settling in

Settling in

Getting settled in to this place has been quite difficult for me, or a lot more difficult than I imagined. And I think this is due to a combination of everything that it so alien about Xuzhou, or maybe I should say so alien about me being here. People stare a lot, walking down the street most people will look at you for a few seconds, some will stare at you continuously as they walk past, some will stop walking, stand still and watch as you walk past them and off in to the distance. A lot of young guys especially have a tendency to shout out ‘hello’, as this is the only words they know in English. They find it hilarious, and it is usually hilarious to us too. This curiosity that the locals here have for the foreigners can lead to some very funny encounters, the other day when we were sat in the town square enjoying some ice cream in the sun we started to hear some music in the distance, it gradually got louder and louder and we struggled to find out where is was coming from as we couldn’t see any large speakers around. After a while we realized that there was an old guy walking through the square directly towards us, with something hanging around his neck. This turned out to be a speaker, and it was blaring out traditional Chinese music at a very high volume. He walked right up to us and stood there for about a minute deafening us with his high pitch music and just had a good look, then he gave us a little nod and turned away, started walking, and turned off his music. We had a good laugh. A few days later we were in a bar having some drinks, curiosity got the better of a drunk Chinese guy and he came over to investigate, we had already noted him earlier on from doing a particularly cool dance involving 2 thumbs up , closed eyes and a lot of nodding. He wanted to tell one of us that he had seen them do karaoke and it was ‘wery gooda’, and that we were all his very good friends, luckily one of the guys spoke Chinese and was able to translate what he was saying. A few of us lit up cigarettes and without having 2 puffs he had pinched them out of our lips and thrown them on the floor, presently he pulled out his own very expensive cigarettes and stuck them in our lips and lit them up, then a round of beers arrived and he went on stage to sing us a song. This turned out to be one of the most energetic performances I have ever seen, he sang a song in Chinese screaming as loud as a banshee, at one point he was on his knees, belting out some Chinese love song going red in the face through exertion. He then blew us some kisses and left the stage, we were laughing so hard we were almost falling off our chairs, my stomach muscles were in pain but it was just so hilarious I couldn’t stop laughing. Luckily he was a bit too drunk to realize our state, or he may have been offended that we were laughing at his singing, but it was just the whole situation, and this has happened a few times now, it’s like being caught up in a real life sketch show, where things start off rather strange, and get stranger and stranger, and you just can’t help but laugh. And what makes it all the more funny is the looks it draws from the locals, they have a slight look of amusement on their face and you can see them curiously wondering ‘what the hell is that weird laowai laughing at’.

The other thing that hits you about Xuzhou is the noise, there is a real hustle and bustle to this place and everyone seems to have developed desensitization to the noise. From my apartment the first thing I get in the morning is surprisingly birdsong, which is nice, but it doesn’t last, it is followed shortly by the army barracks that lies behind my block. This involves lots of screaming and marching at 6am. As the day begins people start driving, and driving means lots of beeping. For anyone who isn’t familiar with Asian driving styles what they have done is replace looking in your mirrors with beeping your horn, and this results in a lot of beeping. They also have a system that means when you are in front of someone, it’s your right of way. So if you are driving along a typical 5 lane street through town and want to move in to the lane on your left you just have to take a look, if there is no-one there you beep your horn and move across, if there is someone there and their car is a meter from the front of yours you beep your horn and move across, and visa versa. Also if you overtake, you beep your horn, if you undertake you beep your horn, or if anyone overtakes or undertakes you, you beep your horn, if people cross the road you beep your horn, and if anyone takes more than 0.1 of a second to start moving after a red light you beep your horn and don’t let go until at least a few seconds after they’ve moved away. As the roads are always busy here, beeping is a non stop all day background noise. At least Xuzhou’s airport is far away enough so that we don’t have planes flying over the city, this is very fortunate. Unfortunately one of China’s largest military bases is located nearby and on most days they fly their jets right over the city, these can be really loud, and even supersonic sometimes apparently.
To help combat the pollution problem facing so many Chinese cities these little electric bikes, or e bikes were dreamed up, these can be basic bicycles with electric motors all the way up to fancy looking mopeds that nip silently along running of a battery similar to that of a car’s. These batteries are the cause of the trouble though, as they are the most desirable part of the bike in a thief’s eyes, so as well as being locked up to the bike, the bikes are also rigged with super sensitive alarms. These go off all the time, and are always going off everywhere, because the e bikes are always parked everywhere. Sometimes just walking past one sets the alarm off, and a car driving past, or a gust of wind, even a loud noise will also get alarms going. The military jets I mentioned earlier, they will set off a whole wave of alarms. It’s just lucky that e bike alarms don’t set e bike alarms off, but even if they did, I’m sure it wouldn’t affect anyone. No-one takes any notice of alarms, people will walk up to their bike and load all their shopping in to the baskets and storage areas oblivious that the alarm has been ringing the whole time, or they will go and sit on their bike and chat with friends before departing, talking over the alarm that has been ringing since the second they approached the bike.
One of the most distinctive noises about Xuzhou, and China in general is also the most unpleasant, and this is the noise of someone charging up a nice phlegmy spit ball to discharge wherever they happened to be standing, and this will be wherever they are standing. The airport, shopping centre, street, park, restaurant and even the hospital, I don’t think that it’s allowed in the school though luckily.
Construction is also a constant source of noise, on the large and small scale. Near the centre of town there is a new development area where they are probably going to build a new gigantic shopping centre, anyhoo they must be doing the foundations because it’s just a big yard at the moment and every now and then a terrific boom goes off that makes the whole city shake. I’m guessing this is them clearing for foundations. All around town there are big building going up, lots of shopping centre style buildings, blocks of flats and then lots of destruction of the old buildings. And on the small scale there are always pavements being turned upside down, shops being gutted out and rebuilt and small building getting radical construction changes in minimal time. I can walk past somewhere in the morning and there will be one old workman squatting down with a small drill with the hammer mode set on working at 10 meters of solid concrete steps, the type of thing that would normally require a giant stand up breaker in England. But at the end of the day when I walk past it’ll all be broken and taken away. And these drills set on hammer mode can be heard from all directions, as can angle grinders, hammers and just about any other building based noise.

But like the locals, you learn to ignore all these noises and they just fade in to the background. But you are still aware of all the noise of everything in the back of your mind, it’s one of the things in China that ensures you are constantly switched on, you can never be sure what’s going to happen. Whether it’s crossing the road and having to watch out for people running red lights, or going when the green man is lit up and having to dodge the silent e bikes that come from all directions, or ordering something from a restaurant and never being entirely sure you’ll get what you order, or who’s going to stare and who’s going to scream hello in your face as you as you walk along the street trying to drift away in what is slowly becoming everyday life. Something will always hit you smack in the face and stop you from assimilating in to the everyday anonymous existence of city life. This is good.