From Scotland to Siberia

New kid on the blog

2009-07-19T22:00:00.004+08:00

Ok, I swear if I’d thought of that title earlier I’d have posted this sooner.

Or maybe not. Many, many apologies for the long hiatus, but as most of you know by now, it’s been nearly a month since Baby A exploded into our lives, a full two and a half weeks earlier than we expected him. One minute I’m waddling around with nothing to blog about because I’m so big I can hardly get off the sofa, and the next there’s simply not a spare moment which isn’t being literally eaten up by a very small person with a very large personality. Amazing how things can change in the blink of an eye.

Babies share so many characteristics with the typical Chinese. Both sleep a lot, make a lot of noise, have no consideration for others, and never do what you want at the time you want them to do it. But you can’t help loving them for their hilarious wide-eyed innocence and cheek. So perhaps China is the best place to have one – at least you get some practice. On the other hand there are a number of aspects which I’d recommend taking into consideration, should anyone out there ever, ever contemplate such a thing themselves.

1. Medical. Ok so this isn’t anything to do with China but I had to get a moan in. Far be it from me to break the conspiracy of silence which seems to prevent those who’ve had children from warning those who haven’t just how bloody awful childbirth is. I mean, I suppose the future of the human race might be at stake. But let me just say this. You know the scene in ‘This is Spinal Tap’ where they realise they’ve put the measurements for Stonehenge in inches instead of feet? Well, I imagine something very similar must have happened when God, or the elves, or whoever designed people, first saw the prototype for a baby’s head and the area from which it has to emerge. You can just see the guy’s face when the awful realisation struck that he’d made a mistake in the blueprint which nobody had noticed, and it was too late to change it. You can hear him thinking ‘Shit. Oh, it’ll be all right’ (without much conviction), and hurriedly deleting all the relevant files so that no-one would realise it was him that had screwed up.

Well all I can say is, I still can’t walk after 4 weeks, so I hope they caught him and fired him. Also, as bad luck would have it, my, er, issues coincided with one of Peter's mosquito bite episodes. He's violently allergic to the little blighters and swells up in suppurating buboes which throb, pulsate and pustulate with a life of their own, usually in several places at once. All in all the two of us spent about a fortnight looking - and feeling - as though we'd been in a car crash. Judging by the size of me, in my case I can only assume the other vehicle involved was a lorry carrying a large consignment of cakes and chocolate, all of which I felt compelled to eat while I lay by the side of the road waiting for the ambulance.

2. Logistical. Getting to the hospital at 3am while in labour was supposed to be organised in advance. Big Boss was going to lay on a car. Drivers were to be primed and ready to rush to our assistance. Did this happen? No. Peter sent Big Boss an email the week before to remind him, but BB was away and by the time he got back, Baby A had decided enough was enough and popped out. I think the email is still unanswered. So we had to flag down a taxi. At least it wasn’t raining.

Actually there was no problem and I don’t think the taxi driver even realised what was going on. Not so the SECOND taxi driver who had to take us BACK to the hospital late at night after I’d been discharged, in some pain from a bladder infection and muscle spasms in my hip. We had the baby in a car seat but I don’t think the driver noticed, so we were convinced he thought I was in labour, the way I was groaning and clutching my (still somewhat large) stomach! At any rate he raced through the Shanghai Friday night traffic at a pace befitting Starsky & Hutch and looked mighty relieved when we arrived. Thank goodness Baby didn’t suddenly wake up & make a noise; I think the poor bloke would have had a heart attack, thinking I’d just delivered on his back seat!

3. Social. The Chinese love babies, especially western babies. It can get rather annoying to be continually cooed over, and when the baby gets older, people apparently demand photos all the time. However, the most irritating thing is that they also have very strong opinions when it comes to baby care. Chinese wisdom recommends, among other things, not leaving the house at all for the first three months, keeping their feet covered at all times, even on sweltering hot days, and dressing them in bizarre crotchless trousers rather than using nappies. Expat mothers regularly complain of being stopped on the street by Chinese wifies offering advice and admonishments. So far though my main gripe is that everyone seems to think he’s a girl, for reasons unknown – even when he’s wearing a manly blue babygro with a picture of a digger on it.

4. Administrative. My feelings regarding a certain international medical insurance provider are on record, so I’ll refrain from repeating them here. I’ll say only this. It took fourteen (international) phone calls, plus several emails, to get a policy set up for Baby. Fourteen. And even then he’s barely covered for his vaccinations and well-baby checkups. It’s a bloody scandal.

The other amusing/frustrating aspect of having a child abroad is that you have to get it a passport and visa more or less immediately. Someone hasn’t thought through the implications of having hormonal women turn up at offices to fill in forms with short deadlines. I almost shouted at the British Consul for not having something suitable for me to lean on. But the fact that our son will have to endure THIS Photoshopped marvel

not only as his passport photo for the next five years but as endless humiliation potential for the rest of his life just about compensates.

Granny is due to visit from the UK on Thursday for two weeks, so the blog’s maternity leave may last a little longer yet, but fret not – we’ll be back in full force before you know it.

Just when you thought it was safe...

2009-05-24T13:38:00.002+08:00

…WATER reared its ugly, pointy-toothed head again this week. Peter, back in Harbin for the week, went home from work on Wednesday to find there was absolutely no running water in the flat. He called Kevin to find out what was going on. Kevin phoned building management and came back with the response that it was switched off for ‘routine maintenance’ (nice of them to warn us) and that it would be back on ‘hopefully before Saturday’.

‘SATURDAY???!!!!!!’ shrieked Peter (who was flying back to Shanghai on Friday and didn’t fancy leaving toilets unflushed and taps in a dubious on/off position). ‘I’m sorry’, said Kevin glumly. ‘I don’t know what to say to make you happy’. Poor lad, he always takes it personally. In the event, it was back on by the time Peter got up on Thursday morning, but not before he’d texted me at 10.30pm saying he was going to bed because he was ‘so depressed about it’.

Then on Friday morning, I tried to turn on a tap in Shanghai, to find that the water had gone off here too! It had been fine half an hour earlier so I suspected it was somehow connected to the loud drilling, banging, and overpowering smell of solvent which had all been emanating from the flat upstairs since 8am. I went back to bed and by the time I woke up we were back on tap. What is it with these people though? Back home, if your water is scheduled to be switched off for five minutes you get a note through the door a week in advance. Here, the notion that they might be inconveniencing anyone simply doesn’t seem to cross their minds.

The chief species of water inconveniencing me at the moment, however, is that which I’m lugging around in my belly and my legs. A couple of Sundays ago I looked down to find my bump had undergone a sudden growth spurt and seemed to be sticking out several inches further than it had done that morning. At 33 (or is it 34 – they can’t decide) weeks pregnant, I am now the size of a house – no, make that a largish hotel - and need a crane to levitate me off the sofa most nights. Not much fun when the temperature is already hovering around the 30 degree mark – although believe it or not, Harbin was actually hotter than Shanghai this week. This – coupled with the frustrations of an internet connection which is becoming increasingly slow for unknown reasons – explains my lack of blogging recently. It’s a long walk to the computer these days, and this desk ain’t big enough for the both of us!

The size of my tum caused some consternation last time I visited the hospital. ‘You gain too much weight!’ ‘Too much eat!!’ (charming), ‘You have big baby! We must check!’. One ultrasound later, and Baby was revealed not to be a monster - apart from the head, which was already 92% of the size of a full-term baby’s! – nor was chocolate the culprit, or not the sole one anyway. No, my problem, it appears, is ‘too much fluid’. (Bloody water. I’m telling you.) So now they want to do another ultrasound tomorrow to make sure the fluid levels have stabilised. ‘But if your belly suddenly get bigger, call us and come in STRAIGHT AWAY!’ They certainly know how to stress me out.

The trouble is that having grown up with the NHS, to me the words ‘I’d like to run some further tests’ strike fear into the heart. British doctors only ever say this if they think there might be something seriously wrong with you. Otherwise their standard advice is ‘Take two paracetamol, go to bed and ring me in the morning’. So I’ve been having some trouble adjusting to the ‘We test because we can’ approach of private medicine, especially that practised by American-trained doctors and aimed mainly at American patients. I finally understand those episodes of ER where the storyline involved the docs haranguing some poor unfortunate who needed an arm transplant or whatever but couldn’t afford it because their insurance didn’t cover it.

In fact most of my preconceptions about private medicine have been turned on their heads. There are no hushed, white rooms or smiling nurses gliding about offering you biscuits. On the contrary, it’s all a bit like ER really, minus the shouting, the shooting and the helicopter crashes. Time being money, the doctors seem to see about six patients at once and scurry about between multiple consulting rooms. They run vast swathes of tests for everything under the sun, with no apparent consideration of the cost to you or actual probability that you might have the condition concerned.

When, in my naivety, I tried to refuse a certain test on the grounds that I didn’t think I needed it, it was too expensive, and, hey, actually, wasn’t I the ‘customer’ and therefore had the right to decline anything I didn’t want, all hell nearly broke loose. It became apparent that they had never encountered such a response before. The nurses were highly confused, the doctor embarked on a quite unwarranted prophesy of doom, and in the end I felt so bullied that I backed down, on the understanding that this was ‘absolutely the last blood test’ they would perform on me. Not so, as it turns out – but being Chinese, of course, they won’t tell you in advance what they’ve got up their sleeves for you in the future, preferring to spring it on you when you go in for what you think is a routine check-up. And nobody has the time or, apparently, the inclination, to consider the psychological impact of all this, or indeed to acknowledge that there might be an emotional side to pregnancy at all.

So, caught between Chinese vagueness and American hyper-efficiency, I sometimes find myself longing to wait three hours for a doctor who’ll say ‘Well that all looks ok to me, but come back and see me again if anything actually drops off.’ But I suppose that the standard of care I get here will be ultimately much better, the medical staff are more likely to speak fluent English, and at least I won’t die of MRSA. I just wish there was a fast track for this baby business. Nine months is a long time.

Business unusual (part 2)

2009-05-07T14:13:00.005+08:00

Peter continues his account of his weekend trip to Lang Ya Shan...

Saturday was conference day. After an impenetrable breakfast of spicy noodles and various strange pickled vegetables, the real business began. First on was young Earnest Vet, who worked for one of the international drug companies. Although all in Chinese, most of his slides told the story quite well, plus I wasn’t much interested anyway, so I didn’t bother to get Kevin to translate for me. We were well provided with Chinese tea – large green tea leaves in a cup that is often topped up by a waitress with hot water from a flask. You kind of have to strain it through your teeth.

Next up was Dr Boffin. He was unbelievably boring. I have seen some awful presentations in my time but this was definitely prizeworthy. His subject matter was quite important to me – several of his slides overlapped what I was going to say – but he had lost the audience within five minutes. An interesting slide would be followed by five or six slides full of mathematical formulae involving logarithms to base e.

Now, in the west, if a speaker is a bit boring we try our best – don’t we – to be polite? We might stare into space and find ourselves thinking about what’s for dinner; what our partner might be doing back home; what was on the telly last night. In China they talk loudly to the people beside them. They turn completely around so their back is to the speaker and conduct group conversations with those behind them. They get out their mobile phones and call friends with a poor signal so that they have to shout. In short; it was like what happens in a primary school class when the teacher nips out for a ciggy. (Does that still happen? It certainly did in my day). Having a microphone didn’t help Dr Boffin at all – he still couldn’t be heard at all over the din. On one occasion he asked the audience whether that point was clear – there was a sudden few seconds of silence that spread like a wave around the room. People even turned around towards the front to see whether anything interesting had finally happened, some clearly put out that their conversation had been interrupted. Then someone near the front answered ‘no, not really’ so he was off again, with ever more detailed explanations whilst the audience returned to their own little worlds.

When he had finally finished, Dr Smooth took the mike. Dr Smooth was an independent technical adviser to Mine Host’s company and was due to speak later in the afternoon, but had obviously decided to try to save the day for Dr Boffin. He had Charisma. Buckets of. And a swept back leonine mane, just greying enough to add an air of refinement. It seems he lives in California, which probably explains a lot. In less than ten minutes he summed up Dr Boffin’s entire hour-and-a-half presentation in a very engaging and memorable manner. He cooed into the microphone. He whispered and they hung on to every word. He raised his voice to make the point and they all nodded emphatically (except the two wifies who chatted incessantly throughout the entire day, obviously). I was impressed.

Next was lunch in the lakeside restaurant, and then I was on. I had been a little concerned about having the post-lunch graveyard slot but, as the only westerner in the village, I was enough of a novelty to keep them engaged. I got a rousing cheer for introducing myself in Chinese and after that they were very good to me. Dr Ssu translated – he is quite a good speaker anyway - so I decided on the tactic of soundbite bullet points, each of which was instantly translated, and it seemed to work. I watched one old guy at the back gradually fall asleep but, apart from the two chatting wifies (who even listened for a few minutes at the beginning before resuming their conversation) they listened quite well.

After me it was Dr Smooth’s allotted slot so he began to smooth them some more. This time he didn’t have it so easy and got quite a bit of heckling. Chatting wifies chatted throughout and I think it was when he stopped talking and stared at them with a smoothie smile that things began to go wrong for him. This was taking liberties. It’s as though they can only take so much smooth at one go. Either that or they were just exhausted at being so quiet for my presentation. Whatever the reason, they were simply not going to believe some of the things he told them, and that was that.

Then came question time. All the speakers sat in front of microphones at the top table and the audience was invited to supply written questions. Some small gift was given to those whose questions were answered as a wee incentive.

We were flooded. The questions were quite good too, and demonstrated that at least some people had been listening throughout. They just kept on coming and coming. After an hour and a quarter and with more of the audience still waving the girls over to collect questions, Mine Host Jason had to call a halt whilst we answered the final eight. It was after 5.30 by now, we had been at it all day and wanted a rest before the onslaught that is dinner.

The audience really perked up then because it was prize time. Each speaker had been asked to give two questions to MH, the answers to which would appear in the presentation. These questions must have been distributed at some stage because the slips were all collected at the end and put into a raffle box. Most of the prizes were fairly small things donated by the companies involved. We supplied pens, mugs and backpacks all bearing our logo. Someone else supplied fleece jackets. The two top prizes were quite presentable though; a nice camera and a laptop. The whole affair was a bit drawn out with many looks of palpable disappointment as the crappy presents were distributed first, raising the excitement level for the final two. As the top table speakers took it in turns to pull the question slips out of the box I noticed that no attempt had been made to mark the papers. My questions were mostly answered correctly – I had made them pretty easy – but I didn’t see one single attempt to answer Dr Boffin’s questions. Some hadn’t answered any questions at all.

I finally got about seven minutes’ break before dinner. Mine Host was delighted with the day and sat me at his right hand, dismissing Kevin to a different table to make more room for the important guests. MH assured me that he would interpret, and his English being quite good, I concurred.

This was not a good idea as it turned out. He spent about 15 minutes at my table then set off on a tour of all the other tables delivering amiable good charm and lashings of baijo. When he returned to our table an hour later he was definitely not in a good way. His shirt was completely untucked and he began to mop his brow and complain of the heat.

Everyone then adjourned en masse to the KTV (karaoke) bar. The Chinese simply adore karaoke and will deny any suggestion that it’s a Japanese invention (but then they claim to have invented everything, including football). Indeed in Harbin we are often reduced to sleeping with ear-plugs in to block out the, ahem, dulcet strains of over-amplified ‘singing’ coming from the KTV bar next to our flat there – which sometimes goes on until 5am.

Anyway the farmers were well up for it that night. Going to join in the fun, I discovered however that the only drink on offer in the so-called ‘bar’ was tea. With what I thought was extreme presence of mind, I quickly slipped back into the dining hall and grabbed a mostly full bottle of something from the nearest table before it was cleared away. Sadly it turned out to be the revolting ‘dark baijo’, which I proceeded to struggle through. As my grandad would have said, I was glad when I’d finished it. I also – confession-time now – lost my karaoke virginity. With ‘Yesterday’. It was good for me. I was also the only singer to get a round of applause, probably because unlike all the others I was obviously able to sing the original words.

After that, I must confess the evening becomes a little hazy. MH was last seen slumped in a corner somewhere. Kevin had made an early exit and was nowhere to be seen. I finally retired to bed, silently thanking my parents for endowing me with a sturdy Irish constitution and wondering what state the Chinese would be in for the following morning’s sightseeing trip.

At this point my correspondent, pleading lack of time, concludes his account, so I'll just fill you in quickly with what I know of the following day's activities. The entire party - apparently looking remarkably healthy despite the previous evening's festivities - were taken to visit an old villa and a living monastery with integral Buddhist temple in the hills beneath which the hotel was built. Dr Ssu and Kevin both came over a bit religious. Peter did his best to enjoy the sightseeing - a process hampered by the fact that they were accompanied by approximately 9000 Chinese tourists aged 4 to 104, including about 70 school parties being escorted around the sites by students talking loudly into megaphones.

It quickly became apparent that Peter was probably the first westerner most of them had ever seen, as around forty 11-year-old schoolgirls queued up to have their picture taken with him. One actually trembled with excitement - or it could have been terror - when he put his arm around her for the photo. Nearly all wore t-shirts bearing text in 'English'. As usual though they didn’t believe in spell-checkers or proof reading so a good percentage had typos. A selection included 'Aple blossm', 'Memory make happy always' … and Peter's favourite: 'Harvard Univirsity'.

Then it was back on the bus for the long journey home - only 6 hours this time if you don't count the two hours required for Jason to get someone to come and unlock his office where he had left his car keys, so that he could drive Peter home.

Finally just a few more photos just to give you the general idea.

Business unusual (part 1)

2009-05-06T14:53:00.007+08:00

As the last week has seen me do little of interest except poring over Mothercare catalogues, I thought for a change I would invite a guest correspondent (Peter) to regale you with his tale of a conference he attended a couple of weekends ago. Here in Shanghai it's easy to kid oneself that China is quite westernised really. The following account shows just how wrong such an assumption is. Enjoy.

We have recently taken on an agent who will sell our products to farmers in the Shanghai and Nanjing areas. The company was founded and is run by Jason. Jason is a rotund, jolly Chinese man who possesses considerably more acumen than is evident at first sight, like one or two publicans I have come across in the past. I was supposed to have addressed two seminars – one in each city – that he organised several weeks ago but these were postponed at the last minute due to an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the area. The ministry got on with the job of wholesale slaughter without feeling the need to let the general public know about it or anything. Anyway they appear to have contained the disease because Jason got the go ahead last week to arrange farmer meetings again.

This time, rather than hold separate meetings, he decided on a different tack. He got us and two other companies whose products he sells to split the cost with him of a conference in the mountain resort of Lang Ya Shan, ‘a four hour drive’ away in neighbouring Anhui province. We were all to travel there by coach (via a factory belonging to one of the participating companies) on Friday, have a full day’s conference on Saturday with presentations by all the suppliers; then half a day sightseeing on Sunday morning before returning home. The opportunities for enormous banquets with much drink, good humour and guanxi would then clearly be maximised. Basically it would more or less be me versus 80 Chinese farmers. I could hardly wait.

Jason (Mine Host) picked us up in the driving rain early on Friday morning – me, our sales director Dr Ssu, and Kevin, who still couldn’t believe his luck that I had let him come along. The poor lad never gets to leave the Harbin office very often and, because he works for Boss and me who already speak English, he missed out entirely on a recent UK trip that all the other company interpreters enjoyed.

Mine Host took us to his office, an hour’s wet drive away on the northern suburbs of Shanghai, outside which an empty coach stood waiting. We were first ushered upstairs into a smoke-filled boardroom where, dimly through the fug, I got my first idea of what 80 Chinese farmers looked (and sounded!) like. Over breakfast of fruit, bread rolls (the sugary Chinese ones) and bottled water, MH did a formal welcome presentation giving the history and success record of his (several) companies before we were allowed to board the bus.

As we groaned through the pouring rain it became apparent that the coach had seen better days. Like in an aircraft, each seat had four switches above it for light, air control etc. none of which worked. No seatbelts. Obviously. Looking about, several seats had been crudely welded together. I’d prefer not to think about how they got damaged in the first place. I’m also not sure if the driver knew when to change gear, as it juddered up every hill and he almost stalled it a couple of times before we got to the motorway.

At least no-one was smoking though, which was a huge relief. Possibly worse than smoke though was the muzak blaring from a speaker just above my head. It alternated between trashy rock numbers with razor guitar riffs to big-voiced slow ballads. Having a headache to start with I eventually had to send Kevin to ask the driver to turn it down, which he did for approximately eleven minutes before it was back to full volume again.

We had a wee and fag stop about 11.30 at the M-way services. Kevin said the farmers couldn’t believe it when they were ushered back onto the coach – they wanted to know where lunch was; 11.30 being the usual lunchtime in China. Even the ‘box of strangeness’ that we have for lunch every day in the Harbin office usually arrives before 11.15. Luckily I had brought sandwiches just in case so I was alright, Jack. It was at this point that I noticed Mine Host wasn’t with us - up at the front of the bus as I had thought. It seems he had an important meeting and would join us by car later.

Soon afterwards we went through an M-way toll gate and were immediately pulled over to a waiting area by the side of the road for a routine police check. Twenty minutes later the driver was still talking heatedly to the policeman, surrounded by smoking farmers, so I sent Kevin to find out what was going on. It seems the driver had a fake driving licence.

Needing to stretch my legs now I wandered around the checkpoint area. All across the hoarding the length of the area were 20 or so giant posters showing horrific traffic accidents, most with close ups of mangled people or bits of people. On one of them the picture was blurred, but the inset photo of Princess Di sporting a dreadful 80s perm gave away the reason for its inclusion. I didn’t realise she was recognised here but I suppose the world’s best known road accident victim is an icon the world over.

An hour later and I was extremely glad of my sandwiches and reading book. They let us go eventually. The story now was that it wasn’t a fake driving licence but a wrong, or possibly out of date, licence for the coach itself. Apparently the bus company would get a few days to put the matter right. By now it was around 2.00 and we pulled off the M-way into a village where there was a nice little restaurant for a quick lunch. I was a bit hungry again by now so the farmers must have been suffering. There were even traditional costumes and folk musicians to meet us.

After that it was still an hour and a half to the factory. In true Chinese style, the entire bus save for me and the driver slept soundly all the way there. I could probably have done so if it hadn’t been for the omnipresent muzak, by now at lower volume but at that irritating boom-chack boom-chack level that reminded me of toothache.

Now, our company has five factories in China and this one was one of our major worldwide competitors so I felt a bit strange, not to mention exposed, when we all donned white coats and silly mop-caps for the tour. Dr Ssu’s cunning plan to give his camera to Kevin (who was dressed and looked generally more like the farmers), and pretend to be my interpreter himself whilst Kevin indulged in some amateur industrial espionage, backfired when they said we couldn’t take cameras inside the plant.

We FINALLY reached the resort destination at just after 7.00 (the ‘four hour drive’ thus having taking approximately eleven hours from when I was picked up at home) and dinner was meant to have been at 6.00 so it was dump the stuff and dash.

The place was a lot bigger than I expected – an entire resort hotel sort of thing set in a steep wooded gorge (my window was just feet from a sheer rock-face) with lots of open covered walkways passing by carp ponds linking different buildings. Whilst clearly being a holiday resort, there were no concessions for westerners; none of the staff spoke English, though most of the signs were bilingual – well Chinglish, anyway; we ate for example in the Anquet Hall. The hotel brochure was a spectacularly bad approximation of my native language. It’s as though they had given it to the manager’s primary school age child to translate, without bothering to get it checked by a real English speaker. I got the feeling that I was the first non-Chinese person ever to visit there.

Most impressive of all was the list of products on sale in the guest rooms. You’ll get the idea if you refer to an earlier post describing my experiences at a hotel in Yi’an, but this one, being a flashier place entirely, had more variety on offer. For some reason, Chinese hotels seem to imagine that their guests will have neglected to pack any underwear and so often have men’s briefs on sale in the rooms. This one offered a range, however, including ‘Women knickets’ and ‘Fatmen’s underwear’. Where the ordinary men’s briefs packet was illustrated with the standard posing western male model type, the Fatmen’s alternative showed a portly Indian gent.

You could also purchase, among other things, various teas, vermicelli, playing cards, ‘compressed towel’, and, for the ladies, ‘Women lotion – an adult-only pudenda washing lotion’. This delightful product, it seemed, could ‘clean the adult pudenda quickly and effectively, forming a protective barrier at the using part to protect human body from filth.’ It could also ‘relieve pruritus and get rid of peculiar smell’. Now you can’t say these Chinese hotel proprietors don’t think of everything. The whole (extensive) list of products ended with the promise – or warning, it was hard to tell which – ‘In the event of shortages of goods or adjustement period, whitout prior notice, locations!’

Dinner was the by now familiar banquet, with courses arriving all the time, much individual and collective toasting with baijo (52% alcohol Chinese hooch), m???jo (a wine-strength disgusting liquid) and beer flowing freely. By some accident or design the Chinese expression ‘gan bei’ means both ‘cheers’ and ‘bottoms up’ so mealtimes can be quite a challenge for some. As has been noted before, the Chinese don’t drink very much, if at all, but at least half the farmers had at least some beer. One large farmer across the table took a shine to me when he saw me ‘gan bei’ with the real stuff so he kept up a steady flow of banter, then later presented me his business card in a formal, if somewhat unsteady, manner. It seems I'd made a friend.

To be continued.....

Conversations you never thought you'd have

2009-04-30T22:31:00.006+08:00

Part 1:

Kevin: What is mean of 'bugger'? Boss say this all the time.

[Peter, after recovering from several minutes of laughter, painstakingly explains the original meaning, and then the less explicit way in which the word is used nowadays to express mild irritation.]

Kevin: Ah. But I find it very difficult to distinguish between 'a bugger' and 'a burger'.

[Peter speechless with laughter.]

Kevin: I also find it very difficult to distinguish between 'can't' and 'can't'.

Peter: What?

Kevin: 'Can't' and 'can't'.

Peter: But they're the same.

Kevin: No. Is very different. 'Can't' is 'cannot do', and 'can't' is rudest word in English language.

[Peter speechless with laughter.]

Kevin: But I don't understand. Why can I not say these words, even to you? What can be so bad about a word? Is it about powerful magic? Like spell-type words?

Makes you think, doesn't it?

Part 2:

[Wildon has just been explaining how people from the north of China are regarded as blunt, straight-talking and down-to-earth, whereas people from the south are seen as a bit more devious, and those from the southern cities look down on those from the north.]

Peter: That's exactly the same division between north and south that we have in England! Or in Scotland, between east and west.

Wildon: Ah. Chinese people like very much the north of England dancing.

Peter: What dancing?

Wildon: Dancing with wooden shoes.

Peter: Wooden shoes?

Wildon: Yes, shoes with wooden underneath. What is name?

Peter: Clogs?

Wildon: Yes! Clogs! Dancing with clogs!

Peter: You don't mean Morris dancing? Where they wave handkerchiefs?

[Wildon looks puzzled.]

Peter: Or where they hit each other with sticks?

Wildon: No. Wooden clogs. Is very popular in China. [Pause.] We also like very much the famous western singer, the King of Cats.

Peter: Who?

Kevin: The King of Cats. You must know him. He is very famous.

Wildon: He has hair like this [gestures to indicate a very large hairstyle].

Peter: The Stray Cats?

Wildon: Yes!

Peter: Are you sure? There were three of them, and they're not that famous.

Kevin: No, is one man singer.

Wildon: He is dead now.

Peter: Elvis?

[W & K both look dubious.]

Peter: I think you must mean Elvis. Haven't you ever heard the name Elvis?

[Both shake heads].

Kevin: He is called Number One of the Cats. But I will look it up on the internet and tell you tomorrow.

[Next day, Kevin walks into office.]

Kevin: I looked up the King of Cats' English name, and you were right! He is called Elvis!

Watery woes - postscript

2009-04-26T17:15:00.005+08:00

The bad news: the window cleaners not only managed to soak our utility room with water pouring through from upstairs. They also knocked our satellite dish out of alignment, so I had to get the TV repair people back AS WELL. Water: you'd never believe the amount of trouble it can cause.

The good news: Peter told Big Boss about our taxi-in-the-rain experience, and he and several others were so horrified that a series of urgent meetings was held, with the result that we now have top priority access to company cars and drivers whenever we want them! I'm now feeling slightly guilty, and obliged to call out drivers for the slightest thing ('Er, I need to go to the shop for a pint of milk, can you send a car please?') to justify making such a fuss. They are also under strict instructions NEVER to send the Sciatica-Mobile van for me again. This was after an unfortunate incident when they sent it for us to do some baby-shopping in last week - thinking they were being helpful - and I flat refused to get in it.

AND, from some time in June to be confirmed, they're going to pay to keep the drivers on 24-hour standby on a rota for me going into labour! Which has got to beat standing by the side of the road in a downpour, probably in the middle of the night, with taxi drivers taking one look at me clutching my belly and thinking 'Blimey, I don't want her in the back of my taxi', for which I would hardly blame them.

And if I can contrive to break my washing machine again, I'll get a new one.

Now if THIS is what a bit of water trouble can do, I say bring it on!

Watery woes

2009-04-21T22:52:00.003+08:00

You know how they say that as you get older, you just turn into your parents? Well I think it’s finally happened, and not quite in the way I expected.

