Liwsi, pick a “princess”

I’ve discussed KTV prior to this post, so I won’t go into too much detail. But what I’m about to write shocked me, we’re not talking “Oh no I fused the Christmas tree lights” shocked, we’re talking “I’m standing on top the Eiffel Tower with a lightning rod” shocked.

The evening started with a text:

“Hey!are you Free for taking some boozes with some friends tonight?i can tell u where and when we’ll meet if you can.lol”

Haven’t I taught him well?

1)      “Lol”

2)      “u”

3)      “boozes” (ok, not technically correct, but A for effort)

This man is 44. Yes, I went for some boozes.

The dinner was good. The men got drunk and started showing off their Russian dancing. I ate turtle (or tortoise, I don’t know the bloody difference), which wasn’t too bad, until I realised that the plate was actually a shell. Lovely. Then we were off to KTV.

I must have been to KTV about twelve times in the past six months, not once have I been to the same venue. This city has one night club and three pubs (one of which I am never, ever able to show my face at again, but that story’s for a later post), yet tens of KTVs! I’ll never understand this country.

Since I’ve been here I’ve successfully murdered Celine Dion, Gaga, Avril Lavigne, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and Whitney Houston. No wait, she managed to do that herself (I physically could not stop myself from typing that one).

So let’s dig a little deeper into this KTV business. What possible pleasure could a group of men in their forties get from KTV late at night?

Sexual pleasure.

Now I have to go back into code (please refer to previous entries) for fear of my life.

Prostitution is illegal in Narnia. However, the boundary between illegal and legal here is somewhat blurred. It’s quite difficult to explain, but is goes something like this: If you have money, it’s not illegal.

For the sake of not having to confuse myself (my brain cells have significantly decreased in quantity since I came here), let’s call these legal-illegal activities “shmillegal”. Yes, ladies and gents, I am an English teacher.

But it’s frowned upon for a man to pay for his own shmillegal “service”. So these incredibly intelligent Simpson men give these “services” as gifts. So where can one purchase such gifts? Well, I’m assuming there are brothels in Narnia, but I haven’t stumbled across one (as far as I’m aware), so obviously the second place one goes looking for a hooker, is at KTV.

The first few times I went to KTV I noticed that every room had another small room attached to it, which was a toilet with a huge hallway. Didn’t think anything of it. The first time I went to KTV with a group of men I noticed that the men were using the toilet quite often. Didn’t think anything of it. The next time I went to KTV with a group of men, I noticed that there were three “waitresses” in the room (who liked to practise their English with me), yet every time a man went to the toilet, there were only two waitresses.

THEN I clicked.

All the stories I’d been told about these “services” and “gifts” all came together. So I left.

So this particular evening there was some fuss over the beer. The men I was with were rich and this beer was a “poor-man’s beer”, so they demanded different beer. But the place didn’t have the beer they wanted. So they asked for free “services”. For some unbeknown reason, the owner obliged and brought in three “princesses”, only one of whom could stay.

It was like being in a cattle mart, these men were looking the three women (who looked like girls) up and down, umming and arring (if anyone knows how to spell that correctly, please send me a message, I’ve been racking my brains out over it) and arguing over which to choose. By now, I was planning my escape, so not really paying attention. As I got up to say goodbye, Feng Jie pointed at me, said something in Chinese and everyone seemed to agree with whatever he just said. I turned to Tommy, so he could translate, he quite enthusiastically said “they want you to choose the princess” as if it was a freaking honour.

These men are tools! They were all dumb enough to think that I didn’t know about any of the schmillegal activity going on.  What did they think I thought? Mouthful right there. That choosing a freaking waitress was taking them 10 minutes! These tools are pretty much running the city; amongst them was the city planner, the city judge, two barristers and a government leader. If this was the UK, I could have made a fortune selling this story.

I’d previously had dinner with every one of their wives and children.

So I said by zaijians and left, without making their decision (although I would have chosen the one that didn’t look like a horse).

Well, it’s definitely one for the “Never-have-I-evers”. 

Doesn’t deserve a title

“I once employed a n****r, my students cried because they were scared of him. So I fired him and employed a Chinese man”

Not the kind of sentence you want to hear over a light lunch.

Racism/ethno-nepotism/mono-culturism (think I may just have made that one up) or just plain ignorance, call it what you want. It exists. And you can’t blame the kids.

