Days 347-353 - Nothing changes in Jinan

As the title to this post suggests, this week was same 'ol in Jinan. Our teaching week was filled up with final exams! The trade off of having no lessons to plan was having to try and stay interested to 100 students talk about the same topics - of course in perfect Chinglish. We really should have written this earlier so we could have shared some comments from our learned students with you - for example when one student was talking about the four styles of cooking they listed off frying, steaming, boiling, and of course you can't forget exploding!

In the weekend Liv had her final Chinese lesson and Adam his final mountain men training session, after which we met up at a Buddhist Vegetarian restaurant to say thanks to Brad and Dave for all their amazing encouragement and body-bashing training sessions over the last year.

On her way to meet the boys at the restaurant, Liv experienced yet another example of the genuine helpfulness of the average Chinese person - being directionally challenged and therefore getting lost, Liv asked for directions and ended up having a personal escort right to the door of the restaurant!

The rest of the weekend was spent running errands and doing last minute shopping. Included in our errands was getting lots of things fixed - as is the Chinese way: wear and repair overrides throwing out and buying new. For less than $4 we had 2 pairs of shoes and a belt repaired while we sat on the side of the street with the fix-it man and people-watched.

Adlibing our Jinan.

Days 340-346 - The adlibing crew expands and draws attention!

On Wednesday morning we got up early and made our way to the train station to pick up Mumbles, Pops, Aunty Trudy, and Uncle Brian, who are travelling in China and popping in to visit us for a few days. Seeing a familiar face is wonderful, but when it's family it's so fantastic that it's almost overwhelming!

After catching 2 buses back to our apartment, we spent the morning catching up and hearing the travellers' stories from their few days in Shanghai. We were both proud to hear that they have already immersing themselves well and truly into the Chinese culture - it just means that we were going to have to work a little bit harder to show them different things in Jinan.

After lunch in our favourite local Muslim restaurant we sorted out train tickets for their onward trip to Qingdao, and then set off to show them Wei Weis and the Muslim area of Jinan. While the boys drunk beer and ate bbq meat, the girls had samosas and naan at the Pakistani restaurant "Jasmines" and went to Walmart! After seeing the disgusting state of the Wei Wei's toilet Brian (rightly) concluded it would be more hygienic to use the alleyways instead. At home the girls chatted and gossiped and waited for the boys to return home after their night out.

On Thursday morning we had to go to class (and Mumbles and Pops sat in on Adam's class for a few minutes, just to see what it was like), and afterwards we headed into town for "Mission Optometrist". During this almost 4 hour mission all the visitors had their eyes tested, and picked out an assortment of prescription sunglasses and normal eye-glasses. In the end we purchased 7 pairs of glasses for about a 1/5th of the cost in NZ (including a pair for Mum Denton back in NZ).

After all that work, Adam and Liv led the way to their favourite restaurant in town for a yummy Chinese meal - I think all agreed the meal was delicious, though some of the visitors mentioned afterwards that they would never enter a restaurant "that looked like that" had we not taken them there! Aim accomplished!

We finished the evening off with a stroll through the night market, only to be cut short by the approaching thunderstorm!

Here's Adam the tour guide:

After another slow start on Friday morning, while the men looked around the huge Cyber Market, Liv took the girls to the old Catholic church. On the bus there we were the centre of attention as an old lady really wanted to know how old Mum and Trudy were!! Later, we made it into town for lunch and a look around some of the famous springs in Jinan and a wander through the mazes of alleyways that wind their way around the single storey old town. Adam even stripped off to his boxers and jumped in the local spring 'swimming pool' - typical Adam behaviour!! While walking around we came across a car on fire - the driver made it burst into flames when he decided to open the bonnet - a bit of excitement, especially for firefighter mumbles! We also strolled down the city river and checked out Black Tiger Springs where lots of locals come to get their fresh water. While Adam and Brian waited to take photos at the bottom, the other four of us climbed the war memorial for a (somewhat hazy) view over the city.

Back at the apartment we all got our energy revived before heading down to another local favourite restaurant for a Hot Pot dinner. Here we chose our veges and meat to cook in the pot on the table - one half filled with super-spicy broth and the other half with a non-spicy but just as delicious broth. As usual the night was filled with chatter, laughter and the drinking of more than a few beers. The men are still marvelling at the size and price of the cheap local beers - in fact Adam is still marvelling at this and he's been here almost a year!!! This means that while the girls are off shopping or wandering, the boys can be found sitting in a restaurant drinking beer (yay - Adam finally has drinking companions!).

With the knowledge that Saturday was the last day we all had together we knew we had to make the most of it. Our first stop was Da Fo Tou Shan (Big Buddha Head Mountain) where Adam usually trains every week. We made our way to see the remains of the old Buddhist temple and the rock carvings that colourfully line the cliff face. Afterwards we all made the hike up the steep mountain to the "Buddha Head" and for a great big view of nothing - unfortunately the smog has been terrible over the last few days meaning the family had to look at our pictures to see what they should have been able to see! Pops also got to set some fireworks off - according to Adam this is an obligatory Chinese experience.

Afterwards we went to a delicious vegetarian restaurant where even the meat-eaters enjoyed their yummy lunch - and even though slightly more expensive than the previous restaurants we have taken them to: still only cost us NZ$30 for the 6 of us! After coming from super-expensive NZ, the family love converting to NZ dollars to see how cheap everything is. We earn Chinese dollars, so the effect is somewhat lost on us. However having the family here meant that the adlibers were treated to meals out everyday (and the occasional taxi!) - spoilt like we were kids again! Excellent!!

