Three reasons why I love China

When you spend a long time outside of your own country, you sometimes, irrationally, get attacks of over the top Nationalism. During these moments everything ‘in my country’ is glorious, nothing is frustrating and everyone there ‘just gets me. You know, the British have a very dry sense of humour.’ During these moments the desire to return home, where you understand the language, the jokes and the cultural nuances, can be pretty intense.
For the majority of my adult life, the concept of China (and it is far more of a concept than a country to those who don’t understand its operations), scared, confused and even angered me. So, because sometimes I need reminding of why I’m here and because China deserves the good rep, here are my top three reasons for loving China: 

1. The utterly bizarre: In Shanghai they had the idea to build a selection of towns modelled on various different countries, mainly in Europe. There are several examples of this but my obvious favourite is Thames Town. Built several years ago, Thames Town was modelled on a selection of British towns across the architectural timeline: there are mock Tudor buildings hanging out next to post-war 1950s concrete blocks; uniform, modern houses lining canals - there’s even a miniature millennium bridge and cathedral. 


The town was originally built with the intention of housing several thousand people; it has a huge, grand (completely empty) hotel, café, pub, corner shop and clothes boutiques, which line its quaint cobbled streets. However, the train line connecting the town with central Shanghai was cancelled and now the town is barely inhabited. It stands as a ghost town, occupied by very few and utilised for wedding pictures and movies (quick side note-when we were there, while the recently married couple had a choice of Cathedral/river/ornate buildings as their wedding picture background, they chose to use the tackiest shop complete with ‘corner shop’ sign and advertisements for British goods that do not now nor have ever existed). This all results in an eerie, utterly bizarre and ‘really??!!’ inducing situation- like a bomb exploded over Russia and sucked Britain and China into a new dimension. My favourite part of this bizarre town is the Chinese beefeater-esq guards who we saw training in the car park in complete seriousness-yi, er, san…three step formations and not-so-perfected ‘queen protecting’ expressions.


This is just one example in a colourful finger painting of examples of Chinese bizarre-ity, all of which induce a delighted expression of utter bewilderment. 

2. Guanxi: The other day a taxi driver picked me up from an address that I couldn’t pronounce. I wanted to return to the exact same spot, so with the help of my assistant teacher on speaker phone, he took me to my apartment, waited outside for ten minutes and then took me back. He didn’t charge me for the time that he was waiting. Instead he shouted at me for the whole trip in the stereotypically gruff way that all taxi drivers seem to have here. It didn’t matter that I had no idea what he was saying; he just wanted me to know that I really should learn how to verbally navigate my own taxi-trips.

On the metro it is customary to barge - no one waits for you to get off, it is a race of excessive importance to reach a spare seat first. There have been several instances of my arriving late to work because I’ve literally got stuck on the metro, squashed too far against the opposite side of the car that I couldn’t break free. However, as soon as you add crutches into the mix, (although everyone stares at you as if you just walked off of the set of Sesame Street still in costume) they go out of their way to help you. My security guard literally runs to open the door for me. Old ladies on the street come up to me, concerned look on their faces, and gesture at my bad leg: 'Bu hao!' I’ve had a couple of really awkward experiences where someone in the toilets has tried to be so helpful that they have ended up in the cubicle with me.



It appears as though the Chinese are very internally focused and ignore common pleasantries, seen in the West as politeness. The language sounds perpetually angry: ‘Ai’, said using the fourth, angry-sounding tone, means love. Yet they will go out of their way to build a relationship with those they come into genuine contact with. It is one of the most generous and helpful cultures I have encountered. However, it is not built upon the great mass of crowd pleasing and is instead a more personally based concept. The concepts of guanxi (the building of relationships) and of mianzi (keeping and maintaining face, equating to respect) are of integral importance in every single aspect of Chinese life. The concept of community is still evident here and is refreshing and sometimes heart warming. 


3. Contrasts: China is vast and therefore is home to every kind of person, belief and natural wonder. This is evident in every part of China that I have visited: the hustle and bustle and polluted skies of Beijing contrasted to the Great Wall, which climbs the mountain side; the fact that in 12 hours we drove through the Gobi desert, the mountains and the grasslands in inner Mongolia; the traditional architecture and mountains which boarder the West Lake in Hangzhou and are accented by large factories and high rise flats. 



In Shanghai you can be in France one minute and stroll straight into an episode of The Jetsons the next, as Pu Dong reminds of a future living on Mars. Driving through downtown on elevated roads which fly over and under one another, is like being inside the internet, flanked on both sides by binary code. Every morning I leave my apartment – ‘the Fortress of Solitude’ – walk through the peaceful gardens and boom…CHINA!! Street food stalls line uneven pavements and cause smoke to billow above. Half dilapidated buildings, the downstairs of which are used for fruit and veg shops or massage parlours, are dwarfed by the towering high rises which sprout up behind. The street market next to where I live and the others around where I work are some of my favourite things about Shanghai – sometimes shocking, even now, and always exciting.



In a country known for its social and political restraints, I have never felt freer, at least in some senses of the word. If you have the money and the know-how, you can do absolutely anything in China. Shanghai in particular is a hub for diverse experiences. So, while there is social control, there is also the world’s largest, well, everything, really (skate park, indoor ski slope, paint balling range, roller coasters); you can have every type of food imaginable, delivered straight to your door. There is also the ability to have an A-list life style when in many ways poverty is all around you, which can be at times slightly shocking and deeply sad. However, the contrasts are what make a thing beautiful and interesting. They set things apart from one another and promote a further understanding.
Contrasts between China and England enhance my understanding of both cultures and also make me appreciate and miss my home more. It’s strange to think that this time next year, after three years away, I’ll be back living in the homeland!

Not so many world apart

Beijing according to Sophie

The thick layer of smog that hung over Beijing and clung to my skin was magnified in contrast to the seemingly fresh mountain air on the Great Wall. As mentioned previously, seeing stars or blue skies can be rare occasions in certain parts of China, so when we do have that lucky bright day or clear night, we tend to appreciate it so much more. Perhaps, therefore, my perception of Beijing has been polluted by the fact that the weather was cold and drizzly and the sky remained a very particular brand of carbon coloured grey.

