A Few More Shijiazhuang Pictures

Shijiazhuang 石家庄

Last weekend I went back to Shijiazhuang to see how the city had changed in the two years since I last lived there. I booked the flight from Shanghai Honqiao Airport for 9pm thinking that that would be ample time to finish work and get there; I hadn't counted on it raining. In China everything stops when it rains. It becomes impossible to get a taxi and the whole road network comes to a halt. I eventually managed to get a taxi but only after telling the apartment concierge that I would pay twice the usual fare to get there. I then got to the airport about an hour later than planned only to find that my flight had been delayed for 1.5 hours due to the bad weather. Still I managed to get the seat on the emergency exit so the flight was comfortable (more leg room than BA premium economy!).

This all meant that I arrived in Shijiazhuang about about midnight. I got to the hotel for about 1am and then went out and met a few friends in a club called Mazzo Bar which is about 5 minutes from the hotel; I was desparate to revist this place as when we lived there previously it gave free drinks to Foreigners all night, every night! I was excited to see that nothing had changed!

Saturday morning I met up with Nancy who was a really good friend to me when I was last here. She showed me around the town quickly and pointed out a few places that had changed/been knocked down/been built and then we went to the school. We got out at the top of the road and walked down the congested road to the school gates. As soon as I got out of the taxi some of my students started recognising me. Shouting "Mr Charlie" and waving - a few coming up to chat.

I go to the school gate and waited around for a few more students to come out of class. We then went for lunch at our favourite Sichuan Style restuarant. I was glad to see that nothing had changed and that all our old favourites were still on the menu; gong bao ji ding, suan la bai cai, song ren yu mi, suan la tou do si, yu xiang rou si, tang cu li ji and chow bing. The restuarant doesn't usually serve Chow Bing at lunch times but I told the owner that I'd come all this way especially and she agreed to go and find the ingredients for me! Service! All this (plus drinks for only £6! and there was plenty left at the end.

After eating we went back to the school and had a look around the class rooms to see a few more of my old students. The majority all recognised me, it was quite funny the few that didn't as it dawned on them who I was. It was great to see so many of the children that I remembered - it was good to see that their english had improved more in the last two years as well. My class are in year 9 now the last year of middle school before moving in to senior school - this will mean that some leave No.42 and go to better schools in the city; but I hope to get back to Shijiazhaung once more before I leave China again and see some more of the children.

Views of the School...

Last weekend I went back to Shijiazhuang to visit the place where I lived last time I was in China. I lived in the school for 6 months from September 2006 to March 2007. When we went to the school in 2006 we were told that the school had great plans for a new sports pitch and running track. However you will see from these photos that not much has really changed at all. The same dirt track for a football pitch, same living quarters for the students, same sheds for the teachers to wash their hair in and the same broken window from when Dan Wate smashed a footy against the boiler house! It's a real shame as you can't really imagine kids in england going to school in such conditions - and this school is meant to be quite an expensive private school!! Maybe one day when I have some spare cash I can help to finance a football pitch! I'd plough up the basketball courts to make way for it though.

KTV

KTV = Kareoke. They love it in the east. The chinese seem to go there at every opportunity and for the tinniest of excuses. I asked of lady in the office what she was going to do this next weekend and she said that she was going to kareoke at 9am! Crazy.

When the girls in the office get paid they like to go to KTV for a bit of a celebratory night out. However, unlike at home, here Kareoke isn't just about getting drunk and acting a fool. Whilst the girls all had a great time and would mess around they took the singing really seriously and didn't touch a drop of alcohol. They even up dancing and playing tamborine and a series of other percussion instruements. Whilst admittedly that sounds quite boring it was actually really good fun. and a good way to get to know the girls from the office.

There isn't much point me telling you what I sang - it was english, but am positive it was barely unrecognisable.

We had food at the KTV which was surprisingly good as well although they did try to force feed my ducks neck at various intervals through out the evening which wasn't too enjoyable!

They charge per person per hour in these places and when the bill came I was a little nervous, however in all for 3 hours (!!) of singing, quite a bit of food and soft drinks all round it came to £20 which I didn't think was too bad. So I treated the others. I would have preferred to go for the £50 package though that was 3 hours singing, food, beer and a couple of bottles of whiskey and mixers. Maybe next time...

A Tasty Snack....

This is a local food store near the apartment that I found whilst walking back from work one day. To say I was excited when I found it would be a huge understatement. Basically the happy chappy above took a ball of dough and rolled it into a lovely flat pancake. You could then choose from a variety of fillings - bacon, ham, chicken, vegetables - I opted for bacon and eggs. A bacon and egg pancake?! Does it get any better than that?! All this for only 50p as well. Not bad at all - in fact, bloody delicious!

