Harbin Hotpot

The Yungang Grottoes and The Hanging Temple

2008-12-29T21:09:00.000-08:00

We were woken up early to heated shouts, looked out of the third-floor hotel window, and saw a line-up of some thirty or forty bakers, dressed in regulation white overalls and caps, standing to attention like floury soldiers as their sergeant major stalked up and down the line shouting at them. This is the Chinese version of staff motivation. On seeing the bright blue sapphire sky shining eagerly above the black buildings, Clive and I were imbued with enough motivation to shower, get dressed and get out of the hotel in half an hour.

Near the bus station we met two men wearing cheap leather jackets and sunglasses, who pointed to their dusty red motorbikes. We bargained and got a price of fifteen Yuan to take us to the Yungang Grottoes. It wasn’t exactly Easy Rider, but the journey across the flat floodplains, along yellow roads, on the bouncy pillions of those little bikes was exhilarating nonetheless. Windswept, with dirt in our eyes and ears, hair sticking up everywhere, we clambered off at the entrance to the grottoes. The two men adjusted their sunglasses and roared off into the shimmering dust. Ahead and above us, the mountain ridges were outlined starkly by the bright blue sky in cinematic superimposition.

The Yungang Grottoes were carved out of and into the high sandstone mountains around 400 BC, the first of the Buddhist revival period and, it is held, the best. They are a series of fifty caves, each with different sitting Buddha figures and high pillars and walls of tiny intricate Bodhisattvas, used as cave-temples by the colony of monks here long ago. The detail and scale of the carvings are astonishing: giant sitting Buddhas, with feet bigger than busses, huge hands held out invitingly on which you could sit a whole coach party of tourists, wide noses and giant smiles, set against the smaller, repetitive decorative carvings in the cave walls, which are like a kind of holy wallpaper, some of which still retain patches of green, red and gold colour. However, the caves were as busy as they were breathtaking. You had to queue before getting a glimpse at each grotto, shuffling and pushing on the dusty paths, as the huge mysterious Buddhas watched the crowds unconcernedly. Perhaps they knew they’d be here for a lot longer than us transitory camera snappers with our peculiar forms of worship.

After we'd seen all we could of the grottoes, Clive and I walked around the corner of a sandstone cliff and were confronted, directly across the road, by a huge coalmine. The mine lay spread-eagled in a series of filthy huts, warehouses, and factories, ugly and black like a stain on the yellow land, huge smokestacks belching smudgy brown pollution into the innocent blue sky. Victorian-style wheel and pulley systems transported the coal from pit-faces to trucks. The trucks then fired their dust-addled engines and chugged off down the sandy roads, spewing black exhaust smoke behind them. The noise of machinery, engines, explosions and shouting men split the pristine sky. Miners, black and thin in the distance, trooped back and forth like rows of Lowrie stick-men. I pondered yet another incongruity in this dry, dirty region: a coal mine built behind the back of a smiling Buddha.

We hitched a lift to the Hanging Temple on a bus from Hangzhou, full of students and teachers from the Television University. At least, that's what they called it. Perhaps they meant it was a university for media studies, or perhaps for drama and the performing arts. Or maybe it really was a university dedicated to training young Chinese for acting in the two kinds of popular soap operas in the country: either tacky, predictable romances (the man always tall, quiet and deep, never showing his feelings, and the girlfriend hysterical, with a penchant for bursting into uncontrollable tears and screams in every episode), or gong-fu stories, set in ancient times (the men either porcine and comical, bearded and nasty, or long-haired and handsome, the girls either an evil queen, a cute and cheeky sister or a stunning damsel who always needs rescuing).

Our coach inched ever-slower round treacherous turns with sheer drops plummeting below, onwards and upwards so slowly, into the spectacular peaks of Shanxi province's Heng Shan mountain range, the floodplains stretching like an endless yellow sea into the distance, the yellow mountains, with their wind-blasted, rain-warped, sandstone rock formations slowly crowding around us. Tiny mountain villages huddle in the nooks and crannies of the rock, mud huts with small areas of irrigated field that looked dried-up and fruitless. Some of the villages consist of cave-houses hollowed out of the mountainsides, rough little oblong windows and doorways winking from the side of the cliffs. It must be a tough, thirsty, physical life of hardship this high up in a cave-house with no running water or electricity, and I didn’t envy the villagers’ life here.

The day warmed like a turned-up oven, the sun beating down on the shining metal of the unsheltered coaches, which smoked and struggled up the slopes like an army of giant mechanical ants. Our bus ground to a halt, engine steaming. Feeling traitorous, we left our TV friends and tried to hitch a lift with one of the passing line of busses, but none of them would stop. Perhaps they didn't want to stop on this steep mountainside, just in case they never got started again. The TV coach's engine roared back to life and, shamefaced, we jumped on again to insulted looks. Half an hour later, we eventually reached the Xuan Kong Si, or Hanging Temple.

There has apparently been a temple on this site (a sheer, unforgiving cliff face of sandstone rock) since the Northern Wei dynasty, which makes the site more than 1,400 years old. In heavy rain, the Heng river, which used to flow right alongside the original temple, would burst its banks and wash away the temple with it. So, the monks came up with the ingenious (or crazy?) idea of building the temple higher and higher up the mountain face, holding the foundations of the temple steady on high stilts above the water. Every time the floods washed away the temple, they’d build it again, only higher up. The cycle of destruction and rebuilding ended when the Heng river was dammed off, leaving the temple literally hanging hundreds of feet up the rock wall above a dry bed of pebbles. Its name in Chinese, which translates as Temple Suspended over the Void, seems appropriate.

The temples are a chain of two- and three-story pagoda complexes with the sandstone face of the mountain as their back wall and a frontage of ornate carved wood, painted in reds and greens, hanging grandly, surreally, from the mountain. I'd love to be able to describe the insides of the temples, but we didn't go into them. As we approached the entrance, marvelling at the precarious beauty of this feat of holy engineering, we were confronted by a huge crowd of people. The Hanging Temple just wasn’t designed for this volume of visitors. Once you've queued in cordoned-off lines to buy your ticket, you’re let out into a wide open space, with no guards or ushers demanding you stand in line and wait; therefore, a couple of hundred tourists, penned into this space, were surging and pushing against each other like a football crowd after a goal to get to the entrance first. We saw that to get up to the temple, you needed to pass through a gate then ascend steps no wider than two or three persons abreast. The Chinese people, with their inability to queue politely, were clustered around this bottleneck. At least two hundred people were trying to squeeze all at once into a gap for two.

It was horrendous. I’ve never seen anything like it. There was only one guard at the gate, and I thought he was about to get over-run. He screamed nervously at the crowd through his loudhailer. Another large surge began as even more people were allowed into the pen, but not enough people had either left or entered the temple to make room for them. People behind unintentionally pushed those in front, who turned around in anger and started pushing back, throwing punches, arguing and grappling. Little children were getting crushed against the legs of adults and crying shrilly. Men were fighting each other around the bottleneck entrance. Tourists coming back down from the temple couldn’t get out for the mass of people below them. It was an absolute shambles. Ridiculous. Dangerous. Nick and I, slightly shaken by these scenes, walked in the opposite direction up the mountain path to the viaduct. Heng Shan mountain presides over a reservoir of still blue water, which sparkled serenely in the spring sunshine. Swifts and martins swooped and played over the water, chasing insects. It was amazingly quiet and calm. Yet only a few hundred feet below us, people were jammed in tight together, screaming, pushing and fighting.

Today I saw how the internal tourism of China is destroying every place of historical heritage or natural beauty it purports to protect. More and more people in China are now making enough money to have a holiday yet, as the holidays are controlled by the government, everyone travels at the same time. Also, not many holidaymakers are allowed a visa to travel out of the country, so everyone heads for the same places. They do not have a choice of France, Spain or the Canaries, Peru or Hawaii, Sydney or Delhi. They have a choice of Tai Shan and the Hanging Temple, or Dali and Lijiang, or Guilin and Yangshuo, and therefore descend on these beautiful little places in huge numbers, leaving destruction in their wake. And it's not even fun! The pushing and shoving endemic in Chinese culture is intensified by the sheer mass of people, so that you have to fight for every bus, hotel and photo opportunity you can get. Countries such as Brazil, Peru or Thailand have complained that the new force of colonial destruction endangering their culture and environment is that of tourism. 'We' go to these countries, stay in nice hotels, visit safari parks, climb mountains, but don't realise the destruction and the draining of natural resources the tourist industry masks. Sure, we bring money to the local economies, but in an industry which is long-term unsustainable. China, however, is managing just fine to destroy its cultural heritage and scenic spots all by itself. Perfectly happily, in fact, as its making money out of it. Is that the difference between an under-developed and developing country, that the developing country is much more capable of ruining its environment without outside help?

Datong

2008-12-29T21:01:00.000-08:00

The five-hour bus journey from Tai Yuan to Datong, through sprawling arid mountains and across flat yellow floodplains, proved to be more spectacular, but no less diverting, than our destination. Datong was once an ancient city of some renown. A glazed screen of nine beautifully depicted dragons, which used to be the frontage of an imperial palace, still remains like a single soldier flying the flag of a fallen company. There are a few old temples and, in the centre of the city, an impressive, well-preserved Drum Tower. Now, however, all about you, filthy black buildings crumble and fall, some through old age and neglect, some through the unstoppable will to progress of developing construction-crazy China. Datong is one dirty, smelly, derelict building site. At night, off the main drag, there are no streetlights and no pavements. Instead, you walk up and down huge piles and mounds of broken earth and concrete in the dark, sometimes a drop of six or ten feet behind the ascent awaiting the oblivious pedestrian like a bear-trap. The dirt streets are flanked by squatting men and women, who display their wares of screws, nuts, bolts, engine parts, shampoo, face cream, hairbrushes, on dirty sheets or rugs. They call out to you in Chinese as you pass, Spark plug? Wanna buy a spark plug? Or, Nuts and bolts! Nuts and bolts for sale here! (At least, I presume that was what they were saying.) And yet despite the crumbling chaos, it’s a huge city, developing, destroying, rebuilding, regenerating, regurgitating. Tai Yuan now seems positively modern, Harbin a gilded metropolis.

Late afternoon, from the top of the Drum Tower, Clive and I watched a department store on the main street stage a fashion show of wedding dresses. The girls were stunning, although totally depressed. Despite the sunshine, the temperature was chilly, and these delectable young girls had to walk out, strutting and pouting, to the high-pitched refrain of Chinese pop songs, in skimpy white, peach, pink or purple dresses, pose alluringly, then leave the stage, to hoots and whistles from the huge crowd of dirty workers and scruffy young families gathered around the raised stage. The incongruity of it, the majority of the onlookers surely unable to afford these skimpy yet extortionate dresses, the girls, certainly not from rich families themselves, or they wouldn't have had to do this, being ridiculed by them, the attempt at glamour, sophistication, sexiness, in this run-down, beat-up mining town, the miners, workers and housewives, beset by conflicting feelings of jealousy and glitter, wanting more but hating every minute of it. Throughout this weird sideshow, all around for miles the city of Datong lay before us, crumbled, broken, rows of tumbled down, windowless shacks interspersed with huge concrete blocks covered in soot.

Tonight we ate sushi in a wonderful restaurant called the Yonghe Dajiudian, which is credited as being the best restaurant in the province. It stands like a neon beacon amidst the broken pavements and run-down streets. We were given warm facecloths to wipe our grimy hands, china cups filled with delicious green tea, well-presented dishes brought by the polite pretty serving staff. The floors and tables were shining and pristine, the tablecloths a sparkling white, the wine glasses polished to a perfect shine. We ate and drank like kings for an hour and a half, without even having to refill our glasses. As I sat back in my mahogany chair, sated and tired, I looked out of the window and saw a little boy, only six or seven years old, standing alone on a huge pile of beaten earth and stone in the middle of the dug-up road, silhouetted darkly against the dusk, brandishing a long stick like a tiny warrior celebrating some kind of hollow victory. As the sushi turned in my stomach, guilt, horror and sadness combining to pin me to my comfortable chair, the little soldier waved his stick and conquered his imaginary world from the summit of his huge mound of muck.

Pingyao, A One Hundred Year Old Egg and Monks with Rolexes

2008-12-29T20:55:00.000-08:00

01/05/02

Today we found ourselves on a seventeen-seater bus with twenty-five other people, the driver a madman, the conductor a psychopath with scary insect eyes. I was seated alongside a fat man in green camouflage jacket who farted continuously throughout the journey until the crowded bus smelt like a one hundred year old egg. This was the bus ride to the fortified town of Pingyao.

The original reason for this little town's existence was money: it was home to the first bank in China. The reason for its existence now is exactly the same, money, although this time the business is tourism. The surrounding wall was begun in 827 BC. The wall was to keep raiding bandits away from the money-pots, and for a long time Pingyao was such an economic centre of importance, it was nicknamed 'Little Beijing'. Now, the town is protected by UNESCO, and is considered an important historical site of cultural heritage. One wonders if the fortified wall during ancient times hadn't proved more efficacious than the town's modern form of UNESCO protection, as being an important cultural heritage site now means that the raiders are not violent tribes on horseback, but armies of tourists flooding out from coaches and storming through the gates.

Today is Labour Day, the first day of the weeklong May national holiday. The narrow streets of Pingyao are heaving with people, shopping, taking photos, pushing, shoving, laughing and spitting, tour guides whistling and clapping their hands, coach upon coach pulling up outside the main gates in a haze of exhaust fumes to spew out their unruly load. The attractive, authentic Han dynasty buildings, with their intersecting inner courtyards, well-kept wooden decorative latticework and carvings, separated by rough cobbled streets, are subjected to a rampage of looting and pillaging quite unlike anything that had once endangered it in the past. You could almost hear the small town creaking under the weight of it, just one more coach load perhaps being the final straw, whereupon the town would collapse, implode, descend into the pits of pandemonium, brought down by its own helpless greed. Once such a beautiful, authentic and ancient place has been officially declared beautiful, authentic and ancient, it's the signal for its surrender.

The surreal thing is, the workers just keep on working. Apart from the population of the town who are actually involved in the tourist trade, every other person just goes about their daily business, cooking, hanging out washing, fixing bicycles, as crowds of mad tour groups fall over each other to take pictures of them. Tourists creep down narrow alleyways for a quick peek, stare into doorways and windows, explore private courtyards, and even go into people’s houses, thinking them exhibits when they're really just homes. At one stage, trying to escape the madding crowd, Clive and I found ourselves in the middle of a wedding party in a secluded courtyard, feeling like skeletons at the feast. Instead of inviting us to join them, the people quite rightly looked daggers at us until we slunk away. It must be strange to live, work, love and die in this place, under the careless scrutiny of absolute strangers. It reminded me of Luss, the small village where they shoot the popular soap opera Take the High Road, in Scotland. When filming is not in progress, tour groups from America, Canada, England, everywhere, are shown round this quaint little Scottish village while the residents, not actors but real people who happen to live there, just carry on regardless as if it's perfectly normal to be ogled at by a bus-load of Australian grannies while you're chopping carrots.

Perhaps because each tour group has only a limited amount of time, allotted to them by their commander-in-chief, the guide, not many of them had managed to scale the fortified walls, so that’s where Nick and I headed. We met an old man up top who hired out bicycles and we cycled round the perimeter of the ancient town. It took us only about an hour, but the tranquility, the fresher air, and most of all the stunning views of Pingyao below us, huddled ancient rooftops like sheep clustered in a pen during a storm, set against the immense dusty yellow flatlands, with mountains looming to all sides in the distance like protective shepherds, proved to be the best part of the day. The wall itself is ten metres high and constructed in the shape of a rough square. It has 72 watchtowers (to represent the 72 sages of China), and 3,000 parapets (standing for the disciples of Confucius). Below you the town lies in higgledy-piggledy criss-cross fashion, and you can see people on the flat rooftop gardens feeding livestock, washing vegetables, throwing sticks to dogs, cleaning machinery. When they look up and catch your eye, you’re left with a choice: hang your head in shame and shuffle off, or brazenly take a photo like a true, unabashed voyeur.

We arrived back at the Railway Hotel in Tai Yuan to find it taken over by a convention of maroon-cassocked monks, each looking identical with their shaven heads, shiny fake Rolex watches and white sports shoes, some of them Reebok, Mizuno or Nike. A monk with a Rolex watch? Weren't they meant to reject materialism and devote their time to inner contemplation? And wasn't a watch pointless anyway, as the monk should surely believe time immeasurable, as he would be reincarnated again and again into eternity, thus time becomes negated, their very idea of it infinite and circular? Maybe he needed a watch so he didn't miss his train when going on holiday. But, aren't holidays in themselves just a materialist construct, and a deviation from the contemplation of... whatever.

The Train to Tai Yuan

2008-12-11T16:50:00.000-08:00

30/05/02

We staggered onto the 6.30 am train to find that the standing room only carriage actually did have seats, but that they were all taken, with a mass of passengers standing all around them. The train had begun in Shanghai, and was packed with people going home for the holiday to visit family. The deal was that you paid for a standing ticket, but if someone got off and vacated their seat, you could sit down on it. This meant that the carriage was full of folk literally standing for a seat, politicking, deal making, cajoling those lucky enough to be sitting, but who were getting off before the train reached Tai Yuan. There were far too many people to each get a seat, however, and we were faced with a potential eleven-hour stand. Gina gulped and gasped like a fish caught on the hook then thrown onto the dock. She began to talk about how nice Qingdao sounded, couldn't we jump off at the next station and go there instead? Clive and I told her we were going to stick to our original plan. The plan we'd worked out months ago. The plan she'd insisted upon gatecrashing, after finding that her other travel arrangements had fallen through. She pulled a face and muttered under her breath.

At the next stop, Jinan, Gina suddenly put on her authoritative voice and said:

'RIGHT!'

We watched her fumble with her suitcase and push her way to the train doors. She turned to look at us.

'Are you coming?'

Clive and I looked at each other, faced with the choice of enjoying the holiday which we'd planned, and Gina had parachuted herself in upon, and leaving her on her own in a strange city in the middle of China, or going with her. Clive slowly shook his head. I nodded. We were staying. To our astonishment, Gina stepped down from the carriage and stomped off into the busy train station. Unaware of our domestic chagrin, the train pulled away on its inexorable route, and took Clive and I with it, Gina-less. She didn't even say goodbye. We're a bit worried about her. She's never been on her own in China before, and I think she's suffering from one of the longest culture shocks in the history of travel. But it was her choice, in the end.

After seven hours of standing with a little guy's elbow nestled into the base of my spine, it was announced that there were some hard sleeper bunks now available. I fought my way to the booth, upgraded our tickets and, at the next stop, Clive and I lugged our rucksacks along the platform, along the length of the train, and made it to carriage number 15 (from carriage number 5) just in time. The next four hours passed much more pleasantly. We talked to some Tai Yuan locals, including an intelligent graduate who was studying English and American literature in Shanghai, and a kind female English teacher who recommended to us the hotel we're staying in, the Railway Hotel, which is adequate, fairly cheap, although dingy in its brown, green and beige colours and a little mouldy-smelling.

The landscape of Shanxi province is fascinating and ancient in a dry, bleached-out way. It's called 'The Yellow Land' as, the further inland you get, the more parched the earth becomes, rivers drying up, mountains yellow and dusty, the newly-arrived sun beating down from a clear blue sky on a sickly, barren, desert opus of huge flat plateaus skirted by shimmering yellow-brown peaks. As the journey progressed, the narrow river that snaked desperately through the dirt gradually became narrower, shallower, until it eventually ended up a dry creek. The thin strips of paddy fields and cypress trees, built on irrigated banks with thin rivulets of water diverted towards them, wither and disappear. All that's left is stone and dust and sun. The train goes through numerous dark tunnels, blasted straight through the yellow mountains, with a huge honk of its horn. Thirty-odd black entrances into the unknown on our eleven hour trip.

Shanxi's economy is driven by coal. Every place glimpsed from the mucky window of our train- crumbling little towns and cities that looked like they needed a refreshing drink of cold water and then a good wash- were mining towns. I was told that the city of Datong is home to China's biggest coal mine, some 300,000 men working there, and that the town is so singularly reliant on its coal, the people's faces have taken on the colour of their money: black. This may have been middle-class snobbery from my travelling companions, most Chinese believing dark skin signifies rural backwardness. This stereotype is exacerbated by the fact that, as rural poverty (the farmers prohibited from owning the land they farm, which belongs to the government) increases in China, so does the population of migrant workers.

Tai Yuan is witnessing a huge influx of peasant farmers looking for jobs in the city, searching for that imagined yellow-brick road in 'The Yellow Land' that will take them away from their rural poverty and make them rich city-dwellers. Many parents work all the hours of the day in the city, to send money home to fund their children's education, the children being brought up by their grandparents. This migration is inter-provincial, many of the immigrants being from the northwest province of Xin Jiang, which is home to a large ethnic minority population, the people looking more like Uzbekistanis or Afghans than Han Chinese. These people are blamed by the Han Chinese for any crime from theft to murder. The graduate student with whom I was happily talking literature, shocked me with a sudden outburst of narrow-mindedness.

'You must be careful in Tai Yuan. There are many Xin Jiang people, and they are dangerous. They will take a knife and kill you for your shoes.'

'That happens in the UK and America too, you know, ' I countered. 'Especially if you're wearing the new Adidas or Nike. And don't you think some Han Chinese commit crimes too?'

This wasn't a very smart remark. It just made him angry.

'No! You do not understand. These people are poor and have no morals. They are low-quality people.'

He actually said that. Low-quality people. So, you take over your neighbour's land, exploit their resources, force them to toe the Party line, then brand them second-class citizens for their trouble. And all in the name of 'The People'. Old Karl Marx'll be turning in his grave. The literature student was talking of the Xin Jiang ethnic minority like some kind of untouchable caste. I mumbled some argument that in every country, every people, there were good and bad, and we mustn't generalise, but he was adamant, prefered to talk rather than listen, and never let up on the subject until eventually giving me some respite by going to the toilet. Clive had been listening to our conversation with some amusement and said, with an ironic twinkle in his eye:

'I bet he's a government spy. You know, the government has spies everywhere, and for some of them, their mission is to talk to foreigners and weed out the bad seeds. Watch what you say.'

The literature graduate came back from the toilet, and we eyed him suspiciously.

Instead of a seedy and dangerous Sodom or Gomorrah, however, we found in Tai Yuan a busy, rough-and-ready vibe, a mixture of well-dressed young people walking arm-in-arm from KFC to the nearest nightclub, and crowds of swarthy workers playing cards, Chinese chess, or just gossiping vehemently on the street corners. Scores of children were skipping and playing tag. The trees were in leaf, the night almost balmy, the city a work unfinished, beaten old dirt-encrusted buildings, like has-been boxers, going toe-to-toe with spanking new skyscrapers and department stores; like any other middle-sized city in this country, in fact.