After lunch we went to the Hero Mountain markets for a stroll around (and some purchases) before making it home just before the heavens opened up. Mumbles, Trudy, Brian, and Liv caught a taxi home, and Adam and Pops arrived half an hour later after jamming themselves into a bus. Because the rain was pelting down outside, the family's last night in Jinan was spent at our place, where Adam cooked his delicious satay pumpkin dish, which we ate while laughing at all the photos we had taken over the last few days. There sure are a lot of good memories that will last us a long time!!

On Sunday morning we picked up a few more of the glasses from the optometrist, before farewelling our family into a taxi. Not too bad, because we will see Mumbles and Pops in a couple of weeks time, after they have seen a bit more of China and we have finished work! Liv only shed a few tears at seeing her family leave ...

The adlibing tour guides.

Adlibing extras...

Throughout our time at Shandong University we noticed the students make no acknowledgement of the guards and cleaners and all the hard work they do around campus - we on the other hand have made a conscious effort to wave, greet, and smile at all the workers, and have therefore become 'friends' even though the extent of our conversations are extremely limited!! Here is a photo of Adam with our favourite guard who always salutes us with a great big smile!

Days 333-339 - Counting down

This week, nothing out of the ordinary happened - well nothing out of the ordinary if you are an English teacher in Jinan! We spent a lot of the week preparing for Liv's family arriving next week, and for our trip around Asia that begins in 3 weeks.

On Saturday night Adam and Matt decided to give the Wei Wei's Challenge a go. For those who haven't heard of this particular challenge it involves drinking 10 bottles of 600ml beer and eating 100 meat kebabs - all in 3 hours. Over half way through, Adam realised all he was going to get for completing the challenge was an extremely bad hangover the next day, so he forfeited. Matt fearlessly (and perhaps stupidly) carried on, only to pass out on the table before he could finish ...

The boys offered excuses along the lines of "I could have done it when I was still an alcoholic student", but all that really matters is that they tried!!

On Sunday Liv's mood increased 100 times when she received a call from her Mum and Dad from Shanghai! They are in the country, and only 3 days away from Jinan!!

Adlibing, adplanning, addrinking, and adwaiting our time left in Jinan ...

Days 326-332 - Ticking off another Province

With an extra day off due to the Chinese Labour Day, we decided to make the most of it and headed off to Shanxi Province. The Labour Day holiday used to be one of the "Golden Weeks" where the entire Chinese population was on the move and travelling was a phenomenal task! Luckily for us the week-long holiday is now only a 3-day one, meaning not all of the 1.3 billion people here are moving around.

Our day on Thursday started early as we needed to make it on time for our bus all the way across town - about 2 hours by bus. But after 4 buses passed us without stopping because they were full well before they got to our stop (when we say full, we mean sardine-tin with people hanging out the door!), we had to resort to catching a taxi. This meant we got to the station more than an hour early, so after getting our tickets we sat down to observe the chaos around us.

We eventually boarded our bus, which would drop us off in Taiyuan 8 hours later. As soon as we arrived we bought our tickets back to Jinan for Sunday, to ensure we actually got home in time to teach on Monday! With little to do in Taiyuan we headed straight for the train station to try for a train to Pingyao that night - and were successful, the only down side being that it didn't leave until 11.20pm, four hours later.

So we headed to a nearby restaurant with a couple of French teachers we met on the bus to count the hours down.

We finally arrived in Pingyao just after 1am in the morning and headed straight to our accommodation and bed.
On Friday we spent the day wandering around Pingyao Old Town. Pingyao is one of the most famous Old Towns in China, and is home to the first Chinese bank. Because the town fell into poverty in the 20th century, there was no money to modernise, subsequently creating a zone of the past for tourists to visit.
Although we enjoyed the old town and the many museums, temples and government offices (including the first bank and old prisons), we found it much more enjoyable to lose ourselves along the back alleyways of the town. Once off the main roads you find the 'real' old town, with children playing, grandmas and grandpas just sitting back enjoying life and not trying to hawk souvenirs to all passing tourists - actually they looked a little surprised that we were not on the main tourists roads! On Saturday we headed outside of the city walls to Shuanglin Temple - a Buddhist temple purportedly one of the most famous in Shanxi Province, with exquisite carvings throughout the temple. Some of the broken carvings revealed the secret to their production, with a wood skeleton and clay-like mud to create the shape and give detail, before painting to finish. One of the down points of visiting this temple was that due to the fact that Shanxi is the centre of coal production all the statues were covered in coal dust, and robbed them of their colours and details.

After visiting the temple we wandered around the village that seemed basically asleep, before heading back to our hotel to shelter from the rain. The afternoon was spent adlibing our way around some more alleyways, spending most of it lost but thoroughly enjoying the feeling - although we always had the wall to keep us from wandering too far astray. The wall was cool to see, especially in the parts of town where it hadn't been renovated because it was just mud - none of the new 'old' bricks in sight. We also popped up onto the wall for a view over the city. A highlight of the day was entering a Taoist Temple at the end of the day and almost having it entirely to ourselves - a nice contrast from the previous day when we struggled to even move in the crowds. That night we really treated ourselves: first we got a full body Chinese massage, before indulging in our first Western Meal since Vietnam, which was definitely worth the high price!

On Sunday morning we began the mammoth trip in reverse and arrived back in Jinan in time for dinner! The only hitch was getting caught in major traffic jams that added in 2 hours to our travelling time, and resulted in the bus being turned off along with the air-con.

It was an awesome trip into the past, and possibly the last time we'll have a home to return to for the next year!

Adlibing the old alleys.