My friend Erik had given me his much tested ‘Beijing itinerary’ and we booked a night at a hostel on his recommendation. Our hostel was wonderful with a relaxed atmosphere; the décor was simple yet beautiful, a particular highlight being an inner courtyard that is common in traditional Northern Chinese houses. Erik had done well. The hostel was situated a close walk to Tiananmen Square and was surrounded by small roads and alleys, home to a variety of markets selling a myriad of goods; flashing bright lights and red Chinese lanterns adorned almost every doorway and window display. In China you can usually tell the seedy level of an alley as measured by the seedy-o-meter: The more pink, florescent lights, the better it’s left unexplored, (unless, of course, your expedition has a wholly different goal).

Alex and I decided not to allow the rain to destroy our Dora the explorer spirits and planned to explore Beijing by night after having a quick shower, (during which I managed to flood the whole bathroom-this is something I have successfully achieved in several countries now…perhaps there is a book in there somewhere).

Within the first hour of our Beijing exploration we had noticed two things: 1. Beijing people are friendly (Ok, so they were trying to sell us stuff but they were friendly none the less) and 2. Getting a taxi in Beijing is a mission worthy of James Bond. Alex: What does he mean he wants 80 yuan? It cost us 10 yuan to get here, he’s having a laugh!! He was indeed having a laugh…he and his quasi-taxi-driver-friends laughed us right down the street.

Our main goal for the first evening was to get as many odd, fried creatures into Alex’s gob as possible. Well, I say ‘our goal’ but really it was Alex whose heart was set solidly on munching down some scorpions. It didn’t take us long to find the night markets; Erik told us exactly where to go and plus, Beijing seems to give the illusion of being really quite small.

I couldn't catch the movement on camera

The night markets are truly fabulous, with a special kind of vibrancy which one only finds in amongst the hustle and bustle of a market place. You can find the same energy in Camden town or in amongst the souks in Marrakesh: it is exciting and intoxicating. This atmosphere was made more incredible by the foreign-ness of the whole affair…like this was absolutely nothing like anywhere else in the world. Bright fairy lights hung in clusters above, putting stars into the Beijing night and lanterns and brightly coloured silks hung over stall after stall.  In and amongst the usual tourist tat and bizarre gift ideas (you can get a model doll made to look exactly like yourself- the definition of freaky-cool), were what we were looking for. Oh what choice, a banquet so splendid that Henry the eighth would tremble with jealousy (interesting side note: the Chinese for jealousy is ‘Chi1 Cu4’ which translates literally to ‘eat vinegar’). Displayed on sticks across counters and counters were a variety of insect and arachnid-the baby scorpions were still alive and moving on the sticks. Alex: I’m going to do it.  Me: You’re a bigger man than I! Oh god…ew! I can’t believe you’re actually eating that. What does it taste like? Alex: Fried bones mainly. Me: Tasty. Let me try a pincer…

Alex with the babies

There. There you have it. My one and only culinary experimentation was a tiny, almost none existent baby scorpion pincer. Alex on the other hand gobbled down all four scorpions and then…he…went…looking for MORE!! I have to say, I am continuously impressed by Alex’s experimental streak; it was around about the second stick of scorpions that me, the stall owner to my left and the random Chinese guy standing behind us started to get a bit nauseous. This time Alex upgraded from baby to daddy scorpion and the only way of eating such a beast, still encased in its very effective armour, is to suck out its wobbly bits.

Daddy scorpion actually not a deeeelish as it looks

 We moved on from the pedestrian street and soon found a whole row of food stalls selling ONLY strange creatures. You know, the kind that usually live in dirt or grass or trees; the kind of creatures which are too exotic to share my nationality. There were bee cocoons, fried birds’ nests, star fish, silk worms, baby sharks, dog stew, cat fillet, locust sticks and centipedes, as well as a selection of other delicacies. It makes sense to me, eating creatures that are in high supply which cost nothing but seeing them all laid out like that, I had to wonder how many actually got sold and what they did with the leftovers. Me: Hey, Alex. Dare you to eat a sheep’s penis. Alex: I don’t want to be the guy who ate penis. Me: Go on, it’ll be funny!!

            *** Some time later *** Alex: I think have some stuck in my teeth.

            *** Even later than that *** Alex: I think it went really far in. It kind of hurts.

Aaaaaand cue one of the all-time funniest moments of my life. I’m sorry Alexiho…I love you but this situation…well, this needs to be immortalised, dear friend.

After a very enjoyable and unforgettable day of climbing the Great Wall followed by a trip to Beijing’s night markets and the ingestion of some interesting, freaky creatures (and their appendages), Alex and I hit the hay.

This is NOT a joke

Our final day in Beijing began early and with enthusiasm. After breakfast we headed off to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Once we arrived we spent quite a long time trying to figure out where exactly Tiananmen Square was…as we stood, in the middle of it! Ho hum…into the not-so-Forbidden-City we traipsed, accompanied by a large crowd of eager tourists with cameras at the ready. Oh, there was Mao’s face over the gate of heavenly peace, very interesting, oh and there goes that toy solider crawling across the courtyard holding the Chinese flag. Me: Are we in the Forbidden City yet? How are we supposed to know? We found out that we were entering when they made us pay- this is always a good indication of when you have arrived somewhere important. Alex and I celebrated our discovery with a series of strangely posed pictures in front of one of many identical buildings.

Being classy in the Forbidden City

Perhaps I will be cursed by the ghosts of traditions past or the spirits of architecture appreciation and I’m not saying that the cultural and architectural importance of the Forbidden City isn’t without extreme and relevant weight. However, I will say that although beautiful and ornate, the Forbidden City is like being stuck in a Chinese hall of mirrors…everything is repeated over and over again. What is initially impressive becomes a very recent memory repeating itself. Perhaps this is crude and for that I am sorry, but really, it’s the truth. Perhaps this was emphasised by the rain and the grey skies- I tend to be effected by the weather.

Before we left for the train station we also went to the Olympic village and moseyed around. It’s a very impressive, futuristic structure, although I’m not sure what they do with it now. The whole area seemed more or less deserted apart from the tourists and usual tat sellers and both of the metro stations joining the area to the main town were closed. We had lunch in Beijing’s answer to Soho or the South bank- unusual, slightly eccentric boutiques, cafes and restaurants lined a pebbled street, which we discovered completely by mistake but which was a definite city highlight, for me at least.

