We Arrive in Urumqi

The plane journey from Beijing to Urumqi is quite an eye-opener as to the manners of the Chinese. They refuse to get up for anyone so whenever people need to get out of their seats they are FORCED to climb over their neighbours, which I think everyone will agree creates a lot more trouble than just getting up in the first place. They, of course, have no qualms about hawking up and spitting onto the floor, but then the Han seem to have no qualms about spitting anywhere, actually. I am more accustomed to this than I used to be but sometimes you get to hear a particularly revolting noise or see someone both blow their nose and spit at the same time, and then it is a bit of a battle to keep the bile down. And I’m not actually especially squeamish about this, I don’t think. It amuses me somewhat when (as I keep getting ill) the Chinese tell me to wear more clothes and then I’ll be okay. No matter what clothes I wear, I might not pick up so many germs if you didn’t keep spitting them practically onto my shoes. Thanks. The Chinese spitting phenomenon explains the rapid-fire spread of SARS in their country. Spitting is actually banned in most cities now because of SARS, especially those on the east coast (I don’t think it is banned here in Urumqi) but that doesn’t stop anyone. Liam and I were treated to a sight of a man actually using a NO SPITTING sign to work up more leverage for his spit. They also have a tendency to put their cigarettes out on NO SMOKING signs, or lean on NO PHOTOGRAPHS signs to get a better camera angle on their shot. You have to almost admire their audacity and complete lack of respect for rules. So, on the flight, no surprise to be surrounded by spitting men (women also enjoy a good spit, but there were few women on the flight). Most of the men were quite tubby, sweaty businessmen. China, my friends, is a country devoid of deodorant. I truly had to search long and hard to find any; the only place I can find any is roll-on at the Adidas stall of our local Westernised department store. So you can imagine that really the flight wasn’t that pleasant. However we do particularly enjoy that all the air stewards on Chinese flights bow to you before and after the flight.
Naturally the Chinese look upon fasten seatbelt signs with complete indifference, so as we began our descent they all got up to deal with their hand luggage. The attendants were helpless in the face of the stampede. Obviously Liam and I managed to get off the flight, with our hand luggage intact, and arrive at the baggage carousel at the same time as everyone else without having to step on everyone’s toes to do so.
When we get our baggage we realise how ill-prepared we are for arrival into Urumqi. The airport is in the north of the city, so we figure we probably have to go south, but we have no actual idea where. We were informed by our Chinese tutor, Joanne Smith Finlay, that we weren’t allowed to move into our university accommodation until the 31st, (though registration ran from 21st-31st) and we arrived on the 30th. We later found out that this was absolute bull, but we have no idea whether it was the Urumqi end or the Newcastle end that mis-informed us. This actually happened several times during our registration process and at first we got really annoyed with the Newcastle staff because they hadn’t help us to prepare for all this (more on our attempts to register later). However, since dealing with Xinjiang Normal University for a few months now, and seeing their idea of organisation, I am inclined to believe that it was they who messed up.
So there we were at the airport with nowhere to go. We had a few rough ideas about hotels/hostels but only knew their English names, which was no help to us in this city. We weren’t in the east of China any more! In Beijing, and even more so in Shanghai (I’m told) there is English everywhere and most people will speak a little. But in Urumqi, you’re on your own, kid.
We go outside and peruse a poster map of the city, but we can’t even locate our university on it, let alone any hostels. Taxi drivers left right and centre were attempting to get us in their taxis, but we knew that taxis from airports are almost always a rip-off so we wanted to do this by ourselves. A man wearing eyeliner came up to us to help. The men here, as in a lot of hot sunny places such as Central Asia and Africa, wear eyeliner in summer as it prevents the sun’s glare. He gave us smaller hand-held maps but we still can’t find anywhere. Turns out he is, of course, a taxi driver. By this point, there were no other taxis left and no way out of the airport via public transport as far as we could see. We took his taxi, and he charged us 100¥ to take us to a hotel. This is like £6.60, but a massive overcharge in China. But seeing no other option, and being tired and fed up, we let him cart us around the city in search of a hotel. He found us one which was clearly over-priced, and so he said he’d take us to a good one. He clearly had a deal with the hotel he eventually took us to, because he stayed in the hotel lobby for ages, and we saw him in there the next morning as well. They charged us more than their advertised price for the room, and we think he got a cut.
The hotel experience was, unfortunately, enough to put us off Urumqi for quite some time. The staff were extremely rude and unhelpful. Like all Chinese service professionals, they were greatly confused by our visa. Because we were on a student X class visa, our length of entry read 000 days. Most tourists or other visitors are only allowed in for a certain number of days so of course that is printed on their visa. But as students staying for an extended period of time, we have to get our visa changed to an official residence permit 30 days or less after arrival in China, so there is no day limit to our visa. As the Chinese have to keep tabs on our every move, the staff had to log our details correctly and so these hotel receptionists didn’t quite know what to do. Though we tried our level best to explain, they didn’t even try to understand and basically laughed at our Chinese. When we got annoyed they giggled even more and were even rude enough to talk and laugh about us behind some paper. We would’ve walked out then and there if we had a place to go! We didn’t like it, so we just lumped it.
The hotel was not especially a good hotel, sort of a Chinese Travelodge, and like I said we paid extra for it (we paid 320 instead of the advertised 288) However it was nice to have a comfortable bed for the night in preparation for our new lives beginning the next day. However on the day we missed the ease of Beijing and the nice staff at the Templeside Hostel. I took my first photos out of the window of our room, and Urumqi looks like a cosmopolitan, vibrant city. Whilst taking these photos I had a bit of a China-moment and got momentarily excited about the place, but I was in such a bad mood it didn't last long. We even went to KFC (which I never go to in the UK) so we could have a bit of the West to comfort us. We met the best person in the entire city, whose name is Clever Girl. She had the sense to give us a pointy menu and the decency to not laugh at us. Other than her, not the best start to our time in Urumqi.

