Wallace and Gromit save the day

So in order to earn my holiday over the last week I had to work all weekend, the weekend before (it's just how it works here). I decided to use the old teacher trick of putting on a video. Let me just say that this was not just me skiving out of having to design a whole new fantastic lesson for just 6 classes but a conscious effort to introduce the children of China to British culture and entertainment (can you smell the bullshit?)! But basically I wasn't going to waste time planning an entire lesson and then trying to get 6 classes to willingly partake in it during the weekend - that would have just ruined everyone's weekend even more! And they've been nagging at me to show them a video so this ticked that box.

So I decided that it was about time I introduced the teenagers of China to the British institution that is Wallace and Gromit! I had all four short films on offer and they absolutely loved it! I wasn't sure if they'd get it or not but it seems that Wallace and Gromit can bridge both cultural and language barriers - i've never heard them so silent and engaged for so long! They even got most of the humour. Even the video questions afterwards went ok....

So basically this is a public announcement to any teacher who has to work the weekend - Wallace and Gromit is the way forward!

G x

The impromptu holiday: Days 5 & 6

Friday 7th - Day 5

So my trip to Hangzhou started with a fast train ride from Suzhou. I did have to stand the whole way because there were no seated tickets left (that's what happens when you buy last minute tickets here) but it was only for an hour and a half, so it wasn't too bad.

One thing I never expected to see on a train in China is the Trolley Dollys walking around selling Haagen Dazs ice cream! Every train seems to do it. There also seems to be lots of Haagen Dazs ice cream shops in this country. Maybe its a favourite here...

I arrived in a rather overcast Hangzhou and spent a while trying to find my hostel. It's in an traditional, pedestrianised part of the city which is full of shops selling Chinese trinkets. If I had more room in my bag I would have packed it with things by now. I've still got another day here so so plenty time left to backtrack and buy myself a Chinese Saxophone (it looks more like a wooden pipe instrument - I want to know what it sounds like though!).

I was originally aiming for the West Lake (the massive expanse of water that Hangzhou is known for) when I went for my afternoon outing but I instead ended up Wu hill looking across to Westlake. Sadly the slightly smoggy air ruined the view slightly, but at least I know what direction to walk in tomorrow.

I'm sitting writing this in the hostel, whilst plucking up courage to go out in the cold for and evening exploring session of my surroundings and the very kind Chinese man who sat down next to me has just given me a lolly. I'm not going to lie, it tastes awful. The outside is tastes like treacle and goodness only knows what the ball in the middle is supposed to be. I think it tastes salty but I can't decide. I'm very jealous of the tea he's just made himself though! He did have to use his own mug though - I don't think we are quite that friendly yet!

Saturday 8th - Day 6

The only word to describe the weather on my second in Hangzhou was dreich! It rained all day long - it was like being back at home (just not quite as cold). Despite my desire to just hide indoors all day I walked all the way West Lake - it took 5 hours! The West Lake is a very famous lake in China due to it's beauty - it's even on the 1 Yuan notes (I learnt this from my train buddy on the way back to Shanghai). Sadly I don't know how beautiful the lake and surrounding area was because I couldn't actually see it (as can be seen in the photographs). I have just googled it though and the place looks breathtaking on a clear day!

https://www.google.com/search?q=hangzhou+west+lake&rlz=1C1_____enGB496GB496&biw=1366&bih=638&noj=1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=KGFjVMj2FejdsAS9moLwBQ&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ

The pictures kind of make me want to go back on a nice day but since the city is over 1200km away that's not going to happen.

The next street food I tried on my walk around the lake was corn-on-the-cob - it had been boiled for a bit too long. I'll have too try the bbq/roasted one next time. I feel i'm getting the hang of this China living - brollie in one hand, corn-on-the-cob in the other and camera around my neck (if I wasn't for so obviously foreign I could be a local). 