All in all, although Beijing isn’t my favourite city in China or indeed the great wide world, it was a fantastic trip. Staying at and then climbing the Great Wall was a highlight of my life and travelling with such a dear and funny friend as Alex made the experience all the more enjoyable. Beijing was a city of firsts but for me, it is also a city of lasts and that makes it a very special place indeed.

Climbing the ever so great wall of China

After several fist crunchingly frustrating attempts at train/plane ticket booking via the internet, Alex and I experienced our first Beijing related Blue Square Shaped Victory (BSSV): purchasing our soft sleeper tickets at Shanghai railway station…at the English speaking kiosk. Our train departed at 8pm Monday night and would arrive in Beijing at 8 the following morning. As usual, I over packed, unsure of what to expect from the Capital city I had heard so much about (what attire goes most appropriately with scorpion munching, anyway?) As we dragged my unnecessarily heavy suitcase along the platform and gazed in through the carriage windows, our trepidation at what our sleeping arrangements would be grew stronger. What a glorious surprise, therefore, when we arrived at our compartment to find two comfortable (ish) bunk beds complete with slippers and clean (hooorah) bedding! Alex managed to successfully bully the Chinese business man who attempted to camp in with us and the whole 12 hour journey was spent sleeping in relative peace.

Our cabin

Our first mission was to make our way through the Beijing rush hour of intense people traffic to the bus station where we would begin our journey to the Great Wall. Immediately Beijing felt different to Shanghai. There was the same over population issue and similar sardine train effect (several times I’ve been late to work because I’ve been unable to get off the metro). However, it was the lack of something rather than it's presense that was so immediately obvious. Shanghai is so intoxicatingly electric and progressive. Driving through down town Shanghai is like entering the internet, flanked on both sides by binary code. There is nothing in this world quite like Shanghai and leaving it can create a drastic contrast. In comparison Beijing is grey and polluted: a beautiful and interesting depiction of the past but a sense of energy towards the future seems to be lacking.

The bus journey (BSSV no. 2) out of Beijing and into the Northern China country took about two hours; we finally arrived at a bus station in the middle of the countryside, strange that it can feel so remote just outside one of the busiest and most polluted cities in the world. We were collected by a driver and taken up the steep and narrow canyon road into the mountains where we would be spending our first night. Our first view of the Great Wall (aside from the miniature mock wall randomly placed on a roundabout) was when we stopped to use a public restroom.  Above the stink ridden building and rising high into the mountains was one of the seven manmade wonders of the world. ‘Wonder’, ‘great’…there was a lot of hype and expectation leading up to this moment and as we made our way further into the mountains and the wall continued to expand before us, it did not disappoint. It is truly an impressive structure, segments of wall broken up by large turrets and look out spots. The terrain on which this section was built is dangerous and steep; it was almost unbelievable to think about how it had been built and how many lives were lost in the process. The driver drove like any self-respecting Chinese man would- with courage and insanity, turning sharply around bends and teetering dangerously close to the ridge of the road. I chatted to him in Chinese (BSSV no. 3) about the very limited subjects I know how to chat about, as Alex gazed out of the window, silently praying for all four wheels to remain on the ground. Alex: I’m glad I didn’t bring my mum, she would be freaking out right now.’

 We were meant to be sleeping at a tiny hostel on the side of the mountain, outhouse and view included in the price. However, despite my recent battle on the great grasslands of Inner Mongolia, a night in sub zero conditions didn’t appeal and since the room available had no heating and the bed was made of bricks...we opted to sleep slightly further up the mountain in a tiny village. The village comprised of about five shack-like houses surrounded by farm land and the scene brought back happy memories of Sri Lanka and Nuwara Eliya.

The village where we stayed

 The bed took up most of the room and was made of bricks and wood. The underneath was an open space which served as a heating system, circulating hot air brought in from a large fire directly outside the room. It was an incredibly uncomfortable night’s sleep but waking up to see the great wall at dawn was completely worth it. The house was owned by a Chinese family and we ate our breakfast while watching their small children playing in the yard.

The start of our climb

We began our four hour climb on a non-restored section of the wall which was pretty damn dangerous, really. Me: Alex, I’m not sure we’re supposed to be on this section of the wall. Please don’t jump up and down on this rickety, wooden swing bridge suspended across the canyon. Alex, please don’t do the goofy dance right now in the middle of this very old, half broken, rickety swing bridge over a god damn canyon with a 30 foot drop into icy water. Alex, STOP IT!!! The climb was pretty arduous in parts, some of it being almost vertical inclines and a few times we had to get off the wall because it was in such a bad state. We then had to kind of scale the mountain side, using discarded cigarette butts and bottles as reassuring signs of successful adventures before. The benefit of being on a section which we later found out was indeed closed: there was not another soul around. Just us surrounded by shockingly beautiful nature- mountains, gorges and an actually blue sky, thankfully free of the thick layer of pollution which acts as sunglasses for the whole of Beijing. At around 8am the sun began to peep out over the mountains and by 9am it had fully risen, dissipating the mist which hung thickly below. Alex: 'There are seven billion people on this planet; I just can’t believe that none of them are on this bit of the wall with us.' I was massively grateful for it- the experience was incredible.

A Nomad's guide to Inner Mongolia-part two

From city to desert to mountains, it was now time to make the 250 km journey to the grasslands. I had made friends with the bus driver and so got to ride the rest of the trip in the front seat. This was advantageous for several reasons, mainly the leg room was considerably more than the cramped space previously endured and my new position allowed for a perfect view of the other travellers, who were sleeping in the most interesting positions, sprawled across each other and dangling face down into the aisle. My new Chinese driver buddy and I had a great hand gesture conversation, which was fully compounded when we ran out of oil and no petrol station had the right kind. There we sat, he looking utterly dismayed, in the middle of the grasslands with no oil and a bus full of rambunctious Europeans. I tried to cheer him up with some over enthusiastic thumbs at side of smiling face but he only looked at me from the corners of his eyes as though I were completely mental. I thought that I had achieved another of those blue square shaped victories when he finally began to beam with delight, only to realise that he had somehow, without leaving the van, managed to find someone to mix the oil from scratch, a concept which was only slightly concerning.

