Jon Tringham

I felt at a bit of a loss of what to write on the blog last week. I normally try to write at least once a week, and it’s usually on a Tuesday or Wednesday, but it’s now the following Monday and while I’ve managed to find the motivation a few times to sit down and write for an hour, I’ve mainly sat staring at a blank page lacking inspiration for an interesting tale to write about. While I can recount amusing anecdotes from a while ago, to fluff up more recent tales into a full length post somehow seems disingenuous, so the following tales are from sometime in the past few weeks.

For the past eight years I’ve had all but one of my haircuts at the same place in London, Ego Hair on Noel Street. I don’t really know why I haven’t been elsewhere; it was the first place I had a haircut in London when I moved there for university and it just became my regular place for a haircut. I quite enjoyed having a friendly chat with the staff while they attempted to tame my ridiculously thick hair. The only times in the past eight years that I didn’t have a haircut at Ego was first when I lived in Miami for half a year as a student on my university exchange and second when I decided to try using clippers on number three to have ludicrously short hair. The haircut in Miami was terrible, and the short hair experiment lasted as long as it took me to grow it all back.

So it was with some annoyance that I accepted that I really needed a haircut, and I half-heartedly took advice from friends and colleagues on where to go while I futilely hoped that the problem of having to have my increasingly long hair cut in a country where I don’t speak the language would just go away. The recommendations were a place in the local mall, ‘Yes I Do’, that Nick had been to, and a place in a department store near the Bell Tower that Dave had been. I didn’t fancy a trek into the centre of town, so went to the local place. I’ve walked past it many times and it always looked busy, but I had no idea how they’d cope with mine and with me not speaking a word of useful ‘getting a haircut’  Chinese. Nick recounted his tale of going there, saying that by the end of the hour it took to cut his hair there was a group of people outside watching the waiguoren get a haircut, but it only cost ¥50.

With some trepidation I headed off to Yes I Do, mentally preparing a plan of action in case it all went horribly wrong. I’d taken a hat with me just in case and I reasoned that ‘there’s a huge Walmart upstairs where I’m sure I could get some clippers to try having a shaved head again’. With the nǐ hǎos out of the way and me pointing at my hair to explain that I needed a haircut, people sprang into action. I was ushered towards the back where I had my hair washed, then to a seat where I presume the stylist asked questions like “what would you like doing” and “how long would you like it”, but I just heard “blah blah blah blah”. My response was always to shrug and signal with my hands and fingers where it should be shorter and about how long. Eventually, after a good 40 minutes of very one-sided small-talk and every unoccupied employee coming over to see what was going on, my hair was getting to be the right length in the right places. With a double thumbs up my stylist finished his work and ushered me back towards the back to have it washed again.

It’s actually not at all bad and I’m not sure why I was so apprehensive.

The other amusing anecdote from the past few weeks is my new Chinese name. Canny, the teaching assistant in two of my classes, said that I should have a Chinese name. I agreed, and said that it should sound similar to Jon so that I can remember it. Canny asked if I wanted it to be meaningful or cute, and I asked if it could be both. As Canny was thinking of Chinese words that sound similar to Jon and are both meaningful and cute, she remembered that whenever I replace the water bottle on the water cooler I just pick up the new 20l bottle and carry it over, whereas everyone else rolls it. She therefore decided that I should be called 壮壮 (zhuangzhuang), which mainly means ‘strong’ but also ‘robust’, ‘magnificent’ or ‘grand’. So far so similar to Jon and meaningful. So what about cute? Well, 壮壮 is the humorous nickname people give to children when they’re a bit fat.

This has been a short and late blog post. Hopefully normal service will resume soon, and I’ll blog again tomorrow or Wednesday with a full length post.

At long last I’ve got round to editing and deleting lots of my Terracotta Warrior photos to leave just the best hundred.

I’ve uploaded some photos of the Lantern Festival, which marks the end of the Chinese New Year celebrations, and of street food at the festival. Click the photos to see more. I promise photos of the Terracotta Warriors are coming soon, it’s just I took 200 photos on the day and editing them down is a challenge!

