the novelty of the new

Jintang, Chengdu, Sichuan Province (7th-19th/10/13)

Location: Arts and Sciences College of Sichuan Normal University

Population: 35,000 students

读万卷书不如行万里路 [讀萬卷書不如行萬里路]

(Dú wàn juǎn shū bùrú xíng wànlǐ lù.)

'Reading ten thousand books is not as useful as travelling ten thousand miles.'

(A pound of practice is more worth than an ounce of theory.)

Chinese Proverb

 

After two weeks of compulsory military training and the end of the National Holiday, my freshmen students finally begin classes with me. For the most part they have regular English names: Clare, Lucy, Emily, Sean, Derek, Pansy, Summer. Then you get the odd curve ball- DingDing and DongDong, Sherlock, Cinderella. Julius Caesar. 

 

With their unbounded enthusiasm they make my bubbly second years seem like jaded old men. They want to know everything about my life, they take photos with me to show their grandparents, and they constantly attempt to feed me. In the space of two lessons I end up with a snickers bar, two preserved eggs and a plum lollipop. Their imagination needs only a little coaxing to produce work that is creative and interesting- given the task to design an extreme restaurant, my students choose to build their establishments by the seaside, up a tree, in a volcano and in one case, on the moon.

 

I should have guessed from the number of KTVs in China that my students would like dancing and singing. It's difficult to walk around campus without strolling past a group of students practising some routine to the tinny music coming from a set of portable speakers on a bench. I give a lesson on solving problems through music where they have to create their own band, coming up with stage names, album titles, logos and a back story etc. I tell them, half-jokingly, that if they sing during their presentation I'll give them extra points. Of course, I only have myself to blame when a group of students choose to perform You Raise Me Up, Westlife accompanying them in the background thanks to someone's iPhone and the rest of the class swaying in unison. In an attempt to regain some sense of normality I ask the next group of students to come up.

 

Student A, striking a jazz hands pose: 'We are the Happy Monkey Band'

Student B, nodding seriously: 'And we are from Earth.'

 

My students aren't the only ones who enjoy the novelty of the new. This week G and I finally gain water, light bulbs, gas for our portable stove, bank accounts and are no longer considered illegal immigrants as we are registered with the police at last. At last we are able to cook our own food in the apartment, turn on a light when it gets dark and drink water without having to boil it first. We celebrate being bought into the 21st century with comfort food from home: sausage, mash and beans on toast and for dessert a whole row from the block of emergency chocolate.

 

We also begin our weekly two hour Mandarin lesson on a Wednesday where our Chinese teacher, Anna, valiantly attempts to teach us and I try to understand what is going on. Some words stick and others are lost immediately in the void. I do, however, discover my favourite word in Mandarin: 红绿灯 Hónglǜdēng. It means traffic light.

 

 

The week ends with the Freshers Welcome Concert on Friday evening, which opens with that most traditional of Chinese entertainment- River dance. What then follows is a jumble of dance acts, literature readings and celebrities. There's the group of dancing septuagenarians, whose choreographer reveals she is 72. There's break dancing, the appearance of a famous Chinese actor who for some inexplicable reason decides to do the robot, a poem so distorted by the sound-system it could be being read by Daleks, the appearance of the Chinese version of Justin Bieber, the school song, the national anthem, and, of course, the obligatory firework display, which is so loud it makes the nearby apartment lights turn off and on.

Standing next to a group of students clad in plastic rain macs and waving neon batons, I can't help but conclude that it's certainly very different to my own Freshers University experience. I ask one of the students standing beside me, who's volunteered to translate what's happening, whether they are enjoying the concert or not.

He shrugs. 'It is better than morning exercise.'

I take that as tacit approval.



the shanghai experience

Shanghai, (1st-6th/10/2013)

Location: East China coast, a two and a half hour flight from Chengdu.

Population: 23 million.

Famed For: Being the 'Paris of the East' and the biggest city proper in the world.

