If They Can Do It, Then So Can I

Day two, and I've begun to work out that you can either be intimidated by this place into a state of petrifaction, just staying in your room and hoping everything goes away, or determine yourself to work it out.

Things are a mystery here, smells, sounds, voices, streets, shop signs, traffic, phones, people. My complete lack of awareness of this different culture and language make people seem unapproachable, even going into a shop a scary experience.

We went out with Casper (real name Wong Kai - each Chinese member of staff at the college has taken an English name) for a walk in the morning and saw Harbin in daylight for the first time. My first impression? Grim. The buildings and streets are shockingly dirty and run-down, breeze-block houses tarred with an industrial-strength mixture of soot and grime, the streets a morass of broken concrete and pot-holes, the roads seemingly ungoverned by any discernible driving laws - cars, bicycles, scooters, motorbikes, marooned maroon taxis, busses and trucks at all angles, peasants leading ancient donkeys, or pulling two-wheeled carts stacked with cardboard, or home-made deep-fat fryers or dumpling steamers on wheels, dragging their wares across the street as huge black Lexus and BMW cars with smoked tinted windows screech and swerve, pumping their horns continuously, all in a pandemonium of 'Me first'.

And the smells! At first they overpower you like chloroform: rotting veg, fried food, creosote, seriously unleaded exhaust fumes, soot, sewers and the chickens and fish of the ubiquitous street markets lining the broken pavements; candyfloss, fresh fruit, spices and herbs; vinegar, leather, donkey shit and sweat; human bodies, animal bodies, and the omnipotent stench of the soy sauce factory which lies a few streets away. Amongst all this, street vendors hue and cry; rag and bone men beat empty plastic cartons, tied to their cart, with a wooden stick to attract business; scores of unemployed dark-skinned raggedy men with scribbled signs sit on the steps of corner buildings and play cards and shout and spit; mechanics wrench at cars up on bricks; welders with no facemasks spark and fizzle with blowtorches in the middle of the road; filthy wiry men dig up the pavements; chickens and ducks cluck and quack from within wicker-basket cages; fish flip and plop out of low troughs onto the dirty pavement.

And the staring! Nearly every person within a fifty foot radius of our little foreign epicentre stops and stares at us, indifferently, unconsciously, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. Then they nudge each other, share a smart comment or two (or am I just being paranoid?), laugh, and walk off, still staring, their necks craning round as the distance lengthens. The kids are worse, although they are so Oliver Twist-cute you can't blame them. A gang of scruffy street urchins - shouldn't they have been in school?- are fascinated by Danuka's sockless, sandaled feet, her white toes sticking out like ten little albino aliens. We were all baffled, however, at her choice of footwear; it's really pretty cold here, way below ten degrees, and the streets are filthy. The kids follow us around most of the morning, giggling and hooting, coming up to less than three feet away from us before running back to a safe distance, totally intent on getting as close as possible to these strange creatures from another habitat, like a boy pokes at an injured dog with a stick then runs away when it growls.

Casper showed us where all the 'best' supermarkets are (low-ceilinged dingy halls with plastic flaps for doors, full of unidentifiable packets, jars and dried foodstuffs), then took us to a tiny photography shop to get passport photos taken so we can apply for our full visas. The shop was decorated with tacky portraits of Chinese couples in wedding dress, interspersed with 'glamour' shots of foreign women with big noses and double chins.

'Beautiful girls, huh!' says Casper, probably making the same joke he always does when he brings new male foreign teachers to this place.

'Umm, uh-huh,' reply Tam and I in unison, and share a befuddled look surely replicated by every male foreign teacher subjected to Casper's joke in this place.

The afternoon was spent meeting, greeting and pressing flesh. Almost all of the names and faces revolved for a millisecond around my jet-lagged brain then vamoosed. We had a meeting with the school management, Chinese guys with cheap dark suits and stern faces, then with Karen, our DoS (Director of Studies), and were briefed on our upcoming classes which, alarmingly, start in two days' time. Two days! To acclimatise to this!

As tiredness sucked the sinovial fluids from my joints, my first day in Harbin was to take an even more truculent turn: I still hadn't phoned my girlfriend. Karen sorted me out with the college card, I typed the card number into the 5th floor common room phone then dialled her number. It didn't work. I tracked down Karen again, and she told me it was because I hadn't charged my card. She took me to the 8th floor, where I put 50 Yuan onto it at the finance office. Ran to the nearest phone, hoping she'd be in. Thought it might be about breakfast time in the UK, although wasn't sure. Her new flatmate answered and we chatted for four or five minutes and then my money ran out.

One of the teachers came in and caught me swearing at the phone. He explained to me that I should have bought an IP Card, showed me where to go, told me just to say: 'IP', and the shop assistant would know what I meant. Did so. Success! Bought a 30-Yuan IP Card and rushed back to the college and the common room. Typed my school card number, then the IP Card number, then the international dialling code then my girlfriend's number. Nothing. Silence. Then I remembered. The college card had run out earlier. I rushed back up to the 8th floor to recharge the card. Finance was closed for the day. It was 5.05 pm.

As the teachers ebbed one-by-one into the common room after a hard day's educating, I complained bitterly about this phone debacle until one of them took pity on me and lent me their card. I dialled the algebra equation once again and… nothing. And again… nothing. Then someone came into the room and said:

'Hey, did you guys know the phone lines were down?'

Groans.

'Not again,' the weary replies.

So, after all that, I still haven't heard her voice since Heathrow. I just wanted to say 'hello', because all I can remember of the last time I saw her was her saying 'goodbye'.

For dinner Anita took us to the local corner-shop restaurant and ordered (and paid for) a carry out. My first real Chinese takeaway! Which, funnily enough, tasted nothing like Chinese food in the UK. Sat eating a huge range of fried vegetables, spicy chicken and peanut, deep-fried pork with lemongrass and sizzling beef and onion, gulping chilled green bottles of Hapi, and watched Alan and Karen play a game of Chinese chess. Have stopped panicking and am now determined to work this out. Watching Anita order the food so confidently, seeing Karen and Alan move the round wooden chess pieces with the strange unreadable Chinese characters, I thought: If they can do it, then so can I. Mind you, I haven't met my students yet…