A very Chinese experience

Last week 135 of Plan China's 150 staff began our annual retreat. In truly Chinese style it took 23 hours to get to our destination via coaches and trains; though we all had beds the electric fans on the 25 year old trains struggled to beat the 30 degree evening heat. We ended up at a place called Bamboo Sea, 'not that famous' a place according to my colleagues almost none of whom had heard of it before.

Not that that matters, it was far enough into the mountains to have fresh air and a great opportunity for me to be forced to speak more chinese. Unfortunately most of my colleagues from the field offices have rather thick accents. Bamboo Sea was, as the name implies, a forest entirely made of Bamboo (not actually a sea, but a metaphor) which was rather large and took up several mountains.What makes the trip so Chinese?

-the tour guide talking for more than 2 hours on the bus about the local area, then organising a 2 hour karaoke competition on the bus (she did not get the humour when i sang Oasis' Wonderwall whilst looking at her: "I don't believe that anybody// Feels the way I do about you now") and forcing everyone to participate.

-the party 1 evening whereby offices/groups perform 'short' skits which in total lasted over 3 hours. It did look funny, and everyone else was laughing a lot, even though i had barely a clue what anyone was saying. Never the less there was some fruit and munchies...

-the 'sightseeing' which requires being bussed around the area we were in between various bamboo related sights (often involving lots of carvings of famous sayings or legends into the rock that is really nothing to do with bamboo and that are found at every famous place in China).

-the food which was 90% made of bamboo dishes. There are, in my recent experience, at least 30 different dishes you can make from bamboo and many other herbal medicines that can be created from bamboo according to the women trying to sell it to me.

-the incredible amount of photos the chinese people took of bamboo and of themselves in front of bamboo (bamboo is quite common all over china).

-lunch on a boat cruising along the river looking at more bamboo

-how loud (and how fast) chinese people speak on buses

and so on.... Anyway it has been a fun trip and great to get out of the office and enjoy more social time with my colleagues. Especially after reading Only 1 percent of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the EU.