So this bubble that I’ve called home for the past 6 months is ever so slowly being burst, thus giving access to people of all colours, creeds, shapes and sizes. The crafty sods let us in, then try to change everything about us e.g. I’ve been given make-up tips from a 44yo man, been force fed to the point of gluttony, hence putting on a hefty few pounds (6 weeks to get into a size 10 bridesmaid dress…shait) and have been described as American, Russian, English, Australian and my favourite; Korean.

Let me clarify, people from all over the world have been able to visit, study and work in China for many, many years. Yet 90% of the people I’ve met had never seen a foreigner until they met me (no pressure Liws). I live in tiny city (by Chinese standard) of just over 800,000 residents with a grand total of 7 foreigners (we trapped a Canadian bloke at the beginning of this month). I’m sure the percentage is significantly lower in the bigger more “Westernized” cities and probably smaller in some other small cities/towns (and if you go to a village they’ve never seen anyone that’s not a relative, bit like Builth eh Rach?)

Back to the actual point of post: kids crying after seeing a black man.

So the kids cried (I have no idea if the man did anything to make them cry, but for the purpose of this entry, let’s assume he didn’t and he was just your average non-paedophilic man). They cried to their parents and the parents complained to the owner, who then sacked the poor sod.

Now, this man was an American, whose first language was English. Naturally, his English is going to be better than any Chinese man’s (I live here; I’m allowed to say it). The owner was basically a coward who couldn’t give the black man (this entry is beginning to make me sound racist, so let’s call him Barry) a chance to win over the kids and show both the children and their parents that he was a decent English teacher.

I don’t want to say that this is acceptable, but I partially understand the children’s reaction. They have never seen anyone that looks different to them. Had the teacher been white, green or freaking multicolour, I’m almost certain the reaction would have been the same.

All this reminds me of a story my mother loves to share with random people at inappropriate times, involving my 3 year old self and Woolworths:

My mother had just taken me shopping, we were queuing to pay for my pick n mix (awww remember those days?) when I started shouting “MAM, look, it’s a monkey!!” pointing to what my mother thought was a black woman at the front of the queue. So my mother tries to smother me with her hugs to try and shut me up, for fear of being judged a racist. Obviously, Iittle Liwsi didn’t follow the plan and screamed even louder “MAAAAM, LOOK, LOOK, IT’S A MONKEY”. At this point we started to leave the queue, which enraged Liwsi bach; who then roared “MAAAAAAAAAAM, MOOOOOOOONKEY” and pointed directly at the front of the queue.  By now, the black woman had left the shop (through no fault of my own), leaving a woman standing there, right by the till, wearing a furry brown coat. The monkey.

There was absolutely no need for that, but there we go. And I’m now reminiscing over pick n mix, yo-yos, bliss magazines and finger skateboards.

I suppose the point I’m trying to make is that a child’s mind is innocent (it was my mother that thought I was racist). The mind hasn’t yet been corrupted by (some) societies’ discriminating ways, it has no idea what racism and prejudice are. If a person is different (looking, sounding, smelling) a child will notice. Hell, if you give a different dummy to a kid it’ll scream the place down (Hanna Merrigan). It’s the parents and those surrounding the child that decide if a kid embraces the difference or turns against it (you either force the kid to like the new dummy, or you let her scream until she gets the old one back…Hanna Merrigan). Lucky for me, my mother ensured that I didn’t turn into a racist, (although a bit of ethnic banter between friends is ok, isn’t that right Guptar?).

After editing: I wish to add that my mother isn’t racist. She married my father, who looks Iranian.

The sad thing about the original situation (which I completely forgot about whilst rambling on about some bullshit), is that the parents gave the old dummy back to their kids. Instead of embracing Barry (remember him?), and explaining that Barry is exactly the same as Wang Zhi Hui, they were cowards who cost their children an amazing opportunity to learn English from a native speaker (not to blow my own trumpet).

Finish with a giggle:

I accidentally said the Chinese word for “whore” instead of “carrier bag” in the Supermarket last week. Ouch.

Some things the media "forget" to tell us

Another pretty depressing post, but probably some of the most shocking (yet disturbingly interesting) things I’ve heard about in this country. I had to think twice before posting this as I’m pretty sure Voldermort wouldn’t be too happy with me for sharing some of the country’s little secrets.

