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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.

 

I continued on my way along the street of art shops as it curved to run below the wall. The base of the wall was lined with people selling art prints and one used almost all her wiles to try to persuade me to buy something from her! 

My goal was “The Forest of Steles”. Those of you who have learned about Ancient History would remember that a stele is a stone tablet, usually with writing carved on it. This museum was started hundreds of years ago by an Emperor who wanted to prevent scribal error. A few months before I left Queensland and before I thought it was possible for me to go to China I picked up a book called “The Jesus Sutras” on special in

Brisbane. This book outlines the recently recovered history of Nestorian Christianity in

China from around the 6th century. I read in it that there is a Christian stele in this museum. The museum has several buildings. They house the collection of that first Emperor and many other stones that have been collected over the centuries. The total is over three thousand. 

The contents include the complete Analects of Confucius (Kong Tze) on about 120 stones, many examples of beautiful calligraphy, excellent and renowned poems, and famous views. Many are set in walls but the most impressive rise from the backs of large stone turtles. All are carved from a single block. In about the third hall I came to I found what I was looking for, the Nestorian Stele. Many steles had plaques next to them describing them in Chinese and English and it was this that enabled me to find the Christian one. It was as indecipherable as any of the others to my untrained eye but the cross at the top is intelligible enough. The light was in the wrong place but I set my tripod up and took the best picture I could. 

Like all the museums in

Xi’an, this one had a gift shop. It sold rubbings of the most famous steles and I recognized many of the items that I saw on sale by the art sellers by the Wall. Of course, I bought the t-shirt, two in fact. One is of a famous poem with the characters artfully created by the leaves of a bamboo plant and the other is a depiction of the God of learning as a character with his foot resting on another character and his hand holding another. Together its three characters represent academic success. 

I returned to the hostel for a while then went out walking, past the Bell Tower in the centre of town that used to mark sunrise and past the Drum Tower that marked sunset (or was it the other way around - if anyone knows tell me). Near the

Drum Tower there is an arched tunnel into the Muslim quarter. There are many attractive wares there. Many, perhaps, are fakes or reproductions but there is no faking of pieces of embroidered cloth with stitches too small for my eye to separate. 

Next day I went on a Wild Goose chase. I looked for the Small Wild Goose Pagoda, the Large Wild Goose Pagoda and the

Shaanxi Museum. The only one I found was the Small Wild Goose Pagoda. It is a 13 tiered tower (ta) which was originally a storehouse for Buddhist relics but is not in religious use now. I climbed to the top by gradually narrowing staircases to see a very uninspiring view of a grubby modern city. The haze and smog of winter prevented any distant view of anything more exciting. On the grounds there was a small temple to Kuan Yin. Kuan Yin is the Goddess of Mercy and regarder of cries. She is a Chinese transformation of the Buddha Avalokitesvara and scholars believe the concept was influenced by Christian beliefs about Mary, Christ’s mother. Unfortunately the temple is now a display room and I felt no residual atmosphere of holiness. The only thing that impressed me greatly on the site was a photo of the Pagoda with a huge crack running down it. It was damaged in an earthquake which robbed it of a couple of stories and left it split in two. After the Revolution the Government had it repaired. I have discovered that in

China the Government is very conscious of heritage and their policies of preservation of cultural sites and ethnic minority uniqueness can be quite enlightened.

Xi’an showed much evidence of this. 

My Spring Festival holiday has begun. I took an overnight train from Xiangfan to

Xi’an, the home of the entombed warriors. A friend helped me obtain a last minute ticket by taking me into the presence of the Manageress of the station and asking her to give official permission for me to buy a ticket. As it is the season when all Chinese want to be with their parents the trains were full. Sometimes it’s nice to be treated as a cross between a celebrity and a kindergarten kid! The sale will be written up in the Railway Magazine as an example of good relations with foreign experts. My journey was enjoyable. I took the best class, soft sleeper, which has six bunks to a section and reasonable mattresses. My inflatable neck pillow was a boon. My companions were friendly and I spoke a lot with a Senior English student and later met another English teacher. It began to snow as I approached the station. This was my first snow since 1980 so I was very happy! I have so many pleasant memories of snow in my childhood in

Scotland. In the morning I woke up on a train moving through a white countryside. Many Australians have never seen snow and would not understand how beautiful that can be. As it was, this was not a full snowfall so the coating was light but at least I caught a glimpse of what I have missed so much for many years. 

