Chinese Traffic - Da Qing Blues

(to go to Bangkok Blues click here)

(to go to Huaiyin Blues click here)

A half an hour after touchdown at Harbin airport, still jangling with culture shock and an 18 hour flight, I found myself standing on a street corner watching a beautiful Chinese girl sob her heart out while lying face down on the pavement. I’d been picked up by Uncle Liu, a scrawny pipe cleaner of a man with a splay-toothed grin, and Joe, a Canadian Chinese teacher who was there because he could speak English, and Uncle couldn’t.

We’d paused in downtown Harbin to drop off a package I’d brought through from
Australia for them – Uncle had bounded up the stairs into an apartment building while me and Joe went looking for a shop to get something to drink.

The July night was warm and the sky was clear and starlit, and as we approached the corner I could hear the moaning and sobbing of a woman. I was looking up at all the apartments as we walked, thinking it was coming through an open window until we rounded the corner and there she was. There was a man too, beside her, a handsome Chinese guy with a good haircut, wearing a beautifully cut suit made from some kind of shiny material - squatting on his heels beside her smoking a cigarette while patiently gazing into space as she writhed and sobbed her heart out in front of him.

Both of them ignored us as we approached, so we made like they didn't exist. Joe asked me if it had been a good flight as we stepped around them. I said yes, it had been.

Joe went into the shop while I waited outside, mooching about looking around as I wondered what I was doing here. I’d come straight from Australia that day to live in China for 6 months, and as interesting as it might well be, nonetheless, I was sick of traveling. I'd been living pretty much in in transit for the last 6 years, but usually only for 3 monthly blocks. This latest venture - 6 months in the Chinese outback, was getting a bit extreme.

But back home this last time I’d been in bit of a jam. I’d spent the last eighteen months staying at my mother's house while finishing a book that in the end nobody wanted to publish, as well as a rewrite of a novel which I'd had been told, at 900 pages, was much too long.

I'd had no job, no assets, and nowhere to live, so it had seemed as if I’d reached the end of the line, until this offer of a job as an English teacher in Da Qing came up and made me pack my suitcase again. I said goodbye to my mother, who cried because she'd gotten used to my company, caught a bus to the airport and walked through those departure doors and into the sky once again.

So here I am, standing under a Chinese night sky in Harbin, watching this beautiful Chinese woman sob her heart out under the streetlights, and it's forming an oblique kind of metaphor in my head - a tone, if you like, of recent events and how they’d led me to this strange place.

Right then I heard laughter behind me, coming from a dim little alley next to the shop. It was kind of a high pitched cackling, interspersed with the staccato chatter of excited Chinese. So I went to the corner and, looking down, saw two Chinese guys squatting n the middle of the paved alley under the hard blue glow of a fluro, doing something with a blowtorch - one of those pressurized kerosene ones that you have to pump.

At first I thought they were waving it back and forth between them trying to get warm, but then I saw they had some kind of animal skewered on a spit which they'd set up in the middle of the alley, one guy turning it while the other played the flame of the blowtorch back and forth.

They see,ed very happy with their lot, chattering and laughing in-between stopping to take turns at cutting off pieces of seared flesh with a large knife, wolfing it down. They looked like laborers of some kind - worker’s caps perched on the backs of their heads and the recycled army jackets I’d already seen on road workers as we'd driven up. Their faces looked like photos I'd seen of an Egyptian mummy, sort of leathery, wizened, but it could have been the yellow light from the flame of the blow torch.

Joe appeared and pushed a bottle of water at me.
"Check it out," I said, then waited for some sign of surprise as he squinted down the alley. He sniffed, then glanced back at me.
"Dog," he said, then took a pull at his bottle of water.
"Dog?"
"Yeah, they've got a habit of eating dogs. They find a dog, they eat it."
“Right. So ... who are they? Beggars?”
He looked back down the alley and then back at me and shrugged. “Nope. Dunno. Just guys.”
I looked back down the alley. "So ... is this normal activity in Harbin?"
"Uh, no, but in China you get used to the unexpected," he said.

We watched the guys eat dog for a while then decided we should go back to the apartment building to wait for Uncle to reappear from his errand. The beautiful Chinese girl was still there, prone on the pavement weeping her heart out. And the guy was still squatting beside her in his suit, smoking a cigarette as he looked beyond into some distance all his own.

We stood a respectful distance away, and as I sipped water from the bottle, I got to wondering what must have happened here. I mean, they looked reasonably affluent – very affluent in fact. Didn't she have a nearby apartment to sob in? I mean, she was extremely well dressed – they both were; her in a silk cheongsam, pressed white jacket and gold jewelry – him in a well cut suit and expensive leather slip on shoes which looked Italian. Maybe it'd been a spontaneous thing - he said something she didn't like, so she collapsed on the pavement. But still, wouldn't you think she'd just go home? Why here?

Standing there taking slugs from our bottle of water, time passed, and I got to thinking about that roasting dog in the alley. I couldn’t work out how they could roast a dog with a blowtorch without burning it.

I asked Joe.

At first he gave me a blank look, like he didn’t know what I meant. So I asked again.
"… I mean, there wouldn’t be enough heat," I said. "Not enough to cook it without burning it …"
Joe thought about this, but he didn’t look particularly interested. He took a slug of water, and we both went back to gazing at the girl.
Then he said, "Maybe it’s kind of a fast food thing, you know, like those rotisserie things they have in Lebanese restaurants."
"Yeah…"
"Like … they cook the top bit, then cut that off and eat it while they cook the next layer.”
“Right.”
“Sort of gives them something to do while they eat, don’t it."
"Yeah, that might be it."

I walked back to the corner and looked back down the alley. The two guys were still squatting there, chattering up a storm while chewing on dog. What Joe said - it made sense. How else would you cook the dog with a blowtorch. I went back to where he was still watching the crying girl.

"I think you’re right." I said.

(to go to Chinese Traffic - Huaiyin Blues click here)

(to go to Chinese Traffic - Bangkok Blues click here)

A Brief Contemplation Before China….

I have said this before in other journals, but in this situation, it is again very apt - that it's strange how leaving is like dying. Whenever I leave a country for what I know will be a long period of time, there is always this profound sense of reviewing and reflection that occurs. Over the last week I have had a number of instances here, where, in sitting, or in the middle of sleep, I vividly remember something that happened, and have an entirely new view of it, as if in recall, I am suddenly able to see what occurred with the clarity of a stranger.

For instance, the other night, I woke up suddenly at about midnight thinking about my mother and father, and feeling a powerful feeling of things left unsaid. But I could not figure out what it was that I would be telling them - I just felt like I needed to tell them something, something that they needed to know. And though the rational part of my mind was saying, "Come on Roger, get real - if anyone has said as much as they could to let his mother and father know how he felt about them, it's you...what else could you say?" And yet I still had this feeling of things left unsaid.

And then I remembered back to one of the nights I visited with Dad, and we'd drunk a couple of bottles of wine, and yacked each others heads of about everything, from Saddam Hussein to our respective sex lives. And then Dad said something that set a seed of sadness in my heart. He said something about how, whenever we get together, we talk so much, yet rarely say much that’s really meaningful. And he said something like, '...and I'm trying to be closer to you - that's why I invite you to come with me to things..." Anyway, we were both pretty drunk, and went right on to a vigorous debate about world politics, and the moment was lost, as many moments do tend to become lost after a couple of bottles of wine.

It was not until I said goodbye, and gave him a big hug beside my car, and felt the surge of affection within that I remembered what he had said. And I tried to think of what it was that I could possibly say that could turn a light onto the incredible love I have for him, to draw him closer, and make him understand, but there were no words. It was the usual stuff we always said as we pottered about the inevitable leaving. "...Thanks for the wine...yeah, drive carefully...I'll be okay...the garden's looking good...yes, have a tomato...." and so on.