For safety purposes (and the fact that I like living) I’m going to attempt to write the whole post without mentioning certain words, such as C***a; which will hereby be known as Narnia, the Ch****e people; who will hereby by known as the Simpsons and the Ch****e g********t;   who will remain to be known as Voldermort.

If Voldermort does happen to stumble across this post and somehow manages to crack the code, I would like to say thankyou and goodbye to my friends and family. Co ni off de…

^^^Why the hell didn’t I just write it in Welsh!! Dumbass!! My brain must be melting from spending too much time with the Simpsons. Doh!

Students in Narnia are renowned for their hard work and the enormous amount of time they spend studying. I came here hoping to find that this was just a stereotype we placed upon the Simpsons.  I’m quite disappointed to say that students here do actually work as hard as they have been portrayed. Poor sods.

I won’t go into detail about the schedule of a typical student as I’ve discussed it before. So quite briefly:

School: 7am-5.15pm (6pm as of mid-April), with a 2 hour lunch break .

Dinner: 6-6.30pm

Homework: 6.30-10.30pm

Study: 10.30pm-12am

This is 5 days a week (6 or 7 days for some), on weekends substitute school for study and extra classes.

As you can imagine there is an immense amount of pressure placed upon students. Based, pretty much, on this ideology:

Parents raise single child>Single child studies hard and gets a good degree>Single child gets a high salary job>Single child owes parents for helping them get a high salary job>Single child must care for parents until the very end>The richer the child, the better care the parents will receive.

So not only do these students have to cope with the usual pressures of getting good grades, competing with other students, focusing on not being beaten, generally being a teenager. But they also carry the burden of having to give the best possible care to their elderly grandparents and parents in the future.

The sad part of this is that not all kids can handle the pressure. I have my own opinions on who should be blamed. But I’ll leave that for now (my rice will be ready in 10 mins!).

Just last month a 16 year old student from another school in the city couldn’t cope any longer and decided to end his own life, by throwing himself in the local river. I tutor two girls who attend the same school as this poor boy, so I asked how they felt about it and what the school has done to deal with the situation. One replied “I’m fine, it happens” while the other quite simply stated “The school hasn’t done anything, why should they?”

They gave me more examples of similar incidents, without so much as a morsel of emotion.

A teacher at the school later informed me of some news from a nearby city; A tragic story which ended in a female student jumping from the top of a school building during the weekly flag raising ceremony. My natural reaction was one of sadness and pity. The teacher seemed more shocked by my reaction than by the news itself. The student had left a note stating that she had been raped by her headmaster and had taken all her clothes off before jumping. I felt even sadder after hearing this. I couldn’t believe the next few words that came from this teacher’s mouth:

“She’s so selfish, it’s wrong that she made everyone see her naked”

“Why not just kill herself quietly? Now everyone knows and she’ll bring shame on the school and the headmaster could be in a lot of trouble”

All this came from the mouth of a 33 year old mother. Not that it’s acceptable for a man to say it. But I kind of expected a woman to have some sort of sympathy for the poor girl.

It’s as if they see these “incidents” as little by-products of the system, and carry on regardless. Sickens me.

Even before coming to Narnia I realised how much control Voldermort had over the media and that I would never get to know real Narnia unless I experienced it for myself. And even with these stories of punishment and pressure, I absolutely adore most things about this country. So please don’t let these poorly written, probably ill-informed tales give you the wrong impression.  This country is home to more than 1.3billion people, so for want of a better way of saying it “shit is gonna happen”.  Just like the British media, the media in Narnia twists stories, leave out the boring, happy news stories and only inform us of what they think we want to know.  The incidents mentioned above only appeared in the news once, before Voldermort got wind of the “leak” (I’d hate to be that news reporter). The only reason I know about them is because some Simpsons trust me enough to tell me, which I’m slightly chuffed about. Then I go and ruin it all by blogging about it…suck on that Voldy!

So here are a few slightly less horrific (well I giggled) news stories from Narnia (unless you were the mother in the third story).

A kid from southern Narnia recently sold a kidney in order to get enough money to buy an ipad. His mother didn’t realise.

A wife managed to kill her husband by cooking him a meal made from poisoned cat.

A Simpson woman recently gave birth to a 15pound baby.

The Simpsons have started dyeing dogs’ hair black and white, so they look more like pandas.

My province has finally standardised the Simpson-English food translations. So if a restaurant decides to have an English menu (which they won’t), they now have a standardised translation which they must copy. So they won’t make the same mistake as the city’s international hotel, which offered “chicken sex organs” to its customers, when in fact it was merely chicken breast (although I wouldn’t even be shocked if I saw this on menu anymore).

