Holiday excitement, a prelude to rust (Marcus)

Some days it’s just so tempting to pull up roots and return home, yet other days there’s things that really compel us to push on. This evening I sat down with Courtney and we went through her short-list of hostels for the cities of Beijing, Xi-An and Chengdu. She has been working tirelessly at organising our summer holiday around China and I have to say, I am so thoroughly impressed and appreciative of all the work she has done. She has put together an extensively detailed spreadsheet which effectively covers everything – from date to location to costing. You name it, she’s there. She did it because she’s good at it, but moreso she enjoys it. It puts her in holiday mode.

Looking through the hostels with her tonight made me feel excited. These cities we are going to visit are going to be so awesome. The whole reason we came to China was to see China – and that means, see as much of China as possible – NOT to live in this shithouse little apartment and be dragged down with the day to day stresses of teaching. I will admit, we thought it was going to be easy-street – this whole year in fact, but it has been hard; really hard.

The teaching for one has been a lot more challenging than we anticipated – particularly the lesson planning. For two, living to learn in the Chinese culture has had its own set of very difficult challenges – but as we were saying as we walked down a bustling side-street in the city the other day – it all feels so normal now – and that’s a good thing. And I think on top of all of these is actually just living here in this apartment. It’s functional, at a glance it serves its purposes, but it really isn’t remotely something we would choose(or even do again), I think.

Let’s have a bitch about the apartment eh? Firstly, by some way of design it’s infested with mosquitoes. This stumps me on a daily basis because above all of the annoyances they bring, my curiosity is well and truly peaked when it comes to asking, HOW the HELL are they getting in?? It’s not like the place has open holes or tunnels allowing them easy access. I would kill to know how they are getting in – just to answer that damned question. Beyond the mosquitoes, it’s also just a messy hole of a place. It’s uncomfortable – with our lovely hard backed chairs and couch; whether they come through with the goods and replace it as mentioned I don’t know – but here’s hoping. The floor is constantly filthy – covered in a layer of grey dirt/dust particles of which I can only guess what it is. The same stuff that covers practically everything everywhere; including leaves – fallen pollution likely. It’s poorly designed – as mentioned before, behind one of the walls and leading into the spare room is a lovely brown stain covered in flaking plaster where there’s obviously a broken or leaking pipe of some description.

*Note - we do clean everything in here on a regular basis.

And it’s just plain feral. In the kitchen below the fridge there’s a lovely mould pattern forming – likewise in the bathroom, in the corner by the shower there’s another lovely cluster of mould that’s appearing in spots – sort of like a mini-mould galaxy. It’s lovely. The bathroom is such a nice place. Every corner has what appears to be silt(or something). Whenever it gets wet, it drips/leaks/smudges. It’s always there. Lately there’s been brown liquid dropping from the ceiling in the corner. We realized this as our newly bought package of toilet paper had a nice brown pool on top of it this morning. It’s the moisture from the stream mixing with the expert craftsmanship of the ceiling creating a type of rust rain.

Rust…rust, China is rusty; everywhere. Everywhere you go you see it. The whole country is slowly oozing rust out of every conceivable pore. It only occurred to me today that it must be the acid in the rain from the pollution that’s actually causing it. If you see metal anywhere, you’ll see rust. Our cutlery in the kitchen? Rusty. The bus stop outside of the school? Rusty. Every building within China? Rusty…or silty. Whatever it is.

You see China is also covered in white tiles. The majority of buildings are completely tiled with these small, approximately 10x15cm white tiles. Between the tiles they are grouted – nothing new here, except in China, the grout is naturally dripping down over the white of the tiles making the entire building look absolutely filthy. It’s the good ol acid again, this time eating at the grout. You see this absolutely everywhere. Add in windows caked in the same grayish crap that lines our floor and you have buildings that look like they haven’t been cleaned in 50 years. Add a layer of dirt to every footpath and you complete the picture.

Being dirty isn’t the only drawback of tiles however – oh no – there’s a better failing – they break! 90% of the footpaths(or perhaps 100%) are in fact brick tiles also. The entire school here is basically tiled on the ground. Every few steps one is broken – likely from the weight of the cars constantly driving over them. The Chinese teachers who own cars basically drive from building to building – even worse those who own scooters. It’s like us back home in Australia in a typical house, walking to the garage and driving to the letterbox 10 metres away. So the tiles are broken all over the damned place. Out in the streets they’re more of a tiled type of brick, but they’re still broken all over the place, and it really makes you wonder why they bother. Firstly it would be 10 times more work just laying them(well not a problem when you have 20 workers doing the job of 2), and secondly, once laid no-one ever replaces them(that I have seen anyway).