First view of Urumqi:

Beijing Tuesday 28th – Thursday 30th

On Tuesday we woke up and switched back to our original hostel, where we’d missed our little kittens! Tuesday was the day we’d planned to re-visit the Forbidden City and BeiHai Park. Also we were to meet up with some of our classmates from Newcastle University, who were actually going to be studying in Beijing for the duration. Before we got there we said we’d meet ‘at Tiananmen Square’. After Saturday’s visit, we realised the impossibility of catching sight of them in such a huge place, so we agreed to meet them at the main monument in the middle at around 2pm.
We caught the bus to BeiHai and actually got to our destination when we realised we hadn’t booked ourselves onto a trip to the Great Wall for the next day. Our hostel offered various trips out with tour guides as well as the evening performances of Beijing Opera, acrobatics and the story of the Shaolin monks. Mostly we didn’t want to be tour-guided anywhere because both of us find that kind of organised, regimented style of sight-seeing pretty aggravating. However we couldn’t find another way to get to the Great Wall without a feat of logistics. All trips and performances had to be booked half a day before, but we had forgotten about the Great Wall trip until we got off the bus at BeiHai. So we went back through rush hour Beijing traffic. When we got back to the hostel we also remembered that we wanted to change traveller’s cheques, so we popped into a nearby branch of Bank of China to quickly change them. Wrong, very wrong. Two and a half HOURS later, our cheques were changed. When we left the bank most customers were in a state of great agitation. When you go to a bank in China, you take a numbered ticket, like in a supermarket deli. There are also different categories of enquiries so the numbers aren’t necessarily called in order. This adds great excitement and suspense to the whole process. How fun it is two hours in to wonder whether your number will be next. My number was the first in its category as well. One or two people tried to push in despite not having the right numbered ticket. The bank staff really didn’t have to do much to deal with them, as the rest of the customers took matters into their own hands when someone tried this. We honestly thought there might be a riot by the time we left.
We managed to get to Tiananmen just in time to meet up with everyone. (Everyone being Lauren, Becca, Steph, and Catriona. We also thought Catherine might turn up. Catherine being one of the four of us going to Urumqi, and also completely AWOL. We had no means of getting in touch with her via phone or internet or any other method, and we didn’t know when she’d be arriving in Xinjiang so we thought it might be quite useful for her to turn up! (She didn’t, because we’d actually changed the meeting time to a later hour and she didn’t know this, whoops.)) Cue lots of tourists requesting photos taken with the six of us. We then walked south to the Temple of Heaven (an ancient Buddhist temple. The emperor used to walk from the Forbidden City to the temple to pray for a good harvest for the coming year). We managed to get lost at some point and asked for directions from some guards who were astonished at the fact we spoke Chinese. The Chinese have three reactions to a Westerner speaking Chinese. One is astonishment. You say thanks and they practically fall over with complimenting you. The other is complete indifference. This one is fair enough I guess; we wouldn’t be surprised if a foreigner spoke English to us in England but after the first class of reactions it feels like a bit of an anticlimax! The third is easily the worst, and that is when they look you up and down and then tell you that your Chinese is useless. The Chinese, generally as a whole, lack that lovely thing called tact. Or manners.
The Temple was fairly interesting and we took some photos of us in China poses. China poses are the various ingenious ways that the Chinese pose in their photos. We’ve decided that the British way of taking photos is pretty boring (stand in front of something of interest and smile winningly) so from Beijing onwards our photos are littered with China poses. The most common is the V with two fingers, à la Japanese, but there are many more as you’ll soon see in my photos.
We had to rush back to the hostel for the acrobatics at 6pm, but it was nice to see everyone even just for that short time. The acrobatics were mind-blowing. It was actually a performance called Stars of The Future, and I have bought a DVD copy of some of their acts. Anyone that wants to have their heart in their mouth can watch it when I get back home. Yes, if you want to sit scared out of your wits for a few hours, then go to the acrobatics and watch little children throw themselves around and contort themselves into impossible shapes. The blurb claims that the performance is ‘reminiscent of a happy, carefree childhood’ but, as far as I’m concerned, for children to be able to do that the last thing on the planet they’ve had is a carefree childhood. The intermission halfway through was entirely necessary for us to relax from the tension. We also had to control our laughter at Miss Claps-Inappropriately, a Spanish woman in front of us who really didn’t have a clue about clapping etiquette. You don’t realise how much of an etiquette there is to applauding until someone sits in front of you consistently breaking with it. When we got back to the hostel they asked what we thought of it and when we said it scared us as we were fully expecting a child to fall to its death they laughed (a lot) and said ‘ah, it was just kids playing around’. The Chinese scare me.
On Wednesday we were off to the Great Wall. This involved leaving at stupid o’clock (7am) and we realised that our tour guide was a psycho when she turned up at ten to and told me off for not being ready yet.
First stop was the Ming Tombs. There are in fact several tombs, but we only visited one. Buried somewhere in a hill in the grounds is a particular emperor, but Chinese tradition and respect says that nobody will locate it because the dead should rest entirely in peace. The tombs that it’s possible to see are actually just monuments – basically big tomb stones saying that the emperor is around here someplace. It was quite informative to have a guide but I was a bit annoyed that when I asked if I could stop and buy batteries for my camera I was tutted at and then deserted to find my way back to the group on my own. What a lovely lady. She marched us around at top speed and only stopped at her own personally designated photo stops. After a while the British contingent in the group stopped trying to keep up and took our own photos and looked at what we wanted to see. When you leave the tombs you have to tap your shoulders and step through on a certain foot whilst saying 我回来了 (I came back) so that you don’t bring the dead back through with you and so you have left the realm of the dead for good. I stepped through first out of the group and so the tour guide heard my Chinese. She complimented my Chinese pronunciation and I told her we were studying Chinese, about to go to Urumqi (which she thought was a stupid place to go, both to study Chinese and just in general, as do most Chinese as it happens). From that moment on, she liked me and Liam a lot more and we became her favourites in the group, which was quite worth it, because suddenly we were allowed to stop when we wanted to take photos and so on.
After the Ming Tombs we went on to a jade factory. This factory was guaranteed by the government to work with only genuine jade, as it was originally part of Deng Xiaoping’s revolutionary policy of Chinese openness to the west. Obviously they wanted the products that they were showing the first westerners through to be genuine. We were taught how to spot genuine jade – it won’t break when it’s dropped and it scratches glass. Jade is next to diamond in hardness. Jade has veins of colour in it and over time this veins change the colour of the jade; effectively it matures. Not all jade is jade-green as it happens. There is white jade and yellowish jade and bottle-green jade and then every shade in between. Some of the jade carvings were absolutely spectacular. As well as the jade, there was other skilful craftsmanship on show at the factory. I liked the style of painting they demonstrated – the painting surface is carved out, and then the painter takes a very watery drop of paint and puts it to the surface and it fills in the whole section that has been carved out. It’s more intricate than it sounds! But talking of intricate, the most impressive painting we saw there was ‘inside’ painting. The artist paints the inside of a glass globe through a very small hole in the glass, which is then sealed. It’s really beautiful when finished. Jade is actually pretty cheap considering that it is a precious stone, but we didn’t have too much money, being poor students, and more importantly, we had to get our suitcases to Urumqi without paying extra baggage charge for weight. Eventually we settled on some stamps with our Chinese names carved on them, and a pair of jade chopsticks each with a chopstick rest. Most countries which traditionally use chopsticks believe that leaving your chopsticks standing in your food signifies death and means that you want your eating companions to die. Though like most traditions this is not really a big thing any more, still most people won’t leave their chopsticks in their food, and on proper occasions it isn’t really appropriate to leave your chopsticks on the tablecloth; hence the need for rests. There were four options: a turtle, a dragon, a fish and a dragon-turtle. Fish signifies wealth. Turtles are longevity and dragons mean power and success. Liam chose a fish and I chose a dragon-turtle (turtle’s body, dragon’s head) which means long-lasting success. The Chinese, particularly businessmen, put various items in their cars, homes and offices in order to bring in success, wealth etc and let out any bad spirits. Various animals mean different things, as do figurines of ancient gods and so on. It’s really a study in itself, tied in with feng shui and history and tradition and superstition; very interesting. The Chinese cabbage is also to be found in practically every businessman’s office. They position the large end of the cabbage to the outside and it is said to funnel money into the room. I think I might get one when I’m next in Beijing so I can add to my student loan : )