Tales from the tiny town

So I’m too busy (lazy) to actually write a decent blog entry and don’t really know where to start as I’ve done so much since I wrote the last update. So this is just a mini post with a few quotes and anecdotes from my time in China. Some of which I have heard/experienced myself, others I’ve heard from fellow foreigners in this crazy country.  Only in China…

So this was on my way to the “countryside” to go fishing with a bunch of men in their 40s (as you do)

Tommy: Liwsi, you see that there? It’s a semen pipe

Me: Come again? (no pun intended)

T: A semen pipe, it goes all the way to the semen factory, you see it?

Me: Yes, yes I see.

T: Look, there’s the semen factory

Me: Yes, yes I see (with my eyes closed to fight back the tears)

T: Oh, look, it’s a semen truck

I have never been so grateful to see a CEMENT lorry in my entire life!

Discussing music with a class of 60 grade 1 students (14-16yo). Students were taking it in turns to come up to the blackboard and write different music genres. So we had the usual; Rap, Hip hop, pop, classical, jazz, then we had the slightly less conventional “Cock” music. It was one of those “don’t laugh or they’ll ask why” moments. So I ever so slyly changed the “C” to an “R” and tried my best not to burst for the rest of the lesson

Discussing European countries with a class of grade 2 students:

“Can you name me a famous person from Germany”

“Shitler”

GONE.  I instantly started smiling and trying my best to hold back the laughter. The class noticed and soon realised what I was giggling at, so they joined in and we had a good little giggle for a few minutes. Needless to say, all hope of getting any serious work done had vanished.

Never has there ever been such a great translation for Hitler. I have eternal respect for the bloke who translated “Hitler” to “Xi te le”.

All this in a two hour conversation (although “monologue” would be more appropriate) with a 27yo female English teacher at Tianjiabin. Discussing her new boyfriend. A “Kill me now” situation.

“I don’t know if I should be with him because my heart does not grow fonder for him every day” (realistic)

“He has female friends you know, can you believe it” (OMFG no? )

“I told him I would be his girlfriend if he could peel the apple and keep the peel in one piece” (great boyfriend material that)

“He never pays for my friends when we go to the cinema” (do you blame the poor sod?)

“He’s a had girlfriends before, so he’s not a virgin, so he’s not pure, so I don’t think I can marry him” (Jeeeeeesus you’ve been with the bloke for a month)

“I read his phone and there was a girl sending him words (texts), so I phoned her and told her not to communicate with him again” (better hope it’s not his mother)

“He’s two years older than me, is that too much of a gap?” (Ok, now you’re just looking for excuses)

“In China, the fatter the man is, the more love he has to give” (Yes, to cake perhaps)

“He brings me apples every day to show his love” (not chocolate though is it?)

“In China, we are told not to look for a man to love or like, but to look for a man that’s suitable” (Sounds like you’re looking for an employee rather than a boyfriend)

I can’t actually believe I remembered all of this crap. To top it all off she started asking for advice! Asking ME for advice?!  The girl obviously doesn’t want to make the relationship work if she’s resorted to asking me for advice. As I was on a bus I couldn’t say “have a drink, you’ll feel better”…so that was me screwed!

A quote from a colleague of a fellow foreigner: “No, I’m not allowed to drink cold drinks as it’s my time of the month”.

“After the baby’s born a mother shouldn’t wash her hair, have a shower, brush her teeth or cut her nails for a month”. One way of keeping the visitors away I suppose.

A few decades ago (before the one-child policy), parents favoured baby boys over baby girls (which is still the case); so if a mother had two or more girls and really wanted a boy, she would name the youngest girl “stop” or “boys come here” (obviously in Chinese), until she gave birth to a boy.

A quote from Kung Fu Panda (student, not the film): “Teacher, you have little fat”. Now I’m not quite sure how to take this. Does he mean “you have become a little fat”, which would be true. Or “you have very little fat”, which is a lie, but kind. I’m going to stick with the latter, as he’s one of my favourites (YES I HAVE FAVOURITES…I’m a bad teacher).

Playing word association with a friend of mine’s student:

1: The world

2: Continents

3: Africa

4: BLACK

In China, if you buy a sandwich (which you won’t get unless you’re in a city with a Starbucks), you’re given plastic gloves to eat it with.

