28. Duolen Culture street

Chinese Literature

This year, China was awarded with their first Nobel Peace Prize for Literature. The winner, Mo Yan who resides in quite a small village in the province of Shendong upon getting the award went on to say how this was an individual prize and should not be a reason for a nationwide celebration. 

The Party I think are ready to celebrate their literacy writers. However, the feeling isn't mutual. 

The Duolen Culture street was once home to many of the great Chinese writers in the early twentieth century. There are statues everywhere honoring them. 

It was such a unique street for Shanghai because of the low-rise Shikumen buildings. The Shikumen house was influenced by Western terrace housing and once housed 80% of the population. However it now seems the only way to cope with the amount of people in Shanghai is to build skywards. So it was relaxing to walk through a street where you are not straining your neck.

Xintiandi is also the place to go for these type of buildings. There has been quite a restoration there over  the last few years.

Weather

I would have loved to enjoyed the street a lot more but the weather was truly terrible. My umbrella had been absolutely destroyed by the strong sideways wind and then lashing rain, which later turned to snow. In the end it was quite funny how little effect my umbrella was having as it got turned inside out on a number of occasions.

First bit of snow in Shanghai since arriving.

There is the paradox that kids in school can get driven to school in a nice sports car. But then the schools cannot afford or deem not to heat the schools. 'Thankfully' I'm on my feet for most the day, so warmth is something I don't have to worry about.  No insulation, no heating and the windows often being found open, schools are a cold place. 

The weather in Shanghai is quite variable. October when we arrived was the pinnacle of the year. Clear, blue skies, temperatures in the mid-twenties. We now two months later deal with cold, wet days, where because of the heavily polluted skies that cold air seems to stick in the air. 

I do though have the hairs on my chest from living at Elms House to really not care too much about a little coldness.

And finally.... a graphic showcasing the average Chinese woman

I would say this is fairly true.

40. Food 4: Provincial Food

Rice

Every mealtime, from where I’m from the meal is deemed incomplete without rice.

I’ve heard that China was surprised when they discovered India had a lot of rice as well. They had thought that rice was their staple food and only theirs.

Their celebration of rice isn’t just obvious by its presence in every school meal, but it is also recognized in Chinese writing.

The word for entrance signifies a door slightly a jar and a man there holding rice. The man thus welcomes him into his home. While the script for ‘buy’ shows a woman at the market with rice on top of her head, and thus the script for ‘sell’ is exactly the same without the rice.

It is thus mystifying why they still insist on chopsticks to eat it.

Chinese Food around the country

I have as of today bought my tickets to and from Hong Kong for the Hong Kong 7’s. Whilst I’m there I’ll be in experiencing the Cantonese food that is known all around the world.

It is said that 95% of Chinese folk who leave the country and travel the world come from this pocket in South East China where Cantonese and Fujian food reign such as Dim Sum and Sweet and Sour food.

Therefore that leaves a lot of China’s cuisine that has not been tasted.

China is split into different flavours. For instance, in the North East where it is cold and things are hard to grow. The food is very salty because a lot of salt is put into the ground.

If you go to Sichaun and Yunnan in the South West, the food is very hot and spicy. I’ve eaten at one Sichaun restaurant and the dish consisted of meat hidden in tons of peppers. This is probably also down to the climate, but also a different style of cuisine.

While the province in the North West along the Silk road, the food is very Muslim. There are many skewers and other food eaten out of hand.

Rice isn’t as popular the further north you go you would find more people eating noodles.

There are also signature dishes to each city or province, such as the Mongolian Hot Pot which I’ve tried and didn’t think much of, Beijing’s Peking Duck and Shanghai’s Hairy Crabs which admittedly I have not found.

Take a look around a supermarket or any kind of market and it is evident that this country is willing to try any kind of food. If you enter a restaurant, I can predict that you will never have the same dish made the same twice, cooks have different ways of making their dish.

 Zhi rou shi shenme- What meat is this?

Learning the language helps you understand the culture a lot better and it gives you the confidence to talk to anyone.