On my walk I took a detour in past the National Chinese Tea Museum. Amazingly I didn't get lost; Hangzhou seemed to really mess up my sense of direction - it took me forever to find the lake first thing! A museum on tea held so much potential and promise for a tea lover - which it didn't fulfil! There could have been tea tastings galore, and demonstrations on tea making but sadly no such luck. I do now know what a traditional tea cake looks like (it's the same shape as a Tunnock's one as well!)

Some pictures from my walk around West Lake...

Continuing the taste adventure for the day I tried some hot milk tea after my walk. I would have loved a cup of Yorkshire tea with milk but that was never going to happen. Milk tea is very popular, i'm not sure what kind of tea they use, possibly Chinese black tea, but the taste was a weird hybrid between tea and Horlicks - once I got used to it it was ok but the first mouthful was a bit strange.

After a speedy train ride back to Shanghai in the evening (1 hour) I managed a very brief but lovely catch-up with some friends from Beijing who had been in Shanghai whilst I was in Hangzhou (they were off to Hangzhou on Sunday morning - I didn't recommend the tea museum).

I stayed in a different hostel on Saturday night to the one I had stayed in before. I should start a hostel review blog - I slept in 4 different beds and one airport bench in the space of a week.

Sunday 9th - Day 7

The last day of my holiday was pretty low key. I had the start of a cold (which has consequently kept me off work for two days - an oral English teacher who can't talk isn't much use) so I wasn't in a very touristy mood. Saying that I had another quick flick through the guide book and with the recommendation of my friends from the night before I went to a tourist street called Tianzifang. This is a quirky little warren of streets packed full of interesting little shops and chock-a-block with tourists! They even have a toilet restaurant. Toilets are the seats and all the crockery is toilet shaped. The picture of a swirl of chocolate ice cream in a toilet was just too much me!

After getting annoyed at people thinking they were slyly taking pictures of me (I really wasn't in the mood - clearly my grumpy face didn't cross the culture barrier) I decided to go the airport slightly early.  The weirdest thing happened on the metro; Some girl in a 'naughty schoolgirl' type outfit got on the metro and started posing for the photographer that she was with which the rest of us normal passengers looked on trying to work out what the hell was going on. I was trying to work out who the pictures for for - Shanghai metro marketing campaign, school transport department, metro enthusiasts club...I turned round so that my foreign face isn't forever associated with whatever was going on!

After my busy week I was pretty pleased to get home. I even managed to pinch another Air China blanket (you can never have enough blankets), I did get a funny look off the hostess this time though!

G x

The impromptu holiday: Days 3 & 4

So the next part of my solo trip on the east coast was to Suzhou - a handy 25 minutes from Shanghai on the fast train.

Suzhou is known as the 'Venice of the East' due to all the canals and waterways in the city, so fittingly, I discovered, the two cities are twinned. At a population of 1.3million people it's pretty small-fry compared to a lot of cities in this country. 

Wednesday 5th (Day 3)

After a lazy start in Shanghai (this was a holiday after all) and a lot of sitting outside Suzhou railway station trying to work out the most fail-safe way to get to my hostel (I settled for the metro) it was 1.30pm before I'd got to the hostel and dumped my bags. I hadn't realised before I'd arrived in Suzhou, that the centre of the city (where the majority of places of interest are) is just one large square which is surrounded by water on all sides - this means that everything in central Suzhou is a perfectly walk-able distance. Good news for me because everything down-south is so big it takes forever to walk anywhere!

On the first afternoon I decided to walk south towards the river and the tourist attractions there.  I've always got a soft-spot for water so the combination a river, sunshine and Chinese bridges was a winner. I had a nice time just wandering about watching the locals and taking pictures (whether any of them are any good will be a different story).

On my way there I came across the Confucius temple (every Chinese city worth it's tea seems to have one). They had some old stones with original city plans and layouts carved into them which were interesting to look at.

I managed to accidentally sneak into the Pan Gate gardens without paying (still not quite sure what happened there). The Pan Gate is a water gate for the river that is connected to the last remaining 300m of ancient city wall. This area was very pretty and if only I could speak Chinese I could have latched myself onto a Chinese tour group to tell me all about it (there were a lot of those in Suzhou).

