The Countryside

Recently the weather has improved and we’ve been out on a couple of excursions in the Pingxiang countryside.  When Pingxiang isn’t trying to be a city it’s pretty nice.

One Sunday morning Bob called us up and informed us we were going to visit a temple.  So, along with Eric, the Dean, and various colleagues/family members we drove off into the mountains.  Here’s Bob with the mighty ancient temple behind him.

We were accompanied by Cowboy, our old friend from the fishing trip back in October, who latched onto Terry the moment he saw him and didn’t let him out of his sight.

At the back of the temple, up the hill, was allegedly something really good, so we started climbing up a very slippery slope.  Chrissy decided it was a little too dangerous to go up so started going back down.   

Mistake.

Half way up the slope we realised there were steps running alongside it.

At the top of slope was absolutely nothing.

We had a bamboo climbing competition to make up for this.  Here I am advertising the great outdoors.

The ancient temple, pride of Pingxiang, was also home to the supposedly rare and important ‘square bamboo’.  Here it is.  Eric was very excited about it.  Us not so much.

All in all, a nice day out though.

A few days later one of Chrissy’s classes invited us to go and pick strawberries near the affectionately named ‘Happy Village’.  The Happy Village boasted vineyards…

...'yellow flower' fields (difficult to explain the actual name to the students)…

...and greenhouses for strawberries, watermelons, and some sort of white subterranean vegetable.

It turned out that the students didn’t actually want to pick strawberries, so we picked every available strawberry ourselves.  We were relatively proud of this feat, though possibly more proud of the fact that we’d all managed to wear the same shirt.

We then went for a little wander through the countryside.  There were ducks.  It was very pastoral.  Terry and the students played a game in the river in which they threw bricks at each other and tried not to get tetanus.

Meanwhile, some of the students went fishing.

Apart from the fact that they moaned non-stop that it was too hot, I think they all had a good time.

And on a final note, the college has decided to become more ecologically friendly as it continues to take sizeable measures for self-improvement.  Observe the recently implemented ‘Plant more trees’ initiative.

Forward thinking, as ever.

Wuhan

The 5^th April was the Tomb Sweeping Festival.  We didn’t have any tombs to sweep so we took a little trip up to Wuhan to visit Cyrielle and Mathilde, who work for Alliance Française in the city.  Wuhan is the capital of Hubei province, just north of Jiangxi.  It’s an amalgamation of 3 city centres and is a major transportation hub as it’s very central and sits on the Yangtze river.  So it’s really big.

I got a train in on Friday night, struggled for about 15 minutes trying to get out of the train station, then we took a taxi to the airport to pick up Bram.  This trip took a very long time, probably because the taxi driver got a little lost in the countryside trying to avoid paying for a toll road.  But we made it, the weather was warm and we headed out to a bar for a great night that ended in 5am massages at a 24hr massage place.

The next day it was raining and freezing.  China really seems to enjoy its daily fluctuations between summer and winter.  A couple of Mathilde’s students were performing in a French singing competition so we went along in the afternoon.  It was a pretty standard Chinese competition – lots of noise and shiny clothes.  But the students all seemed to speak better French than any of my students’ English.  It was really interesting, but a little upsetting.  I got to see one of the classrooms at their school which was even more upsetting – there was heating, real chairs and desks, and no piles of rubbish/spit/vomit on the floor.  Who knew teaching in China could be so luxurious?

The rest of the Pingxiang laowai crew came up on the Saturday.  On Sunday we went in search of cherry blossom, which Wuhan is famous for around this time of year.  People flock from miles around to see the trees.  The campus of Wuhan University is a good spot for it so we walked around in the rain and took generic photos.   

The Uni was really nice – it had not one but two running tracks.  Like some sort of magical dream.

On Sunday it was sunny and warm.  Of course.  We went to a park on the banks of the Yangtze.

 

Everyone was flying kites so we thought we should.   Behold The Spongebob.

The Spongebob did not fly well.  Or, if it did, we didn’t know how to fly it.