Tai Shan

2008-12-11T16:36:00.000-08:00

28/05/02

The overnight train journey to Tai'An, the small town at the foot of Tai Shan mountain, was the first good night's sleep I've ever had on a hard sleeper bunk. On arrival, I jumped from the train full of beans, wearing yesterday's blue jeans, blue trainers, red T-shirt and short denim jacket, and found myself shivering in a cold, grey, drizzly day. We approached the mountain down a long road full of temples and souvenir stalls, the drizzle intensifying. I bought a green 'I've been to Tai Shan' pork-pie hat and perched it rakishly on my head like a true tourist, where it sat all the way up the mountain, getting steadily wetter, until I had to wring it out like a dishcloth.

I'm sure the walk up to Zhongtian Men (The Midway Gate to Heaven), the halfway point up the mountain, would have been spectacular, had we been able to see anything. We could just make out deep gorges, bamboo, big rocks, and thick forests with cool glades, to either side of the stone steps, but only to a distance of thirty or forty feet. As the day wore on, the rain got heavier, the mist thicker, and we could make out less and less. We decided to spend the night at the halfway point, as making for the summit would be pointless in this weather.

On the way up, unable to see much in the way of scenery, I contented myself with studying the many tour groups going up and down the mountain in huge lines like herded goats. At the bottom, a group of company-men, all wearing identical shapeless black suits, stopped at a stall and exchanged their identical slip-on black shoes for identical black and white plimsolls, this their only concession to the fact that they weren't actually going to the office today but, in fact, were walking up a very high mountain in the rain. Large groups of students messed around, slipping, laughing and flirting, as if there were no rain at all. Brawny bull-necked businessmen held on tightly to their trophy wives, who tottered and complained their way up the steep slippery steps in incongruous high-heels. Contrasted against these well-off holidaymakers, tiny, shirtless weather-beaten old men lugged heavy bamboo shoulder-poles, a crate of beer or net of watermelons, bags of washing powder or boxes of oranges, hanging from either side of the pole, weighing the men down into back-bending, leg-sapping postures. As the old men struggled slowly up the steps, their warped, disfigured shoulders bore testament to their daily toil.

Clive and I reached The Midway Gate to Heaven a full forty-five minutes before Gina. We found a tiny hostel down a narrow path and paid for the room, no questions asked, despite the stinky toilet. We waited for Gina outside the temple, chatting to the drookit monks and playing with the mucky indigenous children. A soggy wreath of incense merged with the thick mist. Buddhist chants, played on a battered old tape deck, mingled with the pitter-patter of the rain. Tour groups were led past us by dripping tour guides, almost every single tourist proudly sporting a long orange or yellow waterproof bin-liner with hood. It was like watching a strange sci-fi movie where the humans with little flags for weapons have captured the orange and yellow aliens and are taking them off in droves to be experimented upon. Eventually, Gina made it, we dried off, changed our clothes, had some food, and began to feel a little better. However, we were disappointed because it didn’t look like we’d be able to see the sun come up from behind China's holiest mountain the next morning; if anything, the rain was even heavier than before.

29/05/02

Ah, now that's good coffee! I'd stashed some instant coffee packets in my rucksack and, at 5.30 in the morning, I poured hot water from the flask into my stainless-steel travelling cup, and went out into the dawn mist for a look about. There was an impressively mystical view of shifting mountaintops in the windy mist, peaks and pagodas appearing and disappearing high above in grey silhouette. The light skitter of rain on temple roofs. The first smell of incense lit by an early-rising monk. A cat mewling for its breakfast. The aroma of fresh rain-soaked grass and fir trees steaming in the mist. No one stirred, no one talked, nothing else broke the pact of silence the monk and I had made with the encroaching dawn.

Suddenly, a scream. It sounded like Gina. I ran back to our room to find her sitting ashen-faced on her bed. She'd gone to the stinky toilet and had vomited at the stench.

We started for the summit around 8 am. As we progressed higher, the mist and rain again began to increase, and we knew we'd be able to see nothing at the top. It would be a complete whiteout, or should I say, grey-out. Again, we felt a surge of disappointment; surely the view, in fair weather, from over 1,500 metres up, would be breathtaking. But we were never to see it. The stone steps increased in intensity and steepness, getting dangerously narrow and slippery, so that if you lost your footing, at some points you'd be in for a fifty-foot tumble down a steep stone-flagged slope. Treetops and misty gorges shifted and moved below us. Rocky creeks once home to rivers and waterfalls lapped up the rainfall and gurgled and spat. To either side, abandoned boulders sprouted ferns and weeds, and green walls of bamboo tickled the iron railings.

Despite starting early, the higher we ascended, the thicker the misty mass of tourists became. I spent half an hour at the top with a lively bunch of medical students from Jinan, waiting for Clive. I was in all of their photos, none of which I'll ever see. Clive arrived, and we spent some time exploring the summit's various temples and viewing points, which might have looked impressive set against a backdrop of towering green mountain peaks and wooded descents, but now looked forlorn, sad and grey in the foggy drizzle. We studied the rock formations, which Clive identified as quartzite and serpentine. The huge stones jutted out at weird angles, some pointing straight up to the sky like thick bulbous fingers, some rounded and flat like giants' gravestones. Formed in some Neolithic storm, a clashing together of huge glaciers, they sat foreboding and intransigent in the mist. Most striking was the Boulder Bridge, a humpbacked formation of connected rocks that had somehow lodged themselves between two sides of a deep crevasse to form a bridge of improbable natural design.

It was, however, cold and wet so, once we'd found Gina, we decided to head back down. I was more prepared for the conditions today, having bought a bright orange plastic poncho and red 'I've been to Tai Shan' headscarf from a stall at the Midway Gate to Heaven. I must have looked mighty strange, but that still didn’t excuse the comments Clive and I received on our descent. As we walked, we were subjected not just to the usual stares, but to continual insults as well. Clive's Chinese is quite good now, and he can understand much of what is said to him, or should I say, about him. We were called ugly, stupid, strange, hairy, and big-nosed, the last of which I do take offence to.

'What can you do?' Clive says, ever the pragmatist. 'Cindy taught me a phrase to say: ni zai kan shen me? Which directly translated means: You looking at what?'

'Cool. Have you tried it out yet?'

'Yeah, first time I tried it, the guy just stared at me even more!'

'D'you think he understood you?'

'He understood my words, of course, but not my meaning. He looked at me as if to say: 'What d'you think I'm staring at? I'm staring at a strange-looking foreigner! Any self-respecting Chinese would do the same thing and, if I could, I'd sell tickets.''

We reached the bottom late afternoon, walked out the main gate, and down the long street full of temples and trinket shops, Gina lagging behind. It's not that we were walking fast, it's just whenever we walked slower, she somehow managed to outdo us and find an even lower gear than we were already in, stopping every five minutes to catch her breath or complain about her sore feet. We'd stop, wait for her to catch up then have to wait for her to rest. Impatient, we'd walk away even more slowly than before but then, just moments later, turn back to see her motionless, standing like a distant shadowy obelisk in the rain. It was frustrating for us, and unbearable for her.

Deciding to take the mountain to Mohammed, we got into a taxi and found a clean two-star hotel in the centre of the small city of Tai'An. The city is gearing itself up for a busy week of tourists; we're gearing ourselves up for a standing-room only train journey back west along the Yellow River (which surely must have some water in it now, after all this rain) to Tai Yuan, which leaves at 6.30 am tomorrow morning. When Clive and I returned from the train station, Gina was decidedly unhappy to find out that the train was standing room only, and furious when she heard the departure time. We told her to get the tickets herself next time, rather than sleeping in her hotel bed whilst we did the pushing and shoving at the station. There's a vibe like a bad smell in our room tonight, but I've a feeling it won't stop me sleeping.

The Pits

2008-11-30T16:05:00.000-08:00

Class finished on the Friday, giving Clive, Gina and I plenty of time to get ready for our expedition to Tai Shan (one of the five holy mountains of China, climbed by both Confucius and Chairman Mao), and beyond. May 1st to 7th is a national holiday in China, and we've been told that Tai Shan will be packed, but we still can't wait to get going. Harbin is in the grip of a mini-heat wave; I'm wearing a T-shirt and jeans, outside, for god's sake!

And that's why I've shaved my pits. You see, in Harbin you can't find deodorant. No one seems to wear it. Actually, for near enough ten months of the year no one actually needs it, but when the hot weather does come around, the locals just tend to, well, smell. The city is still happily untouched by big western supermarkets, but this creates a problem in the hot weather. What do you do to avoid being smelly? I asked Alan.

'When I worked in Wuxi, south China,' he said, 'you couldn't buy deodorant there either, and it was really hot. Someone told me that it wasn't actually your armpits, but your armpit hair that held the smell. You see, the sweat dries and sticks to the hair. Then it begins to smell.'

'So you're saying that you actually shaved your pits?'

'Had to. You sweat like a bastard in south China, and by the end of the day you really stink.'

'But didn't it... feel... weird?'

'It did at first, but I didn't smell anymore.'

Alan's eyes glinted with a sarcastic humour I didn't quite trust, but what he said made sense. I decided to give it a try and went back to my room. I skooshed some shaving foam under my arms and began to drag the razor across them. The concave shape of the pits made it quite a tricky procedure, and the hair was long, jagging and ripping if I moved the razor too fast. I caught sight of myself in the mirror and saw the ridiculousness of the situation. It was then I realised Alan had been having me on. However, it was too late by then, so I decided to finish the job properly. Afterwards, my armpits looked a strange, alien, sickly shade of white, and they tingled and stung mercilessly.

I picked up my rucksack and went up to the fifth floor lounge to wait for the others, my pits crying out fiercely with displeasure. Alan was sprawled on the sofa, watching a DVD.

'You shaved your pits, then?'

'Umm...'

'You did, didn't you?'

'Yeah.'

He fell off the sofa laughing.

Clive, Gina and I are now sitting on the train, rattling across sun-kissed fields under a blue sky. The train is comfortable and quiet, as most people are not on holiday yet. We're taking it in turns to occupy the two plastic seats at the window while the other one sits on the bottom bunk. In these six-bunk compartments the bottom bunks are a free-for-all. Whole families take over the space to sit, eat, gossip and play cards. I guess if you actually told them that this was your bed and you wanted to sleep, they’d move, but I haven’t seen anyone try it so far. However, the shared space of the bunks engenders a communal, friendly atmosphere, where strangers can become fast friends during the length of a journey. Every now and again we get hot water from an ancient, coal-fuelled boiler to fill our flasks, the red coals somehow a tenuous surviving symbol of an earlier, receding time.

Stood Up

2008-11-30T15:58:00.000-08:00

It should have been the perfect day. Went on another school trip to the Song Feng Shan mountain range, this time to an ex game reserve, an ancient deciduous forest with long thin pine trees sprouting from steep glacial ridges, which formed high, narrow natural paths to tightrope-walk along. In the afternoon, we got back in time to meet some friends we've made from the Commercial University, for our weekly kick-about. There's little or no grass in Harbin, so our football is played on a dustbowl, with ancient rusted goalposts, broken bottles and empty noodle cartons littering the pitch. Went home, showered, got spruced up, and I was in the perfect mood to finish the day on a perfect, happy hat trick.

We ate at the Shepherd's Pie Place, then on to Gong Da, and from there to the Banana Bar, in a retracing of our steps from Wednesday night only this time, I hoped, without the prostitutes. I was meeting Liu Yang at 10 pm; Tam and Clive, either to keep me company, or to get a closer look at Liu Yang, came with me. We had a drink at the bar as we waited for her. And waited. And waited. She never showed. I couldn't understand it. What was with the e-card, the phone calls, the enthusiasm, if she wasn't interested? How could she have lost interest so quickly? Had I done something wrong?

'Everything seemed to be going so well,' I told Nick and Matt, just in case they thought Liu Yang was a figment of my imagination. 'We went shopping this week and had a nice time. I don’t understand it.'

'Maybe you said something, did something, that she didn't like. You know, Chinese girls are different. It's impossible to tell what they think.' Clive said, with the benefit of experience.

'Well, she did say that she didn't like my hat. But, I mean, I thought she was joking.’

'What colour was it?'

'Huh?'

'What colour was the hat?'

'Green.'

'Oh. Oh dear...'

Nick made a face, the kind you make when a child does something wrong and doesn't realise it.

'You know, if someone wears a green hat in China, it means their partner is having an affair.'

'Really? But, how was I supposed to know that? And how could that have changed her feelings towards me?'

'Maybe she just thought there were too many cultural differences, too many difficulties dating a foreigner. Or maybe you just had BO, or a bit of spinach stuck in your teeth, and the hat had nothing to do with it.'

Perhaps she'd just taken offence to me wearing my stupid pork-pie hat on our first date, regardless of the colour. And if that was the case, I only had myself to blame. Girls are a mystery to me at the best of times, and Chinese girls were no different, were, in fact, more of a mystery to me, with the language and cultural differences taken into account. I didn't want to drink, or play Connect 4, and I certainly didn't want to dance. I was home before midnight. I tried to contact Liu Yang a number of times during the week, but she never answered her phone or replied to my emails.

Turning Thirty

2008-11-30T15:43:00.000-08:00

My birthday was on the Wednesday, a crap day for a birthday, as I have classes all day, and then all day Thursday too. I'd decided to take it easy then have a big blow out on Saturday night at the Banana. Fat chance.

I was so busy I didn't really have the time to come to terms with my three-decade milestone, but it did occur to me that I could still have been working in that hellish kitchen in Warwick, with no friends and a relationship on the rocks; instead, here I was in Harbin, doing a job I really enjoyed.

On Wednesday morning I've PET1 followed by PET3. I wasn't sure whether to just play games with them or give them a proper lesson, so I compromised with a lesson plan that would take me up to the end of the first hour, then leave time to play some games in the second. I was also worried about CW (Charles' Wife) catching me playing games as she stalked around the classrooms like an unlucky black cat. She just happens to be my class monitor, as well as my boss.

I wasn't in the mood for teaching, however, and thankfully did not get the chance. As soon as I entered the PET1 classroom at 8 am, the students stood up and subjected me to a forceful rendition of 'Happy Birthday' in English, then produced a huge fluffy creamy birthday cake. I couldn't make them work after that, could I? I'm sure they were banking on it. I had brought along some board games - Jenga, Connect 4 - so we played those instead, chatting away in English as we munched on the fluffy, creamy cake. Lisa, Moon and Maggie, the cutest troublemakers you've ever seen, started to throw bits of the birthday cake at me. They smeared cream all over my face and into my hair, I retaliated, and soon the whole class was engulfed in a creamy chaotic cake fight.

PET3 were even more chilled. I've made some inroads into this class, and have built up a decent relationship with them, pretty much by using the carrot and stick approach. They're still incredibly lazy, but nice with it. They gave me a card, signed by all, a cactus, and a bunch of lychees, which we peeled and ate noisily as we played cards. Instead of using money, the kids tore thin strips of paper that they wetted on their tongues then stuck onto their faces when they lost. Kitty never won a game, and ended up looking like The Girl In The Paper Mask, only her beautiful eyes visible beneath the white; Camel and Henry, whose hobbies are smoking cigarettes and playing cards (possibly in training for government jobs or managerial positions after they graduate) were, not surprisingly, the winners.

Over the course of the day I was given: a set of bongos (Tam); a fig tree in a terracotta pot (Patrick); a photography and design book (Danuka and Ken); a sketch pad and pencils (Anita); a silver hip flask and bottle of bei jiu (Gina); and a decorative wooden box, all the way from Dubai (Clive); funniest present of the day goes to Andy, who gave me a plastic key-ring with a picture of the World Cup on it, saying: 'ere's something no Scotsman will ever get their 'ands on.'

That night we ate at Big Portions. Everybody came apart from Danuka; we've kind of grown apart recently, not sure why. I had six hours to teach on Thursday, and didn't want to overdo it on the beer. Matty had other ideas:

'Happy birthday, you old git. Gan bei!'

I emptied the glass.

'Yeah, have a good one. Gan bei!' From Patrick.

Right round the table, every one of the fifteen teachers demanded I empty my glass then some of them did it again. Twenty or more glasses of beer later, taking it easy was no longer an option. After pitchers in Gong Da, Ken, Clive and I somehow ended up at the Banana Bar three days early. I was not meant to be there. It was only Wednesday. We drank beer at the bar and played Connect 4 with two barmaids, who kept letting us win, to give us face so we'd spend more money, to the point where we were deliberately overlooking obvious rows of three in an attempt to lose. The three counters seemed to represent the three decades I'd just lived, and I wasn't quite ready to bring on the fourth just yet. I was so drunk, a three-year old would have beaten me, but the barmaid was determined.

Ken left, but Clive and I wanted to dance. We asked the two barmaids up with us and, after consulting their boss, they agreed. Clive got the stunning one, leaving me with the gawky awkward girl, but I didn't care. I had gone shopping with Liu Yang the day before, and today she had sent me a sweet birthday e-card. I was looking forward to dancing with her again on this very floor on Saturday. Back at the bar for one more beer, the two barmaids started pointing to themselves, then at us, then at the door, seeming to suggest we go home with them. I looked at Clive suspiciously, but he beamed back at me, nodding his head eagerly. I suggested we go back and dance for a while longer. As soon as we got onto the dance floor, the two girls were right there, by our sides, pulling at our arms.

I must attest to my innocence in all of this. I had a date in three days time. I wasn't going to spoil it. And anyway, Clive had the beautiful one! I warned him off them. Where was their home, anyway? Was it safe to get in a taxi with them and go to some strange place, where we might be robbed? Did he want to take the risk? He increased nodding speed. I pulled him grudgingly out the door towards a waiting taxi. We heard a shriek, and saw the girls running out after us like Valkyries over a battlefield. I had Clive by the left arm, but the cute barmaid had grabbed his right and was dragging him away. He looked at me as if to say: 'What can I do?'
Valhalla beckoned. As I pulled against the barmaid, the other one started to pull me, so that we became a scuffling, wobbling whole, like a drunken centipede, each bit of its body with a volition of its own so that it moves and wriggles every which way, but never gets anywhere.

Then the cute barmaid made a mistake: releasing one hand, she rubbed thumb and forefinger together in a universal sign-language and shouted what was probably the only English word she knew: 'Money!' This gave me the chance to give Clive one final wrench, and get him into the taxi, where he sat unhappily all the way back to the college.

Liu Yang

2008-11-26T16:27:00.000-08:00

April 2002

I met her in the Banana Bar club in Nan Gang the Saturday before my birthday, and we had a brief, bright, but quickly extinguished…what? Affair? No, no sex. Relationship? No, no commitment was made. I don't know what to call it, but from being the perfect thirtieth birthday present, a promise of fireworks, we became a damp squib, and I don't know why.

It's gone two and I'm dancing with Tam, Clive and Ken on the sprung, bouncy, neon-lit dance floor amidst thick dry ice. Clive is doing the bump-and-grind with a tall, big-boned girl who's all elbows, Tam is gesticulating in that middle-weight boxer style, while Ken is wrapping himself lizard-like around the pole on the stage, forcing his body into all sorts of painful contortions as a group of hormonally-charged teenage girls make eyes at him and scream. Liu Yang starts dancing beside me, then with me, then against me, in tight black jeans, black v-neck top, long hair up in a pony-tail, and these funky black glasses that make her look like a cross between a downhill skier and a pop star.

The music stops and the lights come on. It's time for the exotic dancers or, to call a spade a spade, the strippers. The floor's cleared and, as the men start whooping, and the women start cursing their whooping men, Liu Yang and I escape to the bar for a drink. Under the brighter lights of the bar I realise she's not just cute, but actually quite beautiful: clear pale skin, sparkling eyes, lovely smile, and with kind, tactile mannerisms. We make the usual small talk. She's from Da Qing, studies English at Harbin Normal University, has one year of her studies left. She's still not sure what she wants to do after she graduates. The music starts up again, and we spend the rest of the night dancing together. When it's time for her to go, she takes me by the hand and leads me to the cloakroom, where she finds a pen in her bag and we exchange numbers. We arrange to go shopping during the week, and I invite her to my birthday celebrations the next weekend, she leaves with her friends, and I spend the rest of the night on a cloud floating somewhere above the dry ice.

Wuchang again, and again

2008-11-26T16:23:00.000-08:00

Clive and I have been back to Wuchang to earn our extra pocket money two or three times now; but it, too, has changed, and is losing its previous allure. A lot of this has to do with the lack of social time with Rina, and the disappearance of Cindy.

Rina is now studying English full time at the HIT University in Harbin, then coming back home to Wuchang to teach two full weekend days at her little school. It must be exhausting. She lacks confidence in her English, although I think her speaking, especially, is quite good. Tiredness and this only half-hidden insecurity have turned her into a zombie-like apparition, who stumbles and mumbles about, muttering to herself and complaining. Poor Rina, formerly the queen of gregariousness, a bolt of lightning, a shot of adrenalin, has aged before my eyes. You just want to give her a hug, tell her everything will be all right, then give her a kick up the arse and tell her to snap out of it.

Even more sadly, at least for Clive, who is broken-hearted, is Cindy’s elopement. It turns out that not only did Cindy have Clive, plus his Chinese rival in Harbin (a businessman her family wanted her to marry but whom she refused), but she also had a third man, her first love who lives in Beijing, and it was to him she ran when things got too much for her. She moved in with her old flame, found a job in sales, hated it, quit, and is now, according to Rina, as unhappy as ever, as she's feeling guilty and missing her family, but is too proud to come home.

My nemesis Danny is now our main minder. He acts the part of welcoming host, but seems anxious to get rid of us as quickly as possible when the work is done. Long gone are the nights out and the dancing at Happy Sundays, a distant memory the staggering back at five in the morning to awaken the sleepy night porter at the Overlook Hotel. And yet, after class, Danny still says, 'See you in two weeks,' and we find ourselves pressured into agreeing to just one more weekend. We have to sign our names on pay slips now, which Danny keeps in a locked drawer, and we wonder if, in the future, we ever say 'no' to working in Wuchang, will he use this evidence, and his contacts at the college, to make our lives difficult there? A dangerous game, but one we went into quite willingly, so can't really complain about.

That Sunday morning Clive opened the curtains and we looked out onto the low-rise mess of the little town to find it covered in three inches of red sand, a storm the night before having come in from the Gobi desert and enveloped the place. Cars, bikes, rooftops, pavements, balconies, streets and walls, all covered in red sand and enveloped and strange and alien, like a scene from Mars.

Song Feng Shan

2008-11-26T15:54:00.000-08:00

The foreign teachers, including three new recruits, a pithy Brummie called Jim, and Sarah and Jane, two Liverpudlian girls of Cantonese Chinese ethnicity, and to whom taxi drivers continuously speak Mandarin, without realising they don't understand a word, piled onto the old school bus to find a store of boxes of cold chicken burgers, cartons of yoghurt and bottles of water. We had been invited (ordered?) to go on a school trip to the mountains of Song Feng Shan. This had never happened before in my time here, and I wondered if there was an ulterior motive. Perhaps Charles and Susan wanted us to see their human side. Perhaps they wanted to show the new teachers how jolly and fun working at the college can be. Perhaps they just wanted us hard-working teachers to relax. Depends what spin you put on it.