I was met at the station by a friendly guy from Xian Shuyuan Youth Hostel which saved me from having to choose between the numerous people touting accommodation. We went by bus to the Youth Hostel. The Hostel is next to the

South Gate of the old wall which still surrounds the inner city area. The wall is fourteen kilometres long. Shuyuan Hostel is a member of the Youth Hostels Association. It is housed in an old Chinese residence with two inner courtyards and many rooms. There is an internet room and a travel agency office next to the front reception area and at the back there is a dining room and bar where meals, most of which are Western meals, can be bought. It seemed to me that the cost was reasonable for the standard of accommodation provided. There was one glitch in the advertising where “meals provided” turned out to mean “meals available (for purchase)” but that’s ok. My room had four bunks and a locker and was heated by a radiant heater. The building seemed to retain heat well so cold was not a problem as long as I didn’t sit around with light clothing on. The bed was hard by Australian standards and could be a problem for people with back problems. This is standard in

China, however. There was a pot-bellied stove in the dining/recreation room which kept that really pleasant. This time I was unable to avoid using a Chinese toilet but that wasn’t such a bad experience. I would have liked it to be cleaned a little more often though. Some people have a bad aim!  

My train had arrived at ten thirty so after a rest and lunch I set out touristing. The Hostel is close to buses and within easy walking distance of some of the central city tourist attractions. I passed along a street full of art shops and street sellers of art. I was amazed by the size of some of the paint brushes on sale, from very fine to about six feet long with a tip eight inches wide! The only shop I went into was a shop selling local art. Some of this surprised me and attracted me into the shop. As I found with the stoneworker in Xiangfan the proprietor and salesperson was the artist himself. The bonus this time was that Zhao Jianlong spoke English. The first works that attracted me were paintings in a naïve style. These are known as farmer’s paintings as they are traditionally painted by members of local farming communities. Mr. Zhao also produces traditional cut-outs, complex scissor work on bright paper. Traditionally, they are stuck on windows at Spring Festival time. They can be geometric but more often depict scenes from traditional stories. They range from scrapbook size to wall panel size and are always very detailed. He has won many awards for his work and if they were not so delicate I would have bought one. 

 

Exams are on Thursday and I will not have to teach again until February the first. The school has my papers so that they can finalise arrangements for me to send regular payments back to

Australia and when that is concluded I will go on holiday. The period after Chinese New Year, which varies as much as Christian Easter, is called Spring Festival. The title doesn’t seem to fit well for the coldest weather does not arrive until February but maybe I will understand why some day. Maybe it is when the New Year springs to life. 

I am spending some of my time watching DVDs. They are from a dollar(AU) to $2.50 each and I have acquired a respectable little collection of good films. The quality is inconsistent in the cheaper ones but the shop is willing to take them back without question if I find there are flaws. I was warned that occasionally I would come across one that was filmed in a cinema and actually experienced this with a copy of the last of the Lord of The Rings series. There were a couple of spots where I could hear the audience laugh! I don’t think the major film companies have anything to fear from Chinese pirate DVDs. They are nothing like the quality of the originals and anyone with enough money would buy the original. Maybe the companies should adopt a different marketing strategy here and put out an inferior quality series themselves. They would still be better than watching movies where the kissing noise comes after the kiss finishes! I can’t believe that a couple of foreign teachers I know were such cheapskates that they would watch a movie and then take it back to the shop claiming it was faulty. I took some back but only if they were truly faulty, then I would buy more. 

There are some good reasons why media companies should back off of hassling

China to enforce bans on pirating. The first one is that millions of Chinese will never be able to afford DVDs at true copy prices. In

Australia those companies have such a stranglehold that the prices are insanely high. If they want to reach a mass market they should lower the prices greatly. Another reason they should ease off in

China is that the pirates are developing the market for them by allowing millions of people to actually see movies and get a taste for them. Even so it is only the middle class that can buy the players. We must realize that today the middle class has moved downwards economically because of the greed of the filthy rich, like the people who make decisions in the media companies. I wasn’t poor in

Australia but couldn’t afford to build up a DVD collection. Now I’m watching movies I never saw when they were new and I am writing reviews online about them. Ironically I am assisting the very companies that I condemn as some of the worst examples of Empire building capitalism. Using economic power to invade third world countries with no less serious consequences to the common people than those their ancestors inflicted through force.