I’ve finally got round to uploading some more photos. These are from Christmas Eve when we found loads of people letting off lanterns near the South Gate. Click the photo below to view more.

I’ve been in Xi’an for over two months now, but I’ve only just got round to seeing the Terracotta Warriors. Neil is visiting and really wanted to go again, and it seemed like a good opportunity to go as well. After I got home from work at around 1pm we went to C’est La Vie for lunch. C’est La Vie is a pretty good bakery/pastry place and it’s where I regularly buy baguettes. Actually, as it has a French name I should call it a boulangerie/patisserie.

We then got in a taxi to the train station to get bus 306 out to the warriors. As Neil was chatting to the driver he jokingly asked how long it would take and how much it would cost for her to drive us all the way to the warriors. She said about 40 minutes and ¥140, and Neil bargained her down to ¥120. As the bus would take over an hour and it was already the afternoon, we decided that ¥60 each (about £6) was a price worth paying. It was the first time since arriving in November that I’ve left the city, and seeing the countryside and mountains and the clear(er) air perked me up a bit.

When we arrived at the entrance to the warriors it wasn’t obvious where to go. We seemed to spend a lot of time walking through areas of tatty gift shops, and I got the impression that the official tourist complex has been progressively encircled by more and more commercial chancers. Eventually we saw the ticket office and the entrance to the complex, and almost immediately we were pounced upon by tour guides. The one that got us had an excellent technique for stopping us. I’ve spent a third of my life living in London, perfecting the art of ignoring people on the street who are determined to talk to me, but somehow I couldn’t walk on past her. All the tour guides were wearing official uniforms, and our tour guide said “stop and wait please” in a stern voice while glancing behind over her shoulder. The uniform, stern voice and inference that there was something going on that we had to wait for induced me and Neil to stop, by which point she had us. It was ok though because we’d already decided to get a guide. At ¥100 for two hours it seemed like a reasonable deal.

The ticket to enter was ¥110. It felt a bit expensive for China but it’s the Terracotta Warriors, one of the eighth wonders of the world, so they can charge what they want. After buying a ticket we headed towards the entrance gate, but our guide had other ideas. “You can either walk 2km to the warriors, which takes half an hour, or you can pay ¥10 for the electric car.” Knowing that we had the guide for only two hours, we decided that it was cheaper to pay for the electric car ride than waste ¥25 of tour-guide time. For the fourth time in about 20 minutes I opened my wallet and handed over money to someone. But our tour guide was lovely. Her English for the pre-rehearsed lines was good, although she did struggle a bit when we asked her questions for which she didn’t have scripted answers.

We finally arrived at the first building of the warriors. Wow. This building’s amazing, a bit like the roof of St Pancras station in London, only bigger. Oh look, and warriors made of terracotta, they’re cool as well.

Alright, I’m being deliberately facetious. The Terracotta Warriors are amazing. I’m not sure my writing ability can do justice to how cool they are, but I’ll write a little bit anyway and upload photos once I’ve edited them. Life size and each one an individual, there are hundreds of them still standing exactly where they were placed in hidden underground chambers around 2,200 years ago. Archaeologists estimate there are around 8,000 warriors in total, most of which have not yet been excavated. Everyone that worked on creating the army was killed in order to keep it a secret, and it clearly worked because it wasn’t until 1974 that they were rediscovered by a farmer digging a well. Our tour guide said that the farmer was paid ¥0.5 by the government, and that we could meet him later. I assumed I’d misunderstood but nodded and said “oh right” anyway.

After the first, and most impressive pit, we went to the second pit which is much smaller. In the building were two gift shops. The first sold photoshopped photos of your face as the face of a terracotta warrior, and there were some wonderful mocked-up examples including Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Vladimir Putin. The second shop allowed people, for a fee, to take photos of themselves next to replica warriors. My wallet was already feeling quite violated, and I agreed to its wish to stay in my bag.

