Grab a few beers and get in The Van

After the expo I went to a Beglium beer teasting in a new bar called Kai. The beer list is about as long as my long with 60 to choose from. Unfortunately because they are imported they all cost about £5 a bottle. Lucily enough we didn't have to pay that at the tasting and also luckily we didn't have to try all 60 - just 5. We had quite a good selection - I was a little dissapointed that a couple were standard beers you'd get at home like Leffe and Duval but it was still good fun and set me up for a decent night out afterwards.

Saturday night we went to a mini music festival called "Get in the Van". The idea of which is that you get to bar, pay £6 to get in, get given some free beer, watch 4 banks, then when the final band finishes every loads into a van - you get given crates and crates of free beer to drink whilst you're ferried to the next venue to see more bands. It was a pretty good fun evening. The van didn't leave until the first gig until 1am and it was 3am by the time the final band finished at the second venue. DJs then started playing until the next morning. I left after the final band as had football the next morning at 9am (need to get up at 7.30am). Was a great evening though!

Shanghai Motor Expo 中国会展服务

The Shanghai Auto Show was in town last week. With the credit crunch going around a lot of the international shows ahve been cancelled - making Shanghai the biggest one to take place this year. It was held out in the International Expo Centre in Pudong - near the Maglev train station. As soon as I got off the subway I realised I was in the right place as there were thousands of hawkers trying to sell me tickets and blocks wanting to give me backies on their motorcycles. I'd been warned about the crowds trying to get into the Expo (especially on the saturday-when I went) so in order to avoid the queue I bought a ticket from a tout for just under face value.

The press was predicting millions of visitors to attend the expo over the course of the exhibition - i think most of them went on the saturday at about the time that i visited. It was absolute chaos in some areas and there seemed to be no order what so ever. The hall where the major foreign cars were (Bently, Ferrari, Lambourgini etc) were was absolute bedlam. I can honestly say that I've been in football crowds or concert venues that were more ordered. It was a case of head down, arms out and get through it as fast as possible - meaning I didn't actually get to see the New Porsche, BMW or Jaguar that were uncovered at the show.

this was actually one of the less busy halls

The whole place was absolute overan with people - I don't think I've ever seen as many in one place before and what ever direction I was trying to go in always seemed to be the wrong one. The mess was unbelievable as well:

dan maund will be having kittens at the sight of this

The main reason for going to the show was (apart from seeing some of the absolutely stuning models showing off the cars) was to see some of the Chinese knock off models that I had heard about. I'd heard stories of copied Rollers, Mercs exhbited in hall 1 whilst the genuine articles were being shown in the next building. The Chinese, always better at imitating than using their skills to produce something better themselves, didn't dissapoint. The Rolls Royce knock is ridiculous - I believe action is being taken by the company!

Rolls Royce Phantom? Complete with Spirit of Estacy - Only £30,000

Mercedes CLK?

Mini Clubman?

Hummer?

St Georges Day Dinner

I realise that no one really makes any fuss over St George's Day back home but for me it represented the perfect opportunity to cook my first meal, so I trundled off down the supermarket in search of ingredients.

They serve asparagus in quite a lot of the restaurants over here - usually stir fried with garlic - but seeing as dad is currently spending most of his days pulling the stuff out of the ground it was a perfect ingredient. As you can see they let it grow a little longer than they do in England and because of this it was quite strong tasting. Anyway one of these bundles cost 30p - quite a bit more reasonable than what dad sells it for to the supermarkets!!!

lú sǔn 芦笋

For the rest of the ingredients I managed to get some Potatoes, Broccoli, Runner Beans, Carrots and for the meat element some Australian Steak from the City Store down the road. All the vegetables came to about £2 in total and then the steak cost £2 as well. THe most expensive aspect of the whole meal was the bloody masher for the potatoes - it cost £10! Worth it though as the mash was quite delicious. I'll have to make sure to get good value out of it.

胡萝卜hú luó bo (carrots) , 土豆 tǔ dòu (tates), 牛排 niú pái (steak)

Because of the masher it was one of the most expensive meals I've had in China so far - but it was worth it. Good to have a taste of home. It was a little tricky to cook as don't exactly have all the utenssils that I would have at home - substituted a steamer with a culinder held over the top of a saucepan - used the saucepan lead to keep the heat in. Will try and get more stuff and then I can cook for the other trainees and the people from work.

好吃 hǎo chī!

