It’s a Tough Life: A personal view of living in China

1. Introduction

Arrival in Guangzhou was not auspicious. As we flew over the airport you could see nothing but filthy smog, smog and more smog. Grubby skyscrapers and roads, lots of roads. Landing and customs were fine but it then took the car an hour to get to the hotel (I have since walked it in the same time) and this was on a quiet Sunday afternoon. August is part of the wet season and I have lived in enough places not to be too put off by regular thunderous downpours but it did tend to encourage me to stay in or very near the hotel when not at work.


The title comes from a phrase often repeated by my friend and neighbour, Tom, after we have had a gentle Sunday evening of eating out followed by a foot massage, whilst we (that is normally me, Tom & his partner Nora) drink the wine of course. We have a street full of restaurants a couple of hundred metres from where we live. This parade offers food from the Xinjiang, Hunnan, Shandong, Heilionjang, Jillin & Guizhou regions but ironically, not Gaungdong, where we live. There are also restaurants from Indonesia, Turkey, France, Japan and the Caribbean and a couple of fast food places of dubious provenance and a cake shop in this 200 metre long strip. This information will undoubtedly be wrong by the time you read this, as restaurants open and close with extraordinary rapidity along the lines of “if this doesn’t work, close down, refurbish the place and open up as something else.”

The foot massage enterprise is above one of the restaurants. Don’t get me wrong, the first time you go for a foot massage it will probably hurt quite a lot. Why go back? Because your feet and calves feel wonderful afterwards. Our main complaint is that we can’t get a forklift truck to take us directly from the third (American) floor where we get the massage and take us back and deposit us on the balconies of our fourth floor flat (or apartment if you are odd). Time I started working on hiring that fork lift.

It is truly a tough life.

Whither China?

Are you of an age when the hippie trail was the thing?

I am, and I never did it. I thought it was one of those things that hippy types did, not some yokel from Derbyshire. I never thought of myself as a yokel but I knew my place.

I was, however, from the same mould if you like. Ignorant, but curious. I never left the UK until I was just shy of 20 when I spent a couple of weeks bouncing round France in a minivan with my schoolmate Richard, who was a vastly more experienced traveller than me.

What did I learn? Not much. Too stupid. Bouncing along uneven roads with shuttered windows amongst avenues of Cedar trees.

Now step back a moment.

Uneven roads? In the sixties the UK had the smoothest roads in the world, or so it seemed after bucketing down the French roads. Shutters. What are those? I had never seen those before. That is not to say there aren’t any at all in England, just that I hadn’t noticed them. Of course the fact that they are on almost every country house in most parts of France does make them a bit more conspicuous.
Avenues of trees? Where in England do you see more than six or seven trees in a row? Real avenues were a real shock to a dumb, just about, northerner. Well I am no southern ponce.

We had only reached Normandy.

Chambord? Chatres? We even ventured into Paris and got sunstroke on a beach near Arcachon. What was I supposed to think? A naïve (and I was) young lad who had never been outside the UK. Amazing!

So what do I do?

Not much really. Half a dozen of us went to Greece in a VW Combi minibus the following year which was fine and we did some good stuff (try standing at the top of the theatre at Delphi and talking to your mate on the stage when the place is empty) etc. but not the big stuff.

I expected that – the big stuff - when I went to America for eighteen months. Mr Naïve got robbed on the second day and was home in two months. A complete flop so I signed up to do Voluntary Service Overseas. As I had passed my accountancy exams by then, VSO bit my hand off and sent me to Tanzania. I didn’t do much work but liked living in a nice hotish climate, (lowest temperature ever recorded on the beach in Dar-Es-Salaam 15 degrees, highest 35 degrees) and wandering off all over the country, meeting and understanding (a little) people of a different culture plus the animals and Kilimanjaro. You didn’t have to be in Africa long in the 70s to realise that the way that Britain had abandoned the colonies leaving them with the “Westminster Model” but no Civil Service to run them was, how can I put this, moronic? Naturally the UK has continued to lecture African leaders on their mistakes, not the British ones.

After spending over 4 years trying to start a real career I couldn’t stand the confines of Britain any more and had 18 months in Grenada (pre the American invasion); a stunningly beautiful island but after 6 months you have been everywhere. When I returned from Tanzania after two years out of Europe, once I crossed the Alps everything seemed remarkably green. The luxuriousness of the plant growth in the Caribbean Islands puts Northern Europe to shame.

Domesticity and a failed marriage interrupted my travelling but since that time I have been to lots of places (the current country count is 52) but never thought that I would come to China. I, being English, am lousy and lazy at languages and always thought that that issue would be an insuperable problem.

In 2001 Unisys, an American computer company, had won a contract to install a specialist piece of software for aircraft maintenance for China Southern Airlines in Guangzhou. They had no employee with the required skills and knowledge who was prepared to spend 75% or more of their time in China. Enter yours truly.


Within about 3 weeks I was hooked.

The idea that Chinese are dour miserable, hangdog people is just plain wrong. Having a guailo (white ghost) wander into the shop or restaurant is a cause of much hilarity and entertainment. The staff always want to help you to spend your money. (In my opinion the Chinese are the world’s natural capitalists – they will do anything to make money. I am sure I could buy someone’s granny if I was so inclined.) They will find someone who speaks some English or you are quite welcome to wander into the kitchen and point. If you are buying something in a shop when you offer a quarter of their original asking price they are not offended. (The bargaining is usually done with the aid of a calculator, although I am now quite capable of doing it by speech, most people do not expect you to even know the numbers). Sometimes they might indicate that your initial offer is way too low but not often and you usually strike a fairly amicable deal at around a third or a half of the original asking price. Locals may get things a bit cheaper but not much. It is fun.

You can do more or less what you like in China if you don’t hurt anyone. More of this later.

I made my first trip out of Guangzhou after three weeks and went to Hangzhou. This is one of China’s many ex-capitals and is famous for a lake and a couple of temples. It was my first experience of Chinese tourism. They, the tourists, are amazingly disciplined and orderly. The guide ambles along at the front with a flag held fairly high. The tour group straggle along behind (but never far behind), usually with identical baseball caps on which, of course, distinguishes them from other people on identical tours but with different hats. This might be OK if there is the odd tourist group but there are dozens of them everywhere. Enjoying the peaceful serenity of the West Lake, as you are supposed to, is a bit tricky with thousands of other people for company. One of the famous temples was three or four kilometres from my hotel. I strolled over there one day and it was fascinating for the history as much as anything. This temple had been destroyed in assorted squabbles 17 times – yes 17. The last one was during the Cultural Revolution when Mao’s Red Guards blew up most of it. Zhou-en-Lai promptly authorised and arranged the funding for the rebuilding. I, of course, had not organised the trip but our secretary, May Du, had no real idea that many westerners aren’t the sort to stay in the best hotels and she had duly booked me into the best hotel I have ever stayed in. Naturally it is called “Shangri-la.” This may have coloured my view somewhat.

After a year and a bit the job ground to a halt and my days in China were numbered. My Chinese friend, Bill, said that I had better become a teacher if I wanted to live in China. So that is what I did. Back to England waiting to get made redundant and doing a “Teaching English as Foreign Language” course and I was ready. It was all ridiculously easy because on my last day in China working for Unisys another Chinese friend’s wife, Jennifer, had taken me to the “Foreign Affairs Department” of her university where I was promptly offered a job. A degree was enough; I didn’t need a TEFL qualification.

Dropping a zero off your salary can be a bit of a problem but you will see later that it is not such a big issue.

2. Food & Drink

I live in the food capital of the world!

How is that for a claim? Paris might think it should have that title. New York has the arrogance to claim any “best in the world” title on offer. I expect that the Aussies could put a bid in for the title in their usual way if they could think of where to nominate. There will be many other cities that claim the honour. They are wrong.

I have sampled much fine food around the world. Wonderful salmon in Chile, the most varied seafood starter in Spain and Barramundi to die for in Queensland are good examples but nothing to hold a candle to the food in my home city.

Guangzhou is the food capital of the world. An argument on this issue is impossible. A discussion with someone who has been here might be possible for a few minutes before the inevitable conclusion is reached but an argument is impossible.

Of course the pedants amongst you will say that a non-carnivore who is a lousy cook and has the taste buds of a nematode worm cannot know what he is talking about.

Piffle.

Allow me to explain.

In the modern fashion Hong Kong has been seen a lot recently on TV cooking programmes. Why? I have no idea. Go another 180 kilometres and then you will get good food.

A friend visited recently after having been to Hong Kong. This lady can cook and knows her food. She arrived on a fine sunny morning so we went to lunch in one of the local parks. You go to this restaurant because it is a nice place to relax and have a leisurely lunch and a chat with a good friend that you had not seen for a year or two. You do not go to this restaurant for the quality of the food. Nic was amazed at the quality of the food –vastly superior to Honkers – fresher, no MSG and everything cooked individually. She couldn’t get over it. In the few days she was here we sampled a variety of restaurants and her surprise hardly diminished. On the last day that she was in the city she was rather ill (not from the food) so she never did get to go to one of the really good restaurants that I was saving for her last day.

Why is the food so good?

There are four reasons.

Reason Number 1. This is the real answer. It is fresh.

Most westerners have little real idea what fresh food is. When I was young my mother would go down to the fishmongers on Fridays and buy some “fresh” fish that she would cook the same day. Why Fridays – I have no idea – we were nominally C of E but only went to church for weddings and funerals apart from a couple of compulsory school visits each year. This was in the days before refrigerators were universal. We lived about as far from the sea as you can get in the UK, so the fish might have been been caught by a trawler and died 36 hours before our mum cooked it. On the other hand modern factory fishing ships were starting to be built so maybe the fish had been frozen for a week or few before my mother bought it.

Naturally things got better in the seventies and eighties. Your local fishmonger disappeared and we all went to the Supermarket to buy our fish. Of course, the fishing industry (for that, by then was what it had become) was dominated by large deep-sea craft that could be away for weeks at a time so almost everything sold as “fresh” was anything but. What has changed since? Not much as far as I know. I believe that the situation is much the same in other parts of the”developed” world – at least those that do not have a local fishing fleet.

When I walk in a restaurant in Guangzhou and order a fish if it is dead when I walk in the restaurant I don’t eat it. You normally walk around the various tanks – there can be twenty or thirty in a good restaurant – and choose your own fish – not the type, the actual fish. The man that does these things then fishes out (sorry) your fish in a net for your personal approval to ensure that you are satisfied. I am an inveterate coward and hastily agree and depart back to the table before he smashes the fish’s head on something or other. The late unlamented lower vertebrate will be in front of you about ten minutes later. That is fresh food.

