It’s a lovely Autumn day here in Wuhan. The weather has finally cooled, meaning you can actually walk from A to B without breaking a sweat however short the distance is. Now that the temperature is a much more acceptable 15-20 degrees, it’s even possible to wear a jacket – the only downside is that it’s coming ever closer to Winter, and that means sub-zero temperatures with only one air-conditioner in my apartment.

So, I decided it’s finally time to get on with those posts I mentioned in the my blog is still alive message I wrote a little while ago. Through the next few posts I plan is to write about our holiday to Yangshuo; my new favourite hot-spot TKLK Bar - and my lovely friend Tobi’s visit; Beijing, and the teaching awards that I received this Summer – and I’m sure there will be an extra post of random photosnaps from June-September that don’t really fit into the above categories! 

And, of course, Halloween, my favourite time of the year, but also one of the busiest.

So, let’s get started with Yangshuo, the small tourist town in Guangxi that was the first place I ever visited in China when I was a volunteer teacher, where me and Steven took a three-night break to in June. However, now the problem is, where to start? Yangshuo will always be a very special place to me, as it was the first city I lived in when I moved to China as a volunteer teacher at Yangshuo Middle School back in 2010. The plan was to only stay in China for three months, before going to Brazil. Brazil didn’t happen, and two years later, I’m still here with no foreseeable plans to leave. 

Which is quite surprising given my initial reaction. I still remember very vividly the long flight east, and driving through the paddy fields of Guangxi to reach Yangshuo, where my first experiences were not so great. In the first few weeks of living in China my camera was stolen; I was taken on a welcome bike ride, the bike of which had no brakes and the the inevitable crash left me with a three inch war scar on my leg that remains to this day; I managed to contract conjunctivitis and, of course, food poisoning. To be honest, the initial trip was pretty miserable, despite making good friends at the school with whom I still have regular contact with, such as Vanessa, Tobi and Charlotte. However, it was only when I befriended some wonderful Chinese people named A Gan, Xiao Tang, Guang Guang, A Fu and Yang Yang, that I began to have a good time. That good time turned into a fantastic time, and the friends I made became best friends, that I realised how wonderful China is. The four months I spent in Yangshuo are now a blur of optimism and youth, coupled with beer and endless nights out in bars. 

Yangshuo, a small town based around the long, tourist-orientated West Street, is very easy to become quickly familiar with, and because of that, familiar with everyone that lives there. It was easy to know everybody and walking through the town would involve much waving and saying hello. Of course, my time there had to come to an end, and I had to return back to England. I was back in China within a month, and then I found my job and the rest is history. 

Some people may ask, why do you live in Wuhan if Yangshuo is so great? There are various reasons behind this - living in Yangshuo is expensive, as the area is a tourist destination with a large percentage of westerners visiting for rock-climbing and the karst scenery. That said, the wages are low. Most of the schools in Yangshuo are aimed at passing teachers who want temporary contracts to fund the rest of their travels, whereas I needed a bit more stability. Furthermore, my Yangshuo lifestyle is not good for long-term everyday life. For four months I partied, partied and partied, which was of course fantastic, but partying and spending the evening in bars every night doesn’t really make a good teacher. And my friends in Yangshuo do not take no for an answer when it comes to going for a night out. Of course, I miss my dear friends, but some of them too have taken other opportunities and left the town now.

I have returned to Yangshuo many times since I have been living in Wuhan, and, even though faces slowly disappear to different cities and new ones replace them, the core group mostly remains, which makes every trip very special. The trip in June, however, was very special indeed, as I introduced Steven to all of my dear friends there.

Because we are cheap flying is a little inconvenient, we took the train there, which we were very unlucky with as we could only take seats. The primary way that people travel in China is via bicycle or e-bike for short journeys, and train for long-distances. Long distance trains have three classes - soft beds (in private compartments of four), hard beds (in open compartments of six) and hard seats; which is truly painful for the thirteen hour trip to Guilin; even more painful when the carriage is full of screaming toddlers.

After we finally arrived, we took the from Guilin city to Yangshuo and settled into the hotel around six in the evening - a small, cheap and cheerful establishment off West Street, where we spent the rest of the day to rest. Later that night, I took Steven to the bars and introduced him to A Gan and Yang Yang, where they proved to be their normal, warm, hospitable selves.

The following day was the real start of the holiday, so I took Steven for a wander down West Street to look at the small stores that line it. We picked up some souvenirs for ourselves and friends, and, after Steven made me take his photo stood in front of absolutely everything in Yangshuo, took a Li river cruise which shows you the amazing karst scenery of Guangxi.

After that, we headed to the marvellous Dumpling Dynasty for dinner - a little restaurant that sells the best dumplings in China - where we inspected our purchases and planned our evening out; which ended up being an inevitably beer-filled festival across our friends bars. I suddenly felt very old this evening - when I met these friends, they were merely DJs and waiters in their respective bars; now they are all bar owners.

Perhaps I’m in the wrong business.

Day two of three was where our good luck ran out, as there was a torrential rainstorm the entire day. This meant we had to cancel any plans for seeing the sights, as most of the attractions in Yangshuo are outdoors. 

Instead, we took our umbrellas and pottered about the northern part of the town, eventually having dinner at A Gan’s house and spending a few hours with him in his bar, The Stone Rose, where much of my initial four months in China - and subsequent visits back to Yangshuo - were and are spent, as you can see in the following photos from the past two years.

Day three, thankfully, greeted us with warm sunny weather, so we hired bikes - and our own personal guide - for 60RMB (about six pounds) and rode out of the city to a nearby ancient Buddhist temple, situated in the mountains and with stunning views and architecture that took us a majority of the day to explore.

The evening, our last night, was very special indeed, as A Gan contacted lots of old faces who joined us for dinner and drinks. My dear friend, Xiao Tang, made a four hour trip from Nanning to see me, who I was most grateful to, as, aside from an unfortunately absent Guang Guang, meant all of my closest Chinese friends were all together like old times. Around three o’clock, after dinner, dancing and countless drinks, we ended the evening in Yang Yang’s new luxury KTV bar, situated off West Street and the end of a dirty alleyway that almost reminded me of Narnia. Hugging and a few tears inevitably followed, and it was, of course, an emotional ending to a wonderful short break.

And that ended our short-but-sweet jaunt to Yangshuo. Like me, Steven fell in love with the scenery and people there, who were, as always, accommodating and warm even to new faces. I am sure we will return there soon, and I would recommend anyone travelling to China to try Yangshuo out as a taster of China. It’s eastern enough to be different from home, but the influx of tourism means creature comforts from home aren’t impossible to find. 

Aside from the natural beauty, the main attraction of Yangshuo is its small, close-knit population. I can understand why China would be a love-or-hate place, as the culture is so different to that of the west. That is why today when I meet new foreigners, I always try to be as helpful as I can, just as my Yangshuo friends were for me when I arrived in this vast, exciting country.

