It has almost been a week that I’ve been in China, and the puzzle pieces seem to be falling into place nicely. I now have a Chinese name: Da Zhi. I can even write the characters by myself, but I do struggle a bit with the pronunciation. Even that thought is getting better and better, and I can say Ni Hao (Hello) and xie xie (thank you) so perfectly that the people continue with long strings of Chinese because they think I can say more.

Anyway, so from the previous post just to fill in a few blanks. At Wuhan airport, my final airport of arrival in China, I met Jack, a Chinese English teacher from the school where I am teaching. Friendly fellow, very helpful and courteous and refused every time to let me carry my 16kg bag which was about as big as him. I guess strength doesn’t always follow size as he managed well without breaking a sweat in the Wuhan humidity.

As I missed my intended connection in Guangzhou, I arrived quite late and it was too late for us to start with the mammoth trek to Shiyan. A taxi took us to the far out reaches of Wuhan (or it could have been the centre for all I know, quite a big place actually) where we found a hotel to crash for the night. Quite possibly the first time that a foreigner has ever stayed at this hotel, because as the doors opened on the floor our room was on, the attendant, of which there is one on every floor, nearly sprained her eyebrows as her eyes stretched as big as they could upon seeing me get out of the lift.

After a quick shower in a room which was no different to any western hotel, we headed downstairs for some much needed dinner. After a short discussion about what I do and don’t eat, he ordered a beef dish, a chicken dish and a vegetable dish with a side order of rice. It was massive portions for two people and I didn’t manage to eat as much as I would have liked to. I’m sure my stomach shrunk in Malaysia, as I ate as little as possible from the large variety of fried foods there.

Jack also introduced me to some Chinese beer which game in a ridiculously large bottle at an insanely low price. I drank with vigor as the beer was crisp and refreshing. I would regret this for the next two days as all the traveling, walking and not having any money to buy water dehydrated me a bit more than I realised, and I am convinced there are some illegal chemicals in the beer and I suffered a pounding headache until I managed to rehydrate myself properly again. Nevertheless, sleep that night, came easily.

The next morning we woke up early to go to the train station where we had to still buy our tickets for the trip to Shiyan. We took a short taxi ride as the morning traffic hadn’t started and soon headed into what looked like a residential area with lots of high rise apartment buildings, before we turned a corner and suddenly found ourself on a big square which was in front of the train station. Big squares seems to be quite popular in front of areas where people would gather, such as bus and train stations, shopping centres, etc. Usually tiled or paved with brick, but vast and often empty.

We waited an hour or so for our train to depart and when we finally moved through the narrow crowded tunnels below the platform and crammed into the coach, we found and occupied our assigned seats. The train was packed with not a single seat available. The seating configuration I guess was not unlike trains anywhere else in the world - one row with 3 seats left, and one row with 3 seats right. The seats where configured so that 3 face 3 back to back with the next 3 that face 3. The spaces where narrow which forces you to sit pert for the whole journey. And the journey took… 7 hours. This was longer than the two flights I had to take from Malaysia to China put together.

The train went annoyingly slow at times and I wondered whether this was really necessary, as the track was straight and on flat ground. The scenery was at least mildly interesting and slowly changed from very urban to suburban to rural and we even traveled through some farm land. Shiyan is in the mountains, and after what felt like forever, we finally reached the mountainous areas, passed through some long tunnels and arrived in Shiyan. From here, it was another short taxi ride until we made it to the school.

I was taken to my dormitory, or apartment, I guess, depending on your point of view. I have a living room, a kitchen, a bedroom, and a bathroom. Like the squares, big and empty. The bathroom and kitchen was a bit of a mess, and I should really be cleaning it as I sit here now, but I had a go at the bathroom this morning, and for all the trouble and chemicals I poured onto the dirty floor, toilet, bath, it didn’t have much effect. So i’m goofing off a bit typing before I go back to try again.

The bedroom is nice and big with a double bed and new bedsheets. This is of course greatly appreciated, but I haven’t slept on a double bed since my separation from the Ex. This leads to lots of rolling around at night searching for someone… subconscious programming I guess, I have quite a bit of that going and and need to occupy my mind with something else really.

Anyway, then I met Prince. Fellow foreign language teacher from Ghana. He’s been here for 3 months and took me under his wing to show me the ropes. He’s also thankful for a colleague, as apparently his workload has been a bit crazy with him being alone. He also gets the short end of the stick as even the Chinese are a bit racist towards black people from Africa, and he was happy that a white face has arrived, because this means they will now treat him better too.

Nevertheless, I spent the last few days sitting in on his classes and he is a very good teacher. He teaches all ages from the very young and very cute kids averaging around 4/5 in age, to the slightly older and almost teenage kids averaging ages of about and 11 and 12.

