Myth busting

The dispersal of three myths:

1) All Chinese are hard working.

When I was studying at Auckland University in New Zealand in 2004, I used to make my way into the library some time around ten in the morning. I was lucky to find a seat, such was the keenness of my Asian friends to get in and practise for their IELTS test. If I went to my host university in the UK at ten in the morning, I could have had a whole row of tables, maybe even a whole floor, to myself.

It is, however, all a myth. Maybe it’s the lazy ones who stay behind and the hard-working ones who get the opportunity to go abroad (not actually true, either). And certainly people in Shaanxi and north China generally are regarded as less hard working than southerners.

It's laziness coupled with protestations of business that make it particularly interesting. One of the things I hear most often is wo hen mang (I'm really busy) and variations on it - mang de hen (so busy), mang si le (busy to death), mang feng le (so busy ive gone crazy), etc. I hear this mostly while I'm chatting on QQ, the instant messaging service.

Being busy means just doing your normal, everyday job. When they get asked to do something over and above their normal routine, then they just "beng kui" - collapse under the enormity of the onerous task placed upon them. They need a good xiuxi (rest) after that. I'm trying to work with a university on foreign student recruitment, and the people in charge of the website deserve a prize for stonewalling and intractability. They'll go home after eight hours of playing computer games and chatting on QQ and say how busy they've been.

The people in my office who have the least work to do like to make out they have the most. When one of the drivers comes back from picking someone up - a tough 45 minutes of sitting down and rotating his arms slightly - he'll emit lots of 'ooooh's and ‘ai yahhhh’ sounds, just to let people know how busy he is. When someone asks if he is free in the afternoon, he looks slightly pained and mentions how 'mang' (busy) he is. As soon as the person goes away, he sits at the computer playing on his QQ farm game until lunchtime.

There's another guy here who is employed purely because he is a relative of the boss' wife and can be trusted not to leak secrets and to keep an eye on people. He is probably the laziest and most stupid person I have ever met, but he's good at walking quickly and smoking and talking loudly on his phone in local dialect, which perhaps gives the appearance of being busy. He sits in on our meetings, and at the end repeats everything that was said like he's just thought of it, then recaps again (just in case we missed it the first two times), then concludes the meeting.

When our company moved office, I've never seen them so excited. Here was an opportunity to loudly move tables and chairs up and down stairs and show everybody how busy they were. If no one was watching or within earshot, they would probably just sit around smoking.

Another point worth mentioning is that, generally, Chinese people are willing to work long hours. The opportunity to earn money is rarely passed up by a Chinese, and they think anyone who does is either very rich or very stupid. But when they're not working, they do hardly anything. They seem to struggle to enjoy themselves, and ‘playing hard’ is not on the agenda. A group of Indonesian power station operators received training from our company in Xian, and for the closing ceremony they had prepared songs and skits and all sorts. The boss of our company lamented the inability of our staff to have a good time like the Indonesians. I think this trait is actually generally fairly well recognised by Chinese themselves, particularly those who have foreign friends.

Also, I rarely see anyone running.



2) All Chinese people are poor.

I should make some distinctions here. The older generation in China had it tough. My friend’s grandmother had to give some of her children to her sister to raise. My ex-girlfriend's father is now bald because he never had enough to eat in his teens when he went to work in the countryside. Anyone who lived through that period is very able to live and get by and be satisfied with their lot, especially now.

All change, please! Now it couldn't be any more different. Urban kids born after 1980, and even more so those born after 1990, couldn't be better off. One reason is the family unit. The parents pay for everything. Almost none of the post-1980s generation will pay their own university fees. Almost none of them will buy their own house - the parents will buy it for them. They'll find them a job, buy them a car, maybe even find them a husband or wife if they're still single at 25. A new group of people has been formed - 月光族, ‘the monthly spenders’ - post-1980s generation people who spend all their salary on shopping, drinking and more shopping because they know their parents will buy them a house. I think it's fair to say that, compared to their western contemporaries, most urban Chinese are better off.

