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Nicole and I started the new year with a visit to Chongren to see Beth and Cat at their project. Unfortunately, pretty much everything possible went wrong on the way there. We'd finally got our passports back on the 31st, meaning we're finally able to travel by train again but we both overslept, waking too late to catch the only train of the day to Chongren. Then Nicole lost her purse and we missed our bus whilst we looked for it; then, in the taxi on our way to the station, she realised she'd forgotten her passport after all (which we thought we might need to travel back) so we had to get another two taxis, back to the house and then to the station again. We didn't waste the additional opportunities to bicker with taxi drivers over prices - this is becoming my new hobby, weirdly I quite enjoy it - and finally, we were on our way.
We arrived in Chongren early evening, after around six hours on various buses, where the differences between this and our project became clear very quickly. Chongren is so, so much smaller than Jiujiang! There is one main high-street and apart from that it's all slightly ramshackle roads with plenty of garage shops, but pot-holes and wandering chickens too. There were no road-markings either, so our taxi-driver just drove wherever he fancied, scattering tuc-tucs and pedestrians as he went. At one point an old man pulling a cart had to run to get out of our way because we were headed straight for him and showing no sign of slowing down. I briefly considered putting on my seat-belt (you don't often have them here, so I'm out of the habit) but we'd already been in the taxi quite a while by this point and I didn't want the driver to notice and think that it was a reflection on my opinion of his driving skills. Which it was, but I didn't want to offend him.
Out of the taxi, Beth was waiting for us with hers and Cat's waiban, Mrs Mung, and they led us to a tiny two-roomed restaurant for dinner. Here we found Cat and maybe five teachers from their school, most of whom the girls said they didn't actually know. All of the teachers encouraged us to drink more and more wine, toasting us and each other near-constantly, whilst Mrs Mung pouted because Beth and Cat told her they'd drunk too much on New Year's Eve: "why don't you ever drink too much with me?" Apparently these sorts of meals are normal in Chongren and happen at least twice a week, but me and Nicole have only been to about four since we arrived so it was a nice change for us. We ate until we physically couldn't fit anything else in and the waitress had to be asked to stop the orders on the dishes that were still coming. Beth and Cat took us back to their apartment (which is reaaally nice, btw) and we spent the evening catching up on Miranda.
On Wednesday we were given a tour of the school, which is actually bigger than ours (6000 to students to our 4500), although it's difficult to compare their sizes exactly when both of the campuses are so different. We met a few of Beth and Cat's students as well, before going for lunch in their canteen and lazing the afternoon away. We ventured into town for dinner and, afterwards, ice-creams at the only fast-food restaurant in town. On the way, I came terrifyingly close to losing my bank card and thereby access to all of my money when I tried to withdraw some cash from what turned out to be a dodgy ATM. I tried to insert my card and it jammed in the mouth of the machine, just out of my reach. I panicked, the others tried not to laugh and Cat and I ran across the street to buy a pair of tweezers, with which we eventually managed to drag my card back out. Back at the girls' apartment, we spent the rest of the night playing along to Big Fat Quiz of the Year 2012 on 4OD.
We had to leave about lunchtime on Thursday, but before we left we had time for a tour of some of Chongren's oldest and most run-down little neighbourhoods. These were narrow streets of ramshackle, mismatched houses with torn good luck posters pasted to the doors and rickety public wells for their inhabitants. A couple of the houses had burnt down; the charred remnants of some were still there, others were marked just by bare squares of earth covered in litter. I did try to take photos, but I'm afraid they don't really capture the alleys and homesteads as well as I'd hoped. Cat, our tour-guide for the morning, was also able to point out other interesting things like a dark storehouse where we could see the paper houses built to be burnt at funerals (so the deceased can own them in the afterlife).
That's pretty much everything we did in Chongren, I think. We arrived back in Jiujiang on Thursday evening and have been back in our usual routine of teaching/doing as little work as physically possible ever since. Just one last thing: a while ago, I was asked to write a little about my experiences in China as a gap year student for gooverseas.com. My 'interview' is now up on their website, and you can read it here - www.gooverseas.com/gap-year/gappers-in-china.
Ella xxx
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Jo Love the pictures - more like what I expected for you in Jiugiang, the contrast of new and shiny and makeshift is very striking. XX