We set off again, new driver buddy full of relief produced adrenaline, which had the effect of prompting him to drive like a lunatic. As I was in the front seat, I was the only traveller on board who was able to see quite how close we came to hurtling head long into a lorry. It seems in China, if there’s a traffic jam and you just don’t quite feel like waiting in it, no worries, it’s totally fine to drive off road for a few metres and then zoom down the lane of oncoming traffic. The sound of the horn, in all situations, is the theme tune to Chinese life.

We arrived at the grasslands in the early evening. It was quite an incredible juxtaposition of landscape-in twenty four hours we had gone from the desert to the mountains and now we were standing in a huge expanse of flat, grass covered land (I know that sounds obvious, but it’s the best way to describe the surroundings). All that we could see around us were the five yurts (large, circular tents with a raised wooden platform on which you sleep) in which we would spend the night, a larger yurt for dining, the Mongolian family farm house and an outhouse. There were also several cows and horses and very large piles of cow dung from which to make a fire. The yurts were arranged in a line so that behind and on both sides, all that could be seen was undisturbed land, on the end of which the sun was now settling and the sky had become transfixed with vibrant pinks and oranges.

The yurts

The yurts

We had a traditional Mongolian meal of rice, noodles AND potatoes with a large hunk of lamb meat and some pickled delicacies. We were also served milk tea which had been mixed with a considerable quantity of salt, this seemed to be a normal addition to a Mongolian beverage but was none the less, slightly distasteful. After dinner we sat around with the other travellers, of which there were French, Germans, Spanish, English, Dutch and American, all of whom lived in some part of China and were escaping the big cities for National day golden week. The temperature very quickly dropped to around -5 and our tiny dung-heap fire faded fast, this meant that our only possible option for prolonged warmth was to play drinking games with various Chinese alcohols, bijou being the most prominently disgusting. Thoroughly sauced, and slightly warmed, we went outside to look at the stars. The sky was utterly stunning, tiny stars, usually kept hidden, sparkled next to every constellation that we could recall. We tried to name ten but could only remember a few, all of us recognising the Milky Way with the excitement of people used to living inside a concrete, star-banished metropolis.

The boys and the rest of the travellers eating a mongolian meal

The boys and I were sharing our yurt with two American girls, Mellissa and Becca, with whom we had become friendly. That night we got even closer. It was so cold that we all slept with our shoes and coats on and had to huddle together for warmth that, in my experience, never came. The night before we left our apartment, the boys were joking with me about how cold I’d be with no sleeping bag in the grasslands, bragging about what well prepared adventurers they were for having thought ahead and owning camping equipment. The irony was not lost on me, as we lay on cold wood with a mere blanket covering us: not only had the boys both forgotten their sleeping bags, but they also hadn’t brought any warm clothes, in fact, David was at this moment donning my frilly scarf and I could feel Thomas shivering away next to me. This warmed my spirit if not my toes.

After a sleepless night, we arose to watch the sun rise and drink more salted tea. Me: That was an interesting experience but I am NEVER doing that again. Becca: I still can’t feel my toes. David: I slept quite well, actually. Me: I know, I could hear you snoring all night, you….

Our road trip adventure was concluded by another ‘never again.’ We were taken to what appeared to be a Mongolian ghost town: half farm, half tiny village with abandoned, tiny stone and cement houses in long rows and several disgruntled animals scattered about randomly. A horse ride across the plains was included in the price of our tour and so, although none of us really trusted the safety of this option, we didn’t want to miss out on something that we had effectively already paid for. The horses were tiny; in fact, watching the boys wobbling around on top of these under developed beasts was comical in the extreme, especially since we had a boy in our group who was just less than 7ft. The saddles were held on by little more than a thick piece of string and the reigns were way too short. What wasn’t comical was the complete lack of control that any of us had over the horses. The best example of this was when we came to a main road. My horse was at the front of the others and as we approached the road I pulled the reigns to make it stop. This instead prompted the horse to stride purposefully out onto the road, when there was a bus heading straight towards us. In England, if a driver sees a horse on the road, they will slow down, turn the music off and generally be patient with an animal of considerable weight and power. The buses reaction to having fourteen people-baring horses appear in front of it was to speed up, hand on horn: another near fatality and yet another story to tell. After we had cantered precariously back to the farm/village/?, we climbed back into the bus and made our jolly way back to Hohhot. This time I used my new Chinese bus driver buddy to practise my Chinese. Badly.

Back in Hohhot and checked in to a considerably more comfortable hotel, we decided to meet Becca and Mellissa and head out to some bars. All: We won’t drink much tonight, just a few beers and then bed. I’m really tired. Four bottles of vodka and two Chinese night clubs later, we were all wandering aimlessly around Baby box, gambai-ing every suitable looking person we could find (which essentially came down to any Chinese person who had a drink in their hand). Chinese clubs are always an experience. Massively over the top in their décor and pumping a strange combination of cheesy-classics and heavy bass, they make for a really fun night out; especially as we’re usually the only foreigners in there and so for one night, we gain celebrity status. Baby box, however, had its own guest celebrity-enter Chinese lady Gaga followed by a whole crew of photographers and body guards. She walked straight past us, this random Chinese lady dressed as lady gaga, got onto the stage, performed two songs, badly, got down and made her way back through the throng of over excited fans. The whole time, her body guards (there were four of them flanking her on all sides) kept stony expressions behind their dark sunglasses. Oh China!!

A Nomad's guide to Inner Mongolia-part one

Our Inner Mongolian adventure commenced forth at 5am on Saturday October 1st after one hour of sleep and a considerable amount of tequila. For some reason David and I shunned an early night in favour of more hedonistic pursuits, believing that this would make our early flight more tolerable. We whiled the night away on our balcony, watching the dancing lights of Pu dong and talking about stuff that two inebriated Europeans usually talk about-utter bollocks. Some hilarious miracle got us to the airport on time, plonked us firmly in our seats and boom-sleep (for David at least). I am actually somewhat in awe of David’s ability to sleep on demand in almost every situation-he had on average ten naps a day, completely unperturbed by the dodgy smells and potential fatality of his surroundings. Although the flight to the most Northern reaches of China was only two hours from Shanghai, as with most domestic flights they gave us a delicious meal of unidentifiable meat-in-bun and some overly saturated rice, otherwise known as congee, otherwise known as ‘that disgusting rice-type thing’. Thomas was not happy, I know because he told me, several times over several days. The whole journey was taken up with an incredible desire for ping shui (bottled water) but once we arrived at the airport and located a shop, the only drink option was milk-rows and rows of milk. First Inner Mongolian fact- they dig cows.

