The Rules of China

Rules of China

1. Twins have to wear exactly the same clothes.
2. Whenever concrete is laid, no matter how much of a barrier is put around it someone will tread on it and drive an ebike through it.
3. If you have a haircut, the hairdresser will use spray and gel to stick your hair directly up, no matter how many times you tell them not to.
4. If you are cold, you will get a cold.
5. If you have a baby, you can’t leave your bed, shower or wash for a month after birth!
6. If you get a haircut a month after spring festival, your mother’s older brother will die!
7. If you give your partner a pair of shoes as a present, they will use them to walk away from you, so you have to sell them to your partner for 1 Yuan.
8. Drinking hot water will cure any illness.
9. Drinking cold water will cause all illnesses.
10. If you order food in pizza hut, they will give you the wrong order, even if you speak Chinese, they speak English, or you point directly at a picture and text and say ‘I want this one, this one, this one, THIS ONE!!!’
11. Chinese Medicine is completely proven and verified, anyone who says it’s not is completely insane and doesn’t understand anything about anatomy.
12. Chairman Mao was 70% right, 30 % wrong.
13. Japan is 100% wrong, evil and wicked! 
14. All Japanese people say the invasion of China and the Rape of Nanjing never happened.
15. The Japanese raped and murdered eleventy gazillion Chinese people.
16. Mao caused the death of a few people.
17. In winter, dogs have to wear clothes, otherwise they freeze to death.
18. No matter how squeaky the brakes are on your push bike you cannot get them changed, even though it only costs 1 Yuan.
19. Whilst driving, looking behind has no use whatsoever.
20. If an old person has collapsed on the floor, you cannot help them up.
21. If you get it any kind of car or bike accident you have to fall on the floor and cry out in agony until the police get there to show that you are more hurt than the other party, therefore making it their fault!
22. Foreigners are taller because they drink more milk growing up.
23. Western food has only 2 dishes, burger and chips and steak and chips.
24. ‘pencil box’ and ‘ball pen’ are real words in English because Chinese English teachers say so.
25. Babies and children can pee and poo wherever they want.
26. Crossing the road does not require looking both ways, or even one way.
27. Whilst driving, you do not need to look whilst pulling in to a road, no matter how busy or fast it is.
28. A mobile phone shop has to have a speaker out the front of the shop playing terrible music extremely loudly.
29. If someone holds a door open for you, you are not allowed to say ‘thank you’.
30. You can spit wherever you like.
31. You can throw rubbish on the floor because otherwise the road sweepers won’t have a job to do.
32. When cheers-ing with someone, the rim of your glass has to be lower than the rim of theirs.
33. If someone lights your cigarette you have to tap their hand twice with your finger.
34. ‘medicine alcohol’ despite being over 50% is very good for you!
35. When running, girls have to wave their arms around pathetically.
36. When speaking on the phone you have to raise the level of your voice to shouting volume.
37. You have to stomp your feet as loudly as possible whilst walking up stairs.
38. Putting a few random English words in to a pop song will make it a success.
39. When translating something from Chinese to English, never confirm the translation with a native speaker.  Even if the translation is the name of a spelling competition being held at an English School with 11 foreign teachers. 
40. If there is a very large pothole in the road, there will be a plant or small tree inside.
41. Walking backwards is more good for you than walking forwards.
42. When on your period, you cannot consume anything cold.
43. Chinese men are not allowed to stand within two feet of a urinal.
44. A no smoking sign does not mean no smoking.
45. Girls must take at least 50 photos of themselves with their mobile phones each day, then add funny effects and text and combine them together in to lots of compilation pictures and post them online.
46. Men smoke, girls don’t.
47. Children and teenagers are not allowed to have hobbies, or partake in any kind of recreational activity, they are only allowed to go to school, then go home and do homework until bedtime seven days a week.  However they are allowed to play rule 60.
48. At road crossings, the green man means you are allowed to cross the road, but you still have to watch out for cars as at the same time there are also green lights for cars.
49. Never tread on a manhole cover.
50. Going to the park and standing next to and hitting your back against a tree is a form of exercise that is very good for you.
51. Snack food packaging must be so strong that it is almost impossible to open.
52. Apart from snack food packaging, everything is made shabbily and falls apart and breaks after a few uses.
53. If people fight on the street, you can stand around and watch but can’t intervene.
54. Men can hit women.
55. TV channels are all at random volumes.
56. Adverts of TV are always louder than the TV show.
57. You can’t cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze.
58. When an ambulance is rushing down the road with it’s sirens on you don’t have to move out of the way.
59. All TV show voices are dubbed.
60. ALL Chinese people play a secret game of ‘last one on the train is a rotten egg’
61. You don’t need to stop your car when making a phone call
62. If you do want to, you don’t need to pull over, you can just stop in the middle of the road.
63. You don’t need to wait for people to get off a train before you get on.
64. If someone is fat, or has put on weight, you have to tell them how fat they are.
65. When something starts drawing to a close, you have to leave as fast as you can.
66. In films, Japanese people can not smile, and they can only laugh if they do so whilst killing a Chinese person.
67. Any internal problems in China can be blamed on the Chinese population being so big.
68. If you want to complain about anything to the government, you can only do it on complain day.
69. The numbers on cash machine pin pads are never in the same order.
70. If your phone rings and you are somewhere quiet, rather than rushing to mute it you slowly pull it out of your bag and then stare at it.
71. Chinese TV will only show good things about China and bad things about foreign countries.
72. When a kid gets home they can’t knock on the door but scream “MUM, OPEN THE DOOR, MUM!!!” as the walk up the stairs.
73. If you knock on a door and no-one answers after 3 seconds you have to bang loudly and repeatedly.
74. Fridge freezers are nearly always upside down, as the freezer is on the top so you have to bend down to get the milk.
75. If you take painkillers, you will die an early death.
76. The same music plays when dialling any phone call.
77. In western countries, parents throw their children out of the house when they turn 18, whether the child wants to leave or not.
78. The trucks that spray the roads with water will do their job, even if it is raining heavily.
79. The colour green is good for your eyes.
80. All westerners look the same.
81. When entering a restaurant, every waiter and waitress will ask you how many people in your party.
82. Whenever Chinese people go on any kind of trip they have to buy massive amounts of snack food and water and carry it round everywhere.
83. When using a public toilet for a no. 2 you don’t need to close the door, even if it’s busy.
84. the lower a car revs are the more petrol you save.
85. eating black sesame seeds will make your hair turn black(er)
86. If you fall asleep with anything resting on your chest you will have nightmares.