A sad post today, I’m afraid.

As much as I love China, the only downside to this wonderful country is the sheer distance from England. If something happens in Blighty, it’s extremely difficult to return home. Unfortunately, such a situation happened with my Grandma, Freda Southall, who I was unable to be with when she passed away on September 21st, the day before her 77th birthday.

Her funeral was was the reason behind my recent break back to England.

Rather than concentrate on the sad emotions that follow her sudden passing, I feel it is instead nicer to focus on some of the special memories I have of my lovely Nana, the wonderful woman who bought me a Disney video every Christmas until I was fourteen-years-old and probably would have last year if I hadn’t told her I was getting a bit old for them.

I think my love of all things vintage stems from my grandparents, who, as a child I remember enough Murano glass and vintage 1960s mass-produced prints to fill a car boot sale. I always remember her Shabner print hanging above the stairs that I absolutely adored. My grandma also introduced me to the concept of kitsch, by making me watch Wonder Woman with her every Sunday morning when it re-ran on cable television – back in the day when cable television was still a luxury and most people made do with four TV channels.

My grandma is perhaps one of the reasons why I enjoy story-telling – and writing on my blog – so much. She was the kind of lady that would spend fifteen minutes telling you a story that somebody else could tell you in two, but she would sidetrack with other titbits of knowledge and wisdom along the way before reaching her eventual point.

As good as she was at story-telling, listening was not one of her strong points. She would often fall asleep during conversations and re-join the chatter twenty minutes later talking about the same thing as when she fell asleep - when everyone else moved on from that about eighteen minutes prior. Watching a film was even worse; I remember once trying to watch Profondo Rosso with her (an admittedly odd choice) – the normal running time of which is about two hours. Around three hours later, we were just coming into the last reel as I had to keep rewinding the tape.

The term power-nap was probably invented for her.

Like all grandmas everywhere, she had that very distinct aroma - when she gave you one of her big grandma hugs, the kind you got when you just arrived or were going home, you could bank on spending the rest of the day smelling of Estee Lauder with a smattering of pastel pink kiss marks all over your face. My poor cousin, who wore glasses as we were growing up, probably lost a few sets of frames due to our vice-gripping, face-hugging Grandma.

My Grandma lost her leg in the 1990s due to complications from heart surgery. Even after that terrible event, which must be literally crushing for anyone it happens to, she always had a smile for her grandchildren and her big grin whenever you went to visit her. Her strong will was best summed up by the vicar who gave the service at her funeral - she really was a tough old bird.

Sometimes, even though I adore living here in China, I wonder if I have chosen the right life path, as whilst I am here, I am missing out on precious family moments that can’t be re-captured later; such as spending more time with my lovely Nana. That said, I know she was proud of me for achieving what I have here, and that wherever she is now, she’ll be looking down on me - when she isn’t betting on the horses.

Goodbye, Nanny. I will miss you so much; you rest in peace now. If you see Gemar wherever you are now, please don’t make him watch too much Wonder Woman with you.

Okay, so as unlikely as it seems, this blog is still operational.

I realize that this might be hard to believe, as I haven’t updated here in the past three months, but don’t be too angry with me as I really have been so busy. I have so many posts to write about all sorts of events that have happened since June, but just to prove that I’m still alive, here’s a quick photo and a quick summary of what’s been going on. 

The first thing to report - and as the above photograph with my lovely friend Sarah Cunningham would suggest -  I’m updating this blog from The UK for the first time. Yes, I’m currently in the homeland, sat in my Dad’s car driving down the M6 on a typically gloomy British morning. It seems funny that on Tuesday I was thankful that the weather had cooled to a comfortable twenty-five degrees, whereas here in England, the temperature is hovering around an absolutely-freezing-by-comparison ten degrees. So if I disappear for a while again after this post, you know that I’ve caught a cold.

As lovely as it always is to return home, the reason this time isn’t a good one. My wonderful, beautiful grandma, Freda Southall, died last week, so I came back to spend time with my father and grandpa. I’ll write a full post about this remarkable lady later.

That’s the bad news out of the way, so now for some good news.

Summer was so busy for me, so, like I mentioned, please forgive me for not writing sooner. I also have to write a post about Yangshuo, where Steven and I went for holiday in June to spend time with all of my friends there, all of whom I’ve bought presents for. This means I must write an update fast before I go again for A Gan’s birthday. 

Summer is always a busy time at work for me, as we work six days a week rather than the usual five. As my school is privately owned rather than a state school, classes normally run in the evening, but as children have the Summer holidays, this means we increase our classes, which is the main reason why I didn’t update the blog - I was so busy!

A long time ago I wrote a post about going to Shanghai for the semi-final of a competition run by Sina-Weibo called The China Gold Star Teacher’s Award. I all but forgot about that until September, when I was told I had to go to Beijing for the final - which I actually won! At the same time, I was also awarded The Friendship and Kindness award from The Wuhan Education Bureau. That’s worthy of another post in itself, as I have some comments to make about Beijing.

Also, my old Yangshuo partner in crime, Tobi, visited me and Steven as part of his Oceania/South-East Asia holiday, which luckily occurred at the point just after Summer Fun - The name for the eight week Summer courses at my school with a very interesting choice of name as fun isn’t the first word that springs to mind to describe the July-August timetable. Anyway, I obviously had to show Tobi Wuhan bars.

Tobi’s visit coincided with a really good friend of Steven and mine - a handsome Chinese fellow called Yu Ling - getting a new job at a brand new bar called TKLK International Chains Bar over in Hankou. Whereas it’s never going to win any awards for best moniker, it’s easily one of the best bars in Wuhan. I’ll be writing about Tobi, his boozy visit, and the charms of TKLK at some point this week, too.

So there we go - four more posts coming at some point this over the next week or so when I settle into bed here in Blighty or settle back into routine back in China - Yangshuo; a double whammy of TKLK Bar and Tobi’s visit; Beijing, the teaching awards and general ramblings about school life; a post of random Summer photos that don’t really warrant a post by themselves; and, of course, my fondest memories of my lovely, lovely, Grandma Freda. 

it seems I have my work cut out!

I wanted to write about my amazing Mama, who, just before we went on our trip to Yangshuo last month that I still haven’t sat down to write about, sent me a wonderful parcel from home full of British goodies.

Two packages, weighing a total 4kg and costing a whopping £70 to send, included some great British treats - a pack of Bounty chocolate bars, a bag of Eclairs and a bag of dolly mixture; a four pack of Imperial Leather soap, which Steven peeled the sticker off before putting in the background; a copy of Viz magazine, that Chinese people cannot understand why when I read this yellow (the Chinese way for describing something that is rude or offensive) comic I keep laughing out loud, and Straight from the Heart: The Jason Donovan Board Game, a belated birthday treat from Michelle that cost around fifteen times its original charity shop price tag to post. 