My father had a deep loathing of problems with water. Of a household or environmental nature. He hated rain, refused to visit certain places on the grounds that they were ‘too bloody wet’, and at home any burst pipe or leaking window was always the source of immense trauma. Unfortunately, like a cat instinctively making a feline beeline for someone who’s allergic, it was as if water knew how much he hated it, and concocted ever crueller and more inventive ways of tormenting him. Like the time he and my mother looked after an elderly neighbour’s house one Christmas and ended up having to defrost a foot-thick block of ice off her water tank. Or when they drove me to university for the first time, staying away for the weekend, and came back to find our hall under three or four inches of water and the house with several thousand pounds’ worth of damage thanks to a toilet cistern which had cracked just before we left the house, and had been continually refilling for two days. The malice of water.

Well it’s a good job he never went to Shanghai. In Harbin our domestic difficulties mainly seemed to involve electrics. We had bulbs blowing and tripping not just one fuse but the entire flat; dodgy starters (or ‘cube things’ to give them their technical name as employed by Kevin!) on lights, and a meter which you had to pay for in advance. But ever since we got here it’s been one disaster after another, and every one of them has involved water in some capacity or other. I know I alluded to these before, but I feel compelled now to share the soggy and unpleasant details with you.

First of all there was the washing machine, which you’ll recall was broken when we moved in. It’s a knackered, old-fashioned washer-dryer contraption – one of those with a dial which turns through all the programmes – 1996 model, I was informed, and it belongs in the scrapyard. No washing machine is designed to last that long. I think 13 years in washing machine time is like dog years and it’s about 276 by our reckoning. The writing on the front has mostly worn off so that you can’t read which programme is which – although as it’s all in Chinese this is less of a problem for me than it could be. It rocks and shudders with alarming vigour when spinning and makes a noise like a small puppy being tortured and then run over by a juggernaut. In Harbin I had a lovely new one – purchased by us on the day we moved in – so it was always going to be a difficult adjustment, but I comforted myself with the thought that at least it isn’t a horrid toploader, which are still pretty much standard in China, and it’s indoors, unlike those in a couple of the apartments I looked round which had their washing machines on a balcony outside.

Anyway when we came to use it we found that the motor which turns the dial had given out, meaning the thing would wash, rinse or spin indefinitely unless you cranked the dial manually round to the next number. Grrr. How the previous tenants failed to notice this is beyond me. Either they must have thought this was how it was supposed to work, or else they never did any washing; probably the latter, if their other standards of domestic cleanliness are anything to go by – and I refer my readers to my last-but-one post to appreciate the level of squalour which would provoke ME to make such a statement.

So we got it fixed. Or rather the landlord’s pal, Mr Sun, got it fixed for us. New motor. All well and good.

Then one night last week, when Peter was in Harbin, I was (ironically) hanging out some washing when I heard a sound like water gushing. Knowing I hadn’t left any taps running, I ignored it, telling myself it must be ‘coming from upstairs’ even though I could tell fine well it was in our flat somewhere. Denial’s great, isn’t it? Sadly after half an hour, on my third check of the kitchen sink from which the sound seemed to be emanating, I was forced rudely out of denial by the large puddle in which I found myself standing. Opening the cupboard under the sink, I found a geyser coming from somewhere up at the top of the cold water pipe. Fortunately taps in China all seem to be fitted with their own individual stopcock so I didn’t have to go searching the place for a mains tap, or do without water until the following day or anything. But I did have to do an excessive amount of mopping, putting down of old newspapers, and making phone calls to Sherry, our new interpreter, to get Mr Sun to send out a plumber. Grrr again.

Anyway it turns out Mr Sun is a bit of a dab hand at the old plumbing himself. He came round and mended it personally the next day, producing from nowhere a length of new pipe, and a giant sealant gun with which he fixed the sink more securely in place, and he even cleaned gritty stuff out of the tap for me. All this was conducted with – on his part - facial expressions and gestures of contempt (for the cowboys who put it in, I hope, rather than for me), and on mine the exclamations of shock, gratitude and general female helplessness which, I’m pleased to be able to report, seem to work with tradesmen the world over.

All was quiet for a couple of days, until it was time for Washing Machine Revisited. I’d used it maybe five or six times since its repair, but clearly it was too much. Grrrrrr once more. This time the motor was turning, but the fan belt must have either slipped or snapped off, as I discovered it had completed the best part of a towels wash without the drum turning at all. Result: several sopping wet and not fully rinsed towels, which I had to hang up in the shower (where they acquired rust marks) to drip dry, and then put on the washing line on the balcony (where they acquired black marks from the pollution) to get wet again in the rain.

Ah, the rain. After 15 years in Scotland I should really be used to it, but it’s amazing how six months in Harbin’s dry inland climate can lull you into a place where the notion of water suddenly falling out of the sky is a surprise. I think I only saw actual rain twice in the whole time we were there, and snow no more than half a dozen times. Shanghai, on the other hand, is not only on the coast (like Edinburgh), but is in a sub-tropical zone. Which means that when it rains, it RAINS. Especially in spring.

It’s obviously such a big part of life here that they have a well-developed umbrella culture, with umbrella stands in offices and restaurants, and staff handing you specially-shaped plastic bags to put over your brolly when you enter shops. Why do they not do this in Scotland? Why? The Shanghaiers, particularly those riding bikes or scooters, all wear sensible waterproof ponchos which cover them and their vehicle almost entirely. (They also work for baby bumps!) Again, why don’t we do this back home? The denizens of Edinburgh seem to prefer to walk along with water dripping off their noses and all their clothes soaked through rather than risk looking uncool in a funny mac. But then I suppose looking uncool isn’t much of a consideration for Chinese people; let’s face it, with the poodle perms and bad shorts most of them are starting from what my doctor would call ‘a rather low base’ as it is.

Unfortunately, when we went out to the supermarket last Sunday, I had yet to acquire my bump-covering poncho, and had only a rather old and not-terribly-waterproof-any-more coat and a pair of even older, suede Converse trainers to put on. Peter had his Harbin outdoor coat with the ceramic beads, but ceramic beads ain’t much use against the kind of downpour we encountered. At least not when it takes 15 minutes to get a taxi to the shops, and about 40 minutes – in the dark and in absolute driving rain, soaked to the skin and carrying heavy food shopping, all of which got drenched and had to be dried out on the dining table – to get one home again.

The trouble was that people kept stealing our spot by dodging ahead of us and hopping into taxis which by rights should have been ours, due to our inability to hop anywhere on account of my bump and the shopping. Two men in unmarked cars did pull up and offer us lifts (in English) but we declined in case they were bilingual axe murderers or – more likely – just saw an opportunity to take us for a huge amount of money. By the time we got home we’d have won first prize at an international rat-drowning festival, and all the contents of my handbag –which was done up – were soggy, including my passport. Grrrrrrrrrr. And yuck, as well.

So today Mr Sun (whose name and general all-round helpfulness keep making me sing the Ace of Base song Dr Sun - ‘Give me Doctor Sun, he’s my man’) was due to come round to sort out some bills with us. We’d reported the broken washing machine and he’d arranged for someone to come and repair it at the same time, when Sherry would also be here to explain the problem if required. (He also said that if it broke again they’d just get us a new one, which was a bit of a result as that’s what I wanted in the first place anyway).

They were all supposed to be here between 5 and 6pm. Which is why when the doorbell rang at lunchtime I ignored it. Now I know at least one reader who will sympathise when I admit that I was in my jammies. If anyone else is shocked, then my excuse is that I’m pregnant and don’t sleep well at night (partly because the bed in Harbin was the size of a football pitch so we’re having some trouble getting used to a normal sized one again!), so I often tend to sleep in in the morning. Anyway, if it was the washing machine people, they were too early, and if it wasn’t, then it would be someone speaking Chinese at me about something unknown. So I thought they could just come back later. Which they did. Ten minutes later. And another ten minutes after that. And again after that, each time ringing the doorbell more insistently than the time before.

On the third attempt, they started to hammer on the door as well. By now it had reached the point where I couldn’t have opened the door even if I’d wanted to, as it would have been obvious that I’d been there all along. But when they actually started to rattle the door handle to see if the door was locked I decided I’d rather not open it, as whoever was outside was clearly a psychopath. This went on for a full fifteen minutes before Peter (whom I’d phoned in a state of some alarm!) came home and let the man – who had indeed come to fix the washing machine, four hours early – in.

And then, just to round it all off, while he was here, we noticed that window cleaners were shinning down the outside of the building on ropes, and had just about reached our floor when Peter saw water pouring in through the ceiling just inside one of the windows (fortunately the one in the utility room where there’s a drain in the floor and we keep a mop & bucket anyway). When Mr Sun finally came, we mentioned this with some concern. ‘Oh that’s ok’, came the reply. ‘That won’t happen again. They only wash the windows every two years.’

Dad, if they’ve got the internet up there and you’re reading this, if I ever laughed at you then I’m sorry. I understand now. I never thought I could hate the wet stuff so much.

Now, can I hear something dripping?

Tokyo Girl

2009-04-18T20:16:00.003+08:00

First of all, apologies. We’ve been home from Japan a week, but in between doctor’s appointments, a flood under our sink, and doing all our holiday laundry before the washing machine broke down again (which it did, last night) I don’t seem to have got around to blogging. I did manage to upload our holiday photos though, which hopefully many of you have seen by now – if not, I’ve put a link at the end of this post.

Anyway, we’re back. Peter is slowly getting used to Two-Home Syndrome – otherwise known as ‘Oh no, all my trousers appear to be in the wrong city’ – and I’m mostly sitting around knitting while waiting for men to come and fix things, and occasionally going out and getting incredibly frustrated with taxi drivers who have no idea where to go. I’m now refusing to leave the house until we can get a piece of paper which actually tells them where to get off the elevated road so that they don’t take me a mile past the house every time.

So, as it’s all quiet on the Shanghai front, here are ten facts you didn’t know about Japan.

1. They drive on the left. This was a surprise. I thought it was only the former British colonies who retained this (to the rest of the world) oddity. I can only assume they chose the left at random – as we must have done – at the time when such things came to be decided and formalised. When was that anyway? We just take it for granted, but it occurred to me that I have no idea how it came about. Who decided, and how? I imagine that it happened relatively late in the history of motoring, so if there’s anyone out there who can enlighten me, I’d be fascinated to know. Yes, I know, I’m a bit of a saddo.

2. The Japanese really are unbelievably polite. And they really do bow. A lot. In fact hotel staff don’t so much bow as scrape. Taxi drivers bow. Shop staff bow as you enter and again as you leave, all the while thanking you profusely even if all you’ve done is walk around, realise everything is ridiculously expensive, and walk out again (which was mostly what we did). Drivers bow to you from behind the wheel if you let them go. But more often than not they stop to let you cross. Together with the driving on the left it takes all the fun out of crossing the road.

3. And don’t even get me started on the queueing. Nobody pushes or shoves. They queue for the toilet. On subway platforms they queue in orderly lines at marked points to enter specific carriages. We got ordered to the back of a bus queue for pushing in – Chinese-style - with our luggage when we first arrived at the airport. I never thought I’d find a nation more anal about queues than the Brits, but there we are. It exists.

4. Everyone wears a suit and tie to work. Dark suits with almost exclusively plain white shirts for the guys, and often for the girls too, complete with clumpy black or navy court shoes of the kind favoured by the late Queen Mother. One or two of the younger guys had made a daring foray into subtly striped shirts, but I bet they were the trouble-makers who got passed over for promotion. Even taxi drivers (unless they’re in a chauffeur’s uniform) wear suits. Kids wear western-style school uniform, often with kilts. By contrast, the studenty, arty types could be seen sporting the most bizarre of attire, ranging as far as a pink crinoline with pink bobby-socks and a straw hat (I kid you not). And every girl under 30 – and most of the boys too – had dyed hair cut into a hyper-trendy style. Hairdressers abounded, seemingly on every corner, to cater for this necessity.

Contrast this, if you will, with Chinese fashion style, which goes something like this. Business attire for men: a black jumper with a zip at the neck, probably with jeans or maybe tracksuit bottoms. For the more senior/modern businessman, possibly a suit, but never a tie. For women of all ages: anything goes. Denim or leather shorts are popular, often with thigh-high boots. School uniforms are generally turquoise shellsuits. Hair is stuck in an 80s timewarp, with the bouffant and the poodle perm being the hairstyles de choix for males and females respectively. What a difference a few hundred miles and half a century of open government makes.

I must say a final word about the dogs. Like the Chinese, they like 'em small, but where the Chinese dog of choice is the chihuahua - the tinier the better - for the Japanese it’s the long-haired dachsund. Preferably dressed up in a silly outfit. Who knows why.

5. Nobody says ‘Konnichiwa’ or ‘Sayonara’, any more than people in Britain say ‘Good afternoon; how do you do?’, to the confusion of EFL students the world over. I didn’t catch what they were saying in greeting, but for Goodbye they generally either just thank you (if they’re in the service industry and you’re a customer), or amongst themselves they often say ‘Bye-bye’ in English. The Chinese do this too. I can only guess it’s acquired some kind of sophisticated cachet, like the British saying ‘Ciao’ to each other. I should like to point out, by the way, that I have never said ‘Ciao’. But I did get to use one of the two phrases I know in Japanese – ‘Arigato gozaimasu’, which means ‘Thank you very much’, a great deal. Strangely, I didn’t get to use the other. It’s ‘Niwa de e o kaite iru hito wa ripa na ekaki desu’, which means ‘The man painting a picture in the garden is a splendid artist’. Don’t ask.

6. Japan is a great place to be pregnant. All the subway trains had seats specially designated for those with bad legs or bumps, and everyone is so well trained in excessive politeness that even teenagers leapt back to allow me to sit down the minute they saw me. In China, nobody gives a sh**. It did get us into the ‘Special Lane’ at immigration at Shanghai airport – thus bypassing a queue of several hundred other foreigners last Sunday – but only after I asked and they’d just let someone less pregnant than me go through, and so could hardly refuse.

7. It’s also a great place to have diarrhoea. Yes, once again my constitution – ox-like in the face of Chinese supermarkets of dubious cleanliness and occasionally unidentifiable items served in Chinese restaurants – failed me on arrival in a supposedly ‘westernised’ country where you can actually drink the tap water, and I got a case of Delhi Belly. Or let’s call it Tokyo Tum. Anyway, if I had to pick a country to have the trots, I’d pick Japan on account of the toilets, nearly all of which have a built-in bidet with adjustable spray. Some even have a ‘back or front wash’ option. They also have heated seats, doors that lock, and somewhere to put your handbag – and even, in many cases, your baby, in a special ‘baby rest’ on the wall.

The one unfortunate exception was the public toilet in a park which was the scene of one of my more dramatic diarrhoea episodes. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice to say this was NOT one of the modern, all-dancing, all-spraying Japanese toilets, but was a Chinese-style one.

Now this is where I have to confess, dear readers, that I’ve been protecting you a bit up until now from the unpalatable reality that is Chinese public toilets. But I think you’re ready. Not that I wish to deter any of our potential visitors, but the Chinese have squat toilets. That’s holes in the ground, with a sort of horizontal urinal built into the tiles. For women. You find these everywhere except in private homes, 5-star hotels aimed at westerners, and some – but by no means all – restaurants. Even offices, mega-posh shopping malls, and the western fast-food chains can’t be relied upon to provide proper toilets. You’re generally ok in Starbucks and Pizza Hut, but not Macdonald’s or KFC (er, not that we frequent these places much, honest!).

I’ve yet to fathom out exactly how one’s supposed to use them without getting wee all over your clothes and shoes – and that’s even without a baby bump. Also there’s nowhere to put your bag except in a puddle, the doors don’t lock (or are deliberately left unlocked by people using the toilet so that it’s easy to walk in on a lady in a compromising position), and there’s generally no paper, at least not in the individual cubicles. If you do use paper, you’re not supposed to flush it down the toilet but to put it into a bin instead, along with everyone else’s. As you can imagine, it gets a bit stinky. They tell you the reason is because of poor plumbing, but really it’s because they spread human excrement on the fields as fertiliser and don’t want paper mixed in with it. Which probably also explains why they discourage the use of tampons.

Ok, I’ll stop now. Forget I spoke. Go to Japan and get your bum washed instead.

8. Kyoto has a large expat community. We discovered this when we went to an Irish bar and on the first night were one of three English couples there (the only customers apart from an Irish chap), and on the second night accidentally found ourselves at a wake attended by a large number of middle-aged, bohemian Americans who had all clearly lived there for years. Kyoto is also overrun with tourists of all nationalities, at least during sakura (cherry blossom) season. What’s more, it’s very hilly and April is surprisingly hot. If you’re going, I’d recommend an out of season visit. And not being 6 months pregnant if you actually want to see anything, as all the pretty temples etc are up large flights of steps at the top of steep hills. I lost count of the number of times I sat on a wall to recover while Peter went off and took photos of the thing we were meant to be looking at, so that I could see it later.

9. Despite the above, outside of the tourist industry it’s rarer to find English speakers in Japan than it is in China, where they’ve obviously been teaching English in primary schools for 20 years so that many young people can speak at least some, even if most won’t admit it out of shyness. In Japan, it’s more common to find English speakers among the older generation, but even those are few and far between. Most restaurants – including those purporting to serve western food – have monolingual Japanese menus. Chinese menus (in Shanghai and Harbin anyway) often have English and nearly always have pictures. So eating out in Japan can be a challenge. Restaurant staff, however, seemed mystified as to why we kept walking away.

10. In spite of the down sides, Japan is quite simply fab – and not just when compared to China. It’s super-clean, super-fast and yet remarkably laid back. We found a brilliant quarter of Tokyo awash with vintage clothes shops, which was seventh heaven for me as they don’t have such things in China – well, I suppose there’s not much of a market for vintage Mao suits – yet! The bullet train is great, as is the view of Mount Fuji which you get when travelling on it from Tokyo to Kyoto. And the cherry blossom is truly spectacular. Take a look.

Arigato gozaimasu. Sayonara and Bye-bye for now!

Sweeping changes

2009-04-04T22:15:00.004+08:00

Well. Tomorrow, Sunday 5th April, is my birthday. I shall be (apparently, so they tell me) 41.

Forty-one. Was a more depressing age ever invented? Like so many of its odd-number fellows, it sits uncomfortably between two even numbers each rich in cultural references. The only cultural reference point I can think of for 41 is that it was the age of the unfortunate character of Timothy, played by Ronnie Corbett, in the 80s sitcom Sorry!, which isn’t too great a role model. It was bad enough last year, when I stared and stared at all the cards on the mantlepiece with a large number on the front, wondering who on earth they could belong to as they quite clearly had nothing to do with me. But now I’m not just 40. I’m IN MY FORTIES. Last year I had to come to terms with the notion that I would be ticking a new box, the 40-49 one, on most forms from then on. Then last night I had the horrible realisation that there might even be forms with a 41-50 box which, as of tomorrow, will include me. I’m probably not even allowed another birthday party for the next nine years, and when I do have one, all my friends will be old. As well.

Here in China, this weekend also marks the annual Qingming (pronounced Ching-ming) or Tomb Sweeping festival. This is one of those ‘does-exactly-what-it-says-on-the-tin’ type of festivals when people, er, sweep tombs and generally tidy up and tend their family graves. They also make offerings at the graves in honour of their ancestors. It’s very similar in sentiment to the better-known Mexican Dia de los Muertos (though sadly without the fabby costumes, Watty & Mark!) As one of China’s few solar festivals it always falls on the 15th day after the Spring Equinox, i.e. the 4th or 5th April. Great. Just what I need when I’m feeling a bit sensitive about being middle-aged – a festival of death on my birthday.

Tomb Sweeping Festival was only designated a public holiday for the first time in 2008, when the traditional May Day ‘Golden Week’ was shortened to three days, and you get the impression that people don’t know quite what to do with it yet, especially as it falls on a weekend this year anyway. If the Scottish government ever gets around to making St Andrew’s Day a holiday like they keep threatening, the Scots will know exactly what to do – go to the pub and generally celebrate an extra day’s skiving off work – but the Chinese, as a largely workaholic nation, seem ill-at-ease with the concept of leisure time and appear to find it difficult to relax. They’re forever working at weekends to make up time and, with the exception of Chinese New Year, seem a bit confused by the idea of days off. This is no doubt why China is one of the few countries whose economy is not currently in recession, what financial problems they do have all being of external making.

Anyway, the only evidence of anything unusual going on this weekend has been the fires on street corners where people burn papers bearing blessings and gifts for their ancestors, such as we saw at New Year, only on a slightly wider scale – in Harbin anyway. For the past couple of evenings they were to be seen in every gutter, and the aftermath – in the form of piles of charcoal – was much in evidence this morning. Our ‘corner shop’ downstairs was selling bundles of brown paper specifically for the purpose. As we drove through town on our way to the airport today, there was a bit of a holiday mood - though that may have been due to the unseasonably warm spring sunshine which has made all the ice and snow disappear in the space of a couple of days – and on a road out of town which presumably led to a cemetery there was a mile-long tailback.

Then we arrived into Shanghai tonight in a downpour worthy of a Scottish summer, which would have extinguished the brightest of sacrificial flames and was distinctly non-tomb-sweeping weather. Part of the tradition involves picnicking, chatting and possibly flying kites by your family’s grave once you’ve done your sweeping, but it really wasn’t the day for that so I guess they all went home and ate the food they’d put out for the ancestors there. Apparently they only put the rubbish food like dry biscuits out on the actual graves in case ‘bad spirits’ (or very much alive scroungers, more like) help themselves to it, and save all the good stuff for indoors.

In many ways it’s a fitting conclusion to this week, which for me anyway has had a bit of an ‘end of days’ feel to it. This was my final week in our Harbin flat until the autumn, and I’ve been feeling quite emotional about it. Everything seems to be changing. Even B&Q is closing, a victim of the credit crunch, apparently. Said establishment, we found with some hilarity on our arrival in Harbin, was right on our doorstep, between our flat and Peter’s office. You’ll appreciate the comedy in this when you realise that Peter, who hates DIY with a passion (despite being, unfortunately for him, rather good at it), nearly tore his hair out having to visit our nearest branch in Edinburgh almost weekly in the run-up to our departure last year in an effort to finish our blighted bathroom refurbishments. Anyway, B&Q Harbin will remain open only as long as stocks last – which won’t be long if the swarms of locust-like bargain hunters fighting over humidifiers and buckets reduced by 20% last night were anything to go by.

I hasten to point out that I’m not particularly emotional about the closure of B&Q. I may be hormonal but it hasn’t got that bad – yet! I have however been stressed by several things. The first was trying to book a cheapish hotel in Kyoto at the height of their sakura (cherry blossom) season. After fruitless attempts via several useless websites with non-real-time booking systems, we had to grovel to Peter’s Japanese colleague to find us somewhere, after initially turning down his offer of help because he didn’t seem to believe us when we said we didn’t want to pay £275 a night.

The second was having to leave Harbin just as spring is starting in earnest after five months of grim winter. I’m gutted about this. Unlike all other migratory creatures, we are flying south for the summer. Not sure what species of swallow that makes us – not African or European, that’s for sure – maybe just perverse? Though in a supreme irony, as the infamous Harbin heating has another two weeks to go before it’s switched off, it’s been a like a sauna in our flat there this week, while in Shanghai we still need to wear winter clothes indoors and take them off when we go out!

But the worst part was having to clean the flat. Cleaning rented flats before moving out of them is something I deeply resent, especially when I then have to scrub the new one from top to bottom as I did last week because the previous (western!) inhabitants had left it caked in ingrained grime. In all my years of moving house, I’ve tried in vain to establish whether there is in fact some code of practice which states whether it should be the outgoing or the incoming tenants who do the cleaning. As an outgoer, I’ve always done it under the unspoken but ever-present threat of the Lost Deposit, only to find that the people moving out of my new place had taken this threat a lot less seriously than me – no doubt with good reason, as I’ve never heard of anyone actually losing a deposit due to poor cleaning. Of course we’re not really moving out of Harbin, but a vague threat that the landlady might want to come in some time to have a look at the place was enough for me, so I’ve dusted and hoovered and mopped (well ok, Peter mopped) all week with spectacularly bad grace.

Our Chinese colleagues, and other non-British westerners such as Big Boss (who’s Australian), can’t understand why we don’t get an ayi – a kind of maid-cum-nanny who seems to be de rigueur for all westerners in Shanghai. How do you explain to a foreigner the peculiarly British angst which surrounds the whole question of employing domestic servants, especially ones of a different (whisper it) race? It smacks so strongly of colonialism and the class system that we wring our hands in liberal anguish, convinced that by paying other people to do menial tasks which we’re quite capable of doing ourselves we’re somehow suggesting we’re socially superior to them, despite the fact that this is what goes on in workplaces every day. Couple this late-20th/early 21st century crisis of conscience with the very mid-20th century view, inculcated in us by our mothers and grandmothers, that the worst fate that could ever befall a woman is to be judged by others for having a dirty house, and you see why it becomes impossible to hire a cleaner, who by definition will see us at our worst – unless we clean up before she comes, obviously.

I grew up in the kind of home which got cleaned when – and only when – we had visitors. When we visited others’ houses they had no doubt been cleaned the day before as well. (The trick is not to do it the same morning; that way they won’t smell the polish and so will never guess.) For my mother’s benefit I must point out that this is not meant as a criticism! Quite the opposite, in fact. It was a spectacularly convenient arrangement which allowed everyone to maintain the charade that their house was immaculate at all times while not actually doing much work – though the question of the impromptu guest was always a fraught one, of course. Despite now seeing the inherent ridiculousness of this - and wondering why these people were our friends anyway if these were the criteria on which we judged each other – I have nonetheless embraced the same practices wholeheartedly in my own adult life: something which both amuses and infuriates my husband, whose own family had a much healthier take-us-as-you-find-us approach to the whole business.

So the idea of letting a Chinese woman into my house to poke about in my toilet and behind my fridge, all smiles and Ni hao’s while probably thinking ‘God these westerners are filthy heathens’ fills me with horror. Even if what she’s actually thinking is ‘Thank goodness these westerners are such filthy heathens or I wouldn’t have a job’. Or even just ‘Thank goodness I’ve got such a cushy job where all I have to do is clean up after these oddballs’. For the Chinese, you see, it is – oh so ironically – all just a question of market economics. We can pay, they want a job; what’s the problem?

So perhaps I should just count my blessings. Qingming Festival is also about celebrating spring, planting, and new life. I may be 41 in a few hours, but in a few months, by some miracle – having genuinely thought I’d left it too late – I’ll be having a baby. A sweeping change indubitably, but the most amazing one to happen to me yet. And tomorrow, as my birthday treat, we’re going to Japan: first to Tokyo for a few days, and then to Kyoto, which is a place I’ve always wanted to visit. Japan may be as near to here as going to France is from the UK, but it’s still fantastic.

Changes. Like the man says, turn and face the strain. It’s not all bad.

Knowledge, and the lack thereof

2009-03-29T13:22:00.004+08:00

“TAXI !!”

How often have you shouted that word, or even silently raised your arm on a busy street, secure in the belief that once ensconced in that vehicle you need have no further worries and will be able to switch off for a short while, as you are conveyed efficiently to your destination? You won’t get lost. You won’t be asked any difficult questions regarding the location of or route to wherever you’re going. After all, taxi drivers know everything, right?

Edinburgh taxi drivers do. In fifteen years there I was only ever taken to the wrong place once, and that was forgivable as a lot of the streets do have very similar names. Minicab drivers in York and Southampton seem to have a pretty good grasp of things too, despite having those cities’ tortuous one-way systems to contend with. And in London, of course, all cabbies have The Knowledge.

For my non-British readers, this is a test - allegedly requiring years of study - which anyone wishing to become a black-cab driver in London must pass, and which basically involves learning the name and location of every street and landmark in the UK capital. It’s a BIG place, so the taxi drivers rightly pride themselves on this achievement – particularly as I imagine they must have to keep their ‘Knowledge’ continually updated to keep pace with changes, which is no mean feat these days.

If you’ll permit me an indulgent aside for a moment, anyone who doubts that such an encyclopedic knowledge of a giant mega-city is possible should have met my late father. He wasn’t a cab driver, but I’m sure The Knowledge would have been a breeze for him. He was born and raised in south-east London, and later worked for one of the major publishing houses as their Central London rep for many years between the 1950s and 1970s. He was extremely good at it, and as a result was on first name terms with every bookshop owner, manager or chief buyer in London, which was a great many.

A bi-product of this was that he knew the place like the proverbial back of his hand. When my friends and I started going up to London on our own as teenagers, if any of us wanted to find a specific address, no matter what the area, I had only to ask my Dad and after a minute or two’s consideration he would not only able to advise the traveller as to the quickest route by Tube, but would also draw – freehand and without recourse to reference books – a detailed and amazingly accurate pictorial map of the route on foot from station to destination, showing every turning and landmark - sometimes down to the last tree or lamp-post - with estimated distances or walking times between each.

As a result I was able to travel freely alone around London from the age of about 14 with no fear of getting lost. I’d never heard of an A to Z – my Dad’s maps were all I ever needed. I wish I’d kept some of them as they were works of art, of which he was justly proud. On one’s return home he would enquire with just a hint of a smug smile, ‘So did you find it all right?’, to which one was required to respond with glory heaped upon The Map.

