Journal: First Five Days

Here I am in a new place where I don't know anybody and don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing...for the second time in my life, if anyone's counting. Since these first few days are so important to the process of settling in, I've recorded them one by one.

Day 1 (Sunday)

I thought I was making good time on the trip from Lanzhou to Guanting until I changed buses after lunch and left the highway. Due to frequent stops, roadworks, and stretches of unsealed road it took the minibus about 3 hours to cover the last 70km to Guanting, a small town with only one major road.

A young guy sat next to me on the bus and greeted me. He revealed that he was also headed for Guanting, and claimed he knew a lot of the people at the Sanchuan Culture Centre (where I'm living now). I thought this was all too much of a coincidence and suspected he was pulling some sort of con. However, nothing else happened, and before we arrived I realised that he was genuine. He helped me find the Culture Centre, and when I asked his name he said that I could call him Xiao Bai ("little Bai").

I arrived at about 6pm. My new boss Mr Zhu was out of town, but I was greeted by Yang Ying, Jin Baoyan, and Jessica. Yang Ying is a recent college graduate who has only been working here for about 2 months. She's keen to practise her English with me. I'll play along for the moment, and later try to trick her into correcting my chinese compositions! Jin Baoyan is in his 30s, and seems quiet but friendly. He has been involved with the Sanchuan Development Agency since 1998, which was when Mr Zhu quit his job as a teacher to devote more time to SDA. Jessica is an American who is just here for the summer to help out and do some of her own research. This is the main core of SDA at the moment, although there are lots of other members who sometimes volunteer their time.

Our office is on the second floor of the Culture Centre, and my room is on the first floor. We five share a bathroom and a kitchen. Jessica has been very thorough in showing me all the ropes. The Culture Centre is quite big and other people live here too. When I saw the garden in the middle, I immediately thought of a short story by Pipi which I read recently, which is about an old apartment block that has a central courtyard surrounded by a veranda, much like the Culture Centre.

I love it. I like the informal atmosphere of the group, I like having a chance to live in close contact with this small "work unit", and the work is exactly what I had my heart set on: rural development.

Garden at Sanchuan Culture Centre
One part of the Sanchuan Culture Centre. Our office is on the second floor.

Day 2 (Monday)

I went for a walk through town this morning, feeling a little self-conscious. Being such a small place, I didn't have the sense of anonymity which I have in a big city.

I don't have any work to do yet, but I started looking through some of the files to get a feel for the kind of work that SDA does. They've completed an impressive number and range of projects in the last few years.

Jin Baoyan does most of the cooking here, and for lunch today he made lamb and potato soup. It was very tasty, and good for dipping bread in. People don't often eat rice here, but the bread is very nice. It's a traditional food, so it's called bing (the chinese word for breads and biscuits) or momo (in the local dialect) rather than mianbao, which is the word used for breads copied from the European style. Really, the two are very similar, with the main difference being that most chinese-made mianbao doesn't taste very good.

The Culture Centre has a basketball ring. The ground beneath it was too muddy to play this morning, but in the afternoon I took a ball out for a bit of exercise. No sooner had I got there than some young boys came literally running to join in. There were no questions like "what country are you from?", we just shot a few baskets in a friendly sort of way.

Tomorrow there is going to be an opening ceremony for a school that was built with help from SDA and the Japanese embassy, and Yang Ying and Jin Baoyan went to the village this afternoon. They will stay the night with one of the families. Jessica and I went out for noodles. She's interesting to talk to, and I hope that I can absorb some of her knowledge about China and development work before she goes back to America in about two weeks.

Language is a big problem for me. The local chinese dialect sounds somewhat similar to Mandarin, but I really can't follow much of it at all. And even when people try to speak Mandarin, it usually sounds like something halfway between Mandarin and the dialect. Furthermore, in this county the most numerous ethnic group is Tu, and their native language is something quite different from chinese.

Who's Exotic?

To many people in the West, the Orient is an exotic land of ancient beauty. But what do chinese consider exotic? Well, many seem just as fascinated by China's past glory as foreign tourists are. Urban chinese with zero religious belief visit famous temples and make the obligatory kowtow at the altar. Television dramas set in the Qing Dynasty court are eternally popular (more so in the north than the south, according to statistics). And people occasionally don old-style clothing (tangzhuang) as a fashion statement. For advertisers, it's a gimmick: I recall one ad where the emperor endorsed a particular brand of sauces. The reality is that modern architecture, clothing, and society are completely different to China's imperial past.

Another source of interest are minority ethnic groups, of which China officially has 55, making up about 10% of the population. They star in numerous television documentaries, and it seems they all have something "colourful" to offer: colourful dances, colourful dress, or colourful festivals. Many chinese are attracted by the mystery of Tibet or the exoticness of Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia is seldom mentioned without "grasslands" in the same sentence. Although outsiders might think of China's population as homogeneous, to the chinese there is enough variation inside their borders to warrant package tours.

