Or, Tying up Loose Ends, or, There and Back Again, a Bewildered Student's Tale, or, Why Do I Give Each Entry Multiple Titles?
Ah, China. What days you have wrought. What times we have had. What larks, japes, joys, distresses, madness, laughs, fun, and further madness we have been through together. And now, after a lengthy and busy eight months, that time is coming to an end.
It’s strangely tempting to end my year on a kind of Bilbo-Baggins-esque reminiscing, wherein I ruminate over the possibility that my adventures are coming to an end, and my time is come and I must sail off to the Grey Havens/Paradise, but of course really, it’s nothing like that. I’ve enjoyed a fantastic year living in a foreign country, and now with a mass of experiences and stories under my frayed, market-bought belt, I am returning home to get on with life back in the UK. Life goes on, of course it does. It’s been a good old year, but I mustn’t get too nostalgic.
For about a week now, my exams have been finished, and I’m satisfied with how they went. The field diary project on Beijing I got a fairly good result for, which is satisfying given that it was the largest load of balls I’ve ever written. Contrariwise, I got out of an examined oral presentation by instead entering into a Mandarin Speaking Competition in front of a healthy-sized audience and a panel of judges, on one of the most interesting topics I’ve ever written: Chinese legends and western fairy tales. Fascinating to see how different they are (we love blood, torture and horror in the west, by the way, we really do), and fascinating to attempt some translations: Up the airy mountain, down the rushing glen, 我们不敢去狩猎，因为害怕小人 (women bu gan qu shoulie, yinwei haipa xiao ren).
And now, with the exams aside, we’re pretty much free to engage in leisure. The weather has varied from sunny and clear with the pavement scorching our feet, to heavy, plum-coloured clouds making the air weigh down like a heavy coat on your shoulders, even flinging monsoon-style rains at us. And actually, life here has taken the most unusual term, by strange courtesy of… well, technically unknown, but draw your own conclusions. A couple of weeks back, the internationals all noticed that we couldn’t log on to any international sites, even using our standard VPNs. Facebook, Iplayer, even Googlemail, and for a time, even the Nottingham Uni UK website, were just inaccessible. The university fixed the problem, explaining it was a problem with (blah, blah, smokescreen of technical gabble and mumbo-jumbo), and within in a week, the problem struck again. This time, we got an issued statement from the uni’s internet provider, China Telecom, stating that the problem was “nationwide, and beyond their control”. As I say, draw your own conclusions. What it’s basically meant is that for the last two weeks, international websites have been more or less beyond access, bar a few tiny loopholes. If you’ve seen me on Facebook or Skype, it’s because I took the trek to Starbucks in city centre, who’s wifi is strangely unaffected- students have put a spike in their takings lately, as we flooded the coffee shop to keep in touch with social networking, book flights home, apply for student finance, get internships, research dissertations- all the tasks, important or trivial, that the Great Firewall of China has dictated we cannot do on our own university campus. I can’t even apply to be a helper in Notts next year.
But with the lack of internet has come a strange freedom. Where perhaps I would have spent a significant chunk of my free time Facebooking, watching Youtube videos (I consider myself above videos of cats playing the piano, but old stand-up videos or how-to on topics from stage magic to DIY can keep me occupied for hours), or playing Echo Bazaar, I now don’t have that option- unless of course I’m willing to pay for it by buying a not insignificant supply of caramel frappucinos. Instead, we’ve all been booted off our computers and have had to actually engage with one another and the world outside! What a strange feeling! While I’m not exactly a recluse- I don’t spend all my time locked to the laptop- I now have virtually no means at all to waste time on the internet, nor do any of us. I am currently sporting a rather magnificent gash on one shin, courtesy of a football match last week. In the same week I lost a very competitive game of Carcassone to Kenrick, and on Tuesday I was able to supply my recently-gained and dare I say, quite extensive knowledge of the human skeleton to a pub quiz I would never have been to if I’d had internet access (I’m proud to announce that our team very nearly got a record-breaking score in that quiz- we could well have done, if the final round hadn’t been on football shirts of the 2010 world cup- Ollie and Dad, where were you when I needed you!) I’ve made lime and raspberry profiteroles, blitzed my way through The Girl Who Played With Fire, worked through a dozen pages of my sketchpad and a new book on drawing the human body, been swimming in the sea, and watched Fast and Furious 5, which is resolutely the stupidest movie I have ever seen. We are in the beautiful situation of not only having loads of time to kill following the end of exams, but our primary form of simply frittering the time away pointlessly has been denied to us. We have days to spend doing whatever we want, and we have to do it profitably! What a fantastic place to be!
Obviously it does come with problems. My apologies to people back who I haven’t been chatting to enough lately, because the Great Firewall has locked us out. Sending emails requires the trek to Starbucks, and I’m never there long enough to get set up in a decent conversation, so I’m sorry for that. I would have liked to be able to sort my application for student finance next year too. Not to mention the hassle that keeping up with Doctor Who has become (are we all enjoying it? Personally I can’t wait to find out where these running plotlines are going, although please, Stephen Moffat- stop killing Rory, he’s been dead more times now than any Xbox game character I’ve ever controlled).
So aye, life is good. As Dylan Thomos once wrote, in the play I’ve come to love with time; “Time passes. Listen. Time passes”. And soon, very soon now, I shall come home. On the 15th of June, in fact, less than three weeks away.
