We queue for a bus in the biting cold, well, queue is not exactly the right word, more stand about until one comes then make a mad dash for it, no women and children first in this place, and especially in this weather. The bus is packed, perhaps thirty or forty punters crammed onto it, elbows knees and feet everywhere. I have no idea how the other teachers knew at which stop to get off, as the windows were frozen on the outside, steamed-up on the inside, and there were so many people on the bus you couldn't see out anyway.
The gong fu hall is down a back street off Zhong Yang Da Jie, a little room with creaky bare wooden floorboards and an open brazier in the corner to keep The Master warm while he watches his students' forms. Arrayed on one wall of the hall are grainy photographs, in faded colour and also stark black and white, of The Master as a young man, clothed in white, bare-footed, competing in tournaments in different cities around China. On the opposite wall, floor to ceiling, hang the weapons: bamboo sticks, spears, swords, cutlasses, scimitars, lances, daggers, chains, cudgels, metal poles, num-chucks, ropes; a militaristic fetishist's wet dream. As we enter the hall, a group of children of no more than eight years old are finishing their lessons for the evening. Each of them has to perform their graceful, flexible, fantastical form for The Master before they are allowed to leave. He tuts and corrects them sternly. When they're done they have to bow to him and shout: 'Thank you, Master!' in their high-pitched voices, before running out of the hall, anxious mothers in pursuit brandishing down jackets.
The Master is in his sixties. He moves slowly, gracefully, with the air of experience that suggests: 'It's not how fast you do it, it's how well you do it. Look and learn.' He's a small man, with an age-worn wrinkled face and thick black-rimmed glasses. If you didn't know he was a renowned gong-fu expert, you'd think him completely harmless. But I pity the mugger that dares confront this little old man. When he goes through a form in demonstration it's like watching with the slow-mo turned on. When Jared or Peter tried to do it and made a mistake in posture, he landed them flat on their arse.
Gong fu is all about the forms. I didn't see any hand-to-hand, or foot-to-face, fighting at all. Apparently you need to train for at least three years before you can actually fight. The forms are intricate shadowboxing dances meant to reflect animal movement, and look impossible to remember. Every time one of the teachers gets a movement wrong, even if it's just a foot or hand at slightly the wrong angle, The Master stops them. For the more experienced trainees, he moves in and fells them, to show them that in some way, by adopting the wrong posture, their defences were down; for us beginners he 'PA'S!' into us but doesn't knock us down. Not yet, anyway.
The first half hour of the night is taken up by stretching. I am nowhere near flexible enough for this just yet. J got his foot up on to the wall bars way above his head, touching his forehead to his knee. I hardly had my leg straight at right angles to my body. After that, The Master makes us do various posture-strengthening exercises. For example, when he shouts 'MAAAA BU!' (Horse Stance), you have to bend your knees, keep your back straight, bend your elbows at a forty-five degree angle to your body, ball your fists at about waist height, and hold this pose for what seems an eternity. Your legs start trembling, then shaking, then downright wobbling, and, just as you think you can't stand it a minute longer, he shouts at you to relax.
Then, each teacher has a turn at completing the part of the form they learned last time and, if it's to The Master’s satisfaction - 'YES! YEEEES! GOOD-UH GOOD-UH!' - he teaches you the next bit; if it's not up to scratch - 'NO-NO-NO-NO-NO-NO-NO-NO!' - you have to correct your mistakes before he'll let you continue. This seems an excruciatingly slow process but I can understand it: if you can't correctly perform the last part of the sequence that you learned, then you shouldn't progress to the next part.
Peter, who teaches at another university in Harbin, and is friends with some of the Rising Moon teachers, seems the self-appointed foreign leader. He goes first, using the whole length and width of the hall, face going bright red as he huffs, puffs and 'A-YAH!'s his way through his form. Then next up it's J, who makes less noise but is far more fluid and dangerous-looking than Paul. J is The Master’s star pupil. Then it's the turn of Patrick, Alan, Ken, Anita, in a descending order of experience (and skill) right down to the feckless beginners, Tam, Danuka and I. Tam looked quite good, half bare-knuckle boxer, half Bruce Lee. Danuka was all elbows but could kick quite high. I was just plain rubbish.
As we were warming down, a small brown mouse scuttled comically out into the middle of the floor where it sat, looking at us inquisitively. Anita 'aaaaawed!' in girlie fashion, 'Look at the little mouse!' The Master picked up a bamboo broom from behind his brazier, crossed the floor stealthily, and whacked the little rodent on the head. The mouse, stunned, raised a tiny beseeching paw, just as The Master lifted one slippered foot, brought it down hard, and broke its back with an audible crunch. We watched, stunned. This was the closest we had got to real combat tonight and we didn't like it. Someone giggled nervously. The Master grinned at us with a satisfied, 'Who The Man?' expression, picked up the lifeless ball of fur and bones by the tail, and chucked it headfirst into the brazier, which, as the flames sprang and sparked, became the wee mouse's crematorium.
