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I haven’t written a blog for a week and here’s the reason. My life in China is moving into a new phase now. I followed up three job offers from universities in Wuhan and today I signed a contract to teach oral English and Western culture at a university in Wuhan, the focus being on the culture of the English speaking countries. It’s quite a reputable institution and the people I met were pleasant and negotiable, so I am looking forward to teaching there and learning through the experience. I am not needed until the week after next so I’ll spend next week preparing. As my routine kicks in I’ll turn my attention back to blogging and start writing again. It’s my intention to use some of the blog material in class, to supplement the materials I have been given to use. If any of you want to come to teach in China there is another position vacant where I’m going to teach and I’m likely to be able to help you with other places if that fills. If you have a Bachelor’s Degree in almost anything you could teach at a university and it is possible to teach English without a university degree in High Schools. Let me know if you are interested and I can look into it for you. Write to hugh@hughmacdougall.com

In the last couple of days two friends called me offering me the same teaching job. The first friend, Jan, is hard pressed at the moment and sounded harassed when she rang. A man called Dang had asked her for help finding a teacher for a ten day school he was running. The money wasn’t enough to tempt me away from the work I am doing on my computer so I said no. The second friend rang the next day and she had been approached by the same man. When she was talking she said it seemed too little money for a foreign teacher and joked about a higher amount. I thought about my financial position and joked back that if x RMB was offered I would take it. She said she would call the man and bargain with him and I said go ahead. She told me Dang had given our other friend a lot of pressure. Today I asked and discovered the man had walked into Jan’s workplace and, without having met her before, began to pressure her to find a foreign teacher for him. He was really pushy. This sounded my alarm bells and I began to think about whether I wanted to work for a person like that. My other friend Possum sounded a little uneasy after talking to the man today. We knew another foreign teacher Donny had worked for the man. He has gone to another city in

China to work so I called his friend to see if I could find out if there were any problems. The friend knew little but did give me the name of someone who had been a big problem. I called Jan to see if she knew the English name of the guy who wanted me to teach. She didn’t but she did know that Dang had not paid Donny for a while, giving all sorts of stories as excuses until Donny said he was going to leave and then he was paid. I decided not to take the job, even at a reasonable pay. It is common for such people to play tricks at the end of a contract, giving excuses to delay payment and even saying that the parents gave a bad report on the teacher so why should they pay. I had Possum ask him for payment at the end of each day but he refused and that was his last chance to get this foreigner to work for him.

We returned to the hostel hungry and I went with Bertha, a German girl, to a restaurant for a welcome meal of noodles. After eating we went along the side street which leads to the

Forest of

Stones, for Bertha wanted to look for a pair of beautiful chopsticks. She had not seen the local art before so I took her to the shop I enjoyed before. Bertha bought cut paper work and I fell for a small lacquer screen. I was helped in my decision to buy it by a fellow shopper, a Chinese woman who is a lecturer in International Politics and confirmed the value of what I was looking at. I got a good price. The screen is made of black lacquer inscribed with the images of Chinese theatre masks which are individually coloured. It is a four panel screen with two incised and painted theatrical masks on each panel. There is a little damage on one panel. The artist who made the screen has since died and it is the last one of its kind. I bargained for 60% off the asking price and later I asked two of my Chinese friends to guess its value and both estimated a little more than I was asked for originally.

  Unfortunately I caught a flu or heavy cold and had to take things a bit easier for the next couple of days. I would have liked to go to a temple called Luo Guan Tai which has strong associations with Lao Tse and the birth of Taoism, and perhaps it was even the place where the Tao Te Ching was written. This is outside Xi’an and in the cold weather I thought it would be unwise to make the journey. In sight of Luo Guan Tai is a small pagoda which is one of the earliest Christian sites in

China. I spent a lot of time talking with the students and staff at the Hostel and only went out to visit the Great Mosque, which was not too far away. This is also quite historic, being the oldest surviving mosque in

China. The Government allocates funds each year for its restoration and it is still a centre of worship. The basic building structures are the same as other Chinese temple buildings but much of the decoration is distinctly different. The main worship hall is floored with scores of beautiful rugs and their value in the West would be enormous.  The twenty-first was Chinese New Year’s Eve that year and at midnight there was a mass exodus from the Hostel. I followed, braving temperatures of about minus six degrees centigrade. I ran down through the alleyway in the old wall and stood about a hundred metres away from it with two Chinese guests and watched the fireworks shooting up from all over the city. The best for me were the ones which rose from behind the wall, silhouetting it. I have not seen anything like it since fireworks were banned in Queensland in the sixties because of the high bushfire risk. Expensive public displays are one thing but to be in a city where everyone who can afford to creates the biggest bangs possible and sends rockets into the sky is very special. The next day I relaxed and talked with new friends and left for the station at about four o’clock. My train travelled overnight to Xiangfan and I arrived at about six in the morning. My cold was worsening and I rested and did not make any attempt to talk to other passengers. Someone in the bunk above me was coughing heavily. This is part of the experience of travelling in the Chun Jie (Spring Festival) period. I am sure that the mass movement of people all over the country contributes to the fact that many new forms of flu develop in China. By the evening of my return my cold was quite bad and I rested for the next week and visited my friend Dr.Shang for antibiotics. 