Day 3 (Tuesday)

Today was the day of the school opening ceremony, which I attended as a special guest (because I'm a "foreign friend", I guess). When Jessica and I arrived, a white sash was hung around each of our necks. Presently, somebody came up with two cups of baijiu (strong alcohol) and indicated that I should drink. Not wanting to cause offense, I quickly downed one of the cups. Little was I expecting that one was not enough, that the man wouldn't leave until I had drunk the second cup as well! Thus I was a bit light-headed when I finally met Mr Zhu and the representative from the Japanese embassy, and we were all led to our seats on the stage.

The school students performed some dances, and then there were speeches. Between items, we were given some gifts (an embroidered cloth; a baseball cap) and that man with his twin cups of baijiu came by again. This time I just had a small sip. After the ceremony, we went to one of the houses in the village and had a very tasty lunch.

Dance
Students perform a drum dance.

After that we left the village, but the fun was not over yet. All the guests (which included representatives from various government agencies) reassembled near a small river under some trees. Bottles of beer and baijiu soon appeared. They drank and talked and some (including Mr Zhu) were inspired to sing.

I was aiming for moderation, but in the end I was pressured into a drinking game. It was a very simple one where you hold out your hand with one finger extended. Thumb beats pointer finger, pointer finger beats middle finger, etc. As you show your hands, you should call out together: "We two are good people!"

Day 4 (Wednesday)

I got up early today and went outside to play basketball. Mr Zhu joined me, and turned out to be far better shot than me. Two of his friends, wearing basketball singlets, soon joined us. SDA actually has a basketball team, and according to Mr Zhu it's the best team in the area.

Xiao Bai, the guy I met on the bus, also came by after his morning jog. I took the opportunity to leave the basketball court, where I was hopelessly outclassed, and speak a few words with him.

I had a talk with Mr Zhu over breakfast about whether there was any work I could start doing. He suggested that I try translating some newsletters. It took me most of the day just to translate two pages. With my present level of chinese, nobody would actually pay me to work as a translator, but this is a great opportunity to rack up experience. And although I'm slow, I'm happy with the result.

I also talked to Mr Zhu about my visa issue. Unfortunately, he knows even less about it than I do, and said that I should investigate it myself. So I went to the local police station today. They didn't know much about the process either, but were very nice and made some phone calls on my behalf, eventually telling me that I should go to the foreign affairs office at Ping'an (which is between here and the provincial capital, Xining).

Then at about 5 o'clock, Mr Zhu came and said that he had some urgent business to take care of in Xining and was going to drive there after dinner (SDA is currently borrowing a car from someone, and a grant application to purchase a 4 wheel drive is in the pipeline—remote villages are not easy to get to, after all). So I went with him and Jin Baoyan.

We stayed in the apartment of one of Mr Zhu's friends, who is out of town at the moment. There was a double bed, a single bed, and a sofa. I volunteered to sleep on the sofa, and at first there was no protest. But when bedtime came, suddenly Jin Baoyan insisted on sleeping on the sofa, and Mr Zhu took the single bed, so I, with some embarrassment, had to sleep on the best bed.

Day 5 (Thursday)

We had some youtiao (deep-fried dough sticks) and warm milk for breakfast. The milk is in a bowl, and most people dip the youtiao in it. This is a relatively common breakfast in China, although soy milk is more traditional than cows milk. Fresh warm soy milk is very nice, nicer than the bottled stuff I once tasted in Australia, although unfortunately it is sometimes over-sweetened. On the other hand, I don't like cows milk at all, but I forced down a bowl to be polite.

Mr Zhu went off to take care of his "urgent business" (seeing a doctor, although I don't know what for), and I went to the visa office. I wanted to get an "F" class visa, which covers things like business trips and research, but the person there considered my volunteering at SDA to be work, regardless of whether I was paid or not.

That was quite a setback, since I can't get a work visa unless SDA goes through all the rigmarole of applying for a permit to employ foreigners. In the end, I went back to the visa office in the afternoon and tried to get an "F" or "L" (tourist) visa by promising that I wouldn't do any work. This time the person said that I was outside their jurisdiction and should have gone to Ping'an, but told me he could extend my current residence permit by one month. So now I'm legal until the end of August. It's appropriate in a way, because Mr Zhu said that he would give me a one month trial at SDA (mind you, he didn't say that until I had already sent three big bags by post and was holidaying in Qingdao).

Actually, I'm a little bit frightened of Mr Zhu and the way he keeps changing his mind, and I want to make a good impression. It didn't help that I had to call his mobile three times just to find my way back to the place where we were staying, and each time I understood very little of his chinese over the phone. And I want to offer my services as a translator!

Jin Baoyan bought some meat and vegetables and cooked dinner. He really is a man-of-all-work, and seems to wait on Mr Zhu hand and foot. He's very polite to me too, but I resist it. The way I see it, I'm the unexperienced newcomer who should be making the proverbial coffees.

I've only spent a day in Xining, but I did quite a bit of running around to sort out my visa and buy a second-hand laptop, and I must say that my impression is that the people are quite friendly.