 

Visiting Shanghai is very much wish fulfilment for me. It's the city I most wanted to see when I came to China and the place I'd hoped to be sent to for my teaching. As it is, on my meagre internship salary I'm rather glad I've ended up somewhere far cheaper!

 

It's a sprawling tapestry city, a mishmash of all things wonderful and bizarre, seamlessly woven together into one extraordinary place. It's a melting pot of cultures and consumerism and like any cosmopolitan city provides you with the option to do and try almost anything you want.

 

The food, for example, is multinational. My craving for croissants is fixed one smoggy morning by visiting the French patisserie opposite a tube entrance and nibbling at the flaking, buttery pastry we buy there. We treat ourselves to pizza by the river one evening, enjoying the taste of real cheese after six weeks without it. We sip the thin, brown soup from a bowl of Japanese ramen noodles for lunch and walk past restaurants where the smell of Thai curry wafts down from the open upper windows. Of course there's the requisite menu oddities- chicken soup with an entire dead chicken sitting unhappily in the pot, a broth made using the skull of an ox and then there's the delightfully tasteful Taiwanese establishment, More Than Toilet, where your food comes served in a lavatory bowl.

 

The architecture veers from Sci-Fi fantasy to the sublime. The Bund, smog bound during the day, becomes a Spielberg inspired, glittering, neon wonderland at night. Stroll through the French Quarter with its elegant tree lined walkways and tasteful European-style houses and you could easily be mistaken for thinking you were in Paris- even the street signs are in Chinese and French. Nanjing East Road is Leicester Square transplanted across continents. Duck into one of the many tiny market streets though and you're in a world of narrow alleys and overhanging two-storey buildings, lines of washing strung out to dry overhead and shops tucked into cubbyholes in the walls. There's the obligatory 'restored' ancient town, with it's dark panelled shops and pagoda style roofing, full of overpriced tourist kitsch and the omnipresent Starbucks coffee shop, but Shanghai offers such variety that  hop onto the tube, and two stops down the line you can't help but find yourself somewhere completely different. It's difficult to find a moment of peace and quiet in a city like Shanghai, and if you've come, as we have, during the National Holiday then it's practically impossible. But tucked away in the middle of all the hustle and bustle is the Jade Buddha Temple. Inside it's near silent, just the gentle, rising curl of incense and the breeze ruffling the leaves of a few potted plants. It's hard to believe you're still in the centre of the city. In the tiny temple gardens there is a pool with dozens of brightly painted koi carp, hungrily mouthing at the surface of the water as a little child feeds them. Inside, the Jade Buddha itself is relatively diminutive in it's glass case but the absolute stillness is worth the entrance price and in a place like Shanghai it's easy to understand the attraction of Buddhism and it's quiet, slow, contemplation.

Likewise, visiting Zhujiajiao Ancient Town in the Shanghai suburbs offers a moment of respite from the ever present hustle and bustle. A seventeen hundred year old water town, it is the Chinese equivalent of Venice, with thirty six stone, wood and marble bridges crisscrossing the narrow waterways, and scores of old men pushing their wooden boats up and down the canals, as the tourists take pictures and admire the scenery. We eat dumplings on a rooftop terrace overlooking the water before taking a trip in one of the boats ourselves.From the water, you gain an entirely new perspective of the place and the gentle rocking motion lulls you into a quiet meditation, punctured only by the quiet snap of a camera and the slap of the water against the boat.

 

As for sightseeing and entertainment there seems to be a limitless amount of options to choose from. We take an open-topped bus to see the attractions, winding our way through the city streets and taking in the view. It's an impressive way to see the city- we pass soaring skyscrapers and the National Stadium, a modern art museum that appears to be made out of red Lego and parks full of families enjoying the good weather. We sip inexpensive cocktails at hostels and eat spicy street food under dim pavement lighting, shop and walk and shop again. But one of the best things is experiencing my first proper Chinese firework show, completely free in one of the local parks. We arrive late and the crowds back all the way to the tube entrance, but it doesn't matter because the fireworks are so big that they can be easily seen no matter how far the distance. They light up the sky like it's day time, huge incandescent balls of golden light, exploding in showers of white sparks before quietly trailing away to be replaced by the next round of colour and light. There's no music, but the resulting gasps of admiration from children and adults alike is all the soundtrack that's needed.