Also included were a pack of stickers to award to my students when they are good in lessons. Stickers are usually the best technique to encourage students to behave in class; that and the time when I showed them a photograph of me super-imposed next to Michael Jackson in werewolf mode from the Thriller video and told them he was my best friend and he liked to devour naughty kids.

Mama even sent a book I wanted from Amazon; the Teach Yourself Introduction to Buddhism. Steven, who is buddhist, really enjoys to go to temples, so I thought I should educate myself into what the different elements of the temple represent.

The highlight of the parcel however had to be a copy of the book My Chinese Wife, by travel author and one-time New York Times journalist Karl Eskelund. I originally saw this book - and its wonderful dust jacket - on one of my favorite blogs, Yard Sale Bloodbath, and knew I had to read it. 

One of the most charming elements is the name inside - my copy of the book used to belong to Captain Collins. Whoever that was, his handwriting was beautiful. As is the kitschy 1940s artwork throughout the book, illustrating some of the more memorable moments.

What surprised me is that the book wasn’t the sort of exotica trash (not to say it isn’t without its dated charms) I expected, but actually a very interesting account of the author’s marriage to a Chinese girl during the unrest of World War 2, and the subsequent birth of their Eurasian daughter.

For a book that was first published in 1945, it surprised me how many situations in the book reminded me of my own experiences that I have encountered whilst I have been here in China, some of which I will share in this post.

The most relevant is definitely Eskelund’s description of why he  chose to travel - which perfectly sums up my reasons for living here in China, so different and so far away from my native England.

I loved [my country], but would rather live almost anywhere else. Everything was so orderly and planned - there was no variety, no excitement. I preferred the dirty alleys of the East to the clean spacious avenues of [my city], and shuddered at the thought of living like my countrymen, whose lives were planned from the moment they stepped into a job until the age of  sixty when they retired. When they wanted excitement, they went to the cinema; but I didn’t want to see the film stars love and travel - I wanted to do it myself.

An absolutely perfect explanation to those that question why people would decide to travel to a different country. When I arrived in China I was 24 years old, and a lot of my friends from high school were beginning to marry and have babies. Whereas this suits them and I am happy knowing that they are happy, I found the thought of spending my entire life in a small English town with an annual two week holiday to some far off tourist destination really quite scary.

Most Chinese people only drink at feasts, but then they drink a lot. Everybody wanted to gam bei with me… Gam bei means dry your cup, and when the suggestion has been followed the two drinkers turn their cups upside down to prove they have finished the last drop.

The noises increased as the supply of wine diminished.

Totally true. Although many Chinese men will have a can of beer rather than a can of soda, the Chinese rarely drink to the point of being drunk, unless at celebrations or festivals. At events like these, the Chinese make up for lost time by drinking, drinking, and drinking.

Shortly after midnight the hotel came to life. No zoological garden could produce more a greater variety of sound than those that awakened me… The Cantonese don’t talk like ordinary human beings: they shout in singsong voices, something like a cock’s crowing. My immediate neighbours were constantly shuffling mahjongg bricks with loud click-click noises, and every fresh breeze bought a nauseating whiff of opium.

I’ve only ever spent a short amount of time in Guangdong; the southern part of China where Cantonese is spoken, but replace Cantonese with Mandarin depending upon where you are located and you have a situation familiar in most cheap Chinese hotels. The hotel I stay in in Yangshuo most definitely fits this description - apart from the opium reference!

And finally…

[My driver] was a speed demon whose main object in life was to overtake other cars. The constant racing might have been fun if only the breaks hadn’t been out of order.

Most taxi drivers here in China match this description, as they all seem to have gone to the Grand Theft Auto school of motoring, that is, drive as fast and as dangerously as you possibly can, where other vehicles and pedestrians are not to be considered as things to avoid, but rather targets. Car owners - of which there is a lower percentage than the west as most people prefer to travel by scooter or bicycle, are similarly insane when it comes to driving - like the time when I was on a night out with my friends from Yangshuo and, at three o’clock in the morning after drinking beers all night in their bar for someone’s birthday, all twenty of them decided to mount an open-top jeep and drive to the nearby river for swimming. Which, obviously, the jeep crashed into…

Information about Karl Eskelund is surprisingly sketchy for a multiple bestselling author.  My Chinese Wife, also known under its original - and wonderful - name My Wife Eats With Sticks, was a bestselling title, as was its follow-up My Danish Father, written about Eskelund’s father, a doctor in Shanghai and the dentist to the king of Siam.  Eskelund, Chi-Yun and his daughter, Mei Mei, travelled the world over the next twenty years and throughout the 1940s and 1950s wrote further books regarding their experiences in countries such as India and The Philipines.

Interest in Eskelund’s style of books, it seems, waned around the 1960s, perhaps due to increasing ease of travel and exposure to such exotic lands through the medium of film and TV. Sadly, Chi-Yun and Eskelund divorced in the 1960s, which in retrospect dampens the romanticism of the novel, as the book truly creates the impression that the two were soulmates.

In 1968, Mei Mei appeared in a Playboy pictorial of Scandinavian women, by which point most of her father’s books were out of print (and sadly remain so), apparently largely forgotten. Indeed, the article doesn’t even mention that she is the daughter of a best-selling author.

Prone to alcoholism and depression, Eskelund commited suicide by self-immolation on Boxing Day 1972, in his native Germany. Mei Mei Eskelund too died in her early thirties -  sources provide alternating dates between 1973 and 1975, and no cause of death.

Chi-Yun became a successful author within her own right in Denmark, writing a series of cookbooks and becoming a TV personality in the process. In the 1990s, she wrote a book about her twenty year marriage to Eskelund, entitled Min Casanova. She died in 2000 at the age of 82. 

This is a very sad background to a wonderful book, that I would recommend anybody who has travelled to China or is interested in Chinese culture to read.

Gosh, it’s really been a while since I’ve been here on Tumblr, as I didn’t post anything for three weeks. I have so many posts to upload, about holidays and parcels and all sorts of new discoveries in Wuhan. I did intend to do it earlier, however I found out some heartbreaking news last week that made updating the blog seem unimportant.

Since I started using the internet, I have always had internet friends. Just like real life, some of them remain friends, some of them disappear, and some of them make a lasting impression upon you. 

Some people argue that someone that you never meet, that you never actually have physical contact with, cannot touch you. become a part of your life and become a true friend. This week, I know that I can argue this is definitely untrue.

It is with the heaviest of hearts I have to write about the untimely passing of my special friend, Gemar Castaneda. It was only on May 20th that I last spoke to him, a wonderful Filipino young man with the warmest outlook on life.

Touching wood and appreciating my good fortune, my encounters with death have been limited to just great-grandparents and an uncle. Although my Uncle’s death was tragic, the passing of great-grandparents is difficult but nonetheless to an extent easier to deal with, as it isn’t completely unexpected when someone reaches ninety years old. With Gemar, that isn’t the case. It seems like just five minutes since I was complaining to him about a naughty child in my class and he was telling me about his plans to go and hang out with his friends for the evening.

