Shameless plug

For those of you not 'in the loop', here's an answer to your Christmas present worries, an introduction to a new and exciting musical world, or a blatant bit of self-promotion, according to your tastes.

The wonderful and lovely Rudsambee, the choir/family we left behind in Edinburgh but who will never, ever leave us, have just produced their latest CD - see here.

It's our (see, I still think of it as 'our', even though I haven't sung with them myself for over a year) first recording since the inspiringly talented and generally adorable Ollie took over as director two years ago, and demonstrates the new heights of musical brilliance and exciting new repertoire into which the choir have ventured.

As a disclaimer, I should add that I haven't actually heard it yet, but Peter is singing on it, so it must be fantastic!

Here endeth the commercial break. Ooh, except to say that if you are shopping online this Christmas and feel like supporting the choir (which is a registered charity), you can go to www.buy.at/rudsambee and from there a small percentage of any purchases you make from the online retailers listed (Amazon and M&S are among them, but there are several others which I can't remember) will be donated to Rudsambee.

Think I've covered everything (John, Chris?)

Thank you.

It's my party and I'll sulk if I want to

Blimey. We seem to have unleashed a monster with this party of ours.

To be honest my enthusiasm for the whole idea has been waning rapidly, especially since we had to postpone it from the original date. Hallowe’en’s been and gone, it’s not Christmas yet, it’s cold, dark and miserable (oh hang on, maybe it IS Christmas?), and warming our flat three months after we moved in and when we’ve hardly been here seems a little strange. Plus it means tidying and cleaning. So in a fit of the Scrooginess from which I occasionally suffer, I was all for cancelling the bloody thing once and for all.

But it is not to be. Forces beyond my control have seized upon the idea, swept it up and carried it – with the keenness that only the Chinese can demonstrate – to heights far beyond those I ever envisaged.

It started when we finally decided on a date – Dec 6th, so that Boss would be back from holiday – and Peter told Kevin. Kevin strode into the main office and made an announcement to the rest of the staff. There were murmurs of approbation, followed by a short exchange. Then Kevin returned, stuck his head around the door and asked, ‘Is it true that at western parties, you don’t get a meal?’

‘Yes,’ said Peter. ‘You get party nibbles, but the main idea is to drink, dance and talk. Tell them they should all have their dinner before they come’.

Kevin retreated and conveyed this information to the astounded company. Murmurs of amazement, curiosity and mystification were heard, possibly due to Kevin’s attempts to render the phrase ‘party nibbles’ into Chinese, which I imagine would pose a challenge for the most accomplished translator.

A couple of weeks elapsed and, like I say, I had seriously started to go off the idea. Peter occasionally let slip that someone at work had ‘mentioned’ the party, or ‘asked about’ the party, and tried to float some tentative questions about what we should buy, but I refused to be drawn.

Then at the beginning of this week, Peter was walking past the main office when he heard animated conversation and laughter from within. He walked in, keen to see what excitement was unfolding, and the conversation stopped. The Chinese people looked at him, then at one another, then back at him. He looked at Kevin, who explained, ‘We were just talking about your party. Everyone is really looking forward to it!’

‘Oh?’ said Peter, a little alarmed by the obvious air of excitement in the room, stealing an anxious glance at Eileen. Eileen is a bobbysocked lass from the next office whom I have yet to meet, but who apparently behaves like the love-child of Tigger and an entire troupe of cheerleaders. Mercifully, on this occasion, she seemed relatively subdued.

Another Chinese girl spoke shyly to Kevin. ‘She says, is it really true she can bring her husband?’ he translated.

‘Oh yes’, replied Peter expansively. ‘Bring partners. Definitely!’

Another woman asked something in English which Peter didn’t hear but which produced gales of laughter from those who understood. On being asked to repeat it, she replied hysterically, ‘I said, can I bring my parents?!’

‘And there’s definitely no food?’ said Kevin.

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

What are these people expecting?? Is the whole of Harbin going to turn up in ball gowns and black tie, demanding a four-course banquet with stuffed boar’s head, foie gras and Beluga caviar? A magnum or ten of champagne? Do they think we’re hiring the London Philharmonic to play while they eat? Fatboy Slim to do the disco? Do they expect to see Cirque du Soleil jumping out of giant gold-leaf-edged cakes to gyrate on podiums while dwarves circulate with trays of cocaine? Honestly I’m not Freddie Bloody Mercury. (Sorry Fred, no offence up there, mate. I’m sure they were great parties.)

