Accidents will happen...

It was a pretty ordinary Friday as they all are. Although I had been busy. In the morning there had been a ceremony welcoming the new students to the British Colombia Institute of Technology programme at my college. The international director from Canada was visiting and there was speeches and pin presenting and a trip around the campus. Then we went for lunch, and a very good lunch it was too at a very good restaurant, and I had the best vegetarian food I'd had so far in China.

Then after that was done and dusted I went out and got a haircut, moseyed around the shops and turned up at the Blue Marlin around four to enjoy the end of my working week with some of my teacher colleagues.

I was feeling a bit rough because I'd picked up another cold, but not so bad that I turned down the suggestion of some friends that I might go into Nanjing with them that evening. We were also arranging a Halloween party in the city for Saturday night too.

I had had a couple of beers, but by 8:30 when I had left I had had three beers maximum since before 4.

Steve jumped on the back of my bike and we set off for home.

It was dark and wet and as I was in the cycle lane I was going slowly. 1. because it was dark and wet and 2. because I knew that often oncoming bikes and pedestrians in the road carried no lights and one often saw them at the last minute.

I was crossing a junction when all of a sudden a van was upon us. It hit us midships.

I can remember Steve calling my name and that I was lying on the cold wet floor.

I got up and went over to him, I didn't seem to be badly hurt, I had a big bump on my head and my foot hurt. Steve was obviously in more trouble, his leg was obviously broken and his teeth were broken too.

Loads of people seemed to suddenly turn up. Expats and Chinese.   The ambulance came, then the colleges international liaison, Richard and the police.

Everyones attention was on Steve. I guess I was going into shock. I can remember sitting down and shivering a lot. I gave my name to the cops.  Then two Australian women told me to get lost. So I jumped on my bike (which was up on its stand?) and came home.

Tom and Peggy turned up at my place and checked me out. got me to bed covered in quilts. Todd rang checking on the symptoms of concussion.

Later at about 1am Richard and the Cops turned up, asked me some questions, breathalysed me (I was sober) confiscated my bike as evidence and left. I slept.

Saturday, Tom Peggy and I went to the hospital to see Steve. He was in a bed in a corridor. Not a happy bunny about that at all, but fatalistic and optimistic about the accident.  I admit I cried a lot at seeing him and felt really guilty, but as he said, it was just an accident.

He told me that he had been really worried about me. I had been knocked unconscious and was lying under my bike - thats why I couldn't remember putting my bike on its stand someone had picked it off me but  left me lying there. Steve said he thought I might be dead.

Gulou Hospital Nanjing is not the most modern hospital in China, and the corridor is a pretty ropey place to be. As soon as you enter there are women jockeying to be your 24hr 'mum', they cost 100y (£10) a day and look after your every whim, getting your food, keeping you comfortable, helping you wee and so on.

We stayed most of the day with Steve. He told us that they had hammered the pin through his ankle with no anaesthetic and that as it was the weekend there were no doctors or dentists available to see him. He was a bit pissed off at that.

Richard the international liaison was there and soon the vice president of the college turned up, which we thought was a good sign. We had all agreed that we (the international teachers) would cover all of Steves classes otherwise the might have just shipped him off home, The liaison was a bit surprised at this and couldn't seem to understand that we would all do this for free to protect Steves job.

Tom was there, and Tom is a force of nature and he told the vice president what we were doing and things seemed to get through to them.

Steve was in good spirits and all the foreign teachers turned up to see him, get him stuff and so on.

While I was there I took the opportunity to get checked out by the doctor, I got a CT scan of my head and an Xray of my foot. It cost me about £40.

Doctor and Richard checking my brain

'Hmmm clearly a large brain and a huge intellect, well developed sense of humour too!'

 Luckily all seemed OK. Now Im just worried about turning into a big green thing because of all the Chinese radiation.

SUNDAY - I got there asap and found Steve in a worse mood, he had had not much sleep in a busy corridor and was getting pissed off at being the centre of everyones attention. People actual got up and came over to watch him have a piss and so on. Everything here is public. Plus there were cockroaches crawling around his bed.

Not much happened. All the Chinese teachers from Steves office turned up with a big basket of fruit which was touching and other expats visited.

I got the name of a western doctor from another American expat I know and gave it to Steve who was going to ring it in the morning.