The only time they were ever wrong was when some new development had occurred without his knowledge - something which, it has to be said, he always took very badly. He seemed to expect to be kept informed of all changes, however minor, to the London landscape; indeed, it’s quite possible he half expected them to be run past him first. Any alteration to his beloved native city was truly a monstrous carbuncle. During my student years he occasionally came to collect me by car from King’s Cross when I came home for the holidays, and the installation of any new roundabout or one-way system not only confused and perturbed him but also, you could tell, wounded him deeply. If I or my mother had gone to London armed with one of his maps and dared to remark casually on our return, ‘Yes, thanks, I found the place no problem, the map was great, but incidentally did you know that place you said was a bank is actually now a McDonald’s? And where you said there’d be a big tree on the corner it looked as though they’d chopped it down recently,’ all hell would break loose.

First would come a detailed interrogation to make sure that we weren’t mistaken, or making it up just to annoy him, and that we really had followed his instructions to the letter and hadn’t accidentally – or perhaps wilfully – taken a wrong turning. When at length he was satisfied that we were not either lying or congenitally stupid, the grieving process would begin.

‘McDonald’s?!’ he’d cry, in anguish. ‘What is the world coming to? Been there for years, that bank had. McDonald’s? Christ Almighty,’ and so on in this vein for some time. Or, ‘What, that lovely old tree? Gone? I can’t believe it. Lovely, it was, that tree. Chopped it down? Dear oh dear oh dear. Christ Almighty,’ and at this point would become too choked to continue and wouldn’t speak for the rest of the evening. In the end I gave up telling him. It was less painful for everyone that way.

Knowledge, you see. A powerful tool. Unless, that is, you’re a Chinese taxi driver.

Boss was heard to remark the other week that the only qualification for becoming a cab driver in Shanghai seems to be the ability to drive. To be frank, I would question even that one, but one criterion that certainly isn’t deemed necessary is knowing where anything is.

None of the taxi drivers speak English, so if you don’t speak Chinese the only way to get anywhere is to have your destination written down in Chinese characters and show this to the driver on entering the vehicle. The drill is always the same. They take your piece of paper, peer at it, slowly turn it over and read whatever’s on the back (whether this is the same thing, a different address entirely, or simply your shopping list in English), then with some encouragement from you turn it back to the correct side and read it carefully again, generally while shaking their head and muttering. They may turn to you and ask you a question. When you respond with a shrug, or a wave in the general direction in which you need to go, they mutter some more, throw your piece of paper onto the dashboard and set off, still muttering, which is disconcerting when you can recognise the word for ‘where?’ cropping up repeatedly.

One driver this week did the whole pantomime with my little address note and then turned to me and asked in Chinese which I understood perfectly, ‘Where’s that then?’. And this wasn’t some obscure side-street; our new apartment’s address is on one of Shanghai’s major thoroughfares. It’s like a London cabbie asking you where, say, Charing Cross Road is, or an Edinburgh one struggling to find Leith Walk. What did he want me to say – ‘It’s in Shanghai’, perhaps?

Once mobile, they may start off by going in completely the opposite direction, or take a wildly wrong turning anywhere en route, so you need to have your wits about you and be prepared to shout ‘No, no!’ and gesture frantically – assuming, of course, you know where the place is yourself, because if you don’t, you’re frankly buggered. The only recourse in that instance is to phone someone at your destination, explain your plight, hand the phone to the driver and get them to dictate directions in Chinese. Thank goodness for modern technology.

When they eventually get near – or what they think might be near – to where you want to go, they will slow down and proceed in a very irritating stop-start manner for a mile or so while consulting your paper every few yards. They do this even if you know you’re not there yet and keep shouting at them to go on. Just as they approach the correct place, they will put their foot down and you have to scream at them again to stop, which they will then do, even if this means screeching to a halt in the middle of a dual carriageway and doing a U-turn across several lanes of oncoming traffic.

It’s not just in Shanghai that this goes on. In Harbin, our taxi usage is mostly confined to bringing the shopping home from the supermarket, which is less than a mile away. We have our address, in Chinese, in a text message which we show to the drivers. But not one of them knows where the street is, so Peter always has to sit in the passenger seat and point left and right. In Beijing the other week, Peter was on his way to a meeting and had his cabbie actually lean out of the window while driving along and shout across to a fellow taxi driver driving alongside for directions. Ever heard of sat-nav, guys??

Maybe the trouble is that finding out where places are would involve getting a straight answer out of people, something which you’ll have gathered by now is next to impossible here. The lost taxi-driver in Beijing was only part of Peter’s woes in his attempts to get to this meeting. First of all he had tried to get the hotel reception to give him a phone number for a taxi company so that he could call a taxi to get back after the meeting, as it was out of town. The girl he asked looked a bit perplexed and went into the back office to consult with her colleagues. After a while she reappeared.

‘We will call you taxi,’ she said.

Peter explained that yes, that was fine for getting there, but how would he get back? After several repetitions of this cycle, the duty manager got on the case and offered to find a driver and negotiate with him to wait while Peter had his meeting. Clearly the concept of phoning in advance for a taxi was unheard of – indeed, as the taxis have no radios it’s hard to see how this could work. They sent a lad from the hotel into the street to flag down a taxi. Two stopped at once, only avoiding crashing into each other by one of them knocking down a cyclist, who got up and started shouting at the driver and kicking his bumper, thereby allowing the other driver to win Peter’s fare.

It was this man - who apparently resembled a hippopotamus with exceptionally large, hairy, warty ears - who had to ask other drivers for assistance en route, until Peter eventually phoned the person he was going to meet and did the hand-the-phone-to-driver thing – which in view of the warty ears was pretty brave.

On arrival at his destination, Peter disembarked and retrieving (and wiping) his phone, said to his associate, ‘Right, I’m here now. I’m at the main entrance. Where’s your office?’

‘Ah’, says associate. ‘Go out of the main door and we are round the back.’

‘Left or right?’ asks Peter.

‘We are in a building that is not yellow.’

‘Yes but do I go left or right?’

‘It is a low building.’

Giving up, he picked a direction at random, walked for a little while and then phoned again. ‘Ok, I’m standing looking at a big tower thing.’

‘Ah, you have gone too far. Go back.’

He returns to the main entrance. ‘Now I’ve gone back to where I was before.’

‘I did not see you! Look for the building that is not yellow.’

And so, having asked the guy please to come out and find him, he tried again, and on the second attempt discovered that in actual fact when he got to the tower he hadn’t gone far enough.

People say the Chinese will one day rule the world. If knowledge really is power, I don’t think we’ve got too much to worry about. Rule the world? They’d have to find it first.

Pied à terre

2009-03-24T18:35:00.007+08:00

Well, here it is. We finally made it into our new pad in Shanghai - as madly Chinese as our 'other' place (since we're keeping both of them on) in Harbin, you'll be pleased to note.

The, ahem, gorgeous bedroom furniture below comes complete with huge, matching, jade green, mirrored wardrobes. NOT our choice - and that bedspread HAD to go.

I must admit there were times (as you'll have gathered from the previous post) when I really did doubt that this would ever happen. But there are advantages to the Chinese aversion to forward planning. You say you want something fixed and they'll fob you off indefinitely, but in the end they say 'Oh, I'll just call my mate and get him to come round and do it NOW'. And he actually does. What are the chances of moving into a new place in the UK on a Saturday and getting an internet connection, a change of locks, satellite TV installed and a broken washing machine fixed (I just knew it would be broken), all by Tuesday afternoon?

As usual, the process of collecting the keys, signing the contract and getting shown where everything was took a cast of thousands. At one point on Saturday there were nine of us -me & Peter, our interpreter, the landlord, the landlord's friend, the landlord's friend's girlfriend, two guys from the agency, and the landlord's friend's mate who'd been called to fix the satellite TV 'now'. Trying to get any questions across, via the interpreter, while everyone is shouting at once and clamouring to anticipate what you might be asking and be the first to answer it, is a bit like attempting to do business with a class of eleven-year-olds. Today three different workmen came round who I think probably were eleven-year-olds, judging by their youthful appearance.

But we got there in the end. We haven't really moved that much of our stuff down from Harbin yet but will do so gradually over the next few weeks. But at least we've got a place to call home in Shangers now, so we can escape the bonkers hotel and hopefully my obstetrician will stop hassling me. And how many homes come with one of THESE (below?). It's a mousemat, by the way.

So, now the next thing - to organise our holiday in Japan - in LESS THAN TWO WEEKS. Last week Peter tried to set up some meetings with Japanese customers while we're over there, and was told this was 'too short notice' for the Japanese! Yet somehow I seem to have convinced myself that finding accommodation in Tokyo and Kyoto at one of their tourist season peaks won't be a problem. Am I turning Chinese here?

Meltdown

2009-03-19T11:30:00.007+08:00

Temperatures in Harbin on Tuesday hit a giddy 9 degrees centigrade. The result of this was that within 24 hours every trace of snow and ice had vanished from the roads and pavements, which were suddenly damp and visible for the first time in months. There was still plenty of snow around, mainly in huge blackened piles where efficient security guards (such as the ones in the building across the street from us - ours aren't quite as on the ball, though they do their best) have repeatedly piled it over the last few months, so that it now stands about four feet high all around the edges of the courtyard. There was also snow on the grassy areas, but the odd tuft of (brownish) green was even beginning to poke through there, along with a few forgotten leeks, of course.

For the whole of the last couple of weeks, with the thermometer see-sawing either side of the zero mark, things have been gradually turning to mush. I stepped on one unavoidable sheet of ice the other day, only to find it was the thin skin on a puddle and I was almost up to my ankles in dirty water. The icy pavements used not to be a hazard to walk on: the surface of the ice being quite dry, there was none of the slipperiness we generally associate with ice. All this has changed though, making walking and driving a bit more of a gingersome exercise, though fortunately there were ice-free patches in between.

But by Tuesday, like I said, suddenly we were - for all practical purposes - ice-free. People were walking about in ordinary jackets rather than huge fur coats, the sun was shining, and there was an audible dripping sound. I remembered that last year, when we were considering moving to Harbin, we used to keep a watch on the BBC Weather site to see the temperature here each week. After three months of minus 20, suddenly one week in March it was minus 10, then zero, then plus 10, in a matter of a couple of weeks. Finally, I thought, that moment has arrived once again. Yippee!

But then yesterday it snowed. And snowed. And snowed and snowed and snowed. For about seven hours. Stephen Fry may tell us that it's a myth that it can be 'too cold to snow', but I think what he probably means (and these guys seem to agree with me) is that it's possible for it to be too dry to snow. This would explain why the majority of the snowfall we've had since arriving in this neo-Siberian outpost has been in November and March - the transitional seasons which tend to be wetter than winter proper. At least that's my theory and I'm sticking to it. Whatever the case, they closed Harbin airport for several hours yesterday. Just as Peter was trying to fly back from Beijing (whither he was whisked once again not four days after returning via there from the UK!). You'd think Harbin, of all places, would have worked out a way of keeping airports open in bad weather by now, but it seems not. So he and Boss were stranded in Beijing for four hours, finally arriving home at 1am. More meltdown.

Which is what my life feels like at the moment. This has been a week of relentless stress regarding our new flat in Shanghai. God I hate China sometimes. You can't get a straight answer out of anybody. Ask them a question and they'll just fob you off or even blatantly lie through their teeth to tell you what you want to hear, hoping you won't pursue the matter. Then if you do, they'll deny all knowledge of the conversation. Anything which avoids them having to actually DO something. This makes me want to SCREAM!!!!!

An example: one of the items on our carefully compiled list of 'must-have' requirements for our new apartment was that we wanted broadband internet. I need to blog!! Oh, and Peter occasionally needs to work from home but that's obviously far less important! So, when I went to look round some apartments the other week, this was more or less the FIRST question I asked in every place I went into. There were 6 in total, and the answers went something like this.

Apt 1: 'No, you will have to instal it yourselves. It's very inconvenient.'
Apts 2 & 3: 'We don't know. We can find out. Don't worry.'
Apts 4 [the one we're ha ha supposedly moving into this weekend] and 5: (Slightly irritatedly) 'We can ask the landlord to instal it if you want it. It won't be a problem. Don't worry.'
Apt 6: 'It's included!' (Yippee - except that the apartment in question had a bathroom the size of a postage stamp, and so was no good).

In other words, the person we gave the list to had made no effort to check in advance whether any of these apartments actually had this 'must-have requirement'. Having decided on a place nonetheless, we then had a friend in Shanghai undertake negotiations for us with the landlord's agent, regarding length of lease and so on. In our email to her we specifically mentioned getting the internet connected as a pre-requisite. She specifically didn't mention anything about it in her reply, so assuming all was well, we went ahead and got the contract signed and paid a deposit plus three months' rent up front, which is what you have to do in the face of constant threats that they'll give the place to someone else if you don't.

So this week, with the contract due to start on Saturday, we send a list to the Shanghai office of minor things we want sorted out and finalised before we move in. One of which was 'get the internet connected please'.

'The agent says you never mentioned the internet', comes back the reply.

WHAT????!!!! I seem to have mentioned NOTHING ELSE. Anyway, we're mentioning it NOW, so please do it. What's the problem? Yet this was on Monday, and as yet we've received no answer as to whether this apartment for which we have paid and which we're committed to moving into will have any form of internet connection. Despite, I repeat, this being a bloody MUST-HAVE requirement.

Oh, and as if that weren't enough, it turns out that the giant great satellite dish attached to the balcony (also one of the big draws of this apartment after 6 months of CCTV9 !) 'doesn't work'. Er, why not? Why's it there then? Should the landlords not ensure that things are working before putting the place up for rent? What else will turn out not to be working when we arrive?

And all they keep saying is 'Don't worry. It will be OK.'

AARRRGGHHHHH !!!!!! I'm in meltdown.

A moving story

2009-03-15T16:39:00.005+08:00

So plans are underway for our impending move to Shanghai. There are various good reasons for this, the main one being that I refuse to give birth in Harbin where hospital provision is somewhat basic and monolingual Chinese, and I won’t be allowed to fly after the end of April-ish, so to attend a hospital in Shanghai I need to be living there. Once the baby’s born in July I will be free to travel, but the baby needs a passport before it’s allowed on a plane, and a visa before it’s officially allowed to live in China – a bit of a joke when you consider it’ll never have been anywhere else – and I’d like it to have had a few vaccinations before I take it on a Chinese flight. So we reckoned about 6 months in Shanghai was the minimum, and might be fun anyway.

We’re quite attached to the hotel which we always stay in when we go there, despite an entertainingly patchy room service which frequently results in breakfast turning up inconveniently late or early and almost always with the wrong cutlery (ever tried eating cornflakes with a knife and fork?). But six months in such a place would not only be horrifically expensive but would drive us (me) insane, not to mention the unfortunate other guests who had to live next door to our screaming newborn (!), so we’ve been forced to find what we have to keep remembering to call an ‘apartment’ to move into.

When I say ‘move’, it’s not so much a move as an ultra-decadent bid to have not one but two homes in China (as well as one in the UK, of course), due to the fact that a) Peter’s job – though do-able from Shanghai – is really based in Harbin and will require him to be here at least two days a week, b) we can’t quite bear to commit ourselves to either leaving our Harbin flat or to leaving Shanghai when the essential period is over, and c) unknown to us, a two-year lease had been signed on the Harbin flat - sorry, apartment. So we did the maths and worked out we could just afford to keep two places going for six months, without having to resort to the elaborate subletting plan proposed by Boss but which, we were told in no uncertain terms by Kevin, our Harbin landlords Would Not Like.

That was the easy bit.

Now, anyone reading this who’s known me for a long time will have an idea of my record on house moves. For the rest of you, you could say it’s, well, What I Do. Some people throw themselves into their careers; some excel at sport; others collect stamps. I move house. I think at the last count it was 22 times, four of which occurred before the age of seven and the remainder after the age of 18. One friend always used to joke that she needed a separate address book just for me. The total could possibly be more, depending on what exactly you classify as a move. For example, if I moved from one part of a student hall of residence to another (about 6 times, I think), does that count? Or if I stayed with parents or friends while in transit from one home to another (at least twice)?

Whatever the case, you’d think by now I’d find the whole thing a breeze. Truthfully, I used to enjoy it. Revel, almost. But as time goes on, to my intense surprise I’m finding the experience increasingly stressful – something which I think has less to do with my age and more to do with the fact that I seem subconsciously to find it necessary to make each move more difficult for myself than the last. I feel as though I’m trapped in a giant computer game called House Move 3 or something, progressing to a higher and higher level each time.

I’ve moved into houses, flats, bungalows, lodgings and hotel rooms. I’ve moved out of basements into third floor flats and vice versa. I’ve squeezed the contents of an entire flat into a room the size of a cupboard. I’ve moved to new towns – and even a new country – with no idea where I was going to live, and I’ve turned up at a new home I’d just bought to find that due to a hugely complicated mix-up, my key wouldn’t work and I had to find a locksmith and persuade him that I did live there, honest.

I’ve transported my belongings by car, van, train, plane, ferry, fleet of taxis and on foot, trundling them to a new place a few streets away in a supermarket trolley. I’ve moved in blistering heat and torrential rain (the latter several times – although snow will, I think, be a first). I’ve scarcely ever called upon the services of removers, relying generally on family, friends, grudging colleagues, a grumpy ‘man with a van’ driver who didn’t stop complaining because I hadn’t managed to drum up any other helpers and it ‘wasn’t part of his job to carry boxes’, and a friend who attempted to drive a van from York to Edinburgh without bothering to look at a map first, and took us via Redcar.

I’ve moved from Devon to Cornwall, Cornwall to Bristol, Bristol to London/Kent, Kent to York, York back to Kent again (and several repeats of this cycle while I was a student), then to France for a year, then back to York, then to the Shetland Islands for a brief spell, then from York to Edinburgh where I managed to stay put for a bit, then to Southampton (via Kent), then lived half in Southampton and half in Edinburgh before moving back to Edinburgh properly, and then finally to China. I must have covered more miles than Marco Polo.

I’ve done moves which involved getting things from four locations into one and vice versa. I hardly possess an item that hasn’t been in storage at some point, either containerised or in an obliging mother or friend’s loft for several years. I’ve carried collections of suitcases totalling considerably more than my own body weight on trains up and down the East Coast main line hundreds of times. I’ve organised a complicated logistical exercise which involved driving my things from Edinburgh to York by van and then transferring them to my mother’s car which took them on to Kent. I’ve travelled by train from north to south and back with plants, a large hi-fi system, and even a cat in a wicker basket.

I’ve moved in with total strangers, made friends, lost friends, gained and lost lovers and made enemies. My flatmates have been male, female, straight, gay, young (the youngest being a baby of 4 months) or not-so-young, rich, poor, tidy, untidy, employed, unemployed, lovely, tolerable, and unbearable. I’ve lived with English, Scots, Irish, Spaniards (lots and lots of Spaniards), Danes, New Zealanders, and even a one-legged Welsh-speaking Glaswegian called Davy Jones (seriously).

I’ve moved into a place where the previous occupant’s toenail clippings were still embedded in my bedroom carpet – and there was no hoover. I've lived with a girl who kept the toilet roll in a locked cupboard, and with a Tory lawyer with whom I bickered from Day One. There have been insomniacs, people who managed to sleep through deafening music at 3am, people on odd diets and followers of curious religions. I’ve argued ferociously over heating, bills, and whose turn it was to buy or clean things, and had a lovely Spanish flatmate who used to sell me a few of her cool customised clothes every time the phone bill came in, and I fell for it every time. I even lived by myself for a few years and loved it.

And in all of this I’ve only managed to lose one box of books, and have acquired various useful items, a couple of best friends, and a wealth of life experience quite possibly unparallelled among those I know, and for which I shall be eternally grateful. And now I’m married and I love that too. Better than anything.

But I truly thought I’d reached the highest level of House Move 3 with our move to China. We had to sort our extensive collection of possessions (and believe me, the whole thing gets SO much more complicated once another person’s things are thrown into the equation, particularly when that person is a worse hoarder than I am!) into what we would take with us, what we would ship out for later, what we’d leave behind for our tenant, what we’d throw out and what we’d put into storage. We had piles for each category around the flat, which wasn’t easy as we were short of space to begin with. Things got transferred from one pile to another and back again. My problems with getting someone to transport them to China I’ve documented previously. So let’s just say that it was extremely stressful, and once we’d found somewhere to live in Harbin and our things had arrived, the one thing I DID NOT want to do was move again until we had to go home.

You’ll have gathered that my pregnancy was, if not exactly unplanned, then certainly unexpected, and so I find myself now with no alternative but to uncover some sort of hidden bonus feature on House Move 3 where you can have two homes in China simultaneously, which sounds good but involves new challenges not previously encountered in the main game. These include:

One - Trying to find a suitable apartment in a city a thousand miles away a month or two before you want to move in, in a country where everything is done at the last minute and any properties you look round are always available NOW and the concept of holding it for you is an alien one.

Two - Compiling a list of our requirements to give to a Chinese speaker in the office (so that she could make a shortlist of apartments for us to see), carefully divided into ‘must-haves’ and ‘nice to haves’, only for her to ignore most of the items on the list and send us to lots of quite unsuitable places which maybe filled one or two of the criteria.

Three - Trying to negotiate a lease of unorthodox length (which has turned out to be 8 months in practice) when the landlords just want to make as much money out of westerners as they possibly can.

Four - Getting people in the office to take some initiative when it comes to paying deposits, signing contracts and so forth, when they’re terrified to do anything without explicit instructions from you in words of one syllable, lest they get it wrong somehow and thus lose face.

Five - Sorting all our stuff AGAIN into what to take and what to leave in Harbin, complicated by the fact that Peter will spend several days a week here, and by the fact that I’ll be forbidden from flying so won’t be able to come back for things myself, so I’ll have to be able to tell him the exact location of anything I want brought down.

AND by the fact that Chinese landlords don’t provide bedding or kitchen equipment in their apartments so that we had to buy everything from scratch when we moved in here, and will now have to either take half of all this stuff with us, or else buy everything (including kettle, vacuum cleaner, pillows, plates, pans, etc) all over again. Which of course means we’ll have two of everything when we come back. Three, if you count all the stuff back home. I’m trying to learn to breathe deeply and not raise my blood pressure too much!

I’m so looking forward to the release of House Move 4. That’s where you have to do everything I’ve described above - WITH A BABY.

Freakish

2009-03-08T12:29:00.003+08:00

Here’s a thing. And not a Chinese one.

There is a British company (whom I shan’t name since becoming aware of the scary power of Google to watch my every word much more assiduously than any Chinese Big Brother could ever do) which specialises in making boots for women with ‘large or slim calves’. In other words, a shop for freaks, like me.

They’ve only been going a few years, and when I heard about them I got very excited. Fantastic, I thought – I won't feel like a freak any more! No more utterly humiliating shoe-shopping experiences in which I’m reduced to tears by having a helpful but ever-so-slightly patronising girl get every pair of boots off the shelf in the shop for me, and then having to buy a pair I don’t like that much because they’re the only ones I can fit over my fat legs. These ‘large or slim calves’ people claim to have ‘21 different calf fittings’. They also do shoes for wide feet (yes, you guessed it, that’s me as well). Great! They’re a touch more expensive than the average but that’s fine with me, that’s a service I’ll pay for, I thought.

To put this in perspective you need to appreciate the difficulties I have with shopping in China. Now I’m not huge (well, I’m getting huger at the moment, but that’s different!). Curvy, perhaps. But not vast. But Chinese women are all SO skinny that if I want to buy any clothes here - except in the western shops in Shanghai - I have to get the biggest size there is, and even then sometimes it doesn’t fit me. I’ve never bought anything in XXXL before in my life, but that’s often what I count as here. Very often they don’t even have XXXL, and shake their heads apologetically while looking me up and down in a manner which says unmistakably, ‘God, we didn’t know people as fat as you even existed’.

What with this, and the fact that my immigration medical classified me as ‘obese’, don’t forget (as I never shall, grrr), I’ve been heard to protest wailingly that I must be the Fattest Person in China (FPIC). Peter tries to make me feel better by pointing out any fat girls we spot, with a nudge and an ‘FPIC alert!’. There aren’t many, but if you hang around Macdonald’s long enough you’re bound to see one or two.

Unfortunately, even if I could speak Chinese, you can’t exactly walk up to someone and say, ‘Excuse me, you look like a bit of a porker. Would you mind telling me where you bought the vast tent you’re wearing?’ So I haven’t bought many clothes. Don’t even get me started on the bras. Most of the offerings are gnat-bite size. Seriously I think it must be illegal in China to sell anything bigger than a C cup. Even in the maternity section of M&S they don't go above D. Online ordering from the UK is the way to go for me.

Shoes are just impossible for me here, of course, and it was for this reason that I went to the aforementioned ‘large & slim calves’ emporium in Edinburgh. I’d seen on their website that they did a fleece-lined boot which struck me as ideal for Harbin. It was summer when we left the UK so I couldn’t get winter boots then, so had to wait until we were visiting at Christmas before I could try them on. They don't carry stock in the shop so you have to select the ones you want and then they get them in from their warehouse. So they measured my ‘obese’ calf, and found a pair of the fleecy ones I was after which fitted me no problem.

‘Oh’, said the girl, checking her computer. ‘I’m afraid these aren’t currently in stock in your size combination. We’ll have to make them for you. It’ll be four to eight weeks, I’m afraid, with the Christmas break and everything.’

This was on December 22nd. Guess when they turned up? Last Wednesday. That’s March 4th. I make that more than 11 weeks. The company were very attentive and communication was great. They emailed me at least once a month to tell me the boots weren’t ready yet, and cajoled me with increasing desperation to ‘make an alternative selection from our website’. Eventually they apologetically announced – without me even complaining or anything - that they’d give me 10% off and free delivery, which seeing as it was to China was pretty good of them, thereby saving me about £30. Finally they told me which week the boots would be dispatched, and indeed they were.

Seriously though, eleven weeks? To make one pair of boots? What on earth?? The boots are very nice; they don't fit me now, of course, with my ankles all puffed up with pregnancy, but I won't need them in Shanghai and they should be ok for the autumn.

But what’s all this about ‘my size combination’? My feet are quite an average size once you ignore the width factor, which these guys take into account anyway. Where are your 21 different calf fittings? What’s going on? I'd been hoping for a self-esteem boost but I couldn't have failed more miserably.

Not only am I the Fattest Person in China. I'm officially too freakish for the freak shop.

Blowing hot and cold

2009-03-05T13:23:00.003+08:00

Well. I did have two ‘followers’ on my blog, and now it seems I’ve lost one. Something I said?

How can I possibly feel snubbed by someone I’ve never met? I know I never wrote and said hello, for which I apologise – I kept meaning to, honestly. Or is it the prospect of my heading off to Shanghai (temporarily, I repeat, temporarily) for reproductive purposes and thus failing to fulfil the ‘to Siberia’ part of my remit? Either way, just to disappear seems a bit harsh.

While we’re on the subject, thanks to everyone whom I know is reading the blog silently, but I’d love to hear your comments occasionally or see your wee smiling faces (or even that spooky blank head thing) as ‘followers’ on my dashboard. Just to make me feel loved. And thanks to those who do comment (just so you guys don’t start getting huffy as well!); it’s much appreciated.

But back to Siberia. You may remember the saga of our heating. It wasn’t on, we were cold when it wasn’t outside; then it was on, it was freezing outside and we were sweltering hot. Then it went cold in the flat suddenly one weekend about a month ago and we thought, ‘Uh-oh, looks like switch-off day has come’ – but it was a false alarm due, presumably, to a temporary malfunction which was fixed within a day. All of which was totally beyond our control.

Or so we thought.

Last week we happened to be chatting with Peter’s colleague Wildon, a veritable Mr ‘Let-me-just-make-a-couple-of-phone-calls’ who knows everything and everybody and can sort out things you’d never believe possible. We were complaining of the overpowering heat in our flat, especially in view of the fact that a) the temperature in Harbin is now occasionally reaching a balmy 5 (yes, five!) degrees, and more importantly b) the recommended temperature for a baby’s bedroom is 16 – 20 degrees, and if we couldn’t get ours below 27, I could see myself mounting a nightly vigil by the cot lest Baby should expire from overheating or dehydration.

The latter, incidentally, is another problem, necessitating slathering oneself in E45 lotion and having a humidifier constantly belching out cold steam vapours. We first saw these when we came to Shanghai last year and couldn’t understand why people had kettles (often in the shape of Mickey Mouse or similar) boiling continuously on their desks when it was sweltering hot outside! The idea of it being too dry indoors is a difficult concept to get your head around when you’re used to living in soggy Britain where preventing damp is a constant battle. But here we can leave wet washing draped over the back of the furniture to dry overnight. In fact it makes life more comfortable if you do. Very weird.

So anyway, we asked Wildon what date the heating would go off. He reckoned about mid April – 6 months after it came on. Makes sense, but we blanched at the prospect – by April it’s more like 10 – 15 degrees. Sure you can open the windows then, but still.

‘But’, said Wildon, ‘I think you can control the temperature.’

‘Noooooo!’, we said.

‘Usually there is a control somewhere in the kitchen’, he insisted.

‘Where?’ we asked in disbelief. ‘We’ve never seen it. I don’t think so.’

‘Let me just make a couple of phone calls,’ he said.

And sure enough, the following day he spoke to the management of our building and came back with detailed instructions – there may even have been a diagram – as to exactly where these controls were located, what they looked like and how to operate them. And, sure enough, when we looked deep in the recesses of an obscure cupboard in our kitchen, there they were, just as he described. It seems there’s a master lever for adjusting the temperature of the whole flat, and individual taps controlling each room.

