Having your hair cut in China is an absolute blast, and completely different from the peremptory snip-snip dry-cut and run of its western equivalent. For one wondrous hour you are pampered like a king. It's a bit daunting, however, as you enter the shop, as the first thing they generally say to you is, 'What do you want?' If you don't know how to say 'haircut' in Chinese, you end up standing there like a complete idiot thinking, 'What do you think I fucking want?' before resorting to sign language, snip-snipping scissored fingers above your head in desperation. Learn how to say ‘li fa’, though, and you are welcomed into the strange, androgynous bosom of the hot, wet, funky, hilarious hairdressing community of China with open arms.
There's a hierarchy to be observed in these places. Short, pretty girls in aprons and tight jeans take your coat and lead you to the hair-washing area. These girls can spend up to thirty minutes (depending on the number of punters) slapping, punching and karate-chopping your skull as you luxuriate under the hot water. They generally try to make conversation, asking the usual English-corner questions (but in Chinese) as the water, and their hands, swirl around your ears, making comprehension almost impossible.
'You SKOOSH huh?'
'Wha... SPLASH.'
'You TWIDDLE?'
'Me wha... WOOSH.'
It's definitely a skill I haven't mastered, making conversation in Chinese whilst having my ears rubbed under a hot tap. The girls then take you to a chair and continue to massage your head, shoulders and back, until you are so blissed out you wouldn't care if the hairdresser went on to give you a Mohican.
Then there are the apprentices, young guys who watch their masters' snips, buzz, combing and styling in animated awe, jumping to attention as the hairdressers snap, sharp as razors:
'Gel! Need some gel here!'
'Plug in the clippers!'
'Sweep the floor!'
And in fact they seem to spend most of their day sweeping the floor, with bamboo brooms, carefully caressing the patchwork piles into shovels and depositing them into overflowing bins. The young men obviously get their hair cut for free, either as a perk or as experimental guinea pigs, and seem to make it their personal mission to have the most ludicrous haircut possible, perhaps in competition with each other. Looking like a cross between neo-punk hooligans and Bladerunner replicants, the boys, although young and gawky, strut like mini-Mafioso around the narrow shop, barking and guffawing like stray, castrated dogs, the ubiquitous noisy techno booming and bashing in syncopation with their laughter.
Then there are the hairdressers themselves, all male, like a club, a secret Masonic sect. They come in all shapes and sizes, some of them nondescript, some of them totally effete and affected, their position in the hierarchy assured, as long as they give face to the Head Honcho. The top man in our hairdresser's of choice is tall, thin, and extremely handsome, with huge black eyes, cheekbones to die for and long pianist fingers. He assumes a quiet, authoritative demeanour, totally sure of his place at the top of the hair-cutting food chain. Over the last couple of months he's made me his personal mission, quizzing me about life in the UK, football, and girls. When I told him I wanted a buzz-cut (well, I didn't actually tell him this, but my sign language was effective) then my hair bleached blond, he stared at me in dismay.
'Yellow?'
'Yellow. And she wants red,' I gestured towards Danuka. 'And he,' I pointed to Tam, 'wants green.'
Tam shook his head vehemently.
'No, I don't!'
It's Friday, school's out, and we have a month off for the Spring Festival holiday. We're leaving for Beijing on Sunday night, and the last stop on our 'to do' list is getting crazy haircuts. We figure that by the time we return, our hair will almost be back to normal again, so why not? Actually, Tam had lots of reasons why not, but we weren't listening to him. The cutting and dying of our hair was a release valve we wanted to open, and the Head Honcho was just the man to do it, however reluctantly. He brought out a catalogue picturing the different colours of dye and we chose yellow and red as agreed, Tam abstaining. As the boss took the clippers painfully to my head then started to rub in a peroxide that burned my scalp, I realised Tam'd been right all along. This was a stupid idea. I glanced over at Danuka, whose long dark hair was being assaulted with some kind of goo then exposed to a heat lamp, and I noticed the exact same terrified expression on her I saw staring back at me from the mirror. All this time, Tam was relaxing on a sofa, pretending to read a magazine whilst chortling happily to himself at our self-inflicted torture.
About an hour later Danuka and I looked in the mirrors. Before I'd had time to take in the utter carnage that had once been my head, I heard a squeal. Danuka was almost shouting.
'It's brilliant! It's fookin' brilliant! I've always wanted red hay-yer.'
She looked awesome. Her long green quilted jacket clashed stunningly with her long, deep, crimson locks. I braced myself and looked again into the mirror. My hair, or what was left of it, wasn't blond, but in fact the colour, and texture, of peeled carrots. I looked like an escaped ginger convict. I shuddered then couldn't help but laugh out loud.
The Head Honcho tsk'ed effeminately, wiped his hands of the whole episode on the towel tied round my shoulders, then skulked off as if leaving the scene of a crime.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
A Proposition at the Blue Kiss
There's a Filipino DJ who'll play The Rockafeller Skank by Fatboy Slim at the Blue Kiss if you ask him, and ask him we do, every night we're there. Anita and I bounce around and play it up and love it, because it feels like a little slice of home, transported over the waves and desserts thousands of miles and the vinyl probably has been. Any dancefloor in the world can feel the same as long as the music's right and you don't look up.
We bounce in oblivious long lines up and down, over and back across the floor, completely lost in our own private world, reminiscence of the past triggering deeper, more primitive memories. Because of this, it took me a while to notice the girl dancing beside me, with me, until she was up against me.
She had long, black hair, tresses of which fell about her shoulders as she tossed her head from side to side, enormous black eyes, alabaster skin and a perfect rosebud mouth. Looking back now, I know I could already see something lugubrious in that face - it was like looking at a chipped porcelain doll - and I wonder if I already knew how this story might end.
We danced for three songs, including one especially mental Russian techno tune whose chorus seemed to comprise of a bunch of drunks bawling 'Oh Ricky, Oh Ricky, Ah Ricky, Ah Ricky, Oh Ricky, Ah Ricky', and as we held each other and kissed, even as my tongue explored dental cavities and hot throaty gums I couldn't stop asking myself: Is she a whore?
This was the Blue Kiss, after all.
The music stopped and the dancefloor was cleared to make way for two ballroom dancers, the guy in a tight black tux, the woman in a long flowing blue ballgown. Appropriate swoony music started up and as the dancers arched their necks and swung their legs to the beat, I realised I had a decision to make: leave my lover with a lipstick smile smacked to my face and regret never taking it further, or continue? I invited her to a table for a drink. She ordered a Sprite and I followed suit, although a stiff tequila was more to my taste.
'What's your name?'
'Uh, Greta.'
'As in, Garbo?'
'What?'
'As in, Greta Garbo?'
'Oh, oh yes, that's right.'
We sipped Sprite from straws.
