~ Three F's on China (no expletives!) ~

1. Food

To like food in the Orient you have undergo a kind of baptism of fire. This was mine.

When I arrived in China I spent three days having a whale of a time in Beijing with all the other people doing placements. We saw all the sights, tried all the exotic foods and got vastly overcharged buying Chairman Mao lighters that played the national anthem when they lit up. It was great.

Then came the move to our placements. After a goodbye to friends just met, a flight to Zhejiang province and my placement. The flight was where the jitters set in. Although that could have been because on my in-flight meal I'd eaten a packet of stringy green goo marked 'aviation food'. Either way, when the plane hit the tarmac, and it did hit the tarmac, the realisation of my situation began to hit home. An 18 year old, fresh out of sixth form, I was going to spend the next six months in a country that didn't even read my alphabet never mind speak English. That I was 6000 miles away from home, from my family and everyone I knew. That I would be living in an apartment with a man I didn't even know. That I didn't have any friends with me. Nerves is most certainly the word.

It's important to bear in mind that this was my state of mind when Andy and I were picked up from the airport by Mr Tang, Mrs Wu and a driver. Imagine being greeted by this trio, and then escorted into a small white mini van. Then this small white mini van making its way onto a large busy highway. To imagine the next bit is quite easy. All you have to do is think of a normal motorway, but with no rules. Add the small white mini van that's undertaking rickety tankers at around 70 mph, with the driver exercising the horn much more than the brake. Finally, try to imagine your feelings when you're asked to take your seatbelt off, as in China it's offensive to the driver. Fun isn't it.

Now after this journey all I wanted to do was find a bed and sleep off my anxiety. What I got was my first taste of real Chinese food. We were taken into a grotesquely over-the-top restaurant with plastic dragons coming out of the door. "Okay Dan, all part of the experience, just eat some rice and see it through", I chanted. A few words in Chinese and we were taken in to a room, promptly followed by a box of beer and a cart of oddly smelling food. Chinese food. I'd eaten Chinese food for three days already, morning, noon and night. I was ready for some macaroni cheese or a ploughman's sandwich. The chant continued. First up on the table was cucumber and oyster sauce, peanuts, and cold slices of beef and pork - "ah not too bad after all". Fumbling with my chopsticks, much to my Chinese hosts' glee, I managed a couple of peanuts.

Given the circumstances one of the following things happening would have been ideal;

a) a call home to mum and dad, or maybe some close friends, for a chat, a few jokes and some words of encouragement.

b) being swept off to a hotel suit so that I could enjoy a large hot soapy bath and relax

Or

c) be taken back to our apartment so I could huddle up in my duvet and sleep off my jet lag.

What was not ideal was the arrival of a large steaming earthenware bowl, smelling like rotten chicken and overcooked rice. From this bowl, Mrs Wang eagerly doled out spoonful's of a hot sloppy white broth into mine and Andy's bowls. Looking down into this snotty stew, there were various brown specks, with a large hard brown sphere slowly bobbing up and down in the middle of my bowl. "It is very tasty soup ... you try" ordered Mrs Wang. I only prodded the hard brown ball with my porcelain spoon, and it flipped over revealing a very large and very prominent beak. "It is pigeon soup ... you have the head ... it is very tasty".

I didn't see it but Andy, a man of some wit, described my face as being like an enetophobic man (fear of needles - I needed it explaining) facing medicin sans frontieres entire stock of syringes and being asked to roll up his sleeve.

Well, you've got to laugh or cry. I laughed, dipped my spoon in and gave the skull a bit of a munch. (I didn't like it so much though). And that was my last bad experience with food in China, except for the time with the milk, and another time with a dodgy ice-lolly on a twenty hour bus ride, and a curious incident with some seahorses and cicadas. I learned to love Chinese food, the exotic smells, the curious tastes, and once the cultural difference is overcome (eating parts of the animal you would normally cringe at) you're pretty much set.

2. Foreigners

The Chinese have a word for foreigners, 'Lao Wei’. Although I was never quite sure what it exactly meant as I got a fair few translations from, 'distance brother' and 'big nose' to 'white devil'. (Although it has to be said the last of these translations was given to me by a student who went by the name of Carrot. Incidentally this student also wrote and performed a play called 'My E. T. Girlfriend' in which he married a female Extra Terrestrial, who was played by his best friend. Either way, I was unsure of how sound a translation his was.)