I found out this sad news by Facebook. It had been a few weeks since I last spoke to him, and I was a little concerned as to where he was. Planning to leave a “where are you” type message; it was only when I logged onto his profile that I found a wall of condolences. After contacting his friend, I found out my poor Flower, as his nickname was (a term of endearment in British English that he never really understood and thus gave me the nickname Bee) had died of meningitis the week before. 

Meningitis is an illness that we, as babies, are immunised against in The UK, so it almost seems madness that a young, fit, healthy young boy with the thickest mop of black hair I have ever seen and hopes and dreams of his upcoming university career should die from it. 

The past few days have been very emotional, with many tears shed. It is true that we never met, but for the short period we knew each other we became very close friends, planning to visit each other when we had time and money to. Unfortunately, that visit can never take place now. An element that fills me with sadness is that one of his friends, who did not have access to Facebook at the time, was lucky enough to speak to to him before he died, at which Gemar mentioned me to him. His friend didn’t know how to contact me so I never got to say goodbye. This is difficult, as although it means I can now remember him as the smiling, sunny-natured guy he was, it fills me with regrets and what-if’s if I had had chance to speak to him.

Looking back now, I feel like I should have said more, told him more, seized every chance to talk to him rather than be busy with other things, and this makes me sad. I know, however, that he would not want me, or his other friends who miss him dearly, to cry. Instead, he would want us to remember the good times and best memories we shared. Although our friendship was short, I have enough memories of him to last a lifetime, and I’ll forever keep him in my heart.

His funeral was last Sunday, and it really hurts me to say that I was unable attend. Instead, I sent a letter to his Mama in The Philippines telling her how much I will remember her son, and also enclosed a letter to Gemar that I have asked someone to read to him when they visit his place of interment. The reason behind doing this was to act as a closure. Not a closure of our friendship, which I will remember forever, but rather a closure of my grief and the start of focusing on remembering the good memories and grasping every chance that life throws me. Not only because, as Gemar’s story shows, we don’t know what’s around the corner, but also that this is what Gemar would have wanted me to do.

One thing that Gemar’s death has taught me is to appreciate what you have today and the people that are part of your life. Never take them for granted, because you never know how long they will be around. We never know what tomorrow will bring, and Gemar lived his life being warm, considerate and caring to all of his friends. If everyone took a leaf from his book, the world would be a better place.

I read in an article from a Filipino newspaper, eerily dated just six weeks before his death, regarding a free vaccination session at a hospital against meningitis. The article stated that only one in one million Filipinos die from meningitis. I know that God chose one in a million when he took Gemar from us.

Goodnight Flower. Your Bee is going to miss you every day.

The past week hasn’t been too exciting in terms of seeing more of Wuhan, but rather exciting due to a week of heavy partying – and subsequent days after spent in recovery mode.

Before I get started on that, I’ll tell you about a very cute little antique store I discovered not far from my school. Antique shops are really hard to find here in China, especially if you want things that don’t really classify as antiques yet – it’s much more easier to find artifacts (and, of course being here in China, reproductions) dating from hundreds of years ago than it is to find clunky furniture and electronics from the 1960s onwards.

So I was pleasantly surprised when walking back to school from the kindergarten last week to find a very cute little store which on the surface, just looks pretty much like any ordinary stationary shop here in China. There are hundreds of stores similar to this in China, that are mostly aimed at college students, selling cute stationary and small trinkets like oil burners and photo frames. It was only when we ventured further back that the store became very interesting, where there were some shelves of all sorts of old junk that most Chinese people wouldn’t ever think of buying.

Chinese people have a very odd attitude to vintage goods. Unlike the west, where people have no qualms about charity shopping and car boot sales, Chinese people have an obsession with buying things new. From looking around stores like these, it seems do like the idea of vintage, but only if they can buy it in the box with a price tag attached. Many products are sold pre-aged and evoking images of the 1940s and 1950s, yet actual items from this era here in China are largely unwanted and thus particularly scarce.

Therefore, Steven and Mita were particularly dumbfounded when I had to buy this wonderful old doctor’s medicine box made from red leather with pink cotton interior. When I handed over my 50RMB, the equivalent of a fiver; Steven, wide-eyed, commented “But you can buy a new one on Taobao!”

But why would I want to do that?

I think the idea here is best summed up in a movie that me and Steven watched recently, called Weekend. Steven really enjoyed it, but the only thing I enjoyed about it was this quote:

This was probably owned by some lovely little old lady… and she bought it, and it was probably her favorite thing in the whole wide world. And then, she died, gave it to her grandchildren; they hated it, sold it, and then bought a Wii… and now, I’ve got it.

Whilst we were there we decided to have a bite to eat, as they even served food. I had a very unusual Chinese take on spaghetti bolognese, that I have a very strong suspicion might have been made with jelly cubes, and Steven had a vegetable pizza, which fared better than my fried noodles with tomato jelly bolognese.

Whilst we there, we popped into Made in Special - a wonderful little drink store on Guang Ba Lu that makes this delicious strawberry syrup and 7-Up cocktail, and then I made the stupid mistake of popping into the DVD shop just to have a look, and ended up buying another eight movies to add to the ever-expanding pile of movies that me and Steven have yet to get round to watching. He really enjoyed The Amityville Horror, fell asleep during The Fury, and was clinging to the sofa whilst watching Poltergeist.

When I started writing my blog I often wondered who actually reads what I write here on Tumblr, if anybody at all. So, I was pleasantly surprised when I returned from Shanghai to get a nice message from an American guy who started to follow me called Marshall. It turns out he was here in Wuhan for holidays with his parents, who emigrated to The States in the 1980s. Anyway, Marshall didn’t know many people here his own age, and he asked if I could recommend some bars to go after re-blogging my earlier post about the nightlife here. Rather than just tell him the names of some bars, I asked him if he wanted to join us at the bar later that night, to which he accepted.

It just so happened that it was a Wednesday night, which is pretty famous amongst the expats here in Wuchang as Helen’s Night. Helen’s is a small chain of bars here in China located in some of the bigger cities, two of which are here in Wuhan. On Wednesday evenings they have Ladies Night, which every week makes me wonder how they manage to keep in business. See, mid-week, women who frequent Helen’s bar need only pay 30RMB for unlimited drinks until 1am. I guess that they are banking on the stereotype that Chinese people, when not at festivals, aren’t big drinkers, but I’ve seen many a few ladies carried out of the place not looking their best.

It’s not all bad news for the gents either, as they can get pretty merry on the 25rmb-a-pop whiskey buckets, which is exactly what it says – an ice-bucket filled with whiskey and Coca-Cola.

I was really surprised how similar Marshall’s sense of humor was to mine, and we hit it off pretty much immediately. After three whiskey buckets, we were definitely friends - and thus he - and the hangovers that nights out with him have induced -is the reason why my blog hasn’t been updated in the past fortnight.