And then I drove away with a powerful feeling of insufficiency - a stronger version of the same feeling of insufficiency I feel whenever I say goodbye to anyone I love. And as I was driving away, I thought, 'I might never see him again, and there is so much for me to tell him...'. And I kept going to turn back, to try to articulate what I felt, but I never did because I knew that even if I did, I would not know what to say - there were no words for the feeling I have for him.

And I felt the same frustration when I left my mother at the door of her house, where I had been staying - the incredible insufficiency of words, yet the same compelling need to say something. And though I was a little disappointed with the banalities we kept to, I can only thank god that they exist, because without their well worn grooves, saying goodbye would have been impossible.
And that's what I woke up with the other night, in my room here in Daqing. It seems as if there is a need inside me to always be trying to express how I feel, which drives me to distraction sometimes. So I lay there and tried to figure it out. And after an hour of meditating on it, I saw that really, there is nothing for my mother, my father and I to say - there is nothing we can say which, in the face of the depth of how we feel for each other, would not, in the end, have sounded trite.

I realized that in a good and loving relationship between people, it is the seemingly small, insignificant things that end up becoming the most meaningful. The brief touches, well worn clichés, and silly babble that we do, that ends up forming the most meaningful part of the ongoing ritual of the relationship. And though on their own they seem meaningless, in totality, they end up being the voice of the body and soul of the relationship.

And in the end, they are really all there is to be said. Beside them, I think that any further grand declaration of love would only sound pretentious and self conscious. And that made me feel much better, because I finally realized there is nothing more I can say - that both my mother and father knew how I felt anyway, because I'm sure they both felt similar feelings. And in the end, what are we all going to say that hasn't been said before, in so many other, more spontaneous ways. In the end, a whole history and love can be spoken more eloquently with a simple hug, or a good laugh together, or an interesting conversation, or even just a simple 'good morning' or 'good night'.

And What About China?

Well, one thing I'm realizing is how much our media has misled us about the quality of life here. The impression our media gives us is of a country laboring under the thumb of a ubiquitous government, where enterprise and individuality is squashed, where people are very careful about what they say, whispered conversations in doorways, always looking over the shoulder for the secret police. Well, it's not like that at all. In fact, I would say that the presence of police is 20 times more noticeable in Australia than here, and freedom to speak, as far as I know (and I do have to remember that I've only been here for 12 days), is unfettered. And the people here have an innocence of heart, and joy in the little things that is refreshing, though I fear that, as China pick up pace and becomes the world power it will certainly become, much that is good will perhaps be lost. but we'll see.

The Chinese people are a strange combination of sensitive awareness, inquisitive friendliness, and outright belligerence, which creates many surprises. In general, and over all, they seem an impossible mix of opposites. They are extremely conscious of conforming with a social 'norm', yet most are highly eccentric and idiosyncratic individuals. They are obsessed with orderliness and rightness, yet there is a gentle and persistent chaos in everything, from the way they drive, to the way they do business. They can be so very affectionate, considerate and kind in the way they treat each other, yet also so cruel and brutally unfeeling it is shocking. They have wonderful laughs, and face splitting grins that light you up, yet they can be extremely un-humorous if some subtle social convention is unknowingly flouted.

But on the whole, I have to say, I like the Chinese people very much. I like their self dependence, their pride, their mischief and their incredible resilience. I have to say, I can even see sense in their apparent coldness and cruelty, which, like any negative human quality, it is all too often only seen by its extreme manifestations.

Anyway, I'm trying to learn Mandarin, but my sieve-like brain seems incapable of remembering Chinese words that seem to be all vowels and wooshing noises to my limited sensibilities. I have realized that I still depend on the solid nails of a the firm consonants of English to define the words to the walls of my brain. Also, in Chinese, it's the tones that are very important to the meaning of the words - it's like, every word has a melody of tones that must also be remembered, as well as the word itself, so for an English speaker, who is used to only having to remember the form of the word, remembering the 'melody also is very difficult. It's like, in English, if a sentence were a song, we only have to remember the lyrics, and to say the lyrics in a sentence makes it understandable. But in Chinese, you have to remember not only the lyrics, but also the melody of each sentence.

But I am learning slowly, and my new Chinese friends, who come and visit me every day, get a lot of amusement at some of the strange meanings I come up with by speaking the words with the wrong melody. For instance, the other day, I was practicing saying, "I want some dumplings." The Chinese word for dumpling is like 'jiousu'. But I said it with the wrong tones, and it came out sounding like, "I want a bad lady". They burst out laughing and told me that if I was to go into a restaurant asking for dumplings that way, they would probably throw me out and yell at me to try the brothel around the corner.
But still, I'm slowly getting there. So far, I have managed to be able to go shopping using a grand total of seven words. And they are (oh I am so proud when they fall so expertly from my mouth):
"Ni how..." (hello)
"Bu yow..." (no thank you)
"Hao..." (good)
"Bu hao..." (not good)
"She sheh.." (thank you)
"Dway..." (yes)
"Bu dway..." (no)...well, actually, like Thai, it's 'no yes', because, like Thai, who say 'mai chai', there is no word for 'no' in Chinese - I must say, I love 'no yes' - it's so profoundly tactful.
Often, in an absent minded moment (ah, how many there have been in this strange life of mine), I'll catch myself saying "Ni how" (hallo) when I'm supposed to be saying "Bu yow" (no thank you).

In the main, I manage quite well, mainly because everybody in the shops is so amused by this foreigner with his mangled Chinese and too much money. They all start rubbing their hands together when they see me, and the prices all go up, and big smiles appear on their faces. But I don't care - I'm obscenely rich in this country, so I don't mind spreading a bit around. The average wage is about 900 Yuan a month. And even at twice the price, food is absurdly cheap here, (3 Yuan for a large lunch) and quite simply, it's wonderful. Best food I've ever had in my life, and so varied. So with a wide variety of hand gestures and mute miming, coupled with my seven words of Chinese, I get around okay.

But I can't tell you how strange it is to be living in a country where, not only is there no-one who speaks English, but they have had so little contact with foreigners in Daqing that they can't understand why you don't speak Chinese. So, unlike the Thai people, who all understand when an English person babbles at them - they have a modicum of English that makes things quite easy - the Chinese just talk louder Chinese at you, thinking that if they lift the volume, maybe this babbling idiot will understand.

And everywhere one goes, also unlike Thailand, in China, there are absolutely no signs in English. And because all the apartment buildings are built to strict regulation design, they all look the same, so any one part of Daqing looks exactly like the other - so it's easy to become lost, even for me, who normally has a strong sense of direction.

For example, the first morning I awoke in Daqing, I was so entranced by what I saw, that I walked out of the hotel and got lost. I'll begin at the beginning ...

For some reason, I had not been able to sleep beyond 12.30 am, so I lay about for a while, and then got up at 1.30, unable to sleep any more. I pottered about unpacking until I felt tired again at about 3 am, and then slept again until 4 am when the sky began to pale.
I woke up to the sound of Chinese voices passing by outside my window, and sat up in bed in an alien place, wondering where I was. I looked out the window to see an old woman dressed in pastel colored pajama's running backwards down the middle of the road, her head held high, and her arms pistoning in time with her leisurely rearwards trot.

'Strange', I thought, then saw another woman coming the other way, also in loose fitting pajama's, and also running backwards.
'Even more interesting' I thought, 'Here I am in the Northern hemisphere where the water spirals down the toilet bowl in the opposite direction to the South, and I notice that this reverse phenomenon applies to people also.'

Though it was only 5 am by now, the wide road between my window and the building across the way was filling with people, some walking vigorously, some just ambling in the pallid dawn light, while a troupe of old people did formation Tai Chi exercises on the path. It was a very happening scene. Then an elderly man and a very young boy appeared, both goose-stepping like storm troopers in mufti, the man instructing the boy loudly, showing him how to kick his arms and legs high into the air.

