Pulling my hair out at the library

I find people so annoying sometimes!

A significant portion of my last year at University was devoted to meditating and reflecting on many of life's profound questions. I had turned to spiritual activities as a way to help me get through my horrible time at Uni. What it meant for my character was that I tried to change many things about myself I didn't like. Namely how quickly I lose my temper and get angry at people. My sister often said to me (when I was in a good mood), 'Amira, I just don't know when you're going to 'switch'. One second your laughing, the next your shouting'.

I tried to iron out this personality flaw by doing a lot of meditation and practising positive, calming self-talk, and it helped to a large extent. But it only lasted if I had been doing meditation. If I didn't meditate on a certain day I would find it difficult to control my anger.

Anyway, here in China I don't feel the urge to meditate - back in Birmingham meditation was more important to me than eating, and in fact I lost my appetite for most of the year, something very out of character for me. And what's more, I don't feel the urge to change my personality/character flaws either. These days I'm living by a new principle - be yourself, but what's more important, don't be ashamed of what you are.


Enough back story. The main crux of this post is how frustrated I got today at the library. I was doing my reading there when I heard a very annoying walk. That last sentence does not sound grammatically correct, but I don't know how to explain it. I am quite sensitive to things like how people walk and the sound their feet make. Just from hearing how people walk I will immediately categorize them into 'like' or 'dislike'. This man was most definitely a 'dislike'.

His walk was very self-righteous, as if he wanted people to stop what they were doing and look at him. I'd heard him pace up and down the hallway next to where I sat before, but I avoided making eye contact. This time I looked up.

I am also very good at 'feeling' is someone is looking at me. I can sense it without having to lift my head from the table. This annoying man, I sensed, was staring at me. Sure enough, when I looked up, he was. But it was one of the most annoying, smarmy stares I had ever been subjected to. I had half a mind to get up and punch the living daylights out of him. When he reached the end of the room he decided to walk back towards me to turn on a light. He walked through some shelves to get to the light switch and that son of a $%#^@ was scanning under the shelves and looking at me.

'What are you doing', I said, giving him the most disgusting look I could spread across my face. He answered with a playful smile. 'No, I do not want to be friendly with you, you smarmy son of a pig's butt', I thought. 'I don't need to speak Chinese to whip yo' ass either'.

When I get worked up like this, it takes me a while to calm down. Even five minutes after he sat back at his table on the opposite side of the room, I was visualising getting up and smacking him across the back of his head. I tried to concentrate on my reading, but feeling his presence in front of me, it was impossible for me to get the images of violence I wanted to inflict upon him. So, I took my things and moved to behind a pillar, so that I wouldn't have to see him.

I was just getting back into my book when I heard someone scratching something very vigorously. A few tables behind the smarmy man was a man who was scratching his head with a comb. The way he was digging at his head made it quite clear that he was probably flea or nit-ridden. I'd never in my life seen someone scratch so much. The comb was obviously not doing much for him, so he put his head onto the chair behind him, and started moving his head up and down, using the back of the chair as a scratching post. I stopped my reading and just stared at him for at least five minutes.

I tried to calm myself down again and finally, although another man started tapping his feet, I managed to get back to my reading.

Anyway, tomorrow I will try to be a little calmer, but if that smarmy starer stares at me again he'll have another thing coming...

In the library

Shandong museum

Today I walked to Shandong museum, which took about half an hour. The road there was heavily polluted today and my nose started itching like I used to feel in India, in the old markets of Delhi.

I imagined that the museum would be small and not very well-kept, with not much to see. I was so wrong.

I don't consider myself a museum-person. I don't like the leg pain you get from museums, and I find it difficult visualising what ancient peoples used their tools for. But the museum building itself was worth the entire trip.

Never have I seen such a large entrance hall, with marble stairs. It was absolutely breath-taking.

Inside I looked around the Confucius art section, pre-historic section and modern art section. I formulated a list of things that I should do on my next museum trip to ensure maximum enjoyability:

•  Walk slowly and don't stop moving your legs. Leg and foot pain come from constant walking and stopping, walking and stopping.
• Look only at objects that grab your attention (i.e. don't look at everything). Then try to imagine how these things were used and what it says about the people that used them. Remember these people led to your being on this Earth. They are your ancestors. (Make it personal)
• Learn only a few key facts (about five).

