Another Year Older...

So, today I was chatting with the Chinese teachers at are school (who are all lovely), and the conversation turned to what our Chinese zodiac signs were. Now, with the exception of our manager, who has recently hit the big 30, every single employee at our school is between the ages of 21 and 26, and so we were trying to group ourselves into our relatively limited Chinese star sign groups.

When I said I was 24 and was thus a rat according to the Chinese zodiac (supposed characteristics: talkative, pioneering, quick-witted, friendly, terrible with money - actually far better than my crappy western star sign of Capricorn, whose sole characteristics appear to be stolid, conservative dullardness), they looked at me with blank incomprehension. According to them, if I was 24 then I would have to be born in 1985, and thus I would be an ox. I attempted to refute that logic by saying I was born in December 1984, and woulld thus still be 24 for another 8 months, but this was met with jokes that I was trying to deny my age!

So, it turns out that in China your age is dependent on the year of your birth; like racehorses, all Chinese people age a year on January 1st (yet they still celebrate birthdays -I'm not entirely sure what the deal is with that.) For a person like me who is born on December 28th, this effectively adds a whole year to my age. So, until September at least, when I will revert to the comparative youthfulness of 24 for a few more blessed months, I have now officially hit the big fat quarter century...

ST*&*(&(*D F*!&@%G C*($&@$R

I am interrupting this blog's regularly scheduled silence in order to announce that I am having a very bad day. This is because at approximately 2am this morning my computer decided to set itself on fire. There was I, happily sat in bed wasting time meandering around the little-trodden paths of internet (actually being very swotty and reading some journal articles for my masters, so probably very little-trodden indeed), when all of a sudden I noticed a rather strange and decidedly unpleasant smell. To my, ahem, surprise, acrid black smoke was pouring out of the power socket. Rather less surprisingly, as I was going 'shit........,' Tilly the evil laptop then decided to make a strange noise and then turn herself off.

Now Tilly has a history of wilful, capricious and downright shitty behaviour (it was a bad idea to name her after a wilful, capricious and downright shitty 11th century wannabe queen of England), but self-immolation really takes the fucking cake. Unsurprisingly, she's now not turning back on, and so I whilst I am going to take her to the repair shop this week, I suspect that she might this time actually be dead as a dodo. The power supply has gone funny before and was (eventually) fixed, but given that a) I am in China and they might not have the facilities to fix a laptop with a very unusual power connection and b) she set herself on fire, I am not that optimistic as to her future.

I am hoping against hope that eventually she will be able to turn herself on, even if it is temporary, because ALL MY FUCKING STUFF IS ON THERE! Everything before I left for Prague is backed up, but my photos aren't, and lots of important documents I need aren't (although I have got some of the most important stuff stored in Gmail). I shall hang onto her festering corpse until I get back in the hope that either someone can make her come back to life, or I can have the fun of smashing her crappy little body into tiny pieces.

AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Mangled English - The Album

Throughout this trip, I have been continuously amazed by the terrible yet wonderful things that English can do in the hands of non-native speakers. Excluding our friend in Prague who was responsible for joylessness way (which, I fear, may never be topped), the Chinese must have some claim to be the undisputed masters of mangled English. Examples of their exquisite crafting of English sentences abound in Chongqing, and they run the gauntlet from the incomprehensible to the unintentionally genius. The best will still be showcased here, but I am - alas - far too lazy to devote a blog post to every double entendre or pile of garble that I come across.

It is thus with great pleasure that I invite you to peruse Mangled English: the Album. Yes, there is an album. On Picasa. That you can look at. The album will grow in time and new photos will appear on the interweb, but here is a teaser of the delights that lie in store if you click here:



These were spotted in our hotel in Chengdu a few weeks ago, and left us wondering just what do they do that is so uncomplimentary? Grow little spines to leave you with hideous cuts? Shout at you and tell you you're doing it all wrong? Laugh at the poor guy who's using it and tell him he should have bought a smaller size? Suggestions as to behaviours of uncomplimentary condoms are of course welcome.

Though It's Hard to Avoid Being Sad, I Want To Be Happy in MXCJ

As we all know, many times in life there are things that are just so crap that they swing all the way back round to amazingness again. Bonnie Tyler's 'Total Eclipse of the Heart,' for one, or the terrible/wonderful skagfest that is 'Oxford Blues.' And after only six weeks in Chongqing, I would already be confident enough to wager that a good proportion of the world's amazing/crap things can be found right here in China.

A couple of weeks ago (I know, bad blogger), we had the good fortune to stumble upon one of these gems. We were not forewarned of the shitfest that awaited us; we simply thought we were going to 'Foreigner Street,' which according to the guidebook and to other westerners in Chongqing had some good foreign restaurants and cafes (and, believe me, I do miss coffee and cakes). What the book neglected to mention, however, was that Foreigner Street was situated in Meixin or MXCJ, which I think may actually be the world's worst theme park ever.

