The Great Glass Elevator

After finishing our walk along the Jinbian Stream, we were taken on a short bus ride to the foot of another immense mountain, which has the world's tallest and fastest dual outside elevator going up one side of it. You can see it on the left.















This thing holds 3 world records and was well worth the trip up. This picture is the view from inside the lift. I didn't take it. I was stuck at the back and had a lovely view of heads...












It didn't take us to a chocolate factory, however, at the top we were rewarded with some of the most amazing scenery ever.





























































Also on this peak is the world's finest natural bridge, pictured to the left.
















All along the handrails of this bridge are hundreds and thousands of padlocks, each inscribed with a personal message. They were placed there by lovers, symbolising everlasting and unbreakable love. Ahh.

Jinbian Stream

The second day in Zhangjiajie we got up very early to walk along the Jinbian Stream. This was one of my favourite parts of this trip. It was early, the sun was still just coming up over the peaks, the sky was blue and mist hung over the stream. The mountains were breathtaking as you can see.








These two girls are dressed in traditional, local minority costume. I think it's called Miao, pronounced literally as the noise a cat makes.

It's interesting. I like the lampshades on their heads.









This is Aaron with our tour guide. She was lovely. She spoke only a little English but tried very hard for us. She was always fretting after us and telling us to 'please, be safety'. Yes, that's right, be safety. Become safety. You are the physical embodiment of all that is safe and precautionary... It was funnier at the time.

Take a look at a few more pics.

Order of posts

Heya. Well, China blocks my blog, so I can't read it myself. Therefore I can't check if things are looking as they should. The last 3 posts may be mixed up. They should read (oldest first) 'Western food....' , 'Holidays' then 'Window of the World'. What order do they appear in? Can someone let me know? Cheers!!

Travel the World Together

The day after our visit to Window of the World, we checked out of our lovely hotel and after they nearly conned us out of 1000 yuan, met up with our tour group. It was quite a big group, enough to fill several carriages of a train and we were all given these lovely trendy blue and white peaked caps as well as some name tags to wear.

Wearing them became more and more optional as the journey progressed, and personally was never an option, but they served to help create some great photos.



The train journey lasted about 5 hours and took the opportunity to chat to a few other (Chinese) tourists around us and got to know a couple of them. Once we arrived at Zhangjiajie we were split off into part of a much smaller group and a minibus whisked us off on the start of what would be an intense few days of sightseeing. I've never done the organised tour thing before, and would never normally consider it, but really, it was the best way to see this amazing part of the world.







Time for a group photo outside the park gates at Huangshi Village (Sarah, Liana, Nick, Elisha, Jess, Anthony and Aaron) before we were taken up the nearest mountain by a cable car to catch our first glimpse of these amazing peaks. I thought Yangshuo was impressive. No contest.







The cable car whisked us up in 2 minutes. The alternative was a climb up about 3800 stone steps, taking 2 hours. Unfortunately our tour program was too intensive to allow us to climb all these steps. Honest. Laziness has nothing to do with it.

I'll let the pictures here speak for themselves.




































The Chinese have a habit of naming everything. They see symbolism in every stone and every crag. At home, a mountain is a mountain, a rock is a rock. Here, it is a pig carrying his wife on his back, a monkey gesturing for peanuts or army generals standing to attention. This formation is the 'five fingers'. Problem is, I can count six...















In the evening we terrorised the village and villagers by going in search of beer. We were successful and drank at a small alley 'restaurant' where there were crates, cages and tubs outside with chickens, pheasants, rabbits, frogs,
terrapins, tortoises and fish in them. They were meant to eat but we looked at them and petted them instead. Many beers and many rounds of 'I have never' later, we came to settle the bill and were asked for 20 yuan per bottle! Outrageous! That's club prices. We pushed the woman down to about 12, but that's still double what you should pay. Problem was, we'd already drunk the alcohol so were hardly in a position to argue! Later on back at the hotel a couple of the more drunken among us wanted to go on an adventure. I suggested going back and setting all her animals free. Don't think they did though. Shame.

Western Food? Just give me a cabbage...

Towards the end of September, word hit us of a new 'western style' restaurant that was opening up in Lanshan. Lanshan! As if! Well, that sounded like a real turn up for the books, so naturally we were very excited to try it out. I love the chinese food, have eaten some great stuff here (along with some not so great and some better left unknown) and grown quite fond of cabbage, but a taste of the homeland is not something to be overlooked. So one night we ventured forth to have a look.

Bless 'em, they tried.