MONDAY.

Tom and Peggy visited Steve and found him in a bd way. He had had a bad night in a busy corridor with cockroaches crawling on him. He didn't really know what was going on and the schol liasion guy was talking about him losing his foot.

As I said Tom is a force of Nature and they called the Western Doctor I had got the number of.  The Tom jumped in a taxi and took Steves xrays to him across the City. The Doc confirmed it was a bad break and got his coat and his nurse and jumped in the taxi with Tom and visited Steve. Ho noted that Steve's foot was getting infected and he needed it to be straightened and set asap. I think Tom faced up the school liaison and all of a sudden Steve was moved into a smaller room with only 1 other person. Plus 5 doctors turned up looking at his foot.

Tom GETS THINGS DONE - no question - he is a star, a guy one needs on their side when things are bleak - no question - Thanks a million Tom - we love you.

Decisions were made, the western doc left asking NO fee!

Steve had an operation at 5pm last night.

TUESDAY 1st Nov

I hear on the grapevine that the op was a success and the latest I heard 30 minutes ago is that Steve might be out of hospital today.

Lets hope so!


My bikes still with the Police as 'evidence' we have to wait for the police to apportion blame. If it goes against me, which Im told it might simply because Im a foreigner and 'rich' then I will have to pay compensation to the driver! Sucks huh?

Any ordinary friday huh?


PARENTAL WARNING - next is a picture of the bruise on my arse!

Will keep the arse updates coming as it changes colour......

Social Life, Shopping Etc

Wednesday 26^th October.  It’s getting colder now but I have just been for a 7k run, it took about 45minutes, which I think is quite good.

The weather has been generally good with some lovely sunny warm autumn. I took these shots at a shopping mall where I sometimes drop into McD's for a coffee after work, to enjoy the sun and the lake.

At the Lake

So I’ve been here for two months now only another 8 to go! Does that sound like i'm counting down a prison sentence? I don’t mean it to, I mean even prisoners get visiting rights and that aint happening at the moment.

I’m hoping that Lucia and Matilda will visit me in the New Year and my sister Julie say they might visit next year, so I’m looking forward to those visits, especially seeing Lucia and Matilda again.

The bouts of homesickness I was suffering earlier seem to have gone away, but I do get the occasional bit of homesickness. I’m NOT missing my old job, or my house, or Plymouth and all that stuff, I do miss Snook Doggy Dog a bit, but I can live without my dog.

I do get a bit down after Skyping with Matilda and her Mum. I look forward to it so much but afterwards I feel a bit empty and depressed. As I usually Skype on a Saturday at about 4pm here (10 am there) after I finish I go to the pub where most of my China friends/colleagues are usually enjoying Happy Hour, but I must admit I don’t enjoy it much and usually sit there being a bit quiet.

Last Saturday a couple of the American guys encouraged me to go out with them into the city to see the clubs. As I hadn’t been out on an evening since I got here I agreed.  We went to an area of the city called 1912

  

There are loads of bars, clubs and restaurants there and I had a good time and danced away my frustrations and minor depression.

Earlier in the day I went with Tom, Peggy and a Scots teachers called Steve to a big cash and carry place called Metro. We loaded up on some of the food we can’t get locally. I got stuff like Cheddar Cheese, Pasta, Olive Oil, Pesto, Dark Swiss Chocolate, Curry paste (Indian) a Coffee Press (hurrah) and a big bag of ground coffee all at a good price, so it was worth sharing a taxi to get there to get stuff that makes life a little bit better.

We didn’t buy anything like this for tea!

Turtles for tea! 

We didn't buy this toothpaste either, apparently not so long ago it was called "Darkie", but they changed the name so as not to cause offence! Hmmmmm.

Darlie (Darkie) Toothpaste

Later it was AJ’s birthday and we went to a Hotpot restaurant for a meal. Here you have a metal pot separated into two compartments on a burner on the table. One side has boiling water; the other side has spicy water. You then order loads of meat, vegetables, tofu, mushrooms and so on and put them in the water, let them cook, dip them in a sesame/vinegary paste/sauce and eat, with beer.  Its good. The spicy side is usually designated the vegetarian side just for me which is nice.

Aj and Peggy

Tom, Kevin and James

Xia, Peggy and Titus, AJ and Xia's son.