NOW they tell us. Kevin did have the good grace to look a little sheepish, seeing as we’ve been going on at him about the heat for months and even had him over here a couple of weeks ago trying to fathom out our quite unfathomable air conditioning system.

Unfortunately what there wasn’t was any clue as to which control was for which room, so we decided to experiment with the master lever. Peter turned it as far as it would go without removing a shelf, and we waited. And waited. Twelve hours later the thermometer still said 27°, so he took the shelf out and turned it a bit more, and we waited again.

Next day it was 26°, so he hit the lever with a shoe until it would turn no further. This time, within a few hours, the temperature still read 26° but the heat which we can normally feel from the floor was notable by its absence. We concluded he’d actually turned it off, and that the ambient warmth we could feel was just residual build-up due to four months of super-heatedness and the fact that the flat’s very well insulated (if you ignore the window with the broken catch which we’ve had to both tape and glue shut). So he pushed the lever back up to the first position he’d tried, and we waited once more.

On Monday I was warm. It said 25°. I had to put a cardigan on in the evening but that was ok. Tuesday I woke up feeling a touch chilly. I put on a long-sleeved top indoors for the first time in ages. Then Peter left for the UK. I tentatively suggested turning the heating back to its original full setting (as it was still minus 10° at night) and trying to work out instead which dial controlled the future baby’s room, but he said we should ‘let it settle’.

On Tuesday night I needed a thicker cardigan. This was quite enough settling as far as I was concerned. I went to the exciting new controls and tried to turn the lever anti-clockwise to turn it back up. Could I budge it? Not one millimetre. As if it had never been designed to move. On Wednesday morning I actually had cold feet, and by Wednesday evening I was in a serious winter woolly and starting to worry how I’d get through the week. The floor felt cold. I felt cold. The thermometer, dammit, still read 25°. But no way was it 25°.

Action stations were called for. I pulled the shelf out of the cupboard so as to get a better purchase on the thing, donned Peter’s ski gloves, and manœuvering (sp?) my little pregnant self into a most ungainly position on the floor and half inside the cupboard, I gripped the top of the pipe with both hands and pushed on the lever with both thumbs and all of my inconsiderable force. At the third attempt it moved a centimetre or two. After a couple of minutes to get my breath back I tried again, and after another two or three attempts moved it a fraction more, so that it’s now just short of what it originally was.

The conclusion? The thermometer is creeping back up. I’m sweating again, but not as much as before, and anyway I don’t care. Baby will be fine, we’ll find the control for that room, buy a free-standing air conditioning unit if we have to, and humidify the place within an inch of its life.

I do so wish I was going to be here in the summer. Summer in Harbin is lovely, but by the time I come back we’ll have to start this whole bloody heating rigmarole all over again. Anyway, what's the point of making it centrally controlled if it's, well, not?

Let’s just hope Shanghai’s air conditioning systems are more user-friendly.

Just in case you want proof

2009-03-03T16:39:00.004+08:00

...or didn't read to the end last time and so missed our announcement, here's me. Taken today (Tuesday 3rd March). And there's still four months to go! How big is this baby going to be?

The fact that I am in front of the fridge is merely to show off my bump against a dark background and has NO other significance, honest!

International events

2009-03-01T13:39:00.002+08:00

So, the 24th Winter Universiade has been and gone. The closing ceremony – a pile of boring speeches and lots of people in white floating around, mainly - was last night. We couldn’t get to Pizza Hut because of it! It’s an outrage.

Anyway, as promised to myself I went to one event last Sunday, namely some figure skating (ice dance original dance and pairs free skating to be precise). A bit girly, I’m afraid, and not my first choice as I prefer more exciting events like short-track speed skating or that thing with the tea-tray that I mentioned before, but needs must when you’re short of time and Chinese language skills and the pavements are all covered in ice and snow. Still, apart from an office outing to the races I’d never been to a live sporting event before, so I reckoned it would be an experience.

It was.

You know how I told you Harbin was hoping to bid for the 2014 Winter Olympics? It turns out I was wrong and that should have been 2018. Well, sorry to break it to you, my dear Harbiner friends, but maybe you should make it, like, 2068? Perhaps that would give you enough time to work out what’s actually involved in hosting an international event.

The key word here is ‘international’. Now I’m the first to admit I’ve been lazier than a narcoleptic sloth when it comes to making any attempt to learn Chinese. In fact I’ve made none. I can say more or less the same things now as I could 6 months ago, namely ‘Hello’, ‘Goodbye’, ‘Thank you’, ‘Receipt please’ (very important!), ‘Here’ (to taxi drivers), ‘Where is it?’ (not anything specific, so not that helpful really), and occasionally if I really put my mind to it I can manage ‘I don’t understand’, which we’ve proved is more useful than Peter’s ‘I don’t speak Chinese’ said in perfect Chinese, because they never believe him! This is entirely my own fault. I know this.

But you’d think, wouldn’t you, that if you’ve got several thousand foreign athletes and their entourages coming to your city, and you’re therefore expecting some foreign spectators, and you’ve gone to the trouble of creating an English version of the website for the event, that there might have been some attempt to make the thing accessible to non-Chinese speakers? I’m thinking along the lines of maybe some signage in English? English-speaking volunteers to assist the confused, à la Beijing Olympics, that sort of thing?

No.

And you’d probably imagine that if said English website appears to have a booking facility on it - albeit one without any means of payment, but that’s understandable in a cash-based economy where few people use credit cards – that you would maybe inform the ticket office that people might be turning up with order numbers taken from this website, expecting to collect pre-booked tickets, as promised.

No.

And you might even, in a radical move, make the location of said ticket office prominent, or at the very least let your staff operating in other parts of the venue nearby know where it is, in case anyone asks. And make sure these staff speak English, in case ditto.

No.

And indeed make the entrance to the venue itself obvious. And have concession stands selling food (western as well as Chinese, maybe – you know, just hot-dogs or something, I’m not asking for the moon here). And a well-signposted – no, let’s say several well-signposted – souvenir shops or stalls, with English-speaking staff. Oh and have English-speaking staff in the ticket office, just in case the non-Chinese-speaking would-be spectators should ever stumble across it.

No, no, no and no.

Here’s how it went.

I go on the website and book a ticket (so I think), at the end of which transaction it gives me an order number. We’ve never got around to buying a printer for the house here so I write the order number down on a piece of paper. I am told to bring this order number, and my passport, to the ticket office at the International Conference Centre to collect my ticket. I had planned to do this in advance of the actual event, but as the skating was to take place at the same venue, and as Peter pointed out that the Chinese don’t expect to plan anything in advance, I was persuaded to wait until the day of the competition itself before venturing forth.

So last Sunday afternoon I duly tramp through the snow to the place where the Conference Centre is (next to our supermarket), only to realise I don’t actually know where the entrance is. I search for signs either to the event or to the ticket office. There are none, but some red LCD lettering above a couple of doors indicates that the adjoining hotel is indeed something to do with the Winter Universiade. Avoiding the one which appears to be for delegates only, I approach the other door. This is blocked by several security guards, none of whom appear to be older than 14 as is the norm here, larking around in the doorway. On seeing me, they look at each other and after a moment’s whispering they laughingly push forward the only one who can speak any English. (This is also quite a common reaction we get.)

‘May I help you?’ he says haltingly.

‘Yes’, I reply. ‘Could you tell me where the ticket office is please?’

‘Ticket office…’ he repeats wonderingly. He thinks a moment, then points towards the ‘delegates’ door. ‘This way please’.

‘Here?’ I reply in some scepticism, but he seems adamant, so off I go.

It only takes a second to work out I’m in the wrong place. There’s a red carpet, security screening, a desk with information packs, uniformed attendants with security passes around their necks. This is clearly not the place for Joe Public.

One chap springs forward and says in apparently fluent English, ‘Good afternoon madam. May I check your card please?’, indicating his security pass.

‘No, I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I don’t have a card. I just want to pick up a ticket. Could you please tell me where to go?’

‘Ticket….’, he repeats, just as wonderingly as the first chap. He looks around helplessly for a minute, then urgently beckons a colleague across. This chap really does speak a little English, so I try again.

‘Ah,’ says Chap 2. ‘You go out of this door and you turn, ah, right? Yes, right. You will see hotel called the Hua Ha Hotel’ (turns to friend) ‘Hua Ha Hotel?’ (Friend shrugs). He continues, ‘You can collect ticket here’.

There is now only about 10 minutes to go before the skating starts. I repeat these instructions and thank him. Retracing my steps past the first door, I go round the corner and come upon an obscure and unlikely-looking door, with a very small, indistinct and ambiguous sign which could possibly be interpreted as meaning one can purchase tickets inside. The door is virtually impossible to open but I fight my way in.

Now maybe I’ve been spoilt by living in Edinburgh, but when I’m told to go to a box office to collect a ticket booked online, I imagine something like the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Box Office. A long but patient roped-off queue; banks of computers manned by hyper-efficient staff calling ‘Next’ and turning over thousands of customers in an hour by printing off tickets in batches thanks to their state-of-the-art computer system.

Guess what? No.

This ticket office turns out to be one tiny, dingy room with one tiny, dingy computer, manned by one harassed girl and a bloke who looks like he doesn’t work there but has just dropped by to chat to his pal and is watching with interest while she does her job, and occasionally trying to help despite not having a clue what he’s doing (another common set-up in Chinese shops). A group of excited Chinese are gathered around Girl with Computer, one man waving a bunch of tickets and all shouting.

I hang back and attempt to wait while they resolve their dispute, but after a minute or two, Girl with Computer’s Helpful Friend spots me and beckons me forward. I present my order number. He stares at it in some perplexity.

After a while, the excitement of there being a westerner in the shop distracts the shouting group from whatever other excitement had been preoccupying them, and the hubbub dies down. Helpful Friend shows my paper to Girl. She grabs it with both hands and stares at it. She starts to follow the numbers with her finger, muttering under her breath and shaking her head in utter incomprehension as though I had given her a scroll in ancient Aramaic. I attempt to explain. She asks me something. Not knowing what else to do, I present my passport as instructed by the website. She checks this with a little more confidence, thanks me and hands it back. Having thus, apparently, concluded our business, she returns her attention to the shouters. We have reached an impasse.

After a couple of minutes, seeing I am still waiting, Helpful Friend tries again to decipher my paper but is hampered by the fact that he has taken it from me upside-down. I turn it round and try again to explain what I want. Eventually a woman from the shouting group leans on my shoulder and asks me something urgently. I shrug. She runs into a back office and drags out a young woman with long, highlighted, fluffy bunches in her hair which exactly match her long, highlighted fur coat. She has her arm round this girl and is laughing and shouting something at her in an encouraging manner. She pushes her forward.

‘Can I help you?’ says Fluffy Bunches.

‘Oh yes please!’ I exclaim in relief. ‘I booked a ticket on the computer. This is my order number. I just want to collect the ticket and I was told I could get it here.’

She, too, grabs the paper with both hands and stares and stares at it. ‘Online?’ she says.

‘Yes!’ I cry, ‘I booked it online!’ but still she stares.

‘But, what is the date?’ she asks eventually.

‘Today’, I say in some desperation. ‘Now!’

‘Now? Figure skating?’

‘Yes!’ I reply. At last we’re getting somewhere.

But she’s still frowning and staring at the paper. ‘But, how much do you want?’ she asks.

I think for a minute. How much do I want? Not much really, just the love of my husband, the assured safety and health of those I love, world peace, enough money to live on comfortably without ever having to work again, maybe a big house in the country, a cat would be nice…before I realise what she means is How many do I want.

‘Oh’, I reply. ‘One. One ticket.’ I hold up one finger for emphasis and smile pleadingly.

She turns to Girl with Computer. ‘Blah blah-blah blah blah blah blah’ (indicating me) ‘blah blah, blah, blah blah blah-blah’ (indicating computer and waving vaguely in outside direction), ‘blah blah blah blah. Blah.’ (facial expressions clearly implying, ‘Go on, go on, go on, just do her a favour, for me, eh?’) ‘Blah-blah. You pay cash?’ (Me, startled), ‘Yes, I’ll pay cash’, ‘Blah blah blah blah-blah. One hundred and fifty. Here is your ticket.’

‘Oh thank you!’ I say. ‘But, where do I go?’

‘Please, follow me!’ she says. The woman who fetched her seems to find this highly amusing and embraces her again, repeating ‘Follow me! A-ha-ha-ha-ha! Follow me! Ha ha ha!!’ Meanwhile I’m attempting to pay for my hard-won ticket while she tries to drag me out of the door, saying ‘Let’s go, let’s go!’ I just about manage to hand over my 150 RMB to Laughing Woman, who hands it to Girl with Computer, and thank everyone, whereupon they all happily resume shouting and we make our exit.

It turns out that by pure chance Cassie (for such is my new friend’s name) is also going to see the figure skating. She leads me outside and down the steps into the shopping centre, which seems to be the wrong way, but I dutifully follow. We are accompanied by her friend who walks the whole considerable distance backwards in front of us taking hundreds of photos of us both, even after Cassie asks her to stop. She pauses to buy some Chinese flags, and gives me one. We go through the shopping centre and walk up the escalator which is never switched on and appears to go nowhere, at the top of which we meet up with Cassie’s boyfriend, bearing bags of bread.

After about a half-mile trek we join up with the entrance where the rest of the public (99.99% of them Chinese, I wonder why!) are filing in from outside. A guard lifts a barrier to let us through. We go through security like at an airport. After about another half-mile we reach the auditorium and Cassie tells me which area I can find my seat in. I thank her profusely and tell her, truthfully, that I could never have found it without her. ‘It is my pleasure,’ she replies in great seriousness.

My issues did not end here. There was the health & safety issue (trailing wires everywhere, a large wooden ramp half-covering a staircase for no apparent reason and over which I had to climb, thus nearly pitching head-first onto the ice rink), the seat numbering issue (that in which I was told to sit bearing no obvious relation to the number on my ticket), the lack of food & drink issue, and the souvenir stall issue, which involved queueing to get a number which you then took to another desk to get your goods, but not being able to find out the price of anything before joining the long queue – it seems the Chinese can queue to get in a queue, but not at any other time.

But the skating was good, if a little riddled with falling-over mishaps. It turned out that everyone had come to see two particularly good Chinese pairs skaters who were streets ahead of everyone else and won by miles. The crowd were the most partisan I’ve ever heard, cheering wildly whenever anybody Chinese did anything, and pretty much ignoring everyone else. After the Chinese Pairs pair had won, everybody left (including me, it must be said, but mainly because I was cold and hungry and Peter was due home from a business trip), leaving the unfortunate male solo skaters to compete in front of a virtually empty auditorium.

So a fun time was had, but not quite in the way I expected. And the Winter Olympics? Maybe next century.

Stop Press!

Talking of international events, we have a little one of our own to tell you about, for those of my readers who haven’t yet been privy to this information. In July we will be bringing a new small international person into the world. Yes I’m 21 weeks pregnant, and planning to give birth in Shanghai – hence our frequent visits there for the past couple of months, for me to attend a western clinic.

Being pregnant in Harbin has given rise to some interesting experiences, such as trying to buy a pregnancy test in a Chinese chemist (I ended up drawing a fat stick-person with a question mark over their head!) and a scary visit to a Chinese state-run maternity hospital. So we opted for Shanghai where you get English-speaking doctors and we know lots of people who can help us out. We’ll be decamping to live there for 6-8 months from the end of March.

Which leaves me with a dilemma, blog fans. My blog is called ‘From Scotland to Siberia’, and I’ll be deserting Siberia for much warmer climes for a while. I wish I could do it the other way round – summer in Harbin and winter in Shanghai would be SO much more pleasant, weather-wise – but Baby (and airline regulations) won’t let me.

So can you forgive me if I write about Shanghai instead for a bit? Peter will still be making frequent visits up north so he can report back. And with my blogging friend at Living the Hai Life about to return to Blighty, maybe I can fill her gap a little. So don’t desert me, please. Shanghai is fun. And we’ll be back in Siberia in the autumn!

Yes

2009-02-20T19:54:00.004+08:00

There is not a banana to be had, anywhere in Harbin.

Not since before Chinese New Year – about three or four weeks. Not in our usual large supermarket, not in the other smaller supermarket where I fought someone for the last bunch the other week, not in the corner-shop type place downstairs from our flat. Two weeks ago we even went for a meal in a posh hotel and I ordered banoffee pie for pudding (I know, I know), and was told apologetically that they couldn’t do it, and now I see why.

What’s all that about then?

I know they’ve got an extremely long way to come – not the most right-on of fruits from a food miles perspective, I grant you – but that’s never seemed to be a problem here before. Is there a worldwide shortage? Did we miss banana day or something?

It’s very distressing. I can’t think of more than about a day that’s elapsed in the last five years without me eating at least one banana. They’re a staple element of mine and Peter’s diets, so much so that we both tend to carry an EB (Emergency Banana) with us at all times.

We can get apples, pears, kiwi fruit, strawberries.

But yes, we have none.

I don’t feel like singing about it. But just in case you do…..

Traffic calming

2009-02-18T12:42:00.006+08:00

You're going to love this one.

Tonight is the opening ceremony of the 24th Winter Universiade or student winter games (sort of like a mini winter Olympics for, obviously, students) which is being held in Harbin. China is keen to make a success of this in the hope that it will help them win the bid for the proper Winter Olympics in 2014. (They bid for 2010 and I think maybe 2002 as well but lost out.)

I'm quite excited about this as I love winter sports. Watching them, that is - daring to walk along an icy pavement is about as close as I'll ever come to actually doing any winter sports. I have no idea why I suddenly developed this interest, which began in January 1992 when I was an unemployed new graduate with nothing better to do than watch the Winter Olympics on TV. Prior to that my sport-watching had been pretty much confined to Wimbledon and occasionally as a child bonding with my Dad over cricket or snooker or some such thing. Oh and the infamous Seb Coe- and Imran Khan-fancying phases of 1983-4, but the least said about those, the better! Gimme a break, I was 15.

So anyway, I was hoping to go and see a few things, but a lot of it is actually happening at the ski resort a long way from Harbin, plus we have to go the Shanghai again next week so will miss most of it. Sadly my favourite event, the luge (the thing where someone slides head-first round a bobsleigh track very very fast on what looks like a tea-tray - utterly insane) doesn't seem to be included. So I might go and see some skating, which is possibly the least interesting but involves the least effort on my part.

Both the skating and the opening ceremony are taking place at the conference centre which happens to be about 10 minutes walk from our flat. Right next to the supermarket where we do our shopping, in fact. And like I said, the opening shenanigans is tonight. The authorities, no doubt rightly, anticipate a greatly increased volume of traffic on the roads.

Now stop a minute to think what would happen in the UK in this instance. They'd close a few roads for a few hours, wouldn't they? Inconvenient, possibly, but equally so for everyone, and largely avoidable if you know when and where not to go.

Here's what they've decided to do here.

Today, cars are only allowed onto the streets of Harbin if their registration ends in an even number. (Mr Li's ends in an odd number, hence he's unable to pick Peter up from the airport tonight.)

Can you imagine how that would go down in Edinburgh?

I'm weeping with mirth just thinking about it.

Grim up north

2009-02-15T20:48:00.005+08:00

In the course of his work, Peter sometimes has to travel to see customers. Last week he made his second trip to Yi’an, which is about 180 miles north of Harbin and thus about 180 miles colder and grimmer. People in the villages nearby drive little three-wheelers and live in huts, each with its own pigsty attached. To give you an idea – and to satisfy those blog fans who crave pictures of the grittier aspects of modern China – here are a couple of photos. The temperature gauge one shows the temperature outside the car at about 10pm one night a few weeks ago, I hasten to point out, but I felt you needed to see it for the record!

The trip takes 4 hours by car on a good day, seven on a bad one when roads are closed by snow or suchlike. Potholes, and other hazards such as the occasional very large pig in the road, abound. Luckily we are blessed with Mr Li who is so besotted with his people-carrier with its fur-lined seats that you can see him physically wince every time he drives over the slightest bump. I swear if it weren’t for Mr Li I would be a nervous wreck by now. He is without doubt or exception the best driver in China, by about a million miles.

Of course on occasion we do have to endure less comfortable modes of transport such as the infamous Shanghai Van (or the Sciatica-Mobile, as I’ve decided to christen it) which not only lacks seatbelts or suspension but also reeks of farm produce. This is the vehicle which they sent to pick us up from Shanghai airport the very first time we visited China to see if we wanted to live here, and so were presumably attempting to impress us! Lovely. But after having my bones rattled one time too many, I think I’ve managed to put a stop to that one by saying if it ever shows up there to collect us again I’ll let its tyres down and wait at the airport until they send something else. Big Boss now says if we phone his secretary she’ll make sure they send a nice car for us. Job done.

But anyway, to return to the singing farmers of Heilongjiang. By a grave oversight I omitted to tell you about these in my account of the CCTV New Year’s Eve Gala the other week. I’ve no idea how they can have slipped my mind as, being our local boys, they were definitely the highlight of the show for us – so much so that we considered voting for them as our favourite act, as we were continually exhorted to do by the presenters. We could even have won a golden statuette of an ox, I think it was – but in the end we decided this prize should go to someone more deserving.

The Singing Farmers of Heilongjiang appeared courtesy of the Chinese equivalent of Pop Idol or those Graham Norton ‘Let’s-find-a-nobody-who’s-never-been-to-drama-school-or-anything-and-make-them-the-star-of-an-outdated-West-End-musical-thereby-really-pissing-off-proper-hardworking-actors-who’ve-been-desperate-for-a-break-like-that-for-years’ shows. (Sorry, had to get my gripe in there; working in the theatre I have serious issues with this type of programme!).

However I don’t think China’s professional singers need worry too much about the Singing Farmers. One, a chap with a large bouffant and the ubiquitous gold jacket, did a reasonable Pavarotti (when helped out by a proper singer), but then he did train, we were told, by lying with a giant rock on his stomach and repeatedly lifting it using only his diaphragm muscles. The other guy, who had a craggy face and appeared to be still wearing his original Mao suit – and who had actually pulled out of the final of the talent show due to an unexpectedly good harvest - really shouldn’t give up the day job, but he got a good cheer anyway.

So when Peter made his foray into the wilder parts of northern Heilongjiang to meet farmers, I was hopeful that he might run into at least one of these celebs. I told him to listen out for the strains of ‘Nessun Dorma’ rising from the cowsheds and get the autograph of anyone in a Mao suit and/or with a rock balanced on their stomach, just to be on the safe side. But sadly it wasn’t to be.

Instead, he met a man who had a bedroom and en-suite bathroom attached to his office, both decorated from floor to ceiling in baby pink with lace frills all over everything, including the toilet seat. Something tells me if this guy does any singing it’s likely to be less ‘Nessun Dorma’ and more lip-synching to ‘I am what I am’ – but you didn’t hear that from me.

But it’s the food and accommodation on these trips that’s the high point - if measured on an oddness or a ‘let’s experience the real China’ scale, anyway. At one ‘motorway services’ café, on each table there was a dish of whole, raw garlic cloves. Peter (a garlic lover) asked his colleague what these were for. ‘Am I meant to just eat one?’, he said. ‘Oh yes,’ came the reply. ‘If the food is bad, they will help to fight off infection’. Ah. So it’s like that.

The hotel he had to stay in is apparently the best in Yi’an, but would barely merit one star by our standards. Its price list read:

Suite: 260 RMB [approx £26]
Room rate: 100 RMB
O’clock rate: 50 RMB

‘What’s “o’clock rate”?’ Peter asked another colleague, innocently.

‘Ah’, said colleague. ‘This is for when people want to have sex in the afternoons so they get room for an hour.’ Peter must have looked shocked because his pal added, with a twinkle in his eye, ‘Or perhaps they are just sleepy.’

Fortunately - unlike the 5-star hotels of Harbin - they didn’t actually attempt to provide Peter with an, erm, companion. Instead he was given a room which appeared to have no light-switch. Even the landlady didn’t seem to know where it was and spent ten minutes looking for it in the pitch blackness until Mr Li found it, concealed under a shelf. On seeing what the room was actually like, Peter asked to move. The second one wasn’t much of an improvement (only one working light and a quilt of dubious cleanliness), but did come with a fascinating range of freebies. I thought the things which normal hotels habitually give away were weird enough but these take some beating.

Guests were provided with the following [all sic, naturally!]:

- Tissues
- Ashtray
- Two cups and a teabag, but no means of heating water
- Wrigley’s gum and a ‘compressed towel’, displayed together on a little presentation stand
- A packet labelled ‘Men’s underwear’ on one side, and on the other ‘Panties – Comfortable Consideration New Vogue and New Character’
- And best of all: a sachet of ‘Uncomplimentary’ Yibashi High-Grade Bathing Lotion (‘Exclusive sale in high standard hotes’). The instructions suggested that if you ‘pour the liquid into the location where water pours’ and then ‘drench the inside bathtub wet and spread the plastics on it’, then ‘The degrakable plastics inside can be used to prevent your ksin from being direstly contacted bathtub’. Now it’s not often you can say that!! ‘Original Lotion Is Imported From Holland!’ the packaging proudly proclaimed, as if this would inspire you to use it.

And all this for a tenner.

This week he has a meeting with a man called Dr Dung Pan Boo (“but you can call me Dung Pan”). The mind can only boggle.

Bliss

2009-02-12T17:53:00.002+08:00

I hardly dare say this, but after three weeks, the firecrackers have finally - whisper it - stopped.

There was one final night of sheer deafening bombardment on Monday, which was 'Lantern Festival', the last official night of the lunar new year celebrations, which falls on the first full moon following the first new moon (hope you're following this). This was complete with not only the biggest full moon in 52 years or something, but also proper fireworks - pretty ones, not just those that go bang. Of course they set them off dangerously near to buildings, as before. In Beijing the staff of CCTV apparently even managed to set fire to their own brand-new building, which would be amusing if it wasn't for the fact that a firefighter got killed in the ensuing blaze.

The noise here went on until about 2am and we thought, 'Oh thank God, from tomorrow it's illegal for them to set these bloody things off for another whole year'. But of course, there were one or two chancers who set some more off on Tuesday, either because they had a few left and just wanted to get one in under the wire, or because they were terminally stupid and didn't know what day it was, I presume.

But by yesterday there was blissful, beautiful, wonderful, heavenly, SILENCE, and the men with brooms who sweep up snow are busy sweeping vast quantities of ash onto the snow so that there are piles of grey stuff everywhere. Not that there's much snow left now since, as of last week some time, it's officially 'spring' and even made it to - wait for it - zero degrees one day!! We nearly got our bikinis out.

It's a shame though; I used to like fireworks - when you only ever got to see (and hear) them TWO NIGHTS A YEAR at the most. But after three whole weeks of being woken up by huge explosions at 8am every day - especially Sundays - and often having them either go on all evening, or else lull us into a false sense of security by being quiet until midnight and THEN starting, I have to say I shall miss them like a hole in the head.

Which is what it felt like sometimes.

Flying me crazy

2009-02-08T20:04:00.007+08:00

Domestic flight. It sounds so cosy, doesn’t it, as though they might bring you a pair of slippers and a cup of cocoa? But I tell you I have yet to get off a plane after the two or three hours it takes to fly from Harbin to Shanghai (or back again) without feeling the need to do some serious harm to myself or others. The most patient of saints would find the experience ‘trying’, as Flora Poste (ooh, a literary reference!) would say.

I can only assume that Chinese airlines issue their passengers with a different set of ‘Do’s and Don’ts’ instructions from everyone else in the world. Here’s how it might read.

Arrival and Check-in

1. On first arriving at the airport, we recommend the person giving you a lift parks at a crazy angle at the set-down point. This will make it as difficult as possible for other passengers to get out of their cars and get into the terminal ahead of you.

2. On entering the airport, your luggage may be scanned at the door. This is of course pointless as we are going to give it a full x-ray later but we do like to keep our staff occupied, so please do co-operate with this.

3. Next identify your correct check-in desk from the screens. This will not be easy due to the fact that we will not display your actual flight time, merely the check-in time, and also that several flight numbers, belonging to several different airlines, will in reality all correspond to the same plane.

4. Having found your desk, the trick is to remember that there is really no such thing as a check-in queue. I mean, what is a queue anyway? Something dreamt up by the British, so we heard. Anyway, you can pretty much approach the desk as and when you feel like it. Some passengers do choose to wait in line and this is their prerogative, but should they happen to leave more than a centimetre of space between them and the person in front, the non-queuers have the right to intercept. Do please bear this in mind if you are foolish enough to opt for the waiting strategy.

5. When you are eventually served, please do not expect the check-in staff to listen to your requests with regard to seating arrangements. This is NOT their job, unless of course you are interrupting the customer currently being served. If you are travelling with four generations of your extended family (as you obviously will be), it is best to get seats as far apart as possible. This will allow you maximum shouting potential during the course of the flight, as well as an excuse for wandering up and down whenever the fasten seatbelt signs are illuminated, both of which are crucial to your enjoyment of the flight.

6. Please note the minimum checked baggage requirement is one box of vegetables tied up with string, per person. Other foodstuffs such as bags of sausages may be carried as hand luggage. Please do NOT check in oversize suitcases. These should be retained as hand luggage and stored in the overhead lockers for the maximum inconvenience of others.