However, the return part of the deal is that the kids are expected -and have a legal responsibility – to look after their parents in old age, ie, live with them. It strikes me that this has significantly financial advantages for all concerned compared to nursing homes, separate houses, etc.

My colleagues - mostly post-1980s generationers - like to point out my relatively high salary. And in turn, I like to point out that I pay my own rent, buy my own food, pay for my own plane tickets, and don't get red envelopes stuffed full of money from various aunts and uncles. A good half of these colleagues do not have to pay for anything. Particularly the women. The one child policy (see below) has indeed created 120 men for every 100 women, but this is highly advantageous for women. Girls who are relatively cool and open about going out for a good time never pay for anything. They're not expected to pitch in for the house. While many want to and will be independent, if they choose not to, they could easily get through life without lifting a finger (particular the pretty ones).

There are no slums in China. Brazil, Mexico, India, Indonesia, most of Africa – places which have had the advantages of decades of free world residence and support – have plenty. The closest thing resembling a slum in China are former villages that have been absorbed into the urban area. They might not be des-res, but they are hardly seas of poverty. The buildings in them get higher and higher as people expand upwards.

There are plenty of poor people in China, and being a city dweller I admittedly don't get to see a lot of them. But it doesn't seem too desperate to me. I was walking through a village the other day, and there were brand spanking new washing machines and big new red doors in battered old courtyards. Salaries are rising for almost everyone while inflation (property excluded) is manageable. The Chinese government is considering raising the rate at which tax is paid from 2,000 yuan per month to 5,000 yuan. This has regional implications, but it is the roughly the equivalent of anyone earning £30,000-40,000 a year not paying any tax.

There are 300 new cars a day on the roads in Xian alone - one million a month in the whole country. One million new cars a month? Think about that. More and more people are going on holiday overseas, eating western food, drinking whisky and enjoying the good life. The wealth is far from evenly spread, and this old route to economic growth is obviously unsustainable and will have only one ending, but for now, the rising tide has indeed lifted most boats, if only to varying degrees.



3) The one child policy is a horrible abuse of human rights, blah blah blah

Simple fact for everyone - the planet is chronically and totally unsustainably overpopulated. In particular, China. In the 1930s, due to hundreds of years of highly advanced agriculture and medicine, the population of China was already over 400 million. Chairman Mao, in charge from 1949 until 1976, advocated "more is stronger", encouraging people to have as many children as they could. Of all his decisions, this one undoubtedly was the most pig-headed and has the deepest legacy. In 1954, the projected population of China for the year 2000 was 2 billion. In 1978, sanity returned to China, and they implemented a policy which people, particularly non-Chinese, should be very appreciative of.

I've never met one single person who has said anything other than "there's too many people" in this country. It's so blindingly obvious. Try getting on a bus in any city in rush hour (or any hour for that matter). I've taken over a thousand journeys on urban buses. Quite often I was unable to actually get on it, let alone sit somewhere. There are people everywhere all the time. To find peace and solitude like that depicted in ancient paintings is a challenge in itself. Hard seats on the train are also a must-see for those human rights flag wavers. What about the right to some food and a place to live, something which would be impossible without the policy?

It's illegal to have a kid outside of marriage, giving birth is expensive, and you need permission before having a kid. It sounds pretty awful ('draconian' seems to be the adjective of choice in certain circles). No one particularly likes it. But Chinese are too practical and the situation too obvious for them to do anything other than accept it. With the massive increase in wealth that has now come about, a significant number of urban women only want one child now anyway, and almost none of them want more than two.

I like the phrase "responsible member of the international community". It usually has connotations of terrorism. But overpopulation is much more serious. And when it comes to population, China has been very responsible - due to its own reasoning rather than any desire to be a responsible member of the international community.