The Terracotta Warriors. These are also known as The Entombed Warriors or the Terracotta Army and they are claimed as the Eighth wonder of the Ancient World. It is not an exaggerated claim. The Hostel runs tours with an English-speaking guide so I joined two other travellers and boarded the bus for one of the most amazing sights in the world. We were a bit taken aback when the bus turned off the bitumen onto a dirt track which reminded me of the access road to the Bowen tip and let us off in a bare dirt parking area, but after running a gauntlet of hawkers along a lane walled in corrugated iron we came to the entrance gate to the impressive buildings of the Exhibition Halls and Research Institute. Our guide, Xiao Wang, was on her first day on the job and was very nervous at first to be speaking to real foreigners. We helped her relax and she gave a very thorough account of what we viewed. The first excavation is the most extensive and scores of warriors stand in rows, re-assembled from fragments by patient archaeologists. Elsewhere I have called it the biggest jigsaw puzzle in the world. I think the most amazing thing is that each was made individually and has his own face. It is thought that they were modelled on the soldiers of a real army. The hall is a huge hangar erected over the site. At the far end from the entrance some soldiers and horses were standing either complete or in the process of reconstruction. It was very cold in the exhibition halls and impossible to manipulate the controls of my camera with my new gloves on, so once again I had cold hands.

Another building was a circular theatre with a full surround film presentation. We stood watching an invading army riding towards us and turned to see them riding away from us into the distance. The Warriors really are a replica of a complete military force. A smaller pit held what is thought to be a command post for the two large divisions in the major excavations. All of the figures here are officers. The second excavation has few warriors on display. Scientists are waiting to excavate them when technology is available to preserve the colour of the uniforms. Each figure was brightly painted but the paint deteriorated rapidly when the figures were exposed to air again after so many hundreds of years. This pit was excavated and refilled immediately. After a visit to a building holding photos of Bill Clinton and other dignitaries at the site we left to pass through the line of insistent sellers and reboard our bus. We were dismayed when the driver informed our guide that the restaurant he normally takes people to was closed for the day and refused to look for another one. We went straight to a reconstruction of an underground palace. Perhaps it was hunger which prevented me from enjoying this greatly. It is a replica built from plans of the Emperor’s tomb itself. I am not clear whether this has not been excavated or if it has been destroyed by tomb robbers. It must have been magnificent, with a sky made of gems, lights made from phosphorescent fish oil, and rivers reproduced in mercury. The landscape is reproduced and the life of the court is reproduced, with rows of musicians, harem ladies, courtiers, government officials, etc. The tomb rests in the middle of the artificial landscape. Next to the Emperor are two of his wives. Wives who had not borne children had the choice to enter a nunnery or die with the Emperor. The really amazing thing about this ruler is that his complete burial site extends over 120 square kilometres and was 27 years in the building. He makes the Pharaohs look like petty chieftains. Most of the site is not excavated, including a central mound in a pyramid shape that is the size of a smallish hill. It is likely this is where his tomb is. Who knows what other treasures are still below ground in this huge area. 

The day was snowy and I was well rugged up but had lost my gloves the day before. I have now lost three gloves in China and one of a pair is no use. I took a few nice pictures of the Pagoda and grounds with snow falling then walked on looking for the other pagoda and the Shaanxi Museum. My hands were frozen and I felt my energy dropping before I found a place to eat, a long walk from the Small Wild Goose Pagoda. I had a lunch of kebabs and a nice mixture of something or other from a Muslim restaurant. After that I took a taxi back to the centre of town and had a short rest at the hostel. I was looking for language tapes or DVDs and some books and one of the staff told me how to get to a large bookshop.

I got on the right bus and looked for a passenger who might speak English and read books. Luckily I guessed well and the man I approached knew exactly where I wanted to go and got off the bus with me and walked with me until we were in sight of the shop. I bought an English edition of The Three Kingdoms and a set of VCDs of a television programme which aims to teach people how to communicate in Chinese. I also bought a History of China.

Next day was Shaanxi Museum day. I took a taxi to avoid wasting time. They are very cheap. The Museum is wonderful and I spent four hours wandering through the exhibitions of old artefacts, costumes of minority groups, and art. It is refreshing to go to a museum which permits photography and the exhibits were beautifully lit, so I wandered around with my camera attached to the tripod and took about seventy photos. The time span of the exhibits begins at 1.05 million years ago with skull parts discovered in Shaanxi province. If I had the opportunity I would visit this museum again and again to try to appreciate the ways in which artistic and crafts approaches changed over the centuries.

Next day. My aim for the day was to visit the Large Wild Goose Pagoda. Other hostel guests had told me it was well worth seeing. I paid the entrance fee with moderate expectations after the other Pagoda but the experience was excellent. I paid the entrance fee and entered a clean, well-maintained precinct with old and beautifully ornamented buildings which still house a spiritual community. As I approached the first temple building I saw three girls lighting candles and incense sticks. One of them was holding several joss sticks between hands in a prayer position and bowing to North, South, East and West. I passed the girls and stood looking into the temple, which had three large figures of Buddha in three symbolic postures. One of the girls approached me and offered to be my interpreter as she and her two cousins went around the temple buildings with a guide. Another English student at the Foreign Language University, she spoke English very well and thanks to her I learned a lot about the Big Wild Goose Pagoda and its history. Some of you would remember a programme on TV called ‘Monkey Magic’, made in China and in which a Monkey King accompanied a monk on a journey from China to India and overcame attacks by physical and spiritual enemies. Monkey Magic is the TV version of ‘The Journey to the West’, one of the four great books. The Pagoda’s central theme is the real journey of the monk, Xuan Zang, to India at the request of his Emperor, to study Buddhist scriptures and bring them back to China. He faced many dangers and the journey took three years. When he returned he spent eleven years translating the books and taking little rest. The effort took his health and he died soon after he finished the work. The Journey to the West is a novel which adds mythological elements to this real history. I felt it was significant that the girl who showed me around used the English name ‘Grace’. The temple precinct had a definite spiritual atmosphere.