china random

I  was just taking my dog out for an evening stroll just now when I was walking down the road and nearly stepped on a crab, it took me as quite a suprise when I nearly squashed the little fellow, and then I just stood there staring at him wondering how he got there.  My dog Lucy didn't seem so phased, she took one glance at the little crab and then looked at me, as if she was wondering why I was stopping, which I found strange for a dog, but mind you she has been in China longer than I have so maybe she's just used to things like that.

I found it sweet that the crab had got away from wherever it was being sold, or from whoever had brought it, and escaped the fate of a very hot bath, to roam the streets of Xuzhou late at night.

It reminded me of a while ago when I was in Starbucks in the centre of town with some friends sitting down on the sofas enjoying some coffee and having a chat, when I saw something crawling along the floor right next to us.  I automatically tightened up and pointed at the little creepy crawley thing (which made one of the girls we were with scream for her life) as I realised what it was,  a little lobster.  We were all gobsmacked for a second as we realised a little lobster had just joined us for coffee in starbucks, but then realised that it must have escaped from someone's shopping bag as they stopped in starbucks for a rest after doing some shopping.

There was also another time when I was in a supermarket and came across a fish on the floor in the middle of one of the isles, it had apparently jumped out of it's crowded stale tank and flopped itself all the way down one of the isles.

It seems all the little creatures know what fate beholds them, and try to escape their doom.  But then trey must feel some kind of terror as they are piled in to small containers to get stared by humans and chucked in to bags to be carried away.  It's a sure hell of a difference between their natural environment of a fresh river or the open sea.  But most people don't think about how much a crab can suffer, it's just food, and you need food to live.  And in China now people really want to live, and with such a rich food culture they live to eat.  So the sacrifice of animal cruelty doesn't compare to being able to eat well, espically in a country where 50 years ago 30 million people stared to death over the course of three years.  When you are hungry you can't think about anything else, you just want, and you do whatever you have to do to get what you want.  This pretty much sums up the attitude in China now,  and in all senses of the word the Chinese people are hungry, hungry for food, hungry for change, from the poor man of asia to a global superpower, hungry to get back to their former glory of the most advanced civilisation on earth.  And their appetite is massive, so like the sacrifice of animal cruelty, there is also the sacrifice of the environment, as natural resources are consumed rapaciously in their desire for economic progress.  But this will lead to better living standards, and with better living standards the memories of starvation will seem more distant, and then things like animal cruelty or a grey polluted sky will become more of an issue.

China’s cleanest restaurants

A few days ago I wasn’t in the mood for Chinese and didn’t have much battery left on the ebike to take me far to get anything good.  So after work I wanted to go somewhere on the way home where I could get some non-Chinese food.  Luckily there was a new restaurant that had just opened on the road home so my wife and I decided to go there.  It was a massive fancy new building and I had always found it surprising how they had decided to build such a luxurious restaurant in a not so great location, and unsurprisingly I had never seen it getting much business.  I also knew that the food was not going to be anything great but I wanted to check it out.

I have been in Xuzhou over 2 years now and seen many places like this come and go, they open for a while, look pretty and serve a few customers and then as expected, shut down after a year or so.  So I always found it strange, why do places like this keep popping up, if they all seemed doomed to failure.  And why are they all doing the same thing, a nice environment with bad food.  Surely they would learn from their mistakes.

The photo here is of a tea house that opened near where I work.  This was a really fancy place, apparently they had spend the equivalent of a million pounds on the entrance alone.  With a massive screen that light up the little square at night with nonsensical videos and advertisements, and very funnily sometimes the BSOD (blue screen of death).  This place had a massive grand opening, looked amazing and was a very large place so must have had substantial investment.  I heard rumours that it was a very important person in Xuzhou’s son, and there were also rumours that it was a secret high end brothel.  Anyway after the opening nothing really happened there, you could see all the staff cleaning and standing by the doors waiting for the customers, who never came, and I mean never, I never saw one person who wasn’t dressed in uniform walk in or out of that place.  And considering this was the building next to the one I work at I was going there nearly everyday, and also the gym I used to go to was behind the tea house and to get there I had to walk past the kitchen, which had a glass wall so you could look in and I never saw any of the chefs doing any cooking, or anything apart from standing around and then cleaning if it was late.

