Back to Guangzhou
Driving in from the airport I recognised nothing. It was only when we got close to the city centre that I recognised a few landmarks but even then not much. And I lived in this city for seven years and have been back twice since, the last time only two years ago. Of course this is China so how can I expect anything to be the same. The real impact was because they had built yet more high level fast roads through the city now adding long stretches of translucent materials alongside the roads going up three metres high or so to deflect the worst of the sound upwards.
Having given her the powdered baby milk (there has been a scandal about some of the local stuff so it is not trusted; the fools believe that the west would not sell rubbish stuff), Helen duly “handed me over” to Bill and we went for dinner at a nearby restaurant. The meal was a strong contender for the worst meal I have ever had in Guangzhou, the food capital of the world. We did not tarry long over this imitation meat meal (this is where vegetables are made to look and taste – allegedly – like meat) and proceeded to the BBR. The BBR for the ignorant is the bar by the river – my favourite bar in all the world. It is the location that makes it, right next to the Pearl river with views across it to the skyscrapers but it is the colours that create the greatest impression - oh and it is outdoors. There are coloured lights along the river bank, along the road, all over the buildings and on both the Haizhu and Jiangwan bridges on each side of the bar. They do seem to have abandoned the revolving searchlights pointing up into the night sky from the top of some buildings though. Maybe they are getting "green".
In the bar we chatted about the eighteen months since we had seen each other before being joined by Mao. Mao (not the deceased "Great Helmsman") is one of the owners of the bar who Bill now counts as a friend but whose English is not much better than my Chinese. This limitation, of course, means that the start of the “dice game” cannot be delayed long and it wasn't. This is a gambling game that takes anything from ten seconds to a minute for a game. To be successful you have to be a convincing liar. At the end of each game the loser, yes the loser, drinks – this game should have been invented by the Irish. The drink is not large – about 10 c.c.s of San Miguel - but if you lose ten games in ten minutes you have drunk a litre of beer. Bill started off with a losing streak and I was pretty well invincible for the first twenty minutes but the luck always changes and by midnight we were all quite cheerful, Mao resorted to getting his wife to play in his place as she was sober but, naturally, he had to drink when she lost. Bill and I are seasoned liars so, of course, she was losing a lot and Mao was drinking more.
All good things come to an end and Bill and I got a taxi home where I gave him the cheese and Christmas puddings and Bill introduced me to his wine rack which has a dozen bottles in it – these are to be demolished before I go and stay with Qin & Jennifer in four or five days time. So, in the aid of fighting jet-lag, we demolished a couple - after all I had only been up forty hours (I can't sleep on planes except when taking off or landing) and it was still Christmas night in my mind.
The Chinese conception of gardens is not the same as the Western idea. Whereas westerners think of flowers and grass and space, the Chinese think of views, water, shapes and variety. We went to a house built in the 1870s and it is very complicated – every time you turn a corner you find something new, every window that you look out of has a different aspect. You are wondering why I have jumped from garden to house; well the two are not so clear cut as in the west. This “house” has ponds, a waterfall, trees and a small temple as well as about twenty separate buildings. Bill is quite a fan of this particular place and explained a few things to me so I began to see why he liked it so much.
One of the buildings was a mini three-storeys-that-looks-like-four temple. The top layer of this edifice was dedicated to "The God of Wisdom" and contained a sign that Bill took a photo of but did not esteem it good enough.
I would have been glad if anybody could have made any sense of it. Don't get me wrong, I think that it is great that the Chinese go to some lengths to put up signs in English, I just wish that they would get a native speaker to read the words before they put they go to the trouble of printing them. And this is the aforementioned “God of Wisdom.” So in stead here is a photo of the God.
Another day we went to a park that is quite spectaclar in it's own way. The rock was dug out of the hillsides starting more than 2,000 years ago and has left a series of cliffs and lakes which have been turned into a very nice park. The cliff sides are quite steep so there are wooden handrails in many places and a few little wooden rest houes which are very welcome for some shade in the summer. Of course, they are not actually made of wood, concrete is far more durable in tropical conditions but the Chinese go to considerable effort to make the pieces of "wood" have a good variety of different shapes. In both places it was great to see lots of flowers in the middle of winter - and these were real flowers in these two cases, unlike in some other gardens I have been to.
