I saw a Maserati in town today

Guess what I saw in downtown Mianyang ? Well of course you know if you read the title a Maserati, that's right a freaking Maserati. I cant tell you the make or model but it certainly makes a Jaguar look like a golf cart and a Mercedes look like a bread van (in China that would be a noodle van). It's a local too, the first 2 symbols of the plate shows it's Sichuan B the Mianyang area.
One doesn't want to engage in baseless stereotyping or unfounded speculation but I believe that I can say that the owner of this car is most certainly a wanker. It's the totally wrong car for the city like this teeming with people trucks bicycles tricycles and scooters. The only purpose of a car like this in a city like Mianyang Sichuan China is to show everybody what a great big rich wanker you are. Nice car though.
I was wondering when I will be seeing any Maseratis in my hometown, Masterton Wairarapa New Zealand ? Unless Peter Jackson decides to buy a few the most likely time for a Maseratis to appear in the Wairarapa will be sometime in the 27th century. This is when (according to my calculations) New Zealand wins World War IX. After which the the savage Bogan warriors and their brutal Gearhead Warlords will return to their ancestral homelands with the booty they sacked from the devastated capitals of Eurasia. Their ox carts will laden with Maseratis Lamborghinis and Ducattis. The Picassos, Rembrants and Van Goghs having long since moldered to dust or burnt for warmth.
It will be a sort of Genghis Khan and Mad Max meet Harley Davidson and Smith&Wesson sort of a deal. Delightful no ?

Nightlife in Mianyang

So Jack what is there to do in Mianyang city after hours ?
Well actually not a lot considering the size of the city, exactly how big the city is is difficult to say with any degree of accuracy as it is both an urban zone and an administrative region but its certainly the fat end of 1.5 million.
An important thing to keep in mind when talking about or thinking about China is the sheer size of it. Mianyang is a big city but it's not even in the front rank of Chinese cities, it maybe in the second rank but more likely the third. Chengdu the regional capital of Sichuan would be in the first rank at 7 million odd but anywhere else that would be a National capital, but its a weak cousin of Beijing or Shanghai. It's also worth noting that if Sichaun somehow became an independent nation it would be bigger than either Britain or France (and armed with nuclear weapons).
So here I am sitting in Mianyang city which is big enough for a country boy like me. There are a few places to go out get down get funky and/or groovy if that is your desire but it is difficult not economically but culturally, the Chinese have their nightclubs but I generally hate nightclubs even at the best of times they are so loud all the girls cant hear the hilariously witty things I am saying but here there is the added problem that they wouldn't understand them even if they did hear them so its of little use.
The other big deal for the Chinese nightlife is Karaoke ( known here as KTV, karaoke television) which the Chinese lifted from the Japanese via the Koreans and which I also hate. Its not the drunken singing in public like we had back home these Asian Karaoke joints are segregated so each group of drunken fools gets their own little room a with Celine Dions' "My Heart Will Go On" and The Eagles "Hotel California " as the only English options on the play list my chances for drunken tom foolery are drastically reduced.
There is a single foreign bar in town an international bar if you will called "Flags" run by a genuine Englishman and I certainly recommend it if you are in town but as it is a special sort of place I think it deserves its' own blog post so I will pass over it now but will certainly get back to it another time.
So a few weeks ago I finally get to the bar that I have heard about from the other ex-pats and have been eager to see , just to know if the rumours are true and they are.

Mianyangs' 1944 bar.

Now I like themed bars generally its good to see designers getting imaginative and I like World War II, well I don't Like it like it if you get what I am saying, I don't agree with it but I am rather in to it. I read a lot of books and comics watched a lot of movies. I am the guy who can not only tell the difference between the Soviets' T-34/76 tank and the Germans' Panther but which one was better and why.
So I should like 1944, a WWII themed bar. and yet I just can't it's just too creepy, I mean, I love the Irish (my grandma God rest her sweet Catholic soul was of Irish ancestry) and I think I understand the I.R.A. but I'm not going to drink Guiness in an I.R.A. themed pub Saint Patricks' day or not.
How exactly you do a World War themed drinking hole anyway?
Do you come in get a shot of cheap vodka, then get the barman to punch you in the face and burns down you house ?
Actually what you do in China is make half the place look like a movie set bunker and cover the rest with blackand white photos, But get ready for the creepiest bit.....

