The only two drawbacks for us have been the rain (which others claim is abnormal, the past year) and the reliance on unreliable taxis. Everything else has been wonderful, despite the fact that we speak about 10 words of Mandarin, each. We enjoyed 8 weeks in town while we waited for our container, and to find our lovely apartment. Out in the suburbs, at Castle Hill, we have enjoyed exploring the local village and being recognised there. Virtually all of our fruit and vegetable shopping was done locally, and Helen bought a bouquet of flowers for home and one for her office, at school, each weekend. Most of our colleagues eat out at local restaurants, but we cooked for ourselves at least four nights a week with local produce. We still found time to try a few of the many great bars and restaurants. We found one that fitted all criteria in the past month, the "Zebra Star", across the road from the Garden Hotel - nice setting, reasonably-priced drinks and fabulous food.

 

Helen has loved the shopping in Guangzhou. We knew that we have not even scratched the surface, but it really hit home, this morning, when a taxi driver couldn't find our usual clothing market, and dropped us in the middle of another enormous clothing and leather area, 200m up the street. Last Saturday, I chalked up a "personal best" - four pairs of shoes bought at a small shop that Helen found, and a fifth pair for the day. In times gone by, I probably wouldn't have bought five pairs of shoes in a decade, and certainly not with the same high quality and low prices.

There are markets for everything, as well as a couple of famous "shopping streets". Haizu Square is our favourite area, particularly "One Link" - about 6 floors of small shops selling almost anything imaginable, and quite a few things you didn't know existed, until you saw them. A negative example of the almost-infinite number of objects obtainable are the tiger feet, ibex horns and pieces of monkey for sale for "health" reasons around town - presumably these people "leg it" whenever the authorities come by.

This week, only twelve months after we put our many material possessions into a container, we had the apartment contents wrapped in cardboard again. Machiato was traumatised, but, now that everything is being processed through customs, she has relaxed, although she doesn't stray too far from us. Tomorrow afternoon we board the plane for Jakarta, and the next stage of our adventure. We are very much looking forward to our next jobs, although Helen is concerned that Machi may be emotionally scarred by the move, particularly the stay in Indonesian quarantine.

 

Lastly, the Chinese people have been wonderful. Time and time again, people have gone out of their way, with no thought of reward, to help us. Therefore, we do regret not learning enough of the language to really get to know people, but we, at least, began to establish relationships with people we encountered regularly, from staff at school, to staff at Castle Hill and people who worked at places where we shopped at and/or visited regularly. We hope to be back to see a lot more of China and its people.

  We had a very interesting trip home this afternoon. When we first arrived, and, until the rain stopped, we were captive to the school bus, driven by Mr. Chen, in the afternoons. In our first month at Castle Hill, Mr. Chen drove us to the plant market. We filled the small bus with plants, and he proceeded to drive back home, very, very slowly. Helen remarked on how careful and thoughtful he was about the plants. We soon realised that is how he always drives.

So, whenever possible, after school, we go out onto the main road to hail a taxi home, so that it is a 10-minute trip, on the expressway, like we do each morning, not 35+ minutes, via another housing estate, at snail's pace with Mr. Chen. Taxis have been sparse this week. so we gave up and got into a tuk tuk, which crossed the road between two trucks and a car, then avoided the on-coming traffic (just) to head 600m south, to where taxis are more plentiful.

Three hundred metres down the road, the tuk tuk driver nearly put Helen, me and our friend, Helmi, through the front "windscreen" as he slammed on the brakes and did a u-turn to head back from whence we came - there were police by the side of the road, and, presumably, our man didn't have the correct paperwork.

We then took the same route that Mr. Chen normally takes, but much more quickly. Our hearts were racing as we lurched, bone-jarringly, from side to side and leap-frogged potholes. We got to the T-intersection with a main road and stopped 100m short because two vehicles had collided. In  China, this results in them staying exactly where they are, regardless of the ensuing chaos, until the constabulary arrives and switfly acts as judge and jury. We jumped out, gratefully, then tried to hail a taxi.

The girls got one, and we had to wade through a 2m stream of water pouring along the side of the road (for no apparent reason) and then used the expressway to complete our journey. The 7.5km trip took us only 20 minutes, despite going out of our way and using two vehicles. We were home 45 minutes before Mr. Chen would have dropped us off, but we probably won't do it that way again. The good news is that the expressway exit is usable again, so we shoukd be back to 10 minutes each way for our last two weeks.