The Chinese do treat foreigners very differently. Firstly you are considered rich (which in comparison, you are) and are therefore overpriced on everything. This brings in the vital skill of bartering, and the immortal phrase, 'Tai Guei Le’, 'Too expensive'. If said, this will almost certainly lead the seller to believe you're fluent in Chinese and begin a rant, in Chinese, about how they are your friends and giving you a special deal. If you then use the phrase a couple more times, they will inform you that their children are homeless and blind and that they've not eaten for six days. If used anymore they will become quite bitter, sell it you for a decent price and whisk you on your way.

But it's not just when buying things that you notice the difference, even walking down the street or getting on a bus you'll attract stares and calls of 'Lao Wei'. Most people, particularly the more rural, have only seen foreigners on T.V. ads or in Hollywood movies. I suppose it's because they equate you with Tom Cruise or Kate Moss that they're so curious. And they do treat you like a celebrity.

Sofie, Andy and I went for a weekend trip to Hangzhou and whilst walking around the beautiful and very touristy lake, Andy stopped to take a few pictures. At the time I think I was tucking into some com-on-a-stick, not exactly looking dapper when a got a tap on my shoulder. A young and rather attractive Chinese girl stood there whilst her nearby friend waved a camera. Presuming that I was in their shot, I politely said 'sorry' (Doei Bu Qi) and moved a few feet to the right. But apparently I had misunderstood as she trotted up again, and her friend made the same camera waving sign. It turned out she wanted a picture with me, a person she'd never met, who was in no way famous or important to her. Well, I was happy to oblige, what I didn't foresee however, was that once the green light was given to this one request that several of the surrounding people would also come waving cameras.

Then they saw Sofie, my curly blonde haired, blue eyed Danish friend. 

I did begin to question the sanity of the people of Hangzhou when mothers asked her to hold their babies whilst they took photos. But that's how the Chinese are. They are a nation of 1.6 billion people with tight restrictions on who comes in and out of the country, and a history of isolation. They are not used to foreign people.

3. Falun Gong

About a three months into my placement, my Aussie teaching partner, Andy, and I took a weekend trip to see friends in the nearby city of Jinhua. The weekend did not start off well for me, as on the train down what seemed like a bad stomach ache turned out to be food poisoning (incidentally, I advise anyone who has left yoghurt out in 30° heat for seven hours and then put it back into the fridge, not to eat it.). After an evening bugging a toilet, having a nosebleed, and due consideration given to bombing the supermarket where I bought the yoghurt, I felt slightly better, if looking slightly worse than a canary with a severe case of jaundice. It was in this state that I set off in a cab to buy our train tickets back home. As the cabby and I were speeding off round the typically massive four-lane-roads, we pulled up at a red light to a bizarre spectacle. Literally hundreds of people were standing in a park periodically shaking themselves, like a massive line dance gone wrong. It was around 9pm so quite dark outside, but with the same muggy heat clinging to your skin as it did in the day. So I was bemused as to why such activity was going on. Confronted by the sight, I was about to put it down to post-yoghurt delusion, when the driver, a fairly young bloke with a pungent smell of smoked herbs and slightly bloodshot eyes, said the words "Falun Gong"

Falun Gong is a bit of an odd 'spiritual movement'. Its spiritual leader, Li Hongzhi, states that aliens exist and more grimly, that people of mixed race are instruments of an alien plot to destroy humanity's link to heaven. But its practices are non-violent and people are free to leave and enter as they please, separating it from some more radical sects. The movement's infamy, however, has not arisen from bizarre teachings of its leader or any strange actions taken by its followers, but because of the actions of the Chinese government. Since 1999 the People's Republic has suppressed the Falun Gong, burning books and texts and blocking internet access to information on the subject. It is the odd relationship between the immensely powerful Chinese government and different religions that, during my time there, always seemed to fascinate and surprise me.

As the Chinese government has become more moderate, and western-friendly, it tries to project an image of itself being a decent state. (Although if they're really keen on not been perceived as a police state, they should really change the name of the state T.V. company from CCTV.) This has added an even odder twist to the social place of religion. As religions have been revived since the 1960s - the height of revolutionary zeal, religious doctrine is still incompatible with the claimed socialist dogma of the Chinese communist party. But more to the point, the Chinese government is scared of any organised group that it doesn't control. The Chinese official churches are ultimately controlled by the government. The Chinese catholic church doesn't recognise the authority of the Pope, and bishops are appointed that are loyal to Beijing, shown in the recent spat between the new pope and Beijing.

One of the great things I've taken from my time there, apart from coming back with a much hardier constitution, is that I've gained a sense of the importance of political freedoms.

                                                                                 Dan Hodgkinson