Next we went to the Great Wall at Badaling. The Great Wall is in fact circular, which I hadn’t imagined. The idea was to keep one ethnic group in and everyone else out, but I forget who exactly now. It wasn’t finished. Bits of it are of course in ruins. In fact the Chinese authorities originally considered the wall a great embarrassment because of its state of non-completion, but when outsiders began to show an interest in it, it became symbolic of China. Take as example this from La Geografía China, Sinolingua translated from its original Chinese: La Gran Muralla, una de las siete maravillas del mundo, es la obra de defensa militar de mayor magnitud y que más tiempo requirió para su construcción en el mundo, y constituye la cristalización del sudor, sangre y la sabiduría de los chinos, y el símbolo de la firmeza y la laboriosidad de la nación china. (The Great Wall, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the largest work of military defence in the world and the one which took the longest time to build, represents the realisation of the sweat, blood and know-how of the Chinese, and is the symbol of the strength and hard-working nature of the Chinese nation. (My translation, and without a dictionary, so I apologise for any mistakes)). So that is what the Wall means to the Chinese. But everybody knows of the Great Wall, so I don’t really need to build it up any more. When it first came into sight I had possibly my strongest China moment to date. I was looking at the GREAT WALL.
When I was on it I was actually less impressed, largely because it runs up and down mountains, my trainers had no grip and the walkways are basically smooth. Some people went up and down on their bottom, which makes sense really. It was like the Summer Palace again! Our delightful tour guide allowed us a couple of hours to climb the Wall. When you first go through the entrance, you’re met with several enclosures for black bears. Black bears roam the countryside around the wall, but they’re actually quite solitary creatures and rarely, if ever, attack humans unless provoked. Funny-looking things too. The enclosures allowed the bears a lot of room and had climbing entertainment for them too. Tourists could pay for a plate of monumentally over-priced fruit to feed them. They could catch fruit from practically any angle in their mouths! With hindsight I realise that these bears, though there are many to a single enclosure, are probably amongst the best-treated animals in China. (More on that when I tell you about the hideous zoo we stumbled upon.)
We went up the Wall on what is basically a go-kart on a track. Fun fun fun. Then we trekked as high as we could on our particular segment of wall, with two Aussies (to whom we will always be thankful, as they taught us the diverse values of the words feral and vulgar. Thanks guys.) who may or may not have been a gay couple.
Though the views from the Wall are in my opinion pretty spectacular, there’s really very little to see other than more mountains and trees and green. I thought it was pretty amazing but not everybody would I guess. Really there’s little to say about the Great Wall! I think you have to see it to truly recognise its splendour. On the way back down we got back into our go-karts and had fun pretending we were on a rollercoaster, which we might as well have been as we were hurtling down the side of a mountain in a child’s toy.
The next stop on our jam-packed tour was a silk factory. Again all the silk was guaranteed. Genuine silk is very tough and durable. The threads can’t be broken under duress and it will never bobble. It is unlike any other material as it is made in cocoons and the way it is matted together means that it is extremely strong and stretchy but smooth. We got to see the various stages of silk production which was interesting. The cocoons can’t be broken into – the silk is so strong that they can’t even be cut into. You have to boil the cocoons before you can take the thread. They showed us how they make silk duvets (basically they take one single cocoon and stretch it by four corners, and then they take another and put it on top and so on, and the threads catch with each other and make a duvet. I tried out stretching it, it’s pretty hard to do it so that there are no lumps and it is all stretched evenly. I was worried I’d break the thread but it really is impossible! I quite wanted to buy some products but remembered my suitcase. Perhaps on the way back to Britain. Coming from warehouse source – and being in China – the silk is cheap but extremely good quality. We also learnt that silkworm faeces smell of tea (it’s true, I smelt them!) and in size terms are a bit like those little balls of polystyrene in bean bags so the Chinese put them into their pillows, particularly stress-reliever pillows.
Our tour had ended. We hadn’t booked anything for that night, not knowing what time we’d be back, but our tour guide said there were a few tickets left to see the show Chunyi: The Legend of Kung Fu. This is the history of the Shaolin monks, who practise kung fu as part of their intense Zen Buddhist lifestyle, in particular a monk called Chun Yi (Pure One). I still don’t know why he’s particularly special – I think he turned up to the monastery later than most children and then climbed all the way to spiritual enlightenment, and then became Master of the Monastery. We got in just in time and watched the show (again I’ve bought it on DVD). It was actually really moving and I had to choke back my tears a few times! And the kung fu was amazing, not least the little pre-teen Buddhist monks flipping themselves over on their head. I recommend.
We rounded off the day with a trip to Quan Ju De Peking Duck Restaurant. Even typing just those words, my mouth has filled with saliva. It’s like Pavlov’s dogs. I have never, and believe never will again, eaten anything that good. Peking duck is the Holy Grail of food consumption. I will not rest until I’ve eaten it at least once more. Oh, and I will never again be putting ‘Peking duck’ from England’s Chinatowns anywhere near my tastebuds ever again. We ate in a giant restaurant, which we calculated could hold literally thousands of people. Our room alone had over 400, and there were other rooms on our floor and eight floors in total. A staff member comes and slices your duck up for you by your table, and then they give you garlic, chilli, cucumber, spring onions, ketchup (yeah, it doesn’t go) and hoisin sauce and hot pancakes. You wrap up whatever combination you desire. We ordered just half a duck, as earlier our tour guide told us three people would be satisfied by one half. Liar. We could’ve had half EACH. Hell, we could’ve had a whole one each, it tasted so good. To begin with both Liam and I were picking out the tender pieces of duck breast which was delicious in itself but almost simultaneously we bit into a piece of crispy skin and our lives changed irreversibly. For the better. The crunch, the hot greasy goo, the flavour. Oh wow. Added to the skin and the meat, there was a mystery piece of duck. We think it could have been its tongue. Either way it was the most tender piece of meat I’ve ever put in my mouth. They also gave us half of the duck’s head. We weren’t really sure what the craic was with that, but I can now say I’ve eaten duck’s beak, cheek and brain. Oh and I also ate its eye.
All in all, just today looking back Liam and I have judged this day to be possibly the best in our lives. We stood on one of the Great Wonders of the World, we ate Peking duck, we saw silk and jade and Shaolin monks breaking metal bars with their foreheads. Truly worth it. Best day ever.
By this point, we were pretty much in love with Beijing, and we’ll always remember it as being one of our favourite places in the world. But the next day, Thursday 30th August, after a week of being tourists in Beijing, it was time to fly off to Urumqi and begin our new life.


