A Seedier Side of Wenzhou

A few days ago I went on a night out with one of the other foreign teachers at Web, Kristian. Usually I don't choose to go to the bars or nightclubs here, they really aren't my cup of tea. Most of them are incredibly over-priced and the music is horrendous. I much prefer going to the places that are referred to as cafes, although from a western point of view they would be classed as a bar. These places have a much more relaxing environment, quiet music, and cheaper drinks.

Kristian and I decided to go for a couple of beers at Ming Ou cafe and then have dinner elsewhere. One thing lead to another, and after a few too many Double Deer beers, we decided to hit the bars. A short taxi ride later we arrived at Jiang Bing road where a lot of the bars and clubs are located. As soon as we stepped out of the car, semi-fresh air was instantly noticeable. The road is directly next to the sea, and it makes a huge difference. Taking a gasp of truly clean air is something I terribly miss from home.

We entered a large illuminated night club, the first building we saw. Once inside we approached the bar wanting to order a drink. Although there was a barman waiting to serve, it was a waiter who asked that we order with him. We asked for two bottles of Tsing Tao beer -- the kind you can buy from the shops for 3RMB each. The waiter wondered off, and returned minutes later with two bottles and a receipt of 100 RMB (about £10). We declined.

A few minutes passed, and I began looking at the crowd of people who were attending this night. One thing was glaringly obvious. A proportion of these people were -- how can I put it -- ladies of the night. It is an unfortunate fact, in much of China prostitution is illegal, but mostly ignored by the police -- for a price.

We didn't stay in the club for very long and decided to look elsewhere. We took a short walk outside and found a small road which looked like it accommodated some smaller pubs or bars. The tiny road was packed with people, mainly men which seemed very odd. We walked for a minute or two and realised there was actually not one bar one the street. People were exchanging money at counters for something, but I couldn't see what. There was a mountain of beer bottles (see below) just piled up on the ground. I glanced at the place where I originally thought the pubs must be located, they weren't pubs at all, it was a small apartment block. Both Krisitan and I felt very uneasy at this point. Something was going on here, whatever it was, we didn't want to know. We rapidly turned around and exited back to the main road.

The mountain of beer bottles

It seemed our night was an eye-opener into a much seedier, stranger side of Wenzhou that only exists in the early hours of the morning. I don't think I will be going back there again.

Women's Day

Sunday was Women's Day here in China -- a holiday not supported in the UK. It is a day to celebrate women and all of their achievements, so most of the department stores have a big sale for a day or two. Web also contributed to the holiday by taking us all out for dinner. But it wasn't just dinner, it was KTV too.

After finishing work we walked across the road to the same karaoke establishment Kimi and I had previously visited, the "Jolly 100". This time a mini-room would not be enough, what I think must be the largest of rooms was booked for us instead. Inside it was certainly spacious, with a cinema-type screen hung onto the wall -- it made reading the lyrics easy even without wearing my glasses.

The party in full swing

It was supposed to be a social gathering with a bit of singing, drinking, and eating, but it seemed although the idea was there, somehow it got lost along the way. The primary reason for this was the volume of the music, it was so high it was almost impossible to talk to each other. With a bit of shouting and speaking into each others ears, we made some effort to communicate with each other. A few Double Deer beers later and we, "the foreign teachers", even came to the stage to sing, "Hey Jude".

Like so many events and dinners I have attended in China, they don't slowly end with some people leaving early and some people staying until the bitter end. I find that a function will just stop, and within a few minutes almost everybody leaves within a split second. There's never an announcement or talk of leaving soon, just a kind of silent alarm that repels all people in a room. So at 9:15 we rapidly left the establishment, all with Tinnitus ringing in our ears.

Ganbei

Last night Johann, Kristian -- a new teacher from Canada -- and I were invited out for dinner by a few students. I had expected that we would visit a small cheap restaurant, the kind of which I have become accustomed to. The end result however, wasn't quite what I had in mind.

The students took us to a new restaurant a short taxi ride away from Web. We walked up the stairs, past all of the food laid out on tables for customers to pick (no menus in these places), and entered a private room. This was not going to be cheap. The food was ordered and in no time we were eating. Everything was going smoothly -- until the boss came in.