On Sunday, as you might predict, I could hardly walk. Not from a hangover, I was pretty sober as it happened, I had only drank two bottles of Bud and a couple of shots of Black Jack given to us by some Chinese guys in one of the clubs and all that alcohol I sweated out dancing for four hours, that’s why my legs were dropping off!

My bike had conked out Saturday evening and I had left it chained up by the local supermarket where we were using the cash point.  So I had to walk to get it, luckily it started on the kick-start and so I took it to the bike guy to get fixed. While it was getting fixed I had a walk around the local district and found a large vegetable market.

Inside were loads of stalls selling vegetables, meat and all sorts. There are loads of these markets around, this was about the sixth or seventh I had found locally.  One guy had a couple of live hedgehogs for sale, for lunch of course. There was also a noodle factory, spice stalls, clothes shops; it was a busy shopping day.

Here in China there isn’t a traditional weekend. As its not a Christian country Sunday is no different from any other day. There are no lessons for me and I think the colleges do close on a Sunday (although I do know teachers that do teach English on a Saturday and a Sunday). So all the shops and Banks and most businesses seem to be open on a weekend.

My classes are going well. The three third year classes I teach are still sparsely attended, even though I issued an ultimatum sending a message to students that if they didn’t attend at least 66% of my classes they would fail and they could not be entered for the final exam.  About 4 extra students only turned up across all three classes!

I like teaching the fresher’s class. There are 37 of them and they all turn up and they are all excited and funny and their English is much better than the third years.

On Friday Peggy and I did what’s called English Corner. We had to turn up and talk about Food Culture for about an hour. We talked about the differences between British and American Food, just by looking at Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. Then the students asked questions, but mainly they wanted to take photographs.

It was great!

Basically all I had to do was stand there with a grin on my face and with my arms wide and two by two female students would run into my arms and have their picture taken by a friend, then another two and another two, then two boys and then two girls and so on, it was insane.  Ill try and get some photos, as the official school photographer was there as well and another Chinese teacher James was taking pictures too.

Tonight I’m off to another event. I’m not sure what it is, but I’m getting paid! I think it’s a talking competition and after each student has spoken I must ask them some questions. Ill try and get some pics and report back.

Friday, there’s another thing in the morning (darn its my day off) I think it involves speeches and lunch!

So a busy social life at the moment, which is good otherwise it gets a bit lonely and boring sitting in ones flat alone all the time.

Now its time for coffee with my new French Press – this is one of the things that makes life in China good!

Some more pics of the school canteen

 This is just one floor of four in one of two buildings serving the 30,000 students that live on campus. All the food is freshly cooked, nothing is under heat lamps, its all fresh food, freshly prepared.

Fireworks outside the blue marlin on AJ's birthday

Miscellaneous catch up

Wednesday 19th October, Its a beautiful sunny Autumn day today here in Nanjing, blue skies even.  I've just been for a 7k run and am teaching later, after lunch.

This blog is just a quick catch up of stuff, I've got a few more photo's of my holiday that I took on my phone and forgot about and some other stuff.

No, not me after a night at the Blue Marlin but Beijing Opera. There is one channel on the TV dedicated to Beijing Opera (CCTV 11). It is fascinating to watch but of course totally unintelligible. This was taken off my TV in my hotel room in BeyJomJen.

This is the cake we shared with the kids in the hotel in BeyJomJen

The kids we sang and danced with in the hotel

The kids singing for us - a bit dark tho

Shelves of teeth casts in a dentists in Anqing

This is number 2 restaurant at my college, the building is 4 stories of food vendors. There are loads of them, remember all the 30,000 students live on campus, they have to eat here, they have no choice. Lunch times are manic. But the food is good and cheap.

Tom trying on a fluffy hat (I'd already tried it on) with Peggy and a random student.

We were in a shopping mall on Saturday and upon the third floor we found these huge arcades full of computers and students playing computer games, no wonder they are always tired. This place was huge with hundreds of terminals, all full and there were another three or four on the same floor and even more on the fourth floor. It was like being in some dark science fiction movie, like the Matrix, where everybody is connected to a machine. Scary,

In the same place we went to a new restaurant that had opened and was advertising itself as 'The real Kung Fu' what ever that means but the picture on the advertising looked nice (for the meat eaters that is) a bowl with meat and spices, lotus root and parsley. So we went in, they were really pleased as we were probably the first foreigners to go and they had just opened. Predictably they couldn't cater for me. Even though they also seemed to do hotpot with lots of vegetables and so on, but they cant seem to understand to give me the vegetables and leave the meat out.