'So, what do you do here?'
'What?'
I had to shout.
'What do you do? Your job?'
'Oh, I'm a teacher, I teach German. I'm from Germany.'
My heart danced.
'Cool! I'm a teacher too!'
'I know.'
'You know? How?'
'I just know. You guys are all teachers.'
True enough. But even as I decided to try to believe her, there was something in me, or perhaps something in her, that made trust slippery and fleeting. Or maybe it was just Patrick. He saw us, came over to our table, leaned into me, and whispered.
'If you wanna fuck her, remember to wear a condom, man.'
And I was angry at him, protective of this strange girl, stranger to me not half an hour ago, defender of her chastity and honesty.
'Fuck off, man!'
He left us with a nudge and a leer.
'So, uh, where do you teach?'
She faltered.
'How long have you been teaching?'
She sipped her Sprite and stared at the table. I felt mean.
'I'm not German. In fact, I'm Romanian. I work here. And I'm sorry I lied to you. My name's Grigoria.'
Ridiculously, she put her hand out and we shook.
'I'm still Ross.'
She stared at the table. I felt mean again.
Look, just... tell me your story. I don't care if you work here or not, tell me about yourself. Let's just sit here and talk. I like you.'
She shrugged. Whatever. Then smiled.
'You may be amused by this, but I'm from the mountains near where Count Dracula was said to live. The people are poor in these mountains, and have big families. My elder brother died in an accident. I was now the eldest. I couldn't make much money for my family in Romania. I met a boy, a boy who was nice to me for some short time, and he asked me to come to China with him. He said I could support my family with the money I make there. And like I fool I follow him.'
She took two cigarettes from a packet, lit one, gave it to me then lit another for herself.
'So,' and she blew out a sad wreath of yellow-white smoke, 'we went to Chongqing, and he left me there. In a whorehouse. It would not be true if I said he tricked me. I knew what was happening, but I didn't stop it. You know, by this time I didn't care anymore. At least not about me. After one year in Chongqing my new pimp said I should go to Harbin. The money there is good and the men like eastern European girls. Which is true.'
She took a long puff of her cigarette. After this story, I expected her to be swigging back vodka or something and it seemed strange when she sipped her Sprite.
'So, here I am.'
I didn't know what to say, so I talked really fast without thinking and made an arse of myself.
'Look. I don't care what you are or what you do. I think you're lovely. I can't afford... umm, you know, I mean I don't want to... but I do... but...'
She let out the longest of long-suffering sighs I think I've ever heard.
'It's okay. Give me your phone number. We'll go for coffee.'
As we scribbled our details on napkins, a rotund Chinese businessman flopped down on a chair next to Grigoria, staring at her, then me, then her again, in pornographic wonder. She looked up at him and began talking in a fluent Chinese that put this language teacher's dismal attempts to learn to utter shame. They talked for maybe five minutes, his glottal, throaty language punctuated by huge belly-bursting guffaws, as she made some kind of jokes that tickled him.
'Haw, haw, haw, haw, haw.'
Despite his interest in Grigoria which, truth be told, I couldn't blame him for, he kept making sly sideways glances at me, perhaps wondering what I was doing chatting to a whore and not taking her upstairs. I decided to make an exit.
'Uh, look, umm, I guess you've got a living to make,' I suggested quite unsubtly, 'so, umm, I'm gonna head off...'
As I stood up, the fat Chinese man stood up too, a concerned look on his face.
'No, no, no, no, no,' he cried in English.
He turned to Grigoria and spoke excitedly in Chinese.
'What's he saying?'
'Uh, he ask, if you want to come too?'
I stood there dumbly.
'He say he have the money.'
And for one moment, an image of Grigoria, the fat Chinese man and I, fucking away, popped into my head. I mumbled excuses, left hurriedly and spent the rest of the night huddled over a vodka bottle in a jealous funk. And to my eternal shame, when she sent me an email a few days later, I didn't reply, and we never met for that coffee.
We bounce in oblivious long lines up and down, over and back across the floor, completely lost in our own private world, reminiscence of the past triggering deeper, more primitive memories. Because of this, it took me a while to notice the girl dancing beside me, with me, until she was up against me.
She had long, black hair, tresses of which fell about her shoulders as she tossed her head from side to side, enormous black eyes, alabaster skin and a perfect rosebud mouth. Looking back now, I know I could already see something lugubrious in that face - it was like looking at a chipped porcelain doll - and I wonder if I already knew how this story might end.
We danced for three songs, including one especially mental Russian techno tune whose chorus seemed to comprise of a bunch of drunks bawling 'Oh Ricky, Oh Ricky, Ah Ricky, Ah Ricky, Oh Ricky, Ah Ricky', and as we held each other and kissed, even as my tongue explored dental cavities and hot throaty gums I couldn't stop asking myself: Is she a whore?
This was the Blue Kiss, after all.
The music stopped and the dancefloor was cleared to make way for two ballroom dancers, the guy in a tight black tux, the woman in a long flowing blue ballgown. Appropriate swoony music started up and as the dancers arched their necks and swung their legs to the beat, I realised I had a decision to make: leave my lover with a lipstick smile smacked to my face and regret never taking it further, or continue? I invited her to a table for a drink. She ordered a Sprite and I followed suit, although a stiff tequila was more to my taste.
'What's your name?'
'Uh, Greta.'
'As in, Garbo?'
'What?'
'As in, Greta Garbo?'
'Oh, oh yes, that's right.'
We sipped Sprite from straws.
'So, what do you do here?'
'What?'
I had to shout.
'What do you do? Your job?'
'Oh, I'm a teacher, I teach German. I'm from Germany.'
My heart danced.
'Cool! I'm a teacher too!'
'I know.'
'You know? How?'
'I just know. You guys are all teachers.'
True enough. But even as I decided to try to believe her, there was something in me, or perhaps something in her, that made trust slippery and fleeting. Or maybe it was just Patrick. He saw us, came over to our table, leaned into me, and whispered.
'If you wanna fuck her, remember to wear a condom, man.'
And I was angry at him, protective of this strange girl, stranger to me not half an hour ago, defender of her chastity and honesty.
'Fuck off, man!'
He left us with a nudge and a leer.
'So, uh, where do you teach?'
She faltered.
'How long have you been teaching?'
She sipped her Sprite and stared at the table. I felt mean.
'I'm not German. In fact, I'm Romanian. I work here. And I'm sorry I lied to you. My name's Grigoria.'
Ridiculously, she put her hand out and we shook.
'I'm still Ross.'
She stared at the table. I felt mean again.
Look, just... tell me your story. I don't care if you work here or not, tell me about yourself. Let's just sit here and talk. I like you.'
She shrugged. Whatever. Then smiled.