The man walked in with cigarettes in hand and sat himself down at our table. The students translated what he was saying to us. Apparently, because the restaurant is new, he wanted to celebrate this fact with us. Immediately, our three bottles of Tsingtao beer were replaced with Heineken. From this point onwards the eating stopped and the "ganbei" began (in Chinese "ganbei" means bottoms up, or down in one). The beer was flowing like water, the second I finished a bottle, the waitress immediately replaced it and refilled my glass.

The boss seemed very happy with the proceedings, and invited his friend's son into the room. He sat between Johann and Kristian, and spoke to us in English for a while, of course he had to down some drinks with us too. Next, a couple of the managers came in, and they drank a few more glasses of beer with us. After this, the boss decided to order something a little stronger than beer: cognac -- and two bottles of it. My glass was filled three quarters of the way up with the stuff, and once again we had to down it in one. More managers flocked in and also drank with us individually. Business cards were flying all over the room, each member of staff giving us their card (not that I could understand a word of Chinese on them). I have no idea how much we drank, but it was enough to send the room spinning.

A bottle of Remy Martin that Kimi's mother gave to me, similar to the stuff we were drinking last night

As soon as I arrived home I passed out on my bed. I was even too drunk to speak to my mum and dad who call me on Sunday night. Instead I wrote a message to them saying I couldn't talk due to the cognac. When I awoke at 7am this morning my head was killing me. I took three painkillers, but they didn't seem to work for at least thirty minutes when on the front of the packaging it quite clearly said "instant relief".

My day at Web was a very slow one, I was grateful that my final class of the day was with some of my favourite students. I think I would have died if I had been stuck with a beginner salon (salons are the bigger classes with up to ten students).

Also, today was Ryan's final day at Web, and in Wenzhou. He comes from Australia, is only one year younger than me, and has been in China since January. He joined the training centre about seven months ago, but recently things hadn't been working out. Unfortunately he will be leaving for Hangzhou tomorrow, and then to Shanghai. I just hope he can find happiness wherever it is he decides to stay.

Finally, Kimi gave me her old phone today. She took it to one of the mobile phone stores and managed to get the software changed from Chinese into English. I am now in possession of a considerably better phone than the one that was stolen from me. I just have to keep this one safe.

Buffet Blowout

I have just come home from a birthday party of an ex-Web employee's daughter. She was one today, or should I say two today, seeing as I am in China. For those who aren't aware, as soon as a baby is born in China (in many parts anyway) they are immediately one year of age, there is no counting of days and months, they are just one for the whole year. It is just like how we count the years: we say it is 2008 now, but if we use the Western way of counting age, we are only in our 2007th year and 11th month.

We arrived at the party more than one hour late because of work finishing at 7pm today. This meant that the buffet dinner was almost eaten by the time we stepped into the function room at the hotel. It was free, so I can't complain. I wasn't very hungry anyway, Kimi had bought me Papa John's as she was so excited that it had opened in Wenzhou today (although it was paid for with my money). I hope the baby likes the gift we bought -- it is a big telephone that can speak English and Chinese.

We had a much more pleasant night tonight than last night. We had planned to go on a night out for our new teacher, Kristian from Canada. Unfortunately the planning had been left to the wrong person and nobody had a clue what we were doing. Most of the others were working so Kimi and I waited until 7pm for them to finish -- I was still only semi-conscious after the trauma of shoe shopping in the afternoon. Eventually we decided to go The Victoria Hotel for the buffet. When we got there -- just like tonight -- it was too late, and most of the food had been obliterated. I couldn't be bothered going anywhere else and would have been satisfied to sit down and start eating, but Kimi wasn't having any of it (she was right, it was not worth the expense). After some talking, we decided to go elsewhere, left the hotel and caught a cycle-rickshaw.

It was Saturday night, so things were extremely busy in Wenzhou. The rickshaw driver decided the pavement was a better option than the road for driving on. As we rushed past a crowd of people, I felt us hit something on the right hand side. I looked and saw that we had collided with a man's leg. The driver stopped, got off the bike and began apologising. The man was furious, shouting and pointing at his leg all of the time. I didn't know what I was supposed to do in the middle of this, people were crowding around and starring right at us. Eventually the driver said "sorry" for the 100th time and we drove off.