Security, passport control and boarding

1. Here in China we pride ourselves on having the fastest and most efficient airport security staff in the world. Please remember though that we are duty-bound to appear scary. Such behaviour as smiling at passport control staff, or saying ‘Ni hao’ or other such potentially subversive remarks, is therefore strictly prohibited, and will be viewed as evidence that you are Up To Something.

2. When passing through the security gates, please try to ensure you have NO metal anywhere on your person. We are quite unable to adjust our metal detectors to distinguish between a zip or a bra fastening and a howitzer. Seriously, those bra fastenings can be lethal in the wrong hands. Of course the fact that everyone therefore sets off the alarm gives us a good excuse to grope you. We guarantee that you will always be groped by someone of the opposite sex to avoid ~~embarrassment~~ boredom. If you wish us to feel your boobs a little more, or stick our hands a little further down your trousers, please ask. We aim to please our customers.

3. On arrival at the boarding gate, please remember the rule is at least two seats per person. You may sleep here if you wish. In fact we recommend it; you will have a long wait, as your flight will not board until a minimum of half an hour later than the time announced. As this is now standard practice, no explanation or apology will be offered. We may however call your flight two or three times before the real boarding time. We find this helps to keep our passengers alert and to weed out the weaker ones who didn’t really want to fly that much anyway.

4. About ten minutes before the plane is due to board, you may start to queue. Please see ‘Arrival and Check-in’ point 4, above, for rules governing queueing. Since you will now be less hampered by luggage, you are free to use your elbows to secure your place. If you choose to wait until the flight is actually boarding, you will of course be last onto the plane and have nowhere to store your hand luggage. Some customers enjoy this, however, at it provides greater potential for arguments with their fellow travellers, which is all part of the package.

5. At the gate, your boarding pass will be checked and scanned. Three seconds later it will be checked again by a teenage trainee who watched it being scanned, but needs to check again in case you defaced it or accidentally ran to a different gate in the interim. He or she will then point in the direction of the plane. We find this is necessary as some of our customers have not seen an aircraft before and become easily confused.

On the plane

1. Boarding an aircraft poses a challenge for the Chinese traveller, as it entails a certain amount of waiting for the person in front of you to finish stowing their luggage and sit down, with minimum pushing-past space available. Please accept our apologies while we do what we can to rectify this situation, but in the meantime we suggest you look for opportunities to shove people into the backs of seats, kick them, and of course shout at them wherever you can.

2. We assume that at least three members of your party will never have flown previously, so there will be time before we take off for them to take photographs of the cabin staff, the overhead lockers, the exits, etc. We positively encourage excited shouting at all times.

3. Please explain to your relatives that the safety instructions are there to be disregarded. In particular, the rules pertaining to the wearing of seatbelts are simply quite irrelevant to all Chinese passengers. Small children should be prompted to sit on the floor between seats during take-off, or in the aisle during the at-seat trolley service. Keeping as much luggage on your lap as possible will help to make things dangerous for everyone, so we recommend this.

4. Food will be served during your flight, in the form of the standard ‘Box of Strangeness’. This will consist of: a hot meal (either chicken or beef with either rice or noodles), some pickled stuff, some ‘mixed fruit’ (which, being a packet of peanuts, is neither fruit nor mixed), a sweet roll of some description, cough drops, and another random odd fruit or vegetable-based product. Hot towels (or ‘turbans’ as we prefer to call them) will be provided. However, please feel free to consume your own snacks, especially if they a) smell overpoweringly of fish or b) are swimming in soy sauce which may leak all over your tray table and run off into the lap of your neighbour. If this happens, it is essential that you avoid all verbal or eye contact with the neighbour in question, even when he or she summons the flight attendant to mop up your mess for you.

5. Very important. You have the right to recline your seat at any time except during take-off and landing. However, the person sitting in front of you does not. Should they disregard this rule please adopt the following procedure: first shout at them; then, if they do not immediately straighten up, grasp their headrest firmly with both hands and shake their seat vigorously. Repeat, with shouting, until they either relent or pretend to fall asleep.

Landing and disembarkation

1. The announcement that the plane is about to land is your cue to get up to use the lavatory. Correct practice is to wait until the person who has been waiting the longest is about to go in, and then push in front of them.

2. Upon touchdown, please leap immediately from your seat and start retrieving your luggage from the overhead compartments. Any suggestion that you should ‘remain in your seat until the aircraft has come to a complete standstill’ is clearly preposterous and is just said to test you. In fact, it’s a little game we like to play in order to train our cabin staff in the vital skill of shouting. On noticing half the passengers on their feet while the plane is still moving very fast along the runway, they will charge down the aisle yelling at you to sit down and close the lockers. Your job is to sit down while they are looking at you, and then immediately get up again the instant their back is turned. Several repetitions of this sequence will help to pass those boring minutes while you are waiting to reach the terminal building.

3. The retrieval of luggage from lockers and getting off the plane presents some of the same problems as boarding. Here, however, you have the advantage of being able to drop large items onto your fellow passengers’ heads or toes. If disembarking in a cold climate, this is also the moment to try to don your winter wardrobe while everyone else is doing the same in a very tight, warm and enclosed space.

4. On finding yourself at the Baggage Reclaim point inside the terminal, it is best to position yourself a maximum of six inches from the opening through which the cases will emerge. This will enable you to grab the first item you see which resembles yours without allowing anyone else to get a look at it. If you are unlucky enough not to be one of the dozen people occupying this same spot at any one time, you can stake your territory by using your trolley as an offensive weapon and simply push others, and their trolleys, aside. Please don’t forget to shout loudly to the other members of your party while doing this; it really does relieve tension.

5. Another member of staff will be positioned at the exit from the Baggage Reclaim hall to scan the bar code on your suitcase and that on your boarding pass, to check that they match and that you have therefore got the right luggage. We are however considering abandoning this last policy as it is just too damn sensible and we are unable to see any potential problems which might arise from it.

For a slightly preferable form of air travel, please see here.

Hidden Harbin

2009-01-31T10:14:00.014+08:00

Desperate to escape his family by the fifth day of the enforced holiday, one of Peter's colleagues phoned the other day and offered to take us out for a drive. 'I will show you some sights', he said.

We were expecting a tour of Harbin's better-known tourist landmarks - St Sophia Church (seen it), the Flood Monument (ditto), Central Street (Russian shops, Russian bars and more Russian shops), and maybe a few more ice sculptures, seeing as they're everywhere - but what we got was something altogether more surprising.

The combination of China's culture being so ancient, and yet most of its historical cities having been virtually razed to the ground and turned into concrete jungles in the 1960s, makes it easy to forget that Harbin is possibly its youngest city. Springing from nothing at the turn of the 20th century when the Russians came to build the Trans-Siberian Railway (or the North-East China Railway, as they would have it here), Harbin is barely more than 100 years old. What's more, much of the Art Nouveau Russian-built architecture has survived, albeit often in a run-down state.

Our pal showed us Harbin's two oldest hotels - both quite unremarkable from the outside, but inside a glittering reconstruction of how they must have looked in their early 20th century heyday. Both are still functioning hotels but seem quite happy for tourists to come in off the street and peek about. The first, the Post Hotel, was apparently the grandest destination in the city in the 1920s and 30s, much frequented by expats, and has a brilliant display in the foyer of all the artefacts left behind by (or otherwise purloined from!) said expats, who seemed to have been of a dizzying array of nationalities from Jewish to Japanese, Italian, Portuguese, British and German, as well as Russian and American. All the objects have been scrubbed and polished and restored to their original state, and provide a fascinating insight into the lives of wealthy business people at the time, even if the well-intentioned Chinese curators seem to have had trouble identifying some of them (such as a silver bed-warming pan described as 'Tableware used by the British'!). The hotel has many original features and retains an Art Deco style in its decor. (Sorry, I'm starting to sound like an estate agent.)

The second hotel, whose name I sadly forget, is Harbin's oldest (built in 1901) and has a marble staircase and its original copper revolving door from that era. Again it's succeeded in keeping its period feel through careful restoration, and reminded us of some of the Art Nouveau public buildings in Prague - and it's not often you can say that about anything in China! It too had a foyer exhibition, just photos this time, which showed, among other things, that the Emperor Puyi (the 'Last Emperor' of cinematic fame) stayed there during his years in exile.

As well as seeing Harbin's synagogue, its huge blue mosque,

the seat of Qing dynasty government (note puff of smoke from exploding firecracker - really, guys, it was fun for a day or two but enough's enough now!),

and the former British embassy from the expat days (now a ski shop!), we also had a trip to Harbin's main municipal museum which is also housed in an impressive Russian building (saving the treat of the Japanese Germ Warfare Museum for another day!). Apart from that, and the fact that it's free to go in, it wasn't that exciting, although there were some interesting things there such as Qing-dynasty (17th century) traditional costumes, Ming pottery which looked as though it could have been bought last week at John Lewis, and some gorgeous silver trinkets from earlier eras. Oh, and a whole dinosaur (dead) and its eggs. On the whole though, if you can cast your mind back to museums you were forced to visit on school trips 30-plus years ago, you'll get the general idea - dusty, musty, and laid out in an unimaginative chronological order in glass cases, the way they used to do before someone twigged that this bored kids senseless and invented interactive displays. To give it its due, though, it was busy, with lots of families there - but then again, like I said before, it was the fifth day of a very long holiday!

By far the most interesting thing we saw, though, was Harbin's hutong. Fans of last year's Olympics will have heard tell of Beijing's hutong ad infinitum. Translated alternately as 'narrow alleyways' ('snickelways' to those familiar with York!) or 'slums', depending on your politico-cultural stance on such things, Beijing seems to be wiping its hutong out in the name of progress while simultaneously marketing the remaining ones as a tourist attraction. Harbin, I think, having now seen its version of the hutong, is unlikely ever to achieve the latter, but as some of the buildings are now being renovated there's a possibility that in ten years you may see the whole thing transformed - a la docklands - into trendy loft-apartment-type residences for upwardly-mobile young Chinese - or even pretentious westerners, assuming any (others) ever come to Harbin.

But for now, we felt it was important to capture this. The ghost-town aspect is mainly due to all the shops being shut for the festival, but it's still a million miles away from the shiny, wide-lane, high-tech environment in which we live.

Happy Birthday, Rover

2009-01-27T12:26:00.004+08:00

We know January’s a dull and depressing month back home, so we thought we’d give you an excuse for a celebration.

If you have a dog, today is the day to dress up Pooch in his best party hat, bake him a doggy cake and invite all his little doggy friends over for a few games of Pass the Bone or Pin the Tail on the Postman. Yes folks, according to Chinese New Year lore, today (the second day of the lunar new year) is all dogs’ birthday.

Now what could be more sensible than that? All the pets I ever had were born long before we bought or acquired them, so we always had to make birthdays up for them and more or less guess their ages – with the exception of the cat who had the same birthday as me, although I suspect my parents may have made that one up too out of sentimentality. Here, you’ve got your doggy date of birth all sorted for you thanks to centuries of tradition.

Apologies to cat-lovers, by the way, as the moggies don’t seem to get a look-in on this one. Actually I don’t think many people have cats here; I’ve only seen about three (all on the same day, as it happens – dunno what that signifies!). Most people have what we call SLDs (Silly Little Dogs) of the type beloved of supermodels and elderly Spanish ladies. In fact, prior to coming to China I thought Barcelona was the SLD capital of the world, but Harbin or Shanghai may well have stolen its crown.

Now, while I’m on the subject of New Year lore, here are some Errata (tut!) from the previous post. According to Peter, the fires on street corners are NOT made from coals but from paper. (It looks likes coals to me.) If you want your ancestors to get a car, you DRAW a car on a piece of paper and then burn it, not write the word. (What’s the difference if it’s in Chinese characters anyway?!) The third and fourth days of the new year are the ones for visiting graves, NOT the second day – obviously, you’ll be too busy making jelly and ice cream for your dog on Day 2 – silly of me. And you’ll be pleased to know, I’m sure, that Kevin managed to get a cancellation for a second class airline ticket home so didn’t have to fly first class after all – though having flown second class on Chinese airlines many times now myself, frankly in his position I would have stuck to the ‘Oh no, I can’t get a ticket’ line, seeing as someone else was paying!

So, how did we spend New Year’s Eve? The one two nights ago, obviously, not the real one; we spent that, ironically enough, having a Chinese meal in Wetherby and then discoing the night away with my irrepressible in-laws (the oldest teenagers in town) at the Swan and Talbot, and a jolly good night was had by all. I was about to say that this is the first time I’ve ever had two NYEs in the space of a month, but in fact that’s not strictly true. In 1997, if memory serves, we not only had two Hogmanays but even saw the new year in twice in the same night (on about December 19th) - but that’s another story.

I was thinking we could maybe travel the world in search of cultures who celebrate New Year at other times, and see if we can get into the Guinness Book of Records for the most New Years in a year, or something? We could be like that crazy bloke somewhere in England who celebrates Christmas 365 days a year. I can see us wearing party hats all the time, shrieking ‘The bells, the bells!’ in an over-excited manner whenever midnight came and perpetually singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ while attempting to snog strangers at every opportunity, until everyone was thoroughly sick of us.

But I digress.

The main feature of the other night’s celebrations was, of course, fireworks. We needn’t have worried about not seeing any, or having to stand out in the cold to watch them – they were being set off continuously all evening, in many cases just feet from our window.

In the UK when people do fireworks in their back gardens on November 5th, it’s pretty safe, partly because the fireworks are so – well – crap, and partly because everyone has been so indoctrinated into the discipline of ‘lighting the blue touchpaper and then withdrawing’ (always sounds a bit rude to me) and keeping small children and animals at least 20 feet away at all times, that the frisson of excitement factor is generally nil.

Here they like to live on the edge. Letting off fireworks a couple of feet outside the front door of a tower block, so that the flying, burning bits (and boy did they fly) land on people’s balconies and set fire to stuff? Not a problem. The fire brigade were called, and a few people – but not many, really, considering the size of the apartment block in question, which was just across the street from us – sensibly put on their coats, evacuated the building and waited outside until they could see it was safe to return. But most, including the people in the flat ALMOST DIRECTLY ABOVE the one with the fire, stayed in and watched out of the window.

No fewer than four fire engines arrived, which seemed a little excessive in view of the fact that this scenario must surely have been being replicated a hundred times all over Harbin. Two firemen eventually appeared in the window directly above the blaze, which was about 14 floors up. The flat itself was in darkness, the residents presumably absent and unaware that their precious collection of rotting cabbages or whatever they were storing on their balcony was going up in smoke. The firemen tried to hose out the flames, but were unable to get the right angle. They therefore withdrew for a consultation of the type the Chinese do best, discussing the best course of action at length while the disaster unfolds before their eyes (heaven forbid that anyone should lose face by making a quick decision). Finally the guy from the flat opposite the one they were in (the one mentioned above who’d been watching the whole thing from his window), came out onto his balcony and poured a bucket of water over the fire beneath, extinguishing it completely.

Total time and manpower expended by the fire brigade: twenty minutes, four engines, goodness knows how many fire-fighting personnel in each, and one very long hose. Result: zero. Number of people burning to death in other parts of the city while this fiasco was taking place: unknown.

Apart from this, our chief entertainment of the evening was watching the annual CCTV Gala on telly, helpfully partially dubbed and subtitled by our friends at good old CCTV9. Traditionally, all Chinese families would gather round the TV after their New Year’s Eve meal (much like the Morecambe & Wise Christmas Show in Britain in the 70s) to watch this five-hour extravaganza. Clearly many people nowadays prefer to be outside setting fire to their neighbours’ balconies and deafening unsuspecting westerners with non-stop firecracker explosions, but the Gala is bigger and better than ever nonetheless.

Words are a poor tool with which to describe this event. Sorry to hark back to the 1970s yet again, but that was the last time that we attempted a variety show to even begin to rival this. There was song, dance and, er, ‘comedy’ on a gigantic scale. The costumes were huge. The hair was huger - and more glittery, and more solid. Every performer was backed by several hundred dancers in elaborate attire chosen to reflect the theme of the song. The set had a jaw-dropping backdrop with vast pillars and a constantly changing computer graphic showing everything from swirling flowers to happy children gamboling in the fields, and even a giant dancing ginseng root for the rap song about Chinese herbal medicine. (Yes really. Choice lyrics: ‘The medicine may be bitter but the affliction is more galling’, or ‘I will write you a prescription to cure the ill caused by fawning on foreign things’.) This was performed by a pretty boy in a gold jacket and a tiny six-year-old Michael-Jackson-alike who could spin on his head.

If the singing was bad, the comedy sketches reached new heights of awfulness. Unfortunately they didn’t subtitle them fully, just gave a summary of the plot, which didn’t really illuminate why everyone was roaring with laughter or why the flippin’ thing went on for twenty minutes. We did laugh, however, when it came to the sketch which for some inexplicable reason was set in ‘an expensive Scottish restaurant’ in a remote Chinese village. (Someone should tell them there are no Scottish restaurants, even in Scotland.) I think the Scottish theme had been introduced for comedy value merely in order to get a camp waiter in a skirt on stage. This chap’s costume was basically a LONG, tartan-ish skirt, complete with white lace frill around the hem and a strange flap at the side. With this he wore a long, silky, white tunic, a tartan scarf flung rakishly around his neck, and shiny black brogues. Presumably this is how they think Scottish men dress (in their ‘stripy skirts’)!! Regrettably we never found out what was on the menu in this Scottish restaurant as that bit wasn’t translated.

In any case, by then the explosions from outside had got so loud that we couldn’t hear the telly any more. From about 11pm, if you’d phoned us you could seriously have been forgiven for thinking we were in a war zone. It was constant, and absolutely deafening. We had to shout to each other to make ourselves heard. Fortunately, as I say, this did succeed in drowning out the finale of the Gala, which consisted of a number of medleys of very scary ‘Isn’t China GREAT??!!!’ songs clearly from a previous era which shall remain nameless.

At about 1.30am, the noise had just about subsided enough for us to go to bed. They very considerately waited until 8.15am the next morning before starting again. It took us most of yesterday to recover.

Thank goodness we don’t have a dog. I just couldn’t handle the stress of a party today.

What a load of Ox

2009-01-25T06:28:00.001+08:00

Is it a bull? Is it an ox? Who cares, it's Chinese New Year!

The whole of China has gone de-mob happy (this being one of only two weeks' holiday that most of them get each year), trains and planes are filled to bursting, the shops are crammed with people making last minute purchases of festive fare, and the trees are full of pretty lights. Everything pretty much shuts down for a week, and attempting to get anything done in the preceding couple of weeks is a struggle. Sound familiar? Having just spent Christmas in the UK it gives one a distinct sense of déjà vu. I have to say though, they really know how to do fairy lights in Harbin. There are even fake trees whose branches are made entirely from lights. Princes Street, eat your heart out.

Curiously, the new year holiday is more regularly referred to as 'Spring Festival', which is kind of hard to reconcile with the temperatures of -20 and the permanent covering of ice. Usually it all happens in February, but being a lunar festival (the second new moon after the winter solstice - or the first new moon in Aquarius, according to your taste) it does sometimes fall early, like those annoying years when Easter's in March. Technically this is the year of the Earth Ox, not just any old ox, and each year is also considered either yin or yang on an alternating cycle, so the astrological thing is much more complicated than it at first appears. I'm not going to pamper you with links here though as I'm sure you can do your own Google search if you're genuinely curious about it!

All day and night for the last week we've been deafened by the sound of fireworks and firecrackers going off all around. The firecrackers are in long strings which means the explosions go on for ages. They're allowed to do this for a week before New Year and two weeks afterwards, but not at any other time. Great - three whole weeks of being kept awake until 2am on weeknights and woken up at 9am on Sunday. Guy Fawkes night has nothing on this. If Russia ever decided to invade China, this would be the time to do it - they could shell for a week before anyone noticed.

Unfortunately there's not much to see though. You do see the occasional firework going up, but the emphasis is definitely on noise rather than the visual. Apparently the idea is to frighten off some demon called Nian, which is the word for 'year'. He is also scared of the colour red (clearly a bit of a wimp, as demons go) which is why they hang up red lanterns in doorways. Of course if you were paying attention during last year's Olympics coverage, you'll all know that red is also associated with good luck, so there are lots of red decorations about. Children are traditionally given red envelopes containing money at New Year, and people like to wear red clothes.

Anyway we were hoping there'd be a big public fireworks display tonight, but we got our man to phone the government (as you do!) and he tells us there isn't. These really only seem to happen in places like Hong Kong where the private use of fireworks and firecrackers is banned for safety reasons. I don't think they care much about safety in Harbin but they do like to avoid anything which requires organisation in advance or officials actually doing any work. It's a bit flippin' cold to hang around watching fireworks anyway, so I'm not that bothered.

The weirdest thing we've observed - speaking on a relative scale, this being a country of ultimate weirdness - is the fires on street corners. People traditionally light fires to make offerings to their ancestors: for example, if you think they might want a car, you write down 'car' on a piece of paper and burn it - a bit like a primitive form of online shopping. The thing is that they do this in the gutter, on the street corner. Over an open fire of burning coals. Right next to all the cars, buildings, trees and people. Like I say, safety not a big concern really.

But the main thing is that it's all about family. They have a big family meal on New Year's Eve, then they go out visiting relatives the next day, and on the second day they're supposed to visit the graves of their ancestors I think, but this is now considered bad luck. Anyway, in this day and age most people have to travel to see their families, hence the rail and air travel chaos. Kevin was in despair earlier in the week having failed to get a ticket for any train for his first visit home in a year. In the end he had to fly first class as that was all he could get. Time to learn the merits of forward planning, my boy.

It's also traditional to start the year afresh by cleaning your house thoroughly before New Year's Eve (oh damn, that's today - oh well, missed it!) but you mustn't clean at all during the first few days of the new year in case you sweep the good luck away (now it's starting to sound like my kind of holiday). You should also get a haircut and an entire new set of clothes, which probably explains the shopping frenzy last weekend. The supermarkets are full of really cute traditional mandarin-style outfits for kiddies. On the first day of the new year you're supposed to leave your windows open to let the good luck in, but in view of the climate I say: arrange these words to make a well-known phrase or saying: that, soldiers, game, sod.

However, in keeping with the 'out with the old' ethos, I thought I would share with you the following video which I actually filmed back in September when we first moved into our apartment but which I've been unable to upload here due to having an ADSL line with the diameter of a pinhead. It shows the fab but crazy Chineseness of the flat, including the kitchen light which we dubbed 'the disco jellyfish' (you'll recognise it when you see it) which sadly died this week and had to be replaced with a boring white light.

Also, since I had to enlist the help of a kind friend back home at Christmas (thanks John) to get any video clips onto this blog at all, you've also got more ceilidh dancing from our party back in December. Sorry for the tardiness in sharing these, but make the most of them as they may well be the last videos you ever see here. And it is also Burns Night, so a bit of Scottishness doesn't go amiss. Incidentally Peter got a letter from Lidl this week telling him they've extended their range of kilts. It's a good thing we're over here, I'd have had to hold him back.

Happy New Year! Again.

Death by salesman

2009-01-20T13:57:00.003+08:00

You never know what’s going to happen next around here.

On Saturday, we were just getting ready to go out when there was a ring at the doorbell. The screen on our video entry phone (on of the many ridiculous and quite unnecessary mod cons with which our flat is equipped) showed the peaked cap of one of the security guards, peering over a large package. Behind him another figure could be seen, apparently carrying a large pile of boxes.

Mystified, as we weren’t expecting any kind of delivery, Peter let him in. On arrival at the door he profferred one of the boxes and launched into an explanation.

‘Sorry’, said Peter in Chinese, ‘I don’t speak Chinese’.

Ignoring this (as they usually do), the guard continued handing over the package. He showed a list with all the flat numbers, several of which had signatures next to them. It became apparent we too were meant to sign for our box. There was much smiling and joviality. This, it seemed, was a free New Year gift for each flat, from whom we know not, but Peter signed and thanked him and off he went, quite happy.

What do you think it was? Drink? Hardly likely. Sweets? Sadly not. It was – and you’ll all be sorry you’re missing out, I’m sure – ‘Quick Frozen Glutinous Corn’. In other words, corn on the cob. At least 10 of them, loose, in a box. Every home should have one – and if you live here, it seems every home will bloomin’ well get one, whether it likes it or not.

Anyway, having started thus, our day proceeded to get weirder and weirder. We’d decided to go to the main shopping area in the city centre where there are three shopping centres side by side which we’d not visited before. Peter was keen to try and buy some shoes which would serve for wearing in the office and walking there in the snow, rather than having to change into his walking boots twice a day or risk a tumble on the ice.

The shopping centre (we only got to one) proved to be much like every other one we’ve seen in China, namely huge, glitzy, overpriced, and following an identical layout: basement – supermarket; ground floor – jewellery and cosmetics; first floor – men’s clothes; second & third floors – women’s clothes; fourth floor – household goods. Sometimes they have the same pattern but are all on one floor, in which case they replicate the thing horizontally, as it were, in huge long aisles stretching further than the eye can see. I’m not sure who these malls are designed for. Most of the goods are way outside the price range of the majority of ordinary Chinese people so they are quite often virtually empty, but in cold weather people seem to gather there as a social event, and wander around quite happily just looking at things.

Last Saturday – being the Chinese equivalent of the last shopping weekend before Christmas, I suppose – was an exception. I wouldn’t quite describe it as a retail frenzy on a British scale, but the place was heaving and people were definitely buying. There was a festive atmosphere and some live traditional music by the Clinique counter.

Shopping in China is a Trial. When you buy something in these places, it’s a huge palaver. You get take your item to the counter and they ring it through, but then they keep the item and instead give you a bill, which you have to take to a separate cash desk, not necessarily nearby. There, having used your specially sharpened elbows to fight off would-be queue-jumpers, you pay, and get a receipt which you then take back to the original desk to retrieve your purchase. If you then also want a fa piao (see earlier post if you're one of the few people on the planet, it seems, who doesn't now know what a fa piao is!), you generally have to go to yet another desk – usually miles away in an obscure corner of the shop – and queue/jostle again to present your receipt and tell them what to enter into their fa piao computer. (We now have this down to a fine art, by the way, ever since Kevin provided us with a magic piece of paper with all the requisite details written on in Chinese.)

But it’s not just this, or the language barrier, or the different sizes, or not being able to recognise the products half the time. It’s the fact that they WILL NOT leave you alone. The minute you walk into any shop, at least one assistant will immediately leap up, greet you and proceed to follow close behind you as you move around the shop, so that it’s impossible to look at anything. If you do linger over an item for more than a millisecond, he or she will start telling you about it. Protestations that you don’t speak Chinese, or even blanking them completely, have little or no effect. They may hesitate for a fraction of a second, but will then resume as though programmed.

If by any chance they do speak English and you ask them nicely (or even not nicely) to go away and leave you alone so that you can look, they merely laugh and carry on. We once spent about 10 minutes trying to explain to the girl in a Beijing hotel shop that she’d be far more likely to make a sale to a westerner if they were left in peace to look around, but it simply did not compute. Even in the supermarket they employ staff as what we call ‘pointless pointers’, whose job is to stand in front of the shelves and point to the most expensive item in their section while giving you a sales pitch. Maybe it’s just a British thing, but it makes me want to SCREAM!

The trick (if there is one) seems to be that if you really don’t want to buy, you have to get out fast. If they sense the slightest hint that you are genuinely interested in making a purchase, they get the bit between their teeth and won’t let go. Sometimes this works to their own disadvantage, such as the woman in the same Beijing hotel who was convinced we wanted to buy jade name-stamps with our Chinese zodiac sign on the top and our names specially engraved on the bottom. We liked them, but the price she was asking was astronomical so we changed our minds. She pursued us for two days, finally going to the lengths of engraving our names on for us so that she was then obliged to sell them to us at whatever price we named.

I tell you, the whole experience is so infuriating I’ve more or less given up shopping - which for me is like going into rehab.

So there’s Peter, trying on shoes. Unfortunately he didn’t know his Chinese size, but after a bit of trial and error we ascertained he was a 260 (the approximate length of the foot in millimetres, in case you’re interested – much more sensible than our system). As it was busy, we’d managed to look at several and narrow it down without attracting the attention of the staff, but when it came to the point of asking for the left shoe there was nothing else for it. There were several girl assistants, dressed in smart uniforms with fab red and gold waistcoats, but our case was taken up by a chap whom we’d at first mistaken for a customer, as he was wearing only scruffy jeans and a bomber jacket, with no official badges or markings. However, as he seemed to be telling the girls what to do and they seemed not to object, we had to assume he did indeed belong to the store.

Peter tried on lots of pairs of shoes but none was suitable. When he finally found a pair he did like, they only had them in brown, and he wanted black. This all took some time; you know how it is. Chap in Jeans was highly attentive, but eventually he began to lose patience. He started persuading Peter to try on other pairs in size 255 or 265. Enthusiastic nodding greeted his protests that they were too small or large. Shoe Man kept producing brown ones. It took ages to get the message through that it was black or nothing, but when it did, this was clearly too much. He pointed angrily at Peter’s own shoes, which were brown, as if to say ‘Well, brown ones were obviously good enough for you before, so what’s wrong with mine?’, and started pulling black shoes off the shelf at random and virtually forcing Peter to try them on, irrespective of style or size. He seemed to be at his wits’ end.

