Over the last 10 days I had my first 2 guests stay over in the Xi'an apartment: now more prove of how bad Xi'an is. Actually I do get a bit carried away. Xi'an is not THAT bad. I am just spoiled having lived in such great cities as London, Manchester and Beijing most of my life. Maybe I am just feeling Xi'an is getting better since it has risen above 20 degrees (though still rarely much sun to be seen!).
Work has been busy and my chinese lessons have been really interesting with discussions about China's feudal system and power/control structure, constant invasions, role of religion and confucianism and how this might impact the future. Of course the level of language used was quite basic and a few english words were used here and again; but such intellectual conversations are the only way to stay awake at 7.30 am after 5 hours sleep (we actually went to a Bar 1 night!).
I keep meaning to write more about these conversations, I will 1 day. I also keep meaning to write a bit more about the Chinese language -which I'll summarise incredibly briefly now. Chinese writing system has changed very little over 5,000 years, though the way words are pronounced varies: and there are at least 4 distinct 'languages' which are intelligible from each other. There are few rules. Most words can be nouns as well as verbs; no real fancy tenses to worry about or anything else that french, german and latin (my other experiences with languages) have. Characters are either pictographic or an addition of 2 parts of a character stuck together. Some examples are 'fu' -happiness which is a person, a mouth, a field and clothes (this person is pretty content) or 'hao' -good, which is a woman and a son. Some cool words include the word for pet which has 2 characters. 1 for animal and 1 made up of a dragon underneath a roof. This week I also learn what you get when you combine the character for movement and the character for strength: motivation (i.e. the ability to make someone move).
Just a taster, but you can see that it is a very interesting language to learn, with stories behind most characters and reasons for them being what they are. Unfortunately it is not always easy to work these out unless previously told, and the characters can be spoken in any of 4 tones (which totally alters the meaning).; plus the Chinese often shorten words (e.g. If -Ru Guo, but often just said and written as Ru), speak ridiculously fast in different accents, use lots of idioms ... and so on. Anyway my chinese is slowly getting better. Another couple of years should do it.
Now for some good news: Flights are booked back home for 26th April (staying possibly up to 6 weeks for work and pleasure), I played football tonight in Beijing and in 1 day's time I will be in 35 degree heat on a beach in Thailand.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Western delights
A few busy days later and I am back in Beijing. Let me introduce a typical Beijing trip:
Thursday morning, arrive in Beijing on overnight train. Get to office by 8.30am. Boss takes me out to lunch at the 'First kosher restaurant in Beijing' -not too impressed. Consumption of Western food: Steak sandwich with fries/salad
Thursday evening, head to a trendy bar in a hotel where the British Chamber of Commerce have a monthly networking event to meet new and old people. Grab some Chinese pancake and Peperami equivalent on way to a friend's apartment.
Friday morning, 10am, head to the Bookworm (a western style cafe/restaurant/library) for a 2 hour meeting/coffee. Consumption of Western drink: 2 Mochas.
Friday lunch, still in the Bookworm have 'business related' lunch with a friend before going back to the office to work. Consumption of western food: Steak sandwich with fries/salad
Friday evening, meet a friend for a couple of beers and go to Hot Pot (Every one sits around a pot of boiling water and puts uncooked food in and then eat -yummy and very sociable). End the night in Latinos (Latin Club).
Saturday, go for lunch at GrandMa's Kitchen (American style place). Consumption of western food: Grandma's Skillet (sort of like a fry-up) and Chocolate cake.
Saturday evening, go for dinner at Purple Haze (Thai restaurant). Consumption of non-chinese food: Red Chicken pineapple curry. Consumption of western drink: Long Island Ice Tea.
End the night at Brown's pub for St. Patrick's Day drinking Carlsberg. We get bored and buy 'Monty Python's the holy grail' for 1 pound (expensive, good quality DVD) head back to watch it and eat Ice Cream. Movie dies after an hour. So much for the expensive good quality DVD! Will buy cheap ones next time, that are of same quality.
Sunday, flat mate cooks salad and sandwich style lunch. Dinner is planned at another restaurant. Back to Xi'an on 7pm train tomorrow.
Coming to Beijing is expensive. None of the drinks (including beer) were less than 2 pounds; most up to 3 pounds. Food starting at 3-4 pounds. Yikes. The previous 3 days in Xi'an cost me 6 pounds in total, for 3 dinners and 3 lunches!
Chinese food is great: there is so much choice and variation, but it is certainly nice to eat Western again. But it is not a financially sustainable lifestyle... less time in Beijing (especially with today's awful pollution) in the future I think!
Thursday morning, arrive in Beijing on overnight train. Get to office by 8.30am. Boss takes me out to lunch at the 'First kosher restaurant in Beijing' -not too impressed. Consumption of Western food: Steak sandwich with fries/salad
Thursday evening, head to a trendy bar in a hotel where the British Chamber of Commerce have a monthly networking event to meet new and old people. Grab some Chinese pancake and Peperami equivalent on way to a friend's apartment.
Friday morning, 10am, head to the Bookworm (a western style cafe/restaurant/library) for a 2 hour meeting/coffee. Consumption of Western drink: 2 Mochas.
Friday lunch, still in the Bookworm have 'business related' lunch with a friend before going back to the office to work. Consumption of western food: Steak sandwich with fries/salad
Friday evening, meet a friend for a couple of beers and go to Hot Pot (Every one sits around a pot of boiling water and puts uncooked food in and then eat -yummy and very sociable). End the night in Latinos (Latin Club).
Saturday, go for lunch at GrandMa's Kitchen (American style place). Consumption of western food: Grandma's Skillet (sort of like a fry-up) and Chocolate cake.
Saturday evening, go for dinner at Purple Haze (Thai restaurant). Consumption of non-chinese food: Red Chicken pineapple curry. Consumption of western drink: Long Island Ice Tea.