After an hour and a half's bus ride, we found ourselves in tiny country villages with tin-roofed concrete huts and dirty children, the huge bare mountains looming darkly in the distance under the clearest of blue skies. The driver kept getting us lost down dirt tracks while Tam, Anita and I bounced up and down painfully on the back seat. It got more painful on arrival, however: Charles, that nervous, ingratiating man put on an air of patronising patrician benevolence, expostulating over the area's history like a lord of the manor; Susan, his stick-thin wife, held his arm and simpered; Gina, frighteningly, morphed into a sixteen-stone cheerleader. Our bosses had a forced air of jollity that, quite frankly, made me queasy.

We walked to the four viewpoints on the mountain peaks, metal railings to stop us falling off the huge boulders stacked up like crumbling dry-stone dykes built long ago by giants. Tiny settlements lay like specks of gathered dust way below, dwarfed by the sheer blue canopy of sky above. The mountains sang a breezy siren's song. I left the group along with Ken and Jim to do some exploring. We spent the rest of the day discovering the alternative peaks, where there were no paths, no railings, just incredibly steep ascents you dragged yourself up, using tree roots and tufts of dried grass. A fresh, airy feeling of freedom and optimism blew around us all afternoon. At the top of our climbs, we sat on massive, smooth rock deposits, bigger than houses, and set the school, the country, the world to rights. White butterflies played intricate aerial patterns above our heads, blue woodpeckers scuttled up trunks and tapped and tapped, kestrels hovered above us in the cloudless sky; the school, China, the world, may be changing, but on Song Feng Shan time stood still.

Back to Harbin

2008-11-23T15:44:00.000-08:00

March 2002

Charles sits at the head of the long wooden table, grinning nervously, Gina sitting to his left, his wife Susan to his right, like the ugly faithful monsters - half dog, half dragon - that sit either side of temple gates to ward off evil spirits. They have their work cut out; there are plenty malevolent spirits in this room, myself included. Charles, tongue-tied as ever, coughs and tries to summon up the courage to tackle a difficult subject directly.

'Just because Karen has, well, left,' he begins, 'does not mean you should be feeling, umm, insecure.'

Karen, our Director of Studies, had done a runner and was never coming back. Weirdly, we should have known. She'd mysteriously turned up the day before Chinese New Year's eve in a Beijing park we were visiting, saying a peremptory hello, before slinking off with Danuka, who had become a close friend, for a pow-wow. At the time, I was too busy both flirting with Marina and psyching myself up to eat a stick of barbequed scorpions, to think much about it. Later, Danuka, obviously sworn to secrecy, refused to tell us what was going on, and her fearsome temper procluded further investigations.

Whatever, obviously the pressure of trying to keep us demanding teachers happy whilst dealing with the cloak-and-dagger politics of the college had got to Karen in the end. Often in team meetings she would raise her hands in exasperation and say, 'Look, don't blame me, I know it's a stupid idea but...' And we never did blame her.

'From now on,' Charles continues, 'your new Director of Studies will be Susan, my wife. If you have any academic questions, go to her. She will also be in charge of your schedules and of maintaining academic quality. Give her your full co-operation.'

The definition of 'nepotism' is:-

'Using your power or influence to obtain good jobs or unfair advantages for members of your own family'.

Susan then made a speech about how hard she was going to work and how hard she wanted us to work in return. She was looking forward to a harmonious future relationship with her foreign teachers. All said through lips as thin as a hair's breadth, and with a hard look in her cold eyes.

'On the logistics side, if you need anything, you can ask Gina. She will now be my assistant, and Head of the Foreign Department.'

The definition of 'cronyism' is:-

'A partiality to long-standing friends, especially by appointing them to positions of authority, regardless of their qualifications. Hence, cronyism is contrary in practice and principle to meritocracy. Cronyism exists when the appointer and the beneficiary are in social contact; often, the appointer is inadequate to hold his or her own job or position of authority, and for this reason the appointer appoints individuals who will not try to weaken him or her, or express views contrary to those of the appointer.'

Gina beamed victoriously, like a queen rightfully restored to her throne.

A most unholy triumvirate, made worse by the lack, the emptiness, of the 5th Floor lounge and teacher's office. Not only Karen has gone, but J, Albert and Paul too. The teachers are now being so slave-driven by Susan we have no time to relax in the lounge. Susan has moved out all the Chinese teachers whose first subject is not English from the office, and sometimes it's just Ronald, Ken, Patrick and I rattling about that big room with a few older Chinese who, strangely, can't speak any English. Every day a few of the old women put a foot up on the radiator to stretch their hamstrings out, or skip wildly in the middle of the floor, making the whole office vibrate.

As all this political wrangling goes on behind the scenes, I just concentrate on my teaching. Amazingly, I begin to find myself quite good at it. I see marked progress in my students' English - and attidude - despite the fact that they're now being bombarded with test after test, and forced to study an Upper Intermediate book which is way too hard for them. I've told my new DoS about this but, as Susan was the one who chose the textbook, there's no chance it'll be changed.

I'm giving up two of my evenings every week to help the students who need it catch up on their work. This college may be no meritocracy, but I'm damn sure my classroom will be.

Dalian

2008-11-20T16:36:00.000-08:00

25/02/02

Dalian is big, clean, modern, and full of attitude. Gone are the wide-eyed stares of the Yellow River country bumpkins. In Dalian, the people are as modern and tall as the tall, modern buildings they inhabit; the girls, especially, are well dressed, sexy and way too occupied with themselves to stop and stare at just another bunch of scruffy foreign backpackers. They're too busy getting their hair done, or eating, or chatting, or just being cool.

The city is said to resemble the profile of a tiger, the eye of the tiger being Zhongshan Square, which is the hub and crux of the city, although not really a square, actually circular, eye-like, a huge roundabout from which a bunch of side-streets, home to hairdressers, hardware stores, ice-cream parlours, seafood restaurants, bars, nightclubs, coffee shops, banks, bus depots, hotels and fast food takeaways, branch off. We amuse ourselves in laid-back fashion during the day by walking about these busy streets, then return to them at night to eat and drink. It's all we have the energy to do now. A quiet end to a manic holiday. A winding down. It began at breakneck speed, like the fastest bus ride you've ever been on, and has ended like a pensioner's stroll in the park.

We're knackered. We need a holiday from our holiday. We're sick and tired of hotel rooms and filthy jam-packed trains, had enough of noodle shacks and blocked-up toilet drains. We don't have any clean clothes any more. I'm looking forward to getting back to Harbin, meeting up with the others, and comparing travel stories. We've certainly got a few.

One story I'm going to keep to myself was trying to cross Zhongshan Road this afternoon. The road, the main artery into Zhongshan Square, is the widest, busiest and noisiest in the city, so chock-a-block with traffic that it's virtually impossible to cross over-ground. This is where the underground markets come in. Similar to the underground market in Harbin, but on a smaller scale, dank, white-tiled passages are flanked by cheap shops on either side, forming a sweaty, smelly, noisy, colourful maze underneath the city centre roads. Perhaps only in China, when you simply want to cross a road, you have to go window shopping.

Danuka and Tam are at the hotel; I've popped out for one last bit of wandering before our we leave. I'm trying to get back to the hotel, but it's proving more difficult than I'd thought. The trouble is, I can't read the signs that hang from the ceilings of the underground passageways. I presume they're streetnames, or directions north, south, east and west; or something. Who knows? Stupidly, I follow my instincts. It's a straight road, I can't really go wrong... can I? Go down the steps, enter the noisy, colourful corridors, walk striaght, oh, left here then, umm, nice jeans, should I try... no, better not, oh, turn right here, no choice, follow your nose, ugh, no don't, where the hell am I? Aha! A ray of light. Here we go... and up... and... what the..? I'm on the same side of the road I started on.

I go back down, follow the passageways, come back out into the crisp air and traffic noise, and find myself in the same place. Twice. It takes me thirty minutes. I decide to wait for a lull in the traffic and then leg it over-ground across the road. I wait about ten minutes. There's a chance. I clamber over the barrier, jump down onto the tarmac, and suddenly my ears are screaming. A little guy in an orange vest is bolting towards me, blowing a whistle like an angry football referee. He stands beside me, not shouting, but whistling, his arms moving frantically, shooing me off the road and back onto the pavement. I climb back over the barrier and get scornful looks from two incredibly tall, skinny, gorgeous women who are walking past.

I go back down again, follow the passageways, taking different turns from the last time, or at least I think I am, but still I emerge into the early afternoon glare at the very same place where I started from! I assess my chances of running across the road, but the guy in the orange vest spots me, shakes his head, and puts his whistle to his lips. I go back down into the market, get totally lost, find a passage I know, and again emerge at the exact same point. It's been nearly an hour now! An hour to cross a road! This is ridiculous. I decide to make a break for it. I wait for another lull in the traffic, clamber back over the barrier, hear the peeps of the whistle, look up, see the little guy running towards me, look both ways, and sprint across the road. The whistler starts running after me, his whistles turning into shredded, gasping peeps as he puffs and pants behind me. Phee! Phee! Phee!

I reach the other side, climb over the barrier, look back, and see the whistler shaking his fist at me comically, then I walk away fast.

As I write, Tam and I are in a little tearoom, near the red-light area we got drunk in a few nights ago, uphill from the hotel. We must look like two satiated old men, who've seen and done it all and shall take no more part in the world. All we want is our teapot regularly filled. In the words of Thom Yorke: No alarms, and no surprises. Please. The tearoom is a traditional affair of mild greens and browns, the walls bedecked by vases, china horses, and other such ornaments, perched on split-level monkey-puzzle shelves. Each table is home to a cut-glass bowl of soft satin red and green flowers. Comfortably cushioned wooden chairs and green and white chequered tablecloths are our only companions in here, save the polite and helpful waitresses in green aprons.

We were on perhaps our fourth or fifth pot of green tea when, a few minutes ago, there was a power cut. We sat in the semi-darkness, in the deepening dusk of our holiday, and hardly noticed. As the kind, attentive waitresses panicked around us, we sat unperturbed in the gloom. Today has the feeling of 'home-time'. The lights have gone out. Time for bed.

26/02/02

Fireworks

It was the last night of the Spring Festival, and the locals were out celebrating. So Danuka and I stayed in.

Danuka has a pathological fear of explosions, which, having lived so long in Belfast is understandable enough. When we're outside, and someone sets off firecrackers, she jumps two feet in the air then curses them in seven different languages. Dalian was a war zone of fireworks, firecrackers, homemade bombs and colourful light. I watched it for a while from our eighth floor window. Tam went home tonight. It's just Danuka and I, trying to eke out our holiday by one more day. She suggested we get some beer in.

The fireworks continued long into the night. The next morning, they were still spinning through my head, flashes of light and colour, flashes of fireworks.

My Faith in Humanity Restored

2008-11-17T16:46:00.000-08:00

It was three in the morning and we jumped into the first taxi we could find. We showed the driver the leaflet we'd picked up for the Dalian Youth Hostel, grudgingly agreed to a price of thirty Yuan, and were whisked off into the darkness at breakneck speed. After ten minutes on the highway, he pulled over to the side of the road for no apparent reason. We looked at each other uncertainly. The driver then took his mobile from his pocket, pointing to his watch then to the leaflet for the youth hostel. Quite sensibly, he'd decided to phone ahead to find out if the place was still open. It wasn't. Someone, probably the night watchman, answered the phone, but refused to let us in. We'd have to wait until nine o'clock in the morning.

Without another word, the driver gunned the engine and sent the car hurtling towards the bright lights of Dalian. As he drove through the city centre, he even gave us, tour guide style, a running commentary on the major sights. Not that we understood any of it. For all his good sense, the driver did, however, overestimate our wealth. The first hotel we stopped at was five-star and, on hearing the price of a room from the sleepy night-receptionist, I immediately had us walking out back to the taxi. Way above our price range! On realising this, the driver then made it his mission to get us the best deal possible on a Dalian hotel at 3.30 in the morning. We toured the city remorselessly, stopping at hotel after hotel. The driver and I would go in, knock on the reception desk to awaken the sleeping night staff, then the driver would haggle with them for a few minutes. If he thought we were being over-charged, he'd grab my arm and lead me out of the hotel swearing under his breath. There was one priceless moment when, after the driver had tapped ever louder on the desk with a pen, the drowsy little girl behind it lifted her head by degrees, hair, forehead, eyes half-shut, nose, sour mouth, pert chin, appearing in staccato segments from beneath the counter. She looked at us uncomprehendingly then asked us what we wanted. 'What do you think we want?' asked the driver, who looked at me then burst out laughing. He eventually found us a clean, affordable three-star hotel not five minutes from the city centre, which was still a little above our usual Spartan budget, but for a good morning's sleep we weren't complaining. He shook our hands with a beatific air of satisfaction, and refused to accept any more than the thirty Yuan we'd agreed upon beforehand. I glanced furtively at the meter, and saw that it was over fifty.

Our emotional journey, inner as well as outer, in that it comprised of a sea change in our outlook from cynical mistrustful backpackers to hippies with a true love of humankind, wasn't over yet. The next day, we decided to head to a place along the coast, of which our guidebook gave a good review (i.e. cheap and clean). We did like the place we were in, the Dalian Baolian, but really couldn't afford it. We asked the pretty young girls in blue blazers at reception for directions and, considering we were leaving their place to spend our money elsewhere, it really was nice of the manager to come out his office and offer to drive us there in the hotel mini-bus. We accepted gratefully. Twenty minutes later, we are standing in the lobby of this new place arguing with a woman, who ironically speaks excellent English, about their recently adopted policy of No Foreigners Allowed. The argument went something like this:

'No foreigners allowed? Why?'

'No why.'

'But what's wrong with us?'

'Nothing.'

'So why aren’t we allowed?'

'No why.'

Out of desperation, we asked the Baolian manager if he could drive us to the Dalian Youth Hostel. He could, he told us, but the youth hostel wouldn't accept us either. This didn't make sense, but sometimes it's better to relax, go with the flow, and see what happens, than start a fight. This was the right thing to do. We were taken back to the hotel where, after half an hour's tough negotiations, I'd got the price of our room down by more than half, and felt very proud of myself. Sixty Yuan per night, for a three-star hotel! The manager even threw in breakfast, offered to book us train tickets back to Harbin, and drive us personally to the station. What a guy. I inwardly high-fived the taxi driver who had, purely through a stubborn will not to see us ripped off, taken us to this lovely little hotel. For the first time on our travels, we felt like we'd got a proper bargain, instead of being ripped off because we were westerners. And we almost felt guilty.

Tam wanted to go shopping. Danuka wanted to wander along the cliffs. We negotiated the rest of our day in the middle of a street to the accompaniment of a band of singers, drummers and cymbalists, dressed in bright green, blue and red traditional clothes, celebrating the winding down of Chinese New Year the only way they knew how: noisily. Sick and tired, I plumped for the sea, leaving Tam to fend for himself. Danuka and I took a bus to Tiger Beach and walked from there all the way to the south side of the city. It took three or four hours and added new layers of tiredness to my legs, which began to stiffen up with lactic acid, but it was worth it. The coast road follows the curves and twists of the sheer, impressive cliffs, and provides a fantastic view of the Yellow Sea down below, dotted with numerous little island outcrops. The beaches are clean, white, mellow, quiet, probably because to get down to them entails a steep dangerous slide of two or three hundred feet. Small groups of pot-bellied middle-aged men were stripping off to take a bollocks-constricting swim in the cold water. A couple had annexed one beach for their marriage photo-party, the bride surreally strutting about the cold sand in full white dress and veil. The islands lay in the green effervescent sea like sleeping curled-up animals and, as the day wore on and the light faded, they seemed to shimmer and float like ghostly Laputias in the gloom.

That evening Tam and I went, as usual, for dinner and beer. It had become customary for us to sample the local beer of each new province we entered (Dalian is in Liaoning province). During the evening we encountered a filthy unwashed madman in long coat and beanie hat, who stared menacingly at us through the big restaurant window as we ate, really putting us off our shrimps, then jumped out at us as we left, making us nearly shit ourselves; a cute barmaid in a bar aptly named 'Happy Smile', who phoned up her English teacher for me to chat to, telling us as she did so that she was a really bad student (her teacher agreed); and another barmaid, drop-dead sexy rather than cute, in a warren of back-streets full of brothels, the bar a country and western pastiche with fake wooden panelling and red lampshades where the girls wore cowboy hats, the barmaid a short-skirted, gravel-voiced goddess called Sun Xin (pronounced: soon sheen), who asked us for the phone number of our hotel and promised she’d give us a ring, but didn't.

The Ferry from Yantai

2008-11-17T16:42:00.000-08:00

Travelling during the Spring Festival was really beginning to take its toll. The trains were routinely packed, and it was getting more and more difficult to find any tickets that weren't standing room only. We were regularly covering huge distances and usually at night, which disrupted our sleep patterns, which then in turn left our immune systems low. We were all getting sick, and really didn't need the two-hour wait in Qingdao train station’s ticket hall, where we did, however, manage to bag three hard seat tickets north to Yantai, from where we hoped to take a night boat to Dalian.

I was in pretty cheerful mood. I'd come to like Qingdao, with its narrow streets, yellow-brick houses, steep hills and interesting little DVD and clothes shops. My holiday budget had disappeared in a cool little shop called 'Old Skool Skatewear'. We never saw much of Yantai, going straight from the train to the ferry ticket office to book our boat. It was 8 pm as we lined up to catch the bus that the ferry company had laid on to take train passengers to the terminal. Just as we reached the front of the line, the driver shook his head, indicating the bus was full (a first in my experience in China). We were then infuriated to see him allow four or five more Chinese on.

We were pointed towards a second bus, which sat stationary and driverless. When the driver finally turned up, having finished his mah-jong or noodles, the queue had disintegrated into a scrum. Battle ensued around the opening doors of the bus, elbows, knees, fists, feet and rucksacks the weapons. One guy grabbed Danuka rudely and flung her out of the way. Then we attacked. Tam elbowed him in the stomach, I grabbed his shoulders and yanked him back, and Tash scraped her heel down his shin and stamped on his foot. Down he went, with a pained cry. Serves him right. After a ten minute drive, with five minutes to spare, we ran from the bus onto the ferry’s gangplank, and were, for some reason, ushered through to a room with plastic bucket seats nailed to the floor, where a movie on a big screen was playing at such volume that the distortion sounded like a wounded animal. We had to scream at each other as if we were on top of a mountain in a blizzard, before realising we were all saying the same thing: let's get out of here.

The boat was full to the gunnels. It was like cardboard city out on deck, where every inch of space had been marked out as 'ours' by huge families, ranging from wailing babies to grandparents, sheets, duvets, and other assorted bedding spread across the decks, defining colourful territory like a political map of small neighbouring countries. As we walked down corridors, we stepped over drunks, vomit, fighting children, an array of limbs, heads, bags and suitcases, men and women cooking, talking, drinking and playing cards. We finally found the ship's captain and, after Danuka had fluttered her prodigious eyelashes at him, were taken to a four-bunk cabin with a tiny black-and-white television that stubbornly refused to find a reception. No matter, we had beer and a bed. It was only when we had to stray out into the cramped corridors to visit the toilet, were we reminded of the uncomfortable boat people packed together all around us, our cabin a quiet island amongst raging seas.

Lao Shan

2008-11-17T16:39:00.000-08:00

We took a mini-bus tour to the mountain range of which Lao Shan is the most famous and prominent peak. The next time, if there ever is one, I'd take a regular bus as, after the usual frustrating stops at souvenir shops (one of which was a dried fish emporium which stank putridly), and being hassled constantly by a skinny, bespectacled nerd of a guide with a yellow flag, who clapped his hands continuously crying 'Lai lai lai lai lai!', with a disproportionate sense of his own self-worth, we were left with only one and a half hours on the mountain itself, which isn't nearly enough.

In fact, the mountain range covers an impressive 400 square kilometres, and lies just over one hour (if you're not on a tour bus) from Qingdao, along the coast road of the narrow, stunning peninsula on which the city sits. Lao Shan, in ancient China, was believed to be the home of the Immortals. Apparently there used to be 72 temples dotted around the mountains here, but nearly all of them were razed to the ground during the Cultural Revolution. I formed an image in my mind of a bunch of uneducated teenage Red Guards running amok in the mountains, hell-bent on mindless destruction in honour of Mao, grabbing and smashing artefacts and treasures more ancient and important than they could ever imagine. I looked at my novelty Mao watch, and decided to smash it at the first opportunity.

We climbed rough stone steps which seemed to go on for so long we wouldn't have been surprised if we'd ended up in the clouds, bumping into a few of those old Immortal guys. The mountains are stunning, gnarled, knobbly, their bent, aged peaks seeming to nod and watch as you climb, as if the mountains are old men with a million secrets, and a knowledge you will never know. The summits are set off to spectacular effect by deep gorges, bamboo groves, trickling rivers and a hundred foot-high waterfall that drops into a deep pool over smoothed ivory-white sandstone. On either side of the paths up lie massive yellow boulders, perched precariously, as if at one touch of a finger you could start an avalanche of ten-tonne rocks. At the top of the first climb lies an old temple, perhaps left standing by the Red Guards in the knowledge that they would some day be able to charge an entrance fee to it from Capitalist Roaders and Foreign Devils.

We climbed on for another mile or so, the steps petering out to become a wild dirt path, then began to run out of time. We stopped at a huge boulder, flat as a tabletop, which we used as a viewpoint to take in the mountains and sea below. The sea had taken an azure sparkle that merged seamlessly in a pale, blurred, china-white horizon with the cloudless sunny sky. There were no other tourists here, no souvenir stalls. I didn't need any more Taoist trinkets or fake-gold smiling Buddha's. This was my temple: nature at its most awesome. I reflected that this was the first time since I'd arrived in China I'd been up a mountain with a view of the sea. The scene unfurled over me like a soft white sheet on a clean bed: warm sunshine, mountains, sea and peace, acres of space and fresh air between me and the dirty, over-populated, manic bustle of developing China.

Qingdao

2008-11-17T15:34:00.000-08:00

Undone by insomnia, travel fatigue, dehydration, and a nasty chest, sinus and urinary infection-combo, I stared out at the sea as if looking at the shifting surface of another planet. It had been so long since I'd seen the sea I'd forgotten how alien it can look. Mist enshrouded it; seaweed skirted it; white gulls cried and swooped down into it; colours of briny-brown, mustard yellow, jade green, electric blue. I crunched down a pebble shell beach, took off shoes and socks, and stood in the shallows like a holidaying pensioner, the cold water pulling at my ankles and caressing my toes, then coughed up some of my own alien yellow substance and added it to the water.

The old district of Qingdao is a pretty jumble of various tasty influences, seemingly thrown together and stirred brusquely without recipe. There's a pier (Zhang Qiao), with a long wooden promenade like many English seaside resorts, except, unlike in Brighton or Weston Supermare, there's a pagoda at the end of it selling Chinese tourist junk (you can see it on the Tsingtao beer label). Rugged mountains in the background, sandstone and knobbly, provide the city with a horseshoe-shaped shelter, rather resembling Nice or Cannes on the Cote d'Azur. Battleships and submarines lie like cold dead fish on the surface of the water, which reminded me of The Hoe, in Plymouth. Add to that the fact that the Germans occupied the city for many years, giving it not just its famous Tsingtao beer, but also its old-town architecture - brash castles where the Governors once lived, surrounded by narrow streets of yellow sandstone houses with red roofs - before then being handed over to the Japanese after the Treaty of Versailles, then you can appreciate my confusion. Where, exactly, was I? I was still in China, I knew, because there were thousands of Chinese people all around me, many of whom still, reassuringly, came up to me, garbled 'Hahlaow!' then walked off laughing; but in many ways Qingdao did not resemble the China I knew, loved, and hated.