Like everything about Shanghai, it's big, bold and beautiful, modern and ancient and completely unforgettable.





an abba autumn festival

Chengdu, Sichuan Province (19/09/2013)

一年中秋又来到，远在他乡的我，心中只有一个信念－－祝家中的亲人们永远幸福安康！

 

(Yī nián zhōngqiū yòu lái dào, yuǎn zài tāxiāng de wǒ, xīnzhōng zhǐyǒu yīgè xìnniàn--zhù jiāzhōng de qīnrénmen yǒngyuǎn xìngfú ānkāng!)

The Mid-Autumn Day approaches. Although I am far from home, I have this one conviction in mind- I wish my family happiness and blessings forever.

Traditional Chinese Autumn Festival Message

 

 

In ancient times the world had ten suns. They scorched the earth and shrivelled the crops, dried up the wells and made the people poor and sick. In due time, a hero arose named Hou Yi, a man endowed with superhuman strength, who climbed to the top of the tallest mountain and shot down nine of the suns, leaving the last to provide light and warmth and hope in the daytime.

 

As a reward he was given an elixir by the Empress of Heaven, Wangmu, which if drunk would render him immortal and cause him to become a celestial being. Unwilling to part from his beloved wife, Chang E, however, he gave it to her to keep safe.

Now Hou Yi had a deceitful, selfish apprentice named Peng Meng who had seen his master give Chang E the immortality elixir. Waiting until his master had left one day, he seized his chance, rushing into Chang E's chambers, sword drawn, demanding she give him the bottle.

 

Chang E was a rather clever woman but even she knew she could not win against the armed apprentice. She drew the elixir out from the drawer of her dressing table and did the only thing she could think of.

 

She drank the elixir herself.

Immediately, she ascended to Heaven, thwarting Peng Meng's plans but forever separating herself from her beloved husband. Dwelling in the Palace of the Moon she could only watch over him when the sun retired and the stars appeared, never to be able to speak to or hold him again.

 

Hou Yi, upon returning to his house, knew immediately what had happened and was distraught. Unable to vent his anger upon his apprentice who had fled, he instead decided to create a special place in honour of his wife, laying out an incense table in the garden and decorating it with the sweetmeats and fruits Chang E had loved.

 

When the people heard about what had happened to their beloved hero and his wife they too gathered to make their own special altars, adorning them with hundreds of specially baked cakes, formed in the shape of a full moon.

 

And so the Autumn Moon Festival was born.

 

In reality, it means we get four days off work, the roads become gridlocked as thousands of Chinese people try to return to see their families and a lot of moon cake gets eaten.

 

Moon cakes look like small, decoratively latticed, shiny pork pies, with a variety of flavourings and additives inside, ranging from fruit and nuts, to red bean paste and lotus. The type we buy turns out to have a jelly baby green centre with the same consistency as Turkish delight and a strange chemically sweet after-taste.

 

I decide not to finish mine when it starts taking the enamel off my teeth.

 

We spend our holiday seeing two of the most famous buildings here in Chengdu. The first is The Global Centre, which is the biggest shopping centre in the world. It has five floors of shops, an IMAX cinema, an ice-rink, a glass bridge and a Water Park complete with its own beach. Everything glitters gold, the floors are shiny marble and the escalators have LED jellyfish swimming up and down the sides. There are palm trees and eateries and a huge domed ceiling to let in the light; boutiques and beauty salons and an arcade palace.

 

It makes the Bullring look like a child's dollhouse.

 

In a country that is supposed to embody the Communist ideal of shared wealth, however, it's hard not to think of this symbol of Capitalism as a great big white elephant in the room. Not that I'm complaining- anyone who knows me well knows I am always happy to shop (preferably with other people's money) - but it seems wrong knowing that ten stops down the subway line in the Tibetan quarter there are people with no legs and crippled hands begging for a few yuan. That to get to the hostel this morning I passed a man washing his hands in a puddle on the pavement.

