Settling in

Well, I think we are now well and truly settled into our new home. All the mad dashing from China - all done at breakneck speed - behind us. You might ask, why all the rush after seven years of living there. here are some answers!

When we first went to China, we had been living in Holland and simply put all our things in storage, got on the plane with the cat, a story in itself, and headed for Peking (Beijing in politically correct talk, but Peking in English). After a few years of paying half our income on storage fees, we decided to ship our goodies to China. What would be a simple task anywhere else is a mammoth task in China. First of all we had to convince our employers to support us - this meant getting them to "allow" us to import our personal belongings. The we had to get them, the college where we worked, to complete all the documentation required to do this. This actually needed signatures from four senior managers including the President of the college Board of Directors, PLUS, a copy of the college's certificate on incorporation, to prove it was a genuine college - not enough that it had 10,000 paying students and over 500 teachers! This took over a month to accomplish as most of the managers were somewhere else when it was their turn to sign.

After all that, the documents had to be submitted to the Customs people for their approval, and only then could the shipment begin to actually move from Holland, by sea. This was no easy task as it required our container to be transshipped in Hong Kong harbour onto a small river ship that then trekked up the Pearl River to Canton (Guangzhou- as per Peking). Now it was in the hands of the Chinese Customs - HELP. They X-ray everything and then demand duty on such things as a twenty-year-old, old-fashioned, record player that Barbara had bought in a charity shop for ten pounds - she has a collection of old LPs and 45's, but no way to play them! We paid up about 200 pound in duty and "other" payments - never detailed, so you can imagine what they were for. Eventually our stuff arrived in our home in China.

Now comes the good bit. In order to export our things when we eventually leave China, we would have to go through the entire process in revers, only this time have to account for any items we had discarded, like anything which had broken and we had chucked out, and then pay excise duty on them - the authorities would think we had sold them on to some unwitting Chinese person. After all this we ended up asking our shippers if there was any possible way to get our stuff out of China without going through all this procedure. He scratched his head and came up with the fact that we could actually ship 10 cubic metres each out by truck, and only by truck, if we sent it by the equivalent of DHS, sort of mailing it! And it wouldn't even be X-rayed by customs. YES, we said, YES, YES!! China is full of idiosyncrasies, and this is only one of them.  Now 10 cubic litres is a lot of space, approximately 350 cubic feet for my American friends. So we now had the possibility of shipping almost all our things with absolutely no hassle and even without informing the college and having to get their approval just to get the stuff out the front gate. We lived on campus and had at least two levels of security to get through before the open road! If this sounds a bit like escaping from a prison camp with all your worldly possessions, including a cat, it is exactly that.

We were now in the middle of the summer break and the campus was almost empty, apart from a few teachers who had nothing better to do and the eternal security guards. The shippers arrived and we bluffed the truck through the gates. We stayed on in our house as poor Puss had to still go through the remainder of her vaccinations. After another week, the cat exporter duly took us all to the train station where we boarded the train to Hong Kong in the company of a young man who would handle the cat customs at Hong Kong side!

That was it and now we're here.

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-----

Letters from China No 2

22^nd June 2008

There’s a great amount of superstition and “hanging on” to the old traditions and beliefs in China. Like burning incense to the house god outside your front door on auspicious occasions. Also, burning paper representations of worldly goods like money, cars, TVs, mobile phones, etc which you believe your ancestors might need to get on with their afterlife. So it’s not unusual for us to arrive at floor 13 and our apartment to find the air full of smoke from either incense or burning paper sacrifices. It replaces the usual smell of burnt garlic, which the Chinese seem to like in abundance and is not an unwelcome change.

