Fawlty Towers comes to Xi'an

Friday night, 11pm, a young man in China, what do you do? I could go to the city centre to sample the nightlife where my friend is going tonight but I have a cold at the moment, my nose is redder than the flag of China and my lips are dry and white like a Hovis crust.

So I'm doing what seemingly a lot of young guys do in Xi'an - go to the Internet bar. Personally, I find it quite strange that this is their activity of choice on a weekend evening. But they are not alone. There are lots of Pakistani guys here as well. They all study medicine at university in Xi'an, and the only time I see them is at night, when I'm on my way home and they are on their way to the 'wang ba' (netbar). Joining them is a contingent of Kazakhs, both groups playing 'Counter Strike', one of these games involving guns, bombs, randomly placed wooden pallets and really interestings things like that. Actually, it's probably good the Kazakhs are here, because last week 30 of them got in a huge fight with some Chinese guys, and the police came along and gave them enormous fines. I just hope the Chinese yuan / Kazakh tenge exchange rate is favourable. The Chinese guys like Counter Strike as well, but they also play this dancing game, which just must have been designed for girls under 10.

The best part is when you come in after 10pm, the receptionist will ask you if you're here for the whole night or just a few hours. Surfing a whole night's internet is a perfectly acceptable activity, indeed, it's considered 'cool'. If you go to a netbar early in the morning, maybe 8 or 9, you'll see the remnants of last night's Counter Strike battle strewn across three chairs, sleeping soundly now they have killed their friend over 400 times repeatedly.

So what do the girls do? Attractive girls will take advantage of the huge demand for attractive girls, and work in bars and nightclubs, drinking with guys and earning money for the bar. Others will work in nightclubs or KTV (karaoke places), where you pay for the privilege of having someone sit with you. In my hotel - in every large hotel in China - you'll have one of these KTV places, and a sauna/massage place on another floor, where you can get a little something extra for the gentleman customer. I don't really know what to say when these American guests ask me if we have a massage place, because no-one is meant to know about this (although everyone, of course, does). Presumably the customers are mostly these moneyed, fat guys. I'm fairly ambivalent about it, but it does seem a rather sad way to live, for the girls as well as the men.

Speaking of my hotel, I had quite a difficult evening today - nothing but complaints. (And the for first 45 minutes I was looking for my laundry, which turned out to be lost). I had the "I've been travelling for over 30 years and have never experienced such appalling service" speech from several guests - all from the UK and Ireland, actually. Most of the problems are due to the formidable language barrier mentioned in a previous post. I think the English-speaking guests cheer up after finding a foreigner there and like chatting to me about China.

All our guests are are mostly middle-aged people, coming on package tours, seeing the big cities and shows and main sights, etc. It's interesting talking to them, because sometimes they have a completely different view on China. An Irish woman said to me today how hard-working Chinese people are, and how there was no litter. I don't know what country she was describing, it certainly wasn't the one I live in. In saying that, I'm hardly an expert myself, and I would be very suspicious of people calling themselves China experts, such is the nature of this beast.

The biggest benefit of working in the hotel is the Western buffet. I make generous use of the term 'buffet', and stuff in as much meat, fruit, and non-diced-to-smitherens vegetables as I can in 20 minutes. I then have 4-5 minutes to make short-work of the cheese platter and 3-4 minutes to make mincemeat of the fruit selection, followed by a minute or two for digestion. After all, I'll need all the calcium and protein I can get for an entire night of shooting rogue terrorists and perfecting my break-dancing.

The Princess of Belgium and the short one from Hale and Pace

Firstly, hats off to the England rugby team on a sterling victory over Australia. I should also personally thank David Campese (Australian idiot) for his expert pre-game analysis - 'England have no idea and will lose'. Good call, Dave. Also hats off to the New Zealanders, who have choked yet again. To cock it up that many times is an achievement in itself.

For the last few weeks, I've spent a fair amount of time on the Internet, following the rugby. I really should be using this time to read Chinese, but reading Chinese is painfully slow and lacking in rugby-orientated content. My task for next week is to find a place to watch the semi-finals. I found a German bar the other day with excellent imported German beer, so there must be somewhere in this 6 million person city with satelitte TV.

As to the title of this blog, these are two people I saw in my new job, which I started last week. I work 3 evenings a week in a hotel, supposedly as 'General Service Manager', but really just talking to the foreigners, a little translating, a little sorting out foreigner-related problems, etc. I wear an outfit that makes me look like Alan Partridge - blue, white and yellow striped club tie, etc. It's pretty simple work, and I get a free Western buffet dinner every shift. Taking full use of this offer, last time I had, amongst numerous other things, 8 mini steaks.

