Tree spore frenzy

MAY 24, 2007: The last couple of days have been warm, around 25C, but the shop owners on our school's street have been trying to avoid being snowed under. More photos

It seems a certain type of tree here releases its spores once a year, all at once, like coral. Some authority or another here apparently had a brainwave about 15 years ago: "How we can make dull, ridiculous wide street interesting? I got it! Line street with exclusively that kind of tree that releases whole year's spores in space of 48 hours! Yes! People come from far and wide to see summer snow! This sure to get fuckin' Fuyu's name off Google Earth at last...we become very special...most famous!"

But the novelty of a blizzard of white fluff that gets in your eyes, ears, nose, hair and lungs wears thin after a couple of minutes. After that the attention switches to who can set fire to the biggest spore-drift. It's very satisfying, and not only because the stuff's so annoying. It's so light that when you set it alight it burns with a beautiful big orange flame and leaves no trace of anything behind. It's like the lighter in your hand becomes a zapper you can vapourise shit with. Young waiters and shopkeepers seem to lead the attack, but before long old peasants, and businessmen on mobile phones will be stooping every few seconds to light up a quick blaze.

Strange, balding teacher

MAY 23, 2007: Dined last night with a strange, balding teacher.

He had phased me into reading 600 English words into a microphone for him. "Teacher Shen" is a 50-year-old, chain smoking, computer whiz Chinese English teacher. He says he's a descendant of Confucius, 75th generation or so and for some reason he was contantly trying to rope me in to learn his 'Cool Edit' sound recording program. I don't really know why. But his views on Chairman Mao were fascinating.

His landowning family had everything taken away when the Communists won the Chinese Civil War and he grew up in extreme poverty. His 80-year-old grandfather was severely beaten by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution and died shortly after. However, he said Mao was not to blame: "This was the lower classes," he said, "they took the wrong meaning from Mao's words."



Nor was Mao to blame for the Great Leap Forward disaster, according to Teacher Shen. That was the peasants obeying Mao's instructions too eagerly. After 100 years of occupation, "everyone wanted to help make the nation stronger". This explained why the peasants went into giant farming communes and melted their tools to make useless pig-iron while they starved as food continued being exported. According to "Teacher Shen", at the height of the famine Mao ate pork only "once in six months.

"So," he added, "I love Mao very much because he was a true servant of the people."

Teacher Shen seems to have been rather successfully (re?)educated. But strangest of all when he was younger he used to think his family's dispossession was right. Back in those days, he said, "it was a great honour to be poor. The poorer the better."
But now he says it was wrong. I've met quite a few people with these apparent contradictions in thinking. Maybe, due to the rote-learning education system - one in which a teacher might tell a class, "cats eat mice," and a student who questions this will be told they are wrong despite the teacher himself knowing otherwise.

Enigma of Bill, Mongolian millionaire

UPDATE: Having just read over this, i really must add for future reference, considering this is almost all i wrote about the College specifically, that this was a RANT written shortly after a very late call-up on what was supposed to be a day off, at a time when i knew even less about China than i do now. That is, not the most even-handed point of view. So i must add the context here.

Bill is a GREAT guy. The occasional conflicts between us - it's really an exaggeration to call them 'conflicts' - were because of different standards in accepted practice - i.e. employer-employee relations. It's a common tale in China, and one of the most harmless recurring complaints that foreign teachers have.

Not only that, but Bill facilitated an extraordinary opportunity for us to see the country. Generally, when your boss does something extremely kind for you, the initial reaction is to question what the motive is, and of course, i racked my brains over what could possibly be the motive in this case. About all i could see that was in Bill's self-interest here was to be rid of two whingeing foreigners. However, his warm welcome on our return later in the year indicated he was truly happy to see us again - purely as friends.

As such, i salute Bill as a self-made success story of hard work. Some of his business practices may lead other China novices to frustration, but really what it requires is to thrash out exactly what the terms of the contract are to be, before you arrive there.

As such, i must say that Bill is a champion and i would thoroughly recommend any random readers to teach at his school - BUT EMAIL me and i can help you with a few tips - achubb {at} gmail.com



MAY 21, 2007: When we arrived it seemed the boss, Bill, couldn't be any better. However, the longer we've been here, the more eccentric he's proven to be.

