China’s Megatrends and a Confused Sussex Boy amid the storm

China is in the media spotlight so much these days, and for someone with too much time on their hands and regular tendencies to scroll through the internet in a brain dead zombie-like fashion, it can’t be argued that most of the English language coverage is pretty negative. Of course I’m no media analyst and my regular news updates stem mainly from the BBC, though it would seem Auntie is no pioneer for news reports that don’t hold unbiased “everyone who isn’t doing it like us is bad” viewpoints on developing countries.

For those of you that are interested in China and its chaotic mosaic of a society, and wish to pursue an understanding that doesn’t jump to conclusions but jumps away from attitudes and expectations held by Western democracies, a book named China’s Megatrends by American socio-economic expert couple Doris and John Naisbitt may be worth a read. I picked the book up for 10 Yuan (about a quid) on one of Beijing’s many street book vendors, selling pirated copies of novels old and new, as well as an alarming amount of get rich fast/self help books.

I’ll start with what I’ve gathered so far. The book is filled with various explanations and reasoning behind the actions and schemes of the Chinese government, emphasising its rapid development from a backward peasant society to the world’s second largest economy in just 30 years, and how as a political machine it has been brilliantly efficient in bringing China up to the standards of the developed world. Sound a little too good to be true? Well just when I thought it was refusing to tackle the BBC’s favourite issues of human rights and democracy, the authors make the point that in terms of opportunities and standards of living, the issues of human rights of China have improved dramatically due to the economic advancement and modernisation of the country. Also, the events of 1989 are not attributed to the need for democracy and freedom of speech, but a general dissolution felt towards the government regarding high inflation and lack of produce at the time (though interestingly the book refers to it as the Tiananmen Tragedy, not the typical “Tiananmen Massacre” used by other Western sources). Perhaps most interestingly, regarding democracy the Naisbitts bring forward the age old Confucian ideals of stability and harmony and their importance to the Chinese idea of well-being, thus a Western style democracy whereby parties compete against each other for power would throw the country into disarray when what it cries out for is stability and the idea that the population should all work towards a common goal. It also mentions that the current Western model of democracy took hundreds of years to mature, and China, with its current installation only really being 60 years old, has made massive leaps from its autocratic closed off society under Mao. Unlike the West, individuality is not seen by the Chinese as complete freedom, instead freedom to them is achieved by families and citizens cooperating together and the whole of society heading down a similar path. The book repeatedly quotes from leading Chinese politicians and scholars mentioning plans to put more power into the hands of ordinary more emancipate people’s minds, and take from other countries various pieces of political, technological and sociological knowledge to add to China’s already existing montage of very un-Chinese ingredients.

Although the ideas put forward in the book are quite intriguing and do contradict many of the claims of other media sources regarding political corruption and human rights, it isn’t without its flaws. A peculiar aspect of the book is that it was released in China in Chinese a while before it hit Western bookstores, despite it being written by American authors. This did cause me to ponder whether this book, with its strange reluctance to directly criticise the Chinese system, is being used by China as a propaganda tool; a viewpoint shared (perhaps predictably) by many English speaking media corporations who reviewed the book. With suspicious mistakes in spelling and countless misprints coupled with questionable grammar, I have even been pondering the legitimacy of this book. Alas, after various internet searches it would appear that the book and its authors are real.

The Naisbitts

With regard to human rights, corruption and other nasty stuff we always hear about when hearing about China, the book makes an effort to bring a new light on these matters and the need for more understanding of China’s situation which I fully support, though having lived here for 3 years I can say that a lot of things are without total justification and, among many other things, are the result of a country with a superfluous population all trying to make their way whilst sometimes discarding law and morality. It would however take me an age to write about this and some of the things I’ve witnessed and heard about during my time here. I’ll save those stories for the pub.

The book, criticism aside, does serve well as a vehicle bringing some much needed light and explanation on the current China socio-economic situation, and does appear relatively appeasing and understanding compared to much of the finger-pointing armchair criticism style seen so often on the BBC. I haven’t read much work written by Westerners who have lived in or have studied China’s trends, though so far I’ve found the books of Joseph Hessler, an American teacher turned journalist who has spent much of his working life in China to be the most unbiased and informative view on Chinese happenings. It’s certainly interesting hearing the story from the other side (free from the heavily censored Chinese media), and in the meantime I’ll continue on my new found quest to find out more in understanding China’s doings and directions. This has become more of a book review than a blog, though the theme of the book is a topic that has repeatedly been on my mind of late. 