New Watches

I went to the market in the Underground station a few stops from me on tuesday night and managed to pick up these two watches. Here's how the bargaining process went:

shop guy: 1,180 yuan each.
me (all in bad chinese) : i've been told not to pay more than 100 yuan
SG: ah, you're not a tourist
me: no, i work here.
SG: OK what do you do
Me: I work in a law firm
SG: (looks a bit sheepish) Ok, Ok. How about 400 yuan each
Me: No 100
SG: Ok 200
Me: no 100
SG: OK - how about two for 300?
Me: [sigh] fine.

I promised that i'd be bringing in lots of clients and other business people. I don't think £15 quid is that much to pay for any watch - even a cheap copy - so was quite happy. Spoken to people in the office and they said that was about the right price to pay. They are still working fine at the moment and they've certainly lasted longer than my Mao watch, which I bought last time here and broke on the first night! Any orders?

Chinese Grand Prix 中国大奖赛

The day after the Wedding was the Chinese Grand Prix. The weather had been fine all week and was beautiful on the saturday. Even until noon on the sunday they sun was out and it was reasonably hot. As soon as we took our seats in our uncovered grandstand it started to pour down with rain - and it didn't stop all day. It made for a great race (as the drivers could barely see where they were going) but it also made for some pretty soggy spectators.

The track is one of the most challenging tracks in F1 and is the most expensive circuit on the calendar. I think that most of the money must have been spent on the hospitality boxes etc (ala wembley) as I was quite dissappointed by the facilities and there was hardly any stands or stalls, such as those you get at European grandprixs. We sat on corner 6 which usually wouldn't be the best location but due to the weather we had some pretty big crashes in front of us which kept us all entertained. Even the girls, whom weren't really looking forward to it seemed to get quite into it - although that might have just been because they thought Jenson Button might win! WHen the force india crashed right in front of us you could actually feel bits of schrapnel from the car scatter in the air around you - quite cool.

My 10p umbrella didn't quite make the entire 56 laps of the race - giving up about lap 35 so I got completely drenched. Carsten and I kept ourselves well stocked up on beer though - no matter how wet you get , as long you have a evefrything is OK! Carsten sang a few german F1 related songs in honour of Vettle which went down quite well - and then we all got to sing the British National Athem because Red Bull were the winning contractor.

Chinese Wedding -

One of my colleagues Stella got married last week. She was kind enough to invite me to the wedding, which is really nice of her seeing as I've only known her for a couple of weeks. The wedding was in Stella's home town - Huzhou - which is about 2 hours from Shanghai. They ran buses from Shanghai so all their friends were able to attend. After the night before I woke up to the ringing of my telephone to find that I had overslept and that the bus was waiting for me before it left. I quickly threw on some clothes and ran for a taxi to the bus stop. Luckily I wasn't the last person to arrive and even more lucky was the fact that I could sleep for 2 hours on the bus there.


Chinese weddings are done a bit different to English weddings. Stella and her husband were actually granted their wedding certificate 4 months ago, then they had their wedding photos taken a few months later and they were the ceremony. This was quite a western styled wedding - but with a few subtle differences. Before the couple came down the aisle we had a "this is your life introduction" for both of them - videos and photos of the two growing up, them metting and then a montage of their wedding photos.

One of the more interesting aspects of this wedding was that in Stella's home town it is tradition that when a daughter is born the parents will bury a bottle of wine underground. When the daughter is married they will dig up the wine and drink it at the wedding. The wine was brought round for all the guests to sample and I can honestly say that it was much better tasting than I thought a bottle of wine that had been underground for 25 years would be!

The whole ceremony took place whilst we were eating. The majority of the food was pretty standard fare, but after two or three courses they brought out the speciality for the wedding - Roast Turtle (with the shell on). You eat this a bit like an oyster - pikcing up the shell and biting out the meat - it was awful. I also past up on the Chicken Leg and Ducks Neck!

After dinner they had a "who wants to be a millionaire" style quiz about the couple. They'd randomly placed cards under peopls chairs and if you had one of the cards you had to answer a question. Sods law decides that I ended up sitting in one of the hot seat chairs! I got up and with the help of one of my colleagues was asked to answer the following question:
Which of the following is not a nickname that the husband uses for Stella:
1. Little Darling 2. Little Stupid 3. Little Wife 4. Little Cook. Bare in mind that I have only known Stella for 4 weeks and her husband about 4 minutes I had to be quite careful as I didn;t really want to insult them. I plumped for option C - at random -and got it correct somehow. It turns out that Little Wife means second wife - so would mean that he was calling her his mistress. Lucky guess!

