Does this world map look odd to you? It won't to any Chinese readers, but those from other countries might wonder why China appears in the centre rather than Britain (London is, after all, at 0°longitude). Well, "China" in Chinese (中国) translates as "Middle Kingdom", so all Chinese maps place their country in the middle of the world! I guess Britain did the same when we imposed our maps on the world. So Chinese maps have the annoying effect of squashing all the land masses around the edge. And when you teach directions, as I had to this week, it all gets a bit confusing. China is in the Far East, despite being in the middle. Europe is on the left, in the West, yet America is on the right, also in the West. I asked a Chinese teacher how students cope with having two Wests and no East. She said she'd never noticed and students just learn about China geography anyway! It does help explain my students' woeful world knowledge. "Africa is in Brazil", according to one this week.
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It's not often the world's sporting eyes are on Kunming, but today sees a World Championship fight in our fair city. As aficionados reading this will already know, Yunnan-born boxer Xiong Chaozhong will be fighting Mexican, Javier "The Demon" Martinez for the vacant WBC straw-weight world title. "Straw- weight" implies I could lift him up with one hand, though I don't think I'll be trying that, as he has something of a mean left-hook! The venue is actually the gym where I play badminton every week. Sadly tickets are too pricey for me, and I'll be teaching at that time anyway. But best of luck to Chaozhong as he attempts to become China's first world champion boxer. The result will be added below once known. Q: How do you tell if someone is Chinese within 10 seconds? A: Ask them to use a paper clip... ...after watching my students struggle to work out how to clip some game cards back together for me yesterday, I realised that this is clearly not a skill taught in Chinese schools. The same is true of cutting shapes out of paper - the students usually hold the paper still and try to manoeuvre the scissors around (rather than the other way, which is far easier). Our school secretaries have also been known to staple exam papers together in the strangest of ways. I assume this is all because simple stationary skills are not considered "important for passing for the school exams"? We had an earthquake here this morning. Nobody I know seems to have noticed. Kunming is overdue a big one, they say... I was on apparently on TV yesterday. It seems to have been an old documentary which the station dusted down and gave a rerun. A few of our Chinese teachers caught it and mentioned it to me today, one saying "You are now an inspiration to me!". Hmmm. Makes me wonder what they thought of me before... This week marks the halfway point of Jiajia's pregnancy (by my calculation) and it's certainly rushing past. Despite Jiajia still feeling sick each day, yesterday's blood test indicated all is still well with the baby (although every doctor we speak to stresses the "dangers, at your age", as if there was anything we could do about that). As the prospect of having a child gradually sinks in, we're slowly thinking through the practicalities. A baby room is gradually emerging [see photo below] and various friends have offered to donate items they no longer need (...pregnancy clothes, cot, pram, baby clothes, etc). Little by little, I'm learning more about Chinese pregnancy superstitions. My suggestion of a relaxing bath for the wife was met with disbelief - pregnant women in China do not take baths! Then, as I had to visit the dentist today anyway (another broken tooth), I said it might be worth Ava having a check-up at the same time. Nope, pregnant women in China do not have dental work done. And with the recent sunny weather I wondered if we could get some fresh air with a car trip to the cemetary to visit Ava's Gran's grave. Gasps all round! Did I not know that cemetary visits were a sure way to lose a baby??
This was the scene as I passed a building site on my way to a Chinese lesson the other day. A worker was balanced on top of a concrete post, hammering away at the section underneath him with a pickaxe. It felt like some sort of cartoon joke - did he perhaps expect to float in the air as the column crumbled beneath him? Meanwhile, his foreman watched on unconcerned, perhaps wondering why a foreigner was taking a photo of such an everyday event. Health and Safety anyone? This weekend marks the end of the "Golden Week" in China. The Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holiday are close enough this year for most people to take a whole week off work - something of a rarity here. Road toll gates are free and people head for the sights or to visit distant family members. Students also have a week off school, but must work the previous and following weekend to "make up" lessons. So not really a holiday for them, or their teachers. In fact, barely a holiday for anyone [see photo above].