So I was always perplexed at how this amazing place could do so poorly, especially as it may have been a certain person’s son’s place.  Surely he had the connections to make a place like that a success, a perfect place for business meetings which hundreds of people could easily be directed to.  But for some reason they weren’t.  And unexpectedly after a year or so the place shut it’s massive beautiful doors.  And I never got to try the tea there (which was apparently at least £50 a pot).

So during dinner I brought up the subject of these mystery business ventures with my wife and unexpectedly she came up with the answer, which hadn’t occurred to me at all.  What she said was that they are massive money laundering scams, someone takes a bribe, then opens a fancy restaurant, and then launders the money through the restaurants earnings until all the money is clean, and then shut the place down.

It seems to make sense, everyone knows that there are massive levels of corruption here, and bribes are being passed out in the $billions.  But with the change of government leaders there has also been a massive crackdown on corruption.  Seen recently with the death of a party employee during interrogation (torture) shanggui extra legal corruption investigations, and also with the Bo Xilai case.  I also head another rumour (many rumours flying around Xuzhou these days) that the certain so and so who’s son opened the tea house did a runner.  This has actually happened quite a lot all over China with the leadership change and corruption crackdown.  Many officials have stepped down from their jobs to save themselves from being found out.

So maybe these short term restaurants and fancy tea houses will soon be a thing of the past.  But I bet there will still be a few more opening up in good old Xuzhou over the next few years.  China may be changing ridiculously fast, but old habits die hard, especially when money is concerned.

toilet misuse

I recently saw this article in the BBC

Wayward China toilet users face fine
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23766837

It says that people who misuse public toilets could face fines, but was a little shady about what misuse of a public toilet actually is.

"New laws that come into force next month in the southern city do not specify what amount of spilled urine would be classed as a violation."

"The regulations were designed to curb the "uncouth use of a public toilet""

I know what it is, I have seen it first hand, a thousand times.  Urinals are Kryptonite for Chinese men, or at least that's what it seems like they are, as they will not get close to one.  I don't know why but they never seem able to stand close and actually urinate in one.

See!

But they seem to have a funny attitude towards toilets, "it's a toilet, so of course it smells".  Even in people's homes they wont put an s bend in the toilet plumbing, so that a lot of homes smell like toilets as the smell reeks out through the drains.

There is also an aversion to using chemicals to clean.  What most cleaners do is use a wet mop and wipe it around.  So of course there is a horrible smell as all the pee water evaporates.

I remember when I went to Nanjing, I went up the coolest building I had ever seen.  A 450 meter top ten in the world sky scraper.  After we got the elevator down I started to need a pee.  And a couple of minutes down the road a ran in to a hospital.  The toilet has horrible, piss everywhere, overflowing bins of used toilet paper and then nowhere to wash your hands.  2 minutes away from one of the most advanced  and highest buildings in the world has a hospital where you couldn't even wash your hands after visiting a stinky disgusting toilet.  They should have saved the money they spent on the tower and bought some handwash!  but that's China.

here is a picture of the birthday card that the school gives out to staff, if you can't read the text very well see below

"When I first saw you you was lickin a ice cream.  Knew you had freak in ya blood from the get go.  Yo you showed a nigga some love from the get go.  Cute, too, so you ain't get caught in the image.  Friends got in I shouldn't have tossed out our business.  So religious"

A beautiful birthday message I'm sure you'll agree

Also the little bear sitting on the cake with his "text here" is very cute.  This is actually a very common Engrish.  You see a lot of advertisments with fancy fonts in English saying "insert text here" over and over again.

Getting the ebike fixed!

You can always see ebikes in poor repair here, squeaky brakes and wobbly wheels seem to be a feature of just about every bike you see.  I used to think that this was just people being lazy about maintenance, but I recently found out what the real cause is.

A while ago the brakes on my ebike were starting to get a little loose, it was taking a bit too long to slow down, and on roads where people pull out and no-one looks where they are going I though I had better get them fixed sharpish. 

Along most streets are little stools with signs up saying ‘vehicle fixing’, they are fairly small with lots of tools, charging stations and gas pumps for tires.  So I stopped at one and told him that the brakes are no good and need to be fixed, he said no problem and swiftly took out a screwdriver and twisted a screw around the rear wheel.  Pumping the brake handles seemed to have solved the problem, they were no longer loose but felt firm and solid.  I gave him 20 p and got on my bike feeling good at how quick and cheap it was.  As I accelerated away though the bike seems to be a little slower than usual (which is very slow indeed) and didn’t reach full top speed, as I was on my way to school for class I though I would leave it for a day and see how it goes.

After school I got back on the bike and started to ride home, the battery was draining fast and the bike seemed to ride like it was constantly going uphill.  I had an inkling of what the problem was and so pulled the bike over and put it on it’s stand, I used my hand to turn the back wheel and as I expected it was very difficult and did not want to rotate without much effort.  The man had tightened up the brakes so much that they were constantly on.

