Mangled Names

One of the many wonderful things about the language school where we are teaching is that all the pupils at the school are given English first names to use. This is an absolute lifesaver, as it saves me having to learn the near-identical sounding (but, alas, tonal and thus likely to be badly mangled by my foreign tongue) Chinese names of over 100 students.

There seems, however, to be very little consistency as to how our students acquire their English names. Some of the little kids who are just starting English classes are named by us, but many of our students arrive with English names intact. And some these names are wonderful. Absolutely, head-spinningly wonderful. Between us, Katie and I are currently teaching:

- Scrabble
- Derail
- Sharpie
- Moon
- Susie (boy)
- Tessie (boy)
- Uriel
- Sun
- Sago
- Ice
- Sesame
- Thunder
- GeeGeeBoy

Now some of these missteps I can understand. Some kids seem just to directly translate the meaning of their Chinese name into English, but whilst 'Little Cloud' might be a perfectly lovely name in Chinese, it is a rather less than wonderful moniker in English. Although, y'know,Sun,Moon, and Ice actually sound pretty cool. Others, however, seem to have just opened a dictionary and picked names out completely at random. Scrabble? Sharpie??? Derail???? Why on earth, when a child is looking for an English name, would anyone happen upon 'derail' in a dictionary and decide they want the little darling to be named after a train accident?

And finally, GEEGEEBOY????. There are quite simply not enough WTFs in the universe.

Speed Blogging / Mangled English III

Ah yes, so the blog died again. Oops. I did mean to do it, but somehow between eating huge amounts of dumplings (my trip is basically a tour of Communism and dumplings), learning to appreciate Sichuan spice, loving the fun that is warbling at the KTV bar and, oh yeah, teaching some people some stuff, it got rather forgotten and neglected.

As this blog has only just reached Beijing and is now officially a month behind true time, I have decided to give up any attempts at comprehensiveness, and as such the blog is just going to magically skip forward to today, March twenty-whateverth. The month in a nutshell: there was a very expensive teahouse, time spent wandering round Xi'an at four in the morning, a lovely apartment, some hotpot, a drunken training session in Chengdu, an ultrasound, pandas, some lost piss, and a shiny new permanent residency card. They were all supposed to be blog posts and some of them are even half-written, but, alas, apart from the oblique references above they are now sadly lost to the vagaries of time as I cannot be bothered to write them. Although in cryptic, abbreviated form my month does sound like one long drug-induced dream, which makes me feel more interesting than I actually am.

So anyway, this blog will now morph back into normal, Prague-style mode in which instead of posting tedious updates about 'places what I have been to' and 'stuff what I have done' I will just, as the fancy takes me, post tidbits and random musings about life in China. And where better to start than with a celebration of unintentionally prescient Chinglish? I happened upon this little gem today in Eling Park:



P.S. For those of you that care (Mum), I have just put a few pics of Chongqing up in my Picasa. This album will grow as I add more over the next few days, so stay tuned to see some pretty pics of neon lights etc.

Mangled English Part 2

And so to China, and where better to start than with some Mangled English. This series of posts has sadly lain dormant for over a month as there were no deserving successors to joylessness way, but predictably China has furnished us with some blogworthy examples of what English can do when it is chopped up, mashed to a pulp, and then stuck back together with kiddy PrittStick.

This first one is taken from the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, which is, in case you haven't heard of it, rather a major tourist attraction. Given that the Chinese government is supposed to have, erm, improved the quality of Beijing’s English signs in the run up to the Olympics, I dread to think what this read like a couple of years ago.


(Click on the photo to make it a readable size)

Alright then. So, even if you’ve remembered to ‘dress properly,’ have satisfactorily shown your ‘ticket, monthly ticket and year ticket when entering the park’ and resisted the temptation to bring in those nefarious watermelons, you’re not quite in the clear; those superstitious activities and other lavatorial behaviours are hard to avoid, kids. And remember, no leaking allowed.

