30.1.05
Hello I'm in Turpan at the moment, near where else but Urumuqi...! From Beijing I went to Xi'an and saw the terraotta warriors and cycled around the mosque area which was mad, we had the best food i had had in ages although the air was so filthy you could taste it and i reckon if you were hungry enough you could just open your mouth and eat it too.
Then we got train tickets to Urumuqi and got off at Dunhuang. We went fluttering over sanddunes and climbed one so big its counted as a mountain, and lit firecrackers at the top. The next day which i think was yesterday we went to see the mo gao caves whci hare apparently like the cistine chapel of central asia. Then we got back on the train and upgraded from hardseat to hard sleeper, i've gotta say, hard seat is frickin inhumane. oh that's right in dunhuang my hair froze outside. like, before i went to germany people said that it would be so cold your hair would freeze if you didn't dry it before going outside but it never did but here i reached up and freaked out thinking some twigs had got caught in my hair and then i realised that it was my hair and it was really freaky. today Leuitenant Dan the blue-eyed Aussie babe got an ear infection so we spent the arvo at the hospital where there were cigarette butts lying around on the floor and people were smoking in the consultation room. they needed a chinese name so we gave him long dragon which seemed so much funnier at the time. we actually arrived in urumuqi before getting the bus to turpan, thank god because it was minus 25 there and i could feel my fingers freezing on the inside and i thought they would snap off. clambering over the sanddunes was mad, one side was icy and the other was soft and warm, and walking along the edges was easy because of the ice there and i got to pretend i was lawrence of arabia minus the robes and the penis. man we were exhausted but at the abandoned tourist complex at the bottom this old lady made us some mad tea with lots of stuff in it and sat on her bed and watched and waited to refill our cups, then charged us 10 kuai for the experience which was steep but it was worth it.
tomorrow we're catching a sleeper bus to kashgar and dude i totally can't wait, we're going to spend like a week there.
i reckon after kashgar it's off through sichuan and yunnan and i moved my flight back yet again to march 6, i didn't mean it to be that late, i asked for the 4th or the 5th but he gave me the 6th so fair enough i'll be back the day before uni starts ready to pay some nice juicy late fees, speaking of nice and juicy, it's kebab city here and the food is awesome and i am hungry again. mmmmmm.

i didn't get into media and comm, no surprises there, but i even missed out on 'international studies' which had a cut-off of 92, so my marks haven't even raised my uai by 3 points. dude.

poetry time
china china you're so big
is that a twig
in my hair
what a scare
it's not a twig
it's in fact my hair













You can post in China but you can't read what you've written. So if you were being repressed and opressed by your government somewhere you could probably send out messages for help but never know anyone is doing the same thing!!
Beijing is great. I saw Mao's body today. It was alright. I'm going to Xi'an in a few days and then Chengdu and Chongching. The Beijing accent is mad and I've been practising adding my errrrrrr's to everything. I like the people too. Yay! Having a mad time.
  ¶ 23:31 0 Comments

  Ok I got my extra 9 days in China, haha looks like I can go to Urumiqi after all! Well maybe.
Finished kindy today, I am no longer committed to being a fraud anymore, yay!
Last night I saw The Phantom of the Opera with Jessie. Oh it was soooooooo good.

So this is my last post in Taiwan. I don't know if I'll blog back at uni. I didn't before.

Any last words for my beautiful blog?... Hmmm. I have been overwhelmed with nice people in Taiwan and have learnt alot etc etc. I can chat with the hairdressers quite confidently now so even though I wasn't all psycho and serious about learning Chinese like half the people at the language centre, I have still reached a level I am happy with. The Taiwanese sun has given me wrinkles under my eyes which totally sucks, that is something I will never forgive Taiwan for. I figure I have spent about 5% of my life here haha. I don't know if much has changed except I am slightly less culture shocked than I was when I got here, but I've gotta say, I will never be able to totally accept some of the aspects of living here.
I sent the last two boxes home this morning. I never sold my cd player or fancy tennis racquet, i figure I will let my gorgeous flatties keep them and do what they wish with them. I didn't get to sleep until 5 this morning. At 7:30 my mum called to wish me good luck. I can't believe I'm going to China tomorrow.