Several nights in the BBR led to Mao finding different people to try and beat me - they all wanted to play the guailo (white ghost) who they should be able to beat at a Chinese game. The first candidate was rather a pretty girl who had to be taken away by her brother because she got so drunk losing. His next attempt was three middle aged women in succession one night. I saw off the first two and it was about a draw with the last. I demanded a rest so they started on Bill. By the time we fought our way out we calculated that we had drunk a lot less than half the beer we had bought. Haven't been back for more than ten days.
For me Guangzhou is a rest. I do a few things - go shopping, visit the odd site, go bowling, go to the BBR (although no foot massages on this trip), eat out but it wasn't long before I was back into the swing and doing what I do a lot of when I lived in Guangzhou - reading.
After a few days staying with Bill and Tina I moved to stay with Qin and Jennifer - more good friends who have always helped me a lot in China. I must have been on holiday with these two about half a dozen times. By this time I was relaxed enough and went to see the people from the university where I used to teach. They are very keen on having me back and I am certainly considering it. There are two dificulties. Officially I am too old to be hired as a "foreign expert" but they think that they can get over that. The other issue may be more difficult. China's big cities have a policy of moving the universities out of the city so the main campus of my old university (and most of the other nine univerities in the city) is now outside of the city on an island in the Pearl river. There are a hundred thousand students on the island but the air is clean, there is little traffic, it is quiet, has few distractions for the students i.e. horrible. I took two trips round the island looking for a fish market, half decent restaurants or, so help me, a bar, a bowling alley or a cinema. The campus is so big that you need a bike to get round it unless you allow a twenty minute walk from your flat to the classroom. And five hundred bikes a month get stolen at the university. (They have 35,000 students on the campus there - it is the largest campus on the island.)
Where I used to live when I was in GZ before there were twenty or thirty decent restauarants within three hundred metres, it was a five minute bus ride to the main shopping area, I could walk to many places of interest and it was less than two quid for a taxi to and, more importantly, from the BBR. Even with a subsidy from the university renting a two bedroom flat in town will take a quarter of my salary if I return.
There are many advantages of returning.
1. I like the country, the people and the politics. Britain is a knackered old society only concerned with petty issues and is in long term decline.
2. I had a very easy lifestyle. Teaching 8 x 90 minute periods a week is not hard especially when the lessons are to different classes so there is basically one lot of preparation a week. Effectively a working week of 25 hours.
3. I can save money. Renting out my room here would pay my share of the mortgage. I can live quite comfortably on the pay from the university. I can easily double that with another ten or twelve hours a week testing English or teaching accountancy.
4. I only work eight months of the year. The Chinese accademic year is two four month terms with two months between so I can do lots of travelling.
5. I like teaching English. It is more varied and more testing than teaching Business Analysis.
There are a couple of downsides. Mainly because my friends are too lazy to get off their big fat arses and come and visit me in China where they have the best tour guide that they could possibly hope for. And San Miguel is OK when it is hot but not real beer
The Chinese attitude to western culture is quite interesting. There is a new Opera House in Guangzhou. This is rather odd looking, ugly even, from the outside but works wonderfully inside with great accoustics and seating for lots of people. We went on New Years Day to see an orchestra from Prague playing Czech music most of which I didn't know. During the first half we were sat at the back and I was constantly irritated by people looking at their phones. (Their were regular signs, as soon as a phone went off, telling people to turn them off and spotters with pointer lights highlighting people playing with their phones but, even more than in the West, the phone is the most important thing in anybody's life.) We swapped seats with some friends and sat near the front in the second half which was much more enjoyable. The only real oddity - there was lots of kids in the expensive seats near the front nodding off or having to be carried out when they cried - the rich Chinese think their kids should get culture whether they like it or not. Ten years and a day earlier we had been in the Sun-Yat-Sen Memorial Hall listening to a western orchestra ( we were right at the back and a seat cost 8% of a month's salary) and at the end they played popular classics to which the audience clapped in time. This time the only restraint on the audience were polite requests on the electronic notice boards asking them not to cheer between movements.