End the night at Brown's pub for St. Patrick's Day drinking Carlsberg. We get bored and buy 'Monty Python's the holy grail' for 1 pound (expensive, good quality DVD) head back to watch it and eat Ice Cream. Movie dies after an hour. So much for the expensive good quality DVD! Will buy cheap ones next time, that are of same quality.
Sunday, flat mate cooks salad and sandwich style lunch. Dinner is planned at another restaurant. Back to Xi'an on 7pm train tomorrow.
Coming to Beijing is expensive. None of the drinks (including beer) were less than 2 pounds; most up to 3 pounds. Food starting at 3-4 pounds. Yikes. The previous 3 days in Xi'an cost me 6 pounds in total, for 3 dinners and 3 lunches!
Chinese food is great: there is so much choice and variation, but it is certainly nice to eat Western again. But it is not a financially sustainable lifestyle... less time in Beijing (especially with today's awful pollution) in the future I think!
Saturday, March 10, 2007
a weekend in xi'an
Possibly only the 3rd weekend in Xi'an since i moved here in August -I am quite proud of that actually! The reason is that it is still pretty cold, so no point traveling and I decided to clean my apartment for the first time properly, since i moved in (I have only spent about 14 nights here in 2 months) in preparation for the arrival of a flat mate soon.
I also played football at one of the local universities with a bunch of Uighurs (from Xinjiang, in north-west China) which meant i could not understand a word (their language is more like Turkish than Chinese) -but they were pretty good and it was fun. So now i have played football 4 times since the summer -hopefully i can play more often in xi'an if i am ever 'stuck' here again at a weekend. It feels good to run around lots :)
Xinjiang is a place i want to go to more than Tibet. It has been in and out of Chinese rule for 2 millennium and always 'fighting' the invaders, including nowadays. Though there is much less resistance since a) punishment is severe, b) the economic growth and c) more than half the people there are not Uighurs at all. Some argue the Chinese were forcefully moving people there to make it more Han (and certainly none of the government jobs there go to the locals) but the several Han people I have met from Xinjiang all fled there during the famine of the 1960s, since XinJiang is vast and mostly empty full of good-ish land. I suppose it still happens a lot nowadays in Africa -entire families are forced to abandon their homes and flee to somewhere else because of a simple lack of food!
The last 2 weeks were ok, since the Chunjie trip. Despite having to adjust to the cold weather (although over zero), the early starts (still waking up at 6.30 for Chinese lessons) and spending my days in an office work has been ok, I have been back to Beijing (in time for the end of Chinese New Year, which is another occasion for World War to break out) and I only fell asleep in the office for a few minutes on International Women's Day. Not a political statement, on my behalf, just the office was so quiet and dull with all the women getting a half day extra holiday!
I wonder what all our women did on that half day -probably just get extra time to clean the house or prepare dinner, which is kind of ironic isn't it? I also wonder why most countries barely give a damn about such a day. Well, there were some interesting (depressing) statistics in the UK papers, so maybe people do notice. Unfortunately it seems that most people use the occasion to 'thank women for all the hard work they do', rather than actually try to fight to increase the rights and position that women are in. Much easier to thank someone than try to help them :-)
I also played football at one of the local universities with a bunch of Uighurs (from Xinjiang, in north-west China) which meant i could not understand a word (their language is more like Turkish than Chinese) -but they were pretty good and it was fun. So now i have played football 4 times since the summer -hopefully i can play more often in xi'an if i am ever 'stuck' here again at a weekend. It feels good to run around lots :)
Xinjiang is a place i want to go to more than Tibet. It has been in and out of Chinese rule for 2 millennium and always 'fighting' the invaders, including nowadays. Though there is much less resistance since a) punishment is severe, b) the economic growth and c) more than half the people there are not Uighurs at all. Some argue the Chinese were forcefully moving people there to make it more Han (and certainly none of the government jobs there go to the locals) but the several Han people I have met from Xinjiang all fled there during the famine of the 1960s, since XinJiang is vast and mostly empty full of good-ish land. I suppose it still happens a lot nowadays in Africa -entire families are forced to abandon their homes and flee to somewhere else because of a simple lack of food!
The last 2 weeks were ok, since the Chunjie trip. Despite having to adjust to the cold weather (although over zero), the early starts (still waking up at 6.30 for Chinese lessons) and spending my days in an office work has been ok, I have been back to Beijing (in time for the end of Chinese New Year, which is another occasion for World War to break out) and I only fell asleep in the office for a few minutes on International Women's Day. Not a political statement, on my behalf, just the office was so quiet and dull with all the women getting a half day extra holiday!
I wonder what all our women did on that half day -probably just get extra time to clean the house or prepare dinner, which is kind of ironic isn't it? I also wonder why most countries barely give a damn about such a day. Well, there were some interesting (depressing) statistics in the UK papers, so maybe people do notice. Unfortunately it seems that most people use the occasion to 'thank women for all the hard work they do', rather than actually try to fight to increase the rights and position that women are in. Much easier to thank someone than try to help them :-)
Macau photos
Church, Casinos, Fishing Village and the remains (only the front is left) of St Peter's Church
Hong Kong photos
Rice fields in rural Hong Kong, Beach on Lamma Island, Neon advertising signs in Kowloon and an arty picture of Central, Hong Kong Island
Guizhou and Hunan Photos
Bridge in Fenghuang lit up at night, Fenghuang houses by the river, Zhang Jia Jie peaks in the snow, Dad eating dinner with a local family in the countryside
Sichuan photos
Mum and me with the pandas, Pearl Waterfall at Jiu Zhai Gou, Horse Riding in the Tibetan hills and a gorgeous lake in Jiu Zhai Gou
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