But as I watched all the people passing, I kept wondering what was missing in this wonderful sunlit morning. There was something about the quiet of the morning that was too complete. All I could hear were people's voices, and the pitter patter of their feet. for some reason there are no cars at that time, so the wide roads were full of people in a holiday spirit. But this feeling remained that there was something missing from this scene.

'It must be because there are no cars,' I thought, 'That's why it's so quiet.'

But there was something else, something missing that I couldn't put my finger on. I went into the bathroom, had a cold shower (no hot water till night-time), then came out to the window again, and stood watching the people once again, and then it hit me.
No birds. Not one bird, no sound of birds.

I went over to another window in my lounge room, opened it, and listened, and looked into all the surrounding trees - still no birds. Here it was, dawn, and no birds. I had never been anywhere in my whole life where I had not heard, or seen or been conscious of birds somewhere at least, until I came here. And though I have been here for 12 days now, I have still not seen one bird, other than the chickens in cages in the markets. No sparrows, no crows, no finches or even doves. Birds are gone from this place, and I still don't know why.

And then, in the soft light of the morning, the music began - slightly distorted and reverberating against the buildings - the playschool scales of sentimental Chinese songs pinned to 4/4 time and waltzes, one song after another. I looked at my watch - what is it, 5.30 in the morning, and they're playing music somewhere? What a magnificent way to begin the day.

This I had to see.

Considering the little sleep I'd had, I felt okay, and the dawning sun was now riding above the trees on the other side of the road, so I decided to go out for a run. So out I trotted, a tall, and very pale, exhausted and puffy faced foreigner in army shorts and t shirt, plodding through an early morning dream - a wide open road among hundreds of picture perfect, rosy cheeked Chinese, all immaculately turned out in their cotton skirts, slacks and silken pajama's, stretching, moving through tai chi poses, swinging their arms, karate kicking trees and fences, walking backwards and....dancing...

Dancing?

I found the music I had heard before, blaring out from a small public address set up in the square in front of an office building. Around the two speakers, twirling and spinning together in the early morning sun, were about 15 couples, older people, average age 60 years, waltzing the morning away like it was midnight on a cruise ship. Precise little steps, holding each other correctly, heads held up and looking beyond each other with such blissful looks on their face as they span forward, then back, then around, then forward again. The innocence of their early morning joy, the earnestness of it, the serene beauty of this scene wrapped me up in a blanket and melted me on the spot.

You must remember that I had just come from Australia, where early mornings are usually redolent with befuddled resentment, fueled by hasty cups of coffee and screaming traffic, the desperate sweat of joggers, throwing down breakfast in front of the radio, blitting and blatting disaster and complaints, and millions of cars on constipated roads, struggling to work with all the other barely wakened and lonely human beings who never say good morning, and wonder why they feel so lonely and depressed.

So here I was in a strange new kind of morning, standing in a gentle morning sun, among uncharacteristic celebration of a new day - wondering at the fathers marching mock goosestep with their children, old couples dancing in the street, all with such blissful unselfconsciousness.

And then, as I was running down towards another road, I saw this guy in a suit, he was running, in an odd loping run, with his shoes going clunk, clunk on the pavement, and his arms pistoning wildly. I though he was running for a bus, but he just kept on running, so I fell in behind him to see where he was going - and he just kept on running. He was getting his morning exercise dressed in a full suit - dark pinstripe. I turned off at the next crossing and he was still running up the road, like some kind of manic cartoon character. I kept thinking I had seen that run before. Then I realized - my ex-girlfriend Marisa (she was Chinese) used to run like that on the rare occasions we used to run together - her feet going clunk clunk and her arms pistoning back and forth.

Must be genetic.

And as I kept on running, I felt like I’d woken up in a Leunig cartoon, (for non-Australians, Michael Leunig is a much loved Aussie cartoonist who specializes in scenes of innocent madness) and as exhausted as I was, I felt like crying with the mad, lunatic joy of it all.

But this is the way the Chinese begin every day here - at 5 am the whole city is like a big holiday camp in which another day is being celebrated.

And now to the point of this long story.
Given my newly arrived and disoriented state, it is understandable that, in rushing out from the hotel to run through this glorious new day in Daqing, turning this way and then that, passing old men swapping gossip, whole orchestra's of violins and strange stringed things that sounded like rattling tins, and choruses of voices singing and hissing in happy pentatonic scales - I simply forgot where I was. And I forgot how to get back to where I had been - wherever that was, for I did not even know the name of the hotel.

Put simply, I got lost.

It was only then that I realized that I had wandered out of the hotel without money, identification, or a phrase book - nor did I know the Chinese word for "Help", or even "Taxi!", or even "Oh my god, I'm lost and nobody knows what I'm saying, nor do they care!!"
Put simply, I had never been so profoundly lost in my whole lost life.

So, in line with the creed I have followed all my life, that being, when in doubt, just keep on running and trust in the inherent order within any chaotic situation to appear in its own time, I kept running. I ran and I ran, past the orchestra's, through parks of gossiping people, around streets of apartments that looked just like the apartments in the street before, through gardens where old men and women tended the vegetables, or sat enjoying the sun. For about 2 hours I ran, and luckily for me, there had been a strange string band, with a twangy instrument I remembered had been playing near my hotel. I heard it again from behind a block of apartments - I made my way for it, and found my hotel. And just as I appeared around the corner, the orchestra stopped. If I had have been a few minutes later, I would not have heard that orchestra guiding me home.

Thank god for synchronicity.

(to go to Bangkok Blues)

(to go to Huaiyin Blues)

Well, I've just come back from another banquet, where the plates of food are so profuse and varied that they're piled on top of one another, and the Chinese keep "Ganbeiing' (their version of 'Bottoms up!) through more glasses of beer, while the more timid Westeners keep obediently slugging back the glasses of beer, and old Mrs Wong keeps ordering more bottles. So the glasses get filled again, and oop! "Gambai!!" Another toast, and more beer. And the food keeps piling up, plate upon plate of everything from broiled chicken heads to sliced and lightly fried pigs ears, until the barely touched plates form a mountain of congealing refuse all over the table.

So you slowly work your way through all this stuff - you have to, because they keep loading up your plate, and it's polite to eat what your host has put on your plate. And then your hopeful heart takes notice of the fact that the courses have stopped coming - the peak of this mountain is near. And just when your belly feels like it'll split down the sides if you have to eat one more slice of pigs ear, or duck liver, they bring in a large bowl of plain rice for each of us.
"But why now?" I heard myself say plaintively. "And what's it for? Where was the rice when we were ploughing through all this stuff..."
"The rice is to fill you up!" said a Chinese man next to me, as he tucked into his bowl.
"But I'm already full."
"Then you mus' eat anyway..." he said, "Show Mrs Wong you appreciate..."

So you plough into the rice, tucking it into corners of your being where food has never been before, just to get it down.

But I eat gladly, because I count myself lucky - though I have to stuff myself, at least I don't have to be a part of the mad drinking binge that compulsorily accompanies these muck-in's, because I've told them that I'm 'Fo jiao!'. That means I'm Buddhist, so, as I've explained, I don't drink. Not that I'm adverse to a drink, as you might well know, but I'm buggared if I'm going to 'ganbai' myself into oblivion with their ceaseless beer just to be polite to my employers and all their friends, then waste a day recovering. So I just plead Buddhist and drink green tea while the rest of the teachers 'ganbei' their way to an early afternoon kip to sober up before the next class.

Or, if you're Kingsley 'geez I'm stackin' it on over ‘ere' from Queensland, you out-ganbei the Chinese by sculling it straight from the bottle, one bottle to every one of their glasses. And of course, they're incredibly impressed by Kingsley's prowess. I have to admit, so am I. I've watched Kingsley knock back countless bottles of Chinese beer one night, and never once stop talking, or start dropping his 'rr's'. He's got a lust for life and beer that is positively jet propelled, and though we're from different planets, I like his style.