Not only did China overall do pretty well in the Olympic medal count, but athletes from my province of Yunnan managed to get a handful of medals including a gold (ChenDing, left in the 20k walk), bronze and team gold (Sun YuJie, in fencing) and team gold (Guo Weiyang in the men's gymnastics). Not quite as good as the UK county of Yorkshire, mind you, which would have come 12th in the medal table all by itself had it competed as a country, with 12 medals including 7 golds! I drove down to Yuxi today (90 minutes each way) to hand-deliver a replacement passport to a Lattitude volunteer who lost his some three months ago. Getting the new one has been a very long and tortuous process. For example, the Australian Embassy insist on a personal visit from the applicant despite being 1500km (900miles) away ...and knowing nobody can fly or take a train in China without a passport. Driving in China is very different from the West. In the city cars generally go very slowly due to congestion and the random driving of other vehicles. Traffic rules seem more like vague suggestions, with the huge numbers of bicycles and mopeds apparently exempt anyway. The expressways are often quite empty of traffic, but some drivers see this as an excuse to put the pedal to the floor and weave recklessly around other cars and trucks. You can usually see at least one accident every 20-30km. In my experience, the top three worst drivers are:
Minibuses - often from the countryside and rarely with functioning indicators or drivers with brains. But they know all other vehicles are worth more than their junk-heaps, so we all give them plenty of room. Black Santanas - a very common car here and, for some reason, always driven by idiots. Steer clear and expect random braking. White-Plates - private cars belonging to soldiers, police, leaders, etc get a special white registration plate [see photo]. The rules of the road genuinely do not apply to them, as they will never get stopped, fined or prosecuted by the traffic police. So they happily drive through red lights, up one-way streets the wrong way, down bus lanes, etc. Any accident involving a White-Plate is always the other person's fault, and don't they know it. By far the worst drivers in China. I'm ashamed to say this story kept me chuckling for hours. A girl walks along the street in China - and then promptly falls through the pavement! Click here for the video footage.
What are the food treats I can't buy in China and miss the most? Well, in order, pork pies, Branston pickle, Curly-wurlies, cup-a-soups and Weetabix. But maybe not for too much longer. A Chinese company has just bought the U.K. company that makes Weetabix. So maybe soon YOU will be asking ME to send you packages containing your favourite cereals! Ha! A recent post about the suicides at Apple's "Foxconn" factory started me wondering which employers in the world have the most employees? Foxconn has a huge 1.2 million, yet it only just scrapes into the top ten. Have a think. Can you guess which four countries are represented on the top ten list? And which types of companies? And how many from China? Click here to find out Nearly all my usual non-Chinese websites (BBC, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Google, etc) went offline for a day or two last week. At first, I thought it was just me, but later I heard that my foreign colleagues were having similar problems. When the websites started popping back up again we scoured the internet to find out what had caused the outage. It turns out that the on-line hacking group called "Anonymous" had broken into the websites of nearly 500 Chinese Government Departments and added messages reminding the Chinese people that their internet access is severely blocked and filtered by their Government and suggesting ways to get round it! Hence the internet being down while all the web pages were reset. Not that the Chinese Government has admitted the breach, though! I saw the odd clue in Hong Kong to remind me it is Easter this weekend [eg the random ornaments in the photo] but it doesn't really get a mention in mainland China. However, the little chocolate eggs I bought from "Marks and Spencer" while in Hong Kong were certainly appreciated by my students over the weekend. Happy Easter, readers! Foxconn, the company which makes Apple's iPad, hit the news a while ago when it was reported that ten workers at its Chinese factory had committed suicide in one year. Apple promised to review working conditions and improve health and safety (eg putting up nets to stop people jumping from high buildings). What wasn't fully explained was just how huge Foxconn's factory is - it has a staggering 400,000 workers! Now, the average annual suicide rate in China is reported as 15 people per 100,000 so, by that reckoning, Foxconn's factory should be coping with some 60 suicides a year. Having only 10 deaths turns out to be a testament to their good working practices and the happiness of their staff! Stats a fact. As I walk down the hill from my house to catch the bus to work I often see the children from the local kindergarten doing their morning exercises. At this tender age, their movements are generally muddled and half-hearted, though I have to say their teachers don't make much of an effort either. So is it actually an attempt to get the kids fit? I think not. Is it to teach them the series of exercises so that they can replicate them throughout their ongoing education? Perhaps, for students do the exact same exercises in every Chinese school until they make it (or not) to University. Or is it a form of mind control? Does it simply prepare the students for doing time-wasting and mindless activities without thinking or questioning? Somehow, that sounds more like the truth. I certainly can't see western teenagers meekly standing outside at 7am in all weathers waving their arms around to 1940s patriotic hymns.