Now, 'theme park' may be a tad too generous as a descrption of this place. There weren't really any rollercoasters, and - thank the lord - you didn't have to pay to get in. Rather, this was Chongqing's attempts to present its citizens with a veritable panorama of the delights that exist across the globe. Only, because this is China, it somehow got it more than a little bit wrong. It was situated right on the edge of down (and next to it were rural houses and farms), and looked like this:


Attractions of this theme park thus included:

- An exhibit devoted to Thai culture with the following tagline:



- Little chairs in the shape of bums, some of which helpfully had holes to instruct little boys where to place their penis and testicles.



- A big plastic Jesus spinning atop a wooden shed on a recently dug mud hill. I don't need to go to Rio now that I've seen this:



- A tape on loop that included the tracks B.I.N.G.O., Alouette, I Went to the Animal Fair, and the Alphabet Song. The first one of which was then stuck in my head for days.

- A fake Great Wall made out of breezeblocks.

Rather aptly, however, Meixin's main claim to fame is that it boasts the world's largest public toilet, which is modestly titled as this:



There are literally floors of toilet stalls (which, as this is China, are holes in the floor). Upon entering this labyrinth of lavatorial delights, you are confronted by a statue of a naked baby who 'pisses' water upon your head. Nice. Sadly photo of said baby did not work out, but I did manage to capture some of the helpfully rendered instructions for the uninitiated on how to piss:



There were also lots of signs abounding that instructed foreigners to 'call Helena' if they wanted to invest in replicating Meixin somewhere else. Sadly I didn't write down her number, but if you think that these attractions would go down well in your hometown, I'd be happy to go back and find out for you. On second thoughts, no, I wouldn't.

Oh, and after all of that the - three - cafes and restaurants on 'Foreigner Street' were all very, very closed.

火锅

To condense the customary apology: sorry for no blogging/have been very lazy/will try to do better so please keep checking etc etc. And now that's over, let's move on to one of my favourite things in the world: food. I love food. I love making it, looking at it, smelling it, talking about it and, of course, eating it, which I have been known to do in rather sizeable quantities. In short, I am an unapologetic hog. And given China's considerable culinary reputation, great food was one of the things I was looking forward to the most about moving to Chongqing. Suffice to say, it has not been a disappointment; food is abundant, cheap and delicious, and it will take far more than one post for me to even start to express the wonders of Sichuan food.

Where better to start though than with huo guo, which is the Chongqing speciality. When any Chongqinger with a smattering of English approaches us to try out their skills (this happens frequently, and is normally accompanied by requests to pose for a photograph with them), one of the things they are almost guaranteed to say is 'do you like huo guo?' I dread to think what would happen to the poor soul who answered 'no,' as huo guo is a matter of such local pride that to snub it would be like telling the residents of Pisa that you don't think much of the Leaning Tower, or the folk of Anfield that you think Liverpool FC are a big'ole pile of shit.

Although it's usually transliterated into English as hot pot, huo guo literally translates as 'fire pot,' and is definitely deserving of that moniker. To whit, it looks like this:



Now, that is by anyone's standards a sizeable quantity of chilli. And this is hotpot in a relatively tame state; when it heats up it starts to fizzle menacingly and give off acrid chilli fumes that makes poor foreigners' eyes water and noses expel phlegm in considerable quantities. It is so toxic in smell that it could be used effectively by the police as a means of crowd control.

And yet, despite its initially off-putting aroma, this fearsome brew is delicious. It is a communal meal; the hotpot is places and heated in a hole at the centre of each table, and you then order various delights- which can be anything from fish balls to rabbit's blood and lamb's testicles - which you place in the hot oil to cook. After a couple of minutes, armed with chopstick in hand you delve in to the cauldron to dig out your food. And although it is spicy, it's not actually the pot of death juice that it appears to be - on coming out of the pot, the food tastes really, really good.

Hotpot is not the only dish in which the Sichuanese indulge their love for chilli. One dish we ordered in Chongqing arrived looking like this:



With all the chilli-fied delights on offer in Sichuan, we've found that our palates have adjusted to spice with alarming speed. As my home cooking adventures in Sichuan cuisine have progressed (on which more to follow soon) I have found myself adding ever more liberal amounts of chilli and chilli powder to dishes, and have even come round to the Chinese way of considering green chilli as essentially a vegetable. Much as Van has been known to stay behind in the kitchen to dollop a fat blob of Vietnamese fish sauce on her fajitas, I wouldn't be altogether surprised on my return to Blighty to find myself surreptitiously adding chilli powder to the strangest of dishes.