I got pissed on by a toddler last week. Yep.

Babies and toddlers here wear these “slit pants”. This is where my lack of Chinese and poor writing skills let me down. Picture a normal pair of trousers, with a zip in the front, now rip the zip itself off and take a scissors and cut down from the bottom part of the zip all the way down the crotch and back up the backside. Now leave it, and you’re left with a pair of trousers with a gap in between both legs. Well this is what babies and toddlers wear! WITHOUT NAPPIES! The idea behind this is if a kid wants to “go” the kid has the freedom to “go” wherever and whenever he/she wants (forgive me for thinking that this was the whole damn point of a nappy). So everywhere you look in China…streets, playgrounds, restaurants, on tables in restaurants, on buses, on your jeans, you may possibly see a kid crouching down and “going” from either freaking end, with the parents just minding their own business.

So to explain how I actually managed to get covered in urine. I was walking down the street in no hurry and in a world of my own (easy to do as I have no idea what anyone is saying) when I felt something wet on my thigh. I looked down, then up, then across, to see a little boy (I’m guessing less than 18months old) being carried to the side of his mother while she was walking along the street. I overtook the mother, without noticing the stream of urine, thus getting wet.  I could quite easily have carried on with my day, as nobody would have noticed the smell…but I’m not quite ready to do that yet. So ye, that’s how I got peed on.

My students are becoming more and more confident every week, which is a great! One of the ways I can tell if a student’s confidence has increased is by their English name. If a student has an English surname; then they’re getting more confident e.g.

Minerva - Minerva Dumbledore (who stayed after class to show me her new elder wand and the spells she could now do…18 years old)

Jonathan - Jonathan Watson

Carrie – Carrie Holmes

Jerry – Jerry Cullen

DZK – DZK 2

Mr. Green – Mr. Green Yellow (although I’m pretty sure he just couldn’t remember)

Super Pig Man - Super Pig Monster Man

MJ – MJ Jackson

Punishment

So these next few anecdotes were supposed to be part of the next post. Then I realised that I have quite a few things to write on this topic. So I thought it deserved its own heading. Those of you who like China, look away now.

“The teacher puts our cell phones in a bucket of water if he sees us holding them”

“Sorry I be late teacher, I was run around playground because I forget my chemist homework”
“Ok, I don’t understand, why were you running around the playground?”
“Because teacher punish me, 10 times and I must stand for your class”

I told the poor girl to sit, but every time she heard footsteps in the corridor she jumped up and stood until they passed. Horrible sight to see a kid so scared of her teacher.


There’s one teacher in the school, if he sees or hears a mobile phone in class he will put it on the floor, underneath the leg of a chair. He then asks the owner of the phone to stand on the chair and jump up and down until the phone is smashed to bits.


This next scenario happened in the second school I teach at. I’m told it happens on a daily occurrence, but I’ve only come across it a handful of times. I have never felt so helpless in my entire life. I wanted to bail and get my ass out of the country as fast I could. I’m not sure why, as I knew corporal punishment was still legal and prominent throughout the country. I’d heard stories of students being beaten by a ruler and had seen some of my students come into class late with red marks across their hands. But I’d never experienced the action itself.

This is the worst I have ever felt in China. For these few minutes I absolutely despised the school, the entire education system and the country’s completely twisted way of dealing with “failure”…

So I was having a meeting in the office with two English teachers. Another teacher walks in (no such thing as privacy in China), followed by three of my students. She then starts shouting at them (during my meeting) and makes them stare at the ground (I assume, she was speaking Chinese). She then starts shouting numbers (that I understood) and reaches for a cut off broom handle. She then smacks each student (14 and 15yo) in turn across the backs of their legs until they buckle to the floor. After more shouting they stand up (tearful, but making no noise). At this point I tried to get up and leave, but was pushed down to my seat and gestured to stay there by the deputy head (who had come in to watch this, along with 3 or 4 other teachers). So once they stood they were each hit across their lower back, then across their knuckles a few more times. By now I was facing away, closing my eyes and trying to block out the shouting and the sniggering of the vile creatures in this tiny room. Even with no Chinese whatsoever, while looking away and trying my best to ignore the whole situation I could sense the power trip these teachers were on. I wouldn’t be surprised if the other teachers took turns to beat the students while I had my back turned.