 

Needless to say, I leave without buying anything. 

Wenshu Monastery, on the other hand, is a calm oasis of religious reflection. The mist rolls around the temple eaves, making stone dragons appear and then disappear again, the silence is only broken by the occasional bird song, and in the lovingly tended ponds in the temple grounds, brightly coloured fish break the surface to search for food. Inside one of the temples we creep up three flights of stairs, past the Buddhist library and meditation rooms to reach the top where lies the Room of One Thousand Buddhas. It's as impressive as it sounds- the walls lined with tiny golden Buddhas in different positions surrounding a huge statue of the Buddha in the centre of the room, ringed with flowers and fruit and the golden cushions for worshippers. 

 
Outside are hundreds of shops and stalls selling prayer beads and jade, roasted chestnuts and noodles and tiny wooden models of the Buddha. There are vegan restaurants and tea houses and people chatting and playing Mah Jong. We pass a man casually carrying a dead turtle down the street.



We, however, are having Hot Pot for tea as it is K's birthday.
 

This hotpot is a lot more successful than our previous attempt in Beijing, where in a bizarre set of circumstances we ended up ordering what we wanted by speaking to the restaurant owner's nephew over the phone who spoke English. One of our friends almost ate raw tofu because we weren't sure how long things took to cook and fishing things out of the Hot Pot with chopsticks became a strategic nightmare (especially as anything dropped on the table must be left as it is considered 'dead'). In the end the waitress ended up plating up all of our food over an hour's meal. We couldn't even give her a tip because they don't do that in China.

This time, however, all goes well. Having had weeks to master chopsticks nothing is dropped, we can now gauge how long things must cook for and K has brought along her Chinese friends who order for us.

On the other hand this does mean that there are a lot of dishes I don't recognise. I politely point to one of the dishes that looks a little like a cross between a white stringy jellyfish and a mushroom and ask.

'Jeremy, what is this?'

He smiles. 'You know cow's have four stomachs? This is the first.'

'And that?' I point at something flat, brown and spiky, laid in strips on a plate.

'Fourth stomach of the cow.'

'And this?' I point at a white, spiky strip in resignation.

'Chicken stomach.'

'Jeremy, is there anything you have ordered that is not stomach?'

He thinks and then points over to a plate of kebab sticks with tiny lumps of dark red meat on them. 'This is not stomach.'

'Great,' I smile. 'What is it?'

'Chicken heart.'

I stick to the dumplings.

Outside the full moon is shining and we decide to finish the night in typically Chinese style.

 

We go to a karaoke bar, or as it's known in China, KTV.

 

Inside we pass rooms full of large groups of Chinese people singing very seriously. If we knew any Chinese we could have had a stab at singing the traditional songs.

 

Instead, we end up singing a lot of Abba very loudly and with die hard enthusiasm.

 

K's Chinese friends are understandably a little bemused by this and it is perhaps the strangest Autumn Festival celebration they have ever had- watching a group of English people sing Swedish songs very badly.

 

But it is a celebration none the less. Of birthdays, of festivals, of being in China and loving it.

 

And if there's one thing being in China has taught me, it's that you don't have to understand what's going on to have a good time.

 

blood, sweat and stone

Leshan, Sichuan Province (14/09/2013)
Location: A 2 hour bus ride south from Chengdu.
Population: 533,000.
Famed For: Having the tallest Buddha in the world.

At the weekend we meet up with the other Chengdu interns in the city. It's a chance to catch up on what's been happening, swap gossip, trade teaching tales and relax, far away from anything that smells like chalk or students.

It also makes me and G feel incredibly lucky with our placement and school. I sit, fingers pressed to my mouth in horror at some of the stories the other interns share- apartments infested with mould, peculiar neighbours, demons guised as students who spit and sleep or swear and leave, forty hour weeks, lessons observed by parents and principals, inedible canteen food- and can say that the only unfortunate incident I've had so far is that on Friday morning I woke to find myself locked inside my bedroom.