Pan Gate gardens

Strangely time seemed to pass quite slowly so I managed to fit more in than I expected in my afternoon. Walking is definitely the way to see central Suzhou you'd miss too many of the interesting, lively little streets in a bus or taxi.

After stopping for some street food in the form of a baked sweet potato (very popular here, and I'd never had a baked sweet potato before), I just decided to wander the busy streets and alleyways for a while to see what goings-on I could find. I walked down a lovely street which had trees down the middle and was lined with lots of lovely shops - it was hard to limit myself to window shopping and not buying the lot. All the winter coats looked so beautiful and enticing but definitely not required in Foshan!

SWEET POTATO!

Whilst wandering along I bumped into one of the Suzhou based ELAs on his way home from work. I'm getting pretty good at chance holiday meetings it seems! So my evening plans took a much more exciting turn as I ended up joining a lot of the other ELAs, who work in the city, for dinner, fireworks and giant sparklers in their favourite pub (it was November 5th and it's an expat bar). We were missing not having a bonfire though!

Thursday 6th (Day 4)

The promise of a Chinese silk museum was just too much of a lure to ignore so that was where I headed first on my second day in Suzhou. I detoured in past the North Temple Pagoda on my way there - at 9 stories tall I wanted to see what the views over Suzhou were like. From a birds-eye view Suzhou is not the most picturesque of cities but its got sections that are definitely packed with character and charm.

Suzhou from the 9th level of the Pagoda

It turned out the Silk museum was closed. It also turned out the man chasing me down the street had been trying to tell me this. I had ignored him because I thought he was trying to sell me a taxi ride or sightseeing trip like all the overly persistent locals who had approached me were trying to do!

So after this nice man showed me the sign saying the factory was closed he showed me to the nearby silk factory instead. I nearly ended up amoungst a group of Chinese models in long silk dresses when I walked it - that would really have lowered the tone of the promotional video they were making!

The factory (naturally) had a an extensive shop. I very nearly bought a Chinese silk gown but I couldn't decide on which colour - I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunities to rectify the situation. They were also demonstrating how they turned silk cocoons into silk thread and how they stretch the cocoons to make duvets. So my desire for a silk museum was fulfilled. I also hadn't realised how big silk worms work and that you had to kill them to get the silk (I was clueless about silk production before then).

The trusty little guidebook map then led me towards 'The Humble Aministrator's Garden'. This is an enormous, UNESCO listed garden. According to the bumf, one of the top 4 gardens in China. I discovered I was following in the steps of Margaret Thatcher by visiting it (her's was the only picture I recognised on their visitor wall of fame). This was a lovely, and very busy garden, full of little pagoda huts, beautiful flower beds and traditional stone bridges - a nice way to spend a sunny afternoon.

Suzhou was definitely the perfect place for shop window and market stall browsing - I was in my element just wandering around seeing what was on offer. In my wandering I was making a bee-line for Pinjiang Lu. Pinjiang Lu is traditional, canal lined Suzhou street - most of the canals have now been paved over. There were some traditional hand-rowed boats taking tourists down the canal so Suzhou definitely does live up to it's 'Venice of the East' name. I spent quite a while merrily wandering along this street and noseying in past some of the quirky shops - they even had a 'Cat Cafe' (I didn't go in but I think you drink tea with cats rather than eat the cats...)

Traditional hand-rowed boats on the canal

My last sightseeing trip of the day involved me getting lost inside the Soochow University campus - I'm definitely not going to follow the guidebook anymore if it suggests a foray into another university to look at the buildings - thankfully some students directed me out, otherwise I might still be there...

To end my trip to Suzhou I met up with the others again for happy hour at The Bookworm (the pub we'd been to the night before). A nice way to end my little visit to the city.

