A week and a bit in Fuzhou

While in Fuzhou I visited an orphanage, a school/orphanage for kids whose parents are in gaol, a church based English class, an English college English class, a drug rehab centre, a kind of strange amusement park and a 5 star hotel. I cemented, I played with wires, I played with babies (not so dangerous), I taught some English lessons, I gave a little improptu talk, I looked after /played with Gabby and Sophia (Jose and Fi's daughters), I met lots of lovely people. I didn't take many pictures. Is that enough to summarise my time in Fuzhou?

(I'm happy to answer questions in the comments section.)

More on the 上有天堂，下有 pick-up line...

I met a guy in Fuzhou. He was working in a little shop that sells convenience store type items but is just a hole in the wall the size of your bedroom openning onto the street. He spoke good English and was friendly so I went back another night to get a drink. He ended up taking me out to dinner - Chinese hospitality :) I told him about the pick-up line and he laughed and thought it was great. Later in the week I took him and his girlfriend out to dinner (well, they picked the place). He told me to try the line on her. She wasn't so fussed about it.

Fi and Jose have a Chinese tutor come to their place twice a week and on my last day in Fuzhou I sat in with Fi (Jose had something else to do). She is a lovely young university student, studying nursing. So, I tried the line on her. She laughed as well and said that it would be a nice thing to say to a girl (and that Chinese boys don't normally say such mushy things to girls - I told her that most boys are like that).

So, if you are trying to chat up a nice Chinese girl, you have at least a 50% chance of success :)

Fuzhou atm

Not going to say much - I want to talk more about it after I've done all the things that I'm going to do. Hmm, that might make more sense later, when I actually talk about it...

I'm in Fuzhou, visiting the Salsidos who worked at Crossroads in Hong Kong for a number of years, including when I was there four years ago. They haven't been here all that long - about seven months. The plan was to take about half a year to settle in, get to know the language and the culture a bit, before getting into the work they want to do. Well, they have done that and are now looking at starting up a business. But in the mean time they have also managed to get involved in a whole range of things which I am getting to see too - they are keeping me pretty busy :) More on that later...

So, atm I am being looked after in their home, hanging out with their two lovely daughters and tagging along with Fi and Jose ('hosay' for the Spannishly challenged among my readers :p).

Hangzhou, briefly...

You know I keep mentioning that phrase, about how the Chinese think that Suzhou and Hangzhou are such beautiful cities? Well, I can see what they're on about in Hangzhou. This city has a famous lake, West Lake (which, appropriately, lies to the West of the city centre. It is not just the lake, but the fact that that it is surrounded by mountains, mainly on the South and West sides, so that standing on the city side you will see beautiful scenery. From the mountains looking back you will see highrise. Lots of it - Hangzhou is a big city.

My room mate in Beijing, Miguel, went back to Spain for a week and a half but then came to Hangzhou to do research relating to his PhD. So I came and visited. It was fun hanging out with him and seeing where he was living. On one of the days one of the people working in his department (a girl who was also doing a Masters in English literature) gave us a little tour around part of the city.

The story with the young family in my previous post happened when I went exploring myself (on a Monday - Miguel had to work). I forgot to mention on little thing that is a key part of Chinese curiosity towards westerners. At one point, as I was sitting next to the mother, she held out her arm and put it near mine to draw attention to the difference. To draw attention to how pale I am. Most westerners are pale compared to most Chinese but there wouldn't be many that are paler than me. I think this skin colour difference is quite interesting to most Chinese in a country where most people look fairly similar. OK, there are various ethnic minorities but the vast majority are Han Chinese. There are differences in skin colour but that is mainly the difference between well off city girls who like to be pale and labourers and farmers darkened by the sun. People like me are an anomaly - we must look pretty strange - so it's not surprising that people want to take pictures of us...