The restaurant is called 'Eiffel westernstyledrsh'. It was clearly going for a french theme with the 'Eiffel' part and a picture of the Mona Lisa on the name board over the door. I think the rest of the name meant to work out as 'western style dish'. Nevermind, eh? We would have told them, had it not been in big neon letters outside already. Besides, no-one spoke any english, and we were alone. We pointed to two random dishes on the chinese menu and received broadly the same meal, some meat in a tomatoey sauce with a little salad and some rice. It was edible. It was a bit wierd being presented with knives and forks though. After a month of chopsticks I just looked at them and thought 'what the hell do I do with these!'. Not to worry though, there were place-mats with clear instructions on how to use them, along with hints on etiquette - no elbows on the table etc. All was read with elbows firmly affixed to the table...

After finishing the main meal, under the constant gaze of the whole staff, who all came out to watch us eat, we decided to order a dessert. I found the characters for dessert in the phrase book, showed the waitress and she gestured to a page of chinese, which interestingly was not the one with pictures of ice-cream on it. Maybe we should have taken more notice of that fact. After pointing at two random things, we received...two sandwiches.

Okay...

Mine was a kind of eggy-bread affair, which could possibly be construed as some kind of sweet dessert-like option, but Anthony's was a straight-up steak and onion sarnie. No ambiguity there.

But hey, this is china. We didn't question it (disregarding the fact we couldn't anyway) and ate up, wondering if the staff truly believed this was a normal 'western style' meal they had given us, or whether all their carefully-formed ideas of westerners were being dashed and that apparently westerners eat sandwiches for dessert...

Well, either way, I will not be returning. The next morning I had been to the loo about 6 times before breakfast. Talk about eye of a needle... It took the mega-imodium to sort that one out. My first real bout of food-poisoning, and it was with western style food. How bloody typical.

Holidays!!!

October the 1st was Chinese National Day and to honour that, the schools had a weeks holiday. We decided (eventually) to arrange a get-together with some of the other foreign english teachers who we'd made friends with in Yangshuo in Changsha, the provincial capital of Hunan Province, where we are all based.

We finally arrived after a long and tiring bus ride which involved a lot of God-awful chinese techno music and some of the most hilariously poorly acted films that the world has ever produced. It was car-crash telly. I had to watch it, it was unbelievable. Besides there was nothing else to do on this 7 hour bus-ride, seeing as my ipod had drowned a few weeks earlier...

We met up initially with three friends from Saskatoon, in Saskatchewan, Canada, who are based in Liuyang, a city just one hour away from Changsha. They'd been to Changsha
before, so knew exactly where to head. In our minds, there
was only one place to head. Where else would you go to get your first taste of a big chinese city? There was no competition. It had to be...

...Pizza Hut.

Oh, come on... Please. Give me a break.

It had been more than a month since our last taste of real western food, and we were hungering badly for it.

All that Lanshan could provide us was a dodgy microwaved chickenburger and some fries - not forgetting our bizarrely bizarre experience at the new 'western' restaurant.

I love my pizza, and when you need to travel 7 hours to find some, it takes on a whole new value.

It was a heavenly experience. It was just like it is in the west, only so much better. I was so happy I practically skipped to the salad bar. And they had Tomato Ketchup!!! My heart flutters just at the memory... We ordered everything, stuffed ourselves, then went for Haagen Dazs ice-cream just over the way. Oh my God. Pizza AND the best ice-cream in the world. I almost died.

I cannot possibly begin to explain how much that evening meant to me. Wonderful, wonderful food and the company of other westerners - people who share the same cultural values as me - who I could chat, joke and be truly frank with when sharing stories about the absurdity that is life in China. I laughed til I cried. It was the one-hit antidote to any kind of home-sickness or culture shock that I may have felt and the beginning of a great holiday.

The next day, three more friends joined us from schools in Dao Xian, another town about 2 hours from Lanshan. We were now a truly international group. There were the three Canadians, Sarah, Jess and Nick, the three from Dao Xian (Aaron from California and Elisha and Liana from New York State) joining with Anthony as the American camp and me, the token Brit. All we were were missing were the Aussies, but they had other plans.

This whole experience so far has only proven to me how virtually identical we all are culturally. So we may have some differences, and they're the source of constant mickey-taking on all sides, but the only reason we are able to do even that is because essentially, we are the same. Americans, Australians, Canadians, Brits, we are just one people. I ain't gonna get philosophical or anything. There are far better qualified people to do that but it made an impression on me. Just thought I'd say so...

The group got a little more international with the addition of various Chinese friends. Sunshine was up from Uni for the week with her mate Peng Lijuin and one of the Canadians' students, Kaze, was staying with relatives in the city so joined us for a lot of the time. They were great people to have around, not least because they are friends, but because they were extremely helpful in ensuring we got around ok.

Kaze (left) was particularly helpful to us. We casually mentioned that we fancied going out to western Hunan to see the famous scenic area of
Zhangjiajie (pronounced Jang-ja-jeer by most, Tsang-ja-jeer by others. Either way, my pronunciation is never right), he told us that his mother is a travel agent and in no time had negotiated places for us on a 3-day tour with train tickets, hotels, food and park entry tickets all included, all for about 1200 yuan (about 90 quid) each. Bargain!