G x

The impromptu holiday: Days 1 & 2

So because it always takes me so long to give a a summary of my holidays and trips (they always seem to end up as a blow by blow account) I'm going try and write as I go along. It will mean pictures will have to be added at a later date though (the technology isn't quite that good) and the story telling might be all over the place. It's also written on my phone so there will be lots of typos...

I ended up coming to Shanghai by plane instead of my original plan of train. Purely because the only train ticket I could get was a seat (instead of a bed) for 16 hours. 2 hours in a car and my bum goes numb so I wasn't rating that. There were also no return tickets available to having to ring the school and tell them I was stuck in Shanghai would not have made me popular!

So my late night flight from Guangzhou to Shanghai got in at 12.30am. So naturally I decided to do the classy thing and crash at the airport until the metro started again in the morning. As a nights sleep goes it was surprisingly not the worst I've had. The other 'terminal crashers' around me seemed fairly comfortable as well. It was bloody freezing though - stealing the blanket from the plane was definitely a good call...if only I'd had the courage to take the pillow as well!

Monday 3rd - (Day 1)

I decided to take the frivolous mode of transport from the airport - the Maglev. I'm not entirely sure how it works but its kept on the track by magnets and the top speed when I was on it was 300km/hr...it was a novelty and something to tick off the to-do list if nothing else. It did at least mean I was guaranteed a seat and didn't have to fight with everyone else on the metro. The map of Shanghai I picked up here has also proved a life saver.

As soon as I stepped of the nice cosy metro in the Pudong area of Shanghai I was treated to a weather reality check. My clothing selection was far to optimistic for 18oC (when I'm comfortably used to 28oC + humidity). It has shown me I need to start fashioning myself a winter wardrobe...

In light of my ill-preparedness (not a word I'll be teaching my pupils) my stolen blanket has come into a league of its own in terms of its versatility. It is now doubling as a wrap jacket in the chillier evenings.

So as wonderful as my blanket jacket is, It did mean I started off Monday morning looking a bit like a lost Romanian gypsy (2nd day curly hair and and maxi skirt didn't help). As luck would have it I decided to head to the Pudong area of Shanghai first. The Pudong area is the modern, skyscraper filled side of the river. Which also means at 8am on the first Monday morning of November it is full of smartly dressed business people...and me (looking like a tramp).

After behaving like a tourist for a while (taking lots of pictures and getting lost) I decided to copy Shanghai's hard workers and have breakfast at the Chinese equivalent of McDonald's. And the porridge style thing (it looked like cous-cous grains) I had was much better than anything I've had at McDonald's. Maybe I'll start a western franchise...

The Skyscrapers of Pudong

So after breakfast I continued my wandering around and ended up on the very pretty and peaceful riverside promenade. The sun was out and my lack of sleep and cold feeling drew me to the sunny spot. I also had to find somewhere to sit down and plan my day. I decided on heading to the Bund area first, which was directly across the river from where I was sitting. This area is full of beautiful old buildings and basically where everyone goes to take pictures of the famous Pudong skyline (I was no exception). After walking along to the end of the Bund I found some Cows which are part of the Shanghai cow exhibition (or something like that).

Looking across to the Bund

I also found some Chinese girls (now new wechat friends) who were going to a traditional Chinese tea ceremony and invited me along. I love how friendly Chinese people are. This unexpected surprise in my day was really nice. One of my new Chinese friends translated the whole ceremony for me, and got very excited when I could say words or small phrases in Chinese (ego boost for me). The ceremony involved tasting 6 types of traditonal Chinese tea, each were served using different cups and pouring methods - it's definitely an art-form. Stroking a lucky frog, which had been showered in tea first, was also part of the ceremony. Obviously I just stroked every lucky part of the frog - so fortune, health, love and everything else should be coming my way any day now... The price for good quality tea in China is (I now know) expensive so after the ceremony I parted from my new friends before they bankrupted me entirely! But I've decided to see my investment in tea and the tea ceremony as a unique Chinese cultural experience - one which I've been wanting to see for a while.

