Street scenes

Heading out to do some shopping I find I have to pick my way down the pavement and across the street even more carefully than usual. The main north-south road, linking the two centres of town, is currently a major construction zone; large slabs of concrete are being broken up and bulldozed out, roundabouts are transforming into intersections, bus stops and palm trees are being relocated, and the entire 9 kilometre length is being surfaced in bitumen. A team of women are scrubbing pavers while other labourers are carefully scavenging recyclable material, usually reinforcing bars but I have seen a neatly loaded handcart of very dirty PVC pipes. However traffic management doesn’t seem to be an integral part of the process; coming back into town one weekend we discovered the bitumen-laying machines on one side of the road had caught up with the concrete foundation preparation team on the other side, resulting in a section of the road being completely impassable. Consequently we spent an hour and a half, mostly stationary in a side street diversion, travelling a distance that usually takes 15 minutes. And, of course, this is a good time to upgrade services so the traffic lights are out too, and the water pipes are being replaced with unannounced shutdowns of supply. On 3 days we have found ourselves without water, not that pleasant in this hot climate, but, fortunately, the supply has returned each evening.

I make it safely to the nearest intersection passing groups of men waiting for casual work and a woman pushing a garbage tricycle. Hovering over the crossroad is a huge billboard poster of China’s great American based, square-jawed, sporting hero, Yáo Míng. I love the floating basketball and the curious sea and cityscape and speculate on the insurance company’s message. Beneath the billboard is a man, with a sound system on a small luggage trolley, selling music CDs and barrows selling fruit, though we usually use the fruit stall tacked outside a small supermarket, one of three within about 200 meters. Further on is a little vegetable and meat market with produce, living, dead and reasonably freshly picked, displayed on concrete slab tables. I’ve given up bargaining for fruit and vegetables, as my efforts result in next to no discount. I know I am paying too much because the stall holders keep giving me extra produce! I wave to the woman with a mobile glass cupboard selling roti-style flat bread, and move on past the poultry cart, and, horrifyingly, the dog cart. Both will sell you roast meat to take home or to eat ‘in’ at little pavement-side tables with tiny stools.

Other services cluster round the market. A hairdresser sets up on the concrete forecourt with battery-powered clippers, chair, booster seat for kids (a smaller chair placed on the adults’ chair), a mirror and an umbrella for sun and rain. When finished for the day it is all loaded on to the ubiquitous blue flatbed tricycle. Lined up beside him are three cobblers, each with a free-standing hand-operated sewing machine that looks like it came out of the industrial revolution. These three women, surrounded by leather scraps and half repaired shoes, chat as they wait for work. Back in Zhāngzhōu a similar setup re-heeled a worn pair of shoes for me. I was horrified when I was charged 5 yuán (about $1), which, at the price of a simple lunch, seemed a lot, until I realised I was actually being asked for 5 jiǎo (half a yuán)! Out by the side of the road is a bicycle repair man with a number of spare inner tubes slung on the handle bar of his bike. He is often crouched over a bowl of water testing a tube, and I have seen him with a completely disassembled bike scatted across the pavement. Should you need a new watch battery look out for a little booth, almost a sentry-box, perched at the front of a shop. For ¥10 the elderly man, as they always seem to be, will deftly open up the back, replace the battery and hand it back to you before you can negotiate a price.
















I catch the bus to one of the two main shopping centres and, paying 2 yuán for any length trip, I recover in its beautiful air-conditioned. Leaping off the bus, before it speeds away, I wander past elderly women crouching by black plastic bags of Chinese medicine; woody fungus and dried lizards and seahorses. Other kerb-side vendors sell local snacks, Western soft drinks and newer services such as supplying and applying protective film to your new mobile phone or MP3 player. Motorbike and 3-wheeled scooter taxis congregate at entrances to buildings, their drivers calling out for business, and the pavements are thick with bikes overseen by vigilant parking ‘officers’ waiting to collect the 1 yuán parking fee. Finally I reach the shopping centre discovering the forecourt swamped with red tents and umbrellas, basketball hoops and inflated beer cans. The marketing team for Pearl River Beer is in town and, as sponsor for the Chinese basketball team, is encouraging product awareness though a range of basketball related and other games. Music blares out, young men enthusiastically compete for prizes and I find myself dazed by just a simple shopping trip with its heady mix of old and new China.