So, I learned a lot from him and on Thursday I taught my first 3 classes. The first class I went a bit fast and used words that the kids didn’t understand. Then I adapted the lesson a bit for the 2nd class and it went better, but still too fast with too many new words and too little repeating, so they struggled to remember the words. Then in the 3rd lesson I guess that was the best. I went really slowly and repeated the new words a lot and the kids enjoyed it better. I based the lesson around my introduction and told them where I’m from…. the people here do not know where South Africa is, so I also worked in the continents into the lesson.

The kids have never learned the names of the continents in English, so even the words Asia had to be repeated multiple times. After words, I thought them how to sing The Lion Sleeps Tonight, which my first class sang so beautifully I thought I should record and send to a label. Yesterday, Friday, I loafed the whole day as the schedules hadn’t been worked out yet. Monday, hopefully, I will be in the full swing of things.

Right, it is now 11 o’clock - let me go and try to clean the rest of my apartment before lunch time. I overslept on purpose this morning but also missed breakfast, which isn’t so bad - as the whole week they have been serving steamed bread with some sort of watery substitute for porridge and I haven’t been to keen on that. Lunch is normally the best meal of the day, and I’m famished.

Oh, i also bought some cleaning gloves just now as the chemicals I use are indeed very powerful and would ruin my hands if I let it lie on there for too long. Back to the bowels of the bowls I go.

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Well, what an interesting few days I have had. After going to KL where I spent the evening in the very hospitable home of my sister-in-law, her boyfriend and their house mates, I had an uneasy sleep in the living room. It was comfortably hot and suffered the ever present fear of not waking up in time for my flight.

That said, after eventually falling asleep, I woke up beating the clock with 10 minutes to spare and got ready for the day. We cut preparing to go to the airport a bit fine, but Saiful, sis-in-law Helen’s boyfriend, made up the time by turning the highway into the Sepang Circuit. Checking in for the flight was timeous and without incident and we sat having coffee right next to the forex desk - where I DIDN’T exchange the Ringgit I had as there was a queue. I thought it would be no problem to do it in China…

So I waved goodbye to Helen and Saiful and proceeded through customs to board the Malaysian Airlines flight to Guanghzhou. Thanks to my travel agent I had a very nice seat at the bulkhead which had plenty of room, with a window seat located in front of the engine, to give me a nice view of where we were going. The service, as I’ve had all the way on Malaysian Airlines, was again outstanding and the flight attendants were indeed very attentive. The flight felt shorter than it was. We flew over Guangzhou on the approach for what seemed like and eternity and from the air the airport looked small, like Cape Town’s airport - so I had no real concerns for my 1 hour 15 minute connection.

We disembarked and spent some time in the queue for customs, and I had some time to clean the mess my sunblock made as it’s contents got squeezed all over the inner pocket of my backpack when it got pressured by neighbouring luggage items on our decent. Once I had finished with that i proceeded to the luggage collection point and still had to wait for my bag. At this point there was only 50 minutes left on the clock. I then had to proceed through customs, but despite the fact that you had nothing to declare, everyone had to snake through a narrow passage to have their bags screened. I started to get a little frantic.

Afterwards I sped into the arrival hall only to realise that Guangzhou airport is quite possibly the largest airport I have visited. Expansive is probably a better description, because it’s like a huge containment area with lots and lots of space between stations. My current location was 3 floors up and in the wrong terminal to where my domestic flight would depart from. After going from left to right and left again, I finally managed to find the passage that connects the two terminals and ran down the tunnel CARRYING my 16kg bag in my hand along with my 10kg backpack on my back.

Once i reached the other terminal I was sufficiently lost and cleverly asked the lady behind the clearly marked INFORMATION desk where I should go, and made sure that communications didn’t bamboozle me by showing her my ticket. She directed me to counters in one quarter of the terminal where I tried to go to, only to be stopped by security with them pointing to a departure card. Odd for a domestic connection, but I had no time to think about that. I hastily filled in the unnecessarily detailed departure card and rushed through to the counters, but was told that I am in the wrong part of the terminal. This was in fact again, international departures.

The check-in personnell gave me instructions on how to complete the next 1km of my journey. Eventually I reached the check-in desk, 25 minutes prior to departure. Unlucky for me I was pointed to the sign that states check-in closes 45 minutes prior to departure. That was a major blow and I had all sorts of colourful expletives in my head directed towards my travel agent. Luckily they changed my non-changeable ticket in a flash for the next flight 1 hour and 30 minutes later.

Having checked in my increasingly weighty bag and having changed my sweat-soaked shirt to something dry, I was more relaxed and could now focus on buying a phone card to inform the people picking me up of the delay. But before this though, I had to change some money as I was carrying only Ringgit. My quest again began to find a money changer which was easier to find than I thought (after being misdirected back to the original terminal in error). I stood in the queue for a short while before noticing that they only change Euro, Dollars, Yen and a fourth currency I now can’t remember. Not a problem, apart from the fact that I had nothing but Malaysian Ringgit, and in my small stash of collected money from around the world were no currency they would accept.