What key facts did I take away?

• According to the huge board at the entrance of the Confucius art section, 'Confucius' ethics and political theory forced the gentle and humane nature on the Chinese'.  

I find this interesting because I have always wanted to know why Chinese people are, in general, so much gentler and more peaceful than other peoples, like the Arabs today or the Mongols of yesteryear. I find it difficult to believe that Confucius' ethics are responsible, and anyway I don't like the use of the word 'force' in the explanation. How can you 'force' gentleness? Maybe it's just a translation error.

• In 221 BC Emperor Qin became the first person to unite China.
• Shandong was known as a land of immortals (possible some connection to Mount Tai), philosophical thinkers (Confucius was born in Shandong) and a vibrant economy (good natural resources).
• The design of the museum is based on traditional Chinese culture of having a 'round sky and square Earth'.
• In some dynasty or another they word lampshades on their heads!

On my way home I got on the bus and was perplexed to find yet again a woman standing besides an empty seat. My culturally-shaped brain could not come up with a logical reason why someone would leave a perfectly good seat and stand up. Here are the reasons I thought of:

• She likes exercise
• She's afraid someone gross was sitting on the chair before her and has therefore contaminated it (I did see someone blow into his fingers then wipe his discharge onto the chair next to him)

And that's it, I've come up with a poxy 2 possibilities. It baffles my mind but this is a perfect opportunity for me to see it as a difference in culture and that neither she nor I are right or wrong, we are just different. 

On this same eventful bus trip, I heard loud banging and exploding noises. Someone had set off five boxes of firecrackers. They are so loud that it sounds as if a neighbouring country is shelling our city. And yet again, I failed to understand why they would set off firecrackers in broad daylight, surely they would be more of a spectacle across the black night sky?

In other news, I am fasting today, drinking only hot water all day. Yesterday my Chinese language exchange partner and I ate a 'takeaway' rice, beef, mushroom and pak choi meal. The mushrooms were so salty that for the rest of the day I felt like my body was shutting down. I decided therefore that I need to cleanse my body of all of the rubbish that I have put inside it over the last few months, and give my digestive system a rest. Added to that this morning I tried to do some exercise and I got a nasty mouthful of acid-reflux, so my body obviously needs a little TLC.

Fasting is not new to me, I used to do it during Ramadan. Also when I was reading a lot of spiritual literature, especially Gandhi's autobiography, I was inspired to fast for spiritual reasons - going without food for one day is a good way to lessen your ego and release you a little more from worldy attachments. But my purposes today are purely health-based.

Also, I am officially addicted to The Office (US). It makes me so happy when I watch it, and I basically live my days just so that I can get to the end of them and join my friends in their office, before I go to sleep. I am often thinking about their lives and what they would do or say in certain situations (yes I am aware that they are fictious characters) and I feel like I have been allowed into a wonderful little community. You should check it out if you can!

Cultural difference revelation

Yesterday I had my first Chinese lesson/language exchange with the boy I met on Shandong University campus. It went really well and I took a lot from it, and he did as well because I helped him with an English speech he was to give the following week. But there was one thing that really annoyed me.

We were having the lesson in a public place, the area filled with tall green trees at the University. There were people around us so I attributed the boy's behaviour to shyness. He talked quietly and cautiously and I had to consistently ask him to read out the Chinese sentence out loud after I'd had a go at it. Why doesn't he want to help me? I thought. Why doesn't he want to correct my mistakes? I got quite frustrated but I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

A day later things began making sense. I re-read an article on the Chinese cultural importance of 'keeping face', not saying anything that might humiliate or embarrass the person in front of you. 'That must be why the boy was so reluctant to correct me', I thought. Then I remembered another Chinese boy at Birmingham University who was giving me Chinese lessons, he too was reluctant to correct me. Then I started to think about how my principle at school talks to me. I have often wanted to congratulate her on her talents at speaking so diplomatically. She will never order me to do something and she always phrases her requests as suggestions. In fact, now I come to think of it, all of the Chinese teachers that work at my school have this ability and for one thing, it makes working at the school very pleasant.

