Ankh-Morpork

I think I may just have spent a week in Ankh-Morpork. Given that in common with Ankh-Morpork, Chongqing is perched precipitously above a sludge-filled river (the Yangtze, currently yellower than the Yellow River), on a set of mountains it appears to be in constant danger of falling off, is built largely on top of itself, stinks, is full of picturesque oddities, and is ruled by a selection of criminal gangs and the Communist Party, I think the comparison stands.

It is also full of motorbikes, the smell of chilli and Chinese people, which is perhaps less Pratchett, but no less endearing. In short, I really took to Chongqing. It had all the rough edges and friendliness I associate with the west of China, and miss in the more developed east.

It did take me a few days to recover from arrival... Post three days on a train, including a mere 8 hours standing (which I spent most of watching an Indian soap subtitled in Chinese whilst attempting to talk to a Korean girl, which proved a few too many languages), I arrived in Chongqing at about 7pm. I promptly found myself more or less kidnapped by motorbike and dropped in Chongqing's highly atmospheric stilt house slums, to discover the hostel I wanted to stay in no longer existed, and the motorbike man had vanished... Sadly, every other hostel in town proved to be full, which meant in desperation I was forced to call Liquorice, the student I was supposed to be visiting. I wasn't really that confident of success, as Liquorice is a Chinese university student, who lives in a dorm of 6 other guys, with guards on the dormitory block gates, just to make sure they can't sneak girls in, and especially not dubious foreign girls...

Thankfully Liquorice turned out to be a hosting a mini Class 16 reunion. Class 16 were the kind of class every teacher dreams of - intelligent, obediently cheeky and enthusiastic (although they did insist on bowing every time I walked into class which freaked me out a little). As a result, for the mere price of having to sing karaoke to my ex-students, as they refused to believe my claim that when I sing, somewhere a small bird dies, I was able to crash with one of the girls, and was saved from sleeping rough on the streets of Chongqing. They did also insist on introducing me to San Guo, a kind of Chinese version of the card game Magic, which left me feeling outgeeked and insufficiently Chinese very very fast....

After this somewhat dramatic beginning, Chongqing passed in a whirl of hotpot, neon lights, beer, ferries and occasional duck intestines. I did briefly escape to the relative serenity, sanity and cleanliness of nearby Chengdu to visit Zhao Ying, who braved the wrath of her own dormitory guards to put me up for two nights, and singlehandedly attempted to remedy my lack of knowledge of ancient Chinese. She is just so very determined, and so very intelligent, and makes me all optimistic.

I am now back in Dalian - further updates to follow, and hopefully pictures, once I have finished attempting to reassure my ayi that I am not likely to be thrown out of Dalian University for insufficiently revising for this morning's dictation.