Arrival in China Sept '03

Day 1: We arrived in Beijing at about 2 PM local time. The airport is very much like any other international airport. Shiny and enw with marble floors and stern looking men in uniform. We left and crossed Beijing in a coach to the offices of the British Embassy Education division. There we were lectured about the many things the British Council does to promote English learning in China. By this point, I was exhausted from a long flight and running on a strange high with the aid of sugary cakes and coffee with extra sugar! Finally to grab our attention they introduced us to a teaching game called English Taxi. Its very much like Grand Theft Auto meets a language lab comprehension. Still this entertained us for a good while. After this we had our first taste of Chinese Chinese food. This was a very iffy affair. The food was either, cold greasy and slimy or contained lots of Chili. One of our number destroyed his mouth when a show of Chilli eating bravado backfired. Not even 2 pints of beer could sooth the combined damage of 5 whole chillis! With the banquet finished we went to the hotel and I fell on the bed and went straight to sleep.

Day 2: Up at 8:30 to leave at 9 for Tiananmen square. The sqaure is huge and so very busy. It dwarves Heroes' Square in Budapest. En route we were taught the most useful mandarin phase bu xiexie: no thanks. Useful since as soon as we got off the coach we were swamped with peddlers trying to flog us postcards for $1 and little red books for $10. The only item truely worth purchasing was to be found amongst the fake Rollexes. This holy grail is called a Maolex. It is a wodneful watch with Mao's beaming viasage on the front with him waving to mark the seconds! The pollution in Beijing is so bad that one side of the square is obscured from the other. Anyway, next we went over into the forbidden city. The palace complex used by the emperors and out of bounds to anyone who hadn't sacrificed their manhood, contains 9999 rooms (with nine being a lucky number). The whole city extends in a chain of massive courtyards for hundreds of metres. Lunch for the 2nd day was sadly no improvement on the firsdt meal, being in a rather unwhoseome Shangdong restaurant. At least there was rice! Afternoon was happily passed in the Summer palace which even larger, centred round a huge artificial lake. The lake is filled with row boats, dragon boats and pedlos. I went in one with three other girls and I'll swear I was the only one peddling most of the time. The evening meal was spent at a slightly better restaurant in Beijing. Now there were a few dishes that I could in addition to some rice that didn't have bits of egg in it. In the evening we were taken to an acrobatics show. Despite being cheap and tacky the stuff they were doing was still impressive. It was just disturing how willing they are to pervert Chinese culture just for the tourists. In the evening we found a street bar that served us beer at 25 pints for 75yuan. Truely marvellous.

Day 3: Needless to say there were many hungover faces at breakfast. We were up and out early again to go to the great wall. A bad morning (tired and droopy eyed) suddenly became a whole lot worse when on the two hour trip to the wall we were bombarded with Britney! When we got there, the sun was just starting to burn off the layer of mist that seemed to be all present anywhere near Beijing. The wall itself has been pretty much reconstructed from the ground up to allow tourists such as ourselves to go and trample all over it. That said its still a fantastic sight. The wall is incredibly steep with guard towers dotted at regular intervals. I believe I managed to walk to the 5th tower. After this we were taken to a Friendship store for a "shoppatunity." Friendship stores are governemnt run shops that tours take punters to so that rich American tourists can offload all their precious dollars on a wide variety of tack. The only upside was that the store had a fantastic restaurant which served the most amazing food. After all this we were driven back to the hotel and I slept for 2 horus and after anopther fantastic meal in the hotel I was even smiling again! We returned in the evening to the site of the previous night's revelery. This time everyone was a little more wary of the cheap beer. Especially since we all had to be up at 5:30 the next mroning.

