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of me jogging, with a man I barely know standing next to me holding up his mobile phone watching me listen to an out of date pop song.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.