Perhaps squeamishness is one of the reasons that I like lots of shellfish. These apparently docile specimens of life are also alive when you go and make your selection but there is not the queasy process of life termination to undergo whilst you look on. However, you can still be caught out as a wishy-washy liberal if they bring the prawns to your table before they steam them. I have not heard the prawns scream but I do wish that they would carry out this procedure where I could pretend that it was nothing to do with me. The prawns are, of course, utterly delicious.

Now I can see a little problem here for the western viewpoint. Certification. The Ministry of Agriculture & Fisheries is now called something modern, trendy – and forgettable. I am sure that some editor somewhere will insert the correct expression to ensure that there is no possibility of a libel charge but I seem to recall it sounds something like The Mafia, well maybe not so forgettable, just inaccurate.

Anyway, I am sure that the good old Min of Ag & Fish would say that such food was not suitable for human consumption. It hadn’t been tested, certified, scrubbed, injected and generally reduced in flavour before it was eaten. (I am sure that The Mafia would have a more flexible view, if you want to bump somebody off, a fish is a good a way as any.)

Personally I will take fresh.

Reason No 2. The cooking is simple.

Steam your fish in a little soya sauce. Serve.

Braise you vegetable (whichever it is) with some garlic. Serve.

Steam the rice. Serve.

Simple isn’t it.

Reason number 3. Presentation.

Now this is not your modern noveau cuisine shit. Once a thing is cooked, put it on a plate or in a dish in a reasonably practical tidy way and take it to the table. Don’t fiddle around making it look what it isn’t “drizzling” some junk or other on it. Put it on a plate and put it on the table whilst it is still hot and fresh.

Now what is difficult about that?

Reason number 4. Variety.

When I first arrived in China I realised that there was lots of variety. I decided that every day I would eat something that I had not eaten before in my life. This did not always mean some type of food that I had not had before, although this was often the case, but perhaps just cooked in a different way. I have no real idea how long I kept this up for, but six months is my usual estimate, before I started seeing too many things that I knew I liked.

Let me give you two simple examples. In the UK how many different types of mushrooms do we have? Three? Five? In China we have twenty, thirty or forty, I just don’t know but I really like them. How many different types of greens do we eat in England – cauliflower, cabbages, sprouts, broccoli, peas, beans of one type or another. What else? In Guangzhou we have all those except sprouts and about another ten or fifteen other types. I am not a great lover of this variety of food but I do know that those who delight in such things will be gob-smacked in my city.

Add to this hotch-potch of food a few more exotic things like silkworms – another friend who is an excellent cook simply could not get over these – water beetles, sea slugs and sea cucumbers, squirrels, civet cats etc. I hope you get the idea. They have a saying in this part of the world. The people of Guangzhou will eat anything with four legs except a table, anything from the sea except a submarine or anything that flies that is smaller than an aircraft.

There is one rather odd exception to this. The parks in Guangzhou are full of dragonflies. What have dragonflies done to deserve this lack of respect? Sure enough they turned up on the menu recently so I had to try them. They are tasteless. They are fried and, just like flying ants in Africa. If you have ever eaten potato chips without any salt you will have some idea. That wasn’t in Guangzhou though.

So why is Guangzhou better than any other city in China?

There are two reasons.

The food I have described so far is what may be called Cantonese. This is the food of the local area – Guangdong and parts of Guanshi & Fujien plus Hong Kong and Macao. You do not get this thoroughly excellent food in other parts of China. Most provinces think that it is sweet. This is in contrast to acidic and spicy foods typical of many other provinces that also do not have the variety of Cantonese cooking.

We also get different types of food in this part of the world from all over China – Sichuan, Guangshi, Hunnan, Jillin Heiliongjang, Shandong & Xinjiang to name the ones that are in a strip of restaurants a couple of hundred metres from where I live, as I mentioned earlier. To give you a clue about how different these foods may be Xinjiang is further from Guangzhou than Cairo is from London This strip also contains restaurants from Turkey, Indonesia, the Caribbean, Japan and – wait for it – France. The foreign restaurants are, typical of foreign restaurants all over the world, inferior. Just as your local Cantonese restaurant in Bradford is inferior to the real thing, it is modified to suit local tastes. When in France you eat French food I hope.

Incidentally the Chinese show one of their worst traits about this. When they travel abroad they head for Chinese restaurants, no matter how terrible; they would not dream of trying French food in Paris. Even within China they are very parochial. If you come from some part of the country but move to another you will eat the vast majority of your food in the style of your home province. I find this weird when there is so much variety of excellent food.

A few months ago I went to Chengdu, another ten million people city in Sichuan province about 1,000 kilometres west-north-west of Guangzhou, partly because I like the city and I was wondering if I might like to live there if I tired of Guangzhou. As you may know, Sichuan food is spicy – very spicy. Now I can do spicy and enjoyed the first couple of meals there; they were incredibly cheap. As I recall I had about 12 or 14 skewers, each with four bits of fish or vegetables on them, plus 2 x 640 millilitre bottles of beer. Cost 20 RMB – 2 Euros. So far so good, but meal after meal of spicy is not my thing and I got bored. At one point, I am ashamed to say, I went to a Pizza Hut. There just isn’t the variety of restaurants that there are in Guangzhou. Shanghai & Beijing do have a good variety of restaurants but I have never found one that I like in Shanghai, even though I have been there about a dozen times. I have only been to Beijing once, for reasons that will become obvious later, but I also didn’t find the variety of Guangzhou.

It is time to say something about price. An ordinary meal in a restaurant for two will cost less than 100 RMB (10 Euros), a lot less if some of my friends are ordering. If I order in an expensive restaurant I might get it a bit higher especially with a beer or two added but you have to order far too much food to get the price up to 100 RMB each.

Perhaps the best way to leave you on this subject is something that I wrote a few weeks after I first arrived in Guangzhou. Please excuse the repetition but it does give you a good impression of my early impressions. (Who writes this English?) I see no reason to change it.

I will illustrate the eating process by describing what happens at the restaurant that we normally go to for lunch. This would be a better story I am sure if this place had a name; it undoubtedly does and I think that I have heard it mentioned but my translation abilities have not yet aspired to anything more than counting to five (yes, I do know what beer is).

As you approach you can see various items of food moving around in racks and tanks. Fortunately, we normally avoid this and head straight indoors after our daily viewing of which way round the shark is. The shark tank is about 2 metres by 60 centimetres; Larry is about 11/2 metres. The poor creature’s ability to turn was in doubt until it was noticed facing the other way one day; now it could have been hoisted out and turned round but animal rights are not too high on the agenda here, so it probably moved. Imagine the surprise when the tank was empty yesterday – somebody had obviously had a big enough party to eat it the night before, either that or poor Larry had died of boredom and the staff had eaten him.

Naturally, we are bowed indoors by smiling staff. We walk upstairs and are bowed to our table by more smiling staff. These smiling staff are always women whose main quality seems to be very thin long legs. This is a requirement because they will all have identical uniforms with slit seams up the side to the upper thigh. This job is, of course, completely different from the standers-around in the hotel; in a restaurant they have a job – take you to your table – unlike the similarly clad ladies in the hotels who do nothing except, about once every half an hour or so, answer a question asked by some stupid foreigner. Her answer will be to point to the left at the counter clearly marked “Reception” for new arrivals or to the right at the counter clearly marked “Concierge” for everything else.

Once at your table a new team take over putting on your napkin, minutely adjusting the position of your crockery, cutlery etc. and putting your cup and saucer on your plate for some reason that completely eludes me. The people who can perform this function are clearly defined – I will come to that shortly. Warm face cloths are produced, tea is poured and menus are produced and ignored by the locals. Occasionally a westerner will look at the menu but it is far easier to leave it to our excellent hosts; none of the restaurant staff appear to speak any English beyond the “Hallo”, “Thank you” level of my Chinese. Something is ordered, we know not what although we are generally consulted about the cooking method of the rice. When my reading of Chinese has improved I will be able to read some of the items ordered on the copy of the menu that is left; I might risk a beer soon to try my luck.

Used face cloths are picked up with pincers (no, not just mine.) Some nibbles appear of varying degree of fury or sweetness to keep you ticking over whilst you wait for the food. You have a chance to look around and absorb the staff. There is another class of misfit (apart from the thin-legged group); these are the cutlery, crockery, facecloth and glass collectors. They can collect the goods from the two collection points amongst the 24 tables and they wear brown uniforms – this completely upsets the pattern – and they are the only men. They have no other duties.

The first plate of food is brought by a girl in a drab green one-piece uniform with another drab, darker green pinafore over the top of the uniform. It will be neither the first item that you ordered nor the first one on the menu; it will be the first one that happens to be cooked. When I say brought, I mean brought – not placed on the table; she walks up with her tray and waits for someone of a greater rank to come and take it off her tray and put it on the table. This will, of course involve re-arranging the crockery and cutlery even if you have not touched it, before taking the plate off the tray and placing it on the table. The serving wench of lower rank departs after putting her stamp on the order card left at your table. She has no other duties of any kind and her lowly rank is reinforced by her badge number which will be somewhere around 100.

The food can have been placed upon the table by anybody of higher rank but is usually done by the next rank up. In addition to placing food she can clear tables, call higher ranks to adjust your order, adjust your placings, bring and remove face cloths – yes these are busy people with badge numbers in the 030 to 080 range, wear a drab green jacket and black skirt but still have the same flat heeled shoes of the lesser rank.

So you all tuck in, starting with the most senior person there, of course. These are courteous people who do not laugh like a drain as you trail food across the tablecloth with your chopsticks. I have come to appreciate chopsticks – if you are given a choice, go for those with the sharpest tips. These has two advantages; a slight misalignment does not produce violent 90 degree swings of the food in the damn things and a surreptitious stab at something soft is more likely to be effective.

Dishes are brought by the lowest rank and placed upon the table by their superiors (the table is rearranged each time of course) and consumed. Empty plates are removed – sometimes with such alacrity that you would have had the last little bit of some tasty thing that you have never eaten before if the staff were not so efficient. The ladies of the correct rank always ask permission but this is done by a high speed thrust forward of an open hand that requires countermanding to stop the intended action. My Chinese is not yet up to saying “No, I am a fat foreigner who was brought up to empty my plate”.