The policy is not as strict as it is made out. People from the countryside can, under certain circumstances, have two or even three kids. Ethnic minorities can have two or three. Obviously the rich and corrupt can get around it, and it has created a generation of ‘little emperors' - selfish, bad tempered and dependent children. The gender gap is also a real and undesirable side effect. But aside from the above points, do you really want a huge and increasingly wealthy foreign population spilling onto your doorstep? I didn't think so.

Modern concubines

Last Wednesday was the second of my two recent appearances at the local TV station to be one of the guests in a “light-hearted” chat show. For both topics, the person in charge thought it would be interesting to hear the “foreign” point of view, so I got invited along.

The topic of the first programme was something I became aware of a good year and a half after coming to Xian. It’s 'ernai', literally meaning ‘second grandmother’ but actually meaning private prostitute. I suppose the ancient term is concubine.

An ernai (sometimes called xiao san, or small three) is a girl, usually a university student, who, in return for large amounts of money, plus a car, a flat, etc, agrees to be the private prostitute for a rich man, usually a businessman or government official. It’s called ‘to be wrapped up’ (bao), which means that in return for having her material needs fully taken care of, she agrees to be on call whenever he needs someone to make him ‘comfortable’, to sit with him when he’s drinking baijiu with his friends, go on holiday with him, and to not do anything of that nature with anyone else.

After hearing about it the first time, I was pretty surprised. Afterwards, every single time I asked someone about it, they looked at me like I just asked them “Have you ever heard of chopsticks?”. It’s now such a common thing, no one pays attention to it anymore. One girl friend of mine who was a student at the Xian Film University and is in the know about things like this said about 10-15 percent of girls in her year were ernai, while another 30-40 percent worked as “masseurs”, “waitresses” in KTV bars, or prostitutes in high-class hotels.

If you ever see a red car, particularly a red Mazda, in China, it’s probably being driven by an ernai (or the “dakuan”, rich man, who is her ‘employer’). Beijing Foreign Languages University is the most famous in China for its legions of ernai. It’s the same at the universities here with the prettier students, ie, the music university, the arts university and the foreign languages university. Every Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, there’ll be piles of expensive German cars, usually black, waiting outside the main gate. A small procession of girls come tottering out on high heels and park themselves in the front seat before driving off. One of my colleagues at work tried to deny this happens, and everyone rolled their eyes. It’s fairly well accepted that the vast majority of eligible men (rich and powerful) will ‘wrap an ernai’.

This is, of course, not to say that everyone is in on it. Most girls would not do it, especially the conservative types like my colleagues. I often get told I should learn the ‘good things’ about China, not the 'bad stuff’, which is a pretty lame attempt to save face. However, I’m still fairly surprised by how most 'eligible' people would consider it and indeed do it. Most people talk about it like it’s nothing. I've been told that any man who can afford one will have one, while the richer ones will have two or more. I’ve got a friend from the music university who helps rich guys make contact with willing ernai from the ranks of her classmates.

The reasons for it are probably numerous. Most men over forty got married early in a much more austere age than now. With their one child grown up, wife unlikely to divorce him, and the money rolling in, the temptation is not insignificant. As for the girls, it’s a huge amount of very easy money in a highly competitive, over-populated country. A slightly more cynical take on it would be that it shows the pre-eminent position of money and materialism in modern Chinese society.

The topic of the second programme was why married women ‘stretch over the wall like a red apricot’. Or, in modern terms, why do they have affairs. I made the point that a lot of Chinese men, even now, tend to be nice and loyal before getting married, then after getting married and earning more money, they start to ‘wan’, or play around. I also said that sex life is near the bottom of the list for the vast majority of people when it comes to choosing a lifelong partner. Money, in the form of rich parents, stable job, high salary, etc, tend to be at the top of the list. These points were not denied. The other special guest, a 29-year-old psychologist, had just got divorced three days previously after discovering her husband had four different girlfriends during their four years of marriage, and never once came home before 2am.