Clearly the concept of a party in someone’s flat is unknown to the Chinese and they’re intrigued to see what will happen. Perhaps they’re hoping for an orgy. I mean, if there’s nothing to eat – and they don’t drink much really, unless they’re eating or are in a club – what else is there to do?

Well, I’ve got news. They’re getting mulled wine (a concession to the approximate almost-Christmassiness of the date), mince pies if we can work out how to procure such a thing – but breath not to be held on that score – and Pringles. And possibly a few cubes of cheese and pineapple on sticks for a hint of ironic retro-Britishness. Not that anyone except us and Boss will realise we’re being ironic, but still. If we still feel up to teaching them the Gay Gordons - and provided there aren’t fifty of them – we might attempt some dancing. We will drink, and chat. And THAT’S IT.


But you know what? They’re all so damned enthusiastic about everything that I reckon it’ll still be the talk of the town for years to come.

Frozen veg section

Don't know if you can see this, but in case you were wondering - yes, some people DO leave their leeks out in the snow. (They're just to the left of the tree.)

Others keep their cabbages, rotting, on the windowsill of the common stair, which makes a LOVELY smell when you open the front door!

Mad as hatters, all of them.

Oh bloody hell, it's cold

Here are some pics of the snow. These are actually from last week but it's back again now, accompanied by a wind that cuts straight through any part of you that's uncovered, while your teeth and eyeballs feel as though they're about to freeze.

And it's 'only' minus 14. Ha ha ha ha. Nervous laughter.

Digital killed the video star

Pause with me, my friends, for a moment’s silence to mark the passing of our old VCR, which last night passed over to that great electronics warehouse in the sky, to frolic for eternity with all the Walkmans, Betamaxes, Amstrads, reel-to-reel tape recorders and gramophones that have gone before it.

We briefly considered claiming on the insurance from the sea freight chappies who promised we could do so if they broke anything in transit, and who had clearly dropped the box in which it had travelled. But then we looked at the poor thing, which was already second-hand when I bought it in 1996 and had a label on it with a pre-01-phone number (which, sad person that I am, I know means it was made before 1991), and decided its time was probably up anyway. It’s had a huge amount of use and has endured, by my estimation, at least ten house moves, including from Edinburgh to Southampton (via Kent) and back again, plus at least a year in storage, has had paint spilled on it, had the tracking repaired at least once, and I’ve never cleaned the heads. So expecting it to survive a move to China was probably asking a bit much. If this machine were a cat, it would have reached its ninth life long ago.

The truly annoying thing was that we’d got it working. It took us two hours, trying two different TVs and several different aerial settings, but much shouting and swearing later we’d managed to figure out how to change the TV setup language to English – a major breakthrough, though not as helpful as it sounds when your instruction book and remote control are still only in Chinese – and eventually to get the video to play. It happily played all through Toy Story (which happened to be the first tape that came to hand out of the boxes) but alas when it finished and I tried to rewind to the beginning I could immediately tell something was amiss, so well did I know that VCR and its little ways.

It was groaning in obvious pain, wouldn’t rewind, wouldn’t eject. We somehow succeeded in extracting Toy Story intact and tried another tape, but this was too much and the machine breathed its last. Emergency surgery was attempted in an effort to remove the second tape but unfortunately we were unable to save mother or baby.

Which leaves us with a bit of a problem. As far as I’m aware, you can no longer buy VCRs in the UK (except second-hand) and even if we could, we wouldn’t be able to bring one back to China due to customs regulations. (Very irritatingly, it’s probably cost us about as much to get our now-broken machine into China as I paid for it in the first place.) China being slightly old-fashioned – as previously discussed – it is still possible to buy new ones here. BUT China is in a different region, video-wise-ly speaking, so we wouldn’t be able to watch any of our VHS tapes on it.

And boy do we have a lot of them. We’ve got quite a few DVDs too, obviously, but being slightly long-in-the-tooth types we still have lots of tapes which we each bought or recorded off the telly back in our respective heady youths, and somehow ‘upgrading’ these has never been top of the spending priority list. To be frank, we never look at the damn things, but in a moment of insanity we nonetheless shipped EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM out to China on the basis that there might be no TV that we could understand, so that after a year or so we might actually get bored enough to watch them.

