The China Day

In the phenomenon of life abroad, some days become just too much. The language doesn’t make sense; the culture doesn’t make sense; someone hocks a loogie that hits the pavement, bounces high and lands on your sandaled feet. 

  say what?

In the expat community here in Shanghai, days like this are named. In laowai speak, you’re ‘Having a China Day.’ At first glimpse, a China Day might seem non-assuming.  Small details are lost in translation but it’s to be expected—you live far, far away from home. Perhaps a taxi refuses to pick you up; perhaps a taxi picks you up but refuses to take you over the river via the cheaper, quicker tunnel option; perhaps the man behind you sort of queuing to top up his metro card stands three inches too closely for comfort. 

Most days, you suck it up and deal. But some days, these small details compound on small details compound on small details. And in this way the China Day sneaks up on you. It attacks.  Suddenly, you find yourself all alone in your one bedroom box thousands of miles from affordable ice cream or a clear Internet connection wanting to shove a chopstick through someone, anyone’s, brain.

In these cases, there are a few options: 1. Phone a friend; 2. Drink, heavily. 3. Cry, cry, cry.

I haven’t had a China Day for quite a while so when the last one snuck up on me, I ended my day wailing into the phone crying ‘But…but…but I miss Londooooooooon!’ Gulping, honking, decadent tears.

In this event, an estate agent was more than misogynist and racist towards me. He went behind my back to get more money because I’m a female and a laowai. So I went behind his back to work with a different agent. As it turns out, he neglected to tell me he was the agent-cum-property manager and it all blew up in my face. We exchanged a series of no less than 47 Wechat messages (the Whatsapp of China), spanning at least three hours, with most of his messages pronouncing the word ridiculous as ‘redickerlous’, which sent me into a spasm of nervous giggles.

Because I wanted the property, I continued to engage with this redickerlous banter. I apologized, profusely. He provided me more business baloney, facts, statistics and then outright threats: ‘if you don’t take this deal, then I lose my job.’ We settled, even though I will still out of pocket 20% of a fake you’re-a-Westerner fee.

Between all of this, I laughed. I went out for dinner with my friends and to an awards ceremony at school. And then when I got home, saw my couch and my boyfriend, I fell apart. Only Paul was on a work call so I saved the heaving, choking sobs for my mother. Her advice: ‘Jennifer, if they have a name for this, it means you’re not alone!’ Wisdom.

In the end, we got the last laugh. The next day, Paul engaged with round two of Wechat warfare and we turned the place down to the agent’s groveling and protestations. He dropped the price, he dropped the commission, and we dropped him.

As it turns out, estate agents are wankers in every country. And, as every expat in China will at some point find out, China Days happen. 

Moganshan Running

Last weekend, after a day of listlessly lingering in our Pudong flat, Paul and I looked forlornly at one another.  He barely had the energy to mutter 'next weekend, we need to do something.'  We got stuck in that strange paradox of do nothing=feel exhausted and utterly fed up.  We made a pact to wander the streets of Puxi, to explore, to do something new in our next weekend.

And on Monday, in one of those serendipitous moments of pure coincidence, Marjan, the senior school's librarian invited me to take place in a trail run relay, called the Yodel Run.  The gist:  be part of a team of three in a race leg of about 8km.  She and her daughter would be two of the legs and I would be the third.  Her husband would come to run the whole damn thing; Paul would come to spectate.

In this way, I said yes.

And because I like to stay true to my word, I ignored the warning signs:  the mountain-dotted elevation map; my lack of trail running experience; my lack of running since I moved to Shanghai last August; my coworkers laughing derisively at me--'but have you trained?'; the 5:15am start; the 4-hour bus ride each way.

Bright and early on Saturday morning, we made for a taxi to make for a bus.  Marjan's daughter fell ill so Paul subbed in to run.  We drove, ad nauseum, for four hours--up hills and through gargantuan mud puddles, getting out of the bus at key moments so the driver could make his way over dodgy pavement.  But the views were breathtaking: 

Upon arrival, we appeared to be the least fit by quite a bit.  Lithe, stretchy runners with positive attitudes and proper trail gear relaxed their way to the start line looking confident.  Paul and I formed team second-generation-brown-immigrant-children, cheered Marjan and Roger off and made to our muster stations. 

An hour later, Marjan chugged up the road and I took off through a little village and onto the trail.  There, I was bitch-slapped by the First Hill, a beast of a rock-dotted trail that rivaled my hiking trips in the Adirondacks. Up, up, up it went and as I took to walking, I struggled to catch my breath.  The eventual downhill was much kinder but each downhill was met by a successively longer uphill.  Some of these uphills were deceptive in their twisty, windy, turny nature and what I considered 3k in, I felt like throwing in the towel. 