Teaching China to Dance

Whilst exploring on saturday I managed to somehow stumble across the China X Games 2009. These were taking place just down a side street. It was a mixture of BMX, Skateboarding, In line skating events. There were a few western competitors whom i presume must have been quite famous. They weren't tony hawks or anything but they were still quite impressive. The chinese looked on in awe. I don't think they'd ever seen a bike ridden like that! There was also a music stage and more amusingly a street dancing stage. This was funny as at first the professionals got up and did a little dance, they then bribed volunteers to come and have a go - using bags of doritos as the bait. I've uploaded the two versions - professional and amateur. I'll leave you to guess which attempt is which but I think the locals have got some way to go just yet!

f*cked up

I'm aware that my last posting was a little ahem.."effiminate" so i'll try to reassert my masculinity with this next post.

Saturday night I went to a place called Logo bar to watch Canadian punk band "F*cked up". I've seen them play in England one or two occaisions and never really been that impressed but it was only £4 to get in and had nothing better to do on the saturday evening so thought why not. Also I'd heard that the bar was quite cool and was meant to be a decent live venue. The only thing that i thought was a bit off was that the night was being promoted by group called STD - so they stamped STD on everybodies hands as you came in. I'm not sure if the chinese would understand how funny this is.

The first thing I noticed ws just how small the area for music was. The stage was the size of a toilet cubical, the bar was about 2 feet away from that and the area for the crowd to watch was probably about 15 yards long. It was literally smaller than my front room at home. Having seen F*cked up before I knew that this was going to generate quite a good atmosphere.

I turned up at 9pm as the clun opened at 8.30pm. It said on the flyer starts at 10pm but I thought that that meant F*cked up started at 10pm. In the end the first band came on about 10.30pm, and F*cked up didn't start till 1am. Still there was carlsberrg draft on tap and big steiners were 30yuan (£3) so i had 4/5 of those to get me in the mood. I met a nice chinese girl who spoke good english at the bar, she was waiting for her friends who had gone to a pop concert before coming here (contrast) so we kept each other company. Helpfully she looked after my glasses when ever i fancied going for a dance.

The line up was completed by two chinese bands - one called "The Mofos" who specialised in playing Ramones covers - which was quite good fun- and then a kind of hardcore/emo band called The Rogue Transmission - who were actually pretty decent to listen to. I'd heard some of their stuff when they were sound testing and wasn't impressed but they were really good for the actual show. I didn't get to see any Chinese bands last time I was here, but I did manage to buy a few cds so it was good to actually see some chinese punk in the flesh.

By the time the headliners came on the room was completely jam packed full. Mixed between local indie kids and expats. There were a few mentalists but it was all good fun. F*cked up are fronted by this massive fat skin head, who is quite good fun to watch. He often made his way into the crowd and was joining in with all the dancing. Whilst I went thinking I wouldn't like the music, i knew that he would put on a good show, and in the end I was quite impressed. Definitely worth the £4 it cost to get in - in england it would have 4 or 5 times that to go and see them.

The chinese people I were with had gone home by the time the main band started so I kept my glasses in my pocket for safety. By the time 4 songs had gone I checked my pockets and both lenses had come out. The lenses were in my pocket but the frames are pretty bent. After this I couldn're really be bothered staying for the rest of the songs. I was knackered and quite swetty so got a taxi home to listen to the football results and to watch the arenal v tottenham game.

Doing his part to improve the reputation of westerners in shanghai

All in all a good night - I was knackered and quite drunk when I got home and not sure how I managed to get up for 7.30am to go and play football.

Barbie World

Friday night I went out for a meal with the other expat lawyers again, which was good fun but they were going away for the week so they didn't fancy staying out too late. They were going to Suzhou and invited me to go with them but I've been before and was playing football on the sunday and had vague plans for the saturday night so turned them down. Think we are planning on going away somewhere in april as we have a "bank holiday" one week - tomb clearing festival!



Saturday day with the others out of town I wasn't too sure what to do with myself so just ended up walking around again. This time I walked around the French concession and ended up staying out for about 5 hours. One of the things I bumped into was ths Shanghai barbie shop/museum. this was an absolutely fascinating place. 6 floors of bright pink with everything you could possibly think of emblazoned with the barbie logo and on sale for a ridiculous price. They had a circular stair case that went up from ground to 6th floor that was encircled with different barbie toys. There was even a barbie cafe with barbie burgers and pink drink!