The only thing that you can rely on in the order of the dishes is that the rice will be last. This is, apparently, to allow you to enjoy the full flavours of the cooking before you get down to the serious business of high speed shovelling of carbo-hydrates into your gob. After the food is cleared away melon and water-melon are brought to cleanse the palette (after some judicious work with a couple of pre-packed toothpicks of course.) This fruit is never ordered and is the one absolute constant across all restaurants, whatever the standard or variety of cooking.

The remains are cleared and the bill is called for. This activity must be carried out by a lady of higher rank. The same lady may have taken your order but it is odds against; anybody of the same rank can move from table to table. At first glance these ladies do not look of significantly different rank from the numerous ones who do most of the work; it is just that their jacket is light green. Then you realise that they actually have a blouse on and a sort of lace tie as well. Perhaps, more importantly, their black shoes have heels – about 4 centimetres. Yes, these are a real power in the land; not only can they do everything that the lower ranks can do but also take your order and take the completed order card away at the end of the meal – they can even sit at the desk and work out your bill!

However, their numbers are only in the teens and the Double O numbers really count (although a woman with 007 on her chest does seem wrong to me). These are dressed all in black and have real high heels. They run the place and look after any big groups and do a lot of ordering and they calculate most of the bills and can sit BEHIND the desk.

I suspect the no. 001 owns the place, she sometimes dresses in grey, not black!

We are bowed out by the five girls who admitted us, plus anybody else who is not busy; they all stand at the top of the stairs except the couple who have to open the door for you at the bottom.

Exaggeration – not in the least; that is what happens. Uniforms vary and the odd rank may, as far as I can tell, be missed in some restaurants. You always have to see the food on the way in or no-one would eat there and you will always get things that you have never eaten before in your life. My ambition is to eat something I have never had before every day that I am here. It is a good job I stop at fish; I could be here years.

I fear that I have not explained properly about the mechanisms of eating.

The ordering process I have alluded to but not properly explained. It is simple.
You ask for what you want. It may or may not be on the menu. Irrespective of this particular menu point the restaurant may or may not have it. If they have then how will it be cooked? This is an open discussion in which anyone can join in – that is the potential eaters plus the waitress, or other passing waitresses and it can take some time to reach a conclusion. It always appears to me that the waitress dominates but why I do not know or of course understand whether my assumption is true. By the way, I do not care either, the food will be delicious.

The eating process could perhaps also do with a little explanation. This is not the process of actually putting food in your mouth, chewing it, swallowing it, digesting it and excreting it. I believe that that is quite well understood. No, it is what happens when a plate or bowl of food is put on the table.

The easiest example to take is a bowl of soup. This is a big bowl of, let’s say, fish head soup. Ah, a small diversion here. I guess most of us ignorant westerners would think that fish heads might be good for making a bit of soup stock, particularly for us non-carnivores. Well, I have news for you. Fish head soup costs more than fish soup. In fish soup you get a fish. In fish head soup you get bones and eyes. The head has a small part of real “meat”, it is the cheeks. To be fair they are delicious. I know I should have tried the eyes after all these years but I am a coward. The thing is the locals consider it a great honour to take the head (now calm down here people, we are talking about fish). They put the whole thing in their mouth, churn it around a bit until the good bits are extracted then spit the rest out on the table.

On the table!

What bad mannered people!

Of course it is merely a cultural difference.

Every time a table is cleared in a restaurant so is the table-cloth. So the table-cloth is merely a receptacle for used napkins, spilt things, shrimp cases or shell fish shells, used toothpicks, dropped food etc. Once you except that, spitting out the odd fish bone does not seem so odd does it. Of course this is not projectile spitting, unlike other places or occasions, but more like dribbling out of your mouth. I found it a little distasteful when I first came across it but now I just think it is a cultural difference.

Projectile spitting is another matter. I never spit unless a fly goes into my mouth. Why do footballers spit? What is the point? What is it that they are getting out of their mouth or throat? Do they have some system as footballers that sucks in flies? Some of you will respond that they are clearing the phlegm from their throats. What is phlegm? Can I be the only person on the planet whose nasal system stops all the shit from the atmosphere in my, admittedly ample, nostrils before it gets to the back of my throat? Do these footballers never pick there noses to get rid of the shit in their nostrils? How does it get back to their throats? Can they smoke twenty fags at half time?

The conclusion I have reached is that projectile spitting is taught as a birthright type thing. Unless you can repeat this operation on demand at least ten times a day then you are not a man. My theory has the odd weakness. Women do it very rarely. This is OK with male ego thing. However, none of my male friends do it either. Tricky. It is just a cultural thing that, I am glad to say, is disappearing.


Drink.

Ah, a subject close to my heart. Let me start with a couple of numbers. Guangzhou has approximately 100,000 restaurants (i.e. 1 for every 100 people or so) and 3,000 bars. That is a true reflection of the relative importance of alcohol to food in China. Of course you can get booze in restaurants and food in bars but the indicator is still clear.

There are several reasons for this.

The Chinese are not boozers. Many do not like the taste. Many cannot stand the alcohol – it is a common site to see what someone has thrown up in a bar toilet by 9.30 or 10 o’clock in the evening. This remark applies less to people in the north where the climate is colder.

There is no real culture of boozing. Chinese people drink tea or water. In summer people all carry one or the other around with them to building site, factory, office or classroom. In winter this is less true than in summer. When I say tea it is not the English idea of tea (black tea the Chinese would call that) with milk and, maybe, sugar. Sugar does get added to some concoctions that pass under the name of tea but milk – never. Dairy products are an extremely small part of the Chinese diet – cheese for instance is unknown outside very expensive western-oriented shops. Bit of a blow for me that, as I am a cheese lover and the things that pass for processed cheese in the supermarkets are like their counterparts all over the world, tasteless or near enough to make no difference.

So what is tea in China – Cha (where the English expression “a nice cup of char” comes from) is really an infusion that can have one or more ingredients in it (one has eight but that does include sugar and the water) with hot, but not boiling, water. Green tea is perhaps the best known but there are also red and black teas with mixtures of other ingredients added to taste – roses are quite common for instance. My personal favourite is made from chrysanthemum flowers. The pot can be refilled many times with hot water until you lose all the flavour. I say pot loosely because individual holders are more common for personal usage – a cup with a secondary smaller container in the top that holds the tea. When water is poured onto this it, the water, flows out of the holes in the smaller container into the main part of the cup. The upper part is removed and kept for later reuse; you drink from the cup. One set of leaves and/or flowers normally lasts a working day or close to it. A more basic alternative is often seen; bus drivers, building workers and similar people have these for reasons that will become obvious from the way that they are used. You take a screw top jar, put the “tea” in and top up with hot water and screw the top back on. Unscrew and drink when the opportunity and desire arise, refill at any water stand that has hot water – almost all offices and public buildings have these devices and they are free; they use large bottles of water. Tap water is not generally drunk in China although I clean my teeth using the stuff with no noticeably adverse effects – but then I was brought up in rural Derbyshire with no mains water.

Many people just drink water. A surprisingly, to me, large number of them drink it quite hot – never acquired the taste myself. I do, however, carry a flask of cold water to the classroom.

Where was I? Oh yes, booze.

There are three types of booze in China.

Wine. This is pretty awful. I don’t really know why although lack of substantial demand may have something to do with it. What the Chinese should do is the same as the Aussies did 30 or 40 years ago and get a bunch of German winegrowers over to sort the mess out. I have heard of one such small example but that is a self-starter; things get going much faster once the government, central or provincial, gets behind something. China is a mountainous country with lots of poor land; surely there must be huge potential with a massive export market.

Spirits. These are usually translated as White Wine by the Chinese but the translation is inaccurate and they are spirits. These are also definitely not to my taste. Most can best be described as tasting like sweet hay! Mind you, you have to be in a charitable mood to make such a description. The only use I have found for these concoctions is to stick them into a punch at a party; if you add enough citrus fruit and other alcohol only the real Baijou (for that is what it is called) drinker will notice and you don’t care about him; his taste buds and liver are beyond saving. You can buy foreign spirits fairly easily in most cities; I buy Gordon’s Gin for 70 RMB (7 Euros) for a standard 75 cc bottle.

Beer. In many places you can buy foreign beers – Heineken, Carlsberg and water masquerading as beer (Budweiser). Regrettably these are quite popular in many bars. Every region has its own local type of beer; very regrettably almost all of these are pretty tasteless. There is only really one brand that is nationally sold – Tsingtao. This is not bad although there are several different types and some of them have less alcohol in them than my piss after a few beers, so be wary. Fortunately Guangzhou is blessed with a brewery, like many cities in the world, where they brew San Miguel. I have tested other beers in China extensively and so have visiting friends and Shan Li (as it is translated) is definitely the drink of the true cognoscenti.

Another factor affecting the popularity of bars is price. In England you only expect to pay about twice the price in a pub than you would in the supermarket. In Europe the factor can be more like 3 or 4 times the price. In China it can be up to ten times the price. Even in my local (i.e. non-western bar) it is 5 times the price. My local shop delivers my 640 ml bottles of San Miguel for 5 RMB each. The bar charges 12 RMB each for a 330 ml bottle and that is when I buy 16 at a time!

Most bars are not dissimilar to rather bad bars around the world – tables, chairs, a bar, lighting, TVs and bad music. These are what I call local bars although my favourite bar, like quite a number, is outdoors. This has a spectacular view over the Pearl River. You may have seen pictures of Hong Kong Island (Victoria actually) taken from Kowloon at night. Some of you will have been there. Now I agree that this is pretty spectacular but many Chinese cities try and do things along the same lines (in Chongqing I counted 11 coloured oscillating searchlights) and Guangzhou is no exception. The bridges are imaginatively lit, the buildings along the river are floodlit and the pleasure boats plying the river are multi-coloured. The river used to stink but (in April 2006) they are organising a cross-river swim, including local politicians, to show that this particular branch of the Pearl River delta is now clean. Not quite Mao swimming in the Yangzte when he was 80 but a decent try. Where else would you want to have a few beers with your friends – if it is not raining (often but not always in May to September) or too cold (often but not always in December to March).

A variety on this theme is Karaoke bars, or KTV as they are often called. The Chinese like to sing and they don’t really care how terrible they are. Nor does the audience. I try to avoid these and succeed except about twice a year. If you don’t want to sing yourselves, it is simple – hire a girl to do it for you. Actually these girls can normally make a reasonable attempt at a tune and, of course, are always pretty.