The whole beating thing for me isn’t “controversial” (as the Chinese like to call it when I stumble across a situation like the one above) at all. Quite simply, teachers shouldn’t beat kids. I don’t care what the students have done. I don’t care how much the teacher hates them. And I sure as hell don’t care how the students “don’t respect” the teacher. Why the hell should they respect their teachers? These students just took a wooden stick across their backs by these “respectable” adults.  An absolute joke!!

Everything about this situation p****s me off! But what makes it worse (if that’s even possible) is the pathetic excuse for a reason behind the above abuse. From later discussions (after the meeting, I still have no idea what it was about) I found out that these students had failed a test. We’re not talking 2% here, we’re talking 58% in a test with a pass mark of 60%. Jesus Christ you could graduate uni with a 2:2 with a score like that! What if these kids were just having a bad day, or just didn’t understand the work, or just aren’t intelligent in that certain subject or god forbid that they just didn’t study hard enough. Bloody hell just writing this angers me!

And now I can’t think of any more chirpy anecdotes to lighten the mood. Great. I’m gonna go stand on the street and wait until an Asian does something stupid. Shouldn’t be too long…

You do this at Christmas in the UK, right?

So students in China have NO time off for Christmas. They’re aware that Christmas exists, from watching badly translated American films and listening to Justin Bieber singing about a plant that you place over people’s heads if you want to kiss them during the Christmas period. Yes, they sing the song, yet have no idea what “mistletoe” is, they assumed it was just the name of his bloody perfume.

“No Jenny Bieber, Justin isn’t the only person that can kiss a girl under a mistletoe” (I talk about him so much, I’m allowed to be on first name terms with the bloke)

“No Arthur, it’s not any flower, it’s a special flower. Put the leaf down, Coco is not going to kiss you in class”.

But I will give them one thing, they are aware that us foreigners do like to celebrate Christmas and they did try to accommodate that to the best of their ability. By doing what they assume us Westerners do at Christmas. Perform/make idiots of ourselves in front of friends. Yes, this occasionally happens, but usually as a result of consuming too much sherry/scotch/wine/beer/any opened bottle with a percentage sign on the label on Christmas Day, and the outcome is usually a mixture of singing Myfanwy in jibberish, mimicking the queen’s speech with a paper “crown” on one’s head and string from a party popper as a necklace, dancing with the Christmas tree and acts of puppetry with false teeth whilst asleep….gotta love the grandparents!

Admittedly, the students’ performances were a bit more impressive than this.

So one thing the school did for us is prepare a class “show” (kind of). It was basically this really talented (no sarcasm intended) class of grade 2 students, that I have never met in my life, singing, dancing, beat boxing, playing music, doing imitations and telling jokes to the other students in their class and the three foreigners. Now most of it was in Chinese and I was late, so I didn’t really know what the hell was going on. But I was put in my seat, next to the foreign students, fed mandarins (could have been tangerines or satsumas, but let’s not dwell on details), sunflower seeds and Chinese/tasteless snack-a-jacks and given a Santa hat. I knew I was going to be in this class for a LOOOONG time, my eyes automatically started searching for the nearest way out (third floor window…doable, I can survive with a broken leg for a few weeks).

Side note: I honestly think if I would have jumped out of that window I would have hovered for a little while. See, Chinese washing machines are the BEST invention ever if you want to feel like you’ve lost weight. My first month here, I thought the pounds were dropping off; the waist on my trousers’ were getting looser, the sleeves on my tops were no longer cutting off the circulation to my arms and I was looking frumpy in my clothes, rather than pregnant. Then I put on a top that I hadn’t washed yet. And everything clicked. Liwsi wasn’t losing weight at all. Liwsi’s Chinese freaking washing machine was just a big fat liar and instead of just WASHING Liwsi’s clothes (not really doing a great job of that as we’re on the issue), it was also stretching Liwsi’s clothes with its cold water and stupidly fast spin cycle! My point: baggy clothes…wings….hover…possibly.

So it was basically these forty 17 year old students let out from prison for the afternoon.  We had the traditional Chinese instruments accompanied by traditional Chinese singing, then a bit of breakdancing, followed by a bit of a sketch by a girl (I believe) dressed as Santa, 2 girls dressed as men a boy trying to dress like a boy, followed by a few vocal duets (OMG, he just touched her shoulder ARRRRGGGHH), then a few hilarious (I’m told) imitations of the teachers and some pretty impressive covers of English songs.