So I think next time I have a lesson with the Chinese boy I'll let him know that I want to be corrected as much as possible. I think I have decided that there are two main reasons I may get frustrated with someone: intelligence and culture. If someone has a very different intelligence than me they will do things that I wouldn't usually, which could frustrate me. Similarly with culture. Culture includes education, values, beliefs, morals, world view among other things.

This idea that I have started to formulate will save me a lot of grief in the future. Why? If I get frustrated with people in the future I can attribute it to different intelligence or different culture. Both of these factors are not in the hands of the person in front of me. Intelligence, you're born with, culture you get from your society and family. You can and do alter your culture with the life decisions you make, but the primary culture is not up for modification.

I have battled with myself for a long time about why I am the way I am. I have tried to form theories and understand but they have not led me to happiness. Acceptance is the only way, I believe. I must accept that I am the way I am (intelligence and culture) and I do not need to try to understand why. It is enough to be at peace with the way that I am, so that I can become as productive as possible. This is also true for how I see other people. I don't need to understand why people are the way they are, I can put it down to intelligence and culture, and accept them the way they are. But of course the human need to understand will always be present, but it is not possible to understand everything. If I learn to accept everything though that will be a great achievement.

We all feel the pressure to conform to a 'societal ideal'. One element of the societal ideal as is part of my understanding is 'being sociable'. This is something I have wrestled with for a long time. Personally, I enjoy the company of certain people. People who are non-judgmental, positive, relaxed and who share a similar intelligence and culture to me. I have not met many people so far that fulfil these criteria.

As an introvert, I 'charge my batteries' when I am at home on my own. I need a lot of time on my own to read, write, exercise, and most importantly think. For me thinking is close to breathing in my list of priorities. I need to think about things like life, cultures etc. to help me feel whole.

I don't like how society labels people as 'sociable' or 'anti-sociable', what about people in between? For me, I need to send the vast majority of my time with my self and my thoughts. But this is not just in the house. I need some sort of social contact everyday, even if it is something as small as buying something from the local shop. The sociologist Charles Horton Cooley thought that our self is created by society. If that is true then perhaps my need to be in society at least once a day, may be a way of reaffirming my self.

So this part of me that does not live to the 'societal ideal' in my mind, has been a real challenge to accepting myself. But I have found that trying to explain my behavior does not lead me to happiness either. I have thus decided to accept the way I am and stop digging deeper to try to 'understand', instead putting it down to the vague categories of intelligence and culture and leaving it at that (not even trying to dissect these categories). As one who enjoys thinking and solving 'problems', it will be a challenge for me to just 'accept', but I'm ready for the challenge because I know for certain that the only place it will lead will be happiness.

Experiences of an English teacher

Teaching in China is the first time I've ever taught kids. Since it's been so long since I was around kids as well I had somewhat of a culture shock when faced with 10 smiling, snotty boys and girls.

I have now better acclimatised to the 'kid culture' and in fact it seems to be penetrating into my very being, I'm obsessed with buying kiddy-type merchandise, Minnie Mouse, Winnie the Pooh, you name it. I also like how easily kids laugh. It's nice. It's something we should try to remember as we grow older, to still find the ability to laugh easily because usually we take life to seriously and we forget that we don't actually know why we are on this planet in the first place.

Teaching kids these past few weeks has also seen my bravery levels shoot up. You see, when I first started I would monitor which kids had been digging at their noses and which hadn't. I would then select the kids that I thought had clean hands to use the smartboard pen, that I had to otherwise use throughout the class. Yesterday though, I did something extraordinary. I gave every class a high five. I did this when I was fully in the knowledge that a number of them had just been ramming their index fingers into their noses. But I high-fived them anyway. Ladies and gentlemen, if that isn't bravery then I don't know what is.

I also have a few kids who look almost identical to Giant Pandas. They are usually overweight, and their yes are heavily lidded. They look like they want to fall asleep constantly (maybe they do, students here are really really overworked at school), and they are very slow to move/respond. It used to annoy the bejesus out of me, since teaching these kids was often more painful than pulling teeth, but I've found coping mechanisms.

I think some kids have hearing difficulties and when I ask them to repeat a word, they end up saying something not remotely related to what I have just said. 'Apple' I'd say, 'Anana' they'd reply.

