Letters from China No 17

7^th December 2008

…and YES, the ballet was fantastic. Our first visit to the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and the Lyric Theatre was not only a delight, but an exposure to the hugely varied art scene in Hong Kong.

It’s a strange feeling coming out of a wonderfully professional performance to find ourselves waiting at the Star Ferry pier to take the last but one hydrofoil across Victoria Harbour to our hotel. Even after landing in Mui Wo in South Lantau we have a fifteen minute walk along the beach to our bed. A footpath takes us from the ferry pier past a dragon boat, beached and waiting for its annual outing later next year. The nice thing about this hotel, apart from it being a few meters from the beach, is the footpath that takes you there – no cars, only the occasional bicycle. So we fall asleep to the sound of lapping waves and little else – bliss.

The next day sees us on the train back to the mainland. It never fails to surprise me how simple the procedure is. Arrive at the station in Kowloon, pass through HK immigration in about one minute, two hours comfortable ride in the train and two minutes to pass through the Chinese immigration with a polite nod from the officer. All this tranquility is disturbed by the customs man deciding that we might be smuggling in some floot (fruit) and demanding we place our bags in the X-lay machine for a second look. All’s well and the floot turns out to be the cherry liqueurs we bought at Marks and Spencer’s in Queen’s Road on Hong Kong Island. Again, the retention of the old names is always a bit of fun, and part of the “colonial heritage” that the Central Government try very hard to remove, but the HK people are having none of. Believe it or not, many of them liked being a British colony and Chris Patten, the last governor, is an honoured guest every time he returns to publicise his latest book. His hotel room is inundated with the mini custard cream pies he adored when governor, to the extent that he could be eating them for ever if he chose to do so. It’s not without reason that the Chinese government described him as a “devil of ten thousand years” for introducing democracy to Hong Kong just before the hand over, plus the legal framework of the Special Administrative Region that it became. So now we have a legal system still based upon English common law in Hong Kong, even barristers and judges in wigs and scarlet robes – not much changed there. So it’s a bit like going back to Britain every time we visit, but in the fifties rather than the 2000’s, or the noughties as I’ve heard this decade described.

Back to reality and our last two weeks of term, one week of exam preparation and then testing followed by seven weeks of holiday. It isn’t that bad after all……..

Letters from China No 18

11th December 2008

Last night saw Barbara and I being taken out for dinner by some of her students. You must remember that we live in the countryside here, so fine dining is not on the cards. We duly met at up the college gates and walked the few hundred yards along our not-too-busy-now-that-the-quarry-has-shut-down highway. We reached the “Small City Story” restaurant – some kind of literal translation that went wrong – and were guided to our table. The restaurant could be called “al fresco” as it is actually a large lean-to that backs onto the road and has effectively no walls, well sort of if you count a large photographic hanging of the river and mountains at Guillin as a wall. You don’t take your hat, jacket, scarf or anything else for that matter off to dine here. In fact it’s a very good idea to eat the food as soon as it arrives before it freezes over from the chill northerly breeze that blows through the place. Very hot green tea is served, but before you get a chance to drink it you soon realize that it is being used to sterilize the bowl and cup you’ll soon be eating and drinking from. Dish-washing machines do not exist here, so a large metal bowl and several pots of hot tea are provided to wash the dishes before dinner, plus, you do the washing, but in our case two of our hosts did! The waitress-cum-owner’s wife takes the metal bowl and throws the contents out onto the highway behind us and then we get down to trying to decipher the menu amongst chuckles and giggles when the students try confuse us into eating donkey’s whatsit, but some kind person has scribbled translations on the menu and we are saved. Things you don’t want to mention, far less see on a menu, are quite common, such as pigs intestines with garlic and ginger, as if that would make much of a difference.

We compromise on spring greens (it’s still winter, but they are good) stir-fried with garlic, Japanese tofu and chilies, fried deep-fried chicken in a batter which tastes of star anise, some well chopped pieces of pork, bones and all, fried aubergines, mixed diced vegetables with cashew nuts and a bowl of rice big enough to serve forty normal people although there are only nine of us at the table. Our chopstick skills soon come under scrutiny and we surprise our hosts and ourselves by picking up individual grains of rice and cashew nuts with a nonchalance that defies description. Pots of hot tea come endlessly as does another huge bowl of rice and we trundle our way through what has turned out to be a quite delicious meal. The total bill comes to around $10, or just over $1 a head. We waddle back to our house, sumptuously full, knowing that Friday is our last actual day of classes and that next week holds the routine of testing 100 students individually.