Through the Gobi Desert

Our final leg of the train journey (sob) was from Ulaanbaatar to Beijing, a journey which took us through the heart of the Gobi desert. About five hours after leaving UB, the snowy wastes finally petered out, only to be replaced almost immediately by this:



Most of the Gobi isn't officially true desert, so the sandy wastes were mixed with a lot of scrubby grassland, but it was certainly large and empty enough to see why Outer Mongolia is pretty much used as international shorthand for 'the middle of nowehere.' It is quite surprising just how much of the Eurasian steppe is simply empty and desolate waste or one kind or another.

There were, however, a surprising amount of camels. According to our trans-Siberian guidebook, which was written by a complete train geek and is usually correct on anything train-related, there are only about 500 camels left in the Gobi. As such, we weren't expecting that we would see any at all. I now suspect, however, that whoever did this survey may have adopted the scientifically dubious method of counting camels from the train window, as I'd say we saw about half of the Gobi's supposed camel population within about 12 hours. Either that or the camels just really like playing chicken with the train. Don't suppose there's much else to do.
Anyway, if you squint really hard you might be able to identify these humped creatures as camels:



Until the Chinese border, the train also boasted the most blinged-out restaurant car in the world, ever. Our little faces lit up with sheer delight when we saw the tack-tasticness of this:



Sadly, our belief that we had a lot of Mongolian togrogs left to spend was misplaced - the huge wad of notes we had was actually composed of notes worth about 0.5p - so we weren't able to fully sample the delights of this magical world. But although the cups of coffee we were able to afford certainly did not afford us with too much joy, the surroundings more than made up for it.

After a long stint in the bogie-changing shed at the Mongolian-Chinese border (I dread to think how many listless hours we have spent on sidings and in sheds during the trip) we finally made it to China. The guidebook had told us that the Chinese border post was decked out in fairy lights and that the Vienna Waltz was played to greet each incoming train, but sadly this proved not to be true. There were, however, soldiers hiding out in the undergrowth, which always makes you feel very very wanted and welcome indeed.

The Chinese province of Inner Mongolia looked remarkably similar to its Outer neighbour (viz: desert), but when we woke up in the morning the desert had been replaced by some rather tall mountains and.....a rather large and famous wall. Sadly my camera ran out of batteries just before wall sightage, but northern China looked generally like this:



Before too many hours the train finally trundled into Beijing and we stepped off, knowing we'd made it through the desolate wastes and arrived at a part of the world that is people-friendly enough for lots of people to actually live in. For the first time in weeks, the temperature was not prefixed with a big fat minus sign, meaning that it felt positively balmy.

And so (blub), that was the end of our trans-Siberian journey. The blog has now finally also made it to China, and so there will be no more posts about vodka, or pelmeni, or mutton, or instant noodles, or, unfortunately, about frozen wee. I hope I've managed to convey a little of the literal and figurative uber-coolness of the trans-Siberian trip to you guys, but if not, suffice it to say that I've had an ace time, and would recommend this trip to anyone. Except people who can't stand cold.

Ulaanbaatar

So, the slow blog to China, unlike the train, creeps on, and we are now up to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. I'm blaming 'leaves on the line.' Anyway, the city was a very interesting place; the heir to the ancient nomadic culture of the steppes, it’s also at a crossroads between Russia and Asia, and – increasingly - between traditional culture and modernity. The place is at the moment a curious hybrid, with felt gers nestling between half-finished skyscrapers, and an in-progress Hilton Hotel perched on the edge of your typical industrial wasteland. On one corner you see monumental Soviet-inspired statement architecture, on another the gleaming towers of an Asian megacity, and on yet another, perhaps on a back street, a community of traditional gers encamped behind a small Buddhist temple. Add in some wonderful monasteries and neglected old palaces, a good few cosmopolitan touches such as the existence of a Czech restaurant, and a backdrop of magnificent mountains almost within walking distance, and you’ve got UB. Oh and yes, everything really is named after Chinggis Khan, as he is known here.