Which brings me to the delights of CCTV9, ‘China’s only English-language channel’. Satellite TV is supposedly illegal in private homes here, though apparently you can get it if you have the right contacts (which we probably do) and many people do have it. When you stay in hotels you get movie channels, CNN, BBC World News and National Geographic like everywhere else, but at home we haven’t quite got around to sussing out the satellite thing yet. Which means we have 90 cable channels and only one we can watch – though we have passed the odd amusing quarter of an hour making up ridiculous dialogue to Chinese soaps.

So over the last few months – with most of our belongings still in transit, don’t forget; at least that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it – we’ve spent more time than anyone ever, EVER should, watching CCTV9.

This channel takes Boring to a level you never knew existed. The worst of it is the adverts, of which they have about six – all from the Chinese Tourist Board of various regions – repeated on a loop. We know them all, including the bloody awful plinky music, off by heart. They repeat news, current affairs and business programmes on a three hourly cycle. All of these have a Chinese nationalist bias so heavy it could send the TV crashing through the floor. The presenters speak in an array of accents you will hear nowhere else, ranging from American to tortured Chinese vowels to English public school circa 1952. There’s a sports roundup fronted by an American man who reports on football (i.e. soccer) with clearly no idea what he’s talking about, carefully enunciating words like ‘penalty’ and ‘striker’ with a fixed grin as if he’s speaking a foreign language.

They intersperse these with programmes about China which try desperately to be ‘interesting’ without ever saying anything remotely controversial. Some of these are just bizarre (‘Sports Chinese’ anyone? Yes that’s right, learning Chinese through the medium of tennis).

Our favourite, however, is a programme called ‘New Frontiers’ which is on every night at 10.30pm. The title is a mystery, as it’s about old things within China. It begins with a charming male Chinese presenter in slightly high-waisted trousers walking onto set in the dark, looking ostentatiously for his mark on the floor and then swinging to camera, before saying something like, ‘Hello. I’m Xiao Ge Jin [or whatever his name is] in Beijing.’ (Every single presenter introduces themselves this way. They are all ‘in Beijing’, so I’m unsure why they feel the need to tell us this. But anyway.)

He continues, ‘Tonight on New Frontiers, we will continue our look at the history of the three-legged copper-bottomed pot from the Shaoxing region of China. Last time, in episode 18, we saw how in the Ming Dynasty in the 16th century, the conservation of these ancient pots was encouraged by the emperors. Tonight, we will see how they began to decline in popularity’.

I’m not kidding; it’s that bad. And all this as if you’d been on tenterhooks since last night waiting to find out what would happen next. Then cut to the documentary itself, which is narrated by a New Zealand man with THE MOST BORING VOICE OF ALL TIME who recounts in minute detail every reference to these bloody pots which has ever been unearthed and repeating important events from their history just in case you missed anything. At the mid-point, we cut back to Our Graham for a quick recap, after which New Zealander starts droning on again.

And so it goes on. Every night. We’ve seen episodes about stamp collecting, Chinese chess, and the current series is about the very very long history of some dreadful Chinese opera genre. It makes the talk we had to sit through this summer in the Czech Republic about ‘the history of floating wood downstream’ (don’t ask) seem like an all-action blockbuster.

So you can see how we might get so desperate that watching the same episode of Bergerac for the 14th time, or a tape featuring a fuzzy Carry On Up the Kyber followed by Review of the Year 1997 (no really, I have this) would seem like a fun evening’s entertainment. Alas, our long-serving VCR sits inert on the lounge floor, its matte-black cover removed, its orange LCD display dimmed forever, its wires spewing forth like intestines attached to the green circuit-board which we had to snap, marking the demise of our youth. Ah, the 80s. Forget what I said last week; they’re dead & gone.

It’s time to move with the times. DVDs for Christmas please. Lots. Thanks.

Long lost friends

The boxes are here!! All 19 of them arrived first thing yesterday morning. Here's the living proof.




These babies were last seen departing our home in Edinburgh at about 11pm on 22nd August, after we had helped a poor lad from Beijing load them into his almost-too-small van in torrential rain. ('Harbin?' he said. 'Why do you want to go there?') Here's what we looked like afterwards.

This was after they had sat all that day in the stairwell of our flat due to a cock-up which meant the van which was supposed to pick them up earlier in the day had failed to materialise. So they sent the lad up from Manchester to collect them, and then drive back to Manchester with them the same night. I think the London-based freight company thought Manchester and Edinburgh were quite close together - both being north of Watford, of course.