If ever we'd been in doubt, and really we hadn't, we knew now not to mess with The Master.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Shopping
On Saturday we went shopping with Alan and Karen for our winter clothes. It was also our first real chance to see the city centre. There's three main parts to the commercial centre of Harbin: the shops around the pedestrian street called Zhong Yang Da Jie, which is a pretty cobbled tree-lined street built by the Russians; Nan Gang, which is the business end of the city, a jam-packed bustle of businessmen, shoppers and cars, an endless flex and flux of building and rebuilding, its dug-up streets bordered by towering department stores and office blocks; and the underground market, a huge Cold War era bunker that stretches for miles underneath the city, and is now a massive subterranean shopping centre. Behind the pedestrian street lies an ancient bright green and sandstone Russian orthodox church called St Sophia's, with pointed domes that wouldn't look out of place next to the Kremlin, which has somehow survived the destruction of China's recent past, and now sits in surreal isolation, surrounded by brand-new city skyscrapers and high-rise shopping centres.
The crowds! Especially in the department stores and underground market, the sheer volume of people is immense. Toe-crushing. Rib-cracking. Head-spinning. I felt like a character in a movie, you know when time stands still for just that one person but the rest of the world keeps on moving in a blur all around him, all speeded up, with that one man unmoving, isolated, distinct?
The floor of the underground market is spread with sawdust, which is swept into piles continuously by these little women in blue overalls with long wide brooms. The sawdust is to absorb the gallons of spit ejected onto the ground every day. By evening, the sawdust must be bloated and wet with the phlegm of thousands. A horrible thought. A horrible job.
To buy anything down here you have to haggle. Alan is very good at this. Almost too good, it turned out. We had been advised to buy quilted jackets and thick ski-pants, all of them fake, all of them cheap. He took us to a shop in the underground market where we picked out jackets and saluppettes and asked how much. The women stated her price, whereupon Alan pulled an insulted face and let out a low whistle. He told her (in Chinese) he'd been coming to this shop for some time, and that these new guys were teachers at the same school. If she gave us a good price we'd come back. The woman thought for a moment, seemed to agree. They talked some more in Chinese, the woman all smiles. However, the price of our clothes didn't seem to go down much. Then, Alan threw down the jacket he'd been eyeing himself and walked off, Tam and I hot on his heels. We asked him what the problem was.
'Well, it's not my problem, more yours,' he replied, cryptically.
'Huh?'
'In fact, she was willing to give me a very good discount indeed, on my jacket, as long as I'd let her overcharge you on yours.'
Seems like I've still got a lot to learn here. But when I do, this haggling business might be fun.
The crowds! Especially in the department stores and underground market, the sheer volume of people is immense. Toe-crushing. Rib-cracking. Head-spinning. I felt like a character in a movie, you know when time stands still for just that one person but the rest of the world keeps on moving in a blur all around him, all speeded up, with that one man unmoving, isolated, distinct?
The floor of the underground market is spread with sawdust, which is swept into piles continuously by these little women in blue overalls with long wide brooms. The sawdust is to absorb the gallons of spit ejected onto the ground every day. By evening, the sawdust must be bloated and wet with the phlegm of thousands. A horrible thought. A horrible job.
To buy anything down here you have to haggle. Alan is very good at this. Almost too good, it turned out. We had been advised to buy quilted jackets and thick ski-pants, all of them fake, all of them cheap. He took us to a shop in the underground market where we picked out jackets and saluppettes and asked how much. The women stated her price, whereupon Alan pulled an insulted face and let out a low whistle. He told her (in Chinese) he'd been coming to this shop for some time, and that these new guys were teachers at the same school. If she gave us a good price we'd come back. The woman thought for a moment, seemed to agree. They talked some more in Chinese, the woman all smiles. However, the price of our clothes didn't seem to go down much. Then, Alan threw down the jacket he'd been eyeing himself and walked off, Tam and I hot on his heels. We asked him what the problem was.
'Well, it's not my problem, more yours,' he replied, cryptically.
'Huh?'
'In fact, she was willing to give me a very good discount indeed, on my jacket, as long as I'd let her overcharge you on yours.'
Seems like I've still got a lot to learn here. But when I do, this haggling business might be fun.
Monday, September 1, 2008
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.
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.
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