 

(No amount of handle rattling, pulling, banging or coaxing would open the door. I had to yell for G -who was fortunately in the apartment at the time- who, to cut a long story short, called Beata, who sent a workman who  hummed and hawed and twisted the handle until he eventually agreed that yes, the door was indeed stuck shut.

At which point, he downed his bag of tools and kicked the door in.

 

Whatever works.)

 

The other interns are, of course, simultaneously both annoyed and impressed with mine and G's good luck, but we all toast to our experience here in China- we all know it'll be character building, character changing one way or another- and ganbei our beer.

 

It's an early start to a long day on Saturday as we journey to Leshan to see the giant Buddha carved into the mountainside.

It's the result of the ingenuity of an 8th century monk named Haitong; he hoped creating a giant Buddha to watch over the vast river that flowed past would calm the often turbulent and sometimes dangerous currents that threatened local shipping boats. This plan had a great deal of merit- the huge amount of rock and dirt shifted by carving out the giant Maitreya would be put in the river, altering the currents and slowing the river's flow.

 

Unfortunately, part way through, government funding for the project was threatened. Haitong, to show his piety and sincerity for the project decided to take drastic action.

 

 He gouged out his own eyes.   

 

We weave our way up through the pretty wooded park, round imposing stone towers, threading through crowds of worshippers at wooden temples, their knees bent on buttercup yellow cushions as they clutch smoking sticks of incense. The air becomes still, stifling, humming with insects. Our clothes cling to our bodies, sweat makes our skin shine, and my tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth.

 

And then we emerge, breathless, beside the ear of Buddha.

 

Slightly mossy and a little faded with age, this 233ft statue is still breathtakingly impressive, and we follow the crowds of people lining up to carefully pick their way down the sharply cut stairs inlaid into the side of the mountain so that we can reach the bottom of the Buddha.

It's a slightly hairy descent, the steps often narrowed or worn with age, the handrail low and slippery and I'm glad I'm wearing sensible shoes and that I don't suffer from vertigo.

 

 

 

But it's worth the trip for the view at the bottom. The statue is so spectacularly large, that a family of three can quite easily have a picnic on the nail of the Buddha's big toe, and trying to angle the camera to take pictures of ourselves and the statue requires some imaginative placing. As it is, I manage to get a picture of myself and my friends K and L with a bit of the Buddha's leg in the background.

 

The rest of the weekend is spent recovering from the slog back up the mountainside and trying not the scratch at mosquito bites. We stroll through Jinli street, a pleasant tourist trap, full of shops selling prayer beads and jade, Tibetan carvings, good luck symbols engraved on grains of rice, indian scarves and sugar spun animals. We pick at food stalls selling everything from deep fried dumplings to something called 'three times mud', intestines to melon slices on sticks. It's a lovely place, especially at night when the glow of the red lanterns lights up the dark wood panelling that the shops are built from. Still, as we sit in Starbucks drinking hot chocolate, it's hard to believe that this is an authentic recreation of ancient China (which is what the sign proclaims as you enter the street.) It's the Disney version, clean and shiny and wholesome. 

 

We leave Jinli street with the feeling of having been in a kind of Twilight Zone, an Alice in Wonderland China, except here everything is horribly neat and orderly and disconcerting.

 

Five minutes down the road, someone clears their throat by my shoes and we almost get run over by a taxi.

 

Unconsciously, we all relax.

 



the post-it note justification

Jintang, Chengdu, Sichuan Province (09/09/2013)

Location: Arts and Sciences College of Sichuan Normal University

Population: 35,000 students

不闻不若闻之，闻之不若见之，见之不若知之，知之不若行之；学至于行之而止矣 不聞不若聞之，聞之不若見之，見之不若知之，知之不若行之；學至於行之而止矣

(Bù wén bù ruò wén zhī, wén zhī bù ruò jiàn zhī, jiàn zhī bù ruò zhīzhī, zhīzhī bù ruò xíng zhī; xué zhìyú xíng zhī ér zhǐ yǐ)

'Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand'

Chinese Proverb

 

'Good Morning, Rachel!'