Was that a good or a bad thing?

A Strange Dream

That evening Danuka gave me some strange brown powder, along with bright green and yellow pills that looked like M&M's, alleging them to be full of calcium, vitamins and Chinese herbal remedies. I sank into a spluttering, stuttering sleep, having the strangest dreams, of which this is an example:

Tam and I are eating in a typically noisy Chinese restaurant. We're the only foreigners there. I'm tucking into one of my favourite dishes, beef noodles in chilli sauce. It's impossible to eat this dish without slurping it, making a nasty noise your mother would have told you off about as a child. On trains, at roadside stalls, or in restaurants all over China, however, it's a common noise:

'Sssssshhhhhhlllllleeeeeeooooooooo-puh!'

So I'm slurping and sucking my noodles, making a bit of a mess. However, every time I suck and slurp, every Chinese person in the restaurant starts tutting at me in a disapproving manner, shaking their heads and making faces at each other. This is making me really self-conscious. I try to eat my noodles silently, picking up a few strands at a time with my chopsticks then biting into them, but I still make a noise. I can't help it! And to cap it all, every Chinese in the place continues to spit and gob, clear their nasal passages with a howk onto the floor, and sook and slurp away until their hearts' content. Surely, if this is acceptable, then my slurping of noodles should not be criticized?

Worse is to come as Tam goes to the toilet. Now, toilets in China are nothing to write home about, not unless you're an Environmental Health officer on a busman's holiday, anyway. They are of the squat design, stink to high heaven, usually have filthy floors covered in human waste, paper and water, and brown disgusting stools stuck to the porcelain which the cleaner, if there is one at all, will need dynamite to shift. When Tam returns a few minutes later, the whole restaurant goes up in arms, complaining about the smell. They refuse to finish their meals, or even pay for them, threatening to walk out if something is not done about the horrible stench left by the foreigner. They accuse us of having no manners at all - we slurp our noodles rudely and leave a terrible smell in the toilets - all the time clearing their noses, spitting onto the linoleum and shouting at the top of their voices.

Take Me to the River, Take Me to the Sea

2008-11-12T16:15:00.000-08:00

When I woke up, the walls were undulating and the ceiling was spinning round in circles above my head. I had no idea where I was, and not just for a split second, but for whole minutes. I coughed, and a bright yellow gobbet flew from my mouth with bullet velocity.

Then I remembered the black beer and red peonies. Last night Tam and I had drunk the local brew in a strange dimly-lit basement bar. Henan's finest, it said on the label. Wouldn't like to drink the worst, if that's the finest. Picture of a sad-faced dog on the bottle (perhaps because that's how you look the day after), with the name May in large print. I smoked cigarettes from a bright red packet (the same colour as my throat this morning), on it a picture of peony flowers. These flowers have a special significance in China, something to do with an Empress who, jealous of their beauty, ordered them all destroyed. A good idea, and I wish she'd finished what she'd started.

Talk about starting badly and then going downhill from there. We actually went down-river. Today had weirdness written all over it. We were doomed from the moment we woke up. I blame the double-palindrome. Today's date is: 20.02.2002. Spooky times afoot. Which would explain why Danuka suddenly said:

'Let's go and see the Yellow River.'

Let me explain. This whole holiday Tam and I have done all the donkey work, the booking of train tickets, checking into hotels, route-planning, bus-finding hum-drum that takes up a lot of time when you're travelling on a budget. Danuka happily leaves all this to us, attesting that our Chinese is better than hers which, considering our Chinese is a few hackneyed sentences buttressed by The Lonely Planet Mandarin phrasebook, is a tenuous claim at best. We figure she's just lazy. Why jostle, push and fight for train tickets when you can get two guys to do it for you? However, if she doesn't like something, she's quick enough to complain about it. Anyway, she'd taken more initiative in those few seconds than she'd taken the whole holiday. And that worried us.

Being way too hung-over to object, however, it was to the Yellow River we went. To be fair, Danuka took the lead in the travel arrangements. She identified the number six bus as the one to take us to the viewing point outside Kaifeng but, after waiting at the stop for some time, we eventually found out that the route had been discontinued. At least, that's what we took the guy, waving his arms about, and saying 'No no no!' to mean. No bus? To a famous viewing point? Seemed strange, at the time. Danuka flagged down a taxi and eventually settled on the sum of fifty Yuan, there and back, with the driver. We got in, and found the vehicle bedecked in black leather, black curtains over the windows, and fake plastic flowers on the parcel shelf behind us. It was a funeral taxi, a hearse-chaser for hire. Alarm bells began to ring. From the gap in the black curtains, I watched black clouds gather in the sky, which suited my mood. I coughed and emitted more yellow stuff. Note to self: do not, on any account, let Danuka take the initiative, ever again.

After only ten minutes, the driver turns right off the main road, drives along a tree-lined path for a few hundred yards then stops. He shoos us out, promising to wait. Of course he'll wait: we haven't given him any of the extortionate fifty Yuan yet. We walk along the narrow road, flanked by statues, pagodas, trees, but for the life of us can't see any river. Are we really at the viewpoint? We're not sure, as a viewpoint generally necessitates a view, and there's absolutely nothing to see here. The taxi suddenly skids to a halt alongside us. The driver beckons us to get in. He lifts up a bottle of mineral water with just a drop left in it, shakes it, says:

'Mei you shui.'

Then bawls with laughter as if this is the funniest thing he's ever seen in his life. No water. Our Chinese was good enough to understand that. We didn't believe him. Surely this was some kind of practical joke. Kaifeng has an infamous history of being destroyed repeatedly by floods from the Yellow River. There must be some water somewhere. We made him take us back to the viewing point, which we'd already passed without knowing it. When we got out the cab and walked to the edge, it was just as he'd said. Mei you fucking shui. No water whatsoever, just a dry bed of silt. And that bastard had known all along.

We couldn't believe it: a viewing point to see a dry bed of silt. Right enough, there were no Chinese tour groups bouncing around with their two-fingered V-for-Victory signs, taking photos. Because who wants to take a photo of silt? Apart from us, who'd paid fifty Yuan for the pleasure. Tam and I looked at each other then burst out laughing. We didn't stop for maybe five minutes. In fact, this really was one of the funniest things we'd seen so far. This was the wrong, or maybe the right, thing to do, as Danuka didn't speak to us again all day.

One final ignominy remained. We asked the driver to take us back to our hotel, but instead he took us on a tour of Kaifeng housing estates, saying something like 'Don't worry, I know what I'm doing', before stopping outside a block of residential apartments down a narrow side-street. He pointed to himself to say that this was his house. He went in, then came back five minutes later, dragging what turned out to be his sister, a small, shy girl who he claimed was an English teacher. With her translating, badly, he then made us a proposition: he would take us to see some real water, at another viewpoint on the river, and it would cost us only another fifty Yuan! Pride in tatters, it was all we could do not to strangle him. But we couldn't strangle him, as we had no idea where we were, or how to get back to hotel.

The curse of the palindrome didn't end there. The train journey from Kaifeng to Qingdao that night proved to be just as nasty as the one from Luoyang, but one nightmare train journey in a travelogue is enough, I think. Strangely, just after midnight, palindrome mercifully over, we managed to upgrade our tickets from hard seats to hard sleepers (the term 'hard sleeper' does not sound too auspicious, but believe me when I say that these hard bunks had become some sort of holy grail to us by that time) and, after a mad dash along the length of the train, rucksacks bouncing painfully, when it had stopped at some hick station in some hick town, we got into our hard sleeper carriage and breathed a sigh of relief. Then couldn't sleep. Is it possible to be too tired to sleep? We were. As the train trundled slowly across the border of Henan and Shandong provinces, the promise of Qingdao, a seaside city, beaches, mountains, and our favourite beer beckoning, we sat up saucer-eyed, playing cards.

Broken Chinglish

2008-11-12T15:50:00.000-08:00

The Iron Pagoda Park was kissed with sunshine and held static by clear blue sky. A short bus journey out of the fortified walls takes you to this wide, green expanse of trees and grass. A mellow atmosphere and warm weather re-charged our motors and burned our faces. The Iron Pagoda isn't really iron, but stone. It gets its name because, from a distance on a sunny day, you can see it glow a deep burnished russet iron-red. Its decorative carved edges end in a sharp point which points to the heavens. It dominates the landscape as you walk through the park appearing in different forms, from different perspectives, towering angularly every which way you look.

What struck me most about the park, however, were the signs, translated into such amusingly bad English that sometimes you had no idea what they meant. The signs, be they rules, advice, instructions or warnings, were obviously transliterated directly from the Chinese into English by a person with a flowery imagination and terrible spelling and grammar. For example: Gutteral Relics; Meet and Guid Temp; Off Ice; Girth Aid; Tourist Complaining; and, my personal favourite, Big Sod. Here are the park rules, verbatim:

Sight Seeing Notice

Tourists should obide the order Consciously while you are visiting the Iron Tower park.
Peace buy tickets to go in park by line. Peace don't block the way.
Peace keep the sanitation of the park. Peace don't spit, relive the bowels or throw rubbish as is your way in the park.
Peace take care of cultura relic and pubic property. Don't doodle on the trees place of interest or pubic properties in the park.
Peace take care of the flowers and grass. Peace keep off lawn and don't break flower or fruit.
Peace take care of the order in the park. Don't senc out throwaway your dog shoot birds or catch them in the park. Don't lie on chair on bothsides of the park.
Don't fight or bust up in the park. Don't gamble, do anything superstitious or anything that transgresses the law either.
Peace don't throw anything that is easy to burn or explode in the park.
Peace leave the park consciously on time. Don't cemo lish the walls of the park or be bivouacked in the park.

Kaifeng

2008-11-09T16:41:00.000-08:00

Kaifeng, one of the seven ancient capitals of China, sits precariously on the flood plains of the Yellow River. It has a difficult relationship with the river, which is simultaneously the city's benefactor, the waterways connecting Kaifeng with north, south and east, and its destroyer, repeated floods having razed the city to the ground on numerous occasions.

Like Xi'an, the old part of the city is situated within four fortified walls, and there are some lovely old streets. Shudian Jie is the main drag, a pretty old street lined with wonderful two-storied Qing Dynasty balconied houses, which are crafted with intricate wooden carvings and topped off with old-style pagoda roofs. The street plays host to a vibrant night market, full of clothes, jewellery and, especially, food stalls. The people of Kaifeng like to walk up and down, up and down Shudian Jie every night; it's the street to see and be seen on.

We walked through the market that night like zombies, barely taking any of it in. My memory is held firm at the edges by wooden Qing buildings, then in the middle is a complete blur: smoke and cooking smells; good-looking couples promenading; myriads of ancient bicycles heaped together; chairs upon chairs around low wooden tables; people eating, drinking, chatting; us somewhere in there too, wandering vacuously, silently. We decided to have a quiet few days and regroup, before heading to the busier metropolises of Qingdao and Dalian.

The Train to Kaifeng

2008-11-09T16:08:00.000-08:00

Luoyang train station was brutal. Guards strutted up and down, barking orders at us through loud-halers from a distance of two feet. We were herded into long, straight queues, shouted at if we so much as put one foot out of line, then marched onto the platform like captured animals.

Then all hell broke loose.

The train only stopped at the platform for six minutes. Although the three of us were near the front of our queue, it became a battle of life or death to get on the train. The guards with the loud-halers had disappeared, leaving everyone to fight it out. The line-ups disintegrated into a jostling mob, pushing and shoving around the doors of the carriages. As I pulled myself up the ladder I had to stick my elbows into two people who were scrambling up the side-rails to get on before me. Another guy was hanging on to my big backpack, wrenching at it, trying to pull me off the ladder, my shoulder blades burning with the weight. I turned and punched him. There seemed nothing else I could do.

I managed to get on the train but didn't make it to a carriage. Around twenty people, including Tam, Danuka and I, were crushed into the small space between the two carriages, unable to move, sweating and groaning and wriggling painfully. In Harbin I had seen pigs on the caged back of a truck, squashed in so tight the poor animals around the edges had been crushed to death. That's what it felt like. I couldn't, and tried not to, imagine staying like this all the way to Kaifeng.

A little boy was pinned against the wall, crying shrilly. His father was talking to him frantically, but couldn't get to him. The heat became intense. The guard, a pretty, petite young woman with full ruby lips, was fighting at the doorway with people still trying to get on, although there wasn't an inch of space for them. The crowd brandished their tickets angrily and tried to pull her out of the carriage. She was screaming, screaming at them to get off, get back, crying her eyes out. as they grabbed at her arms. I began to fear she'd lose her fight and bedlam would ensue in this asphyxiating space. Luckily, the train then pulled away. However, that left us with a different problem: five hours of this.

Someone nudged me and I looked round, expecting another confrontation. A man said, in perfect English:

'Hello. Can I help you?'

I must have done a double take, as he repeated the question.

'Can I help you?'

Help. Yes. Sounded good. But I couldn't see for the life of me how. By that time a couple of people on either side of our sardine can had popped through the sides to the carriages left and right, not so much by design but because of the sheer pressure pushing them against and through the doors. We had a miniscule amount of elbowroom. Summoning the last of the air left in my constricted lungs, I explained to him that if he could help us upgrade our tickets to, well, anything better than this, we would be eternally grateful. He shouted something to the little guard in Chinese. She produced a calculator, and told us the price of available hard sleepers. We'd been told at the station there were no hard sleepers left, but seemingly there was. I shoved some money at the girl, and she pocketed it, gesturing at us to follow her. Suddenly, she got her second wind, a surge of confidence. She carved out a way for us to get out of that confined space, and dragged us into the long line of carriages. I asked the guy to come with us, we'd pay, as a thank you, but he shook his head, smiling in wry, fatalistic fashion, comfort isn't for the likes of me y'know, and told us he'd be all right where he was.

It was a long, long walk through all those carriages with our heavy backpacks. People everywhere: whole families on one seat, old men hunkering down under tables, people lying on the luggage racks, more people strewn across the floor like spilled trash, with what looked like all their belongings, in massive red and white striped plastic bags, clogging up the aisles. The girl finally showed us to our bunks, in a carriage only half-full! I felt terrible for the poor people, especially our helpful friend, still stuck in that horrible sardine-can, when we now had this spacious carriage. I pushed the feelings of guilt down, deep down; I was becoming a survivor, a train warrior, a backpacking example of will to power. The girl smiled at our beleaguered but relieved expressions, and I quelled an urge to propose marriage.

We needed a drink. We left our rucksacks in the quiet carriage to look for the buffet car. We found it, near deserted, the only people in it policemen, guards and a crew of cooks dressed in dirty whites, playing cards. We sat down and ordered three cold beers. They looked at us contemptuously, said something in Chinese that we presumed to mean we shouldn't be there. We played our trump - the ignorant foreigner card - shrugged, looked confused, then one of the cooks got up, laughing, to bring us three bottles of cold beer. From being amongst the unluckiest passengers on the train, we were now by far the luckiest. We'd won the last hand, even if it had been rigged for us, as foreigners, in our favour. An image of the squashed little boy invaded my relief. Again, I squashed it down, squashed him down, as if it were me squashing him against the hot carriage wall, and still I sighed with relief. We had a bunk, a cold beer, and a buffet car. We'd survived.

The Shaolin Temple

2008-11-02T16:17:00.000-08:00

The bus was meant to leave at 8 am. That's why we'd got up so early. In fact, it didn't leave until nearly nine. This was because the driver spent our lost hour arguing, jostling, and scrapping with the other bus operators over customers. He was a big lad, and gave some of them a real slap.

When every seat on the bus was finally filled, we moved off, entertained by a bad-taste Chinese soft-porn slasher movie featuring a simpering psycho-killer who looked about as dangerous as Norman Wisdom but who, purely through the unbelievable stupidity of his female victims, had managed to kill three times before a little girl of no more than five years old started crying and her father forced the driver to turn it off. The killer's modus operandi, if you're interested, was to seduce the women, get their ample breasts out, start squeezing then strangle them with a silk scarf. If the little girl hadn't started crying, I think I might have.

Our guide, a big stocky man with the build of a heavyweight boxer, severe flattop haircut to match, spoke at, rather than to, us for the rest of the bus journey through a hissing microphone. He was fond of laughing at his own asides for much longer than any of the tourists, in a disconcerting chuckle resembling granite chips being thrown into a deep pit. We had no idea what he was talking about, and were quite happy with this arrangement, until some meddling Chinese guy behind us appointed himself our translator. We then spent the rest of the journey being unsparingly subjected to the boxer's dreary descriptions of the history and scenery of the Shaolin Temple. If there had been a referee present, he would have stopped the match to save us any more punishment. Unfortunately for us, this kind of thing is actually a holiday, fun, the done thing, for Chinese tour groups. The bus stopped at every available minor-temple, place of semi-interest and, especially, at every souvenir shop, so they could trundle off the bus like a herd of cattle, take photos (two fingers tackily held behind each others’ heads in the V-for-Victory sign) of every available rock, tree or building, barge into the shops, haggle and fight with the assistants, before spending obscene amounts of money, then back onto the bus ready for the next round. Ding ding!

The souvenir shops soon thankfully gave way to misty mountains. The ascent was tricky and dangerous. Hazy rays of sunlight punched through the mist as the bus inched up the mountain road. We reached the Shaolin Temple to find a gaudily painted edifice in colours of green, yellow and red. Like most 'ancient' buildings in China, it had burnt down on numerous occasions, the contemporary structure being erected in 1929, which, according to my now well-oriented idea of 'the old', made it old to an extent, although nonetheless gaudy. The size and design of the place, perched at varying levels atop mountain slopes, is superb, but I couldn't help but wonder if the very reason there is any kind of building on this spot, much less a spiritual one, is because of the supreme, breathtaking natural beauty of the mountains which surround it. Unfortunately, this beauty is horribly scarred by hundreds of stalls, selling anything from Shaolin Monk T-shirts, badges, wall-hangings, trinkets, pancakes, noodles, to cheap fake gong fu weaponry. I'm sure our bus companions had a field day, although I couldn't help but shudder at what The Master would make of it all.

The Everything of Nothingness

Before getting a chance to grab our bearings, we were shoved back onto the bus and whisked off to a large cold hall, with plastic seats and green-carpeted stage-floor. One-by-one, shaven-headed young men in bright orange garb came out to perform their specific forms, as we sat, the audience, as if awaiting clowns. The ancient monks invented gong fu to counteract the physical inertia of prolonged meditation. Each form is a description of animal movement, demanding flexibility, grace, power and concentration. Each young man enters the floor to act out his particular form of frog, monkey, tiger or preying mantis to careless, rapturous applause. Their ages range from six years old to perhaps twenty-five. Their physique and skill are impressive. They demonstrate their strength by punching through glass, bending lead bars over their heads and being lifted up into the air on sharp spears. One young monk held a porcelain bowl by his abdominal muscles and invited members of the audience, who formed a conga line in front of him, to pull it off. The men tried their damnedest to pull it away, as their loved ones in the audience tried their damnedest to capture it all on camera. Of course the men failed, and fell down in a comical clownish heap of bodies to general laughter, the bowl, not the young monk, breaking.

Around 527 AD the monk Boddhidarma sat in a cave above the Shaolin Temple for nine whole years. Some say it was because of his dismay at the poor physical condition of the monks, some that it was to express his lack of recognition for the external, materialist trappings of this tainted world, his belief that the inner was much more important, and much more real, than the outer. I wonder what brought him out of that spell. Why did he decide to end his exile, his absolute rejection of this world, after nine years? Was it the singing of a songbird? Was it the fall and smell of fresh rain on stone? Was it the innocent cry of a young woman's voice? Or had he decided that nine years, nine years, was just the right amount of time?

Whatever it was, he called it: 'The Nothingness of Everything'. I can't help but wonder what would happen if someone sat in a cave like this now. Would he or she be topic of choice on talk shows and political programmes? Would helicopters fly overhead with film crews hanging out of them? Would there be rows of gift shops up to the cave and tour guides selling tickets? Because now this place, once so holy, preaches 'The Everything of Nothingness'. Buy your tourist junk, take your photos, watch the clowns and acrobats, then go home and tell your friends all about it. Except, what is there really to tell?

The Forest of the Dagobas

If Qin Shi Huang in Xi'an was turning in his grave, then the Shaolin Monks were having theirs trampled over in the Forest of the Dagobas. Every monk of significance who had died throughout the history of the temple had been buried here, on his grave erected a decorative sandstone pillar, some of up to thirty feet high. Tam and I sat on a low wall and watched the obelisk-like gravestones glow a sad golden-brown in the sun, surrounded by a multicoloured throng of tourists taking photographs. However, the people did walk along the tree-lined gravel paths less hurriedly, with less pushing and shoving, and less noise than usual, as if imbued by an air of semi-reverence in this peaceful place.

Later, Rebecca and I ate at an out-of-the-way noodle shack, deep forests on the slopes below us, mountain peaks appearing from behind mist above. As the sun burned through, it was like a pair of curtains had been pulled open, and suddenly we could see the magisterial beauty of the place. You could see why it had been the chosen retreat of the monks: tranquil, contemplative, glorious and inaccessible. And you could almost imagine, squinting your eyes a bit so that the souvenir stalls, crowds of people, huge tour busses and dirty roadside restaurants disappeared for a few seconds, what it must have been like hundreds of years ago as a shaven-headed, orange-garbed novice, the Masters wizened, gnarled old men who still packed a punch, the old wooden temples quietly spectacular, cow-bells and chanting the only noise, the forests and mountains hiding you and your austere ways away from the rest of the world until, after a life of study, contemplation, meditation and kung-fu, you were laid to rest with a proud golden-brown pillar over your head which caught the sun and glowed every late-afternoon into eternity.

Breakfast in the Dirtiest Restaurant in the World

2008-11-02T16:14:00.001-08:00

After a restless sleep, trains honking and shunting, shouts from the card school repeatedly waking us up, we got up and got ready to make our pilgrimage to the Shaolin Temple. However, you can't make a pilgrimage on an empty stomach.

At the unholy hour of 6.45 am, there was only one little restaurant open near the train and bus stations: a filthy hut with two pock-marked plastic tables, which looked like they'd suffered terrible acne in their adolescence, thick black dirt on the, well, dirt floor, and a grubby blue-eyed cat, chained to the wall, which perhaps once was white but had become an indefinable shade of brown. The cooking was done out on the street, which happened to be the bus depot parking lot, so the food was given an extra-smoky carbon monoxide flavouring. The veg prep was carried out on a rough wooden trestle alongside the two tables by an old man with a bad cold who sneezed continuously over the food then wiped his nose with his sleeve. Our tea was poured into glasses so chipped, that the chips were actually holding the glass together, aided by a thick brown scum around the inside which had long since rendered them non-transparent.

