Letters from China No 1

Introduction

I’ve wanted to do this for quite a while and hope you don’t mind being used as guinea pigs. I always enjoyed listening to Alistair Cooke on the BBC’s World Service giving us his latest report on life in the USA in his “Letters from America”. This is my attempt at reporting daily life in China as it happens.

14^th June 2008

After several days of torrential rain and thunderstorms, we have a brief respite. Maybe some sunshine will appear as the summer break looms on the horizon. Two weeks to go, some final testing of our students, then our foreign teachers disperse around the globe on holiday, seeing family or just taking a couple of months to tour China. For some it’s a once-in-a-lifetime event, they’ll stay here a year then return home to take up their old lives again, though never to be the same. For others, ourselves included, it’s a time to relax and enjoy more of the surroundings in what has become our home here in Guangzhou.

Since the earthquake in Sichuan, things have quietened down a bit, the Olympic torch relay around the main towns and cities has resumed, although in a much more subdued manner. For people who twenty years ago were just emerging from the throes of the Cultural Revolution, the relay is something akin to Martians walking the Earth. To the ordinary people, it is almost meaningless, just another flash of the government’s push towards modernization. The meaning and symbolism of the Olympic Games is unknown to them, and of little or no interest. If they understand anything, it will be of some foreign culture being foisted upon them for a very brief time in their lives. The daily struggle will return tomorrow, even if it never went away today. We will enjoy the spectacle on TV along with the rest of the world, but for the farmers working a 14 hour day, day in day out, it means nothing and will benefit them nothing. In fact, it has probably cost them an enormous amount already in taxes they can ill-afford to pay. Watering their plants by hand from huge buckets slung on bamboo poles across their shoulders under the scorching heat, trying to get three, or even four crops a year from their tiny allotments is about all they can cope with.

The thunderstorms have returned as I sit looking at the cityscape from our 13^th floor apartment. As long as it’s number doesn’t have a four in it then it’s not unlucky according to our Chinese friends. So we’ll be lucky and not be struck. The lightning strikes the highest of the local skyscrapers, including the highest building in China just half a mile away. Dramatic, to say the least. The thunder rumbles around the apartment.

A few weeks ago we had a stressful few days. As the Olympic Games approach, the authorities here are increasing security, hoping to avert attempts by Osama bin Laden and his friends to disrupt them. Airport-style walkthrough security metal detector arches have been introduced to the subway in Beijing. Here in the south of the country, various people have been rounded up and deported, mostly African , Indian, Sri Lankan and Middle-eastern men who have been trading here semi-officially. There have been Middle-eastern traders in Guangzhou for over two thousand years and today there are about a quarter million of them, so it seems a bit strange to hear these stories. Visa conditions are being enforced and what was once the easiest country to work in as a semi-legal visitor is now more strictly controlled. I was always amazed at how easy it was for some people to enter China and find unofficial work. It’s another interesting aspect to life here. Apparently the authorities have said it would return to the old way after October! Well, at least our visas are being renewed legally by our college after a six-day jaunt to Hong Kong to get the documentation in order.

Last night’s news showed the culling of poultry in Hong Kong after traces of the H5N1 Asian Flu virus was found in three wet markets. Wet markets are still the favoured way for the local people to buy food. They sell live chickens and fish and very fresh fruit and vegetables. It is always disconcerting for us “Guilos – Foreign Devils” to see old ladies walking home with a fish flapping about in a half-filled carrier bag. Or, indeed, a chicken poking it’s head out of a shopping bag on the bus, looking around at us guilt-ridden humans.

No chicken for dinner tonight-----