In modern China, there seem to be ancient ways of thinking, communist (1949-1976) ways of thinking and ‘modern’ ways of thinking all jumbled into one and spread across different generations. Coupled with the unprecedented speed of unsustainable economic development, it’s hard to get to grips with it, particularly for the only children. As they say, ‘the forest is big, it contains every type of bird’.

Christmas, New Year and other bits and pieces...

Christmas passed without much happening. Despite the enormous popularity of Christmas among the younger generations, it's far from a public holiday so everyone went to work as normal. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, though, it seemed all of Xian came out to wander round the streets. The centre of town was blocked off to cars (although not my electric scooter) from four in the afternoon. By 7 o'clock, the streets that are normally choc-a-bloc with cars were even more choc-a-bloc with what can only be described as hordes of people. Hawkers were also out in force, selling Halloween face masks, Santa hats and a general array of absolute pap.

I did receive one Christmas card. I have a friend who works in the provincial trade department, and she said (the day before Christmas) that she would send me a card. So it was to my sheer delight, a week after Christmas, that I received yuletide greetings from both the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade Shaanxi Sub-Council and the China Chamber of International Commerce Shaanxi Chamber of Commerce. The spirit of Christmas lives on after all.

For New Year, national law requires companies over a certain size to give a small gift to their employees. Normally it's in the form of vouchers. But this year the boss' wife, who is in charge of the money, had a brainwave whereby she could save a few kuai. And so it was that each of us was given an enormous box of bananas and a slightly smaller box of tangerines. I estimated the bananas to number approximately 80-100. Despite being partial to the occasional banana, I felt slightly overwhelmed by the volume and smell of boxes upon boxes of bananas being stacked up in our small office. We were faced with the problem of transporting this lifetime supply of diarrhea-inducing fruit back home. My electric scooter is pretty good, but it was not designed to transport cargo. So I took about 30 of them out, and left the rest to someone else. I think he sold them over the weekend.

The day before New Year, the news headlines popped up on my QQ (the ubiquitous instant messaging service) with a report about 'Thief Village', a place in the countryside near Xian famous all over China for being an outlet of stolen clothes and accessories. I decided to go there on New Year's Day, one of my rare days off.

After about a 50p, one-hour bus ride from the southern bus station, I got off the bus on the main road running through the countryside, with few other people about. I headed towards a nondescript looking village. Not sure if I was in the right place, I was about to ask someone when they stopped me mid-sentence: "You saw the report on QQ then?"

The entire place is completely illegal, but even the huge introduction sign erected by the village council states 'clothing retail industry' among the selling points of Meng Family Village. Near the entrance is a block of small, single-storey shops, all with a bed sheet covering the doorway. Most of them sell the same things - shoes, clothing, belt, watches, and so on. From my research, it's mostly fake stuff but with some genuine items mixed in. I heard that if you make yourself friendly with the shop-owner, they'll bring out the best stuff from the back for you to inspect personally.

I don't think they get a lot of foreigners there, and I was greeted with plenty of 'hah-lows'. They don't like it when you say you're just browsing, so I said I was checking the place out for some rich foreign friends who were hoping to visit the next day. One shop, unassuming from the outside, had wooden floors and dark wood closets, with a very strong smell of leather. It could easily have been the real deal. Inside, rough but well dressed women with dyed hair were arguing with customers about the genuine-ness of the clothing. There's no fixed prices, so the final price depends on the bargaining skills of the two parties. I left with no damage to my wallet, but a good idea of where to do my gift shopping next time.

On the other side of the main road by the bus stop was a single-track road heading through the countryside with a sign for a mountain scenic spot. Having not much else to do, I decided to take a look.