At New Year I made the choice to stay home alone rather than go out drinking and celebrating. A bit lonely but I really don’t want to change my major life choices because I am away from home. I rang my mother who was also spending New Year alone for the first time in many years, so that was really special. My children and their mother were out but I spoke to them the next evening. Alice and I went to my friends’ restaurant and she paid to thank me for helping her edit her lesson plan for an English teaching competition which she won.………..The Chinese lessons I was lent must have been recorded on half speed as they played at double speed on my school tape player but I bought a nice little machine that has a digital memory and can replay a section of tape and record my voice too so I can compare my pronunciation with the recording. Most of my sounds are ok in practice sessions but don’t transfer to the street well. I was puzzled for a while that the Chinese did not seem to have the flexibility to decode my meaning if I mispronounced a word but this is because Chinese does not have the adaptability of English. An error in tones gives an entirely different meaning and each word has a wide set of meanings which only gain clarity through their context within a sentence and the circumstances they are spoken in. I slowly understood these things. I recommend to anyone coming to

China that they should study Chinese first if they want to learn the language. Most of my friends and a couple of my students say they want me to teach me their language so I am going to have many tutors. I have learned pronunciation to the extent that I can say most of my students’ names in a way that they understand.……….Flora arranged an appointment with a French doctor and I discussed my medical problems with them both. It seems that the only possibility of obtaining some of the medicines is through

Hong Kong. It is easier to have them sent from

Australia so that’s what I will do. (Later I found it was really easy to get my medicines in

China. Xiangfan is the only place I have had trouble. The bigger pharmacies in each town have a book listing Chinese and English names for most medicines. You can also get a Chinese friend to look on the internet for the name of your medicine and write it down somewhere you can’t lose it. Take that with you when you go looking for your medicines.) 

After the Mayor’s party I returned to the school and picked up a present for the Cools and went to their restaurant to say Merry Christmas. The following week was very full but here are some highlights. 

Flora lives in the old part of the city, on the other side of the river, so I went to meet her at a place we both knew, McDonalds. We had a snack and I suggested we look for somewhere quieter to talk. We found a tea house in an old building and talked there for an hour or two. There is no pressure in Chinese eating places for the customer to leave when they have finished their meal, something I have found particularly obnoxious in many Western establishments. 

Until then I thought Flora was an interpreter for the French for she arrived at the party with them and was looking after them. She does assist them in that way but when I discovered she is a doctor I decided I should ask for her help in finding a supplier for my medicines in

China. She said she would try to find them and wants me to ring her if I have any medical problems. Flora also wants me to teach her English and will try to find more paying students for me. We left the tea house and walked down the old street to the riverbank so that she could show me the old wall lit up at night. I didn’t have my tripod but tried to take some photos. I got a couple of nice photos of Flora at the tea house. Flora has a baby daughter. 

On Sunday the Cools took me in their car to Long Zhong, a site covering several acres and a memorial to Xiangfan’s greatest citizen Zhuge Liang. There was a period in Chinese history called the Three Kingdoms Period because three rulers fought for supremacy, not unlike the Tokugawa Period in

Japan except that after seventy years of war the victor became Emperor and not Shogun. Bob and others had told me a little about Zhuge Liang and I followed this up a little on the internet. I discovered he was a noted intellectual who was approached three times by one of the warring rulers and eventually granted an audience. Zhuge Liang agreed to help the ruler, Liu Bei, and became a general and official. On my visit I soon found I knew only a little of the story. 

We went into a complex of old buildings which was the great man’s school. We passed through a gift shop and temple where his assistance can be sought. Then there were rooms containing large figures of Zhuge Liang, Liu Bei and the two generals who accompanied Liu Bei when he visited Zhuge Liang. Then we came to a room where many scenes of Zhuge Liang’s life had been reconstructed in glass fronted recesses, dioramas. Harry translated the descriptions very capably and I began to realize this man means far more to the Chinese than I knew. I saw him writing poems which are still prized, negotiating alliances, winning battles with little bloodshed through cleverness, changing the direction of the wind through prayer to win a battle fought on land and water, giving wise advice to the ruler he chose to serve, inventing a sort of wheelbarrow for carrying weapons, telling the future from the stars and becoming a regent who never sought power for himself. A Renaissance Man long before the Renaissance; a Moses, a Leonardo, and a Nostradamus in one body. Now I have read the book, ‘The Three Kingdoms’, which is a history more sophisticated than most Western works of the time, and am amazed at the figure of Zhuge Liang portrayed there. 

When we returned I went to my apartment for an hour or two then went back to the restaurant where I ate with the family and some of their friends (a travel agent, a union official and an uncle). We ate a variety of wonderful dishes including some filled bready things which were made especially for me. They have excellent cooks.