Anyway I had a beer, some deep fried corn pattie things whilst Tom and Peggy ate their meal, which did look good and they enjoyed it. Although Tom was a bit suspicious of the meat and was sure it wasn't chicken and guessed it was frog. But he didn't want to know until he had finished.  And sure enough when we asked the waitress later it was frog, or as they call it here, field chicken.

Ribbit!

My Mountain Holiday Part 3

Saturday 15^th October, Its sunny with blue skies. Just been for a run with Peggy, 7k, first one after my cold so I was pleased to do it without dying!  Will do some shopping later with Tom and Peggy, then its watching the rugby, Wales v France.  I’m so pleased that the kind men at the World Rugby Federation organised the matches so they come on during the Blue Marlins happy hour.

Back to my holiday. We were up early to catch the minibus back down the mountain. This time we had insisted that we had a minibus to ourselves as the trip up was a bit of a squash.  The trip downhill was pretty uneventful, obviously lots to see in terms of the views across the valleys and as we went through the small towns and villages that were just waking up.  People were eating their breakfasts outside their houses, brushing their teeth, washing their hair, trudging off to work with tools over their shoulders. The butchers had new cuts of meat on their counters, AJ says that if we were earlier we would have seen them slaughtering the pigs on the street ready for the days fresh supply.

Outside many of the houses, shops and buildings on the concrete slabs golden coloured rice was laid out drying. We also saw soya and cotton drying, a chopstick factory with wigwams of 1 metre long sticks drying outside. Other houses were festooned with drying tobacco, it is clearly harvest time in the mountains. On some of the mountain roads, crops were laid out in the road and as the vehicles passed over them the crop was threshed. 

We were off to Tahiu were we were to meet another Brit, Kevin and his Chinese wife (forgotten her name). Kevin and his wife are in business here and in fact were jetting off to Las Vegas the next week to do a trade show, he’s an Engineer, I don’t know what his wife does, import/export I think. We met them at Expo 5000 in Tahiu.  This is still in the process of being built, but it’s an exhibition of 5000 years of Chinese culture and history built, as ever, on a GRAND scale.  It was 120y to get in which I thought was a bit steep even for China, but once inside it was worth it.

We wandered around getting as much attention as the exhibits, we had to pose for lots of photos, we were followed around for a bit by a TV crew and a number of official photographers took pictures of us.  It’s a bit like being a film star being a foreigner in China, we’ve not been asked for our autographs yet, but I suppose the mobile phone photo is a modern equivalent.

We found an area where there was some live entertainment, chairs were found for us and we were placed centre front so we could get the best view.  It was really hot and there seemed to be a distinct lack of vendors trying to sell you overpriced drinks and as it was well gone beer o’clock we left to find a restaurant for lunch.

After lunch we bade goodbye to Kevin and his wife, leapt aboard the minibus and set off for our next overnight destination Anqing (pronounced anching).  Anqing is where AJ started teaching in China, and where he met his wife Xia.  Xia had a motorbike accessory shop and AJ was a regular customer, enjoying not only a loud personality (hi AJ!) but a louder motor scooter pimped to the max! So we were staying at another uncle’s hotel and AJ had a date to meet some of his old students the following day.

It’s was another 3 or 4 hour drive to Anqing so we saw the usual sights and dozed (how quick one gets inured to the fantastic sights whizzing past the windscreen).The hotel was not as new as the one in the mountains, but it was OK, clean, ensuite, TV and computer, this was my sight outside of my window.

The hotel was also a knocking shop. Down the corridor from me past a receptionist’s desk was a suite of very nice ‘massage parlours’.  AJ told me that he was asked on arrival if any of us would like a massage or a ‘room visit’.  He declined on our behalf.  Although I didn’t see any of the masseuses’ or random girls hanging about smiling in a provocative way, so it must have all been very discreet, although that night my corridor was very busy until about 4am.