After quite a lot of this, I suggested to Peter that maybe today just wasn’t his day on the shoe front, and that maybe we should go and look around the rest of the shopping centre before we actually died. He agreed, and thanking our friend profusely for his help, we set off. But Shoe Guy wasn’t taking No for an answer and began following us. We quickened our pace, and even hid behind some shirts, but as we were about to make our escape upstairs he cornered us at the bottom of the escalator and, grinning, beckoned Peter into what I took to be a stockroom through a concealed entrance at the back of a small shop.

A minute or so later, Peter re-emerged and called me. ‘You’ve got to see this,’ he said. Following him and the Shoe Guy, I stepped through the back of the shop – into a (literally) parallel universe. Attached to the shopping centre we were in, stretching away into darkness, was another narrow corridor of shops running alongside, but where ours were huge and brightly lit, these were poky and dark, with things hanging from the ceiling. Every single shop seemed to sell shoes. There was no obvious entrance or exit other than that which we had used, but customers were milling about as if oblivious to the 21st century going on next door. It was straight out of Harry Potter.

Peter was ushered into one of the little stalls, where our pal and several girls again attempted to bully him into trying on every pair of black shoes they had, becoming quite agitated when he argued that they weren’t his size. Finally I managed to bundle him out and get back onto our own side of the time portal, but our stalker could still be seen hanging about for quite a while, watching us as we walked around, and about an hour later he materialised beside us yet again, several floors up, and seemed to be saying that he had just two more pairs for Peter to try on if he would only come back downstairs. I half expected to see him chasing after our taxi, brandishing black shoes, as we drove home.

Maybe the ski shops of Edinburgh should take a leaf out of this guy’s book.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for...

2009-01-16T20:24:00.005+08:00

Yes, it's Harbin's only claim to world fame - the incredible Ice and Snow Festival!

As an early Chinese New Year celebration, we were taken yesterday on an office jolly - a grand day out, marred only slightly by the intervening meal which was somewhat strange (sliced pig's intestines or duck's tongues, anyone?) and conducted in near silence except for endless boring toasts in which everyone thanked everyone else and looked forward to prosperous business relationships, before it descended into the kind of corporate bonding games which I rate somewhere below root canal treatment in my list of preferred activities.

But the ice and snow sculptures were just FABULOUS. And as it was 'only' minus 13°C, I didn't even feel that cold - but then again I was wearing three thermal vests, two scarves and an indeterminate number of dead sheep. Not to mention the WMEMs, of course.

Simply uploading a few pictures to this blog wouldn't do the thing justice, so if you click below you can see the whole album - just hit 'Slideshow' for the full effect once you're there. I say 'full effect' but you'll have to imagine the (loudly) piped classical music which accompanied it all. Peter and I got some funny looks when they got to 'Bolero' and we started Torvill & Deaning-it on the ice.

Anyway, it's the Snow Festival first (which had a Finnish theme, hence the strong Father Christmas and Moomin motifs), then the Ice Festival - they take place in adjoining parks next to the (frozen) Songhua River, some views of which you can also see. Hard to comprehend, I know, but all the structures which look like the Blackpool Illuminations on acid are made entirely from ice blocks, hewn from that river.

Why? Who knows. Apparently it grew out of a local tradition for making ice lanterns by hollowing out blocks of ice and putting a candle inside. I suppose someone thought, 'Ooh, it might be pretty if we joined a few of these together and put coloured lightbulbs in them', and from there - in just ten years - Harbin's Ice Festival became one of the 'big four' ice sculpture festivals worldwide (the other three being Montreal, Sapporo in northern Japan, and somewhere in Finland). Mainly due to the proximity of the Songhua and its endless supply of ice, Harbin now boasts the biggest annual ice festival in the world.

I am now more convinced than ever that it's the most bonkers place on Earth.

Enjoy our pictures.

The season of peace and glove

2009-01-13T11:10:00.004+08:00

A belated Happy New Year to you all – and as you can see, it’s new year, new look, for From Scotland to Siberia. The previous template (chosen in some haste) was just too – well – pink, and that Georgia font, while it looked lovely in our wedding invitations, is a bit too curly for on-screen reading, so I decided to go sans serif. If anyone actually preferred the old look, please tell me, and I might think about it. Or I might just ignore you.

Anyway, you’ll be glad to know they let us back into China - although I did have Amazon’s number in my phone and primed as we came through Immigration, just in case! (See earlier post).

We managed to pass a very pleasant and restful few weeks with our families and friends in the UK, despite spending rather more time than one might wish being forced to read the Daily Express advice on how to avert the recession by not buying anything (not sure quite how that works), enduring endless discussions about the Strictly Come Dancing phone-in votes scandal (what?), sitting in doctors’ and dentists’ surgeries, having injections, and rushing around buying up the entire contents of Boots and Morrison’s, trying desperately to stock up on all the things we can’t buy in China. We bought, or were given, so much stuff that I bravely decided to forego the purchase of more Marmite, resolving instead to eke out my remaining third of a jar until the next visit home. In the end we had to buy another suitcase so I could have carried it after all. It’s a tragedy.

But not as tragic as the tale which I’m about to tell you, concerning the World’s Most Expensive Mittens.

I purchased the WMEMs back in August at Blues the Ski Shop in Edinburgh. I don’t mind giving the shop a wee bit of free publicity there, as they are easily the best stocked, most helpful and definitely the most polite of all the ski- and outdoor shops in the city – and believe me, after last week, I know what I’m talking about.

Prior to moving out here, we had been given a ‘cold weather clothing allowance’ with which to buy outdoor wear suitable for Harbin in winter, and knowing not much about that kind of thing, we went to said shop and told them we were moving to ‘somewhere cold’.

‘How cold?’ asked the nice laddie. ‘Are we talking Alps? Rockies?’

‘Try Himalayas’, we replied. ‘Or Siberia’.

‘How cold does it get?’ he enquired.

‘Ooh, minus 35-ish’, we said.

He promptly ushered us towards a special section labelled ‘Mega Expensive Clothing For Lunatics’ (well, it may as well have been) and proceeded to give us the low-down on coats with ceramic bead inserts, thermals spun from the wool of specially reared and individually named sheep whose progress you could follow on a website (seriously), and last but not least the benefits of down-filled ski mittens. Basically the moral of the story in all cases seemed to be: modern artificial fibres may now be very advanced and capable of withstanding great extremes of weather, but at the end of the day, nothing – apologies to the vegetarians amongst you but this is the word of an expert here – nothing beats natural materials when it comes to keeping out the cold.

Now it has to be said that I do tend to suffer with cold hands and feet, and we’d been warned that ordinary fleece, woollen or even leather gloves simply wouldn’t cut it in Harbin, so getting a good pair was high on my priority list. I tried on a few of the less fancy pairs in the shop but wasn’t satisfied with the fit. ‘OK’, I said in the end. ‘Show me your down-filled mittens. Do your worst.’

Well, it was love at first sight. They were cream-coloured on the back, quilted, with a black leather palm and a fleecy lining. They came down over the wrist like a gauntlet and could be tightened or loosened by means of a velcro strap at the base of the hand. When I put my hand inside, my whole body felt warm, and they fitted like a – well, you know, a thing that fits very well.

They were £55. For a pair of mittens. But I just couldn’t resist.

It was late November before I had a chance to give the WMEMs their inaugural outing. The temperature had dropped to about minus 12 by day, minus 20 by night, but my hands were fabulously toasty. Outside, I couldn’t feel a thing (or, indeed, do anything either, as they tended to lend a sort of toy-soldier effect to one’s hand movements and make it impossible to open doors or pick things up – but hey, I was warm!). Indoors, even in a car, I had to remove them immediately or I’d have spontaneously combusted. The cream colour had already proved to be hopelessly impractical in a soot-stained city like Harbin, but I kept sponging them gently since they professed to be dry-clean only.

As it happened, I didn’t actually go out much during December, so I’d probably worn them on no more than about four occasions when it was time to fly home for Christmas. I reckoned I wouldn’t need them in the UK, and certainly not in Shanghai where we spent a few days at either end of the holiday (though in practice it turned out to be chillier in both places last week than we’d anticipated), and so contemplated leaving them behind, but remembering that we’d be arriving back into Harbin on a January night at temperatures of minus 25, I decided to take them with me.

I wore them as we left the house, then took them off for the car journey to the airport, taking care to put them on the floor with my handbag and not on my lap so that I wouldn’t forget they were there when I stood up. I carried them into the airport, and then, in the check-in queue, frustrated by having too many things to carry, I hurriedly shoved them into the backpack which I was using as hand luggage.

And that was the last I saw of them. Or I should say, of one of them. Peter was getting something else out of the backpack that night at the hotel in Shanghai when he said, ‘Oh, one of your gloves is here.’

‘They’re both there’, said I.

‘No’, he said. He searched the bag. I searched the bag. We searched our other bags. There was, most definitely and most, most tragically, only one WMEM.

I’m not ashamed to say I cried. (It’d been a long day.) I am, however, slightly ashamed by my Paris Hilton-like behaviour which followed.

Knowing I’d had them at Harbin airport, I got Peter to phone Kevin, who dutifully phoned the airport and harangued the lost property department, left luggage and the head of cleaning regarding the loss of the ‘very special and expensive’ glove which his boss’s wife had obviously dropped there. The next day I made him phone them again and do the same thing. But all to no avail.

The next day, we flew to Edinburgh, where I had resolved that at all costs I MUST replace the WMEMs with EXACTLY the same ones. Never mind that we had used up our cold weather clothing allowance. Never mind that I could probably buy something very similar in China and claim the money back. I had to have them, and I had to have them NOW (or at least before that flight back to Harbin).

Sadly there wasn’t time before Christmas, so it was last week, early in January, when I eventually went back to Blues and talked to another helpful young man. No, they didn’t have those, but they had the same make in white for £70. Even I baulked at this. Or these, which were not quite as good but very similar, and which felt actually a bit less toy-soldierish and were only £40, but they didn’t have my size. They could try their Glasgow branch? No, I said, I’m leaving the country tomorrow. He suggested a couple of other shops.

I then spent two afternoons trudging up and down the central shopping streets of Edinburgh in search of down-filled ski mittens. No one had them. ‘People don’t really use down much these days’, the uber-cool dude in the snowboard shop informed me, condescendingly. ‘Down tends to be a bit too warm for skiing’, grunted a very surly Northern Irish guy in another shop. ‘Did I say I wanted them for skiing?’, I barked back in intense irritation, being by now in at least my seventh shop. By then they didn’t even have to be the same ones, but I was unshakeable on the down. Thermal micro mega-warm ultra-therm-tech go snow-proof hyper-fab heat-shield super techno fleece just WOULD NOT BE WARM ENOUGH.

Finally, crushed and defeated, I bought a pair of ordinary thermal gloves in Milletts for £12. It was the coldest day in the UK for – ooh, some number of years – check the papers. ‘Do you want to wear them now?’ asked the nice young lad. ‘Most people are, today.’

‘No thanks,’ I replied, ‘I’m going somewhere MUCH colder than here.’ ‘There’s nowhere colder than here,’ he said glumly. I couldn’t help but disabuse him. He apologised.

There was just one slim hope left. On our return to China, I kept the single glove in my hand luggage to show to the lost property people at Harbin airport, just in case they had found the other one and had kept it for me for all these weeks. Our flight into Harbin on Saturday night was delayed, and our poor sweet driver, Mr Li, had been waiting patiently for us for an hour. Despite this, I still insisted on keeping him hanging on further while I found out where the lost property office was. This took some time, as the first six people we asked didn’t speak English, and when Peter found the appropriate word in his phrase book and showed it to them, they kept trying to usher us through the security gates and couldn’t understand that we had just arrived on a plane.

In the end we phoned Kevin again and got him to explain that I was looking for a glove I’d lost on the 17th December. When prompted, I waved the remaining WMEM at them. Eventually the message got through and they went to check, but came back shaking their heads. Alas, all hope was lost. I sat, grieving, with my poor lonely WMEM and contemplated hanging it on the wall as a trophy, while wondering how on earth I would be able to go the Harbin Ice Festival in inferior gloves. It was a sad night.

…..

Last night, Peter went to the supermarket, and took my (now empty) backpack – which I had carried the length and breadth of Britain for three weeks, and unpacked and re-packed at least four times in the process - to carry home the shopping.

He had finished unpacking it when he said, ‘Hang on, there’s something heavy in the bottom’.

‘No there’s not’, I said. ‘I emptied it.’

‘I’m telling you, there is!’, he insisted, and reached down and pulled out a slab of cheese which he’d just bought. ‘I think there’s a secret pocket at the back here’, he said. ‘And – oh! –

HERE’S YOUR OTHER GLOVE!’

So much to blog, so little time

2008-12-16T12:33:00.006+08:00

With our festive jaunt home to Blighty hurtling rapidly towards us, there seem to be a million things – well, at least three – each of which I could have written a whole article about but simply don’t have time. There follows, therefore, a smorgasbord of observations about this crazy world in which we find ourselves, which if I don’t get them down now are in danger of falling into the vast black hole that I once laughingly called my memory, never to be seen again.

So. Last week we had to call Building Management out again, when another dodgy bulb tripped all our fuses for the second time. It seems that they’d been trying to get in to see us for several weeks to check our water meter, but every time they came to the door we didn’t understand what they wanted so they hadn’t been able to gain access. We don’t like to call poor Kevin too often.

Anyway it appears that our water meter is low on money. The landlord says he will come ‘sometime’ and put some more money on it. He is unable to tell us when ‘sometime’ will be, despite the fact that we’re going away tomorrow for three weeks, but until then we are ‘not to worry’. This is typical of the Chinese total inability to plan anything in advance. They simply do not, will not, or cannot do it. On the day before our party, at about 4.30pm, Kevin sidled up to Peter looking a bit embarrassed and said sheepishly that ‘the girls’ had asked him to find out if we would have the party that night instead, as it suited them better! Attempting to order diaries and calendars as New Year gifts for his customers, Peter has been frustrated by the lack of any with space to write down appointments. When Kevin saw Peter’s own (British) diary he was baffled. ‘But why would you want to write down what you’re doing in the future?’, he enquired. ‘Chinese people do not do that. Sometimes they think about tomorrow. Or maybe, sometimes, the next day.’

Often Peter arrives at work in the morning to be told he has a meeting with an important client in half an hour’s time, which has just been arranged. They arrive to find about 10 local dignatories, bureau heads, factory bosses and the like who have all assembled at what appears to be a moment’s notice. After the meeting, they progress to an apparently equally impromptu but sumptuous lunch of unidentifiable but delicious dishes, be it at the most expensive restaurant in Harbin or a transport caff in a dodgy rural town (where all conversation stops and all heads turn as Peter walks in). Much ‘Gan bei!’ and general hilarity ensues, even when the interpreter has to leave early, leaving him alone with a group of monolingual Chinese bigwigs. Business here is strongly based on the principle of ‘guan xi’ which translates as ‘business relationship’ but basically seems to mean ‘getting people to trust you by getting drunk with them outside work before anyone signs anything’. No wonder he’s enjoying his job!

Some of the places he’s visited on these jaunts have been eye-openers. Parts of Harbin itself are quite poor, but outside the city it’s another world. Last week he went to Acheng, which he described as ‘like Castleford or Pontefract in the 1970s’ (not, I gather, a recommendation) but which still boasted huge wide streets, impressive amounts of public artworks, and the entrance to the town was guarded by a huge arch, fabulously decorated in vibrant colours. In another place, they had to drive through a market, squeezing between stalls where people were selling frozen meat and fish - frozen by the air temperature, that is; no need for freezers here! They had almost reached the end when a vehicle appeared, blocking their way. With no way to turn round, Mr Li, our ultra-resourceful and ever-smiling driver, reversed the entire length of the market, back between the stalls down the narrow, winding lane, with frozen fish being flung back and forth and a guy on a tricycle behind him, who would only reverse a few yards at a time until Mr Li got out and remonstrated firmly with him. The whole process took about an hour.

Needless to say, the weather fazes the locals not one jot. Peter’s first farm visit took place on the first day that the temperature dropped to minus 11°. Everyone happily tramped about in the snow and ice looking at maize pellets or whatever. In the UK such an event would have been cancelled on the spot. (Though of course this does presuppose that it would have been planned in advance!). But then they were all no doubt wearing the ubiquitous, the redoubtable, the indispensible - Harbin Thermals.

Thermals. God how they love them. Especially longjohns. You could almost hear the collective sigh of relief after they were able to get them on when it got vaguely cold at the start of November. Of course some people hedge their bets and never take them off all year round. We even saw brides wearing them under their wedding dresses on a hot day in May (truly). There are shops selling nothing but. I’m not saying you don’t need them of course – the wind doesn’t half bite through your trousers when you go out otherwise – but the problem is that if you go out, generally you’re going TO somewhere, like the shops, or a restaurant. And the shops and restaurants are BOILING, which makes the wearing of thermals quite unbearable indoors.

At Harbin airport they have countered this problem by supplying little changing booths near the baggage reclaim (with signs in Chinese, English and Russian), for the purposes of changing into your longjohns after arriving from somewhere hot. How brilliant an idea is that? Now if the shopping centres and supermarkets did that, it would be ok. But as it is, you have to put your thermals on immediately before leaving the house and then make a run for it (seeing as it’s constantly 27°C in our flat – and I mean constantly). Then by the time you’ve arrived at your destination and are just about feeling a bit chilly and glad you put them on, you’re back indoors into a super-heated place with huge padded curtains over the doors for insulation, and pouring sweat while carrying your coat around. Something’s not right there. No wonder the locals acclimatise so well to their thermals that they’re terrified to take them off.

But otherwise they’re remarkably well-adapted to the weather. When it snows – which is disappointingly not that often, actually – an army of men with broomsticks materialises from nowhere, and with rapid efficiency they clear the snow from the roads and pavements within what seems like minutes. There’s none of the head-scratching and wondering what this white stuff can be that’s falling out of the sky, which accompanies the UK’s every annual snowfall. Once that’s done, being a very dry climate, there’s no slush to contend with, just icy patches here and there. Still, we do find it quite funny that people are sending us Christmas cards with snow-scenes on and writing things like ‘Bet your weather’s very different to this!!’ inside. Er, no, it’s not. It might be 27°C in our flat, but in the unheated utility room/balcony, a 3-litre bottle of water turned to a solid block of ice overnight.

And talking of solid blocks of ice, preparations for the famous Harbin ice festival would appear to be underway! Yes it seems this is one thing they CAN plan in advance for! So by way of Christmas greetings to you all, here are some pics of the embryonic ice sculptures – or more like ice constructions – which are shooting up around Peter’s office and our flat.

Tomorrow we’re off to Shanghai for the company expats’ Christmas lunch - at the Hilton, no less, where we get to behave like old colonials for a day – and then home for the festive season. So I’ll say Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all, and see you in three weeks.

Tips for the society hostess in China

2008-12-10T21:37:00.006+08:00

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the society lady who wishes to create a favourable impression upon her guests shall be expected to provide, in the context of any social function - be it grand or humble - to which she chooses to invite such guests, an evening comprising the following elements: fine wine and ales, stimulating conversation (in which said guests should at all costs be encouraged to mingle and discourse with others not of their prior acquaintance), musical entertainment, and, should she feel sufficiently daring to attempt this, a little communal dancing.

For those ladies as possess the imagination and the fortitude to attempt such a social event in the land of China, however, it must be recommended that a few addenda or annotations to the above advice be inserted, for the mutual benefit of all.

Firstly, a word regarding the guest list and the arrival of said guests. The society hostess in China cannot expect her guests to be ‘fashionably late’. On the contrary, she can expect them, if informed that the festivities will commence at eight o’clock, to meet in B&Q car park at ten minutes to that hour, and arrive all at once. (Note: this may exclude such guests as English Boss, who may choose to make a later entrance, all red face and bare feet, protesting that he has ‘rushed straight from the gym’. Such behaviour is, of course, his prerogative, and must be tolerated.) If the guests have been given prior permission to bring further guests of their own, the hostess should not be perturbed to discover that they will assume this invitation extends to young children, who may thus appear without warning.

Now on the subject of fine wine and ales. Try as she might to encourage her guests to partake of such excellent refreshments, the society hostess will find herself thwarted by their insistence, to a man, that they will take only ‘the non-alcoholic version’ of the mulled wine, please. The author’s proposed solution to this difficulty is simple: do not make a non-alcoholic version. Or at the very least, mention it only very quietly to those for whom alcohol is known to be strictly prohibited. Tell everyone else that the mulling process removes almost all traces of alcohol from the wine.

On the plus side, the hostess will find herself at the end of the evening with almost as much wine and exactly as much beer as she had at the start. This will compensate for the fact that no one - apart, again, from English Boss - will bring any alcoholic beverages with them. They may, of course, bring other gifts, which are most welcome, even if unsought, and will be gratefully received.

The question of stimulating talk provides a greater challenge. It is difficult to sustain a conversation with a person whose two words of one’s native tongue are ‘Hello’ and ‘Bye-bye!’, especially if the only words one knows oneself in their native tongue happen, by unfortunate chance, to be a translation of the exact same two words. The opportunities for philosophical discussion are, under these circumstances, understandably limited. Pointing, gesturing and smiling will only get even the most accomplished of hostesses so far. Of course, conversation may be attempted with those of the guests who do speak English, but these are not always readily identifiable.

The chief difficulty, however, lies in the fact that the art of ‘mingling’ – so crucial to the truly successful social occasion – has yet to be introduced to China. Thus, what may at first appear to be an example of another universal truth – namely, that all parties eventually end up in the kitchen – will prove in fact to be an attempt by the Chinese guests to simulate their own notion of a party by all sitting around a large (and, it must be said, imaginary) table in the dining room, talking amongst themselves at an elevated volume. As English Boss may be heard to point out, the reason why party guests usually gravitate to the kitchen is that this is where the fine wine and ales are generally to be found, but clearly this motivation is not a factor where our abstemious Chinese friends are concerned.

This will leave our host and hostess making an attempt to engage the one other western guest (Wildon’s English teacher) in a discussion regarding the habits and haunts of the local expatriate community. Unfortunately, he is entirely ignorant of such matters and appears, moreover, to wish he was anywhere else but at our hostess’s party, so this proves equally unsatisfying.

In these circumstances it may be considered best to cut straight to the communal dancing and musical entertainment.

These, prefaced by the distribution of the traditional ‘dram’ to all, should be led by mine host – attired, of course, in full Highland regalia (kilt: Lidl, £24.99) – and will feature such delights as the Gay Gordons and a Reduced Virginia Reel. (Note: this is not as enjoyable as the Gender-Confused Eightsome Reel, but this is strictly for the more advanced practitioner). The Chinese guests may, at first, be more willing spectators than participants. One or two may choose the melee as a suitably distracting moment at which to make a swift exit and sit in the car because the hostess’s home is too hot, even though it is minus 22° outside, but with a little persistence most can be induced to join in the fun, and can be heard to remark afterwards that they greatly admired the host’s ‘skirt’ – indeed, that it was the highlight of the evening - and that they had heard that 'Scottish men wore stripy skirts’ but had never actually seen one in the flesh, as it were.

Following this gaiety, a little light flute-playing and a discussion on the technicalities of playing the Chinese flute or dizi may be employed to calm the mood again from that of excitement to one of gentle relaxation.

After quite a lot of this, our hostess may find herself fervently wishing her guests would leave. In this instance, some gracious and well-chosen words to signal that the evening is at an end, and to express her gratitude and pleasure at her guests’ attendance and her dearest wish that she may see them again soon in the near future, are appropriate. Something along the lines of, ‘Come on you ‘orrible lot, get out of my house’. Otherwise she will find herself waiting until one of them plucks up the courage to enquire tentatively whether, at eleven o’clock, it is ‘ok if they leave now?’. Since they consider it rude to leave before ‘the end’ and she considers it rude to tell them it is the end, both sides could be in for a very long night unless someone takes the bull by the horns. And thus, the evening concludes.

Footnote: the consumption, thereafter, of the remainder of the whisky by, say, host and Boss should be approached with caution.

Talking of arrest and deportation....

2008-12-05T11:33:00.002+08:00

The award for utter crass bloody stupidity goes to.... Amazon - those beloved and usually harmless purveyors of books, CDs and DVDs to the millions of Brits (and probably Americans and many others) who can't face trotting down to Waterstone's or HMV during the Christmas rush to discover that their sought-after products are deemed too obscure to stock anyway. Yes, Amazon have really made one spectacular, and potentially politically dangerous, boo-boo.

Picture this, if you will. We order a batch of DVDs as Christmas presents for ourselves - innocuous TV comedies and dramas of the Frasier, Midsomer Murders and Mighty Boosh variety - to be sent here, to Peter's office. All our mail comes there and is always delivered from the UK within a week without problems. I also order a book which is to come separately, as I forgot to add it to the original order in time. After a few days we duly receive notification from Amazon that both parcels have been dispatched, and sit back and wait eagerly.

A week later, I receive another email from them, informing me that the parcel containing the book has been returned as 'undeliverable' and that I will be refunded in full. No reason is given. I check the address; all appears in order. This is very mystifying.

Until, that is, Peter arrives home later that day, bearing the second parcel (the one with the DVDs in) which was delivered that afternoon. Emblazoned in huge letters across the back of the packaging are the words, 'GUNS 'N' ROSES - CHINESE DEMOCRACY' !!

To us, and the marketing department at Amazon, clearly, this is an innocent enough advertisment for an album title.

To the Chinese government, who take a pretty dim view of anyone (particularly interfering westerners) criticising their system, this is something else entirely. Not to mention the fact that Peter had to sign for this parcel in full view of all his staff and some fairly high-level associates, several of whom could be seen to look askance at it.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dear Chinese government: We would like to make it known that this was nothing to do with us, we had no idea that such a thing would be printed on the packaging, and it bears no relation to anything that was inside.

DEAR AMAZON: HAVE YOU LOST YOUR TINY MINDS??!!! Fancy sending a parcel with that printed on it to someone IN CHINA! At least this explains what happened to the other parcel. How this one got through I do not know, but please be very sure about one thing: IF we find that as a result of this, Peter's name is now on some list of dangerous subversives and that we get stopped at the airport, possibly denied re-entry to the country, Peter's work permit is revoked and he loses his job (not an entirely far-fetched scenario, I promise you), YOU WILL BE HEARING FROM OUR LAWYERS.

Meanwhile, as a global retailer, perhaps a little awareness of the world around you wouldn't go amiss, guys.

Party planning, part 2

2008-12-03T18:29:00.006+08:00

Oh God. It's out of control. Someone's actually coming specially from Beijing. Peter keeps hearing excited chat around the office - he can tell, because there doesn't appear to be a Chinese word for 'party'. This doesn't bode well. The problem seems to be that Chinese people never organise anything more than a day in advance - they were amazed by the concept of a diary in which you write down appointments - so obviously to them anything which requires several weeks of planning must be the social event of the decade, if not the century.

Tomorrow Kevin is emailing everyone to confirm the details. So I reckon I have about 12 hours in which to come up with an escape plan. Faking my own death sounds too complicated to engineer in such a short time, so the best course of action would seem to be to relocate to Thailand where, apparently (don't know if this is just under the current state of emergency or always), gatherings of more than five people are illegal.

Today's conversation on the matter went as follows.
Kevin: What time do western parties start?
Peter: It depends, but usually about 8 o'clock.
K (shocked): 8 o'clock??!! Is very late.
P: Well actually some don't start until 10 o'clock.
K (scandalised): 10 o'clock????!!!!!
P (thinking it best not to explain that this was so that some of the guests could go to the pub and get drunk first, then roll up when the pubs close at 11 - or, in Scotland, 12): Well they tend to start late because, like I told you, people have their tea before they come out. So 8 should be fine.
K: Ah yes. So, what food will there be? [Does this boy think of nothing but his stomach?]
P: Party nibbles.
K: And what are they?
P: Crisps, nuts, olives....
K (with obvious lack of enthusiasm): Cheese?
[Kevin tried cheese for the first time at Boss's party a couple of months ago, and found it revolting. It was Camembert, mind you, which tastes like old socks to me, and I like cheese.]
P: Well, yes, cheese.
K: I should have come with you to supermarket, buy things I like!
P: What do you like?
K: Only joking. So, what time will the party end?
Boss (who's been listening with increasing amusement the whole time and seems keen to stir): 5 am! [Boss and Peter laugh].
Kevin (horrified): Really??!
Peter: No. It will end when all the beer is drunk.
K: Ah. I see.

Or, I would add, when all the guests are incapable, whichever is the sooner.

So, as things currently stand, we have six bottles of wine for mulling, but no spices with which to mull them, as Peter was unable to identify cinnamon or cloves in the supermarket. Mince pies have been abandoned as simply a challenge too far, short of flying down to Shanghai to see if Marks & Spencer's have them in their food hall there. But then, even if they did, they would probably all have been snapped up by now by desperate expats, who had managed to virtually clear the shelves of food within four days of the place opening when we were last there, prompting the shop to display apologetic notices explaining how they'd had to send to the UK for more supplies. Seriously. Imagine the years of M&S withdrawal symptoms which must have led to this behaviour. It's like Ikea's Edinburgh launch all over again.

But to return to the matter in had. So, warm, fruity but possibly spiceless mulled wine, possibly with a dash of brandy then, to make it more interesting - check. 'Nibbles', for people who are used to having a full meal when they go out - check. Large quantities of beer - check. Gigantic bottle of whisky so that everyone can be offered a dram in true Scottish style - check. Twenty or more Chinese guests, unused to alcohol - check. Energetic Scottish dancing - possibly.