So far this year China has suffered several major disasters, the earthquake in Sichuan is the one most people will know of. But there were others including a massive freezing ice storm in the north and north-west which shut down roads and railways leaving people stranded around the country at the time when just about everyone is trying to reach home for their one and only holiday, the Spring Festival. In our city of Guangzhou there were over one million people sleeping in the street for a week outside the railway station. Numbers like that are unheard of in the west and the fact that nobody died was amazing to us all. Fortunately the weather was mild for February and the local government shepherded the people into the International Trade Exhibition Centre where, at least there was enough room for all those people to lie down and toilets etc. The Chinese army set up field kitchens to feed all of them. Eventually, they either got on a train for the days-long journey home, often sitting upright for more than 48 hours, or struggled back to their dormitories in the factories where they had worked all year waiting for this one moment to see their families again, albeit for a few days only. There have also been typhoons battering the coast not too far from us, sending millions inland for refuge. And not to forget several major train crashes which killed many more.

So 2008 has not been a particularly auspicious year for China and the coming Olympic Games in Beijing. So, much so that people have began to doubt the meaning of “lucky eight”. The number eight has always been considered lucky and the government, bowing to popular belief, has arranged that the opening ceremony of the Games will start at eight minutes past eight on the eigth day of the eigth month (August) in 2008. The reason for all this is that in Mandarin the word for 8, "ba," sounds like the word "fa," which means "fortune". That kind of superstitious thinking would have earned you stiff punishment not many years ago in China. The authorities have spent decades trying to root out "feudal thought." But it still runs deep in the popular mind, and Beijing apparently knows it.

People here believe natural disasters portend trouble for the country's rulers, which is an interesting thought. This dates back over 3,000 years, when the king who overthrew China's first recorded dynasty justified his rebellion on the grounds that the ruler he deposed had lost the "mandate of heaven" by ruling poorly. The belief is that “Good government preserved the harmony between man and nature”. So, if a ruler fell down on the job, there would be strains on the natural order reflected by catastrophes such as floods, droughts, and earthquakes" that augured his downfall”. This was the official ideology until the end of the 19th century. When a massive earthquake destroyed the city of Tangshan in 1976, killing at least 250,000 people, the popular imagination quickly linked the disaster to the death of Chairman Mao six weeks later.

Here are a few other examples of how the Chinese relate numbers, dates and symbolism –

It is customary to eat long noodles on your birthday, for example, because they signify long life.

Words that sound like one another, and dates, have an especially powerful attraction; September 18 is a popular day to open a business because the Chinese word for that date "jiu yi ba" (nine one eight) sounds like the phrase meaning "get rich quick."

August 8 has been regarded as a particularly auspicious date, both for its numbers and for the fact that the Olympic Games, a matter of intense pride to most Chinese, will open on that day. Beijing hospitals say they are expecting a spike in births that day, according to the state-run press, even if it means an even higher number than normal of C-section deliveries.

Parents of prospective "Olympic babies," however, laid their plans before doubts set in about just how lucky the number 8, or even the Games themselves, actually are.

Heretical numerologists have been all over the Chinese Internet in recent weeks, reading ominous significance into the string of misfortunes that have struck China in recent months.

The heaviest snowfall in 50 years that paralysed the south of China over the Lunar New Year holiday fell on January 25, ie 1/25. Add one to two to five, suggest the woe-mongers, and you get eight.

Same with the date that riots broke out in Tibet – 3/14, they point out. Same again with the date of the Sichuan earthquake – 5/12. To make matters worse, the earthquake struck 88 days before the opening day of the Olympics, which perhaps means double bad luck.

Then there's the "Curse of the Fuwas," those five cuddly Olympic mascots, each with a regional or mythical association, that some diviners of ill-fortune say represent a ghastly premonition.

One is a panda, native to Sichuan. Another is an antelope, native to Tibet. A third carries a torch, recalling the embarrassment of the protests that dogged the international torch relay. Another holds a kite, symbolic of China's kite-flying culture that was born in Shandong, in April the site of the country's deadliest train crash in decades.

What might the fifth, a fish, portend? The floods that have displaced more than 1.5 million people in southern China in recent days?

Back to College tomorrow and the last few days of testing. Monday night at around ten o’clock we will no doubt experience the massive setting off of fireworks, as will happen every night until exams are over. This scares away the demons, allowing our students to sleep peacefully. Never mind the fact that it keeps us awake through the night as some of the over-enthusiastic ones set off massive explosions throughout the night!

At least we’ll sleep well tonight in our apartment…..