This in turn was after we had had to enlist the help of two friends to carry them down from our second floor flat, as the company (who were otherwise brilliant) didn't offer this service. And after our flat had looked like a bomb site for two months while we packed everything, with boxes in various states of construction, and the items to go into them, littering every surface and at one point getting wet when water poured through from the upstairs neighbours' window in another torrential rainstorm (Edinburgh gets a lot of those in August).

And while simultaneously we were trying to do up our bathroom, which we'd left far too late and failed to anticipate things going wrong like all the tiles falling off the wall when we got the new bath put in.

Or the new bath having a hole in and having to get another new bath. Or, at the same time, the sewage pipe which drained our only toilet becoming blocked by a tree root that was growing out of it two floors up, and not being able to get a scaffolder to come and fix it, and our insurance company refusing to pay for it because it was 'above ground', and having to argue with all the neighbours about paying their share of it, so that for two months our toilet was prone to block up completely and without warning so that I had to go into town to do a poo in Debenhams on two occasions.

And this was after I had spent a month tearing my hair out trying to get ANYONE to give me a quote for transporting our stuff to China - which Peter's company said we had to get three quotes for before they would pay for it - rather than just say hurriedly, "Oh, er, I'll call you back" - and then never do so - when I mentioned Harbin and they looked on a map and saw where it was. Praise be for the marvellous Sherzod ("Don't worry!") who took the whole thing in his stride to such an extent that when his firm said they could do the job - and gave us the lowest quote into the bargain - I even said to him, "No offence, but do you actually know where Harbin is?"

So you can understand why we are BLOODY GLAD to see these boxes. Even if we did have to pay a horrendous customs charge because apparently we had some dodgy items which they shouldn't really have let through. Don't know what - maybe the mandolin and the accordion, or most probably the Tampax; I reckon they're banned in China (see here). And even if the Chinese delivery guys did dump the boxes outside the front door at 8.30am and drive away, so that we, Kevin and a passing cyclist hired on the spot for the purpose (I kid you not) had to carry them UP the stairs again to get them into the lift to our flat.

Of course, most of what's in them is utter crap which we don't need. And the things we really do need (a serrated knife, teatowels) we didn't think to send out, not realising you can't get them here.

But at least, here, the saga comes to a close.

Until we need to send the damn things - plus everything we've bought since coming to China - home again in two years' time.

But I'll worry about that later.

The Master Plan

So, Mr Bond, we meet at last.

The time has come for me to reveal (to those of you who didn’t hear about this before we left Edinburgh) our Grand Project for Harbin, to which I alluded in my previous post.

Viz: to bring ceilidh dancing, and Scottish/Celtic traditional music in general, to China, and turn Harbin into the Ceilidh Capital of the East, with the ultimate aim of having a Celtic music festival along the lines of a mini Celtic Connections, here. Anyone who doesn’t know what a ceilidh is, please click here. Please note it is NOT the same as Scottish Country Dancing.

We call this Operation Ceilidh Culture (name shamelessly pinched from Edinburgh’s own small annual traditional music event – sorry guys. It’s a only working title!)

Why? Because it sounds crazy enough for us to try it; because Peter never got a chance to start his ceilidh band before we left Scotland; and because God knows the Chinese desperately need an injection of some kind of quality music, if the trash that we hear on our built-in shower radio (yes, that’s right) or piped blaringly loudly out into the street outside shopping centres is anything to go by. Frankly, it’s Eurovision-style pop of the cheesiest kind, and much though you know I love Eurovision, they really need to be educated on the musical front. Plus Peter has a theory that the pentatonic scale is the same as the range of chords used in most Irish tunes (or something) so therefore the Chinese ear is predisposed to like that kind of music.

And hey, if it fails there’s always my backup plan, which is – on the strength of the above – to bring Eurovision to China instead. It’s broadcast in Vietnam and Korea, apparently, so why not here? I’m thinking of writing to Sir Terry, now that he’s become disillusioned with European political voting in ‘our’ contest, and suggesting he expand his horizons. Why not an Asiavision Song Contest? Bad music and nationalism combined – it sounds right up China’s street!

But I digress. How do we intend to bring our project to fruition? Well, it pans out like this.

