The Last Post (from Suzhou)

Well it's ridiculously late - see the time this was posted at.
But once again, due to a late night last night, my body clock is all out of sync.

Since my previous post on Wednesday we've eaten pigs head in a Xuzhou (Shelley's home town) restaurant - it was actually good. We've had chickens feet:


In a Sichuan restaurant and crayfish and eel in what Michael called a Chinese Restaurant. I think he didn't really know what region it was, so just told me that to shut me up.

I have discovered that people are damn obliging here. We went for a couple of games of pool, there were no beers behind the bar, so the barman nipped off to the shop to get us some. I like Milky Tea with tapioca seeds in.

All you can drink at TGI Friday's for around £5 is a bad way to start a Friday night. And TGI cocktails are rank, way to sweet. Chicken on a stick outside of a nightclub absolutely kills a burger from a dodgy van.

Tomorrow I get the 20:30 night train from Suzhou to Beijing and a new part of the journey begins. I'm a little apprehensive, but that's probably healthy, it would be a bit dim to move to a city of 15 million people where you don't know a single person and be totally complacent. I am very excited though, this first week has been great and China is a really fantastic place to be. It seems to be really fast-moving and constantly changing and modernising cities. I guess there'll be an upturn in the blogging since I won't know anyone there, so I'll have time on my hands. I'll be sightseeing, house hunting and generally trying to get to know the city too though, so there'll be plenty going on.

Photographs and video from today

You can check out the individual photographs here.
See especially the last few from a visit to the market, plenty of interesting ones.

Here's a short video from the market, I've got a couple more here.

Day what?

Today is Thursday apparently.
And I arrived on Monday lunch time.
So that makes this technically day four.

I've definitely had four meals in a restaurant, I've been to the pub a couple of times, I bought some DVDs, a webcam and a microphone for Skype, oh and a Chinese simcard (message me if you want the number).
The thing I'm not so sure about is if I've been to sleep enough times for it to be day four?

When I arrived on Monday, I surprised myself.
Having gone an entire 24 hours with no more the a couple of grabbed hours kip, I arrived here, went out for dinner (Xinjiang style - West China, think lamb), then a few beers, then managed to stay up until 03:00 talking and drinking with Mike.

The next day I slept until 16:00, which was understandable.
Then we went out that night for dinner (Sichuan style frogs) and a walk around the lake - Mike's clearly getting older. Unfortunately, a combination of sleeping until 16:00 and laggish confusion meant I didn't sleep that night at all.

I don't mean I had a bad, disturbed night's sleep, I mean litterally none at all.
So then Shelley and I went out for lunch (Guangdong) then the shopping as mentioned above.
By the time we were getting a taxi back home, my head was lolling around and I was literally falling asleep on my feet. I wasn't too tired to notice the supermarket though.

It wasn't actually a carrefour we went to, but you get the general idea. It was bright and filled with confusing and exciting things that I have no idea what they were. I said Tamey is getting older, but clearly so am I when the idea of a shopping in such a supermarket clearly excites me.

Anyway, we got back and decided to watch Kung Fu Panda, which was good fun while I was awake - about 50% I think. I then had to go to sleep for an hour. Mike got back from work around 19:00. I got up and had a shower and we went out for food (Hunan - Mao's home province, very spicy) and then a few beers here.
The Bookworm was very cool and somewhere to get my hands on cheap books, combined with music and beer means I was very happy to see they are also represented in Beijing. I'll be there.

We got home at a reasonable hour (before midnight) and I had no problem falling asleep. It's now morning and here I am, awake as normal. So hopefully that should be the sleeping patterns sorted out. Tonight Shelley is going to cook (Jiangsu I'd guess - cause that's where we are and she's from) and we're going to chill out.

So some immediate impressions to finish up with:

• The food is incredible - don't underestimate this, everyone has to eat, every day
• DVDs still cost 70p each, there's no excuse to be bored
• The Internet works fine, can't find any problems
• Supermarkets look damn confusing in a good way (Himmo, don't worry, they have Nutella - it's just very expensive)
• An electric scooter looks like loads of fun, but the roads are crackers
• This is going to be a really exciting place to live

Day 1

Well here it is, the first post proper.
I'm writing this in Mike and Shelley's apartment, just after 18:00.

Yesterday was a long day travelling and took 24 hours.
But before I describe that, I want to put it in context.

I have seen this show on TV a couple of times.
The Long Way Around seems to be an opportunity for Ewan MacGregor and his boring (and well-named) mate to be paid to travel the world. Good deal for him. However, whenever I see it, they're always having some emotional moment, worrying about whether they'll be able to carry on or not. Although it's interesting to see the places involved I have to confess I don't care enough whether two very rich men, backed by a huge support team, can complete their utterly pointless journey. So for me, those emotional wranglings just get on my nerves.
Consequently, although my journey here was damned hard work, I'm not going to complain about it, I chose to come here and have to get on with it.

This was my route
View Larger Map

So you can see it was a canny way. Over 9000KM (>5000 Miles Imperialists) in fact.

At 12:30 on 24 August we left Caroline's parent's house in Berlin and drove to Tegel Airport.