Anyway, in thanks we took him and Sunshine out for dinner at Pizza Hut (the three from Dao Xian had missed out the other day, and frankly, I was never going to turn my nose up to this pizza, even twice in a row). They had never been
before, so it had to be done.

The pic top-left shows us all after having devoured our meals. Also necessary was another trip to Haagen Dazs. We were on a mission to educate!!

Aaron then deposited all our money for the trip into the bank to pay the tour guide. Logistically, we could only manage this with cash. 9600 yuan of it. And, we couldn't resist a shot of him holding the equivalent of about 9 months average salary in his hand. The onlookers certainly couldn't believe it.

In all honesty we wasted quite a bit of time in Changsha. 8+ people are hard to get moving. Had we been better organised, we could have taken in a few more sights, but it was cool. We were relaxed and just enjoying each other's company. We did manage one major sight (more in next post) but other than that, spent a fair amount of time shopping. You will all no doubt be relieved to learn that Changsha sells deodorant. I bought enough to last about 4 months!! We also had enough time to make it to a bar. It was a nice place. The music was bearable too. Pop and RnB. ANYTHING is better than that techno they play everywhere else! It was a pretty sober night (for all but one of us, Sarah) but it was nightlife and youth, the other major thing apart from deodorant and pizza that Lanshan cannot supply! We enjoyed it. I hope to enjoy it again soon. This place is definitely a destination to revisit. Good times.

Window of the World

Day three in Changsha. We took the recommendations of almost everyone on this day and visited 'Window of the World'. This is a big-ish kinda theme park of sorts, where there are many famous buildings from around the world reproduced in miniature. Everyone we had told about our holiday said 'oh, you must go to window of the world'. It seems like it must be Changsha's biggest attraction.

It was ok. Nothing to shout about but we still had fun. To give you a flavour of the place, here's Elisha, Sarah, Liana, Jess and Aaron in front of the (mini) Sydney Opera House...

To be perfectly honest, window of the world was a little bit ghetto. The reproductions were obviously not cared for in the slightest. Bits were missing off all of them and some were in a really bad shape. Queen Victoria was missing from her pedestal outside Buckingham Palace, so Aaron kindly stepped in to replace here. She would not be amused. We were though...














Although it did state in big, clear, poorly-written letters 'do not climb on the attractions', well, there was no-one about, so I couldn't resist the temptation to play Godzilla and climb into this Cambodian (or Thai? Archaeology friends, help me out here...) temple complex. (Is it Kok Phanom Di? I can't be arsed to look it up...). Anyways, made for a good photo...







I think anyone who has ever been to Changsha must have a photo like this in their collection. You can see just how ghetto the place is by the missing columns and broken sign...














We all had a good laugh regardless and by the time we were finished with it all, it was dark (no daylight savings time here). Here's a good one of all of us - Sunshine, Anthony, Elisha, Me, Jess Liana, Sarah Nick and Aaron.

Can you give me an English name?

All of my students ask me again and again 'Do you remember my name?'. The answer is, unvariably, 'No'. This is pretty embarrassing, cos it's always the nice ones who try in class and who I should know. I stress to them the fact that I have over 1050 different students of my own, plus a good number of Anthony's who I also chat to regularly, and it would be impossible to memorise them all - and that's if I could memorise them. Chinese names are HARD. When they're all Wu Xi Mei, Tang Rei Li, Chung Wan Xi and Huang Li Fang, well, I just give up.

It's slightly easier when they have English names, but not all of them do. I have to say though, the English names that some of these kids do have certainly make them memorable.

Where do I start... Well, in the last post I went out for a picnic with two girls named Friday and Sunday, not forgetting good old Human Being. When I was doing some marking for the first time I came across this book with the name 'Human Being' on the front. I thought 'wise ass' and carried on. So I was a little surprised when while riding out to the mountains I struck up a conversation with the lad riding next to me:

'So, do you know the name of the place we're going to?'

'Sorry, no I don't. Let me introduce myself. My name's Human Being.'

'Oh. Ok. Right. Erm. Good.'

He said this so earnestly I could do nothing more than ride on!

We are good friends with two teachers, one of whom is called Seven, the other being Colour. Another teacher friend of ours has possibly the best name of all. He is a fairly geeky, bespectacled chemistry teacher who has a big thing for playing World of Warcraft on the internet. His English name?

Apollo.

As in God of the Sun.

While I think this name is seriously cool, I could think of no man less suited to carry the mantle of 'God'.

Stories from friends' schools have yielded students named Robot, Hitler and Satan. No guesses as to who were the previous teachers' least favourite students....

Best of all is Cinderella. Going against all preconceptions, Cinderella is one of the foulest, most irritating students you could imagine. She is overbearing, smelly, breathes on you and wants to be your friend...