He is, it seems, a self-made millionaire. We know he's a fan of paying bribes but he also has devious ways of getting around them. He is also a member of the Mongolian minority group, so the one-child policy doesn't apply to him. But he's 32 now and desperately seeking a wife in keeping with the demands of his mother, who lives with him (not the other way around, he got her out of that village as soon as he started getting rich).

His treatment of the girls at this place is in correlation with his chances of marrying them. His Chinese employees work 7 days a week, and very long hours. The turnover rate is astonomical. Since we've been here at least 4 have left and he recently asked Cynthia: "Do you think Australian girl would like rich Chinese businessman?"

Strangely enough, he had a girlfriend for like 10 years but didn't marry her - the friends of his who met us in Beijing were his ex and her husband! But for all his seeking of a wife, he always sends foreign teachers to the big dinners, like the one in Chagan Lake, ostensibly to drink on behalf of him. "I am not very social," he says. But this is a big problem, especially here in the north-east of China where drinking is a huge part of the culture. On our first night he got a round of beers for the men and a round of warm peanut milk for the girls...and him. "It's only for girls," he announced as he cracked open his, apparently without irony.

He will do almost anything for us - get us cheese from Changchun, spaghetti from Beijing, help us look for a car, lend us money. But he's refusing to pay another foreign teacher her overtime pay, from March when she saved his arse because he had only 3 foreign teachers. He's a habitual liar - he'll 'schedule' a day to go looking for a car, then give us classes on that day. He'll tell us he has the 4 blocks of cheese we asked for but then present us with half a block and tell us his mother ate it (this is implausible - she's a very traditional old woman from a small village!).

He also loves to play favourites - when we arrived we were the favourites but then 2 blonde Canadians arrived and suddenly we were expendable and he starts ringing surprise classes on us. Oddly enough, though, he doesn't care about the hole i kicked in the office wall - "It's cool, man, noooo problem."

He likes to paint himself as a man with all the answers, even when he's got nothing. Like when we first told him about how fuct it was teaching at the high school, he promised a new teacher was arriving soon and would "take over all the classes at the high school". Problem was, he promised the same thing to three teachers teaching 60 classes a week between them in 2 different schools.

Just last night i got served with a 7-days a week schedule starting next week. I was looking forward to my last Saturday afternoon off when the phone rings to tell me i'm teaching a class this afternoon. I ring Bill to complain that this short notice shit is rude, and he tells me, in these words, "It's Wu Lan's fault," (that's the new secretary). I didn't believe him so i said something to the effect of "whatever". And he responds, "I will deduct 100RMB from her wages - will you be happy then?" What a fucking nazi.

But really, who could really hate on those puffy cheeks?

Exhibited in Chagan Lake - rampant baijiu

MAY 15, 2007: It was supposed to be an occasion where we played foreign dignitaries. Unfortunately it seems the most unassailable equation -- dignitary + baijiu = indignity -- is not part of the curriculum here. More photos

The headmaster of San-Zhong High School (the school i hate teaching at) wanted to take us to lunch at Chagan Lake. Or so we were told. He wasn't there, and the occasion was certainly not a lunch for us. It was, in fact, a meeting of the head teachers from all the schools in the area to receive and discuss the recent exam results. I suspect our role was to be exhibits supporting the High School's claim that it had foreign teachers.

Nonetheless, the meal that followed was worth the trip. It was nothing short of ridiculous. Within a couple of minutes of our arrival at the table the 3m-diameter Lazy Susan was covered with dishes. And that was before they brought out "The Big One". While i'm not sure exactly what type of fish it was, what i saw before my eyes was that it took 3 waiters to carry it in on three giant plates the best part of a metre long each.

I have no idea how they would cook such a fish. Maybe they have a specially-made oven. The brute was about 30kg of snowy-white flesh between 8 people, yet still the dishes kept coming. So many, in fact, that a few minutes later "The Big One" was completely buried except for his head. Which just shows what a naked display of wealth the whole exercise was and how little interest the organisers had in the actual enjoyment of the meal. They didn't really need to try too hard for that though. There were at least six different types of fish on the table (only 3 or 4 accessible), all of them supreme.