There are also a few western bars, which are a bit more like pubs and designed for western clientele. A lot of these have sports showing, predominantly the dreaded football although I can go and watch many sports in these bars. (We have Murdoch vision on satellite from the Philippines and Thailand. I used to be a man of principal and refuse to watch Murdoch vision in England but I am going soft in my old age.) You can even watch cricket sometimes if you know where to look. These bars are more expensive than “local” bars but have a happy hour, which can make them cheaper than local bars at the right time. What drives you up the wall is the repetitiveness of bad old rock music. I swear that I can predict that “Hotel California” will come on within half an hour of my venturing into one such local joint.

The last main type is “Show Bars”. These are only found in cities. You sit around at or near the bar where there is incredibly loud music playing, usually with someone on the stage behind the bar singing. These people can sing but Chinese Pop music is pretty dreadful; the Chinese like The Backstreet Boys, Mariah Carey, Celine Dion and the like. That should give you an idea of how dreadful it is, as the Chinese songs tend to follow that bland ballad crap style - especially at high volumes. Beer is 30 RMB for a small bottle.

Every large city also has a few 4 or 5 star hotels where you can pay silly money for alcohol and bad food if you are too timid (i.e. American) to venture out.



3. Transport & Travel

Travel in China is amazingly easy.

Turn up at an airport 30 minutes before your plane is due to depart and you will be checked in within two minutes and off through security and into the waiting area (I hesitate to use the word lounge – these are not luxury areas unless you are in an international area and even then what happens? Does any international airport offer seating to those in cattle class beyond a hard seat that you hope separates you from the funny smelling foreign type next to you.)

Security is perfunctory and quick. You may need to use a bus rather than an air-bridge but there is still a good chance that your flight will leave a few minutes early. Once the crew know that everything is aboard then off you go. When you are flying home at the end of a few days work it is a great way to pick your spirits up.

“Security is perfunctory and quick” I hear you say. Al Quaeda have killed far more people since September 11th than they could have imagined. Just think – “enhanced security” has brought extra delays. Take an airport has at least 25 million passengers a year. If “extra security” adds an hour to each journey that is 25 million passenger hours. An average person lives – say 80 years – 4160 weeks or 698880 hours. That is 35 lives are wasted at my not very imaginary airport every year because of “increased security” and I am talking about only one airport. Check the arithmetic and add a few more big airports and then the light will dawn.

China doesn’t do this terrorist bullshit. You have a ticket and a proper identification – then get on the plane. That is not to say that they are not infected by the scare shit. Things are definitely getting worse and the Chinese are inclined to confirm with the ill-thought out idiotic American response to the spot of bother in New York. Soon we will be sitting around on our arses because of the all-important “security”. How stupid is it that in the USA (and the UK) that if you joke about the dangers of your spectacles at an airport then you can be arrested for threatening something or other. I am glad that Big Brother does not rule in China – thank somebody that I live in a free country.

Trains.

I make no bones about it, train is my favourite form of travel. I have been fortunate enough to do some of the great train journeys of the world long before the television programme of that name came along.

The greatest of them all is the trip out of Lima at 7.30 a.m. that, of course, starts at sea level and by 1.00 p.m. has reached 15,500 feet. Let me repeat that, you have reached 4,700 metres in 5 ½ hours by train.

How can this be done? The first trick is (assuming that the routine has not changed so much since I did it in 1982) face backwards. I cannot recall properly but after about an hour the engine is taken off the front and put on the back leaving you facing the other way from the direction you were pointing when you left Lima. Bit of a bugger if you are hoping to face up and see the magnificent mountains above you. Looking back down at rather scruffy villages on the terraces does not seem to have quite the same appeal. Call me a pedant who cannot appreciate looking back on things, call me a conservative who hates looking forward, call me a liberal who is not sure what he is being liberal about, call me a socialist (I wish ) because that would at least deliver a decent, survivable life but please do not call me a revisionist who always looks backwards. Above all don’t call me a capitalist (that is what I am ) because I do not have the moral strength to overcome my inability to take a real moral stance against that which I despise.

Where was I. Oh yes, climbing out of Lima (as in any good book about China) then we stop. Hrumph! Why. Then we start backing up. What the ??? is going on ?

The whole climb is based upon 22 switchbacks. This happens when it gets too steep to climb in one direction so the whole train goes into a siding and stops. Then someone changes the points and the whole train reverses up the next section. When that gets too steep, stop in a siding, change the points and come out forwards again. There are 22 of these switchbacks and you get the mountain. What could be easier?

Slow. Sorry did I say slow. I meant slow.

Back to China. There are a few fast trains but not many. Once a year I go to Hong Kong (to watch the Rugby 7s – fantastic, just check the alcohol consumption in that period). It is about 180 kilometres. The 120 kilometres in mainland China takes an hour, so does the 60 kilometres in Hong Kong. This is a non-stop train. Unfortunately they do not do emigration/immigration and customs on the train, which would save getting on for an hour. Say it quietly but, to all intents and purposes, Hong Kong is still a separate country. They have their own currency, their own immigration regulations (Brits, for instance don’t need a visa for Hong Kong – or Macao – but they do for mainland China) and customs controls. There is a much greater difference between Hong Kong (or Macao) and the mainland than there is, say, between France and Germany, who have a common currency and invisible borders. Beijing also interferes very little in the running of the territory. One of the ironies is that Honkers is much more democratic than it ever was under the rule of that “democratic” country – the UK. Of course that doesn’t stop hypocritical British politicians going on about it.

There are train services between the main cities but average speeds are normally about 60 or 70 kph. This is partially because there are lots of stops so you can always get food and beer if you don’t fancy the stuff that they are selling on the train. (As a non-carnivore this can be a bit tricky for me.) You have to book if you want a sleeper – a good idea for most journeys. A “hard sleeper” costs more than a bus and the train is slower but one journey on a “night bus” is enough to persuade you of the wisdom of getting the train wherever possible.

When you first get on a night bus you think that this looks good – individual bunks. That is as good as it gets. I am only 1metre 75 centimetres tall but I cannot stretch out properly in one of these bunks. I am 80 odd kilos and consequently rather more broad shouldered than most Chinese so I am jammed in at shoulder level. The lights are turned off when it goes dark and you have no personal light to attempt to read by. Unless you are on a main highway reading is tricky anyway – remember China is very mountainous. Just make sure that you have plenty of music and batteries if you have to travel by this means of transport. Once was enough for me, although I fear that I will have to travel this way when I finally make in to Xinjiang in the far west. Perhaps you will also understand why I like the sociability of a train, you can always find someone to have a chat and a beer with – even if you don’t understand a word each other is saying.

Taxis

Cheap or what.

If you don’t have a local sim card, ask at the airport before you leave it, there is a fair chance that you can buy one dirt cheap. (Sim is universal word and taking out your phone battery will do the trick – remember the Chinese will sell you anything to make a buck) If you wave a mobile phone around this will attract attention and may do the trick and in most places you will be fine but, if you try this remember that you have established yourself as a target in any city in the world so be careful in China, as anywhere else.

The best advice is to walk out of the airport as if you own it. Ignore the guys inside the airport (or big railway station) who come up to you and offer a taxi – this will cost you several times the true rate. You will see a sign in English saying “Taxi”. Head that way and get in the first available one; the queue can be an hour if you are unfortunate enough to fly in to Hongquiao airport in Shanghai, elsewhere it is normally seconds. (The problem at Hongquiao is not caused by a shortage of taxis; it is just that the organization is terrible – western rather than Chinese. If you are smart go upstairs to the arrivals place and you will find a taxi dropping people off – jump in) All taxi fares in any city are governed by the local city. Establish the destination, usually by handing over a card for the hotel. Of course, many expensive hotels will have desks at the airport but if you are travelling cheap, you will have a name and address off the internet written in Chinese or from your last place of residence. It is a good idea to sort out your next bed before leaving a city – particularly at busy periods. Busy periods are the beginning of May, the beginning of October and Spring Festival – which you probably call Chinese New Year in late January and early February. It may come as a shock to you but taxi drivers are to be trusted in China. You don’t tip and they will be punctilious about your change down to the last RMB (unless you are in really horrible westernised places like Shanghai, Shenzhen or Hong Kong).

The value of having a local Sim card as soon as you can get one occurs if you have any difficulty. Just phone your hotel and they will instruct your taxi driver in the appropriate language.

Most cities have a surfeit of taxis so, unless it is a wet Friday afternoon at knocking off time, your wait is counted in seconds – I am not joking, it is seconds. If it takes me two minutes to get a cab I wonder what is wrong.

Guangzhou has some of the worst drivers in the world; like Delhi without the manners. In Delhi everyone just piles onto a roundabout with traffic four or five wide. Much the same happens in Guangzhou, it is just the speeds are different. In Delhi there are lots of bullock carts, donkeys, cyclists, appallingly maintained roads and the like that keep the speed down. There are no such problems in Guangzhou. Cyclists, where they exist, are in the lane for the use of cyclists and buses (or on the pavement). This lane is, of course, also used by every other vehicle as required to get to a restaurant, short cut a delay, say hallo to friends, cut a corner or just out of boredom. You may also meet the odd pedestrian standing in the middle of the lane doing their knitting and waiting for someone to chat to, although I haven’t seen this in Guangzhou. A bit more difficult are the hand pulled trolleys full of fruit going the wrong way; even on a push-bike this can be testing.

So your taxi or bus (only somebody with a death wish would drive themselves in Guangzhou) comes straight in to the roundabout at about 30 or 40 k.p.h. Of course, the first time that this happens when you first arrive in the city you are hanging onto anything in the certainty that you are going to hit something hard. There are only seat belts in the front of taxis and who wants to sit in the front when you are going to smash into something.