Dance Offs and Debauchery

After the intense working weekend of an English teacher in Beijing, Sunday evening comes the time where I am eligible to paint the red capital red. Though depending on how much watered down Tsingtao beer I consume from a giant 40 Yuan keg, perhaps a yellowish brown hue should be the more suitable choice of colour for painting the town, or at least a corner of my bathroom. The current hotspot for me and my colleagues, who due to a strange working schedule throws us together whether we like each other or not, is the PBD pizza bar. Of course we love each other really, and the topics of conversation, although rarely departing from frustrations in our attempts at educating spoilt Chinese kids, are always fun and varied, at least until we all stand up and dance in unison to “The Chicken Dance” song. This happens to be one of the tracks on our kindergarten class CD, and as educators/entertainers, we have mastered the technique of dancing perfectly in time to this kid’s party classic whilst feeling no shame whatsoever.

The bar itself is pretty nice and relaxed, serving as a student hangout for both Chinese and foreign students alike, offering cheap (but pretty yummy) pizza and other Western delicacies, as well as dirt cheap alcohol, ranging from the mentioned Tsingtao keg (fiendishly guised in a Hoegaarden glass), to mixers, shots, and all the quirkily translated cocktails you could imagine. After the initial “phew, the weekend is finally over” pint or five, the atmosphere starts to heat up around 10 as the bar staff pump up the volume of the music, instantaneously attracting more students like flies, and thus begin the many (attempted) dance offs. Since discovering the bar (thanks Simone!) it came to our attention that although being pretty packed most nights and playing loud (albeit generally dire) music, that nobody was getting their boogie on. Although perhaps an ambitious claim, we’re pretty proud that our Chicken Dance moves followed up nicely with Ricky Gervais style flash dance mixed with MC hammer shit to Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” caused a dancing sensation that is now a regular feature on the PBD Sunday night roster. As I mentioned earlier, the bar is pretty nice and friendly, and is full of Chinese students from all corners of the country, all of whom are up for a bit of dancing after a few drinks. We met these guys from Guizhou (a relatively under-developed province in south west China) who were celebrating a friend’s birthday, and after being showered generously with various liquors from these guys, we got up and repaid the favour by being true ambassadors of the highest of Western culture by dancing pristinely and elegantly to Usher’s “Yeah”. This in turn, caught the eye of a nearby bloke wearing tight clothes, who was shaking his body and was dancing in a highly suggestive manner that would most likely bring trouble upon his head should he portray said dance style in a bar in my hometown. That was our cue to decide to take a sudden interest and yearning to play table football.

You got served bro!

This Sunday I chose not to indulge in such shenanigans, and headed down to the old part of Beijing for a gig at the Yu Gong Yi Shane concert hall. It’s not a massive place, perhaps a little smaller than the Brighton Corn Exchange or The Underworld in Camden, though it’s the spiritual home of Beijing’s thriving music scene. It was only my third trip there, previously seeing Danish outfit The Ravonettes and American indie pop group The Pains of Being Pure at Heart (sounds like a band formed by a group of teenagers who hang out shopping malls right?), and this time I went with my girlfriend to see Australian indie pop duo/couple Agnes Kain. Although not particularly well known across the world (I came to this conclusion due to their not having a Wikipedia page), they were completing their China tour, and played a lovely set of sweet guitar/keyboard driven tunes. The crowd wasn’t huge, though was pretty responsive after each song and clapped along happily as the singer/keyboardist became more and more perplexed by smoke emitting sporadically from the stage. They tested out a couple of tracks from their upcoming third album, and their charm and honesty was exposed after a mouth piano malfunction and a prompt explanation about how they hadn’t rehearsed the new material a great deal. Still, after getting my feet going almost as much as The Chicken Dance, as well as hanging out at the bar and chatting after the show, the band are in my good books.