During our stay in UB, we visited some really interesting places, but unfortunately for various reasons I am underserved with photos of them. The first was the Gandan Monastery, which is the home of a 32 metre tall statue of the Buddha. Unfortunately, taking photos of temple interiors is frowned upon, so you’ll have to content yourselves with the following pictures. The temple was quite majestic, and was clearly still active as a religious site: monks and nuns were everywhere, and we even saw a group of small trainee monk boys standing outside a school. Unfortunately they were engaing in rather un-monklike behaviour by kicking each other and a small dog, but hey, even little monklet kids will be kids. The place was also filled with enormously fat pigeons (Buddhist monks' and nuns' generosity to them being, from what we could see, considerable), as you can see in the following:









We also visited the Bogd Khan Palace, a wonderful old complex a couple of miles out of town that felt as if it had been in a state of benign neglect for the last seventy years. It was the home of the last Bogd Khan – the Buddhist spiritual leader of the Mongol people - who in 1911 also declared himself Emperor of Mongolia when the country became independent from China. Because it is a little out of the way, the palace seems to be seldom visited, and so we were able to poke around the fascinating complex of temples completely undisturbed. There was also a museum – again, completely deserted excluding a couple of pleasantly bookish-looking staff - housing some amazing artefacts that the Bogd Khan and his wife had ordered from around the globe for their pleasure. These included beautiful four-poster beds, the most blinged-up ger I’ve ever seen, and a whole menagerie of stuffed exotic animals prepared for and shipped to the Khan by a company in Hamburg. The couple clearly had interesting tastes.





Another exciting place was UB ‘black market’ – named, of course, in the country’s Communist days – a sprawling free-for-all quite a way out of town. They stocked vast quantities of everything your visiting Mongolian semi-nomad or hip UB-dweller alike could ever need; fur hats, leather boots, silver daggers, fake Adidas trainers, reams of cloth, mobile phone charms; all, of course, at knock-down prices. It was almost endless, and amidst the large swathes of junk there were some really interesting finds, including the cutest children’s boots. If anyone fancies importing Mongolian leather children’s shoes, believe me, they would go down a storm in Crouch End. Unfortunately I have absolutely no photos of this market, as getting one’s camera out in the middle of this place would have been tantamount to writing ‘rob me, I’m a complete twat’ on my head in Mongolian Cyrillic.

Oh, but before I forget, there is also one feature of which UB should be less than proud. After considering this matter carefully - for, like the award for terrible policing, there are a plethora of contenders for this crown – I have decided that UB is home to the most aggressive and downright maniacal drivers that I have seen in any world city. Yep, ever. Unlike other places, the problem doesn’t appear to be caused by faulty vehicles or a general lack of roads: UB has traffic lights, pedestrian crossings, basically everything that you would expect of a sizeable city in terms of basic road infrastructure. The problem, however, is that all these accoutrements are completely disregarded by the road users themselves, who seem to believe, to a driver, that they are competitors in a computer game where one gets points for every item you crash into or small child that you mercilessly plough over. Red lights are routinely ignored, and cars will happily charge at pedestrians as they cross the street. It is basically complete anarchy, set to a noxious cacophony of honking, and each crossing the road inspired terror in our hearts. At the biggest junction, the situation is so bad that they have resorted to employing a ‘traffic director,’ who basically stands on a box in the middle of a six lanes of traffic and by means of a loud horn attempts to strike fear into the hearts of UB’s drivers. It didn’t appear to be having much effect.

Goulash - In Outer Mongolia?

I’d like you to think, for a moment, of Ulaanbaatar’s restaurant scene. If you are conjuring up images of stringy pieces of mutton served on a bed of mouldy yak’s milk, then you’re about where I was before I visited. Two weeks ago, if someone had asked me to guess where outside of Central Europe one might happen upon a Czech restaurant, Ulanbaatar would not, it is fair to say, have been my first pick. In fact, it would probably have ranked near Kisii in my internal probability stakes, which as those of you who have suffered me going on about Kenya will understand, is equivalent to ‘absolutely no way in god-forsaken hell.’ But then, what should we spy about two minutes from our hostel in UB but this:



Of course, we had to go. Whilst I wanted to find out quite why there was a Czech restaurant in the middle of UB – with the menu outside rendered in Mongolian, English and Czech -, sadly none of the (Mongolian) waiters or waitresses spoke sufficient English for any progress to be made in solving this mystery. We did, however, have a pretty authentic Czech goulash with bread dumplings, which was, frankly, heaven after two weeks of noodles and frozen pelmenny………………..