I reached over to pet the manky cat, feeling sorry for it, after watching it being booted around by one of the serving staff. I thought better of it when I saw the desperate hunger in its eyes. Skin and fur hung loose from its long bony body. It looked at my hand and licked its lips in anticipation of its first square meal in ages: my fingers. Rebecca prodded her boiled tea-egg with a chopstick. Trying to play the hardened China expert, I told her not to worry, that sometimes these places with lots of character served the best food.

'Does the dirt come on top of the character, or the character on top of the dirt?' she inquired.

Luoyang

2008-11-02T15:46:00.000-08:00

We're now in a city called Luoyang, western Henan province, the capital of China during the Northern Wei dynasty (AD 493), now a middle-sized city of change, building sites, torn-up pavements and KFC's. It's our stop-off point to get to the Shaolin Temple, home of gong fu, where we're headed tomorrow. Hua Fei didn't turn up at Xi'an station, and I wasn't sure if I felt relieved or disappointed. Perhaps both. The six-hour train journey proved to be similarly uneventful, apart from a hilarious conversation with an inquisitive old woman, conducted purely from badly pronounced sentences torn from our Lonely Planet Mandarin phrasebook and extreporous sign language.

We'd planned to stay at what our guidebook had described as a tall, white, clean hotel opposite the train station, but had found this place covered in green-canvassed scaffolding. We were persuaded to stay next door by a tall, scruffy, untrustworthy-looking guy in long green army jacket, eventually agreeing, just to get away from the crowd of people who had clustered around us, gawking as if at some kind of circus sideshow.

The hotel consisted of two dingy corridors with a wooden table at the entrance, which was both the reception desk and, later on, home to a noisy and degenerate card school that kept us awake until the early hours of the morning. It was but one annex of a rambunctious building also home to a hospital and post office. In our room, a layer of brown dust had settled onto a layer of grease, which had itself settled onto every available tabletop, skirting board and chair. If you touched anything your hand stuck to it, leaving a layer of skin as you ripped it off. The carpets were threadbare, the seventies-style pagoda wallpaper damp and rotten. But we did have hot water, and a big television, with remote control still encased in its polythene wrapping.

At one point during the evening, the tall scruffy guy knocked on our door and entered without waiting for an answer. His long green coat was now mysteriously emblazoned with shiny golden buttons. He produced a bunch of red paper tickets from a pocket and asked us if we wanted to go to the Shaolin Temple tomorrow. We eyed him suspiciously. Don' wahrree he reassured us in broken English, I is policeman. We declined politely. He stood there for about five minutes, a hurt expression on his face, fingering his shiny buttons, then left.

We walked into the city, looking for restaurants and Internet bars, and found a place where we were served what they claimed to be gong bao ji ding (spicy Sichuan chicken and peanuts), but looked more like white offal. As we ate, a young boy outside of maybe six years old stared at us, nose against the glass. We made faces at him and he looked at us with a mixture of wonder and incredulity. He then ran off, to return with a gang of urchins, holding a tiny girl up so she could get a better look at the weird foreign clowns performing tricks.

Hua Fe

2008-10-29T17:47:00.000-07:00

14/02/02 (cont.)

Hua Fe works part-time in the club we went to last night to fund her English study at Xi'an University. She came over to our table to practice her English and we quickly struck up a conversation, shouting to each other over the dance music.

The first thing I noticed, as usual, were her eyes. They're huge, like the exaggeratedly wide eyes of a character in a Japanese manga cartoon; deep, dark black with a shimmering hazel glow, they mist over like a rainy day when she's tired or bored, but widen and sparkle when she laughs into two luminous planets. She wears her hair short, spiked and gelled, has perfect tiny white teeth, and a sensuous expressive mouth. When she frowns her forehead wrinkles like a baby's, when she laughs the wrinkles melt away, and two large dimples appear underneath her cheekbones. Her character, as I found out, is a messy, perhaps even unstable mixture of the fun and the serious, the modern and the conventional, the fearless and the timid.

I was quite proud of my own bravery, as we were leaving the club the night before, to pluck up the courage and ask her out on a date in front of the giggling bar staff. She pulled her serious face, wrinkling her brow, then the dimples appeared, she smiled, and accepted. It was only later that I realised that we'd be meeting on Valentine's Day. At MacDonald's, no less, which was packed full of couples taking advantage of the western-style fast-food 'romantic specials'. I got there at three on the dot, Yesterday by the Beatles blaring at a cringe-inducing volume from the restaurant's speakers, and waited. I thought she was going to stand me up, but no, here she was, short, curved figure, short, gelled hair, big eyes all aglow.

We went to an expensive coffee bar which had a great view of the main shopping street, hordes of couples arm-in-arm, families, kids, street beggars, pickpockets, all down below. The staff were unfriendly and abrupt, perhaps because they had to work on Valentine's Day, perhaps because they objected to seeing a local girl with a western man, perhaps because they were just miserable bastards. The coffee was extortionate, the banana chips stale. After the first gush of formalities and polite phrases, a silence descended, too soon, on our date. To gee things up a bit, I asked Hua Fe to teach me some Chinese that would be useful for my travels and bless her, she did, thoroughly, scribbling down the words on paper napkins and the backs of receipts.

When that gimmick had run out of steam, I tried to ask Hua Fe about her life. She resisted any questions she thought too personal or off-limits, and more than once I found myself backtracking, changing the subject, even apologising. I felt like I was pressuring her, but didn't really understand in what way. Simple questions about home or study brought back that furrowed brow, that narrowing of her gorgeous eyes, a tsk! noise from her pursed mouth. What I found out about Hua Fe:

She was very tired, perhaps even depressed. Her family lived in a small town outside of the city and couldn't afford to fund her studies. She had to work nights in the noisy, smoky club, harassed by men, belittled by bosses, to pay the bills. She came home every night with a headache, exhausted, but couldn't sleep. This played havoc with her study: she regularly fell asleep in lectures, forgot new vocabulary, or simply had no free time, so she was falling behind and getting low grades. I compared Hua Fe with some of the richer students at the Star, and pondered the unfairness of the world. She missed her family, but due to lack of money and her work, hadn't even been able to go home for the Spring Festival. She didn't even know if she could continue at university next year, but had no idea what she would do, what kind of job she could get, if she had to drop out.

Hua Fe was working that evening at 5, but her life story, winkled out of her bit by bit, took up so much time we didn't leave the coffee shop until well after 6 pm. When I told her I was leaving the next day, she offered to come to the station to make sure I got on the right train. I told her not to worry, I didn't want to trouble her. She took umbrage to this. I relented, backtracked, said of course that would be very kind. She changed her mind, said she wouldn't come if I didn't want her to. I ended up telling her I did want her to, although by that stage, I really didn't.

Phew! Our first, and last, tiff, in front of the grumpy waiting staff, who looked at her with cold told-you-so expressions on their faces. Hua Fe exacted her revenge out in the street: she had to rush to work and, when I offered to walk her there, she refused point-blank, stomping off without looking back.

The Terracotta Warriors

2008-10-29T17:30:00.001-07:00

14/02/02

Forty-five minutes on the number 306 bus took us to the Terracotta Army.

After running the gauntlet of tourist shops on the approach to the site, we were met by a series of buildings that resembled a business park (which is kind of appropriate). But for the numerous signs advertising the Warriors, we could have been looking at call-centres, car dealerships or offices, neat landscaped trees and patches of grass completing the effect. For some reason, I felt a surge of disappointment. Still, it wasn't the outside of the buildings we were there to see.

On entering Pit 1, a huge aircraft-hangar of a building, I was suddenly struck by a flashback to my childhood. I was about ten years old, queuing in the rain with my parents on Waverley Bridge in Edinburgh. A long line of people were waiting patiently, excitedly, to see these ancient pottery warriors, recently discovered, and come all the way from China. I remembered standing opposite these strange old soldiers, not much taller than myself, and aping their expressions and poses, each one of them different, inscrutable and eerie...

Pit 1 houses the main collection of troops, the size and number impressive. You're not allowed to take photographs, so Danuka spent most of the time glancing about furtively, before firing off secretive snaps. I felt sorry for the broken warriors, jagged and cracked, left to lie in discarded piles at the edges of the pits like bits of sliced-up dead around a battlefield. Despite the casualties, however, there's a standing army of thousands.

By far and away the best pieces are the ones in glass display cases, which you can scrutinise close-up. You can really appreciate the detail that's gone into each unique figure, and it makes you wonder if they were actually modelled on real soldiers, now long dead, but cast into a strange immortality they could never have imagined. A portly, jolly looking general grins out at you, an archer takes aim with an intent expression of concentration, a cavalryman proudly holds a beautiful horse by its reigns.

Of course, these warriors were never meant to be unearthed, but were to protect the tomb of Qin Shi Huang from looters, invaders, mortal and immortal enemies. It's estimated that, in the three pits, there were originally 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses. I wonder if he's now turning in his grave

Tam, Danuka and Rebecca decided to visit his tomb, but I had more contemporary concerns. I had a date.

Xi'an

2008-10-29T16:34:00.000-07:00

13/02/02

We emerged from the depths of Xi'an train station, sometime in the early morning, into a dazzling throng of touts, tourists, travellers and taxi drivers, the rising sun shimmering madly in the craterous puddles of a recent rainstorm.

The people from the Youth Hostel, who we'd spoken to on the phone the day before, had promised to meet us at the station, but never turned up. After a deceptively short taxi ride, for an exorbitantly high fee, we eventually arrived at the hostel, which is situated in a dark little nook beside the South Wall, to find everyone asleep.

The hostel was damp and dingy. There was no hot water until 5 pm and the charges per night were much higher than we'd been quoted on the phone. We briefly discussed finding another place to stay, but exhaustion got the better of us. We were shown down to a dank stale-smelling basement, to rooms that looked more like torture chambers than dorms, which were 35 Yuan per night. Danuka and Tam took one room, with four hard beds and a bare electric bulb the only adornments. Rebecca, our new travelling companion, and myself, asked to be shown to the luxury suites upstairs, which also proved to be cold rooms with hard beds and bare electric bulbs, only not as damp as in the basement. Which, I guess, explained why they were fifteen Yuan more expensive.

After a cold shower, we went out into the ancient fortified city to get our bearings. Four high walls enclose the old town of Xi'an, with gates to north, south, east and west like a giant square compass. Dead in the centre lies a huge ornate Bell Tower. Follow the hand of the compass west along a straight road and you come to the Drum Tower, so-called because a huge red drum has somehow been built into the structure of the building, and hangs enormous in a feat of improbable engineering. The Drum Tower is a gateway into Xi'an's Muslim Quarter, which is the most interesting and atmospheric part of the city: narrow, smoky, tree-lined streets, filled with all kinds of food stalls, bird markets, and junk shops. You can buy anything from an ocelot fur to a mina bird in these narrow smokey streets, which are full of noise, cooking and people. The Muslim men wear flat round white hats and talk in a language quite different from the guttural Mandarin I've become used to.

Situated in the heart of the Muslim Quarter, the Great Mosque is interesting for its Chinese, rather than Arabic, architecture and landscaping. It dates back as far as the Tang dynasty. Apart from the Hui muslim minority people actually using the place for worship, we were the only ones there.

Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said for the Dacien Si, or Temple of Grace, which was chock-a-block with tour groups. The Big Goose Pagoda towered sombrely above the multitude of people pushing and shoving below it. We decided not to bother, and instead went to the Shaanxi History Museum, which was expensive, but worth every Yuan. Shaanxi province is a major site of archaeological interest, full of artefacts proving this part of China to be one of the oldest civilisations outside of Africa. The museum is modern and well-lit, and takes you through the ancient history of this country via weaponry, cooking utensils, pottery, brass and jade, china and wood, crockery, clothing, ornaments and religious and funereal paraphernalia. I could have spent two days, rather than two hours, in the place.

On the way back from the museum, we accidentally stumbled across a rough and ready little fair, hidden inside a high-walled courtyard. Coconut shies, shooting galleries and candyfloss stalls mingled with large penned-off areas full of cans of fizzy juice, beer, packets of cigarettes, remote control cars and other children's toys. To win one of these prizes you had to roll a plastic hoop along the ground, hoping it would fall and encircle one of them. You could keep your prize, or gamble it against winning another one. Crowds of people were rolling rings, gambling, gesticulating, cheering and groaning, kids everywhere, men spitting and laughing at their friends' good or bad luck.

I felt that, in one afternoon, I'd seen the many faces of developing China: the spiritual, the historical, and the here-and-now. What they had in common was being sliced up and sold off to the highest bidder.

One wonders if China will win the big prize, or gamble all and lose.

New Year

2008-10-25T23:29:00.000-07:00

11/02/02 - 12/02/02

It's New Year's day, and I'm sitting at a plastic table in a hard-sleeper carriage of the night train to Xi'an. Now and again, red, green and yellow fireworks explode in the darkness outside, reminding me of my own celebrations last night. I feel like I've left home. When we departed this evening, there was much exchanging of email addresses and promises of keeping in touch forever. Which, of course, will never happen.

Last night, New Year's eve, started with dumplings in the hostel kitchen. Everything had been prepared by the sweet and energetic female staff. All us foreigners had to do was put the pork into the dough and wrap it up, but all my efforts looked like car wrecks. Rebecca, on the other hand, got the hang of it after a few minutes, coercing the lumpy bits of goo into pretty packages. When it came to eating them, I carefully avoided the ones crafted by my clumsy hands, and went for Rebecca's instead. Suddenly I felt a sharp pain, something metallic in my mouth. I complained about the alien object in my dumpling. The Chinese girls laughed and said that I'd found the One Yuan coin.

'I think I just lost a filling.' I whined, rubbing my sore mouth.

'No, it's good news. There is only one coin, and you got it. It means you'll be lucky.'

I tongued my skinned gum, trying to look cynical, then saw Marina smiling at me and couldn't help smiling back. As I did so, I made a silent wish on that lucky coin.

Over the last few days, Marina and I had been inseparable. We seemed to be constantly in conversation, and had even begun doing that bumping-together-as-you-walk thing that people do when they're attracted to each other. I loved her placid sky-blue eyes and shy, serious mouth. A mixture of the imperturbable and the vulnerable, looking at her face was like looking at the sky on a spring day, feeling the beauty and provenance of the world, but knowing that clouds could come at any minute.

Our group of friends walked down the market streets, looking for fun. Fireworks lit up the night sky. I was itching to hold Marina's hand, but couldn't figure out a suitably nonchalant way do it, so that it didn't seem overly serious. I settled for a nudge, pretending to point out a firework. She nudged back. At the club, we watched as Paulien became embroiled in her usual bout of haggling with the barman. Despite her angry demeanor during these sessions, I was convicned she actually enjoyed it. Perhaps she was addicted to the adrenalin rush of justification and pride that came after her usual victory. This time, however, they were wise to her.

PAULIEN: No no no! You said, one karaoke room, two packet cigarettes, twelve beer and one red of wine for two hundred!

BARMAN: No no no no no! I say, one ka la okay loom, one packet cigarette, but no beer or led of wine for two hunled!

PAULIEN (shaking her fist in the air): Right! I've had it! Boycott! Boycott!

And she led our group right of the club and never came back. Marina and I didn't follow them, however, we stayed on the dancefloor. As we danced, I began to suffer from an overwhelming sense of déjà vu, as images of dancing here with Frauke just a few nights ago, and being unable to pluck up the courage to kiss her, flashed through my brain. I pulled Marina close and buried my face in her candy hair, but still I couldn't kiss her. What was wrong with me? For some reason I remembered, in one of my favourite Spiderman comics as a kid, how Spidey had lost his special powers but still had to fight every one of his arch enemies, one-by-one.

Then Marina said:

'I think I'm going to kiss you now.'

I was enraptured. That proximity, that touch, that smell, that softness! Fireworks boomed outside, dance music boomed inside, lights flashed, and young, drunk, happy locals whooped and danced around, bringing in their New Year, Marina and I locked tight together in their midst.

This afternoon, New Year's day, I took one final walk through the colourful market streets, to buy Marina a present. She'd spent the day in bed with a migraine. When I knocked on the girls' door back at the hostel, Helena answered in her pyjamas. I caught sight of Marina, snuggled up in bed, and felt like jumping in beside her and never coming out again. Helena shook her awake, and she slowly, painfully, got up, stretching like a long yellow cat. She padded softly over and held me in a short, ambiguous hug. I gave her the jade necklace I'd bought, one single green bead on a red string, symbolic of good luck for the New Year, symbolic that anything was possible for her, for me, but probably not for us. She kissed me silently on the cheek, put it in her pyjama pocket, and went back to bed.

Hutongs

2008-10-25T22:05:00.000-07:00

09/02/02 - 10/02/02.

In Beijing there are endless amounts of street markets, parks, temples and galleries, but the most interesting areas by far are the hutongs. To find them, all you have to do is turn down an alleyway, any old alleyway will do, and suddenly it's not an alleyway any more, but in fact a wormhole in time that takes you back to the Beijing of half a century ago.

You wander down narrow dirt streets lined by rows of ramshackle huts, many with falling-in roofs or broken windows. The streets interconnect with haphazard, illogical nature, and you're lost in minutes. Motorbikes and taxis rush past at dangerous speeds, honking their horns. There's food and cooking everywhere: rusty braziers with smoky sweet potatoes; candied crab apple sellers on bikes, their long sticks of candy precariously perched; stands of raw meat putrifying in the spring sunshine; dumplings steaming in stacked wicker baskets. Old people play cards or mah jhong in shaded ground floor rooms. Men spit and piss with impunity. Children play tag around piles of garbage in the gutter.

The hutongs have a vitality - and an indiscipline - that the clean, policed, sanitised version of Beijing sorely lacks. I guess that's one of the reasons why they're being systematically demolished.

The Chairman Mao Nightlight Hangover Cure

2008-10-22T17:49:00.000-07:00

08/02/02

I awoke at 8.30 am on the dot, after exactly three hours sleep, rolled out of bed, remembering too late that I was on the top bunk, and clattered to the floor. I instantly regretted being conscious. I felt awful, sick and giddy. My head ached and my parched throat felt as if someone had taken a razor blade to it during the night. I would have gone straight back to bed, but I couldn't negotiate the stepladder.

I needed a hangover cure.

Tam eventually got up and we formed a two-point plan of action. First, to the MacDonald's next to Tiananmen Square where, two large coffees, French fries, cokes and Big Macs later, we felt ready to confront the embalmed corpse of the most famous Chinaman since Confucius, the theory being that seeing someone who looked worse than us might actually make us feel better. It was worth a try.

You can see Chairman Mao, weirdly serene in his glass case, in his tomb on Tiananmen Square, every morning between 8.30 and 11.30. If you're not squeamish about these things, or if you have a dark, ironic or just downright ghoulish sense of humour, then I heartily recommend it. It's a bizarre and rather funny experience and, unexpectedly, free.

You're marched two-by-two towards the tomb by a platoon of young soldiers in green uniform. Then they stop you, in order to explain the rules:

1. You are to take off your hat.
2. You are not allowed to stop for a closer look.
3. You are not allowed to take photographs.
4. You are to maintain an appropriately respectful demeanour at all times.
5. You must not talk.
6. You must not laugh or smile.
7. You must submit unquestioningly to these rules.

I wrung my blue woolly hat in my hands and gritted my teeth. I caught Tam's eye and saw he was of the same mind: we had to separate, or we'd break out into giggles.

The two lines were then told to start shuffling into the tomb. One line goes round to the left of the glass case, one round to the right. Nobody talks, smiles or stops. Some of the old-school Chinese actually make little bows as they pass their prone ex-demigod. Some just stare open-mouthed. The man himself lies there with an enigmatic smile on his face, looking waxy and unreal. Bright spotlights below his head and shoulders up-light him so that his face glows a luminous shade of orange. He shines like a nightlight, the kind you give children afraid of the dark. The Chairman Mao nightlight: available at an Ikea store near you. This was too much. How can they present you with this then order you not to laugh? I glanced over at Tam, and saw he had his knuckle in his mouth.

Outside the tomb, on either side down the steps, are trinket stalls selling all kinds of tacky Mao memorabilia: watches, plaques, pop art T-shirts, pendants, wall hangings. I wondered whether this was not more disrespectful to their glorious leader than Tam and I could ever be.

In fact, in Beijing there's a whole industry of Mao. I'd bought my fair share in the market the day before, in the shape of a watch with, instead of Mickey Mouse on the face, a cartoon image of Mao waving one arm in frantic salute to denote the passing seconds. What can I say? I just had to have it. I was persuaded to pay thirty Yuan for it, which was far too much, by a bubbly, persistent, pretty woman who, after we'd paid for our purchases, still wouldn't let us leave. Make hay while the sun shines, she was obviously thinking. Or, take the stupid foreigners for every penny you can get. At one point, she was gripping Tam by one arm, not letting him escape, while I was pulling him by the other, trying to drag him away. We stretched him out between us like two medieval torturers, as a crowd of onlookers gathered to watch the comedy performance of the two foreign clowns and the unstoppable shopkeeper.

THE BIG MAN's

2008-10-22T16:39:00.000-07:00

07/02/02

The best parties often occur when you've no plan and everything just happens spontaneously. This was Danuka's 28th birthday. The fact that we celebrated it twice as hard as she did herself hardly seems to matter.

That evening, more backpackers arrived, including Aaron, a tall softly-spoken Canadian, and two cute blonde Finnish girls, Helena and Marina, who were most definitely invited. Along with Karst and Paulien, a Dutch couple we've known for a few days, and Rebecca, as well as assorted others, we made up a real multi-national group. To round it all off, Frauke turned up too.

We headed out towards the market area, where Danuka spotted a lively looking restaurant. What an inspired choice it proved to be. It was the kind of Beijing restaurant where the waiters sing you a greeting as you walk through the door. The place had a nice blend of the old and the modern, its polished pinewood furnishings augmented by bright neon and a VCD player attached to a massive TV, that played Hong Kong and Taiwan pop music at way too loud a volume. The food was tasty, spicy and cheap, and the beer came in massive ice-cold pitchers.

If a business is the reflection of the inner spirit of its owner, then picture with me THE BIG MAN: a huge genial pot-bellied Pooh Bear of a man, grubby T-shirt rolled up for ventilation leaving a beachball-sized stomach to wobble underneath with a vitality all its own. A face of idiosyncratic wrinkles, kind eyes and a constant grin. Hearing it was Danuka's birthday, he arranged the tables for us in the middle of the room, stuck on a really bad Michael Jackson VCD, and proceeded to spoil us with discount food, peanuts, sunflower seeds and (personally) hand-rolled cigarettes made from a wretched, lung-busting tobacco.

Three hours later, as 'They Don’t Care About Us' is being drowned out by dozens of chopsticks hammering on any available glass, plate or table-top, Tam and THE BIG MAN are arm in arm.

TAM: Karaoke, zai nar?

He strikes a corny pose, one hand held out in front of him like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.