I bought two paintings for a thousand quid each!
Now there's a shock. It is difficult to think of a man less interested in fine art than me, don't you think. One of my friends in GZ is an artist. She does lacquer paintings. This involves many layers of lacquer, sanding down and the like. It also involves using interesting materials - for instance Virginia uses eggshells quite a lot to define edges. I have alwasy liked her work and we went to see some of her new stuff. We got to the gallery and it was closed - day off. So the staff gave us some tea whilst somebody opened up the very very large gallery for the three of us - Virginia, me and Maurice (Virginia's hubby). We had a wander round and looked at a few other artists and some quite interesting sculptures but it was Virginia's stuff I wanted to see. Her new stuff is smaller than the grand things I am used to and she is doing a series of fifty women faces by nationality. Interestingly, she told me that they sell the paintings by the square foot. At current excahnge rates it is £700 per square foot to the gallery and £1,000 to the punter. They weren't expecting me to buy any and Maurice tried to persuade me out of it but I have always liked Virginia's paintings (and I could not afford the big jobbies she used to paint - and still does) so I got two at gallery rate. The plan is to get some mug (Anna) to punt them round a few London galleries for a poultry commission. If they sell, I will become an art dealer; if they don't I have two lovely paintings to hang on my wall. The women are French and Japanese - I thought I should be considered a connosier when Virginis said that the French one was her favourite - but the artist would wouldn't they!
And so to the Philipinnes.
Bill had been keen on taking a trip outside China. He is a well travelled man but independent travel outside China for Chinese citizens was pretty well impossible ten years ago so he is very knowledgeable about China but, hardly surprisingly, not so au fait with the rest of the world.
He was in Europe in 2011 and we travelled round a bit. I have two lovely memories. he looked at these lumps of scaffolding poles in the road and said "What is this?" He had never seen a cattle grid before. Upon seeing a big field of wheat in Belguim his reaction was "Microsft screensaver". This is quite a good indicator of how he must have felt when I first met him in 2001 asking stupid questions about China.
The original thought was to go to Myanmar. However, it was impossible for Bill to get through the bureacracy in time (and I don't know about me either) so we settled on the Philipinnes. Even for this it wasn't easy. Bill applied for a visa on December 24th but didn't get it until January 5th. The most likely explanation is that the new Chinese passport has, very conspicously, on the cover all the islands it lays claim to in the South China Sea. This is pretty well all of them right up to the coast of the Philipinnes. Surprisingly, some of their neighbours don't like it.
The third member of our party, William, is a Canadian national so, despite the fact that his English is much worse than Bill's (William originates from GZ), he didn't need a visa, just like me.
William had planned the trip but, due to my interference, we were committed to staying in this place for three days.
Things began, how shall I say, smoothly. A 1.50 a.m. flight out of Hong Kong, a 6.30. am two hour boat ride to Bohol and three million people hassling us to get in a taxi or on a tuk-tuk. This was in English (the national language is Togalog but if you want to hassle the tourists it had better be in English). As we wondered out of the port looking for a cup of coffee the most persistent hassler was disposed of by the reassurance of a grumpy old Englishman that whatever taxi we took it wouldn't be his.
The "city" was a complete and utter dump i.e. imteresting. In really poor countries I am always surprised by the things that people think somebody wants to buy. This particular city's speciality is transport. Practically every vehicle on the road is a tuk-tuk for hire. Philipinno tuk-tuks are a bit different; they haven't grasped the idea of taking the back wheel off the motor bike and substituting an axle like on tuk-tuks in most parts of the world. Tuk-tuks are just motor-bikes and sidecars with a roof, The bike engine is 150 ccs so a driver and three passengers, all around the ninety kilo mark, makes for slow rides. The one sat behind the driver has to ride side saddle with his head tucked down under the roof - Bill was the poor sap who got the hour long ride to our destination.
We were on Pangloa and heading for a white beach. Well actually I had booked us into a place four kilometres from the beach so there was a lot of tuk-tuking. The beach is white but it is not very long or wide with shops and restaurants lining it - hmm! The place I had booked was nice though, unlike the weather. It didn't rain all day but it rained quite often particularly in the middle of the day so an hour by the pool after breakfast was inevitably followed by some activity.
