Welcome to Harbin

Friday night started with a talk from Charles and a jovial intelligent old man called Michael Chen, another vice principal of the college, in a room on the first floor with a formal mahogany meeting table and heavy wooden chairs. This guy is a bit of a character. He speaks fluent English with an Eton accent and the gravel-like gravitas of Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption. He was educated by a well-spoken Englishman in a missionary school in Sichuan province more than fifty years ago, before moving to Harbin to learn Russian and meeting his wife here. After graduating, he was ordered by his politically motivated superiors to teach English, not Russian (Mao must have fallen out with Stalin by then- terrible how the whims of leaders can unalterably change the lives of millions), so here he is now, vice principal of an English college, never speaking a word of Russian. I got the feeling Danuka, our Bulgarian multi-linguist, and Michael could have a good 'cultural language exchange', if they ever got the chance.

The two vice principals looked at us four newcomers with serious expressions. Michael had broken the ice with his life-story. Now it was time for the nitty-gritty.

'There are some things we have to tell you about teaching in China,' Charles began.

We looked at him expectantly.

'A-hem!' then that strange squint smile, eyelids fluttering, eyes narrowing nervously.

Just spit it out, man, I thought.

'Well, erm...'

'You see,' Michael butted in, saving Charles from tongue-tied embarrassment, 'there are certain taboo topics. It's not that you can't talk about them as such, it's just that mention of them in class, or in the staff-room to the Chinese teachers, or in fact to any Chinese person, no matter how innocently, could result in... well, misunderstandings.'

'Could you be more specific?' Danuka pressed, enjoying this.

'Well, take Taiwan or Tibet, for instance. I know many westerners believe that they are independent, but here you must realise that we Chinese believe that they belong to us, and as it is here you live and work, you must be careful of starting political debate on this subject. In fact, steer clear of it.'

So far, so predictable.

'Anything else we need to know?' Danuka pursued.

'Okay, well, the Cultural Revolution. Many bad things happened. People were sent for re-education to Dong Bei, that is, the northeast, where you are now. Some of the more modern Chinese people believe that Mao made many mistakes, some people still believe him to have almost, well, god-like, iconic status.'

Danuka snorts.

'What I mean is,' Michael interjects hurriedly, 'is that to start a conversation on this subject as an outsider is not advisable... And there is one more thing, a topic that, although most Chinese would agree on this point, it is much more pronounced here in the northeast: Japan.'

We obviously looked confused, so Michael explained:

'When Japan occupied China, their soldiers committed the most horrific crimes against the northeast people. Do not on any account bring the topic of Japan into conversation in the classroom.'

Fair enough. Michael smiles, his tea-coloured age-spots stretching across his face. He looks directly at Matty.

'And to my last point: be careful out there. Harbin can be a violent, dangerous city. On no account get involved in any fighting, violence or skulduggery that could put you in danger or bring into question the reputation of the school.'

Skulduggery? Matty, leather jacket, crew cut, stocky, middleweight boxer build, shifted uneasily in his chair as Michael Chen let his gaze linger on him for what seemed like at least five minutes.

'I repeat, on no account get into a fight.'

Lecture over, it was off to dinner.

A black tinted-windowed car ride to a fancy city-centre hotel, a private room with TV, karaoke and a huge round table with lazy-Susan spinning circular glass in the middle, unsparingly stacked full of weird new dish after weird new dish: seafood, cold meats, pink round circles of sausage, lumps of congealed fat with hairs bristling from the rind, eggplant, pepper and potato, celery and pork, sizzling beef, sweet pumpkin cakes, of those that I could name, and countless other dishes I didn't recognise and can't now describe. This was our welcome dinner, courtesy of the principal, who was not one of the men I met yesterday but in fact a woman, and the elder sister of Liu, our visa procurer. I wondered whether the Communist ideal of women working as equals with men (or at least being equally exploited) held the same in China's Capitalist-Socialist revolution, or if Liu was a bare-knuckled exception to the rule.

We got back to the college, bloated and sleepy, and were met by Alan, who was to take us into town to meet the gang at one of their local watering holes. Gina went to bed, but Tam, Danuka and I were ready to let our hair down. With a linguistic dexterity that amazed us, Alan didn't just get us to the university district bar, but also managed to have a conversation with the taxi driver about how business was going, and we envied him this seemingly small thing.

Our first bar was a dark candlelit underground affair, with a Chinese guy perched on a stool with acoustic guitar crooning cheesy Chinese love songs. Most of the teachers were there. The beer was amazingly cheap, 5 Yuan for a big glass pitcher called a jia-pi. The chairs were swings hanging from the ceiling held by ropes, very romantic, but for most of the clientele there romance was the last thing on their mind, getting pissed out of their faces being much more the thing. As the jia-pi's flowed, the room began to spin with a mixture of jet-lag, over-eating and alcohol, the people taking on a kindly blur, the music soothing rather than annoying. Then a drunk-ugly Chinese guy came up to our table and shouted at Danuka:

'Give me fuck! I wanna fuck!'

As us newbies sat shocked, the others stayed cool and said something like, 'Look mate, we don't want any trouble...'

'Give me fuck! I wanna fuck!'

The guy pulled some notes out of his pocket and flung them in Danuka's face.

'I wanna fuck!'

He was screaming wildly. Things were getting hairy. And Danuka was getting more and more angry.

'Ya fookin' bastard,' she shouted, standing up.

The drunk, somehow insulted, picked up a glass ashtray from the table and flung it at her. Thankfully, it didn’t make full contact, but she was covered in fag ends and ash and none too happy about it. Me, I admit, I was scared. Before anybody could do anything more, the bouncers sprang into action. They grabbed the drunk and pulled him away from our table. The drunk remonstrated with them, but they politely but firmly told him what was what, ushering him out of the door. We decided to head to another bar, just in case anything else kicked off. Our mood had kinda been spoiled anyway. We paid the bill, pulled on our coats and filed out of the door.

Outside we were met with the sight of the drunk, spread-eagled on the pavement, four hefty men laying into him with belt buckles. He seemed to be unconscious.

'Well, he won't be trying that again in here,' someone quipped.

On the way to the next bar it was explained to us that Harbin has many Russian prostitutes. Chinese men often see a western woman and presume she's on the game, making insulting comments and not taking no for an answer. Karen told us a story of being taken to a deserted back street by a taxi driver late at night, where he stopped the car and tried to assault her. Luckily, she managed to get the door open and run away.

A few more bars passed by in a blur, and soon it was only Jean - a bearded, energetic teacher who once worked at the Rising Moon but now plies his trade elsewhere - Tam, and I in The Blue Kiss, a wooden-floored basement nightclub with a western-style bar in the middle, chairs and tables round the edges and a small dance floor. Jean told us the bar was run by the Russian mafia. It had just re-opened, having been closed down for a while because of a fatal stabbing. Not to worry though: as long as you kept out of trouble, The Blue Kiss was safe as houses, he attested. Drunk Chinese men danced with eastern-European girls with overly-made up faces and brightly-coloured dresses. Jean ordered a lethal fortified red wine, which came in large jugs filled with ice cubes. As we drank, winced, and shouted at each other over the weird Russian techno, a rotund grizzly Madame kept grabbing at our arms, trying to convince us to go with the girls. Later, we escaped down a back-alley strafed with projectile vomit and Jean led us on foot all the way back to the college (he says he never takes taxis, preferring to walk everywhere), a hike that nearly killed us, drunk and exhausted in the cold Harbin air, our breaths pluming out in clouds, the sweat on our brows turning to slushy icicles, our legs full of battery acid.

We had been well and truly welcomed to Harbin.