Me and the boys on Hohohohohhot

Our first day in Hohhot was spent wandering around beautiful markets lining narrow, winding streets. Traditional Mongolian buildings and run down, yet charming houses were adorned by Chinese lanterns and the familiar five star flag that flew for National day. The pertinence of this was not lost but is better left somewhat ignored. We found ourselves in an auction where we managed to buy two massive paintings for the walls of our apartment, which has now been thoroughly Chineseified and looks great. We also went to a temple which was incredibly colourful with many hidden corners and had a five tiered, layered stone pagoda standing proudly in its courtyard. Outside the temple several old men sat around, playing cards on tiny make-shift tables and drinking liquor from small metal flasks. We quickly became an attraction, being a minority far more here than we ever are  in Shanghai. However, unlike the sometimes snooty-tooty, swanky pants air of the Shanghaiese, the Inner Mongolians were polite and simply interested in our strange, exotic selves.  Our first impressions of Inner Mongolia: the smiling, inquisitive faces of the local people-a real mix of Chinese and Mongol- and the traditional meets modernistic aspects of two cultures, once colliding, now co-inhabiting. This mix of culture was reflected in the beautiful buildings and loud, bustling shopping centres; in the drive for excess and consumerism on the busiest shopping street I have ever got lost on and the peaceful temples: the vibrant colours reflecting obvious care in their upkeep. We knew straight away that we were in for a fantastic five days and we were not disappointed.

The temple in Hohhot

The next morning we squashed into a van with eleven other travellers and made our long and bumpy journey through the valley and into the Gobi desert. Once in the desert, we exchanged van for treacherous, hot-wired sand jeep and sped like maniacs across the sand dunes. For an adrenaline junky, China’s considerable ignorance in the face of health and safety means exhilaration in the most unlikely of places-this essentially became the tone of our whole trip.

Thomas, David and I had decided that we didn’t quite fancy a camel ride (I once spent five hours on one in Israel and had had my life’s fill of numb bum) and so we separated from the group and made our way into no-man’s land. Actually, if I’m honest, nowhere in this section of desert could be described as no-man’s land. Aside from the fact that it seemed almost impossible to escape the various entourages of moseying camels, there was only one view that wasn’t marred by China’s fantastic ability to completely shun natural beauty. David: That’s got to be the biggest factory I have ever seen.’ Thomas: ‘Shall we take the picture facing the other way? I can see the cable car in full view.’  Me: ‘We shouldn’t walk too far from the group boys, we might get lost in the desert forever’. Boys: ‘Shut up Sophie.’ Regardless of the interesting juxtaposition between miles and miles of pure white sand and streams of grey-white factory pumped pollution, the experience was great fun. We did eventually find ourselves pretty secluded and able to privately attempt, poorly, to throw ourselves off of sand dunes and to sit and watch the sky turn different shades of red and orange as the sun departed from the day.

After the desert and an even more treacherous jeep journey back to the bus, we headed into the mountains…and got lost…several times. After a five hour journey, a few naps and a constantly rumbling stomach we arrived at the Wudang Zhao temple, the biggest Tibetan temple in Inner Mongolia. We got shown to our room, which we shared with three others and was heated by a small electric fan. The Lamasery in which we slept is two hundred and fifty years old and incredibly basic, yet subtly beautiful and obviously much loved and cared for. The toilets were dangerous-housed in a cement open air building and in complete darkness, the two massive holes that dropped several feet into…imagination needed…were potential traps for the unsure footed; It was breezy, to say the least. Dinner that night was microwavable something that was cooked in a pan of water heated on one of the electric fans-it was not delicious but it was resourceful and welcome after being made to wait until almost midnight. The boys and I decided that we would go and explore the temple prematurely, so, taking a torch, we made our way up the winding steps and around the courtyards of the temple. It was impressive, even in the dark, and the sky above shone with a multitude of stars. It’s amazing how happy a starry sky can make a person who has become used to a sky shrouded constantly by smog. It was breathtakingly beautiful and we stood in the courtyard, heads up to the sky like children hoping to see Santa’s sleigh at Christmas. We finally returned to our beds after having a bit of a dog scare and realising that this midnight exploration may result in a loss of face. The Chinese value face, I value mine.

The next morning we were woken by a Chinese woman’s exclamation: ‘Oh, you’re still asleep.’ And were hurried down to the temple where we ate a breakfast of noodles, handmade in front of us, as we sat under a tree watching the Lama monks get ready for their day. This was made more interesting by their use of smart phones and the stylish donning of designer trainers but, as Thomas reminded me, they must advance with the times. In past days the temple was also a school, and the 2,500 room complex was home to 1,200 residential monks. Today the Lamasery houses a mere sixty, all of whom are salaried. The Wudang Zhao temple is beautiful, the surrounding willow trees (from which it gets its name) are covered with the coloured fabrics of the Tibetan monks-Blue symbolising air, white for water, yellow for earth, red for fire and green for harmony, wisdom and natural surroundings. David: ‘Has it been raining strips of fabric?’ No one: ‘Ha-ha.’ The temple itself is built up the mountain and so there are many small, spiralling staircases cut into the stone and various paths to discover. Additionally, the mountains frame the temple on all four sides and the air was actually breathable!! Wonderful! We spent the morning in the temple and then began our 250km journey to the grasslands. On route we stopped to use the toilet (this had to be done my crawling through a hole in a fence and balancing precariously over a 15ft drop) and to buy as much Chinese liquor as we dared-we were told it was going to be very cold on the grasslands that night. We had no idea how cold very cold could be…

The markets in Hohot

One in 1.4 billion-experiencing the Chinese section of a Chinese hospital

One of my favourite parts about living in Chinaland is the frequency of the ‘really? Did that really just happen?’ moments. Two of the most memorable of these CHINA (!!) moments showed me the contrasts of China first hand, as I had experience of the western style of medical treatment versus that at the Chinese hospital.