Agnes Kain - awwww

 I’ll keep my eyes peeled for any more gig news and will do my best to report any incidences from any of Beijing’s wide array of bars. It seems something worth raising an eyebrow to or writing about occurs in almost any given drinking hole on any given night here, as people party like crazy and paint the red town yellowy brown. I’ll keep you posted.

Syringes and Strange Drivers

There are many ways in which as an expat you could be sceptical towards the education system here in China. One being the sheer the difference in the approach of learning in China, with it being more exam focused rather than focusing on practical life skills. During my time here, I’ve seen a wide range of different teaching styles, from ruthless, robotic rote teaching to the more open “let’s try and educate our students to question things” approach. Unfortunately the latter is harder to come by due to many reasons that I presume mainly stem from politics or traditional Chinese hierarchal ways of thinking, particularly in the north of the country.

In spite of this, this morning saw my first ever direct experience of the use of a syringe (minus the needle) to maintain order and discipline in the classroom. I had been having trouble with a class that features in my three time a week newly acquired kindergarten gig, and asked one of the senior Chinese teachers for some advice on discipline. This was mainly concerning one particularly disruptive kid with the ability to cause domino effect patterns of chaos to what is normally a reasonably well behaved class. I explained to the Chinese teacher that the kid was causing problems in the class, and she responded by stating “he is really naughty, but he’s afraid of injections”. She then proceeded to find a syringe, (which I presume was not stored for medical purposes but for last gasp disciplinary measures) then filled it up with water, and finally squirted the naughty toddler with projectile aqua (which is French for water). After its apparent effectiveness, she continued to be on syringe standby should he, or any other daring preschooler dare to misbehave in any way deemed unfit for this lady with an interesting passion for using primitive water fight techniques to bring order to a class. If any of the must haves of the 90s was needed now, it’s surely the Super Soaker 500. I don’t claim to be a child psychologist or anything, though I can see how methods drawing on a kids fear of injections to gain short term control of an unruly attitude could be detrimental to their mental well being. Though I can say, as a novice in controlling mental kids that frequently run recklessly into a particularly precious area, I’m still open to suggestions. Anyone familiar with such experiences, suggestions are welcome should you be reading this.

Sit down or I'll vaccinate you

After the fun is over, I usually feel pretty fresh from my work out of being paid to jump around with 4 year olds (yes Daily Mail, it’s what I do and surprisingly I’m not a paedophile), and can enjoy the rest of the day off in the lovely warm weather than Beijing is currently having. The driver who drives me to and from the Kindergarten always holds interesting conversations however, mostly maintaining an interest in Western practices and customs, questions which I’ve answered countless times since being in China though he can’t be blamed for his curiosity. We entered into controversial waters the other day though, as he brought up the topic of the British Empire by stating that British people look down upon other countries in an arrogant manner, and love to bully weaker countries. Although I’m usually pretty switched off and looking forward to getting home at this time, I was a bit shocked. I went to say that although Britain had committed some pretty despicable acts during the days of the Empire, some countries did benefit from the introduction of democracy, economic development and social welfare. I pointed out Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong as examples. He then retorted with “that’s your Imperialist education teaching you those things, but all you did was bully weak countries!”

My inclination was to go down the route of either saying “open your eyes” and look at the above mentioned countries current situations, or responding with “what about China bullying others with it’s claims over The Philippines/Taiwan/Tibet?” I perhaps rather foolishly choose the latter, though luckily my risk of offending him deeply was met with a simple “Eh?” as if such to question such matters was a completely alien concept. I stopped there and didn’t want to get into that can of worms, though it was certainly the first time I’ve experienced this kind of opinion in such a direct manner, though I was aware of its existence prior to this. Chinese people are generally pretty humble, though there is a theory that a key element to some of the Chinese people’s psyche is the idea of 弱者心态, which basically translates as inferiority complex or small man syndrome. This attitude stems from centuries of China being invaded, raped and pillaged by numerous other nations, though now, with China finding its way in the world, many want to prove its not weak anymore and will actively stand up against such foreign oppression, be it legit or not.  After swallowing my pride and trying not to get too offended by his claims, he went on a wild America bashing rant, mentioning some recent football match between the US and China where an American player refused to shake the hand of a Chinese player after being fouled. All I had to do then was be the typical foreigner in China nod and smile as he barked away, simultaneously meandering around the Beijing traffic as the cotton seeds that dominate the Beijing skies at present floated romantically around our surroundings, under a beautiful blue smog free spring sky.