There’s no denying that some of these were good. Bloody good. But I just couldn’t take any of it seriously.  This could be down to the fact that I don’t take anything seriously since coming to China. Or it could be because Santa was running around with a bag of sunflower seeds, followed by HeShe with a bag of tangerines. Another contributory factor to my lack of seriousness towards the whole thing could be that every single time a girl and a boy touched (these people are 17 and 18) the whole class screamed. Then in a middle of a performance, Santa or just a random student dressed like a chav would run up to the performer (while he/she/they/it were/was performing) give them a gift or a rose then run off, or even the fact that that the teacher’s 18 month old son was trying to electrocute himself with the guitar amp (“I know it’s painful mate but I honestly think that jumping out of the window is a better way to go than electrocuting ourselves with the guitar amp, especially with my with my baggy clothes and your age 12 coat, but it’s your call”).

Then as if that wasn’t enough. Santa, Chav and SheHe, started giving us gifts (‘cause the sunflower seeds weren’t quite cutting it), the teacher got up to sing, dedicated a song and a rose to yours truly, the teacher’s wife got up to sing and dedicated the song and a rose to her husband (by the look on the wife’s face, I think her husband should have thought a bit harder about who to dedicate his rose to…OOPS). Then it was as if the prisoners were being called back to their cells. EVERYONE got up (or were pulled up by the three wise- not so-men). We were (once again) forced to dance, sing, be jolly (and sober) and then walk down an imaginary catwalk, pose for imaginary cameras, like real-life plonkers!

I might sound like an ungrateful, ranting cow. But I had a bloody good time! Don’t get me wrong I could have gone the day without being forced to be an anorexic dog walking down a cat-walk, but it’s all part of the Chinese experience eh.

You might like to know that the gifts I received were 1 x red ear muffs (£4 O.N.O), 1 x white fluffy ear muffs (£2 O.N.O, I won’t lie, I tried these ones on), 1 x red AND white hat (MINE), 1 x pair of red and white gloves (now just the lone red and white glove, I think I may have left the other, along with my dignity, in an Irish Bar whilst travelling) and 1 x Santa hat/multi-season peg holder (MINE).

Side note (I really should start planning my posts before starting to write): As I stated earlier, the students who performed also got presents, some weren’t quite as lucky as me and only got one pair of ear muffs, while others were luckier and got Spongebob sponges. But I noticed that load of them were getting what I thought was moisturizer. Ye, I was wrong. So in China, it’s believed that the whiter a person’s skin, the prettier that person is (that is in no way, shape or form grammatically correct). So it’s a bit different to Wind Street, where it’s believed that the more orange a person’s skin is, the prettier they are. My foundation= invisibility cream. When I plaster the stuff on, I can pass for having an Asian father, and suddenly I’m not that white girl with the stupid hats that everyone stares at. I’m just your average girl with Asian genes, from a country not too far away (if you saw my father’s passport/wedding photo you wouldn't question this), so NOBODDY stares….BLISS. I now realise I should probably have used a side, side note for that little titbit of unnecessary information. Mooooving on….So, both men and women (girls and boys even), use this “skin lightening cream”, which, essentially, is moisturiser mixed with cif bleach. I’d never heard about this stuff before coming here. But within days I noticed people with pinky marks around their faces and on their collars. Then I was told about this stuff. People are severely damaging their skin to become “white”.  I have so many issues with this, it’s unbelievable. 1) Who the hell said whiter is prettier? 2) Pretty is an imaginary concept you daft, daft people. What the hell is pretty?? (Just realised I’m going all philosophical on myself, pulling that one back in). 3) How the hell is it humanly possible to be thick enough to go and damage your skin because you believe that patchy, damaged, scarred skin is “prettier” than the perfectly healthy skin you already have? GRRR it infuriates. And what infuriates me even more is that no parents, teachers, friends or family members have the sense to tell their teenage sons and daughters not to do such a dumbass thing, in fact they do the opposite and freaking encourage them by either buying it for them or leading them to believe that is perfectly normal by using it every day of the freaking week!! You see 14 year old girls coming to school comparing the pinky coloured marks under their jaw line, to see who’s making the most “progress”. PROGRESS…it’s freaking BACKWARDS you complete and utter fools!!

Ok, way too deep and serious for my liking. An anecdote from class 102 today:

Kid: Teacher, teacher, I want change my English name.

Me: Ok, why do you want to change your name, Kobe?