(Incidentally, last week I arrived for work too early, so went to have a quick look at a nearby park, adjacent to the city wall. Everyone stared at me when I went in, but it's fairly normal in China, I thought nothing of it. Then this guy comes up to me, chats a bit, asks if I want to take a walk with him. I say no. Then another guy comes up, we have an identical conversation. Thinking something is a little fishy, I turn round and there's lots of people standing behind me, staring at me. Then I realise everyone here is male, and that I had found Xi'an's Clapham Common. A hasty retreat followed).

This last week, the World F1 Powerboat Championships came to Xi'an, and for some strange reason they all stayed at our hotel. I say strange, because this is at most a 3 star hotel, yet they call themselves 'pre -5 star', whatever that means. Throughout the week, there were a number of problems, mostly stemming from the Chinese staff being hopeless at English. It's good for me, because I can practise Chinese with them, but it's amazing how bad it is, given how long they study it for. Typical conversation is as follows:

Guest: Can you speak English?

Hotel staff: Yes.

Guest: What time is breakfast?

Hotel staff: Yes.

Guest: No, I said what time is breakfast?

Hotel staff: No.

(Guest angrily exits).



One of the receptionists is actually scared of foreigners. When a foreigner came to the front desk, she would glance up at him, the foreigner would open his mouth to speak, then she would just turn away, hoping this ogre will go away.

I also love the way they deal with things. You ask someone for something, they will ask someone else, they will ask someone else, they will ask someone else, and a long time later you will get the opposite of what you originally asked for. It's like Chinese whispers without the whispering.

The F1 people mostly consisted of Italians, a few other Europeans and some Arab princes. The main thing I noticed was how physically big Europeans are. It was pretty obvious that the Europeans were the ones driving the boat, fixing the boat, etc, and the Arab playboy princes were providing the funding. I saw the Princess of Belgium, but she didn't look very pretty to me. Also, one of the Finns looked just like the short one from Hale and Pace. Maybe it was him, who knows. I've seen a lot of lookalikes recently, actually - last week, I saw a French guy who looked just like Dr Mengele.

Speaking of Germans (good link, huh), with this new found income I can afford to go to the German owned supermarket near my flat to buy some decent stuff and start doing my own food, particularly breakfasts. I just love the garden furniture display outside, and the fact that not one single person in China has a garden. Genius. But inside they have a good array of breakfast materials, so I bought some Chinese yoghurts, French cereal bars and German cornflakes - 'Der knusperfrische Start in der Tag'!! Ja, tasten ist gut. The controversy about Chinese made products has some truth - a lot of things made here are poor quality. But that's why they are so cheap - pay peanuts, get monkeys. If you pay a labour force nothing and ensure that safety standards are not enforced in the effort to keep costs down and profits up for non-producing managers and directors, it should be unsurprising that quality is an issue.

Recently I've been in the local bar a lot, ostensibly to practice Chinese. There was a guy there last week, I guess he could be considered 'cool', he had a friend and some attractive girls sitting around him. He wore dog slippers that looked like the car in Dumb and Dumber, and when he sat on the desk, he sat with his knees up like a kid. These are the cool guys. Another time, a group of middle-aged men, bored with their wives, came in because they heard that this bar had a lot of 'mei nu' (beautiful girls). When the bartender said they had gone home for the holiday, they left because the only decent way for moneyed, married, middle-aged men to drink in China is to pay young, bored-looking girls to sit and drink with you. These are the cool guys.


A couple of weeks ago, I met a person who lives on the floor above me. A couple of times a week we get together, speak Chinese, English, etc. But she wants to watch Friends, which is good for me (nice to see some TV that I can understand). She pauses it in places she doesn't understand, and I explain. Incidentally, she is a Christian (I've met more Christians in Xi'an than in England), and being Chinese as well, incredibly conservative. Yet she has a tremendous ability to pause the DVD on all references to sex and amusing body parts. Recently I've had to explain the meaning of the following: 'diaphragm', 'wood' (the other meaning), 'skidmark', 'burning loins', 'topless babes', 'taking me roughly in the barn', and so on.

