coolest dude in Vietnam...

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7 month review

So, China's second most bored workers (second only to the countless door people who stand outside hotels, apartments, shops, restaurants for 8+ hours straight) - the 40,000 or so who scan internet sites for inappropriate material, must be doing their regular 1-2 monthly scan of blogger. It's been down for the last 3 or 4 days. I suppose I should spice this entry up a bit, to give them some good reading?

Have I mentioned before that occasionally you'll be watching BBC World News when a report on China, a not so favourable report begins, and then unexplainably, the TV goes black? Changing the channel, you realise that its only BBC World. Hmmm... very coincidental I think. It's happened about 4 times to me so far since I've been here. But most of the time I just hear enough to get the general idea... protests in Guangdong by farmers who are forcibly being removed from their land, public shaming of prostitutes in the streets of big cities... etc etc. The other day I saw a CNN feature about people employed in Beijing whose job it is to 'clean up the place' and introduce Western manners etc. They monitor bus and train 'queues' and try to ensure people get on the bus in an orderly fashion. They are also trying to persuade the public to not pick their nose in public, or spit, or wee in the streets etc.... It's quite funny. Scary that this sort of behaviour even needs to be addressed. But I can't but help think that for a country this big, changing so quickly, that it's not China that's going to catch up to the rest of the world, but it's the rest of the world who are going to have to get used to the way China does things. I don't think some things here will ever change.

Here's my 7 month report card:

Things I miss: friends (you guys!), film theatres, live bands, anonymity (in terms of being stared at), going for a drive when we feel like it, being able to read and understand labels of food in shops, being able to find food that you like, fast internet speeds, being able to access ALL internet sites, seeing the AFL on TV, a sense of order (and not chaos), being able to buy shoes that fit, being able to buy clothes that fit...

Things I don't miss: Seeing John Howard on TV, listening to politicians, TV ads, annoying TV personalities (Stand up Chris Bombalis, that smug guy on morning TV... Kochie, Naomi Robson etc), Over-saturation of all things Broncos, Ocker Aussie dudes grunting about footy, beer and chicks (on some strange level I do miss this, though), bad TV programs and the annoying adds that accompany them, my old work, driving around in cars (well, this is in both lists)...

university

Studying at university again is fun. For the last two and a bit weeks I've been studying Chinese at Suzhou University from 8.30am each morning until 11.50am. The lessons are all in Chinese which is actually really good - just what I have needed to boost my language skills along a little bit. Learning a foreign language in your native language is really slow going and I think, quite limiting. It then becomes a language built around translation, which is difficult to maintain. By hearing everything in Chinese, hopefully we will start to imitate our teacher more and more - which is probably the main way that children learn language. At first of course, it is probably useful to learn Chinese in English.

Our class is small - 15 students at last count. 8 Korean, 3 American, 1 American/Pakistan, 1 Czech Republic, 1 German and me. I'm quite lucky because many of the other classes have 20-30+ students. We are all at a fairly equal level which is also useful, however, there is 1 Korean woman with terrible pronunciation who unfortunately speaks in a really loud voice, which the less intuitive teachers hear and then assume that all of us are struggling with pronunciation. If she'd only drop down to a lower level class, then we'd all be a bit happier. Anyway, I'd rather feel like the classes are a little slow, than too fast. The one area that is moving fast is the characters. On our very first day we were required to learn 7 characters, on the second day 10 new characters, the third day 14 new characters etc... This pace will no doubt continue, but with around 3000-5000 characters needed to understand and read in China, its understandable why they introduce them so fast.

I just went for lunch at a restaurant with Nina (my German classmate) and Lenke (my Czech classmate). It was fun - we ordered a bunch of dishes having no idea what any of them were, as there weren't many pictures, and we couldn't quite understand the characters. I just found out from my boss that the main dish we were eating was Pig Intestines. We kinda had a feeling it was going to be one of 'those' dishes, we were just hoping it wasn't dog, or cat, so I think I can live with that. In China eating a part of the body is supposed to be good for that part in your body. So hopefully, I've just down a bit of good work for my intestines!

Some more thoughts

Here's a couple more of the photos from our Vietnam trip. I'm forever taking photos of scenery, buildings and the environment. But I think these capture the typical image of Vietnam.