That Friday, we decided to take Marshall to Sugar’s Bar, over in Hankou. The owner of the bar, who has the thoroughly amazing English moniker Sugar, is old friends with Michelle, and always ensures we are well-treated when we go there to drink his amazing Long Island Ice Tea cocktails, that surely pour around 50% proof. After that, we took him to Romantic Life, where Steven works, to continue to party until the early hours - at which I must have been really drunk because I overcome my irrational hatred of the popular Chinese past-time KTV, and teamed up with Lorna to sing Madonna’s Holiday for the remaining drunken revellers at around half one in the morning.

We returned to Sugar’s Bar on Tuesday, supposedly for a quiet drink. At least, that was until Sugar decided to give us a round of drinks free of charge, and then, when we finished those, a bottle of champagne… and when we finished that, a round of whiskey-cola drinks. Highlights of this evening are blurry, although I do remember Sugar (who has a penchant for head wear) passing his pirate hat around, a man walking into a closed floor-to-ceiling window door and leaving a face-print upon it, and Lorna being sick from the taxi window.

Wednesday night offered more frivolities at the New Helens…

… But it was Friday that needs to go down as the big night out.

By the time last Friday came, it was almost time for Marshall to go back to America, so me and Stevie decided to invite him and some of the people that he’d met here to dinner at our house. Steven prepared an amazing pasta and made some finger snacks too, so we were definitely well fed.

Marshall was dropped off by his Papa - quite possibly the loveliest man ever - with a bottle of Southern Comfort in tow, an unnecessary thank-you for taking him out over the previous fortnight. This should have been the first inkling that it was going to be a particularly heavy night. Lorna, Vera, Monika and Sarah all stopped by to say hello - or rather, bye bye - with Lorna and Sarah joining us three boys for a night out, the venue of which after much deliberation we decided should be Steven’s bar. 

So, the bottle of Southern Comfort gone, along with a bottle of Chinese rice wine that we’d had in the fridge since March. This should have been the second inkling that Saturday morning was not going to be a nice time to go to work. 

At this point, we were already a little bit tipsy, so much so we decided to assign Star Wars figures to everyone that was joining us for the evening. We decided Sarah was R2-D2 (the useful friendly little gay robot - her words, not mine); Lorna was Chief Chirpa, leader of the ewoks; Steven was Princess Leia; Marshall was Princess Leia in a different outfit - and I was, of, course, Darth Vader, because I was, of course, the coolest of the bunch. 

After that, we got our taxi to the bar and arrived a little earlier than planned, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, as nightclubs don’t stay open as late as their western counterparts, with most closing at around 2am. We soon found a place to stand and ordered some beers - with eight bottles costing a slightly-expensive 200RMB. Not that it mattered - Steven’s boss loves me; so lets me get away with most things in his bar. So me, Lorna and Marshall - Steven had to work and we lost Sarah who’d gone off dancing with some random people - kept ducking out of the bar and heading across the road for cheap Bacardi Breezers, a pinch at a mere 10RMB a bottle. It was only when we’d drank all twenty-one bottles that they had in stock that we moved onto the rice wine again, downing half of it on the street (classy) before spiking Sarah’s alcho-pop with the rest, before another marvellously out-of-tune rendition of Holiday.

Needless to say, I was definitely not feeling the 9am class on Saturday morning.

And so, that ended Marshall’s trip to Wuhan. I hope that we didn’t deprive him too much from seeing his family here in China; but I’m glad we managed to see so much of him as we did as he really is a charmer and I think it’s fair to say we really bonded over our copious amounts of alcohol. I sincerely hope we remain friends in the future. If you’re reading this - good luck for New York, Marty! ^^

It also proved my theory about Wuhan. Wuhan does indeed not look like the most exciting place you can visit in China when you arrive, but if you scratch beneath the industrial, smoggy surface - and make sure you scratch in the right places - you’ll be pleasantly surprised at what you can find.

I was going to start this post with another apology about not updating the blog for a week, but I think it’s better just to say that I’m probably only going to write here on a weekly basis, as when I sign in I always have so much to write! I’ve noticed a few people have started to follow me here on Tumblr now, so thanks for that - I hope you find my posts about living here in China interesting!

The past week has been busy as usual, this time with a visit to the local aquarium and a trip to Shanghai.

Let’s start with the aquarium, which isn’t too far from East Lake and the Hubei Provincial Museum. The funny thing is that I was here in Wuhan for almost a year without realizing that half of these places actually existed. The aquarium is a little expensive with an 80RMB admission fee, but is definitely one of the better tourist attractions in Wuhan. Sadly, almost no effort has been made with the approach to the aquarium – when you pay the admission fee and walk up, you have to walk through an old dinosaur-themed playground which is completely overgrown and looks like something out of Jurassic Park.

When you reach the venue, however, it’s a different story, and there are plenty of fish to look at up close. There was even a very dodgy performance by two girls dressed as mermaids in one of the aquariums, and a diver dancing with a shark – or rather, feeding it treats in an effort to keep it sweet whilst he grabbed hold of its fins and spun it around.

As usual, there was more stupidity from some of the patrons, include one idiot blatantly ignoring signs telling you not to piss off the fish put your hands in the tanks. I love the way in the photo it looks like they are seriously swarming like someone from Joe Dante’s Piranha. If they had attacked, that would have actually justified the 80RMB admission fee.

All in all, a nice day that definitely deserves a place in the recommended category.

So – moving onto Shanghai. I’d never been there before. In fact, my only real familiarity with Shanghai was with that Madonna romantic-adventure-comedy movie Shanghai Surprise where she plays a missionary. Madonna playing a missionary is pretty much the funniest thing about the whole movie. It’s no wonder she got away with those burning crosses; if God didn’t strike her down for this movie, she’s got to be pretty much indestructible.

Anyway, back on topic, I’d heard a lot of things - both positive and negative - about Shanghai - some people seem to fall in love with it, but some friends, who have similar opinions about Beijing, think it is too westernized. The friend I saw whilst I was in there told me when I arrived; “Welcome, you’re not in China anymore!” And to a certain extent, she was right. I’ll explain why in the rest of this post.

The reason for going to Shanghai was that my school asked me to go to take part in a teaching competition run by Sina, which is kind of like a Chinese equivalent to Twitter. A few weeks ago, I was asked to film one of my classes and post it online, and I didn’t expect to hear anything else about it, until my school director told me I was being sent to Shanghai for the quarter-final.

As usual in China, the communication was absolutely dreadful; nobody seemed to know what the procedure would be until I arrived. When I got to the venue, I was given a little sticker, my photo was taken, I stood around for around twenty minutes, introduced myself to the judges and then had to perform a six minute class… and that was it.

This meant I had the rest of the three day trip to do whatever I wanted.