After the second pit we went to the main official gift shop. Our tour guide gave us the low down on how much the different sized replica warriors cost. I said I was only interested in the full size replica, a snip at ¥17,000, but didn’t think I could fit it in my hand luggage. Our tour guide than suggested that we might like to buy a book about the warriors and have it signed by the farmer who discovered them. I’d done it again, misunderstanding that we’d be meeting the farmer who discovered the warriors. Then the tour guide said “there he is” and pointed to an old man sitting behind a desk.

I simultaneously felt two emotions: discomfort and deception. The man was clearly on display, as though he was just another curated exhibit in ‘the Terracotta Warriors experience.’ Was he there by choice or coercion. Was he happy to spend all day signing books for tourists and posing for photos. Then Neil said the other thing I was thinking. “In China I’m never sure whether to believe things. For all we know he could be anyone, just the person currently employed to be “the farmer” on Wednesdays.” Good point Neil.

Anyway, then we went on to the third pit which is currently completely unexcavated, giving the feeling that we were looking down at very precious bare earth. In this building there were some warriors in display cabinets, and Neil and I couldn’t help noticing how trendy the warriors’ shoes are and that they’d sell well in TopMan. It’s safe to say that we’d reached the limit of how much serious history we could consume for the day.

Our guide pointed us in the direction of the cinema before leaving to snare some more tourists. The movie about the warriors was so awful it was funny. I think it must have been produced in the 1980’s, and still ran on the original film. Most of the audience left within five minutes, and the rest were either laughing or looked annoyed at mine and Neil’s attempt at a humorous running commentary.

Despite feeling like people saw us as walking cash machines I actually had a great time at the Terracotta Warriors. I’d definitely recommend it as a ‘must see’ for anyone visiting China.

We decided to get the bus back. I was a little ashamed about getting a taxi to the warriors, almost as though we were tourist arseholes throwing money around like it doesn’t matter and not caring that we were insulated from the real China. I much preferred the bus, seeing the landscape pass by slowly and stopping here and there to pick-up ordinary Chinese people going about their daily lives.

As we passed a girl cycling I had a sudden realisation that although I know infinitely more about China than I did when I arrived two months ago, I’ve only just scratched the surface. The girl looked to be in her 20’s, riding a worn-out bike slowly yet purposefully. She was wearing a smart pink coat and although she was looking wearily at the road ahead she appeared content.

What does she do for a living. Where was she coming from and going to. What’s her home like. What are her hopes and ambitions. Who are her friends and family. How does she fit into Chinese society.

Apart from the first, those are questions that I’d struggle to answer even for the Chinese colleagues at work that I know best, and I had a sudden pang of frustration that I don’t have more opportunities to interact with and learn about ordinary Chinese people outside the bounds of teaching at a private English language school. I said as much to Neil and we talked philosophy for the remaining hour on the bus back to Xi’an.

Just after I last blogged my very good friend Neil arrived. He used to work at the same school as me in Xi’an, but moved on to another job in Shanghai a year and a half ago. After he arrived on Thursday we went to Park Qin’s cafe for pizza and then downstairs to the bar to meet Nick and Dave.

Yesterday we went to Xiao Zhai to buy some DVDs and then Neil, knowing the city much better than I do, showed me a street with lots of nice cafes. It’s a street called Shi Da Lu a couple of metro stops south of Xiao Zhai. First we went to the Village Cafe because Neil says it has really good burgers, but it was closed so instead we went to the Sculpting in Time Cafe. It was just the kind of relaxed comfortable and friendly place I’ve been looking for, and somewhere I could easily accidentally spend most of the day reading and watching the world go by. It was lunchtime so we ordered food, and then we stayed chatting for so long that we decided to also have afternoon cake and coffee. The lattes were huge and came in a big bowl, and were also much nicer than Starbucks.

Shi Da Lu is next to the Xi’an International Studies University and the customers in the cafe are mainly university students and a few westerners. Typically for a cafe near a university, many people were working away on laptops and using the free wifi, and it was also advertising its ‘Chinese Corner’ language exchange.