If we take the school bus from and to home, it takes at least half an hour. However, if we go by taxi, and use the expressway, it takes 10 minutes. It is well worth the AU$10 in fares each day.

Yesterday, our friend, Helmi, had the family car, and drove us to school, as she had done last week. We reached the exit for school, to find it blocked, obviously because of the landslide on the feeder road that had taken the life of our colleague last week. We drove on. The road authorities, in their wisdom, have blocked every opportunity for a u-turn, so we had to go off the next exit, a long way away, in town, pay the toll, and go back on the expressway, to another exit.

This morning, in a taxi, we reached a new exit, before the school exit, and, after a short debate, took the risk. The school exit was still closed. About 5km on, the expressway forks. Yesterday, Helmi chose to go right, to town, saying the left fork, which looked like it would bring us back onto the expressway in the opposite direction, in fact, went, via another expressway, to Zeng Cheng, a city ~40km away. The taxi driver went left.

Not only was Helmi right, but there was no way of turning off or turning around for ~20km. When we did find an exit, it took us around a huge lake, in the middle of nowhere. Helen recognised a sign (in English, of course) which indicated that we were in a tourist spot famous for its way of cooking free-range chickens. We didn't see any chickens, but we saw a fair bit of the countryside before we reached the road that runs past school.

Our 50-minute ride cost us less than AU$15. The annoying thing was that, even though the side of the road was still fenced off because of the landslide, traffic was going both directions. There seemed to be no reason why the exit should be closed. We'll have to find a way of ascertaining its status tomorrow

The first thing we did was head up top the city wall. I suggested bikes, Helen suggested a tandem. She soon wished she hadn't - she was terrified, because everyone else seemed to walk or ride straight at us, and she had no control over where she was going. I managed to cajole her into 13 of the 14 kilometres, and she walked the last one.

   

We found a nice, cheap restaurant by the south gate, in a youth hostel, and discovered a neat bar street. We had a couple of wanders through the Muslim quarter, and bought a few nick nacks.

 

We hired a car to go out to the warriors. We had a female driver and a female guide. The guide didn't mind that we were not going to use her. She directed us to a silk factory (Xi'an is the start of the Silk Road) where we bought a few things.

The site wasn't as crowded as we had expected, for a Sunday in China. Before starting the trek from the ticket office to the "pits", we bought a half-size, kneeling warrior. He will stay in the box until Jakarta. The farmer who first found the site was there, and we bought the book and got him to autograph it - the English translation is very poor, but it is conveys the story. We looked at the three pits, which were impressive, then wended our way back out, past the tourist stalls.

We had our last evening meal with ex-Ciputra colleague, Tjandra, and his wife, Felly. Tjandra has done his two years in Xi'an and is moving to another international school.

Shanghai was amazing. We caught the "maglev" into town, and reached 430 km/hr. The Dong Hu Hotel, in the French Concession was very nice (and should have been, for the price). There were plenty of bars and restaurants within walking distance. Helen had a list of things to do, and one of the first was the Bund. We walked the 5km there, and had a good wander around. The walkway along the river was packed with people.

We ambled through Yuyuan park to a tourist area beside it. I bought a boxed set of 12 harmonicas, one for each musical key, for well under AU$100. We met back at the hotel, and set out for an afternoon cocktail. We had an enormous nachos with a couple of margaritas just around the corner - we found that most places had great "happy hour" deals until 8pm.

The next day, we hiked down to Taikang Rd. It is a wonderful art area, with a lot of restaurants. We were a bit early for many traders, and it was drizzling. We decided to catch a taxi out to the old canal town of Qi Bao. The taxi driver dumped us in the middle of the new town and few people understood our Cantonese accents (for our 10 words of Mandarin). One young woman waved us in a general direction, and then Helen spotted one of the ubiquitous, brown, tourist signs. Qi Bao was a good place to take photographs, but not to hang around, so we caught a taxi back to Taikang Rd and had a delicious Thai lunch.
 

Helen had determined that, if we did nothing else, we were going to "M on the Bund" for a drink. It was really nice, although outrageously expensive - well worth the visit. On our last day, we caught the ferry across to Pudong and went up to the 88th floor of the Jin Mao tower. It is pretty amazing, although it was very hazy. The tower is hollow, and we could see 88 floors down to the bottom. We also saw two blokes come out of a higher floor on the tower beside it, on some sort of mechanical arm, to do some cleaning or maintenance. Pass on that job. We had lunch at a very nice, very classy restaurant looking back across the river to the Bund. The meal was lovely, but I was annoyed that they charged us AU$15 for a bottle of water.