The main thing I noticed about Shanghai is that, like I mentioned earlier, it is very westernized, at least in comparison to Wuhan. One of the reasons why I chose to live in Wuhan was that the idea of an overtly-westernized city didn’t really appeal to me, but after visiting Shanghai, I was pleasantly surprised and would actually seriously consider relocating there at some point during my Chinese adventure. I always thought that Wuhan had quite a large expat situation, but this is nothing compared to Shanghai, where it seems a foreigner is on every street corner. Most people in the centre of the city speak English too - which led to some embarrassment when I - speaking my best Mandarin Chinese - asked a store assistant in H&M where his T-shirt was from, only for him to respond in perfect American English that he’d picked it up whilst he lived in The States.

Whilst we’re on the topic of H&M; the branch in the Shanghai city centre also stocks shoes right up to size 45, not out of the ordinary for your Average Joe but a good three sizes bigger than most Chinese men. I bought some snazzy espadrille-style pumps that will probably last two weeks, but for 95RMB, who’s complaining?

Shanghai is also pretty easy to navigate due to its impressive metro system, which links the whole city via over 400km of tracks. This made it very easy for me to complete one of the main tasks I wanted to whilst I was in Shanghai - the shopping. The first thing I did was check out a record shop. Wuhan, as far as I’ve discovered, doesn’t have any vinyl stores, aside from one CD store on the university campus that has one box of tatty 80s power-pop LPs that are unworthy of a place in my collection. Anyway, I searched on the internet for some addresses and managed to find this apparently small store on the second floor of an electronics mall. Not really where you’d expect to find the Mecca of Chinese vinyl collecting, but looks can be deceiving.

At least, I thought the shop was small. After I looked through the stock, the boss, one of the only people I met in Shanghai that didn’t speak English, approached me and told me he had some more Japanese stock in some boxes outside the store. I found some gems in here, including some Yuzo Kayama and Hiromi Go LPs. By this point, I’d been in the store for around an hour, and was ready to leave. Whilst paying for my purchases, the boss this time round asked me if I wanted to look in the store room, by which point I gave up all hope of seeing anything else in Shanghai that day as there was about a hundred boxes of completely unsorted vinyl from all over the globe.

One of the exciting things about all of these records is that they were all Japanese imports, who really excelled themselves with packaging design for vinyl. Buying a record in the 1970s and 1980s must have been a real experience, as not only did you get the music, you got the obi-strip on the sleeve, teasing you with the audible delights contained therein, the lyric sheet (or sometimes even a lyric booklet with photographs) and even a poster for your bedroom wall. My copy of Laura Branigan’s Self Control even came with a brochure all about her back catalogue. 

Anyway, thankfully, the teenage girl who bought my Hiromi Go records had managed to resist temptation, and so my records came complete with vintage posters. Hey, Go-San, those sunglasses are pretty rad.

Three hours later and fifteen records later, I decided to call it a day and head over to Ikea, one of my favorite stores in England. Now, Ikea is always a better experience when you go with someone, as you can take photos pretending that the rooms are your house. I didn’t do any of that this time round, but I bought some cute bits and pieces for my house, and some great toys from their childrens’ section to use at school. I’ve actually started to come to realize that I’ll probably never leave China, not by choice but for the simple fact I have so much crap here now leaving would cost a small fortune.

After the competition, I saw my old boss Cathy, who moved to Shanghai last year to work with the headquarters of EF. Cathy’s nickname when she worked at our school was “The Facilitator”, as many evenings with her were spent with her feeding everyone else in her vicinity with booze. She was determined to make sure I didn’t leave Shanghai without a party. Which she did, to the extent of which I don’t really remember the evening; the kind of evening you try to piece back together with photographs - and you know it must have been bad when you have photos outside the Iranian Embassy…

Because of this, I didn’t really get to do half of the things I planned to do on my last day in Shanghai, instead spending most of the day in post-night-out-with-Cathy recovery mode. Despite this, I did manage to check out The Bund, and the nearby skyline, on either sides of the Huangpu River.

The skyline is home to some great architecture such as The Imperial Pearl Tower. The area of the skyline isn’t very vast - and because of that, impressive - as Hong Kong; the skyline length is quite small, almost looks like someone has scooped the buildings together. Where the skyline is more impressive than Hong Kong is that the architecture is so varied - the Pearl Tower, finished in 1994, is fascinating, and The Shanghai World Finance Centre is the fourth tallest building in the world.

The Bund, on the other hand - or rather, side; is the complete opposite, with the architecture dating from the early 20th century, largely in art-deco style. In the 1940s, this was the home of the major banks and European trading houses, but is now one of Shanghai’s major tourist destinations. I was most impressed by the Customs House, which reminded me of the Liver Building back in Blighty.

I imagine this is a great place to hang out when the weather is warmer, as it was pretty cool and a little bit rainy whilst I was there.

And that pretty much concluded my Shanghai adventure. If I get through to the quarter final of the competition, I will have to go again, so maybe I’ll be able to see some more sights - and inevitably buy more records, soon. Either way, I’m sure I will see more of Shanghai in the near future.

Another busy week here in Wuhan…

Last Sunday was Mother’s Day here in China. When I lived in England, I always thought that holidays like Mother’s Day were Hallmark holidays designed for people to line the pockets of card companies; however, working in China as a teacher, they are definitely a gift, as it means you can do class activities which don’t require any lesson planning. Excellent.

Therefore, classes on Sunday were spent making Mama a special Mother’s Day card, the personalisation coming from the messages inside. These ranged from heartfelt, sentimental messages like “I love you for making me who I am today” - to the downright honest - “I love you because you wash my clothes and buy me things”.

This is one of the things I love about teaching - one minute, I’m making cards, the next minute, I’m discussing ways to survive a zombie apocalypse and freaking out a room full of Chinese fifteen-year-olds by showing them the trailer to Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead.

Before we move on, Mother’s Day made me think especially about my mama - and the rest of my family and friends - back in good old Blighty. I’m very lucky in that I never manage to miss everyone back home, as I normally have a chat to my parents every couple of days, and my friends keep me updated with their latest news via Facebook.

Whilst we’re here, my Mama has been an absolute star whilst I’ve been in China, in the form of sending parcel after parcel of tat from England. When I told her I missed Bounty chocolate bars, she sent some; when it was Halloween, she sent my decorations; when it was Christmas, she sent my presents. Once, she even sent me a 1970s magazine rack - and that’s one of the reasons why my Mama is GREAT.

Monday was another normal day, teaching at the kindergarten in the afternoon and then an activity class for four-year-olds in the evening; in-between spent in the DVD store on Guang Ba Lu flicking through the latest stock delivery. This time round we picked up another nine movies or varying genres and varying critical success - ranging from The Seven Year Itch to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 uncut-with-extra-chainsaw-acion edition- oh, and the aforementioned Evil Dead; which, as a follow-up to a comment in a previous post, Steven did find thoroughly unpleasant and disgusting upon viewing last night. This was mostly due to some marvelous moments where he almost jumped off the sofa - the biggest of which was where Ellen Sandweiss’ hands burst through the wooden trapdoor and grab poor Bruce Campell’s head.