Flight 1 Berlin 14:05 - Dusseldorf 15:15

Maybe trying to show the rest of the world how cool and liberal they are, one of the choices of in-flight literature was this (NSFW).

Then at Dussedorf airport as I was buying a copy of Hello Magazine (For Shelley, I didn't even read it honest) I managed to put my passport and boarding card down somewhere.

Pretty dim, fortunately somebody found it straight away and gave me a shout. That could have caused some serious disruption, not least trying to get another visa.

Flight 2 Dusseldorf 17:25 - Shanghai (Pudong) 10:20 on 25 August.

The flight was pretty dull to say the least.

However the back of the plane was pretty empty, so instead of sitting next to a miserable looking bloke as I had been assigned, I managed to get a middle row of three seats to myself.

I finished my book and also watched a couple of rubbish films (What Happens in Vegas and 27 Dresses). I bought a bottle of Johnnie Walker to give Michael as a present for letting me stay over. Inevitably I had a sneaky couple of glasses in the hope it would help me sleep on the plane, but no joy. I did take this rather nice photograph though:

I arrived at Shanghai airport pretty much on time and despite the hassle involved in getting the visa, immigration was a damn site easier than the last time I passed through Heathrow.

Got my bag and then headed out to the long-distance bus station for a bus to Suzhou where Michael lives.

Unfortunately there were no buses, no-one that spoke any English and no signs in English. As my fellow travellers will remember from last time, this was not an easy place to navigate. Even more so when there's clealy something wrong and no buses around. So trying not to aggrivate the hole in my shoulder with the 25kg backpack, I walked back to the terminal to try and get some information. Ther information desk seemed a good place to start. It wasn't.

After thrice explaning where the bus station was and me thricely responding that I'd been and there was clearly some problem, I gave up. On the way back to the bus station a Japanese guy started talking to me, so I pretended not to have already been to the station already. When we got there he was able to read the temporary sign and explained that because of some problem, we had to take a different bus to Shanghai's other airport, Hong Qiao. From there the buses were running.

Unfortunately 13:00 is clearly rush hour in Shanghai. What should have been a 1 hour bus ride took 2.5 hours.

It must have been bad traffic because even the Chinese passengers (i.e. everyone other than me) were looking out at the queues and making incredulous noises.

When I did eventually get to Hong Qiao buying a ticket was really easy and the 1.5 hour journey to Suzhou was uneventful. Michael met me 5 minutes after the bus arrived and the visit began.

Inevitably it ended at about 03:00 the next morning with a good degree of the whisky gone.

A quickie

I leave Germany tomorrow.
Boo.
However as soon as the plane lifts off I will be overtaken by the excitement of what is to come.
You can expect the first blog post proper sometime on Monday/Tuesday.
Wish me luck.
Caroline follows in a couple of days when the Brussels Bureaucracy sorts itself out.

Last Day and visa settlement

Quick post before decamping to the boozer.

Secco at 17:00, Basha at 19:00, then The Forth whenever after that.

So my final day at work and I got a cracking haul of presents:

• A lecturer's jacket of the type you'd expect to have leather patches (picture to follow)


• A pipe for the same reason as above


• A certificate detailing my achievements (scanned copy to follow)


• A Hugo Boss tie - very bebonair


• A beautiful Waterman Pen, engraved with one of my typical work phrases "For Fuck's Sake"


• An extremely high quality merino undershirt to deal with the Beijing winter (see below)

Oh and the letter of invitation is on it's way too, so that's a big relief. The earliest it will arrive is Monday at 18:00. I'll keep you posted.

By the way, the German is isolated in southern Germany, Stuttgart and Freiburg to be exact - hence no posts.

Penultimate day and visa strife

No Visa strife is not Cockney rhyming slang for what I intend to make Caroline.
I'm sure you all know now that we got engaged last weekend and are planning to get married next summer in Berlin. This surprises me, even though I planned the whole thing and asked.

Visa strife instead refers to the process of getting my working 'Z' visa for China.
To get that I need:

• an application form with photograph - completed
• a work permit from the Ministry of Labour - got it
• a letter of invitation from the Ministry of Education - not got it yet

So when I have those things, I then need to go to the Consulate in Manchester and get my visa.

Unfortunately, it takes a few days for letters to be sent from China, even by priority Fed Ex. So the flights I had for Berlin on Monday are going to have to be delayed. It's no real problem, as long as I can leave on the flight from Berlin to Shanghai on 24 August.

However it would be nice to get over to see Caroline soon, what with us being recently betrothed and all.

On the bright side, this is my penultimate day working in local government, so that is something to smile about. I even completed a Service Planning document today, just to remind myself what I will no longer have to do. My colleagues are whispering, I already know I'm receiving a pollution mask, but what else is in store...

In case you were concerned...

about our social lives in Beijing, this here blog seems to suggest we will have no trouble.

In fact reading some of the posts reminds me of some of the nights out we had in China last time.

Obviously this will only be a small slice of our life in China, but it's nice to feel that the fundamentals are in place.

Next onto the luxuries, like finding somewhere to live. So far I am liking this place. It's the indoor/outdoor pool combo that's selling it.

Only 7 days left at work.