What actually happens is that this attack has been anticipated by the car, bus or truck that you have just barged in front of and he (it is almost always a he) just lets you in with absolutely minimal room to make sure that nobody else tries the same trick. If you are exiting a side road the behaviour is the same. You don’t stop and wait for a gap in the traffic (this will cause continuous honking of horns behind you), you just plough straight out into the traffic. Driving in Guangzhou is extraordinarily aggressive but people maintain very even tempers. Of the large cities, it is the worst that I have seen but, at least, they do attempt to stay on the correct side of the road about 90% of the time. This is not true in small cities, towns, villages and country roads where everyone drives to cut all corners assuming that nothing is coming in the opposite direction. This assumption is true most of the time but relying on reactions to correct any trouble that may occur because of the mislocation of the car is not my idea of good driving. My best Chinese friend, who is normally extremely sensible (outside the bar) and considerate, falls into this group of maniac drivers. It is little wonder that Guangzhou, with less than a fifth of the population of the UK and less than 10% of the motor vehicles, kills more people on the roads every year than the whole of the UK. In fact I have to say that the drivers are very skilful at getting through impossible gaps, swapping lanes at high speed, bypassing all obstacles etc. all whilst holding their mobile to their ear or texting, of course. The devotion to the phone is more important than the driving. Only a week before writing this I was being driven home by a professional driver who was proceeding down a large road – 4 lanes going our way – in the third lane when, with a screech into his phone he stopped. It was only after serious remonstrations by me (What the f*** are you doing was about the best I could manage, my Chinese lets me down badly in times of stress) that he very slowly drove to the side of the road – that is not gently move from one lane to another indicating as you go - but a sharp left turn at 5 miles an hour and drive across in front of anything coming up the other lanes. 30 seconds later, a calmer driver plus passenger, and we resume; he is obviously still thinking about the phone call because it is a full minute before he is back up to lane weaving, horn honking and lights flashing – normal Guangzhou driving. A tip for the unwary: If a driver is driving down a lane and a vehicle 100, 50, 30, 10 or 2 metres in front indicates that he wishes to enter your lane (a fairly rare event – I sometimes amuse myself on the way home when it is dark counting the number of vehicles indicating correctly – normally about a quarter of those indicating but most people just don’t bother, they know where they are going!) then flashing your lights is not an invitation to proceed but a demand to clear out of my way. If it is more than ten metres then the flashing (and hooting sometimes, even though hooting is illegal in Guangzhou) will be ignored – quite right too if you are pulling out to overtake but, of course, it can be undertaking, using the hard shoulder, bus lane etc. One thing it is not is boring.

It is safe to say that the car is king in Guangzhou. A car driver can drive where they like, how they like, park where they want (completing blocking the pavement is common, forcing pedestrians into the road) with complete impunity. The only real rule is do not hit another car. Both vehicles involved will stop immediately (not pulling over, of course) and discuss the incident ad nauseum until a conclusion and financial settlement is concluded and settled. The length of the traffic jam that they have caused is of no concern to them. To say that there are no traffic laws in Guangzhou is probably untrue – they are just never enforced - and the police drive as badly as everybody else.

Pedestrian crossings are interesting. There are many marked and those at junctions controlled by traffic lights do work in the sense that cars are waiting at a red light whilst you, the pedestrian, have the green light in your favour and can cross fairly easily – although the Chinese follow the American “turn right on red” principle so you are not really safe. If, however it is an ordinary pedestrian crossing at an uncontrolled pedestrian crossing no car will ever stop, and I mean ever. I have never seen a vehicle stop and wait whilst somebody crosses, they just drive round you (or through you, if you are unlucky). If there is the width of the car plus ten centimetres between you, as a pedestrian, and the pavement then the car will drive in front of you, the pedestrian has to be no more than two strides from the pavement to force the car to the outrageous inconvenience of going behind her. I have never seen a cop stop anyone for doing this. So it is little wonder that people ignore them, just as the drivers do, and cross the road anywhere at any time. There are quite a few footbridges over the main roads in the cities, which most pedestrians use but it is not unknown to see people only ten metres from a bridge crossing six or eight lane highways, even with a barrier in the middle that you have to climb over. The technique is nudge your way out slowly and cars will swing round in front of you until you reach a point where there is room for cars to pass behind you as well. You are now standing in the road with cars going past at either side of you at 80 or 90 kph. So what do you do – carry on until there are two lanes behind you etc. The most unnerving part is when you are in the middle of the road with no central reservation. Then you have cars with a collision speed well in excess of 150kph heading towards you but you just carry on nudging out into the next lane. This is a slow process; it is much quicker to walk the ten metres to the bridge. As you can imagine, this approach can be a little unnerving but sometimes it just has to done. The trick is to find an old lady and always keep her on the side of the oncoming traffic as you cross. People and traffic are a little more disciplined in Shanghai so when I apply Guangzhou techniques to crossing roads in that city people are a little surprised that a guailo is the most aggressive pedestrian. After 5 years you can get used to almost anything.

One of the things that I find particularly distressing on this subject is the sheer selfish stupidity of the local government. Don’t get me wrong I think that the province and the city are both well managed but this is beyond me.

Many Chinese cities are restricting the use of motor-bikes. This is allegedly for two reasons. One is drive-by crime. Many women get their bags snatched by people on motor-bikes. Fair enough, any sensible government would try to stop this. Most governments would just enforce a “no motor-bikes on the pavement” rule like most western countries. Oh no.

The second is pollution. Anybody who knows anything about vehicle emissions will tell you that small capacity motor-bikes do several times the mileage (kilometreage?) that most cars do and perhaps twenty times the mileage of a 3.5 litre gas-guzzling SUV. So the government wants to get rid of motor-bikes because of pollution. This is bullshit, they want an excuse to have flash government vehicles to drive around in.

The government also have little concern for the facts that most people who die in motor-bike accidents are on the bikes whereas cars kill pedestrians, but who cares about people walking, they are not members of the middle class? No new motor-bike vehicle licences have been issued since 1997, motor-bikes are banned in many streets and will be banned from the city completely in 2007. Sheer stupidity.

Bus services are regular, reliable and very frequent. Standard fare is 2 RMB (20 Euro Cents) for almost any distance. There used to be some buses at 1 RMB but these have largely been faded out. I am happy to pay double for most of the year because the 2 RMB buses are air-conditioned. Of course if you cannot read Chinese characters you might have a bit of a problem with the timetable. I know one or two bus numbers but usually, unless I am in a real hurry, I just get on any bus going in the general direction I am going in and get off once the bus has significantly deviated from my desired route. I usually walk the rest of the way. Occasionally I will get on another bus or, if I am in a hurry get a taxi but I normally feel like too much of a plonker to get a taxi for a kilometre or two.

Guangzhou, along with many Chinese cities, is building a huge Metro system. When I arrived in the city in 2001 Line 1 was open, by the end of 2005 4 lines were, at least partially, open and there will be 9 complete lines by 2010. These are not small lines and critical mass will soon be reached so that many people will habitually use the Metro as in London, New York or Madrid. This will leave the streets clear for more SUVs.

I have cycled in several Chinese cities (including large ones) and out in the country but I would not cycle in Guangzhou

However, I have no hesitation in walking anywhere in the city at any time of day or night. This is not because there is no street crime, there is. It is just that as a guailo you are safe, attacking you is a very risky enterprise and thieves don’t do it. It is a sort of inverted racism if you like, rather similar to in Africa where the white man is considered by the locals to be superior to themselves. In China I think it is more that the cops will feel compelled to catch someone if a guailo complains and the bad guys know this.

Most Chinese are not big travellers. Many of my students who are 20 or 22 have not been outside Guangdong province (about the same size as England). Only the rich, educated and politicians have been outside the country. Travel to Hong Kong was loosened up a couple of years ago and many people want to go there. There was a story in the local English language paper a few months ago celebrating the fact that 2 million people had crossed to Hong Kong since the restrictions were eased. The story was notable because of the person involved. The paper said, and I am doing this from memory, “Miss Candy Chen, a hooker from Shenzhen, became the 2 millionth person to cross the border”.

In fact one of the hangovers from the old highly centralised system is the hooka. This is not a lady of the night or a large pipe but people’s documentation. You do not keep your assorted birth and education certificates yourself, your employer does. This puts them in a very powerful position and unscrupulous employers exploit this. You need your employer’s permission to travel outside mainland China (and even a few places inside) for instance. What people really don’t like is the idea of unemployment because then your hooka gets sent back to your hometown and you have to follow back to somewhere you have tried to leave. Many people have moved from the country to the cities to make a better living so the threat of unemployment and consequent forced return is very serious.

4. Communications

Everybody in Chinese cities has a mobile phone. Naturally I exaggerate a bit, toddlers do not, some foreign teachers refuse to carry them and people who have just arrived from the country haven’t saved enough to buy one yet. China is by some way the biggest market for mobile phones and they work very well. Coverage is excellent; you can get countrywide, province wide or city-wide services to suit your pocket and requirements.

People are wedded to their mobiles even more than in the west. I have to be a real bully to stop students from answering the phone or sending text messages in class. I have got to be quite good at bullying. In important meetings people wouldn’t dream of not answering the phone, let alone turn the damn things off. You can be in a meeting with thirty people. It is an important meeting. It can be a little daunting. You are there to represent your company (in my former life) with one Chinese colleague/interpreter and there are thirty people from the client. Of course you have no idea what they are saying and only the two or, sometimes, three people who are sat near the head of the table will say anything to you. There will be twenty odd others who say nothing. There will be no minutes and no actions from the meeting. But this is an important meeting that all the junior people will cancel all business and social engagements to attend and then say nothing and have nothing to do afterwards. However, if their mobile goes (and, of course, they haven’t turned it off) then they have to rush out of the room to take the call – much more important.


It is quite normal to be sat in a restaurant with a couple of people at the next table one of whom is sitting quietly whilst the other is shouting into their mobile for fifteen minutes. Many people, maybe even most, are much more considerate and would leave the restaurant but having to listen to the pricks shouting in a language that I don’t understand is not good for my blood pressure.

A mobile phone is, however, invaluable for getting the assistance of your friends when language is a problem. Four of us went off to visit a park 100 kilometres or so out of town two or three months after I first arrived in China. It was a nice park. China is very good at these things, they are still building parks all over the place and they are well maintained and green. Of course you meet the odd idiosyncracy. This particular park had waste bins that looked like the seven dwarfs. A bit out of place you may think but slightly amusing. Ok I agree except that the opening in front at the top was matched by an opening at the bottom in the back – not so much a waste bin as a rubbish relocation device. Anyway we had a fun morning, the park is a good few square kilometres and rises a few hundred metres with plenty of water including a lake which you are not supposed to swim in but that did not put off the Turkish & Israeli participants. Whilst that was going on I was busy being photographed with hundreds of people – everyone wants to be photographed with a guailo. Personally I have never cared for photographs of myself but you have to adapt.