'You may be amused by this, but I'm from the mountains near where Count Dracula was said to live. The people are poor in these mountains, and have big families. My elder brother died in an accident. I was now the eldest. I couldn't make much money for my family in Romania. I met a boy, a boy who was nice to me for some short time, and he asked me to come to China with him. He said I could support my family with the money I make there. And like I fool I follow him.'
She took two cigarettes from a packet, lit one, gave it to me then lit another for herself.
'So,' and she blew out a sad wreath of yellow-white smoke, 'we went to Chongqing, and he left me there. In a whorehouse. It would not be true if I said he tricked me. I knew what was happening, but I didn't stop it. You know, by this time I didn't care anymore. At least not about me. After one year in Chongqing my new pimp said I should go to Harbin. The money there is good and the men like eastern European girls. Which is true.'
She took a long puff of her cigarette. After this story, I expected her to be swigging back vodka or something and it seemed strange when she sipped her Sprite.
'So, here I am.'
I didn't know what to say, so I talked really fast without thinking and made an arse of myself.
'Look. I don't care what you are or what you do. I think you're lovely. I can't afford... umm, you know, I mean I don't want to... but I do... but...'
She let out the longest of long-suffering sighs I think I've ever heard.
'It's okay. Give me your phone number. We'll go for coffee.'
As we scribbled our details on napkins, a rotund Chinese businessman flopped down on a chair next to Grigoria, staring at her, then me, then her again, in pornographic wonder. She looked up at him and began talking in a fluent Chinese that put this language teacher's dismal attempts to learn to utter shame. They talked for maybe five minutes, his glottal, throaty language punctuated by huge belly-bursting guffaws, as she made some kind of jokes that tickled him.
'Haw, haw, haw, haw, haw.'
Despite his interest in Grigoria which, truth be told, I couldn't blame him for, he kept making sly sideways glances at me, perhaps wondering what I was doing chatting to a whore and not taking her upstairs. I decided to make an exit.
'Uh, look, umm, I guess you've got a living to make,' I suggested quite unsubtly, 'so, umm, I'm gonna head off...'
As I stood up, the fat Chinese man stood up too, a concerned look on his face.
'No, no, no, no, no,' he cried in English.
He turned to Grigoria and spoke excitedly in Chinese.
'What's he saying?'
'Uh, he ask, if you want to come too?'
I stood there dumbly.
'He say he have the money.'
And for one moment, an image of Grigoria, the fat Chinese man and I, fucking away, popped into my head. I mumbled excuses, left hurriedly and spent the rest of the night huddled over a vodka bottle in a jealous funk. And to my eternal shame, when she sent me an email a few days later, I didn't reply, and we never met for that coffee.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Moonlighting with the Wu Chang Clan
The small country town of Wu Chang only has one claim to fame: its rice. Local legend has it that Chairman Mao once proclaimed it the best rice in China. And when Chairman Mao spoke, people generally had to agree with him. Right now, Clive is trying to convince Cindy to agree with him, and get serious. Cindy seems not so sure. Her friend, Rina, a voluptuous, shiny-haired, energetic girl, comes from and owns a school in Wu Chang. Both girls are ex-students of the college, and use their contacts there to get foreign teachers to visit Rina's school. Which is where Clive and I come in.
Train tickets, hotel, dinner, a night out on Saturday, all paid for; as well as 150 RMB per hour, all for only two hours teaching. It seemed too good to refuse. I accepted, as much for the fact that it would get me out of Harbin, to something new. If we were found out, of course, we'd be sacked on the spot.
Carrying a bag at Harbin train station was an arm-wrenching experience. The volume of people there resembled human garbage crushed into a huge waste disposal unit. Nursing bruised ribs and an elongated right arm I sat down to enjoy the train journey with Cindy and Clive. A young girl asked me if I'd take care of her box while she went to the toilet. I had a quick peak in it when she was away and found a family of white, terrified, pink-eyed mice. Somehow they reminded me of myself.
Heilongjiang province looked flat and bleak from the train window, endless furrowed snow-covered fields, shabby little villages, donkeys, cattle and ploughs. The sun took an age to set behind the flat landscape, but left a wonderful warm red glow after it had gone. I breathed in the countryside smells deeply. It was the first time I'd been out of Harbin since my arrival three months ago.
Rina met us at the station and took us straight to the school, where a reception party of adults wanting 'free talk' were awaiting us. The school is on the fourth floor and has a long balcony, which overlooks the low-rise little town. The classrooms are small but clean. The people are friendly. The adults ranged from seventeen-year old schoolgirls to middle-aged policewomen.
When asked, Rina and Cindy couldn't decide whether the population of Wu Chang was 9,000 or 90,000 (the Chinese for ten thousand, yi wan, one wan, makes the translation into English confusing). I'm plumping for the former. The streets are dirty and the roads without tarmac. The buildings are small and poor. A crossroads of two streets constitutes the town centre, each with a couple of two-storied department stores which looked like pygmies compared to their Harbin equivalents. Motorbike taxis, donkeys, and the odd car. People stopping and staring at you as if you were from another planet and, in some ways, you are.
Our hotel was a sombre, clapped-out affair, with an air of faded grandeur. It had once been used for government functions, but no longer. Clive and I seemed to be the only guests. Room 405, down dark and dirty threadbare red carpets, the yellow gloom of economy bulbs lighting damp peeling corridors and the kind of symmetrical stairwells that were once used to separate boys from girls in Catholic schools. There was no hot water in the room, which wasn't dirty but could hardly be said to be clean, and you had to fill the cistern with water from the tap if you wanted to flush the toilet. The only thing of value in the room was a shiny new-looking television set. The place reminded me of the Overlook Hotel.
In the evening, shoeless and cross-legged, we ate spicy Korean food then went to a bizarre Hicksville nightclub name of Happy Sundays (where your shoes most definitely needed to be on). At either end of the stage, two gorgeous skinny scantily clad girls gyrated their hips and tossed their long hair to the histrionic Chinese dance music from within metal cages. The lighting was psychedelic. A mass of drunken men cavorted and pushed each other around at the front like bizarre Chinese bumpkin punks. Then, with Clive and Cindy in the middle, everyone started doing the conga, bouncing up and down in a long line, throwing their legs out to either side. Later, a strange masochistic man came onstage and hung crates of beer from hooks embedded in his nipples. Later still, I had three consecutive slow-dances with the lovely Rina, much to the jealous consternation of Danny, her (business only?) partner, who sat sour-faced at the table. It was the first time I had touched a woman in three months. I could feel my erection digging into Rina's hip, but she didn't seem to mind.