Let's just all be friends shall we?

New Kindergarten Classes/Thoughtful Reading

With the recent addition of this three times a week early morning kindergarten lessons, my teaching schedule has been somewhat packed of late. Should I be complaining? Probably not as I am working a full time job that requires me to teach a now whopping 26 hours a week, and although one could argue that teaching hours require more mental and physical energy than office hours (depending, of course on the job), it’s a different world compared to the usual forty hour week. Anyway, this recent injection of pace into my professional life has certainly made me treasure my days off and not mull around on a supposed “working day” spending time rather unproductively waiting for the time when I have to reluctantly venture out for my sole 90 minute evening class. Teaching is also a job where you’re often required to take your work home with you, and I’m one of those people who like to get all my planning and marking done first so I can have stress free gratification of what is essentially one single day off a week after all the paper work mentioned above is taken care of. Suffer first and then be joyful afterwards, perhaps a Buddhist approach that is also mentioned in “Roads Less Travelled”, not a poem by Robert Frost, but a book on human fulfilment and spiritual development by psychiatrist Scott Peck which I initially thought was one of those Bill Bryson-esque quirky travel books, hence leading me to buy it. It wasn’t, though it’s proving an interesting food-for-the-soul read anyway. These types of books seem to be everywhere in China, both in English and Chinese, with authors like Peck and Malcolm Gladwell appearing in almost every street seller of pirated books, right next to those directly titled self-help books  such as “How to Talk to Anyone” and “How to Make Friends and Influence Others”.

Anyway back to my point about my recent attempts to make use of my spare time. I’ve just got back from Beijing’s expat exhibition, where various companies and organisations set up stands and smother you generously with brochures, key rings and pens as they try to pitch their product. It was quite a pleasant experience though, not what you would normally imagine given China being a place with quite a few people, and we were able to glide effortlessly through the stands, with the main aim being the curry stall. My girlfriend was there on professional duty doing research for her boss on various education companies, though I just hung around chatting to various expat company representatives whilst conspicuously eyeing their rubber bouncy balls imaging the possibilities annoying my neighbours playing one man dodge ball by rebounding the balls off the walls of my apartment. Apart from the cheap and delicious curry, the highlight of the morning was chatting to a Beijinger who was promoting wine by giving out free samples of Californian chardonnay and biscuits. We switched between Chinese and English whilst chatting, though it took me a while to pinpoint his English accent, though it turned out he studied in New Zealand. I revelled by sipping on my wine whilst listening to his mixture of northern Chinese English (which swings towards an American style) and his Kiwi accent, which in terms of uniqueness and unpredictability, blows South African English out of the water. Lovely guy though, and he’ll be certainly getting visits by us in the future if we ever want 20% alcohol wine. Yeah I was tipsy at 10am after sampling that stuff… living the dream.

The international atmosphere was pretty friendly, and I was surprised by encountering a group that organises Celtic themed evenings, with Irish bands, tug of wars and so on included in the festivities. The Welsh flag was featured on the brochure, though as an ashamed half-Welshman who doesn’t really know what we would do during such events, (insert sheep joke here?) I didn’t ask any questions and signed up for notification about coming events.

It's not just about sheep...

It was nice finding out about these organisations that were until this morning were unknown to me, goes to show how much Beijing has to offer. After just missing the chance to appear on a bilingual radio station at the exhibition, I did put my name down to appear as a guest host on their chat show, and should it come to pass, I’m going to have to be on my best behaviour to avoid being a Mandarin speaking Alan Partridge broadcasting to the ears of locals and expats alike. Might go down well though, who knows- “This evening’s hot topic is which is the best rice? Is it a) Chinese, b) Thai, or c) Condoleeza?” We’ll be taking your calls right after…Ruddy hell, it’s Soft Cell”. Classic Partridge.

Ahaaaaa!

