Pedal Power

As I have finally purchased a bicycle (she's a beaut') I felt it would be a appropriate to compose a post on the subject of two-wheeled modes of transport. This will be extremely uninteresting for most of my readership, however both my father and uncle will take great pleasure from the fact I am still obsessed with anything with pedals, cranks and a chain.

The most common variety of bike about Zhengzhou is in fact a kind of electric bike, kind of like a moped but with a battery instead of a petrol tank. These are extremely popular as they are cheap and also allow the rider to make a journey with relatively little effort. However, I feel they are a menace. Firstly because the rear drum brakes are extremely poorly made and subsequently poorly maintained and therefore constantly squeal at pitch that is unbelievably painful for my relatively young ears. Secondly the extra weight of the battery and motor makes the all too common collisions (thankfully, none so far involving me, touch wood) more violent. These collisions mainly occur when a slow rider pulls in front of a faster rider without a glance over the shoulder, something I do automatically. In fact this is the main cause of all the traffic incidents I have witnessed in China. The other danger presented by fellow cyclists is their choice of the 'blinkers on, brake at the last minute' riding style as opposed to the 'constantly aware of traffic flow and potential hazards' technique that is so highly regarded in the west.

Anywho, the second most popular type of bicycle is the pushbike. Most have low slung cross bars (something that I would not be seen dead with as for me this means it is a girl's bike) and are single speeds. None of them are fixed wheeled. The rest of the push bikes are a mix of knackered old mountain and road bikes with the occasionally flashy hardtail thrown in. The biggest global brand out here is Giant. They dominate the pushbike market and also make a lot of the electric-assisted-bicycles that you see around the city. The other big brands are Merida and Gamma, the first of which make some quite nifty high-end cycles that you can by back in Europe.

If it weren't for the constant threats to one's life, riding a bicycle in Zhengzhou would actually be extremely pleasant. Firstly the cycle paths are wide, and well paved. Secondly, along every major street, there are small bicycle repair shops at intervals of about 100 metres. Here you can get all minor repairs done on the spot for very little money, and they pump up your tires for free. The people inside are often extremely friendly (actually friendly, not nosy and rude) and always impressed if you can speak a word of Chinese.

Anywho, must dash to my Chinese lesson this afternoon. Until next time.

Back in the Saddle

I finally have a bicycle. It is a classy, 10-speed Chinese road bike, purchased from the second hand market in the north of the city. Firstly I ought to describe the market and our little shopping excursion.

Our visit occured straight after a large lunch (in terms of people at the table and quantity of food and drink served) with a friend of Wojciech's and mine and his friends from a bank somewhere in the city. As with so many things, no matter the quality of the food (on this occasion, reasonably good) and drink (as usual, foul), good company makes for a good meal. I had a great time stuffing my face with fried dumplings and roasted duck while practicing my listening (which is noticeably improving day by day) and having a crack at joining in discussions where I could. This kind of practice may not be quite as productive as a lesson but it is certainly more enjoyable. On the subject of my Chinese, I have taken to learning 6-8 new words a day. I have found that anything that I learn in this way, sticks. It is also something I could quite easily continue when I am not having lessons or even in China.

Anywho, we were given a lift to the second hand market which is in the far north of the city straight after lunch. As I have already said, we had had a very good time, and Wojciech had had a bit more of a good time than others (if you catch my drift). I'm not sure whether the 'Chinese courage' aided or damaged our bargaining ability but, in the end we walked away with a working bicycle and a lock for less than 15 quid. Unfortunately, we were not really in the mood to look round the market, which is housed in a number of cavernous warehouses. It apparently sells, second hand, everything you can possibly imagine and it would be interesting to wonder through the stacks of TVs and heaps of fans for inflating bouncy castles.

This week I have been working and studying as normal, but with the aid of my bicycle I have given myself about an extra three quarters of an hour during the day. This makes coming home at lunch far less of a rush, which in turn has allowed me to fit in some more small study sessions and find some cool little restaurants around our flat.

My contract ends on the 7th of May and after that I do not know whether I will continue to work there or take another job (there are still continuous offers from the multitude of private schools in and around the city). At the end of May, I am going to meet my mother in Beijing (I cannot escape!) and I will hopefully find out by the end of this month whether I have a job on the closing ceremony of the Olympics. In the intervening months, I am keen to visit Oz to see the cousins and also do a little travelling in China. However, I feel the most important thing I can take from my time abroad is a good grasp of Mandarin, and for that reason I will try to do whatever allows me to learn as much of the language as possible.