It’s been really good catching up with Neil, but a bit strange seeing him in Xi’an. I’ve known him for so long in London that to take our friendship out of the context of London and transplant it into Xi’an seems bizarre!

Later on yesterday we went to Martin’s house for his birthday party. Martin lives down near Xiao Zhai so we seemed to spend a lot of the day going back and forth on the metro. As I’ve mentioned before I’m at a school in the north of the city, and the same company has more schools in the south. There are only eight western teachers at the north school and it can feel quite isolated, but there are 35 or so western teachers at the southern schools, which are all quite close together. Unfortunately the socialising opportunities between my school in the north and the other schools in the south are quite rare, and so it’s been difficult to expand my social circle beyond the few people at my own school. But at Martin’s there were lots of people from other schools, and I’m now starting to remember their names. Maybe next time we meet I’ll remember to collect some phone numbers and widen my social life a bit further.

At around midnight everyone at the party decamped to go to Song and Song, which is a Chinese night club. It’s difficult to know where to begin when describing Song and Song and writing about our night there, but to keep you interested, at one point I was dancing on the stage.

Compared to Fantasy, which I blogged about a few weeks ago and is a western-style club, Song and Song is a Chinese club that I feel deserves a lot of description. Me and Neil decided to get some food before entering, so everyone else had already scoped out our area and couple of tables. Upon entering I ended up standing at a table with Neil and Angelo. Less than a meter to my left was a very attractive woman in hot-pants dancing on a podium at the end of a runway stage, and on the main stage were a couple of performers dancing and singing. It was my first time in Song and Song so I was still a bit mesmerised by the surroundings, but everyone else was totally non-plussed and deciding what drinks to get.

I never quite know what the protocol is when ordering drinks in clubs here. Back home, I’d decide to get a drink, then spend ages queueing at the bar to buy a drink, then try to force a way through the crowds back to wherever all my mates are. But here it seems very few people actually go to the bar and table service is much more common. Angelo was collecting ¥100 from everyone to buy bottles of vodka and mixers. Being a non-drinker, but also not wanting to seem too stingy, I put in ¥50 and in return had two cans of sprite throughout the evening. Now that I don’t drink alcohol I seem to spend a lot more per drink but a lot less overall throughout an evening.

After a couple of songs the dancers and singers finished their set and left, and the hard and fast club music started. The DJ had the image and confident swagger of a professional DJ, but couldn’t mix two tracks together to save his life. Regardless, the music was a combination of energetic western club tracks from five or so years ago and Chinese songs I’d never heard before. After half an hour or so another singer took to the stage and started singing typical Chinese love ballads. It reminded me a bit too much of the night at KTV for me to respect the singer’s talent, but it was at this time that I had an idea. What if this singer could serenade Martin with a rendition of happy birthday. He’d be so happy!

So I mentioned it to Neil whose Chinese is infinitely better than mine and he put the plan into action. He went off to talk to the singer when she’d finished her set, the bar manager, the DJ, etc. Basically anyone who could actually make it happen, but apparently they only sing happy birthday at midnight. Oh well.

Around 2am all the performers had finished and a few random people were dancing on the stage. Manny and Angelo, the two extroverts of the group, got up on stage and started dancing extravagantly. A few songs later and Neil got up on stage to have a dance-off with Angelo. It’s worth mentioning again that I don’t drink. At all. I was stone cold sober in the club. There was a time when I would only dance if I was pretty drunk; in fact I used to see getting the confidence to dance as one of the benefits of drinking. So I surprised myself with a desire to get on the stage and dance the night away. I came to the decision that if the next song was a good song that I knew I could dance to and Neil, Angelo and Manny were still up there I’d get up and have a dance. The next song came and it was rubbish so the guys returned from the stage.

But half an hour and a few more good songs later, Neil, Angelo and Manny were back up on stage with a few other people and I thought ‘sod it, you only live once and it’ll make a good blog post’. So up I got and did a little dance. I don’t know, somehow being sober allowed the rational part of my mind to overcome the shy part.