I spent all year saying goodbye to friends. Now it's my turn. To all 5.2 readers of this blog, known and unknown, and probably known in real life but not known here... it's been great.

Goodbye!
  ¶ 19:45 0 Comments

  I finally decided to let my chemically straightened hair out and fork out for a lonely planet china. That was a huge mistake because now I can't decide what I want to do. The original plan was to spend most of the time in Beijing and Shanghai and wait till I get there to decided what to do but now I want to climb all the mountains and go all over the place. It would be fun to go to Urumqir although getting there and back would take four days. And Harbin is supposed to be the best place to go in winter and now I'm just dying from confusion. Goddamit. I would tell my travel agent I want another week there but I've already changed the dates twice and I don't want to give him the shits. Oh what the hey I'll email him anyway. [One minute later] Oh shit I did it, I emailed him. I hope he replies by tomorrow haha!

Also, I'm having drinks somewhere tomorrow night from eightish or nine-ish, probably at FM, so if you are in Taichung at the mo, come and say goodbye. Friends, countrymen, and blogging associates!!!
  ¶ 19:23 0 Comments

  My Third Last Day in Taiwan

I told my Aunty that I probably wouldn't be back unless I was getting paid a million bucks to do something for the welfare of humanity, and well, it may be true. Will I be back? I cannot imagine coming back to teach English, or living in Taichung. Somebody would have to make it worth my while. Like, I would have to live at the Splendour while my German engineering company sent me here for two months at a time.

I'm getting my hair chemically straightened (again) today. Joy!
  ¶ 16:17 0 Comments

  Which Ivy League university is right for YOU?

Harvard
You're the best -- you know it, as does everyone else (except for US News and World Report every few years). You might not be hip, you might not be pretty, but you're smart as a whip and you never need to do another impressive thing in your life.
  ¶ 04:25 0 Comments

  Snide Snide is an expression of contempt. I'm too young to know what contempt means, so I'll look that up too. Contempt means intense dislike accompanied by disrespect. So, in order to be snide, you must first feel contempt. According to deductive reasoning, if you don't have contempt, then you can't be snide or make remarks that are snide. What a horrible word, snide. It sounds like snake.

Snarky To understand the meaning of the word snarky, I had to look up irascible. It means easily angered or prone to outbusts of anger. Snarky sounds like scary, and people who are snarky are indeed quite scary.
  ¶ 02:47 0 Comments

  prostrating before the emperor

kindy update II
Well, after the new wave of discontentment and the discovery that my nanguo was laibuji, I lay awake that night formulating a way of saying sorry indirectly. I swear, I'm a frickin genius. Before I went into class, as I took off my shoes as usual, I stayed down low, and got on my knees, right in front of the door and bowed my head down under the pretense of looking for something in my handbag. I was the total model of humility, and man it made a pretty big impact, all the other ladies were like patting me on the back and feeling sorry for me and stuff and basically what it did was show them that I wanted to sort it out, which is what we did, and now everything is sweet. And last night I giggled myself to sleep as I thought about how kneeling in front of a closed door would have meant little to me a year ago but how dramatic it may have looked to the ladies. Although, during class, I got a bit carried away with the whole World Peace thing, and pulled out the "face" flashcard from four weeks ago, with a picture of Mrs Alligator's face on it, and told the kids how face is important in some places and if you go somewhere where it is, you have to get used to it. I wonder if five year old kids can talk about face. It wasn't subtle enough and they thought I was complaining about the East in general, so that sucked, but I'm still happy about my little success and they do generally leave me a little leeway when I'm blurting things out in Chinese.

In other news, today's the sixth, which means I'm leaving in nine days! Sold my scooter this morning, I was so sad. My scooter didn't even say goodbye, or wave, or acknowledge that it would never see me again. It generally doesn't tend to move unless someone's driving it, though. Walking away was so hard.

