little monsters

(2nd-3rd/11/2013)

Location: Chengdu, Sichuan Province

 

'Things you see at Halloween? Monster, vampire, ghost...sexy nurse!'

                                                                                                                              -Student quote of the week

It's dark and stormy outside, with a cold breeze and a slate grey sky that promises rain. I've forgotten my coat, my phone battery is about to die and I'm in an aboveground tomb.

 

It can only be Halloween.

 

At the university it's been another interesting week of teaching. My second years, (having already covered Halloween in their first year) think they know everything and are in a silly mood. The lesson begins to slip from my fingers so I switch tactics and turn off the lights.

 

Several scary film trailers later, they're still young and innocent enough to be cowering in their seats, hands splayed over their faces, peering nervously through their fingers as ghosts, monsters and possessed victims appear and disappear off screen. I flick the lights back on and grin at my students, who stare back at me, cowed and unsure what I'm going to subject them to next.

 

Back in control, we watch and discuss Michael Jackson's Thriller. I split them into groups and get them to pretend to be news reporters investigating paranormal sightings at the University, interviewing students. The acting and conviction varies from group to group, but my last class perform spectacularly well- one group of six even re-enacting the abduction and consumption of a student by a monster. It's hilarious and just a tad gruesome, which means the students find it great fun- especially the boys who sometimes have difficulty focussing in lessons.

 

Halloween also means the start of my dealings with a new set of little monsters- my classes at Enoch International Kindergarten begin this week. I go prepared for a lesson on colours, big, bright pieces of multicoloured card clutched under my arms for the kids to jump on, handmade flashcards in my bag...and walk into the kindergarten to find forty under five year olds dancing along to Gangnam Style.  
 
Apparently they're rehearsing for a Halloween party.

 

My lesson on colours promptly cancelled, I instead get to lend a hand doing the actions to Incy-Wincy Spider and If You're Happy and You Know It. I throw balled up pieces of newspaper at Styrofoam skeletons and fill my pockets full of sweets ready to give to the children that evening. The parents turn up promptly at five thirty and watch their offspring strut down a makeshift catwalk in their Halloween costumes. There are robots and witches, wolves, monsters and princesses. One little boy is dressed as a duck. Words fail to express how adorable he looks.

 

The children perform their dances, destroy the skeletons and finish the evening by going on a treasure hunt in the play-area, before politely asking their teachers for sweets as they have been taught.

 

'Teacher! Give me candy!'

The weekend arrives unexpectedly quickly. The weather becomes grim and my plan to escape Chengdu is hastily shelved, the prospect of an hour's bus journey to a deserted ancient town damp with rain and choked with mud, an uninviting one. Instead I stay and see some of the things I haven't managed to get around to.

I go back to Jinli Street at night, the pathways lit up prettily with thin, red paper lanterns. I visit Big and Small Alley, two long streets full of expensive, interesting shops and restaurants, where you can buy a hot chocolate and watch victims have the wax removed from their ears by experts wearing headlamps and wielding tools that once belonged to Edward Scissorhands.

I visit People's Park and watch the dozens of people rowing their boats on the lake in circles, trying to avoid each other. It's rather like watching several sharks swim around your bathtub- there's not enough room and someone's going to get hurt but you can't look away. As I'm watching from my quiet, lakeside bench, three cleaners appear from the corner of my eye and decide now is the perfect opportunity to clean the area around my bench. Only my bench. No-one elses. Two more appear from the trees behind. A sixth slowly circles in from the front. I'm reminded uncomfortably of Thriller and make a quick exit.

 

And now I'm in a tomb. Technically it's the only aboveground tomb to be excavated in China and it belongs to Wangjian, the Emperor of Former Shu in Five Dynasties (847-918 AD). Like most tombs it was robbed of its treasures over time, and now only the stone coffin remains with twelve warriors on each side bracing it on their shoulders. Along the sides of the coffin are twenty four people playing musical instruments and at the end of the tomb is a statue of the man himself, seated in a chair and residing over his own half shadowed resting place for all eternity.

 

I'm not sure what creeps me out more- the poorly lit tomb with it's shadows and stone faces or the man I saw earlier having six inch needles thrust down his ears to remove the wax.

 

I end my weekend by meeting my friends for hotpot at a new restaurant near the Tibetan quarter. Successfully navigating the menu via the only English speaking waitress in the establishment we wait and watch as the bowls of spicy oil are brought to the table and gently heated. The liquid bubbles. And then from the depths of the bowl comes a dead fish. A whole fish with eyes and scales and there it is, floating around belly up in the bubbling sauce. One of my friends, R, announces she will be sick.

 

There is a quick conference around the table. The fish cannot be left in the bowl and so the poor dead creature is hastily scooped out. Now there is a new dilemma. There are no bowls or plates or dishes on the table. Nothing to put the fish on. Our only option is to squash it into the only free receptacle on the table... the napkin holder.

 

The fish stares at us with an expression I can only describe as depressed.

 

'Fú wù yuán,' I beckon the waitress over and present her with the dead fish awkwardly wedged in the napkin tray. 'Búyào. We don't want this.'

 

She looks at the dead fish I am presenting her with and then at our group. We repeat ourselves and make removing motions. Both the waitress and the fish look unimpressed.

 

Another waitress joins her and together they look at the fish squeezed clumsily into the napkin dispenser. There is a brief flurry of Chinese and eventually the waitress sighs, nods and carries it away.

 

We turn back to the still bubbling bowl. No-one volunteers to stir it again. Gingerly G pokes a long handled spoon into the bowl to check nothing else will float up at us.

 

It's Halloween and it's China.

 

Anything could be in there.

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.