Apology

As both my readers have now implored me to write something, here it is: I'm off travelling for the next three weeks, and hence shall probably only be able to update when I get back, but we'll see.

As for the recent silence, my apologies. I got out of the habit of blogging, and equally pertinently, lately the internet has been dreadful. I can no longer access my VPN from home, and hence this is posted from the safe haven of Starbucks. Without a VPN lately, it seems that almost every site not within China itself is subject to some interference. Getting into my gmail account has become a daily half hour battle, involving begging, pleading and screaming at my unfortunate laptop. Reading the news normally involves reloading the page three times every time I click a link. Getting through basic tasks, such as applying for a student loan, now occupy the majority of the time I spend on the internet.

Anyway, otherwise lately I have:

- laserquest battle in an old bunker once used in Russo-Japanese war near Lushun (Foreigners united 5, Chinese 0). Post laserquest, which was what most of us had come for, we were also treated to a tour of Lushun, and we got to hear all about how evil the Japanese were, again.

- walked 15 kilometres as part of a bizarre walking day event held in Dalian - just me, a Bermudan named Jeff, some of his friends and hundreds of thousands of Chinese.

- gained official sort of qualification in Chinese. I'll certainly need to take the HSK again sometime, but its a start.

- went dancing with my host sister, and discovered when the Chinese waltz, they start on the other foot. I started I as normally would, and promptly stood on the guy's toes. Ah well.

- successfully avoided falling out with my ayi, despite her cleanliness fetish resulting in a very loud bout of cleaning at 3am, thereby depriving me of sleep.

- travelled to Bingyugou, just outside Dalian, and went walking/horseriding, before being persuaded to dress up and have my photograph taken by a decidedly odd group of Chinese hikers from Harbin.

- read awesome collection of Chinese modern fairytales (lent to me courtesy of a friend) written by a guy who could give Lewis Carroll a run for his money (boy flies into sky on firecracker powered broomstick, accidentally discovers the clock which controls the world's time, speeds the clock up which caused the world to spin faster. on returning to earth he finds everyone asleep as the world is spinning too fast, and making them dizzy, and when he too falls asleep he finds everyone is now living through their dreams instead. He winds up fighting an epic battle against Major Strange and his evil minions Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-tea-do (Minister for Music), Bottomless Pit (Minister for Greed), and Not Yet Enough (Minister for Corruption). It was amazing. I miss reading children's books.)

There is undoubtedly much more. However, I need to go catch a train to Beijing now.

I had hoped to avoid the royal wedding, by dint of being in China. It seemed a fairly good bet, given other side of the world, foreign language, communist disdain for monarchies...

No such luck - it is being broadcast live on Chinese news, and my host mother is glued to every second of it, and needs my assistance for such weighty issues as who Elton John is. Ah, well. Not like the dissertation proposal is due in tomorrow or anything.

Dissertation Woes

I have an ability to get interested in almost anything as it turns out (currently 19th century Chinese ghostly satires). This is making choosing just one dissertation topic challenging.

Ten days to go. Any suggestions welcome.

Rant

This is a rant that has been brewing for a while.

China, on the whole, does rather well compared to countries with faintly similar twentieth century history for sexism (well, India. Yes, I am aware the two are really not that alike). One of the advantages of a reform movement which completely rejected the past, and one of the few better points of the CCP - perhaps a little swamped by a few of their other issues - is that they are reasonably progressive with regards to women's rights. At least on the surface, China trumpets the equality of women, and their right to careers on an equal footing with men. This message is occasionally undermined a little (search for pictures of the PLA's crack female regiment on parade, say, or the occasional city which believes appointing attractive female police officers will lead to the more harmonious resolution of disputes), but things could be worse.

Which its why it is so very disappointing to find that Chinese society appears full of a latent, creeping sexism, driven by the weight of family expectation. Young women are indeed expected to be highly educated, attend university, and find jobs post graduation. But they are also expected to find a husband, and come 30 odd years, expected to have children, thereby ensuring the continuation of the family name, and provision for when elderly... It is subtle, yet inexorable. Independent, highly talented women settle down, and abruptly find themselves expected to give birth, and having had children, to take a set back from their careers to concentrate on home life. It is assumed by all that they will be happy to do this, content with childraising, and a life revolving around the kitchen. The idea that they might prefer to let their husband do the child rearing, or return to their jobs appears semi-unthinkable. As a result, women tend to find themselves passed over for jobs, or promotions, as managers assume they will  inevitably leave to have children. More and more women are being encouraged to marry well instead of working - find a man with a BMW, rather than acquire the BMW themselves. It is perhaps not coincidence a Chinese business recently started offering classes in 'How to Marry a Billionaire'.

It is currently making me quite angry. Especially for my student, who at 32, married, working for a research company and childless finds herself in a minority. She complains she has no-one to relate to, as all her friends already have children, and begins to wonder if she should too, to fill the emptiness in her life...

Rant over now, I think. For now.

Today, my ayi got up at 5am, as per normal, and when I dragged myself out of bed to try and once more stagger to my 8am lecture on time, she decided that the thing to do that day before I went to class was to measure my blood pressure. It is apparently 105/72.