It is Monday morning and I have just been enthusiastically greeted by my first class of twenty second year university students as I walk through my classroom door. They are already seated in neat rows at the front of the room, paper out, pens at the ready, smiling and eager and ready to learn.

They are also twenty five minutes early to my lesson.

It could only be China. Teaching here is always an adventure. Sometimes it's frustrating and exhausting and you want to bang your head (or the students) against your desk just to get a response other than blank bemusement.

Sometimes you have to trick them into speaking because through a deadly combination of shyness, Chinese teaching methodology (students should be seen and not heard) and puzzlement at the mad Englishwoman gesticulating at the front of the classroom they are occasionally struck dumb. I put them in groups and sneakily sit next to them to hear them speak. I set True or False quizzes, making them stand up if they think it's false and sit down if they think it's true. Five questions in they're so sick of mimicking a jack in the box they're yelling the answers at me. Sneaky plan success.

Sometimes it's worrying. A lesson on family ends with us discussing the royal family and what the students would do if they were King or Queen for the day. Most of them help the poor, or go shopping or travelling. And then there's the student who stares in utter bafflement because they have genuinely no idea. There's also the student who grins and offers up the suggestion of 'killing the King and Queen because then I could do what I liked.'

It's difficult to know which is more terrifying- the pupil with the Machiavellian streak or the student with no imagination.

Most of the time though it's brilliant and hilarious and very easy to feel a great deal of affection for your students. One day, for example, teaching body parts and illness, we role play going to the doctor and I circle the class listening to them pretending to be ill. Then this genius bit of acting happens:

Boy One (clutching his stomach and groaning): Oh Doctor, I am very ill.
Boy Two (feeling his forehead): What's wrong?

Boy One: I am pregnant.
Boy Two (laughing): What? And who is the father?
Boy One: You are.

It's the moment when a student successfully uses the right words you've taught, then makes an imaginative leap and can make a joke in English that makes teaching worthwhile. Or seeing one student gently help another who is struggling to think of the right word. Or watching them pretend to give a news report, faces creased in concentration as they recall the correct vocabulary and intonation.

Mostly though I just enjoy watching them learn. 

 

There's a proverb in China that if you actively involve children in your lessons they'll learn and remember. So I make no apology for playing a lot of games with my students. Rock, paper, scissors. Pictionary. Charades. Twenty questions. Hangman. Anagrams. My students stick post-it notes on 'volunteers' (read: victims) to learn body parts. We watch and discuss film clips to illustrate points I've made in the lesson. Blackadder, Robin Hood, Man Vs Food. The more disgusting, funny or scary the better. We listen to songs to work out the lyrics: Rihanna's California Kingbed is good for doing body parts, Adam and the Ants' Stand and Deliver for crime, Madness' Our House for family, (though it's only as I'm watching that I wonder whether it's culturally appropriate for my class to be watching a man in drag play mother round a house).

My students are kind in unexpected ways. They leave me greetings on the blackboards. They set up the computer for me before I get to lesson, close curtains, find missing erasers, offer me their food, fill up my water bottle and take me into town to show me where to buy the best snacks. One of my students, Stephanie, makes it her personal mission to get my trousers turned up because 'Teacher, I am very concerned your pants are too long. We shall go and make them shorter.'

Our first weekend in Chengdu and unsure how to get back to the university, a student who speaks very little English buys bus tickets for me and G, shows us the correct bus, travels with us, then hails and pays for a taxi for us once we reach the local town afterwards. She flatly refuses any offer of reimbursement.

Being a teacher here is often funny and sometimes difficult and mostly amazing but always a privilege. Nothing will compare to that first moment, standing in front of twenty eager faces and opening my mouth and teaching. It felt odd and amazing and right. Like I'd always done it.

That first lesson, one of my students brings a note explaining their friend cannot come. I open the letter, expecting a few vague lines about illness and promises of future attendance.

Instead it begins:

'Dear Honorified Rachel...'