TEACHER.

It's a terrible photo (in my opinion), but I think my bio sounds impressive, hey? Would you want to learn English from me?

new baby pic

Not ours - but Russ and Donna's new girlie - Finlay Isabella Jade Geddes. Russ asked me to upload it for all of you...

Bike capital of the world

Vietnamese love their bikes. Here in Suzhou all the bikes are electric, they run on rechargable batteries. In Vietnam, the bikes are all noisy petrol bikes and are a form of transport for the whole family - I saw as many as 5 people on some bikes...

Even after living in China for 6 months, the noises, activity and smells of Hanoi and Saigon were really exciting for us. I can only imagine the sensory experience for someone coming straight from a Western country. It was really great seeing all this activity but after a few days in Hanoi, we were ready to relax and do nothing in Mui Ne, a beach resort in Southern Vietnam. This was a really enjoyable time. High points included reading "We Need to Talk About Kevin" in 4 days straight. Low points included seeing some of the more interesting things on the beach... lots of dead fish, a dead pig, and 3 or 4 bags of intestines of large animals (possibly cows)... people just dump anything into the sea it seems. We didn't feel like swimming much in the ocean after finding these nice surprises...

A long rant

This image shows a typically messed up powerline in Vietnam. You see this everywhere and I think it can stand as a good metaphor for the way things can be quickly slapped together - the onslaught of progress, but with little thought into long term planning of things. A Chinese student once told me that she thought a difference between Japan and China is that Japan focuses on longterm planning and detail and is more aware of a need to create calm and peace with new development and the existing environment, whereas China was more focussed on short term gain and proving to the world that it is the quickest at doing everything. I think this make sense, and in that regard Vietnam seems motivated by the same fast-paced westernization as China.

Having about 10 days holiday in Vietnam, with a lot of time to read, think and relax, combined with the part-time nature of my work here in Suzhou has allowed me a lot of freetime to contemplate things - the world, Asia, culture, language, America, travel, spirituality, the environment. I was saying to Trace yesterday that it's almost like I have too much time on my hands, and by living in a foreign country have too much sensory input - too many new things to take in on a daily basis. Not just everyday things we see, but through TV, print and internet as well. Living in Australia I could choose to think about those issues on my own terms and when I liked (mostly), but here, I am constantly confronted with understanding culture, language, Asia, Australia, the West, environment etc etc. But it seems that I can't make sense of it all - there is too much to consider, and finding a middle ground - a positive and influential position to take on issues of importance doesn't come natural to me.

I'm being inspired by people like Al Gore with his commitment to environmental issues, Jimmy Pham, the man who established the Koto initiative in Hanoi (http://www.koto.com.au/), and politically inspired by reading more about international politics, like Noam Chomsky's "Hegemony or Survival". All of these people and many others were able to, and continue to do their bit in bringing about a better world. However, for me, I often feel really overwhelmed at the amount of work that needs to be done.

Seeing some of the levels of poverty in Vietnam and reading and learning about the horrendous amount of violence and suffering these people have faced over two or three hundred years, it can be difficult to see how humanity can ever reach a peaceful and more equitable type of society. In China too, I am becoming more frustrated at the situation of this country. There is a massive information vacuum that has existed in the country for well over 50 years, and although it may have reduced slightly, there are still new ways that the Government has developed to reduce access to information. We spent yesterday afternoon at a propaganda museum in Shanghai which had all these incredibly overt political posters from 1949-1979. Messages ranging from moving to the countryside to work hard, to making nuclear and biological weapons to kill the Colonial powers (mainly focussed on the US).

On one side I am buoyed by the positivity of publications, and stories about positive changes underway in China. Don't get me wrong things are getting better (for some people - people with access to things). The environment is a focus of the Government, but its an enourmous task to fix. The economy is booming and creating opportunities for many. Westernisation is leading to many improvements to people here. But the one sided postivitiy of CCTV9 (the English propaganda TV channel here) and the powerless media (controlled by the Government) ensures that people here believe that China is this amazing land of opportunity with endless freedom. From being an Amnesty International subscriber for many years, I know otherwise. As a westerner, I still have some access to information to foreign media that reports [THIS PART EDITED] due to the complete information vacuum, people here would not have the faintest idea this is occurring. I feel somewhat powerless, yet obviously do not really wish to cause problems with the Chinese Government, as I believe they are probably doing a better effort than can be expected given their history, the extreme population, and the needs to improve so many aspects of society all at once.