Teddy McRubbish

And now the long post about some place we visited is done, so to another random aside in which I demonstrate why when Jon reads these posts his head is filled with an image of my gurning features. As context, Listvyanka - the lovely village on Baikal - is full of barking dogs; as you walk down the street, each successive garden yields a big slobberin beast that will energetically let you know not to even dare think about crossing the threshold of its territory. One also appeared to laugh at Katie when she fell over, but that is beside the point.

Amidst this canine chorus, there was one particular hairy mutt that I for some reason particularly liked; he was trying so,so hard to appear fearsome and threatening and yet completely failed to do so due to the fact that he was essentially a cute, tubby ball of fur. For some reason I dubbed him ‘Teddy McRubbish,’ and for some even more inexplicable reason this name came out to the tune of ‘Beauty School Dropout.’ Unfortunately this particular breed of dog turned out to be very common in Siberia and Mongolia, meaning that I spent a significant amount of time driving Katie – and myself - mad by breaking into ‘Teddy McRubbish’ every time one came into my line of sight. The tune also prompted the reappearance in my head of the song we once composed about the Balliol quasi-pirate librarian to the same tune (lyrics unfortunately completely unfit to print on a blog my mother reads), meaning that I drove myself slowly mad for days.

Whilst I unfortunately didn’t get a picture of the original and the best, here are some stray McRubbishes that were snapped in Ulan Bator. Anyone who knows what breed they are, please do tell me, because I feel the need to have one in my life.

Lake Baikal

Whilst Irkutsk was surprisingly nice (and I'm sure its pelmeni festival was even better), the whole point of the stop there was to use the city as a base to see Lake Baikal, the deepest, oldest and clearest freshwater lake in the world. We took the bus down to Listvyanka - a village beside the lake - which was a 90 minute journey on a freezing old boneshaker barely warmer than outside. Admittedly, it probably didn't help that I chose to sit next to the window that was broken, but as that was the only window you could actually see through I decided that early-stage hypothermia was a small price to pay in order to see the pretty Siberian hills and forests.

Basically, Lake Baikal was huge, breezy and frozen. Unfortunately due to lack of monies (on my part, of course) we did not go dog-sledding or snowmobiling, but we spent the day wondering around the lakeside and around the pretty village of Listvyanka, which is where my glasses met their aforementioned doom. I did try to persuade Katie that she really wanted to go for a little hike in the snow up the hills around Listvyanka (and there are some photos of me looking like a demented guide leader going 'tally ho,' but at -25 she for some reason didn’t seem particularly keen on the idea.

Here are some pictures of the frozen north:







Lake Baikal would also be absolutely wonderful in the summer; it’s surrounded by mountains and in July and August is apparently even warm enough for what the guide book calls, I suspect rather euphemistically, an ‘invigorating dip.’ I now, of course, I have a lovely idea for a future summer trip – in the mythical future time when I finally get some money – crystallizing in my brain. I think it would be rather fabulous to fly to Beijing, take the train to UB and spend a few weeks in Mongolia horse-trekking and wandering around with nomads, head up to Baikal for some hiking in the pretty alpine scenery around the lake, then take the Baikal-Amur Mainline (a line that goes north of the main trans-Siberian that few people and hardly any travellers ever take) to the Pacific Coast, or even – if the line’s reached there by the time I go – to Yakutsk, where you can catch a boat down the Lena River all the way to the Arctic Ocean. One day this shall be done, and perhaps too, shall be blogged….

Advertising Genius

Now, after a month of gorging myself on cake, goulash and beer in Prague, I must admit that Russia was a bit of a dry spell food wise (China, on the other hand, is food paradise - consider yourself forewarned that there will be many long adulatory posts about Sichuan cuisine).