On a slightly less surreal note, last night I dreamt I was mad King George, and spent most of my dream running up and down corridors so my ermine cloak streamed behind me, and commanding courtiers to bring me felt.

My life bemuses me sometimes.

My apologies for the long silence - I have been suffering from a phenonomen known as 'Dalian fatigue'. Its not precisely been a bad few weeks, although it has involved increasing amounts of preparation for my various dissertations, but it has simply paled by comparison with the months I spent travelling. Subsequently, everything has felt very routine, despite a collection of birthday parties, and various outtings, as well as the more usual drag of classes. Dalian continues to slowly get warmer, my host family remain delightful and infuriating in almost equal measure, and my Chinese continues very slowly to improve. Due to recent international affairs, I am now also remarkably well acquainted with Chinese vocab relating to Libya. My attempts to explain to taxi drivers that technically China is involved in it all as well, via the UN, have fallen on somewhat deaf ears though, no matter how well I think I explain that.

In other news, the political situation here is looking dire - Ai Weiwei being merely the latest in a series of disappearances or arrest of prominent dissidents and intellectuals. I did try explaining to my host family about Ai Weiwei (unusual in the list of the missing as there is a reasonable chance ordinary Chinese will know who he is), who were not in the slightest bit surprised, before my host mother interrupted to tell me and my host father to be quiet, 'just in case'.

Shhh,

Nobody tell the Chinese police, but I am now semi-gainfully employed, tutoring a very shy/conscientious Communist party member who is chronically afraid she will fail her oral English exam in June. She's rather sweet.

Radiation Scares

News here has been dominated for most of the last week and a half by news of the Japanese earthquake, and following nuclear scare. Apocalyptic music precedes rolling broadcasts of footage from the disaster zone, in microscopic detail, and very thorough analysis of the likely consequences to China and all else.

My host mother has been glued to this ever since it all happened. First with much shaking of the head, and expressions of amazement that only SOME of Japan was in ruins, and sympathy with Japanese people, and then with increasing worry that nuclear disaster was heading our way, fast. In fairness to her, everyone has been scaremongering, from announcements by scientists that we are not to go out if it rains*, to the French students who were commanded home by an impressively paranoid university, and we are signicantly closer to Japan than much of China. It is, however, still a good 1000 miles...

This culminated a few days ago... Despite reassurances that the radiation levels in China have not risen, at all, and perhaps helped by repeated announcements by public authorities that green tea really does not ward off the effects of radiation poisoning anyway, China briefly went salt crazy.

My ayi did too - but she made it to the supermarket just a little late. To her horror the salt was all gone by the time she got there, so she grabbed the food with the highest salt content instead - seaweed.

We all laughed at her when seaweed was served up that night. However, she still made us eat it. Just in case, she said.


* Radiated or no, rain seems even less likely. I can't remember the last time it rained here now - China really is suffering from a drought.

My host sister today received news that she has been offered a full scholarship to study for her PhD in America, at the same university where her boyfriend is studying. Unsuprisingly, everyone is absolutely delighted - we're off to climb a celebratory mountain shortly, and then off out for dinner. My ayi especially is over the moon. She spent the morning clucking ecstatically, has declared me to be a lucky mascot, and started making jokes about her daughter winning a Nobel prize. At the current rate of progress, that could yet happen.



Ayi line of the week: 'Have you ever considered plastic surgery on your nose? Just a little bit off the end, maybe?'

Return to Dalian and Non-Protests

So, I am back in Dalian, and have been greeted with the twin choruses of 'You've got thinner!' and 'You still speak Chinese!' as I staggered through the doorway, post one final night on a train. It was a good train ride to finish with - decidely the poshest Chinese train I have been on, with specially sanitized toilets, stylish yellow fittings and actual soft bunks. However, it also featured a man so in love with his Applemac he insisted on watching films on it till 3am, and when he had finished stroking it lovingly, he proved also to have a snore so loud the woman in the bunk above him swiftly evacuated herself to the corridor seats. As a result, I did not sleep especially well. My host elder sister has also returned from Taiwan - looks like things could be livelier with her around.

As you may have heard, the main thing that did not happen in China this week was the Jasmine Revolution. The journalists turned up, as did very large numbers of policemen, but no protestors. Thus the journalists all happily took pictures of disproportionate numbers of policemen outside MacDonalds in Beijing, which resulted in a few of them getting arrested. It would have been much better if the police had just stayed away (for China anyway): then all the journalists would have been able to take pictures of would have been a few people going to MacDonalds, which really isn't news. The disproportionate response continues - there seem to be police everywhere at the moment. There are grannies in 'Public Security Volunteer' armbands wandering the streets and gossiping in service of the state, instead of wandering the streets and merely gossiping as they would normally do. According to one friend, students in Beijing universities were all given impromptu talks on 'respecting the law', and doubtless most dissident activists have just been rounded up once again. From my point of view, I am now even having to read news of the cricket via VPN. I do wish they would relax down a little - revolution here does not seem remotely likely. This is not Egypt, and most people here are unaware of any call for revolution, and have better things to do... Besides which, I really do just wish to read the cricket unimpeded. I don't think Ireland-England as reported by the Guardian is particularly subversive.

