rupert and hannah

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Hi Hannah here, to let those of you who didn’t know, know that we are back. Back in wonderfully clean, quiet (apart from the seagulls at 4am) and (despite what you may have heard), civilised Wales!
We were sad to leave Haikou but had some great leaving do’s. We organised a leaving party for all our students and used a big meeting room on campus. We made some huge banners and put out a load of drinks and snacks and tried to have a Western ‘mingle and chat’ type party. The students were obviously expecting a more Chinesey party which is where people give performances, regardless of whether or not they actually have any skill in singing/dancing or whatever. We managed to avoid giving a performance but Rupert did give a quick speech, mainly just to tell them what to do as they were all sitting staring expectantly at the stage. We also met up with the class of little first years that I had taught for eight hours a week in the first term and Rupert taught for two hours a week in the second term. They were very sad to see us go, we were the first foreigners they had ever spoken to and they had all become very attached to us, some even cried at our last meeting. The Chinese don’t hug but they think that all westerners do so they all queued up to give me a rather awkward and sweaty hug goodbye! They gave us a cute gift of a little album with an individual photo of each student with a card behind it. The cards contained funny Chinglish messages such as “how fly the time” and all ended with some version of “wish you happy everyday”. On our last night we invited our closest friends to a leaving meal at the posh restaurant on campus and had a fabulous meal for about twelve people for a cost of about ten pounds. Leaving the next morning was all a bit surreal and even now I don’t think it has sunk in that we have truly left.
Oh and we had a great time in Beijing, we did all the sights, ate Beijing duck and were amazed by the massive hype surrounding the 2008 Olympics, even two years prior to the event. We dread to think what it will be like when the games are actually on. At the moment the city is filled with ridiculously huge, boastful signs about ‘One World, One Dream’ and they have created these five little animal characters, one for each colour of the rings, they are supposed to be five of the most famous animals in China but the only one I can remember is the panda. You don’t see much of the five rings and I have just heard that it maybe because they are similar to something used by Falun Gong, the sect that is banned and heavily persecuted by the state. Everywhere you go, around Tiananmen square, even inside the Forbidden city people are flogging Olympics memorabilia, much of it probably fake. The city is undergoing a huge clean-up operation ready for the Olympics which sadly meant that every single attraction we visited including the Forbidden city, the Temple of Heaven, the Summer Palace, the Lama Temple and Jingshan Park were all under scaffolding and had little armies of men chipping away at them and slapping on new coats of red paint. The most impressive part of the Forbidden city, called the Hall of Supreme Harmony or something like that we rechristened as the Hall of Supreme Scaffolding, although you couldn’t even see through the scaffolding to see what it looked like because they had covered it with a huge tarpaulin with a picture of what the building should look like painted onto it. Rupert was appalled by the quality of the work being done on these old buildings, he saw workers pouring concrete into the roof of a palace in the Summer Palace, men chipping away at a beautiful old door in the Temple of Heaven with pickaxes and filling in cracks in the old stone altars with new cement, it seemed that no attempt was being made to use original materials in the restorations.
We managed to eat some of our favourite dishes in Beijing, we found a wonderful Sichuan restaurant with one of the most perfect ‘Gong Bao Ji Ding’ (spicy chicken with peanuts) that I have ever had. One night Rupert was pleased to find that he prefers the ready made Beijing duck you can buy in supermarkets like Sainsburys to the real thing!
We left the Great Wall to the last day, partly because we had managed to get sidetracked by shopping (Beijing is great for cool fake stuff) and partly because we were kind of dreading going there knowing it was going to be full of Chinese tour groups who are a law unto themselves and we had been getting very annoyed by the ones we had to fight our way through at the other sights around Beijing (think matching fluorescent caps and T-shirts worn by hordes of very Chinese people from provincial cities with few foreigners, who are hence more interested in staring at the foreign tourists than the attractions they have come to see, led around by a stressed tour guide with flags and megaphones trying to herd them from place to place at a pace that must leave the tourists exhausted by the end of their holiday). Although it is something like two thousand miles long, there are only a few sections of the wall open to tourists and we elected to visit the nearest (and hence the busiest) one. It was nothing like another, more remote section I had visited four years earlier, but was still impressive as it snaked away over the hills as far as the eye could see. Sadly the tour groups were out in force and there was only so much we could take what with the sun beating down on us and me hobbling around with a painful, bruised toe (having somehow got it tangled in Rupert’s whilst we were walking along the day before) so we had a quick look around and then headed off the wall to find some shade. The transport up and down the mountain to get to the wall was a strange kind of toboggan crossed with a roller coaster that was possibly the highlight of the day. One moment that we shall never forget was when we were trying to get down the steps off the wall, and realised that the steps were wide enough for two people to pass each other but that the hundreds of people trying to get on and off the wall were all pushing to get through at once and the only way off was to join them and quite literally fight the people coming the other way to push your way through and get off the wall. It was terrifying and what made it even worse was that to the Chinese it was completely normal and acceptable. I have come across this crowd mentality before in China and it never fails to shock me, each person for themselves. However many coats of red paint the authorities add to the attractions in time for the Olympics, it is not going to make up for some of the cultural differences which may well horrify the international visitors. Don’t get me started on the spitting or the communal toilets…
So after an interesting and fun week in Beijing we flew into Heathrow, looking forward to some cool, refreshing British weather. We were quite disappointed to hear that you guys were in the middle of a major heat wave and even more disappointed to see that my little sister is as usual way more tanned that us even though we had a head start of a year in the tropics. We have been back for about two weeks now and “how fly the time”. Rupert has been doing some work at his parents house involving moving big stones and digging holes and I have been at my parents promising to write the final blog for the last two weeks but the time really has flown. We are not quite sure what will happen next, there haven’t been many science teaching vacancies for Ru to apply for and so we are thinking now that we will find random jobs and a flat (probably in Bristol) and Ru can wait for next term/year and see if there are more teaching vacancies around. So I guess this is it for this blog, now that we are back in the real world we shall have no need for it. We are not really sure how many people that we sent the link to, actually looked at our blog, but if you are reading this then I suppose you did, and you may be the only one (and you’ll probably never know) but thanks a million and we “wish you happy everyday”.

