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.