So the next day I took the bike back to him and told him that the brakes were too tight, he looked at him funnily and seemed a bit confused that I had just taken the bike to him complaining that the brakes were too loose and was now complaining that they were too tight.  So I thought I would just let him see, I put the bike on it’s stand and turned the back wheel with my hand showing that it absolutely would not spin unless given a lot of force.  This seemed to have no effect on him and he still looked at me like an idiot who didn’t understand that wheels go around.  So I just told him to loosen up the back brake, he got out his trusty screwdriver and made some adjustments again, I gave the wheel a good spin with my hand and it actually continued to spin by itself for a good second or two so I assumed he had sorted the problem.  I was only going to find out however, you can’t solve one problem here without creating another even bigger problem.

I gave the bike a little test ride, I accelerated up to speed and then gave the rear brake a little pull, expecting a small reduction in speed I was surprised by suddenly coming to a complete halt, the brake had somehow applied itself and giving it the lightest touch will resulted in full on braking.  Ebikes have a nifty feature of cutting the electricity out every time you use the brakes, so you can’t accelerate and brake at the same time, hence saving some battery life.  And with my newly fixed brakes every time I touched the rear brake and came to a complete stop I was left without power for a few seconds as the brake recover from their frantic braking, leaving me only to pedal desperately and shuffle along with my feet.

I though as long as I didn’t use the rear brake, it would be ok, the front brake was still OK and I could just be a bit more cautious, probably better to ride a bit slower anyway.  However, this is the land where people absolutely do not look when crossing a road, people will blindly drive their ebike across a road without seeming to care that a car could pile in to them, so as you can imagine driving around you get a lot of scares, and the involuntary action when someone pulls out in to the road 5 meters in front of you is to at least apple to brakes a little bit to slow down and be ready for an emergency breaking manoeuvre.  So each time this happened I would automatically touch the brakes and then be slowed to a complete stop, whether there was actually any danger or not.  Then have to pedal like crazy to try and unlock the brakes so the power can cut back in.  After a couple of days and many stops I realised I couldn’t take it any more.  So I took it to get fixed.

I rolled up to the old matey with his screwdriver and told him about the brakes were still broken, that they were worse than before and I wanted them fixed.  So he made some more adjustments, I made him loosen up the brake so that it didn’t automatically lock itself and then told me that the problem was the actual brake lever, and he couldn’t fix that, and to get a new one.  When I asked where I could get  a new one, he said “at a shop”.  So I left and though forget it, the rear brake isn’t locking itself now so I’ll just leave it at that.  I got on the bike and started to ride off, I didn’t get far though before unsurprisingly a problem arose.  The bike just died, drifted to a complete stop and the accelerator was unresponsive, the lights were still working and it showed to have electricity but it just wouldn’t go.  I was flabbergasted, I couldn’t understand how one idiot with a screwdriver could brake my ebike just by turning one screw on the rear brake.  But somehow he did, and I soon realised what was the problem, he had somehow managed to loosen up the wire too much, while leaving the actual brake fairly tight.  And this slack on the wire wasn’t pulling the brake lever back so it was just flopping around and this was engaging the energy saving no power while braking feature.  Easily solved though, whilst riding use fingers to push the brake lever forwards, just very annoying while trying to ride.

After a couple of days of this I was on the point of throwing my ebike in to the river, I would have rather have done that than take it back to the screwdriver man.  So I got it taken to a proper repair shop, they said that the rear brake was broken and it needs a new one, which would take a few hours.  So I left the bike with them and went to work.  I came back a few hours later to find my bike ready and a nice new £7 brake system on the rear wheel.  I paid and drive off, I tried the rear brake to see if any disasters had occurred, they hadn’t, the brake worked perfectly, and so perfectly that if you pulled it hard enough it would actually lock the wheel and you would skid.  I drove off back to work feeling very pleased, and safe knowing that I could actually stop every time someone pulled out in front of me.

After work I got on the bike and started to ride home, when I was about a kilometre away from home the bike suddenly started making a funny noise every time I accelerated and then the transmission went.  If I accelerated the motor just made a rotating, grinding noise.  And I think that what had happened was the motor had become disconnected from the rear wheel, funny though, as the motor is the rear wheel.  But anyway, there was no drive and I had to pedal it back home, and then the next day pedal it back to the shop, this was made all the worse by it being summer and incredibly hot and humid outside, also the bolt that connects the left foot pedal to the shaft had come loose, which was in itself another story of repair failure, so that meant I had to stop every 5 minutes and tighten it up to stop the pedal falling off on to the street.   But got it there and they fixed it for free.  And guess what, it hasn’t broken again since!