Peter’s original plan was to find some fellow musicians and start a ceilidh band. All he really needs is a keyboard player, someone with a rhythm machine of some sort (both of whom could be Chinese), and either a guitarist – in which case Peter could play the melody line on the flute – or, preferably, a fiddler (who would probably have to be an expat) so that Peter can play guitar or mandolin instead. I could probably even manage to learn a few simple tunes on the accordion.

But to have a ceilidh we needed to find some willing guinea-pigs for the dancing. We were stuck as to how to go about this, until we met Magi. As I mentioned, he is something big at one of the universities, and as a teacher of English he is very keen for his students to learn about British culture as well as the language. It also transpires that he is a bit of a Scotophile, has visited Scotland (even staying in the same hostel on Skye where we went on our choir tour in 2006), and is interested in Scottish music. When Peter mentioned his ceilidh band plan to him, Magi became very excited.

‘You provide the music’, he said, ‘and I will provide six thousand students!’

Sorted. The Chinese seem to love doing strenuous organised activities in large groups, particularly if they can be shouted at while doing it - and none more so than young people still in the education system who have known nothing else all their lives – so ceilidh dancing should suit them down to the ground. We just tell them everyone in Britain does this every week. They don’t need to know it’s a purely minority interest confined to Scottish people, and mainly those over 40. And once the blokes realise that they not only get to touch girls but that the girls can ask them to dance, we should be on to a winner. Six thousand of them might be a bit much, but hey, why aim low? Now THAT's a big Strip the Willow.

So, to recap.

One: get Magi to organise his students to come to a ceilidh at the university. How he pitches this is entirely up to him. If he wants to give them course credits for it, that’s fine by us. We’ll need a Chinese person with a loud voice, a good memory and a sense of rhythm to learn the steps and then call them in Chinese. Maybe they could do simultaneous translation as someone (who by a process of elimination I’ve just realised would probably have to be me – argh – I only know two dances!) calls in English. As we won’t have a band ready in time, we use Scottish CDs, of which we have many. Chinese students dance the night away enthusiastically. THEY WILL LOVE IT.

Two: meanwhile, we find out where the expats hang out, and advertise both there and at the university for musicians to join a band to play Scottish and Irish music. If a couple of Chinese musicians come along and learn the tunes, so much the better. THEY WILL LOVE IT.

Three: building on the success of the inaugural ceilidh, we make these a regular event at the uni. Ok so maybe ALL 6000 students don’t have to come EVERY time. But those who do will LOVE IT. Once the band is formed and has got a repertoire together, we replace the CDs with live music, and then everyone will LOVE IT EVEN MORE.

Four: word gradually spreads about this new dance sensation, leading to ceilidhs (small ones at first) being held in the city for people other than students. We will have laid the groundwork for this by teaching a few friends some ceilidh dances at our parties (see previous post) whenever we have the chance. Soon Scottish music and ceilidh dancing become a craze in Harbin. This curious new development attracts national attention. Harbin becomes known as ‘The Scottish City’. We are featured on CCTV News. People flock from all over China to sample the exciting new cultural experience. THEY ALL LOVE IT.

Five: since everybody in Harbin now LOVES Scottish music so much, we decide it’s time some real Celtic musicians came over to do a concert. We find out how one goes about raising money for such an event in China, we get the money (ok so this part of the plan isn’t quite thought through yet!), and approach some of the stars of the traditional music scene to come over. We reckon Aly and Phil may be slightly out of our league at this stage (though boys, if you’re reading this, we’re huge fans, and any time you feel like waiving your fee in return for the trip of a lifetime, the invitation’s there!), but maybe some of the younger generation might be up for it. If we could get Jenna Reid, that would be fab. Or one of the big ceilidh bands like Shooglenifty. Although more of them, so more expenses.

Six: back home in Scotland, Aly Bain turns on the news one day and sees a piece about two Brits who have brought Scottish music to the northernmost reaches of China. He phones Jenna (or whoever), who says, ‘Oh aye, I went to play there. It was great. Those guys in Harbin LOVE Scottish music. You should see them ceilidh!’ Aly gets our number and calls us. When we’ve finished saying ‘We are not worthy’, we discuss our plans for a major Celtic music festival in Harbin – perhaps every two years. No need to be over-ambitious.

‘The trouble is, Mr Bain,’ we say, ‘it’ll be very expensive and we don’t know how we can raise the cash’.

‘Leave it with me, pal’, says Aly. [Not sure if Shetlanders say ‘pal’, but you get the picture.]