We spent maybe 20 minutes trying to get it in the air and the best part of an hour unwravelling the massive tangled knot that the string had become.

Terry and I went down to the river to have a look but it was not terribly inviting.  Here I am by the crystal clear blue water.

Here’s Terry by the luscious green river banks.

There were probably some other interesting sights in Wuhan but we got too distracted by the overwhelming presence of Western food to notice.  It was great to see the girls though, and to get out of Pingxiang and meet some new people.  Unfortunately the only direct train back from Wuhan is at 1am so we had a typically sleepless night on a Chinese sleeper and nearly all of us were ill for the next week.

Worth it though.

A lot of Pingxiang and a little Xiamen

I couldn’t really let March slip by blog-less so I thought I’d better find something to say before April arrives…

It’s not been a very exciting month, simply because we’re all just settled into our teaching routine now and there is nothing else to really focus on here.  After half a year my students can actually understand what I’m saying to them and this happy miracle, coupled with my new timetable which gives me both Monday and Thursday off and 4 fewer hours of teaching a week, means we all have a lot more fun in class now. 

Recent teaching episodes have included ‘Money’ (passing around British cash and letting the students enthusiastically photograph themselves holding it, and singing a classic from Abba), ‘Body’ (giving the students an extensive quiz about health and fitness and inappropriately rewarding them with sweets) and ‘Hotel’ (conducting a hilarious exercise where students ran around trying to either book hotel rooms or register guests in their hotels, and showing an episode of Fawlty Towers).  The weather was so beautiful today that it felt wrong to waste it in the classroom, so I took my class out onto the athletics track, got them into groups and they read through a wedding role play I'd written.   

This activity ended when one of the ‘brides’ and one of the ‘crazy ex-girlfriends’ started wrestling on the ground.

I did have a short break from Pingxiang at the start of the month, when I was invited down to Xiamen for a reunion of the Guangzhou crew and Torsten’s birthday.  I can’t honestly say that I saw a lot of the city itself, as we chose to favour celebration over tourism, but we had fun and I wasn’t robbed, so it rated well.

Xiamen is a coastal city in Fujian province, in the south-east of China.  Torsten and Bram live in an apartment with some nice views out to sea but it was really hazy the weekend we visited, so I didn’t actually see them.  The imagination is a powerful tool though.

On the Saturday we took the ferry across to Gulangyu Island, a very scenic but rather touristy island just off the coast of Xiamen.  It was full of beautiful architecture, little winding paths and greenery.

We wandered around, went to the beach and bought small and unnecessary memorabilia.

On Saturday night we went to a cafe/bar on Xiamen University campus, where a few of Torsten’s friends put on some live entertainment before we headed out to a club.

Here's Torsten and his ladies…

On Sunday we went to China's biggest Starbucks before heading our separate ways.

I caught a 20-hr sleeper train back to Pingxiang.  I did not sleep.  The Chinese guy below me was an erratic snorer and the Chinese guy opposite me had night terrors.  Just some of the highlights of cheap travel in China.

And that's about everything of photographable interest for March.  Apart from the dramatic events occurring outside my apartment, where they have decided to build...something.  A new shop, rumour has it.  Will the shop ever be fully functional?  Only time will tell…

Sanya, Take 2.

I had planned to take Sar to Sanya before Lydia invited me down the first time and despite my previous theft experience I was looking forward to going back.  After rain on the mainland we were hopeful for sun.

Sadly, this time there would be little sun.  Fortunately it was still warm, our hostel owner, Chris, was great, and we met these guys.

James and Brian were the first Americans I’ve met travelling who I’ve really got on with.  They totally broke my stereotype.  We spent the first few Sanya days hardly moving from the rooftop terrace of our hostel (Sanya Backpackers), playing cards and just generally having a laugh.

In the evenings we would go to Dolphin, our favourite place ever.  Dolphin was a sports bar that served amazing Western food, had a pool table and basically provided us with something to do/eat at all times of day.  Here we are just after brunch.