Result? Large-scale puking, us picking comatose Chinese bodies out of wardrobes and shower cubicles for the next two days, a riot, and a major pileup on the roads, leading to our almost inevitable arrest and deportation? Probably.

Shameless plug

2008-11-29T11:00:00.006+08:00

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

2008-11-27T22:40:00.002+08:00

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

2008-11-22T22:33:00.002+08:00

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

2008-11-18T17:42:00.003+08:00

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

2008-11-16T11:31:00.003+08:00

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

2008-11-12T10:17:00.014+08:00

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

2008-11-10T11:47:00.011+08:00

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

2008-11-06T22:41:00.003+08:00

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

2008-11-05T12:18:00.006+08:00

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

2008-11-02T19:53:00.002+08:00

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.

Hong Kong pooey

2008-10-29T17:18:00.000+08:00

Well, this has been one of the weirder and least pleasant weeks of my life so far.

As you know, we flew to Hong Kong on Monday from Beijing so that Peter could have his operation. My purpose was to be hospital visitor, helpmeet, and carrier of heavy items.

So what do I do instead?

I go and catch gastro-entiritis, probably from some dodgy salad on plane or in hotel, though I can't be sure. I was ok in the morning and up until Peter's surgery, which was at 1pm, but suffered progressive stomach pains after lunch while sitting by his bedside. By 5pm I was projectile vomiting and being taken downstairs to A&E in a wheelchair, and by 9pm I'd been admitted.

So at the time when I was supposed to be tending to the patient's every need, bringing him grapes and so forth, I was in fact lying on a bed two floors below him IN THE SAME HOSPITAL, attached to an IV drip and generally puking my guts up! He'd had his op and was fine, if a bit tender in the nether regions, while my nether regions were making a bid for freedom. So he mostly ended up visiting me.

Fucking fantastic. You couldn't make it up.

So we both spent Monday and Tuesday nights there, which at least saved on taxi fares. They were nice, and everything, but even so. Nuns visited us (it was a Catholic hospital - a fact we didn't discover until we got there). Nurses took our temperature and blood pressure about every hour. Peter was in a semi-private room with a guy who hawked and snorked every few seconds and snored like a rhinoceros. I was in a general ward next to the Amazing Human Sheep, who bleated loudly all night. Peter has a sore bottom. Actually, so do I. And a sore stomach. And two sore hands. I was, I repeat, on a drip. An actual drip. I've never even been in hospital before. It was horrendous.

We were both discharged today and keep telling each other that 'one day we'll look back and laugh' about 'that time we both ended up in hospital in Hong Kong'. We came to China because we wanted an adventure, but there are limits!

Anyway, hopefully we'll be heading back to Harbin on Friday, as THE GOOD NEWS is that our 19 boxes of stuff, which we last saw when it was driven off from Edinburgh on a rainy night in August, has finally arrived in China and cleared customs, and is ready to be delivered to us on Saturday if we're there to receive it. Hooray! I must say there were times when I gave it up for lost.

But I'm afraid I can't tell you much about Hong Kong, having seen very little of it. They drive on the left, and have British plugs. It's hilly. It's hot.

And, er, don't eat the salad.

The robe robbers

2008-10-25T23:49:00.000+08:00

Bit of a drama this week. Just when you thought everything was finally starting to settle down for us following the visa debacle, Peter had to go to hospital for an emergency procedure under local anaesthetic to treat an abscess in his colon. I’ll spare you the details, but it wasn’t pleasant. What might be described as a major pain in the arse.

He happened to be in Beijing for the first of three launches which he’d organised for his company. After arriving in considerable agony, he made some fruitless entreaties to BUPA International, who seemed to find the task of locating an English-speaking doctor in China’s capital a little too challenging. Hmmm. Had he consulted the local guidebook in the room, he would have found there are many hospitals to choose from, such as the Shunyi Hospital, the 2nd Shunyi Hospital, the 3rd Shunyi Hospital, or the Longwinded Town Hygienic Service Centre. In the end though he managed to track down a fantastic western hospital who sorted him out. He’s ok now but needs to have a further operation on Monday under general anaesthetic to remove the remainder of the nastiness which they couldn’t reach. However, on the recommendation of the doctor we are flying to Hong Kong for this.

It’s not the ideal way to see the world. Poor Peter has spent the last five days trapped in a Beijing airport hotel, which is a pretty grim fate. No trips to the Forbidden City or the Great Wall for him, on this occasion anyway. I joined him yesterday, laden with summer clothes for our non-sightseeing trip to Hong Kong, where it’ll be in the region of 28-30°C. (It was actually snowing in Harbin when I left yesterday morning). It’s quite warm and sunny here (although the locals all think it’s cold and keep telling us to put our coats on), but we’re limited in our attire as the hotel has a dress code which demands that you don’t wear a ‘singlet’ in public. This immediately made my hackles rise. Peter wondered if he could wear a doublet, but I said that would be twice as bad.

The hospital here have been great and have arranged our flights to and accommodation in Hong Kong, although this required complex negotiations between BUPA International, BUPA (which is different, it seems), and his company. They have booked his surgery, and even emailed him a letter from the surgeon telling him what he needs to bring to the hospital and so on.

Which is where the trouble started.

The letter stated: ‘Please bring with you pyjamas, gown, slippers, toothbrush, toiletries and towel’. Now, Peter doesn’t wear pyjamas. Or slippers. His dressing-gown is at home in Harbin. Ditto all his towels (he knew he’d be staying in hotels where towels are provided, so didn’t bring one, and neither did I).

So, ok, we think. A T-shirt and shorts will pass for pyjamas. Flip-flops will serve as slippers. We could ‘borrow’ a towel from the Hong Kong hotel for a couple of days. Then Peter had a brainwave and decided that before we leave here he would buy one of the nice, white, waffle-weave bathrobes which the hotel provide in the room. The book of guest services expressly states ‘Should you wish to purchase a bathrobe, please contact the Housekeeping Office’. Knowing that Housekeeping’s English wasn’t brilliant, we asked a guy at reception how much the bathrobes cost. It took several attempts to get him to understand what we were talking about, but eventually he phoned Housekeeping, and told us they cost 350 RMB (just under £30), which seemed not unreasonable, but we wanted to consider our finances so we thanked him and returned to our room.

The other reason for hesitating was that we couldn’t remember whether the robes had the hotel logo emblazoned across them in a prominent fashion which would be a bit embarrassing in hospital. However, when we tried to check by looking at the robes in the room, we found that the maid had taken them when she cleaned, and not replaced them. There had been one there at the start of the week, Peter said, which he’d used and it hadn’t been replaced for several days. I used the new one this morning and once again it had disappeared, as sometimes happens.

Having decided to proceed anyway, Peter phoned Housekeeping.

P: Hello, it says in the book in my room that it is possible to purchase a bathrobe, so I would like to buy one please.
Housekeeping: Book?
P: Yes, the book that is in all the rooms.
[Silence].
P: It says on it…[describes front cover and title page of book in detail].
H: Yes?
P: Yes, well, if you turn to the page where it says ‘Housekeeping’, where it says, ‘Bathrobe’, it says ‘If you wish to purchase a bathrobe, please call Housekeeping’. I would like to purchase a bathrobe.
H: One moment please, sir. [Slight hiatus, then returns]. I will send someone to your room.
P: Thank you.
H: You’re welcome.

Five minutes later, a knock at the door. Someone from Housekeeping stands silently, then says, ‘May I help you?’ Peter takes her over to where the book is. ‘Ah, book!’ she says. He turns to the relevant page and painstakingly points to the Chinese writing under the ‘Bathrobe’ bit. ‘Ah,’ she says. ‘One moment please’. And goes.

Another five minutes. Then a different wifie appears with three bathrobes, gives one to Peter, and starts looking around the room for our used ones. She looks in the cupboard, behind the bathroom door, on the bed, and casts a slightly accusing eye at our suitcases. Peter tries to explain that the bathrobes were removed when the room was cleaned and that we weren’t given new ones, but that what we want now is to buy a new one. She doesn’t understand, and phones Housekeeping. Peter patiently informs them, again, that the bathrobes were taken away and we have none. He suggests that perhaps now that she has brought three, she could leave them all – two for the room and one for us to buy. He hands the phone back to her for translation. She listens for a long time, then says, ‘One moment please’, and scuttles away, leaving one bathrobe behind.

Approximately fifteen minutes go by. Then the phone rings in the room and I answer it.

Housekeeping: Ah, good evening madam, I am so sorry to trouble you.
Me: That’s ok.
H: I just speak to room attendant, and she say that she put two bathrobe in your room this morning, so perhaps you forget or you put them somewhere different?
Me: No, we do not have any bathrobes. Well, we do, we have one, which your attendant just brought a few minutes ago, but before that we had no bathrobe. The attendant took the bathrobe away today and did not leave a new one. We have told you this several times but you don’t seem to believe us. I rather resent being accused of stealing bathrobes.
H: Oh, I am so sorry to trouble you.
Me: Well, ok, but all we want now is to buy a new one and charge it to our room bill.
[Pause]. H: Ah, you want…?
Me: To buy a bathrobe. And to add the cost to our room bill.
H: Sorry?
Me: The cost. Of the bathrobe.
H: Cost?
Me: Yes, the money. 350 Yuan. To add to our bill. Can we do that?
H: Cash or credit card?
Me: No, put on our room bill. The bill for our room. Our hotel bill. For our room.
[Pause]. H: One moment please. [Hangs up].

I’ve had enough. I phone reception and ask for the manager. He’s busy so I ask for him to phone me back.

Manager: Ah good evening madam, this is duty manager. How may I help you?
Me: Well, we’re having a bit of difficulty here this evening. [I relate the saga to date, explaining once again that we were given no new bathrobes, that we have not hidden or stolen them, and that we would like to buy one as offered in the guest services book].
DM: I am so sorry, madam, for your trouble. So you have no two bathrobe clean?
Me: [having to think a bit about this one]: When? Now?
DM: When you check in.
Me: Well, yes, there was one bathrobe when my husband checked in on Tuesday. He used it and it was taken away. Then later it was replaced with another one. I used it today and then it was taken away too, and we were given no new bathrobe. And nobody in Housekeeping seems to understand or believe us, and they keep phoning us asking where the bathrobes are.
DM: So you want new bathrobe clean? Or two?
Me [losing will to live]: No. We don’t care. [I try a new tack]. Is it possible to buy a bathrobe from the hotel? For 350 Yuan? And charge the amount to our room bill? Is that a service you offer?
DM: Ah, you want to buy new bathrobe? And to give signature and charge to your bill?
Me: YES!!!!!! Yes!! That’s what we want! Please! Thank you.
DM: Ah, sorry, we are confused. [You don’t say]. I call Housekeeping and send someone to your room.

Ten minutes later another girlie appears with two bathrobes. One is wrapped in plastic. She carefully explains that this is the one we can buy, and the other ‘you can use in my hotel’. She hands Peter a chit to sign, saying, ‘Credit card’. ‘No’, he says, ‘charge to room’. She goes to the phone. ‘Phone the Duty Manager’, I say. ‘He knows’. She phones and is quickly given the ok, so Peter signs and gets his bathrobe. This has taken more than half an hour.

The thing is, it’ll be so flippin’ hot in hospital in Hong Kong that I bet he never even wears it.
We quickly hung the remaining two in the wardrobe on full view to prevent any further accusations of robe theft. Thank God we’re leaving tomorrow.

Perversity

2008-10-20T21:06:00.000+08:00

Since the arrival of our shiny new visas, we have spent the last few days acquiring more of the trappings of permanence here. Hence I now have a bank account, a Chinese mobile phone so that I can text Peter or phone other people in China without it costing both of us a bomb, a landline on which it’s now possible to make overseas calls, and a vacuum cleaner (which has no telephonic capacity as far as I know).

You’d think that in a country where a spectacular amount of hoop-jumping is required to obtain a visa, the opening of a bank account would be a tortuous process. Indeed, we had postponed this step until our residents’ permits were in place so as not to provoke any awkward questions regarding our projected length of stay in the country. However, what you do is: you walk into the bank. They photocopy your passport. You write your name on a tiny form in a tiny tiny box (most Chinese names are only two characters long, so they have some trouble with western names which come in three or four parts!), and sign the form. They enter your name and phone number into the computer. You sign again. They give you a cashpoint card and ask you to make up a PIN.

And, er, that’s it. Nobody asked about our jobs, income, ages, or how long we’d been at this or our previous 17 addresses. Nobody appeared to care whether we were laundering vast sums of money for a rogue nation or didn’t have two ha’pennies to rub together. Nobody tried to sell us a mortgage, a pension or the services of an independent financial adviser. We didn’t have to complete a form the size of a small novel. There was no ‘Your cheque book will take 7 working days and your card another 14 working days after that, and then you might get your PIN and actually be able to use your account sometime in the next month’. We didn’t even have to pay any money in.

Buying the mobile phone – and even the vacuum cleaner – was more complicated and required the divulgence of more personal information than this.

Something is very wrong somewhere.

One other thing. The heating has finally come on. It will now stay on, 24/7, until about March I should think. Maybe April. And guess what? It’s TOO DARN HOT IN HERE NOW.

The cabbages are coming! (Part 2)

2008-10-17T16:46:00.000+08:00

As a child, I loved the Moomin books by Finnish author Tove Jansson. If you’re not familiar with these, they tell of the adventures of a group of cute, fantastical creatures that live in the north of Scandinavia. Several of the books feature seasonal themes, such as one entitled Moomin Valley in November which describes how the various characters cope with seeing their world transformed from a summer playground to a bleak, autumnal landscape.

This is how it felt, returning to Harbin yesterday.

Firstly, the heating STILL isn’t on. We’re reliably informed, though, that it comes on next Monday. Apparently October 20th is the first day that it’s considered cold enough. Yeah, right. That’s why last night we sat in our flat wearing our coats and scarves, wondering how we would ever pluck up the courage to get undressed to go to bed. It’s a bit brutal after the heat of Shanghai (which was just pleasant at this time of year, should you ever consider a trip there; don’t go in August). It reminds me of the time we went on holiday to Tenerife at the end of September, and flew back into Glasgow airport at 3am on an October night which was, as the Scots say, baltic. It came, to put it mildly, as a bit of a shock to the system.

Note to self for next year: the first three weeks of October are not a good time to be in Harbin. They are a good time to take a long holiday, somewhere hot.

Secondly, the trees, which were all still green when we left less than two weeks ago, are now mostly yellow. I say mostly, because they are going yellow from the bottom up. I’ve never seen anything like it. If memory serves, the trees back home (and anywhere else I’ve ever observed trees in autumn) turn in a more random fashion, a few leaves yellowing here and there at first, some going quite brown and then dropping off, while a few green ones cling on tenaciously well into November.

Here, all the trees lining the road from the airport had brown, shrivelled leaves on the lower branches, completely yellow leaves over the middle and high branches, and right at the top, a tiny crown of green. They are spindly trees whose branches all point upwards. If anyone can enlighten me as to what kind they are, I’d be interested to find out - the knowledge of nature which I once gleaned from educational childhood drives with the AA Book of the Road being now sadly lost in the mists of time.

Last but not least, if the day we left was Leek Day, this is most definitely Cabbage Week. In some cases the leeks are still out as well, though most people seem to have put them away and they can be seen hanging from ceilings on balconies and in utility rooms. Outside our front door, however, we are privileged to have both. If you don’t believe me, here’s the photographic evidence. I’ll give a prize (virtual only, I’m afraid) to the first person who can correctly guess the next vegetable to appear on the streets on Harbin – if there is one.

Occasionally people come out and start trimming them or picking bits off them. I don’t know if this is just for preparation purposes or whether they’re harvesting bits for their dinner.

There are a number of other unanswered questions too, such as: do they leave them outside even when it starts snowing and is sub-zero? What happens when they start to rot? I can’t say I fancy living with the smell of rotting cabbage for the next 4 months.

But most importantly, how do they know whose leeks are whose? They’re everywhere. How can such a system possibly work? Do they have special Vegetable Wardens to prevent Grand Leek Larceny? Which if you ever watched The Good Life, you’ll know is a very serious matter. Certainly our security guard has taken to patrolling up and down this stretch of courtyard, and was very suspicious when I started taking pictures. The Leek Police dismisseth us.

We're legal !!

2008-10-15T15:09:00.001+08:00

YES !!!!!!!!!

Seven and a half stressful weeks since Peter first arrived, and after a nightmare of confusion, changes of rules, jobsworth bureaucracy and an avoidable trip to the UK for Peter, we finally have our Residents' Permits. I just scraped in under the wire and would have had to fly home TODAY if anything had gone wrong. But thanks to the saintly but determined Candy we now have the magic pieces of paper stuck in our passports, which allow us to live and (in Peter's case, when combined with his work permit) work in, and travel in and out of, China. What a flippin' relief.

Until next year, when we have to do it all again.

Everyone sing along:

Wo-oh, I'm an alien
I'm a legal alien
I'm a Britisher in Harbin.

I'd like a glass of Harbin beer,
With a fa piao on the side,
And you can see it from my idiotic grin
I'm a Britisher in Harbin.

Sting, eat your heart out.

OK, I'm showing my age, I know.

More Shanghai sights

2008-10-14T18:31:00.000+08:00

Why the panda is endangered...

[Ahem; assume husky phone-sex voice:] This is not just Shanghai. This is 21st century, fully capitalist, plastic Shanghai.

Shanghai sights

2008-10-14T18:13:00.001+08:00

Photoshoot.

East meets west; old meets new. C'est la folie?

Dammit!

The Laughing Cow suddenly realises it's no joke.

The unbearable weirdness of being….an expat in China

2008-10-10T23:30:00.000+08:00

Sorry, haven’t blogged so far this week: partly because I’m in Shanghai and my blog’s meant to be predominantly about Harbin – not that I feel I can’t talk about our travels to other parts of China, but there are others who write about Shanghai so I don’t want to tread on anyone’s toes. Funnily enough, no one else writes about Harbin (see below!).

The other reason is that I’ve been engrossed in an excellent book, The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce by Paul Torday, which was a quick-grab purchase by Peter at the airport the other week (he’d read this guy’s first book). I am having to force myself to stop reading it and do other things because I like to savour books and not finish them too quickly. So here I am.

I was going to talk at some length about the fact that unlike Harbin, Shanghai has a proper expat community, which I’ve glimpsed a little this week for the first time really. In Harbin - unless there’s a secret westerners’ enclave upon which we have yet to stumble - the nearest thing we get to an expat community is occasionally seeing another non-Chinese person in the street, both of you grinning delightedly and then gazing longingly at the other’s retreating back, before you realise they’re most probably Russian and therefore unlikely to speak enough English to become your best friend.

We don’t really mind this too much at the moment, but in the interests of research I was going to do what my history teacher would probably have called ‘compare and contrast’ with a city which is used to, and actually caters for, foreigners. But then I decided that was very dull. So instead here’s a brief list of things I like about being a foreigner/expat in Shanghai, based on my limited experience thus far.

1. English language bookshops – fantastic. I don’t care if a paperback costs a tenner.
2. The Metro. I could happily ride around Shanghai all day on it without ever surfacing above ground. It’s bilingual. It’s brilliant. And I love it.
3. People not staring at you every time you step outside.
4. Seeing the occasional other foreigner and thus not feeling like a total freak (see 3).
5. Foreign supermarkets selling a random and not enormously wide selection of strange imported products (like Lidl gone horribly wrong). The goods for sale are mostly American but there’s some German, Dutch and French stuff; not much British and a very sorry lack of Marmite, but at least you can escape the smelly meat and live seafood sections which you get in Chinese supermarkets. Apparently M&S has just opened here too!
6. The likelihood that staff in shops may speak a little English, or will at least comprehend that if you don’t look Chinese, chances are you won’t understand them however much they follow you around trying to sell you stuff. (NB. Not foolproof, this one, however. Some of them follow you round trying to sell you stuff in English. Some just carry on in Chinese anyway. It’s a gamble.)

There are, of course, disadvantages – the most irritating probably being everyone’s desire to practise their English on you, which means that a simple stroll through any tourist area becomes a race to dodge groups of students shouting, ‘Helloooo!! Please, may we talk to you?!! Where are you from?!!! Please, come with us, we will show you Shanghai!!!!’ in a somewhat manic fashion.

It’s best to pretend to be French. When Peter’s really had enough he occasionally even answers them in Gaelic. That usually throws them.

So, anyway, what I decided to tell you instead of all that, was that on Wednesday we had a grand day out at the police station applying for – roll of drums and fanfare here please – our Residents’ Permits!! (I won’t tell you the whole story behind this until I know it’s gone through and my passport is safely back in my hands, but suffice to say it’s the culmination of weeks and weeks of ridiculous bureaucracy and hassle.)

The Alien Assimilation Centre or whatever they call it is a huge modern building in Pudong – the posh, new part of town, full of futuristic architecture and manicured flowerbeds. I’d assumed it wouldn’t be a speedy process, as most things in China involve waiting; even in Harbin the police/visa thing took an hour, and there were hardly any other foreigners there. But even we weren’t prepared for the epic scale of this particular round of doing nothing while other people shuffle paper pointlessly.

Our little helper Candy – who is as sweet as her adopted name suggests and who has been FANTASTIC and unerringly patient throughout this whole process – warned us that the minimum wait was usually an hour, sometimes an hour and a half. But when we reached the top of the escalator, passing a huge room full of Chinese people applying for visas to visit Hong Kong and Macao, into another huge hall which closely resembled the departure lounge of a large airport, with back-to-back seating all of which was occupied, we were issued with a little ticket like the ones you get in the booking office at the station or the deli counter in Sainsbury’s to tell you when your number’s up. Our number was 496. A screen showed that they were currently processing number 258.

Candy ran off to fill in forms for us, while we sat regretting not having brought our books, laptops, ipods, tea, coffee, sandwiches, intravenous vodka drips, stink bombs, hand grenades or anything else which might get us to the front of the queue faster or make the time pass more quickly. We did a bit of nationality-spotting, but as most people looked Chinese (but were probably Korean or Taiwanese) or American, it wasn’t that absorbing. A ginger-haired Italian and a woman who turned out to be from the Philippines and looked as though she had a shrunken head were about as interesting as it got.

We watched the time ticking by and tried in vain not to watch the numbers ticking by much more slowly. Dolefully we calculated that they were processing about one person per minute, which meant we had 200 minutes to wait. It was 2.30pm when we got there and the place closed at 5pm. Sleeping bags, camping stove, phone number of the British consul, cyanide capsules – why did no-one tell us to come prepared? If it had been an airport there would have been a Starbucks, vending machine, photobooth, newspaper stand, stall selling souvenir pens and T-shirts with ‘I’m a legal alien’ printed on them, branch of Cyanide-Capsules-R-Us, you name it. Marketing opportunities just passing them by.

One side of the room was lined with counters – not many of them actually staffed – and when your number came up we reckoned you had about 30 seconds to notice it on the screen, see which desk you were being called to, identify it and run up there, before they assumed you weren’t there and pressed a button for the next number. This was slightly nervewracking, and we were just devising a formation in which the three of us could stand spread out along the length of the room so as to cover all bases, when at 3.45, when they were on about number 320, a uniformed man with a megaphone strode into the room and starting shouting something.

Immediately there was a surge forward to the desks. ‘What’s happening?’ I asked Candy. She removed her ipod and listened thoughtfully for a moment. ‘All numbers before 380 can go up now and stand there’, she said. A young Israeli man who was sitting opposite us with his mum showed Candy his ticket excitedly. He was number 500. ‘No’, said Candy.

The ticket system now being given up as a bad job, small queues formed at each desk, intermittently shepherded and shouted at by the man with the megaphone, whose job it clearly was to harry people. He was the Harrier. His patch covered half the room and another, younger man who obviously hadn’t passed Grade 1 Shouting yet was patrolling the other half, looking menacing and regarding his colleague’s megaphone with envious eyes.

After the queues had gone down a bit, the Harrier decided they could handle the next wave and called numbers up to 450. Despite being the foreigner-processing area, all the announcements were in Chinese only. The Israeli boy tried again and was sent back again. We moved closer to the queues so as to be ready to leap when our turn came. A large Egyptian man tried to go forward too early and was sternly reprimanded by the Harrier. Then we spotted Candy making an audacious break into one of the queues, ahead of the Filipina and her pals. The Harrier hadn’t seen her. We held back in British anxiety until she reached the front and then joined her, but a surprisingly friendly policewoman told her to go back and wait.

Then at last – yes! – it was all numbers up to 500. Candy leapt forward. The Filipinas were too slow and ended up behind me, trying to work past me using only their hair. We were third in the queue. When we got to second, Candy turned to me and hissed, ‘Stand there. I’m going to see which line is faster’, and moved a few queues down. This caused consternation as she had now crossed into Junior Harrier’s patch. Senior Harrier finally spotted her and for a minute I thought we were for it. Fortunately, at that precise moment the person in front of us finished, and like lightning Candy was back with us and we reached the desk.

A certain amount of pushing, shoving and a bit more waiting later, they had looked through all our papers, taken our picture (I had to shove a woman’s arm out of the way when they did mine, otherwise it would have been right across my face on my photo), retained our passports for a week and sent us on our way.

This, then, my friends, is what it takes to be a foreigner in China. I can’t help feeling that if they told people about this in advance, they could probably ease their population problems quite significantly.

Of cabbages and things

2008-10-06T14:22:00.000+08:00

Of all the sentences I ever thought I’d hear myself utter, ‘Oh God, I’m SOOO BORED of coming to Shanghai now!’ wasn’t one of them.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great place – or at least what we’ve seen of it is (if you don’t mind air and noise pollution, excessive humidity and being almost mown down by scooters whenever you try to walk anywhere). It’s just that we seem to have spent a disproportionate amount of our time on a plane between here and Harbin, en route to or from an airport, or walking through the vast echoing halls of Pudong Terminal 2, which could be a fitness plan in its own right if you didn’t fancy any other forms of exercise. We’re up and down here so often that I’m becoming convinced that a) there are in fact no other places in China besides Harbin and Shanghai, and b) they’re just next door to one another, whereas in fact a) China’s ginormous and b) er, China’s ginormous and the distance between Shanghai & Harbin is about 1000 miles – a 2 and a half hour flight, or the equivalent of flying from Edinburgh to Prague or London to Rome and back every couple of weeks. No wonder it’s a drag.

Every time we come here we’re either in transit to somewhere else, always either jet-lagged or about to be and never have a chance to look around, or alternatively – as this time - we’re here to complete some tiresome visa-related errand involving being relieved of our passports for several days and generally messed about. And, having left Harbin complaining of the cold, here it’s still slightly disagreeably muggy and Peter, predictably, has done nothing but moan about the heat, while the aircon in the hotel is of course off since it’s now ‘winter’ (I even saw a girl in a woolly hat this morning).

As you’ll have gathered, I’m in a bad mood. I won’t be happy until we get these damn visas sorted out once and for all. But, in order to maintain peace and harmony and keep you entertained, I’m going to ignore it and tell you an interesting aside instead.

Last time he was down here, Peter was told that up until about twenty years ago - presumably before many people had fridges or freezers and before the advent of long-distance distribution and supermarket chains in China - it was common practice in Shanghai for everyone to have a stock of cabbages for the winter, which they kept outside on the ground or on their balconies so that they would remain cold. The cabbages were delivered about now, October, and kept throughout the winter, slowly rotting, but come February people would still be eating them, peeling off the outer rotten leaves to find they were still edible inside.

In modern Shanghai today you don’t see much of this, apparently. But the outdoor fridge tradition would appear to be alive and well in Harbin. Yesterday as we were driven to the airport we noticed that on every available space – on pavements, roadsides, front steps of apartment blocks and shops, hanging from balconies, windowsills and doorknobs, and being transported around on stalls, carts and bikes – were hundreds and hundreds of ….

LEEKS !!!

(Plus a few cabbages for good measure.)

They hadn’t been there a couple of days before. Where did they come from? Was yesterday one of those dates which everyone just knows by osmosis is Leek Day? I bet in two weeks’ time if you try to get leeks in the supermarket there won’t be a single one to be had.

Anyway, on a loosely related topic, for the Have I Got News for You fans among you, here’s the missing words round.

Frustrated Welsh farmers face prison over [....... ?]

Woman catches [......?] from garden badgers, report claims

Headlines from Farmers’ Weekly; don’t you just love trade journals?

Maybe we should tell the Welsh farmers about the Harbin leek glut? You never know; it might help.

The heat is on (not)

2008-10-02T18:50:00.000+08:00

Harbin, as I think I may have mentioned, is a place with an extreme climate. Like Montreal, whose latitude it more or less shares. Now you know how an extreme climate works, don’t you? In winter it’s very very cold indeed, 30° below zero, with snow and ice and such. In summer it’s really very hot - 30° and more above - tropical, almost - so hot you’d never believe the ice & snow were there six months ago if you hadn’t seen them with your own eyes. Got it.

But wait, aren’t we forgetting something? Cast your mind back to primary school. How many seasons are there? That’s right. So what does an extreme climate do in the season that comes between summer and winter? Changes from one to the other, that’s what. And as the needle on that thermometer has to travel such a long way in such a short time, it changes pretty damn fast – dropping about 5 degrees per week in fact – at night anyway. If you’re not familiar with the climate of Edinburgh then you’ll no doubt wonder why I find this even worthy of comment. But if you were used to living in a place where the weather’s more or less the same all year round apart from the odd warmish week in July and the odd coldish week in January, you would understand why the concept of a proper autumn is a revelation.