I did witness one protest this week however. They do happen, with some regularity, but almost always caused by specific grievances as far as I am aware. In this case, a family were demonstrating outside a hospital in Kunming after medicine prescribed for a cold/flu had somehow led to the death of their son (if I read the Chinese banner correctly, I think he fell into a coma and subsequently died). They were all clearly devastated, but were trying to raise money and awareness so that they could take the hospital responsible to court. They had gathered quite a sympathetic crowd by the time I arrived, and were handing out incense to all they could. However, having attracted a crowd, they also drew the attention of the police, who quietly but swiftly began moving people on. I left as one of the protestors started trying to hit a policeman for breaking up the demonstration. I imagine it ended peaceably enough - the police were not being aggressive, but sadly I don't think the family have much chance of success either. A tragic case, for sure.



PS Most of my knowledge of why they were demonstrating was based on translation of their banner - I'm reasonably certain I am right, but not entirely. I certainly have the essentials correct that their son died and they felt the hospital was responsible.

Well I am currently relaxing in a cafe in Kunming, where the weather is perpetually springlike, and contemplating return to Dalian. After somewhere in the region of 9000km, 2 months and temperatures ranging from -26 to almost 30, I shall get on a 38 hour train back to Beijing, followed a mere 10 hours or so onward to Dalian.

It has been quite a journey, through all sorts of terrain, from tiny villages to some of China's biggest cities, mountains to the endless flat dry plains of north China. Highlights definitely include spending new year in Dingxi and showing my mother and Ralph around for three weeks, as well as the day the weather miraculously cleared in time to see the Dragonback Rice Terraces, and finally going rocklimbing once again. I am also now considerably better at three handed bridge than I previously was.

I am currently struggling with the internet a little, to the extent that it seems to be easier to access cricket scores via a VPN than without, which is decidedly odd. As such, fuller reports and pictures to follow when back in Dalian.

I'm now in Xi'an, and feeling the sense of relief which comes from having taken on the Chinese transport system and won, and also from just being out west again. Xi'an isnt that far west really, but compared to the south where I spent the last week, it feels it - full of bustling Muslim bazaars, and very long queues to buy mutton.

However, the few days I spent in Nanjing and Anhui were very pleasant. Nanjing turned out to be full of interesting Ming dynasty remains, whilst Anhui found the way direct to my heart by being very rural, full of dialects I didn't understand, and having an illegal motorbike taxi service. I suspect in summer, it would be a tourist hellhole, but in winter I and the other student I was with for the time had it all to ourselves - picturesque villages full of butchers slaughtering cows in time for Chinese new year, bamboo forests, snow covered terraces and tea plantations. It was the kind of place that gives rise to all those stereotypical images of China, and which I wasn't sure actually still existed anymore, if it ever had.

Nanjing was a little overshadowed by the massacre - I steeled myself to go the museum - which is a shame, as it is a much pleasanter and much older city than that. The massacre though still is almost uncomparably horrific, and still so recent really. However, what was for China a remarkably good and surprisingly unbiased exhibition was a little spoilt for me by the quote on the exit by Jiang Zemin stating 'This is a good place to conduct patriotic education'. It should of course be remembered, and I am often surprised how few Europeans at least seem to know of it - but I sometimes feel it is used by some Chinese in a way I am highly uncomfortable with.

However, it feels good to be back in Xi'an, and I move onto Dingxi shortly to celebrate Chinese New Year with friends.

I'm currently in Nanjing, former capital of China, and site of particularly unpleasant 1937 massacre, relaxing before heading onwards to try and find a slice of rural China in Anhui. Post Harbin, Beijing and Shanghai, I'm craving greenery a little, but its been a fine trip thus far.

It began in Harbin, with temperatures of -26, and ice sculptures that could have been designed by Disney on acid, then down to Beijing, which was mostly notable for feeling warm at -6, then down to Shanghai to visit a friend. The trip to Shanghai took a little longer than expected - I miscalculated the distance, and ended up on a 22hr hard seat train. Shanghai I learnt to like in temperatures somewhat lower than the 40 degree steambath I last saw it in, mostly thanks due to the hospitality of a friend and her demented ex-street kitten. The kitten, with her odd colour eyes, incessant friendliness and willingness to chase anything was perhaps one of the most charming, and yet also thickest animals I've encountered in a while - her party trick did appear to be running headfirst into walls.

Basically, its all been good up till now, although perhaps best of all has been the return of hot showers to my life. They had been sorely missed.

Travelling

The exams are over, the cricket has been won, and I am looking forward to a blissful two months without a single 8am lecture. I leave for Harbin and real winter tonight, and shall be wandering around bits of China in the company of various people until early March when Dalian Ligong Daxue heaves itself back up for the second term.

I'll update as and when I can - but if not, email really is a wonderful thing.