What this whole adventure really showed me is the lack of skill in professions here, I assumed that a man who made his living out of fixing ebikes would be able to fix a small problem, or at least identify the problem and help me get it fixed.  But in truth he had as much of an idea how to fix it as I did.  I assumed him to be an old master of bikes, but he wasn’t.  All he does is fix punctures and pump up tires, and I don’t know why he needed his little station cart with all his tools layed out looking like he could do a half decent fix of anything, I think that all he really used was a puncture repair kit and a bucket of water.  During one of the visits to him I asked him to put some oil on the chain, and he said ‘I don’t have any oil’, so his wife went round the corner to get some.  The old man makes his living by fixing bikes, and luckily for him there are so many people riding poorly kept bikes on the road, and a lot of poorly kept roads, that a lot of people get punctures, enough to keep him busy every day fixing them.  He doesn’t need to worry about giving a great service so that customers return, no-one’s going to push a bike with a puncture half way across the city to let good ol trusty screwdriver man fix their tire.  They’re going to push it to the closest one.  So when I come along with my bad brakes, he can tighten it a little, maybe solve the problem, but why would be bother delving in to something new when he can sit back and do what he always does, if it get’s him by.

And this seems to be the attitude of many Chinese people when it comes to work, people don’t want a job with challenges, where they have to work out new problems, adapt and make progress.  What most people do here is pay a large sum of money to get a job which is considered good, and a good job has to be stable, so that they have a future.  A future also doesn’t mean great prospects of rises or increases of responsibility, it means to be able to do the same job until you want to retire.  With no stress, an easy office job where all you do is stamp papers is considered a really good job, where you don’t have to be worried about being overworked, you can spend most of the day sitting down not working, have a nice long lunch, and then an afternoon nap.  And do the same thing day in day out.

There doesn’t seem to be a need to be so productive, it’s more about how long you work than what you actually do.  As long as you put your hours in you’ve done your job, and that usually means 6 days a week 9 or 10 hours a day.  You could probably squeeze all the work in to a third of the time if you worked hard, but most people don’t want to work hard, they don’t want the stressful life of maximum efficiency and a heavy mortgage.  They want to not have to worry about work, have enough time to eat good Chinese food and enjoy life.  This is essentially done by being close to your family and eating Chinese food.  And I think this is an admirable way of life for the average person.  Even if it does result in people like screwdriver man who seem to do a half assed job, maybe it’s my fault for over expecting his abilities.  I wouldn’t expect a decent slap up meal from someone selling street food here.  But anyway, I’ll know what to do the next time the brakes on my ebike start getting bad, the same as every one else, nothing!

Chinese conversations

This conversation happened a while after I told my friend about a new teacher that was coming to work at our school, a university friend of one of the foreign teachers from Nottingham, Dan.

Chinese person:       When does the new African teacher start working?

Me:                             What new African Teacher?

Chinese person:       You said there is a new teacher starting, and she is from Africa.

Me:                              No I didn’t, but there is a new teacher starting soon,she’s not                     from Africa, she's Dan’s friend.

Chinese person:        Yeah, Dan’s friend.

Me:                              She is from England, not Africa.

Chinese person:        Then why did you say she was Black.

Chinese people have very funny ideas about nationality, as this conversation shows.  It’s hard for them to imagine that a black person can be English.  I think this stems from their ideas of Nationality regarding their own country.  They think of China as pure, and foreigners clump together in to ‘not Chinese’, so when they see whites, blacks, Middle Eastern of Southern Asian people they simply label them a non-Chinese.  I find it funny coming from such a large country with a broad mix of ethnicities, a quick walk around a city here you will see a very eclectic mix of Chinese people, a product of the greatest migration in human history of peasants from the rural countryside to the cities.  This means each city contains people who have come from the freezing cold Russian north as well as the Boiling hot south and the Muslim East, all mixed together in massive east coast cities.  Even so, Foreigners do stand out quite a lot and despite the fact that they may have lived here all their life, their ancestors haven’t lived here for five thousand years, and that means they are not Chinese.  So when they think of somewhere like England they think of white people, Kings, the Industrial Revolution and David Beckham, and although their geographical knowledge outside of China is pretty bad they still know that England and Africa are quite far apart.  Therefore they assume that black people from England are just Africans who are living in England. 

Of course this isn’t always the case, the Chinese are now the biggest travellers in the world, ninety million went abroad last year, and more and more Chinese people are getting a better understanding of foreign culture.  It used to be very difficult for a Chinese person to travel, but now it seems that everyone is getting away.  Especially students, I am forever bumping in to young Chinese who can speak decent English and then say they have been studying in England or America, or bump in to people who say their children are studying abroad.  And they are not always wealthy looking people, it’s quite easy to discern someone’s wealth by just a simple look here, as if a Chinese person has made money they generally like to show it, and the kind of people who say their children are studying abroad aren’t always rich.

Even so, ninety million people going abroad still isn’t that much in China, maybe only one in fifteen people.  The vast majority of people I meet here have never left China, most people have barely done much travelling around China.  And in a smaller city like Xuzhou with only one thousand foreigners most of them barely see foreigners, or get to speak to them, and if they do hardly any speak Chinese.  This combined with their education, which is massively focused on Chinese history and culture, and TV, also only about China, would no doubt lead to them being slightly ignorant about foreign culture, and what nationality really means.  As well as leading to some very funny conversations.

A Western Style Chinese wedding

I have chosen this photo of the wedding lunch as I think it represents just how ‘Western’ the wedding was.

A while before the wedding, my girlfriend told me that I had been chosen to be one of the Groom’s best men, I was a little surprised at this as I had never actually met him, and wasn’t that well acquainted with the Bride either, but as she was one of my girlfriend’s best friends and I though it would be fun I accepted.

