V’s been reading my old blogs from my days in Prague and asked me why I don’t write about my life any more. I said that it wasn’t that interesting, and that as I bored myself writing about it, I dread to think what anyone else will make of it. She disagreed. The upshot of all this is that I’m going to try to write a full record of this week, and see if it’s in any way readable or interesting. Please let me know what you think, usually-non-commenting page-hit-people.

Woken up by the baby at just after five am. At first he is crying, but later he is just crawling around, gurgling, making strange noises etc. Either way he needs watching. Carry him around for a bit, then at seven thirty V’s mother takes him off me so she can give him his bath. Go back to bed but not sleepy any more, so just sit up for a while, then go off to have breakfast. Baby is having some too, but V’s parents are on the case (and having a very minor row) so I have some toast and an egg, then take my tea upstairs to study Chinese for a while. V gets up at 9.30, still not a full night’s sleep, but enough for a while.
I’d had a plan yesterday to make sausages and mash for lunch, but it turned out the bag of potatoes had all been used. It’s always a bit of a struggle to make anything – V’s parents are quite posessive about the use of the kitchen, and have little or no desire to try “foreign food” and while V is usually keen, she has a few too many ideas about what she wants. I get dressed and am about to go out to the market when V’s father suddenly finds more potatoes, so I cut my trip short and just take the dog and the rubbish outside, then come back to wash the potatoes and put them on to boil.
While I’m waiting I read this, before going back to finish cooking. Mash and sausages are good, gravy is a bit rubbish. A marginal success, but at least M gets to try mash for the first time, clacking it around his mouth.
After lunch V tells me she hasn’t got around to telling her parents we want to go out in the afternoon, so I have to do it. They take it fairly well. Then we take nearly an hour getting ready to go as V can’t find a skirt. The delay suits me.
Eventually we get out of the door. M is learning how to wave goodbye, so we make a big show of it and upset the dog. The bus into town is even more packed and uncomfortable than usual, then there are two subway trains and another, much nicer bus. We get to Nanluoguxiang around 2.30 and spend an hour and a half looking in various shops for Christmas presents. V had already done the reconnaissance on Saturday, so it was fairly painless, and we buy three whole presents. Before V came along I’d never spent more than a day Christmas shopping, but now it’s a serious business, made more difficult by the inescapable fact that everyone probably already has all the Chinese stuff they need.
After shopping I persuade V to come to a cafe. She selects the Tibetan one, and we try yak butter tea for the first time. It tastes a bit like milky bovril. V says it isn’t tea, so I tell her all about beef tea.
It’s getting a bit late so we leave Nanluoguxiang and go to catch the bus. V gets off after a couple of stops – she has something else to do and I’ve got a class to teach. It’s a ten minute walk from the bus stop and two subway trains again, and for a while I’m concerned that I won’t get there with enough time to make copies. In the end I reach the school with fifteen minutes to spare, most of which are spent fighting with the photocopier. There are twenty students there, and I trot out an old class on writing e-mails. I’ve misjudged the level a bit, and it’s too hard for them, but thankfully I know to overprepare these days, and we cut to the activity before everyone drifts off.
After class I take the subway home, listening to a podcast where an American guy talks about his experience of spending eight months in a Chinese jail. It doesn’t sound very nice. I get home at quarter past eight and eat dinner. V’s father has cooked a hotpot with radish, beef, tofu skin and Chinese leaf, which I eat by myself as everyone else already had their share hours before.
I spend the next couple of hours on the internet. M is sitting in the cot next to me – sometimes I pick him up and play with him, but he’s in an odd mood today – hard to entertain and east to upset. When we put on his pyjamas he screams with annoyance. After 11 we watch another 40 minutes of ‘Eat Drink Man Woman’ – but then it’s midnight, and we should really both be going to sleep.

At the start of this week the landlord turned up at short notice to fix the heating upstairs in the flat. On the one hand this was good news – the upper floor was freezing last winter – but on the other hand we had to send the dog away (he doesn’t allow dogs in the flat) and put up with two days of disruption.

He arrived at 9am, while I was having a lie-in, accompanied by his favourite odd-job man and another two guys, one of whom turned out to be the man who sold us our dog. Tongzhou is a small world, even if there are a million people here. They banged, drilled and sawed for the next two days, and left the apartment with an extensive system of pipes, around 100m of the things, giving the upstairs floor a new industrial estate vibe. It didn’t occur to them to lay down any sheets or move furniture, so everything was covered in an inch-deep layer of plaster dust – chairs, computers, books – everything. That took the best part of the next two days to clear up. Every time you brushed and mopped the floor you’d release another layer of dust which would settle on the clean floor an hour or so later. We had to keep the baby downstairs for the whole time.

The other thing they fixed, on request, was the wiring system for our water bed. It’s been comfortable all summer, but now winter is getting close it’s almost too cold to sleep on already. The heating system it came with had a mess of frayed wires and a broken plug. The odd job man claims to have fixed it now. Have a look and see whether you think I should use it. The white part is insulating tape wrapped around a bit of frayed wire. The plug is new. Is it just me, or does it still look a bit dodgy? I’ve been assured that the water and electrics are entirely separated, but still….

Can I really trust this thing?