Photos:

(L-R) Steph, moi, Lauren, Becca and Liam at the Temple of Heaven China-posing our hearts out.




(L-R) Catriona, Becca, Lauren and Liam on the steps of the Temple of Heaven





The acrobatic warm-up



Casually spinning umbrellas with the toes whilst lying on someone else's feet. As one does.

The Ming Tombs

The amazing jade ship. The picture really doesn't do it justice. It was carved out of one single block of jade. It's worth hundreds of thousands (of pounds. Millions of RMB!)



The style of painting I described



'Inside' painting.

Black bears!

The Great Wall, stretching away as far as the eye can see.


I attempt (and fail) to make part of a silk duvet.

Liam, whilst smiling, isn't actually truly demonstrating the extent of his happiness as he holds a duck pancake.

Beijing (Thursday August 23rd - Monday August 27th)

Wow, this is a fairly huge topic to cover. Where to begin? As I last left it, we were on the doorstep to the Templeside. After ringing the doorbell (which is quite an incredible doorbell: first it rings and then it says 你好！请开门。(Hello! Please open the door.) I want one for myself.) we were ushered in into the hostel. In Beijing, the majority (I think) or at least a large part of the population live in a certain type of housing called the hutongs. The Templeside is in a hutong. Hutong is a Mongolian word which could well mean ‘live together’ (this may have to be checked, I think memory may not be serving me correctly). Basically in the old Mongolian style of living, people lived in groups in small, one-storey houses, and then they would leave them and go and build elsewhere and so on. Mongolians believe that when you leave a place you should symbolically leave water there, otherwise that area will not be habitable in future. The Beijing hutongs are built under the Mongolian influence, and are sprawling and extremely complicated to navigate. Hutong in Chinese means alleyway. Staying in a hutong was quite an experience, not least because under the plan for re-construction of Beijing, the hutongs are to be demolished. This is a real shame because it is effectively destruction of the traditional Beijing way of life to replace it with a Western-style concrete and steel infrastructure, simply for the enjoyment of foreigners coming for the Olympics. Perhaps the Chinese have not realised that most Westerners would come to China to see something that they couldn’t easily find in the West anyway? In the hutongs, there is always something to see, hear and experience. And to smell. This was also where we first had to accustom ourselves to being stared at and talked about. Westerners, even in Beijing, are of huge interest to many Chinese. It appears that it is not enough to see Western faces on film, TV and in advertisements. Seeing one in person is this massively interesting event. Some can’t drag their eyes off us. They nudge their companions to alert them to our existence. Since arriving in China, we’ve had points, gasps and photographs taken (both openly and ‘surreptitiously’ and even some where we have had to pose with the Chinese). In Beijing when we were on public transport, or in a restaurant, or just walking down the street, we were the main attraction. How do white people walk? How do they talk? How do they eat? They always look into our bags to see what we carry around, and when we shop they always want to see what white people could be buying. Once when we were in a taxi we looked out of the window at the bus next to it and literally EVERYONE was peering into our taxi. Most Westerners just try to ignore the staring and pointing and don’t acknowledge it at all. They most definitely don’t do anything interesting! So, to make their day, I waved and stuck my tongue out at them. I may have made their lives. That early on even, we began to find it strange to not be looked at. God only knows how we’ll take being back in the UK where we’re just another member of the population and nobody stares at us! How ordinary and unimportant we’ll feel.
The Templeside was a traditional-style building. It has four blocks built around a central courtyard. We were in Templeside shop number 1, the original. Templeside shop number 2 is located not too far away. Both are run by the same family and their staff. We were never sure who was related to whom though really. Liam and I shared a twin room for our stay in Beijing. The Templeside shop 1 was really pretty and the courtyard was shaded from the outside summer heat and pollution. There was a family of white cats with two adorable kittens. The hostel also had a deal with a nearby restaurant to provide food to their guests, so most nights we ordered pre-set dishes from this menu. In the mornings, breakfast was included.
The first day in Beijing (Friday) we did very little. We arrived in the mid-afternoon and stayed awake long enough to eat some dinner. The next day we had big plans, which were quickly scuppered by my being hit by jetlag like a ton of bricks. I slept practically the entire day. Finally on our second full day (Saturday August 25th (what a long time ago!)), we went out to discover Beijing.
It was a really nice 30 degree temperature. Liam, being a skinny ginger (read: Scottish) of course thought it was too hot. (Note to Liam: I know you’re not ginger really. But still.) All the Chinese men roll their shirts up to their nipples (regardless of their figure) in summer, which is quite a comical sight. Why they don’t just take them off is beyond me – we can already see everything!
We decided to hit Tiananmen Square first, and navigate our way there on the bus. This was the first time we’d been on a normal Beijing bus. The number 22 which we caught from XiDan Aviation Building was, in hindsight, shockingly (but fortunately, considering our suitcases) empty. I held a grudge against the number 22 for a few days because I didn’t like the bus babushka on our first journey. However I have now come to recognise the greatness of the 22 in all its glory. I digress. So there we are, packed in like sardines. Now your average person would probably start to feel more than a little bit claustrophobic (a memory from my Year 10 Paris French exchange suddenly springs to mind. Two girls had to take taxis because the busy-ness of the Métro was too much. The Paris Métro at rush hour, my friends, is a calm and deserted mode of public transport. These girls would undoubtedly hit full-level hysteria on a Beijing bus.). There is NO room to move. Most people can’t reach anything to hold onto, but that is entirely okay, because the unmoving mass of people will hold you up should your bus driver brake unexpectedly (which they WILL, by the way) or swerve into the opposite lane of traffic (again, fairly guaranteed) or possibly up a kerb (yes, yes, regular occurrence), or hit an unlucky pedestrian (okay, I admit, I’ve never seen this one). It is on the Beijing buses that Liam and I coined the expression ‘Western concept’. This is when somebody attempts to take up more space than just their base body mass, perhaps by sticking out their elbows or putting shopping bags in the way. They will then be having a Western concept, because they have this bizarre notion that it is in their rights to have personal space and air to breathe. Silly. Liam and myself were, of course, guilty of being too Western in our concept of space for the first few bus trips. The bus would come up to a bus stop. It’d already be more full than the average British bus could ever hope to be. There would be 20 people waiting at the stop. The bus driver opens the door to let them on and we say (to ourselves): “There’s clearly no more room! What are you doing?!” It took very little time for us to be Beijingers in our concepts. There’s always room for more! We now take this attitude on all public transport, lifts and other enclosed spaces. We no longer can claim to have any sense of personal space. Look out everyone when we come back home. The main issue the British have is that they don’t let things get full ENOUGH. Yes, it is very uncomfortable when there are people standing all around you and you’re being all British and trying not to stick your elbow up their nose and not knock little old ladies over and so on, but when you pack an extra 50 people into those air gaps, then suddenly all decorum is out the window and you don’t have to struggle to stand up in difficult positions any more. The mass will hold you up. Heaven.
Well would you look, I digressed again. You may have to get used to my doing that. So we arrive at Tiananmen by bus. I enjoy having my nose in someone’s armpit for the entire journey. Liam by this magical thing called a sense of direction (yeah, I don’t have one) manages to get us off at the right stop. Now. How do we actually cross these 17 lanes of traffic to get to the square itself hmm? A lovely rickshaw man offers to take us, no doubt for about 1000¥. We can see the square from here goddammit! Finally we spot an underground crossing. This is the way most big roads are to be crossed in Beijing. Even the hardy Chinese pedestrian will not risk crossing over the top. In Urumqi most roads are crossed by bridges over the lanes of traffic.