That's right kiddies "Arbeit Mach Frei" now I don't speak German but I sure as hell knew this phrase it was hanging over the gate of Auchwitz the most infamous of all the Nazi death camps. And here it is above a board of photos of wartime atrocities, (too nasty to show) delightful ! Everytime you think you know something about the Chinese psyche the do something to surprise you. I mean, What the hell were they thinking ?

What is that you are doing in China anyway ?

Now that I am back in the swing of blogging I had better make up for lost time and cover some of the ground that I have neglected.
Firstly,
"What is it that you are doing in China anyway Jack ?" somebody who gave a damn might ask,
Teaching Chinese kids English, is my reply
"Why do that ?" is the follow up question
"Well they are learning it as an integral part of the Communists' devilishly cunning plan for world domination, and I'm doing it partly because it's a blast and partly because it's part of my fiendishly devilishly cunning plan for world domination, call it a Meta-Trojan horse, I'll infiltrate the infiltrators if you get me.
But officially for the record and as far as anyone down at the P.S.B. ( Public Security Bureau ) knows I am a Foreign Expert Engaged in the Fields of Culture and Education. Oh yes indeed I am the most cultured thing to come out of the Wairarapa since Kingsmeades' Tinui Blue Cheese. (Of course down our way we call it KULT-chaa).
Its strange how being far away from home surrounded by foreigners makes you nostalgic for the taste of home, such as a good Cheese. Checking out the Kingsmeade site made me almost homesick, especially when I saw "Wairarapa Jack" hey that's Me ! "Hard pressed, its' flavor deepens with maturity" that is most definitely me. I don't feel particularly hard pressed right now but those Chinese kids can be rather demanding.
I do 18 classes a week 9 juniors ( aged 10-11) and 9 seniors (aged 17-18) as each class only gets 1 period with me per week and there are about45 kids per class that's about 800 students a week. I feel that my flavor has deepened with maturity, part of that is age but part of that is also China. I feel more confident now about myself and my position in the world, I also seem to have gotten much taller since I came to China. I distinctly remember being of an average sort of height in New Zealand but now I am really quite tall.
My School is called Mianyang Wai Guo Yu Xue Xiao or Mianyang Foreign Language School if you talk foreign. It's new(it opened about 2001) and by New Zealands' standards it's huge about 5000 kids ages from infants to seniors. It's a private school with a lot of modern equipment. They have a swimming pool (I've never seen it used) and they are currently in the process of upgrading all the TVs in the class rooms to huge flat screen plasma types. There are currently 4 foreign teachers in the school, myself an American and two Africans we get on okay.
I have my meals and apartment taken care of by the school for a nominal fee. The wages aren't great by international standards but with the current international financial mess dropping the exchange rates they are actually getting better, I'm living quite comfortably thank you very much.
Just in case you cant read the English versions of the school mottos in the above picture they read;
"Master the culture of East and West" and "Develop Your Own Personality"

Very groovy no ? don't worry there's a lot more where that came from...

Jack is Back !

Yes that's right kids, Jack is back and in full effect.

I could spend a bit of time coming up with some dishonest excuses why in spite of my promises I haven't posted for more than a year. Such excuses would include shifting residences (both countries and several apartments) erratic broadband and the great firewall of China, not to mention a rather difficult 8.0 magnitude earthquake.
All of which are true but the as usual the simplest explanation is usually the best and I will have to put it down to good old laziness. There is another thing too which is a little more difficult to explain, I like the concept of blogs and I really enjoy reading everyone elses' but I have often have a certain reluctance writing them, maybe its a privacy thing but I am sometimes worried about what the people I know will think about what I say about who to whom. Or possibly what I say to whom about what, maybe even whom I say to what about who.
I'm an English teacher now I should know all of this grammar crap, if it wasn't for the spell checkers I wouldn't even be writing intelligible English. In response to this little problem I have come up with a solution that appeals to my somewhat bifurcated world view.
I will simply split my blog in two, posting some sort of content on one and certain styles of content on the other. Think of it as a tangible metaphor of the left brain right brain split, the physiological fact that lies at the center of so much of humanities brilliance and madness.
This blog "East is West" will be the left side, intelligent, insightful and analytic, my other blog "Spaceman Jack" will be the left side, imaginative, creative and holistic
well thats the idea anyway let's see which side will dominate !