I have many classes but at the same time I have none. The way the system at this school runs is that kids have 3-hour English lessons. Two of those hours are taught by Chinese teachers, and the foreign teacher then teaches for the remaining hour, kind of like a 'guest appearance'. So none of the kids are my students and I have therefore decided against memorising their names.

OK, names are one thing, but how about gender. Surely I should know the gender of the children. But this is not so. There is one student I have who I keep forgetting what gender they are. Yesterday I had said student, so I decided to play the 'shopping basket' game, where we'd all go around and say what we wanted to put in our shopping basket, then remember what other people put in their baskets, using she/he. Thankfully the student after the student in question cleared up the problem when she called the other student 'she'. You see, usually this student will wear a pink or purple to, so I will assume that she is a girl, but when she comes in with a blue jacket, and I've forgotten what gender I assigned to her in the previous lesson, because the previous lesson was two weeks ago, then that's when my problems begin.

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Also, I used to get very frustrated at some of the words we have to teach our students. In one lesson I have to teach both 'humourous' and 'funny'. Personally, I have never said 'humourous' in a conversation, and so when I would teach the word to these 8-year olds, I would mumble it under my breath and move on as fast as possible.

Then I noticed something. The Chinese translations under each word was different. I then had the idea that maybe in Chinese there are two words that are very close in meaning, but for Chinese people they are used in two very different contexts. At that moment I realised that I was not teaching my students British English or American English. I was teaching them Chinese English. The students would be speaking English by directly translating from their native Chinese.

Now in some circles this would be preposterous. How could they translate from their own language? They should learn through immersion, as we did as babies. But actually, I've come to see that Chinese English is not any different from the different dialects of British English, with their different pronunciations and vocabulary. That is why I have stopped correcting pronunciation that does not detract from the meaning of the word. The sound 'th' for example in 'athlete', is said as an 's'. People in London say it like a 'f'. So what? The word is understood either way so in my opinion there's no need to be so pernickity.

Stickers here also have immense power. I had one class that was so rowdy I didn't know what to do. I tried shouting, clapping, standing in silence. I had almost exhausted all of my control methods when the Chinese teacher simply suggested I give the good students stickers. 'Pfff', like that'll work, I thought. But I took out the stickers all the same and a hushed silence descended immediately onto the room. I was speechless. Why would students respond better to being rewarded for good behaviour than punished for bad behaviour?

Later I found out the true meaning of the stickers. It is not the stickers themselves that are intrinsically worth alot, it is what students do once they have collected enough stickers. They can exchange them for various toys/ pieces of stationary in the magical display case in the reception area. In that way, at my school Stickers are the currency, the money, the dosh. That, is where their power lies. I started to go off on a thought tangent about how the school is like a microcosm of society. Students are the workers, teachers are the bosses, and stickers are the wages.

KTV

Singing 'My heart will go on' at KTV

Yesterday I attended my first KTV event. A group of Chinese and Foreign teachers from my school branch went downtown. I had heard so much about the karaoke entertainment that is KTV, but I imagined it would be difficult because we'd be singing in front of absolute strangers. It turns out most KTVs are a private room with a large TV and an interactive computer system where you can choose the songs you want. My song list was: 'My heart will go on', Celine Dion, 'Your song', Elton John, 'Turning Tables', Adele and 'There can be miracles', Whitney Houston and Maria Carey. It was a lot of fun!

Slurping... to do or not to do?

I read this article on the Guardian website about how the Chinese government issued a 64-page guide to Chinese tourists about how they should behave when they are travelling abroad (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/03/china-advice-travel-tourism-guide?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487). This came after reports that Chinese tourists were giving China a bad image, due to their behaviour. In China and other parts of Asia, 'keeping face' is very important. People do not wish to look bad in front of others - which is actually a pretty universal human desire.

The guidebook features advice from avoiding teeth and nose-picking in public to not leaving footprints on toilet seats, after some tourists apparently try to re-create the squatting toilet with standard Western seated ones (I'll leave your imagination to paint the rest of the picture). But the guide also features quite bizarre pieces of advice like the fact that if women do not wear earrings in Spain they will be laughed at as if she were undressed in public. Where did they get that from?

But now lets turn our attention to one of the most pertinent cultural differences that I noticed when I first came to China, and one that the guidebook also mentions. That is the issue of slurping. 'When travelling abroad Chinese citizens should refrain from slurping their noodles loudly'.