I love life today, it's one of those days. I'm doing everything I ever wanted to do (except become a mega-famous actress, although Cate Blanchette was 28 or something when she hit the big time, so I've still got time!) and dude I've been waiting to go to China since I was like 15. Dude!
  ¶ 14:14 0 Comments

  My glasses broke for the 5th time. That's all I have to report. I saw Ocean's 12, dude, Brad Pitt gets better with age.
  ¶ 19:24 0 Comments

  It's my second last Tuesday in Taiwan. 11 days left! NO WAY. I don't really feel it, except that my private lessons are winding up which means no more pocket money, and my scooter goes tomorrow. I have been reading over old posts from ages ago and didn't realise how long I had been doing it for. Like, from before Hong Kong. The internet addiction has got to go, but man what a way to preserve the memories. Everything is in cardboard boxes now.

chinese forums

kindy update.i had thought the face thing was smoothed over but today i arrived and learnt that there is a new wave of discontent because during the last international face-loss incident, whatever it was, the 'nan guo' that i expressed was too 'laibuji' which basically means that i figured out what the hell was going on and tried to say sorry, all too late. It just wasn't good enough; I was supposed to have been more 'on the ball' at the time, which sucks because I had just explained to them about communication problems etc. If I was a blonde-haired blue-eyed white man bearing gifts perhaps I could treat them all like fucking shit without it phasing them! No, let me rephrase that. My EQ is lacking (made up for of course with my IQ Mhaw Ha Ha), which was especially apparent the time the guy whom I had the hots for asked me out, but instead of saying "Will you go out with me?" said, "my friend just gave me two tickets to see The Day After Tomorrow. Have you seen it?"... I thought he was just making conversation, so I said "Yes, I have seen it. And I thought it sucked arse. It was totally B-Grade." Then he went all quiet... After 6 or 7 hours had passed, back on my bed in the girls' dorms reading Great Expectations, it suddenly dawned on me what had in fact occurred that morning; and I learnt what it means to be beside one's self.
  ¶ 06:02 0 Comments

  I was completely inspired by the weird blog that was referred to in that comment. You want mad?

The time had come for Betty to go and clean out the fridge. But alas, her phone sounded the Beep of Glory, and she rushed to read the sacred message. It was from God. She didn't even realise she had his number in her phone. 'Cool!,' she thought, 'I've got his number!' It said, 'where r u? Im horny.' Then she realised it was actually from Dave, who had put his number in under a different name. She decided to go for a drink. Her friends were sitting at a table in the corner, busy discussing scooters and generally just talking themselves up. At the bar she started a conversation with a man named Human. "Hi, I'm Betty," said Betty. "Hi, I'm Human." "I would never have guessed, to tell you the truth," she replied. "I get that all the time."

Jane thought the name suited him. He had no face, just a blank space where his face would be, and the rest of his body was kind of see-through except that you could see his heart beating inside. "I like your heart," she said. She couldn't think of anything else to say. "Thanks. It's looking for a language exchange partner, actually. Do you know of anyone that would be interested?" "Your heart's looking for what?" She ordered another drink. "Oh, never mind."

Suddenly the music stopped and the lights came on. The bar guy wanted to make an announcement. "Can I have your attention please." Everyone turned to look, including the friends in the corner who were busy talking about the last time they had decent Spanish food, but were in fact wishing to express how trendy they were that they knew all about Spanish food. "I would like to announce that everyone owes me two dollars." Human's heart began beating faster inside his body and everyone noticed. "Look!" They cried. "His heart is beating faster! Maybe he doesn't have two dollars?" "Of course he has two dollars! He just doesn't have any pockets to keep it in!" Human remained silent.

Dave walked into the bar. Betty swivelled around to greet him. "Dave, why are you wearing a leather jacket and why do you have your hair gelled over to look like Danny from Grease?" "I don't look like Danny from Grease. But I'll tell you who does. That guy over there!" He pointed to a man sitting by the window. He looked a bit like Danny from Grease. The girl next to him looked like Sandy, and there was a pink pom-pom lying on the ground near her feet. "Betty," said Dave, "you're the one that I want." The pink pom-pom spontaneously combusted at Sandy's feet and a small pile of ash was left behind.

  ¶ 04:10 0 Comments

  "So," said Angelica, seeming to move in on him as if to prevent him from running away, "I hear you think my magazine is too commercial."

"I said it was commercial, not neccessarily too commercial. I merely pointed out to my Betsy, who was trying to write an article for it, that she can't include anything about how some of the shopkeepers treat her like shit when she goes shopping... which is something that lots of people experience here... because the magazine has to be 100% politically correct."

He realised that he should probably have said that indirectly, by saying that it was something his cousin Bob said. What he had just said, which was the exact truth, was probably taken to mean the opposite or something. Oops. She was the most defensive he had ever seen her.

