Some say he is a pirate… some say he is a peasant… some say he is a prince… And some say, Kenrick Davis, that if you ever introduce me to the campus in that manner again, I shall have you spayed. For so was my introduction before I gave a speech in the Fourth UNNC International Mandarin Speaking Competition, where I gave a talk on the differences between Chinese legends and western fairytales (compact version- Chinese legends are nice, fairy tales are not). Tremendous fun, we all had a good laugh giving our speeches and listening to one another’s. I felt tremendously proud of how much of the other speeches I understood, though I’m buggered if I know why the Chinese audience found my speech so amusing. They were tittering the whole way through, and I’ve no idea why! Maybe because I did it without any shoes on.
Hello, and welcome to the tenth entry of my time in China. The time here has gone flying by, and it’s tough to believe I’ve been here seven months. Tougher yet to believe there’s only two months left, only one of which will be spent in education and exams. Then it’s travel, trek, and finally come home! My days, the time has gone by. And it’s been a good time. But to blazes, why am I talking as though it’s over? There are still adventures to be had, and still stories to be told! So let us settle down and get to it. I have nothing for our Chinglish of the Month entry this time round, so let’s dive straight into the stories!
My wonderful family came to Ningbo to end their journey! What a joy it was to see them, and hear of their travels. I had a whole magnificent plan to get to Hangzhou (and by magnificent plan, I mean I had given it some vague consideration and Googled the train times), but by the time they arrived everyone was so tired that we spent most of our time relaxing in the hotel! Fine by me- delicious posh food, and my first experience of a proper massage, (a word which I feel ought to be spelt ‘massaaaaaaaage’), which was AMAZING! By the time it was done I was so relaxed you could have poured me into a bowl. There was a slightly confusing moment when the girl got up to kneel on the small of my back and start digging into me kidneys with her knees, but I was too zoned out to do anything more than go “Mnugh?”
So after I’d recovered from that, and we’d had a couple of days around Ningbo relaxing, the family went home. It was with a very sad wave that I saw them off, and a sudden panic roughly four minutes later when I realised no-one had told the taxi driver where they were going. But it seems the fears were unfounded, as they made it home in one piece. And then my own travels had to continue…
Field school trip to Beijing. Now, theoretically this was a research trip, where I would be examining tourism off the beaten track, seeing just how frequented the less well-known tourist areas were. It was a WORK trip. Not in any way a LEISURE trip. Hear me? A WORK trip, not a LEISURE trip. WORK not LEISURE. Not LEISURE, but WORK. Very, very, very definitely, A WORK TRIP.
Shame then, that so much time was spent racing through the streets on cheap bikes while dodging traffic, and then lounging about in the sun. Don’t you hate it when a plan falls through like that? Sure, a certain amount of work did get done. But I’m buggered if I’m going to wander through the Forbidden City, a marvel of ancient art and architecture, or stride the Great Wall, one of the very Seven Wonders of the World, and spend the time there counting the ratio of western to Chinese tourists. Forgive my use of a rather non-academic vernacular, but balls to that. I mean really, who needs to know these things? So while under the pretence of collecting data for my field project, I was once again enjoying the marvels of Chinese ancient history, and the stories it unfolded. Better still, I was able to tell a few of the stories meself this time, having heard them last time I was travelling Beijing. Always fun to be the narrator, I must say. So that’s your history lesson there, but what new?