We shall see

A very long day

As Wojciech always says; 'In China anything that is free, sells very well'. This can be demonstrated by the massive queues in supermarkets and on the streets for tiny free samples. It is also something I should have kept in mind when Vincent, a man from the school at which I work, invited Tom and me on a day trip to Luoyang this Saturday.
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Luoyang is about two hours west of Zhengzhou by train, and is one of the three ancient Chinese capitals in Henan, along with Zhengzhou and Kaifeng. Its main tourist attraction is the Longmen Grottos, about a 40min bus ride from the central train station. The Grottos consist of a number of, you guessed it, grottos filled with carvings of Royals and characters from Buddhist history and mythology. They were patronised by many Emperors, including Wu Zetian, China's only female Emperor, in about 500 AD. Unfortunately many of the statues were defaced, literally, during the cultural revolution, but what remains is very impressive. The area is very green and cool, being a large river valley, and was therefore a delightful contrast to the dry heat of Zhengzhou. It took a good three hours to walk round and see everything, but it was worth it.

However, Tom and I were constantly pestered by Vincent who had decided that he would use the twelve hours in which he would be in contact with native English speakers as a private English lesson. I expected a little of this, but nothing close to the intensity and annoyance that he managed to generate. Not only were his questions constant and repetetive, but also annoyingly irrelevant. He seemed to desire to master coloquial English before he had any grasp of conjugating present tense verbs. Fortunately his son was pretty cool, and Tom and I had a good laugh mucking about with him and carrying him on our shoulders when he was tired. We also witnessed one of the more bizarre incidents that I have seen so far on my trip. A father giving his son a hefty boot in the bum for mucking around in a photo, then stomping off in a sulk, leaving his son completely startled. Very odd.

Tom and I are beginning to fight back against the annoyingly curious (I would say nosy but I am compromising and Vincent was constantly telling us that the reason everyone was either staring or laughing was because Chinese people are very warm hearted) Chinese. Our first weapon is our developing language skills. Now if a small child grabs his friend and shouts 'look, look lao wai!' (which is a semi-offensive way of saying foreigner that means old outsider), we can copy his actions, crying out 'look, look Chinese children!' which has yet to fail in putting them off guard. Our most recent development in the fight against nosiness was born out of or trip to Luoyang. If a Chinese person unashamedly takes a photo of us, but with know attempt to ask for permission, simply because we are foreigners, Tom and I will take out our cameras and each take a photo of the offender. This is very enjoyable, and an excellent release.

'More jellyfish with your chicken brains sir?'

This is not in fact a question I have been asked (not that I would be so bold as to suggest that I would know when a Chinese waiter had asked it) but I have consumed both jellyfish and chicken brains. Neither were a culinary revelation, the brains being tasteless and jellyfish being surprisingly crunchy but unsurprisingly salty, but are an interesting start to the subject of food in China.

I'd like to start with my average day's consumption of food. Firstly my meal proportions are unhealthily skewed, with breakfast being by far my smallest meal and dinner by far the largest. More often than not, I skip breakfast (valuing the extra time in bed over a bowl of rice porridge from one of the restaurants over the road) and if I do have it, I will simply pick up some yoghurt and eat on the skate to work. For lunch I usually return to the area in which I am living and pick up a rice or noodles dish, for example niu rou mian (noodles in a beef stock, with a few slices of meat). Dinner is where the most 'eatage' is to be had. On an average night we will go to our local eatery and order a few dishes. My favourite served locally is the fried aubergine, which is swimming in oil but absolutely delicious. We get our greens in the form of spinaches and simple salads. For me the low point of these meals is always the meat. As it is very expensive in China, almost everything you are served is 90% bone, skin, fat and gristle with the remainder being chewy, lean meat. The price of meat is probably one of the reasons that the Chinese consider so many parts of the animal that we in England would not normally consider eating delicacies. With chicken it's all about the head and the feet, the latter of which you can buy vacuumed packed to eat as a snack in most places that sell food. Fortunately I have not been offered such 'delicacies' on many occasions, but when I have it has not been a pleasant experience.

I will now try to give you a brief overview of the Chinese dining experience. Let's start with the obvious: the weapons of choice are the chopsticks. My limited skill has brought much praise from fellow diners who are amazed that I refuse a knife and fork. Often you are also given a small bowl with a small porcelain spoon for drinking any stock or soup that remains in dishes. Generally, unless you order an all in one dish, by this I mean meat, veg and carbs mixed up (like chao mian), then everyone shares communal dishes. This is a major contributor to China's massive Hep-C infection rate but also encourages socialising. In smarter restaurants, diners will sit round a round table with a spinning glass disk in the middle on which the dishes are placed. This is intended to allow easy access to the food but often leads to people having bowls of soup being spun away from them still containing their spoons.

The thing that I have found most difficult is the order in which the food is served. Basically it comes in the order in which it is prepared. This means salads come first, OK so far, but cooked, sweet dishes come intermingled with the cow's tail and the pig's trotters. This is all far to random for my western palate so I normally avoid the deserts and try and pick something up around our house afterwards. The other odd thing is that after gorging themselves on the ridiculous amounts of food available, the Chinese will often order a rice or noodle filler just to make certain. All of this pales in comparison to the dreaded bai jiu.