We had a bit of a rest and then went out into the evening for a beer and a look around.  Anqing is completely different from Nanjing.  Anqing is a bustling busy place with a lot of street life, hawkers on the sidewalk, food vendors and so on these are not allowed in Nanjing.  We had a beer or two in a nice bar overlooking the main street.

One of the strange things about China is that there are very few places to sit outside and enjoy a drink or a meal.  With the exception of some McDonalds there are no places to sit out and have a coffee or a beer. Yes you can buy a bottle of beer and find somewhere to sit but otherwise you are stuffed. Our local pub, the Blue Marlin does have tables and seats outside, but they are regularly hassled by the police to remove them because they ‘are not beautiful’. I have been there and been moved off my table by the police. Of course once the police have gone the tables are moved back.

Later that evening we went to a restaurant where the menu is a series of pictures stuck to the wall and you chose from the pictures.  There didn’t seem much choice for me so I sloped off and found a street vendor and had chow mien (fried noodles).

When I got back to the restaurant to join my friends there was a wedding going on. The majority of patrons were the wedding party and the bride and groom were standing outside the restaurant greeting their guests.  This seemed to take quite a long time, then they came upstairs where the groom was taken to the stage and various things were said, then he was joined by his bride, it was all very sweet.

After the meal we went to the Yangtze River where there was a promenade. It was very busy. Groups of people were doing Tai Chi and Ballroom dancing. We went down from the elevated walkway/wall to watch the dancing.  Tom and Peggy started line dancing, I started jigging around and soon we were the centre of attention again. Peggy was whisked off by some woman doing ballroom, I ended dancing pop style with some woman, we all had a great time.

Then over the road Chinese Opera was being performed, it was like Beijing Opera, but was a local form, I forget the name. Once again people were unceremoniously shooed off their seats which were given to us, we were presented with a cup of tea, the performers waved to us and everybody watch us instead of the opera. Hell you can watch opera any day of the night, but four foreigners that’s pure entertainment gold!

After a while we wandered on watching some classic music being played and other singers and entertainers. As I have mentioned this doesn’t seem to happen in Nanjing which is a shame (although having spoken to some Chinese teacher colleagues at my college stuff like this does happen at a park with a lake in it in town, so I might have to seek this out soon.)

We then wandered back through the busy streets and back to the hotel. As it was quite early Tom, Peggy and I went over to the shop got a bottle of beer each and sat on the sidewalk ‘shootin the breeze’ as they say until it was time for bed.

As I have mentioned it was quite noisy in the corridor during the night (but no knock on my door) and then the building site outside started at about 6am. At about 7 I went out for a stroll plus I needed to find a drink having realised that the majority of my liquid intake over the past few days had been beer.  And by drink I don’t mean more beer I mean orange juice.

We were due to get an early bus home, but as it was a holiday the early busses were full so we were booked on a 3:30 bus home.  The plan was to go to McDonalds for breakfast. But when we got there at 9:30 they had no muffins (the vegetarian choice is an egg and cheese muffin), no sausage meat for the breakfast burgers for the meat eaters so they shut breakfast down in our faces. Tom went off in a huff, not wanting to give McDonalds another cent, I berated the manager telling him I was going to write a letter about his crap management to his bosses in America (he didn’t seem that bothered). Eventually they made me egg and cheese in a burger bun. Peggy got the wrong order and what she got was shit as you can see in the photo.

The rest of the morning was spent wandering around shopping, looking at the sights, and so on.

At lunchtime we met with AJ’s old students, most of them had graduated from their college and were now off to university. The girl next to me was off to study medicine to be a doctor.  Her English was quite good so I asked her to help me order a pizza. On the menu all the pizzas had meat on them so I wanted a basic cheese and tomato pizza. She explained this to the waitress and all seemed well.

Until…

A bit later we were talking about tomato sauce or something when she suddenly gasped and with eyes wide explained to me that she had made a mistake and had ordered me a cheese and potato pizza! OMG this was going to be something to look forward to, and yes indeedy it was.  When the pizza turned up it had cubed potato covered with cheese on it. It was absolutely disgusting, I ate two small slices and gave the rest to the poor starving students who ate it.  But hey This is China!

They were all nice friendly students and we had a good time until it was time to dash off to the hotel get the bags and make it to the coach station. The trip was about 3 hours; I slept most of the way.

This was one great holiday – come to china – stay with me – why not?