But, my current views extend beyond China and Asia too. I believe that environmental issues are becoming critical. Living here, you do start to think that for one, there are too many people in the world, and the enormous rate that the world population is increasing can't be sustained. It is an unfortunate policy, but I think that the 1 child policy in China was a necessary step to making a change to that. But the amount of emissions here, the pollution is depressing at times. And where I live is one of the better, more cleaner places in China. All the buildings, trees and paths are grimey, and leaving your clothes on the line for longer than a day means they'll need to be washed again. Blue skies are rare, cars and more factories will only worsen the situation here. But still there are positives - energy efficient light bulbs are the standard throughout China and Vietnam, and I noticed that Australia has now moved to ban the old style. We are trying to do our bit, by flushing the toilet less, contributing for airplane emissions and generally using lighting less.

Here's some other things I've been contemplating, in rough thematic groups:

frustration
We've well and truly realised that in China we are outsiders. Also, that this will always be the case. In such a homogenous society (over 98% of people are Han) we will never be "chinese" in the way that Chinese can be considered Chinese-Australian in Australia, or similar in the US, Canada, UK etc... Staring will probably always be something we'll have to deal with here as it seems ingrained in Chinese culture. If someone anywhere raises their voice, very quickly a huge crowd will gather - not saying a word, just staring. Our cultural expectations with staring are very different. We didn't find this a problem at all in our recent trips to Japan or Vietnam. My frustration extends to the cultural vacuum that I mentioned earlier. This is also notable in internet speeds. I have broadband which is the standard in China. However, it is commonly known that on top of all the blocking of various Western sites (many innocuous), that the telecommunication resources established for access to local Chinese hosted websites is far, far superior thatn that to Western sites. The result is that accessing Chinese sites is hundreds and thousands of times faster than accessing Western sites. The thinking behind this is that if Chinese people, used to quick speeds accessing local sites, ever try to access Western sites, they will get frustrated and leave before the page opens. After doing some reasearch on broadband download speeds, I've found that the slow end of the scale are speeds of 300-400kbps and the fast end gets up to 800-900kbps. There are now ISPs offerring speeds of between 3 and 9 mbps as well. Can you imagine then, how frustrating it is for me to access Western sites as speeds of 0.6 to 6kbps. That's the speed for my downloading things (music, video etc). This also impacts on the speed of opening pages, which can take 10 seconds +, even minutes... This is pre 56k modem days here - I'm downloading a file now at 0.6 kbps - it's been downloading for 15 hours and has another 13 to go according to this... Of course, I imagine there is nothing I can do about this, because this is part of the government's subtle plan to redirect people here away from Western sites.

crazyness
Crazyness. China is crazy - good crazy and bad crazy all wrapped up together. Construction goes on all the time, whilst people go about their daily lives. Road works, demolishing of buildings etc, occur with very little protection of safety and you have to walk through and around constructions sites often. In places where this occurs, there is often no footpaths, so you walk on the road and risk your life. Liability is not a concept understood here. I'm particularly thinking of the area around our train station - the aforemention 'war zone'... people, cars, bikes, pre-historic car things going all over the place while bulldozers and machinery demolish and build things at the same time... Then there's the fireworks and firecrackers... COMPLETELY INCREDIBLE... You probably won't believe me when I tell you that we've had close to 72 hours of constant fireworks and firecrackers - for the end of the Chinese New Year. People die and get seriously injured, but that doesn't seem to matter at all - China has enough people to lose a few.... I'm talking non-stop noise - you can't sleep, if you have a headache you're stuffed... if you have a baby (I can only imagine) - usually there is just one dude setting them off - no one watching, no one cares, because it happens every single day of the year. Only at Spring Festival, we seem to get them non-stop. It was kind of cool landing at Shanhai airport and seeing fireworks going off simultaneously at about 6-7 different places in the city, but hearing them all day, and all night is another thing.