I'd just come back from another session, where i'd been fueling myself on chocolate and Fanta after a pretty tiresome day, and I really fancied something to eat. Something meaty. 

The smell from outside the station enticed me in from the minute I got off the train at my home stop of Zhongtan Lu. I'd seen this stall before. It obviously did meat and before I could decide the nice lady had put one kebab stick on her coals to heat up.

3 yuan it set me back. It didn't take long to heat up and she handed me the stick. I had a bite. Chewy, quite fatty, very weird texture so before I left, I asked the titled question one I'd learnt at the evenings class. The answer:

Dog. 

She said it as she pointed to the now very obvious smiling canine on her poster.

I was that hungry I still finished it. I'm becoming an animal.

27. Keeping in touch.

VPN

I had a view of China's internet restrictions as being akin to a 1986 Big Brother-esqe world before coming over. There are restrictions on such popular sites as Facebook and Youtube. China supplements this craving for serial internet procrastination by providing you with baidu for all your downloading needs, taibo for all your shopping needs, weibo the equivalent of Twitter and I thought I'd chuck in nciku if ever dictionary.com got blacklisted, unlikely.

Or you can get a VPN, a virtual private network, allows you an access all areas pass for the net. VPN's are readily available. They come at a price. Usually amounting to about £5 a month, not bad really. I would wander who in China would get a VPN, the more better off, the more Liberal?

My VPN is Astrill. Despite the odd hiccup, I'd thoroughly recommend it.

Keeping in Touch

Have I told you before that the 3:00pm Barclay's Premier League games are broadcast on our regular TV here. Its great. You can watch three BPL games on a Saturday night.

Being away from home has been made a lot easier to bear with modern technology.

Here are some examples of things which would not have happened 10-15 years ago and now we are able:

Last night, I was on Skype, my head being placed at the Christmas table. A bit odd but it felt great to have a slice of family Christmas in my day, although a slice of Turkey would also have been greatly appreciated.

I'm writing a piece for the University of York Careers service to use in one of their Job fairs. They apparently have seen my blog and got in touch via Facebook.

However nothing beats the more old-fashioned ways like writing cards or getting the class to spell out a message and then send that picture over.

  

Can anyone guess the message!

And finally.....

I have been given a Chinese name by my colleagues. Its very easy to spell and pronounce /wung/. Plus it has a pretty cool meaning.

It means 'King', naturally.

26. A catch up

Christmas is back on

For me, Christmas has come early. There is power back in our apartment! I've had an ultra busy week, but everything ground to halt yesterday when our electric board short circuited. It took two days to get an electrician in and its finally been fixed.

I've been resorting to the daylight and in the evening candle light to find my way around the apartment. It was ok though I got to catch up on my book 'Freakconomics' which has now been subsequently finished, wrote some letters home and went for a bike ride wearing my new motorbike style helmut.

Tales from the last week

Here is a bit of a summary then of what's been happening.

Today has been busy enough. I taught three 90 minute inside classes. Following that I did some promo work for the intensive courses coming up in January, we were targeting children which made me feel like the child snatcher as I offered them the free ruler and pencil which came with our brochure, Meanwhile our Chinese staff hounded the parents. Freezing cold, Alex and I headed to my apartment and we got the electrician round. Talked travel plans with Alex. Fixed the problem. And finally 10 minutes after that had happened, taught my first tutorial lesson, which was scheduled for six o'colock and it went really well. I felt a lot more comfortable when knowing someone was openly paying for my time.

So other things from my week.

Last Saturday. A little worse for wear from a night at a club dancing to a DJ set from Caspa. I entertained kids at our Christmas party dressed as none other than Santa Claus. Jamie as Mrs Santa/Santa's helper and I danced, sang, played games for about 75 minutes. Tough work with a white beard on. I'm not sure what the childen got out from our celebration of Christmas. A few parents wanted photos with me (Santa Claus) at the end of the night suggesting they have an appreciation for it but on the most part the children were more excited by what was in my sack than my 'Ho Ho Ho's but then again who isn't?