I’m pretty sure there are no photos or videos of me dancing – and that can only be a good thing – but I have witnesses in case anyone doesn’t believe me!

Last week on Tuesday it was Kitty, one of the Chinese teaching assistant’s, birthday. As with every Chinese female I’ve met so far, Kitty really likes KTV – Karaoke TeleVision – and so she booked a room at the local Real Love KTV. KTV isn’t like any karaoke I’ve been to in the UK or US. It’s much more serious. Instead of a karaoke man turning up at a bar with his karaoke machine and a few drunk people having a go at singing shouting Wonderwall, KTV is an actual destination. At KTV a group of friends have a private room. In the room there’s a touch screen computer to select songs, a couple of microphones hooked up to a proper soundsystem and a big screen TV for the music video and lyrics. At the push of a button a waiter comes to take orders for drinks and food.

To give an idea of the scale of the KTV industry, our room could have held around 25 people, and we were in one of around 25 rooms on one of four floors of Real Love. Between my school and Real Love, just a few streets apart, we could have chosen from around five other KTVs.

Everyone seems to have an opinion about KTV, and while those opinions cover an entire spectrum from ‘love’ to ‘hate’, the majority of people end up at either end. To massively generalise, at the ‘love’ end of the scale are most women. At the ‘hate’ end are most men. The response to the prospect of going to KTV from most of the western men I work with was horror. “It’s awful” they said, “unless you’re absolutely wasted, when it can be a bit fun.”

But regardless, me, Dave and Nick went along anyway and found Kitty and her friends completely sober and singing love ballad after love ballad. More love ballads than I knew there were possible combinations of words and musical notes available. So Carrie and Brittany changed the tempo a bit with some Black Eyed Peas and Jay-Zed, then someone put Coldplay on the playlist for Nick, which he really didn’t appreciate.

I thought it was actually quite fun despite the protestations of the guys. And just in case anyone’s interested: no, I didn’t sing. I’m too nice to subject people to torture.

I did sing, however, in Park Qin on Sunday for Chinese New Year. It seems to be a tradition in Park Qin to play Wonderwall every night, and part of that tradition is that all the Brits sing along with everyone else looking on in amazement. Apparently we’re the only nationality that knows the words.

Chinese New Year seems to be much like the western new year. Everyone either stays at home and watches TV, or goes out to get drunk, pops outside at midnight to see the fireworks, then carries on drinking afterwards. We started the night by getting a taxi into central Xi’an. I know what you’re thinking – not another boring taxi story – but I think this one has enough merit as an amusing anecdote. There were five of us, and taxis here only take four people. But the driver was nice and we agreed a slightly inflated ¥30 fare with her before all squeezing in. It was at this point that Colin decided he really needed to go to the toilet and me sitting on him wasn’t helping. “Not long” we reassured him, but there was a protest blocking the road so we had to go a longer way around. Eventually we said to the driver to stop to let him out and we all had a good laugh shouting ‘granny bladder’ as he ran to a discreet place. As we all teach kids, apparently the Chinese we used was equivalent to saying something like “I need to go pee pee”, but it’s the meaning that counts.

We started the night on Bar Street, which was deserted. The bar we went in didn’t have music but instead everyone was watching TV. The TV programme seemed to be a cross between the Eurovision Song Contest and the Royal Variety Performance. I guess it’s China’s version of Jools Holland’s Annual Hootenanny. It was boring so we went to the hostel bar, which was also quite quiet. So, surprise surprise, we ended up in Park Qin again.

Sometime during the night I decided to put my camera in video mode and film as much as possible to later turn into a movie. The results are on Vimeo here. Considering it’s the first time I’ve filmed and edited together a movie I don’t think it’s too bad at all.

At midnight we all went outside to see the fireworks, but unlike back at home there was no central organised display, just random people letting of random fireworks. The result was much more dangerous with explosions going off all over the place, which made it much more exciting not knowing where the next explosions would come from.