The Chinese Government have recently been throwing their weight around in the TV programming schedules, cancelling any "low-brow" entertainment shows which were proving too popular (Chinese X-factor was pulled mid-series), banning foreign imports in prime-time viewing (mostly Korean and Hong Kong shows anyway) and insisting on more uplifting and harmonious themes. They say it is to improve the morals of their citizens, though others suggest it is more to do with controlling the news and increasing patriotism in this year of significant leadership changes. One programme which is thriving though, is "Interviews before Execution". Prisoners about to get shot get a final opportunity to tell the public where they went wrong and encourage them to be model citizens. But unlike X-factor there's no "voting off" the worst (or best) criminals. Shame! At the end of November last year I blogged about a deer and a ram who had fallen in love in a Kunming Zoo. Well apparently they are getting married today (it being Valentine's Day). Over five hundred people are paying $10 each to go and watch, and the animals will be dressed up in wedding clothes for the occasion! Cue the corny puns, I fear... "Doe you pramise to stay together, no ifs no butts....?" "I wool" ....etc I'm a regular reader of, (and sometimes contributor to) the website GoKunming which is the main online source of information for foreigners in Kunming. This week, amongst the news and local reports, there was a lovely piece of prose by Colin Flahive, which lyrically summed up his experiences and memories of life there. Having spent many years in rural China myself, it really struck a chord. He kindly agreed to let me repost it here: Ode to the Countryside
Where meals pull families back together each evening and there's always extra just in case someone else happens by. Where your back is always sore from sitting on hard little chairs while cracking open handfuls of sunflower seeds and sipping on endless cups of strong tea. Where a pig somehow feeds an entire family for a year with sausage and salted pork and where even yak butter tea can be refreshing. Where every cigarette you refuse plants a seed of distrust and where they won't let you leave until you eat just one more meal. Where they cook for the pigs before cooking for the family. Where somehow cats befriend dogs, dogs befriend ducks and ducks befriend chickens, while cows and buffalo stand around seemingly stupefied by it all. Where the idea that dogs can't eat chicken bones is laughable. Where the proud clucks of a hen that just laid an egg don't go unnoticed by the owner. Where wearing high heels or a business suit is no reason to stay out of the rice paddies. Where children don't practice the violin for five hours a day and the term 'tiger mom' means nothing more than the mother of a tiger. Where the only traffic is a herd of goats and the only honks are from geese. Where the ability to chat is an art form and "privacy" is a foreign concept. Where you can't help but feel like a wimp when you notice how worn everyone else's hands are and how manicured yours look. Where everything you eat was raised or grown just a short walk away and even the corn cobs don't go to waste. Where a walk to the neighbors' house might take a couple hours. Where fire still stokes the embers of life for cooking, heating, disposing, fertilizing and as the vehicle to fill the wallets of passed relatives. Where even with barking dogs, clanging cow bells, early rooster calls and roaring tractor motors you somehow sleep sounder than you have in a long time. Where you can still find your way by the light of the moon and the Milky Way spans the entire sky. I saw this sign on the side of a shop the other day. A nice double error! China has no fewer than four different emergency telephone numbers 110 for Police 119 for Fire 120 for Ambulance 122 for Traffic Accident Not as easy to remember as Britain's "999" for everything. I was prompted to check them as my boss, Robert, had a small car accident earlier this week and, when he told me, I realised I didn't even know the telephone number of the Police here, let alone the Traffic Accident. So now I do! A stamp marking the imminent Chinese New Year was released last week to quite negative reviews. With its bared teeth, grasping claws and fiery hair, many of the online Chinese community have been saying it's simply too scary! The Post Office's reply has been, "Dragons ARE scary - live with it!" (or words to that effect). It's a special year for me, as I was born in the year of the Dragon. There are 12 animals in total, so you can work out my age if you do the maths. And no, I'm NOT 60! Or scary! There seems to be an increasing amount of evidence that the original Santa Claus was Chinese. His beard may be a different colour nowadays, but it's said that Lord Shang Ke who gave bribes to the naughty, and punishments to the good, could have been the inspiration for the Father Christmas we all know. "Shang Ke Lord" may even be where we get the name "Santa Claus" (according to the China Daily Show website, anyway). I had a second article published recently in the excellent Merton Chinese Cultural Group Newsletter, this one comparing Chinese and UK healthcare. Click below to download a copy.
A while ago I was contacted by a "Chinese Cultural Group" in Merton (UK) who had heard about me through a friend of a friend. They asked if I'd be willing to write an article about life in China for their rather well-produced magazine. Apparently it was well-received and I've now agreed to write a regular column. If you'd like a look, you can download it below.
I was explaining the word "coincidence" to my students the other day when one of them gave me an unbelievable example. At the Beijing Olympics, China won 51 gold, 21 silver and 28 bronze medals. That's 51-21-28, or 512128. Earlier the same year, Wenchuan (S.W. China) experienced a huge earthquake killing 68,000 people. When exactly? 21st May at 1.28pm. That's 5/12, 1:28, or 512128. I was mightily impressed ...until, that is, I checked it online. The earthquake hit at 2:28pm. So China really needed an extra silver medal! Close, though!
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AuthorPaul Hider lives and works in Kunming (SW China) and regularly updates this blog about his life there. Past blog entries
May 2024
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