Come April or May, when the process is reversed, I shall doubtless be reporting with smug delight the joys of actually being able to step outside in light clothing and bask in spring sunshine, rather than the Scottish custom of gazing with confusion at the advancing calendar and wondering why there are no leaves on the trees and I’m still wearing a woolly hat. But for now I’m grumpily stomping about the house swathed in fluffy socks and huge jumpers which don’t normally see the light of day until Christmas-time, and occasionally sporting my dressing-gown as outer wear, and cursing whoever’s brilliant idea it was to have the heating in all the buildings here centrally controlled.

Yes, you read that correctly. We can’t switch on our own heating. We have to wait until The Powers That Be deem it cold enough. Surely this is taking communist communal whatnot to its most ridiculous and barbaric extreme. (Although I seem to remember they have the same system in France. I rest my case.)

I had been holding out with some optimism for October 1st to be the big switch-on day. After all, September 1st was considered an appropriate date for switching off the air conditioning in all the buildings, so I reckoned, a month of in-betweeny weather and then bam – October – it’s winter and the heating goes on. The shopping malls have been overheated for a week or more so I really got my hopes up.

But, alas, yesterday came and went and our floorboards - under which, I’m told, our elusive heating lies - remain resolutely cold to the touch, despite me testing them with a hopeful toe every couple of hours. Peter’s boss (who’s in the same boat in his building) said, ‘Oh, in Anshan it doesn’t come on until 1st November’. But Anshan’s several hundred miles south of here. They couldn’t be that cruel up here, could they? Could they?

The trouble is that, actually, if I’m truly honest now, it’s still vaguely warm outside during the day. Balmy enough for a mini plaguette of ladybirds, even. (What are the chances of that? The last time I saw that was in the Long Hot Summer of 1976, and believe me, that ain’t where we’re headed right now!) The Harbin locals, being used to those 30°C summer temps & all, think it’s cold enough to wear jackets but it’s really not. The other day we went for a walk and wrapped ourselves up in jumpers, coats, scarves and gloves, so convinced were we that if it was this cold indoors it must be freezing out. When we got outside it was 19°C and we had to take everything off again.

Unfortunately our flat’s south-facing side is entirely blocked in by high buildings and so we get no sun whatsoever. Add to this our double (or in some places quadruple) glazing – of which we’ll no doubt be exceptionally glad when winter comes in earnest – and you have one highly insulated ice box with no heat source. Even Peter, He Who Never Feels Cold, is wearing a fleece and his SHOES indoors.

I’m so depressed I nearly did my tax return.

But instead, I have decided that as Peter has to go to Shanghai on Sunday in order to start the next stage of the visa saga on Monday, little though I relish the prospect of leaving our home to live in a hotel again, I shall decamp there with him for a week or so. It’s 25-30°C there at the moment. (Ironically, Chinese government policy is that all public buildings south of the Yangtze River have no heating at all, so in a month’s time everyone in Shanghai will be sitting in the office with their overcoats on while we in Harbin will be walking on hot floors. I hope).

Then next week I shall do my best to convince everyone that I shouldn’t risk trying to get my visa in Shanghai and that it would be best for me to go back to the UK to get it as Peter did, and stay there for a couple of weeks. I know it’ll be cold and miserable there, but you have a brilliant thing called an On switch, and right now that sounds like heaven.

Fun, part 2

2008-10-01T13:10:00.000+08:00

I haven’t said much so far about eating in restaurants in China, although it’s something we’ve done a fair bit of, so here goes. Prepare to forget everything you thought you knew from your nights down at the Sunrise Take-Away.

If you go to a restaurant in a large group, you’ll likely be shown into a private room. The tables are big and round, with a giant lazy susan in the middle so that dishes can be spun round and shared. The concept of ordering one meal per person is unknown here, and there’s no such thing as starters and main courses. You just order a number of dishes, each one of which will be either meat, or veg, or rice, etc, kind of like tapas, and then share them, with each person taking a small portion from the main plate and transferring it to their own plate, or even eating it direct from the main plate. If you’re worried about catching other people’s germs from them dipping their chopsticks into your food, tough. I gather that eating out CAN get raucous (especially if there’s a lot of ‘Ganbei!’ which the dictionary translates as ‘Cheers!’ but is really a challenge to down a drink in one) but this usually only happens in all-male company. Typical.

The whole business can be somewhat disconcerting if you’re not used to it. As is the fact that the waiters expect to discuss your food requirements with you at length, suggesting dishes which will complement those you’ve already ordered so as to achieve a ‘ying-yang’ type balance, and they therefore bring you the menu and continue to stand by you while you look at it, pen at the ready, and get very confused if you ask them to go away. The menu is usually all in Chinese but has photos – do not be fooled by these, however, as the food when it comes generally bears no resemblance to them, and anyway you could be eating duck’s head or bull’s penis for all you know, so it’s best to have an interpreter on standby! They just bring out the food in the order it’s ready, so the thing which takes longest to cook could well arrive after you’ve finished everything else. So quite how this achieves a balance is slightly beyond me.

Mostly the food is actually very tasty. Northern Chinese cuisine is quite different from the Cantonese food we’re used to in Britain – spicier, less sweet, more noodle and dumpling-based than rice, but beyond that I find it hard to summarise except to say that if you’re after Sweet & Sour Pork, Prawn Crackers or Chicken Chow Mein with Special Fried Rice you won’t find any such thing. My rule of thumb is I don’t eat it if it looks slimy. Peter is prepared to try anything except chicken’s feet. And beyond that, it’s all a voyage of discovery!

The strangest meal we’ve had was in a restaurant called ‘Triplepot’ which we went into because it had an English name. Sadly it turned out they spoke no English whatsoever and had to find a student who was eating upstairs to come and translate for us. He could not, however, prepare us for the eating experience. The table had a circular hole in it, in the base of which was a hotplate. They brought over a large pan divided into three sections, one containing water, one ordinary oil and one chilli oil, and lit the thing until all three boiled. They then brought out the food – raw – and we had to cook it ourselves by dipping it into the compartments, instructed by actions from the bemused staff.

Our favourite so far, though, is the highly entertaining ‘western style’ restaurant near our flat. They have a bizarre menu with dishes apparently plucked at random from the various cuisines of Europe, called things like ‘German-style fried potatoes’ and ‘French-style chicken with mushroom juice’. (‘This is chicken with a mushroom juice’, the menu explains in the small print, in case you weren’t clear). The food’s very nice, but everything is served in the Chinese way as described above, with the sharing and the random serving order. If you ask for water, they may bring you hot water – for what purpose I’m not sure. Oh, and you get free bread, butter and jam for pudding. The atmosphere is also curious; it’s never very busy but like everywhere in China they have hundreds of staff. The first time we went there we were the first customers of the night, and ate our dinner observed by twelve waiters and a girl pianist in thigh-high denim boots, who tinkles away at lift-music standards like ‘Love Story’ in a somewhat minimalist style while you eat and attempt to ignore the stares. It gives a whole new meaning to ‘going out for an English’!

But they try their best, bless them. They even have a feedback questionnaire which as an ex market researcher I think is so brilliant I shall quote it for you in full.

The Investigation Answer Sheet of Victoria Western Restaurant

Thank you for spending your time in filling in this answer sheet. We will according to it ameliorate our service and make you a much more happiness at Victoria.

1. Excuse me, do you usually come to a western restaurant?
· Occasionally
· Usually
· Once a month or above
2. Please tell us whether you are satisfied with the atmosphere of this western restaurant.
3. Excuse me, are you satisfied with the food of the restaurant?
4. Excuse me, are you satisfied with the price of the food?
5. Excuse me, are you satisfied with the service quality of the workers?
6. Excuse me, are you satisfied with the circumstances of the sanitation?
7. How do you know the Victoria Western Restaurant?
· The friend’s introduction
· Saw it by chance while driving
· Advertisement
· Others
8. The advice that you’d like to tell us is…..

Thank you again for the support to Victoria Western Restaurant. Wisher to have a meal pleased! Happy your life!

This feedback sheet was being done by YUMMY&LIFE magazine jointly.

I would love to fill it in, but words do occasionally fail me.

Fun

2008-10-01T13:04:00.000+08:00

Last night we had our first social engagement since we came to China a month ago (if you don’t count a token-gesture meal out with the Big Boss in Shanghai the week we arrived, which you shouldn’t).

This was a ‘party’ given by the Less Big Boss here in Harbin, ostensibly as a belated flat-warming but really a Meet the Girlfriend event, as she’s visiting for the week. This is, annoyingly for those of us stalled in the middle of visa processing, a holiday week here. Today, 1st October, is China’s National Day – the anniversary of the founding of the PRC in 1949 – and they get a whole week off for it. All of them. Well, shops are open, builders are still building (drilling above my head as I type), but nobody else is doing a stitch of work all week.

Up until last year they had three of these ‘Golden Weeks’ as they’re called: this one, one in February for Chinese New Year, and one in May for Labour Day. The purpose of these is to boost the economy through increased domestic tourism and binge shopping and NOT, as you might imagine, to give the poor overworked Chinese a few days’ paid holiday, which they actually don’t get otherwise unless they’re lucky enough to work for a western company. But as of this year the government decided people weren’t spending enough and the detrimental impact on the economy from everything shutting down was outweighing the advantages, so they cut one of the Golden Weeks (the May one) and replaced it with a few extra one-day holidays instead. Now everyone is up in arms about it because a three-day weekend isn’t much use for visiting long-distance family in a country the size of China, and as a result this week was predicted to be the busiest October week for travel ever.

Apart from that, I don’t think much goes on really. There are quite a few red lanterns up around the place (see pic), which is pretty. I was hoping to see some kind of spectacular parade, but it seems that unless it’s a special anniversary that kind of thing went out with Mao. There might be a firework display but I’m not hopeful.

So, to return to the subject of Fun, Chinese style. Now those of you who know me know I like a party. Drinking, dancing, chatting, loud music, more dancing, more drinking, etc. That’s a party, right? Wrong, it seems, in China. Perhaps it was just that particular group of people, who were all Chinese apart from us, Boss and Boss’s girlfriend, or perhaps we’re getting old (heaven forbid!), but this so-called party consisted of nine people sitting around a coffee table picking at nibbles – rather self-consciously as the Chinese weren’t touching them – talking mainly about the weather and the best methods of cleaning hard-wood floors (I kid you not), and then having to go out for a meal because Boss didn’t have enough plates to serve us all food. We got to the restaurant about 9pm, which is considered extremely late for eating here, and everyone picked at their food again and at 10.30 all went home.

Just wait until we have our flat-warming party; we’ll show them how it should be done.

A one-horse space race

2008-09-27T22:27:00.000+08:00

In August, the entire Chinese population got very very excited about the Olympics. At the beginning of September they got pretty damned excited about the Paralympics. And now, just when you thought no further demonstrations of national excitement were possible without mass spontaneous combustion occurring, they’re getting excited all over again about China’s third-ever manned space mission, the Shengzhou 7, and first-ever spacewalk. You wait 50 years and then three come along at once.

Of course, it’s probably no coincidence that they’ve launched the spaceship this year, or indeed at this particular juncture when – Tibet and melamine-flavoured milk aside – China’s image in the world is perceived as being a positive one on which they can build. There’s been a lot of talk about ‘confidence’ and ‘transparency’ – the idea being, it seems, to justify the vast amounts of money spent on such projects (each space suit alone cost $4.5 million US) on the grounds that it will attract more foreign investment to China by showing how far they’ve come as a modern nation. One commentator summed it up by saying that the reason why it has taken until now – more than forty years after the first space walk was conducted by the Soviet Union in 1965 – for China to reach this level of technological achievement was that, unlike the former USSR and America, China has not been competing with anyone to show its dominance of space. China is, he said, ‘only in a race with itself’. In which, of course, as in a one-party state, there can be only one winner.

As I’ve had nothing better to do this week, and as we’ve only got one TV channel (assuming I don’t want to sit through hours of Chinese game shows, karaoke shows and badly acted costume dramas; funny how you can tell they’re badly acted even when you can’t understand a word), over the last couple of days I’ve been following live coverage of the space mission, at least for as long as I can stand it. Having been MUCH too young to watch the moon landings this was, as far as I can recall, my first experience of live space broadcasting, and bloody hell is it boring. It was also China’s first attempt at making such a programme (they were going to do a live transmission of the last manned space launch in 2005, but wimped out at the last minute in case it blew up or something), and it showed.

Apart from amusing little touches like the fact that the rocket which launched the spaceship was called ‘Long March’ (how long can they keep milking that one?), and that the rows upon rows of technicians at the Beijing mission control base were, inexplicably, dressed in jannies’ overalls, the programme – whose intro featured suitably Star Wars-type music and graphics – made excruciating watching. Mostly, nothing was happening, but as with all live broadcasts where they’re waiting for some momentous event they tried to fill the time by discussing pointless minutiae and attempting to explain the proceedings to the uninitiated viewer. To this end, they’d invited a couple of experts – a Chinese scientist and an American academic - into the studio, where a female presenter struggled valiantly to make them say something interesting enough to fill half an hour or so.

The trouble was that the Chinese guy had clearly learnt his English from an aeronautics textbook and didn’t know any words of fewer than four syllables. She’d ask him a ditsy question like ‘So where are the astronauts sitting right now?’, and he’d drone on along the lines of ‘ah re-entry module velocity elliptical orbit component verification blah blah’ for about ten minutes in a robotic Chinese monotone, whereupon she’d titter ‘Oh ha ha, I’m getting a bit lost now, this is a bit technical for me, ha ha! Professor Lewis, maybe you can put it in simpler terms for us?’ Unfortunately, however, he couldn’t, being possessed of – if it’s possible – an EVEN MORE robotic and boring style of delivery than the first bloke. Obviously the director had just looked at these guys’ qualifications on paper and decided, ‘Yeah, they sound intelligent, let’s get them in’ – without troubling to audition them to see if they were remotely suitable for telly or should really have been left locked up in a deserted castle somewhere with lots of bubbling test-tubes and a servant called Igor.

On Day 2, the first Chinese scientist had been replaced by a second, whose command of English was sketchy and unintelligible. Professor Lewis was still there and starting to emerge as front runner. By Day 3, with Chinese scientists nos. 3 and 4 trying their luck, he had come to realise that he was the unlikely star of the show, and was warming to his role. ‘Their blood would BOIL !’, he exclaimed with glee - talking about the effects of failure to depressurise correctly - holding up his fingers like an Italian chef savouring a particularly flavoursome sauce. ‘It would cause excruciating PAIN, and possibly even KILL the astronauts!’, he added, a demonic glint in his eye.

Anyway, amidst all this, some facts which may have escaped you in the old west. All the astronauts are aged 42 and considered to be at their physical peak, which gives me hope that I’m not quite over the hill yet. Mind you, for the last two years they’ve been living in special training camps eating space-food, only being allowed home at weekends, and for the last couple of weeks haven’t been allowed home at all in case they caught a virus.

Two of them, Zhai Zhigang who did the spacewalk and his backup Liu Boming, are from Heilongjiang - where we are. Our boys in space; almost makes you proud. They didn’t say they’re from Harbin so I would imagine they’re from little one-horse towns – the equivalent of having two guys from Auchtermuchty and Ecclefechan up there. Zhai Zhigang in particular, it seems, came from a very poor family. His father was infirm and his mother made her living selling toasted sunflower seeds on the street. The story – romanticised possibly – is that when he passed the entrance exam for the army, she borrowed 15 Yuan (about £1.25) from a neighbour to buy him a briefcase, but all she had to put in it was toasted sunflower seeds, so that’s what he went off to army training camp with.

She didn’t live to see her son become a national hero.

G'day folks

2008-09-25T19:02:00.000+08:00

I’ve finally worked it out. My so-called broadband-which-isn’t-really-it’s-dial-up internet connection – if such a lumbering, clunking thing over which it is impossible to upload even the shortest video clip in less than an hour really merits the name ‘connection’ – thinks I’m in Australia. Or if not in the country itself, then its environs. (Does Australia have environs?)

This explains why
a) I can see all the websites (including this one) which I’m not supposed to be able to see from China, and yet my VPN which I purchased for this express purpose before leaving the UK doesn’t work, implying there’s a proxy server somewhere;
b) when I went to renew my anti-virus software the other day, the price came up in dollars. I assumed it meant US dollars and went to the drop-down box where it said ‘Change currency’ – and the two options it gave me were Australian dollars or New Zealand dollars. Big choice there, then.
c) when I try to find out what’s happening in Neighbours, I can’t get off the Australian version of the site no matter how hard I try, so all the storylines are three months ahead – though annoyingly it won’t let me actually watch the videos. But I DO know that Libby…. oh no, I couldn’t possibly tell.

So I say good on ya, cobber, to my Chinese landlords, who must have had the same devious idea as me and set up something to bypass the blockade. I’m SLIGHTLY annoyed at having forked out £20 for a VPN which is effectively redundant. I suppose I can use it in hotels, but usually their internet connections are unrestricted anyway. Still, my fault for being hyper-efficient and buying it in advance rather than waiting till we got here to see if we actually needed it.

By the way, thanks to all for your emails and comments on this blog. I really do appreciate them and apologise for not responding. It’s just that what with having to connect the modem and dial up every time as if it was – God – 1998 or something! [snorts in contempt], and needing to communicate with Peter who’s been in the UK all week, I’ve just not really got round to it. But I’m thrilled you’re all reading, and I never intended this to be one-way communication so I promise I’ll make a better effort. Claire, I’m glad I made you laugh but I was deadly serious about the face creams! Congrats to Rachael & Jake. Arno, actually I miss Polwarth – a bit! Lucy, are you out there?

Just going to crack open a can of Foster’s and put another shrimp on the barby.

Water, water, everywhere

2008-09-23T16:42:00.001+08:00

I do so hope you can see these pictures clearly. This is several official men, including a uniformed security guard (later joined by a second), trying to clear up a major leak from a manhole cover in our courtyard by sweeping at it with broomsticks - proper ones, as ridden by the Wicked Witch of the West (though of course she'd have melted in so much water).

This was the scene I came home to today - about three inches of water outside our front door due to I don't know what, but enough to make them shut off the water to the whole building earlier, without warning or explanation.

This was somewhat disturbing because we pay for our water by the primitive means of a card inserted into a meter under the sink. When I asked our interpreter, Kevin, what would happen when this ran out, he said, 'The water will stop', as if this was the most obvious and normal thing in the world. Our landlords had offered to pay for the water for a year in advance for us, but as they'd failed to get a fa piao, Kevin had sucked his teeth in a jobsworth manner and they took the card away.

Hence my panic today, but fortunately Kevin's phone was engaged, and I was just about to go over to the office to harangue him when an almighty gurgling erupted from our toilets and the water came back on.

Milk matters

2008-09-20T12:02:00.000+08:00

Don’t know how much coverage there’s been in the UK of the news story about tainted baby milk powder. Here, it’s vied with the Paralympics for biggest news of the week – at least on the one English-language TV channel we currently have, which shows the news every couple of hours so you tend to get to know it off by heart!

Basically several of the big dairy companies have been found to be producing infant formula powder tainted with melamine (the stuff kitchen shelves used to be made from), which unscrupulous local producers have been adding, in order to make a quick buck by disguising the fact that they’re watering down the milk. Apparently it was the New Zealand-based parent company of one of the dairies who did a random quality-control test, spotted it and blew the whistle. At least four babies have died and hundreds more are ill as a result. It’s just too horrible to think about. If ever there was a time to feel grateful that I’ve so far failed to produce a baby, this is probably it.

But like all these scares, positives will (and indeed already have) come out of it. Peter – being the expert & all – says that it will professionalise the dairy industry here, which after all has only been in existence for about fifteen years. Apparently it’s been common practice for ‘peasant’ farmers [I don’t like to use that word but can’t think of a better one] who own one or two cows to walk them daily to a local milking station, where their milk is then sold on to the big dairies. This earns them a bit more money, and adds to the milk yield for the big dairies who are, it seems, struggling to meet the growing demand.

Certainly the milk section of the supermarket is always very busy and there seem to be hundreds of brands and different types of milk. In Heilongjiang province we're fortunate in that all of the local dairies have tested melamine-free. Incidentally, we’ve learnt that if it looks like a milk carton, it’s probably yoghurt. Milk tends to come in bags. Yes, little plastic bags from which it is impossible to pour unless you snip off the corner and put them into – you guessed it – an empty carton. As they say, you figure it out. We, however, have a milkman! Well, technically we don’t at the moment, but we did and we will again very soon. He (or she, never seen him/her, and never likely to) comes at 5am, seven days a week, and deposits two of said little bags, containing real fresh milk, not UHT – which is a miracle – in a little polystyrene-insulated box attached to the wall outside the door of our flat! What are the chances of that? Who knows, maybe the whole ‘milk delivery’ idea will catch on in the UK (!).

Oh, while I’m off tack slightly, one source of light relief in all this is the fact that Chinese newsreaders are having some difficulty with saying the word ‘dairy’ repeatedly (as I’m having some typing it repeatedly, actually). ‘Diary’ is quite common, but there was one report we watched which referred more than once to ‘diarrhoea’ companies. Possibly strangely apt in a sick kind of way!

Anyway, it’s at the local milking stations that the problem has been occurring. Several people have been arrested, and the head of the main dairy company involved has been sacked, along with (for some reason) the mayor of the region where the scandal first came to light. More importantly, a much more rigorous system of quality controls has already been put into place, and Peter reckons the use of milking stations will cease, peasant farmers will find another way to make money, and the dairy companies will have to use bigger herds of their own – which ultimately will mean more business for his firm. As several other companies have now been implicated, chances are there will be more sackings and arrests. What’s interesting is that if this happened in Europe or America, I bet these people would have resigned without waiting to be sacked, but here the done thing seems to be to wait to get caught before you admit to anything or take responsibility. ‘A shame culture, not a guilt culture’, Peter read somewhere.

Hence, I dare say, the reason why no one will take charge of our visa situation. I can hardly believe that as I type this, Peter is up in the sky on his way back to Edinburgh without me. Before anyone gets excited, it’ll be a flying [pardon the pun] visit; he’ll be in Yorkshire most of the week and hopefully back to China next weekend. We await the verdict on whether I’ll have to do the same in October. Meanwhile, I’m alone on the bridge, watching out for Klingons as I eat my lunch.

Spot check

2008-09-18T10:35:00.000+08:00

Here’s a good thing about China.

Cursed as I am with somewhat oily skin, I have spent the past 20 (ok, try 25) years in a perennial quest for good skin products to help with same. In the UK, this is an extremely frustrating task. There isn’t much on the market, and what little there is tends to be found in the ‘teenage’ section of most chemists, which is not only a rather embarrassing place to be seen shopping at my age, but also means the products are cheap and, ergo, useless.

From time to time, one of the higher-end cosmetic firms brings out a product aimed at the grease-coated among us. I buy it, use it for a few months or, if I’m lucky, a couple of years, and start to think my troubles are over. And then one day I go to replace my almost-empty bottle or tube, and am told the product has been discontinued ‘due to lack of demand’. This happens every time without fail.

‘Demand?!’ I want to scream. ‘I’ll give you demand! If you’d taken the trouble to ASK, or WARN ME [they never do] that you’re about to discontinue the damn stuff, I’d have bought every bottle within a 100-mile radius! There may not be many of us, but those of us who do buy these things REALLY REALLY NEED THEM so please could you just NOT do this? Please?’ Yes you, the ex-makers of, among others, Christian Dior Ultra-Mat lotion, Clinique Turnaround for Oily Skins, and even the late lamented Body Shop Lemon Oat Facial Wash (ah, those were the days), it’s YOU I’m talking to.

So, imagine my delight when I first entered the toiletries section of a Chinese supermarket, to see aisle after aisle of products ALL for oily skins! Good ones. This was incredible! It was like I’d died and gone to acne heaven. But you know what? Most of them were by recognisable western brands, but the products themselves were unfamiliar to me. Which can only mean the bastard manufacturers are making these things purely for the Asian market.

I feel cheated! There I’ve been, chasing some holy grail of blackhead removal all over the UK for decades, when all the time Chinese women have had this stuff on tap. Clearly some market researchers have concluded that western women are ‘all’ worried about ‘dryness’ and ‘ageing’, while their Chinese counterparts’ concerns are shiny noses, blocked pores and zits. Do the Chinese have greasier skin than westerners? I can’t say I’ve noticed, but then they’ve had access to good products.

But now I’m on to them. So, while any western woman coming out here should make sure she ships out plenty of deodorant, good soap & toothpaste, disposable ladies’ razors, fake tan if you’re into that kind of thing, and above all tampons [why, China, why?], oh and I suppose products for dry skin if you do have it!, I will be shipping back, when I eventually leave, vast quantities of cleansers, toners, facial scrubs, masks, spot creams, oil-free moisturisers and matifying lotions.

And the best thing is, when I run out, I know where to go to get more.

I love you, Chinese women, every spotty, greasy one of you.

Annoyed

2008-09-17T12:15:00.000+08:00

I was going to show you a video of our space-age shower, but haven't got the right lead to upload it from my camcorder to my laptop. Then I thought I'd show you one of a torrential downpour / hailstorm outside the supermarket the other day, which I filmed on the normal camera, but I'm on a crappy dial-up ADSL line so it won't work, even on YouTube, for now. Sorry.

Anyway, all this has now been overshadowed by the news I've just received, that due to more unbelievable visa screw-ups, not only does Peter have to fly back to the UK next week to get his visa, but it looks quite likely that I will also have to fly back, separately, in a couple of weeks, to get mine.

I am not happy about it. Not at all.

But at least I've got a shopping trolley.

It's home, Jim, but not as we know it

2008-09-16T19:41:00.001+08:00

Above are some pics of our new flat, which we moved into this weekend. Apologies for the lack of posts for a few days but we've only just got online.

The flat is huge (there are several more rooms, not shown above) and is like the Starship Enterprise. I almost keep expecting the doors to do that 'shhp, shhp' thing.

Next time, a video.

Remember the Green Cross Code?

2008-09-12T21:11:00.000+08:00

Yeah, well, if you come to China you may as well forget it. I tell you, if Dave Prowse hadn’t got that George Lucas gig he’d have had plenty of work here to see him into ripe old age.

Forget Look Right, Look Left etc. Here it’s more a case of, Look Left, Look Right, Look Left Again, Look Around Wildly in All Directions, Panic, Start to Cross, Realise That Cars Are Still Coming Even Though Green Man is Showing, Run Back to Pavement, Repeat Process Several Times, Give Up If Want to Stay Alive, Wait For An Eternity, See a Chinese Person Crossing and Stick Very Close Behind Them While Being Prepared to Dodge Rapidly Moving Taxis Which Will Stop For No Man. Doesn’t really trip off the tongue, does it?

Actually, they have a very sensible system for traffic lights which show how many seconds there are to count down until they change to green and the red man comes on. There’s no way for pedestrians to control the red & green men, but the lights change with sufficient frequency to make this not a problem. Except that the green man doesn’t actually mean ‘It’s safe to cross now’. It means, as far as I can deduce, ‘You probably have about a 50% less chance of being killed if you go now than if you wait until the lights change again’. This is because a red traffic light DOESN’T apply to traffic turning right OR left (!), or to bikes & scooters, which have their own lane in Harbin (a minor improvement on Shanghai where the bike & scooter lane doubles as, er, the pavement). And as the roads here are nearly all huge, wide, four-lane boulevards which have to be crossed in stages, it can be challenging to say the least.

The other thing is the car horns. They are incessant, and seem to indicate, ‘I have no intention of stopping, so if you [be you a pedestrian, cyclist or other driver] don’t want to die, get out of my way’. There’s no lane discipline as we understand it; they use the American system where undertaking (never has a word been more apt!) is allowed as well as overtaking, and at roundabouts everyone just sort of pushes forward optimistically, blasting their horns until someone lets them through. It’s kind of traffic Darwinism.

Getting in a car or taxi is a white-knuckle ride, compounded by the fact that many don’t have functioning seatbelts except for the driver, who never wears his anyway. But then the Chinese attitude towards protective clothing and safety gear seems ambiguous. In Shanghai, anyone who has to work, cycle, or even walk in close proximity to traffic wears a surgical mask to protect them from exhaust fumes. Pedestrians carry umbrellas to shield them from the sun. Scooter-riders and cyclists wear sun visors, and weird detachable cotton sleeves, elasticated at the top & bottom, to cover their arms if they’re wearing a short-sleeved shirt. The thing absolutely no-one wears is a helmet. But at least if they get knocked down and mangled to pieces by the relentless, high-speed, multi-directional traffic, they’ll have nice clean lungs and their arms won’t be sunburnt. So that’s ok.

If you want to read further thoughts on Chinese driving, as well as many other aspects of what it’s like to be a British woman living in China, do check out my fellow blogger at http://livingthehailife.blogspot.com/.
What she has to say about culture shock, Chinese food, Chinese sleeping habits, Chinglish, shopping, Tampax and the unavailability thereof in China – to name but a few – I simply cannot improve upon or add to. It’s exactly as she describes it. Her recent description of the visa medical which I mentioned last week is accurate too, though I was fortunate enough not to have had any intimate surgery to have to explain to Chinese doctors.

Incidentally, you may like to know that according to my medical results I ‘Be in basically normal health status’, but that a UK size 14 is considered ‘Obese’ here. I’m still fuming every time I think about it.