After the wedding the shanghai visitors were taken for a boat ride down the river in the centre of town and then went to the park for a little while. The weather was beautiful and the boat ride was relaxing - in all it was a lovely way to finish a really enjoyable day.




I;'ve got some great ideas for Rugi and Kate's big day in October now - think i'll leave roast turtle off the menu though.

My New Local Team 上海申花

Suffering from football withdrawl, the boys and I decided to go and throw out backing behind our local side - Shanghai Shenhua. Shenhua play in the Chinese Super League, the league is comprised of 16 teams from all over the country and each team plays each other twice in the season. The league starts in March and finishes in November = so hopefully I will be able to get to most of the games. The game we went to see was against Shenzhen Jianlibao - both teams had started the season strongly so we were hoping for a close match.



Shanghai play at Hongkou stadium in the north of the city. The stadium has capacity for 33,000 supporters. The average attendance is probably only 10-12,000 though. The squad is mainly chinese players but there were also several australian, spanish and brazilians in the mix. We got tickts for £5 (the cheapest available from normal retailers but if you join a supporters club you can pay £15 for the whole season - so think I will look into that), they were on the second tier and about mid way around the pitch. You could get touted tickets really easily too (plus for a lot cheaper) but becuase we were working on the friday we didn't know if we'd have time to get these at the ground.

Before the game we went to the club shop and found you could buy about 5 million different types of shanghai shirt. Confused and astounded Dan plumped for this seasons Asian Champions League shirt for 50Yuan and I plumped for what was apparantly last years shirt for 150yuan (i preferred it as it had a chinese sponsor). The official shirt for this season was 550 yuan (more expensive than kits at home!). At the ground there were several sports outlets selling western shirts and kits as well.

After we were kitted out we snuck a few beers into the stadium and got ready to enjoy the game.
The more vocal fans - the chinese Ultras - or "Blue Boys" as they call themselves - congregate behind the goals at each end. They had quite a good collection of banners and flags and at each end of the ground they had two or three drums. One flag borrowed the liverpool motto - you'll never walk alone, we will be together forever - and others featured Bruce Lee and Che Gueverra. The atmosphere was quite good behind both goals with the fans singing a mix of local and european style football songs. They even did a verision of Popey the Sailor man! You can't get tickets for behind the goals unles you are a fan club member or season ticket holder and where we sat it was unfortunately quite quiet despite our best efforts. There were no away fans at all so the home fans were quite vociferous in their baiting of the away team. The whole idea of having "football ultras" when there are no away fans is quite bizzare.


The match was reasonably entertaining - not the greatest of games! The standard was not quite up to Blackpool's league but it was good fun. Shanghai ran out 4-1 winners. When Shenzhen scored the whole ground fell into complete silence but it was in reality a stroll in the park for Shanghai. Shenhua have never won the Chinese Super League but they are currently second so lets hope that this is their season.
The only thing I don't like about them is that they some loose affiliation with Manchester United!




After the match we had a few celebratory beers in one of the supports pubs near the stadium and then went on to a bar called mural where it was £10 all you can drink. One of the trainees had loads of friends over from Hong Kong so it was quite good fun. I wasn't meant to be driking too much as I had the wedding the next day but got a bit greedy with the ten pound offer and had a bit more than I had wanted to! As usual.

Ski Saturday

I've never been skiing before. Its something that has been suggested to me on quite a few occaisions but I've never had the time/inclination to learn how to do it. Before coming to China I had decided it was about time to have a try and was prepared to have a few lessons at the local indoor centre in Castleford. Lessons there are about £70 a session, so when Xuan announced that Shanghai had an indoor centre where you could ski all day for £20, including ski and clothes hire I thought it would be worth a go just to see if I could at least stand up on the boody things.

Carsten, Xuan and I all decided to to have a go. Both Carsten and Xuan are experience Skiers. Xuan has been skiing since he was little and Carsten grew up in the German/Swiss Mountains (i think) so has always skied. They said they'd give me any tuition i needed. Sods law dictates that the day we decide to go and play in the snow indoors actually turns out to be the hottest day of our tenure here by some distance - an absolutely stunning afternoon. The centre was about an hour from where we lived - all the way at the end of my metro line and from the outside it looked like a former communist building.