It could only be China.



the sichuan situation

Jintang, Chengdu, Sichuan Province (02/09/2013)

Location: A 28 hour train ride from Beijing to the very West of China.

Population: 12.5 million.

Famed For: Being the home of China's Pandas and the gateway to Tibet.

 

 

For twenty eight hours, China rolls past the train windows in a myriad of forms and colours. Leaving behind Beijing and the light rain that has begun to fall, the train speeds through the endless suburbs of towering apartment blocks, passing by shabby restaurants, pebble-dashed schools and lines of washing. The sky changes, becoming clear and sunny, then darker, clouds gathering at the corners like school children waiting for a fight. The landscape morphs into watered fields of rice and old men bent in half, picking the tender shoots. Tall bamboo sways in the wind and the mist begins to roll in as the ground starts to rise and fall becoming lush, green and mountainous, dotted here and there with ramshackle farm buildings and shabbily dressed locals, skin sun darkened and wrinkled.

 

Stepping off the train at Chengdu train station, the air wraps round us in greeting, hot and wet as though we've walked into the bathroom after someone else has showered. Sweat slicks our skin, shines our hair and presses our clothes close against our spines. Walking even short distances leaves the napes of our necks damp, faces flushed. The sky is missing, as though someone has reached up and painted it out in big, blank strokes of dirty white smog. Unlike cloud it has no texture, no shape, nothing to define the edges of it. It simply hangs, featureless and heavy over the city.

We are, however, an hour out of the city by car and as my flatmate G and I drive along the motorway in a taxi organised by our contact, Beata, the sky begins to reappear in patches of blue. We are living on campus at our placement at the Arts and Sciences College of Sichuan Normal University, and that turns out to be another pleasant surprise because the university is really rather impressive.

A large arched gateway manned by uniformed guards serves as the entrance. Beyond that is a tree lined avenue with a large bubbling fountain and rising behind it is the grand entrance building, made of light, skin coloured stone. A small lake with the glint of orange fish lies in the middle of the campus and everywhere is green and verdant and lovely. A black butterfly the size of a human hand flits over my head.

Our apartment is habitable enough, needing only a touch of TLC and some light cleaning. We are on the sixth floor though and there is no lift. No internet. No drinkable water. No air conditioning. No gas for our stove. We have only one key between us. Also, a colony of wasp-like insects inhabit the crack between the tiles and the window in our bathroom. Whilst they seem docile enough it does add a Fear Factor style element every time we need to use the shower or toilet.

I have decided I can never visit Australia.

Our neighbours, on the other-hand are lovely. On the floor below is Gregory, an American whose two great loves are coffee and guns. He's been here so long he knows all the tricks and tips and most importantly fixes our TV so that we have HBO movies, rather than just the ironically named Chinese state news channel - CCTV News - in English. He gives us hot chocolate and oatmeal cookies and speaks of a mythical shop called Metro, which stocks foreign foods including real cheese and Heinz baked beans. As proof of this he shows us his kitchen cupboards, containing an altar to the god of western foodstuffs- Coffee, Frosties, Pasta, Quaker Oats and Snickers.

 

Mark, who’s Dutch, smokes and who is generally tall and cool lives on the second floor with his Chinese girlfriend Elaine, (also a teacher and very excited about hotpot and teaching us to cook authentic Chinese food). After trying the canteen food, I too am very excited.

 

Finally there’s Joshua, a laid-back American, with dreadlocks, tattoos and his own rock band. He’s also the leader of our department.

 

They encourage us to tell Beata about the things that need fixing in our flat, especially the wasps. So we do.

 

Beata smiles blankly at us as if we are stupid for not realising that wasps are a design feature of every Chinese home. We explain we want them gone. She laughs at us.

 

'Aah, disgusting!' she giggles.

 

Friday morning there is a knock on the door. Outside is a tiny Chinese man who smiles, points at the paper in his hand, (which is all in mandarin) and then walks past me and into our bathroom. He flushes our toilet, grins and gives me a thumbs up. Then he leaves. The whole experience takes no more than a minute.