Kid: Because I get new name.

Me: Ok, what is it?

Kid: Breast

Me: No, Kobe. You can’t change your English name to Breast. Now go back to discussing question 2 with God, please. 

Santa

These next posts are not going to be in any particular order. Will be both grammatically and structurally incorrect. Will not be changed until this damn flu has gone away. I will not care. 

So China is generally an atheist country, so as you can guess, they didn’t celebrate Christmas AT ALL! Well that’s the excuse they use. I think it’s more to do with the fact that it’s a day celebrating someone else other than the g********************* (Voldermort, I added a few stars JUST for extra security).

I was invited (I say invited, I mean forced to go) to a banquet with members of the city’s local government and all the foreigners in the city at the time. This hotel’s dining hall was packed, must have been about 200 people there, easily. There were a grand total of 7 foreigners (6 of whom I was already friends with) amongst these 200 people. SEVEN! I suppose the school wasn’t lying when they said “It’s a great chance for you to meet other foreigners in the city”, but it did lead me to believe that there would be more than 7 freaking foreigners in a city with a population bigger than Cardiff!

So we were ushered to our seats by the waitresses. A room full of red tables all decorated nicely, with a gold table right at the front. I assumed I’d be taken to one of the red tables. But no, no, no, they sat me down at the gold table, slap bang in the front of the room, full of business men (I assume) wearing suits and speaking on their bluetooth head-sets (I’m pretty sure they weren’t actually speaking to anybody, I bet it was so they didn’t have to make an effort to speak to the white girl), so that every Yom, Yin and Na-Li could have a good look.

So eventually the head-sets were turned off (happened to be at the same time the wine started being poured). On a side note, have you ever seen a Chinese man with a headset shaped dent in his hair just in front of his ear. I giggled. Worth a google. So the wine was being poured, drunk and tipped. Business cards were being passed left, right and centre (I learnt that in Chinese this week), felt like a right numpty without a business card. So Tommy (“interpreter” on his place setting) had the genius idea to befriend a bloke from Shanghai and share his business cards, just with my number on the back). Again, I say genius, not so genius when you get phone calls at stupid o clock in the morning, before the sun’s up (I’m guessing, haven’t really seen the sun in the past few months), from Chinese interpreters inviting you to dinner.

So at this point, the banquet is incredibly awkward for all the foreigners present. None of us want to be there, the food’s ok, Chinese men staring at every single thing we do and my interpreter is too busy chatting up a past student of his to actually interpret.

THEN my saviour walks in!

If there is ever a cross section of society that gets stared at more than foreigners, it’s morbidly obese foreigners. The entire room stopped, turned their heads and just stared at this great big lump of a man, with his grey hair and his stained shirt, plodding across the room and a tiny little interpreter leading the way. I swear if this man had a beard I would have sat on his lap and told him what I wanted for Christmas. Slightly inappropriate?! Don’t care, you have no idea how much I missed Santa this year!

So he sat down. Grabbed a blue egg (yes, that’s correct) with his hand and munched away like he’s been there the whole time. I’m guessing his interpreter was introducing him to the rest of the table, but I was too busy staring at this fat Aussie to pay any attention. He then turned to me and said “I don’t have a f*****g clue what she’s telling these Asians, as long as they don’t start asking me for money, I know she’s doing her job”. From that point on, Fat Lyndsay and I were just fine.

If there was any other English speaking person on that table (thank god Tommy couldn’t understand the “Austri-alien’s” accent) fat Lyndsay would have been deported.  I reckon his interpreter deserves a hefty pay rise for “interpreting” what he was saying to the rest of the table.  Here are a few of his quotes (I would like to add that I am merely quoting and don’t believe, nor do I condone anything that is listed below):

“See that n****r guy over there (Ted), he’s from Zimbabwe “. In actual fact he’s from Texas.

“I’ve met that Pakistani girl (Sunita) before”. She’s from London.

“Screw the wine, can you ask them for a cold beer”

“I can’t f*****g remember if I’ve met these people before, they all look the same to me”. He’s been in China for longer than me.

“I live in a hotel, it’s great. I don’t do my bed, I don’t cook, I don’t even have to flush the toilet”.

So yeah. The whole point of this post was to say that over Christmas I saw one fake Santa in this hotel, and one bloke that looked a lot like Santa…just without the beard, decency, kind-heartedness and generosity (although he probably had enough money to buy a toy for every kid in China).