Letters from China No 3

This letter was lost during the Chinese Totalitarian Dictatorship's censoring of my blog.

Letters from China No 4

6^th July 2008

With the upcoming Olympics on everyone’s mind (and I don’t mean just the Chinese), the World’s attention is focusing on Beijing and the other two cities where events will take place, Qingdao and Hong Kong. Beijing is a capital city that is rapidly running out of water, not solely to the games, but to things like the 30 or so new golf courses that have sprung up around the place. There’s even talk that the centre of government will be moved to another city as a result. It hasn’t taken long for this shortage to occur, less than five years. When we lived there 6 years ago there was one golf course, but with the burgeoning middle-classes the demand for things like this are booming in a city that is nearly in the Gobi desert. Beijing is a huge sprawling city expanding faster than you could imagine, but without the water resources to accompany this expansion. Visitors to the Games, including the athletes, are being advised to bring their own supplies of drinking water! The schemes to divert water to temporarily green the city are surrounded by all sorts of controversy. Here are some of them courtesy of Reuters –

Olympic city's water in state of crisis-report

Thu Jun 26, 2008 2:06am EDT

By Chris Buckley

BAODING, China, June 26 (Reuters) - China's ambitious hopes for a "green" Beijing Olympics have magnified, not relieved, the city's reckless dependence on water from strained underground supplies and a mammoth canal project, a critical report says.

Beijing has promoted its 2008 Games as a nature-friendly festival of sport, but water for the expanses of greenery and sparkling waterways greeting visitors in August will be pumped from sources already battered by over-use and over-engineering, says Probe International, a Canada-based conservation group.

"With each new project to tap water somewhere else, demand for water only increases, and at an ever greater cost to China's environment and economy," says the group's report given to reporters on Thursday.

"Whether diverting surface water or digging ever-deeper for groundwater, the underlying solution is like trying to quench thirst by drinking poison."

The Beijing Games have been beset by worries that air pollution will impair athletes. Yet Probe International's study suggests the Games' thirst for cheap and plentiful water will also leave an environmental burden.

Strained underground sources supply over two thirds of Beijing municipality's needs, and since 2004 the city has also begun drawing on "karst" groundwater supplies 1 km (0.62 miles) or deeper below the surface.

These deep underground sources, stored in porous rock, were originally set aside for use only in times of war and emergency, the report says.

Beijing's thirst for water for the Games has also piled pressure on Hebei, the largely rural province next to the capital that supplies much of its water.

To ensure there was no risk of Beijing running short for the Games, officials ordered a 309-km (192-mile) northern section of the larger South-North Water Transfer Project first be completed to pump more water, if needed, from Hebei.

Hebei is already one of the country's most water-short provinces after a decade-long drought, but nonetheless supplies Beijing with about 80 percent of its water.

A visit there this week showed the canal project has been completed, but only barely, and many farmers have been left weighing the costs of giving up land, water and crops for the sake of presenting a verdant Olympic city.

"We've been lucky with the rains this year, but we still don't have enough water," said Liu Xiuge, a middle-aged farmer in Gaochang Village, who said farmers had planted corn, rather than wheat, because not enough water was available.

Other villagers there said wells were running low because engineers had pumped away groundwater to make way for the canal, about 100 metres across, now cutting through the fields.

"If you dig a well now, you hit rock before there's any water. It was never like that before," said Wang Guiju, a 55-year-old grandmother.

"We've had good fortune with the rain this year. But what happens next year when we have another drought? I don't think they'll be rushing to help us."

Such complaints reflect a much broader water crisis facing northern China and the national capital, where industrialisation and population growth have overwhelmed conservation concerns, says the Probe International report, written by Chinese experts who requested anonymity.

"Long distance diversion is extraordinarily expensive and environmentally damaging," says the report, which calls for reforms to water pricing and economic policy so consumers are encouraged to save water.