Getting to the airport, we were pleased to be put on an earlier flight. We were less pleased to discover that both flights were combined, and very displeased to sit in the plane, on the tarmac, for two hours before taking off. The flight was quite "bumpy", and, when we alighted in Guangzhou, other flights were also very late, or cancelled. After unpacking, we were in bed by 11pm. Sleep was difficult, because the heavens opened, and the lightning and thunder went on until nearly dawn.

We returned to school to find that an area where some of the families of the Chinese workers at school lived had been destroyed by floods and a landslide on the night we flew back from Shanghai. A woman who worked in our photocopy room died, as did the brother and sister-in-law of one of the gardeners. The school community has been brilliant in collecting donations to help ten families get back on their feet, and a trust fund will be set up for the daughter of our colleague.

A colleague noted, to Helen, earlier this week "When we arrived, it was too hot to do anything, then it was too cold, and now it is too wet!" He isn't that far wide of the mark, but the past couple of days have been nice. The weather hasn't stopped us doing a lot, but it certainly "dampens" the enjoyment of some events.

ANZAC Day, this morning, wasn't one of them. About two hundred folk gathered at the Shangri-La hotel, on the south side off the Pearl River, to commemorate the day. It was really nice. The New Zealand Consul had a lovely story about a colleague who came across two medals in a Beijing flea market. One had belonged to a New Zealand soldier from WWI, but the other was awarded to a numbered Chinese labourer, one of 95,000 (!!!) brought by the British to the Western Front, in WWI, to dig trenches, etc. The NZ Consulate people were able to put a name to the number, but not a story, apart from a general anecdote by a New Zealander who had met some of these labourers at the time, and noted that, apart from language, there were few differences between them. It is also recorded that some of these Chinese labourers had also taken part in defending the trenches from the German advance. How these two medals came to be on the same table in a Beijing market will remain a mystery.

So, as we number down our days in GZ, we have not diminished our fondness for the city. There are aspects that are very different to Australia. For example, banking: I had one successful attempt at transferring money back to Australia. Unlike what I had been told, the process was very simple, although tedious. The China Construction Bank is very "methodical" in processing transfers. It involves a lot of sitting and waiting, and then signing bits of paper and entering PIN's, but it is quite straightforward. It was much easier than our dealings with a well-known, western, offshore bank, which which we parted company because of its ineptitude.

 

As in any country, when you "go local", you meet nice people. We shop at our local shops and markets, and can therefore, interact with familiar faces, even if we cannot speak the language. Some vendors are excellent at anticipating our desires, and go out of their way to accommodate our difficulty in communicating. I hope that foreigners in Australia receive the same degree of understanding that we do in China.

There have been numerous times in my life when I think "Why me?" (or "Why not me?"), but this week is one of those times when I feel very fortunate and privileged. I have a brilliant family (and a very cute cat), and it seems like everything has fallen into place in the work area. The past 18 months have been a tad less than perfect on this front, but it seems that it might have been worth the wait.

I often reflect on things I've done and/or said and realised that I could have been a bit more "wise" about it (as suggested by a Board member in Surabaya), and I've made some horrible mistakes in dealing with people.  But, on many other occasions, if I had done things much differently, I would have compromised my principles too much. I remember, at a particularly tough time, in a number of aspects, of my life talking to an American counselor, in Ubud. He listened to my tale, and then said "You're just not hanging out with the right people".

Well, being at an International Baccalaureate conference is definitely hanging out with the right people. I used to say, to my administration colleagues, in Surabaya, I wish that all IB teachers could attend the conferences. Workshops are great, but they don't give the sense of being part of the world's greatest learning community that a conference does.

Listening to the stories of James Tooley, who researches "illegal" private schools for the poor around the world, or National Geographic's "explorer in residence", Wade Davis, who exhorts us to preserve our humanity by preserving traditional culture and wisdom, or Greg Mortenson, who builds schools in Pakistan and Afganistan is truly inspiring stuff. But, the wonderful experience of being with 800 others who share the vision of what the world should be, and are working towards making it happen, is breath taking.

The final realisation is that, out "there", are millions of people who, in their own way, are labouring to "create a better and more peaceful world..", and we will never know a fraction of their stories. I salute them all.

We had a glimpse of China as it used to be, on Saturday. The receptionist at school, Wendy, organised 10 of us to visit the ancestral compound in which she grew up.