THE BIG MAN: Aaaaah! Ka la okay! Wo zhe dao!

THE BIG MAN mimics Tam's pose so that it looks like they're miming a romantic duet.

THE BIG MAN takes us all the way down the street to a club, talks to the manager to make sure he looks after us, then leaves. We'd eaten and drunk in his restaurant for over three hours, till after midnight, and it had only cost the twelve of us 180 Yuan.

Everybody was up dancing in the club, except for Danuka who, sometime after twelve, had said, 'Right, it's not my birthday anymore,' and had walked out on her own party. Tam was on the stage with a Finnish girl on each arm, Karst was dancing with epileptic rock-star madness, a bevy of gob-smacked Chinese girls in satellite around him, Aaron and Rebecca and Paulien were in their own wee private groovy worlds, but I never really noticed much more after that, as I was dancing with Frauke. I couldn't take my eyes off her. She had this really cute way of twining her arms and raising them above her head, whilst simultaneously wiggling her slim hips and shaking her head from side to side until her blonde shining hair unclasped itself anarchically and fell about her face. I tried to remain as co-ordinated as possible and not fall over my own feet.

As we danced she told me she was going back to Germany the next day. I could hardly hide my disappointment. I weighed up the options: suggest that we go back to her hotel, and make mad passionate love all night, or put my foot in it by suggesting exactly that, breaking the spell of friendship that had grown between us. I plumped for the latter. This was either strangely sensitive of me, or an act of total cowardice - I'm not sure which - and somewhere in there lies the difficult dichotomy of being a bloke.

Sometime later...

PAULIEN: No! You said, one karaoke room, two packet cigarettes, twelve beer and one red of wine for two hundred.

BARMAN: No no no no no! I say, one ka la okay loom, one packet cigarette, six beer but no led of wine for two hunled.

Sometime later still...

ME: She's leaving on a jet plane. Don't know if she'll be back again.

We sang, badly, in a karaoke room above the dancefloor till 5 am. Red of wine included. Wobbly and hoarse, I walked Frauke to the nearest main road, as the first rays of light poked through a peachy-pink dawn. She flagged down a taxi, kissed me on the cheek, got in, and sped away into the new day.

The Wall

2008-10-16T17:12:00.000-07:00

06/02/02

We jumped onto the bus at 8 am and headed through and out of Beijing on a cool bright sunny morning. After a bumpy three-hour journey we were deposited at the side of a narrow sloping road, which would lead us all the way up to Jinshanling, and a ten kilometre stretch of The Great Wall taking us all the way to Simatai.

The approach to Jinshanling was spooky and surreal. We were the only people there. We walked past boarded-up shops and restaurants slowly being reclaimed by undergrowth, deserted houses so covered in fibrous fingery creepers it looked like they were having the life crushed out of them by giant spectral hands, and a silent funfair with rusting rides in the shape of giant animals, paint peeling, crying out in voiceless anguish for a pack of children to bring them back to life. My imaginary soundtrack to our walk up to The Wall was 'Ghost Town' by Coventry's finest, The Specials.

I guess the place must have once been a popular tourist destination, but hadn't seen any business in some time. I remembered the woman in the hostel the night before warning us that the walk from Jinshanling was long and tiring. Many tourists preferred the convenient on-and-off photo opportunity of Badaling. The 10 K's we wanted to walk saw The Wall slowly disintegrate, dangerously at times. This sounded perfect to me. Unfortunately for the long-gone funfair owners and restaurateurs, most tourists to The Wall seem to prefer the quick and easy these days.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah... Sometimes when you visit a renowned scenic spot or historical site, it proves to be a letdown. There are just too many tourists, and you can't see the place for the people; or it's being renovated and is covered in scaffolding; or it just doesn't look so grand as you'd seen it on TV or in the guidebooks. For us, The Wall exceeded our wildest expectations. As we ascended, stepped onto the walkway, looked around, it grabbed every morsel of air in our lungs and ripped it out.

This feeling of awe doesn't leave you. Every time you reach a high point or turn a corner, you see The Wall snaking in front of you for miles on end, or plummeting behind you into a stark ravine. The barren brown conical mountains of Simatai dominate the landscape with their sheer slopes ahead, the smaller hills of Jinshanling surround you and, for as far as you can see and on every ridge lies The Wall, a coiled snake, a whipped tail, an outstretched leg, a wisp of an eyelash. Sometimes it sits like a superimposed image against the blue sky in front of you, sometimes it looks like a bomb has exploded below, as you clamber down and over a crumbled mass of sandstone boulders.

Tranquil, tiring, affecting, memorable, the quiet hush of the windless day, the blue sky, the dry barren hillsides, the deserted watchtowers, the curve and snake of The Wall, brought about in us an almost spiritual calm, a sombre hush like that inside a cathedral. Not even the gangs of persistent postcard-hawkers tugging at our sleeves for half the way could bring us down. The Wall could have been some kind of alien temple, left behind aeons ago to a long-forgotten god.

Even the descent full of rogues and cheats couldn't spoil our mood. We had to get off The Wall at the Simatai gate then descend to the bottom, where we'd pick up our minibus again. As we tried to leave we were stopped by two 'guards', barring our path down the narrow slope, a sheer drop to our right, a sheer cliff face to our left. The men demanded 30 Yuan each from us, in order to enter Simatai. We explained that we weren't going up to Simatai, but were, in fact, heading down to our bus. No matter, we still had to pay. Then we turned a corner and were confronted by a deep ravine, the only way across a rickety rope-bridge. Of course, another two men were on guard to extort five Yuan each to simply get across it. After all this, we were half an hour late for our bus which, surprisingly, was still waiting for us at the bottom of the hill.

Frauke

When I think of The Great Wall in my dotage (not long now...), I'll most likely always associate it with a lovely German girl called Frauke. She was the only other passenger on our bus wanting to tackle the ten kilometre hike from Jinshanling, and not just continue on to Simatai and ascend from there.

Serene, dreamy blue eyes, the same colour and shade, I noticed, as the fragile blue sky above us as we walked The Wall; a serious, soft, pale face; neat, blonde hair, swept back in a ponytail; easy-going attitude; relaxed and interesting in conversation. We walked and talked about books, Europe, politics, travel.

Frauke had been working in Shanghai, for a German law firm, had finished her stint in China and was now taking the chance to see some of it. She came from Hamburg, but lived in Berlin. She described and contrasted the two cities to me: in Berlin the people are more uptight, trying too hard to be cool, fashionable, whereas in Hamburg people are more relaxed, not so worried about being cool as much as enjoying themselves. I got the feeling Frauke’s personality was stuck somewhere between the two cities, but her heart was in Hamburg.

I'm sure I'd felt something clicking between us. On the bus back to Beijing, as the driver swore uncontrollably in a thick Beijing dialect at the slow-moving rush-hour traffic, and Tam delighted in his new-found Chinese skills by translating all the swear-words for the benefit of the other backpackers ('He just called that car driver a mother-fucking cunt!'), I tried to summon up the courage to ask Frauke out. Even just ask for her email address. Something, anything, that would mean that day, that feeling, hadn't slipped through my fingers like Simatai sand. As I procrastinated, Danuka seized the moment and, as well getting Frauke's email address, invited her to the celebrations we're planning for Danuka's birthday tomorrow night. Frauke promised she'd come.

A Tea Ceremony at The Forbidden City, sponsored by Nestlé

2008-10-16T16:47:00.000-07:00

05/02/02

Our hostel is located in an anarchic warren of ramshackle backstreets somewhere behind the south gate of Tiananmen Square. Turn left out of the hostel, walk through the atmospheric little streets, and you find yourself in a colourful, noisy, wonderful street market full of shoppers, bikers, rickshaw men, street vendors, students, medicine shops and restaurants. Red lanterns bob in the breeze; multi-coloured ticker-tape flags flutter above your head; red and gold New Year lucky hangings and pictures adorn every door. People grab at you, follow you, invite you into their shop or to their exhibition, which always seems to be on its last day and so has reduced prices especially for you. A hum of 'CD-DVD, CD-DVD' and 'Hello watch! Hello wallet!' follows you like a cloud of mosquitoes. Thumping Chinese dance music provides the soundtrack.

Turn left at the end of this bombardment of sound and colour, and you head towards the hub of the city, Tiananmen Square. The contrast between the warm, packed, noisy market streets and the wide-open space of the square hits you like a cold blast of air from a crypt as you approach. The busy streets give way to stern, stark, self-important government buildings and statues, each of them surrounded by acres of space on the massive square. A towering, phallic, white obelisk rises in ungainly fashion like an unwanted, embarrassing erection. A squat, wide, pillared building sits surrounded by vending stalls and guards, and is the home to the embalmed corpse of Chairman Mao. The most eye-catching building on Tiananmen Square is the entrance gate, called 'The Gate of Heavenly Peace', a grim misnomer if ever there was one. The gate, in its original form, was built in the fifteenth century, but destroyed and then rebuilt, like so many of China's cultural 'relics'. In 1949, Chairman Mao had stood up there and announced to the clamouring millions China's revolution, his legacy to crush their demonstrating descendents with tanks.

The centre of Beijing is an unholy triumvirate of architectural jumble. Here and there, you have the rebuilt or renovated relics of China's ancient history, colourful pagoda roofs and temples nestling quietly in tree-lined parks; in between lie the government buildings, humourless, ugly ducklings, ostentatious and masculine; all around this hotchpotch are thrusting, pushy high-rise shopping malls, office blocks and skyscrapers. This confusion of the old and the now, the ascetic and the political and the practical, the uncomfortable bedfellows of art, politics and business, left me unsure as to whether I thought Tiananmen Square and its environs fascinating, ugly or crude.

This confusion was intensified after buying my ticket to The Forbidden City (40 Yuan, off-season). I wish now I hadn't looked at the back of the ticket, but I did, to find out one of the most famous of China's historical and cultural landmarks was sponsored. By Nestlé. All images I had of Chow Yun Fat gliding over serried rooftops vanished in a flash. Pictured on the back of the ticket were twenty-odd children, all wearing the red neckerchief of the Communist Party's version of the Cub Scouts, all of them smiling inanely, each one holding up to the camera, for maximum product exposure, a different Nestlé drink.

The Forbidden City is so-called because for many years no one was allowed into it, except by royal decree. The Manchus destroyed it in the seventeenth century and thus it's another re-building job, from the eighteenth. There are 9,000 rooms apparently, but most were forbidden to us, either locked up or protected by red rope barriers; perhaps it was because it was the off-season. As we walked through the giant white courtyards, surrounded by mazes of pagoda rooftops, we at first enjoyed the peace, quiet and relative lack of tourist throngs, then began to get quite bored. In fact, we were dying for a cup of tea.

We found the Imperial Tearoom in an ornate, geometrical rockery with stone pathways, whorled limestone and ancient, gnarled pagoda trees. Here we were introduced to the traditional Chinese Tea Ceremony. Utensils:

One Teapot.
One Pouring Jug.
One Smelling Jug.
One Drinking Cup.

The crockery was decorated with pictures of dragons (to represent male) and phoenixes (female), which changed colour ingeniously from black to red as hot water was added to the utensil. Method:

1. All utensils are warmed with hot water.

2. Hot water is added to the pot then poured away. This cleanses the tea- leaves.

3. The pot is filled with hot water again and the tea left to infuse.

4. The tea is then transferred to the pouring jug.

5. The tea is poured from the pouring jug into the smelling cup.

6. The short, squat drinking cup is then put on top of the taller, narrower smelling cup, the whole lot flipped upside down, so the tea falls into the drinking cup.

7. Then you run the warm, aromatic smelling cup through your fingers and inhale the sweet fumes.

8. Then you drink once from the drinking cup for health.

9. Then once from the cup for wealth.

10. Then a third time, for happiness.

We left the Forbidden City full to the brim with tea, and wobbled our way through the side streets back to the hostel.

In the evening, after booking our tickets to the Great Wall, Danuka and I failed to catch up with the others who were going to the theatre to watch the Beijing Opera. We were hopelessly lost for a while, until an Irish theme bar appeared, offering over-priced Guinness. A strange trade-off: swapping fake Chinese culture laid on for the tourists for fake Irish culture laid on for the ex-pats. But at least the music was better.

Beijing

2008-10-14T17:37:00.000-07:00

04/02/02.

Beijing

We took the night train from Harbin to Beijing, in a six-bed 'hard sleeper' compartment, across from which were two hard plastic seats and a formica-topped table. Tam and I, unable to sleep, sat at the table most of the night playing cards. One month to travel around China, on trains, with only the Lonely Planet Mandarin Phrasebook and a vague plan of where to go!

I'm not sure if we were excited, or terrified, or both.

The next morning, we lugged our rucksacks out into warm, dry, sunlight-dappled Beijing streets and looked around in confusion: we were outdoors, and it was warm; what was going on? Getting carried away, we decided to walk to our Youth Hostel. Tam had a map, and it didn't look too far away. We found it easily enough; too easily, in fact. The girl at the desk told us we hadn't made a reservation. We showed her the receipt, and were told we were in the wrong hostel.

Back on the street, the taxi driver studied the name of the hostel then denied all knowledge of its existence. He asked his buddies. They conferred for a few minutes then corroborated his story: nah, this place doesn't exist... but don't worry, get in anyway! Forty-five minutes later, what looks like the same buildings are appearing then reappearing again and again. We were going round in circles. Clive, who is in Beijing with Tam, Danuka and I for just one day, before flying off to Dubai to visit his parents, swore at the taxi driver in Chinese for quite some time before he (the driver) suddenly cried, 'Oh! A-ha! That place!' and sped off in the direction he should have gone in the first place.

Not exactly an auspicious start to our tour. However, I had other portents on my mind.

The Watch

Before leaving Harbin, I'd made a promise to myself to put the ill feelings of the last few months behind me. I had missed her quite enough. It was time to start a new chapter.

As I went to chuck my bag under the X-ray machine at Harbin train station, it slipped from my shoulders, the strap tangling with the strap of my watch. The weight of the rucksack was too much for the watchstrap, which pinged and shattered, the watch falling from my wrist. The watch itself was undamaged, but the strap was knackered. The watch had been a birthday present from her, a memento of happier times. At first I felt upset and annoyed but, as I sat on the train mulling it over, I realised that it could easily be a good omen, that the last remnant of the chain, the chain of memory, the chain linking me to the past, to her, had been broken, and looked irreparable.

Philosophers, Fish, and Missing Persons

The hostel, which the taxi driver eventually found, was called the Far East International. I plug it shamelessly because it deserves it. Clean, bright, friendly, a nice blend of the old and the new. And cheap! You enter the place through a traditional courtyard to find cool tile-floored rooms with comfortable wooden furnishings and modern televisions and computers. A dorm room of four beds cost only forty Yuan per night. In the sitting room area there are round tables where you can write, and jasmine tea from which you can help yourself. It was so comfortable, we were afraid we would fall asleep and lose a whole afternoon. After some discussion, we decided not to waste any time, and headed straight for the Summer Palace.

The royal gardens of the Summer Palace have a chequered past. Favourite of the Emperor Qianlong in the 18th century, ransacked by the French and British in the nineteenth, to be rebuilt by the Dowager Cixi a few decades later, the area consists of connected parks, pagodas, temples and lakes and is magnificent and grand on a massive scale. Around every corner lies a garden, pagoda, river or ornate bridge, surrounded by forests, walkways, gnarled trees, statues, ancient pockmarked rocks and steps, steps and more steps. A long lake lies behind a colourful temple. A jade boat sits in frozen water. Paths of crazy paving lead you meanderingly through man-made waterways. In fact, water forms two-thirds of this royal retreat and lends the place a tranquil atmosphere.

My favourite place was the garden within a garden called 'The Harmonious Interest Garden'. Rather like The Mouse Trap, Hamlet's play within a play, the garden forms a microcosm of the Summer Palace as a whole, and is the crux of the imperial idea of harmony, philosophy, and a spiritual place of retreat. Small and compact, lacking the grand ostentation of other attractions in the park, it looks the kind of place where an emperor could hide away and lose himself in contemplation; equally, it would be perfect to steal away to with a concubine or two.

The garden consists of squat pagodas connected by stone pathways spanning inter-connecting channels of water, which were still more or less iced over at the time of our visit. Ornamental hump-backed bridges and leafless spindly trees completed the austere scene. Willows, bare and cold, let their thin bending branches fall and caress the icy water, as if weeping for splendorous bygone dynasties.

You could imagine the garden depicted in Chinese watercolour on rice paper, the droop of the willows accentuated, the curves of the bridges and angles of the paths intensified. I stood on a small bridge and let the afternoon sun bathe my forehead, willow branches brushing my cheeks. I felt calm in the sun. I remembered reading that, long ago here, two philosophers had stood in this very spot and talked, for some obscure reason, about fish. Perhaps they were wondering where the fish went when the water iced over in the winter.

The sun was beginning to melt the ice on the surface of the ponds. For the first time in months, sticks and branches, which must have been trapped the whole winter, were finding freedom. Light reflected from the tiny air bubbles in the thawing water around the edges of the branches, forming sparkling angled patterns on the surface.

I walked back towards our agreed-upon exit gate, warm and calm for the first time in months.

This feeling soon evaporated when, on meeting Tam and Clive at the gate, I found out Danuka was missing. We waited at the exit for over an hour, hoping she would turn up. The scene after the Tiger Park, where we three men had abandoned Gina, Anita and her mum in the freezing cold, immediately sprang to mind. I knew we couldn't leave without Danuka. Would she be able to find her way back alone? Did she even have the address of the hostel? (I didn't.) Would she be safe in this strange city at night?

The Summer Palace covers a huge area, and our chances of finding her in there were virtually zero. However, we couldn't just leave without her. We had to do something. Moreover, we were now being harassed by a woman who was talking about the size of western men's penises, making obscene gestures like elongated elephant trunks with her arms and fingers (she was also trying to sell postcards). I set off for the temple area, Tam went back to the lakes, and Clive volunteered to wait at the exit gate just in case Danuka arrived there later, wondering out loud if he shouldn't actually just wait for her in the MacDonald's across the road.

After three hours of fruitless searching, and countless descriptions in bad Chinese of a six-foot red-haired western girl wearing a long green coat, it got dark and cold and we decided to return to the hostel and consider what to do next from there. The park had closed, so there was no way, unless she was sleeping or unconscious, that Danuka was still in it. We caught a taxi back, entered the hostel with heads hung low, to find Danuka sitting with Gina, Anita, and her mum, who had arrived in Beijing the day before, all of them drinking jasmine tea with knowing looks on their faces. Natasha had somehow got back via a bus, a taxi and a police car. Meanwhile, our karma, in the physical manifestation of four righteous, angry women, had somehow followed us all the way to Beijing.

Holiday Haircuts

2008-10-11T22:42:00.000-07:00

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.

A Proposition at the Blue Kiss

2008-10-11T21:14:00.000-07:00

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.

Moonlighting with the Wu Chang Clan

2008-10-08T17:29:00.000-07:00

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?

The Tiger Park

2008-10-08T17:15:00.000-07:00

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.

The Ice Festival

2008-10-08T17:09:00.000-07:00

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.

Christmas 2001, in the Ice City

2008-10-08T16:54:00.000-07:00

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.

A Birthday Party

2008-09-23T17:48:00.000-07:00

The roads are all iced up now. It's getting really, really cold. A kind of cold I've never been confronted with before. Wet hair freezes into icicles. A runny nose becomes two tiny green glaciers on your top lip. Your ears throb and ache for hours if you go outside without your woolly hat. You lose sensation in your fingers and toes, despite fleece-lined boots and ski-gloves, after ten minutes of exposure. Sometimes I awake cold and never really warm up at all, just muddle through the day with a cold, frozen grin, that melts away when I get back to my room.

Last Sunday, the day after our break-up, I had been invited to Cindy's 18th birthday party. I had a shocking hangover, after a binge at the Gong Da university bars and clubs the night before. The last thing I remember was dancing round a pole, falling off the stage, lying on the floor giggling and wailing. I wasn't in a celebratory mood when I woke up that morning, to say the least.

Cindy sits quietly at the back of my PET1 class. Like almost all her peers, she's an only child. She wants to go abroad to study hotel management. She lives with her parents in a small but neat apartment in the Gong Da district, a stone's throw, I noted from the taxi window, from the clubs and bars I'd been making an arse of myself in the night before. Shoe-horned into the little flat were: Nancy and Kitty, from PET1, three students from PET2, the mother, an aunt, and a jug-eared cheeky little boy whose parental origin I never worked out. Cindy's aunt prepared the food while her mother conducted the proceedings. Her father, an engineer, was working late, and would join us later. I was the guest of honour, it seemed, and treated like a king.

Oranges were peeled on my behalf. As soon as I'd sucked my way through one carton of yoghurt, I was given another. I was fed pine nuts, peanuts, sunflower and melon seeds, then shown around the tiny place as if on a museum tour. The living room was wooden-floored, with a narrow kitchen and balcony off to the right. Apart from the table and chairs waiting patiently for our party, two wooden armchairs sat squat and stately either side of a black and red wall hanging with the Chinese character fu, which means good luck and fortune in the future. Cindy explained her father had bought this in Beijing, especially for her parents' wedding. I was asked to pose in front of it for a photo, one hand touching the picture, the other hand on my heart; this would bring me good luck in money and love. The irony didn't escape me, but I gamely kept in place my frozen grin. Cindy's room was smaller than my prison cell at the college, but tidy and warm, in girlish pastel colours, soft toys and teddy bears annexing the large bed, in the corner an expensive computer. I gave Cindy her birthday present, a calculator that told the time in ten different countries, and she giggled with glee and kissed me on the cheek.

Dinner was incredible. The highlight these huge, boiled bones with tiny tender scraps of juicy meat, from which you sucked the marrow out of with a straw, and a delicious local dish called suan cai, a mouth-wateringly bitter combination of starch noodles, sour cabbage and tiny bits of fried pork. The father, a wiry, talkative, beaming man who obviously doted on his only daughter, came back and we got stuck into the beer. Did a fair few gan bei's (which means you have to empty your glass) and began to feel better. The family started singing songs and, not wanting to be rude, I sang Happy Birthday, Floo'er o' Scotland, and Yesterday, the Paul McCartney song, which nearly stuck in my throat. After all that, I went home with half-a-dozen yoghurts, having to turn down an oft-repeated offer of a huge bag of egg fried rice, not wanting to seem greedy, as well as an open invitation to come back any time. This raised a smile from the cynics in the 5th floor lounge.

'You'll be married off to her soon, if you don’t watch yourself.'

This really wasn't funny. However, I felt a kernel of warmth inside me that didn't dissipate for days. Last night, in the taxi on the way to the bar, I looked out at the monotonous breeze-block Gong Da buildings, these massive soulless dwellings of thousands, and I realised that, in any strange city anywhere in the world, this faceless, uncaring façade can be instantly erased by imagining a family like Cindy's inside them. A city is not the sum of its outward appearance. For if Shanghai can be compared to a beautiful lady with bright make-up and dazzling clothes, or Beijing as a stunning, traditional woman in qi pau dress, then Harbin loses in comparison, looking more like a wrapped-up worker struggling through the freezing night. But this is all cosmetics. The heart of a city is its people, who live and work and love there.