I must say, when I first landed in this fine land, slurping bothered the hell out of me. Ask any one of my close family members and they will tell you how I would lose my temper faster than they could blink their eyes, if I heard even a little noise coming from their mouth when they ate. 'YOU'RE EATING IN MY EARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR', I would roar as my face puffed red and the vein on the side of my neck would swell to monstrous proportions.

But no noise my family ever made could compare to the slurping and open-mouthed eating that tormented me during my first few days in China. I wanted so badly to rip my ears off my head and throw them at the slurping-fiends. On failing that I just pulled at my hair and smacked my forehead numerous times.

But here's the good news. I'm over it. In fact, if you could hear how I was going at my bubble tea tapioca pearls today, you'd think I would make an excellent contestant at the World Slurping Championships.

I've come to see slurping and other things people do here like spitting on the street, kids peeing wherever they see fit etc. etc. as actually quite liberating. Yes I have spat in streets a few times and some of you may be shocked that I'm letting my Western standards slip, but I say to hell with standards.

'Better out than in', seems to be the running concept here. People here are more relaxed, more natural. They don't pretend to be divine beings that never burp, slurp or kurp (I couldn't think of anything else that rhymed with burp and slurp so I'll leave it to you to decide the meaning of 'kurp'). No, they acknowledge the fact that they are human and as such have bodily functions that need to be addressed.

Cooking in my kitchen

Chopsticks time... or not?

I usually eat/cook the same sort of food, and it was what I ate through University as well. It involves rice or potatoes stir-fried with an assortment of whatever vegetables happen to occupy my fridge, and some sort of protein, usually egg, but occasionally fish or chicken. The chicken is usually pre-cooked and the tuna usually comes in tins.

The basic idea is that it should be healthy, filling and quick. Today I had rice, eggs, aubergine, tomatoes, green peppers and a new root vegetable that I've never had before (I think it was turnip??). Oh, I nearly forgot the most important ingredient - soy sauce! Once upon a time I might have fried a little garlic and added that to the magic, but I'm afraid I have been put off eating garlic for the foreseeable future.

Also I would like to make a confession. The picture above clearly shows two chopsticks resting on the plate of food, as if they are to be subsequently used in the act of eating the contents of the plate. I'm afraid I have duped you terribly. No self-respecting Egyptian can handle chopstick-related eating for long periods of time. Although I try to use them occasionally so that I can train myself in the art, I am and always will be a 'get-a-spoon-and-shovel-the-food-down-your-mouth' girl. We Egyptians pride ourselves on the speed with which we consume food as well as the complete lack of elegance we do it with.

This is what my cooking area looks like:

I'm blue da ba dee da ba da da ba dee da....

Lunch in 10 minutes

I have two hobs but most of the time I only need one. There's also a really scary knife that has been the cause of many-a-nightmare that I've had in China. I'm trying to train myself only to use it when my full attention is on the beastly blade, otherwise I am certain I can bid a few of my fingers adios.

The Monster Knife

Carrying on this mini-tour of excitement (have you found yourself on the edge of your seat yet?), I would like to show you the balcony/conservatory area, the part with the washing machine and where I hang my clothes to dry.

Wash, wash, wash your clothes...

I like it a night. I stand and look at the flickering lights coming from the other apartments across from me, and do some very important observations into Chinese family life. During the day it gets as hot as a furnace so it's no fun to be in. As for the washing machine itself, I would like to rename it 'rip clothes and splutter mud and other unidentifiable pieces of debris on them' machine. I put my washing in for an hour and when I take it out it feels very dry, smells kind of clean, and for some reason is covered with bits of dirt that were not there at the beginning!

Finally we move on to the bathroom. It took me a while to get used to operating the shower unit, and I still haven't got used to the song that it screams out at me:

The next winner of 'Britain's Got Talent' ladies and gentlemen.

You see what happens is I have to plug in an electrical cord into the wall opposite, which heats the water in the tank. I wait about 20-30 minutes then, when all is quiet, this shower unit lets out a loud, high-pitched scream, before moving onto some sort of Chinese melody. Everytime the song starts I have a mini-panic attack. Is there a better way to start the day? Nope, I didn't think so!