25 and feeling not any older

Beijing has certainly been in my good books of late. In some strange phenomenon that challenges the many opinions held by many Western expats and news bodies across the world, we’ve seen nothing but blue skies and clear, sunny days for near on three weeks now. The warm, pleasant weather has certainly brought that usual summery lift to my mood, especially considering it was cold and grey barely a month ago. My first day where the Beijing thermometers hit the mid-twenties was spent with me being a little over excited, forgetting that beer at 1pm coupled with sunshine equals lethargy, which left me reluctant to move for the rest of the day. I’m continuing the fashion of not learning from many of life’s mistakes by repeating this feat of sitting outside a café in warm weather getting slowly drunk in the afternoon; which I must say is certainly helping these words roll out from my often uninspired brain onto the computer.

Had a decent birthday last week, which began with my official entry into the 21^st century by getting a smart phone, HTC of course, as I’m far too special for those common Iphones. It was a sweet present which was made even sweeter by the way it given to me, as Simone decided to kidnap by old beloved (yet dying) Motorola whilst I was deeply focused on a Pro Evolution soccer game, changed the SIM card into the new phone, and wrapped it up in a secret location in the flat. Having realised my phone was missing, I entered a state of being somewhere between panic and confusion, called my phone from Simone’s own, heard an unrecognisable ringtone, and eventually located it hidden in a drawer. Great present! Though the touch screen pad still confuses my fat fingers. The birth “day” quickly snowballed into a birth “week” due to various work commitments, though I was able to celebrate it properly with the usual Sunday night gathering after work with several of my dearest in Beijing. Working as an English teacher does certainly require you to take on a schedule which seems to prevent English teachers form mingling with the rest of society as we often work on weekends, with the conventional Friday night out of shenanigans and mischief occurring on a Sunday. Sorry god.

Thou shalt not get pissed on Sunday

Up until recently I have had a pretty relaxed schedule, working intensely on the weekends with a lesson here or there in the evenings on weekdays. Now however, I have been required to teach a Kindergarten which has recently signed a contract with my school, meaning I have to be up at 6.30 every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to be picked up and taken to this school for lessons starting at 8.30 and ending at 11.30. I say picked up, though the first couple of days left me waiting for an hour while the driver navigated his way around the terrors of the Beijing rush hour, and with me having to direct him to his own school the first few times we went. As I mentioned, my work schedule does, for better or for worse, allow to me live relatively outside the normal 9-5 slog, though this new job at the Kindergarten has exposed to me to the true nature of Beijing’s rush hour at full flow. The first days I saw several incidents such a guy being knocked off his bike by a car followed by a brief argument while the poor guy was still lying on the floor, and a car driving in front tailgating another car which led to the inevitable bump as the car in front stopped, and the two drivers simultaneously opening their doors almost in sync as they got out to quarrel in the middle of the motorway. The pick of the bunch however was seeing a bus, which had seemingly driven through a barrier on an intersection on an elevated motorway, and had crashed down onto the grass about twenty five feet below. Judging by the amount of debris and the absence of the emergency services, we’d obviously missed this by a few minutes, though it was pretty horrific driving past the wreck of the bus with all its smashed windows and possibilities of people being trapped inside. Accidents like this happen all the time in China, and go frequently go unreported save for online social websites spreading the stories around the net. Still goes to prove that even after three years there are some things here that don’t take much to shock me, in both good and bad ways.

Fallen through a barrier? You ain't seen nothing till you've had a bomb on a bus

Having these ongoing experiences whilst in China, plus a discussion with a local Beijinger about China’s ups and downs, has led me to start writing an article about things I love and loathe about China, and maybe I’ll start posting it bit by bit on Facebook or similar sites should anyone be interested to have a peek. I found that writing the bad points took up much more word space that the good points, though I feel a lot of the negative things here need explanation as there are often relatively legit reasons behind them. Anyway writings like this can offer a different perspective on China rather than those BBC articles which constantly highlight it’s downfalls from the eye of a developed democratic nation; Beijing correspondent Damian Grammaticas being a prime example of this, with article headings such as:- Are China's leaders worried? Welcome to the Beijing smog ,China's pollution, Held 'hostage' by China, When words are crimes in China, Confronting the China challenge, China's critical poor gather to watch premier, Damaging coup rumours and so on.

Chinese New Year 2012

It’s nearly a month or so since my last blog entry so if there is anyone out there remotely interested in my life in Beijing then I’m glad to ease your anticipation or any curiosity you may have by keeping this thing up to date.