Following this Sean, Darren and I went to a apartment floor party. It was decently attended with lots of different nationalities and a keg of beer. I love meeting people from around the world and Shanghai is a great place for this to happen.

Monday. First lesson of my Mandurin course. I arrived part way through the course and it was the last lesson of the phonics bit of the course, which the other class mates had been doing for 3 weeks. In Mandurin there are four tones, a high flat, rise, fall-rise and a fall. They hold a lot of significance and its quite frustrating when you are saying the word but the tone is all mixed up. There are four meanings for the word 'ma' for instance 'mother', 'hemp', 'horse', 'scold' or its most common usage as a question marker if it has a fifth neutral tone. I did not thus mind missing these lessons as my linguistics background helps me to understand these tones a bit better.

After the lesson I met up with a Swedish girl I'd met at the floor party, Starbucks and the movie Life of Pi were on the cards. It was quite relaxing to experience a normal date again. 

Wednesday. I thought I was in for a lucky day after getting out of Yili Road in 3rd place. However, I was tricked by Lady Luck, that cruel mistress. 

It was in the first lesson of a six lesson, two school day. I was off to a cracker, entertaining the children etc, when suddenly reaching down to pick up a dropped piece of chalk I heard a pantomime style, onomatopoeic rip. Surely no. No you cannot be serious. Oh dear Lord I thought as I reached to the back of my now ripped Matalan trousers. There I felt a tear which quite literally went straight down the middle of my trousers. Looking around I checked to see if the children had noticed. I paused for thought, then hesitantly continued the lesson.

This all happened in the space of probably a few seconds. I had to hold out for a while more. But through a number of stealth manoeuvres around the board, and tactical wear-age of my coat, I got through the rest of the morning's classes and then bought a new pair of trousers on my way to the next school with just enough dignity intact. Sorted.

P.S I'm fairly sure the kids didn't notice. 

Friday- After a big night celebrating my bosses birthday on Thursday I managed to summon up the energy to go on a second Chinese date the night after. Keeping it short it was as equally as stressful, we took a bus again to a very remote place in Shanghai. This time the docks. There we went to this End of the World party, which was way overpriced and under attended. Night was salvaged by finding a cool cafe in our complex after trekking home where we played board games with the cafe owner and this ancient Japanese dude called Konishiwa. 

Shanghai continues to amaze and surprise me. So I endeavor keep up the blog posts. My aim is to write about my teaching methods and lesson styles soon, keeping in touch with home, transport and pets to name a few topics.

Now I am going to enjoy having power back in my apartment. 

25. M50

The trade-off

I got in on Wednesday night from work and remembered about Monday nights proposition with one of the party guests. The deal being: Art lessons in calligraphy and Chinese art as long as we spoke in English. Not bad. So after a mug of tea, set it up and luckily, she was just finishing her working day and thought it was a good idea also.

An hour later, former Art student and a new teacher, Darren was on board, and Sheila, another Monday party goer from the other night.

We turned up at the meeting place, an art gallery, Loftooo. It was one of twenty or so small galleries in Shanghai's main art gallery complex, M50. Literally down the road from where we live. Her gallery was showcasing this artist called Dan Fu. He had all these ink works on the walls. Some of them were valued at like 800,000 yuan (£80,000).

It was quite an extraordinary experience, one I'd never think I would fall into. There was all the material  provided an artist would need let alone a novice and we had our own personal teacher giving us advice.

Painting (hua hua in Chinese) runs through the family, my brother and sisters are quite excellent at it. It really has never done it for me. However, the setting was just too atmospheric and the opportunity too great, so I was a practical teacher's pet.

First we had to look through books of Chinese art. The Chinese methods of painting are very distinguishable to them. Scenery with mountains and lots of trees, seemed to be a main focus for most of the artists.

Anyway below is my effort, it took me about an hour and a half and it is now hanging up proudly in my bedroom.

Ink as you can imagine likes to run quite a lot along the page, so if you brush over a bit where it is too damp, the ink will run horrendously. There is a phrase which seems to be very true in successful lessons as well and thats, to roll with it.