The drive north, towards a place called Conghua, was a very uninspiring trip, along a 6-lane highway lined with concrete monstrosities. We stopped first at the village of Qian Guang, and spent some time poking around. Parts of it are hundreds of years old. It is completely abandoned, and most of the villagers live in apartment blocks nearby. Wendy couldn't really explain if the villagers had a choice in the matter, or not. There is a tourist trail through the decaying houses, and several are being renovated as tourist shops.

 

We then looked at a traditional compound, down the road a bit.  The layout is basically a clan hall, with rows of family cottages each side of it. There are still some people living in it, and it looked as though the gene pool was extremely small.
 
Because the day was getting away from us, we lunched at an outside restaurant, which are fairly common around the outskirts of Guangzhou. Basically it was a collection of huts in a circle, with either one or two round tables in them. Despite being rustic, they had an air-conditioner/heater and a basic karaoke set up. A Chinese friend of Wendy's ordered. Through the window, we could see a rooster being selected for "preparation" for our meal. The food was actually much more enjoyable than that at a lot of the more expensive Chinese restaurants in the city. Wendy's sister, Vivien, joined us.

Mid-afternoon, we drove along a road lined with lychee trees towards the compound. Even though it has been abandoned for more than 15 years, it is still very impressive. Originally it was walled, with a large watchtower at each corner. One remains - Wendy said the Japanese bombed the remainder. There was another story that the bricks were taken by the communists to build roads.
   
We had a sense of the lifestyle of the better-off classes, pre-Mao. The compound was very much like a small castle. The girls showed us a house they had lived in as teenagers. A family entered from the alley, and shared the living area and kitchen with the family that entered from the opposite alley. There was a hand pump for water, although Wendy said that, even in her time as a child there, the clan members drew water from the well at the front of the compound. The elders of the clan lived in the hall, which was also used for communal occasions.

Wendy told us that, during the Cultural Revolution, her grandmother was stripped of her jewellery and forced to parade down the street whilst being jeered and spat upon. It isn't excusable, but it is understandable, considering that many of the people outside of the wall would have been doing it very tough.

It was a very enjoyable, interesting day, and we hope we can fit in a few more similar experiences in the next few months.

In each of the Asian countries in which I've lived, I like just wandering around and looking. There is always something new and interesting to see, particularly in the village outside our estate: Yong Tai. I've been around all the streets and alleys, and always find something at which to marvel.

With Helen in Beijing, I thought I might do a few more "local" things. The first one was a haircut. I'd had one before in Yong Tai, but picked the wrong place. This time, I went to the flashest hairdresser in town. I first had the Asian haircut experience nearly a quarter of a century ago, in Japan, and Indonesia has it down to an art form. Most of the 20+ chairs were occupied, and I was led to one at the back of the shop. None of us spoke each other's language, but I got the message across that I wanted a haircut, and how much I wanted off.

I had the obligatory wash and head massage, and then a young man began to cut. A couple of others started to hang around. The one who was prepared to risk a bit of English asked me where I was from. He obviously didn't recall the lessons in which they learned the answers to that question, because it took a photo of the Sydney Harbour bridge on my phone to convey the concept of Australia. The haircut was good, and very cheap.
 

In the late evening, I caught the estate bus a couple of kilometres in towards town, and got off opposite an area near a university, where we've been a few times. I explored the other side for a little while, and could not find any bars - the Chinese must drink while eating, at restaurants (of which there were plenty). There were two clubs on that side of the main road. They didn't seem to have much atmosphere, and charged ~AU$50 for 12 large beers, which explained why the locals entered in groups of six.

Thinking that, maybe, students like to have a tipple, I used the overhead walkway to get to the other side of Baiyun (White Cloud) avenue. No bars there either, but there was another club. At this one, it was possible to by one small beer, which I did, then caught a taxi home.

Sunday was cool and miserable, but I wandered down to the village for a foot massage. The girl at the desk gave me a key and I was led to the change rooms, but I mimed that it was only my feet that I wanted done. The masseuse did pretty much most parts anyway, in the chair, with my clothes on. She kept on talking to me as though I was likely to answer, so we both did a lot of shrugging and smiling. When I tried to get her to go easy on my dodgy shoulder, she seemed to want to try to fix it. She was adamant. She sort of pinched the skin near the old scar, which hurt a lot, but it actually seemed to help. (I'm not sure how long it will take the marks to go away.)