"I am trying to protect my culture. Our magazine was created to cash in on the fesh for foreigners. Locals see where the foreigners eat, drink, and hang out, and want to go there too."

"The what for foreigners?"

"The fesh foreigners... the foreigners fesh."

"The what? How do you spell it?... Oh, the fetish for foreigners."

"I'm sorry, my English is very poor."

"No it's not, sometimes I just need to know particular words so that I know what you're saying."
"I'm sorry, my pronunciation is terrible. What do you expect? I'm Taiwanese, of course I have an accent."

"I'm sorry, sometimes I need to ask exactly what the word is so that I understand what you're saying."

It wasn't enough, he had to reassure her of how amazing her English was. He took his right hand, stuck it up his arse, went searching around, and finally pulled this out:

"If my Chinese was as good as your English, I would be king of the world!" A single tear dropped from his eye.

This was passable, and the conversation was allowed to continue.

"One writer mentioned in his article about Hualien that he saw yet another old Taiwanese man chewing a beetle nut on the side of the road. I wanted it edited out. I kicked up a fuss. The writers have to respect my culture. We don't want everyone thinking that Taiwan is a land of beetle nut chewers. Would you like it if everyone said 'Oh the U.S. is full of hamburgers, or Norway is full of eskimoes?'"

"So the magazine is in fact not for foreigners but for locals. That's why you don't have stuff about the raw experiences of foreigners here." (Of course, he thought to himself, it's less important to promote understanding than to cultivate and profit from the glorified and superficial image of foreigners)

"It is based on the fetish for foreigners," she repeated.

"But, you see, I don't agree with this fetish for foreigners."

She flashed an understanding smile. "I know."

"It's all lovely to be worshipped and admired when you get here, but it creates a wall, or a blockage, between foreigners and the locals."

Another understanding smile. There was something he found disturbing about her understanding smile - perhaps it was that yes, she understood, but no, she didn't care.

"I'm trying to protect my culture."

He accepted Angelica's stance and reconsidered her, as a whole person. He tried to figure out who she was, and the nature of the motivation for her deep involvement in the foreign community. Local women had accused her of being a so-called 'foreigner-hunter'; others had asked, if she loves foreigners so much, why doesn't she just go abroad? This exact thought had often crossed his own mind, when he reflected on the way she hopped from one person to the next and managed to maintain superficial relationships with such a broad network of foreigners. She wasn't desperate for a foreign boyfriend. It couldn't be just for the Face. She was long past that. What was it?

The topic of conversation changed to his plans to go and take a position in Shanghai.

"I can't wait to go to Shanghai, it's supposed to be the Paris of the Orient. And maybe then my Chinese will be as good as your English."

"Oh you won't learn any Mandarin there. Everybody speaks Shanghainese."

"Alright then. I'll learn that too."

"I know that people come to do business in Taiwan and find it's nice to do it with country people because they are honest and sincere, but the Taiwanese people that came over from China will pretend to be nice but are not. The people that came over from China are smarter than the people that were here before."

This was followed by a sudden, unexpected and unexplainable drop in temperature. "The Shanghai people are the smartest Chinese in China. No-one else in China is as smart as them."

"Why? What makes them so smart?" He could envision little more than a bunch of super-gangsters who could outsmart even the best of outsmarterers in China; people who could write the Art of War three times over... with footnotes. His expression betrayed his aniticipation of another typical blurb about how people from one city are totally different from another because of the way they eat their dumplings or whether or not they add rice wine to their chicken soup:

"Because they were the first to have contact with foreigners."

He was not sure in which direction his eyes were looking when he glimpsed a fragment of the concept Angelica was trying to convey. His small mind was trying to catch up logically with the brief moment of clarity he had experienced as the words that came out of her mouth and the guiding look that emanated from her eyes combined to express an idea that would probably never be fully understood. The moment disappeared but Angelica acknowledged it before it did. His eyes glowed as if his respected friend has just placed a large chunk of gold into his hands, smiled and gave a fatherly wink as if to say, 'spend it wisely.' The gift was rare. He said exactly what he thought, or as the Chinese would say, he 'indicated his way of thinking': Angelica, if only I had a hundred friends like you.


  ¶ 00:51 0 Comments