Life is a Beach in Bali

Because I am traveling light, my camera was too big and bulky to bring along to Bali.  My mobile phone was also a disgrace, I couldn’t read the text anymore and it could only store 30 messages at a time and really needed to go.  I decided I wanted a phone that could also double as a camera and still be a good, easy-to-use, simple phone.  Probably expecting too much as usual and it took me ages to settle on one that did not cost an arm and a leg (the choices are mindlessly large) but finally I settled on one yesterday and, so far, I am rapt with my Nokia X1.  It is doing everything I wanted it to do and more, but, of course, it is early days yet.

While the photos are not great quality they are good enough to add some colour to my blogging.  The phone is terrific and so is the MP3 player which is great because, sadly, my I Pod thingo sang its last song in the washing machine in China several months ago.

Anyway, the point of all that is gets me back blogging and now I have a discrete camera so I don’t have to go around feeling like a gawky tourist.

I love nothing more than the Kuta beach in the very early morning particularly at low tide.  You can walk for miles on a near deserted beach and swim in the ocean to your heart’s content.  And my heart is really content doing these simple things.  I have had more long swims in the ocean here, in my not yet three week holiday, than I had in two summers in my old home town of Apollo Bay in Victoria; it was always too cold, too windy, too wet for more than half a dozen dips in the ocean each year.  Whilst the scenery was undoubtedly grand, it was always disappointing not to be able to use the beach for more than a few days each year.  This is probably why I have made the decision not to go back to such a temperate climate unless, for some reason, I have to.

When you wake up each morning in Bali, you know with a certainty, the weather will be good for walking and swimming and, let me tell you, it’s a great feeling and you can sort of frame your day around your morning four hours on the beach.  Also you can get a healthy breakfast of Asian porridge and a freshly pressed tropical juice right on the beach; something you could never do in Oz.

The Balinese school kids gather on the beach in the morning in their always, pristine and attractive, uniforms.  According to a Balinese parent I know, apparently they have three uniforms to cover the 6 day, school week.  Schooling is taken very seriously and they appear to be doing the Indonesian national curriculum.  What is quite strange to me, is the small emphasis on learning English as a second language, particularly given that about 90% of the Balinese economy depends on tourism.  It’s like they are all being trained to be office managers and professionals which seems to be more that slightly out of step with the reality that the majority of them will end of working in rather menial jobs in the hotel and hospitality sector.

And the Balinese that have been working in the industry for years still have incredibly low levels of English too.  Staff I first met in the hotel I stay at here three years ago, still have the same standard of pigeon English which is kind of interesting.  I almost get a sense that they don’t put much store by learning English apart form a half dozen key words (transport, buy here, one more, very cheap) and it is one more way in which they protect their unique culture from the barbarian tourist onslaught.  I need to look into this phenomenon some more and try to understand it.

Anyway, leave you with some snaps of the early morning Kuta beach and the school kids getting ready to line up and be lectured for an hour (that’s all that seems to happen, they don’t do much else!).

The Balinese Red Dragon

The Red Dragon has arrived in Bali for the summer break and is enjoying the delights of his favourite haunt.  I’ve received a couple of emails from him, and with his permission, I’ve posted them here.    DB

………………Had four action packed days in Candi Dasa exploring and getting in touch again with this amazing and most peaceful environment. The highlight for me was a fishing expedition in an outrigger canoe.  My mate Reggie and I trolled the magical east coast of exotic jungle and gigantic volcanoes for several hours, watching the sunrise over the towering volcano, Mt Agung, which is truly monumental in size and shifts and changes shape and colour all day.  The Balinese believe it is magic volcano and the Gods live there and I believe it too!   Then, we took our Jeep to some amazing places on along the coast; plenty of wild monkeys, coconuts, bananas everywhere, tiered rice paddies and ancient villages with stunning ocean views as the back drop.  Eating eating!