But I made up my mind when I came here - I'm not drinking alcohol on this trip. Probably the only time in my life when I haven't drunk alcohol, other than when I'm in the monastery. You see, aside from the fact that I genuinely am not interested in drinking right now - I want a holiday from alcohol - the other part of the problem is, I'm a wine drinker, and there is no wine worth the name anywhere to be found around here. I cannot drink beer - it wrecks me, so I try to stay away from it at the best of times.

But there is no substitute for beer here. And though the Chinese beer tastes quite good - like German pilsner - the Chinese have no idea what good wine is. Because they all drink beer, they use the bottles of wine as gifts, to give away to their enemies - that's what we reckon, anyway, because who'd want it. Nobody really drinks the stuff, though Mrs Wong opened a bottle one night, when she'd heard that Kingsley and I liked wine. So we had to drink it, and it was one of the most repulsive tastes I have ever experienced - like a mixture of grape juice and gran's old 'Gay Paris' perfume, with just a touch of kerosene.

The other thing is that I must appear to be consistent in my refusal to drink, because if the Chinese see you drink just once, then you have to always drink, and you have to drink everywhere, because otherwise the prickly Chinese temperament gets offended. for this reason it had been a problem me trying Mrs Wong's wine, because I had a devil of a time explaining to her that though I was prepared to taste her wine, I was not prepared to drink her beer.

This drinking thing is very big here - particularly among the men. The ritual of drinking seems to become a metaphor for all the power relationships among them. It even comes down to little things, like never clicking your glass higher than your hosts, and always draining your drink when they 'ganbei'. And the drunker they get, the more easily offended they become. They get offended if you don't drink with them, but as Kingsley found out one night, (at least I think it was him…I’m not sure) they also get offended if you drink more than them.

He got wildly pissed with a bunch of Chinese guys in a bar one night, and one Chinese bloke, bristling with oriental machismo, tried to keep up with him - kept buying Kingsley bottles of beer, obviously in the hope that 'Kingers' would fall into a faint under a table real soon. But 'Kingers' didn't - in fact, 'Kingers' thrives on massive body abuse such as this - his whole being sort of moves into overdrive and he seems to burn up whatever food and beer he consumes in a kind of nuclear explosion of wild chat, swearwords, and cigarette smoke. Eventually, when this guy could hardly stand, his friends called the whole thing off. 'Kingers' meanwhile was totally oblivious to the fact that he was involved in a drinking duel - he thought the guy was just real friendly - so he got a real surprise when this guy took a swing at him, because he was pissed off that Kingsley had caused him to lose face by drinking more than him.
As I said, they get offended very easily.

So when I got here, everybody was telling me, "Oh, you've got to drink. They'll get offended if you don't...".

So I asked around about the options - and put simply there were none. The only option was to either drink Chinese wine, or the local spirits, which tastes like distilled garbage, or to make a stand and just say 'no!'. So I chose that option.

The only problem then was finding a reason why I was doing such an unheard of thing as refusing to drink beer. I suggested telling them I'm Buddhist, but everybody seemed to think this was not a good idea, because there are many Buddhists here who drink.
"Well, I'll tell 'em I'm Thai Buddhist then..."
But no, the consensus was that I would be better off going with "I'm allergic to beer..." And right up to the first 'ganbei' I was going to use this excuse, but when the time came, I thought, 'fuck it, I'm not going to lie'. So I told them I was Buddhist, and even though it doesn't make sense to them, it'll have to do. To a certain extent, its true that I'm not drinking because I'm Buddhist, because when I came here, I had decided that I wanted to focus on my practice more than I had in Australia, so I figured, 'fuck'em', I'm going Buddhist', because I just will not drink if I don't feel like it.

And I really don't feel like it right now.

So I started saying no. And whenever the host would frown and threateningly lift the bottle to my glass, I'd put my hand over it and said more firmly, 'Fo jiao!', meaning 'Buddhist'. Now, as I said, this confuses them because they all have an alcoholic uncle who's a devout Buddhist, but I just keep right on with my Buddhist explanation, and though I'm sure they hate my guts for it, it seems to be catching on okay. So they bring out fruit juice, or coconut milk, and I 'Ganbei!' the night away with that while the other teachers get reluctantly, but unspeakably pissed.

Now, perhaps at this point I should explain about Mrs Wong - she is our employer.

She's a seventy year old ex-headmistress, who survived the madness of Sun Yat Sen and the warlord era that happened after the fall of the Qing empire, then World War II and the Jap's, then the wholesale slaughter of Chiang Kai Shek, and the profound change of Mao Tse Tung, then through the tragedy of the Cultural revolution - so she's as tough and gnarled as old wood, as most of the older Chinese are. She likes a serious beer, and has these little black eyes that sparkle from behind folds of leathery skin, and has enormous splayed yellow teeth that she keeps revealing in the long and sustained grins that replace her lack of English.

I have to admit, I am seriously impressed by her, regardless of the fact that I’m terrified of her. Sometimes I sit across the table from her, at another of her grotesquely wasteful banquets, and as I lift my glass of coco-nut juice to her in another 'ganbei', I see all of China grinning at me, and I get frightened, because China is so fucking tough! She has had to be, to have survived so much change in such a short time. You only have to check out the figures to see how incredibly resilient these people have had to become. Me and a Canadian guy figured out that over the last 100 years, the Chinese had lost over 10% of their current population to war, revolution, and man-made catastrophes. Add on another 300 million dead from starvation and natural disasters, and in this country, you have a Darwinian masterpiece in the making. Tempered by so much adversity, these people have developed the tenacity and strength of character to be the next rulers of the Universe.

I don't yet know what I think of that thought, because I'm still contemplating my complex reaction to China, but I'm working on it.
But....back to Mrs Wongs smile - it fascinates me so.

As endearing as it can be, it fools no-one once they have gotten to know her. She's as mercenary as they come, and hard as nails. She's always lurking about all the classes selling the parents books and tapes they don't want, and trying to gyp them out of extra fees. But because she's our employer, we do try to keep in her good books, though I doubt she really cares. She wears old cotton communist fashion gear, with this military kind of underwear that comes down almost to her knees. I know this because she has a habit of sitting on low couches with her legs apart, so I can see everything under her dress, and it's pretty frightening.

Anita, another Australian teacher told me that one time Wrs Wong showed her into the girls toilet, where there were all these squat toilets in a row, and no partitions. Though she had only been showing Anita where the toilets were, she must have decided she might as well take a slash at the same time, so she hauled down her military underwear and, lowering her quivering old flanks down, she gestured welcomingly for Anita to squat at the hole beside her. Anita walked quickly away, desperately holding back a scream.

There is this strange phenomenon that occurs when people first come here to teach. Mrs Wong auditions them. She gets them to teach a class where only she, and perhaps another Chinese teacher is in attendance.
"She what?" I blurted when I heard.
The other teachers said they all went through it.

In fact, in the early days, Mrs Wong would bring them straight from the airport, jetlagged and often hung over, to get them to do the audition straight away. Luckily I had a couple of days rest before I went for my 'audition', but it was still a bizarre event. Mrs Wong, who cannot speak a word of English, sat down in the middle of a large class room waiting to see me 'teach'. Luckily a couple of other teachers played extra students while I gave my class.

I had no idea what I was going to do, so I began with: "Hello, I'm Roger...you're Mrs Wong..." then went right on to "...and I'm here...and you're there...and, well, actually, I would say, 'I'm here....' and you say, 'You're there'...actually, no...you say 'I'm here'...no..hang on..."

