Sisters in Lanshan

Continuing my sisters' Chinese holiday, after Hong Kong we took a train up to Guangzhou, where we spent the night, breaking the long journey to Lanshan up into something more manageable. We only had one night and did nothing more than eat some kick-ass German food at 1920, my favourite restaurant there, before catching a train the following morning to Chenzhou in Hunan. As it was the end of the May 'Golden Week' holiday, when literally all of China is off work, the only tickets left were for a sleeper, which turned out to be the best way to travel in any case. No crowds in the aisles, somewhere to lay your head and chill... A great way to spend the 4 hour trip.

Now, my girls are not light travellers, and nowhere was this more apparent than the transfer between rail and bus station in Chenzhou. Nightmare. Once we got to the bus station and onto our bus we faced yet another trying situation. The attendant had taken our tickets off us and ushered us onto our bus, where we took up the back seat, so we could sit together. Some moron got on and started making a fuss because his ticket said he was on the back seat and he didn't get it that we wanted to sit together and that there was still a seat for him somewhere else. I played the dumb foreigner card and pretended I didn't understand anything he was saying until he went off and got the attendant. She asked to see our tickets, which we didn't have cos she'd taken them off us earlier! Cue much confusion...

Fortunately I managed to do that Chinese thing of being just incredibly emphatic. No matter whether you're wrong or right, the outcome of many arguments tend to be dictated simply by how strongly and emotionally you press your point. Confrontation is something the Chinese avoid so come on strong enough and that's it, ding ding, end of round one, the other backs down. I pointed lots and sighed a few times and, well, beyond saying that 'you've got my tickets, I gave them to you', there's not much more that I can say back, or have said to me. Pretty pointless. So they soon gave up and settled down.

Once all that was over we enjoyed our journey. It was another 2 and half hours to Lanshan, but we passed through some beautifully idyllic countryside. It had been good to get down to Hong Kong, but it wasn't the greatest place I'd been to to date. I'd imagine you could have some great experiences down there, it's just not the kind of place to be if you're on a budget and travelling solo, or with younger siblings. One day I'll be back... Still, bouncing around on the bus between the fields watching farmers wading barefoot in the mud to plant out their rice, I was glad to be heading home. It was a good feeling. My sisters liked it too. This was what they came to see. Apart from a little escapade with an errant ma-ma-yo that took Sarah on a solo tour round the entire school campus before finding my apartment, we arrived safe and sound.

Next day we were invited out with students from classes 122 and 118 to eat at another student's house (top photo), which was pretty cool. Later on in the afternoon, once it had cooled down a bit, I took them for a walk out into the mountains by the reservoir. I think we only made it about 15 minutes up before sister number one could go no further. Shame we couldn't have made the top for the view, but we contented ourselves with playing around with the camera instead. Turns out Sarah's camera has a decent zoom (see dragonfly below). I took one of two butterflies trying to further their species too, but it was a little fuzzy. Still, if you've ever pondered how butterflies do it, just ask and the photo's yours...
Once the girls were settled in at home, which means once they'd turfed me out of my own bedroom to sleep on the floor, blocked up my toilet, strewn my apartment with clothes and covered all available surface with all kinds of stuff, it was time to put them to work.

In the course of the next week they met each and every one of my students, plus two other additional classes and were the subject of a special English Corner. They had photo after photo taken and now understand better why I can't smile anymore. It was good though. Some classes were better than others of course, and some classes needed to have questions dragged out of them, but they managed it. It was so funny seeing Sammy next to my students. She was as tall as most of the 18 year olds and just towered over all the other 13 year olds.
I think the boy in the glasses in the pic above fancied Sam. He was first to ask for her email and QQ number (Chinese chat program). These boys are all a year older than Sam but still look so young.

One class was particularly memorable, but for all the wrong reasons. I had finished the last class of the day on Wednesday, Junior 1 class 174, a fun class to teach, after lots of good questions and a nice game of Word Snake when, as usual, they asked me to stay and play Hangman with them. Each week they won't let me leave and instead of having form time and maybe doing a little homework for the next half hour, we play Hangman. They love it. My Junior 1 classes are always pretty lively, and I encourage them to shout and get excited about the games and competitions we have. That Wednesday was no exception. In addition it was a hot and sticky day, with no breeze. We were just into the first round when suddenly some girls to my left began to scream. I looked over and saw that one of my students was having a fit. She was all tensed up and convulsing. It was horrible. Luckily some Chinese teachers were nearby and they went to get help. All I could do was clear away the desks round her and try to keep the students from crowding in as the class teacher held her and tried to bring her round. It was one of the worst experiences I've ever had. I felt so helpless. In the UK I'd have been straight on my phone dialing 999, but here, I had no idea what to do. And to see that happen to one of my students, a little girl, was awful. Just awful. I couldn't stop thinking about it for the rest of the night. It didn't help that later that night walking back from the supermarket I saw an ambulance pulling out of the school gate. It was a sickening feeling. I kept wondering that it might have been the atmosphere in my class that set it off. Too exciting, too loud, too frantic. It turned out she was ok in the end. She was in class the next day even, but my God that was an episode.
The rest of the week was more or less uneventful. As uneventful as Lanshan ever gets anyway. Sarah got sick, which was not fun for either her or me as I had to clean out the buckets. It was even less fun seeing as we couldn't use my bathroom. Instead there were four people now using Anthony's bathroom. Not the prettiest bathroom in the world, as Anthony is not the cleanest man in the world, and also pretty bug ridden. I eventually killed a big spider that had been terrorising Sarah and no-one else, and after one late night toilet trip saw no fewer than four cockroaches of various sizes there. This plagued my mind somewhat, seeing as I was sleeping on the floor... In fact, on the girls' last night in Lanshan, I was just settling down to go to bed when an absolutely enormous centipede crawled under the door right past my make-shift bed and made a run for the bathroom. It was wriggling manically, waving all its legs side to side like it was doing some kind of mexican wave, but was damn fast and in no time had found my bathroom, crawled behind a pipe and was gone. The thing was at least a foot long and a good inch wide, so I was not too keen on it making a return trip during the night. I sprayed its last known location liberally with bug-spray and luckily found it dead later that night.