The people in there were mainly shanghai's new rich with their spoilt kids and other curious foreigners. Some of the kids were throwing horrendous stops because their parents refused to buy them things. Most of the girls in there had an obsession with pink - as you can see from the photo at the bottom.

The chinese have an obsession with blonde hair. The people who I were with before who had blonde hair would get stopped in the street all the time and people would try to pluck hairs from their heads as they walked past - so it's no wonder that they chinese have such love barbie. In all it was quite an odd experience - surely this type of thing only happens in china?

I'm a barbie girl - in a barbie world.

First week at work

Its been a good first week. I've just about settled into the flat and have overcome the time difference I think. Its a lot more tiring now that i've started work though so hope I'm not speaking too soon. Working hours over here a little different. In Leeds I'd genereally get in to the office for 7.30-8am - over here people turn up between 9.30 and 10! I spend the first hour or so caching up on emails from england sent over night and then start work proper. England starts work at 4pm our time so this means we usually get some enquiries coming in about 5pm, this means that you still end up staying quite late and this week I've been leaving on average about 8/9pm. In keeping with my behaviour habits in the Leeds office i managed to loose my pass on the first day which I don't think they were too pleased about!

One of the things I don't like about the training contract process is that just as you get to know everyone in your department well and start to really like everyone you then have to move on to somewhere new. It usually take a few weeks for you to really find your feet and start getting good work and start making friends. Luckily, I seem to have hit the ground running in Shanghai though and seem to get on with people quite well all ready and even over this first week have done a wide range of good work.

The office is quite small. I think there is about 9 lawyers in the office - 2 of which are australian, 1 of which is italian, the rest chinese. There are then secretaries and HR etc which probably brings the total number up to about 15 people in full - a start constrast to the 700 or so in Leeds! This makes for quite a small friendly team where everyone gets on. The office managing partner is Australian and he is really laid back so that makes for a really nice environment to work in. The core of the office is basically young chinese girls. The receptionist, trainee solicitors, secretaries and finance people are all between 22 and 30 - they're all good fun and have enjoyed trying to weasle some chinese out of me and are currently in process of conjuring up a chinese name for me. I'll let you know what they come up with.

Becuase the office is so small people are expected to pick up whatever comes in, this means that one day you can be doing one subject and the next you are doing something utterly different. This certainly makes for an interesting life but I think i'd prefer to be an expert in one thing rather than just a general good all rounder - although I'm some way off that even at the moment! This week I've done work on Competition and Antitrust, Emplyment law, Intellectual property and also got involved on a massive Biofuels project. I'm not too sure what i'll be doing this next week, but I think i've been drafted in as some kind of project manager on the biofuels thing so that will be interesting. The meeting lasted 8 hours so theres a lot of work to do on the back of that.

I'm lucky that I've got experience in Competition law and Projects from the UK as these seem to be too really big areas out here at the moment. The first competition laws came into effect here last August so its a great time to be here to see how it develops. I wrote an article last week on a recent decision and this has been published on our website and is to be put in a magazine so I'll see if I can put it up on here. One of the best things about being an international trainee is that I get wheeled out for clients everytime they come - this has meant that i've been taken out for lunch all but one day this week- the other I ordered some fried rice to come to my desk (for 80p - excellent!).

We set up our Hong Kong office around 2 weeks ago and this week the two managing partners came to shanghai to see how we are doing here and see what improvements need making. One of the guys I know from Leeds so it has been good to have someone I know about the office. Tuesday night we went out for a big meal to welcome then to the office and then went out to an Irish Pub for St Patrick's day. It was possibly the strangest St Patrick's day I've ever had and Guiness was £6.50 a pint! Luckily I only had to buy two pints!

I know from last time that Chinese girls are not really big drinkers , and the girls from the office had never tried Guiness before but I think they enjoyed their first St Paddy's. The bar was good fun and they had a "traditional irish" band playing "traditional irish" songs - such as Fields of Athenrei and Bye Bye American Pie?! They also played various bar games like mini skittles to win prizes. Of course the place was mainly expats but there was still quite a few chinese getting into the spirit of things - This girl (Monica) clearly has some work to do on her two handed drinking technique.

The morning after the night before I was feeling quite roung and woke up to some strange banging and shouting. I really couldn't work out what it was. I jumped out of bed to investigate what was going out - in a state of undress - pulled back the curtains and was greeted by the following site. All I can say is that I hope the privacy glass on the window was working properly.