And finally, a word on the weather. 4 weeks ago it was extremely hot, sweaty and horrible, now it is freezing cold, wet and horrible. Autumn lasted an entire 3 weeks. Hats, gloves, scarfs, the whole kaboodle has been dusted off and all is being worn. And to cap it all off, everytime it rains my building has no hot water, so ice cold showers all round. Still, I'm not fussed - the main thing is we beat the Aussies.

Do fish get thirsty?

This question has been puzzling me recently. Answers on a postcard, please. Also puzzling are the following fish-related questions - 1), do fish get bored in goldfish bowls? 2), would they like to go out and swim freely, or do they enjoy the protection afforded by a bowl habitat? And 3), we eat shrimps, crabs, etc, but why don't we eat goldfish?

As you can see, I've really been immersing myself in Chinese recently. The last few weeks have been a fraction worrying, in that I've discovered I just do not speak enough Chinese. However, the plus side about learning language is that this situation is not out of my control, and I've found some ways to change it. One of them is the dreaded 'language exchange', one hour English, one hour Chinese, etc. I say 'dreaded', because my pet hate is speaking English to Chinese people. So I'm putting up a notice on a noticeboard tomorrow - '1 hour English, 2 hours Chinese'. Seeing as this entire country is seemingly learning English, I expect to find takers.

As for the weather, it's just as weird as China itself. About 3 weeks ago, it was 37 degrees or so. Then it rained for a day, and when it stopped raining, it was about 25 degrees and has been so ever since, with clear blue skies and moderately breathable air. The feel of the city has changed, there are less short skirts around, men are no longer rolling up their trousers to air their shins, and I've been able to study in my room without passing out. With the clear skies, however, you can see just how bad the air is - all along the horizon line, it's just brown, stretching out miles all the way to the surrounding mountains. To think I'm breathing this in all the time is not pleasant. In fact, general unhealthiness of lifestyle is probably the thing I like least about being in China.

Taking advantage of this good weather, I caught a bus out to the countryside and went to a Buddhist temple. Visitors to China may suffer from the phenomenom 'templed out', which is even mentioned in Lonely Planet, and means having seen so many temples that they aren't interesting any more. This is true, but the one I went to had no other people there, and the temple grounds were a very nice place to read Dostoevsky's The Karamazov Brothers (not his best, ed.). The monks invited me to lunch, and then afterwards I spent the afternoon with one of them drinking green tea and, when he wasn't answering his mobile phone, discussing the wrongs of consumerism in modern society and how Buddhism has the answer. At least, I presume that's what we were talking about, I really didn't catch most of it. I did, however, receive a pamphlet.

Today I went to something called Cosplay, with is big in Japan and involves lots of 16-23 year olds getting together in groups and dressing up like their favourite Japanese computer game characters and having people take photos of them. I was pretty much the only person there who didn't like computer games, and not dressing up like a princess from another planet or whatever, I didn't get a huge amount from it. It was still pretty interesting, though, to see how the really cool kids spend their time. And I had some people I knew there, so I got in for free and spoke some Chinese.

In other news, my idea to start running again has been hamstrung by the military. That is, all 1st year university students currently have no lessons and must do military training, most of it on the running track, and lasting all day, every day for one month. It mostly consists of short bespectaled students in Army fatigues either a) practising to stand still for hours on end b) practising to sing for hours on end and c) goosestepping across the football pitch like Nazis for hours on end. The thing that strikes me is how unthreatening and pointless it all looks. Still, nice weather for it.

Survival tips for China

Fancy a trip to China? Don't forget to pack the following 10 items.



1) Sense of humour. Without it, China sometimes seems a rather grim place. With it, everything becomes interesting and a source for humour.



2) Sense of humour. I really mean it.



3) Some paper/books to sit on. When sitting down somewhere outside, a Chinese person will always sit on something to prevent their trousers getting dirty. The other day, a friend of mine saw someone picking an old newspaper off the ground and sitting on it. Because those old papers are really clean.



4) Toilet paper. None is provided.



5) Cigarettes. You'll often get offered one, so it's a good idea to have some of your own to return the favour.



6) A Portuguese passport. This means, when someone says 'Where are you come flom', in order to practise their English, you can legitimately say you're not American/English, etc and continue the conversation in Chinese. Unless of course, you do what I do, and lie. About 40-50 people in Xi'an have now met a Portuguese guy called Carlos, who looks suspiciously like the English guy their friend knows.



7) A map of China with Taiwan shaded the same colour as the mainland.



8) Haggling skills. I've yet to master.



9) One of those rollbars they have in rally cars to fit in your taxi before setting off.