I was a wee bit stuffed, but didn’t really mind, as I thought I would simply make a collect call to my agent who would then alert the people who would pick me up… finding out how to make a collect call was impossible, as I had no coherent way to explain such a thing to a non-English speaking populace, and with my very poor Chinese vocabulary, I had no words which made any difference to this situation. In the end, I bugged one Information lady so much, she offered me her cellphone and I managed to make a call. I hadn’t be that close to tears on my travels for a looooooong time, but I would like to blame tiredness and not any other factors.

After that it was easy sailing and getting onto the China Southern Airlines flight was a pleasure. The plane was new, the crew was friendly and efficient, and in the 1 hour 10 minute flight they managed to swing the drinks trolley past twice. I even managed a nap. The plane was quite empty, but the seats were roomy in any case. I rate it as the most enjoyable flight of the trip. In Wuhan I had no rush and meandered from the craft to the luggage carousel, where I nearly fell over when my bag was waiting for ME. A first for anywhere.

This is where I met Jack, but more about that later. It’s dinner time and I have followed Prince around the whole day sitting in on his classes, so I need to tend to my growling stomach. More later, or perhaps tomorrow.

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The day started early. Woke up because my 2 year old sprayed the whole bed with the contents of his bladder. It was 5 o’clock, so I thought may as well get up seeing as how I needed to repack to travel anyway. So cleaned the bed, cleaned the boy (not necessarily in that order) and started to fold my meager possessions in to neat little bundles again.

I chose to take an earlier flight, as my booked flight would have gotten me into KL at a bit of an awkward time, not leaving much to to get to places before it got dark, etc. etc. My bro-in-law took me to the airport and there was a bit of an episode with my ex… but we’ve sorted it and now that distance separates us again, it all some how, surrealistically, seems normal.

Anyway, I said goodbye to my mom-in-law who cried and cried and cried. Made my heart all soft. Then as I said goodbye to my little boy, I knew he didn’t realise the impact, but as I left he sat there, desolate, depressed, almost looking sad - that just broke my heart and sobbed quietly in the car for a while.

On the flight I engaged in a serious session of lucid dreaming. Not really sleeping, not really being awake. Elements of all my emotions surfacing, fighting for brain time. Made for some interesting viewing actually. The flight, thankfully was short. The flight attendants were entertaining; by accident, not on purpose. I think I sat next to a lady-boy too. I thought the woman looked funny, big feet in sandals, big rough hands. I didn’t look. We were separated by an empty seat. On the decent she tried to have a conversation, but was talking so softly, on purpose, that it didn’t last long. I saw her… him… it, in the airport terminal again, with it’s buddies. I walked away quickly.

I met up with my sister-in-law. Such kind people. She works at the Mandarin Oriental and quickly organised me a tall cold orange juice plus one glass of water. It went down well. She then took me back to her apartment (not in that way), sat me down in front of the TV and plied me with more water, snacks, chocks, etc.

Anyway, snuck downstairs for a quick email and here I am. Tomorrow morning the adventure begins. I embark to China where god knows what awaits me. It will be…. interesting to say the least. I will keep this blog updated.

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I’ve missed several weeks. Several weeks. Lots have happened. First on the time line, I met a lady. Some call her Zee, and although I love her full name, I will stick to Zee to protect the innocent.

We met online, and she took a fat chance first to reply my email, and after knowing me for about a week, to meet up with me for a coffee. It was at the same time the most wonderful and dumbest occurrence ever.

Most wonderful why? Because of the type of person she is, easy to talk to, open, approachable, comfortable… she really coaxed me out of this black hole I had been finding myself in. You know, closed of between 4 walls, picking up the shards of my life in post-separation-pre-divorce stage and generally feeling very sorry for myself. She’s a ray of sunshine, no, she is the sun - I really find it difficult to be depressed when even I only think about her.

We chatted daily for the week before we met. She’s a very interesting person from a large and loving family, and herself has had many experiences, some good, some bad, but all which have contributed to the first class character that she is today.

Dumbest why? Well, at the same time as I met her, I also applied for and gained employment in China.

You see, my little boy from my recently wrecked marriage stays in Malaysia and he’s growing up with English as a 3rd language, so although he can communicate relatively well, it’s not as good as is in Hakka, a Chinese dialect, the language of his primary care giver.

So I seeked employment in Asia to be a) closer to him for visiting, and b) to be able to learn at least one of his primary languages. I would have done this before if only I could find someone that would employ me without a University degree. But that has never happened before, until of course, I met Zee.

I continued befriending her anyway, because I never thought I would fall for her as I did. It happened while we chatted really, some time before we met. The afternoon we did meet for a coffee in a crowded place the way they recommend you should meet your internet acquaintances, I was well and truly smitten. Our coffee lasted for 2 hours, mainly due to this blabber mouth being dumb-struck and Zee just being her usual comfortable self, coaxing conversation.

We had 3 more dates after that and lots of chats in between. The last time I saw her, and when I had to say goodbye for the last time, it was well and truly difficult… and that was after a mere 2 weeks.

Alas, distance is a killer. This I know.

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