Chinese Opera

So, here are the promised photos (click here for the full album).
Here's James in his new tailored suit at the theatre.



The beginning of the show. The royal concubine is visited in her dreams by moon fairies.


The envoys bearing lychees for the emperor's concubine run into a couple of surprisingly agile old peasants.


The emperor and his concubine.


An Lushan, the arrogant and treacherous warlord. He got a big round of applause at the end.


The finale, including four actors dressed in full body dog suits (you can see them at the back).


Taking down kids drawings in the last week.


Nice teacher.


Mean teacher.


Last day of school.


Some of the kids. They're pretty good posers even at a young age over here.



Some shops at the fabric market.


The two girls who befriended James at the uni. Watch out!


Girls from the local massage parlour doing their morning excercise to music.

Today we went to 'Hello Pizza' for lunch, it was pretty good although we did chicken out of the fruit pizza with jam.
Tomorrow we go to the fabric market again, to pick up a nice winter coat in preparation for the cold Melbourne weather.
Back soon(ish)!
See ya!

New Goings On

I've finished teaching! That's probably the biggest news of our whole trip, from my point of veiw! Yes, I am quite relieved and happy that it's all done. Now, I get to cruise around the city while James slogs away for a few more weeks at uni. Ive been doing a bit of shopping and cooking and sleeping in, and not a lot else!
We've been going to the fabric market every Saturday to pick up or order more clothes to be made for us. We haven't even got that many, we just keep thinking up one or two new things to order most weeks. Luckily our favourite restaurant is on the way home, so we don't have to cook after a tiring day of shopping. It can get tiring haggling over prices all day!
A few weeks ago we went to see some Chinese opera at one of the big theatres in town. It was out there! The costumes were huge and silky and colourful, with glittering headresses for the concubine and the moonfairies and feathers and painted faces for some of the men. The speaking and some of the movements were very stylised and sometimes even seemed comically over the top, and there was some great physical theatre from the envoys bearing lychees from the provinces for the emperor's favourite concubine. It was a pretty amazing spectacle! Photos are on their way...
Other than that we are savouring our last tastes of the yummy food here, trying to hold back from going to all the yummy restaurants too much. James has some new Chinese friends, a couple of girls who approached him at the uni. They said they wanted to do a language exchange, they would teach him a bit of Chinese, and he could teach them some English, but I think they have suspicious motives. James only met them about a week and a half ago, and already they have messaged him a few times and last time he met up with them they gave him two cards each, one in Chinese and one in English, plus photos of themselves with little notes on the back saying how much they will miss their dear new friend! The cards were similarly gushy about how they just had to keep in contact now that they had met, and there still hasn't been any actual language exchange. All a bit suss, I reckon. I'm keeping my eye on those two. Actually, I think James is a bit of a hit with some of the Chinese women, he has admitted himself that one of his teachers has a crush on him, and the other day a girl in the street said 'tasty!' as they checked him out. Go James!

Golden Week

It's Golden Week! It's a holiday starting on May 1st, celebrating Labour Day with Chinese Characteristics. It's almost a week off - almost because everyone has to make up the week days they miss by working/schooling on weekends! Grammar classes/kiddie teaching for nine days straight is most assuredly uncool.

On the last working day we went to the park to chill out. We discovered many small schoolgirls paying to be trapped inside inflatable plastic balls.


It was cheaper to go for a row on the lake, so we did that instead.


Nat and I tried to go on holiday, but bumped into 900 million other locals doing the same thing. Turned out they'd planned their weeks a bit better, too. Still, realising similar opportunities would be few and far between, we dived in.
We'd heard of a lovely sounding Buddhist-sacred-mountain-monastery at Jiu Hua Shan, and that it was nestled in rugged terrain. Great, lets go! I could even meet my old Chinese pen pal on the way. Woo!
Alas, accomodation was scarce and Natalie and I ended up travelling only as far as Nanjing, sharing the very last Single Executive Room in a relatively expensive hotel. Yes, the bed was a tight fit, but having spent the day lugging our luggage all over the tourist-infested Yangzhou in search of bigger ones, we were too tired to care.
See?


So, after a single night away, and having bags packed for at least three, we found ourselves braving the bus ticket queues for a ride home. No Buddhists, no pen friends, nuthin'.
It wasn't all disappointment, though. The weather was fine and warm, and...
- We did take a creaky little trip in a pedicab, a first for us both, and ate at some sort of famous teahouse in Yangzhou. I drank a beef stock dumpling with a straw and Nat didn't.
- Rode a two-seater bike around Nanjing's nearby mountain and botanic gardens. Couples were getting married all over the place, posing sweatily amongst the blossoms.
- Found an awesome little cafe in the twisty backstreets. The enthusiastic Frenchman in charge made a mean G&T.