 

I am still not sure what has happened. I am, however, reassured that our toilet now has the approval of a stranger.

 

Beata comes to see us the next day. 'Is your toilet working now?'

 

'The toilet was always working,' I explain. 'It's the wasps that are the problem. Wasps.' I flap my arms and make the buzzing noise.

 

'Ah!' Beata nods. 'Wasps. I will sort this out for you.'

 

A week later the wasps are still here. On the upside, a man is now installing air-conditioning in my room.

 

I may have to work on my mime.

the city made of history

Beijing (29/08/13-01/09/13)

Population: 20.18 million.

Famed For: Being the Capital of China.

不到长城非好汉 (bú dào Chángchéng fēi hǎohàn)

'He who has never been to the Great Wall is not a true man.'

Chinese Proverb

 

 

The Great Wall of China is literally breath-taking. Undulating across the land, it dips and curves to follow the contours of the hills it sits on and in the morning light it emerges from the densely forested slopes like a great grey snake or the tail of a dragon, with it's ridged scaling turrets and winding pathways.

In some places the ascent becomes so steep and the steps so high and narrow that the handrail is the only thing left to cling onto. It stains the tourists' palms rust red and tests the muscles in your legs and the steel of your nerves. At some points the path becomes too constrictive to stop without blocking the way, so, with lungs heaving, you push onwards up towards the small fort that marks a stopping point.

But the view. Everything is worth it for the view.

It makes you feel...small.

Walking one of the new Wonders of the World, on steps which were two thousand years in the making, built by slaves and peasants and soldiers now long gone, for one of the world's oldest civilisations and here you are, one person casually standing on so much history.

The sense of perspective is both refreshing and terrifying. It's also coloured with a huge sense of achievement, because despite being one person you have in some way conquered the Wall, and followed in the footsteps of thousands of people before you.

 

You are now part of the history.

I stop to read some of the graffiti that has been scrawled along the Wall by previous travellers, hoping for some words of wisdom, some sense of profundity.

Eva + Carl woz here - '99

I can only assume they too were overwhelmed by the sense of history.

 

Meanwhile, in the heat of a cloudless blue sky day, the roof of the Forbidden City gleams gold and bronze and the sunlight picks out the small dragons that rest on the edges of the tiles. The white stone floors are impossibly bright against the sunburn-red walls and everywhere there is a sense of both grandeur and space. It's very different to a British Palace or a UK Stately Home, whose buildings are full of carpets and paintings, antiques and statues and so much clutter.

The Forbidden City exudes minimalism. The many Halls feature gleaming floors, a golden throne and perhaps a few vases as tall and wide as a grown man. The rest is space (the artefacts having mostly been moved to special museum rooms to the sides of the palace complex).

 

It means you have to use your imagination to travel back to 1420 A.D (when the Palace was finished) to imagine the smell of incense, food, the perfume of flowers thick in the air, servants running to and fro. The sound of courtiers trying to obtain favour, the echo of gongs, music from lutes, harps and drums. The Emperor seated on his throne, conducting affairs of state. The Empress sipping steaming fragrant tea. The concubines, secluded in their rooms, plotting their next political move.

 

Admittedly, this is quite difficult when half a dozen people try and take your photo at the same time.

 

To really gain a sense of just how big the Palace complex is (and to escape from the crowds) we took the short walk up to the top of Jingshan Park, directly opposite the Forbidden City. And once at the top the whole of Beijing unfurls like a large gilded flower opening at dawn, the hilltop providing a 360 degree view of the capital. The Forbidden City gleams and suddenly you can understand why they call the Palace a City because anything less would be ludicrous. It simply is that big.

Like the sprawling mass of the Great Wall, the Forbidden City seems larger than life, an impressive feat of planning, building and engineering. It's as though everything in Beijing is seen through a fairground hall of mirrors- everything is bigger, stranger and more exaggerated and it's been deliberately built like that. It almost seems like a type of madness, this obsession with size and grandeur.

But when you live in a country that contains one seventh of the world's total population, why do anything small?