Knobcottage in China

There had been yet another change to the timetable and it turned out that I was not teaching until the evening.  In the evening I found that the evening lessons had been cancelled, but that's another story! Anyway, breakfast as normal....or as normal as it gets in China!  Breakfast in the hotel consists of spicy noodles, boiled eggs, cabbage, little bits of what I think is spicy brown tofu, several types of rice-and-bean-based 'porridge' with a side of roasted salted peanuts,  fried rice, little steamed buns, boiled eggs, hot milk and watermelon.  All self-service, except the noodles which are flash-boiled for you as you wait.  Personally, I can do with out the spice so I left the noodles alone and tried most of the other things!  Today no one was teaching until the evening so I was breakfasting alone.  I took a table by the window and started to eat.  Unlike most people there who were wrapped up in their mobile phones, I looked out of the wi...

The journey home Tongren and Jiangkou are about 40 miuntes apart by car, the same by bus.  However busses stop running early and the only alternative is Didi, a kind of Uber, so called because didi means both little brother and the sound of a car horn!  Didis are easy to get peak time. Sunday night is not peak time.  Bu meng had an answer.  She had a freind who was on a conference in Tongren who was about to leave for Jiangkou. So she said goodbye and put me in a normal taxi and it headed off to the Hotel where her freind had been running banking training course.  We met and she drove me to Jiangkou.  On the way she asked if I had eaten evening meal.  I hadn't so she said she would treat me in return for me speaking english with her.  So off we popped.  My first chinese barbecue!  Here is Dan at thebarbecue. Al sorts of interesting things to cook, plus whilst the order was being prepared, Dan went off to get a watermelon from a stal...

The next day, before we went left,  the hotle staff presented each of us with a pais of metal chopsticks and spoon!  A lovely little gifts! The gift from the hotel Me and the receptionist who present us with the little gifts. Meng and a bodhisattva Me and a bodhisattva Part of the temple Meng burning insence a cheeky monkey, who rather unsurprisingly later stole some fruit off a visitor, Monkey in a tree a monk who fancied his had at art...incidentaly he didn't charge or request any money.  Perhaps a glance at the finished product may indicate why! ...after this Meng took me for a meal and to a fantastic bookshop.  The meal was a hotpot.  Basically raw products that you cooked yourself in boiling liqiuds of various desrciptions...a knid of a fondu without cheese or oil.  We cooked some very interesting things...aprts of animals tht I have dont usually eat!  After that we got on the train back to Tongren N...

After freshening up at the hotel, we wentto the concert.  It was only 15 minutes walk away.  It was really quite unusual and very nice.  As usual Meng was really god company, a very easy going young lady!  The music was strings and piano with come interesting catoons playingon a big screen behind the musicians. Then back to the hotel and a long chat in the reception of the hotel.  It was a lovely night and a really nice hotel! The hotel reception area.

When we arrived in Guiyang, I had had warnings that there was heavy rain in nearby areas, when we got out of the airport I was expecting to see some rain, but this was big rain!  The road was flowing with water and under all the bridges people had got of their motorbikes and we're standing round, smoking, spitting and wringing out their clothes.  Cars, presumably without windscreen wipers, had just stopped at the side of the road...But traffic was still moving.  Anyhow, we finally got to the hotel and it appeared the rain had stopped.  The hotel didn't look special from the outside, nut Meng had picked a good one.  Inside it was lovely, and the staff were fantastic.  There were the usual problems trying to photocopy my passport for the Police* but we managed.  The guy behind the desk said something to Meng, she translated.  Then this robot showed us to our rooms.  Yup, a robot showed us to our rooms.  You can probably hear me giggl...

Well the day started at a hotel in Tongren.  I checked out and was met by Meng.  She took us both to her office, then to a taxi.  Taxi rides are always interesting.  He drove around for a while and stopped near anyone with a suitcase.  We were going to the station and he wanted four passengers.  Four passengers, four fares.  At the last pick up we stopped so Meng could buy some noodles.  Then we stopped a bit later so the driver could buy some buns.  He ate them whilst driving.  He then took  opened the passenger window and threw the empty bag out into the street and continued on the journey to Tongren Railway Station...Tongren South Railway Station, which is about an hour taxi ride from Tongren, but it is the stopping point of the high speed train.  Apparently this was the best site for it as the rest of the county is so mountainous.  Also, and I am not sure why, Tongren North does not sell train tickets and we needed t...

On Friday I had arranged to meet Meng at 11.30 outside the bank in which she works, but before that I had to check my salary.  It hadn't been paid.  If it wasn't paid, then I couldn't afford to stay over Saturday night.  I then spent an hour trying to get my agent to sort it out, only to face the usual barrage of half-truths and misinformation.  Eventually, after an hour,  I persuaded her to advance me some of the salary and decided to stay on in Tongren.  I met Meng, and it was a happy reunion.  She took me for a cup of coffee, and we net her friend for lunch. Meng and freind (again I cant remember names) Some of what we were eating...there was lots more and it tasted good! Real good, good company! During the course of the meal, she said she had a trip planned to go to Guiyang to take in some music.  She asked did a want to go.  Of course! In the meantime, another young woman called Angela contacted me and invited me out to a ...

By Wednesday, I had had enough of Juangkou, so I arranged to go to Tongren, and a friend Angela, a girl I had met with Wendy in Guiyang when I first arrived in China, had offered to take me out for a meal and some KTV (karaoke.)   I expected to go on Friday for Saturday night, but got a call on Wednesday night from Wendy.  Wendy is the woman who took me from Guiyang to Tongren when I first arrived in China.  Via a friend, she had heard that times were tough for me and invited me to chill out at her place, watch some TV and films, then sleep on the sofa overnight.  I jumped at the chance, as the school was closed Thursday and Friday.  So next morning I set off for Tongren.  I net her and her boyfriend in Tighten, and we headed back to her place.  She lived at home with her mother, brother and brother's girlfriend.   A view of the inside of the appartment.  My freinds tell me that this si quite expensively furnished. ...

The conference, like most official Chinese 'things'. looked very grand.  It was all about the difficulties and succeses encountered by the 'foreign teachers'.  Conference room The conference was in bothChinese and English, but there were three distinct phases.  The Chinese part, the mixed part and the Foreigners part.  Itstarted with the Chinese part.  The Chinese part was mainly to tell the foreign teachers all the relevant information about visas and regulations.  As my friend said it was like having to read all the terms and conditions of opening an itunes account whilst all you wanted to do was press the "Accept" button.  We all pressed the imaginary 'accept' button, but the terms and conditions kept coming: "... and where it says 'name' that is where you put your name" etc. ad infinitum ad nauseum.  We then had a break becasue no one was listening any longer.  We returned to part two wheich was a little lighter.  ...

Well as you've probably gatehred by now, China is different to England, and as for Health and Safety, well in China it just does not seem to exist...or a least not to the same extent as in England.  Here follow a few "What could possibly go wrong?" examples. slightly blurred but four 56lb bags of produce on one tiny scooter.  I thought it was goping to get wheeled home, bu no, she sat astride the top sack and drove off dond the road!  I wasnt quick enough to get pictures of her departure! Brakes not working? Well stick a couple of stoned under the wheels. Umbrella on a motorbike plus five bottles of butane.  Safe as houses!  A three wheeleer with a load twice as high as the truck.  Piece of string will fix that.  A huge crane loaded onto the back of a lorry, maybe several 'tens of tons' Hand tied with some freyed rope and where the rop passes over a sharp edge, a carefully squashed 'pop bottle' to prevent the metal cutting ...