We met a few more Americans in Dolphin and after drinks we would head down to the beach bar, where a very talented Filipino band played every night.  When the band finished we would hang out on the beach, setting off fireworks that Chinese men bought us, and running around with sparklers.

It was the perfect way to spend nights on a tropical island.  Unfortunately, I had forgotten that Sanya has a dark side; namely, that of petty theft.  So it was a nasty surprise when I was robbed again, this time of my whole bag.  Goodbye purse no.2, phone, keys, hoody and, tragedy of tragedies, camera.  It was actually Lydia’s camera, which she had lent me after I broke my camera in Sanya the first time around, and it had all my photos on from a whole month of travelling.  Not good.

Oh Sanya.  Truly ours is the epitome of a love-hate relationship.

I have been able to (painstakingly) recreate my photographic memories from 10 different people’s cameras; enough for the last 5 blog entries at least!  But, needless to say, it was very upsetting at the time.  However, after initial distress and a thwarted attempt to drown myself in the sea, I came to terms with my loss, and got on with enjoying the holiday.  Again.

One day we went to the beach, even though it was about to rain, to show the guys the nudist colony.  We didn’t get too close.  In the far background of this picture are a lot of very dark, very naked Chinese men.

When the boys left we were extremely upset.  Fortunately, the next day the sun came out.  We spent most of it on the beach.

Drinking coconut water…

Sitting around with our other American friends...

Singing the Dambusters theme tune...

And pretending to be mermaids/dead bodies washed up on the rocks.

We also went scuba diving.

We had a very busy time in Sanya.

One evening we went out for sushi with a couple of girls from Brazil and Colombia.  The sushi was good, but the chairs at the entrance to the restaurant were better.

The day James and Brian left, our old friends Rik and Susan turned up!  Here we all are with Chris at the hostel.

On our last night, Chris took a group of us out for a seafood dinner.  In Sanya the streets are basically lined with seafood restaurants, where all the fish and other creatures swim around in tanks stacked up outside.  You choose which fish you want.  Then they throw the fish on the floor in a bag and smack the bag on the floor until the fish is dead.

It was a little traumatic.  But the food was delicious.

We then went back to the beach bar for the last time.

The next day Sar had to leave in the morning to catch a flight to Hong Kong and then back home.  Chris has a couple of big maps on the wall and gets all his guests to put a pin in to show where they're from.  Here we are trying to guess where Stoke is...

I was very sad to see Sar go and spent the day moping around until Harman, a Canadian policeman staying at the hostel took me out for lunch.  And then gave me $100.

I tried to refuse it, but he said I'd had a lot of bad luck recently and I should see it in a 'Pay it Forward' light.  Someone had done him a favour in Malaysia, he was doing something nice for me now and I would be able to help someone out in the future.  In the end he didn't give me a choice and, as it turns out, I needed the cash.   I can't get another bank card until next week, so Harman's money allowed me to get back to Pingxiang, get a new phone and is currently allowing me to eat.  So that worked out well.

Harman's kindness broke the trend of unfortunate things happening in China and me wishing I wasn't here.  But I still didn't want to go back to work.  When Chris offered me a job at the hostel I was extremely tempted.  However, due to my integrity, and a clause in my contract that makes me liable to pay up to $9000 if I breach it, I returned to Pingxiang last weekend.

Apart from the gaping hole in my heart from Sar's absence, it's actually nice to be back now.  I enjoy not living out of a rucksack.  And I'm too much of a celebrity here for people to try to rob me.  Pingxiang has its perks after all.

Guilin to Yangshuo

After a quick stop in Guangzhou we flew to Guilin.  Guilin is a Chinese tourist hot spot, home to the Li River and famous for an eight hundred year old inscription that boasts ‘Guilin’s Scenery is the Best Under Heaven’.  We weren’t super impressed with Guilin itself though, because we could tell the scenery was very beautiful but there was this big city in the way.

Still, we had some fun.  Sar wanted to try hot pot, so we went to a hot pot restaurant for lunch.  Unfortunately, the menu was entirely in Chinese and nobody spoke any English.  Miraculously, with a bit of Chinese and some educated guesswork (ticking random boxes) I actually managed to get us a decent meal.  