On the inside the decor was slightly more up to date but the clothing or equipment supplied was still a decade or so behind - please see Carsten's lovely pink suit! The slopes weren't as much snow, more tiny grains of ice but it was soft and didn't hurt too much when you fell over (as I did quite often), however as it was ice you did get quite wet and cold. The slope was 400 odd metres long but not that steep so quite good for learners. The first thing that my tutors tried to teach me was how to stop - a "snow plough" they called it - i was useless at this. I couldn't get the hang of moving the front of you skis in and pushing the backs out. Just couldn't manage it so we quickly moved on - I mean, who needs to stop anyway?!

Despite not being able to stop I made my way down from the top of the slope. Xuan and Carsten just told me to throw myself over if I needed to stop - I didn't really have much choice on this and found myself on the floor quite a few times. It is quite difficult to get up with skis on though so thought I'd better improve quickly. Luckily there were hatfuls of chinese people who in comparison made me look like a granstand competent skier! I sooned realised that skiing was like motorcycling that you just need to keep your head up and look at where you want to be going - as soon as you look down you fall over. I managed to have one run from top of the summit to the bottom without falling over and turning at the bottom in order to stop. The feeling when your going so fast is quite amazing - but quite scary at the same time. I'm not sure if the others will want to go again as this place was for begginners really but I'd definitely like to try again - although it will be a while before I join my friends on the piste.

Derby Day in Shanghai

So yesterday saw the biggest game of Blackpools season. The local derby - Preston North End (or Preston Knob End as blackpool fans refer to them) away from home. If Blackpool managed to win they would all but guarantee their safety in the Championship for another season and also put any promotion hopes for their biggest rivals to bed yet again. Games like this do not come around too often and to be missing it was truely galling. This made worse by the fact that Preston had allocated Blackpool the whole Tom Finney Stand - 5,500 tickets - thus ensuring an awesome atmosphere. Unfortunately the only option for me was to tune in via internet radio. in order to get into the spirit of things I decorated my flat in an appropriate manner. Sad to have missed it but their will be more days like this next season when I'm home. Particularly if Newcastle get relegated!

Chinese Name 马超睿

马超睿

this is the chinese name that I have been given by work.
It is pronounced:

马 Ma 超 Chao 睿 Riu.

Chao means super and excellent
Riu means smart and steady!

Obviously entirely appropriate and I can't see why my parents didn't christen me this at birth.

Huang Shan 黄山 Yellow Moutain

Last weekend was tombsweeping festival so we had the monday off work. The other trainees and I thought it would be a nice idea to take the friday off work and give us a nice 4 day break. We decided to head for Huang Shan. One of China's most famous scenic spot, Huang shan is the setting for most of the typical chinese landscape paintings that you see - so we were expected great things.



Imagine our dissapointment when the first day was foggy and the second day was not only foggy but there was also torrential rain for most of the day. Walking up thousands of steps is not easy at the best of times, but when the "inspiring" views you were sold are impossible to see and the weather is appalling it is even harder.






The first day we walked up to the western steps which are meant to be the more challenging choice of stairs and are meant to reward the climbers with superior views to the eastern steps - in fact the Lonely Planet guide books recommends these steps for coming down only! So we walked up them and didn't actually get to see any of the stunning scenary - just our luck. We got to Jade Screen on the first day and reached our hotel. The hotel was OK - room was big but was only made for three people, they had then just squeezed an extra five mattresses into the space available. Luckily the shower worked though. The food was absolutely awful though



Whilst the first day was a bit bleak, it was nothing compared to the second. From the moment we left the hotel to the moment we checked in to the next one it was constant rain. Luckily we only had to walk for three hours or so - our second hotel was nicer than the first but the room was more like a hostel (bunkbeds) and the hot water only worked between the hours for 7pm to 10pm. So we got there looking like drowned rats and had to wait for 3 hours before we could have a shower. On the upside the food was much much better and we had a few interesting card games to pass the time - I taught everyone how to play Auction Rummy - i regreted teaching them the buying rule though as even the first hand takes 15 minutes when 6 people are buying every single card they see!



We were promised much better weather on the third day and thankfully the forecast was right. Bright sunshine all day. We walked to the very top of the moutain and then walked down the north side all the way down to the entrance at ground level. This is the less touristy route down the moutain and the path that most the porters that have to lug bags and boxes of food all the way up the 6000 foot climb! It took us about 3 hours to get to the bottom and we then took the cable car back to the top of the hill. After that we walked around the east side of the moutain for a hours and saw some absoultely fantastic scenary, then we made our way back to the hotel.


