Zak "Shu-Lin" Wood

1 month on
Chinese painting, bumps on cars, and no rugby.

It's been, unless my maths fails me pretty badly, a month since I arrived in China. Well, a month and two days.I made a decision, the week before last (or around then) to try and fill my spare time with something other than watching DVDs or walking myself to death and getting lost. So I have taken up the ancient art of Chinese painting, basing my learning purely on a book I downloaded from the Internet. This is not going as well as you may have expected, thanks to my well known artistic streak, and other factors to follow.I have also started Tai Chi (Or dzjaaid sneeze, as I believe it's called here).

Many people (myself included until yesterday), see Tai Chi as a beautiful, slow, balanced and graceful martial art. This is incorrect. In a one hour session, we spent 30' doing stretches that would make my physio cry with happiness (at the money she could make repairing us), 20' practising kicks and jumps and lifts of sorts (The lifts were particularly special - my partner was a great guy called Tristan, who weighs about 60Kg. Suffice to say I remained firmly on the ground), and a final 10' of doing one Tai Chi step. All of these moves were surprisingly complex, and if it weren't for my unmatched physical fitness and legendary coordination, I might have seriously hurt myself.For those who can't read between those lines and don't know me well - I hurt myself.

I have also started formal Chinese lessons, and have been given my Chinese name: Shu Lin (The ‘u’ is a flat tone, and the ‘i’ is a 4th tone) - it sounds like Shoe lee-en. This is a crucial moment in any man's development, and certainly I like the sound of it. Shu Lin - mighty wood who stands tall as a pine tree and is strong like an oak. No, that's not what it means. It means (cue the jokes) Forest.

I am starting running tomorrow.Enough about my new hobbies though, and on to more wildly inaccurate but all encompassing observations of China based on my limited experience in a very un-Chinese city.

In an earlier post I mentioned how appallingly Chinese people drive, but on this count I believe I was mistaken. Although they park anywhere, drive through non-existent gaps, insist on turning across oncoming traffic, and are generally an absolute menace to my mental health, I have not seen a single car with a scratch on it. I mentioned this fact to a couple of the other teachers, and we've all been looking - Chinese people simply don't make mistakes when driving. It amazes me. I come from a city where any car without a scratch is being driven to go get one, and so this lack of unintended ornamentation is surreal. I can only put it down to one thing - There are very few women drivers in Huizhou.

I also went to a police station the other day, which was interesting. I have not been arrested yet Mom, don't worry - we had to be present to get our working Visas. We arrived, and sat in a little huddle while one of the guys from the school did the admin work. I was called up first, and given the Spanish Inquisition about when I arrived, what I did before I came here, was I ever a criminal, how many marshmallows I could fit in my mouth at once - all the usual. I returned to our group, and wished the next person luck. Nobody... NOT A SINGLE OTHER PERSON... got asked anything. NOT A SINGLE QUESTION. Bloody police. I digress though - what was interesting was that the police stations are almost exactly the same as in South Africa. Two people doing all the work (slowly), and a hundred standing around behind looking thoroughly bored, but conscientiously avoiding anything that might be construed as effort. I hypothesise that these people are there as bouncers, lest anybody suddenly get so fed up with the absolute bloody minded inefficiency of the whole place and go nuts. Read that last sentence again, and it'll tell you everything you need to know about my thoughts on bouncers.

On the school front, things continue to go well.My classes are, for the most part, magnificent. I'm not going to go into detail about each kid, and what this one or that one did that was cute, or clever, or whatever. Suffice to say, they are mostly great kids, and the ones that aren't I'm working on. I think I might be able to get into this teacher vibe.

Upcoming attractions - This Monday/Tuesday (those are our days off), we're heading down to the beach. We rent tents and camp on the beachfront, as I understand, which should be a great experience. More than that, I cannot tell.- My long awaited cycle is absolutely going to happen some time in the next month. I have so far ridden my beautiful little bicycle all the way from the shop home. But wait!!

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