culture
So much to say about culture which has been dominating my thinking. I wonder if anyone has even bothered to read this far? I've said it many times, but there is also a vacuum of music in China. The music is terrible. I think that someone like Britney Spears would come and also say the music is terrible. Does that make it clear enough? How about, Kenny G is invincible in my eyes compared to the noises which parade as music here. Japan and China in music terms are worlds away. Completely different worlds. China is swamped by the influence of appalling Taiwanese and Korean pop music. There is a prevalence of light entertainment shows like Idol etc.... Acting is also pathetic - mostly period dramas, bad quality - overdubbed voices (Monkey style), bad action - think 1920s/30s melodramas - unnecessary facial expressions - absolutely no subtletly or naturalism at all.... As mentioned earlier, China really is a monoculture and I find it hard to see how it could ever be a Western multicultural society with real diversity in things like religion and developed sub-cultures. The lag in progressive art scenes - notably music is a huge barrier to becoming multicultural.

travel and America
Recently reading Lionel Shriver's amazing novel "We Need to Talk About Kevin" has hugely impacted my thinking on many things including the point of travel. The novel's lead character, a travel writer reaches a conclusion that in all places in the world people eat, sleep and work and was dismayed to find out that they have trees in Spain too. The point is that the world is very much the same. Culture is different, but people do all the same things in the same places. It's like my thought that travel is basically going to places and then trying to find places to eat and go to the toilet, mixed in with a lot of walking around. Doestn't sound that good does it? She contemplates the US a lot in the book too and I love this quote - that said something along the lines of: like or not like it, "everyone has a relationship with America". It's so true - you don't have to have a relationship with any African country or even European countries (unless it's your home country). But in this world, today, having a relationship with America is unavoidable.

I gotta take a break.

Teddies!

So many teddies in the one place. Cool, hey! This was from a shop in Hanoi - one of those places like a stand at the Exhibition, where the staff must spend most of their mornings and nights setting them all up and then putting them away...

We really enjoyed Hanoi and stayed in the old town area, with its typically Asian manic pace and noise. Tracey met one of the street kids she had sponsored through the Koto initiative there, which supports street kids by educating them and training them to work in a restaurant. Having graduated, he's now working succesfully in a top Italian restaurant in Hanoi. This was one of the many highlights of our time in Vietnam. As tourists we are constantly reminded of our fortunes and the misfortunes or lack of opportunities of many others. I find it difficult to know how best to play my part to improve this situation, but, seeing this Vietnamese boy and his gratitude made us realise that there are real ways to help others and that we need to look harder to find other avenues... This includes being a responsible tourist adhering to principles of eco-tourism. Aeroplanes are of course, really bad for the environment due to their massive emissions, and where possible we've talked about avoiding areoplanes in favour of trains. This is also because we both have health issues with planes - for me it is the pain that my ears experience that seems to occassionally occur when the plane is landing. I'm going to see a doctor about this to see what I can do...

Wecome Chinee New Yeah

It's taken a long time. But I'm back blogging. So much has been happening, and I again feel both overwhelmed with a responsibility to try to document it... such is the blogger's life. I don't know if I can do this, but I will try to mention a few interesting things that have happened the last month or so.

First of all, happy Chinese New Year to everyone. Year of the Pig - Golden Pig too, because it's a year ending in 7, which makes this extra lucky. It's especially good luck to have a baby this year, but more on that later...

We've just come back from a great week and a half holiday in Vietnam. This was really relaxing (on the whole). Whilst slacking and lazing around at Mui Ne on a beach resort it occurred to me that holidays and travelling are about good patches and bad patches. Good patches when you're really enjoying yourself and getting along well with your travel companion. Bad patches can be when you miss that plane, have something stolen, are arguing or not getting along, or get ripped off etc. The more good patches you can string together, the more fun etc, but usually I find the good and bad patches tend to alternate quite a lot. When travelling, due to the alien place, language and culture things can change quickly from highs to lows... From my experience travelling is a mix of both - usually about 50/50, with a slight tip towards the good experiences. Of course, in time all the bad patches turn into good patches or at least comical patches as our memories re-remember them...

Anyway, I must say that our time in Vietnam was definitely full of largely good patches with one rather biggish bad patch at the end in Guangzhou Airport - but this was a bad patch that turned into a comical patch, which can happen... more on this later. It was a great holiday!

