Our first city was Lijiang in the South West. The guys wanted me to fly into Shanghai so I could spend a day giving them some classroom training before we transported the car and flew the 6 hours down to Lijiang. I argued it was a poor use of our time together, especially as I'd be screwed after the first flight anyway. My flight to Beijing, actually, was great fun - it would take me a while for the novelty of business class to wear off; the free drinks (that none of the Chinese on board enjoyed); the food; service; and most importantly the reclining seat that allowed me a few hours of proper sleep. When my second flight was half an hour from landing the hostess came through and told me in broken English that we were going to land in Guiyang - Guiyang that is maybe the equivalent distance from Lijiang as Plymouth is from London! All of a sudden my certainty that meeting en route was the most efficient plan felt at risk! We sat on the tarmac at Guiyang for an hour and then took off again. The guys later told me that there'd not been a drop of rain in Lijiang and certainly no storms, so I've got no idea what bullshit they were spouting about not being able to land due to weather. I messaged Griffin (Xuan, but we'll stick with his English name robbed from World of Warcraft that he likes to play. I've still not fully understood why they feel the need to use English names.) to tell him to go get food and that I'd taxi it back. As it turned out, they waited and waited and were there at arrivals holding a sign with my name. We made it back to the hotel by 0100, about 26 hours after I'd left Granary Cottage on Tuesday. I did actually sleep, helped by the imbibing of free crappy Bordeaux on the second flight.
Noodles for breakfast, no coffee, lots of tea. They do at least love eggs and I found blood sausage, thinly sliced, maybe deep fried, served cold - it's not Bury's finest, but it was great to know they like it too. My brother had mentioned about one of his students telling him about a blood cake they get back home in... Thailand, Chris? We would stay at this hotel and do three return runs to XiangGeLiLa (Shangri-La) over the next few days.
Roads were mixed, mostly good tarmac, mostly shit driving. It's taken me until today to realise some frustration at not being able to drive, and at the digital throttle, braking and steering inputs that these boys are so good at. Why have one braking event when you can have six? Think of the Churchill dog with my disapproving face on. I don't know if it's the ride of the car, height of the seat or what, but I'm writing this while on the move, as I have done with some work the last few days, and I've not felt sick yet. Not driving also means I can get as drunk as I like, and take naps once I've provided some wisdom on what the car's doing and what issues we need to investigate. The sleep's been even more necessary since I got strep throat two days ago - a throat infection that makes it incredibly painful to swallow. My neck on the left side appears to have half a tennis ball stuck inside it. Luckily for me, but not so for man kind's continued protection from virus and infection, antibiotics are available over the counter here - I bought a pack of Amoxycillin for about £1.50 this morning!
That first day on the road was fun, and the food at our first XiangGeLiLa restaurant was incredible! The ribs were probably my favourite but I loved all of it. The way it works in most places is that you go in, stand in front of the fridge (sometimes refrigerated as well!) for a few minutes to decide what you fancy, pick some meat (all the usual plus the occasional frog, no dog yet) and vegetables, and go take your seat. I am going to buy a steamer and spend some time learning how to cook rice properly, I still don't think I get it right every time and, unsurprisingly, they do.
We took a wrong turn on the way back, instructed by the shatnav and taken blindly, and before you knew it we'd done 15kms of dirt road / stone track and had another 15kms ahead of us. Because it was proper back country and there weren't any police or many people at all around, I got to take the wheel for a few kilometres. That was great, until we got a puncture in the right hand rear tyre. We fitted our space saver to get us to the next town, all hoping desperately that we didn't pick up any more shards of scrap metal or screws or sharp stones before we got there! We made it, and in the photos you can see some of the tools the guy used to repair the tyre - namely a grinder, a big metal hitty thing, and a small pot of superglue sat next to the mounting machine. We must have done 2000kms since so he did a good job. I've had repairs done on my Hilux's offroad tyres using pull through plugs before (actually just bought a kit for us at the workshop too) but not everywhere does it and certainly not on road / lowish profile tyres like these. But then we wouldn't have to drive 1000kms to find a new tyre in the UK! I'll let you know / you'll hear about it if we have a blow out at high speed.
More good food and bad driving, lots of document preparation, approval of reporting they've done so far, and talking Griffin through how to prepare, inspect and report stuff on the car. It's a strange contradiction on these trips that where I'd usually be doing 'normal' work, I get to sit in [generally] cool cars all day, see some great scenery and eat good food, but then the end of the day comes and we've still got half the day's work on the laptop to complete in the few hours available around dinner and showering. I love it, even without coffee.
Griffin, Fei and I have worked well together and I hope they are learning a lot about testing cars, maybe as much as I'm trying to learn about their culture, food, people and geography, all within the limitations of our language. I don't know how the contracts are set up, but I try and always consider that these guys might one day be able to split from the company I work with, and for that reason as well as developing a self-start attitude I'm trying to give them the proverbial fishing rod, as opposed the fish. While they are proud of what they do, technical and by and large professional, I see very little fire in their eyes. Griffin clearly doesn't feel that confident driving in any situation, and his real passion is for movies and computer games. The government strongly encourages and rewards scrappage of cars that are ten years old, and that must contribute to people only using dealerships, not working on their own cars, not owning classics. What can you do if they're not petrol heads? Formal process only takes you so far, maybe experience and time will help to bridge the gap.