On the morning of the wedding I had to make my way to a hotel, where I was to meet someone who I didn’t know who was going to take me somewhere unknown to do I don’t know what, which was all I knew.  I met him outside the hotel at the ungodly hour of 6 am and followed him in to the hotel room where he and his friends were getting out of bed, I had seen a photo of the Groom and didn’t see him there but the guys I was with told me we will first go to his house, then to the Bride’s house, then back to his house, and then come all the way back to this hotel, because this is where the reception will take place.  There is no ceremony or church to go to because Chinese actually get officially married months before, which is a walk in two minute procedure to the registry office.   So after a while they all got dressed and we made our way to the Groom’s house, which is the new house that the Groom has to buy for the wedding.  It is a prerequisite of marriage here that the Groom has to buy a house, or at least have a house fully paid off.  Which seems a bit ridiculous in a country where house prices are astronomical and the average salary is £700 a month, but the Chinese are very good savers, as they have to be- no money saved means no marriage or healthcare.  And they are also very good at getting rich, like this Groom, who is what the Chinese call a “rich second generation”, a child who’s parents has profited from the explosion of wealth in China by setting up a business and making big money fast.  And what better way to show off your wealth than buying a fancy new house in a fancy new neighbourhood, filling it with big TVs and Apple computers and getting everyone from the wedding to come and see it.  As I walked in and met the Groom’s parents the first thing they said to me was “hello, go and have a good look around”, which I did, very impressive, although a little tacky.  The Chinese don’t personalise their houses very much, apart from a few photos everything is kept very clean and simple.  And something that I have always found strange coming from the home of fengshui is that the arrangement of furniture is always very bad, maybe that is just fengshui, but it seems to be that everything is arranged neither aesthetically nor practically.  There were lots of people at the house and I finally met the Groom.  We stayed for a while and then left, for the Bride’s house, her family house where she has been living until now, now she is getting married and leaving her family to move to become part of her husband’s family.  About 20 or so of us left and outside waiting was a big yellow Hummer and 5 Chevrolet Cameros, I got to ride in a Hyundai.

After a ride across a very busy town filled with lots of other wedding cars- that day an auspicious date apparently.  Numbers are very important in China, there are good ones and bad one, 9 for instance sounds like the same word for ‘long time’, so that’s a good one.  4 however, sounds like ‘death’, so that’s a no no.  So if you can pick a date with some good numbers like 9 for your wedding, you will be married and happy for a long time.  Later this month May the 21^st promises to have a lot of weddings as 5 21 (wǔ èr yī) sounds like (wǒ ài nǐ) which means ‘I love you’, ahh.  Anywho, we arrived at the Bride’s house and everyone piled out of their cars and started cramming their way in to the stairwell excitedly following the Groom, who has to knock on the front door and persuade the Bride’s mother and father to open to door, they are reluctant as this represents the Groom coming and taking their daughter away, but then this is actually what he does so they’re right to be reluctant, it is the Grooms job to tell them how much he loves their daughter and will wait outside that door forever if he needs to.  Knock, knock! “delivery service” he calls out, everybody laughs.  For a good few minutes he continues knocking on the door and asking for permission to be let in, finally they open to door, and there is nothing stopping him from getting to his wife.  Apart from the bedroom door, and all of the Bridesmaids who also don’t want to open the door and give away their friend, they put up more of a battle, and here the Groom has to be a bit more cunning “open the door and I’ll slide you in some money” he says.  After negotiating a price the door is opened a little, and then pushed open fully by the Groom and the tide of people trying the see in.  The Bride is sat ready on the bed in her dress and only the sweetest whispers of her husband’s sweet nothings will persuade her to get up and leave with him, which she does.  And then even more people pile back on to the street and back in to the cars to go to the Groom’s house.  At the Groom’s house the Bride knocks on the Groom’s door and asks for permission to enter, she has a much easier job than the Groom and is let in fairly quickly.  After this it’s back in to the cars and off to the hotel.

At the hotel the Bride waits at reception and greets all the guests, there is a counter where people give their money, how much depends on how well you know the Bride and Groom.  For my girlfriend, being a best friend it’s £200.  You pay your money, and then you get to sit down in the hall and get ready for the show!

I walked in to the hall just as things were about to get started, the Bride and Bridesmaids were standing outside waiting to enter.  I stood to the side of the room, at the front of the hall was a stage, and protruding from the stage through most of the room ran a catwalk.  All the lights were off apart from a line of spinning spot lights running along either side of the catwalk.  Very loud music made conversation nearly impossible, drum beats built up and up the tension, at semi climaxes big puffs of smoke spurted out from either side of the stage.  The drum beats keep building up faster and faster, louder and louder, the spot lights spin like crazy and flicker through the dark room.  I look to the stage, what’s going to happen? To the door where the Bridesmaids are waiting, back to the stage.  The music keeps building, the smoke machines puff and suddenly the music climaxes with a massive beat of the drums.  Then silence, I look from side to side, where are they going to come from? Who is going to come out? I hold my breath but still there is silence, nothing happens.  Then suddenly the drums start again, but slowly, the CD has started again.