Now, it's not that Russian food was bad, just that it was unfortunately incredibly expensive. Everytime we went into a restaurant or cafe and read the menu, our spirits would sink as we realised that all the nice-sounding things cost over a tenner. Inevitably, we'd end up ordering borshch (beetroot and vegetable soup) or solyanka (meat soup with olives and lemons), both of which were very nice but neither of which provided our daily calorie requirements in an environment designed for animals with a blubbery mass of fat to burn off.

The logical choice, of course, was to cook food in the hostels, but as hostel cooking facilities were relatively limited, food essentially meant pelmeni. Pelmeni are essentially little flour dumplings filled with meat that you stick in a pan and boil, and they were our main calorie provider and financial saviour during our weeks in Russia. Sadly, however, we did not attend this wonderfully advertised pelmeni festival, the photo of which is the actual point of this rather rambling little post...



See. Now aren't you glad you read to the end? Even my hideously gurning mug in all its GIFfed-up glory has nothing on this beauty.

The Margate of Siberia

Okay, so due to the fact that we didn't have internet in our (very lovely) apartment until two days ago, the promised blogorrhoea never materialised. This meant that despite the fact that I'd already written a fair few posts on MS Word, I couldn't post any of them, respond to anyone on facebook, or even defend myself against the lovely GIF animation that miraculously appeared in the last post's comments section. But now I am back with a vengeance, and so a certain vonmonkey should await revenge of some as yet undecided kind...

Anyway, for the sake of thoroughness (and because I'm sure as hell not deleting what I've already written) my amazing time-travelling blog shall continue to write as if it is still sometime in mid-to-late February, with England still all snowy and me still somewhere in the Siberian tundra. Although I had planned to start with Mongolia, I then realised that whilst there had been a mention of its bone-chiilling freezingness, Irkutsk itself had not received any blog love. And it does deserve some, for it was a surprisingly pleasant little city.



Before I arrived, I had a mental picture of Irkutsk as a grim industrial pile, worth visiting only as a gateway to Lake Baikal, but instead I found a place with what can best be described as the atmosphere of a seaside town in the off-season. Instead of grimy old pipes, there were traditional wooden houses, some pretty art nouveau buildings, a laid-back atmosphere, and yes, even bunting and people selling candy floss and ice cream. This last delicacy may sound a bizarre choice in temperatures as low as -50, but I have been informed that Siberians actually eat ice cream in winter for warmth, the ice cream being about twice the heat of the surrounding air. I still think a warm drink would perchance be a more effective heating mechanism, but then I am not a hardy Siberian, so I know little about such matters.



Anyway, despite the obligatory ‘Lenina’ and ‘Karla Marxa’ streets and statues of communist luminaries, the centre of Irkutsk appeared to have been largely spared the delights of Soviet town planning, and even the obligatory pollution from across the frozen river appeared strangely picturesque. Apparently Irkutsk was once dubbed the ‘Paris of Siberia,’ and whilst this may be a slight overstatement of its charms, it certainly was a pleasant place to while away a couple of days. We visited the house of the nineteenth century exiles Sergei and Maria Volkonsky, members of a group of aristocrats who were sent to Irkutsk in 1825 after supporting the Decembrist plot against Tsar Nicholas I (not the one on my Romanov necklace). They had, shall we say, rather better living conditions than the majority of exiles in Siberia, and the museum contained some rather cool antiques from their house, which the kindly assistant attempted to tell us about in Russian. We didn’t understand everything, but we got the main gist and anyway, everything looked very pretty. We did then rather amuse the staff by failing to read the one sign in English in the whole museum (tour continues this way), and promptly walking through the side door that took us straight outside into the -25 cold. Yes folks, we smart.

It was also in Irkutsk that I understood my first Russian pun, and was so proud of myself that I had to take a photo, and now have to explain the joke (sorry). This sign reads ‘Las Knigas,’ which, as ‘kniga’ is a book, means that this is a bookshop making a lame pun on ‘Las Vegas.’ I was a little bit too happy when I understood this.