Plans are there to follow, but more often than not, they're not. Things happen which make you go off the planned route, and you have just got to roll with it. Note the many shadows and random ivy like branches on the painting.

If anyone is mentally impressed with my skills btw, the painting was valued at 100 yuan. Hitting the big time here.

Routines

Its been about two and a half months now since arriving here. That's longer than my Fresher term at York, twice as long as the post school Eurotrip and nearly three times as long as the trip to Bolivia in 2007.

Its mental to think how time flies a lot quicker when you are old. Those trips or experiences I had which all occurred last decade were incredibly memorable and hence seemed to last longer than they actually did. 

With this in mind, the plan is to go to Japan over New Year. We have three days off on the 1st to the 3rd, which thankfully doesn't overlap with my Friday and Saturday day off so plans are in the pipeline to go on a little excursion a bit further east.

I apologize to anyone reading this who due to restrictions is not able to go off to Japan just like that. 

I blame routines for time going so quickly. Weeks fly by because of them.

Very recently, I have signed up for a 2900 yuan Mandarin part-time course lasting 12 weeks, so this is now what my weekly schedule looks like in the evening.

Monday: Mandurin lesson (7.00-8:30) at Mandurin House

Tuesday: Poker at Alan's and Adam's (8:00-12:00)*

Wednesday: Mandurin lesson (7.00-8:30) at Mandurin House.*

Thursday: Mandurin at Shane Head Office (5-6), Football/ Rugby 7-9

Friday: Night In/Out. 

Saturday: Tuition lesson with Bobby. Lesson plans/watching BPL on TV.

Sunday: Rest.

* Despite giving it the title of this piece, the proposed Mandurin means that more M50 art lessons may have to be put on hold. I could potentially swap it in for poker which I haven't gone to the last few weeks anyway, as it was pretty good. Decisons, decisions.

and its my Decembeard

I've found the French have a great passion for the facial hair.  Hence my curled up lip expression  which in France is meant to mean 'we'll see'.

A beard is something that sets Westerners further apart from our Asian counterparts. As you will not find a Chinese man with a consistent beard. I'm growing one not to distinguish myself, nor to make me look older, but it was first muted so I can be an even more effective Father Christmas. The Christmas party is tomorrow and I'm due to dress up as the big man, then ask questions, then perform, first by singing Christmas classics, then with a dance which has been decided by my helper as Justin Bieber-Baby. I will then have to teach the chorus dance to the kids with my helper. Choose the best one. Give out loads of other prizes. Then pose for photo's. This is on my day off. God help me.

However back to the beard, if I can keep it up for the whole month to be a true Decembeard, well we'll see!

24. Private tuition

Living it large in Apartment 3104

We had a party last night. It went down well I thought. We had been umming and erring for a while, mainly due to everyone having a Monday and a Tuesday off but for my housemate Sean and I. So after a while of putting it off and we decided upon Monday, due to Sunday clashing with the Manchester derby. Thus Today, Tuesday, my busiest day of the week, has been a struggle.

Our fellow teaching community came along, most things seem to be done within the teaching community, drinking being the main one of them. But we also had the pleasure of three Chinese girls turning up. I had sent a text to my craigs list bike seller, Sheila, who in turn brought round two other Chinese girls, who no joke had never even met each other before last night.

The funny thing was that in England, you will say the party starts at 8 O'Clock, and typically people trickle in at 10 - 11. However, when I got the text back from Sheila saying she was to come, it was to come on the dot. I had turned party host entertainer earlier than planned.

The punch was therefore christened far before the main bulk of people turned up. And what a punch it was.

Most lethal was the transparent liquid, Baijo, a very strong 53% rice liquor. 2.5 litres for 30 kwai/£3. The apple juice(pinguo ju) mixed with the staple Lambrini made it taste quite nice. I also put some chopped up melon, which was given to us by our estate agents because they use our flat for potential buyers in the building. We've been assured that they're not potential buyers of our flat.