Bai jiu is the traditional Chinese rice wine. It can be anything from 40-60% and tastes absolutely foul. I am convinced, through observation of post-quaffage facial expressions, that the Chinese can't stand it also but they say otherwise. Drinking alone is a bit of a faux-pas and you are expected to wait for the call of lai-lai! (come come) or, the somewhat worse, gang bei! (bottoms up). Therefore the pace of drink can be determined by a few people at the table. I try to avoid drinking the foul beverage as much as possible, but at a social dinner it is nigh on impossible.

Anywho, in the spirit of Channel 4, I would like to list my top 5 things I have eaten in China:
5. Seeds - This is the snack of choice for the Chinese I have encountered. The reason I like them so much is that the complicated act of opening the seeds means that I cannot wolf it down on a long journey as I would do with anything else.
4. Xinjang Dumplings - These are baked on the wall of a stone oven and the combination of pastry, mutton and black pepper reminds of Cornish Pasties.
3. Yoghurt Ice Creams - My favourite treat. I believe they are made by a dairy company in Inner Mongolia and at 1 RMB (7p) they are difficult to resist.
2. Thick Noodle Soup (hui mian) - Very filling and wholesome and not too heavy on the flavour, something that is very rare over here.
1. Fried Aubergine (chiezi cai) - As I have already mentioned, an extremely tasty dish which I will attempt to emulate back in Blighty.

Wo hui Zhengzhou

I have returned to Zhengzhou after my successful trip to Xi'an with Tom. We left on Thursday night at 7:30 from the central bus station in Zhengzhou. The journey was less than perfect, we broke down twice and our fellow travellers were more noisy asleep than awake. However the major gripe with the whole thing was that we arrived at 3:40 in the morning. This was down to our misunderstanding when we bought the tickets and meant that we not only had to find some beds at this ungodly hour but attempt to communicate with the weary taxi driver in broken Chinese. We arrived at the Shuyuan Youth hostel to find that, in typical Chinese style, that the front desk was massively overstaffed despite the early hour. We ended up with two beds in a four-bed dorm that was already occupied by a Kiwi couple. Our arrival, accompanied by the switching on of the rooms bright strip light (not by us but by one of the hotel staff as we said 'Don't worry about the l...'), must have severely disrupted their sleep so we were doubly grateful when they warned us that they were leaving early so we could shotgun their beds. This was necessary as the hostel was extremely busy and we had been told that we would have to find somewhere else to sleep.

So with accommodation sorted, Tom and I ventured out into this new city. Xi'an was, for me, a breath of fresh air. Firstly it was raining, which was a welcome contrast to the overly dry climate of Henan. Secondly, in Xi'an they have embraced their traditional architecture, and even the new buildings attempt to emulate it to some extent. Added to this much of the old remains. Being the most famous of the inland cities, apart from the capital, there are far more tourists on the streets, and for this reason Tom and I did not cause anywhere near the stir that we would cause in Zhengzhou.

On the first day, we cycled around the city walls which was nice after our cramped bus journey. We then went to the Muslim quarter for some lunch. The food was very good and we shared the table with a young Chinese couple who let us taste some of their dishes. It was not such a novel experience as I have eaten in a Xinjang restaurant in Zhengzhou a number of times. However the Muslim quarter is very cool. First there is the big market, which although a bit 'touristy', had a few interesting trinkets. Then there is the Great Mosque, a large building in the Chinese style built around three court yards. We somehow managed to avoid paying an entrance fee and were lucky to catch the afternoon prayer. On the way out of the Muslim Quarter, I sampled some of the sweets, none of which had a completely unexpected taste, but all of which, after the initial shock, were delicious. Later in the afternoon we briefly visited the Bell and Drum Towers, which if I'm honest were almost exactly the same and therefore equally dull. We spent that evening chatting with some of the younger hostel guests about their travel experiences while drinking the slightly overpriced beer in the basement bar.

Saturday was our day to visit the terracotta warriors (Bing Mayong in Chinese). We immediately discarded any thoughts of an organised tour and decided it would be both more economically sound and more impressive to take the public bus. This meant standing in a frighteningly long queue at the train/bus station, that was actually deceptively quick, followed by a forty minute ride in a double decker to the dig site. The warriors were discovered in 1974 by a peasant farmer digging the well. His thankless task today is to sit in a shop at the shop everyday and sign books for tourists. Tom and I did not go in, but I have an image of a small man with one over-developed wrist. The warriors themselves were everything that we expected, neither better nor worse. Unfortunately the impressiveness wears off after a while and one notices the ridiculous high tourist prices (a bottle of water cost ten times the price of one in Zhengzhou). Using our out of date student cards and vehemently refusing any offers of tours or guides, Tom and I managed to do the whole thing for less than 45 RMB (about three quid).