Back in Park Qin and Albert, one of the TAs at school, joined us and the drinking got even heavier. I left around 3am when everyone at the table ordered a second bottle of rum.

Once again I’m writing this in Starbucks, taking advantage of the fast internet and free heating. This time the only seat available is next to the window. This is fine, except that all the people walking past outside see a waiguoren sitting in the window working on a laptop and slow down for a look. I feel like I’m in a weird zoo. A few have even stopped and peered through to my laptop screen trying to work out what I’m writing. This is another thing that, although it feels like it, is not worse about China but just different. I’ll put this ‘curious to the point of rudeness’ in the same category as the spitting in the street and the constant staring – something annoying to get used to.

Tonight my mate Neil, who lives in Shanghai, is coming for a holiday. In fact he should be here any moment so it’s time to click ‘publish’.

A few days ago it was Chinese New Year. Me and a few friends went down to the South Gate to see the fireworks and hang out at Park Qin. On the night I decided to make a video, and I’ve now uploaded it to Vimeo. Considering it’s the first time I’ve ever edited a video I don’t think it’s too bad at all. It was filmed on my four year old digital camera, and the video quality in the dark isn’t all that great, and the sound quality was so bad there’s no original sound left, but I have to work with the tools I have available.

Happy New Year, Xin Nian Kuai Le!

I wrote most of this post a week ago in Starbucks, and now I’m finishing it in Starbucks, but it’s still written from the perspective of last week.

The past week has had its ups and downs. Everything from wondering how I’m going to cope for the next 10 months in Xi’an, to thinking that come November I might sign up for a second year. As I’m still getting used to living here and to a new job and career it’s only natural that I’ll have a range of emotions and feelings about Xi’an and the job. In the past I’ve quit too many things because they got hard, and I’m determined to see this one through.

While my last post was mainly about taxi rides (hope you didn’t find it too dull… reading it back I certainly did…), between the taxi rides I went to two new bars, doubling in one night the number of different bars I’ve been to here. The first was a hostel bar a street from Park Qin. I actually like it better than Park Qin; it’s warmer and a bit more relaxed, with quieter music and it has more areas to just sit down and have good conversation with friends. The other bar was just along the street and has just been redesigned. Imagine a cool Shoreditch bar on overdrive and you’ll have a good idea; people know it as the ‘Alice in Wonderland Bar’. I really liked it for its quirkiness – it’s just the kind of cool place that if it were in London I’d find about too late to be considered cool – although Colin, Brittany, Lindsey and George were less impressed. Hopefully I can make both more regular places to go than the Belgian Bar and Park Qin.

I’m currently writing this in Starbucks while using the internet. While I’ve finally got internet in my apartment, it’s not particularly fast. It purports to be 4M, but most of the time it runs at about a quarter of that speed. Harry, the school’s admin assistant, came up to me in school a few days after setting it up. “How’s your internet, it’s fast isn’t it?” he asked looking quite pleased. After having asked such a proud leading question I didn’t want to disappoint him by saying that it’s about a tenth of the speed of my old connection in London. So instead I said “it’s 4M isn’t it – much faster than the connection at my dad’s house, I think he has 1M” (he lives in the middle of nowhere). Harry, beaming with pride, commented that China doesn’t offer 1M connections anymore.

The advantage of the internet in Starbucks is that it’s really quick, and downloading TV shows from the UK is much faster. Being bored one day I started trying to find a link to download a TV programme I saw about 10 years ago. The show was on Channel 4 and was a reality TV game show where three teams of two people were abandoned somewhere in the world and had to find their way back to Trafalgar Square as quickly as possible. It was great, but, I presume for two main reasons, it only had one series. It was filmed in the first half of 2001 so I guess making follow up series was difficult, and it was shown late at night so it didn’t attract many viewers. Anyway, I didn’t see all of the episodes at the time and I’ve occasionally wondered if it’s possible to download it. Unfortunately it was called Lost!, and since 2004 when a rubbish but very popular TV drama with the same name was made, googling ‘Lost’ trying to find a TV programme from 2001 has been pretty pointless. But, bored one evening I managed to find it! It’s here: http://thebox.bz/details.php?id=145523 and I can highly recommend it.