Maybe not.

I think I have to get more creative in dishing out English names. One of the last names I gave out was Gareth...

Al Fresco Dining - Chinese Style

After a month of watching what I eat, and where I eat it, wary of dodgy stomach bugs and the like, one weekend in October found me eating food out of sections of bamboo in the foothills of some nearby mountains and drinking water from a stream.

And it was one of the best days I have had here to date.

Some students from Class 118, the good ones, took me out one Sunday afternoon for a picnic. I had no idea what to expect, but least of all was building an open fire near the edge of a small stream, washing meat, vegetables and rice in said stream and then cooking them in a wok we'd borrowed from a nearby farmhouse. At the farmhouse we negotiated a good price for a big-ass piece of bamboo, which the farmer chopped down for us and sawed into pieces. For those not familiar with the anatomy of bamboo (and I would have included myself in this category!), it is made up of several segments which are closed off by plates at each end. These made instant vessels to hold things in, such as water and our dinner and were also perfect for cooking rice in. We made a small hole in one end of the bamboo segment, and put in some water and rice. Then this hole was plugged with a bit of wood and the whole thing was thrown on the fire. About 20 minutes later, we raked out the bits of bamboo, split them in half and inside was cooked rice! I hesitate to say perfectly...results were a bit variable to say the least, but I was well impressed!!! How cool is that!!

I had a great time with the kids and again was out in the countryside, seeing the real deal. Unfortunately no photos, but some great memories.

Good Bicycle

A week after I was taken up a mountain by class 118, another group of students - this time all Anthony's students (he teaches grades senior 1 and 3, I have senior 2's and all the junior classes) - took us on a bike ride out to a place called Nan Wan Qiao. It translates as 10,000 year old bridge, and it can be seen in the photos below. It ain't 10,000 years old, but it is pretty ancient, as is the small village of mud and wood houses it leads to.




One of the students who visits us most often is called Adam, and he's at the back right in this picture. He's an avid bike rider, hence the reason we came all this way on our bikes.

It's a good job he knows a thing or two about bikes. We certainly needed his help along the way...

Buying our bikes here in Lanshan was traumatic. Not only did we have a crowd of around 30 people watching us intently the whole time, but we also knew that these bikes were far from decent. It wasn't even possible to change the
damn gears to the lowest setting! In my book a bike with 9 gears and only 6 of them useable is the definition of a design fault. With the pressure of the crowd, the inability to explain what was wrong, and the knowledge that these probably were the best bikes in town, we bought them anyway, just to get out of the situation.

This was our first long-distance bike ride. With all the hassle we'd already encountered, we really should have known better than to trust them...


Five minutes down the road, Anthony's rear-gear-changing-mechanism-thingy falls apart. It just literally came to pieces the first time he tried to change gear.

We should have turned back then...

By the time we arrived back in Lanshan his actual gear control had come loose so he couldn't change gear anyway, a pedal had fallen off and my front brake had broken twice!

Despite all this we had a great day. It was a beautiful place and once again we were with some of our most entertaining students (see photo!).

I'm just not so sure whether I can trust my bike enough to go out on it again for any distance.

The truly ironic thing is, that printed on the frame in big
bold letters are the words 'Good Bicycle'...

Drunken Sunshine

At Sunshine's leaving party we were invited by one of her friends to a birthday party the next day.

It was a lot of fun and without any parents or other responsible people about, they all decided to drink some beer...

None of these photos show Sunshine at her best, but this one shows her with her best friend, the little phrasebook that I was given from my mates at work before I left for China. They were inseperable.

Gambe! This is the spirit of chinese meals. A big group sat at a round table with a load of dishes in the centre to share, toasting each other with glasses of beer. You down each one, every time. The beer is weak, but the quantity gets you.

One of the first chinese words I learnt out here was 'Gambe', (cheers in english), and I have said it several hundred times since!





She'd hate me if ever she saw this photo, but I wanted to show just how red she went after a few glasses of beer. You could feel the heat a mile away. We thought she'd throw up, but she was ok...I just don't think her face will ever be the same again! At least she didn't have to go to class straight after, which we found out the guys had to once they'd finished!!

Sunshine and Showers

Now, in sod's law fashion, we found out our only outside friend, Sunshine, would soon be leaving Lanshan for University, leaving us friendless once more...sniff. Ah, it's not as if we're ever left alone, there's kids and teachers around all day every day, but it was just nice to have an excuse to get out of the school and see some different people.

One such occasion was for Sunshine's leaving party. It was held at her home in the countryside near Lanshan, just a half hour's walk, with all her family and friends - enough to fill 3 rooms!

We had a fun time and again, got to see some more of the local area. Unfortunately it was a bit damp, but I still got some good photos.











When the only traffic on the road is a water buffalo, you know it's rural.