I am diverting again. After a good mornings walk it was getting on for 3 p.m. and we got back to our car and indicated to the driver that we would like to go to a restaurant. We did this by pointing to the restaurant across the road. We all got in the car and drove across the road! Not quite what we had in mind but there were window seats and we thought we could have a leisurely lunch watching the world go by; it was fine. Ah, a bit of a problem there, we were whisked upstairs to a private room as we were obviously important guests. This room resembled an Indian restaurant with thick flock wallpaper. One deviation was the window; this was large, but unfortunately the wall for the adjoining building was only six inches away from the pane of glass itself. There are sat 4 guailos and a driver who speaks no English. We are presented with a menu in Chinese with a young lady waiting to take our order. Normally I would have overcome this problem by going to the kitchen and pointing but this option was not available on this occasion so what do we do? It is obvious, I phone Maurice. Maurice is a Chinese friend who normally ordered lunch when we worked together during the week.

The conversation goes something like this.

Ed “Hi Maurice, how are you”
Maurice ”I am fine. What can I do for you?”
Ed “Well you know that you normally order lunch”
Maurice “Yes. Where are you?”
Ed “ It doesn’t matter. Can you order lunch please?”
Maurice “So you stupid guailos are stuck and hungry?”
Ed “Yes”
Maurice “Ok. Give the phone to the waitress”

So Maurice orders lunch from a hundred kilometres away. He knows that I don’t eat meat so we still have a decent lunch. I did find the beer on my own though. To my shame I was stuck in the middle of nowhere a couple of months later with a friend who was visiting and I had to repeat the trick. How many people have ordered lunch for other people from 2,000 kilometres away? Maurice has. The Chinese are wonderfully helpful people; they invented the art of the possible.

That is the real point about communication. Of course there are surly people who don’t want to talk to ignorant foreigners who don’t speak their language but there are loads of people (the majority) who want to help you. They will point you in the right direction, find someone who speaks English or demonstrate immense patience if you have to try and communicate in Putonghua. The cynical amongst you will say that they just want to make money. True. Does that stop people in Europe being unhelpful?

The aforementioned Maurice has been known to say that China has 5,000 years of history and 100 of them are good. Well if the 100 taught them good natured tolerance then it was worthwhile.

Don’t get me wrong, one of the reasons that they will help the stupid foreigners is because it is fun. If you have a fairly uninteresting life what could be more fun than having a laugh at the foreigner’s expense. That is fine by me, they have a laugh (and so do I normally) but I get my bus or meal or whatever. It seems to me that I get the better of the deal. Perhaps there should be a warning sign at Chinese airports “Pompous pricks will not enjoy this country” If you do not have the capacity to be amused by your own ignorance then China is not the country for you.

I am being a little unkind here. I am an experienced confident traveller. If you have never been further than Benidorm or Phuket then China will probably overwhelm you and you won’t like it.

Underplaying the difficulty of the language would be a mistake. I am a lousy linguist but that is not to deny that Chinese is difficult. I know very few Chinese characters (it is easiest to think of them as syllables) but occasionally it can be very amusing. A good example is that the characters for people and mouth together mean entrance. People mouth, what could be more natural? This logic can let you down seriously. Hua means flower and Xia is shrimp. However the HuaXia Bank is not the Flower Shrimp Bank!

Mao can mean wool, coal, sheep and something else that I cannot remember, not to mention the name of some famous political guy. It all depends on the tone. There are four tones: high level, rising, rising-falling and falling. This is what makes the words mean different things. Can I tell the difference in tones? Of course you do learn but it is a slow process unless you are young. As a teacher of English I have learnt to imitate people to show them the difference between what they are saying and the correct pronunciation. None of my Chinese friends are good at this skill so my learning is very slow. It is also a lot easier to change to English (all my Chinese friends speak pretty good to very good English) so learning Chinese requires quite a lot of determination. Even when I have tried Chinese classes English is still the language used most of the time. This is just plain bad teaching.


5. People

I was brought up with the idea of Chinese as dour, blank-faced, humourless people – the classic inscrutable Chinese.

Now, of course, one of the truly ridiculous things about racism is that it ignores the individual. Every society, culture, race, town, family, school, office, factory etc. has its share of arseholes. China is no exception, but overall the Chinese are as happy, cheerful and charming as any group of people that you are likely to meet. Now you will accuse me of stereotyping. True, but I hope that you get the idea.

Humour varies a lot from individual to individual, as in any society, but they definitely have a characteristic of liking to laugh. This can get a bit wearing in some ways. The telling of the same joke for the tenth time to the same group of people can still bring out plenty of guffaws.

The key thing is that when you walk into a shop in some area that is not full of gweilos or you are out in the middle of nowhere the response is the same. Uncertainty. Maybe a little concern about how to deal with this odd looking man. The thought of why has he come into my shop or restaurant, why not next-door i.e. normal uneasiness at an unfamiliar situation. The last thing you get is antagonism. Once the initial difficulty passes and it is, usually, only a matter of seconds the opportunity for enjoyment is grasped. This can mean proffering some goods, looking at your dictionary if you have taken it out (a hopeless task normally), finding someone who once knew some English or just smiling sweetly thinking there is money to be made here.

The process of establishing what you want to buy is thus established on an amicable basis by a bit of pointing, gesticulating, bad English and worse Chinese. A price is then quoted, often with the aid of a calculator. If you are out buying vegetables the amounts are so miniscule that you just accept it. Fruit can be more expensive – 4 or 5 oranges can cost you a couple of euros when they are out of season - they probably come from Australia – you might demur but the price will not go down much. Either you want the oranges or not, so you pay, or not. Of course, local fruit in season is ridiculously cheap.

When you are buying tourist crap it is a different story. If you feel that you must have a pocket watch that celebrated the 100th anniversary of Chairman Mao’s birth in 1993 you can expect to be asked for 100 or 150 RMB. You should settle for about 30 and don’t expect the watch to last. In Beijing once I saw a cheap plastic watch that had golf clubs as the fingers. I had a golfing friend in mind when I asked the price and the girl said 125; I roared with laughter and offered her 25. She accepted quickly because she realised that I was not some tourist straight off the plane. If I could have been bothered to try that hard I would have got it for about 18 but, hey, she was (and probably still is) pretty and everybody has to make a buck. Would you spend five minutes arguing over the last 70 cents in Europe? It amazes me when you hear westerners bitching about paying twice as much as they think that they should have done for something that costs a quid or two and that they would pay 15 or 20 quid for when they are at home.

Fun time can be at bus and train stations. You join a queue, hoping it is the right one and normally get to the front pretty quickly. You know where you want to go but can you pronounce it correctly? No. You try again. Still no success. You are getting conscious of the queue behind you. You try showing the guide-book but that does not fit through the hole in the window, so you show the guide book to the person behind you. They are a little taken aback but after a few seconds they pronounce the name correctly and, hey presto, you get a ticket that clearly marks your destination (this normally looks like the same characters as in the guide-book) plus a time of departure and seat number. Finding the bus is normally pretty easy and the conductress (for there is one) knows how many tickets have been sold for that particular bus and consequently when all passengers are aboard. This has been a great help occasionally when I have gone to the wrong place to board the bus and have arrived late at the correct place. Well in cities this is true.

Of course the efficient, well-organised traveller will have things written down on small pieces of paper using the proper pictograms and this will normally have been done by the hotel staff who have, in any case, bought a ticket for you. I don’t stay in those sorts of hotels. Actually that is a bit of an exaggeration. Any hotel that costs more than 6 or 8 euros a night will normally organise things properly for you but knowing that you will arrive at the intended destination is no fun. Wherever you end up you will find a place to stay. There may not be good hotels but they are always reasonably clean – unlike many public toilets.

Ah now there is a thing.

If you go to a five star hotel and take a piss you may suddenly find a bloke massaging your shoulders. Now I may be a bit of a prude but when I want to go for a jimmy riddle I think that this is a relatively private affair. You take out percy and point him at the porcelain and don’t look around at whatever anybody else might be doing. It can be a bit of a blow to your concentration, not to mention your aim, when somebody seizes you by the shoulders.

When I first travelled around France all those years ago I did not like the classic French crapper. Of course, I am using the wrong name, as any self-respecting student of water closets will know. Thomas Crapper invented the modern flush toilet, it is just that nobody told the French. So you were stuck with those squat down things which is fine for flushing the bowls, the very action of squatting hastens the job, but the problem is that when one sphincter muscle releases then another one tends to follow very rapidly. This problem can be overcome by taking a piss before settling down to the serious problem of No. 2 disposal. However, haste can sometimes make this impractical and you end up pissing on the back of your trousers or your shoes whilst having a crap. The solution is to rip off your trousers and underpants when you walk in the place but this can be a little undignified as you have to start the process (after a few pints of course) as you approach the stall. Thank goodness that the French have learnt the benefits of Mr Crapper’s invention.

Regrettably the old French method is still the norm in China. There are lots of proper places where you can sit down, relax and do the crossword or Sudoku, as takes your fancy – fortunately my apartment is included in these areas of civilization – but not public toilets outside flash hotels. So you have to plan visits for substantial waste disposal carefully enough to remove any garments that you think may get inadvertently tangled up in the process.

Now, in places, there can be other complications. Lijiang is a tourist town and well worth a visit – you need at least a week to cover the surrounding areas. There is one small problem that the drinking man or woman needs to be aware of. Restaurants and bars have no toilets. So you are idling away a pleasant evening eating and drinking when the urge for a piss becomes rather urgent and you enquire after the location of the facilities and there aren’t any. You are informed that you go 50 metres, turn left and they are70 metres on your right. This is not the answer that you are expecting and have not listened properly. You wander off into he night and, of course you have not paid proper attention to the directions – assuming that you would have understood them anyway.

In centuries past, before the age of underwear, in a predominantly rural society, women had the advantage in this particular area of bodily function – they could squat down in any field, spread their skirt and relieve themselves more or less anywhere. In the age of pants (or knickers if you prefer or are American) the situation has swung the other way. No self-respecting drinking man has not had many occasions to swing into a dark alley, take out his todger and obtain immediate and hugely satisfying relief. This option is no longer open to women, at least without some risk of embarrassment. Lijiang is wall-to-wall shops with no dark alleys so you have to go to the appointed place, where money has to be paid. As a well brought up Englishman you first have to part with some miniscule amount of cash, another delay, whilst holding on to your prick trying to stop the embarrassment before you run into the place of relief. Of course, the reality is the opposite, the Chinese are eminently practical people; if you rush past the woman (and it is nearly always a woman) for a piss and return a minute or so later to hand over 2 cents it is not a problem. There might be a slightly rye smile on her face but that is because you are a qweilo who knows nothing. She does not think that you are trying to cheat her out of her rightful payment.