Chinese New Year was spent down in Zhaoqing, Guangdong province which was certainly a nice get away to warmer weather, cleaner skies and awesome food for a good couple of weeks. I could tell I was in a small city in South China again not only by being a giant ginger beacon among the clouds thus being subject to being stared at, but also due to the various billboards of a model dressed as Princess Diana wearing nothing but a bra and panties in a sneaky attempt promote women’s lingerie for a local store. Bemusing, though above all tabloid dynamite for those wonderful institutions The Sun and The Daily Mail wishing to pray on people potentially disgusted by such blasphemy. Diana controversies aside, I spent most of my time down there being fed like a spoilt kid by Simone’s family, and feeling as if I had just arrived in a foreign country once again, sitting down nodding and smiling like a good foreigner who has no clue as to what is going on. This was largely due to there being both Cantonese and Hakka (which, disappointingly is not a language derived from the New Zealand rugby team’s pregame war chant) dialects drowning the Chino-airwaves around me, and despite having a decent understanding of the former, my ability to express myself has yet to reach any form of communication save for a few yeses and no’s here and there. Cantonese is also one of those languages where if you make one slight error in pronunciation you can either end up bemusing or offending someone, which I discovered outside a dim sum restaurant in Guangzhou telling a waitress to “die” after attempting to thank her.

Diana in darker days

Still it was a good holiday, and apart from being generally lazy and soaking up the lovely surrounding karst mountain landscape, it was great to meet up with old friends Matt and Joe, and our reunion was celebrated none better than hitting the city’s finest nightclub “The Cave”, in which we were reminded the wrong doings of the fine art that is wooing scantily dressed dancers by some Indian and Chinese clientele.

After a manic 2 weeks of working the typical English training centre winter course slog, I’ve got back into the swing of things in Beijing which involves being squashed on buses and subways, dodging multi-directional incoming phlegm (human) tiptoeing my way around litter and fag-ends (human caused) and hop scotching above and over scattered faeces (human?) decorating the pavement on the walk home from the bus stop. It’s interesting how these things really don’t bother me at all and seem only trivial in my life perspective here in Beijing. I’m not sure if I should thank a more liberal and accepting attitude that has come from travelling and living abroad, or being plain desensitised to all this stuff which I’m sure would have had me ranting a couple of years ago. It still does on occasion, however somewhere amid all this dirt and calamity I am still enjoying myself in the red capital, and am furiously writing letters to Mr. Hu requesting him to sort out the spitting in lieu of a possible parental visit in the summer. 

Welcome to the concrete jungle, we got smog and dust

Anyway it’s a short one this time, as I am clearly far more focused on the outcome of this Mr. Xi and his visit to America in hope of achieving such deep relations between the two countries so that they create a giant slide between America and China for people to conveniently use to travel between the two countries.

Christmas Aftermath

After having a pretty manic Christmas party involving a visit from the police interrupting a mass chorus of Bon Jovi’s “Living On a Prayer” (80s cheese metal hasn’t quite found it’s deserved appreciation here yet), it was nice to have a practically work free week to chill out and enjoy the holiday. An improvement on previous Christmases in China indeed; the last 2 years have seen me dress up as Santa distributing/manically lobbing candy across classrooms, and attending the ritual Christmas dinner in Pizza Hut. It was nice this time to get a little tree, hang up some lights, order a turkey and roast vegetables, and have some great company round to let the chaos ensue. The following morning was spent feeling particularly fragile though the consumption of various chocolates and left over apple pie coupled with Lord of the Rings helped me get through the day.

