Welcome to Tangshan

Therese and I were dropped off at the largest train station either of us had ever seen, advised in broken English to go through that gate (pointing…) in two hours… Ahh when we spent the money to have our hand held through our first Asian TEFL experience, we didn’t expect such thoroughness and dedication…

However, we were not to be deterred, “We’ve got this” we said to one another. Therese stayed with the bags while I went on the hunt for Ice Cream and Water. Unfortunately the staff member at McDonalds felt disinclined to serve me a soft serve as she had the person before me… she waved me away.

Do not wave a Leake away when there is ice cream involved. I felt my blood rise and cheeks glow. I stomped back to Therese and our bags and decided that would be one of the last McDonalds experiences of my life. Therese and I got a soft serve in a strawberry flavoured cone and awaited the arrival of our train, sitting cross legged on marble floor of the station.

It was only a two hour trip on the bullet train, hitting 250 kms per hour. The country side flick flick flicked past us. Squished between our bags we stared out at the flat lands, at strangely empty high rises, at fields of grass and rice, at villages falling to rubble.

The train finally slowed down and Therese and I gaped out the window having realised, yes, we were entering the Walking Dead Season 3 set… or some other Zombie Apocalypse film set. It was haunting. In the distance there seemed to be a Nuclear Power Plant, I made a mental note to go and visit Homer Simpson at my first available opportunity.

The sky looked a thumb smudge of charcoal on canvas, and this soon came to make sense when we learned that this was infact the site of a previous coal mine and close by, towns still functioned as such.

In my rush to get off the train amongst the melee of Chinese passengers anxious to get out and get home I scraped my heavy backpack against my biceps and felt the coming-on of some rather impressive bruises!

The two of us followed the crowd pretending as best we could that this was just another normal day for two Westerners in Tangshan. When we breached the exit a smiling vertically challenged lady greeted us with a smile from ear to ear and bright shining eyes, her name was Lilly. She waved us through the station to the taxi line. Her English was somewhat broken but she seemed genuinely pleased to meet us and I only had the smallest concern that she was a decoy for some human trafficking triad group.

Lilly waved down one of the various taxis and together with the taxi driver tried to haul on one of our enormous bags. The driver looked at the remaining luggage and shook his head. Our bags were hauled out of the trunk and back to the side of the road. We waited (I say patiently, but lets just say my temperature was slightly raised… surely there was a mini-cab taxi that could fit all of our luggage in it?)

NO!

However, ten minutes and twelve taxis later a taxi driver took pity on us and was happy to load my two backpacks and Therese’s incase into his trunk… he felt it not necessary to close the trunk, to tie down the trunk… or take any form of precaution in securing our valuables.

Therese and I crammed in to the back seat and watched out the back window anxiously as our possessions bounced up and down and often threatened to bounce down the road! We swung and swayed and beeped our way through traffic, the boot danced a jig throughout the journey.

While in the cab Lilly explained our living quarters. Therese would have an apartment to herself. I would share a ROOM with another person… a room… with…. Another person?! FOR SIX MONTHS! I took some rather deep breaths, I considered taking up smoking again, I wondered if I could get a medical certificate explaining my condition as a hermit….

In the end it was a misunderstanding, Therese would have an apartment to herself, I (because I’m an Aussie and apparently Aussies are very social… I’ll need to discuss this with the Party For Cultural Preconceptions), would be sharing with a girl from the UK – but would have my own room.

I cannot begin to express my utter relief! I couldn’t afford a plane back to Oz and had I been required too I’d have dealt with it, but good gracious, even when I was in boarding school I preferred a solo room! I suppose this was a good indication of the general confusion that would occur during my life in China. Similar when I tried to buy sugar for my tea and used the word for sugar without the correct accent, so ended up with two bags of dried reconstituted soup!

After a precarious 20 minute taxi drive, including a u-turn here and there, we arrived at Hebei Tangshan Foreign Language School. It was only 2pm, the sky was blue, the building were large and ominous. Lilly led us through the campus and as she opened the door to the teachers accommodation corridor an “aussie aussie aussie” bounced off the walls (great… I thought… an occa!), “Oi, oi oi”, I begrudgingly responded.