The Banquet

The banquet is one of the joys, and mysteries, of living in China, and we have experienced many; some in our honour, particularly when starting a new job, some to celebrate a special occasion and some to greet distinguished visitors. Generally the events we attend are not ultra-formal affairs but the culture and etiquette are still baffling to me.

The arrangements are often made late in the day so I find myself scurrying to get ready. I never quite know what to wear. My instincts tell me to dress up, yet I know the other guests and host will be quite casual, though we will be greeted at the doors of the restaurant by beautiful women attired in full-length brocade dresses, with fur capes in colder weather. They’ll escort us to a private room with the curtains drawn shut to focus us on the occasion. There may be easy chairs set round a coffee table and an individual bathroom, while on the wall, close to the round dinning table, will be a huge, and loud, TV.

Ordering involves an extended discussion between the waitress and the host, a senior company member or, if we are travelling, the driver. This process usually doesn’t involve a menu but rather a dialogue between the two, sometimes held over the fish tanks and racks that hold the fresh produce, about what we might want, the options available, and the balance of the meal.

The rational for the number and range of dishes eludes me but in Zhànjiāng seafood features strongly. Frequently we’re served a whole fish, prawns and crabs if they are in season, sea cucumber with western broccoli, sea worms either battered or steamed on a bed of clear noodles, and shellfish. There will usually be a roast chicken or duck, chopped across the bone, maybe a beef or pork dish, generally only one vegetable dish or two if you count steamed sweet potato and corn, and noodles, dumplings or steamed bread. I swear there is always something to scare the foreigners such as the sea worms or duck’s feet, though I think these are genuine favourites here, and once we were served dog which, now that I have tried it, I’ll never touch again.
















The banquet is often, by Western standards, a speedy affair; the first few dishes arrive from the kitchen within about 10 minutes and the rest of the food follows soon after. The platters are squeezed onto the ‘lazy Susan’ and swung around to sit in front of the host, who is sitting facing the door, or a special guest. The host will ask everyone to start eating or get things going by serving some of the “best bits” to a special guest, usually the pieces I am least keen to eat. The soup, and there has to be soup, will arrive early in meal, while towards the end, when I am too full to consider it, rice, or rice porridge, is ordered and consumed at speed. The signal to conclude the meal eludes me. The arrival of rice and a fruit platter may give some indication, but I often find I’ve just worked out which dishes I like and am settling down to eat properly when everyone is standing up and it is all over.

Sometimes, if there is serious drinking to be done, the banquet is more drawn out. This opens up a new set of problems as I struggle through the etiquette of toasting. In Zhànjiāng we are usually served a tall glass of green tea and then might be offered red wine, báijiǔ or both. The báijiǔ, a clear spirit, is served in thimble sized glasses, for which I am very thankful as it is usually tastes like rocket fuel and is just as powerful. A tiny amount of red wine is poured into brandy balloons and, as with all alcohol, only drunk with other people in a toast, often a gānbēi requiring the glass to be drained. A local variant is to start the meal with 3 gānbēi toasts following which you can just take a sip, assuming there isn’t a faction in the group determined to get the foreigner drunk. I am yet to work out when I should stand to toast, who I should toast, who I should toast first, what is an appropriate reason for a toast (I suspect any reason will do), and how low on the other person’s glass I should clink my glass (the lower the glass touches, the more deference you are showing). I also have to remember to hold my glass with both hands and, once finished, show the glass to the group to prove I have in fact done my duty and emptied it.




The banquet can be a confusing affair and just when I’m feeling more comfortable with it I discover a new layer or a new variant; we’ll just have to keep practicing!