Before classes on Tuesday, me and Steve decided to visit Guqin Tai, a famous local landmark just across the river in Hangyang. Guqin Tai is a historical site dating back around 500-200BC, dedicated to the friendship - or perhaps even relationship - between Yu Boya and Zhong Ziqi. Legend has it that after travelling down the river, Yu Boya was playing his qin - a Chinese zither instrument - alone in the woods when a passing hermit, Zhong Ziqin, commented on his skills. It is said that Zhong Ziqin had such a perfect understanding of Yu Boya’s music, the two became the best of friends. They promised to meet every year after that, but upon Yu Boya’s return twelve months later, he discovered Zhong Ziqin had died from illness. Upon hearing the news, he smashed his qin to pieces, and never played again.

This touching story apparently took place at this very hill in Hangyang, and serene gardens are lined with statues of the two men amidst typical Chinese architecture. There is even a chain in the main garden upon which you can add a padlocked message proclaiming your love or friendship to another. I really enjoyed this place, as it had a wonderfully tranquil atmosphere and was very well maintained. I think me and Steve might return here for some of his English classes.

After that, we took a little rest in the pomegranate gardens before I had to go to work. Boo!

Wednesday offered hi-jinx in the form of Alex’s leaving party, which was a definite bittersweet affair. I’ve always got on really well with Alex as we have taught many classes together - and wound many students up - so it was very sad to see him leave. Well, at least that’s what I can say now, because at the time I was probably being really irritating having finished three whiskey-cola buckets.

On Thursday, me and Steve decided to check out the zoo, but not before I finally went to the dentist to check my tooth. When I was about sixteen I had a small filling on my back tooth, and around three weeks ago I noticed it had fallen out. Anyway, I put off going before finally plucking up the courage to go, putting it down to part of my Chinese experience. I asked around and found out the name of the best dentist in the city, and headed over on Thursday afternoon to get it checked.

It turned out, I definitely should have just gone three weeks ago, and, unlike Chinese hospitals, the presentation isn’t that much different to those back in the west. In reality, the only difference was that there was something like a dental ward, with twenty separate dentist booths lining the room. The dentist, who spoke very good English, informed me of every step she made, and finished the filling within twenty minutes.

After that, we headed to the zoo. Zoos always divide my opinions - on one hand, I appreciate the chance they give to the public to see animals up close, and also the fact that they play a part in preserving species. However, it always seems a little cruel to see wild animals caged up and unable to experience their natual habitat.

Some zoos work very hard to maintain environments as close to the natural habitat of each animal, and parts of Wuhan zoo are excellently presented. However, some of the larger animals, such as the lions and tigers - even the pandas, surely regarded as one of the most famous symbols of China - lived in what seemed to be poorly maintained cages. A lonely porcupine was wandering around a double-structured cage with a concrete floor and small sleeping quarter. A porcupine never struck me as being that dangerous that it required two cages.

This is always something that always seems to strike foreigners when they visit China. Unlike Britain, with various establishments and laws dedicated to protecting animals, China does not have any equivalent, so many animals seem mistreated in comparison. One thing lots of westerners don’t believe is that when you go to a Chinese supermarket, large tanks house fish. Not for your garden pond, but rather for you to choose which one you want to eat.

That said, a large proportion of the zoo was excellent. The landscape was amazing, as the zoo is set on the lake in a sprawling park with much woodland and many waterways, and the pondlife and birds are particularly well maintained. Hopefully, Wuhan Zoo will some day provide all of its animals with the same level of living conditions.

Taking all factors into consideration; all in all, definitely worth the 20RMB admission fee.

Later that night, after a trip to a DVD shop in Hankou, Steven and I began watching some classic Chinese movies from the 1960s which we picked up for a few quai each. We started with Liu San Jie, a classic movie from the 1960s set in, of all places, Yangshuo, the town where I first lived when I moved to China.

Liu San Jie tells a story of a poor, famous folk singer who sings songs whilst paddling along the Li River, refusing to pay taxes to the government. On the way, she bumps into a kindly old man and his son, and after exchanging songs (something which she does pretty much every time she opens her mouth), decides to spend time with them in their village, actually filmed in and around the street where I used to live.

Whilst there, the local town governer, the richest man in the land, challenges the villagers to a singing competition, which he inevitably loses, so he kidnaps Liu San Jie, causing the poor townsfolk to form a plan to rescue her.      

Two things struck me as particularly interesting about the movie - firstly, was how idealised the images of China were; the poor, despite being practically destitute, and portrayed as happy and thankful, set against the beautiful backdrops of Yangshuo’s karst mountains. Secondly, the film glaringly reflects the ideologies of the Chinese government at that time. The rich are portrayed as treacherous, the poor as martyrs; Liu San Jie refutes the advances of the town governer, instead falling in love with a peasant farmer.

It will be interesting to watch more Chinese movies around the same period and look out for the cultural and ideological ideas presented there. That’s one of the most fascinating things about living here - China’s past is so vast and fascinating, even something as simple as a cheap DVD can become an enriching history lesson. 

Saying that, it can’t be all study and no play - so the week was rounded off by spending an hour or two in Helen’s Bar for Michelle’s birthday, just before the epic weekend classes started on Saturday morning!

Despite the risk of peaking too soon, and by that I mean taking in every single sight in Wuhan and having nothing else left to do on my days off, me and Steven have had another week wandering around the city finding interesting things to do, hence a very lazy week with regard to blogging.

On Tuesday, before class, we decided to visit Hubei Art Museum. The original plan was to look around this the same day that we visited the Hubei Provincial Museum as there are next door to each other, but as Steven insisted on reading every single post and card in the exhibition halls, that excursion took far longer than planned. With a packed lunch of duck and cheese sandwiches, we headed out to the gallery.

We didn’t really pick a very good day to visit, as two of the four halls were closed for new exhibitions starting this week, meaning we only got to see the permanent sculpture exhibitions. The gallery, from the outside, gives the impression of being enormous, yet is very sparsely decorated inside, housing around thirty sculptures. There was, of course, artwork inspired by the usual Chinese themes, such as an enormous bronze sculpture of Chairman Mao and an oversize bust of the poet Qu Yuan (more on him when Dragon Boat Festival arrives in June), but also some very creative works, including a fascinating collection of insects fashioned from scrap metal, and an ancient Greek inspired statue carrying a machine gun. I’m not an art critic, so I won’t go into the messages that the artists were trying to convey, but it’s worth a visit if you have an hour to kill.

On Thursday, we took a trip to the Guiyuan Buddhist Temple, otherwise known as The Temple of Original Purity, in Hanyang. The name for the temple originates from a Buddhist sutra, meaning to surpass the circumscription of existence and extinguishment, to return to purity and tranquility .This temple dates back to the 1600s and is absolutely massive, taking us a good few hours to explore. The admission fee was next to nothing, and the temple still acts as a place of worship. The whole atmosphere was very serene, although there were more strange looks than normal from the Chinese at seeing a foreigner wandering around the temple.