10) Your business card. I got given one today by some guy who owns an English language school. The English name of his school was spelt wrong.





Things you won't need



Arrogance. We all know Europe is less populated, cleaner, no silly tones in the language, etc. But if you come here with the 'we're better' attitude, there is really not much point in coming at all.



A phrasebook. No one will understand you anyway.



Knowledge of MaoZeDong and the Cultural Revolution in particular. Young people in China have about as much interest/respect for this period as a New Zealand sheep farmer.



A wallchart for the Rugby World Cup. If you want to watch that, forget it.

'Your pronunciation is causing me physical and/or mental suffering'

And so goes the latest gory indictment of my less than stellar progression in Chinese, the world's most traumatised and traumatising language. This confidence-imbibing remark was made to me this morning by one of my teachers at the university. In fairness, she does have a point: my pronunciation is dreadful. I just have to admire the frankness.


The new term started last week. I'm in what's meant to be the 'Upper Intermediate' class, which has about 11 students - half are Koreans, two Japanese, a Thai and an Aussie. It's not bad, but with the teaching more or less remaining as it is, it remains an ineffective way of learning language. While I plan to be in China for 2008, I doubt it will be at a formal institution like this. Whichever way you look at it, and I've looked at it every convievable way, Chinese is an absolute stinker of a language.



Yesterday I spent 3 hours writing out characters over and over again. And the really fun thing about this is, is it 24 hours later I've completely forgotten most of them, so you have to do it again. And again. And again. Until 2 weeks later I test myself again and can write it. A lot of the words I'm learning now are ones I haven't had an opportunity to speak, so I'm learning the language backwards. If you think about how you learnt English, you first listen to it, then say it, then read and write it. I'm doing it the other way round here, and the ineffectiveness is all too visible. I've also discovered the more I know, the more I realise I don't know. So heart-warming.



Learning Chinese for me is a matter of peaks and troughs. Sometimes I feel really good about it, my progress is visible, I can talk to people without constantly saying 'shenme' (what?). Then I have a few days of not thinking much in particular, then a few days of not understanding anything, pronouncing my Chinese name incorrectly, forgetting how to write my name, holding the pen upside down, etc. The my mood goes back up again, and so on.

I can't say I have a huge number of Chinese friends - I have plenty of people's phone numbers, but only a few I see regularly. I discovered Chinese people have many friends, but few friendships i.e., they know lots of people, but have very few really good friends. I'm kind of the same here. I go to a bar and some small restuarants near my flat quite often, to eat, drink and 'blow the cow' (a Chinese phrase meaning 'hang out and chat') (or so I'm told). Not speaking enough is the one major problem I face on a daily basis. However, I've been here over 6 months, and the difference is huge. As the final line of the Chinese national anthem goes, 'qian jin!' (surge ahead!)

Nicknames

The best book I've read about China - River Town - is written by an American guy (Peter Hessler) who spent 2 years here teaching English in the 1990s. He was working in a town with no other foreigners apart from his fellow American teacher. He said over time they developed nicknames for several people in the town, the school, etc, that no one else knew and I've found that my fellow European flatmate and I have done exactly the same. Unfortunately I have no pictures, but a written description is presented below.

The Burger
A Korean student at the uni, so called because a) he's more than a tad lardy, b) in winter he wears a big, brown puffer jacket and c), he appears to have the mental capacity of grilled meat. He always has this dumbfounded look on his face, like he's been airlifted into Xi'an for the first time and has no idea what's going on. He's actually a nice guy, but a complete burger.

Tiger Woods
This is a girl from Thailand at the uni who has a 42-teeth grin just like Tiger Woods. The funny thing is, we both used to think she was pretty. Then after the summer, I said to my flatmate, 'Hey, I saw Tiger Woods today, she doesn't look pretty anymore', and he said he had seen her that day as well and thought exactly the same. While she may have lost her appeal, there's no-one better with a 7 iron.

The Doormat
This is a girl who has been staying in my Chinese flatmate's room recently, so-called because she has a fringe resembling this essential household item - brown, thick, coarse, heavy, all in all, extremely matty. The thing about the girls who dye their hair here, presumably they do it to look a bit different, but they all dye it a pale brown colour. Individuality, Chinese style.

The Duck
This is the Taiwanese guy from the bar last week who quacks when you call his name. It's not really a quack, but it must be the Taiwanese equivalent of 'eh', or 'aye', the sound when you hear someone calling your name. I was there today, and so was he, quacking happily, unsurprising given the recent rain.