Tiananmen is huge. Liam and I have another phrase, which is ‘a China moment’. Despite having crossed half the world and living in this country, most days we are just settled into it. However sometimes some things spark you and you suddenly think ‘my God, I’m in CHINA!’ These are amazing moments, because it is nice to know that despite being here constantly, we can still have moments of pure appreciation and happiness. Looking upon Tiananmen gives one a huge China moment. It is a site of great historical and political importance. Behind us to the south is Mao’s former place of residence. To the north is the famous Tiananmen gate (see previous post). Between the two is a huge square with throngs of people milling around. We walk over to the gate which is now sadly covered in scaffolding. Once through Tiananmen Gate, you reach the entrance to the Forbidden City. Well actually, no you don’t. You reach the entrance to a sprawling square surrounded by historical buildings, ALL of which is the entrance to the Forbidden City. Liam and I both stupidly and independently thought that this one square was the entire Forbidden City. With retrospect, I don’t understand how we could make such a monumentally idiotic mistake. Nor how we could not mention it to each other. (Until that night when one of us, I forget who, first admitted it. Cue hysterical laughter. As Liam said, you had to be there to get the intense humour of the moment. Or be drugged up on tea and MSG.) Anyway, so we’re walking around this square, both a little disappointed, when we realise some random young Chinese man has fallen into step beside us and is nodding along to our conversation. At the time this struck us both as quite strange. We are fairly used to it now. It turned out this man was an art student, and his college was putting on an exhibition in one of the buildings. Would we like to look? Now we’d been pre-warned about art exhibitions being a huge rip-off as the average Westerner feels that they should buy something after being treated so nicely, and everything is ridiculously over-priced. But obviously we both thought that that one square was it for the Forbidden City so we saw no harm in trying to find SOMETHING interesting to do. We ended up buying some indeed ridiculously over-priced artwork, which is now decorating our living room here in Urumqi. It’s really quite pretty actually. Next to accost us were three younger students who attempt to take us to a tea ceremony. Much as I would like to go to a traditional tea ceremony we had been severely warned that this was a bad idea because it’s normally even more of a rip-off than the art. We did get one good thing out of the interaction, and that was that they told us we had to buy tickets to get into the Forbidden City. What? We’re not IN the Forbidden City?
We bought tickets and entered the biggest non-city city in the history of the world. It was really interesting and we practically had to run to get out by closing time, which meant that we didn’t see it all by any means. We decided we’d come back on Tuesday and try to cover the bits we missed. Upon leaving the City we are met by hundreds of beggars and street hawkers selling Mao merchandise (particularly watches) and translated Little Red Books. One little old woman practically pushed her ill baby into my arms in an attempt to get money off me. I would have given her some actually if it hadn’t been for the fact that I was surrounded by tens of other people desperate to get into my purse. After we broke free and walked, I thought, out of ear-shot, I said to Liam that I might be interested in seeing a Little Red Book. A few street hawkers with the ears of bats then chased us down the street with armfuls of these books. We got away and then went into one of the two parks. One is BeiHai Park and the other is JingShan Park. BeiHai is apparently one of the best sites to see in Beijing. We accidentally went into JingShan instead. Actually it was a very nice calm park and we went up to a monument on the Shan (mountain) and took some aerial views of Beijing on my camera. We planned to come back to see BeiHai on Tuesday.
Sunday was really quite a waste of a day. It was raining and so we decided to just go out and see some of the shopping streets of Beijing. I really wanted to see a packed busy street, like you see in the media, where there are just hundreds and hundreds of Chinese people hurrying down the road. We went to a main shopping area but sadly I didn’t get to see my street. : ( We did however find an amusing store. It was five flights tall and absolutely packed full of fake merchandise, often with some brilliant Chinglish slogans. Since then we’ve realised that almost everything over here is more likely to be fake than genuine, but rarely do you find just one location where EVERYTHING in sight is fake. Copyright theft, anybody?
On Monday 27th we had to change hostels. There was a problem with our booking for some reason, and so we moved to the Templeside shop 2 for one night, to return to shop 1 on Tuesday morning. To get through the hutongs without damaging our suitcases we borrowed a little pull cart and were taken to the hostel by one of the daughters (or nieces? General staff members? Who’s to know?), which I suppose finally merited some of the staring we always got. After that we visited the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace is particularly stunning, but also dangerous to those with heart problems, breathing problems, or who are generally not mountain climbers in exquisite physical condition. It was the summer residence of the various emperors through the ages, and practically every sign emphasized how the English destroyed the palace on various occasions, usually just after the Chinese had renovated it from the destruction of the previous English attack. My, how proud I felt. The whole day was absolutely hilarious, as Liam and I spent far too much of it collapsing from heat and exhaustion. Added to the food poisoning I had picked up in Turkey, I also fell off a foot-high kerb and sprained by ankle badly. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to sightsee at all in Beijing but my ankle held up well. At the summer palace my ankle condition was obviously exacerbated which was unfortunate as we still had the Great Wall to go. We spent the entire day there until we had seen it all. One particularly nice bit of the Palace is Suzhou Street. Suzhou is a city in South-East China, near Shanghai. Basically it’s a model of an ancient street, and all the way down it are little stalls and shops (basically tourist traps, but still worth seeing). I bought my name in calligraphy from a very very old gentleman – done more beautifully than I could ever hope to reproduce – and also got up in an empress outfit and headdress and had my photo taken. Liam and I also got a keyring made from a photo of us. The photographer was pretty insistent that we were a couple despite our protestations to the contrary so the photo looks a little romantic. At the Summer Palace, as in most of the tourist sites in Beijing, there are several little museums and exhibitions. We were getting quite fed up of being surrounded by huge groups of ignorant American tourists already at this stage (sorry any American readers) and so when we were in an exhibition at the Summer Palace, after checking that there were no Americans in sight, we spent a good half hour mimicking and taking off their stupidity. As we came to leave, I watched as a museum attendant approached the ‘Chinese’ man who had been following our path around the entire exhibition and speak to him. To which he replied, “I’m sorry, I’m not Chinese.” in what was clearly an American accent. Whoops. I’d like to say Liam and I learnt from this but we didn’t. By this point it was about quarter to five. We were scheduled on a Beijing Opera trip at six and so we hopped on a bus home. We waited without a driver for a fair while and I bought a pea flavoured ice lolly out of curiosity. Never again. I had to run off the bus to throw it away and then back on again.
The bus journey took well over an hour and we ran into the hostel late. Fortunately we still got to go the opera, which is so far from what I knew to be opera. It is sung in a very specific way with high-pitched voices in an ancient dialect, with translations into ‘English’ and Putonghua Chinese for the spectators on screens at the side of the stage. There are very few props and so the props used have to demonstrate a huge amount of background. For example, a single horse whip can demonstrate an army on horseback and so on. Every performer was male save one single woman (who played the main character in the main performance), and every one was made up with either a mask or make-up of intricate patterns. Walking into the famous LiYuan opera theatre was like walking back into the west in terms of the audience. The Americans next to me found the singing style absolutely hilarious and laughed through practically the entire performance, which I found extremely disrespectful and rude. Two operas were performed; Farewell my Concubine, the introductory opera, which was very short, and Stealing Silver in Storage, which was longer and had more to it. Some of the acrobatics in the opera really impressed us, for example the main character standing in the middle of a circle of about 8-10 ‘soldiers’ who were throwing their ‘spears’ at her as she rapidly kicked them all back to their rightful owners who then caught them again. We wondered how the next night’s acrobatics could be more impressive than this kind of thing – if the acrobatics just in the OPERA were stunning, then why does acrobatics need a show of its own?