With Mrs Wong grinning her mouthful of splayed and yellow teeth, her little eyes are all crinkled with amused incomprehension, right then I just froze. It could have been the metaphysical mind-fuck I'd got into, trying to explain the whole 'I'm here and you're there' paradigm that did it, but I just got lost and started bumbling about explaining that what I meant when I pointed to her and said, 'You say, 'I'm here' - I mean, no, you should say 'You're there'...no...'
After a long silence then I felt like saying, "....perhaps it might be better if you taught me...", but Mrs Wong just kept right on grinning, so I went right on to, 'I'm an Australian...that means I come from Australia...'

Luckily one of the other teachers saved me at this fascinating point in my lecture, by asking questions about where is Australia, and I was able to spend a lot of time drawing a big and elaborate map on the blackboard. Then I drew a bird and an angry man and that went down quite well, but I'm not sure - I was too blinded by the sweat running into my eyes to tell at this point.

But apparently Mrs Wong was satisfied by my performance, because she took us all out to a restaurant for the first of the aforementioned banquets, where I got to explain for the first time that I would not be drinking her beer. That was quite confronting, as you can well imagine.

Anyway, Mrs Wong has a friend, who is equally as formidable as she is - her name is Mrs Lui. She's about 60, and looks like she would have been a communist beauty in her day - I often imagine her dressed in a brown suit buttoned to the neck, with a Chairman Mao cap with a red star on it, chanting and waving the Little Red Book.

Now she dresses as if she doesn't care - Russian utilitarian I'd call it - but then, most of the clothes shops here still stock only Russian utilitarian. It's like walking through 50's Moscow. Anyway, Mrs Lui...when I met her, she told me, in between sucking her teeth, which she does continuously, that "You...aaah....you can ca' me...Mrs Lui....hokay!!!"

The 'hokay' was not friendly - it came through the gate of her smile with all the allure of a barrage of rifle fire.

Mrs Lui speaks a little English, so she is Mrs Wong's right hand man, handing out the directives. The phone will ring and I'll know it's Mrs Lui because I hear the sound of her sucking her teeth for a good ten seconds before she launches into an incomprehensible slush of strangled consonants and vowels that always causes me to tentatively say, "Um...I'm sorry, but could you say that again...' over and over again.

But she is very patient - she gives another little suck of her fangs, and says exactly the same thing again, and again, and again, until I eventually unravel what it is she's trying to tell me. It's like talking to an unresolved Rubik's Cube. When I met her, Mrs Lui told me proudly that she used to be an English teacher in a high school.
Mrs Lui, like Mrs Wong, smiles a lot - long knowing smiles, with her eyes burning steadily above, like two crescent slits, glowing in the weathered fortress of her face. Her smiles remain on her face for long periods of time and, as with Mrs Wong, they send chills darting up and down my spine because I know that, even as they both tore my body apart at a banquet, and picked through my sliced fillets (lightly fried in aniseed, sugar, garlic, ginger and soy) with their chopsticks, then gayly 'ganbeid' the night away as the serving girls swept up my bones from the floor around them, those luminous smiles would not falter or fade.

The Chinese men, as I have mentioned, have an extremely delicate psychology, somewhat like that which I imagine Caligula might have had at the peak of his power. One finds oneself constantly tiptoeing around its invisible pressures like a sycophantic courtier desperately trying to avoid being slaughtered on the spot. It is a peculiar mixture of brutal machismo and delicate hypersensitivity, particularly when they've been drinking. They can take offence at the smallest thing, yet you never would know it because they keep on smiling. The only signal you get is that their face goes slightly red, and they keep making the same point over and over again, until you get the picture and give way.

For instance, a couple of weeks ago (my, has it been that long?) I had been assigned to give a series of lessons at a school near here over the next weekend - 4 hours of lessons on the Saturday, and five hours on the Sunday. Pretty hefty schedule, but seeing as I didn't have much other work in the week, I figured it was okay.
So that afternoon, Mrs Lui appeared with a plump little man with a skin discoloration which I imagine already compromised his Chinese sense of face. They sat up the back of the class and, peering into the same book I was using to teach with, he followed my performance, nodding his head sometimes, and frowning at others.

Now, you have to realize that an Chinese English class is somewhat different to what you might imagine from Australian classrooms. For a start, many of the parents also attend these classes - they often even sit in the minute little desks alongside their children, cuffing them when they get something wrong, or turning aside to answer the incessantly cheeping mobile calls that the Chinese ether is littered with these days. Most of the children sit with blank faces, occasionally smiling when the mad foreigner pauses in his incomprehensible gabble to mime the meaning of a word, or scratch his head as he tries to figure out how to express the inexpressible nuances of the word, 'similar', or 'exact'.

And as the teacher begins to sweat and talk even faster and louder, and the mobile calls begin cheeping their banal little melodies in harmony with one another, everybody sinks lower into their desks, slowly wilting into their books, and the second hand of the teachers watch seems to prove Einstein's theory of relativity by almost stopping.

But I digress - that's a bad day.

This particular day me and the classroom (except the parents) were in flow. They were answering with all the right words, and laughing in all the right places, so I looked pretty good. I must have, because after the class was over, the little man came up and said through another inscrutable Chinese smile, "You berry good teacher... But mus' use book more. Too much playing...chi'ren here to learn...not laughing..."

He then went on to tell me over and over again as I tried to decipher his tangled consonants and vowels, that he was the head of the English department at a large school near my hotel, and he wanted me to teach some weekend classes. "Aaaah, your English is very good." I said, hating my hypocrisy. But when in China....

So anyway, he and Mrs Lui took me back to the big school to introduce me to the Headmaster, who wanted to look me over. They took me up to a large communist type office, with an enormous padded office chair and even more enormous desk with very little on it, and we sat making a strangled three way conversation with Mrs Lui about Australia, and how it is a beautiful country.

"Aaaah," I said, "But not as beautiful as China..." When in China...

So then the Headmaster came in - a big and quite powerful looking man with a face that looked a little like that of a Tong hit man. He shook my hand and received my deferential bow with a satisfied smile, and after offering me a cigarette which I declined, he sat down and they all spoke Chinese for a half an hour, while I wondered to myself why there was a map of America on the wall. Were they planning something?

Then they all stood up and my heart clenched when the little man told me that the boss wanted to shout me lunch in a private room at the dining hall across the way. I decided to make things clear early, so I quickly told him that I was Buddhist.
"Buddhis'?"
"'Fo jiao!" I said meaningfully, and he was suitably impressed, but still mystified.
"'Fo jiao!...I cannot drink beer." I said apologetically.
"No beer?"
"No...I cannot..."
"Oooohh....." he said doubtfully.
"So could you tell your...leader that...um... that I cannot?...."
A long conversation in Chinese took place, with each of them gesturing towards me at various times, while I stood between them, looking suitably penitent and regretful. At last the little man said, "Hokay...no problem...." and everybody smiled at one another, laughed and nodded, and shrugged their shoulders and talked more Chinese.

We went to this enormous communist dining hall (everything here is enormous. Enormous seems to be the main quality of communist architecture - enormous roads, buildings, statues - everything) where a girl in a red silk kimono type dress showed us up to a large and sumptuous banquet room to the side of the main hall.

In this room was a table for about 20 people ( there were only 5 of us), a chromed karaoke bar with a massive television screen attached, and many imperial type paintings in gilt frames all over the red velvet covered walls The floor was covered in thick blue carpet, and the table was heavy varnished wood, and I wondered, as is my Western habit, how much this little lunch in my honor was going to cost.
Then the courses started coming - nothing spectacular - a few fish in different sauces, tempura prawns, roast duck, finely sliced horse radish in mustard, fried chicken combs with capsicum. And we were drinking tea, so I thought they'd got the picture.

But then I realized the beer had just been a little late arriving, so there was much celebration when a big trolley of bottles was wheeled in through the door. Eventually, after I had persisted with 'Fo jiao!' coupled with many ingratiating smiles, they settled into ganbeing their way through dinner, and everybody except me began to get quite high spirited. That's when the little man, who had seated himself beside me, began to assert himself.