Cultural chasms

Having arrived in Zhànjiāng (湛江) and got Roger settled and productive in his new job, his colleagues decided it was time to get me working too. I had hoped to find employment in something other than teaching, so had ignored a passing comment from a very old Chinese friend of Roger’s about working at Zhànjiāng Normal University. I assumed, in a culture that doesn’t say ‘no’, not replying at all would indicate that maybe I was less than enthusiastic at the prospect of teaching oral English to classes of up to 50, and sometimes more, students. I obviously miscalculated this nuance of Chinese interactions as a couple of months later, and without warning, Roger’s good friend announced he had visited the university and arranged an interview for me. So, he advised, he’d be happy to take me there in 2 day’s time. We would be meeting someone from the Office of International Exchange and Cooperation and I’d need copies of my passport, visa, photos, and qualifications.

Two days later I’m ready in my best outfit, rarely worn as the environment and climate is just too destructive for expensive Australian fashion, clutching my documentation and feeling slightly bemused. I acknowledged that there seemed to be few other work options for me other than teaching and realized that a position at a university was probably a lot better than teaching 25 classes a week to 60 16-year-olds at a middle school. Yet I did wonder if I had explored other possibilities enough, and was feeling somewhat ‘organised’.

However an opportunity is an opportunity and we head off past the hotel at the gate to our apartment complex, up the grand palm-tree lined avenue we live on and by the banks and government office buildings that line the road. Soon we enter Chìkǎn (赤坎), one of Zhànjiāng’s two city centers, complete with a couple of modern shopping centers, the site of a local battle against the French ‘imperialist invaders’, a maze of little back streets, and the University.












Arriving at the University administration building, where we are instructed by signs on the wall to speak Putōng huà (Mandarin) rather than local languages that include Guǎngzhōu huà (Cantonese), I realize Roger’s colleague is going to join me in the interview. So, watched on by both Roger’s old friend and the other staff in the open office, I have a 20-minute wide-ranging conversation, in English, with the Foreign Teachers’ Manager. There is then a lengthy discussion, in Chinese, with Roger’s work colleague, resulting in me being told that, given my visa type and the limited time we plan to stay in Zhànjiāng, she will need to talk to her boss. I will be contacted in couple of days if I’m required to present a sample lecture to students and the Vice-Dean of the Commerce School.

Two days come and go, and, without me telling anyone about the interview, I keep getting asked by Roger’s work colleagues, from the students to the Director, how it went and when will I start teaching. Two weeks after the interview I have still not heard and I learn that Roger’s good friend has followed up with the University. He advises me I’ll be giving a guest lecture early the following week and the day before the presentation he’ll pass the topic on to me.



Having received the theme, “Education’, on the morning of Tomb Sweeping Day, a public holiday, and being told I will be speaking to up to 60 students, I find myself at the University the next day presenting to the Vice-Dean and the Manager, and five students! Most of the students have decided to extend their long weekend into Tuesday and not attend my non-compulsory lecture. The few students there, and the staff, seem to respond well and again I’m advised I’ll be contacted in two days.

Four days later I’m invited to come into the office to talk. Eagerly I attend and I finally manage to ask some of the questions I have, up until this point, had no opportunity to ask. I am offered a position and find there is no expectation that I might refuse the job. That evening I’m rung up and told, for reasons I could not understand but involve another foreign teacher hurting his foot on the Great Wall, that the plans have all been changed and I’ll be advised what was happening in, surprise, surprise, a couple of days. I do get called 2 days later, at 7.30pm as we are going out to meet a friend for dinner. I’m to let the University know by the middle of May if I want a position for the next academic year, starting in September, but could I fill-in for a teacher the next morning, at 8am!











Life in China often leaves me bewildered and stressed. Frequently I feel I have no basis to interpret people’s actions or modify my behavior to better reach the outcomes I desire, and I can’t count the number of times I have had to race to meet other people’s ridiculously tight deadlines. As far as I can tell organizational planning operates by a completely different set of rules, and usually on a just-in-time basis, and the nuances of social interaction constantly elude me. I fully understand that Roger’s colleagues’ interest and actions are heartfelt and intended only with kindness and to do the best for Roger and his ‘family’ (me), yet I am surprised at the differences in personal space and shocked at my emotional reactions when my boundaries are breached. It is a vivid lesson in the power of social constructs.

From Fújiàn to Guǎngdōng

Well, we have done it! We’re in a new city in a new province, Roger has a new job working for the Chinese Government, and I have survived both moving and, I find, looking at the calendar, 2 years in China!