A foreigner in a strange land

It's interesting, that being so obviously not from around here that it makes the locals so curious. Even in relatively touristy areas, such as around the edges of West Lake in Hangzhou I was still being looked at. Over the last few weeks I've had plenty of people calling out 'helloooo', usually from a distance or from behind me. Most of the time it's OK but sometimes it can be annoying or there is a hint of negativeness in it...
Walking around Suzhou, which is meant to be a touristy town, I had lots of people looking at me. Well, actually I was wearing shorts and they were all looking at my legs. I think I saw only one local in shorts in the two or so days I was there (and maybe a handful of girls in skirts).
But overall I have had a pretty good experience. Even though China is opening up and tourism has been here for quite a while people are still curious about foreigners. It is not unusual for people to come up to you and ask to have their picture taken with you.
Sometimes someone will start a brief conversation with you so they can practice a bit of English. Sometimes they will want to talk to you but they don't speak English and I get to practice the little bit of Chinese I know.
A couple of days ago, wandering through a park in Hanzhou I walked past three Chinese people. To me they looked like two young girls (on a young teen) and a little boy. They asked to have their picture taken with me. Sure. As I was walking back, I met them in a different place and one of them invited me to sit with them. We chatted a bit in Chinese.
[An aside. My Chinese is very limited, so the success of a conversation will often come down to the Chinese person words their questions. If they ask me something that is a bit different from the text book conversations I probably understand even though I might have been able to give an answer. They then might just give up. If they ask their questions in the right way then I can answer and we can have a little conversation.]
It tuned out that the girl (not the teen) was actually the mother of the little boy. After a bit of age guessing we were both surprised to find that we were both 29. She had gotten married at 21 or 22 and had the boy at 22.
In Fuzhou I had to stay two nights in a hotel. The first evening I went wandering to find some drink and went to one of the nearby little hole-in-the-wall shops that sold drinks and fruit and snack foods and thermos flasks and cleaning products etc. Working there was Henry, a happy smiley welcoming young man who welcomed me to his shop (well, of course, so I could buy things). His English was really good and I found that he had studied something to do with computers and was working here in his family shop in the evenings. Last night I needed some water so I wandered over to his shop to see if he was there. He was and he invited me to sit (which I think is fairly Chinese). We chatted for a while and he told me about his plan to open a restaurant (not quite what we'd expect - it would be a hole-in-the wall type shop selling easy to cook fast food). This is because he thought it would be more likely to make more money this way than to have a regular job. He had already worked for five years installing computers and slowly worked his way up to an OK salary (2000RMB per month). But his cousin owns a couple of these little restaurants and makes 5000RMB per month. We also did the age guessing game. I was surprised to find he was 27 (he looked young even by Chinese standards). Then he was surprised that I wasn't 20...
Someone bought some bananas he gave me one, on him.(Katrina has already busted me for casually mentioning eating bananas. What can I do? I can't help it if I can casually eat bananas here...). I thanked him and mentioned that I was a little hungry. When his brother-in-law relieved him we went out to dinner. I didn't have much of a chance to stop him but dinner was his treat as well. He asked about taxes in Australia, whether they were high. I compared Sweden which has really high taxes and we talked about social services and social security. Well, in China, there is nothing. If you need to go to hospital you pay. If you are old, well you better have saved enough money. If you don't have a job, well, get a job.
This is a very different world...

OK, I need to do some catching up

I wanted to write a little more about Suzhou and I need to write something about Hangzhou and now I'm in Fuzhou... I'm in a really nice hotel here but internet is expensive so what you get is a couple of quick posts. Leter in the week I should get a chance to put up a few other points I thought of.

But, brief summary of where I am. I've just left Hangzhou (near Shanghai)where I caught up with Miguel who was my room mate in Beijing. Beautiful lake. Now I'm in Fuzhou (halfway between Shanghai and Hong Kong) visiting the Salsidos who are doing work with an orphanage and a drug rehab centre (the same organisation that Phil worked for). I'll be helping out there for a week and it sounds like I already have heaps lined up for me. I'll let you know about that adventure... afterwards...

I've discovered...

... where the home-boy cool, one trouser leg rolled up look comes from: old Chinese men :)

上有天堂，下有苏杭

Leo wanted to change that into a pick-up line (but he was never brave enough to try it out):

上有天堂，下有你

Anyone think it would work?

Suzhou gardens

I guess I should be a bit less lazy than usual and point out that in Pinyin (the official representation of Chinese using the Roman alphabet) ´zh´ is pronounced like a ´j´, ´ou´ sounds like the vowel when Homer says d´oh! Think of a girl called Sue and a boy called Joe. Sue Joe.

So, Suzhou is famous for it´s gardens. As a city, it´s not that exciting, although it has a few canals spread around the place which can be pretty. Now, these gardens are not about hedges, lawns and flowers. Here its about rocks and ponds. Doesn´t sound exciting? Well, they´re not meant to be exciting, there´re meant to be calm and relaxing. Walking through them I did find them relaxing. I wouldn´t mind living in this kind of place.