On the way to Starbucks I bumped into Carrie who finished her contract at the beginning of January then went to Thailand for a couple of weeks. She’s back in Xi’an for a few days before heading back home to the US. It was nice to briefly catch up with her and hear about how warm and sunny Thailand is.

For Carrie’s leaving dinner at the beginning of January we went to a ‘hot pot’ restaurant. Hot pot is a speciality of Shaanxi province that everyone seems to love and was raving about before we went. I’ve only had it once so feel a bit bad writing a scathing critique of it, but I really don’t see the attraction. As with most Chinese food everyone sits around a round table and shares the dishes in the centre. But with hot pot there is an additional pot of hot sauce on a burner in the centre of the table, and the food delivered is raw. It’s up to the diners to drop the raw food into the pot, wait a bit until they think it’s cooked, then fish it out and eat it.

In principle it sounds fun, but in reality it’s messy, I think actually not that tasty, and also potentially risky to health. With a pot of boiling sauce in the centre of the table, and people dropping in food and fishing it out again, the table and diners end up covered in splashes of the sauce. The sauce we had was spicy and a deep browny-red colour, and proved difficult to wash out of my clothes. A lot of the food to drop in was frozen cuts of meat. The meat here in China isn’t great to begin with, and slicing it a millimetre thin and boiling it didn’t do anything to improve it; it just came out like a fatty stringy mush with a slightly gritty texture from the sauce. Dropping in potato slices was pointless as they took half an hour to cook, and then were too soft to pick out with chopsticks. But the worst part was not knowing if the meat I was fishing out was the bit I dropped in a few minutes ago that was cooked, or a bit someone else dropped in a few seconds ago that would give me another bout of gastroenteritis.

After the meal I looked a bit apathetic towards the whole experience, and people assured me that this one was merely ok and that they’ve had better. Well if that was ‘ok’ I wouldn’t like to see what a ‘bad’ hot pot is like. I’m sure in the next ten months I’ll have another hot pot at some point, and maybe I’ll change my mind, but for now I’ll avoid it if given the choice.

Tonight at midnight is Chinese New Year, so I’ll be going into the centre of Xi’an with my camera and trying not to get blown up by fireworks. We have the week off work so I’m sure I’ll have time to regale you with more stories from Xi’an, for example, last week I went to KTV, which could fill a blog post on its own! Maybe I’ll even get round to uploading more photos.

I last blogged a week and a half ago just after new year. Since then I’ve been pretty busy at work and depressingly lazy outside work, so I’m only now getting round to updating the blog again.

The first thing to report on, since it’s the story that prompted more comments from family and friends back home than anything else I’ve written in the past two months, is my newfound sobriety. The problem with giving up drinking is not that I miss drinking alcohol but rather that it’s impossible to give up drinking without people assuming that there’s a wider, unspoken, reason to do so. Indeed, since my announcement two people have discreetly told me that if I ever want to talk about it then they’re there for me.

This puts me in somewhat of a catch-22 situation. If I deny having a drinking problem the assumption is that I just haven’t yet admitted to having a drinking problem. So I will refer back to my previous blogpost: I’ve given up drinking in China because I can’t find tasty alcoholic drinks here and being someone who didn’t drink much anyway I don’t see the point in drinking something I don’t like, not quite getting tipsy or merry, and then having a hangover anyway. My friends here have forced a concession out of me: if we discover real Pimms in Xi’an this summer then I’m giving up on not drinking in China.

Anyway, it’s been ten days since my new years resolution and I’m still sticking to it. On Sunday evening Colin, Brittany and I went out with Lindsey and her boyfriend to a bar that’s just re-opened after a redesign. Everyone else was drinking beer or gin and tonic and I had a few cokes. It was actually one of the most enjoyable nights I’ve had since I got here. I didn’t get my usual alcohol induced sleepiness, and so didn’t disappear home to sleep shortly after midnight, and was still in Park Qin chatting away to Brittany and various other ex-pats at 2:30am when it closed. I got to see two different bars in Xi’an; in one night doubling the number of bars I’ve been to here. I even found the taxi rides there and back comical.