I’m afraid to say my knowledge of Buddhism is very limited, so it was fascinating to watch people worship. Steven informed me on a few things and I’ve just ordered an introductory book from Amazon to find out about the religion, but one thing I was taught whilst I was there is that people release turtles and fish into the pools of the temple to please the Gods and act as a wish for happiness. Therefore, most of the pools are crammed with sea-life. At one point, we were approaching what I thought was a stone monument in the centre of the pool - it actually turned out to be hundreds of turtles basking in the sunshine.

The last picture in the montage really sums up Wuhan well – steeped heavily in tradition, but, like most of China, developing at rapid speed. This is one of the things that attracted me to Wuhanin the first place. Wuhanis the fifth biggest city in China, yet lacks the westernism and sheer enormity of cities likeShanghai andBeijing. That said,Wuhan has just the right amount of accessibility to western comforts to make it just the right balance of east and west.

After that, we crossed the road and went to theNationalStoneMuseum. On paper, this doesn’t sound very interesting at all, yet was actually a very nice afternoon trip. There are several exhibition halls with many examples of different stones, and the centre is a beautifully landscaped banzai garden. The second floor is the home of many fascinating fossils and dinosaur skeletons, and there was even a seven-foot-tall latex dinosaur for photo posing. Therefore, it instantly became one of the better tourist attractions I’ve visited in Wuhan, and well worth the 40RMB admission fee.

After watching the rest of the Halloween movies – or at least up to the sixth installment – with Philip and Steven on Thursday night, Friday afternoon was spent having a wedding dinner for Jolina, one of the local teachers at my school who got married last week. InChina, it’s customary to take all of your friends / work colleagues to dinner when you get married.China’s wedding ceremonies are totally different to those in the west, seeming much more low-key in comparison, and normally end with everyone joining the bride and groom for a meal, paid for by the groom. It’s also customary, as with any special occasion in China, to give the host a red envelope with some money inside, the amount of which depends on how well you know them. I will write a more detailed post on Chinese weddings when the next one occurs, as unfortunately Jolina got married on a Saturday, which meant all of her work colleagues were slaving away at work and therefore unable to attend the ceremony.

Me and Michelle decided to liven up the meal by having photographs with the staff in the restaurant, who are forced to wear some of the worst hats I have ever seen as part of their uniform; the women seemed to be taking fashion tips from Zorro, and the poor boys are forced to wear little drummer boy hats all day. As you can see from their faces, they were very bemused at our request to take their photos.

Later that night, I decided to join Steven at the bar where he works for a couple of drinks. The only interesting thing to report from that evening is that I realized it is now far too hot inWuhanto wear tweed pants to a disco.

Last night was a quiet night in for me, Steven, and my best friend here in Wuhan, Philip. Whilst we’re on topic, and because he will undoubetdly crop up in future posts, I’ve known Philip since almost my arrival in Wuhan. I first met him through my school when he studied as a VIP student, which meant we had one-to-one classes twice a week. From this, we became very good friends, and now he spends a lot of time staying at my house to watch movies and drink beer improve his English.

After another trip to the DVD shop of Guang Ba Lu to buy some more movies, we decided to actually start watching some of them, owing to the fact so far we only watched one of the fifteen that we bought - a very obscure English movie called Deep End, starring Jane Asher and responsible for teaching Steven the phrase piss off. We decided to start with Halloween, John Carpenter’s 1978 slasher movie that all but started the genre as we know it today. Playing in China under the literally translated - and far less snappy - title The Moon is Shining, Panic!, and long time a personal favorite of mine, I thought it was time to initiate the two boys to the horrors of Michael Myers’ bloody quest pursuing Jamie Lee Curtis, so we settled down with around a million different snacks, turned the lights off and let the terror begin… which opened my eyes to some interesting points that I want to write about today. 

The first thing that amazed me about watching Halloween was how scary the two boys found it. Philip spent most of the second half of the movie covering his eyes and jumping around the sofa every time Michael Myers emerged from the shadows. Maybe I have been de-sensitized to the movie, having seen it so many times, but it seems fair to say Halloween - in terms of gore, musical stingers and jump-out-your-seat moments, plays very tame in comparison to the countless number of clones that followed it. Similarly, when watching Brian de Palma’s Carrie with Steven last week, it is fair to say the shock ending had the desired effect upon Steven.

This made me curious about the attitudes towards horror films, and moreso censorship, in China. Horror films are, from the people I have spoken to, somewhat frowned upon within Chinese culture, which seems strange considering the country’s history of popular ghost stories. Indeed, all of my Chinese friends, when they saw the cover artwork for the Halloween movies - and even Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho - highly regarded in the Western world and featuring a DVD sleeve with the image of Janet Leigh screaming in the shower - said that the movies looked horrible and they wouldn’t want to watch them.

In 2008 it was reported that China’s General Administration of Press and Publications would not allow the exhibition of movies containing “wronged spirits and violent ghosts, monsters, demons, and other inhuman portrayals, strange and supernatural storytelling for the sole purpose of seeking terror and horror.”

Which means a re-release of Halloween at the cinema is highly unlikely.

The government’s attitude to horror films - and in fact, films with adult-themed stories, is similarly rebuking. Chinese government only allows around 20 western productions to be released every year. These films must be suitable for all audiences as China does not have a rating system at the cinema, meaning the content of the movie must be suitable for cinema patrons of all ages. As mentioned in an earlier post, even the recent 3D re-release of Titanic played either cut or optically-censored in the scene where Leonardo diCaprio’s hand-double Leonardo diCaprio draws Kate Winslet, and the much-celebrated production of Farewell, My Concubine, starring the tragic Leslie Cheung, was banned due to its portrayal of homosexuality.

Whilst researching these facts, I found some interesting facts about domestic films too. According to the Taipei Times, whereas foreign films are merely screened to the government for approval, Chinese productions must submit the plot and the finished movie in order for release.

The thing that makes all of this seem so old-fashioned is the fact that, for those living close to Hong Kong, a day-trip there can be rounded of by seeing the latest horror movie at the cinema. When I last visited, the subway was festooned by billboards for Scream 4 - playing just about everywhere, with an adult certificate from Hong Kong’s classification board.

But, is such strong censorship still relevant in Chinese society, a country where counterfeit DVDs can be bought for even the most disgusting of Italian splatter movies for next to nothing in every city? Maybe not, but it definitely seems fair to say that the ideology of the government with regard to horror movies reflects - or influences -  the attitudes of Chinese people’s movie-going tastes. Either way, I’m going to enjoy showing Steven and Philip the scariest and most vile films I can think of.

Last time I was in the DVD store I saw a copy of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead. Now, that could be a cracker to pick up for the next movie marathon…