In true nighthawk style, we went on to a deserted pool hall, where we got our collective arses kicked by Cindy's brother (who was surely there to give Clive the once-over for the family) and his friends. Back at the hotel, we had to rap on the glass door for ages, before an ancient porter, seemingly of the same age and state of disintegration as the hotel, stumbled out from behind the desk and opened up for us, garbling unintelligibly. As we walked down the dark spooky corridors to our room, I couldn't help wondering what I was doing in this weird place. This question was answered when, all too soon, it was 7 am, and I had two classes of children to teach. Thankfully, the students were more awake than me, and much better behaved.
After a big lunch, we were soon sliding about the icy back-roads to Harbin, in a small van driven by a crazed lunatic who didn't bat an eyelid at overtaking tractors around snow-covered blind corners. In between ducking, flinching and grabbing the nearest chair with white knuckles, Clive and I discussed possible excuses for our disappearance this weekend. Clive decided we should tell everyone we'd been to a place called A Chung, a place I've never heard of and would have found impossible to describe if asked.
As a result of our heavy lunch, we both soon needed the toilet. The driver pulled over in the forecourt of a petrol station and pointed dismissively towards a wooden shed with two symmetrical walls in front of it. This was our toilet. Women to the right, men to the left, separated by a breezeblock divide, the shitter a long thin trench dug into the ground. It was freezing cold, so thankfully the smell wasn't as bad as we'd feared. But, on entering, the sight of it stopped us in our tracks. The trench was filled with a four-foot high pile of frozen faeces. A child-height mountain of sparkling, solid, crystallized dung. It struck me that it would, in fact, be almost impossible to empty the trench, as fifteen minutes after someone had shat, their stools would be frozen solid. We decided to defy our aching bowels, and settled instead for a piss.
On our return to the college, our alibi proved to be just as big a pile of crap. As soon as we stepped into the 5th floor lounge, J asked us:
'So, how was Wu Chang?'
Are there no secrets in this place?
Train tickets, hotel, dinner, a night out on Saturday, all paid for; as well as 150 RMB per hour, all for only two hours teaching. It seemed too good to refuse. I accepted, as much for the fact that it would get me out of Harbin, to something new. If we were found out, of course, we'd be sacked on the spot.
Carrying a bag at Harbin train station was an arm-wrenching experience. The volume of people there resembled human garbage crushed into a huge waste disposal unit. Nursing bruised ribs and an elongated right arm I sat down to enjoy the train journey with Cindy and Clive. A young girl asked me if I'd take care of her box while she went to the toilet. I had a quick peak in it when she was away and found a family of white, terrified, pink-eyed mice. Somehow they reminded me of myself.
Heilongjiang province looked flat and bleak from the train window, endless furrowed snow-covered fields, shabby little villages, donkeys, cattle and ploughs. The sun took an age to set behind the flat landscape, but left a wonderful warm red glow after it had gone. I breathed in the countryside smells deeply. It was the first time I'd been out of Harbin since my arrival three months ago.
Rina met us at the station and took us straight to the school, where a reception party of adults wanting 'free talk' were awaiting us. The school is on the fourth floor and has a long balcony, which overlooks the low-rise little town. The classrooms are small but clean. The people are friendly. The adults ranged from seventeen-year old schoolgirls to middle-aged policewomen.
When asked, Rina and Cindy couldn't decide whether the population of Wu Chang was 9,000 or 90,000 (the Chinese for ten thousand, yi wan, one wan, makes the translation into English confusing). I'm plumping for the former. The streets are dirty and the roads without tarmac. The buildings are small and poor. A crossroads of two streets constitutes the town centre, each with a couple of two-storied department stores which looked like pygmies compared to their Harbin equivalents. Motorbike taxis, donkeys, and the odd car. People stopping and staring at you as if you were from another planet and, in some ways, you are.
Our hotel was a sombre, clapped-out affair, with an air of faded grandeur. It had once been used for government functions, but no longer. Clive and I seemed to be the only guests. Room 405, down dark and dirty threadbare red carpets, the yellow gloom of economy bulbs lighting damp peeling corridors and the kind of symmetrical stairwells that were once used to separate boys from girls in Catholic schools. There was no hot water in the room, which wasn't dirty but could hardly be said to be clean, and you had to fill the cistern with water from the tap if you wanted to flush the toilet. The only thing of value in the room was a shiny new-looking television set. The place reminded me of the Overlook Hotel.
In the evening, shoeless and cross-legged, we ate spicy Korean food then went to a bizarre Hicksville nightclub name of Happy Sundays (where your shoes most definitely needed to be on). At either end of the stage, two gorgeous skinny scantily clad girls gyrated their hips and tossed their long hair to the histrionic Chinese dance music from within metal cages. The lighting was psychedelic. A mass of drunken men cavorted and pushed each other around at the front like bizarre Chinese bumpkin punks. Then, with Clive and Cindy in the middle, everyone started doing the conga, bouncing up and down in a long line, throwing their legs out to either side. Later, a strange masochistic man came onstage and hung crates of beer from hooks embedded in his nipples. Later still, I had three consecutive slow-dances with the lovely Rina, much to the jealous consternation of Danny, her (business only?) partner, who sat sour-faced at the table. It was the first time I had touched a woman in three months. I could feel my erection digging into Rina's hip, but she didn't seem to mind.
In true nighthawk style, we went on to a deserted pool hall, where we got our collective arses kicked by Cindy's brother (who was surely there to give Clive the once-over for the family) and his friends. Back at the hotel, we had to rap on the glass door for ages, before an ancient porter, seemingly of the same age and state of disintegration as the hotel, stumbled out from behind the desk and opened up for us, garbling unintelligibly. As we walked down the dark spooky corridors to our room, I couldn't help wondering what I was doing in this weird place. This question was answered when, all too soon, it was 7 am, and I had two classes of children to teach. Thankfully, the students were more awake than me, and much better behaved.
After a big lunch, we were soon sliding about the icy back-roads to Harbin, in a small van driven by a crazed lunatic who didn't bat an eyelid at overtaking tractors around snow-covered blind corners. In between ducking, flinching and grabbing the nearest chair with white knuckles, Clive and I discussed possible excuses for our disappearance this weekend. Clive decided we should tell everyone we'd been to a place called A Chung, a place I've never heard of and would have found impossible to describe if asked.
As a result of our heavy lunch, we both soon needed the toilet. The driver pulled over in the forecourt of a petrol station and pointed dismissively towards a wooden shed with two symmetrical walls in front of it. This was our toilet. Women to the right, men to the left, separated by a breezeblock divide, the shitter a long thin trench dug into the ground. It was freezing cold, so thankfully the smell wasn't as bad as we'd feared. But, on entering, the sight of it stopped us in our tracks. The trench was filled with a four-foot high pile of frozen faeces. A child-height mountain of sparkling, solid, crystallized dung. It struck me that it would, in fact, be almost impossible to empty the trench, as fifteen minutes after someone had shat, their stools would be frozen solid. We decided to defy our aching bowels, and settled instead for a piss.