I met an interesting-looking girl today

I went to the gym after I battled once more with my Chinese learning. I decided to keep walking on the side of the road that I end up on anyway, instead of crossing early, because I reasoned I'd be less likely to be ploughed down by oncoming motorbikes on that side. This decision led me to meet a very interesting girl.

Not far from the gym there is a crossing. I stood waiting for the speeding vehicles to pass in front when I spotted the girl. She had beautiful long brown hip-length hair, wore a tight black dress and black heels. The conservative grandmother in me began hauling mental abuse at her for displaying her body in such a fashion, something the grandmother in me strictly agreed with herself that, should only be seen in nightclubs or other places of that ilk. The only odd thing I noticed about her was how she was wearing a white surgical mask. Surely someone as fashion-conscious as this lady would not compromise her look for her health?

Anyway, I hushed the grandmother for a little while and crossed the road.

'Thank you', I heard someone say. I turned around and it was the girl talking to me. Her English was very good and the next thing she said helped me understand why.

'I'm from Hong Kong'. She then began speaking very fast, jumbling her words. I wasn't sure what she wanted exactly.

'Where are you from?', she asked me. She told me she'd been in Jinan for a year and a half and that she was studying business. She was really very pretty but I couldn't shake the thought that had just entered into my mind that she worked as a prostitute. She couldn't have been much older than me.

I discovered why she was wearing a mask on her face. It was to hide the smell of alcohol that saturated her breath. As she spoke to me she let the mask slide slightly.

She wanted my number and a part of me wanted to give it to her, I felt she needed my help. But another art of me told me to stay out of it. 'You don't know what kind of things you may get yourself into', the voice of reason shouted at me.

I lied and told her I didn't have my phone and I didn't know my number. In another f her jumbled mumblings she said that someone in a night club yesterday had stolen the battery of her phone. That's it, just the battery. It was at this point that I noticed the grubby purple plastic bag she was carrying. That definitely does not fit her fashionable image, I thought.

She pulled out a worn out purple leopard skin purse. 'See, I'm from Hong Kong', she told me as she pulled out her passport that was in her purse. Then she took out the mobile phone which, as she had told me previously, did not have a battery.

As she was searching for her phone I noticed she had quite a bit of bruising on her arms and a small burn-type wound on her right hand.

She settled on typing in her email address into the Ipod I was holding in my hand and told me to send her my number as soon as I got home. I hated being two-faced. I hated being nice and kind to her face, then when I would leave her I knew that I wouldn't follow up on my kindness with the act of giving her my number. But, I reasoned, we are all two-faced. That's what society forces up to become. We all have at least one public and one private persona but in reality, we all 'play many parts' on the stage of life, as Mr William Shakespeare said himslef in 'As you like it'. I noticed her email address had the word 'men' in it twice. Maybe it's a nickname, I thought, trying to give her the benefit of the doubt.

After a safe distance I decided to erase the email address from my Ipod. But it would take much longer to erase the memory of that beautiful girl from Hong Kong, with her hidden secrets.

Learning Chinese - up and down and up....

Being in China is great for learning Chinese. I am motivated to find out what all the signs around me mean, not to mention trying to understand what people are saying and trying to speak to them myself. Today however, I hit a rough patch. This happens every now and then. I lose motivation, overwhelmed by the enormous challenge that is the Chinese language.

I don't have a Chinese teacher because I want to see how far I can get on my own. I believe this way is harder and will take me a longer time, but in the long-term it will be the most beneficial thing I can do. If I achieve it it means that I will have learnt how to teach myself a language from scratch, and I can then apply those skills to other languages, not to mention teaching other people languages from scratch. Of course I do use internet resources and I have some very useful apps on my Ipod (thank you mama for making me bring the Ipod even though I kept saying I didn't want to - you were right again!) which help me along the way. My favourite app was free. It's an English-Chinese, Chinese-English dictionary, where you can write Chinese characters in, and get the definition. Very very useful.