The music starts it dramatic drum beat again but I don’t pay much attention this time.  About half way through it stops, and three pretty young girls walk on to the stage and start dancing.  After they finish the Groom gets up on stage with his friends and they start singing, the Groom then breaks off from his friends and the music goes romantic, he walks down the catwalk looking longingly towards the door where his wife will come from.   As he reaches the end of the catwalk, she enters, followed by the bridesmaids they walk to meet him.  An MC starts talking loudly and then the 3 dancing girls come back, this time dressed in rather revealing outfits and carrying a chair. ‘loosen up my buttons’ by ‘the pussycat dolls’ starts playing and the girls start dancing around their chairs. I look around the room and see lots of children and old people and wonder what they think of this erotic dancing, but no-one really seems to be paying that much attention, just watching casually.  After the dancing the husband and wife get on stage and the MC talks for a while, not much really happens and then they get off the stage.  Next food starts getting served, and as you can see from the main photo despite it being a Western wedding there was definitely no western food, but then there wouldn’t be.  Chinese people love their food culture, and consider it to be the greatest in the world.  So they wouldn’t want to spoil their tables with awful western food, and here western food truly is awful so it’s a good thing really.  And most of the food is edible, and quite tasty, I didn’t touch the pork face though.  The dishes come out one by one and eventually start piling up on the table, each table gets about 30 or so different dishes and not one of those is finished as there is only 8 people to a table.  As the meal goes on the food just keeps coming and plates get emptied on to other plates and eventually there is a little mountain of plates stacked atop of each other in the middle of the table.  Just about every kind of edible food imaginable is served, and quite a few you wouldn’t imagine edible all spin around on a big lazy Susan, a bottle of Chinese spirit, some beers and a few packs of cigarettes are also put on the table.  After a while the Bride and Groom come around from table to table to drink with their guests, a big glass of Chinese spirit of carried on a tray and guests take turns to take a sip with the couple.  After this the couple goes to their private rooms to eat with their closest friends and family, otherwise they would just have to sit in the hall with everyone else.  And we stay at our table and enjoy the food and show, which continues with the dancing ladies, a magic show, a traditional face changing mask dancer, and singers.  A male singer is introduced by the MC as a famous local singer and sings a few Chinese songs and is followed by a Chinese girl who sings ‘Rolling in the deep’ by ‘Adele’ very loudly, and then rather fittingly the show is over, and then with lunch finished and no more entertainment people start to promptly leave. 

Ted from the gym

Ted is a nice fellow from the gym who came over to talk to me one day while he was half way through getting changed.  As he approached me stark naked and said ‘hello’ I though he was another Chinese person who can speak English and wants some practice, but after I while I realised he was just a friendly guy and approaches everyone for a chat, whether he’s wearing clothes or not.  We had a good chat and when I complemented him on his English he said that he likes to listen to English music, and learns through the lyrics.

A while later, as I was jogging he came and stood next to me with his phone in his hand and asked me, “do you know‘love me for a reason’by Boyzone?”, As I replied “yes I do, but I am not a big fan of Boyzone” he said “here listen” and held his phone up and starting playing the song.  As I was jogging he stood next to me for the whole 3 minutes and 39 seconds and watched me listen, I felt a bit awkward and so kept jogging and kept my eyes straight.  When the song finished before I could say thank you he began to ask me “do you know ‘Always come back to your love’ by Samantha Mumba?”  I could see where this was going so I decided to take swift action, “yes, I know it but I don’t like that song very mu-“ but before I could finish my sentence he said “here listen” and played the song.  Then followed another 3 minutes of me jogging, with a man I barely know standing next to me holding up his mobile phone watching me listen to an out of date pop song.  As the song finished I slowed the machine down and was about the tell Ted that I am trying to jog, and don’t want to listen to bad music when he said that he had to go and didn’t want to disturb me.

As I continued to go to the gym I would see Ted nearly every time, and sometimes have a chat or play a game of table tennis, I even recommended him ‘the Who’ when he asked for some good music to listen to, just in case there was a repeat of the jogging incident so I could actually listen to something I like.  My plan failed.

One day as I was Doing some weights on one of the machines when he sneaked up from behind and gave me a shock as he started “do you know..” my hopes were high as I got ready to reply “yes, I do know ‘pinball wizard’ and I think it’s a very good song, in fact I wouldn’t mind listening to it right now” My hopes were dashed as he finished his sentence “do you know… ‘You Raise Me Up’ by Westlife”.  My reply “Yes, but I don’t like Westlife” was completely ignored and answered with “here listen”, and this time he had earphones and continued to place them in my ears himself.  I took them out of my ears and said “no, really I don’t like Westlife, thank you”, he paused for a second and I thought that maybe I had offended him, then he pulled the earphones out of his phone, took a step backwards, held up his phone and said “here listen” and played ‘you raise me up’on speakerphone.  I looked at him with stupefaction and then began to laugh.  As I laughed he looked at me strangely and I could see that he though I was very odd for laughing at such a nice song.

