Chinese Toilets

I have had my fair share of bizarre toilet experiences in China. In Beijing there's a mall that has toilets you go inside, close the door and you can see through the doors and walls to everyone OUTSIDE the toilet (slightly unsettling.) I have had to get off a crowded bus to pee on a motorway verge, in sight of the entire bus. People took photos of my giant, white bum and compared it excitedly in Chinese to the moon. And, of course, there have been the many hutong toilets - holes in the floor, no partitions or door around so you squat and watch everyone around pee. Lovely.

This week I went to the toilet at work. A normal toilet. Normal door. Normal walls. No one peeing beside me. I had my glasses tucked into the top of my shirt. As I leaned over to press the flush on the toilet, the glasses fell out and were sucked away. Sucked away. My. Very. Expensive. Glasses. Gone.

What do you do in that kind of situation? I laughed slightly hysterically. I ran out of the toilet, found Alan and shouted 'I've just flushed my glasses down the toilet! What do I do?' He looked at me like he didn't understand the words coming out of my mouth. I had a class to take. I ran along to the classroom, burst in the door and said 'I've just flushed my glasses down the toilet! What do I do?'

It turns out that this may be a situation that has never really happened before. No one knows what to do.

Toilet life seemed to go on as normal. The glasses were irretrievable in everyone's opinion. I was gutted.

Two days later I passed the offending toilet and noticed two ayis furiously plunging at the toilet. Later, a sign appeared stating the toilet was 'out of order'. I'll say. Then a mechanical pumping machine appeared and started churning water in the toilet. Signs appeared everywhere stating: 'please do not flush paper or tissues down the toilet.' What about glasses I thought?

The ayis said that people kept going to the toilet, kept flushing and it would block. They didn't know why. I tried explaining. It didn't translate. I gave up on the glasses.

About 5 days later I got an email: "Morning all, Anyone left a pair of Ray Ban glasses in the toilet (staff only) on the second floor? They are with me now." Surely they didn't mean IN the toilet?

They did. Smeared glasses were returned to me. I don't think I can ever wear them again.

Winter of Discontent

Suzhou winter has well and truly arrived. Suddenly. 

Two weeks ago I was cycling around in a pair of shorts and a vest and now I am wearing every piece of clothing I own while still inside my house. 

The Suzhou cold is not a Scottish cold. It's a cold that gradually sneaks into your bones and before you know it, you can never remember having been warm. Summer is a distant memory. IT'S ONLY BEEN TWO WEEKS! In Scotland, houses have central heating and double glazing. Apparently that is unheard of Suzhou way. I don't know how. In so many ways China is futuristic and modern and ground-breaking but when it comes to heating: not so much. South of the Yangtze = not very much heating. North of the Yangtze = heating, but only after a certain day of the year specified by the government. All the flashy, modern apartments of Suzhou have all mod-cons. Bar heating. 

Some apartments have underfloor heating (not ours) but due to a current shortage of natural gas in China, you are only allowed a certain amount of gas every month to work it. If you run out, you aren't allowed to buy more. Otherwise, you have to turn your air conditioning unit onto 'hot'. You have to have it on all day to have any effect. If it's a particularly cold day, your bones stay cold and your face heats up like you've got a bad fever. The effect on your skin is not dissimilar to nuclear fallout (I expect.) Various other things are also working against us. When it rains, water pours in through the bathroom window. All our clothes are damp. There is a problem with our boiler which means that we have to keep the window beside our kitchen open ALL THE TIME. 

Coffee gets cold as soon as you pour it because the cups are so cold. I kid you not.

Hot water bottle central, 50 layers of clothes and a look out at the amazing view from our apartment and i'm sure the winter won't be too long. Please God. 

Red Hair

Last Sunday I dyed my hair red. It’s pretty damn red. The change has proved more controversial than I'd anticipated. I have been surprised and amused by people’s reactions. Apparently in Suzhou it is de rigueur to tell people that you think their hair looks crap. Here are a select few comments:

“So. Did you mean your hair to turn out like that?”

(to me) “Oh. That’s… well… that’s certainly a change. Do you like it? Do you really like it?” (to Alan) “What do you think of that?”

“What possessed you to do that to yourself?”

“Oh. It’s you. I’ve been looking all over for you. I didn’t recognise you with your hair like that I thought you were some sort of wayward teenager.”

“It must be pretty tough when you’ve got hair like that to pick out clothes that match.”

“Chinese people think red is a lucky colour but they’d never have their hair like that.”

(at a Halloween party) “Where did you get your wig?”

The Million Trees Project

Roots and Shoots Shanghai aim to plant one million trees in Inner Mongolia to help offset China’s carbon emissions and reduce the effects of desertification.

My Eco Club group at school aim to raise enough money in our school to plant 1,000 trees. Trees are 25RMB (about 2 pounds, 50 pence.) By selling bamboo tree ornaments and wrist bands on Monday this week we raised enough money to plant 264 trees: only 736 to go!

You can offset your carbon emissions by planting trees. Go to: http://www.jgi-shanghai.org/Content.aspx?ItemID=164

The Hunt for the Pink T-shirt

It’s not very often that you need to find a pink t-shirt at short notice. We were positive. A quick 15 minute jaunt along Shiquan Jie should do it, then dinner. Then relax.

We left work at 5 o’clock. We sat on the bus for about half an hour and it didn’t move anywhere. I have now nicknamed myself the ‘five o’clock bus fascist’. My feeling being that if you’re not on the bus at 5 o’clock then you’re missing the bus, the bus is leaving without you. The 5 o’clock bus leaves at 5 o’clock. Not so.

At around 5.30 the bus driver shouts at us to get off the bus. Well he shouts a lot of things in Chinese that we don’t understand and gesticulates towards the door. He drives off leaving us in the same place we started. It transpires that he has gone to help out another bus that has crashed. Obviously.

So. We get on another bus. A bus that spends half an hour driving us in the wrong direction round the lake and then dumps us and tells us to get on another bus. Deciding our luck with buses is not particularly good we sack it off and opt for a taxi. The taxi driver does not seem pleased about our destination. He calls someone and puts them on the phone to us. The person on the phone asks where we are going. We tell him. This happens another three times before the taxi driver dumps us at the opposite end of the (very long) street from where we want to be.

We begin the very long walk, laden with bags from work. At first there is an absence of pink t-shirts. Shops have EVERY other colour of t-shirt other than pink. Then we spy some pink t-shirts. Ones with feathers, diamantes, giant pictures. No plain pink t-shirts. Where is Primark when you need it? We split up and arrange to meet in half an hour, pink t-shirts in hand. Neither of us can find the place we arranged to meet and spend 45 minutes looking for each other. I accidently knock a man off his bike and cause a ruckus. We trek UP the road, DOWN the road and eventually get a bloody pink t-shirt around 9.30. Only 4 and a half hours later.

We have dinner and get eaten alive by mosquitoes. Pink skin to match the pink t-shirt.

BUT: we did raise nearly 600 quid for breast cancer charities.