Anyway, the party was a great success. Here are the things I've learnt:

1. Quite a few new words in Mandurin. One of the girls took it upon herself to name pretty much every object in the flat in Mandurin.
2. Gambei. One word and it is within the Chinese honour to down their drink.
3. M50. One of the girls worked at a famous art gallery just down the road. She said she'd swap typograph art lessons for english lessons. Deal.
4. These floors in the flats are great for wiping up spilt drinks and in quite extraordinary circumstances urine as well. Poor fella.
5. The need to get business cards. It really is the done thing here.
6. As well as being a valuable conversational tool, viewing maps is also a manly activity.

Tuition

Referring to the business cards, they are essential if you want to get well known in the tuition world.

I had my first 1 on 1 session on Saturday and it went well. The teacher from Fu Dan school who gave me the contact came to pick me up and we walked for 20 minutes. Luckily the kid lives in the surrounding area so I did not have to take a train.

We got there, thank god as it has started to get extremely nippy in the night. I was all smiley as we entered the flat, which went down well.

The student's flat was very small, he lived with his parents, who were both excellent cooks I was told but unfortunately did not stay long enough to find out, in about a 70sq metre 3 room apartment.  

I got talking to Bobby the student in his room. We got on well. The conversation subjects as I seem to remember were why are Western people so big? What is rugby? What team do you support? Hobbies. Getting a part-time Job. School. Morning exercises. Why its important to be happy? Philosophy and the Utiliatarian approach. Why money isn't important? And of course football and girls (you can't have a male conversation without those two). 

He was 16, incredibly happy go lucky character and seemed to treasure anything I owned. My phone number for instance he told me was special. 

It was a 75 minute chat, I said the first session would be free. After a bit of awkward negotiations, i think we agreed on 100 yuan for a weekly meet up.

In a show of friendship I suppose, Bobby and his Dad decided to walk me home with the teacher. 

and finally....the McDonalds Delivery Man

23. Making contacts

Shanghai is an incredible city. Its at the pinnacle of innovation and many ambitious, burgeoning industries. Things are happening and you can feel it, you can see it. This city waits for no man. Skyscrapers are growing faster than trees.

Contacts are everything. There is a huge contact card culture. You meet someone they give you their contact card, I really should get some.

However, at the moment I'm doing just fine as recently I've got a job tutoring a kid who is after just someone to talk to in English. Its quite phenomenal to think that you have this sensationally precious skill of being a native fluent English speaker and until you come and teach abroad you would have never given it a second thought. I'm meeting the family tomorrow who live quite close. I've been growing a beard so far this December and I'm not sure if I should shave for the first meeting. Ah decisions.

Sport clubs are also a great source of contacts. I'm a member of a rugby team, full of people in lots of different industries, and as of Thursday night a football team, who all seem like they are doing alright for themselves. As of now though, nothing major has come from these two. In time things may develop.

Just now though, I was texting someone whose bike I liked on craigs list. They were selling it, and I have really wanted a bike. I know it is dangerous but there is no better way to see this city and I have felt frustrated that I only really know the city through the tube stops and their surrounding areas.

I met the seller just now by the look of the bike. i thought it'd be a Western guy leaving but 'Mr Bike'(the name I had put in my contact list) turned out to be a mid twenties Chinese girl. Respect. She gave it to me for 300 yuan chucking in a sturdy lock I bought her a coffee.

We started talking and she is part of a business who import international goods, mainly everyday things in the house, healthcare, healthy foods, face care, kind of a P&G style company. There is a company similar in China called Taobo and they were in the news recently for making $ 1 billion in a day or something ridiculous. The money is big that's a certainty.

Suddenly I knew everything there was to know about British manufacturers. As mentioned before, I told her that China was crying out for some decent moisturizer. I'm meeting her boss in the next two weeks.

In return I invited her to our flat party on Monday.

The bike itself, well as you can see its a BMX. Something I would never go for, its fun to ride, you can move about so well on it. They tyres are rock solid aswell. In the background is the music player I bought today, the sound is alright and it was only £8.

Mum, I promise I'll buy a helmut.

This may just be like most things, a road that leads to nowhere. But who knows. There is something going on here and thats what I love about this city.