David goes to China

Chinese doesn't have articles as such - no 'a' or 'the'.
So Chinese people speaking English have great difficulty knowing when to use 'the' especially.
I tried to find a simple rule and I'm struggling.

I will take the bus.
The bus goes from the station.
Buses go from the station.
The buses go from the station.
I like Chinese people.
I like the Chinese people.
Sunshine is good for you.

After this morning early rain, I caught a bus to the centre and did some mooching and shopping.
Then anohter bus to the summer palace over an hour away.
I was pleased that I was able to convey clearly to the conductor where I wanted to go and apy.
My mistake became clear about an hour later when the conductor encouraged me to get off because I had clearly enunciated completely ther wrong destination.
She gave up after a while and I ended up at the Summer Palace - a huuge (did I mention that everything is big here?) park with many magnificent buildings. And lots of people, 99% at least Chinese. Nowhere here is empty.
A lovely lakeside spot to eat my lunchtime noodles.
Back via an Internet cafe to blog some of this.

It's interesting to me that I'm refelecting much more (a good thing) on my experience here because I'm blogging. Not all of my reflection are making it online, both because some of them are quite personal and because of access difficulties.

Outside noisy hawking and spitting are common male and female esp older people.
Indoors farting is considered unremarkable.
Eating wet stuff with chopsticks invloves a lot of slurping and it is not consdiered necessary to close one's mouth or refrain from speech when eating.
Shoes are replaced with slippers on entry to the home. (Good job I brought mine)
Heaven knows what sins of etiquette I'm committing all day long.

Yang is my host - he's a tour guide at a music musem.
I don't know the names of the other family members - it's consdered too tricky.
They are

• mother-of
• father-of
• wife-of
• baby-of

Father-of manages some maintenance activity at or near Tiananmen.

Mother-of is housewife

Wife-of is a nurse.

Baby-of is 4 months old. He seems to get the full-time attention of at least one adult whenever he is awake and often two. In the morning, father-of leaves at 8am baby arrives soon after with wife-of, or Yang who breakfast then go to work, leaving baby-of with mother-of.

In the evening, all the family eat together (to the accompianment of Chinese news in Chinese or English documentaries about China) except the rota'd babyminder who alternately raises the baby-of to hyper level 7 and then tries to soothe it to sleep with random whistling.

Then mother-of and wife-of take baby-of across to Yang's apartment for sleep. After about half-an-hour Yang and mother-of switch apartments. During that half-hour basketball may be watched on TV.

Taitai, bath, solitude - there's no peace or personal space here for anyone

I don't miss - TV, coffee (I've had about three cups in 10 days), alcohol (which is a surprise!)

I've managed to upload a few, I think.
It's a painful process.

Home is a battered apartment block from the outside.
Inside clean and white walls. Wood flooring (tiles in wet areas).
Dark highly polished matching wardrobes, sidebaord etc.
Three-piece bamboo/rattan suite. Chinese decorated cushions.
Fold-away dining table.

When I go to places like France or Spain I can pass for a native as long as I keep my mouth shut, so locals often come up and speak to me.
Here they take one lookk and assume the cruel truth that I would barely understand a word - so they don't bother.
I *have* had some limited success asking for stuff in shops, though.

Today it rained early in teh morning, which was a blessing to calm down the dust. Water is in short supply; toilets only flushed when necessary. Tap water isn't drinkable; there's akind of water-cooler in the living room which is really a boiler. This ised to fill up a big flask so that cha is always available, but I drink more cah than anyone.
Electricity is also conserved (cost?) - lights only on when it's *dark*.

BJ and everything in it is big. Tiananmen Sq and Forbidden City no exception.
Forbidden City is impressive in scale and decor - comparable to Bangkok's temples - perhaps not quite so special or perhaps I'm getting blase. (And some of the majopr buildings were closed for renovation for Plympic crowds next year.)
Went by taxi today and found I was more relaxed walkign around - when I cycle I always seem to be in a hurry to arrive.
Set my knees free again. I've only just ralised that *everyone* wears trousers - I should have known that. Maybe in the summer...

I found some old men (the young ones are at work) playing pingpangqui in a park and joined in. We all had a good time.
Ended up not too disgraced and with a bit of a suntan.

I ate at a cake shop - strange I know.
Food at home is very fresh and different. Half a dozen dishes, mainly veg wiht one or two meat, plus rice or bread or noolde and usually a thickbrown rice broth which is quite tasteless, but very filling.
Breakfast is something breadlike - brioche, dry toast, flolded thick noodles, doughnuts (I'm using all these words loosely) again with brown rice broth.

500 days to go to BJ Olympics - ribbon cutting etc.
I went out to the Museum of Science and technology. The bottom floors are like Eureka - aimed at kids but quite interesting. Half of it sponsored eg by Intel, so no mention of Motorola or AMD in "History of the chip". Full of one enormous school party.
Top floor very different. History of Sci in China. Astrolabes, gunpowder, clocks, maths. Nice.
Afterwards I went to their ciname - and enormous Imax setup which was spherical - you lie back in yr seat to watch it all aroundm you. Very immersing, especially the helicopter travel - it felt like you were really there as you could look all around.