With Taylor Swift in my ears, I shook it off, got an eventual burst of energy and chugged my way through a field of what smelled like excrement to a water stop that I thought was my relay changeover.  It wasn't.  Instead, I was greeted by a pair of Chinese race officiators with gatorade and water who warned me that I still had 3k to go.  

The worst was yet to come.  I took to walking, had a little mental breakdown, and threw myself up through the bamboo forest and a hill so demoralizing I thought about laying down and curling up for a little death nap.  It was difficult to enjoy the scenery, which looking back, was admittedly gorgeous.  Of course, the up was met with an eventual down so steep that I could only throw myself forward onto the next bamboo tree and struggle my way down the hill in this fashion.  

This was not before sussing out the huge German shepherd noticing me, calmly, quietly, intensely.  I scanned my memory of all things Cesar Milan, dog whisperer, and considered my options:  run?  that already wasn't happening so not possible; hit it with my water bottle?  was death by dog bite a fate worse than dehydration?; stare it down?  I think that was one of Milan's key ways to NOT deal.  Eventually, I just kept on moving.  The dog stayed exactly where it was and I came to the realization that perhaps, maybe, I'd hallucinated the whole thing.

all alone with my sweat and self-delusions in the bamboo forest

Fortunately, the end was near.  I'd made it to a concrete section of the trail and took off across the sloping curves of a road, through a rice paddy and to my checkpoint where I forced cheers out of the waiting runners who'd already finished the leg.  Paul looked at me murderously as we changed over and took off down the next stretch. 

I later learned that, at nearly 10k, the second leg was the longest of the relay.  Marjan had a 7.7k stretch and Paul had a 7k one.  So when I'd made it to the water stop, I'd already run 7k; this would have been beautiful information for my decaying mental attitude at the time.  

Alas.  Paul finished the relay strongly and we were able to enjoy the runner's high and beautiful scenery for about half an hour before struggling onto the bus and back another four-hours to Shanghai. On the upside, Moganshan is a stunningly beautiful national park that bears visiting.  Pizza has also never tasted better.  I'm also pretty certain that out of all the difficult, stupid things I've done, this was one of the most challenging.  Harder than a half marathon, harder than biking three-days with my IA group. 

Whether I'd do it again remains to be seen. 

We Be Blogging

Here at DCS we find ourselves in the midst of 'exam week', a seven-day expanse of student heads down in silence writing frantically.  This yields a hell-inducing load of marking, teachers with heads down in silence grading frantically, as you will, which then informs further teacher mania with a word-heavy number of student reports all needing to be turned around in an itty-bitty space of time. 

I'm thrilled.

Before all of that though, I created a scheme of work for my year 8 class on travel writing.  Based on the fact that my students have been to many, many more destinations than I have, I knew there would be ample material.

 

Educationally, what I loved about teaching it was the notion of 'authentic assessment'.  In non-teacher speak, we created a real, live working product that models something in the real world.  Not a five-paragraph essay, not a 45-minute pressure filled timed response.  A blog.  We created a blog.

I give you said blog:  8CG Travels

My students rocked it.  I couldn't be prouder.

Urban Wildlife

Upon our one am return from Gili Trawangan, I made straight to bed and fell into a semi-comatose state.  Ten hours later I was greeted with a series of messages from Clare, who found herself alone on the streets of Shanghai at 3am clutching her backpack in a state of shock.

It appears that whilst she was taking a holiday, a new resident moved in.  The individual in question, a rat, was of the extra-large, brown, beady-eyed variety. Calmly, it picked its way through the contents of the open-plan kitchen oblivious to the screams it induced.  

A rat in of itself is relatively unremarkable.  Big cities have them and big cities with really old buildings are prone to this type of invasion.  What is notable is the aftermath.

After forlornly clutching her backpack, sending messages to friends and receiving no reply, Clare finally decided to check herself into a hotel.  But the timing was bad.  Her mum was arriving that afternoon and rats aren't exactly kind houseguests.

Phone calls were made to landlords and agents, a dizzying process when you don't speak the language.  The first comments included dismissive laughter and 'You have a rat. You get a cat.' After a smattering of Chinglish, the landlord eventually agreed to foot the bill for Clare to stay in a hotel for the time being.  They would need a week to 'deal' with the rat.

One week later, Clare returned to find rat droppings around her wardrobe and near her clothing.  Next to the kitchen table a new sturdy packing box lay unassumingly to one side.  Inside the box a fat, ginger cat intent on causing no beast, great or small, any deal of harm dozed; its leg was tied to the table and the 13- centimeter turning radius only served to provoke the rat more. To recap, rat meets fat cat tied to table and sneers its way through its cheesy dreams.