I only went to a couple of actual gardens and my camera battery died so I don´t have that many pictures unfortunately. Here are some of them.

There is also a story about finding that bridge...

Response to Carmen's blog

At the moment I am in Suzhou, heading to Hangzhou tomorrow. These are meant to be two of the nicest cities in China (and so, are meant to be two of the more touristy). I'll have to write up some of the things I've done. But first, one last thing on the Silk Road. Kind of appropriate, then, that I'm here, since Suzhou is famous for it's Silk. Silk doesn't originate from here but the city became famous for its silk production pretty early on.

Carmen (fellow ABS employee, fellow Chinese student, fellow traveller along the Silk Road) has written up her account of the Silk Road trip.

Here is my response to a few of the things she wrote:


- Thanks for putting up with having to translate for me. It wouldn't have been as good without you.

Day 1
- I didn't mind the hotel in Urumqi. Even though they kept trying to look at my previous China visa. The girl just couldn't accept that the current visa was the current visa...
- scared of mutton?

Day 2
- we almost had two crashes, which would have been pretty decent if the driver had reacted one second later.
- it is true that I danced and won the pretty girl. Oh, do you want the story behind that?


Day 4
- Yes, this tour guide was great (we had a different one in each place, you see).

Day 5
- What is so embarrassing about getting dressed up in costumes and taking silly pictures? Oh.

Day 6
- Yes, I was the centre of attention as I tried to practise Chinese

Day 7
- The famous temple was actually really intersting, mainly because we got to see the normal every day activities, rather than it just being a tourist attraction. But yes, Carmen was sick :(
- I liked the salty tea. The salty milk was OK too, but I was clever enough not to put any butter in it :)
- The heated argument looked like it might turn into a fist fight at one point...
- What's with the anti mutton propaganda?

Silk Road photos

Here are some of the photos from my trip. You will have to wait until I get to experience the full slideshow. Here are just enough to give you an impression (and to make you jealous)...

Silk Road (cont.)

4.9.06
Sky Lake at 天山 (Sky Mountain) - we're now in Switzerland :)

China has only one offical time zone but we are really 2 hours behind here. Locals all run on local time. Our tour will apparently run on Beijing time, but we seem to be having breakfast at local time (ie quite early) and lunch and dinner on Beijing time. The days are long...

Tonight we jumped on an overnight train and leave Xinjiang provence behind.

5.9.06
We arrive in Gansu provence, another land of desert and oasis.

We visit the Mogao caves - centuries of Buddhist carvings. Amazing but rushed. 'One of the greatest repositories of Buddhist art in the world' Lonely Planet says. Again it is right.

After lunch we visit some sand dunes - they look just like those fake looking ones in Star Wars - and go on a camel ride. I have now ridden camels with one hump (in Oman) and two humps (lets not get into and argument about what is really a camel - I don't know - they both look fairly camel like to me). Then having a ride on an inflated ring down the dune (I'll show you the movie when I get back).

Sheep feet at dinner - just skin and bone, just like chicken feet but a bit bigger. Yeah, I didn't really like it.

6.9.06
We left Dunhuang to take a 7 hour bus ride to the Western end of the great wall. Apparently this is the first year that the tour didn't have to get up at 2am - the road used to be so bad that it took 14 hours. Most of the way we rode along the new road but it is still being built so there were a few times when we had to go along the old rough road. At one point the driver bribed a road worker to let us onto the new road since regular traffic didn't seem to be allowed on it at that point. At lunch we stopped at a new city. And I mean new. I don't think that we can really imagine how China works, living in Australia. What I saw was a city of new buildings, new parks and new wide streets, with practically no-one in them. I think the story is that the population of the old town is being moved over to the new one (but hasn't happened yet).

We then took the overnight train to Lanzhou. Meanwhile I'd been adopted by one of the Chinese ladies on my tour - she designated herself as my Chinese 老师 (teacher). We got upgraded to Soft Sleeper (the top class - we would have been getting hard sleeper) but I think that was just because they stuffed up the booking.

7.9.06
We arrive in Lanzhou, famous for being the most polluted city in the world, and spend a morning there. Time to go on a raft ride on the Yellow River (the Mother river of China). Not just any raft - we were floating on inflated sheep skins (you'll need to see photos to truely apreciate this).