I stopped the wet market for tofu, fruit and flowers, and decided to lunch at the restaurant in the estate. I would have been better off down in the village: at least someone would have had a go at trying to understand what I wanted. The girls didn't even understand my universal mime for menu. However, I realised it was on the place mats, so I sat down. It was very Chinese - I wanted a fried rice, even though some of the dishes were tempting, for example, the double-boiled pig's lungs with figs, the steamed fish lips with soy sauce and pepper, the aged duck egg with jellyfish, the braised pig's skin with blood pudding and the chicken or pig feet in white vinegar.

I chose Canton style rice, which, of course, as I realised, too late, wasn't fried. It was steamed rice with some pork and other unidentifiable bits of pig and some green stuff, all made slimy in the way that most Chinese cooks do. It was okay, but I won't be back.

So, it was good to try a few new things. The haircut and foot massage are worth a second trip. I wish I had the language to find out a bit more about what happens in other shops, and be able to give the proprietors a better chance of satisfying my wants.

I'm not sure whether it is because female cats are different to male cats, or whether it is because Machiato is Chinese. Two lots of friends have the same issues with their young cats, and, they, too, have female cats they acquired here, in Guangzhou.

Having had many male cats (usually neutered) in the past, some of Machiato's behavioural traits are hard to fathom. Male cats respond to the "alpha male" stuff (see The Life of Pi), but Machi is irrepressible. Cats, obviously, do not have any sense of morality, but my previous cats have all eventually understood that certain actions earn a rebuke, of some sort, from their owners (definitely not masters) and usually modify their behaviour. Not Machi - even after a smack, or a dose with the spray bottle, she repeats the behaviour until she is physically removed. In fact, if smacked, she will usually retaliate by biting the "offending" hand. Any action that she is prevented from doing is simply a problem to be solved, such as dashing up the inside of the kimono hanging on the lounge room wall.

Cats are supposed to abhor water. Our last three felines had been regularly bathed, but this did not stop them staying clear of water when left to their own devices. Machi, if sprayed, doesn't bother to groom herself, like other cats. In the garden, she chases the water stream from the hose, and happily dips her paw into the water pot outside. She has nearly fallen into the spa when chasing bath foam bubbles and loves "helping" with any hand washing in the sink.

The "naughty" behaviour is predominantly attention seeking, such as burrowing under the runner on the dining room table or tearing up a piece of paper on my desk. She is much more aggressive in demanding attention than any previous cat.

Like any kitten, she loves running and climbing. The trees in the garden are second favourite to the teak four-poster bed. She is like a monkey, and, until this morning, had never fallen. Unfortunately, inside the apartment is treated the same as outside, and getting from A to B usually involves going over or under every possible piece of furniture at maximum speed.

Despite being a cause for concern from time to time, she is far more affectionate that any of her predecessors. She actively seeks out our company (discounting the usual need for food, a scratch or warmth) and, even when being wilfully disobedient (or, is it us who are being wilfully disobedient?) she is still extremely cute and funny.

Guangzhou is a very dangerous place at the moment - because of the high humidity, warm air temperature and cold apartments and houses, virtually every tiled surface is covered in a film of water. In some cases, the moisture is enough to flow (for example, down the stairs outside our apartment). There is a setting on the air conditioners that helps dry out rooms, but one has to be very, very careful walking around. The photo shows footprints in the moisture on the school basketball court.
   
Machiato, Guangzhou's cutest (and naughtiest) cat is like a cartoon character - she takes 20 steps on the spot before moving, when trying to run away, and, several times, has slammed into a wall attempting to take a corner at high speed. Hopefully the "crisis" will be over in a week or so.

Chinese New Year celebrations have finished up - our neighbouring village, Yong Tai, smelt like  Bagdhad just before Saddam went, with all the fireworks going off in the street. Machi, and every other animal in China, was not impressed.

Last week, there was a ground-breaking ceremony for a new gym at school, and the school's owner put on a dinner for business associates, to which some of us from school were invited. The dinner was held in one of Guangzhou's better hotels (which means very, very good.) The food was okay, but the free-flow Moet made it a great night.

I'm really enjoying playing in the band - it must be great to actually be good at playing something, or singing. I manage to fake it enough to get by, and judicious choice of material, plus the fact that we play in a bar (with a heap of colleagues in attendance) has the crowd rocking.

Finally, this has been a momentous week in our lives. Very disappointing news from the school, on Wednesday was followed, on Friday, by an unbelievable offer from somewhere else. We will continue to give our all at Utahloy, and hope that we can continue to make a difference.