Where we were staying on the east coast town of Candi Dasi – the Temple Garden (run by Reggie’s Aussie old girl friend), the hotel is extremely cheap but amazingly tropical and beautiful; I would love the abundant tropical flowers and orchids growing everywhere. Daily, I sat in the shade of the coconut palms that line the shore and watched the azure blue ocean and the local fishing fleet in peace all day from my deck chair, smoking cigars and thinking little.  Your thinking slows down here under the spell of this magnetic island.  I  also really love the snorkelling amongst the coral reefs fascinated by the teeming varieties of very colourful tropical fish.

It gets hot here too but with two big differences: the constant and steady cool sea breeze keeps it always pleasant and the humidity is also low because it is their winter here.  I’ve just come back from three hours at the beach.  The early morning hours are really the best for the beach.  Not so many people and you can do the walking before it gets too hot.

Many people of all different nationalities are out too, so it’s a parade of colour, beach fashion (and the lack of it) and some hot looking girls and guys too (but I don’t look much! LoL).

I really enjoy seeing the Muslim, Javanese families come down to the beach for the first time.  They are usually in large family or social groups.  The girls are covered from head to toe in the most colourful and fashionable clothes.  You can see they love the sea because they get very excited and take lots of photos.   Sometimes they ask me to be in the photo cause they haven’t seen too many odd looking westerners like me before.  Sometimes the girls will often go into the ocean fully dressed and with head scarves on too.  They stare at us hardly-dressed westerners with amazement (and probably disgust)…some Western girls barely have their genitals covered.  On the whole, I find the westerners very coarse and unattractive compared to the Balinese and Javanese who are, light, fine-limbed and deeply tanned.

I love swimming out through the breakers about 100 metres and then swimming up and down the beach in absolute peace looking back at the land and the clouds…its absolutely one of the best things on the  planet I like doing.  The water is always warm so you can stay in for as long as you like.  Then I stagger up the beach and dry off in the golden sunshine of the early morning.  Later I go up to my favourite Warung (café) in the shade of the palms and have coffee, Asian porridge and some pure freshly squeezed juice (usually mango, guava or a coconut).  Later, I head back to the hotel for a shower and doing as little as possible, just hanging out by the pool reading and listening to music and swimming, swimming and easting.

Today and for the next three days, is one of the main Hindu ceremonies for the Balinese who worship Hinduism and not Muslim like neighbouring Java and the rest of Indonesia.  Most of  the shops are closed which is good because it is so quiet and peaceful and all the Balinese are dressed in their best ceremonial costumes.  Temples big and small litter the landscape in all gardens, houses and in all public places and all are littered with food offerings to the Gods and lots of burning incense waft across the beautifully scented Balinese air.  There is also plenty of food in the offerings for the rats and the squirrels which are endemic to the place.   It is all very colourful, very interesting and very mysterious.  It is amazing to watch; the Balinese keep their culture alive despite the tacky tourism through their enduring religious beliefs and through the daily practise of their customs and ceremonies.

I negotiating to lease some land on the beach at Candi Dasi, a magic place on the east coast (I’ll send some photos later).  The house would be  two bed roomed apartment designed and put together by a friend, really cool and modern pad right on the ocean.  It would be very leasable but I intend to make it my home in the long term.

Zhang Qi

Japanese Restaurants

Quite unexpectedly, some of the best Japanese restaurants I have ever frequented are in Wuhu.

The one I like the most is on the top floor of Huayi, a large and expensive chain store (something like Harrods I would think).

This Japanese specializes in Tepanyatki? (Japanese/Korean barbecue) although it is run exclusively by Chinese interests.  You sit around the barbeque and the chef barbeques the delicacies of your choice on the large stainless steel, hot plate.  It is a real art form, fascinating to watch and the greatest appetite enhancer you can imagine.  I am really fond of the lightly grilled goose liver on a thin slice of whiter bread…unbelievable! 

You can’t fault the freshness of the sea food produce either even though we are 400 kms. away from the nearest sea in Shanghai. I saw a live lobster served to table yesterday in a most artistic manner with its tentacles still moving…a bit cruel really but the Chinese like it fresh from the water. 

Wondered whether the lobsters (or crayfish as we Aussies call them) had been imported from my small coastal town of Apollo Bay that still has a small crayfish fleet as a mainstay of local industry.