A few minutes later, we pulled up outside the restaurant of Kimi's choosing, but it looked different. My worst fear came to fruition: they had changed the restaurant into a hot pot restaurant. After eating the hot pot here, I have not had any appetite for it again. The waiters had set the table and were ready to take our order. With a little embarrassment we got up, apologised, and left. We had no clue where to go next.

After strolling around for a few minutes we ended up near a cheap noodle shop, a place we regularly frequent. They serve brilliant fried rice, so in defeat we went in. I felt terrible that we had ended up in this place and weren't with Kristian having fun. Fortunately I spoke to him and found out that he was so tired he didn't even want to come out and went home not long after arriving at the hotel. We have planned to do something after work this week which should be much less of a hassle I hope.

Kimi and I were on our way home when we decided to buy a dessert from a dessert shop inside the large Intime department store. These shops specialize in fruit desserts, especially ones containing a lot of mango and coconut. We made our order, but unbeknown to Kimi, she had made a mistake: Instead of ordering mango with coconut ice, she had ordered mango with coconut yoghurt. "Just as the night couldn't get any worse" she said with complete sincerity. I ate the yoghurt and she ordered the ice. I do hope we never have any real problems to deal with in the future.

Mango, black sticky rice, and the disaster: coconut yoghurt

Tomorrow I have been asked to go to Wenzhou university to talk to the students about how to improve their English in a short time. In all honesty, I haven't a clue what I am going to talk about. I don't even know the kind of level I should be aiming for. The only reason they are sending me is to advertise the training centre, unfortunately my sales pitch is not going to be up to scratch.

Bars and Free Holidays

I must apologise for my rant about the air raid siren yesterday. It seems that it wasn't a random blasting of the alarm after all. At work I found that others had been disturbed by it also, so I asked what the point of it all was. Many didn't know, but a couple told me the real reason: September 18th is the anniversary of when Japan attacked and began an invasion of China in 1931. Every year the sirens go off all over the country to remember the people who died in the war, similar to our Rememberance Day -- although wearing a poppy is much more subtle than blasting an air raid siren.

Last night I went for a few drinks with Johan from work. I've not been to any bars or nightclubs for a while because I really don't like them here in Wenzhou. They are over-priced, play horrible-deafening music, and accommodate the kind of "foreigner" I wouldn't usually choose to be around. Not that these people are bad or anything, but for me, some of them can be a little....weird. I believe that a lot of people who are teaching in China have come for an adventure, escape, or are completely lost. In any case, I find that quite a few of these "lao wai" just aren't on the same wave length as me (I can't even describe what wave-length some of them are on). That's not to say I haven't met any great people, because I have, and many of them too.

A typical scene in a Chinese night club, it's a shame you can't hear the deafening (and terrible) music and taste the dense cigarette smog that fills the building. Also notice the welcoming stare from a local regular.

Anyway, back to last night. The place that Johan took me too wasn't a bar at all, it was a restaurant; but inside it was reminiscent of a semi-classy bar from home. Dim-lighting, fashionable furniture and décor, music being played at a sensible volume (God, am I middle-aged?), and most importantly of all, cheap beer. Finally, I have found a great place to relax, talk and have a drink. We had a good conversation about many things last night, it was interesting to find that somebody who seems so different than me can have so many things in common. I look forward to going back to this restaurant/bar soon (it's only a couple of minutes away from my home too).

I also found out yesterday that Web is going to pay for it's teaching staff to go on holiday for three days in October (October 1st is National Day in China, another public holiday). Luckily for me they have decided to go to Xiamen, the same place Kimi and I were planning to travel to. Of course I didn't forget about Kimi in all of this, I can bring her too, but she will have to pay the full cost. This is not a problem because we will still be getting the holiday at half the price really. The only drawback to Xiamen is the bus ride. It's going to be at least seven hours, and after my experience of travelling to Wuzhen and Xitang, I would much rather spend more time at the destination than on a bouncy bus.