Preparing to move from Zhāngzhōu to Zhànjiāng is not as straightforward as it might be in Australia. By chance I had a contact from teaching with an agency for a parcel delivery company, so arranging transport for our belongings was not as hard as it might have been. However the packing was up to us. Packing tape was easily found as I passed lots of small stores selling tape, and only tape, on my way to yoga classes, but the boxes were harder. We had been told to wait until we heard someone calling from the street wanting to buy waste paper, then to catch up with them on their loaded tricycle to buy boxes. I had no faith in this option as understanding the different calls from all the itinerant merchants was next to impossible, but finding enough solid boxes to meet our needs would be a miracle. Finally Roger spotted a small shop, on the outskirts of town, packed high with second hand boxes. So, with piles of ‘China Daily’ (the ‘feel-good’ national English language newspaper), I was ready to start packing, a rather bigger exercise than even I had imagined. We had arrived with maybe 5 suitcases between us, but we moved with 29 boxes, 17 bags, a couple of drawing tubes, and a bike. A little embarrassing as the Chinese seem to move with a just a couple of ill-assorted bags, a doona and maybe a bucket too.

With the bulk of our goods loaded on to a truck, thanks to Roger’s young work colleagues who carried it all down 4 flights of stairs, and our train tickets booked we had one last evening in our favourite bar. Unlike the other bars in town, which are dark, smoky, very, very loud, and not to our taste, Kōng Píngzi, (Empty Bottle), in the historic part of town, is calm, relaxing, and even groovy. It is the perfect place to sadly say goodbye to our foreign and local friends.

The next day, with 4 suitcases, a drawing roll and a couple of day packs between us, and bags of fruit given to us as a leaving present, we head to the station. We are marched, by women in very smart uniforms, to the correct place to wait on the platform. Saluting the train as it rolled in, the staff bundle us on and into our soft sleeper berth. We load in our bags, hand over our tickets to be replaced by plastic cards, and make tea from the thermos of hot water provided. We just need a meal and we will be set for the night. In the dining car a written menu, with no pictures, is supplied, slightly complicating the ordering process. However the tactic of peering over people’s shoulders and ordering what looks good on their table works quite well and results in us being given a serve of chilli sauce by a group of men travelling from Sìchuān.












During the meal I manage to entertain the entire dining car. After a visit to the toilet I had to resort to mime as I tried to explain to the train staff that I lost my plastic ticket down the toilet. I was pulling paper out of my handbag just as the train lurched, and the paper and the both our tickets shot up out of the bag. One ticket made a beautiful arc in the air, and vanished down the squat toilet and under the train. We needed the tickets to get off the train station so I was convinced I would be filling in forms, in triplicate, for the rest of the night. Eventually the staff, and everyone else, understood the problem, and the result was a huge fine - 6 yuán, or just over $1!

Arriving in Zhànjiāng we are warmly greeted by Roger’s new work colleagues and taken to our newly renovated apartment a couple of floors above Roger’s new office. There is great concern over our comfort, and Roger’s new employers have done a wonderful job making the apartment lǎowài (foreigner) friendly with bright rooms and Scandinavian style furniture. Yet, all I can see is the ‘Chinese bathroom’ with the shower and the toilet in the same, tiny, room. There is no shower cubical and to get to the toilet you have to pass the shower, across the wet floor. Things get worse when I have a shower after our long trip. My heart sinks as the water trickles out.

We struggle on with low water pressure and anxiously wait for our belongings to arrive. Finally Roger enlists the help of his new work colleagues. Suddenly there are men downstairs working on the water mains, one of the drivers (who turns out to be a great handyman) in the kitchen under the sink, and someone on the phone to the delivery company. The very next day a truck arrives with our boxes, again carried up to our apartment by workmates, and with a bit of fiddling around, and a day or two with no water in the kitchen, we have wonderfully strong water pressure all through the flat. I find the world looks a better place after a good shower and a few personal things around. But equally I now know we have our new friends to help us settle in Zhànjiāng, just as our old friends in Zhāngzhōu made us feel at home there.








Our 'Welcome' banquet with Roger's new colleagues.