Anyway, eating as much as you can stuff in, washed down with several quality beers and a wine comes to a little over US $24 which is a fortune by local standards and doesn’t really fit my pay packet either but I know for the same quality and experience back home I would part with several times more, so, sorry folks I will just have to continue to live the hog life as long as I can.

Hope you like the pics.

Zhang Qi

More on Housing

Been away for awhile, finding it hard to stay motivated to do the blog because there is so much on here all the time.

Promised months ago that I would do some more on housing and finally have some photos to add even though one of my mates back in Oz has accused me of being in cahoots with the developers’ promotional strategy. Merely reporting what I see, as usual, G.

The housing market (or more appropriately, the high-rise apartment market) is booming in all key cities of China. Despite the Government’s efforts, inflation in the housing is still seemingly rampant which is making it very hard for the really low income earners and there are many million of these.

Last year, a Chinese colleague put a deposit on an apartment off the plan as they say back home and will wait about two years to take up residency on floor 21 of the 24 storey complex that is already well under construction.

Like many other Chinese teachers at the University, she decided to get in early while the market was still relatively cheap. For Y500000 (about $77000 AU), she will eventually move into a bare bones, concrete-shell, apartment that will need tiling painting and furnishing, easily consuming another Y200000 or so.

For a lecturer on a salary of approximately Y40000 a year and relying on a single income, it is no mean feat. I am told that the same apartment now (12 months later) is worth a minimum of Y750000 (110,000AU) so it is good that she moved into the market when she did.

You can go to all these ritzy apartment display centres where you will feted and approached to see if you are interested in buying (check out the snaps). The landscaping around these display centres is always first class, but having visited an estate for lower income earners much further out of town, I am not sure that this is always the case with the finished product. Anyway, the finished product always looks first class and I wouldn’t find it too hard to live there as long as the lift worked. Not sure of what, if any, energy saving features these properties have, but, I will add more about that at some other time.

By the way, for the money you only get a 50 year lease, so I don’t know what is expected to happen if you are unfortunate enough to happen to outlive your time.

Zaijian

Zhang Qi

Wuhu – a development miracle!

There is an advertisement often repeated on the Chinese English News Channel (CCTV) that goes ‘’every minute of every hour China undergoes rapid transformation.’’ Let me tell you this is not media hype; China is really undergoing transformation on a scale and level unprecedented in human history.  And, boy, is it in your face; often literally in the form of construction dust in the environment and, of course, the constant boom and thud of heavy construction equipment operating night and day.

Typical high-rise inner-city apartments

As you know, I arrived several months ago, and, even in that short time, I have witnessed the opening of two new major shopping complexes (with others under construction) and also witnessed several arterial roads in the city being transformed into grand boulevards over night under my very nose.

By the way, when we traveled back from Shanghai airport  to Wuhu by car (440 kms), we were on high speed freeways that were as good as anything I have ever seen in the west. They were relatively free of traffic and the Chinese (Wuhu) built car we were travelling in was able to cruise at a steady 140 kms comfortably.

Recently, I got my hands on some statistics about this city’s urban transformation.  According to a reliable report, at this very moment in Wuhu (a smaller and fairly insignificant, provincial Chinese City) there are US $14 billion worth of developments underway.

Apparently, the Central and Provincial Governments are working on a major transformative strategy with the aim of shifting the centre of  (economic) gravity away from the overcrowded and overdeveloped cities on the eastern seaboard (Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Tianjin etc) to smaller cities in the central and western belt of China. Hinterland cities such as Wuhu and many others in the Yangtze delta region have become major beneficiaries of this development thrust.

Now everything is in China. is new!  Old is out. The ‘new and big is best’ mentality that infected our thinking in the post-war era has even reached the poorer regions of the Chinese hinterland. The shopping malls, hotels, housing and industrial projects are simply an amazing sight to behold.

New urban housing abounds

Yesterday, I got to visit two new housing estates that are still being constructed, one for working people who have been displaced as a result of the urban-renewal process and a middle class example. They are all mostly in high rise buildings but with well-landscaped surrounding gardens.  The interiors of these places are decorated with great taste and rival anything you see in western, inner-urban apartments, although, getting into a basic, undecorated shell can cost upward US $100,000 even in this, third-tier, provincial city. I  will bring you a detailed report on my observations at the housing estates and some interesting photos in my next blog.