In between machine gun Chinese with everyone else at the table, he had kept up a gentle rain of chat with me, all inconsequential stuff about Australia, whether I was married, children, what I did in Australia. All the while he was gaily ganbeing the beer, and smoking more and more cigarettes with his big Tong type boss across the table. I seemed to amuse the big guy, because he kept pointing at me and laughing out of the side of his mouth, and as he drank more, and his face got more red, his laughter increased, and myself as a source of amusement became more pointed.

But I just tucked myself deep into myself and did what was necessary - smiled when smiled at, speak when spoken to - just get through the thing. At that point the mind and body become mechanical things, and my spirit sits deep inside, looking out through my eyes, pulling the levers, and pushing the buttons, making sure the apparition they think is me is navigating the waters with care.

And then, from right out of the blue, the little guy says, "You will...ah....you will present a pran....a pran of your lessons....in the morning, before you begin teaching....."
A pran?
"Sorry?"
"A pran....of your lesson..."
"Oh, a plan...."
This threw me. Was he kidding? I had the book and the tapes, and I hadn't even seen the class, and he wanted to know what I was going to do. I didn't even know what I was going to do. And that's when my carefully constructed facade slipped.

"I don't think so." I said, in what I thought was a reasonable tone. I didn't notice his face redden until later.
He said again, "Aaaah...you will present a pran...to me....in the morning...."
He was still smiling, and I wasn't quick enough to pick up the subtle changes in the mood - I just rocked on trying to be reasonable.
"No, I don't think that's a good idea....I mean, I don't even know what I'm going to do...I haven't met them, I don't know how their English is...I think a plan is a waste of time."
He took a little time lighting a cigarette, so I went right on.
"...I mean, I get in there, and I don't really have a plan...I'm just trying to light them up in any way I can to get them to speak, right...because that's the only way they'll learn. So if that means playing a game, then that's what I'll do...or maybe...."
"I think you will present a pran....to me....in the morning...."
And I'm thinking, 'is this guy thick or just deaf?'
So I said flat out, 'Nuh...I don't do plans'.

And that's when I noticed the deep red color of his smiling face, and the fact that he was beginning to sweat, and take quick little puffs at his cigarette. Then I realized, this wasn't about the plan at all. This was about power. This man was simply exercising himself over me, and I wasn't playing the game.

So... decision time.

I knew it was a waste of time butting heads with this guy - he had too much to lose to back down. So I put myself back inside myself, threw a few switches, pressed some buttons and quickly changed course.

"This plan you want...it will be very small...right?"
His smile relaxed.
"Oh...sma' is hokay....sma' pran...."
"Okay, I'll give you a small plan..."
He offered me a cigarette, which I declined
"But mus' hab your pran for me in the morning...."
"Yeah, no problem...small plan in the morning...."
He called for more green tea and had the girl fill my cup, and the matter was finished.

But I had tasted a little of the rock-like need that the Chinese have to maintain face, even if it makes no sense. And I must say, I find that aspect of 'Chineseness' very frightening, particularly when it's extrapolated to a national level, because it seems that to the Chinese the appearance of power means much more than common sense. Does this bode well for the future? I'm not sure....

Well, going on through a second month in the land of green tea, 'Ni hows', chaos and big dreams, I have, aside from the language, adapted quite well to my environment - perhaps I even look a little like an Oriental Roger, because I have lost weight and perhaps my face even seems more Chinese than it was when I arrived. But then, my physical habits are different. I'm still not drinking, and though I went through a brief love affair with Chinese cigarettes, that too has stopped now, except for the occasional cigarette – I love smoking so much – don’t know why..) and with the regular meditation my habits are as pure as it is possible for them too be.

Interestingly enough in Daqing I find that generally my body has settled on a waking time of about 5.30 am. I know that those of you who know me from Melbourne will find this quite a surprise, given the consistency and persistency of my nocturnal habits there. But experience has shown me that this nocturnalness of Roger is very much attached to Western environments. In Asian environments he becomes the opposite. In Bangkok I am a morning person, when I was in Hong Kong, in Bali, and now in Daqing – in Asia I love the mornings.
Well, perhaps it’s more that, in most Western cities, I hate mornings.

There is a hysterical edge to the average Western morning, a kind of resentfulness, as if the world would much rather have stayed in bed. In a Western morning I always feel kind of acidic and hurt. In a Western morning it's like the whole world has drunk too much coffee, and is late for work - all the cars, people, even the light is impatient, brutal and stupid. Unlike the gentleness of a Western dusk, there are no relaxed philosophical wonderings in a Western morning. Everything is hideously hard edged, dull-eyed and pointy.

But here in Daqing, as I've described in previous letters, the mornings are a gentle time, perhaps when people are at their best. It's a time when old friends talk about the great march, the price of vegetables, or whether that gaunt foreigner who rides through here every morning on his bike will ever learn to ride on the right side of the road. It's a time for old men to fly a kite, for parents and children to play and look around, for another game of mahjong with the neighbors. Each morning is a kind of celebration - no resentment or irritability - only a kind of optimistic anticipation of the day ahead. So I find it entirely natural to want to be up during this time.

So let's go out once more for a walk in the pale morning air pf Daqing, where there is no sound of birds, no traffic, but rather the quiet chatter of millions of people. But this time we won't wander through the park with all its backward walkers, strange string bands, tree kickers and ballroom dancers.

We'll go the other way - through a short cut between apartments, and round the side of the giant redbrick building with its tall round chimney stack, which houses a massive oil fired furnace - one of many in Daqing which send hot water out through grey insulated pipes that snake all throughout the city. The whole of Daqing, except the slum areas (which I stumbled upon while riding the other day), is centrally heated by these oil furnaces which provide hot water and heating for the many thousands of apartments and buildings throughout the city. I don't know how they organize the bills, but I find these pipes very reassuring. It's like these furnaces and pipes are the arteries of a vast organism within which I am a foreign body that has temporarily found a place. I feel like this often in Daqing, as if the whole city is alive and profoundly interconnected around me. And what seems chaotic, like the traffic, is actually incredibly orderly when this invisible interconnectedness is taken into account.

As I walk, I keep a look out for the dope plants that Kingsley regularly rips into for his supply of ganja… but perhaps I should explain. The Western contingent has discovered, to its amusement and more often, its incredulous excitement, that right throughout Daqing, in gardens, alongside some roads, in schoolyards and vacant lots, outcrops of marijuana are as common here as garden weeds. So of course Kingsley “I'm into it man...” from Queensland is like a pig in slush, because he just loves anything that alters his body chemistry.
For a while I didn’t believe them – I thought maybe they were smoking garden weeds. But yes, only yesterday, I saw what they were talking about. I went for a bike ride up a dirt road into some backlot behind Yen Jiu Yuan where our hotel is and there, in a dusty lot, ignored by the many youths who were playing soccer nearby, were a couple of big fat bushes of healthy marijuana, positively glowing in the morning sun. So Kingsley and many of the others have a steady and reliable supply of marijuana here, which they use quite constantly it seems.

It's not as if the Chinese don't know about it. Apparently the other night Kingsley and one of his mad Canadian mates lit up a scoob in a taxi and the taxi driver was right into it. So I don't know what's going on, but it's strange that a drug that is so demonized and romanticized in the West is not even an issue here - they just don't care, though I imagine many of the Chinese herbalists use it. I don't know for sure, but I can't imagine that they are ignorant of its medicinal qualities.

And here, of course, the subject of dope inevitably brings us to contemplate the ‘Kinger’.