On the way to the south gate our taxi had a little bump with another taxi. Nothing serious, and to be honest I’d been expecting it since we got in. Our taxi driver had set off at a sedentary pace and looked carefully before pulling out. I think he even gave way to another car. Such responsible driving immediately put my nerves on edge and it could only be a matter of time before such caution caused a problem. Passing around the bell tower roundabout (think: Arc de Triomph) we were in the wrong lane and our driver, trying to move across, was just a tad slower than all the other vehicles. I saw the gap ahead of us open up and wondered why our driver wasn’t accelerating hard to fill it before another car did. The driver of the taxi behind us, trying to move across lanes the other way, obviously thought the same thing as I did and promptly ploughed into the back of us. I’m not certain what our driver said, but I could make a good guess…

On the way back home I was alone so I had to do the talking to tell the taxi driver where to go. I’ve memorised my address in Chinese and can now say it in what the Chinese staff at work describe as a ‘standard middle class’ Chinese accent. Two months in China and already I’m speaking Chinese in their equivalent of received pronunciation… Anyway, the taxi driver understood me just fine, he just didn’t have a clue where Feng Cheng Wu Lu (Feng Cheng Fifth Road) actually is. Normally getting a taxi from the west side of the south gate is easy. The driver takes us south through the gate, left around the gyratory, and back north through the gate again and then we stay on the same main north-south road all the way home. My taxi driver set off very slowly and hesitantly then turned right to go west along the south side of the wall. I wondered if he hadn’t understood, so I took out the piece of paper in my wallet with my address written on and handed it to him. He read it and still looked confused. Problem.

So I started directing him, first trying to tell him to turn around, which he didn’t do and instead got a bit annoyed. Where I live in Xi’an is about as far from the centre as Edgware is from the centre of London. For a moment I thought about the equivalent situation in London. A Chinese person gets into a black cab somewhere around Waterloo. The only English they speak is “Edgware”. The taxi driver sets off in a direction the Chinese person hasn’t before been taken to get back home, and starts speaking Chinese and pointing to try and give directions to the driver. I bet a London cabbie wouldn’t be best pleased, so I relaxed and trusted that we’d get there eventually. Then by the next gate where we could turn north, the driver got into the left hand lane, which would have taken us even further south.

Through pointing I told the driver to turn right, which he reluctantly did. At the main east-west road I told him to turn right again, then at the bell tower I told him to turn left. We were back heading north on the main north-south road, and I just had to make sure we didn’t turn off again. We passed through the north gate and carried on. Then we got to the ring road, which is Feng Cheng South Road. “Ah ha” I heard him think, “we must be nearly there” and he slowed down as though any moment he’d see where I live. But Wu Lu is actually about four kilometres further north, and every 100 meters or so I had to indicate through pointing that it’s further north and to carry on and don’t turn off yet. We got to fifth road and I told him to go left, but instead he did a u-turn to head back south, so I told him to stop, paid him the ¥22 (about £2.30) fare, and walked the extra 500 meters home. I’m just glad I have a good sense of direction or we’d have driven around all night.

The final item on this update is to say that I’ve got rid of my cough without taking any medicine. I’m not averse to medicines and I’m certainly not about to become a homeopath or some such nonsense. But, the only thing that would have helped my cough is antibiotics and I don’t want to potentially contribute to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance for something as minor as a cough. I also couldn’t be bothered with the faff of finding a Chinese member of staff at work to take me to hospital for a cough that would (and did) clear itself up in a few days.

At the risk of this blog becoming a diary of my medical problems, I’ll go on to say that now I’ve got rid of the cough I’ve picked up another ailment. It’s cold here, and very dry. That coupled with the chlorine in the tap water and my skin, especially on my hands, is drying out and cracking. Fortunately I brought a pot of moisturiser which is helping.