Having not been to the countryside much, it's always good to have a wander round. I was struck by how empty and quiet the villages were. Urbanisation is taking in people and leaving behind old people to look after the kids. It seemed the kids, though, playing outside on the streets and in the fields, were better off than urban contemporaries stuck in front of their computers with no fresh air. I wa as also struck by the relative wealth. One battered old house with a missing door had brand new washing machine humming away in the courtyard, and many of the houses had big red doors and white tiles on the front, a sign of wealth.

After paying the five kuai entrance fee (50p) and avoiding the enormous dogs belonging to the old women in charge, I wandered up the mountain, Erlang Mountain. It's effectively in the middle of nowhere and not well known at all. I had the entire place to myself for most of it. There were lots of birds and pheasants flitting around among the trees, and the overall peacefulness brought home just how much noise there is in the city. A waterfall was completely frozen over, and I watched some university lecturers attempting in vain to climb round and over the side of it. One woman, like many others, chose to wear high heels for her Sunday afternoon mountain climb, which always interests me.

On the top section was the occasional mud brick house, and any reasonably flat part was given over to crops. I met up with a nice couple and wandered round with them for a bit. Later on they gave me a lift back to the bus stop. It's easy to see why so many people are enjoying high standards of living in China. Their small hatchback cost only 60,000RMB (about 6,300GBP), much cheaper than before. And with their only one child being looked after by the grandparents, they are free to go out and climb mountains and give random foreigners lifts.

Snow in Xian - for one day, at least

A few weeks ago we had some very heavy if short-lived snow, making the usually grey urban mass a fantastic white. Riding my scooter home from work at 8.30 at night along the City Wall through the snow was one of the nicest experiences I've had in Xian...

Winter solstice - beware your ears

Yesterday was Dongzhi, or the middle day of winter. And it was also the day I appeared in the Shaanxi Daily. Click the link below:

http://www.sxdaily.com.cn/data/bsxakb/20091223_9775744_2.htm

The person next to me is a friend, opposite are two of her friends. All very innocent. And yes, a lack of regular physical activity has made me fatter, although in my defence, the angle is unfavourable and that pose was deliberate...

The Chinese text of the story reads as follows:
"Yesterday was Dongzhi, which means, as the saying goes, 'If you don't have a bowl of dumplings, no-one will sympathise with you if your ears freeze and fall off'. [My translation perhaps leaves a lot to be desired.] In the area around Dachejia Street [the street I live on] and the Xiangzi Temple, all the restaurants were thronging with people, with long queues stretching out the door. This excitement also attracted foreigners. This foreign chap is enjoying his dumplings on Dongzhi just like us Chinese!"

Google Translate produces a slightly different version, perhaps showing that computers can't do everything:
“Yesterday was the 24 integrity of the winter solstice, folk known as "the winter solstice misconduct dumplings bowl, frozen out Ear nobody, "the folk. The day, reporters in the cart Wenjiaxiang Xi'an, Hunan several sub-Temple Street The shop selling dumplings, dumplings and saw people who's interest is high, and everyone at the door waiting in a long Long. This lively scenes are infected with a foreigner. You see, the foreign dignitaries and the Chinese people, like the Winter Solstice dumplings to eat something!”

Apologies for the infection...

Yesterday I think I had about ten to fifteen people ask me if had eaten jiaozi (dumplings). Being a foreigner and generally nonplussed by festivals of all denominations, I figured I could take the risk of my ears falling off. But in the evening a friend phoned me up and said they were at a restaurant near my flat. It turns out I go past this restaurant every day, but names of restaurants are even harder to remember than Chinese people's names.

The three of them had waited for ages to be seated, and they called me just when they were getting a table. The restaurant has cannons outside and is adorned on the inside with pictures of emperors and replica clothing from the Qing Dynasty. Given the relationship in the past between the Qing Dynasty, Britain and cannons, I stayed away from mentioning the theme of the restaurant. Minimum expenditure per person was 40 kuai, comfortably exceeding my prediction. I don't like ordering food for other people, so I left the three of them to ensure 160 kuai was well spent.

