually quite tasty. Another was this suspiciously cheap sweetcorn broth thingy which also came with an assortment of Korean sides, like Kimchi and tofu skins. Good times. Martha also had a really suspicious snack thing that cost the equivalent of 10p, and lords knows you can't buy anything edible for 10p anymore. Needless to say, I didn't buy one.

And that's about it from my travels in the Northwest. The only other thing to add is we stayed in a dodgy motel down a dodgy side street for the night that cost about 3 pound fifty and probably used to be a brothel. But the landlady was really nice [probably used to be the 'madame' of the brothel] and gave us a discount because we were foreigners. All in all, a good trip.
Xxx

The Beginning of the End

Right. We've started wearing shorts to school, we've gone back to spending Friday's drinking at hopscotch and trying to kill each other on the bumper cars, we've had a barbecue at the beach, there are giant ants everywhere, we eat meat on sticks outside again, chubby middle-aged Chinese guys are rolling up their tops and letting their guys hang loose. I'm calling it, it's Summer. Summer in Dalian turns the city into a completely different place. After a bleak and frankly desolate [and frickin' windy] Winter, it's nice to have rays of hope shining through the classroom windows. Instead of hustling home or to a cafe after lessons, we eat lunch outside and frolic [yes, frolic] on patches of grass. It's no Greenwich park, but it'll do.

Pictures of  劳动公园 [Laodong gongyuan, Labour Park]

The whole feel of Dalian is different too. Despite being in the grips of boredom, you find that you're more likely to be arsed to do things when the weather's nice. We go to the [the] park and drink beer during the day like the foreign hooligans we came abroad to represent in the first place, and some of us have even started exercising. To be fair, some people were training for the sports fair [see Sports Day for more crazy China details], whereas I'm just starkly aware of the fact that I've put on a few, and have decided to jump on the sports-zeal bandwagon.

Our campus turns into a lovely little wilderness in the Summer

In other news, you know your year abroad is truly coming to an end when people you've spent your whole 9 months with start leaving. I'd like to semi-dedicate this post to my good friend Warren, by far one of my favourite people in Dalian, and one of the few Americans who doesn't irritate me just because of his nationality. His sharp wit and sarcasm will be missed, as will his blunt remarks and 'love' of teaching. God, I'm really selling him aren't I? It's alright, he's quite good-looking though which makes up for it. Anyway, I'm gonna miss him, we're all gonna miss him. But I'm mainly jealous that he gets to leave and I have to stay here. He may be leaving during the period of best weather, but at least he's leaving on a high.

Me and Warren

Warren being manly [in a Chinese way]

运动会！！

Ah the scent of Patriotism in the morning. I do love China. You know how I always say bitches be crazy? Well, you know who else be crazy? China. Just so you're aware, 运动会 [yundonghui] means Sports Day [bold intended]. You remember Sports Day, right? That day, or couple of days, where all the athletic kids were forced to do the competitive races like 100m and relay, the people whose defences could be worn down were forced to do the horrible things like shot-put and 1500m, and the moaners and chubbsters had to sit on the sidelines for the whole day and pretend to give 2 thirds of a shit? Well, that is exactly what sports day in China is not like. Lemme walk you through it, that way, you can make an impartial, unbiased evaluation of China's level of insanity.

The actual event took place on the Friday of last week, so of course the Chinese students had been practising for about a month or so, training up and preparing for the Opening Ceremony [yes, Opening Ceremony, don't do a double take, it happened]. Here's some prep evidence:

Just some casual frog-marching practise. Oh yeah. That actually happened. Then there was the actual ceremony. Well, first, we all have to show up at 7a.m to receive our free departmental T-shirts. We weren't as organised as some departments, which had come up with chants [accompanied by those big Chinese Drums you saw at the acutal Olympic opening ceremony], costumes, marches, mascots and some had even learnt these flip-card routine things so the audience spelt out characters Like 'Go DUT!' [Dalian University of Tech.] and '加油!' [Good luck/go for it!]. I don't think I'll ever be able to do the atmosphere justice - just imagine a Man city vs. Man U game, but with less hooliganism and more organised, communism style 'fun'. Seriously, most of the audience was made up of freshman, who weren't allowed to leave otherwise they failed 1/4 of their credits for that year. Brutal. Most of the foreign students had f'ed off by 9:30.

Reppin' the Foreign Students'  Orange T-shirts

our motley lot 

Just an example of how other departments were better than ours

Yes, their signs make a picture. As you've
probably guessed, this is the history of art's section

The actual sporting events weren't quite so organised. In typical Chinese style, the bulk of the effort was put into making the whole thing look good, whereas the quality was just left to be 差不多[chabuduo, more or less, but in a bad way]. It was still a good day out - even though it was 28 degrees, with no clouds and no breeze from about 8:30. The true sports fans stuck it out though.

Some foreign students in the relay, action shot!

Some of our teachers...

...more teachers [and the one on the right's son]

Men's 400m relay...we did not place. But I don't think we came last...

Martha in the women's 3k...or was it 5k? Whatever 7 1/2 times
round the track is

Marth came 3rd in her race! There she is rockin' some Bronze

As you've probably guessed, I did not participate. Hey, if I had, who would have written the awesome blog post about it? Get some perspective people.

Xx