In a clean, respectable establishment (i.e. most places in cities and tourist towns) the aforementioned woman will sell you toilet paper. Fair enough you might say but if you are in a rush? Tricky. This is why all women and many men carry toilet paper or, more often, tissues with them at all times. It is a habit that soon becomes normal. Besides it is cheaper to buy from the shop than the toilet operative.

When you get out in the sticks you are reminded of the days when you first worked in a factory and men would retire to the bog for a gentle crap, a smoke and a read of the Daily Mirror (I am from the days before Murdoch ruled the Red Tops). However there are no doors for the cubicles in China so you wander along looking for an empty space. There is a trench about 15 or 20 centimetres deep, lined with tiles, that you squat over – one leg each side if you are Chinese – having a ciggie and reading the paper. This trench is flushed by people peeing or, once in a while, a bucket or two of water being thrown down from the high end. They smell a bit and, to a western eye, seem very unhygienic but are they a bad idea? There is much less water used that in a conventional WC, they are properly cleaned regularly, unlike many student houses for instance, and they are sociable. But they do stink and, as I am too embarrassed to remove my trousers and underpants, the risk of pissing on myself still exists.

Weddings are odd things. Soon after I arrived in this fair city I was, as usual, on a Sunday afternoon wandering around. I happened to be in a small part of the city that had been under joint Anglo/French control until 1949. This particular idiosyncronicity was a hangover from the Opium Wars – a period when the Western powers, particularly the British, engaged in a bit of wanton bullying of the weak Qing Empire. Anyway there are some old buildings still left from the Anglo-French occupation. These are a pretty nondescript collection of second-rate constructions but are old – a hundred years or so - by Chinese standards and therefore considered attractive. I can assure you they are no such thing unless you think that the key word in the last sentence is “second-rate”. Having finished my digression I will get to the point. There was a couple wandering about – him in his best suit and her in her beautiful white wedding dress (with jeans underneath) and they looked very very bored. They were attended by a photographer and a man with a large silver disk. This disk was a couple of metres in diameter. They would stop from time to time and the man with the disk would position himself to get extra light on the couple whilst the photographer did his thing. Stupid man that I am I thought that this was all very odd behaviour on your wedding day.

A few weeks later my Chinese friend, Bill, came to work one day and announced or , more accurately, mentioned that he had got married over the weekend.

Perplexed or what?

A couple of months later Bill came into the office and handed round the “red bombs”. A red bomb is am invitation to the wedding reception. “Why is it a bomb” I hear you say. It is because you are expected to attend the reception and return the envelop with some money in it. You do not give wedding presents in China, you give money. People hope, or expect, to make a profit out of a wedding reception. Some receptions can be as perfunctory as a quick lunch that you turn up to for an hour or so, hand over the dosh, scoff a quick bite and leave.

Bill and Tina’s was not like. First of all they greeted us at the door with both dressed up properly; Bill in a very good suit and Tina in the standard western white dress. Photographs have to be taken before you disappear into the rather cavernous room of the 4 star hotel at which the do was held. I was sat with Bill’s friends from university. This, in typical Bill style, was a well thought out choice. There was one other guailo there – Tina works for Ericsons – but putting the two white guys together would have been a mistake. Bill’s university friends are a convivial bunch with lots of pretty good English, which they are not to nervous about using. So we raise a few glasses whilst we wait for the main event. This turns out to be that the happy couple come into the room (Tina by now is dressed in traditional red) and proceed to eat a few grapes (or was it cherries) together off a bunch held between them. I assume that this is a throwback to the idea that they had not had sex before marriage and this was their first physical contact. China has moved on since then although I do know of a couple who were married without ever kissing each other, let alone anything else, so perhaps the moving on is rather selective.

We then get down to the serious business of the day – eating. The bride and her mother-in-law go round go round to each table and have a cup of tea with each group of ladies of ladies. This is, as you can imagine, a fairly sedate process. Bill and his father in law go round to each table and have a drink of something rather stronger. By the time they reached us, the eleventh and last table father-in-law had a distinctly cheery countenance about him.

That is it. No speeches, no dancing, no mixing with desirable people of the opposite sex. Everybody gets up and leaves.

Except us. Bill reappears, gets out yet another bottle of good brandy and starts tipping a good measure into everybody’s glass at our table. When he gets to my glass he keeps pouring. Eventually I protest and he says that I did not tell him to stop. It is “gambei” time. This is basically bottoms up. So everybody else has a decent amount to down in one and I have an indecent amount. I say that I cannot do it but, of course, I do.

Not long afterwards I had to be helped back to my apartment – the asshole of the group. Maybe not – Bill had to go to hospital and get his stomach pumped! We are both true professionals though and went to work on time the following day.
8. Places

Have you ever been to Birmingham?? Did you like it?? Shanghai is the same – characterless.

Do I like Sheffield? Yes, they have an independent spirit with the trams and the hills around.

Do I like Newcastle? Hmm. At least it is interesting. The accent, the bridges, the independent spirit. Of course I like Newcastle. I just don’t like going there because they have shit beer.

Get the idea?? I’m not the easiest person to please but like character and individuality. Shanghai is pretty much lacking in these. Nanjing Road is full of expensive shops selling western goods – and pimps. The sex industry is fairly active in China but this is the only place I have met pimps who were any more active that handing cards saying “Missing You Tonight. Please Telephone Me” Of course, I cannot divulge any number because I would be guilty of soliciting – an offence in England no matter if I was only doing it for fun. It is good to live under the benefit of British justice – if people like something it is imperative that it is made it illegal; how else could criminals be encouraged so that we stick all these non-white people in the slammer for a few years. Having the morality of a Banobo, I see nothing wrong with the sex industry but once pimps are involved then it is not the girls making the money but they are being exploited (and often treated extremely badly).

Shanghai’s most famous street is “The Bund”. This is by the riverside and is largely the home of non-descript 19th Century European buildings. The most interesting thing is a trip under the river to Pudong. This little trip can be a bit difficult to find (I think it was my third attempt before I found it) but is worth the effort. It is a little underground light railway with separate shuttles leaving every minute or so and you and maybe 3 or 4 more people in each shuttle. It travels at walking speed through about 7 themed areas to do with different things in space. It shows the usual Chinese ability to imagine things from the tiniest things. It is perhaps the most tasteless piece of “artistry” I have ever seen. Wonderful.

The reason you go to Pudong is that it is the new Financial District of the city, built over the last 15 or 20 years and jammed full of skyscrapers. I went on a Friday evening so the place was pretty much deserted – just like the Old City of London (or modern Canary Wharf, I assume, although I have never seen any reason to visit that particular effrontery to good taste.) I was interested in the Pearl TV tower. Pearl is a big television broadcaster round this end of the world and so has to have a big tower. I believe it is no.3 in the world. (What sort of person has been up 3 of the 4 tallest TV towers in the world – when he has a distinct aversion to looking down from a long way up.) That is third in height, for ugliness it must be the undisputed champion. I thoroughly recommend that you find an image of it to see if you can possibly disagree. It looks like it is a tripod at the bottom, each leg with some huge spherical growth on it, caused by some appalling disease I assume, before settling into the fairly normal erection in the sky. Nice colour too. I am totally incapable of doing justice to its ugliness.

The view from the top is fairly indicative about Chinese cities. Shanghai is largely a commercial centre, not an industrial one, and is near the sea but the view from the top is – how shall I put it – filthy. You cannot see beyond the edges of the city (and Shanghai is extremely compact for its size) and I do not think that was an untypical day; I have been to Shanghai plenty of times.

The outstanding thing about Shanghai is the museum. This was opened in 1998 and is a very interesting design. However, it is the contents that are fascinating. On my first visit I did not get off the ground floor (there are 6) before I was “museumed out” after about three hours. (I have been back since and there is loads worth seeing on the other floors) All I had looked at was the copper stuff and some burial remains. A fantastic place – one of the great museums of the world.

Why do I dislike Shanghai so much? There are several reasons.

It is the most westernised place in mainland China. Of course this will be an attraction for many but as someone who has lived in the west for many years and is interested in things Chinese this is a real turnoff.

It is bloody expensive. You pay more for beer in Shanghai than anywhere elseI know except Venice. Of course most things are a lot cheaper than the West but it is still, by some way, the most expensive place in China.

The people are snobs. They think that they are superior to anybody else in China – or the rest of the world.

Food is poor. I often go to Shanghai to teach at weekends and evenings are usually partially spent hunting for a good restaurant. There aren’t any. I am not saying that I have not had some meals that would pass for excellent in England but in China we expect more from our food.

In short, Shanghai is a shithole and should be visited on a day trip from somewhere more interesting nearby like Suzhou or Hangzhou. I suspect the illustrious John Gittings may disagree with me.

Just to (nearly) complete the story about pimps in Guangzhou handing out cards I will attach the full text (minus phone number, of course). It is included for illustration of “Chinglish” of course, not for any frivolous or titillating ideas. The punctuation and spacing are as per the original.

“All the beautiful teen-ager girls from our massage centre would offer you with the first class service,first class essence,we are waiting for you we’ll bring you the romance, comfort and cherishing.” So that clears that one up.

Incidentally Suzhou and Hangzhou are both quite interesting.

Suzhou is supposed to be the home of the most beautiful women in China. Now, I am old fart with dubious judgement but you could have fooled me on this one. I may be biased but the girls from the south are the best looking as far as I can see. What Suzhou is also famous for is its gardens. Here I agree and some. They are fascinating and there are lots of them. Now if you think that a good garden is banks of roses, masses of daffs, chrysanthemums by the yard full etc. then you will be disappointed. Chinese gardens pay a lot more attention to permanent structure than ephemeral things like flowers. There are plenty of flowers but it is the layout, the use of rocks, buildings and water that define the nature of the gardens. I do come from the school of thought that says somewhere like Sissinghurst is the idyllic garden but I have come to appreciate a different view and these gardens are something special.

Beijing has been capital of China for most of the last 800 years (the name means “Northern Capital” just as Nanjing means “Southern Capital”) but China has had many capitals. A thousand years ago the Han Chinese were chased out of Northern China and the Southern Song Dynasty settled on Hangzhou as their capital. The great T’ang dynasty built almost exclusively of wood but 300 years later the Song did build with some stone and had developed the habit of carving in rocks quite a lot. So there are some old temples and rock carvings around the area to see (even if the temples have been rebuilt innumerable times and many of the carvings are quite modern.)