Apart from the 2 cups of ice.  But I maintain that a cup of ice with hot pot is just good sense.

We visited Jingjiang Princes Palace, which Sar could not pronounce.  It was a mini walled city, with palace buildings, lanterns and trees.

Here are 2 trees hugging.

We also climbed 306 steps to the top of a steep hill known as Duxiu Feng to get some views over the city.  It was a random sharp pinnacle that just rose out of the ground seemingly from nowhere, because the land all around it was flat.  There were many legends about how and why the hill was important, but I can’t remember any of them.

We only stayed the one night in Guilin, memorable for a disastrous experience at Pizza Hut where they tried to convince us that a meat pizza always comes with fish sauce.  The less said about that the better.

In the morning we took a cruise to Yangshuo.

A cruise on the Li River from Guilin to Yangshuo is supposedly the highlight of any trip to southern China, if not to China as a whole.  The scenery was stunning.  There’s not really any other way to say it.

The Li River winds through Karst hills, which have the most weird and wonderful shapes.  I googled them to find out how such interesting shapes form, but geography was never my strong point and I got confused.  Let’s call it magic.  Our helpful guide, Cherry, informed us that the beauty of the Li River scenery was down to 10% information, 30% observation and 60% imagination.  We spent some of the cruise trying to imagine what each hill looked like, but they mostly all looked the same to us.  So I guess we missed out.

We managed to get the last day of ‘good’ weather before a cold front moved over the region, so were able to stand outside for a lot of the 4-hour cruise.  It was quite breezy though.

We spent the cruise with Rik and Susan, an American couple who had taken the same bus as us from the Guilin hostel to the boat, and were headed to the same hostel in Yangshuo.  They were very friendly.  Here we are with Susan.

I had heard only the best things about Yangshuo and we weren’t disappointed.  Unlike Guilin, the scenery wasn’t obstructed by skyscrapers; Yangshuo was basically just a couple of roads and a lot of tourist stalls.  Wherever you looked you could see the mountains and though the centre of town certainly catered to tourists it only took 5 minutes to get out into the countryside.

We stayed 3 nights in Yangshuo and really enjoyed our time there.  We had done 4 cities in 4 days so definitely appreciated stopping somewhere for a little while.  The weather wasn’t great, but the rain and mist actually added to the charm of the hills.  One day we went for a wander through the countryside.

Apart from that, we didn’t really do anything.  Our hostel had amazing breakfasts, freshly baked banana bread and DVD players in the rooms.  We ventured out when necessary, for food, massages and shopping.  I couldn't stop buying earrings and Sar got a Chinese flute from this guy.

At night, the hills around the town were lit up and everything reflected in the water; it was, perhaps, too pretty to capture on camera.

I went for a run along the river and also took a bike out one day.  Yangshuo is really small, so it wasn’t a difficult task to get out of town and find the road I wanted to travel south.  Just one left turn and then one right turn.  Very, very simple.

Somehow I ended up 10km north of the town.

I would actually say that Yangshuo is my favourite place in China so far.  If I have the chance in summer I’ll definitely be going back.  It was lovely in the winter rain; I can only imagine how nice it would be in the summer sun.

All too soon it was time to leave Yangshuo and we were both really sad to go.  We caught a bus down to Guilin (on which we had the privilege of watching both a Chinese movie about lethal playing cards and Moonraker) and then got a sleeper train back to Guangzhou.  Just can’t get enough of Guangzhou.

My reason for using Guangzhou as a transit base was that it has really cheap domestic flights.  I’m not sure why, but it does.  Unfortunately, we were flying out in the evening and our train arrived at 6.30am.  Also, it was raining.  There weren’t a lot of options, so we chose to go and hang out in the riverside hostel for the day.  I think I’d been there enough for the staff not to suspect we weren’t guests, or care that we spent the whole day dozing on the sofas.  Not the most exciting of days, but it was much needed rest and by the evening we were very, very ready to get to Sanya…