The food was actually excellent, as it usually is. The same greenery (cauliflower, cabbage) that gets cooked in England and tastes awful tastes much better when it emerges from a Chinese kitchen. The suffering English children endure with greens during their childhood is not a misery inflicted upon their Chinese counterparts. There was also some beef on a bone. You put in a straw in the bone and drink the juices, then don some plastic see-through gloves and knaw away at the meat. It was actually very good once I had managed to put the gloves on.

Halfway through, I noticed a photographer taking some photos. Being the token foreigner in the restaurant, it was pretty obvious what he wanted - a picture of a waiguo pengyou (foreign friend) eating jiaozi on Dongzhi and holding his chopsticks badly. He took quite a lot, and I'm impressed, and of course grateful, that he managed to choose such a bad photo.

Conversation was the usual unfilling pap. My friend is okay but her two friends were a fairly common type of female university student - immature, no personality, a bad case of Little Emperor attitude and zero sense of humour. After finding out I've been here for two and a half years, they then asked me if I could use chopsticks. A silly question deserves a sarcastic response. I said no, and when I did use them, they were flabbergasted. In situations like these (which occur all the time), I can go a whole evening just humouring myself. It sounds rude, but it's either that or talking about mobile phones or brand name bags or the difference between American English and British English and other incredibly tedious topics.

But getting your photo in the provincial daily – not bad, that.

STOP PRESS: I've just spent the entire evening walking around the centre of Xian. After going to 12 newspaper stands, one bookshop and two hotels, I discovered that my photo has appeared in the worst selling newspaper in the entire province. Of all 15 places, only one had three old copies of the Shaanxi Daily. The answer for this was explained to me by the owner of the last newspaper stand - it's the official Party paper, so no one reads it. Given the unflattering photograph, perhaps this is a good thing.

Oscar breakthrough

Following my appearance on provincial television in March 2008, a few weeks ago I was asked to take part in a 25-minute discussion programme about female university students wanting to be the mistresses and "er nai" (private prostitutes) of rich men. And following that, I was phoned up by different people from the same channel who wanted to make another programme. It's just this sort of random interesting opportunity that crops up now and then that retains my interest in living in this overcrowded country.

Every night on Shaanxi TV 2 there's a 30-minute mini-soap, different every night, all made by amateurs. Collectively they are known as bai shi. I took part in one back in 2007. Everyone speaks in local dialect, which varies from being very similar to standard Mandarin to completely unintelligible, especially to me. The point is that the stories reflect the lives of the average person, or laobaoixing (old hundred names). The programme I was to take part in was a mock Oscars-style awards ceremony, and there were to be six judges, with me being one of the judges by virtue of the fact that I am a foreigner who can speak some Chinese and was available for filming.

When I met two of the station personnel in Starbucks two weeks before to discuss it, they told me that Furong Jiejie (The Lily Sister) would be one of the other judges. She is the equivalent of a Z-list celebrity, somebody from this province who became famous via the internet for being ugly, wearing tight horrible clothes and performing a series of poses and dances ranging between silly and vomit-inducing. The show was to be filmed over three afternoons, with three awards per day, and will be broadcast over three different days over Chinese New Year on Shaanxi TV 2 - potential audience, 60 million (likely audience, much, much lower).

I turned up on Tuesday morning for rehearsals, which involved me watching the opening performance and doing nothing else. For each of the three days there was a fairly elaborate act involving the presenters, nominees for the awards and various dancers. There was also an in-house band, complete with electric drumkit, keyboard for making amusing noises when something funny was said and an array of interesting outfits, my favourite being on day two when they dressed up like Viennese aristocrats. The judges - myself, Furong, a film director, a comedian, a professor of arts and a representative from the show's sponsor – got to sit back and watch the on-site director getting in a flap when the nominees, all amateur actors, stood in the wrong place and didn't move when they were supposed to.