Seven: in 2011, the first ‘Celtic Connections East’ - no, let's call it 'Celtic Connections China'; better logo potential - festival is held in Harbin. We have had to use our contacts to get Harbin airport to start running international flights to places other than Vladivostock just for the occasion. Everybody LOVES IT, it is a resounding success, and the 2013 one is bigger than ever. Harbin is the Ceilidh Capital of the East. We become slightly rich, and have changed the face of modern China forever.

…..

WHAT?????

It could happen.

A man called Maggie

My faith is restored. Not quite yet in international removers, who still have our 19 sea freight boxes SOMEWHERE between Dalian and here (we think) but in humanity and Harbin.

Last night I heard a loud noise from outside and looked out to see a large number of fireworks being let off from somewhere nearby. Now, it has to be said the Chinese do like their fireworks, but seeing as it was Nov 5th I like to think it was either some Brits – which means there ARE some others here, and not far off at that – or else it was some Americans celebrating the Obama win. Either way, it’s all good.

So, we’ve decided to have a party, as a flatwarming and celebration of getting our residency and such like. Well, to tell the truth we decided to have one a couple of weeks ago, and had even sent out the invitations to a ‘Hallowe’en Flatwarming’ to be held on Nov 1st. But then those mice & men intervened as usual, we had our little hospital drama and were going to postpone it until this Saturday. Unfortunately though Peter’s still not really up to prancing around the lounge doing the Gay Gordons (more next time on this) so we have rescheduled it to the last Saturday of this month, or first Sat of December, depending on when Boss is around.

The guest list, albeit short, reads unlike any other I have ever compiled, for one simple reason. Chinese names. Or to be more precise, the English names which Chinese people adopt for themselves when they start to learn English, and use for the rest of their lives whenever dealing with westerners, on the (probably correct) assumption that most westerners will find their real names too hard to pronounce. You know the kind of thing – Jackie Chan, Jimmy Chung. It’s a sensible idea, although a rather strange concept that you could conceivably work closely with someone for years without ever finding out what their real name is.

The trouble is that the names they choose are so – well – I’m trying to be charitable here; let’s face it, if I was asked to choose a Chinese name at random ‘from a book’ (which is seemingly where they get the English ones from, Manuel-style), I’m sure I’d inadvertently come up with something that meant ‘Rotten Lotus-Flower Breath’ or ‘Number One Puppy Mutilator’ or some such thing. But still, you’d think that this book, whatever it is, would give them SOME indication as to whether the name is popular/old-fashioned, male/female, likely to make westerners crack up, or is, indeed, a name at all. But no. Perhaps it was written by someone with a particularly mean streak who wanted to humiliate Chinese people.

Most of the names have two syllables, presumably because Chinese given names have two syllables so this sounds right to them. Men seem to favour patrician names which make them sound like New England landowners: Simon, Roger, Henry, or the surname-as-first-name variety such as Schofield or Hunter. (Though I did see a hotel lift attendant called Elton, which made me smile). For the women, the choice seems to be between wife-of-New-England-patriarch (Lily, Julia, Serena), or a whole catalogue of shockingly twee monikers which would befit the waitresses in a dodgy cocktail bar or a range of 1970s dolls. Candy and Wendy are extremely popular, but we’ve encountered Coco, Calyx and even Fairy.

Thus, my invitation list (in part) reads as follows: Kevin, Wildon, Tiffany, Eileen, Hunter, Sunny, and Magi.

It’s like living in The Great Gatsby. In a gender-confused kind of way. Sunny, you see, is a girl. And Magi (that’s as in Thatcher) is a man.

Some of you have heard this story before but I think it bears the retelling. This poor chap, who’s something quite important at one of the universities in Harbin, at the time he was choosing his English name, came across a reference in an art book to The Adoration of the Magi, where it said that ‘Magi’ meant ‘a wise man from the East’.

‘Ah, a wise man from the East,’ thinks he. ‘That is me.’ So that was the name he chose. Sadly no one told him the correct pronunciation, so for years he’s been handing his business card to people with the name ‘Magi’ on it and saying ‘Call me Maggie’.

He has since been disabused, as he told us, ‘When I first went to Australia, they were most disappointed that I was not young lady!’ but he still persists with it. You’d think – seeing as it’s not actually his real name and all – that he could change it. But it doesn’t seem to work like that.

So there you have it. The idea with the party is that one of the guys will bring his English teacher, thereby enabling us to meet some other expats here at last, and that Magi (who teaches English and has lots of native-speakers on his staff) will be the catalyst in our plan to turn Harbin into the Ceilidh Capital of the East.