Turned out the main foreign teachers here were two Aussies, originally from Cairns, that had spent the last fix / six years in China. Alan and Rhonda were kind and welcoming, gave us some time to get ourselves settled and then Alan was on to it! We were off to discover a bit of Tangshan whether we liked it or not!

Alan loves teaching in China, he’s over sixty and loves imparting his knowledge to others. He will engage a Chinese kid in conversation as soon as shake another man’s hand. You can tell he enjoys his life and his wife, Rhonda, is much the same.

Alan took myself and Therese (lets be honest, the both of us would have loved a bit of chill 

 time… but one does not say no to Alan!) on a bus to Pheonix Park.

We walked a few blocks and entered a quiet sanctuary of trees, waterways, waterless estuaries Signs indicated where to go in circumstance of an earthquake or similar event. We observed a pong littered with lights and water lillies that apparently lit up at night.

Alan took us along a path that led up up up the small mountain, to a peak where we could see the city as a whole. It stretched from East to West, from South to North, a blanket of buildings, estates and factories. Roads winding through a quilt of economy and moments of modernity.

At the peak of the mountain we came to a temple and behind hidden behind a gate a woman kneeled in traditional Buddhist attire. Before the gate was a cushion and place for incense to be burned. Here is where you could pray to a living goddess. I did wonder what happened when she needed to relieve herself, I wanted to ask her how she was, if she was happy. However I’m learning that I know less than I ever thought I did… It’s hard to separate culture from knowledge, belief from understanding. This person, presumably, believes that she is a living goddess, a representation of perfection, of something beyond reality. And who am I to say otherwise? I believe what I believe with as much evidence as anyone else.

As we made our way down the mountain we watched and listened to citizens who came to the park to practise their music. Their unique instruments singing out melodies that danced between the trees and flittered across leaves.

We watched groups performing Tai Chi, and other groups… in their hundreds, dancing… a make shift band, a great speaker drumming our music and dancing minions, smiles and laughter and movement on the corners of streets, on corners and in parks.

While the others clapped and watched the spectacle I could help but turn around and watched the sun lay shadows across the phoenix sculpture. The sculpture of the phoenix is a representation of Tangshan having fallen during the 1976 Earthquake and risen from the ashes, stronger and more beautiful.

We continued to wander, a regal lit-up department store took over the horizon, complete with a Tiffany’s store which I had to take a happy snap of for my sister! We didn’t enter “Wanda Plaza” that day, but in coming weeks I enjoyed the delight of stores filled with phone cases, cheap blue tooth keyboards (one of which I’m writing on at the moment) and other electrical devises, bobble headed key chains, lego sculptures, fish filled vases, rabbit haired toys, Marvel Animation figurines, and hand puppets, my favourite of which was a rather sad looking turtle! There are also the latest from Zara, Chanel, Lee and Ralph Lauren.

I was distracted by scents one day wandering through Wanda, I looked below the escalators and saw a plethora of beautiful flowers, flowers that reminded me of Australia, native flowers of China… and roses, that international beauty itself.

The super stores here are beautifully manicured and what you would expect to see from France to America, to Australia and indeed, Bali, Indonesia.

It is when you leave these conglomerates that you see the everyday life of the citizens of this or any other country.

Over the coming weeks I have spent time trying to get to know my new home, I’ve visited the Museum of Puppetry where they show the history of Chinese animation through puppetry. The puppets were originally made from Donkey skin… which lets, be honest, I wasn’t overly happy about, but then again, the first drum in Africa was made of Elephant stomach, so I’m not here to judge!

Eventually, after a long and rather enjoyable wander with Alan, Therese and I were able to go back to our respective apartments and get to know our digs for the next six months…

Tangshan has a high level of humidity and after our three hour wander I was in want of a shower… I opened the door, I pulled the water tap, I stepped in…. I couldn’t pull the door closed, water was showering throughout the wet area, I stepped back in reaction, the tile under my feet clipped, cracked… suddenly my foot was in goodness-knows whose old washing water! My arm flicked up in alarm (would I fall down this potential sink-hole?!) and broke my roommates (who’ve I’m yet to meet) shower item holder!

I eeked… I eeped! I jumped out of the shower.

“Welcome home!” I thought to myself and laughed in delight at my continuing adventure.