Aaaah Kingsley, Kingsley, Kingsley. What a phenomenon he is. Red haired, capacious, and irrepressibly ebullient, the Kinger is very busy here. Where usually he’s used to raging through the pubs and beaches of Melbourne and Byron Bay, right now he’s consuming China, because that’s what the Kinger does – he consumes. He consumes everything – beer, food, drugs, sex, experiences, sights, sounds. The sheer irrepressible physical capacity and appetite of the man is almost surreal. And, as happens when one consumes at a great rate, the Kinger universe is expanding greatly, as he freely admits, uttering “geez, I’m stacking it on mate...” from around the side of yet another upended bottle of beer. One night I caught myself, sitting across a table from him during a meal, thinking what a universe separated us, because I cannot fathom the Kinger mind, and he cannot fathom mine – and yet I know that, many years ago, I too was trying to consume the world. But I’ve forgotten that mind now, so it seems alien. It’s strange how change happens in a life. Once we were one way, and could not imagine being anything else, then we are someone else, and we cannot imagine how it was to be who we were before. But still, I like his lust for life.

And so I walk on, through the crowded market place, along the road between apartments, through a garden, keeping my eyes carefully unfocussed on anything but where I'm headed - because everybody stares. As Tamir and Jen, two Canadian teachers, said when I first arrived, “In this city we’re all pop stars.”, and it’s true. Foreigners here are a source of endless fascination for the locals. And if their eyes were laser beams, each of us would be incinerated the moment we walked out the door.

But this comment of Jen’s reminded me of a little trick I learnt off Michael Hutchence when we were both pop stars in another world (him more so than me) - we were talking about how intrusive it was to be stared at all the time, and he told me that whenever he was out and about he just kept his eyes unfocussed on everything but what immediately concerned him, and it had the effect of making him invisible. And it works. If you're being stared at by hundreds of eyes, as happens if you're a foreigner in Daqing, you just fix your attention on where you’re going, or whatever you're doing, and focus on that. It’s a wonderful exercise in mindfulness, and is handy for letting go of the parts of the world you don’t want - in some strange way, because you're not responding to them, they rapidly lose interest, and it's like being alone.

At this time of the morning all the restaurants are still closed, so I head down through the apartments, and across the road to the middle of another apartment block where there is an impromptu market most mornings, where farmers squat on old blankets selling the fruit and vegetables piled next to them. The vegetable sellers yell and hawk and spit carefully between the feet of all the old Chinese men and women in brightly colored jogging suits weaving between them, shopping for everything from freshly baked bread to steamed dumplings, or savory egg pancakes stuffed with chopped spring onion.

I eat an early morning breakfast as I wander - two biaizu (round steamed dumplings stuffed with god knows what - some chopped spicy stuff) for half a Yuan. Then I sit with an old man and strike up a long conversation, him prattling in Chinese, me prattling in English, while drawing pictures of little men with birds on their heads in my book, which amuses the gathering crowd very much. And though neither I nor the old man understands a word of what the other says, we enjoy the exchange nonetheless. In fact, this early morning exchange is perhaps been one of the more satisfying conversations of my life.

Breakfast finished, I bid farewell to the old man and the giggling crowd, and wander on, shopping for my regular fare of carrots, banana’s and peanuts. Shopping is an endless acceptance of the inevitable markup of prices which, unlike Kingsley (“Ohm fuckin’ sick of bein’ ripped off…”), who now bargains relentlessly, I accept the increased prices as my personal 'foreigner tax'. I can't be bothered haggling - good luck to them. The money will be well used, I'm sure.
As I walk along a row of stalls, I know they all know me now, and the other shop keepers laugh and point, and the stall holder who's lucky enough to have the banana's I want can barely resist rubbing his hands together as I hand him my purchase and wait for the verdict. I'm sure I pay triple the market price for everything.

And there is a reason for this.

They all know of me because of one ill-fated purchase I made when I first arrived, which I'm sure is outrageous enough to now have become legend throughout the entire market. It was very hot when I arrived, and I didn't have any sandals, so on one of my first trips to the market, I was picking through some footwear at a stall, when the woman came out and handed me a larger version of the sandals I was inspecting. I was still dazed I think, from the traveling and being in a new place - because what followed was such an outrageous act of mindlessness on my part, I still get shivers when I contemplate it.

Anyway, she handed me these sandals, and I didn’t think they were that flash, but I couldn't be bothered ploughing through the language disparity explaining that I didn't really want them after all. And considering that she'd hunted through for my foot size, I sighed and told her, yes, I wanted them.

How much?

She uttered some intelligible Chinese, so I handed her a pen and indicated I wanted her to write down the price. She wrote down what looked like the number '63' and some Chinese characters after it. I assumed it meant '63 Yuan', the equivalent of about $15 Australian. Not yet used to the different value of money here, I figured that, though expensive, it sounded equivalent to sandals in Australia, so I shrewdly decided to offer her 50 Yuan. I wrote down the number '50' beside her price and she shook her hands vigorously, indicating it was not acceptable.

Thinking myself a tough negotiator, I kept nodding my head, and saying 'hao, hao' meaning, ‘good, good’(my only Chinese at the time, meaning “good, good”. My, my, what a lunatic optimist… wandering through Daqing with only "good, good" to get by with). I kept indicating that she should take my 50 Yuan or I'd leave. Eventually she shrugged her assent and, feeling quite satisfied with myself, I took out a 50 Yuan note and handed it to her. She grinned widely as she snatched it from my fingers and it disappeared very rapidly into some small space on her person.

Then something made me pause.

It was something about the incredulous tone of the laughter coming from a bloke squatting nearby watching the exchange that caused me to do a retake. By this time she was packing my sandals and the incredulous tone of the conversation from the gathering crowd all round was becoming louder, and punctuated with rising laughter and much shaking of heads.

So there I am in the midst of this carnival – and I'm gazing at the piece of paper with our original negotiation on it, and now I'm thinking more critically. I inspect the original price again, that she had scrawled on the paper - and I realize that what I had thought was a '3' was actually a Chinese character - meaning what, I don't know - but it wasn't a number.

I realized she'd been asking for 6 Yuan, not 63.

By this time, still grinning widely, she was pushing the bag with the sandals into my hand, and nodding frantically for me to take it. I absent mindedly took the bag, then pointed at the piece of paper and began mouthing mutely like a fish, trying to think of how to explain. I looked into her eyes, and at that moment the whole crowd around us went quiet. But it was too late. My 50 Yuan note was gone, and there was no way it was coming back. All I could do was clutch my bag of plastic sandals and shake my head with a melancholy smile. And at that moment she and the crowd around us knew I now knew. And I knew that they all knew that I now knew - and even with all this knowing, it was still a done deal. Nothing to be done.

Walk away.

I took the package, and, with as much dignity as I could muster, to the sudden hilarity of the now substantial crowd I packed my hideously expensive sandals into my backpack and pushed out into the street.

Two days later, a plastic strap on one of the sandals broke, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away. They’re still sitting hopefully beside my bed. Maybe one day I might find some way of getting some value out of them.

So I'm sure they all know about me around the market. I can feel the ripple of gossip follow me down the line. But it doesn't matter. After many years of traveling, I have long accepted that the bottom line is that when in Asia I am inevitably a fool. I am a fool because I cannot speak their language, and I do not have their mind, and I come from a place they do not understand. But this is not a bad thing - in a way, I find it quite comforting to have no face or high reputation to have to uphold. After all, everything is upside to a fool...isn’t it?

Of course, I’m not always this philosophic about my defeats on this particular battle ground. Sometimes an event will bring out my innate stubbornness, and I’ll make sure I win. One particular instance occurred a week or two ago. I was ambling through the street market outside a large department store near here, looking for bananas.

There is a way of doing this. You cannot approach anything here without immediately being hooked into obligation to buy by the eager vendors. So I have developed the habit of appearing not to care about what is there, until I see what I want – then I go straight to it, and before the sales pitch begins, I pick up what I want and make clear that this is all I want.

So I did this – I saw a bunch of bananas that looked okay, and indicated to a boy at the stall that I only wanted half the bunch. His mother, a hard faced leathery whip of a woman, stood nearby picking her teeth, with that glisten in her eyes that a prospective sale often brings.

