Ma Ma Yo!! - Lanshan Scenes

I've been dying to get some good photos of this town for ages. Went for a walk today on a warm and sunny January 31st and actually remembered to take my camera.

One of the most characteristic aspects of Lanshan is its transport. If you don't want to walk (which is easy enough in a place this small) you hail down one of these little three-wheel motorbike taxis with a cry of 'Ma ma yo!!!'.

They are everywhere. For a three yuan flat-fare they will take you anywhere you want. You can fit three people inside at a push, just don't ask them to go up any hills... I'd love to have one back in the UK but there's no way in hell they'd be declared road-worthy. They are beautiful little things but a bit too well ventilated in the winter. The name includes a Chinese word for 'slow' - man man (慢慢). No false pretences there.

As I was out and about I took a few more shots. The first is of a main crossroads near a big supermarket (plenty of ma ma yo's in view and about as affluent as it gets here), the next is at the entrance to the market, followed by views of inside the market while the last is of a small street next to the school, showing typical Chinese homes. Nothing spectacular here but this is where I live.

Christmas Holidays

As I mentioned before, for Christmas we got given a surprise 12 day break. We made the most of it and planned just over a week of travel. Naturally we wanted to escape the winter so we headed south, first to Guangzhou and then to Hainan.

Leaving early on Saturday the 23rd, our bus took 7 hours to get to Guangzhou. We had been told 5 hours, but the roads were awful. Half of the road had been dug up and the other half felt like it needed to be. What made up for it though was the scenery. We passed through two mountain ranges, the first was just outside of Lanshan. I
knew that the mountains were pretty big, and we'd seen them at Wang Nian Qiao but these just kept on going. It looked almost alpine, if you ignored the fact that the forests were bamboo, not pine. I also didn't realise that we live only about an hour from the border with Guangdong. We're a lot further south than I had thought. anyway, the views were spectacular, and if my window had not been held together with sellotape, I'd have opened it to take some pictures. The second mountain range was well into Guangdong and was similar to the landscape in Yangshuo. Very cool.

When we finally reached Guangzhou we were met by Kristy and her husband, classmates of a colleague at school. She took us to our hotel, and made sure we knew where we were in the city. We took them out for dinner to say thank you.

Our hotel was pure quality. Her company uses it for business and we got a special business rate. It was 5 star and it showed. Wow. We were on the 24th floor and had a great view over a plaza right in the centre of the central business district. Great service and a fantastic breakfast buffet. I'm hungry again just thinking about it... And it all cost only around 40 quid for a twin. Still, that's
almost a third of my monthly wage for 3 nights.

I really liked Guangzhou. It was a real 'big' city. If felt 'normal'. Changsha was still a Chinese city, just with 7 million people. Guangzhou seemed much more cosmopolitan. It is also pretty green. There were loads of trees everywhere. That really surprised me. It was also very clean.

We mainly relaxed here and did big city things like shopping and eating western food. Over the course of the holiday we ate Chinese (obviously), American, Indian, Italian, Russian and German food.

The German food was the best. It was in a restaurant called 1920 on the riverfront. I could have been back in Vienna, it was amazing. This was where we celebrated Christmas. We drank Hefeweizen by the litre and ate the best German food I've had in a long time (and that includes actually in Germany). Serious quality. That day had been a bit stressful for me. My Chinese bank card refused to work in any cash machines and got blocked leaving me penniless and I only managed to speak to my family for 5 minutes at an outrageous rate, but that place turned it all around for me.

We managed to do some sightseeing there, including Yuexiu park, a great place where the first three photos were taken. Yuexiu park contained the big red Zhenhai tower which was an old lookout post. It sits atop an old section of the original city wall which now has strange trees with roots that look like something out of the film 'Alien' growing all over it. It was nice to see a well-cared for park, to see big trees and to hear birds. There are no birds in Lanshan.