My technique up until this point has been to learn phrases and the associated Chinese characters. Fr one reason or another I have decided to switch tact. Now what I will do is learn 5 nouns a day and 1 verb including their characters. I like concrete nouns that I can touch (bed, pen, book), so they are what I will be starting with. Today's words were: bed, pen, hair, face and tap. The verb was 'to touch'. I've also organised a conversation exchange next week in which I hope to say all the words I've memorised to my study buddy and see whether he can decipher what I mean. Actually, even if I say all the words correctly (tones and all) he still may not understand. This is because as a language, Chinese has very few syllables compared to other languages. Context therefore is usually essential to understanding meaning.

National Day 2013

Sometimes I can been seen strolling through Jinan dressed as above. You see, apart from the pollution caused by the steel factories all around the city, there seems to be endless ongoing construction work which helpfully channels tiny dust particles into the lungs of passers by, making it relatively unpleasant to walk around. However, this mask I am sporting, was bought very cheaply from a local pharacy, so I doubt it actually does any good - it probably does me more harm so I don't wear it that much.

National Day in China is October the 1st, the day in 1949 when the People's Republic of China was formed by the Communist party, led by Mao Zedong.

On this day I did a little shopping, then ate an interesting noddle and quail-egg dish:

Later I met up with some English teachers and we went to the Muslim Quarter and ate barbecued meat on sticks. To be honest I was really disappointed with the fact that we were going to eat barbecue. We did it once before and what happens is that I pay a lot of money and eat almost nothing. I don't like eating the fatty part of the meat, and that's all they put on the stick. Then there's the waiting for the meat to be cooked which is a real pain. Not my favourite thing about Chinese cuisine I must say.

On my walk home from the meal, I passed by Quancheng Square, the main square in Jinan. It was more full than I'd ever seen it before and people were flying LED-lit kites, roller skating and listening to live music. At 8pm the most beautiful fountain display I've ever seen started. The music in the background was Ave Maria and the water from the fountain danced more beautifully than any dancer could. It was incredible how the water swirled and twirled in perfect time to the song.

Watch out for the massive hole in the road!

Doing some walking in Jinan

Today I decided to try to get to the Yellow River park, north of Jinan. I made it an admirable distance by getting on random bus numbers and getting off them when I felt that they were heading in the wrong direction - this technique got me surprisingly far! In the end however, I decided not to continue to the Yellow River because the roads were so heavily traffic jammed that I decided not to torture myself too much.

I ended up getting off near Jinan Zoo where I found a multitude of street vendors selling all types of food:

The second and fourth pictures show 'toffee apple sticks' which are delicious! I also found a man squeezing out fresh sugar cane juice, just like the juice we get in Egypt. But in China the sugar canes are black not green:

Continuing on my journey, I decided to get on another random bus. Which number do I like best? I thought to myself. A number 4 bus pulled up to the bus stop and it looked like there were quite a few empty seats on it, so I hopped on. It turned out to be the right decision because the bus took me to a a hustling and bustling part of the city that I'd never known about. I grabbed some food from a local street vendor (rice, sweet and sour chicken, tofu and some other stuff - the picture is below, maybe you can tell me what I ate?) then continues on my merry little way.

On my travels I saw a number of people selling pets of all kinds: snakes, hamsters, tortoises and little kittens:

On my way home I saw the cutest old man eating a banana very slowly. He was rather poor but if he'd asked me for money I think I would have given him the entire contents of my wallet.

Why I love bubble tea

Today I finally found a little stall that sells Bubble Tea like the ones I used to buy from Oxford - just Jasmine tea with bubbles. Usually the bubble teas I've bought in China (and especially the ones I bought in Bangkok) were way too sugary and they almost always had milk in the, which was way too rich for me.

So why am I crazy about bubble tea? For those of you who don't know what it is, bubble tea is the name given to any tea (and sometimes juice or smoothie) that has tapioca pearls in the bottom. If this description is blowing your mind, take a look at this picture:

Now, I must confess that I have a strange phobia/reaction to anything that has a lot of hole-type things- the picture opposite being an example, a sponge being another example - but I make an exception for bubble tea.

Now here is why I love it. Bubble tea is not just a drink. It's a challenge. So you think you've finished your drink? Think again. There is a high probability that you will find a tapioca pearl or two hiding in the bottom of your cup. You must, needless to say, find and eat every single one. That's another think, it's like drinking and eating all rolled into one. Tell me what other foodstuff/drink can top that? Not many. Not many at all.