When you first move to China, they want to be sure that you are not bringing with you any unwanted diseases, particularly such delights as HIV, TB etc. In a country so populous (and around five per cent of Chinese people have hepatitis B, which is, well, a pretty damn large amount of people), this is very logical and is appreciated quite substantially by me and my none-diseased bodily unit. Clean blood, clean mind, clean soul or something to that effect. Within the first week of residing in the country, all foreigners must take a thorough medical examination, which involves blood tests, a chest x-ray, internal organ scan (seems the liver survived the Praha years after all), eye test and some test that checks your heart rate and blood pressure but appeared to be more like an electrocution device and was applied with no explanation.

The system implemented to carry out this full body MOT was shockingly efficient. After paying and receiving our barcodes, we were ushered into a changing room and told to strip off and gown up. We were then ordered to one room after another, where, with extreme speed, they checked us over with various equipment and a typically Chinese bedside manner. My personal favourites were the eye test: Me: I’m not wearing my glasses, I can’t see that line. Eye man: Read what it says. Me: I can’t see it. E.M: (impatient tone, slight rising intonation) Just read it. Me: but I CAN’T! The chest x-ray was also especially delightful. I still had my necklace on and so the woman told me to put it in my mouth. There I stood- a thin gown the only thing protecting my modesty, chest shoved out against a metal plate with my necklace in my mouth. China has made me classier than ever before. There were four of us going through the process together and so we kept bumping into each other in the corridor for just enough time to exchange our wide eyed, ‘really?’ before moving to the next numbered room.

The whole process took no more than twenty five minutes; after we had been poked and prodded, had strange metal cuffs strapped to both wrists and ankles and a significant quantity of blood extracted from our veins, (while we were in the same room as each other as a kind of group activity), these three basic strangers seemed much more like friends. Afterwards all I could say was, ‘that was absolutely amazing!’ 

In contrast to this clean, efficient, slightly imposing experience, my second hospital visit seemed even more shocking. I had been experiencing stomach cramps for a few days and so my LLD sent me with the health insurance woman to Number one people’s hospital of Shanghai. I don’t actually have my insurance card yet, and so the reimbursement would take a while and I didn’t have enough money to pay for a Western doctor up front. Cue 9am Saturday morning in the Chinese part of the Chinese hospital; insert several hundred infirmed people forming a human conveyor belt of chaotic madness. Scribble into the picture a series of dirty waiting rooms, an ayi half-heartedly sweeping up cigarette butts and Pepsi cans from the floor (absence of antiseptic cleaning fluid duly noted) and one slightly overwhelmed British girl who had never been more of a minority in her life. Now, what I am about to impart regarding my full Chinese assimilation should be preceded with the following information: it took less than two hours to do what would take two weeks on the NHS and the whole treatment (seeing the doctor twice, scan, blood test and four different  types of medication) cost 300RMB, which equates to exactly £30. Additionally, the hospital use a very effective method of keeping track of who of the hundreds of faces owes what-each person is issued an electronic card, which is swiped by every doctor and specialist you see, this not only contains the amount that is owed but also all details regarding your condition. Compared to the 1930s throwback system in place in Prague, this was really quite pleasing.

Our first mission was to see a doctor and so we joined a que of people for one of the numbered doors on the fourth floor. I was absolutely the only white person in the whole building and so was the subject of much curiosity. However, hospitals have a way of humbling and the stares were not quite of the same intensity as those on the metro. Because of the Chinese people’s impartiality to the custom of queing, a level of polite aggression was necessary. We had to be ready to move seats down towards the doctor’s office the minute the person next to us moved up the line, in case someone planted themselves in our rightful place, which almost happened several times. This had the effect of everyone kind of hovering over the chairs with an expression of slight paranoia. Once I finally got to the see the doctor, I was one of five in the room with four other doctors, the doctor spoke absolutely no English, kept coughing into her unprotected hand and examined me on a table in the middle of this room in full view of all of the other patients. CHINA!!!

Next it was down to floor one and a swift walk through a room full of patients of all ages. There were old people in wheelchairs holding a catheter bag in one hand and a bag of saline solution in the other. Several people lay bleeding on wheely beds or gazing forlornly out from behind half drawn curtains. Of course there was also the token smoker, casually puffing away as if he was waiting for a pint at the bar. ‘I’m in a germ vortex. If this doesn’t kill me, my mum will when she reads my blog,’ I thought. I was hurried to a small booth type thing in the middle of this room; the minute I sat down the woman behind the desk grabbed my arm, tied an elastic band around my upper arm, took a needle out of a sterile packet and with very little warning, shoved the needle into my arm. Once she had finished she threw the bloody needle and tube into a lidless, plastic box to my immediate left where it joined many others of its kind.

My experience of a Chinese hospital doesn’t beat that of a Sri Lankan private hospital where the operating theatre consisted of labelled cardboard boxes: circumcision, endoscopy etc. and where there was blood all over the floor from some poor fellow who’d come before. Or the state hospital where the entire Nuwara Eliya police department had their injections done with recycled needles in a waiting room whose walls sported centimetre thick grime. However, it was an incredibly interesting experience. In a country where people are numbered and the collective, not the individual, is the main consideration, it can be seen that efficiency is the most vital element to medication. They may not be clean but they are thorough and the Chinese have a pretty sturdy constitution, judging from what they’re willing to put in their mouths. When you are but one in 1.4 billion, it becomes easier to understand why politely waiting in line, or having privacy to see the doctor, don’t seem to be factors of much importance. Oh China, you crazy, quirky, potential death trap-happy National day!!

Nostalgia

‘Men grow old, the end draws near, each moment becomes more and more valuable, and there is not time to waste over recollections. It is important to understand the mathematical paradox in nostalgia: that it is most powerful in early youth, when the volume of the life gone by is quite small.

’~ Milan Kundera ~ ‘Ignorance’

Relationships with places can be a bit like those with people. You form attachments, memories, connections and what often ensues is a sense of love, hate or forced indifference.  This is particularly pertinent with your first love or the first place you form a home away from home. Pulling yourself away from place or person is often painful and this can manifest in different ways. It sometimes hits all at once with an almost desperate sense of longing; the unknown holds further significance when held in constant comparison to the comforts of the known. Other times, and for me this is usually the case, it comes in waves. A smell, a series of colours or the crispness of the air, early in the morning, can send a flash of memory that tugs somewhere deep inside the gut, similar to the shocking realisation that you may have lost something really important. This is nostalgia; one of man’s most poignant and yet, in my opinion, utterly fruitless emotions. The word comes from the Greek nostos meaning ‘return’ and algos meaning ‘suffering’: Nostalgia is therefore the suffering caused by the longing to return.