While the boy separated the banana’s the mother moved in to close the sale. I mimed ‘how much’ by rubbing my fingers together in that universal signal for ‘money’, and she held up her hand and displayed five fingers. I assumed she meant 5 Yuan, which was a fair price for the 6 banana’s I had chosen. So I took out a 10 Yuan note, and she whipped it out of my hand and it quickly disappeared. The boy offered me the bananas, but I indicated I wanted some change.

The woman flapped her hand disdainfully and yabbered in Chinese, then went back to picking her teeth, pointedly ignoring me. I looked at the boy, and he looked at me, and I said very emphatically, “Wu Yuan!’, meaning ‘5 Yuan’ to which he shook his head and said something like, “Bu dway, shi Yuan”, meaning ‘not right, 10 Yuan’. And suddenly my blood went hot and I’d had enough.

Now, 10 Yuan for 6 bananas is quite expensive, but not outrageous for a foreigner. And she might well have given five fingers twice, very fast, but I was in no mood to be reasonable. The boy pushed the banana’s at me, urging me to take them. I shook my head and repeated that I wanted my 5 Yuan. The woman kept ignoring me, so I went up to her, and put out my hand, saying, ‘5 Yuan’. She pointed to the bananas while flapping a hand at me to go away, but I shook my head and stood with my hand out. She began yabbering derisively to a customer standing there about what was going on, and tried to walk away, but I followed her, with my hand out, asking for the 5 Yuan.
By this time a crowd had gathered, and she began yelling at me, flapping her hands – and with the boy still trying to push the bananas into my hands, I kept following her around the stall, saying quietly, “Wu Yuan, Wu Yuan”.

At this point various people in the crowd began offering their opinions, and it seemed, from the way they were speaking to her, they sympathized with me. I had not expected this, but I presume the price was steep enough to offend them. So anyway, this stand off went on for about 5 minutes, with me following her around her stall, quietly saying ‘Wu Yuan, wu Yuan…”

By now she was screaming at me and making a real scene. It was then that a Chinese man in a suit appeared at my side and asked me in good English what was going on. I was surprised, because an English speaker is a rare thing in Daqing. I told him, and he nodded sagely as the woman warily watched our exchange.

“I think she is a bad woman.” he said eventually. “I will speak to her.”

So I stood back and, with the crowd muttering and commenting from the sidelines, he took up my case. This lasted for another couple of minutes, and the muttering turned to shouting and gesturing at the woman. I don’t know what they were saying, but it was clear that they were on my side, and I assume at some point, she figured the 5 Yuan was not worth the damage this was doing to her business. She whipped out the 5 Yuan note and threw it on the ground.

Again my stubborn streak took hold. There was no way I was picking up my money from the ground. Ignoring it and, taking the bananas from the boy, I carefully put them in my bag, then stood over the money, looking at her, but not picking it up. Again there was much arguing back and forth. The boy was standing next to me, obviously extremely embarrassed. The man was ripping and tearing at her with Chinese, (it can be a wonderful medium of abuse I’ve noticed) and by this time, she was looking pretty hunted. It was her boy who took the initiative to finish the fiasco. He picked up the 5 Yuan note and handed it to me, with an apologetic smile.

“Sheh sheh,” I said (thank you) to him with a conciliatory smile, and took it and, after thanking the man I turned, and seeing the surrounding crowd all peering curiously at this strange scene, bowed deeply to them all, and walked away with victory singing in my heart. It’s such a rare thing for a foolish foreigner with no Chinese to win here, that when it happens it is sweet.

As it happened, the man who had come to my assistance caught up with me and we talked for a while as we walked. I asked him what the woman had said. He told me she had been telling them all that I had agreed to pay 10 Yuan, but that the price had been so outrageous to the Chinese that they all took my side.
“I was surprised.” I said.
“Why?”
“I thought everyone would agree with her.”
He shook his head.
“We don’t like that she make us all look bad.” he said earnestly. “So we help you.”

And once again, my heart felt full with the innate ‘goodness of spirit’ that characterizes so many of the Chinese. It is something I have felt many times, not just in China, but in all of Asia.
There is this myth that Asians will rip you off as soon as look at you. And many times this is true. But running parallel with this is a kindness and sense of fairness, honesty and grace that is stunning in its directness, which has made for so many magical moments in my travels. I suppose this is because in Australia, the dichotomy of ways is less defined. You don’t get ripped off as much, but it’s also the case that people rarely exhibit the spontaneous grace, concern and kindness that Asians so often do.

But I digress….where was I?

It’s now 7 AM, and I make our way back to my hotel to get ready for work. I cross the road, and walk along the lane, past ‘Mamma Jiowsa’s”. I’ve spelt that phonetically. It roughly means Mamma Dumpling, a name given by the foreign teachers to the woman with the kind smile who runs the place. She’s always very patient, waiting as we stagger through our mutilated Chinese, and hunt through the pages of phrase books looking for a particular dish, and often gives a free dish when we eat there, using her only word of English, taught to her by Tamir, “free” – so everybody eats at ‘Mamma Jiowsa’s’.
Then through the park with its communist kitsch chrome globe of the world, from which the familiar shape of Australia always whispers ‘home….home…’ as I walk past.

Pause to watch the team of Tai Chi people doing their stork poses and slow motion kung fu, then back to the hotel to knock on the door and wake up the night porter to let me back in. He blearily scowls at being woken by me for the second time this morning, but…well, he is the night porter. Then down the long and expansive Communist hall with its high ceiling, stone floor and stark quasi-classical design to the door of my rooms.

Everything is big here - the buildings are huge echoing mausoleums, with high ceilings and whispering echoes, and convoluted corridors, with many rooms, often empty, or sparsely furnished. Bigness seems to be the Communist way, particularly the streets – even the small streets are big enough for a couple of tanks to trundle down – and perhaps that is why they are the size they are. Perhaps it is thinking ahead to the military concerns – the need to get troops and armored vehicles into any part of a city if there is trouble, because as far as I know, the way cities were before the revolution, was more cramped and complex.

And right down at the end of the long, long corridor are my rooms.
Aaaah, the rooms of my life.

So often, it has been the rooms where I lived that have embraced my soul, my spirit and my life. I can live anywhere, be anything and put up with anything, so long as I have pleasant rooms, or even a good room. It is an extension of my body, a mansion in which my mind tinkers with various projects, that are left lying about in variously assigned departments – a painting here, the guitar at rest over there, a letter half finished on the computer, a book left lying open on a table, another waiting on a shelf. If I had not had these two rooms - beautiful, high ceilinged and gentle, with their double glazed windows, billowing lace curtains and luxurious silence, I think I would have left Daqing within a week.

I have two rooms – a rather spacious living room with a lounge suite around a coffee table, a desk, and cupboard with a microwave and water cooler, and a bedroom with two beds, and a bathroom. The bathroom is prone to flooding whenever I have a shower, because of haphazard Chinese plumbing, but it doesn’t matter. It’s a home. It is here, when I close the door, that I breathe a sigh of relief, and flop down in a couch, and begin contemplating better things. The quiet in here breeds ideas and wonderings, and nurtures me when I nap, or sleep. It enjoys the music I play, and looks over my shoulder at the banal little drawings I have been doing, and the air chuckles.

I have a habit of spreading the bits and pieces of myself all around a room, which makes it my own. This habit began when I was with the band - I used to carry a special bag with all my ‘home’ things in it – paintings to put on the walls, scarves to put over the lights and odds and ends to scatter about, which would immediately turn wherever I was into home. The habit still remains. I carry my bits and pieces with me, and wherever I am, whether it is a tiny hut in the monastery, or a room in someone’s house, as soon as my things are put here and there, home appears. I suppose it comes from having spent most of my life in transit to somewhere else.

So I get ready for school – packing my bag with the books I need, and tuning my guitar. Then I clatter back down the hall to where a driver waits to take me to any one of the half dozen schools that we service.