I had a nightmare after that, I was going for a jog around the lake, it was a beautiful day, and I was enjoying the fresh air and peace and quiet when suddenly I hear “do you know…” from behind me, it’s Ted, he’s found me. He carries on “do you know… ‘My Heart Will Go On’ by Celine Dion?” My screams of horror and pleas of mercy are ignored as I hear the dreaded words “here listen”.  He plays the song, I try to sprint away but no matter how fast I run or which direction I go I can never outrun him, and the worst thing is he’s got the song on repeat.

I still see Ted in the gym, I didn’t tell him about the nightmare though as I don’t want to give him any ideas about Celine Dion.

how to dry clothes when it's 4 degrees in your house

 4 degrees centigrade is how cold it got inside my house mid winter, that's bloody freezing, and with the AC turned on full blast I could get it to about 10 degrees, still hardly warm but fine when you're wearing one of these bad boys.

Of which I am the proud owner of a pair.  But mine aren't the grandpa colour of this chump, mine are red, with pictures of monkeys and stars and writing that says 'best fneomome.

Anyway, one thing that really bothered me last winter was how long it took to dry laundry, about 3 days.  But this year I had a brainwave, and devised a way to dry my laundry in a couple of hours,and warm up the living room, without having to hang my laundy up on the drying rack in front of my AC, which blocked the doorway to my kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, spare bedroom and living room, so really got in the way.

Quite simply, place a nice warm radiator under a drying rack.

 Hang the clothes up.

And cover with a duvet sheet to hotbox the clothes, dry in no time.

photos of cold winter

This is the river near my house, that I go for a walk along every night, at the coldest point of winter, for about a month, it froze over.

This is Lucy, who accompanies me on my walks by the river every night, enjoying the snow.  Funnily despite being freezing cold this is about the most snow I have seen in two years here.

This is the park next to my house after the snow!

Wrapping up warm for the ebike on a cold winters day, ear warmers and handlebar bags keep extremities warm in speeds of up to 20 miles per hour!

Chinese and weather

The weather in Xuzhou varies very much from season to season, winter is cold and summer is hot, not to extreme, but verging on the point of unbearable.  This may sound like a good thing but is actually rather bad.  What this means is that in winter it is freezing cold, but not so cold that you can't live in your house without any proper heating, if you wrap up many layers and super thick house (or outside the house) pajamas you won't be too cold, the ac turned on to 30 should do the trick.  But still, your house is cold, getting out of bed is hard, showering is bone chilling, the olive oil in your kitchen freezes and is unusable, just you didn't die of cold.  If you go any further north, it gets colder, and to compensate this they have central heating.  Go south of Xuzhou and it doesn't get so cold, no problem there.

The same problem arises in summer, it's very hot and stuffy, but ACs aren't turned on everywhere, you quite often have to sit down to dinner and be careful not to let sweat drip in your dinner.  Yet go north and it's not so hot, go south and it's so bloody hot that everywhere has AC.  What makes this problem worse is the Chinese, at least in Xuzhou have a deathly fear of cold, strange then that so many places have little to or no heating during winter but that's just the Chinese.  According to Chinese people there is a direct link between cold and illness, if you get ill, it IS because you were cold just now, if you are cold now, you WILL be ill.  Cold doesn't just mean ‘cold’ either, it can be ‘colder’, or ‘not so hot’.  If it was 35 degrees in the day and it drops down to 30 at night with a breeze god forsake you if you don't wrap up in your thick blanket and drink only but hot water.  Having this mentality when raising kids means that Chinese people grow up nearly immune to heat, from small, they have been forced to, despite boiling hot humid weather, to sleep with a thick blanket, to have a hot hot shower, and wear extra layers.  Chinese people can afford to do this easier than westerners for a couple of reasons.  1, Chinese people don't have BO, no smell, no matter how hot and sweaty they get there is no odour, so there's no nasty, awkwardness of being smelly and having to take a shower just to stop making people sick when you get close to them.  2, the only thing Chinese people fear more than the cold is the hell spawned vitamin d producing ultra violet rays of satan, aka sunlight, so wearing a sweater or jacket on a boiling sunny day is no problem, and hey you're not going to get too hot and smelly.  But let that sunlight land on the beautiful pasty white skin and it will turn a horrible healthy brown colour, and people will see you and say "hey, look at that guy, he looks like he hasn't moved from an undeveloped country where people have to work in the fields to get food to a developed country where we live and work in cities and agricultural work gets done on a large scale by machines and then sent in to the cities for us to eat as we sit in our offices and homes avoiding the sun".  And you wouldn't want people to say things like that about you because you would totally lose face.  And losing face is probably more fearful than even direct sunlight or a light breeze on a spring evening in the park. 

So Chinese people hate the cold, yet don't have heaters, love being warm, yet hate sunlight.  Are terrified of getting a tan because it make your skin unfashionable, yet fine to wear pajamas out and about.  Very paradoxical, but that is China, there are so many things here that are ridiculously self contradicting and blatantly stupid, but perfectly normal to Chinese people.

The reason I highlight this is because it's one of the most in your face cultural differences you experience being a foreigner in China.  I say in your face because if it's only 20 degrees outside and you are only wearing a T-shirt there will be Chinese people ‘in your face’ warning you of how you are you are going to get ill soon, and need to wear more clothes.  And this is something that, like the heat of summer, or the cold of winter, is bearable, but quite annoying.