What Hangzhou is really famous for, though, is the “West Lake”. This is an entirely artificial creation from the Southern Song period. It is big, and I mean big. It is several tens of square kilometres, imagine getting that dug with picks and shovels, and a metre or three deep. What was it built for? Pleasure. So the emperor and his concubines/wives and assorted family could go for a jolly on hot summer days. They knew how to enjoy themselves these guys. Imagine it.

Emperor: Oy, Grand Mandarin we could do with a bit of a lake here to take the wives and kids out for a bit of cooling off when it gets a bit hot.

Grand Mandarin: I will see what can be accomplished for next summer your mandateness.
(Emperor’s believed that their descendants would rule as long as they retained “the mandate of heaven”. When you wanted to lead a revolt you had to claim that the existing big fat cat had lost the aforementioned mandate. A concept invented by the Duke of Zhou when he fancied his chances nearly 3,000 years ago. Clever chap that Duke.)

Change of scene

Great Mandarin: Go and round up 10,000 slaves and start digging over there somewhere near the Big River (as the Yangtze is called in China). I will be over in a couple of months and we will decide how to fill the hole.

Flunky: Yes boss.

Easy when you know how.

It was one of the first places I visited in China. I couldn’t get used to the crowds. After all we had all come to see the serenity of the West Lake. All of us, all tens of thousands of us. Serenity is not the first thing that comes to mind in such circumstances. The Chinese are a pretty cheerful bunch on the whole but they do like chatting. It doesn’t matter if it is on the phone, internet or in real life – chatting is what they do – a lot. So the poor tour guide has a bit of an uphill task. First of all the group will be more than twenty – forty is common. Second, whatever any individual has to say is more important than anything the tour guide has to say so they will speak out. The Chinese have a filter mechanism that I do not possess and seem to be able to concentrate on the pearls of wisdom proffered by the tour guide – a skill I have never managed. Thirdly, they will be passing shops and the Chinese cannot pass a shop. Fourthly, nobody ever wanders off but there are always stragglers so trying to keep all members of the group properly informed is tricky until you realise that the Chinese will always follow an authority figure and wait patiently until stragglers have arrived before the tour leader speaks. Amazing isn’t it. It was a real shock when I first encountered it. The university, that is my main employer, organises trips for the foreign teachers occasionally and these can be OK but when a couple of us say that we are wandering off up this hill and we will see the rest in a couple of hours the Chinese tour guides are completely flummoxed.

Where was I? Oh yes the West Lake. Now this is quite interesting – really – but you have to work at it to get away from the crowds. It was my first experience of mass lotus plants, lots of interesting flowers, butterflies and insects and some interesting links between the islands in the lake. The aforementioned nearby temples and carvings actually make it an interesting place. I didn’t go in to the modern city at all although the taxi had gone through it after traversing the lowest crossing of the aforementioned big river. I can tell you one thing about it. It is big.

Perhaps it is time I told you a bit about the Yangtze (or Yangtze-Kiang as the name used to be given in English atlases). Name. Size. Economics.

Rivers. Interesting. There are several contestants for the longest river in the world – the Nile, the Mississippi-Missouri or the Amazon. Basically these are arguments are for nerds like me who like this sort of shit. However the reality is rather different. The Amazon has, by far, the biggest annual outpouring of water. Some arsehole, probably me, would argue that the Euphrates was bigger in flood. It may even be true but the reality is that the Amazon pours out so much fresh water all the year that you can drink fresh water 50 miles out to sea. After you!

That is not to dispute the Amazon as the mother of all rivers geographically but economically? Numero Uno is definitely the Nile. It is the source of European culture (forget the Greek stuff, it was merely a refinement on Egyptian stuff). So what is next?

The Yangtze is the only serious contender. Let me introduce it to you. It is big. Now Bill Bryson said that the universe is big. I have to bow to his greater knowledge here. However, I am a simple man – to me the Yangzte is big. Now choose The Thames, The Tay, The Severn or The Shannon: what can they muster? Ok the Rhine or the Danube?

Small aren’t they? This is a river that runs the second half of its length (i.e. 2,000 kilometres or ten times the length of the Thames) at 100 metres (?) above sea level. China as an entity grew up rather north of the “Big River” but it has been the lifeblood of the country for about 1,300 years. Just like the Nile it provided the floods that gave life. The fact that it took life as well was relatively minor ( as per the Nile) and it brought a similar level of development. This meant that in the 8th century A.D. China had a highly centralised system of government whereby each and every farmer was directly responsible to the central government for his taxes. Think about it, in the age of Charlemange or before the idea of an Anglo-Saxon unified country in England and more than a thousand years before the unification of Italy or Germany paid taxes to a central authority more than two thousand kilometres away. Just think about it paid to a central authority 2,000 kilometres away. In terms of time to travel you are looking at what? The time to reach Mars? The time develop a cure for Aids? It is more unimaginable than a functional world government in modern terms. It didn’t last.

8. Politics

Inevitably, I have to come to this subject at some point.

When I had been in Gunagzhou about a year I asked my mate Bill about politics, saying that we never discussed it. His response was something like “Politics, we don’t care about politics, that is for Beijing. We care about money” I thought, yep that sounds like it is about right for Guangzhou.

Let us start with the name of the party. The Communist Party was formed in 1922 and has been in power since 1949 but it is not the same party. Communism in the sense of large state-owned enterprises, strong central planning and intolerance of other methods is history – capitalism rules. Governments – National, Provincial & City – do retain a lot of power but often don’t exercise it. However, the party does still exert a strong propaganda influence but this is largely nationalist in nature. A good example was some small anti-Japanese riots in many cities in April 2005. This was sparked by one Japanese history book putting a revisionary slant on the Second World War – something to the effect that it wasn’t all Japan’s fault. The Chinese government tolerated these (riots not books) for a few days but when things started getting out of hand lots of police and army were to be seen everywhere and the troubles rapidly subsided.

This little story indicates the way that the government likes things. A nice bit of anti-Japanese racism that can be stirred up with a bit of propaganda but then easily controlled.

I abhor racism in any form and tried to take the issue up in my classroom. When I explained that Europe had got over the racism (I did not mention the anti-Muslim racism that is growing more fashionable) and a major war in Europe was just about unimaginable some of the girls could see the point but not one male in any class. Even my friends are the same. I was telling Maurice about the discussions in class a couple of weeks later when he said the same as my male students – that Japan has never apologised. I happened to have the Guardian Weekly with me and showed him the front page where Japan’s Foreign Minister said that Japan unreservedly apologised for the actions of that time. Maurice’s reaction “I don’t know anything about that.”

Maurice speaks and reads excellent English – so has access to external news coverage, has lived in the Netherlands for 4 years, has worked for American companies for the last six years and yet he still comes out with crap like that. A good illustration of what priorities the government has and they certainly ain’t communism. The party should be named the Chinese Nationalist Party.

How much influence does Beijing have?? The answer is not much. China has double the population of Europe & North America combined and is far too big to have strong central government. Beijing’s influence on Guangdong is greater than Brussels influence on England because Beijing controls foreign policy and the army but little else. In the 1990s Guangdong moved from being the tenth richest province to the richest. This was done locally, not on Beijing’s instructions. A few months ago Guangzhou announced plans for “Greater Guangdong” to spread the wealth to nine other provinces and regions. This was not announced in Beijing by Hu Jintao or Wen Jiabao but in Guangzhou by the local party secretary. Can you imagine Tony Blair or Gordon Brown leaving it to Ken Livingston to announce that London wanted to relocate many civil service functions into the surrounding counties – or even allowing him to do such things.


Tianmem Square 1989. This subject has to be raised. The Chinese government’s view appeared to be that this had moved beyond a protest and become a revolt. Thus they did what any government would do and stamped it out.

Nobody has ever been held responsible is the usual cry. Actually Li Peng usually gets the blame although it is unlikely that the tanks rolled without the, at least tacit, agreement of Deng Xiao Ping. Now look back twice as long ago at the vents in Derry when a similar proportion of the population of Derry were shot by the British army. There have been innumerable enquiries, public and private but who has been held responsible? Has anybody lost their job? Has anybody been sent to prison? For the British to try and lecture China about Tianmen is sheer hypocrisy. It is a sad fact of life that the British government is so right wing on foreign policy that they make a Gaullist like Chirac look like a pragmatic liberal. Full trading relations with China should have been resumed years ago, that is assuming that China would want to trade with a country that is so irresponsible and covers up its faults.

“in Tibet her suzerainty has in recent years been asserted with success” (An Outline History of China Part 1; Herbert H. Gowen; Sherman, French; 1913; p10). So perhaps China didn’t invade Tibet in the 1950s. In fact Tibet has never been recognised as a separate country by any other country or body; it has been part of China for hundreds of years. The brutality of living in that area at 3,500 metres upwards, of course, meant that the people there were largely left on their own in their ignorance, appalling health, sexual intolerance and discrimination. In 1950 there were no schools or hospitals, all education, such as it was, was done in the temples and that meant boys only of course. The Dalai Lhama was all-powerful in effect and did nothing about this position. Although still a young man at the time, he showed no inclination to modernise the area effectively under his control. Is it any wonder that Beijing wanted to improve this mess?

Many or most ethnic Tibetans do not like the Han Chinese. I was told in a bar in Lhasa “We like all foreigners except Chinese”. A well used line no doubt that would appeal to the China bashers but the facts are simple. There are only 6 million Tibetans in the world, half of whom live in Tibet. The Autonomous Region now has a similar number of Han Chinese as Tibetans. China has invested a lot in the infastructure (including a new railway), is not going away and has no intention of letting the area come under Indian influence. The simple fact is that a strong Chinese presence has lead to better health and education, less sexual discrimination and substantially more wealth for the Tibetan people. If the Dalai Llama had been left with his theocratic methods most of them would have died in their 30s.

China has a lot of minority peoples. Yunnan province alone has 25 (including Tibetans). These are tolerated and to some extent encouraged to show their individual traits. This helps bring in tourists and reduces pressure for more autonomy. In total they are less than 10% of the population; the rest being Han Chinese. Those provinces where the majority is not Han Chinese (Guangxi, Tibet, Xinjiang, Ningxia & Mongolia) are not in fact provinces. They are designated as Autonomous Regions to give (in theory at least) more power to the peoples of these areas. I don’t think it makes much practical difference.