Beijing

Beijing 5/9
(another retro post)

First impressions of Beijing, not what I expected but I rather expected that. I suppose that I'm not letting out any state secrets when I say that it's massive, massive in every respect. The motorway from the airport into the city is at least 5 lanes in both directions but on either side there are neat rows of trees of varying heights equivalent to another 3 lanes. None of which was here 10 or even 3 years ago.
Then I am in my hotel, total time from Auckland less than 16 hours. The hotel is very fine as good as anything I have ever been in an offical 4 stars, and 10 minutes walk from Tianamen square.
After check in cool down chill out clean up and a cup of green tea a few of the delegation get together for a stroll to the famous square. my first impressions of which were an odd sense of quasi- Deja Vu an odd sort of sensation that has been folloowing me around in China a lot.
Its the sensation that you have seen this p[lace before combined with the absolute certainty that you haven't. The hundreds of pictures, scores of books and dozens of movies I have seen st in and about Beijing make this place instantly recognisable but the photos cannot reproduce the scale of the place or what my old philosophy professor called "The Qualia" the actually feeling of being there and doing it. I take a few pictures ( will try to post them soon) and while lining up for the perfect shot of the portrait of Mao over the gate the Deja Vu strikes me again as I review the shot I realise that I have seen it before and that I must have been standing on the same spot that all the other ones must have been taken nut now it's megapixel digital not monochrome film and it's hundreds of 4 door sedans cruising past not thousands of bicycles.

Rainy National day in Mianyang

So its national day October the first,
After a few days messing around and a few more trying to get this PC to reset to English I am posting again. Its another "Golden Week" which is Chinese term meaning "Crazy Week".
A few years ago the central government had this great idea that they could actually stimulate the local economy by mandating a few weeks holiday every year, the now infamous Golden weeks. It certainly worked, up to a point. Everyone who can goes some where and does something, restaurants train stations hotels and senic spots are choked and I suppose that everyone will return to work more stressed out and obviously lighter in the pocket.
I'm staying well out of it, I've done my touring for a while but tommorrow I will go to the (second) wedding of my (former) boss and his (former) employee.
Should be crazy

The Flight, Auckland - Hong Kong - Beijing

Auckland 4/9/07

The flight was good, well good enough. I certainly hope that I never become so cynical that I forget what a marvel intercontinental air travel is, although I suspect that with more exposure to it that I may.
My heart still feels a thrill when I get up close to a 747. It's an old design now but still a magnificent bird, it's lines and size are quite remarkable.
The size of the economy class seats are remarkable too, they, like the meals are a modern marvel of miniaturisation.
But then its a miracle that I am eating at all at 10,000 meters up in the air zooming along over the Pacific ocean Auckland to Hong Kong in 11 hours, so I won't allow myself to complain too much.
The in-flight entertainment I did enjoy. The Air New Zealand seat mounted media screens have a huge selection of TV, movies, games and other time wasters.
I watched 2 episodes of The Simpsons (Classic) 1 episode of Flight of the Conchords (Excellent) and 3 episodes of Little Britian (bloody hilarious).
But as for time wasters I did watch all of Bridge to Terebithia.

Mini-Movie review

The Bridge to Terebithia

Starring; That dude who played the evil robot in Terminator 2

and

A couple of bratty kids

Maybe it was all my fault. Expecting some sort of C.S. Lewis, Tolkienesque movie where youngsters discover an alternative reality, battle some Cave Trolls, knock over a few Orcs and generally give the Dark Lord a kick in the sack. But instead I got coming of age, discover your true self, the power of friendship,innocence, imagination.

Utter drek, avoid.

We didn't get so see much of Hong Kong at all, like the last time I was here this was just transit. But the madcap rush through the aiport to make my connecting flight on to Beijing was really something else. The airport is another modern marvel, massive, clean and efficient. Our incoming international was contected to the out going (semi) domestic flight to Beijing by a combination of an underground train and a cute little Chinese girl running in a very dignified manner at a surprising high speed in heels.

We got to the next gate with 5 minutes to spare

I am becoming increasingly convinced that this whole country is being run by women. They knew I was coming before I got there and where I had to go before I even knew where I was, and with their sign with my (and the other NZCFS guys) name on it greeting me as I got off the air bridge they even showed they knew who I was, which is something that I am constantly having trouble with.

2 1/2 hours onto Beijing a perfunctory customs check, another highly efficent pick up an airconditioned bus to take us into the great city itself.