How naïve we were.

Photos!

Templeside hostel in a Beijing hutong.

The famous Tiananmen Gate

The view of Forbidden City from JingShan Park

Beautiful gardens inside the Forbidden City








JingShan Park temple








Temple at the Summer Palace

Me with 300-year-old man and my name

Liam being enlightened

Battle scene at the Beijing opera

The Journey and Arrival in China

From previous posts you can read that I was fairly stressed about coming to China, as it was completely unknown territory and quite a scary grown-up thing to do. In hindsight, now 3 months down the line, I barely understand why I was so worried. Yeah, it’s the other side of the world and the language and culture are different, but apparently humans have an amazing capacity for immediate adaptation!
Just before coming to China I went to Turkey where I got food poisoning. Sadly I was only just recovering from this when I had to make the journey. After my goodbyes at home in Birmingham, my dad took me to London on the 21st of August where we stayed in a Travelodge and met up with Liam. I was dragging around the world’s biggest suitcase. I always seem to take more than anybody else. However I had actually managed to pack light (considering I was leaving for an entire year that is) and most of my suitcase was in fact empty. Anyway I’ve since discovered that almost everyone who went to China in my class had suitcases of the same size or bigger. Don’t believe Liam’s claims that his suitcase was far smaller than mine. It’s all lies. Besides, I had managed to pack in well over half a year’s supply of both asthma and allergy medicines and tampons (unavailable in China). On the morning of the 22nd we made our quick stop to Gatwick, checked in and boarded our plane. I was still pretty full of medicine at this point so no food poisoning issues as yet.
The first leg of the journey is London Gatwick to Dubai International. At this point the people on the plane were a varied mix of people as Dubai Airport is the hub of the United Emirates Airline’s routes out to the rest of Asia. I was sandwiched between Liam and a Chinese man who was fairly excited to learn we were going all the way to Beijing, as was he. However I imagine his excitement rapidly abated as I kept on having to pop to the bathroom and he was in my way.
The in-flight entertainment made the journey seem a lot shorter than it actually was, and we arrived in Dubai at roughly midnight local time (I forget particulars). Dubai airport is as luxurious as it is feted to be, with gold everywhere and palm trees inside the main walkways of the departure lounges. I was particularly delighted to see such amazing toilet facilities, being in my current condition. Cleaned every few seconds and flushed with boiling hot water for extra hygiene. It was at this point that I told Liam that I was expecting culture shock in China and could deal with most things, but I didn’t think I could compromise on good toilet facilities. Hmm. How things change.
Our flight was set to leave at about 3am, I think. Suddenly I felt absolutely sick. However whilst waiting to board the flight there are no toilet facilities; I would have had to check back out and then in again to go to the nearest toilet, and with the queue forming I didn’t consider it worth the bother. We boarded the plane from the runway, which meant going outside in Dubai for the first time. It’s the middle of the night; all is pitch black. It is 38 degrees. God only knows what the temperature is at midday. I barely noticed the heat, actually, as I was trying not to vomit on the nice lady in front of me.
Finally the flight begins, the fasten-seatbelts signs are switched off and I run to the toilet where I throw up the entire contents of my digestive system. Nice. But from that point on, I am suddenly cured of the food poisoning, yay!
This flight was a lot less interesting. By this point both Liam and I were dirty, bored and quite frankly, knackered. We even forgot to worry about our imminent arrival. Practically everyone on the flight bar us was a Han Chinese. Before landing we were handed several slips of customs papers to fill in. Then we went through quarantine. The man on the desk checking everyone’s slips looked quite astonished to see that I have ticked the box ‘vomited in the last 24 hours’. He fetches his superior. I am waved on. Phew. Next hurdle: visa checking. Waved on again. I stand in China (wow!) and watch Liam in international territory.
We were now both in China, and we collected our bags, which was incredibly efficient. Then we walked out into the arrivals lounge. What absolute CHAOS! I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many insistent harried people in one room before. After fighting our way through, Liam and I left to catch a shuttle bus. The shuttle bus, tickets 16 ¥ each, took us to the XiDan Aviation Building in Beijing. On the journey, I fell asleep. (Only fair considering I didn’t sleep at all on the flight.) Liam, on the other hand, took in some of the sights of Beijing. That is, when we were not stuck in miles of non-moving traffic. This part of the journey took literally hours. I woke up just after we drove past Tiananmen Square. The Chinese government is currently undertaking a huge project to renovate Beijing in time for the Olympics. This includes making sure all their historical buildings are tip-top standard. Work started on Tiananmen Gate (for those who don’t know, that would be the huge building leading into the Forbidden City on which hangs the massive portrait of Chairman Mao) the day after we arrive. The next time I got the chance to see it, it was covered in scaffolding. Liam, however, got to see this historical site in all its glory on the journey. Grr.
At the Aviation Building, we boarded our first public bus. With our suitcases. Most buses in Beijing have two/three doors. Whether it be a single or articulated bus, it has getting-on doors at the front (and the middle), and getting-off doors at the middle (and the back). As you may well be aware, there are a lot of people in Beijing. 10 million use the bus system every day. This means that on your average bus, there is not enough room to even turn around. Therefore every bus has a bus babushka. Invariably women, these lovely ladies calmly and kindly re-organise the positions of everyone on the bus so they are in optimum positions for paying the fare (which, in Beijing at least, you have to pay directly to the babushka unless you have a bus pass), ascending and descending. On our first bus, there were barely any people at all, fortunately. The fare is one kuai (¥) each. Liam hands over a five. The bus babushka repeats: two kuai for both of us. Liam flusters. It is at this point that I realise he is trying to hand over five mao (10 mao/jiao to a kuai/yuan) instead of five kuai. In my exhausted state I watch fairly disinterestedly rather than alert him to the problem. Finally it occurs to me to pay the fare myself instead. The price has suddenly gone up for all our trouble. I pay it, and thus begins our love-hate relationship with public transport in this country. Un-doubtedly more to come on that later.We arrive at our destination (XiSi lukou) and entirely through Liam’s sense of direction – with no help from me whatsoever – we arrive at our hostel, the Templeside.