Then a bus ride out to Xining in Qinghai provence. Now we're in Tibet. OK, Tibet is a seprarate provence, but historically this area was part of Tibet. Outside the Xining (which has lots of Chinese people) the signs are in Chinese and Tibetan.

8.9.06
A long day. And a cold one. But worth it to see the 6th most important Buddhist monastry in the world. Seeing a monistry is OK, but I've seen them before. This one was really interesting because all the normal monastic things were going on around us. Despite groups of tourits folling shouting tour guides, there were people from the local minority group, with traditional clothing and intersting braided hair, worshiping and prostrating them selves in the different temples. There were also lots of monks wondering around. I also got to hear a little bit of throat singing and chanting in one temple as the tour walked through - very cool sound. Interestingly a few of them stopped a few times for a chat and a laugh while the others continued around them.

Then up to Quinghai Hu (lake) a huge salt water lake 3200m above sea level. Snowy peaks well over 5000m were passed on the way. The reactor where China had its first succesful results in researching the atomic bomb was passed on the way back.

The Silk Road

I've just got back to Beijing after a week and a bit tour of the Silk Road. Quite an amazing and different and fun experience but also rushed and tiring (and I'm a little bit sick atm). Here is a summary of what I saw:

I went to the city that is the furthest away from any ocean. Ranged in Altitute from the second lowest place on Earth (after Death Valley) to 3200m. Hot and sunny days to temperatures approaching freezing. Sand dunes and desert to green glacial valleys with snow capped peaks in the background. And saw quite a range of cultures...

2.6.06
We arrived in Urumqi (Wulumuqi) 'the furthest place on Earth from an Ocean (2250km) according to Lonley Planet.

3.6.06
In Beijing you can see signs (such as road signs in Chinese and English). Here you see them in Chinese and Arabic (Arabic writing, not the language) - we are really in Central Asia now. Well, Central Asia with Chinese people since lots of Han Chinese have migrated out here.

This morning we are rushed through Karez Paradise, a museum about the karez wells. This is talked up as being the 3rd biggest ancient construction achievement in China, after the Great Wall and the Grand Canal. And fair enough too - we are in a desert and there was no water that could be dug up either. So, the locals dug wells in the mountains, tens of kilometers away, and built tunnels to move the water to where they lived. Virtical shafts were then dug down to the tunnels to access the water. Gravity supplies the water pressure - no need for a pump. (Try and find pictures on the net.)

The food out here is different as well, of course. Mostly mutton, and no pork. I'm loving the bread :)

Last(ish) goodbyes

Now it's over, which is a bit sad. One month is so short: to learn Chinese and to get to know people. One month is enough time for you to get to know people well enough to know that you would like to get to know them better. And since I can't hold a conversation in Chinese I am limited to who I can get to know. A lot of my class mates couldn't speak much English, so we resorted to speaking in a mix of bad Chinese and bad English. It meant I had to use my Chinese but it also meant I couldn't say very much. I would have liked to get to know them better. And now I won't be able to keep in contact with them since we have no decent way to communicate. I have met a bunch of Leo's class mates and he has to speak to them in Chinese. But he can, so he has made better friends with them.

So lots of good byes. Who knows, some of the Japanese might visit Australia one day. Realistically I should be able to keep in better contact with Leo, and pay him a visit some time. Anyone want to have a trip to New Zealand? I have been wanting to go on a hike there for a while... There are also some people I will be able to see in a couple of weeks...

My rough itinerary for the next month is:

1-9 Sept - Joining a Chinese tour of Xinjiang Autonomous region
10-12 Sept - Maybe spending a couple of days somewhere close to Beijing
13-14 Sept - Have a couple of days in Beijing and catch up with people - some foreigners who haven't left and a couple of locals
15-18 Sept - Go down to a city near Shanghai (I've forgotten the name) where my room mate Migel will be studying and have a couple of days hanging with him and exploring - it is meant to be a nice city
18-30 Sept - About two weeks in Fuzhou. Apparently there isn't anything interesting to see there but I know some people working in an orphanage and drug rehab work and I am going to help out.
1-10 Oct - A week and a half in HK with Phil (yay!). I'll get to catch up with Crossroads people and others as well.

I probably won't be in contact much in the next couple. Expect and email or blog update in the middle of the month.