One of the other big sights I saw was the Museum of the Tomb of the Nanyue King - an
absolutely amazing museum sited over the original tomb of this king who died more than 2000 years ago and was discovered intact a decade ago during building work. You can go down into the tomb itself and there are halls displaying all the burial goods that were left with him. Given their age, the artifacts are so beautiful, so intricate and so well preserved. I loved it.

The other was the Chen Clan Academy - a temple built to honour all the members of the Chen family in Guangdong and which acted as a kind of school for anyone sharing the surname. The decoration on this place was amazing. I took loads of pictures. Apparently each scene tells an actual story.

We left Guangzhou after 3 nights for Sanya in Hainan on Boxing Day, spent 4 nights there, then returned on the 30th for 2 more nights in Guangzhou before going home to rest and recuperate. The other posts tell the rest of the story. all
that's left to say is that we had a great time!

Tropical Paradise...

After a few days spent in Guangzhou it was time for the second part of our Christmas holiday - a trip to a genuine tropical island.

We flew from Guangzhou to Sanya at the southern point of Hainan Island, off the coast of China, on Boxing Day. A few hours delay in the airport was forgotten as soon as we were flying over those wide beaches and blue seas.

This is the first time I've been anywhere tropical, and I was not disappointed...

It was warm, between 20 and 25 degrees,
sunny, with palm trees everywhere, soft sandy beaches and a warm, clear blue sea. Perfect.

We didn't do a great deal. After living it up in Guangzhou, we tried to be a bit more budget and stopped in a youth hostel in Dadonghai where we got 4 nights for less than the cost of 1 night in the 5 star hotel! Best move we ever made though. The place was packed with travellers from all round the world. Mostly Americans, Germans and Russians but there was a complete international cross-section. What was funny about Dadonghai was that instead of having signs written up in Chinese and English, everything was written in Chinese and Russian. I only knew which places were restaurants cos I knew the Russian word! Must have been the Mallorca of the old Soviet Union, or maybe it's just closer than anywhere else... Who knows.

So we had plenty of people to hang out with. We met an Austrian, Min, from Vienna incidentally, whose parents are Chinese and who just finished a semester in Beijing as well as three guys from London - Paul, Andrew and Tim. We went out to the beach, lay about, ate, lay about some more, ate a bit, then went out to a bar til the early morning. This was much the pattern for a few days.

On our last day though, we decided to do something different. We'd heard of another beach at Yalong Bay where all the 5 star resorts are located and the beach is said to be much better. It didn't seem to be far from what we'd heard so we thought it might be nice to ride there.

Here follows an essay in how we should have known better...

We needed to rent 6 bikes but it was pretty late in the day and couldn't find any for a decent price. The youth hostel said they had a few, so we decided to take a look. Turned out they had three mountain bikes, one fold-up bike and a tandem.

Riding these poor unfortunate excuses for bikes seemed just too hilarious an opportunity to pass up on, and I think we were too bowled over by the prospect to pay much attention to the man who needed 30 mins to fix them up before they could be handed over. Should have taken that hint...

So we set off and it started out great. We took photos, laughed at each other's stupid bikes and generally attracted much attention wherever we went. We reckoned it might take 45 mins to get to the beach, however, 30 minutes in, one of the fold-up bike's pedals fell off. And so it began...

Well, there wasn't much we could do at that point, and the beach shouldn't be far away, so we flagged down a motorbike and sidecar, loaded Paul and the fold-up onto it and Min told the driver to take him to Yalong Bay.

Off he went, and on we went. We rode, and rode,
and rode, and...rode...and...rode...and really weren't getting anywhere. If anything it looked as though we were heading inland. We were going in the right direction though. We were following the signs, it just always seemed that every time we turned a corner and expected to see the beach, the road just kept on going.

I was on the tandem at this point, and seriously knackered. The bikes were crap and it took effort just to get them going on the flat. When a huge hill came along I thought 'screw this'.