On our return to the college, our alibi proved to be just as big a pile of crap. As soon as we stepped into the 5th floor lounge, J asked us:
'So, how was Wu Chang?'
Are there no secrets in this place?
The Tiger Park
Nothing in this place is ever simple. Anita's mum is visiting right now, and we'd decided to take her to see the tigers on Sun Island. The tigers are said to be more active in the snow than in the summer, so this was the time to see them. Little did we know that, despite the big cats' fearsome size and splendour, it will be the surreal nature of our journey back we'll remember a lot longer.
It takes a bumpy half hour on the number five bus to reach the white, frozen wastes of the far side of Sun Island. Inside the park are around 40-50 big cats, a mixture of cubs, immature adults, grown males and females. The tigers are larger than life, arrogant and striking. First of all, you're taken to an outdoor compound in a little bus, from where you can watch two or three huge males thrown half-cows, legs, haunches, heads (bought by the more ghoulish of the punters), the tigers pouncing and crunching. One massive male came right up to the bus window. You could see its breath on the glass. It straddled the bus, front paws near enough touching the roof, growled, then turned its back on us and proceeded to piss on the windows. The glass froze over yellow-green, the colour of a lime Popsicle, and as it froze we couldn't see anything more.
Next, you go into a yard full of walkways with wire walls, where numerous tigers of different ages are hanging about in pens. The little ones wrestle, the older ones lounge in the corners or pad back and forth restlessly, paws leaving huge indentations in the snow. The orange and black of the cats, and their huge yellow eyes, contrast abruptly with the snow's dirty white. The tigers are gorgeous, and I have never been so close up to an animal of their size and beauty before. Too close, for one shocking moment: I was foolishly trying to poke my camera through a gap in the wire when a large male looked straight at me. Suddenly, from a supine position at the opposite end of the enclosure, in a supple orange blur it had bounded across and had its front paws on the wire where my camera had been a moment earlier. My legs wobbled and I fell back. The tiger growled righteously then strutted slowly away.
Fast-forward to late afternoon, and the temperature's dropped as quick and viciously as a pouncing cat. The sun is setting red and orange against the tabletop-flat arctic tundra landscape, staining the land bloodily. There are no busses and no taxis, and we've no idea how to get home. The other visitors to the tiger park have already left, ignoring our beseeching looks. Not one of them in their fancy cars offered us a lift back. Mind you, there are six of us: Clive, Tam and I making up the male contingent, Anita, her mum, and Gina the female. We walk out of the car park to the road. A white track, slowly being hidden under the new snowfall, stretches without end in either direction. The sky goes suddenly black. The wind howls. Snow strafes our faces. From a crisp sunny day, we're suddenly stuck in a blizzard, and in the middle of nowhere.
Clive asked one of the park attendants what we should do. He suggested walking as far as the edge of the nearest town, and getting a bus back to the city from there. We stood around debating this until we realised we were going to freeze unless we took action. So, we trudged off down the slippery, narrow road, in the hope, rather than the expectation, of finding transport, any kind of transport. Our toes went numb. We lost all feeling in our faces. Our hopes sank lower with every step. There was nothing on the road, not a car, bus or bike. We were the only people out there. Thin bare trees on either side of the road gave a bleak perspective of the distance we had to walk. There were no houses, barns, or animals in the fields except, disconcertingly, a set of huge paw prints in the snow, heading in the same direction as us. Too big for a domestic pet, too tiger-shaped for a donkey; we began to worry.
We trudge through this Siberian wasteland for some time until a most unholy-looking saviour emerges suddenly from the white. A motorbike taxi: an ancient bike with a tiny garden shed attached to the back; a cross between a rickshaw and a mobility scooter; a ramshackle hut, with an ill-fashioned seat for two, on wheels. The driver's wearing thick boots, a long green Russian army-issue coat, a furry hat and has huge gloves attached to the throttle and brake of the decrepit bike. He pulls up and hails us through the blizzard. We begin to bargain with him then realise we'd pay him anything, hell, even offer him our three female companions for a night of fun and frolics, to save us from freezing to death out here. Then we realise the awful truth: there's six of us, and this is a two-seater
'Well, ladies first,' says Tam, ever the bloody gentleman.
'Get in mum,' Anita's pushing her mother towards the mobility scooter.
'What about me?' Gina wails from behind us.
'Get in too,' says Anita, 'we can fit in three people at a push.'
Three ordinary-sized people, maybe. We realised that Gina was never going to fit into that little wooden shed along with Anita and her mum. However, the women refused to leave without her. So the six of us are standing there arguing at the top of our voices in a blizzard: You go, no you go, but I don't want to go if she doesn't go, well we'll go then get a taxi and come back for you, well, we could do that too... The driver revs his engine, suggesting that somebody better bloody-well get in or he's off.
'Right, FUCK IT!' Tam shouts, 'if you lot aren't getting in then I am!'
He marches up to the mobility scooter, me right behind him, and gets in. I squeeze in alongside. We catch sight of the three women, standing forlornly in the snowstorm. There's a cry.
'Wait for me, guys! Don't leave me here!' and Clive jumps headfirst into the tiny shed.
As there's not enough room, Clive ends up lying across our laps, his feet, legs and arse dangling out of the door. The driver, in a fit of frozen pique, gets off the bike and starts slamming the door on Clive's arse. It won't shut. The driver then starts shoving Clive, cramming him in inch by inch like he's packing a suitcase. Tam and I groan and curse, slowly being crushed against the flimsy walls of the shed. Eventually, with a final kick to the buttocks, the driver gets Clive in, slams the door, and we take off into the night leaving three damsels in snowy sub-zero distress.
However, after thirty seconds of being thrown about in the back of the mobility scooter, we were beginning to wish we'd never gotten in it. Clive was crushing us and, as the scooter skidded and slipped along the icy roads, we began to fear for our lives. Although the driver certainly knew where the accelerator was, cranking the little bike up to full speed like a bobsleigh, he seemed to have lost the brake. The road was full of pot-holes and bumps, covered in snow and black ice, and bordered on either side by a six-foot deep drainage ditch, but with its disproportionate weight in the back relentlessly dragging the little machine off-course, all the driver could think of doing was going faster.
I began to understand the true meaning of karma. This kind of karma was of the instant variety. If you could bottle it, and print the instructions 'Just add water' on the label, you'd be a rich man in no time at all. I saw myself dead in the drainage ditch amidst a carnage of body parts, wood and metal, perfectly preserved until the spring thaw, then to be eaten by the escaped tiger. I offered a silent prayer to the golden Buddha that I would always, and I mean always, let ladies go first in the future, if only he'd deposit me back in Harbin in one piece.