Since I have been living in China for a while, it can be said that many of the obscurities and strange happenings don’t quite have the same effect as they used to back in the early days, hence the rather large gap between my blog writing. There are still little things that continue to amuse or amaze me however, one being finding a call card for a prostitute inside the wrapper of a kid’s lollipop the other day. I haven’t got a clue as to why or how it got in there, and the thought that it may be intentional caused not only bedazzlement but alarm, though my only sure assumption was that perhaps these agencies (or whatever prostitution companies are called) may need to have a good think about this new direction of their marketing. Anyway it certainly sparked the thought that there are still ample opportunities for various things to keep my curious brain occupied during my time in the Chinese capital. This was consolidated further two nights ago when, after finishing some Greek food with some friends, we stumbled upon a camera set up in the square of Sanlitun (one of the bar/trendy areas of Beijing) which projected your image onto a big screen overlooking the masses of coffee shops and trendy people wearing glasses with no lenses (don’t get me started on this obscure fashion trend!). The screen also had computer generated reindeers and a Santa which would do strange dances alongside your image, which, after being met with the initial “look I’m on the big screen!” reaction, was then followed by many people in the vicinity dancing along with these computer generated characters. It was quite fun and stimulating watching these people of all ages try to keep up with a dancing snowman, though the icing on the cake was the guy who decided to take the opportunity to action humping motions behind a CGI Santa.

It’s the end of 2011 now and I’m sure there will be many other musings to be had upon the last year which has flown by for me; starting with an initial plan to return to the UK and do a masters in the summer, followed by a turn of events which involved me meeting my amazing girlfriend and staying in Beijing and living a nice fulfilled life. Having had some doubts about where to go next in life before, I chose to follow my feelings this time and aside from missing an array of family and friends dearly in the UK, most of my desires led me to stay in China and develop my skills as a teacher whilst polishing my Mandarin ability and keeping my girlfriend happy. A busy life indeed! Though 2012 is looking like a promising year, and come next December I will be clambering on the giant Chinese ship depicted in the film alongside John Cusack saving me from world destruction. See you in the next life! (As sung by Suede…)

Blog Resurrection

Welcome to the rejuvenation of my blog! Since I haven't posted anything on this site for almost three years, I'm not going to post every blog I've written since then as that may prove to be chronologically confusing. So from now on I'm going to post every blog I've written since 2012 and any that should come if something confuses/amuses me. Any die-hard followers (if you are, then you must have nothing much to do), please check my Facebook page to fill in any gaps. Enjoy!

It's alive!!! 

It’s currently about 10.30pm on Monday the 12^th December 2011. I have just spent a very lazy day recovering from the hectic weekend schedule of a training centre English teacher with Simone, which began with being up by the ubiquitous sounds of construction that are inescapable anywhere in China. This time it was someone drilling on the floor above which somehow entered into my dream just prior to my awakening which created the strange sensation as if someone was having a nice release just over my head after a massive curry the night before. It sounded like that anyway. We got up, had breakfast, lounged around, went to the shops to get some Christmas shopping done, and then came back home after which I cooked up my staple fried tofu dish which readily satisfied the taste buds of a certain Cantonese lady. All that was washed down with a Japanese beer and the remainder of last night’s rose wine, which was followed by more lounging around, watching a couple of episodes of Leverage, and a quick blast on the guitar.

I’m currently reading a book by Brazilian author Paulo Coelho which follows the life of a famous author who aside from being pretty lovelorn, mentions some of his thoughts about the processes of writing and using life experiences to create stories, and writing things consciously that contains very unconscious content and messages; using knowledge we have that comes out spontaneously through our daily life actions, which in this guy’s case is writing novels. Anyway its added to my recent thoughts about how I haven’t been doing any writing of any sorts recently, and having looked back at my last blog which was dated around February 2010, I realised that perhaps it’s time to get back on it, and I hope I can still write something of mild interest. Before I started writing this entry, I reread all of my previous China blogs and came to the conclusion as to why I haven’t written any for so long – they all had the tone of me expressing my amazement, confusion and excitement of being in China at that time and wanting to share that with the folks and friends back home. This starry eyed feeling, I have to admit, has dwindled to an extent since living in China for almost 3 years and having a life here, compared to the feelings I had a couple of years ago where I was purely here for the experience, travel and fun. China being China however, I am still frequently amazed/shocked/gobsmacked/impressed on a regular basis by things I see in my daily life, so I hope to report on these things when I see them!

Anyway I hope this is the first of many “New Owain China” blogs. In summary, I’m enjoying a pretty decent life in Beijing, spent cowering from the smog, dodging the dodgy cooking oils and food additives, and generally continuing to behave like the bumbling Englishman in the classroom, not yet quite managing to realise there’s often a step between the blackboard and the rest of the class which always results in laughs across the room when I trip upwards mid-lecture mode.