For the rest of the afternoon I was following the guidebook. I saw the former British Consulate building, which was very grand looking (as you'd expect). I walked down East Nanjing road, which is a very busy shopping street. I lost count of the amount of times I got people coming up to me listing things I might want to buy from them...

I also went to the Shanghai museum, which is in the People's Square (a big park in the middle of the road). The museum was nice (full of traditional Chinese furniture, jade statues and Chinese paintings) but I have to confess I raced through it - Chinese paintings, whilst pretty, aren't really my thing.

The arrival at the hostel was a welcome break for my feet, as well as a chance for it to get dark so that I could go and see the famous skyline of Shanghai at night. 

The bright (and pretty) lights of Shanghai are going to have to be my equivalent to bonfire night fireworks for this year. But I spent ages just looking at the changing lights and the brightly coloured boats going past so I'm quite happy with that exchange.

The 'Blanket Jacket' in it's glory (and the Shanghai skyline)

I can definitely see why people fall in love with Shanghai, the evening atmosphere definitely won me over.

Tuesday 4th (Day 2)

I started off my day with a trip to Qibao old town. This is a traditional little village away from the centre of Shanghai which has been preserved for tourists to explore. I really liked it here, anything that seems traditionally Chinese tends to win my attention quite easily - I think it's because I'm used to living in a city full of shiny, new buildings. There were tourist sites in it the town that you were supposed to go and visit but I got so absorbed in raking about the little shops (which were full of endless gifts to buy - foot-bath anyone?!? - And different street foods to eat) that I forgot to go into any of them. I don't feel I cheated myself, I was having too much fun fighting my way down the narrow alleys with the other tourists.

One of the lovely bridges spanning the canal into the Old town

The newly downloaded guidebook on China has definitely been a good last minute buy - everything I've done has been straight out of it - I lose count of the amount of times I look at it in a day.

I decided to check out the Yuyuan gardens area of Shanghai next. When you get off the metro you walk into a bazaar. There were a disappointing number of Starbucks and department stores stuffed into these old fashioned buildings for me, but it was nice just to wander around - it was a bit difficult to avoid being shoved into the nearest dumpling shop queue but I survived. I got so used to shooing people off who were trying to get me to buy things that I almost ignored a nice group of Chinese people who wanted me to take their photograph. This led to a nice little conversation (in English) about their trip to Shanghai and my trip to Shanghai and what I should go and see whilst I was there. They were quite impressed when I said I'd already done everything they suggested To slightly escape the crowds I went into Yuyuan gardens themselves. They were pretty, Chinese style gardens (I don't have much more to say there).

In trying to cover as many areas of the city as possible, I went to the French concession. It promised lovely rebuilt French buildings and tree lined streets. I wasn't so enamored. It was just reconstructed buildings filled with Starbucks and lots of Western-wannabe restaurants offering afternoon tea. I only lasted 10 minutes. The evening I spent in the hostel languishing on the sofa (I don't have a sofa in my little home), speaking to the other temporary residents and planning the Suzhou part of my trip was definitely more enjoyable. I've decided, apart from the fact that they had sofas, my hostel was great because the street outside the closest metro station was packed lots of good street food - nothing like dumplings and steamed buns for breakfast!

G x

Shanghai here I come

So my surprise 5 days off has turned into a surprise 9 and a half days off! So I have decided to go to Shanghai and surrounding cities for a few days. My current plan of action is Shanghai and then I want to try and see Suzhou, Hangzhou and Nangping if I can fit it all in.

I was going to take the train but they were all sold out since this trip is so last minute - the dates have changed 3 times in 3 days - so I'm flying with China Air.

I'm hoping Shanghai has postcards a plenty because the south of China doesn't seem to do postcards (I haven't forgotten about you all - Promise!)

I hope everyone is having a nice Halloween - i'm a bit jealous to be missing Bonfire Night but hopefully the nation that invented the firework will be putting on a show sometime soon!

G x