We ate sugar cane with Mr Lei (Apollo) on his roof and went to watch a funeral. There have been two funerals down my road in the last few months. Funerals are big things in China. The first one lasted over a week and for the whole time the road was blocked with crowds of people keeping the deceased company until it was time for burial. People were literally sat around on the street like overspill from a popular bar, just playing mahjong or cards and chatting. They were permanently cooking and had taken over someone's yard especially to prepare all the meals. I walked past just before lunch once and there were about 15 large round tables waiting ready in the street. Industrial-scale catering.

This funeral was on a slightly smaller scale, but it was the music that attracted us. While we were sat on Lei's roof we could hear live music coming from somewhere. Upon investigating we found the funeral. It was after 10pm by now, late for China, but the party was still going strong. I say party because it was. There was a live band (the first I've seen in China), singers and actors who later put on a show. The festivities were to last for a full 24 hours and there was a big crowd watching, many in pyjamas as undoubtedly they couldn't sleep through the noise. The family of the deceased wore white robes and hats. White is associated with death here, not black, which is interesting. Some people were crying, as is to be expected, but the atmosphere was not mournful, and never sombre. Later on, there would be a procession to the burial site, which often includes a marching band and a dragon. It's all a celebration of a life now passed and precisely how a funeral should be. I was impressed by the concept. I want my funeral to be like that, with a big party preceding my coffin being led thorough the streets by a dancing dragon. Perfect.

One lunchtime we decided to visit the Ta Xia Tower. The four Junior 2 girls that we eat with every day were free (not being boarders they don't get locked in their dorms for 2 hours over lunch) and wanted to do something with Sam so we invited them along. We all had a lot of fun. We played on the elephant slide then climbed the tower to admire the view, each of us hiding round corners and shouting 'boo!' at whoever was unfortunate to come along next. Then back down in the courtyard the four girls suddenly stopped, stood in a circle, locked their right legs together by the knees and started to hop around, clapping and shouting out 'hai you yi ge, hai you liang ge, hai you san ge...' and so on for as long as they could. It looked like fun, so one after the other we all joined in. I'd never seen that before anywhere, but it's a cool little game.
One morning Susan took us out for a traditional local breakfast, which is much worse than run-of-the-mill Chinese breakfasts. No dumplings, no baozi, just some greasy fried dishes and brain soup with boiled pig's blood. Yummy! Bearing in mind Sarah had just been violently ill the night before, this was perhaps not the best way to start the day. However, I have to applaud Sammy here. She took some of that brain and placed it in her bowl. That it later got hidden by noodles is neither here nor there, just good sense!

We were only taken out for two other meals, and they were two of the most uncomfortable I've been to. Over the course of my stay I've scared them shitless with stories of my nightmares at such meals. All the enforced drinking, the bizarre specialities that turn up and some of the rituals that have to be observed and honoured. The poor things just didn't know what to do with themselves and, strangely enough, the Chinese didn't know what to do with them either. My sisters just sat to one side of me, silent symbols of nervousness. I reassured them, and to be honest the meals were pretty acceptable, but the situation was still so awkward. My colleagues tried to make some polite conversation but that petered out pretty quickly. One of the most bizarre moments was when Sam practically scolded Mr Lei for trying to press another drink on me when I'd said I was finished. I can't imagine any Chinese 13 year old daring to tell a thirty-something man where to get off. I think they were quite taken aback really, but I wish I had Sam around as my bodyguard a little more often! The KTV afterwards was even worse, but a perfect representation of this unique kind of hell. They pulled out all the worst possible English songs they could find, which is pretty much all you can ever find. We sang Backstreet Boys and Britney, the theme tune to 'Ghost' and attempted to fumble along to songs that had become old long before any of us were born. Then of course they turned on the flashing lights, put on some awful, tinny, repetitive Chinese techno and shouted 'Disco! Woooo!'. Mr Yang was waving his limbs all over the place and looking very pleased with himself, while the ladies all did a little mambo or something. We mostly stood around watching the six of them with a mixture of embarrassment and car-crash fixation before we managed to persuade them we'd rather sing 'Casablanca' one more time... After an acceptable amount of time had passed we blamed jetlag and escaped.

All in all they did well though, especially with the food. In fact it was little Sammy who was initially so worried about the food who got on best with it. By the end of the week her chopstick skills weren't that bad even. They did their bit as celebrities for the week and wowed the town well. My students are still asking after them. They certainly won't be forgotten.