Suzhou's sickos...

I was talking with some friends on the weekend about some of the more unusual "things" we'd seen in Suzhou. The conversation soon degenerated into some of the more 'out-there' things. Here's some I've seen:

Just this Sunday, a guy throwing up out the side of the front passenger seat of a car (while driving). This was down Gang Jiang Jie - the busiest street in the city. It went on for about 4 blocks, until we passed the car, and by that stage there was an incredible amount of spew all over their new BMW...

A while back I saw an old guy - about 60 or 70 years old taking a wizz into a canal, on the same street - in front of everyone. The thing was, he didn't seem to make any effort to be discreet (like going down a few of the steps leading to the water and away from everyone's view) - he just got it out in front of everyone. Everyone, kept going about their business - no problems...

Regularly, we see kids walking around taking a dump, or having a wizz through Chinese designed pants - that are pants for kids with a huge hole at the bottom. Why bother with nappys when you can just let it all out anywhere - and I mean anywhere, with reports of this occurring in supermarkets and shops... Must get cold down there, mind you...

Possibly the best, was one I didn't actually witness - a friend of ours saw a completely naked man on the side of the road selling his wares on a blanket as others do. Apparently, he was just acting normal, and everyone else was too - just totally ignoring the fact that he was just standing there naked. In the West, if you saw this, you'd realise it was probably some sort of dare underway, and secondly you'd probably yell something out to them... but here, you just apparently do that stuff, and you ignore it when you see it...

metal

Metal music - what's it all about? I don't know... Anyway, I've been discussing this a bit on a few forums lately, check this out if you're interested.

turning things off

This photo and the photo from the last post are both from the area within Shanghai known as the French Concession. I don't think there were ever actually many French people living there - but there were Russians and other Europeans once. Anyway, it is heavily European influenced and looks quite beautiful.

One unusual Chinese characteristic very noticeable at my work, is the perceived importance of turning electrical things off to save money. It starts off with things like photocopiers and printers, which are constantly turned off as the Chinese staff walk past them. That's kind of bearable, but it still means that I have to get up and turn the printer on and boot up the computer connected to it nearly everytime I print something - 5 minutes of wasted time...

Then there's the lights - lights are never used, unless its absolutely necessary. At times I'm working away at work in the dark, but if a couple of dollars can be saved by turning lights off then, that seems to be the preferred approach.

But it gets worse. If you leave your desk for 30 minutes or an hour, someone will come along and turn your computer off - even if you have documents up etc. Now in winter, it's really cold - probably no more than about 10 degrees in the office... the Chinese staff will turn on the faulty old airconditioners (that cut out at 18 degrees) to warm the place up (read: blow luke warm air around the room for a short while), and then turn them off again. Probably about two bursts every hour of about 10-15 minutes. Consequently, I wear a heavy millitary jacket, scarf and about 3 layers of clothes at all times in the office. I do take my beannie off just so I look a little less 'outside'...

Everything is about turning stuff on then off... on then off... saving money? Who knows. I tried to find information on the internet about how turning lights on and off and booting computers up 3 or 4 times a day is not good use of energy, but, I don't know if that's still the case - computers have improved a lot in recent years...

So this is just one thing, I think I'll have to live with...

Westerners are all the same

As Morrissey once said on that infamous album by the Smiths, "I was shocked and surprised to discover..." that Asian people think that all Western people look the same, and that they can't tell the difference between us often. Weird heh? Maybe it's a bit of a generalisation (which is something I'm good at dealing with in), but a few Chinese people have now confirmed this. Many Westerners here have made comments to that effect all along, but I kind of didn't believe them. But our young, educated Chinese tutour just this week said to me, "yes, we Chinese people cannot tell Western people apart"...

Of course that raises the Asian stereotype, that all Asian people look the same - same coloured hair, same straight hair (and usually the same style here in China), same colour eyes, similar complexion, almost no variation in their height (ie small), no fat people - everyone is the same build... So then, if Western people range from tiny, thin to tall and obese.... with different complexions, hair colours, styles of hair, different eye colours etc - and to make another generalisation allowing for a lot more individuality through the development of sub-cultures etc (goths, punks, yuppies, 2nd hand clothese buyers, power dressers, indy types etc etc) - which just doesn't seem to be all that much developed here.... then how come Chinese people can't tell us apart??