Well of course, there was much more to be said of Beijing. An encounter with a very intimidating camel- I had no idea they were that big, it was huge! Like a battered old rug draped over a wall made of knees. A trip to the sand dunes, where I may have inadvertently transformed a graceful swan dive into a catastrophic faceplant in the sand (furthest distance I’ve ever travelled on my head), and a stomach-dropping disappointment when myself and Camy (nine names Italian legend) had been waiting all day to go horse-riding across the sand, only to find the horses were off making a movie, of all the ridiculous excuses. Made up for possibly, by the tremendous build-up which certainly did NOT disappoint, which was Outback Steakhouse. I admit it may seem strange to make such a deal of a meal out, but let me tell you, after seven months of fiddling with blasted chopstick-sized portions of piddly rice-and-bits-of-thing, to have waited a whole day…
To have looked forwards to, FOR A WHOLE DAY…
To an AUSTRALIAN RESTAURANT…
With REAL STEAK…
EIGHT OUNCES OF IT…
Cooked AS BLUE AS THE SEA, and DRIPPING WITH JUICE…
I don’t think I said anything through the whole meal, as I was too busy dying of pure ecstasy. I paid 198RMB for it, which is twenty pounds or roughly two weeks of eating on campus. But it was worth every single penny. This is also why I’ve dedicated what is possibly a disproportionate amount of blog space to describing one meal, but it did make me insanely happy.
I’m sorry. I’ve now got into nostalgia mode, and can’t remember what else has happened. Thinking about that steak has literally stopped my memory working. What else has happened lately? (This is a further example of me not redrafting my blogs).
Oh yes! I made a pie. Okay, so maybe that’s not the most riveting thing, but it was a damn good pie. I haven’t yet decided whether it ought to be called cottage pie pie, or deeper-than-ever-pie. Spot the literary reference. And I invented the recipe meself, so I was pretty proud.
Back on track with remembering interesting things (well, marginally more interesting), I was due to be heading to one of the outlying islands last Saturday, a place wonderfully and most Orientally named Peach Blossom Island (side not- did you know that the opposite of ‘oriental’ is ‘occidental’? I didn’t), (second side note- do I overuse brackets?), but sadly that trip fell through. It was slightly frustrating to get the call saying it was cancelled at half six in the morning when I’d already taken a half-hour taxi journey to the meeting point, but then again Laowaitan is beautiful at 6am, so it wasn’t a totally wasted trip. I mention this for mention of yet another Chinese person who has saved me from getting terminally lost- remember in Harbin when I wandered, panicked, around the streets trying to find my hostel at some heathen time of the night until a nearby Chinese girl took sympathy? Well, while travelling back from Beijing the first time (when I’d been with my family), such an occurrence almost happened again. The bus from Shanghai to Ningbo did something it had never done before- it required a transfer. I didn’t know this. So imagine my surprise when I asked the driver what time we’d be arriving back in Ningbo and got the reply, “This bus doesn’t go to Ningbo”.
You know that feeling of shock when your stomach seems to just vanish into thin air and leave a hole in the middle of your belly? That feeling of “This has gone so badly wrong, I literally cannot begin to formulate a plan of action to respond”? The feeling where you can’t even go “AAAAARGH” because the sound just dies in your throat? Yeah. It was that feeling. Obviously I checked that I hadn’t misheard, misunderstood, or just asked the wrong question, but nope, this bus was not going where I needed to go. Thanks goodness then- thank it every day- that Sara also happened to be heading to Ningbo. Sara, who works in Ningbo and had many interesting stories to pass the bus rest of the journey, and who most significantly, knew where to transfer on the bus. We’ve met up a couple of times since, and hopefully this Saturday meself, her and co. will be travelling out to see Peach Blossom Island, for a good old explore. I do love meeting new folks. She’s also responsible for having given me a long-overdue tour of Ningbo, and do you know what?
It’s quite a beautiful city.
And I shall be sad to leave it.
Naaaaaw… here’s me getting all sentimental. Not much time left before I return home, and so much to do. Although I haven’t mentioned exams and coursework, trust me there’s plenty of them. This clearly says a lot about what my mind is centred on at any given time. But aye, not much time left, before I come home. And though I’m looking forwards to getting home immensely, I may, shock of shocks, be sad to leave China behind.
So let’s make these last few weeks count! I’ll see you all soon (and I suspect, post once or twice before I come home, but until then- up through the atmosphere, up where the air is clear, oh let’s go fly a kite!