For most of the awards, the actors would introduce themselves, then we the judges would vote for who to get rid of. Then the audience (30 or so people on either side behind each of the two rows of judges) would have their say. Some of the awards included some secretly filmed clips where the nominees had been set up and covertly filmed, Jeremy Beadle style. Then the actors and presenters and judges would have some easy back-and-forth light-hearted banter about who should win and why, then we would have the final vote and present the awards (a clear plastic Oscar-like trophy and a piece of tarted up A4 masquerading as a certificate).

The most entertaining category was the Male Impersonating A Woman, which involved some humorous alternative uses for mantou (steamed buns). Some of the other categories, though, failed to get the atmosphere going, particularly when for one prize only one nominee turned up. It's also evident that amateur actors doing comedy is much more successful than amateur actors doing serious acting. With the overall nature of the show being a cross between a variety show, talk show and prize-giving ceremony, it was quite difficult to really get into it. I replied when asked, made a few light-hearted comments (most of which were drowned out by the accompanying keyboard sounds), but didn't 'shine' as I think I would have liked to. My career in provincial television hangs in the balance.

I didn't do myself any favours after filming on the final day, either. I was talking slightly nervously to the male presenter, Shitou (a very big cheese in Shaanxi province), and some other people outside in the car park. I have a tremendous habit of missing a key sentence at a key time. He said something about going to dinner with the other guys. However, I didn't really catch it, and assumed he was talking to the other people, which looking back on it is unlikely. So that was another chance missed. Although at least I did get a phone number, so we live and hope.

Riding a scooter in Xi'an

Winter cracked into action today, producing clear nostrils, cold fingers, stinging ears and a quickened step. I had the first three, but not the last, because as the proud new owner of a Xinri Electric Scooter, I don't have to walk to the bus stop. Instead, I can cruise past it on my way to work in coal-powered, psuedo-environmentally friendly silence.

I’ve been waiting a long time to buy one. My research told me that Xinri was the most reliable make, and if the adverts painted on the sides of the 704 bus are anything to go by, it appears Jackie Chan also drives a Xinri. That effectively was a deal clincher for me.

It comes with five different methods for locking it. Mostly I only have to use two, because my flat and workplace have secure parking places, and there are plenty of makeshift ‘bike parks’ around the city where you pay 1 kuai (10p) and get it looked after. However, leave it outside in an unfortunate position and that may be the last I see of it.

It also comes with a sort of rain cover that you drape over yourself when riding in rain. Whenever it rains, Xian becomes dotted with people wearing an assortment of different-coloured plastic sheets whizzing through puddles. Only at the third attempt did I manage to correctly put it on, thinking the two holes for the wing mirrors were holes for my arms and the see-through bit for the light was for my face.

The flats where I live have an old brick bike shed where the bikes live and where you can plug it in to charge it up over night. It’s looked over by an old lady of dishevelled appearance and a young girl with a bad limp, both of whom speak a language almost unintelligible (to me, at least). It’s dark and dingy inside, mostly filled with old unwanted bicycles covered in dust. Every time I come in she is either sitting in her chair by the stove warming her hands with the ginger cat wrapped around the base, or watching TV in the little room that she and the girl live in inside the bike shed. Sometimes I stop and have a chat. Topics are almost exclusively about someone she knows in Sweden, flight time from Beijing to London, the fact (or opinion) that I overpaid on the rent of my flat, and that I should watch out for the woman who reads the meter because she doesn’t trust her. Now winter has come, the two of them must be absolutely freezing.

My morning route takes me up the main South Street to the Bell Tower, centre of Xian, and along the main East Avenue, through the arches of the East Gate and straight along the main road more or less to my company. In the evenings, I take a left inside the East Gate and drive along the single-lane road that circles round right up against the entire inside length of the City Wall, until I come out at the South Gate, very near my flat.