There’s also one other uncool factor about these brick tiles…when it rains, half of them are lose in their fitting. As you walk along, the tile presses into the ground suddenly – but you have to be real fast to notice it moving. At a glance it appears completely perfect. The thing you DO notice however, is your previously dry foot, that you have been carefully keeping to dry ground, is suddenly SOAKING WET as a seemingly invisible wall of water has appeared out of nowhere, swamped the shoe and disappeared again – without leaving a trace that anything actually happened. I have had this happen to me several times over the months and I can honestly say, it SHITS ME!

So that’s how it is here. Buildings are tiled then never cleaned. Interesting designed offices and shops go up then are buried under the dirt and never cleaned. Gardens are erected in the streets yet never seemingly maintained. Hell I don’t even know why they bother beautifying anything when the majority of the populace wouldn’t bat an eyelid at littering it. The other day we were on the bus heading into the city, and at one of the stops, the bus comes to a half, its hydraulic doors fly open as normal, and the woman beside us chooses that moment as a good opportunity to launch her rubbish out the doors. Door opens, rubbish goes out onto the street, doors close, on we go. I just can’t fathom what they are thinking – or rather, are they completely not thinking? Bloody Chinese people, I swear. I hope the new generations bring in a greater respect for the environment and perhaps living in cleaner surroundings – though I don’t have much hope as we’ve seen numerous teens littering also. At least I can say it’s not my damned country. **

** Of course we have our fair share of litterbugs back home also. Nobody’s perfect I guess. Got cigarette butt?

The wall just keeps looking nicer and nicer.

Lovely brown streaks that come from the ceiling lead down to...

...Mmmm yum. Everything is just so well made here.

We had one of those uber smoggy days today - the last one was when i was terribly sick. Today thankfully I got to enjoy it in perfect health - perfect other than the sore throats we had from a day of talking in front of classes whilst inhaling it. Last night I was about to head to bed and I thought I smelt smoke. After a check around the apartment I realized the balcony window was still open - of course, it was the smell of the lovely fresh air outside.

Classic Chinese parking. This was around 40 metres in front of the bus stop to which the bus had to go around the car to get to the stop.

Opposite the marvelous car park was a Chinese policeman doing what Chinese policeman do best - not armed with a speed camera back home, but armed with a simple newspaper. A few minutes later a worker came out from the gates behind him and completely without thought(the norm around here) started sweeping the dirt from the driveway behind the cop car - the huge dust cloud then going into the open windows of the police car. It's like witnessing some kind of slapstick silent movie.

Opposite one huge factory is a large empty area filled with piles of dirt and rubble. Running down the middle of this rubble is a vendor street. Here, under the brightly coloured umbrellas come the food vendors. They cook food of every description in little ovens and stoves and bbq's and you name it, all of which are generally attached to a bike. The food is really quite excellent, and despite being devoid of any hygene whatsoever, the above scene, in some respects is literally the Chinese equivilant to a food court. The workers stream out to it during their lunch breaks and sit on little makeshift seats like it's some kind of outdoor cafeteria. You see these bright umbrellas all over the place, generally opposite places where factory or construction workers are located. The little cars you can see in front of it are also usually present - these are the 'unofficial taxis' aka someone who has a car and will take you somewhere for money. Illegal. We wouldn't ever use these guys as you are basically asking for trouble. While it's unlikely, they don't run meters and could rip you off to Kingdom Come, and then when you didn't want to pay? Well you don't really want to get into that kind of situation. Of course you'd pay, and that's what they rely on - though on the other hand, they also likely provide a good cheap local taxi service for the locals, just like....

..these guys.

On the weekend I had decided I wanted Pizza, come hell or high water. We tried a new place in Wuxi city called Champion's Pizza. Well the food was fit only for losers. The pizza was passable, but the pineapple was basically flavourless and all over the pizza in big difficult chunks - I think I only got 2-3 pieces, the rest just falling on the table. The ham was likewise pretty average - possibly Spam.

So while my Pizza was below average but edible - Courtney's 'Meat Kebabs' on the otherhand(and I think calling them meat period is an injustice to meat everywhere) were just ...blech, disgusting. We have no idea what meat it was, but it had the consistency of gristly rubber. I thought she was just being fussy as they looked quite good initially(and of course 50% smaller than they looked in the menu), but when I tried them, jesus christ, revolting. This was a pizza place that looked very similar to Pizza Hut really, but run by more of a local business - that therein was the problem.



*editors note - I'm not actually angry, my 'emotional output' goes up and down with the mosquito body count. Though I have to add, Courtney 'the machine' Wort has just nailed 4 in the space of around 5 minutes, go you good thing!