Zaijian for now

Lao Qi
(Old Qi)

English Corner!

English Corner is a weekly event during the school semester that is a treat to witness. Eager (and sometimes the not-so-eager) Chinese students of English gather at about 9 pm on Wednesday and Friday evenings to practise their fledgling English. The not-so-eager, maybe, to try to pick up a girl friend which, in a University with 16000 male and 3000 female students, is no mean feat.

The laowai (foreign teachers) are contracted to appear for an hour but usually put in at least a couple of hours, however, two teachers on our team are heroic and do the Fridays as well.  I am afraid I am not to be counted amongst the conscientious.  I refuse to attend the Friday night event because, as all Australians know, Friday nights are religiously sanctioned for recreation in Australia.

Happy English Speakers

Anyway, whilst it is generally a fun affair, it can be exhausting because one is generally surrounded by hoards of ‘listeners’ and one or two questioners. You can be quite ‘punch drunk’ from the effort by the end of the evening.

The most disconcerting aspect of the whole affair is when student after student (of the 300 or so under your charge) confront you, in the half-light, with the imperative, “Do you know who I am John Qi?” Now let me tell you, it’s a game I don’t like playing at all and I usually resort to: “Yes of course I know you, you are one of my students aren’t you?” Which is invariably met with the retort “Yes, I am, but which one am I?” Ah, yes, that would be one of the Chinese ones, wouldn’t it?

Seriously, we do our best to try to remember all our students’ names, but in a mass crowd situation, at night, I have even been known to forget my own name let alone one of the students that have been under my charge for a mere 10 hours.

Anyway, I will leave you with a few snaps of English corner. Cheers for now.

My turn, my turn!Victory in the English war

Living it up in Wuhu!

Our foursome foreign teacher team had lunch at the Crowne Plaza yesterday, one of the two 5 star hotels in Wuhu.

The Crowne Wuhu

The Crowne is fairly palatial and dining there is a fine experience particularly considering that our day-to-day fare is usually food from street vendors and small, family owned restaurants that dot the city.

We were celebrating Persian New Year, as one of our teachers, although a Brit national, also has a Persian heritage.

The Crowne has an excellent buffet lunch that costs approximately $19 AU or US. This is expensive by local standards and a treat that doesn’t really fit into our pay packet all that often. However, out of interest to all those gourmands out there, I will give you an idea of what the $19 will buy you here.

First of all, there is the lovely clean and quiet atmosphere and, of course, the white linen, knives, forks and attentive table service.

Next, you have the choice of just about all types of cuisine but if there is not something you

Everything you want!

particularly like in the many bainmaries  that adorn the counter, you can ask one of the chefs on standby to cook you up something special. Our English colleague, Steve always has bacon and eggs done to his liking but our new Aussie teacher, Clare, got onto some small and delicious fish that were particularly tasty and fresh.

Lovely fresh delicacies

For myself, I started with several helping of sushi, sashimi and salad before moving onto a main course of spicy lamb chops, potatoes, pumpkin and a good assortment of fresh vegetables and other side treats.
Also, I indulged in a few slices of beautiful in-house made, whole-meal bread and butter.

We also had as much good bottled Tsingtao beer as we wanted to drink and milkshakes, juices and whatever.

The main including Aussie lamb chops!

I had a third course of unusual tidbits including some northern Chinese steamed buns and other delicacies.

For sweets (deserts) there were many lovely cakes, delicate slices and cheesecakes, all as delicious as they look in the photo.

After that I couldn’t possibly engorge myself further so it was a couple of good cups of coffee and a happy chat with the colleagues.

Back home, I probably wouldn’t get through the door of such a hotel with $19 let alone even pay for the drinks, so you can see, we live royalty here.

So much for the diet!

My sweets, too tempting!

Bon appetite!