FuckYes
This is the Butler's friend (see below) who has been to our flat a couple of times. Typical Chinese girl, a bit mousy, innocent sort of personality. She wanted to learn some English so we taught her 'fuckyes', saying it means 'absolutely right', which is more than a half truth. It's quite funny when she said it with this big smile, thinking she was being so clever with her English. (Her degree, by the way, is English). Next day she phones me up saying she looked in the dictionary and discovered it has alternative meanings. Isn't she clever!

The Butler
Former flatmate who moved out last week, so-called because in the first few weeks of living together he actively volunteered to be butler at any future party. He said he felt no-one respected him, which is probably true, and very unsurprising, given things like when there were lots of people in the flat, he would insist on sitting on the floor. A complete nutcase, I'm not certain his genes are 100% human, there seemed to be a fair amount of plankton in his DNA.

The Truman Show meets Winston Smith

I've suddenly realised what life has been like recently - I'm Winston Smith [the guy from that book 1984] and I'm in the Truman Show. This has been particularly true in the proceedings concerning the university in the last few weeks, proceedings which came to a head this afternoon. I am pleased to say that, like when Jim Carrey walks through the sky at the end of the film, I have succeeded.

What's been the problem with the university? They said this term's tuition fee is 7300RMB, I said not for me it ain't, because I'm here for one year, and according to last year's tuition fee, my fee should be 5570RMB - a big difference. What's more, they specifically told me in February that the second term's fee was this lower one. They can raise the tuition fee for new students all they like, it doesn't affect me - thus went my water-tight, non-deniable argument.

They've been point-blankly refusing recently to budge on this, throwing up the usual walls - not answering the phone, avoiding me, saying 'mei banfa' ['I have no choice']. Thus last week I didn't even go to the university at all, because talking to them is really extremely similar to talking to a tank stuck in wet cement.

My German flatmate is the same situation. So he went there this morning, and came back and told me all about his 'discussions'. Turns out he'd copied my 'Robert DeNiro-in-the-film-Casino' from last week and gave the two people in the office a talking to, making one of them really angry. But it's easy to understand why, talking to these guys is incredibly exasperating at times. For example, the following mini-conversation took place.

Chinese office person: Everyone has already paid this semester's tuition fee.

German friend: Has he paid? (pointing to his German friend next to him, who hasn't yet paid).

Chinese office person: Everyone has already paid.

German friend: Has he paid?

Chinese office person: No

German friend: So not everyone has paid.

Chinese office person: Everyone apart from him has already paid. You pay now.

Maybe the exasperation doesn't come across, but it really makes you feel all alone, and pull a lot of Tim-from-the-Office type expressions.

So this afternoon I go the office as well and talk to someone a bit higher up. We have the usual rebuttals about how it's not their fault, we want to be friends with you, bla bla bla. I told them, truthfully, that I had yesterday been to the cheaper Xi'an Petroleum University to ask about studying there, and also to the Public Security Bureau to check this was OK. A genuine threat to give them no money at all was my trump card.

We continued discussing and getting nowhere for a bit. One argument they had against giving me the pre-arranged fee was that everyone would then starting wanting it. This is rubbish, because I'm not a new student, and the old students have either already gone home (only here for a semester) or already paid a whole year in advance. I asked them how many students started in February, are here for one year and paid only half in February (i.e., same as me) - she said lots. I said you could maybe you could check your records for an exact number, she said they don't keep such records. I said so how do you know it's lots, she said it's probably lots. I said maybe it's no-one else, she said, yeah, maybe it's no-one else. Great, thanks a lot. Please don't go into law.

Afterwards she said would talk to her colleagues and get back to me on Monday or before. An hour later she phoned me to say they have already discussed it. It's amazing - some things take for ever to get done in China, and others can get done super-fast. They agreed that where was a 'banfa' (solution) after all - funny, that. They agreed that I had made no mistake and will let me continue at the uni for the lower fee, on the condition that my flatmate says sorry for telling them how shit they do things, and that we don't tell anyone else.

I'm sure they all now think I'm the most annoying person ever. But did they really think I was going to let them p*** all over me and let them get away with it? Did they really think that? This was their biggest mistake. I currently feel like Perry Mason after a well-won courtroom drama case.

PS, yesterday I was sitting at the bar, and on my left was a Chinese guy who looked just like Austin Powers, and on my right was a Taiwanese guy who quacked when you called his name. You just gotta love China!!