Then for a reminder of the harmony with which China occupies this part of Mongolia. (A boss-dude explained to me the area was once occupied by the imperial Japanese, and then added that the place "used to be part of Mongolia".) This blue silk-clad Mongolian with a cowboy hat and more hairs on his chin than all the Chinese in Jilin Province came out with this 2-string cello. This guy was a general. No cold metal microphone stand for him, he had a live, human one. He started with some long, droning strokes of his bow, then came the vocals. I say 'vocals', not singing because they varied between death metal and Islamic prayer-time, high-pitched bird noises and a didgeridoo. Then the cello music suddenly changed to this kind of barn-dance music for about 20 seconds. Then it was over. He cast the cello aside, took the microphone and became an average karaoke/wedding singer. Guess there's only so much Mongolian droning a Han Chinese can take...



Predictably, we were obliged to drink baijiu. I was getting a bit sloshed towards midday, when we left. But as we said goodbye to the nearly-untouched "The Big One", it was impossible to avoid the idea that people might actually starve in some parts of this country. The table was still piled so high with food that i really hope the hotel management has that terrible policy of feeding live-in staff customers leftovers.

We had previously been told there would be no classes today on account of the 'occasion'. But that idea was shattered when it was revealed they scheduled us in for classes at the headquarters in the afternoon. So, to get out of having to teach classes we had to drink.

We grabbed two bottles of baijiu for the ensuing boat ride and temple visit. Only problem: all the other foreigners decided to be filthy liars and play up how drunk they were. Leaving me the only one honest enough to actually get plastered beyond redemption.

Then it was back to headquarters to rampage around drunk (me) or 1/4 drunk (everyone else). Boxxy spent a good hour or so trying to get me to go home, during which time i managed to kick a hole in our office wall.

Asleep by 6pm. Vomiting by 3am. Fucked the whole next day. Baijiu is toxic. Stay away from it.

One of life's heartbreaking sights

MAY 10, 2007: It's one of life's heartbreaking sights, up there with orphaned baby orang-utans clinging to tree stumps, sacks of dead puppies, piggeries, mangled ferraris yadda, whatever breaks your heart.

This is what broke my heart today anyway: parents force-feeding KFC to unwilling 2 and 3-year-olds in Songyuan, China under the watchful eye of the "Chicky" cartoon (literally one eye, he's fucken always winking for some reason...does no-one else notice how suss that makes him look? It's like he knows something we don't...maybe it's that KFC products aren't actually made of dead chickens after all. Yes! that must be it. What else could explain both "Chicky's" happy disposition and the constant winking?).

As though advertising doesn't do the job of getting enough of us addicted to fast food. It'd be heartbreaking enough to see in Australia, where we're fat already. But the Chinese are still an un-bloated people. The kids are fatter on average than their parents, though.

If people want to get KFC, fine. If they want to bring their kids, fine. But forcing the kids to eat the shit when they don't even want to? Fuck. I'd do anything to feel the revulsion that's written on these kids' faces towards over-processed, hormone-laden, fried artery plaque. Advertising propaganda sees to it that we're hooked by about the age of 5. It probably will these kids too. At least their memories of the place will be bad for a time.

Improving Buddha's corporate standing - Chagan tourist hell - peasants are bad

MAY 1, 2007: We started with a plan. Rather a good one, i thought. Photos

It was follow-up to the original, 'Buy a motorcycle and travel around China on it' plan that was canned by a combination of scaremongering and Robert Xiansheng's blatant disregard for the safety of motorcyclists. (Really, it was quite weak. There are swarms of motorbikes here, the riders almost never with a helmet and it's quite common to see entire families clinging on to one 50cc scooter. But, to be fair to us, we didn't cave in until we had a better idea.)

What an idea it was, too, when it came: Phase in one of the ubiquitous blue 3-wheeled trucks (they're literally all blue, all the same blue at that) and take it round the countryside - its natural homeland. I looked them up on the net, and a new one consumes 3.5L of petrol per 100km. That's less than my scooter back in Perth. And they're only 10,000RMB ($1650) new. Not to mention how downright hilarious it would be, box and guce gallavanting around rural china in a peasant truck.

So when we started out this morning to see some local tourist attractions, the logical next step seemed to be to ask one of the school bosses where we could get one. This fucked our plan.

As i informed him of the details, after a few intense guffaws his face turned to stone when he realised i was serious. "No," he said. "You cannot do this. The, uhh, agricultural truck is only for the, uhh, peasant."

"But that's okay," I protested, "we want to do things as people do them here."

"No but you cannot do this."

"Okay...but what's the reason?"

"We will go to Chagan Lake. I will tell you 10 reasons then."