Looking out of the dirty taxi window I could see, in my mind's eye, Cindy with her mother and father: true, generous people, filling their hard-earned little space in this world with love and light. The tower blocks, the icy cold, the darkness, all vanished for an instant.

The Crash

2008-09-23T17:25:00.000-07:00

I remember in our first meeting with Karen, we'd been told to watch out for The Crash.

'For the first two weeks to a month everything's so new, so exciting, you don't have time to physically adjust. You're just too busy, too blown-away by it all. Then you go through a sticky period when it all catches up with you. Then, at around the two-month point, you have The Crash. You get sick. Depressed. You miss home. You're exhausted. You're lonely. It sucks.’

I've had mine early.

Something had been wrong for a while. First, my girlfriend's computer wasn't working, then her college's too. Then, when she did contact me, her emails or phone calls were as cold as an ice lantern: you know there's a light inside, but you can't feel the warmth. She ceased to use the words essential in a relationship such as 'need', 'miss', or 'love'. She never asked how I was doing, and at the time I really wasn't doing too well. So I started telling her quite graphically how I was. I told her all about my Crash. I gave her all the details. Not trying to goad her into caring for me, more like trying to find out just how much she'd stopped caring.

I didn't ask for sympathy, just told her the facts: food poisoning, exhaustion, culture shock, isolation. In her replies to me she never showed any sign of concern. It was as if she were saying, 'Well, it was your decision to leave me and go to China. It's not my fault you're having a tough time'. True enough, but she didn't seem to realise I was having a tough time because I could feel her love for me slipping away by the day, and she didn't even want to talk about it.

She phoned on Friday and, somehow, was put through to my boss's office. He came in looking none too pleased to be carrying out my secretarial work, and told me there was a girl on the phone for me. Eyebrows rose in the teachers' office. She'd phoned to tell me that she wouldn't make our now not-so-regular Sunday phone call, as she was going clubbing in London. Had a semi-domestic in front of Charles. We resolved to sort things out on Monday morning but, after three almost sleepless nights, I couldn’t get through. Got up early Tuesday morning, Monday night her time, phoned, got through, ran into a wall of ice. Told her I missed her. Silence. Told her I loved her. Silence. Asked her why she couldn't reply. Silence. I hung up.

Got sick again during the week, and she didn't express one iota of concern. The only email I got was this:

'Hi,

I'm very tired because I've just finished a major report. My new horse is being a real sweetie at the moment. Getting on really well with her. Speak to you Sat.'

Which could be translated, or analysed, something like this:

'No 'dear' - I'm not going to say anything that might incriminate me later-

I'm very busy, so not going to spend a long time on this email. In fact, I haven't the time for you any more. I'm now talking about my horse as a defence mechanism. It saves me from having to talk about myself or my emotions. Anyway, I love my horse more than you. Face the facts. Speak to you Sat. so don't expect me to bother to get in touch until then.

No 'love', for the same reason as no 'dear'...

This was a reply to an email I'd sent telling her about my being off work with food poisoning and exhaustion.

When Saturday's call came around, she immediately adopted a cold tone of voice that suggested she didn't want to be there. She never asked me how I was. As an unsubtle icebreaker, I said:

'Look, I need to ask you something. I need to get this off my mind. Do you want out?'

'I don't know,' she replied.

I was practically spoon-feeding her an exit-plan, suggesting to her what I thought she wanted to say, but she couldn't admit it and I, stupidly, selfishly, didn't even realise that she might have been acting like this because of me, for me.

'What d'you mean you don't know?' I shouted down the phone. 'It's a simple enough question. A yes or no answer will do.'

Then it all, finally, came out.

'I don't know, Ross. Really. I just think... I just think that we're drifting apart, moving on with our lives. You sound so confident and happy in China [sic], and I'm beginning to feel the same in England. Everybody's been saying to me that I'm back to my old, confident best. I've got my sparkle back. And it sounds like you have too [double sic]. I just think that we're no good for each other anymore. I'm no good for you. We're just making each other unhappy now. We're changing, becoming different people, stronger people...'

'But but but that doesn't mean we can't be strong, change for the better, then sort our relationship out this time next year. Just because I'm becoming a stronger person out here doesn't mean I don't need you.'

I imagined her, long hair, bright smile, laughing at something.

'But, by the time you get back, we'll have changed so much it won't be us anymore.'

'That could be a good thing.'

'I don't think so.'

'You've obviously been thinking about this a lot.'

A loaded question.

'A bit.'

'So why the fuck didn't you talk to me about it? Why didn't you tell me you were having doubts, instead of giving me the cold shoulder treatment?'

‘...’

'Well, it'll be the last time.'

A silly thing to say. It was her dumping me, after all.

'I know it will be,' she said.

'I just wish you'd told me sooner.'

'I'm telling you now.'

'Is there someone else?'

'Of course not.'

And suddenly I was five thousand miles from home, alone.

A Stay of Execution

2008-09-18T17:35:00.000-07:00

On Monday it was her twentieth birthday. When I heard her voice crackling and time-delayed over the phone line, I don't think I've ever wanted to set eyes on someone, hold someone, so much in my life. I was conscious of the fact that I shouldn't get upset, in case I spoiled her day, but it was tough. When I put down the phone there was this long dark stretch of emptiness ahead of me.

Got some of the frustration out of me at gong fu on Monday, but by the time Wednesday came around, I felt too tired to go. Teaching is wearing me out. I'm still new to it and know I'm making lots of mistakes, which contribute to my students' unstinting demonstrations of ennui. To add to that, I'm not clicking with PET3 at all. In fact, they hate me. I walk out of the class every afternoon in a foul mood and then worry about it until the next day. Karen observed one of my lessons with them and it was a nightmare. One boy set fire to the curtains. Another boy and girl started kissing in class, tongues and all. Half the students refused to answer my questions or speak any English at all for the duration. I'm sure it was deliberate. Karen was remarkably sanguine and helpful about it in our feedback session afterwards. I just have to connect with them, apparently.

And the dreams. I've been having the most vivid nightmares that waken me up at 4 am every morning. Different every time, though they seem thematically linked. I then lie awake and watch the morning light creep under the curtains until my clock alarm rings my 7 am wake-up. In my dreams she always looks different from how I remember her. Hair shorter, straighter and more business-like, out are the funky halter-necks, big jeans and short-sleeved T-shirts, in are dark-coloured skirts and jackets. She's not mine anymore.

I dream I'm following her about a strange, dark house. She tries to avoid me, pretends she doesn't notice me, and act as if she doesn't know me when I catch up with her. It seems as if she's waiting for someone, someone not me, and my presence is entirely inconvenient. I dream I'm fleeing from, or fighting with, people who I haven't seen since my schooldays. It's as if they don't recognise me, even though I try to tell them who I am. I dream I'm in a strange place, being screamed at by a mob of strangers. It seems completely unmerited, although I'm not sure if that's really the case.

It's now Friday, and she hasn't contacted me since her birthday. She hasn't replied to my emails, and every time I phone there's no answer. A long-distance relationship needs structure, needs deadlines met and promises kept. If that falls apart, then everything does. We fall apart. I fall apart.

I was ready for a bit of a blowout at the weekend, and certainly got it. Some of the other teachers are going through a hard time too. Ken and Anita have been here for over two months now, and the novelty has started to wear off. Danuka is finding the constrictions of living in China hard to adjust to. Tam, I think, is in love with Anita, but it doesn't seem to be reciprocated. We were all ready for it. I ran back from the Internet café through a torrential rainstorm, lightning forking apart the navy-blue sky, pot-holed streets filling with brown water, to find the college in darkness. Power cut. We were each given two candles and, instead of retiring to our rooms, it being Friday night, we took all the candles to the 5th floor lounge, Ken brought through his class tape-recorder, which had emergency batteries, and we all chipped in for a crate of Hapi. Which didn't last as long as we'd thought it would. We sang at the top our voices to the Beatles, danced drunkenly to the Prodigy, played nonsensical drinking games, then found we had no beer left. Ken and Anita volunteered to go on a beer run. Twenty minutes later they turn up, soaking wet, with another crate of beer, a huge set of keys and a stun gun.

'Where did you...'

'Oh, there’s a twenty-four hour shop a few streets away. We took a taxi.'

'No, I mean the...'

'Oh, these,' Ken grins, jangling the keys. 'Well, when we went downstairs, the door was locked. Luckily enough, the guard was fast asleep at the desk, so we let ourselves out. And back in again. Then we found this...'

He brandishes the stun gun like a bank robber.

The next day we were summoned to an emergency meeting with Karen and Charles and informed that the principal was not happy. Not only had the guard been unable to open the front door in the morning to let the students in, the principal's room happened to be right above the 5th floor lounge and she'd been kept awake all night by our party. No mention was made of the stun gun, however. We were ordered to make a suitably contrite apology to the principal, en masse, that evening. Luckily, when we arrived at her door at the appointed time like naughty schoolchildren, she wasn't in, although it felt like only a stay of execution.

Story of my life just now.

The Sociability of Noise

2008-09-18T17:07:00.000-07:00

We were sitting at a restaurant last week and I suddenly noticed how noisy it was. You tend to block out the noise in this country, but when I found myself literally bawling at the person next to me at the table, it hit home.

We call this restaurant 'Big Portions'. All the restaurants we go to have been re-christened in English by the teachers, as it's just too damn difficult to remember their Chinese names and it saves any mix-ups. 'Meet me at Big Portions', rather than, 'Meet me at the restaurant on such-and-such a street with the red sign and the round tables', or, 'Meet me at wa ga bu ge bu'. There's also Whistling Fish, Tartan Tables, Donkey Meat, Long and Thin, Chez Roddy's and The Shepherd's Pie Place. We like Big Portions the best, for obvious reasons. The restaurants are always busy and always noisy.

Here are some other noisy places I know:

The Internet Café

Crowded with teenage boys playing computer games. Smoky, smelly and dark. When you finish sending your emails, you walk out with jangling eardrums, a headache and your hair reeking of cigarette smoke. If you are really unlucky, you’ll have an absolute psychopath at the computer next to you playing Counter Strike or Tomb Raider. He'll crowd your personal space as he plays, elbow banging against you repeatedly as he shoots aliens or drops bombs from helicopters, dodges bullets or screeches his rally car round a corner.

He'll be involved in numerous shouted conversations with his friends, who are playing the same game on other computers around the room, demanding to know how they are doing and giving them regular updates on himself. If he's doing well, he'll scream with pleasure at the top of his lungs, attracting a scrum of spectators around his computer screen, hemming him, and you, in. If he's doing badly he'll shout and swear imprecations and threats at the monitor. One minute, he's howling with pain, the next celebrating wildly.

Bus Stops

Busses themselves are relatively quiet compared to the bus stops, the people having tired themselves out by the hard-fought victory it is just to actually get on one. If you get a seat, you sigh with relief and fall into a catatonic state for the rest of the journey. If you don't get a seat, you expend your remaining energy hanging on for dear life. Either way, you don’t feel much like talking.

Bus stops, on the other hand, are beehives of activity, anthills of action. People crowd and jostle to get into position, drivers and conductresses spit and scream out of the bus windows, taxis pull up and the driver implores you to get in, people gossip, rant and shout at each other. Cars, trucks and motorbikes flash past at dangerous speeds on the icy roads, horns blaring. Then, when the right bus pulls up, people sprint and crowd around the door like rugby players fighting for the ball. All that just to get on a bus.

Department Stores

Are just a complete assault on your senses. The underground market and the huge multi-level stores such as Hi Buys or Manhattan are a seething mass of humanity, cheap clothes, dodgy electrical goods and household appliances, fake-leather shoes, paper flowers, picture frames, toys, watches, jewellery, you name it, it's there. Entering one of these places in your thick winter clothes is like moving from an icebox to an oven. Your frosted face quickly starts to sweat. You step on someone's toes, try to turn round to apologise, elbow someone else, then get pushed in the back and thrust towards the cheap colourful Aladdin's Cave of treasure, all to a soundtrack of haggling, arguing, exhorting and extorting.

English Corner

I've never seen anything like English Corner at HIT University, or 'International Dateline', as some of the teachers call it. HIT is a technological university, one of the top ten in China, and therefore massive. Chinese people, mostly students, but also housewives, businessmen and workers, go to English Corner to practice their oral English. Most of the foreign guys go there to meet girls.

Not wanting to sound bigheaded, but now I know how a film star feels when mobbed by adoring fans. There must have been at least one hundred Chinese people per foreigner. You're surrounded by a throng of people then subjected to the most boring interrogation, which soon becomes a subtle form of slow torture, like drops of water steadily, remorselessly, dripping in a dark cell.

'What's you name?'

'Where are you come from?'

'Do you like China?'

'Do you like dumplings?'

'Do you have girlfriend?'

Again and again and again. Some students have an agenda and hang onto it like a dog with a bone. An architecture student will ask you if your country has any Gothic spires or Byzantine archways. A tourism student will want a detailed description of your country's scenery. A football fan will ask you if you've ever met David Beckham. The people crowd round so close that, at one point, I actually butted a girl standing right behind me with the back of my head. When you leave English Corner it's very easy to get knocked down by a bus: your brain is on information overload and subconsciously you're repeating, zombie-like, 'Nice to meet you. My name is Ross. I am from Scotland. Yes, I like dumplings'.

So, back to Big Portions: it was getting late, but the restaurant was still full of noise. Anita shouted over to me:

'YOU WOULDN'T THINK THERE WERE ONLY TWO TABLES LEFT EATING HERE, WOULD YOU?'

I looked around and saw she was right. The restaurant was almost empty. However, the Chinese gentlemen playing a drinking game at the next table were making enough noise to fill a concert hall.

In Britain, this would be deemed anti-social behaviour, and the manager would be coming out to politely ask them either to make less noise or leave. When you hear noise like that in a restaurant or bar in Britain, you brace yourself for violence: the only noise like that back home is drunk guys about to fight each other. In China, they're just being sociable. The young guys screaming across the room to each other in the internet bar are only making conversation; the lady screaming at you from a bus window is just trying to drum up business; the shoppers screaming at each other in the store are simply enjoying their haggling banter; the students screaming at you at English Corner are merely practising their English.

Often in China you can only get what you want by shouting. In Britain, if the waitress has forgotten your beer, you sit and twiddle your thumbs, trying to catch her eye, not wanting to cause a fuss. In China you shout:

'FU WU YUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN! PI-JIIIIIUUUU!'

At the top of your voice. And you don't even have to say thank you.

China Joins the WTO

2008-09-17T04:02:00.000-07:00

It's the weekend, my second weekend in cold, grimy, dirty Harbin. I'm missing my girlfriend and not in the mood for drunken loudmouth ashtray-throwing local geezers or eastern European prostitutes. In fact, after crawling out of another class where half the students behaved as if it were their first ever Engrish lesson, and the other half slept, I'm not much in the mood for anything.

I don't have a choice, however, as Betty and Athena invite (order?) me to go shopping. The two girls are best buddies and sit giggling at a two-berth desk most days in my PET1 class. I don't want to go but I can't say no. I mean, it would be good to get at least two students on my side. I accept and, quite unexpedtedly, enjoy myself.

We got a lift to Nan Gang in Betty's father's black VW Passat. I sat in the passenger's seat and pulled on the seat belt to find that there was no attachment for the belt to clip into. Betty's father laughed uproariously, his daughter translating that no one wore seat belts in Harbin. I let the belt ping back to find a dusty diagonal stripe across my new jacket.

The two girls wouldn't let me pay for a thing. The bus rides, the lunch (in a huge hall where, after buying different coloured tickets, you could walk around and pick anything you wanted from a multitudinous range of foods), the photo-booth, the ice cream, the arcade games, even the taxi ride home. Felt a mixture of discomfort and warmth at this. I objected politely every time they paid for something, more for my own dignity than anything else, but really all the girls wanted was for me to enjoy myself, and I did.

Betty is one of the class brain-boxes, plump bespectacled and shy. Athena is sharp and confident, frizzy hair with a reddish tint and the plucked, pink tattooed eyebrows that are the fashion here. Her mother owns a clothes store in the city, and she dresses accordingly. Betty has a lively sense of humour when you winkle it out of her. Athena is talkative and streetwise. They complement each other nicely. Athena knew the bus routes, the coolest shops, the best places to eat, Betty stayed by my side, taking my arm by the elbow in motherly fashion every time we crossed the road. Athena went home late afternoon, leaving Betty and I to make our own way back to the college. Betty had a minor panic, getting us lost while trying to find the correct bus stop. I insisted we take a taxi back then she insisted on paying for it.

In the evening, Leon, our volunteer translator at gong fu, held an English Corner at his father's restaurant, to celebrate China joining the WTO. Tam and I talked to two pretty girls, English names July and Caesar. (Seriously. When I suggested that Caesar was generally a man's name she refused to listen.) The girls were interested in the more tacky side of Scottish culture: bagpipes, kilts, haggis and all the other stuff I never wear, eat or play . I described to them tartan and mountains and rainy days. July told me about Chinese New Year, setting off firecrackers to drive away evil spirits, and the Harbin Ice Festival, with igloos, frozen palaces and ice lanterns. J dragged us to DJ Fridays afterwards, a faux-western bar in Nan Gang. Of course the girls couldn't come, having to get back to their university to beat the curfew. We commiserated, and thanked our lucky stars that there wasn't a 10 pm curfew when we were students.

At 11.40 pm last night it became official: China is now in the WTO. The whole world's putting freedom of trade above freedom of speech, and I don't know what to make of it. In fact, at the time, J, Tam and I were downing tequilas and dancing to bad Chinese techno.

Today I visited the Ji Le Si temples for a second time. The great golden Buddha now has a giant yellow crane in his eye-line, bigger than he is.

Meet the Students

2008-09-17T03:45:00.000-07:00

My first week of teaching went by in a flash.

I have PET1 and PET3 (PET standing for Preliminary English Test), the former class a bunch of smart, cheeky, unmotivated 17-20 year olds, all girls, save for one boy; the latter a bunch of lazy, cheeky, unmotivated 17-20 year olds, fifty per cent girls, fifty per cent boys. The boys are to a man taller than me, and I can't imagine them sleeping in drawers. I'm told that the ethnic north-easterners are descendents of the Manchu and have inherited their towering physique, pale skin and sharp cheekbones.

Although the students here seem much less mature than their western counterparts, perhaps because they live a life of sleep, study, curfew, sleep, study, curfew, hardly getting a chance for vandalism, drugs or teenage sex, the classes do come with their own particular challenges.

I'm told the college is a kind of halfway house for the offspring of the rich, who've failed their university entrance examinations and are just waiting in limbo until daddy finds them a good job or a place at a university abroad. You certainly see some expensive clothes, watches and mobile phones here, and in fact the students often make the teachers look like paupers. I surmise that the more motivated students are from the families who actually had to save to put their children into this college. A pity that they are the ones who have the least chance of success, as it seems money in this country, like any other country, can buy you anything. Brains and hard work, on their own, can't.

Thus, a sense of inertia seems to prevail amongst many of the pupils, and a sense of cynicism definitely prevails amongst all the teachers. One told me of a time when he tried to get a reaction from an especially lazy student by burning a note in front of him (the teacher found out later this was illegal in China, burning the image of Chairman Mao not a good idea) and telling him this was what he was doing by not working, just wasting his money. The student looked up and, in the only English he had spoken for weeks, said:

'Is not my money. Is my father's,' and, glancing at the burning banknote, added, 'and my father got much more than that.'

The classrooms feature the same bare, peeling white walls as the dorm rooms and three rows of two-berth wooden and steel chair-desk combos nailed to the floor. If a student isn't interested in the class (or just can't be bothered), they lay their head on their desk and fall fast asleep. I tried throwing a bit of chalk at a girl doing this. The chalk bounced off her skull, she looked up with a confused expression, then fell straight back to sleep. Worse still is when a student shows their displeasure by opening their mouth as wide as a train tunnel and yawning so loud that the other students can't hear what I'm saying. I've begun to realise my job is to stand at the front and try to keep them awake. I hope it gets better.

The Golden Buddha

2008-09-08T17:20:00.000-07:00

On Sunday Tam and I took a forty minute bus ride right past Nan Gang with Clive, a tall, blond Cambrian who has a constant ironic twinkle in his eye not unlike an inscrutable Buddha, to see the temples.

You approach them down a long green-and-white tiled street bordered by building sites, half-built skyscrapers looming like ghostly sci-fi skeletons, scaffolding covered in dirty green canvas, the sounds of jack-hammers, the thump and crunch of metal on stone, clouds of brick-dust, workmen bawling at each other, the smell of metal and fire.

Pay five Yuan, however, and you are inside the tranquil Ji Le Si (Temple of Heavenly Bliss). You are met by a fifty-foot tall Golden Buddha, who placidly surveys the ever-changing city from his meditative sitting position, like a resigned grandparent realising he now lives in a new era which he'll never quite get the hang of. Then the smell of burning incense sticks, the jangle of cowbells in the breeze, silent shaven-headed monks going about their daily rituals, temple buildings with pagoda roofs, golden statues inside with different deities, paths round the outside, symmetrical.

The temples (there's another, less interesting one alongside) had an aura of bare, ascetic vulnerability, with the leafless winter trees, the silent monks in rough cassocks, the incense mixing with the dust from the construction site on the other side of the road, the cowbells intermingled with pneumatic drills. The new world seemed distant, but impinging, the old world hanging by a thread, a hazy cloud, ready to be blown away in the next gale. China, a work in progress: all that which wasn't destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, or in the previous feudal dynasties of war, famine, fire and flood, has a much more dangerous enemy now: progress.

I asked Clive how the monks justified the five Yuan entrance fee. Wasn't Buddhism the antithesis of capitalism?

'Well, monks still have to eat, don't they?' he replied pragmatically. 'Thought for the day,' he continued. 'Funny, isn't it, this huge city of anything between six and nine million, that no one's ever heard of?'

'Right enough. I'd never heard of it before I came here.'

'What you saw last Friday night, you know, the violence, the debauchery, the prostitutes, all comes from Harbin being a crossing town.'

'A crossing town?'

'Yes. It's a major railway crossing: Beijing to the south, Vladivostok to the east, to the west Russia then Europe via the Trans-Siberian Express...'

'Of course! In fact, when I finish my contract here, I don't want to fly home, I want to take the train to Moscow, to Paris!'

'Watch out for thieves if you do. Anyway, what I was saying was, we're in the Wild East here, and there are plenty cowboys about. Much of the land is still wild, and many of the people here are too.'

We went back out into the dust and the hammering and waited for a bus.

You can get on a bus in Harbin and travel for as long as you like for one Yuan (the cheap busses) or two (if you want heating/air-conditioning). Naturally the one Yuan busses are the more crowded. Naturally the two Yuan busses are the more comfortable.

In this world you get what you pay for. The one Yuan busses have holes in the floor; the seats, if you can get one, are filthy and often broken; the suspension is long gone, so every bump on the broken-up tarmac roads is a killer; the driver's a boy-racer, competing with busses from rival companies to get to the stops first. Pedestrians and cyclists beware: these busses stop at nothing, not even at red lights.