A 'small' Chinese crowd watching the Argentina-Serbia/Montenegro match. Footie, well the World Cup atleast, is quite popular out here. Not as big as basketball though...














Some very strange, apparently Western, Chicken dish I ordered. Chicken coated in bread crumbs, with spam, processed cheese and in the middle, yes, the obvious choice, Banana! Accompanied by chips (yeah!) and two types of melon covered in a bitter lemon custard. Well, they tried...















And he was staring at us thinking we looked odd!
















The cool sunsets we get here..
















Wayne Rooney in Sanya (well, a bad painting of him!)

















Pineapple production line!

These are some of the girls from my Tourism English 2 class (they are all first years).













There are two of the four boys from another Tourism English class.

















This is the the other Tourism English (1) class, all of them, during our last class, boohoo!

Somehow, despite Hannah's massive post, she managed to forget a few things, about which I shall now recant.

About a month ago we had a weeks holiday - to celebrate workers day - China's second biggest holiday. The local government's foreign affairs department arranged for loads of invited foreigners to go and visit a special village outside Haikou. We never did work out the point of the trip - although there were loads of press (TV news people, three photographers and others) all trying to take our pictures. One photographer became particularly keen on taking pictures of Hannah. She, however, had other ideas, and spent most of the day turning away from the guy - you could see him getting more and more desperate as the hours went by and the number of pictures of Hannah's back steadily grew - I think he got a couple of good ones in the end though. You might think this slightly mean, but if you see a Chinese person with a camera then they are most likely pointing the camera straight at you, rather than their wife who is patiently posing (oh yeah, and not smiling, the Chinese never seem to smile in photos). The trip was pretty bizarre and pointless, although we got to see a mangrove forest and some modern looking houses in the middle of a jungle. Plus we got lots of free, albeit rather odd, food. The whole bbq'ed fish was the nicest, almost as good as the coconut rice (literally sticky rice in a quarter of coconut), however it wasn't so nice when the Chinese guy sitting next to us deftly plucked the eyeball out from his fish and popped it in his mouth!

A few days later we went with a friend to a Chinese tourist attraction, Shishan Volcanic Crater National Geopark - UNESCO recently visited it. It was pretty cool, there were a couple of extinct volcanoes dotted around and you could climb one and climb inside. They were veruy picturesque as they were covered in trees and shrubs. However, the whole site was very chinified, with concrete steps everywhere and lots of bizarre unnatural scenes to look at (pineapple plantation, "traditional" dancing, old people singing local songs etc.). Of much greater interest were these old caves that we went to see nearby. There were loads of interconnecting cave systems, made by the flow of lava from the volcanoes. Even cooler was this small village nearby that was entirely constructed from volcanic rock (basalt?). It was a really lovely looking village - we shall whack some photos up soon.