Mostly every road is busy and requires maximum concentration at all times, leaving little room for enjoying the surrounds. However, that road I take in the evening is not really designed for cars. It’s very quiet, and passes some areas that retain a lot of original character, not to mention the ever impressive City Wall. Especially now I don’t have to take the overcrowded buses, it is a genuine pleasure to go to and from work. I particularly like being able to weave through gaps created by cars stuck in traffic.

With only a throttle, brakes and the all important horn to worry about, and a top speed of 35km/h (on full battery), driving is mostly a test of hazard awareness. The hazards come from many directions. The large intersections common in Xian are generally controlled by traffic lights, but right-hand turns at red lights are acceptable, so always looking in every direction is a definite must. Drivers of large trucks carrying earth from construction sites (la tu che) apparently have some code of conduct whereby they must drive at a speed of ridiculous or above. Fortunately, they only come out at night. The rampant proliferation of cars is less of a hazard due to the almost permanent low speeds everywhere in the gridlocked city. The main roundabout, for example, looks a little like that one around the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, but the low speeds make it surprisingly easy to negotiate. The bus drivers are masters of their trade, well used to two-wheeled vehicles entwining themselves around the bus as it drives along.

The electric moped is more common than its petrol-driven cousin, but less common than the bicycle and certainly less common than the car. However, the number one threat comes from the lowest rung of the ladder - the pedestrian. Particularly the elderly. I've seen a few minor incidents involving an old person and a car. Seeing as the driver is obviously a rich person and the old person, ticket warden, etc is not, issues of financial fairness are more important than whose fault it actually is. The crowd invariably supports the less financially well-off party with calls for 'pei qian' - 'cough up some money!'. Plus China is generally a country were old people are respected and looked after like children. Not wishing to have a potential mob hemming in my front wheel, I take extra care when approaching someone who looks like it would be expensive and culturally reprehensible to hit.

The elderly and other highly compensatable parties do have one advantage in that they are unlikely to suddenly run out into the road at any angle or speed that takes their fancy, which is what happened in what's the closest I've come to an accident. Fortunately my brakes were working so a potentially nasty low-speed accident was avoided. I delivered a choice selection of the finest words the English language has to offer, and continued on.

In fact, while road rage is fairly uncommon, it's quite liberating to be able to swear very loudly and directly without fear of retaliation. I make sure to swear in English, partly because my bad pronunciation might reduce the insulting impact of what I mean to say, and partly because one day someone actually might turn round and things could get very mafan (troublesome) indeed. Most of the time the pointedness is slightly lost on them, not to mention the humour of combining four different F-words into a grammatically correct sentence. Last week I was going at full speed when faced with five youths walking in the middle of the road in my direction, ie, the wrong direction. I engaged the horn early and continuously, which only scattered them very late, but one was so engrossed in his mobile phone that it was only when I was shouting "Out the way, you f***ing idiot!" at ear trumpet length from him that he finally perked up and jumped out of the way with the sort of expression that I was aiming for. About five seconds later they had managed to remember the rude words they saw in some Hollywood film and directed it back in my direction, although it took a further five seconds for me to understand it, by which time any chance of further exchanges were long gone.

The scooter can also be used as a means of generating income. Some people, mostly middle-aged blokes, operate informal taxi services. While it is technically illegal (and even carrying a second person is also illegal), it's also very handy given the uselessness of public transport in Xian. I've been approached before by people wanting a ride, but when they see it's a foreigner, they keep on walking and pretend they weren't approaching me. One of my proudest moments in China happened last week when I fooled one of my colleagues into thinking I was one of these taxi guys. I drove up slowly beside him and said 'zou bu zou' - 'where to, mate?', the standard greeting. He shook his head angrily. I drove slightly ahead and said it again. This time he was halfway through his angry 'piss off' expression when he saw it was me and his face dropped. Although it was only one sentence, it sounded native enough to fool him.

Overall, it's a lot of fun, practical and a huge improvement on the buses! Presuming, of course, I don't hit someone tomorrow.