I have been thinking upon this subject since I left Prague at the beginning of July. Since then I have been nostalgic about a myriad of things. Some are obvious and slightly cliché: I miss walking along the Vltava at sunset or sitting under a bridge with Ezo-T, watching the sun rise over the castle; I miss my wonderful friends and the pub below my apartment. I REALLY miss the big bed of dreams and morning burka times with my flat mate Ale-J. But most of what I miss can’t be specified; it has much more to do with a series of emotions and a personal captivation with the true essence, not just of Prague but of the whole of the Czech Republic: the people, the culture, the stunning scenery and UNESCO protected buildings. However, the more I think about these flirtations with the past (I guess they can be linked to a sense of longing), the more unnecessary, and even ridiculous they appear to be.

When I was living in Prague I felt that there was something more that I needed to be doing and by the time I left I couldn’t have been anymore sure of the validity of my decision. I took countless walks leading nowhere, purposely got completely lost in areas that I had been many times before. I saw every roof top with new eyes and was constantly stopping my friends to gasp at the beauty of the castle (it is utterly breath taking, every time, without fail), the gardens and the cobbled streets. This is what I imagine true love is like: beautiful, every time. And yet in my heart I felt that Prague wasn’t the one for me, that she wasn’t always good for me and so that is why I left. This is why I find my subsequent nostalgic flirtations so ridiculous; my decision to leave will never take away from the amazing experiences that I had in Prague. Nothing is lost, everything is gained.

With a place, the best part is, it will always be there, you can always go back. You can create new situations, build new memories. And anyway, everything that we do is informed by the experiences that we have had and so they are always there, if you allow them to be. I am a person who craves adventure, which for me is often found in the unknown. I once saw an advert for a Czech bank that read, ‘I love change, I sail all of the seas.’ With this desire comes sacrifice and countless ‘goodbyes’; maybe one day I’ll find my anchor, but more now than ever, I feel almost addicted to the excitement of change.

At the moment I am excited, really excited, because I now live in a City where my walk to work is filled with an assault of unidentifiable smells and street vendors selling something that may or may not kill upon digestion. One day last week, on the way to our local noodle bar (my house mate Thomas’ mecca), I walked into a giant pair of pants drying on a clothes line in the middle of the street-I got full-frontal, British lingo pant faced in broad daylight- and minutes later was sitting watching a man, who probably hadn’t washed his hands, expertly pulling noodles and then flinging them into a boiling pan of…urm…something liquid-ified. That is normal. That is all. In the supermarket near my apartment, Thomas saw a child urinating on a washing machine, when his mother noticed what he was doing she simply turned him around to face the aisle…it’s safer that way, less chance of electrocution! A similar story involves an older child in Wal-Mart, except that this time it was concerning poo, but at least his parents had the forethought to lay down paper on the aisle first. Yesterday I’m pretty sure a man on a scooter actively tried to run me over. I think this because I was crossing the road (at a green man) when he came across the zebra crossing and onto the wrong side of the road, hurtled straight towards me and missed me by a few millimetres.

 Life is exciting in the most mundane situations: going to the supermarket is an adventure, crossing the road at a green man or eating something delicious can be dangerous. I got taught (in my first lesson) the Chinese word for fart and yet I’m so terrible with the tones that I am probably saying something quite ordinary such as ‘television’. Today I got paid to be a frog, a cat, a dog and to jump, meow and woof my way around a classroom with an entourage of fifteen four year olds who, as it turns out, I am on a very similar scale of humourosity with.

I guess what I mean, in a convoluted way, is that every day I feel nostalgic for something and yet every day a new and exciting experience or challenge is presenting itself. So does nostalgia hold substance in life or is it a distraction from the present? Now I’m trying to appreciate everything as I see it, that way when the inevitable tinge of nostalgia presents itself, I will know that the experience was the best that it could be (even when it was the worst) because I truly saw it as and when it was happening and because I was grateful. For me, it’s about experiences, fucking up. It’s about loving with no reason; walking the edge and trying not to fall off (too many times). It’s rumpaaachumping to your own beat and smiling, even when there doesn’t seem all that much to smile about. ‘My thought is me. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking’ ~Jean-Paul Sartre~.

Blue, square shaped victories

Life in China is full of victories of all colours and shapes (I get paid to sing songs about yellow triangles and blue squares). These are not just the simple kind of victories that I’m used to, like drinking only once in the week or waking up early to go to the gym. These are a kind of me against the grain victories, the kind that deserve, nay, require a particularly enthusiastic, all limbs flailing ‘victory dance’. Sometimes this has to be done in public, but such is such.

Last week my biggest victory had several layers. After getting my flat mates to draw me a very comprehensive map, and still managing to get lost in the back streets of Hong Kou for about an hour, (Thomas: ‘Sophie, it’s just up our street, first right, first left and you’re there), I finally found the local police station. In China one must register their residence within 24 hours of plotting anywhere, whether it is in a hotel, hostel or a particularly swanky pants apartment. My passport (I now have my own China style little red book of residency-yep yep another victory!!) had been at the visa office since I had moved to Hong Kou and so I was over two weeks late registering with the police. My Spanish housemate, David had had the same problem and had been kept at the police station for over two hours with no explanation, only to be let go without so much as a fine. The Chinese police can be unpredictable and also, kind of scary. However, I sailed through my residency registration with absolutely no problems and was out within ten minutes. England-1, Spain-0, a quick celebratory finger dance and I was back on my merry way to school. Usually I try to avoid the public toilets on the road side at all costs, especially the ones in my neighbourhood, but after the previous mission and subsequent Chinese police related nerves, I really had no choice. The final layer of Saturday morning’s victory ensues…