I was more amazed than relieved to see the orange lights of the little town. The driver, still unsure of where the brake pedal was, brought our nightmare journey to a halt by killing the engine, aiming the scooter at an eight-foot high bank of snow, and sliding sideways into it. We fell out of the shed, threw some money at him, and ran for the bus, which had just conveniently pulled up ahead of us. On the bus we eventually began to thaw out. Feeling in fingers and toes returned with a vengeance, ears stung, and we began to be able to move our mouths. This brought about the first mention of the girls. In low tones, as if someone might overhear us, we discussed our feelings of regret, guilt, worry, and self-justification, finally blaming Tam.
When we got back to the college, we were surprised to see the girls sitting with their feet up in the lounge, cups of steaming hot tea in hand, having already told everyone what absolute bastards we were. Two minutes after our departure in the mobility scooter, they'd flagged down a bus and were taken straight back to the college.
It takes a bumpy half hour on the number five bus to reach the white, frozen wastes of the far side of Sun Island. Inside the park are around 40-50 big cats, a mixture of cubs, immature adults, grown males and females. The tigers are larger than life, arrogant and striking. First of all, you're taken to an outdoor compound in a little bus, from where you can watch two or three huge males thrown half-cows, legs, haunches, heads (bought by the more ghoulish of the punters), the tigers pouncing and crunching. One massive male came right up to the bus window. You could see its breath on the glass. It straddled the bus, front paws near enough touching the roof, growled, then turned its back on us and proceeded to piss on the windows. The glass froze over yellow-green, the colour of a lime Popsicle, and as it froze we couldn't see anything more.
Next, you go into a yard full of walkways with wire walls, where numerous tigers of different ages are hanging about in pens. The little ones wrestle, the older ones lounge in the corners or pad back and forth restlessly, paws leaving huge indentations in the snow. The orange and black of the cats, and their huge yellow eyes, contrast abruptly with the snow's dirty white. The tigers are gorgeous, and I have never been so close up to an animal of their size and beauty before. Too close, for one shocking moment: I was foolishly trying to poke my camera through a gap in the wire when a large male looked straight at me. Suddenly, from a supine position at the opposite end of the enclosure, in a supple orange blur it had bounded across and had its front paws on the wire where my camera had been a moment earlier. My legs wobbled and I fell back. The tiger growled righteously then strutted slowly away.
Fast-forward to late afternoon, and the temperature's dropped as quick and viciously as a pouncing cat. The sun is setting red and orange against the tabletop-flat arctic tundra landscape, staining the land bloodily. There are no busses and no taxis, and we've no idea how to get home. The other visitors to the tiger park have already left, ignoring our beseeching looks. Not one of them in their fancy cars offered us a lift back. Mind you, there are six of us: Clive, Tam and I making up the male contingent, Anita, her mum, and Gina the female. We walk out of the car park to the road. A white track, slowly being hidden under the new snowfall, stretches without end in either direction. The sky goes suddenly black. The wind howls. Snow strafes our faces. From a crisp sunny day, we're suddenly stuck in a blizzard, and in the middle of nowhere.
Clive asked one of the park attendants what we should do. He suggested walking as far as the edge of the nearest town, and getting a bus back to the city from there. We stood around debating this until we realised we were going to freeze unless we took action. So, we trudged off down the slippery, narrow road, in the hope, rather than the expectation, of finding transport, any kind of transport. Our toes went numb. We lost all feeling in our faces. Our hopes sank lower with every step. There was nothing on the road, not a car, bus or bike. We were the only people out there. Thin bare trees on either side of the road gave a bleak perspective of the distance we had to walk. There were no houses, barns, or animals in the fields except, disconcertingly, a set of huge paw prints in the snow, heading in the same direction as us. Too big for a domestic pet, too tiger-shaped for a donkey; we began to worry.
We trudge through this Siberian wasteland for some time until a most unholy-looking saviour emerges suddenly from the white. A motorbike taxi: an ancient bike with a tiny garden shed attached to the back; a cross between a rickshaw and a mobility scooter; a ramshackle hut, with an ill-fashioned seat for two, on wheels. The driver's wearing thick boots, a long green Russian army-issue coat, a furry hat and has huge gloves attached to the throttle and brake of the decrepit bike. He pulls up and hails us through the blizzard. We begin to bargain with him then realise we'd pay him anything, hell, even offer him our three female companions for a night of fun and frolics, to save us from freezing to death out here. Then we realise the awful truth: there's six of us, and this is a two-seater
'Well, ladies first,' says Tam, ever the bloody gentleman.
'Get in mum,' Anita's pushing her mother towards the mobility scooter.
'What about me?' Gina wails from behind us.
'Get in too,' says Anita, 'we can fit in three people at a push.'
Three ordinary-sized people, maybe. We realised that Gina was never going to fit into that little wooden shed along with Anita and her mum. However, the women refused to leave without her. So the six of us are standing there arguing at the top of our voices in a blizzard: You go, no you go, but I don't want to go if she doesn't go, well we'll go then get a taxi and come back for you, well, we could do that too... The driver revs his engine, suggesting that somebody better bloody-well get in or he's off.
'Right, FUCK IT!' Tam shouts, 'if you lot aren't getting in then I am!'
He marches up to the mobility scooter, me right behind him, and gets in. I squeeze in alongside. We catch sight of the three women, standing forlornly in the snowstorm. There's a cry.
'Wait for me, guys! Don't leave me here!' and Clive jumps headfirst into the tiny shed.
As there's not enough room, Clive ends up lying across our laps, his feet, legs and arse dangling out of the door. The driver, in a fit of frozen pique, gets off the bike and starts slamming the door on Clive's arse. It won't shut. The driver then starts shoving Clive, cramming him in inch by inch like he's packing a suitcase. Tam and I groan and curse, slowly being crushed against the flimsy walls of the shed. Eventually, with a final kick to the buttocks, the driver gets Clive in, slams the door, and we take off into the night leaving three damsels in snowy sub-zero distress.
However, after thirty seconds of being thrown about in the back of the mobility scooter, we were beginning to wish we'd never gotten in it. Clive was crushing us and, as the scooter skidded and slipped along the icy roads, we began to fear for our lives. Although the driver certainly knew where the accelerator was, cranking the little bike up to full speed like a bobsleigh, he seemed to have lost the brake. The road was full of pot-holes and bumps, covered in snow and black ice, and bordered on either side by a six-foot deep drainage ditch, but with its disproportionate weight in the back relentlessly dragging the little machine off-course, all the driver could think of doing was going faster.
I began to understand the true meaning of karma. This kind of karma was of the instant variety. If you could bottle it, and print the instructions 'Just add water' on the label, you'd be a rich man in no time at all. I saw myself dead in the drainage ditch amidst a carnage of body parts, wood and metal, perfectly preserved until the spring thaw, then to be eaten by the escaped tiger. I offered a silent prayer to the golden Buddha that I would always, and I mean always, let ladies go first in the future, if only he'd deposit me back in Harbin in one piece.