Quingdao is currently trying to clean up its waterfront and in-shore sea from an invasion of green algae. The PLA (army) have been moved in en masse to clear the hair/wool-like stuff by hand. Thousands of soldiers are on the beach stuffing the algae into yellow plastic bags which are then trucked off to be dumped somewhere well away from sight. The run-off of salt water from that lot will no doubt cause the local farmers some grief.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong doesn’t seem to be having any problems in the run-up to hosting the equestrian events. I wonder if this tells us anything?

Letters From China No 5

Saturday night took us, with some friends, to the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra 2007-2008 Finale Gala (sic) and Mahler’s Symphony No 3. My understanding of classical music was tried to its extreme to get a handle on the opening movement. Discordance and very loud climactic brass and timpani did very little to prepare me for the beauty of the remaining 5 movements. Written around 1896 it seemed to be a harbinger of the horrors of World War one. What relevance might you ask has this to do with a “Letter from China”? Well, the situation in China today in the lead up to the Olympic Games leaves me with similar feelings. There is not the feeling of euphoria one would normally expect with little over three weeks to go. The security precautions in Beijing have been upped to such an extent that you would think a “Great War” was about to happen. Ground-to-air missiles deployed around the main sites and 200,000 paramilitary personnel tells a lot. The New York Times’ David Barboza notes, Beijing appears to be "less concerned about hosting a global party and more concerned with making sure no one spoils it." Seems about right!

Needless to say, we, being well away from the epicenter of all this fuss, see nothing of this security build-up except for the fact that any luggage we carry must be X-rayed before we can board the train to Hong Kong. The people in Beijing are being subjected to X-rays, metal detector walk-through doors just to get on the subway!

Last week saw us taxiing our way back out to our college to pick up our passports, newly stamped with our new residence permits a relief to us both in the current climate of deportations for any infringement of the immigration laws. On the way we saw more evidence of the recent flooding in the from of landslides in places we thought very stable. Just tells us how heavy the rainfall has been. The fields were almost back to normal with the farmers trying to pick up the pieces and salvage whatever they could. I’m just hoping that we have had the worst of the rainy season and that the rest of the summer will be blue skies (a rarity here because of the pollution) and sunshine. Talking of pollution, recent TV pictures of Beijing show it is just as bad as it’s ever been. It will be interesting to see both what the authorities do about it and how the athletes who have to perform in it react when they get here.

We’ll see……..

Letters from China No 6

24th July 2008

We’re well and truly into the hot part of the year with the day’s highs reaching the high 30’sC or around 100F for my American friends. Two years ago it hit 45C or 113F and that was HOT HOT HOT. With 15 days to go to the Olympic games, I’m getting a bit concerned for the athletes, not to say I wasn’t concerned before now. BUT, when we were in Beijing six years ago it was 47C (116F) in August, very dry and dusty as the winds blow down from the Gobi Desert bringing it nearer and nearer to the city. Dust would settle everywhere and seep into just about everything. So it’s not only the pollution that people should be worried about, think about running a Marathon in that temperature whilst wearing a surgical mask to keep out the dust!

A few days ago three new subway lines were opened in Beijing for the sole use of officials, participants and contestants at the Olympics. The Beijing population has accepted this state of affairs until after the games, as would any people who had been told “it’s for the good of China”. Special “Olympic lanes” have been made in the main roads for the use of “officialdom” and and odd/even system has been introduced for cars. That means that cars with an odd numbered registration plate can drive today, even ones tomorrow etc. The last time I saw that in practice was in Rome many years ago. The rich just went out and bought another car with a number plate with the opposite numerical attributes – no driving problem for them. I can well imagine that the same will apply in Beijing. Now there are about 3.3 million cars in Beijing. The odd/even system now means that the public transport system will have to cope with an added 4 million passengers – we saw the catastrophic results on the news last night.

Talking about the subway lines in Beijing! Six years ago there were three, today there are eight. Not bad in five years, and all the latest technology. How do the build a subway line in Beijing? They do it from the top down. In other words they blast a channel through the city, houses, factories, shops, everything demolished, then they dig a huge hole, put in the subway line, stations etc and finally fill it all in, level it off and plant trees. Simplified version, of course. But what happens to all the people who have been displaced when their homes were demolished? Questions like that do not arise too often here. Totalitarianism has a way for everything…….