Those are the two major things that Hannah forgot to say. Life continues as normal here. The weather is very odd at the moment, and very regular. The morning starts out very hot and sunny, with clear skies. Then around one it clouds over and by four or five there is a thunderstorm with very heavy rain. Then by eight the clouds have gone and it is very hot and humid again. Kinda strange.

Finally, the World Cup is pretty popular out here - and loads of shops have got a football theme going on. Not one to miss out on a chance, Coca Cola have joined in, with really bad paintings of Rooney plastered around the place. He has evil red eyes - slightly odd choice of colour. Anyway, I'll post a picture of it later.

Hi there, it's been such a long time since I put anything on here that I am going to try and write a nice big chunk about what we have been up to since about...oooh March or whenever the last time I actually blogged something was.

So at the beginning of term we had some Tai Chi lessons and after a Couple of months had mastered the routine that is the 24 basic movements of Tai Chi. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it, thinking it would be boring as its so slow, but was persuaded to give it a go by Rupert and after the second lesson I was hooked. We had a lesson everyday until we had finished learning the basic movements and since we finished we have been supposed to be practicing it and perfecting it ourselves but we haven't done too much of that recently partly because the tropical climate seems to make us lazier than ever. Ru started Kung Fu lessons recently but that seems to have fizzled out as it is too hot for such strenuous exercise.

Esther (my sister) arrived in mid-March and stayed for almost a month. We managed to fit a lot into the month, particularly shopping which she and I are very good at. Other highlights of her time here were a weekend at a hot spring resort in the south of the island and another weekend at the Golden Palm resort in Sanya that Ru and I had visited back in October. The hot springs were lovely, the weather rained for most of the weekend but it was so hot that it was quite nice to have the cooling rain, especially as you are wallowing in hot pools and are soaking wet anyway. We went with our American friends and their son and we all stayed in a cute little villa at the resort which was kind of like a pink tiled Chinese version of a Swiss chalet (see pics later) complete with its own private hot springs tub out the back. On the Saturday some of us decided to go and climb a nearby mountain called Seven Fairy Mountain. It was amazingly tropical and lush, the noises of the insects and birds was deafening, despite the heavy rain. The route up the mountain was typical of Chinese mountains - a staircase, and we slogged our way up hundreds of steps in a few hours to reach the top, stopping near the top for lunch of rice and veg at a little house, the owners tried to persuade us to have chicken as well but Esther made sure we declined as the chickens were all running around our feet and they were just going to pick one up and kill it. Some of the chickens had chicks, some a few hours old and Esther is a bit of an animal lover and was offered a chick to borrow for a few hours! Anyway, the very last part of the mountain was a kind of cliff face with two chains secured all the way up it and a huge drop away down another cliff on one side. You had to scramble up the cliff by hanging onto the chains, kind of rock-climbing without the harness etc. I was pretty much pushed up and pulled down it by our American friend Bob and Esther was helped up and down by his son Zeke who climbs like a monkey. Rupert and our Chinese friend Lily wisely decided not to do it and after reaching the top I really regretted going up as going down was infinitely scarier (see pics!). It was one of the scariest, most exhilarating things I have done and I would never ever do it again,especially as when I got back down I saw a sign and asked Lily what it meant - she translated it as "it is forbidden to climb up this cliff, it is too dangerous". We couldn't see anything because of the swirling mist and rain and so even after reaching the summit didn't get to see the famously stunning views from the top!

The weekend we spent in Sanya with Esther was also marred by rain. We did manage a bit of swimming in the sea and pool during the brief periods of blue sky but spent a lot of the weekend sitting on the balcony willing the rainclouds to go away.