A middle-aged woman is usually sitting halfway down the bus, next to the exit doors, to collect the money. Her secondary job is to stick her head out of the window and scream at the top of her voice the number of the bus, the price, and the route, telling punters at the roadside in no uncertain terms to 'GET ON THE BUS!' She promises them seats when there are none. She tells the standing customers to 'MOVE TO THE BACK!' every time more punters get on, trying to squash in as many fare-payers as is humanly, or inhumanly, possible.

'Standing Room Only' does not do justice to these death traps. The conductress justifies her existence by constantly fitting thirty or forty more people onto the bus than it was originally designed for. When the bus brakes suddenly - in fact the busses always brake suddenly, with no thought for the people's comfort or safety - the standing customers go flying forwards like human dominoes, only saved from broken bones or suffocation by the fact that there are so many people standing, it’s impossible to fall right over; you're just left at a forty-five degree angle to the floor, your elbow in someone’s midriff, someone else's elbow in your back.

Outside the Ji Le Si today we got on one of these busses. As the doors rolled open, we could see a mass of assorted arms, legs and bums, none of them seeming to belong to a whole human body. The conductress told us to 'GET ON THE BUS!' assuring us there was plenty room. We didn't want to, but we were beginning to lose feeling in our toes, ears and noses. It was getting late and it was getting cold. Tam and Clive squeezed on first, managed to get onto the top step, then half onto the floor proper. I jumped on as the bus started to pull away but found that I couldn't actually get in. I started to topple backwards just as the exit doors snapped shut. I grabbed an overhead rail and clung on grimly, feet dangling, missing floor. I hung on until the next stop, then realised the greater danger that awaited me. A bunch of people had edged and pushed around the exit space and, as soon as the doors opened, they would shove themselves off the bus and take me with them!

I desperately tried to find a foothold but couldn't. The doors swooshed open. I gritted my teeth and gripped the rail as tightly as I could. Then an avalanche of humanity swept over me, through me, people pushing, shoving, elbowing, until my body was parallel to the ground in a Superman pose. I stayed in this aerodynamic position for some time until all had gone through and the doors snapped shut again, nearly slicing off my feet, which were just beginning to return to earth after their maiden voyage.

Public transport was never such an adventure in the UK. At least I have a story to tell her during our Sunday night phone call.

The Gong Fu Master

2008-09-04T17:30:00.000-07:00

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.

Shopping

2008-09-04T17:16:00.000-07:00

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.

Welcome to Harbin

2008-09-01T17:28:00.000-07:00

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.

A Piece of Cake

2008-08-29T01:25:00.000-07:00

Day three, and I finally got through to her on the phone. However, as conversations go, it was pretty monosyllabic. The time-delay didn't help, and neither did her own personal time delay, which consisted of a deep sigh, an angry pause then a huffy one-word answer. Whatever. So-so. Nothing. Dunno. I can't say I blame her.

This morning I was shown the ropes by Jared. The students call Jared 'The Beautiful One'. He's from England, of Mauritanian ethnicity. He's friendly, intelligent, organized and popular. I'm taking over his classes in a week. It'll give me time to observe his teaching, but that might just make things even more daunting. I can imagine the female students, in floods of tears, carving his initials onto their breasts before hurling themselves from windows. He's going to be a hard act to follow. Jared is far too modest to acknowledge, or perhaps even notice, this. If he weren't so nice I’d hate his guts.

He took me through the books I'm to use, then showed me to my 'work-station' in the teachers' office. The office is bright, open-plan, made up of four-desk islands shared equally by both Chinese and foreign English teachers. I like it. It's friendly and conducive to work.

In the afternoon, Tam, Danuka, Gina and I were taken to a granite-walled hospital for the visa medical in the afternoon: chest X-rays, ECG's, and blood tests, which I guess are to make sure I'm not bringing HIV into the country. If and when I get my visa, at least I'll know I'm healthy. In the evening, Tam and I, feeling cocky, offered to get the carry out from the local restaurant ourselves, unaided. The other teachers primed us with what to say, which I have forgotten already, the Chinese language sounding, to the uninitiated, like a string of guttural grunts, and so down we went to the little restaurant, where the daughter of the family presented us with a menu written in, of course, Chinese. We shook our heads wisely, put the menu down on the table, and repeated our order like a holy catechism. And, guess what, she understood! She nodded, wrote it all down, and went through to the kitchen to relay the order. It was child's play. So Tam and I are sitting there, proudly patting ourselves on the back.

'You know,' I'm saying, 'China's not as difficult as all that. Sure, it's totally different from home, but that's why we came here, wasn't it?'

'Yeah,' Tam agrees, 'it's gonna be a hell of an experience.'

'I reckon if you can cope with this, you can cope with anything.'

'Right enough,' he flashes a conspiratorial look. 'You know, Gina hasn't been out of the college on her own since we got here.'

'Really? Wimp!'

'Sad, isn't it?'

The young girl came out of the kitchen and said something we didn't understand. We shrugged our shoulders and raised our hands palms-skywards, trying to make her understand that we didn't understand. Of course, she had understood that right away, by our crumpled, bewildered expressions. However, she just repeated the same sentence, or at least it sounded like the same sentence, who knows, but more slowly, as if she were talking to a slow student who hadn't yet figured out the answer. All we could make out was:

'WA BOO GE HU GE BU!'

Then again:

'WAAA - BOOO - GEEE - HUUU - GEEE - BUUU!'

We waved our arms about frantically, shook our heads dementedly and rubbed our stomachs hungrily. The young girl sighed, again the patient teacher whose students are just too dumb for words. She stood on a chair and pulled the clock off the wall. She indicated the number ten on the clock. Ah, it's money she wants! We give her ten Yuan. She looks at us, incredulous. Sighs once more. Silently counts one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten. Ah! Ten Yuan isn't enough! We give her a pink one hundred note, like, ten tens, yeah? We nod our heads inanely at her. She thrusts the hundred back at us and stomps off to the kitchen. We sit down.

'What the hell was that all about?'

'Beats me.'

Five minutes later the food comes, all in order; she piles up the cardboard containers in plastic bags, writes down the amount, we pay and head back up to the college, pondering the confusion. Why was the girl so keen to stress the number ten? We look at each other, laugh, and make an unspoken pact not to tell anyone about what had happened. And in that unspoken pact our friendship is sealed tight too. These moments do not come often enough in our lives.

We get back to the college, and the other teachers are mightily impressed.

'No problems, then?' Alan asks, raising an eyebrow.

'Course not, man. Piece of cake!'

'And it only took you just over ten minutes. That's a record for newbies.'

Ten minutes.

Oh.

If They Can Do It, Then So Can I

2008-08-27T21:39:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Groans.

'Not again,' the weary replies.

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

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

Arrival In Harbin

2008-08-20T21:21:00.000-07:00

The Air China economy class seating area was thronged with folk; guess I'd better get used to that.

The seats were arranged in banks of three down each side, with a raft of four-abreast in the centre of the plane. Tam, Gina and I had tickets for the four-seater bit, but Danuka slunk off and arranged herself at a window seat beside an elderly couple. Then when Gina sat down her chair broke. She tried to make out that it was broken already, but we had heard the snap and crunch of plastic and metal. She went off in a strop and found another seat, leaving Tam and I with two seats each. As we roared across northern Europe, Russia, Mongolia, Beijing-bound, the cheap Sinclair computer-style graphic on the big TV screen at the front of the cabin plotting our route east at the frustratingly slow pace of a snail, we munched M&M's and drank beer to take our minds off what we were getting ourselves into.

Thirteen hours later, we arrived at Beijing airport, changed some money, and got piles of pink hundreds, green fifties, brown twenties, all with the grinning warty face of Chairman Mao, as well as these brown slips of paper with old-fashioned thirties-style trucks on them, which look more like lottery tickets or Monopoly money. Then on to Harbin airport, and a welcoming party of four, two foreign teachers and two Chinese: Karen, an English girl, nervous and friendly, our 'Director of Studies', Alan, a taciturn sarcastic Scotsman, Charles, a Chinese guy with a squint psychotic smile who's one of the big-wigs of the school, and Casper, the 'fixer', whose job it is to look after the foreigners.

The eight of us piled into a little van and headed off into the cold, grimy, foggy Harbin night. I couldn't see much out of the steamed-up windows except countless monotonous concrete over- and underpasses. Rising Moon English Language College is to be found in the industrial part of the city, surrounded by narrow filthy streets of crumbling cracked pavement bordered by high-rise tenements that look like dirty, stacked rabbit hutches in a derelict pet shop. It's going to take some time to get used to this place. Maybe when I see it in the daylight...

The college building is a ludicrous monstrosity in the shape of an unused stack of metal staples dropped on end: the front of it one long eight-storied wall of classrooms, then a wing to either side which house the dormitory blocks. We were first ushered into the student canteen on the ground floor, to eat dumplings that were nigh on impossible to pick up with the chopsticks. As we dropped, splashed and fumbled with these slimy boiled conundrums, a bunch of the foreign contingent just returned from 'gong-fu', which I'm presuming means 'kung-fu', joined us and proceeded to eat them all up. Jet-lagged, confused and still hungry, we were then shown to our rooms.

The foreign teachers live mostly on the fifth floor, but as there are now so many of us (twelve, I think), and there aren't enough rooms, I've been stationed on the fourth floor along with the Chinese staff. My room resembles a prison cell minus the bucket. It is a little smaller than our spare room at home; the walls are of stained, flaking, chalky plaster, there is a bed with an ancient mattress and patchwork covers; a tall wooden wardrobe; a rough wooden writing desk with chair; a separate room, no bigger than an alcove, with toilet, sink and shower in such close proximity that I could brush my teeth, take a shower and have a shit all at the same time; and that's it. I should count myself lucky, though: the Chinese teachers bunk six, sometimes eight to a room, and have no shower or toilet en-suite (if you could call mine that). I can hear the sad, one-man-clapping slap of flip-flops on cold concrete, the mumbling of an unintelligible tongue, and the hawk and spit (they're spitting on the floor!) as they trudge to the communal toilet at the end of the corridor.

I couldn't bear to be in that bare cell alone, so went up to the fifth floor, where there's a common room with DVD player for the foreigners. Tam was already there, sitting on the sofa talking to a petite pretty girl with red hair and green eyes (he doesn't hang about) called Anita.

'Yeah, it's well cheap 'ere,' she was saying in a south coast accent. 'I usually take only two hundred kuai - that's RMB - for a night out. Mind you, I am a gell!'

'What's the beer like here?' Tam asked.

'Rough as a roofer's glove, mate, but it does the trick. It's called Hapi, which is funny, ain't it, as you don't feel so 'appy the next day, I can tell ya.'

'Happy beer?'

'Yeah; stands for Harbin Pijiu. Pijiu means beer in Chinese.'

'Pee-joe,' we repeated in a mantra, as if Anita were our Beer Guru.

Before she left, sweet Anita, taking note of our frazzled jet-lagged demeanours, stuck on a DVD, A Knight's Tale, with Heath Ledger, and Tam and I were left in this strange room, strangers to each other up until yesterday (or today, I'm a bit mixed-up), listening in a surreal daze to the refrain of 'We will, we will ROCK YOU!' until, realizing we’d been rocked quite enough for one day, we decided to brave our bare jail cells for the night and try to get some sleep.

But I couldn't. So I've been sat at the desk writing my diary, my diary to her which she'll probably never see, so perhaps it's really my diary to me, and it's now 1.30 am and I feel lost and lonely in this cold room, this strange school, this big dirty city, this alien country. I peer out through a gap in the colourless curtains and see only empty, unlit streets. I feel like the only one awake on this whole planet.

I wonder if she's sleeping. If so, I wonder what she's dreaming.

Prologue

2008-08-11T17:04:00.000-07:00

She'd been dreaming of my death ever since I'd announced I was leaving. She'd awaken in a panic from visions of a plummeting plane, engines ablaze, dropping like a pebble into a cold foreign sea, engulfed by black smoke on arctic tundra, or turning to dust amongst the unforgiving dunes of the Gobi.

I was nine years older than her and people had said it wouldn't work. But we'd made it work, for over two years, up until I left my job as a kids' football coach in Scotland to follow her to Warwickshire, middle England, where she was to study Human and Equine Sports Science. Half horse, half human. With her long legs, glowing brown eyes and her propensity to see in tunnel vision, a blinkered skittishness, it suited her. But god, how I loved her.

Enough to give up everything.

We lasted a year down there, a year that like pot of tea started sweet and ended bitter. I couldn't get a job at any of the good sports centres as I couldn't swim. Every time I spoke to one of the managers of these places, outlined my qualifications in football, badminton and athletics, they'd get interested then ask:

'Great, and have you got your Bronze Medallion?'

'Uh, no, I haven't.'

'That's okay, we'll put you through the course, no problem.'

Of course, as soon as they found out I couldn't swim I was sunk.

To pay my share of the rent on our pretty two-bedroom apartment I took the first job I could find.

'Where's ya bin?'

Roger would ask me this every time I climbed the fire-escape stairs with the slops. He thought it was really funny, creasing up in girlish giggles as I sweated and humped out the stinking buckets.

'Where's ya bin?'

He was a violent schizophrenic with the biggest penis I have ever seen, outside of dirty magazines and porno movies. He was fond of getting it out and waving it about before the nearest nurse could stop him. He had a slatternly girlfriend from another home with dyed-blonde hair who came to visit him at the weekends for a shag. He was just one of the forty-odd residents suffering not in silence but in gibbers, wails and screams, in their own private hell (if they were unlucky enough to realise their condition) or consigned to oblivion (if they weren't), living in a dilapidated mansion on the outskirts of 'Historic Warwick'. Assistant Head Chef, me. Stuck in a steamy basement bereft of any natural light along with a seventeen-year old ferret-fancier who had pre-empted his teachers by giving up on school before it gave up on him, a shy portly gay man with receding red hair and gingivitis and the piglet-faced, scheming Head Chef, who enjoyed assassinating whoever had just left the room, laying bare every one of their bad points mercilessly like a butcher with a sharp knife, until they were nothing but a set of separated organs, stinking offal on the table before us. 'Bag o' shite,' she'd proclaim.

The only time I felt comfortable in that place was on the 6 am breakfast shift. I'd cycle along the dark canal, walk through the fusty halls of the quiet home down to the kitchen, where I'd crank up all the ovens, light every gas ring, and fry up enough bacon, toast enough toast, stir to the boil enough porridge, to feed a barmy army. Then I'd sit outside on the fire-escape steps, wolf down a bowl of porridge with sultanas, almonds and honey, drink coffee, smoke, and watch the sun fizzle and fry against the morning mist, a handful of heaven snatched from that hellish bedlam.

I tholed this as well as I could, trying to stay positive. We did have each other, didn't we?

She went back home for New Year and I spent the worst and loneliest Hogmanay of my life with a bunch of strangers, a half bottle of Bell's blend my only friend. I was on breakfast shift the next day, the first day of the new year of 2001, the head chef of course having first dibs on the day off. Bag o' shite. When she came back for the new term, I told her I couldn't go through that again. She promised to stay down south for the summer and we'd spend some quality time together; it would be a second summer of love, but we seemed to have misplaced the first somewhere, and it was no real surprise when the second didn't materialise. Summer 2001 was for her, up north, a round of parties, drinking and dancing while, for me, down south, it was scrubbing ovens, sweating into my whites, and humping out the slops.

'Where's ya bin?'

The newspaper ad' read something like this:

Do you want to teach in China?

If you have a degree, and a thirst for adventure, call...

A Coventry number. I felt compelled to answer it. As soon as she saw me doing this, she said:

'You'll get it.'

And she was right.

So I sent myself to Coventry, to a portakabin in the suburbs of that shabby shoebox city. The interview process was a joke. 'Have you got a degree?' 'Uh, aye, in English Lit, from Edinburgh Uni.' 'Okay, you're in.' We, the other already-accepted candidates and I, listened to selected 'experts' in the field: a guy in his late thirties who’d been a TEFL teacher overseas for some years, and an old man who'd lived over there and had got married to a local girl (he lent me the China episode of Michael Palin's Around the World in 80 Days, as if that was some kind of preparation). We were asked to download lesson plans from the Internet. And that, basically, was that. I left that evening none the wiser as to what I was getting myself into. All I knew was that I was being sent to a city called Harbin, which was very cold. I should buy some warm clothes before I left, but not to worry, whatever else I needed I could buy over there, as it was cheap. I had visions of myself trudging through snowdrifts in a blizzard to a rickety wooden hut. The two other candidates there, who were to become my companions in travel, culture shock and teaching, seemed to have no more idea than me.

Danuka

Tall, angular, awkward, beautiful, with a face that seemed to have been hewn from white granite with a chisel. Bulgarian linguist and mistress of seven languages. I thought her at once sexy and diffident, alluring and unreachable. She was wearing a green shirt and flared jeans and her dark hair cascaded down her back like a waterfall in a photographic negative. With the sudden action of a camera shutter, her nature would change from open to closed and back again in a blink. Tough, cool, chatty, moody, she was a mystery to me right from the start.

Gina

Power-dressed with the veneer of professional respectability you'd associate with a practising (or, now, non-practising) lawyer. Bobbed, curly, blonde hair, ice-blue eyes, a tittering giggle that skittered across her face, whose features rose and fell in waves of childlike moods, as if everything should be black and white in the world and the grey constantly upset her. At times she'd take control with a firm 'Right!' and then at other times seem to have no idea what was going on. I couldn't imagine why on earth she was on her way to China. But then again, why were any of us?

The next step was to renew my passport, which was almost out of date. I phoned the passport office and asked them if they could rush it through in two weeks. An irrepressible Irishman with a sense of humour really not suited to his occupation told me there would be no problem.

'Where ye headed, then?'

'China.'

'China! Fir fuck's sakes. Now what would ye want to go and do that for?'

'Umm, well, I'm going to teach English.'

'Ah, that'll be it then… Here, how tall are ye?'

'Dunno, maybe about five-foot seven.'

'Jesus, ye'll be a giant over there, ye know.'

'Aye, I hadn't really thought about it.'

'Well it's the truth. Chinamen are short little fuckers. They're so sma', and there's so many o' them, they have to sleep in drawers.'

He told me to enjoy my drawer, and I hung up wondering how he'd managed to get through the job interview.

I still have the photo-booth photos of her, of us, together, which we took at the same time as my passport ones. She looks improbably pale, face and collar-bone ivory, deep brown eyes wide open, a sad but assured smile, as if she knows what's going to happen but doesn't want anyone to know her thoughts on it. I'm behind her, my chin resting on her right shoulder, face craggy and unshaven, eyes and mouth creased in forced smile like tears in crepe paper. Looking at that photo now I hardly recognise myself. It's like looking at another person.

We'd decided I'd spend a year in Harbin, which I'd now found out was in the north east of China, had a population of more than four million, and was famous for it's ice festival.

'Where's ya bin?'

The last time Stuart said this I replied:

'It's where I'm going, Stuart. Where I'm going.'

I quit my job and waited for the visa to come through. This meant a lot of daytime TV shows and, one day, watching some trashy Australian soap, the programme was interrupted to show images of a plane colliding with a tall New York building and bursting horrifically into flames. I watched gob-smacked as it happened again. That afternoon I couldn't tear myself away from the terrible carnage of 9-11. The whole world seemed to go into a kind of collective shock. Of less importance, our visas were delayed. And every night she would wake up in a panic and when I asked her what she'd dreamt about, she wouldn't say.

A few weeks later, at a motorway service station somewhere south of Oxford, she's crying hysterically. The drive down had been fraught for us both, so much we wanted to say to each other but couldn't put into words. In the back of our minds we were wondering if we were ever going to see each other again, but we hid these thoughts behind the clichés and platitudes of the everyday, as if we'd see each other tomorrow. Time now seemed so short, and yet the car seemed to be moving in slow motion. A long goodbye is never a good one, and this was excruciating, like having your teeth pulled slowly out of your mouth one-by-one without anaesthetic. And yet I felt that I was trying to be strong for the both of us. She was a real mess. She wouldn’t let me drive (her car, mine already sold), but I was afraid she was going to crash. Suddenly she's shouting at me incoherently, in this busy service station car park, yanking at the steering wheel violently, hardly looking where she's going. She pulls out into the exit lane and nearly blind-sides a yellow van, slamming the car into a juddering emergency stop just in time.

'What's wrong with you?' I shout at her, as if she were over the other side of a frozen river, rather than right next to me in the driver's seat.

'What's wrong with you?'

And eventually she composed herself enough to tell me about her dreams.

Heathrow airport international departures terminal is an incredible, horrible, nasty, fascinating place, a melting pot of people inasmuch as it's hot, bubbling and constantly minutes away from brewing to boiling point. We finally all managed to meet up, me with my distressed girlfriend, Danuka, alone, Gina, sobbing parents in tow, and a lady name of Liu, representative and visa procurer for Rising Moon English Language College, who were to be our new employers in little more than a day's time. This seemed somehow wrong and totally unreal, in the way that change can grip and unseat you like a classroom bully yanking your chair away.

Liu was flashing a photocopied passport with a picture of a young, grinning guy, asking us if we'd seen him. It seemed there had been an addition to our party. Right on cue this stocky, friendly Englishman in a leather jacket and jeans saunters up to our group, more sobbing parents in tow.

'Alright, I'm Tam.'

Now we were four.

After half an hour of pushing, shoving, bickering and pleading, our heavyweight luggage was checked in, amazingly with no extra charge, the others left for TGI Fridays, and I walked her back to the car.

Under the dim lights of the cavernous concrete car park we cried and held each other for what could have been seconds or hours then suddenly she was opening the car door, getting in, starting the engine and pulling away out of my life. I stood there for some time, dazed, with this crazy notion that she'd come zooming back out of the dark bowels of the car park, screech to a halt, get out of the car and declare that she couldn't live without me and that I should get in and come home with her and forget about ever going to China. And at that moment I would have done it; my suitcase would have been heading to Beijing, but I would have been heading home with her, to our house, our bed, her arms.

I eventually wandered back into the airport, which was throbbing with life, people dragging huge trolleys of suitcases, chatting, eating, shopping, sleeping, colourful, sweaty, smelly, angry, happy people everywhere, and I had no idea where I was going or what I was doing. All could think about was her. I was convinced this was a mistake. I just wanted to go home.

'Oi, Ross man! Over 'ere!'

It took me a while to realise someone was calling me. It came to me as if from down a deep well. It came to me almost as if from within myself.

'Over 'ere, you wally!'

Focus returned and I could see Tam waving, laughing, at a table with Danuka and Gina at TGI's. I joined them and ordered a steak sandwich with fries. When the food came I must have eyed it with such pleasure, perhaps wondering when I would next be able to eat a steak sandwich, if they even had such a thing in China, Matt laughed and said:

'I like you, Ross. It doesn't take much to cheer you up. Your girlfriend's gone, but you got a steak sarnie and chips. Things could be worse.'

And, with that, I suddenly began to look forward to our big adventure.