I was more amazed than relieved to see the orange lights of the little town. The driver, still unsure of where the brake pedal was, brought our nightmare journey to a halt by killing the engine, aiming the scooter at an eight-foot high bank of snow, and sliding sideways into it. We fell out of the shed, threw some money at him, and ran for the bus, which had just conveniently pulled up ahead of us. On the bus we eventually began to thaw out. Feeling in fingers and toes returned with a vengeance, ears stung, and we began to be able to move our mouths. This brought about the first mention of the girls. In low tones, as if someone might overhear us, we discussed our feelings of regret, guilt, worry, and self-justification, finally blaming Tam.
When we got back to the college, we were surprised to see the girls sitting with their feet up in the lounge, cups of steaming hot tea in hand, having already told everyone what absolute bastards we were. Two minutes after our departure in the mobility scooter, they'd flagged down a bus and were taken straight back to the college.
The Ice Festival
We all needed cheering up.
As part of the deal that gave us so much time off for Christmas, we had to work this Saturday morning. One hand giveth while the other one snatcheth away, seems to be the moral of Chinese management. We sat around the long polished meeting table and discussed interminably the preparations for the forthcoming exams. Sharon looks stressed out. The teachers seem drained after a Christmas far from home. A lot of pale, cold, dreary faces. Towards the end of the meeting, Sharon's expression brightens.
'Some good news. Our beloved superiors have somehow got their hands on a bunch of tickets for the opening night of the Harbin Ice Festival and are putting on a bus for us to get there. Anyone want to go?'
We'd have done pretty much anything to escape the examination-induced fatalism of that meeting room but, for once, the management had actually come up with a good idea.
After a traffic-jammed crawl across the bridge, we reached Sun Island and left our bus in a massive snowy car park. The multi-coloured lights of the glowing ice-sculptures inside drew us forward hypnotically. We entered into a cornucopia of neon, lighting all things ice: palaces, grottoes, pyramids, castles, towers, temples, arbours for wintry lovers, huge volcanoes with glowing neon orange summits, archways, staircases, igloos; ice-houses with ice bedrooms, kitchens and living rooms, within them ice beds, tables, chairs, TV's and sofas; there were dodgems, chutes and slides; all made from the blocks of ice I'd last week watched dragged out of the river.
Surrounded by a bustle of friendly, excited people, from toddlers to grandmothers, breath pluming in the bitter cold, hands clapping, feet stamping, bodies shivering, we shuffled, slipped, slid, climbed and careered around the huge expanse of colourfully-glowing ice. Little kids, wrapped up in too-big clothes beyond even their own mothers' recognition, run, slip, fall on their arses, then get up, laughing, with a mixture of pain and glee. Old ladies climb hazardous ice walls, creaking and inching up the sheer faces like ancient penguins lumbering up an arctic beach. Men in flap-eared Russian fur hats shout, spit then launch themselves on their haunches down ice-slides. Complete strangers josh and jostle each other in a jovial crush to get to the icy attractions. Everyone is smiling. Even those come painfully crashing to a halt at the bottom of a slide, or spilled recklessly from a toboggan, get up and grin wildly.
These northerners are a tough breed. Even in enjoying themselves they risk life and limb. Physical discomfort is not just tolerated in this place but expected, welcomed even. A Health and Safety officer from the UK would have a field day! No handrails? No crash barriers? Ice walls with no safety net? Sledges with no brakes? He'd close the place down. Either that, or take all the fun out of it. I have the scars, in the form of bumps and bruises, to show how much fun I had tonight. As I sat on a toboggan at the top of a slope, someone walking past slipped and stood on my hand with a crunch. I hit a nasty bump on one slide and now have difficulty sitting down. And, in a self-inflicted kamikaze mission, on the last ice-slide, which I'd decided, against everyone's advice, to go down head-first, I met with a painful collision at the bottom, taking out four totally innocent bystanders in the process.
Our previously jaded group of cynical teachers had suddenly regressed. We were twelve years old again, and extremely naughty. We barged past people to get to the slides first, threw powdery snowballs until our faces and fingers froze, and generally tried to outdo even the craziest local. The more slides we conquered, the more danger we wanted. Once we'd been down a slide feet-first, we had to do it headfirst. A vision of us: arms-interlinked, sliding and spinning chaotically down a slope of ice, tumbling into each other at the bottom and giggling like children. Captains of Industry out there: bin the paintball, bin the go-kart racing, bin the motivational talks. Bring your ailing workforce to the Ice Festival! Let them throw themselves down sheer slopes of ice for a true bonding experience.
Just as I was getting sick and tired of this freezing place, tonight, ice became my ally.
As part of the deal that gave us so much time off for Christmas, we had to work this Saturday morning. One hand giveth while the other one snatcheth away, seems to be the moral of Chinese management. We sat around the long polished meeting table and discussed interminably the preparations for the forthcoming exams. Sharon looks stressed out. The teachers seem drained after a Christmas far from home. A lot of pale, cold, dreary faces. Towards the end of the meeting, Sharon's expression brightens.
'Some good news. Our beloved superiors have somehow got their hands on a bunch of tickets for the opening night of the Harbin Ice Festival and are putting on a bus for us to get there. Anyone want to go?'
We'd have done pretty much anything to escape the examination-induced fatalism of that meeting room but, for once, the management had actually come up with a good idea.
After a traffic-jammed crawl across the bridge, we reached Sun Island and left our bus in a massive snowy car park. The multi-coloured lights of the glowing ice-sculptures inside drew us forward hypnotically. We entered into a cornucopia of neon, lighting all things ice: palaces, grottoes, pyramids, castles, towers, temples, arbours for wintry lovers, huge volcanoes with glowing neon orange summits, archways, staircases, igloos; ice-houses with ice bedrooms, kitchens and living rooms, within them ice beds, tables, chairs, TV's and sofas; there were dodgems, chutes and slides; all made from the blocks of ice I'd last week watched dragged out of the river.
Surrounded by a bustle of friendly, excited people, from toddlers to grandmothers, breath pluming in the bitter cold, hands clapping, feet stamping, bodies shivering, we shuffled, slipped, slid, climbed and careered around the huge expanse of colourfully-glowing ice. Little kids, wrapped up in too-big clothes beyond even their own mothers' recognition, run, slip, fall on their arses, then get up, laughing, with a mixture of pain and glee. Old ladies climb hazardous ice walls, creaking and inching up the sheer faces like ancient penguins lumbering up an arctic beach. Men in flap-eared Russian fur hats shout, spit then launch themselves on their haunches down ice-slides. Complete strangers josh and jostle each other in a jovial crush to get to the icy attractions. Everyone is smiling. Even those come painfully crashing to a halt at the bottom of a slide, or spilled recklessly from a toboggan, get up and grin wildly.