Once Esther left she was replaced briefly by Ru's parents who came for a fleeting visit one weekend. We had a fascinating day trip to a couple of little villages on the West side of the island. The first on was a little farming village with lush rice paddies and some wonderful old wooden houses and barns which meant Ru's dad was like a child in Disneyland! There were some reminders of the interesting and troubled history of rural China, most exciting for me was the village barn with old faded paintings of Chairman Mao, slogans from the cultural revolution and a chalkboard which was very faded but you could just about make out the markings as the place for recording how much time each villager had spent in the communal fields each day and hence how much (or usually) little rice they were given at the end of the year - some villagers ended up owing rice despite having worked in the fields all year. Sadly the villagers were all old people or children, the young people having left to work in Haikou, leaving their children to be brought up by the grandparents in the freedom and safety of a small village, sending for the children once they are old enough to attend school in Haikou. The young will not return to the village, having become accustomed to the excitement of city life and so the villages will presumably eventually become deserted, and as this must be happening all over China we wonder what will happen in a nation so populous and so obsessed with being self-sufficient.

The following weekend Ru and I returned to Golden Palm resort in Sanya and this time enjoyed lovely weather and huge crashing waves in the sea. Ru got horribly sunburned on the Saturday which overshadowed the rest of the weekend. The resort is rebuilding their pool so most of it was closed off so we visited a few other resorts to pick a different one for our next trip to Sanya. We decided on a neighboring one called Red sky resort. We have just come back from a weekend there and had an amazing time. Although Golden Palm was lovely, Red Sky is somehow even nicer, its way smaller has a fabulous pool (see pics)and great stretch of beach. The weather was lovely and Ru wore a T-shirt even while swimming so managed to avoid getting burnt. This was our fourth trip to Sanya and by far the best as I was ill during the first one, it rained most of the second one and Ru was completely frazzled in the third one. This time we avoided getting burnt (apart from my forehead and one leg!) and even ate relatively realistic fish and chips and Mexican chilli in the resort's restaurant. We love going to Sanya but coming back at the end of the weekend is hard as our apartment feels really third world and basic compared to the luxury of the resorts! We plan one more trip there before we leave - hopefully in late June and will definitely go back to Red Sky resort.

So term is coming to an end, we only have about four or five weeks left and we are starting to wind down and get ready to leave. We will be sad to leave but feel it is the right time to go as in the last few weeks we have started to get a bit bored and restless, especially in the evenings - but we do have loads of free time as we only teach ten hours a week and most of that is over by ten in the morning, so its hard to fill all that time. We have made some great friends amongst the students and will be sad to say goodbye to them. Some of the students are really funny and interesting and we have had some great lessons with them. This week I have been talking about the difference between the British and Chinese education systems with my second years and there is an exercise where they are asked to rank some educational goals in order of importance in the Chinese educational system and then for the British educational system. It is very amusing to see that the most important one in the Chinese system is usually said to be 'Loyalty to your country', the second is 'Developing memory skills', and goals like 'Independent learning', 'Individual thinking'and 'Creativity and Imagination' come near the end, almost the opposite to how Ru and I would rank the British educational system. The students are so shocked to learn that in Britain we are not instructed to love our country as the most important part of our education.

There are so many things we will miss about this place, particularly the food. We were very excited recently though to discover a western style coffeee shop type place that actually does a pretty good cheesecake! I think that as we are starting to think about leaving we are starting to crave western food more and Ru has also been very excited to discover a place that does a rather good impression of steak and chips, despite it coming with a garnish of strawberries rather than salad! I am really going to miss the shopping here too - the other day I went shopping with one of Ru's students and bought a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, two pairs of jeans and had a Chinese silk dress made and spent a total of less than twenty quid! Yesterday we went to an optician and Ru had an eye test and bought a new pair of glasses and a pair of prescription sunglasses and the total price was about thirty quid.

I am going to miss the sunshine but am looking forward to cooler nights, its often hard to sleep here when its really hot. I am so not going to miss the insect life - we seem to have been bombarded recently by cockroaches, slugs, massive centipedey things, mosis and the occasional jumping spider. The lizards are very cute though, we have loads living with us but they do make weird, incredibly loud noises for such tiny creatures.

We are going to fly from here to Beijing a week or so before we fly home from Beijing so are looking forward to a holiday there. I have been there once before and can't wait to go there again, I am looking forward to the Great Wall etc. but Ru seems to be mostly looking forward to the Beijing Duck!

Well that's it for now, I will add loads of photos after this post and I'm sure we'll blog again from here or Beijing. We arrive back in the UK on July 16th and hope to see you all sometime over the summer.

Love Hannah

I know it's not very clear but it is me - honestly.