Remember the Green Cross Code?

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.

One Week in China

Welcome, folks, to the inaugural posting on my China blog. Wonderful wonderful technology allows me to bring this to you with -hopefully - no interference from government internet censors (the ‘Great Firewall of China’ of which you may have heard tell). I hope over the next couple of years to keep you all updated regularly with developments and observations on this truly bizarre new life of ours. Please feel free to pass on the link to anyone I’ve missed but who you think might be interested (within reason!).

Peter came out a week before me as you know, and had a chance to go to our home-town-to-be, Harbin, to look at a couple of flats, on which more below. His initial stay there was remarkable mostly for the novel definition of ‘room service’ embraced by a certain French hotel chain which shall remain anonymous. On his first afternoon he was just trying to take a nap when the phone rang in his room. A woman was whispering something in Chinese. For some reason he got the impression that it was the wifie who had cleaned his room that morning who was worried he might be unhappy about something. She kept saying ‘Rooma rooma {incomprehensible Chinese word} one, two – yes, no?’ After several minutes of What? and Sorry? and repeating ‘Don’t understand’ in Chinese, he hung up. A couple of minutes later the phone rang again and after going through the same non-conversation a second time, he finally said ‘Room hao’ (good) to express that he was quite happy with it, thank you very much.

The next thing he knew, the room doorbell went and there was a small woman outside with large sunglasses on. She marched in, deposited a carrier bag on the floor, turned round and repeated the ‘Rooma {Chinese} one two yes? mantra but this time she made a massage type action with her fingers. He said ‘Ah - no thanks’, shook his head and went back towards the door - but she wasn’t taking that for an answer. Pointing at his willy she said the Chinese word again. He said ‘NO!’ but as he headed for the door she made a lunge for his privates. He opened the door, grabbed her hand an inch from his bits and pushed her out. She skipped back for her carrier bag and beat it immediately. When he reported this encounter to his interpreter the next day, the lad nearly wet himself laughing. ‘She wasn’t saying “rooma” she was saying “woman”’, he said. ‘She wanted to know if you wanted one woman or two, and when you said ‘room good’ that was an invitation to go ahead!’ Peter asked him if this was common and he said ‘Oh yes – all the hotels have an arrangement with locals to make sure every need is satisfied. Many people require this service’!! What would Basil Fawlty have made of it all, I wonder?

Having escaped with his virtue intact, it was back to Shanghai to meet me off the plane and begin the tiresome task of applying for our residency permits etc. The first requirement for this was to undergo the ‘Aliens Exit-Entry’ medical (something painful involving Sigourney Weaver surely?). This is essentially a ridiculous production line designed to ‘process’ as many ‘aliens’ as they can in the shortest possible time. They get through probably 40-50 patients an hour, chiefly by having a clutch of nurses running up and down the corridor barking orders at you: ‘Go in there! Take off shoes! Lie on bed! Breathe! Hold breath! Again! Finish! Now wait outside room 206! Next!’ It was probably just as well I was in a jet-lagged haze, having been forced to endure this less than 24 hours after landing. Perhaps Peter’s Harbin hotel friend intended to conduct her business in a similar fashion? Anyway I can only assume it’s been designed purely as a money-spinner, as the relevance of most of the tests escapes me. A blood test for AIDS and TB I can understand but honestly, an eye test? Peering in the ears? Poking my stomach for 20 seconds, a quick ECG and an ultrasound of my liver and kidneys? How exactly do these determine whether I should be allowed to stay in China or not?

Peter had already had his medical before I arrived and his results happily came back as ‘Normal’ - “Even my liver!” he announced with some surprise. (No one can tell us what happens if your results are not Normal. They certainly don’t treat you, and may indeed ship you home, possibly dumping you overboard into Japanese waters as they go.) Unfortunately though, even the Normal are subject to the whims of the Chinese authorities who have decided, it now transpires, to change the rules so that Peter will have to fly to Hong Kong or possibly even back to the UK to get his visa sorted. By spectacularly bad timing our arrival has coincided with ongoing Olympics-induced visa paranoia, so we remain somewhat in limbo at the moment.

Apart from that our stay in Shanghai was unremarkable, owing to the fact that I’m still waking up at 4.30am every night so I’m permanently too tired to go out unless I have to. I have no idea why 4.30am, as that’s 9.30pm UK time, but that’s jetlag for you. My Dad never believed jetlag existed (then again, he never believed stereo existed either) and I so wish he was around for me to set him straight.

Anyway, due to this it was somewhat reluctantly that I flew up to Harbin with Peter on Wednesday so that I could see our new flat. A couple of pictures above. It’s the most extraordinary place I’ve ever seen, with décor like something out of a 1960s sci-fi film and a whole host of gadgets, including an all-singing all-dancing shower complete with lights, massage jets and sound system, of which the owner guy was immensely proud. It’s got 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a central air-con unit and under-floor heating throughout. The contract should hopefully be signed today, and with any luck it’ll be available for us to move our stuff into within a few days – if not ourselves, as we have to go back to Shanghai next week to sort things out, so it’s a couple more weeks in hotels unfortunately.

Our goods which we sent out by air freight have arrived and look very strange and surreal sitting in the corner of Peter’s office. The rest of the stuff (19 boxes thereof!) will take about 3 months by sea, so we took the precaution of flying out our winter clothes, as it’ll be below zero in Harbin by mid-November. It’s still in the mid-high 20s here now (not counting this afternoon’s sudden torrential storm), but public buildings have had their air-con switched off as of 1st Sept as it is now officially ‘cold’, having been up into the high 30s in July & August. Then in winter it’s minus 15 by day, minus 30 by night. Actual proper seasons; that’ll take some getting used to.

Peter’s job is going well and they are busy building the team for the new business. All are apparently very impressed with his couple of sentences of Chinese. Getting lost walking back to the hotel and a trip to the supermarket on my own have almost been enough to shock me out of my denial with regard to learning the language. If I can at least master ‘I don’t speak Chinese’ it’ll be an advantage!

Before you go, scroll back to the top to check out a couple of the spectacular photos which Peter managed to take from the plane over, we think, Mongolia at dawn.

Keep us posted on all the news from home.

Love
M&P