In China the concept of queuing is really not much of a concept at all. Far from the British style of wait and wait, grumble and wait, it appears to be customary in China to move yourself to the front of the queue and avoid waiting at all. As I was in the queue for the toilets, an experience which is made more uncomfortable by the inescapable smell, a woman practically pushed me out of the way and stood in front of me. In just one month I have learnt how to deal with such situations, and so I tapped her on the shoulder, shook my head in a stern, yet not too rude, NO! and re-inserted/asserted myself in my rightful place in the queue with a nifty little hip barge. She looked at me with disgust, decided that she would rather hold than wait another two minutes behind me, turned and walked away. She looked back a few times and shook her head as if she truly could not believe that such an unfair situation had been stowed upon her. I smiled politely: yet another small victory. In front of me were two women who began arguing in raised tones, which appeared to be regarding who was next in line. As the woman in the cubicle opened the door, both women barged into the cubicle so that all three of them were crammed together in a small, smelly, squatter toilet, squabbling and flapping in an absolutely hilarious fashion. They remained crammed in there together, pinning the poor woman who had rightfully earned her toilet time for about a minute before one of them was forced to back down from the fight and out of the cubicle.  What a surreal, yet in no way surprising, China experience to begin my 13 hour working Saturday.

While I am on the subject of toilets I have another interesting observation to impart, although I’m still not sure exactly what the routes of it are. If someone hands you a small child in China, beware of how close you place it to your clothes. Nappies are not readily used and most small children have big holes in the crotch of their trousers or baby grows. As far as I'm aware, this is so that they can go about their business whenever they are, whether it's on the side of the road or wherever, and I believe it is also to aid toilet training. However, this means that while you are mushing over the beautiful baby in your arms (and Chinese babies are in my opinion the cutest in the world), said beautiful baby may be laying waste to your daily attire. The Chinese civilisation is one of the oldest in the world and this fact leads me to think that there must be some logical reason why they choose the 'let lose’ method over the conventional method of ‘catch that shit before it ruins someone’s day’. Aside from nappies being expensive, bad for the environment and a bit of a pain to change, I haven’t yet discovered the reasoning behind these crotch-less garments, although my mission is not over yet. What I will say, though, is be careful with how you deal with your shock the first time you witness this phenomenon. Take the example of Papa-T today at Tiger hill in Suzhou. Me: Dad, look, there’s a kid with those crotch-less trousers I was telling you about. Dad: Oh my god, I need to get a picture of this. Me: Dad, it’s still not ok to take pictures of small children’s nether regions. Dad: If only the world recognised the difference between anthropological interest and paedophilia…If only indeed, Pops!

I travel to work by train and Rickshaw- Shanghai: a city of contrasts

When I take the time to actually see when I look around me (it’s amazing how many people never do), I am continually awed by the many contrasts that I am able to observe, sometimes in the most unusual places. These observations are what get me excited; they fuel my writing by waltzing with my imagination. Stories are people and people are everywhere. Luckily, it seems that I have unwittingly moved to the right city: the more time I spend here, the more I am growing to really love it.  

Shanghai is a city of extreme contrasts. The futuristic skyline is impressive, slightly surreal and displays a captivating array of bright lights that scream consumerism and debauchery. Bring the eye level lower however, and you will see glimpses of the 'real' china. Old houses,  stacked on and around each other, lines of laundry flirting with brief, teasing bursts of breeze; make shift hole in the wall restaurants and shops; bbqs displaying an array of meat, fish and vegetables and a small portable stand where they cook it up with incredible speed and rather too much oil; plastic chairs set up at the side of the road where whole families gather in the evening. Real China is dirty, smells pretty terrible (Lisa: ‘It smells like poo. Holy shit, is that HUMAN poo?) and the culture is very far from what I am used to in Europe. This means that not only will a man not hold the door open for you, but he will in fact close it on you. Waiting for people to exit the train before you barge on is also a thing of the past, as is being able to put your bag on the floor without it getting covered in phlegm. However, there is an energy in Shanghai that is hard to capture in words or on film. It is perhaps the product of these extreme contrasts. It is the after math of an implosion-explosion caused by the collision of traditional Chinese customs, the Western elegance of once colonised districts such as the French Concession and the bustle of a city populated by 23 million. It is life lived under the ever changing colours that dance down the sides and across the roofs of almost every modern building; life looking at a sky line that is always changing. It is enigmatic, electric and exciting. Some days my means of transportation are a train and…a rickshaw. From my balcony you can see the dilapidated, busy neighbourhoods that look like Lego in contrast to Pu Dong- the pearl tower, the bottle opener building, Shanghai’s twin towers.  

Next to my apartment, which is incredibly swanky pants and even has an oven (!!), there is a farmer’s market where you can find moving bags packed full of bull frogs, ducks that are kept half dead and therefore docile, cages rammed with chickens, buckets with eels which are escaping onto the street. One minute I am in the tranquil marble veneered sanctuary that is our apartment building, or I am looking at the lily pads in the ponds in the gardens that separate the two towers of our complex. The next minute I step out and BOOM…CHINA!! It’s quite incredible and I feel very lucky that I have the privilege to go from seeing Pražský hrad every day, to this. It may not be aesthetically beautiful, but it has a beautiful spirit and its spirit is everywhere. I’ve heard that Shanghai isn’t ‘real China’, it the whore of the East, the pearl of the orient and has apparently lost a lot of its culture, a lot of its China-isms. I feel that parts of Shanghai, where I live for example, are ‘real China.’ None the less, I am really excited about travelling to the other parts of China, to experience ever more contrasts. The next exciting adventure to come is a trip to Outer Mongolia with my flat mates!

I will leave you with a particularly hamusing encounter. Earlier today Laura and I decided to go to a noodle bar to try and rid ourselves of a hangover caused by lady’s night at I love Shanghai. Note to self: free gin and tonic is not anywhere near as good an idea as it may seem at the time. Eurgh! As we were leaving the place an old man came up to us and asked us if we speak French. We said we speak a bit and he asked us what the French for umbrella is. We didn’t know so he told us. Apparently it’s la parapluie. Interesting stuff, right? He then went on to explain, using an unnecessary level of gesticulation, that la parapluie translates into Chinese as ‘penis inserts in vagina.’ The whole time Laura and I were standing there, nodding politely at this little old Chinese man with no teeth, ‘o how very interesting.’ It was only as we walked away that we looked at each other with a thudding realisation, ‘what the HELL just happened there?’ As Matt would say, I am a magnet for ridiculous situations.