It was hot, I was tired, I'd forgotten I'm allergic
to some sun-creams and my face was burning up so I told Anthony I'd get a sidecar and told him to carry on by himself. He must have looked such a sight. There's possibly nothing more pathetic than a man riding a tandem by himself...

Anyway, after a bit I managed to flag down a sidecar and set off after the others. It wasn't long before I saw some of them sat by the side of the road ahead. It turned out that Min's bike's back wheel had come loose on it's axle and was useless to ride. Well, brainwave. I took the bike on the sidecar with me and Min had the empty seat on the tandem. Perfect. Again, onwards...until I
came across Paul, walking back towards Dadonghai with the broken fold-up bike and looking thoroughly lost. Turns out that after we sent him off he'd just been dumped in the middle of nowhere by his sidecar driver, and speaking not one word of Chinese had decided to just try and walk back home. Well, I suggested he hitch a ride with me. So, with two bikes now on my lap in the sidecar and Paul sat behind the driver, we set off again for Yalong Bay. We were so laden down that the bike nearly tipped over backwards when we started!

We were making good progress until for no
apparent reason we stopped. The driver gestured that for some reason he could go no further, so we got out and started walking. I'd last seen the rest of the guys about half an hour ago so was pretty happy when I got a phone call saying they were there. Was less happy when they told me I was still miles away, but no problem, we just had to flag down a taxi. That was a little bit more of a problem than we'd anticipated, seeing as every one that passed was obviously en-route somewhere and had passengers. Eventually we managed to find an empty one and finally reached our destination. It had taken over 2 hours and about 25km to get there, but it was worth it, as the pictures show.

We spent the whole afternoon just chilling there, playing volleyball, swimming in the sea, drinking from Coconuts and admiring the scenery. When it was time to go back to Dadonghai, we took the bus!

Bike-riding in China. Never again.

Back in Dadonghai, we went to an Italian restaurant. None of us had eaten since breakfast and we were ravenous. As soon as the food came we just dived straight in. They forgot to bring us cutlery, but no problem, as they brought instead three unordered salads. We didn't raise the issue with the waiter and polished them off in minutes, only noticing later that a nearby table of three Russians left without eating anything...

Now, I really enjoyed this part of the holiday because we got to meet and talk to other foreigners. For me, it was especially cool as I got to speak to other Brits. It was good to talk 'real' English and in no time at all, I realised I'd picked up an accent again, and this time it was pure London. Later on in the evening after we'd all left the bar we were getting some streetside barbecued food I was just chatting to my mates when suddenly a bloke overheard what I was saying, came up to me and said in broad cockney,

'Now don't try and tell me you're not from London!'

'Erm. Well, actually...I, er...'

'Come on up to my rooftop, we're having a little afterparty, bring yer mates and a few beers.'

'Oh. Alright, er...mate.'

So we found ourselves down the road up on this apartment block roof drinking and swapping stories til at least 4am with about 20 other random foreigners. It was a good night. The hangover the next day was in direct proportion to the enjoyment the night before, and made the plane ride to Guangzhou a little less enjoyable than the ride out. We spent a further 2 days in Guangzhou, back in the same hotel before heading back to Lanshan on New Year's Day.

Guangzhou By Night

Guangzhou won't win any prizes for most beautiful city in China, but at night it really came into it's own. Every important building was lit up with neon lights and made quite a show. The first two pics are of the tallest building in Guangzhou, at Citic Plaza, just down from our hotel. The third is Teemall, a huge shopping mall near Tianhe stadium, while the last two were taken from a ferry boat on the Pearl River.

We took a two hour trip along this stretch through the centre of Guangzhou on New Year's Eve, and it was the best part of the night. Every building no matter how big or small was lit up and there were even TV shows being broadcast on the sides of some towers. It was quite something. We were on a fairly late trip and it must have been the last, cos as soon as we got to the furthest point and began to turn back, bang on 10.30pm, the entire riverfront was switched off. The whole city just turned black. We thought we'd just witnessed a massive power cut, but the streetlights were all
still on. Guess they're still pretty economical, even here in the big city.