Apologies

Well I think it’s high time I actually put this blog to use, seeing as I’ve been in China for over two and a half months and haven’t actually used it. I thought it would be a good way to let everyone know what I’m up to quickly and easily… but for that to work I actually have to write : ( Sadly I can’t access the blog in its usual format because of the Chinese firewalls, so some of the things I was planning to do in it like the ‘people who regularly feature’ and ‘some of the Chinese vocab I use’ can’t be edited.
Also I should pre-warn you that some of my blog entries will be pretty damn huge, seeing as I’m trying to write everything I remember so my friends and family will actually know what I’ve experienced.
So my apologies to anyone who has checked my blog only to be disappointed – hopefully now I can get up-to-date and from then on actually keep it current!
x

我们在北京啦！！！

We're in China! Flew out on Tuesday afternoon, stopped off at a ridiculously hot Dubai, then finally flew on to Beijing Capital Airport. Shuttle bus to random bus stop, bus to random street, short walk to the Templeside hostel. I'm sitting on my bed blogging away. The hostel seems nice thus far.
Anyway, I haven't had a proper sleep for 37 hours, so something tells me that now might be the time!
Muchos love to everyone
When I'm next available for huge blog entries, I'll write a longer one about the joyful journey :-$ and what I've been up to so far.
Miss you all x

T-nowhere near enough days

As far as getting everything ready on time is going, I am up the proverbial without a paddle. Hence the extremely sparse posting these days. Hopefully next time I get time and an internet connection at the same time (a rarity in these harrowing times) I can fill you in on the stress that is my life.
Today is my last full day at home. Sadly I can't lie back and enjoy it as it seems I have to do about 20 days' worth of stuff in this time. And it's not like if I don't do it, I can kick back and say 'ah who cares, there's always tomorrow.' Because quite frankly, there is not.
So today, Monday, is last full day. Tuesday I am leaving for London the latest I can conceivably make my dad wait until, and until that time I am being with my boyfriend. This is non-negociable. I need more time with him. If anyone pushes me, I may snap. (Just a wee warning there).
On Wednesday I leave my darling little Travelodge and I'm off to Gatwick. As the situation lies, it looks like Liam will be hitching with us lol. As he is welcome to do, because on Tuesday night, I am finding his room and crying like a baby until he kicks me out. Maybe. I may prefer to drown my sorrows in complete isolation.
Then finally on Thursday I land in Beijing. Which, I'm reliably informed, is 32 degrees C. Also, in an initiative to make the air clearer in time for the Olympics (summer 2008, for those seriously not in the know, ie. on Mars) the authorities are from a few months ago trying to alleviate the pollution levels caused in part by the extreme number of cars circulating daily in Beijing, and there are approximately 1 million less cars on the road in the capital. However the air is apparently (according to the journalist) still acrid, and "burns your lungs at every breath". Oh hahaha, what joy! I can barely contain my excitement about going now, you know!
Oh well, at least I have enough asthma medication to supply a small army.

i has mai visa! mai visa, i has it.

Yep, I finally have the coveted visa. Unfortunately it's only single entry when I was intending for multi-entry. I feel this may largely be my fault. This is mostly because I know for a fact it is entirely my fault.

So, for those not in the know, there are 3 Chinese embassies/consulates in Great Britain: Edinburgh, Manchester and London. As I complained earlier, I was only really able to go to London. Frankie, my classmate, told us that the visa form we'd been provided with was out of date, so I looked for an up-to-date form on the London Embassy website. I'd found the form, printed it off and started filling it in when I ran into several difficulties with what to fill in, because sometimes the wording on the form was a little ambiguous. Brainwave! Look on the old form our teacher gave us months ago and see whether that gives me any clues through different wording. It was at this point that I realised I had filled in the old form anyway. I return to the site. No luck; it was the same form everywhere on the site. I proceeded to find the new form on the Edinburgh consulate site and (after a lot of ridiculously difficult (read: easy to everyone but me) technological stress) I filled it in. Now on the original form I couldn't decide what to choose out of single/double/multi entry on the visa (basically the amount of times you're allowed to re-enter the country), so I left it blank. By the time I'd filled in the second, new form, I'd settled on multi-entry, and duly ticked the relevant box. I took both to London with me. It's obvious what's coming next. London, bizarrely enough, demands that we use the old visa form, so I handed that one in. You pay on collection for the visa, so when I picked it up, the woman behind the counter asked for £50. "£50?" I ask. "It is multiple entry, right?" "Yes, yes, multi entry.[insert mad I-have-no-idea-what-you're-talking-about-so-I'm-just-going-to-agree Chinglish accent here]". Okay. I walk off and then check the visa. Single entry. I realise what I've done. Clearly if you don't specify, they assume single entry. Added to the fact that I'd filled in the date of my expected first entry and said it would last 365 days. D'oh. I guess if I decide to leave the country then I'm going to have to change my visa IN China. Shucks.