Once again, we forget to take the camera with us. So you can click on these pictures and see shots of the hotel room. Oh, and some of our degustation at Les 5 Sens.

The Yu Gardens

Here is a quick update with some pictures from our recent visit to the Yu Gardens. The grounds date from the Ming Dynasty, survived the Opium Wars and now teem with thousands of tourists. Nat and I expected a hard time from the spruiker/hawker contingent, but they were unusually relaxed. We funded some beggars instead.
Have a click on the picture below to see an album of Yu images:

YuGardens

Easter is called the Jesus Resurrection Festival here. The local Cathedral didn't seem particularly festive this week, though. Thanks again for all the wonderful choccy nosh, Cass!

Some edge

We have had all four of our ears lowered recently. Natalie even got a fringe! OOoooo... There were some slight dramas and miscommunications (I think I was instructing Nat's stylist to "please cut her head shorter with some edge"), but it all worked out in the end.


Ok, ok, so we haven't been up that Pearl Tower thingo yet. But we did check out the tomb of Xu Guangqi, local Catholic legend. Click the image below to see a few more pictures of the surrounding park.


Thanks to dear Cass for providing us with a huge box of Easter goodies. Do you think we can last another two weeks...? Shanghai's oldest cathedral is just around the corner, so perhaps we'll get right into the spirit of it and check out the local mass.


Natalie took the camera to work and took a few shots of the school.


Pu Ming Primary is a relatively new school in the outer urban district on the eastern bank of Shanghai's Huangpu river. In the 1980's, it was a marshy bog that supplied the city's wet markets with fresh veg. 15 years and billions of yuan later, BAM - "Pu Dong New Area" had appeared. It's hard to capture the soullessness properly within little snaps, so you'll have to wait until your postcards arrive...

People's Tongue

We're both beginning to settle into our new routines here. I'm out the door early in the morning to learn The People's Tongue at uni, allowing Natalie a nice sleep-in before her midday start at Pu Ming Primary.
My classmates are an amiable bunch, and I'm glad I ended up with an enthusiastic text teacher (laoshi) to boot. We call her Yuan Laoshi, and she attacks each obscure grammatical conundrum we throw her way with great skill and relish. She also thinks the Beijing accent is a load of old twaddle, and drops in snarky comments about it. Rather a contrast to our speech laoshi, an undergrad who toes the official line with disconcerting precision.
The class is small and highly varied in background, as Nat has mentioned. Nuir is Bangladeshi and has been helping me with some tricky words. Tobias is a chatty german fella who is very proud of the work group he has assembled - a bright Japanese lass, a sultry Italian and himself. He calls it the Axis of Evil.
The few Australians have clumped together. I've been chatting with a guy called Scott who is teaching English to kids after class and looking forward to becoming an expat very soon. He said he'd like to stay in China forever, even though the kids at his school call him pigu laoshi (arse teacher).

Semester Start

James has now started uni, with classes starting at 8.45 every weekday morning. Luckily this means that he gets to finish at 12. It seems to be a very cosmopolitan class, with students hailing from the US, Canada, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, India, Pakistan, Australia and Russia. The language spoken in class by the lecturer is fairly dense and difficult to understand, but the textbook is a bit more familiar. The uni is fairly close, it takes less than half an hour on the bus to get there. James is pretty happy that there are little street vendors out the front of the uni so that he ca pick up a fresh omelette or some dumplings for breakfast in the mornings.
I started teaching last week. My class has a bit of a different make-up to Jamie's. It consists of 6 and 7 year old Chinese children. The ones from Shanghai have a much higher level of English than the kids who have come from the country. They are pretty sweet little things. One said to me 'Teacher, you are very, very beautiful'. Ahh, it's good to have admirers! I am teaching four classes of grade one four days a week. I am really glad I signed a part time contract instead of a full time one as it sometimes takes me ages to plan lessons. Actually, that was probably because the kids still haven't got their textbooks and I didn't get my flashcards until the end of the week, so I ended up drawing pictures of kites and soccer balls and bikes until all hours. It takes me about an hour and 20 minutes to get there on the train and bus, but I'm happy that I only have one year level to teach, so I can prepare the same lessons for them all! Also, I'm pretty lucky to get posted only at one school; some of the other teachers have to travel to two or three different schools every week. I was really nervous on my first day, and the week has had its ups and downs, but I think it's slowly getting better. This weekend we're both taking it easy, watching movies and eating lots of yummy food. We're finding more and more restaurants that we like. We haven't been cooking much at all, actually, which has been a nice change!
We're off to see more of the city now!
Bye bye! Zai Jian!