More phone calls, more shouting. After logistical dramas with old paperwork, Clare terminated the contract and moved all her things out a week later.  Oh, China.

Addendum: The Ferret
I've relayed this story to many people as they've wiped the tears of laughter out of eyes. But one of my students was entirely unsurprised. A friend of her mother's had a similar, larger, issue.  It seems that the city of Shanghai is well-versed with its rat problem.  So much so that they introduced ferrets to eat the rats.  Only conditions were so good that the ferrets got full and happy, began to breed and created their own infestation.  So this woman actually had a family of ferrets living largely and loudly in the rafters of her flat.  How's that for a new urban food chain?

Qinghai Lake

For the second half of the Duke of Edinburgh's Gold International Award, I sat back whilst another group of teenagers, this time all girls, planned and decided the logistics of their Adventurous Journey.  Yet again, my goal on the trip was more of a spectator role. Essentially, make sure nobody dies.

So my seven-girl team planned their trip to Qinghai Lake, one of Buddha's sacred lakes, on the Tibetan Plateau. The thing no one told me at the start of signing up to support IA was that there would be bicycles involved. These bicycles would go on the road. We would do this for several days. I've never really 'biked' before--I mean, around the block and down trails of beautifully bike laned cities, yes. Traversing the roads of China with its crazy drivers, no.

The panic began.

And then we arrived to the airport for a flight that would eventually be delayed for seven hours. Only no one could tell us that at the start of the grand adventure. This is how we arrived at our hostel at 5am. Things weren't starting with any kind of promise.

The day became a flurry of sorting logistics, procuring bikes, etc and getting dropped at our next set of lodging, our really, really scenic lodging:

As it turns out, the Tibetan plateau is a flat as a pancake. And there's nothing there.  Then the fat, aggressive snowflakes began to fall. Considering we could only pack what we were able to carry, I layered up and managed to get five shirts on. With a wind chill whipping up around us, we added insult by cycling into the tail wind.

My hog: 

The weather eventually started to look up:

But the scenery stayed the same:

At random intervals, yurts dotted the otherwise barren landscape.  Inside, wind worn locals manned stoves and hot water kettles. They hospitibaly opened their tent doors to the bikers and pilgrims who were crazy enough to take on the journey.

Through my students and their Mandarin speaking skills, we learned that the lake was in fact a sacred one. Buddhist pilgrims are called to journey around the lake in meditation and prayer. The more hardcore of the pilgrims took to the sacrifice of taking three steps, clapping their heads above them, at their front, on their knees and then sliding prostrate on the ground. I got no good pictures of this but it was a humbling feat. We struggled to cycle along the whole damn path and here these individuals, often very old, were shuffling the 4,3127 square kilometer circumference of China's biggest lake.

It also turned out that we were cycling anti-clockwise around it and in doing so, we were potentially upsetting the karma of the place. This made a lot of sense--locals continued to shout and wave their arms at us. I thought it was because of our mostly Western looks.  Apparently not.

Along the way, nature called. As such, makeshift toilets also dotted the landscape. I am proud to now call myself a true traveller--China has taught me to bathroom anywhere. I was afraid the planks were going to break underneath me in this particular establishment. Maybe 'in' is a bad choice of words: the road was 20 meters in front of me, a stalactite of poo resided directly underneath me:

Onward! Prayer flags always adorned the top of hills and people in their cars would throw little paper flag pieces, along with their prayers, out the window at these junctures.

Perhaps it was the extreme exercise or the cold, but the food we had during the days of cycling was pretty magnificent. We ate bread and huge bowls of noodles. Rice was hard to come by--the further north you go in China, the more noodles become a staple. Restaurants were much easier to navigate with  a group of students who spoke degrees of Mandarin.

Bread fried and then crunched up to make those crispy wonton snacky things you get in American Chinese restaurants: 

In between our three-day cycle, we stopped at various non-descript hotels and guest houses. On day one we cycled 63 kilometers. Day two followed with 70 and we finished on a whopping 83 on our last day. Along the way, one of the girls got sick; whether this was psychosomatic or not, I will never know. But my group stuck together, made choices for one another and stuck it out.

I was impressively proud of their strength and determination. They persevered to stick to their itinerary and held each other up through mini-breakdowns (2), flat tires (3) and biting winds (too many to count).

It helped when we got to the cold desert hills of the west side of Qinghai Lake. They hills were impressively huge but the cheering party at the top of each one was better.

Toilet in the middle of desert sand dunes: 

When we wheeled into the finish point and learned that we were the only group to stick to our initial plan and were in fact, the group to bike the farthest, there were tears.

I didn't think myself capable of quite the journey but I proved myself wrong. What an exhilarating experience; sign me up again.