We suspected he was more intolerant of the battering our peasant truck might cause the school's image. After about a half-hour, he brought the subject up again. "So, you want to buy the, uh, agriculture vehicle," he said, smugly.

"Yes."

I was buried under a Guatemalan mudslide of 'reasons': "The police on the highway do not like this vehicle. They will give you many fines," (But i see so many of them on the highways!)
"The agriculture vehicle is not allowed in the big cities," (We don't want to go to big cities, we want to go to the countryside.)
"The safety is not good." (Surely better than 2 wheels, which they were even going to help us to buy.)
"You can go to many tourist places on the train." (We don't want to go to tourist places!)
"The police in the other province will not like this vehicle. You will have to give them lot of money," (What can i say? No idea if it's true or not.)

Then he pulled out the brick-wall tactic: "This vehicle is only for the, uhh, agriculture use. Only peasant can use." (Welcome to China, where things just are.)

But his last reason was so ridiculously hilarious it was almost worth abandoning our dream just to hear it: "If you go to some village, the peasant there, they could think you are spy, and may be they hit you." God-dam Mong-gorians! "Because the education level is not high," he quickly added.

Well i'll be damned.

Anyway, defeated, i slumped in my seat and yielded to traipsing around the tourist spots. It wasn't as boring as i had anticipated, and it served the purpose of showing us just how dominant oil is here.

Jilin is not a particularly rich province, but oil just might be the reason for the abundant tractors we saw on the way to Bill's village. There are oil pumps (those big rocking metal arm-type ones) in city streets and in the fields. There are oil pumps in wetlands and at tourist spots, on construction sites and in back yards. And the oil is surely the reason for the Shanghai-esque number of cranes here.

Around here even Buddhist temples have cranes in the sky and oil pumps on the ground. The first tourist spot on the itinerary can only be described as a 'temple complex'. On a patch of Mexican scrubland stand a couple of smallish, inauspicious temples, corrugated-iron wood sheds and hay-walled latrines with roosters inside. This much appears to have been the same for centuries. But among all this a dozen oil wells pump steadily while at least 4 more massive, ornate new monuments to the enlightened one are rising from the dust faster than levitating monks - we were there on May Day, one of the biggest public holidays of the year, and work was pressing ahead on these 4 new Buddha megaplexes in true China style. It's gonna be the Greater Union of Buddhism.


Even the scenery around touristy Chagan Lake, our second destination, is dominated by oil wells and giant gas cylinders and heavy earthmoving machinery. Very few peasants don't have an oil well in their fields, many have 20 or more.

The most interesting feature of this tourist flashpoint (there was a catfight that drew a crowd of well over 100) was the incredible arrays of weapons on sale at the souvenir stalls. Flickknives, switchblades, swords, daggers (yes, the FURY!), tasers, coshes, telescopic batons, vicious, vicious crossbows, BB guns, fake pistols, and...wait for it...baseball bats being sold specifically as weapons. That fight could've gotten so ugly. I was there with my video camera too.




Stewing over the 3-wheeler defeat on the return journey, I concluded peasants must be a kind of enemy within China. They feed the country (though that's changing with a lot more imports coming in) but in the eyes of the authorities they constantly threaten to spark unemployment and poverty by 'descending' on the cities. Except in a few places where it's openly flaunted, the system of toll booths on highways sytematically stops people from moving about the country freely. It's 28RMB to get through one, which is at least 2 or 3 days' income for even a relatively well-to-do country person. And if what we were told today is true, the giant "JI"s (for Jilin) painted on the back of the 'agriculture vehicles' will ensure that no vehicle within reach of the rural poor ever gets too far.




My purchase of 4 Chairman Mao badges and medals at the weapons stalls sparked a Chairman Mao discussion that continued through dinner back in Songyuan. "Nicky", a Chinese girl, says he was 99.9% right. She, along with many Chinese, believe the government only says he was 30% wrong to pacify those who were fucked over by him. According to western history (wikipedia) that was a lot of people. They're mostly dead of course...

But the interesting point about this is how much these loaded, capitalist Chinese love Mao. These guys probably have similar money in nominal terms to us, i.e. they're fucken rich here. Fucken rich in terms of spending power (like us), but not exactly elite or anything. They do live in a desert backwater, after all. But they're pretty numerous (supposedly 100-200 million in China - 10-15% of the population).

They loaded us up with a massive table of food. The price, as always, was compulsory Baijiu.