Next Friday we will all be treated to a Christmas dinner, hosted by the local government, in the grandest hotel in the nearest town. They go out of their way to make us all feel very welcome, so it’s very nice of them to treat us all to dinner which will include some entertainment provided by some of our very talented teachers.

A big difference from Christmas afternoon tea in the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong, accompanied by their mini orchestra and carol singers, that we plan on having on Christmas Eve……..

Letters from China No 19

Early January, 2009

Now this might sound very run-of-the-mill to people who live in a free democratic society, but to us who live in a society that is far from being those things, the following is an amazing step forward. It all started with me telling my students the return date for classes after the Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) holiday. I told them that college would resume on February 9^th, to be met with looks of dismay and astonishment. One brave soul had the strength to utter “But, Robert, that is the day of the Lantern Festival. Our families meet and eat a special meal on that day. We can’t be here then.” It’s a bit like saying classes would resume on Christmas Day after having had a few days off for shopping. I told them I’d check with the office and come back to them. Up until Thursday the Chinese director of our department was insisting that classes would resume on Feb 9^th, but suddenly on Friday morning, he admitted that the college had capitulated and that we would resume on Feb 16^th, one week more of holiday. That all sounded very mature and reasonable until we heard what had happened to sway this decision. Apparently the student body had held a meeting, which in its own right is illegal here as the right of free assembly does not exist. They held a debate over whether they should return on the 9^th or simply miss classes for several days and eventually voted on a decision. They chose to forego their festival days at home and return to college in order not to waste their tuition fees. The debate was apparently very well organized and voting was held in a very democratic way. It appears that subsequently the parents had applied pressure to the college board and had the dates changed. These two happenings are things which are unheard of in China. People kow-tow to the powers-that-be and never, repeat, never, dispute a decision by anyone in authority.

Now, we foreign teachers have been teaching the principles of debating and voting in our classes and use debate as a way of stimulating speech. Plus, we have been drumming into the students that they are not merely students here, but fee-paying customers and that their parents pay for what they receive and if it doesn’t come up to scratch, then complain. Complaint is almost unheard of here, again, they kow-tow to anyone in a position of power, be it a manufacturer or the person who serves them their food in the canteen. Now the students have organized themselves into groups who inspect the restaurants/canteens and have a questionnaire they are completing with peoples opinions. It seems that our ministrations over the past six years are eventually coming to fruition.

As I said, this might sound trivial to you all out there, but here it is an amazing change of attitude.

Letters from China No 20

13^th January 2009

Well, we’ve had bad taxi drivers and even badder, but the one today sure took the biscuit for nail-biting rear-ending, horn-blasting, lane-switching (I won’t call it lane-changing) and what I believed to be the after-glow of a very garlicky lunch was more than likely the whiff of some of China’s finest moonshine (they call it white wine here, but in reality it’s 99% white spirit or could be described as a sort of home-made rocket fuel). Anyway, it was with great relief that we convinced him to drop us at the campus gates rather than braving his driving around the campus narrow roads – thankfully all the students have gone home for the holiday.

It’s still cold and frosty at night, amazing as we’re almost on the Tropic of Cancer. In fact a lake in Hong Kong iced over two nights ago – now that’s something! As we approach the Chinese New Year I thought it might be interesting to describe how the years were given the names of animals. After trying to decipher the childhood stories of my students, I finally came up with this. Just before the Lord Buddha was about to leave this world, he asked all the animals to visit him before he died. Well, not all the animals came and the story goes that the Rat asked the Ox to let him ride on the Ox’s head and just before they arrived he jumped down and was the first to arrive. The Lord Buddha decided to name a year in honour of each of the animals in the order they arrived at his home, so now we have the Year of the Rat followed by the Ox and subsequently all the other animals. There is no Year of the Cat, apparently the Cat and the Rat had an arrangement that the one who woke first would waken the other and they would travel together to the Lord Buddha’s home, but the Rat woke first and didn’t waken the Cat, so the Cat overslept and didn’t arrive in time. That’s why cats hate rats, according to Chinese mythology.