Today is, in a sense, the 100th birthday of modern China, but you’d be hard pressed to notice it.
On the 10th of October 1911 a small bomb was accidentally detonated in Wuchan, part of modern-day Wuhan, injuring one man. When he was taken to the hospital the staff discovered he was a member of a revolutionary group and informed the authorities. The group’s cover blown, they decided to launch their coup – this was the start of the Wuchang Uprising, which led to the downfall of imperial China and the proclamation of the Republic Of China on January 1st of the following year. The first president was Sun ZhongShan, generally referred to as the father of modern China.
Unfortunately the story that follows is not quite so heroic. While China had a president and an officially democratic system, in reality most of the country fell into the hands of opposing warlords, and decades of civil wars followed, only to be ended by the shockingly brutal Japanese occupation of the 1930s and 40s. It wasn’t until Mao Zedong’s victory in 1949 that China was again united.
The losers in the civil war were the nationalists, the party led by Sun ZhongShan in the 1910s. As they were routed from the mainland the remaining nationalist forces evacuated to Taiwan (controversially taking the country’s gold reserves with them), where they have ever since continued to refer to themselves as the ‘Republic of China‘.
Taiwan still celebrates October 10th as their national day – they call it ‘Double Ten Day’. On the mainland, though, there is no holiday and no real recognition. My wife, educated not 50 miles from the site of the uprising, was not even told about it at school. China’s holidays and celebrations are of two types – traditional, ancient celebrations with elaborate customs and boring official holidays where everyone gets time off in order to not really celebrate a Party anniversary. Double Ten is too mixed-up and ambiguous to celebrate, and doesn’t do anything to glorify the current regime. Today, however, is the hundredth anniversary, and it appears that The Party have decided to relent a little. I suspect that the main reason would be that ignoring it completely would arouse more interest than doing it half-heartedly.
Last week I was going through Tiananmen Square with V when we saw a huge portrait of Sun Zhongshan hanging up in front of Mao’s mausoleum, a little baffling as he wasn’t present at the Wuchang Uprising, and did nothing to organise it. Icons are always preferable to difficult questions. Then last night there was a very dull ceremony on TV where various CCP leaders took to the podium to briefly mention Sun, who had ‘opened the door’ before going on to the usual eulogies about how The Party had developed modern China. It wasn’t a particularly fascinating event, the only item of interest being the appearance of former president Jiang Zemin, who had been rumoured to be dead since his no-show at the CCP’s 90th anniversary earlier in the year.

Today there was a stranger ceremony, live from Wuchang on national TV. Events of this sort are generally ruthlessly choreographed, so when there is a slightly disorganised air it seems bizarre. It took place in a public park, the ground covered in unattractive plastic sheets. Party officials stood in rows, but many of them scratched their heads or legs and looked around. At the back there were rows of girls in uniform, but when there was a long shot several of them could be seen to be talking to each-other. These may seem like minor issues, but in China this is distinctly odd.
The next big anniversary is on January 1st, the hundredth anniversary of the declaration of the republic. It’s unlikely that much more of a fuss will be made for that, though there’s always scope for a surprise in China.

I live in a house with a family consisting of four Chinese people, one half-Chinese baby and a dog, nationality undetermined. I might also be part of the family, it depends. My Mandarin still isn’t up to a level where I can communicate with them freely – and Mandarin isn’t even the main language of the house. Generally people get by in a dialect I’ll call WuXueHua, and if I want to know what’s going on I’ll have to learn that instead.
I’ve never properly written about the family before, partly because they’re just part of my world now. But I’ve got some free time this week, so here they are.

The Father

The Mother

The Elder Daughter

The Younger Daughter

The Grandson

The Dog

…and then there’s me.

It’s been a busy late summer with work, baby and visits, and this blog seems to have been one of the first casualties. Thankfully work’s dried up a bit and we’re just about to reach a week-long national holiday, so sporadic service is about to be resumed. So, what have I been up to?
Well, the first thing is the baby of course. He’s HUGE now (I fully expect to be repeating this mantra for the next 15 years, so you’d better all get used to it) and it’s increasingly hard to believe he was inside V just over half a year ago. It’s not a bad existence for him right now, dozing, waking up, making speech-like burbling noises, crying, drinking milk, etc, and we seem to be coping ok as he’s got three adults to look after him 24-7 (plus my part-time efforts). Living with V’s parents continues to fluctuate between comfort and mutual annoyance, but for the moment at least it’s the most convenient option – so convenient, in fact, that we’ve signed up for another year together, the deciding factor being the massive potential hassle of going out own ways.
Work is a fair bit different now – the TEFL school has wound itself down almost to the point of disappearing, and although I’m still officially the “headmaster” it’s a very possible that I won’t do any work for them again. To make up for the lost hours I’m doing in-company training for a European company, who pay me more for working 8 hours in a week than the TEFL school paid me for working 40. It’s tougher work though, with more preparation needed, and on the other side of Beijing and out of my comfort zone.
Late summer hasn’t been anywhere near as lazy as anticipated, mainly because there has been a steady stream of visits and social occasions. First there was a wedding, then my dad & stepmother came to visit (a good chance to see the sights again, but Beijing decided to throw the most English weather it could find at them, and the sights were barely visible through the haze all week – still, we tried lots of great food), then another friend returned from repatriation exile, and finally this week there was a sudden and unexpected reunion for 3/4 of V’s gang of childhood friends – so this week we’ve been taking them to have roast duck, hang out in Nanluoguxiang, etc, etc.
It’s 11.52pm as I type this and I really ought to get to bed. Tomorrow is the first day of the 7-day national holiday, a chance for me to finally get up to date with this, and a number of other things.