To put this theory to the test, I borrowed an American friend's swimming membership card complete with photo. I think this guy looks different to me, but would Chinese peopleagree? He's taller, a different build, and I don't know - just looks quite different. Turns out that when I went to use his card, the person barely looked at it. So I got in on his membership... but I don't think my test was conclusive...

more backtracking

This is a photo of Sapporo's airport where we landed a few week's back. It was supposed to be a 3 hour flight, but became 4 hours after we circled for an extra hour, as there was snow on the runway. After we landed, I remember thinking, how the heck did we ever land with all that snow everywhere? The landing was actually really smooth...

After living in China for over 5 months, Japanese people seemed extremely friendly and polite to us. That's not to say that Chinese people are rude, but just that there are some cultural differences involved in welcoming people and serving people etc. Some of it is clearly language based, as the Japanese language has developed with inbuilt words that relay respect and service that are common in everyday situations. Even the way they say 'hai' is very polite and welcoming... Speaking to an Australian who has lived in Japan for 4 years, and an American for 8 years, though, gave a different perspective on Japanese people. They both basically said that they couldn't stand the overwhelming politeness that accompanies any conversation. In fact, it was explained to me that the difference in cultures between willingness to express what people actually think is vastly different in Japan, and that essentially this is the difference - that the extreme friendliness encountered is a cultural and language aspect that actually masks true feelings... interesting...

Anyway, you don't get that here in China, so it was welcomed. The Japanese language also struck us as being really cute sounding, even beautiful. It's more smooth flowing than Chinese and very childlike. In fact, I kept remarking to Nancy and others how it sounds like a kids' language... Of course the Japanese fascination with child like qualities (from the girly pigtails, to the short skirts, and kitschy products) - particularly in women is a whole other story...

Japan and other stuff

I've been offline for sometime due to a week's vacation in Japan, and trouble with accessing the internet. The recent earthquake in Taiwan severed some undersea cables, and since late December, our already slow internet access has gotten much worse. I can't access many sites from Australia or North America at the moment, and if we can they are usually painfully slow at uploading.

Like Nancy said in her blog, many things have happened, and I will try to mention some of these over the next few weeks. We left for Japan on 23 December and stayed until 31 December in Niseko, a ski village on the island of Hokaido. It was lots of fun and very tiring - the good thing about skiing is that it keeps you fit, while you're also relaxing. So we had Christmas together there - it was pretty much just another day, though. We bumped into Tara and Oogs - Tara best friend of Renae - some of you will remember/know her... We made a few other friends there - people we mostly kept bumping into.

New Years was quiet, but we enjoyed a brunch meal at the Suzhou Sheraton. It was astounding the amount of food there...

I'm really feeling more positive about China since returning. Maybe my 6 month culture shock period is drawing to a close. Everyday now it seems I get complimented by Chinese people about how good my Chinese is, which is really satisfying and good for motivation. And I think I'm also getting a lot more comfortable with being stared at, and at being an outsider here...

Chinglish

I was just helping a Chinese friend today to translate a menu into English. She'd had a go at it, and then I checked it and used my basic knowledge of Chinese characters to see if it made sense. It was pretty funny, but I tidied it up as much as I could. I must say though I felt really tempted to throw in the odd surprise word like 'penis' or 'nose' or something... mind you, those sort of delicacies could be pretty believable here anyway.

Anyway, I just did a quick google search on Chinglish menus and found this nice surprise!!

cute kids

These kids are so cute. These are my grade 4 students - there's 18 of them and I may only get to teach them one more time, so I thought I'd take a photo... My other group of school kids are grade 5 students, and I don't like them anywhere near as much - I'll be happy when that course ends. But this group is really special, they are cute and usually eager to learn English. And when they don't understand something, they have this funny looking confused look on their faces that is priceless.

I know this is an obvious statement, but it's fascinating observing them all and seeing their different personalities at such a young age... you can see the smart ones, the funny ones, the loner types, the ones that are quiet and studious, the ones who are bored, the ones who try to get the teacher's approval all the time... it's a tiny snapshot of society, which is pretty cool.

Merry Christmas

etc