The "use of high-speed internet" promised turned out to be something of an exageration.
The PC was nearly 10 years old, struggling to run WindowsMe, full of virsues and connetced to a dial-up through a firewall which won't even let me read my own blog.
It's laos inconveneitnetly located physically.
So I need to find other methods. Im writing this form an internet cafe via Terminal Server.
I can't upload pics - sorry.

On Monday, Yang is at work and I get to go out on my own.
Back on the old clunker - I take out a spanner (having thought ahead this far) and raise the saddle about six inches. Joy! I can almost straighten my legs.
I'm wearing shorts, which attracts more attention than my foreignness.
I satrt off at a local park. At 10am on a Monday it's packed - nowhere in BJ is empty. People are variously playing volleyball, badminton, keepy-uppy or singing or partaking of organised tango lessons.

I cycle for about 1.5 hours up to the Nth of BJ and see the Olympic Nest. (BJ is biiig)

Back into town to find food. I stop at a random dumpling house, seats 50, 8 staff, no customers - it's about 2pm. They speak no English; about 5 of my 150 words are useful. I end up getting food (beef dumplings and a kind of rice broth, 30p) and am the caberet for the staff as I eat it. Everybody's happy.

Accidentally I end up in Tiananmen Sq on my way back. Whoa - that's one big sq.


Again I'm the only Caucasian - you only see westerners v close to the main tourist sights; and even then Chinese tourists vastly outnumber Ws.

It's hot! probably about 18C
And dusty.
And sometimes windy.

Yang and I went to see the Temple of Heaven - big, many buildings, impressive and heard a recital of traditional music.
A Bhuddist temple - enormous standing Bhudda about 18m tall. I've seen bigger, but only lying down.
Hutongs - the old alleyways and courtyard style houses.
Drum tower - big solid tower with large drum to tell BJers the time. Measured by a large water clock. Drum beating demo.
And parks - BJ has lovely parks.

Yang, who works as a tour guide in a musical museum. Has quite good English fortunately.
Unfortunately he's shy about using it, so we don't talk much.
He took me out on a bike ride of the city. I'm using and old clunker that weighs more than me and has roller brakes which, like the brakes on most bikes, barely work at all.
BJ has enormous number of cycles and most of them are in use most of the time. Very wide cylce lanes and cyclists cross junctions in packs - even the most rabid motorist (and the motorists don't appear to be rabid here) thinks twice before taking on the pack.

BJ is v flat, seesm almost to be downhill everywhere, except when the wind is against you.

After a nap I took a wander around the local streets. I say a wander, but I was out for 3 hours. I didn't see another Caucasian in that time. I attracted some interest, but only a few people nudged their neighbours and pointed.
Saw some lovely streetlights.
Went down the backstreet, disused railway tracks etc. Ended up in a veg market which happened to be near home fortunately. BJ is quite N/S, E/W kind of city and the sun is relaibly S at midday, so I didn't find it too tricky.

Home is a small apartment in the Sth of BJ. Up a few flights of stairs, looks dilapidated outside, very clean and fine inside.
Consists of one lounge/dining room, one double bedroom, on single bedroom, a 5ftx5ft wetroom/toilet and a 5ftx9ft kitchen. Home to mother and father of host; he lives in same apartment block with wife and 4 month old baby. Only host (=Yang) speaks English, so my vast knowledge of Chinese is very handy.
I thought they had a parrot - there's a large rectangular box covered with red velvet - but it revealed itslef to be a television. Everything is kept with a cover - eevn the telephone ahs a cloth over it, the remote control is covered in plastic...

The flight over was uneventful. Boring stopover in Paris cooped up in the international transfer Gucci shopping mall. Sat next to very uncommunicative French teenager who regretted choosing a window seat and isolating himself from the other 20 French teenagers I'm sure. Got a couple of hours sleep.
Then we're over China - the Great Wall through the portholes.
The plane also had a nosecam - the first plane I've been on with one - which was interesting in the air, v scary on landing.
My homestay host met me at the airport and took me home for a nap.

I've just spent an hour donwloading and installing remote desktop client on a handcranked machine connected via a wet peice of string through a fierce firewall so I can make this post. It may be my last for a while. Pictures are out fo the question. Apologies to all my fans - I may have to write this blog when I get back home...

I can't remember the last time I was ill.

Now, with impeccable timing, I've had a throat infection for the last few days - the very few days in which I was planning to really learn Mandarin. Now I'll have to do it on the plane - good job it's a long flight.

Now I think about about a similar thing happened when I intended to learn Spanish on the Santander ferry; despite mirror-flat seas (I'm not a good sailor) I was ill from an infection all the way across. Thankfully the Spanish medics spoke English...

I'm heading off to Beijing at the end of next week and my vocabulary is a modest 150 words or so, not all of it available to me in all the forms I might need.

I can translate all of it between English and Pinyin (not necessarily with the right tones) in both directions. I can read maybe 60% in characters and write about 40%.

When I'm listening I find it difficult to distinguish some of the starting consonant sounds, so I need a lot of context or familiar content to understand spoken Mandarin.

I can speak all the words I know with only occasional mispronunciations, but I'm sure that my accent is dire and my tone is often wrong.

Now I need to concentrate on standard phrases I'm going to need -

• Please speak more slowly.
• I don't understand.
• Two beers, please.
• Where's the toilet?

I discovered this week that a colleague of mine will be visiting her family in Beijing with her husband while I'm there. Maybe we'll meet up. Small world!