On our return that evening we decided to go for a stroll outside of the old walls, to get away from the crowds. On this walk, we were accosted by a man speaking to us in Chinese who we initially thought was trying to sell us something. We were mistaken, we walked with him for about quarter of an hour and had a simple, but interesting, conversation on the subject of 'currencies of the world'. We returned to the hostel in time to go and get some food, and were dismayed to find that yet again all of the guests were eating western food in the overpriced 'Traveller's Cafe' (some eating pizza and chips [oh the shame]). Defiantly Tom and I went out in search of an alleyway (where the best and cheapest food is invariably available) and discovered a cool street restaurant where we tucked into two plates of Chao Bing (fried shredded pancake [chao as in 'chao mein']) , sharing a table with a middle-aged couple from England who had quit their jobs as teachers and had been travelling for seven months. On returning to the hostel we finally managed to drag away two English lads from Nottingham, with the unintentional aid of the American traveller singing 'oom-bop' on the open-mic) to explore the night life of Xi'an. We listened to a live band in the incredibly smokey 'Bar-Moonkey' before wandering around 'Bar 1+1". This bar was a veritable labyrinth, I imagine to make the task of escaping the extortionate prices as difficult as possible, and looked like one of the flashy places out of CSI Miami. We ended up wandering the streets, bottles of Tsingdao in hand, checking out the night food markets and stuffing ourselves with kebabs and dumplings. Good Times.

We had allocated the next morning to shop in the market. We were on the hunt for trinkets that where neither too expensive nor complete crap (excuse my yingyu). In the end we each purchased some cool 'old' combination locks that used symbols instead of numbers and Tom bought a chess set. We were pretty pleased with our heartless bargaining and it seem to draw admirable glances from fellow travellers (many of whom, I imagine had just paid four times what we had for the same items). The stall-holders would immediately set an extortionate price which we would attempt to cut but about 75%. The ultimate weapon is the 'walk away' which one must perform to it's completion a few times so that other vendors do not think you are bluffing.

At two thirty we went to the train station. We managed to wangle our way into the soft-seat lounge, similar to the first-class lounge in an airport, and had no problem in catching our train. The journey was long, but relatively smooth. Chinese trains appear to stop for about ten minute in each station, giving one plenty of time to get out, stretch one's legs and purchase a drink. The afternoon was very hot and the train was not air-conditioned, however this was not a problem as long as the train was moving. We arrived around midnight, took a shared taxi to my apartment before saying our goodbyes. I am extremely glad that we decided to risk the long trip on this busy weekend as we had an excellent time.

Now I am back to work, I feel refreshed and have a new found energy. This week I will be buying my bicycle for Pakistan, which is exciting my inner child. Also today it has been raining all day, which frankly, has been marvelous. I am looking forward to fresh new city in the morning. Also, a certain amount of schadenfreude has led to me enjoying the glum faces on the Chinese populous as their city is given a spring clean.

On a completely irrelevant note, today I ate an ice cream believing it to contain blueberries. It turned out to be made with sweet kidney beans and was actually quite nice.

We're off to see the warriors, the wonderful warriors of Xi'an

Tom and I are departing for Xi'an in about two hours. We bought tickets at the bus station two days ago which in itself is a triumph of our developing language skills. Furthermore we discovered that the journey will last either 7 or 12 hours and the bus may or may not be a sleeper. This mystery simply adds to the excitement of my first proper attempt at 'going travelling' as it were. Tom was told by a number of lanky haired gappers, when he spent the Spring festival in Beijing, that Xi'an was 'awesome' and 'mind-blowing'. As you can imagine, with such cliched descriptions of our destination in mind, our expectations can only be high.

Not much has happened this week so I thought I'd take up one of these posts lamenting about all of the things I miss from Blighty. I feel I can do this today as I am in a good mood so it will not be overly upsetting.

1. I miss bread. More specifically I miss Simmons' granary sandwich loaf (I am now salivating). The bread here is a) always white and b) contains a lot of sugar. This was a bit of a shock the first time I tried to mop up some sauce at dinner. It tasted like gravy on Brioche (something my father would love)
2. I miss people ignoring me in the streets. I'm sure it is born out of a desire to be friendly but the constant hellos do wear me down. Especially when they are spoken behind my back and followed by a torrent of guffaws.
3. I miss my friends and family (Aaaaaaaahhhhhh). This is most apparent when waking from a dream about home (which has happened on a few occasions) and the shock of realising I am 8000 miles away is really quite strong.
4. I miss traffic regulations.

The fact that I can't think of much more is probably a good sign.

Anywho, in a few days you will have an über-post on Xi'an accompanied by some new pictures on facebook.