I feel that’s a good beat to end this blog entry, but at the same time, it feels like I’m not finished. Because I make a point of never redrafting, I’ll leave that slightly awkward transition in there, and now pose the questions that need to be asked, even though I’m sure I’ll be asked them again when I get back home (and will happily answer them again).
Will I miss China? Sadly, no. I’ve enjoyed my time living in Ningbo, and that’s mostly due to the people here. Had we been in Ningbo, Shanghai, Harbin, Tokyo, Dar es Salaam or on Titan, the moon of Saturn, I don’t think it would have mattered, apart from Titan’s sorely lacking atmosphere and decent pubs. That pun was unintended. The people I have met, both within and outside the uni, both international and Chinese, have been what has made this year so enjoyable. I’ve not developed any particular bond with Ningbo or with China, and there are few things from this land I will miss- though there are some, I must admit. The year away has renewed my love for Wales and Britain. So, maybe sad that I shan’t feel any great remorse at leaving China, but true.
What am I looking forwards to about getting back? Again, this is largely down to the people I have missed, in Nottingham, in Aberaeron, and all over the place. It’s been a long year away, and though I’ve kept in touch as best I can, it’s not nearly the same. But there are other things too that I’ve missed while abroad. Sausages. Pubs. Aberaeron’s painted houses. The sea, non-UHT milk, being able to lounge, the Welsh language, British adverts (possibly the strangest thing I’ve missed), cider, British countryside, and of course, Improv. Some of these things are just tiny details that make your home your home, others have defined my life. Either way, I look forwards to having them back in it.
What have I learnt in China/What will I take from my experience here? That I love cooking. Seriously, it’s been my stress relief, my joy, and one of the few things that, when I get it wrong, I want to correct the mistake, try again, and get better. It’s a possible career route for me. Obviously, my grasp of the Chinese language has vastly improved. I’ve also learnt that culture cannot be taken for granted.
Things like humour, punctuality, attitudes to drinking, even what we might class as “racism” – defining a person by their cultural background and upbringing without taking their individual personality into account- can vary hugely from one nation to the next, and can even be almost absent in certain cultures. We Brits here in Ningbo often judge the Chinese students based on stereotypes, and they do the same of us- and of course, it’s not always right. We make the mistake of thinking because many of them have led sheltered lives and don’t have great interpersonal skills, they are all reclusive shut-ins who can’t make their own decisions. And they hear from everyone they’ve ever known that all foreigners are perpetually drunk or hungover, drop out from school, don’t study, are always late, and can’t be relied on. Of course both sides are wrong to think like this all the time, but it’s an easy mistake to make.
I’ve learnt a whole lot of lessons about the practicalities of travelling, like to always have a proper map, not a sketch you’ve copied from Google maps, and that sitting still to wait for a bus is often a better idea than striking out by yourself. I’ve learnt to like coffee, beer, and mustard, and have become almost addicted to iced tea. I’ve learnt to make at least a minor effort at keeping fit and healthy. Recently, I’ve learnt how much you can get done if you cut off your access to the internet. I have learnt the entire periodic table, bar about six elements (although to be fair, I would probably have learnt that in the UK as well). Significantly, I’ve learnt that I have no particular interest in pursuing a career in China. If the road brings me back, well, I have the capabilities, cultural knowledge, and language skills to dive back in. But I’m not going to go looking for a return flight. More than anything, I’ve learnt how much I love Britain.
Will you keep in touch with people from China? Absolutely. Through MSN, Facebook, QQ, and email, there are a lot of people I want to keep in touch with. In time, some of them will come to Britain, and I’ll hope to meet up with them, and maybe show them round. Some will come very soon, some have only distant plans for the far future. Either way, I hope we will still be on good terms when their flight lands.
Are you going to cook Chinese food for us? NO! I want never to eat with chopsticks again! Blasted tiny, fiddly portions… And all so OILY! But I can now make a bang-up pork pie, some really good cakes, and I’ve mastered the best sticky toffee sauce you will ever find on the planet. This goes similar for “If we go to a Chinese restaurant, will you order the food in Chinese?” No, I will not, mainly because most Chinese restaurants in the UK are in fact based on Hong Kong cuisine, not mainland China. Which means the food is unlike anything I’ve eaten out here, and if the staff speak Chinese, they most likely speak Cantonese, not Mandarin.
This point of the blog now feels far worse for ending on than the beat we had up there. But as I say, I always submit the first draft of my entries, because that’s way it feels more like you get to read my thoughts as they would stream out in a conversation, rather than a polished article on presenting China to the world. And now, the time has come to end the written tales of my adventures in China. I’m sure you’ll hear more of them- I can’t be expected to live here for nine months, then come home and not talk about it at least a bit! But next time you hear about my adventures, we’ll be face to face, with a pint on the table, or a slice of cake and a cuppa, milk two sugars. I look forwards to it, and not to mention of course, do tell me what you’ve been up to this year! I have always held, and still do, that everyone has a story to tell. I can’t wait to hear yours.
Cheers, and thanks for sticking with me,
Dan
One final, final note. I realise I am not writing the sequel to a crime thriller, and I don't need to post 'tasters' like I'm some kind of multi-million copy-selling internationally renowned author. But as I mentioned, I'm reading the Girl with a Dragon Tattoo books, and they're messing with my writing style a bit.