The final day was got up at 5am for the sunrise. We'd been a little dissappointed at not being able to see a sunset any of the previous days due to the fog and cloud but this more than made up for it. We made our way up to a pavilion on the top of the mountain and sat down on the cliff. The sight was fantastic and the noise the chinese made when this bright red orb emerged from the sea of clouds was hilarious. It was quite a magical moment. Really



enjoyed just sitting there and taking it all in.


After such a fantastic start to the day the rest didn't dissapoint either. We made our way back down the mountain - deciding to take the western steps again, in order to see some of the sights that we missed due to the fog on the way up. About half way a few of the girls decided to take the cable car the rest of the way and Xuan, Emma, Carsten and I completed the trek. I was sceptical that we would do it in enough time (we had a 3 hours before our bus departed) but we were fine and I was so happy that we did as the weather beautiful and the surroundings fantastic. To top of the holiday at the bottom of the mountain we found a waterfall where we sat and had a well earned rest for half and hour or so - and got fantastically sunburnt.


I was a great holiday. I stupidly didn't take any proper walking shoes - just my flat soled addidas sambas - so ruined my ankles to a fair extent but it didn't hamper my enjoyment. After we reached the bottom we boarded the bus for the 6.5 hour journey back to Shangers - I'm sure you'll be surprised to here I was asleep almost instantly upon taking my seat!

meeting some old friends...

One of the main reasons i wanted go back to shijiazhuang was to meet up with some of the great friends that I made last time when I lived in the city - most notably Nancy and Shirly.

Nancy is still teaching in No.42 but apart from that just about every other aspect of her life has changed from when I last saw her. She is now married to a fantastic husband who works for sinochem in Shijiazhuang and they live together in a two bedroom flat near to the park. The house they live in at the moment is quite small so I couldn't stay there when I visited - instead i got a room at the World Trade Plaza hotel - but in the summer they will move to their own house which they bought in a different part of the town. This house is going to have 3 bedrooms and will be much more modern, so hopefully I can stay there with them when I next visit. Nancy says that she and her husband will probably try for a baby once they have settled into their new house. Hopefully when I next visit them they will have some good news! I hope to be able to buy them something for their new house - if they let me - as I missed out being able to give them something for their wedding.

Nancy and I met saturday morning at the hotel and then went around town quickly before going to the school and seeing my old students. In the afternoon I walked around Shijiazhaung park and the neighbourhood around the school. It was great to go back and see some of the old markets and restuarants where I used to shop at and visit. The town hadn't changed much at old apart from they have brought the shops a row back from the road to make more of a pavement area. This means that many of the shops are about half the size of before. The most noatble example of this is that the blue restaurant in the post below is the old muslim restuarant where we went after nights out and was huge but is now about one eighth of the previous size!

After walking around the town we went back to nancys and made dumplings for tea. I was pretty useless at making dumplings (despite having done this once before in China) but all the ones Nancy and her husband made were delicious. We also had some Roast duck and some vegetable dishes that Nancy made. It was all very delicious. Their current house doens't have a dining room so we ate off a table and chairs in the bedroom - hopefully I can buy them a dining table for their new house. We watched their wedding video which was hilarious - really told the story of a chinese wedding.

Afer eating with Nancy and her husband I met up with Shirly who i also met at No.42 school. Conveniently Shirly's parents have two houses; one where they live and another for Shirly to stay during the school week. The house where Shirly lives turned out to be in the same development as Nancy's - just the opposite block so that saved one potential moment of confusion. Shirly had some friends round at her house so after having a few drinks and introducing myself we went to Youth Year Bar and then on to Mazzo Club. Thankfully Mazzo club is still completely free for foriegners. It is also free for women. So the only people that actually pay for drinks in there are chinese men - I'm not sure how they manage to stay open!! The clientle of the bar had grown a little younger from the last time I was there but the music was near enough exactly the same and it was still absolutely mental. There wasn't many foreigners there - apparently they mostly go to a new bar in town (that must be free alcohol as well!!) but the people were just as friendly as ever.

After Mazzo we went to KTV with Shirlys friends for a few hours and then headed to McDonalds about 5am for a snack before heading home about 6am. The next day was hard work! Flying home at 6pm I was absoltely exhausted!