These northerners are a tough breed. Even in enjoying themselves they risk life and limb. Physical discomfort is not just tolerated in this place but expected, welcomed even. A Health and Safety officer from the UK would have a field day! No handrails? No crash barriers? Ice walls with no safety net? Sledges with no brakes? He'd close the place down. Either that, or take all the fun out of it. I have the scars, in the form of bumps and bruises, to show how much fun I had tonight. As I sat on a toboggan at the top of a slope, someone walking past slipped and stood on my hand with a crunch. I hit a nasty bump on one slide and now have difficulty sitting down. And, in a self-inflicted kamikaze mission, on the last ice-slide, which I'd decided, against everyone's advice, to go down head-first, I met with a painful collision at the bottom, taking out four totally innocent bystanders in the process.
Our previously jaded group of cynical teachers had suddenly regressed. We were twelve years old again, and extremely naughty. We barged past people to get to the slides first, threw powdery snowballs until our faces and fingers froze, and generally tried to outdo even the craziest local. The more slides we conquered, the more danger we wanted. Once we'd been down a slide feet-first, we had to do it headfirst. A vision of us: arms-interlinked, sliding and spinning chaotically down a slope of ice, tumbling into each other at the bottom and giggling like children. Captains of Industry out there: bin the paintball, bin the go-kart racing, bin the motivational talks. Bring your ailing workforce to the Ice Festival! Let them throw themselves down sheer slopes of ice for a true bonding experience.
Just as I was getting sick and tired of this freezing place, tonight, ice became my ally.
Christmas 2001, in the Ice City
Walking on Thin Ice
At the edge of the frozen Song Hua river two men fish like Eskimos through a hole in the ice. Songs ring out as teams of workmen drag giant ice-cubes, block after block, from the river's freezing depths. I sympathise.
One man, attached to the safety of the shore by a thin rope, a single umbilical thread, stands precariously on a floating wedge of ice. He hacks and saws at it, lessening it by degrees in huge chunks. The chill water laps at his feet. The little island of ice shrinks incrementally around him until he’s only on a half square metre. The calm assurance of the man that he won't fall in!
As we walk to the middle of the river, the ice becomes thinner. Murky water flows slowly beneath us with enviable serenity.
Lost
A few nights ago I stood alone at a junction in the city centre without recognising any of the streets. I had no idea which road to take, in which direction the college lay. The neon, green and pink, looked alien, the writing unreadable. Pedestrians hustled past regardless, all bound as quickly as possible, in the minus-thirty temperature, to wherever. I couldn't feel my face, and blinking was becoming difficult as my eye-sockets froze. A policeman, directing traffic like a stranded emperor penguin, peered at me now and again. If I'd had enough Chinese, I'd have told him I was lost and begged him to take me home. No, I mean, home.
Christmas
Two days later, and a dozen hung-over teachers are performing a Christmas panto in a marble and wood concert hall in front of four hundred students and parents. The school had treated us to a turkey dinner at the Holiday Inn the night before, then we'd gone on to the Banana Bar nightclub till five in the morning. We had to drag ourselves out of bed at 7 am.
To begin, Karen, aka Cinderella, sweeps the stage floor, singing sadly along to the pop song I'm a Big, Big Girl in a Big, Big World. The students sigh dutifully. Then, the music suddenly changes to Slade and Clive enters down the aisle, suitably paunchy in Santa outfit, throwing sweets to the now screaming students. He reaches the stage, whereupon the Ugly Sisters (Paul, Andy and Danuka) mug him. Paul, ex-rugby player, gave a super-real performance of kicking Santa in the face. Cinderella runs away. Enter the gnomes (Ken, J, Albert, Patrick and I), who try to wake Santa up. J does some kung fu on the Ugly Sisters, but they pull out a gun and shoot him. The gnomes regroup and perform a terrifying version of the All Blacks' Haka to scare the sisters away. Then Cinderella comes back on and gives Santa the 'snog of life'. We sing Jingle Bells then make a run for it.
Our performance was videoed and appeared on the Harbin TV news some days later. Auntie Wang, the cleaner, got so excited she took a photograph of her television.
The next day, Christmas day, was the longest of my life.
At the edge of the frozen Song Hua river two men fish like Eskimos through a hole in the ice. Songs ring out as teams of workmen drag giant ice-cubes, block after block, from the river's freezing depths. I sympathise.
One man, attached to the safety of the shore by a thin rope, a single umbilical thread, stands precariously on a floating wedge of ice. He hacks and saws at it, lessening it by degrees in huge chunks. The chill water laps at his feet. The little island of ice shrinks incrementally around him until he’s only on a half square metre. The calm assurance of the man that he won't fall in!
As we walk to the middle of the river, the ice becomes thinner. Murky water flows slowly beneath us with enviable serenity.
Lost
A few nights ago I stood alone at a junction in the city centre without recognising any of the streets. I had no idea which road to take, in which direction the college lay. The neon, green and pink, looked alien, the writing unreadable. Pedestrians hustled past regardless, all bound as quickly as possible, in the minus-thirty temperature, to wherever. I couldn't feel my face, and blinking was becoming difficult as my eye-sockets froze. A policeman, directing traffic like a stranded emperor penguin, peered at me now and again. If I'd had enough Chinese, I'd have told him I was lost and begged him to take me home. No, I mean, home.
Christmas
Two days later, and a dozen hung-over teachers are performing a Christmas panto in a marble and wood concert hall in front of four hundred students and parents. The school had treated us to a turkey dinner at the Holiday Inn the night before, then we'd gone on to the Banana Bar nightclub till five in the morning. We had to drag ourselves out of bed at 7 am.
To begin, Karen, aka Cinderella, sweeps the stage floor, singing sadly along to the pop song I'm a Big, Big Girl in a Big, Big World. The students sigh dutifully. Then, the music suddenly changes to Slade and Clive enters down the aisle, suitably paunchy in Santa outfit, throwing sweets to the now screaming students. He reaches the stage, whereupon the Ugly Sisters (Paul, Andy and Danuka) mug him. Paul, ex-rugby player, gave a super-real performance of kicking Santa in the face. Cinderella runs away. Enter the gnomes (Ken, J, Albert, Patrick and I), who try to wake Santa up. J does some kung fu on the Ugly Sisters, but they pull out a gun and shoot him. The gnomes regroup and perform a terrifying version of the All Blacks' Haka to scare the sisters away. Then Cinderella comes back on and gives Santa the 'snog of life'. We sing Jingle Bells then make a run for it.
Our performance was videoed and appeared on the Harbin TV news some days later. Auntie Wang, the cleaner, got so excited she took a photograph of her television.
The next day, Christmas day, was the longest of my life.
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