We got to go into the ancient city of Lijiang on Saturday night - Griffin took us out of the main city into what looked at first like a building site, then turned into steep stone steps winding through old trees. Breathless, we hit the top, and started heading down the other side - you couldn't see much but could hear the music and smell the food. I power drank whisky and cocktails while those guys had one and then topped up with water and ice. After they left I started talking to a barmaid called Cha Lei, who was studying in the North but back for the summer. It was all very innocent, if that's what you can call her giving me a solo performance of Taylor Swift's 'Romeo and Juliet' on the guitar - totally surreal and incredibly sweet. I didn't know the words.
Facts and Stuff
- Crockery in restaurants is to be washed once put on the table. Take the pot of tea and poor a little into your rice/food bowl and your tea cup, swill with the kwhy za (chopsticks) and empty into a spare bowl / the street / sink or whatever's available
- A pot of tea is always served
- Fish and meat bones go on the table, make your own little pile
- Khwy za are NOT to be stuck into rice when not eating - this is a symbol of funerals where they'll do the same or maybe even use a cigarette to symbolise the burning out
- Generally it's mouthfuls from each serving plate, and fill your bowl with rice - it makes me laugh that they're so against licking fingers but it's fine for my chopsticks to go into my mouth and then back onto the plate we're all eating from, or even that in some places you serve the rice for yourself from a food 'bin' which is probably full of forearm hair and dead skin
- Don't tip - it may bring shame to accept over what you have asked - this is good, and the food is always cheap anyway by our standards. I just had lunch at a 'service station' (think old school hall canteen badly redecorated with ancient fridge in the corner) - the food (fish soup, pork and qin tai (celery) stirfry, cabbage) was delicious and fresh and filling and it came to about 90 Yuan total, i.e £3 each.
- Dog is still eaten but not as often in the developed parts of the country. Apparently cat is not very nice at all. When I asked about the dog eating festival the guys entirely nonchalantly asked if we did not eat dog in the UK. Only at Christmas.
- Guangdong province is where they eat all the weird shit. Like 'Three tzs' - a mouse or rat meal so called because the mouse goes 'tzs' (maybe supposed to be a squeak) as it drops (live) into boiling oil, then again as you pull it out, and one final time as you bite down into it. Anyone? No? Maybe you'd like to try monkey brains? It is not so common now but still goes on in some places - that they crown the monkey while still alive and strapped to a chair, add a little chilli and vinegar, and tuck in. Unimaginable horror and pain and noise. I heard on the radio recently that many people here believe that the more fear an animal feels when it dies the tastier it is, and the more testosterone a man can get from it. Could easily be true (that they believe it, not the other bit).
- The great firewall of China has made working and communicating really difficult - lots of my life is organised around or with Google stuff - and Google is BANNED. VPN to the rescue on my work laptop, but it's slow.
- Chinese music is utter balls and although Griffin is proud of downloading FLAC files which are huge due to their quality, the production seems consistently just as balls as the melody. All reaffirming my belief that England, the UK, is the best country in the world. I'm certainly respectful and must continue to learn as much as I can, but I sure am proud of, and grateful for, where we come from. I've been listening to Fleetwood (mainly Mr Wonderful and Kiln House), Amy Winehouse, Rag n Bone Man (blues singer and guitarist from Brighton), Leon Bridges (soul dude from Texas with a wonderful band) and all sorts of other brilliant music.
We're en route from Kunming to Base today, before another one night stop off tomorrow on our way to the island province of Hainan. The scenery has all been dramatic and big, but battered and torn and ripped by machinery and relentless building - near Lijiang there was hardly a hill or mountain that didn't have a quarry dug out the side of it, waste ground material piled across the surrounding landscape and horribly ugly blocks of flats and schools rising up in place of them. It is getting much less scarred as we go further South West, more green and natural, the mountains thinner and pointier like those of South East Asia - and I guess that makes sense as I've just seen that right now we're about 50kms from the border of Vietnam! Drop me off, fellas?
I think it might get even more beautiful as we approach Hainan, but there lies another horrendous Chinese contradiction - it's most beautiful major island is also home to an underground nuclear submarine base, which is due to be expanded to accommodate aircraft carriers. 14 years ago it was the site of an air collision - where a US plane was flying past the island at a fair distance, but close enough for two Chinese fighters to be despatched to intimidate them. One of the Chinese pilots was apparently infamous for perilously close fly-bys, once enabling a US airman to photograph a scrap of paper with the Chinese pilots email address on it, text visible. This time he fucked up - he caught the nose of the US plane and crushed his cockpit. Read the article on the news or Wikipedia for the crash landing that the US guys had to make as, even allowing for a little good ol' American sensationalism, it makes your hairs stand on end to think he got it down OK. Maybe you remember the incident anyway? George dubya's first foray into foreign diplomacy.