Corpulent Red Dragon

Small Pleasures

One of the pleasures of living in China is that there are so many small things that keep you senses so alive every day. Like that tulip trees that have come into flower outside my apartment and remind me that Spring is here at last.

Spring at Last

Another of these pleasures is riding in the local taxis. Road rules are interpreted somewhat more liberally than in the West and most trips in a taxi can, to say the least, be a hair-raising experience.

Constant dodging in and out of traffic is the order of the day and sometimes even driving up the footpath if the driver can get away with it. The other month we even dodged over double white lines and around a police car with its lights on and no one seemed to worry about the on-coming lorry, except me.

Locally made Chery Taxis

Most of the drivers are very experienced at this sort of ‘playing dodgems’ game and, only now, six months later, has the knot in my stomach started to relax a bit, realizing I might indeed, have a fair chance of seeing tomorrow.

Anyway, that aside, most of the drivers do like a chat and are very good at encouraging me to practise my few words of Chinese. I have found out for instance, that quite a number of taxi drivers own their own cabs and usually work their cab as a family team.

Most drivers make between Y6000 to Y7000 per month which is about AU/US $1K. to $1.2K

However, if they own the taxi and work it with the wife or a relative they may make as much as Y10,000 or $1500 AU per month. Not bad when you realize that a University graduate in her first few years is unlikely to make much more than 1500 Yuan per month ($230/month after four years study) and a Professor at the university can only  earn about Y5000 per month ($770/month).

So some taxi drivers can be counted amongst the new and ever expanding middle classes of China than are now counted as being 250 million people. It is roughly estimated that a middle class persons income would be in the vicinty of  Y8000 per month ($1230).

However, it must not be forgotton that the peasantry still makes up the bulk of the population and per capita incomes are still at third world proportions (around $200 US/AU per month)

That’s all for now folk, hope you ike the photos of the Tulip Tree and the taxi.

Back in China and blogging again!

Would doubt anybody would bother reading this after such a long absence but I am hoping I will get a better chance to sustain my effort this time. I have been to Oz and back for the Winter break to visit family and to deal with some business matters.

A tumultuous start to the Semester in the form of a housing crisis for the new foreign teacher but, hopefully, all is well now. I have a home again and can resume something of a ‘normal’ life in China again after a 10 day sojurn in a local hotel.

The Japanese earthquake is getting lots of attention here. The English CCTV
Channel does a pretty good job of covering foreign events and the floods in Queensland also received a great deal of attention.

Spring is upon us, the weather is getting appreciably warmer and life easier. The students however are busy studying for the national and standardised English examination (TEM 4) which they must pass in order to graduate.

I’ll try to get some more relevant pics happening soon but in the meantime I will leave you with this

Xmas party my flat 2010

‘It is a snowing ina Wuhu’ (Chinglish version)

The students had all been telling me for days that the snow was on its way but it was still a surprise for an Australian to witness it falling for the first time.

The kids all like the first snow fall and there was general merriment in the classroom and great happiness that the ‘lao wai’ (foreign teacher lit. cold outside) had not really witnessed a scene like that before.

It was really quite beautiful particularly walking back to the apartment through the falling snow. It is so soft, so silent and so bloody cold. Suddenly, what was mundane before takes on a new sense of magic and the world seems fresh and interesting again. Although, in China, let me tell you, it is always fresh and interesting.

Let me share with you a text I received this morning from a student explaining why she wouldn’t be able to make it to school. It is very typical of the notes we frequently receive. “Morning John Qi, because the weather predicator says today it will be snow and this week it is also raining. But today is not very bad….maybe it’s too late to get up to come to school. I feel sorry I cannot come to your class on a sunny day. And I promise I will come back next week. Please accept my apologise and forgive me.”

Maybe I’ll have to wait for a sunny day before she graces me with her presence again but in the meantime I will continue to laugh.

We are all very busy getting reading for the end of semester exams and the eagerly awaited Winter holiday. The foreign teachers are having a small get together in my flat to mark the passing of Christmas; apparently my Scottish compatriot has promised to cook haggis (can’t wait!) and the local brandy is bloody excellent.

Seasons Greetings to you all!

Red Dragon

Snow on campus