We tried to go for a walk in the "Chocolate Hills", so called because of their colour. None of us had eaten green chocolate. Walking wasn't up to mush so we tried lunch on a boat. This was supposed to be a beautiful valley. Well it wasn't ugly but I have certainly been to many more interesting valleys. However, the locals had got it sorted. A boat would leave about every five minutes, the food (OK but the Philippines ain't a place to go for culinary delights) was a buffet, there was a trio of singers and the boat stopped once, timed after you had eaten, so you could get off and watch some local dancers. We arrived just as the previous boat left, stayed five minutes and were immediately replaced by the next boat - the dancers must do the same routine at least fifty times a day. All nicely timed so we were back in exactly an hour. We went to a tazier sanctuary. The tazier is the world's smallest primate - only about 20 centimters long with rather a longer tail. It is nocturnal so sits still in the day which allows the tourists to get within twenty centimetres of them and stare - they just stare back. Lovely creatures - their main predators are domestic cats.
One day we went to another island to snorkel. This was a forty-five minute boat ride and we did over two hours continuous snorkelling - you could stand up - the longest I have ever done in one stretch and the rain doesn't affect you. You can probably guess there were lots of fish to see - there were of many varities and colours but there are strong currents off the reef and we were discouraged from venturing out so couldn't see all the good coral properly. We had barbecued lunch on the beach - nearly all food seems to be barbecued - but there was good reason here, the island generator isn't turned on until the evening. As our host said "after lunch souveniers". All the women who were hanging round the camp - about eight of them - descended on us pushing their individual souvenirs. Bill didn't buy anything and William started haggling for everything he was offered. I picked a couple of shells that I liked (mine host had commented that I hadn't asked for discount) and asked for discount. Mine host's response was to add a trinket, when I protested that William had got discount he added another! It was a very entertaining half an hour.
The two real highlights of the trip were both about light and colour.
We went night kayaking (which I have never done before) to see fireflies - lots and lots of fireflies. I have seen them on Attenborough and a small display in Malaysia but these were fantastic. There were seven or eight separate mangrove trees each with two hundred (I guess) flies around them, winking away apparently in waves. It is a lovely site made all the more pleasant by doing it in an evironmentally friendly quiet way. Of course, an illegal fast boat came up at the end with (by the sound) about half a dozen noisy tourists on board.
It was so dark (no stars of course) that you couldn't see anything and we managed to lose the light on the back of the guide's boat. Wiliam (who was in the front of the canoe) was utterly useless at paddling - gently twirling his hands and just skimming the water - so I had to put my back into it. I was slightly relieved when I spotted the red flashing light.
The weather improved so we went back to the snorkelling island to do something I have never done before - diving. I was quite nervous, Bill and William had both done introductory dives before although both some years ago. You basically get carted round by your instructor, all you have to do is regulate the pressure by squuezing your nose and blowing. You have to do this surprisingly often - every foot or two you go down. Other than that you just look at the fish and the coral which were fantastic. Bill was struggling a bit but I turned out to be something of a natural. I am definitely going to get PADIed - somewhere warm - so I can do some proper diving.
The lowlight was the journey back to Guangzhou. We flew out of Cebu and getting a taxi to the airport there wasn't straight forward so we spread out to try and flag one down and somebody opened Bill's rucksack and took his Kindle; apparently William saw it but didn't shout and run across the road. I had put Bill on my Kindle account so he can get books in English but within five minutes of it getting knicked Tina, Bill's wife, had cancelled the subscription from GZ - Chinese and Technology, what a combination. When we got to Hong Kong we could only get a taxi to the border, we hadn't got enough Hong Kong dollars so the taxi-driver allowed us to pay in RMB - the same number. The RMB is 20% stronger than the Hong Kong dollar. We got over the border and couldn't get a taxi to GZ. It was gone 2.00 a.m. by this time but that doesn't matter in China. The local Shenzhen taxi driver took us to two places where GZ taxis go from - nothing. We waited at the second stop for half an hour before a GZ taxi did turn up so we got back to Bill's at 4.30 a.m. Tina wasn't best pleased to get a call from Bill because we hadn't got the right door keys!
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