Anyway, getting the visa was in practice nowhere near as hasslesome (it's a word!) as I was geared up for. The dad and I went to London on Thursday night, and stayed in a lovely Travelodge. Then on Friday morning we intended to get to the embassy for quarter to nine, but finally made it at quarter past. Halfway down the street we spot a snaking queue. When you see something like that you just KNOW that that particular queue is there for you to join. The British mentality, I suppose. And of course, it was. Made some friends in the queue through pen and pritt-stick sharing (hello!). Kat going travelling for a month, and Ally who is teaching in Shaoxing (I think that's the place, outside Shanghai) for a year. Everybody doing something different. Spotted James from Newcastle in the line too. Small world. We finally got in, handed in our documents, forms and passports, and popped off down Oxford Street for some Starbucks. Then back to wait in line AGAIN to pick up and pay for out form. I found myself (almost) inexplicably shaking with nerves. The whole deal rested on this. No visa = no China. No year abroad. No problem at all. I paid up and then spent the rest of the day being a tourist and hitting all the Monopoly streets. Delighted that the visa is done. I was also heartened by how much I know about China and how prepared I actually am compared to some people I overheard talking whilst eavesdropping during the long wait. Very confidence-building.

SO excited!!!

Wow today I'm just on fire with excitement! Can't wait to go to Chiyna (sic lol). So finally the email has arrived: "yor documintz iz heer." That means that even though our teachers finally decided to send us the faxed copies of the documents as a last-ditch remedy, now there is no worry, as the real things are winging their way(s?) to us right now. Recorded delivery of course to prevent postal injury.
Even aside the amazingness of knowing that the visa should now be slightly more straight-forward, I'd be happy today anyway. Walking along merrily in the rain, thinking a visa-stress-inspired thought: 'ugh, I hate this weather. And I hate England, but I'm not looking forward to going to China either. Why would anybody want to go to bloody China?' Then I stopped in my tracks. (Not literally, as the guy walking his dog behind me might not have been too impressed.) So. I FIGURATIVELY stopped in my tracks. You see, there are two things which are stopping me from getting all excited about China. Firstly is the obvious stress over getting there, fulfilling their entry requirements, getting a visa, getting accommodation, getting to Ürümqi itself etc. Following today's email this stress is slightly dissipating, but I'm not relaxing until I'm holding that visa IN MY HAND. Probably won't relax then either, let's face it.
Then secondly is leaving Chris :. ( I'm entitled to get soppy at some point, y'know! It's really going to be horrible. I'm sure we'll get through it because we've known for months that this is going to happen and we are prepared to be away from each other for a long time. Also I spend a fair amount of time 200-odd miles away from him in Newcastle anyway, while he stays here in beautiful Walsall, so we do spend a large proportion of our time apart and so we know to keep in touch and keep smiling : )
However... a whole year! He's coming to visit me roughly halfway through the year so that's like six months and six months, which makes it a little better, but I can guarantee hysteria when I have to leave him and fly away.
But I have to cope, otherwise I'll spend my year, as my aunt put it, wishing it away. And to be honest, depressing though all that is, this is my once-in-a-lifetime chance, and I'm going to make the best and most of it as much as I can.
I'd quote that special saying 'absence makes the heart grow fonder'... but really I don't think it could get any fonderer.
.....
Hmm, I digressed. So those were my two stresses and now I've decided I must make a conscious effort to not let them ruin it for me, and not hinder my excitable suspense. I'm sure Chris would rather I be happy and excited than depressed over the whole thing. [May have to check this is actually true lol.] And in my track-stopping I thought again: WHY would I want to go to China?? Erm... well because it's amaaaazing, perchance? A sudden flash of images went through my head: firecrackers, and lion dancers, rickshaws and ricketty bicycles and banana boats, giant metropolises (metropoli?), lakes and mountains, neon characters flashing and little dudes with those big umbrella hats (what ARE they called??), kyoot Chiyneez babies and chopsticks... well the list goes on. I admit in that split second my unconscious brain was being a little stereotypical, but still, in those rapid-fire vignettes, my excitedness came back.
The icing on the cake was watching a lovely programme today "Addicted to cheap shopping". Highbrow viewing indeed. Y'all won't believe me, but my immediate instinct was that there'd be some reference to China in a programme about cheap production. And right I was. The presenter's hideous pronunciation aside, this was an articulate and interesting programme, which included some contribution from my new hero, James Kynge. I've owned his book China Shakes the World: The Rise of a Hungry Nation for a while now and it's really interesting. The best informative but easy-to-read book on the Chinese economy I've found yet (not that I've really been looking, to be fair). I'm on my third read-through of it. Now, as so much of this programme was about China, they popped over there and filmed about 70% of it there too. Cue excitement-drool from Xi Han. I'm positively ready to illegally emigrate to wee China.
Feels nice to be thinking this way. Would that it not change.

Quick disclaimer.

小高， in terms of this blog, 我希望你知道我要偷每个的你做的主意。kthxbai. Yeah my Chinese sucks. Deal.

Uhm... I can has dokumintz now plz? Kthx.

Well finally I've got my act together and decided to blog. Sadly though, my Chinese university of choice (新疆师范大学/XīnJiāng Normal University), has most DEFINITELY not got its act together. So, to get a student (X) visa to go to China I have to have an admission notice from a Chinese university, together with a JW-202 form issued by the Chinese government. Hmm. It appears I have NEITHER of these. No forms = no visa. No visa = no China. My flight is booked so I'd kinda like to know I'll be allowed in the country, y'know?
My English uni (Newcastle) has received faxed copies of these forms, so we know we're definitely allowed to study at XinJiang, but we're waiting on hard copies. Just found out from a classmate that actually the embassies only expect photocopies anyway. I'm stuck in a bureaucratic loop.
Besides that the visa itself seems a huge hassle. To get mine I have to go to London. I was originally going to go to Manchester but apparently my region of England is only served by the London embassy, and not by Manchester (which is CLOSER, GRRR!). As I have no idea when I'll be getting my documents I am loathe to book a train/hotel/day off work. And if my boss kicks up noise about me booking a last-minute day off, I could snap. I may or may not need a medical (something to check soon I guess, lulz) to get this visa. I am going to go for the same-day service which is an extra £20 on top of whatever I pay for the visa. A single-entry is £30, double-entry is £60, and for a year-long multiple-entry visa I have to part with 90 of my precious English pounds. I'm yet to decide which is best for me, as being the skinflint (read broke student) that I am, I'd prefer not to pay for something unnecessary if I can help it. [啊鑫 what are you going for?]
Anyway until I have a visa I refuse to allow myself to relax. Okay, that's not it. I'd LOVE to relax, but I CANNOT! I'm rather rapidly being put off by this. So it's not the worst hassle so far in the world ever, but why do I get the extremely ominous feeling that worse is yet to come...?

Me? A narcissist?! Never!

I am pleased to announce that I have been co-erced into beginning a XinJiang diary and, having being thus convinced, I have decided that said diary will be the best ever in the whole wide world so there. Aside from world domination, the main purpose of my blog will be to cover my own personal Journey to the West into the mystical desert land of the Taklamakan. On the 22nd August 2007, I fly to Beijing to begin this year long trip to XinJiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. I expect to begin with my posts will be more than a little sparse, but as the fear mounts, I'll be pouring my soul into this blog. More to come soon(ish!).....