Day 4: It was the strangest thing having to say goodbye to everyone in the group knowing that you would never see some of them again, despite best intentions to arrange a get together. Even worse was the realisation that the people you were just starting to become friendly with were going so very far away. Our flight left at 1200, so we spent a good deal of time kicking around Beijing airport like lost luggage. We arrived into Kunming airport at about 1600 and we met with some education officials before having a Yunnanese banquet. The cuisine of Yunnan is reasonably hot (not as bad a Sichuan though) but still very tasty. I even discovered an agreeable dou fu which tasted a lot like Blue Danish. Finally we were bundled in a car and whisked to Yuxi. We'd scarcely been unpacking for half an hour when the phone rang and a girl called Shark asked if she could come round and see us with some friends. Minutes later she appeared with 3 friends, Anita, Jack and Rainbow. We talked for a little and we were asked random questions including what our star sign was and what blod type we were. (I susbsequently discovered that the Chinese believe you can find things out about someone's personality via their blood type).

Day 5: We met the headmaster at about 10-o-clock. He told us valuable we were, what a good job the other 2 pairs of gappers had done, and generally made us feel welcome. After that we were taken to the supermarket to stock up on various necessaries. I spent some time cleaning the firdge whilst Tim wrestled a bottle of water for the bubbler. For lunch, Shark appeared and offered to take us to the dinning hall. Linda also came to escort us as well (our first double booking). The dinning hall food is passable but far from pleasant. In the evening Shark took us out again for Dumplings in town. So far I had only sampled the boiled variety. It was a suprise to discover that they came steamed and fried as well. They ware truely delicious and the meal for 5 of us cost only 20yuan (about 2 GBP).

Day 6: This time we lunched in the Jiang Brother's Across bridge Noodles restaurant. Across Bridge Noodles is the traditional Yunnanese dish. You are given a boiling soup covered in a layer of oil. You then add a variety of raw slivers of meat etc into the soup. Once in the soup they cook very quickly. The result is tasty and delightfully spice free! For dinner Tim and I went out on the markety and sampled some kebabs. The lady on the stall dipped them in Chilli! Our mouths will never be the same again.

Day 7: Shark took us out for lunch again to meet some of Anita's friends from the teachers' college. We had an exceptioanlly hot variant of spaghetti bolonaise. These friends, 2 Americans and a Dane, were an odd bunch who had arrived in Yuxi at more or less the same time as Tim and I. In the evening we were to go to a banquet with Sally, an English teacher who had arrived with a large part of her class in our appartment two days earlier. The banquet had a disturbingly large amount of sea food for a land locked province. There was however a very nb\ice sweet pie thing which I was able to use to soak up the wine that the quick witted waitresses kept pouring in our glasses. At lunch Shark had insisted that wecome and see her dance in her class party: later she rang to say that she would hold her 'act' until we arrived. So I had to make polite excuses to leave Sally's class party to go and find Shark and see her dance. I got lost... After 20 mintures of wandering round the second grade classrooms I finally made someone understand that I wanted the 3rd grade class rooms and soon I found them. I then had an agonzing wait as the Head master delivered a few stirring words to Shark's class and shook my hand. I waited through two performances, saw Sharks dance (which was exceptionally good). And slunk out to get back to Sally's class party. I ran most of hte way back and as soon as I arrived panting, I was forced to play my tin whistle in front of everyone. It was an utter disaster. The notes I did get out were broken and out of tune. The rythm was poor and the fingering was down right awful. Then I had to play musical chairs with the students. I managed not to win (to avoid getting a second box of mooncake (Tim had won one already)). However as penalty for losing I had to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in front of everyone. I was so exhausted and nervous I even got the words wrong. Then Tim and I were made to sing, we choose the Red Dwarf theme tune for want of anything better. We even tried to explain Musical statues to them but it didn't work. Finally after aa dance of the penguin galato song, I was presented with the box of mooncakes that I'd skillfully avoided winning and we were allowed to go. Sometime after we got back Shark rang up. a surreal evening became so much more surreal when she asked if I wanted a Chinese Girlfriend.

Day 8: Today we've sat and done very little, save getting a key copied. I suspect that last night's banquet may have disagreed with us... I hope the Yuxi plumbing is prepared.