As I mentioned, it was New Year's Eve. In hindsight it would have been better to spend it in Sanya where we'd made friends and there was a good backpacker spirit, but Guangzhou it was. The ferry didn't dock again until after 11pm and then we were on a mission to find someplace to celebrate the New Year before it passed us by completely. We managed to find an Irish bar which seemed to fit the bill, but no sooner had we arrived than we realised we had no money! It was 11.50pm by now and we were running about trying to find a cash machine that would take our cards. We were finally pointed in the right direction and made it to the bar with just enough time to order a Guinness before the countdown. At least, I think we did. No-one in the bar had thought to check the time, and the girl who was supposed to do the countdown was nowhere to be found. In the end they pulled someone out of the crowd who pulled out his mobile,
took one look at it, put it back in his pocket and just said 'five, four, three, two, one! Happy New Year!'. Whatever. It was ok. We stayed for about an hour and had 2 drinks. There were tons of ex-pats there but everyone seemed to know each other. It felt like being at someone else's party so we weren't too sad to leave. That and the fact that we had a 7-hour bus ride home at 9am the next day...

Lemonheads

Well, it's knocking on for 5 months now since I saw any of you lot. You'd hardly recognise me.

Freaky Fruits

So, today, totally randomly, each teacher got given two massive bags of fruit. We were told we'd be getting oranges. I like oranges.

God knows what the hell these are though. They look like enormous mutant lemons.

I'm thinking maybe grapefruit. I hope not. I don't like grapefruit. Can anyone enlighten me?

I just don't know why though. Is there a surplus of mutant lemons in China right now? Did the bottom fall out of the mutant lemon market? They can't have fallen off the back of a lorry cos it took a lorry to deliver them here! They better have been free. I for one would have appreciated more glass in the windows rather than 50kg of bizarre fruit.

I know they say 'never look a gift-horse in the mouth' but seriously... I mean I haven't even been able to try one yet, not possessing a kitchen nor any kind of kitchen utensils besides an emergency pair of chopsticks. I just don't know what to do with them!

The best examples though of these kind of totally mad and misguided thought processes have to be our Christmas presents. On the day before we left for our holiday, our foreign affairs officer, the communist party leader for the school and the man in charge of finance came over and presented us each with a Christmas present from the school, all wrapped up nicely with bows. We were quite nicely surprised. We were even more surprised when we took them home and unwrapped them.
No word of a lie. This was my Christmas present.

Honestly.

I know it's the thought that counts... but that's precisely what worries me.

Christmas Pictures

Here are a few pictures we took during the run-up to Christmas at school.




This is my favourite Senior 2 class, Class 122. It's also my biggest - 72 students - but you couldn't find a friendlier, more harmonious group of kids.








This is my best Junior 2 class, Class 170, there's only 58 of them! This was early on in the week when my plastic tree was still looking pretty good. By the end of the week it was held together by sellotape, and I'd gone through 6 sets of lights!










I love all my Junior 1 classes and have a load of photos but this kinda sums them up. Bunch of nutters.











These are our favourite girls. We eat with most of them every day and despite only being Junior 2s (about 13 years old), they have fantastic English now.










The week was rounded off with the first Annual Lanshan Yizhong Christmas English Talent Contest, for which we were judges. All those taking part were my students and we had poems, speeches, songs and drama. It was great fun and of course, we had to perform our piece too. We did 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' and they loved it. I guess they'd never heard it before and each time we raced through the part after 'fiiive goooold riiiinnnngggssss' they all wet themselves
laughing. These kids are easily pleased... Seriously one of the best nights I've had here so far. And who at home could ever have imagined seeing me stand up and sing in front of this many people? Amazing.