Tune in next time….

The old and the new

Just a few pics of Harbin and Shanghai to try and illustrate what I was talking about last time. No photos of HK, I'm afraid, so you'll just have to imagine the wall-to-wall beigeness.

Where we're going, we don't need roads

Back from Hong Kong, a chance to reflect and indulge in a spot of philosophical musing on the nature of time, progress and so forth.

Watching fave comfort-film Back to the Future last night may have brought this on. Or perhaps it was the fact that Peter was clearing out some old papers today and came across an envelope which he was supposed to post to the Premium Bonds people to tell them he’d moved house. In 1967.

Anyway, ever since we arrived in China, we’ve been saying how it feels like being in a time warp. Obvious examples of modern technology such as the internet and ubiquitous mobile phones aside, it has very much the feel of the UK in say, the mid-1980s. It’s not just the prevalence of poodle perms. It’s the sense of optimism, combined with conspicuous consumerism by the rich while facilities and infrastructure have to advance by leaps and bounds to try to keep up (and don’t always succeed), and while others still struggle in poverty.

Chinese cities are full of people who make a living collecting and selling rubbish for recycling – plastic water bottles, old cardboard, you name it. You sometimes see pictures of them with the rubbish piled high on the backs of their bikes (or occasionally donkey-carts). We call them ‘tub-thumpers’, as they ride the streets thumping loudly and continuously on an empty oil drum attached to the handle-bars to advertise their presence, sometimes shouting out as well, in a way which reminds me of the rag-and-bone man who still used to call round our area in his horse-drawn cart when I was a kid in the 70s. But I suspect that within ten years they’ll be gone, as China continues to rev up to 88mph and propel itself into the future, obliterating everything which could possibly mark it out as a ‘developing’ country.

There’s no doubt about it though - if in China it’s about 1986, in Hong Kong it’s roughly 1974. Admittedly due to our unfortunate medical experience we didn’t see much of it, but we drove through it, I managed a bit of shopping on the last day, and you get a feel for a place. Much of it had a very slightly seedy, run-down feel; the hospital and hotel were decorated in beige and chintz and appeared to be run by Peter’s grandparents, but I kind of liked it. They had proper, old-fashioned trams. Troupes of schoolgirls in white dresses could be seen, shepherded by nuns. I found this brilliant arcade of little shops selling cool clothes at reasonable prices. As China is coming up in the world, Hong Kong is definitely going down and is no longer where it’s at, but I found this preferable to China’s immense, glitzy malls full of over-priced shops, no customers and bored staff who pounce on you and try to push their most expensive items on you all the time.

Maybe it’s my age, as they say, but I do find myself yearning for a simpler time. A time when I wouldn’t have had to phone my credit card company yesterday to ask them to reactivate my card, due to the fact that I had to pay a deposit of $20,000HK (about £1600) on admission to hospital, and even though I had phoned them in August and told them I was moving to China they were only allowed to record that I would be here for 90 days, after which I would have to phone them again and tell them I would be here for another 90 days, and so on, and even though the HK payment was in China and was within the 90 days, and even though the hospital subsequently cancelled the payment anyway because they got clearance from our insurers that my bills would be covered, the credit card people STILL thought it was fraudulent and stopped my card without contacting me to check.

I mean, what kind of a world are we living in here? Call me a cynic, but surely most self-respecting credit card thieves would go on a splurge and buy designer goods or fly to exotic destinations with their ill-gotten gains? Not think, ‘Ooh, I know, I’ll check myself into a crappy hospital in Hong Kong for a spot of freeloading puking’.

On the other hand, simpler times are often over-rated. This we discovered when a light-bulb going in our bedroom at 11.30pm last night tripped a fuse which took out the power to the whole flat. (Just in case we were getting lulled into a false sense of security by not having any disasters befall us for at least three days.) This led to 12 hours without electricity, a freezer full of ruined food, and a few panicky Sunday morning calls to our poor long-suffering interpreter, Kevin, who eventually a) established that we had not – quite – run out of credit on our meter, and b) got a security guard to come up, flip a switch behind a locked panel outside our front door, and hey presto everything beeped and flashed and was working again.

Honestly, will this never end?

I’m now thinking of investing in a DeLorean. The only trouble is, I can’t quite decide whether to set the time coordinates forwards or backwards.