Long lost friends

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I'll worry about that later.

A man called Maggie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tune in next time….

Hong Kong pooey

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.

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