Posted 11:44 PM by Gobbler
note to the curious inquisitor: start about four posts down. quite a splintered blog this afternoon.

Posted 11:35 PM by Gobbler
"Be resolute, fear no sacrifice and surmount every difficulty to win victory." Chairman Mao Zedong, The foolish man who removed the mountains, june 11, 1945.

With this in mind i will continue. let me go on by telling you about the other disturbing event that took place at the same dinner that featured the 'surely quite mad high pitched screeming woman' the other night. after the dinner the dancing girls got on stage and started throwing little pillows at people. never one to shun a free pillow, i grabbed one. actually i missed with the first attempt at catching it, with the unfortuante consequence that i had to fish it out of the plate of dessicated chicken. at least it did not land in the stewed pineapple stuff.

this pillow did not comoe without a price, however. firstly it came with a piece of cord attached to it such as would allow one to put it around ones neck, and secondly all those with one had to get up and dance. off we went all holding hands in a big line. we tramped outside. i got through the door in time to see a waiter pouring parrafin from a bowl over a fire which we then began dancing around. there were about six other full bowls waiting around the fire as it blazed away, and things began to get disconcerting as we repeatedly charged the fire hokey kokey style, getting dangerously close to the bowls of parrafin. in a mood of high excitement people began making efforts to kick the contents of the bowls over the fire. this struck me as unwise and not the sort of thing you'd be likely to get a license for in england let alone belgium, but when in rome and so on. then, at the end of the dance, someone, with a well aimed right foot, propelled the contents of the bowl into and over the fire in my direction. the group scattered rapidly. certainly i pegged it fairly instantaneously, but others proceeded to pick up the bowls and throw the contents at the fire, and at other people. things were getting out of hand, but noone seemed to be going up in flames. then i twigged it. it was only water that they were chucking around, the parrafin put away. undoubtedly i was glad not to have been torched in some crazy ritual, but i felt a little cheated nevertheless.

Posted 10:35 PM by Gobbler
"We can learn what we did not know." Chairman Mao Zedong, Report to the second plenary session of the seventh central committee of the communist party of china, march 5 1949.

Bright as a button old mao.

a new power source has been secured. it was rather tricky and i wasnt sure if i was going to manage it but taking the words of the chairman to heart i have learnt what i did not know and discovered that by plugging the plug into the socket the batteries on this bad boy are happily replenished.

where on earth was i? ah yes the full english with the fake bacon and sausage. the least full 'full english' it was ever my misfortune to eat, and i was the least full full englishman after it. if you do not wish to eat butchered animals then do not eat butchered animals, but please do not then compromise by eating bacon shaped pink stuff, and furthermore do not allow my dear friends to lure me to such places that serve said pink stuff. thanks.

so yeah we had the vegetarian restaurant. overall relatively edible but i made a classic schoolboy error by taking a hefty helping of some white stuff before tasting it. calamity! it was atrocious! i dont even think it was a vegetable, which i would have been prepared for, it being a vegetarian restaurant and all, but it was just strips of chewy stuff that carried the odour of a corpse and the taste of a chargrilled bogey. i am not a fussy eater. noone can say that i did not thoroughly earn the titles 'gobbler' and 'animal' for noble work in the culinary fields. i chewed through the pigs ear on monday night with the ease of a pigs ear eating pro, but the chargrilled strips of bogey defeated me on this occassion. what would mao have had to say? probably he would have reminded me that "There are not a few people who are irresponsible in their work..." (Chairman Mao Zedong, 'In Memory of Norman Bethune', December 21, 1939).

Apparently, however, i did not come to china to eat. i am a teacher, correctly titled i am a 'foreign expert'. they are at least half right in this. i am certainly foreign. i find that most foreigners are, on the whole, foreign, and thus worth avoiding. this si a guiding principle that i hold dear. this presents a certain technical difficulty, as it will be hard to avoid myself. the solution to this issue wont be a simple one and i fear that even the chairman has little advice to offer on the subject. But anyway, teaching may start as soon as monday. it seems that ive got a fairly cushy set up. Yangzhou gets high praise all round, and most of the punters that im hanging around with this week are within shooting distance of the place. there are also 6 CIEE people going to the same institution, 4 brits and 2 yanks. some people have it pretty different. one girl's going to a town that is real big on its coal mine, the other to an oil field, and one guy to a town that no-one has ever heard of. it was founded way back in 1996 (golly!) and now has a population of 5 million. thats china for you. and thats me done for now.

Tonight were off on cruise down the river and then theres suspicious rumours of a sojourn to a place of beverage consumption and general jollity. until the next time.

Posted 10:32 PM by Gobbler
"To make china rich and strong needs several decades of intense effort..." Chairman Mao Zedong, On the correct handling of contradictions among the people, February 27, 1957.

A fair point. and they do seem to have done rather well. it is no longer true to say that "...china is a big country, but she is still very poor..." (Introductory note to "Running a co-operative diligently and frugality", 1955) Well, china is still quite big but no longer quite penniless. how did it happen? according to the chairman himself, some serious diligence and frugality was called for. he loved those words. in my own vernacular i would probably not use diligence or frugality, but rather "the little buggers have really put the hours in." according to the China Daily, china has got some serious cash rolling around. ok so its a paper run by the government (it simply isnt on to have silly nonsense like a free press), but even if half of it's made up things look pretty perky round these here parts.

Apart from reports of how marvellous china is, headlines today include "101 year old woman volunteers to be mother". this bizarre story, however interesting, does not match up in quality to the pick of yesterdays publication, which was past question "Centenarian throws martial arts challenge", where "A 104 year old man in Nanjing... - who claims to be a martial arts expert - said on monday that he was ready to challenge anyone above 75 years old regardless of sex and nationality to a contest..." today's news has not been without its violent element either, as we hear tell that there was a "Restaurant smashed up for not serving fried rice." Well absolutely, i mean what the hells the good of a restaurant if you cant even get a bowl of rice? place deserved a going over. Elsewhere, the China Daily grabs another scoop with the horticultural shocker "Man attacked for refusing to buy rose". i tell you the news never stops in this place, and the paper is there to tell it all. cant wait for tomorrows edition.

The night before last we had to go through the outrageous nonsense of a vegetarian restaurant, where tey tried to make the food look and taste like meat. this strikes me as a rather silly and pointless exercise. a bit like the full english vegetarian breakfast i had once, oops battery low, hang on

Posted 10:01 PM by Gobbler
"Liberalism manifests itself in various ways." Chairman Mao Zedong, Ibid, p.31

take posting for example. there i was yesterday, all pleased with myself after scribbling a few lines on the trip to china's tallest building, what the guide described as a 'Sky-crapper' which features a 'sex scene floor', the 88th, that we would be visiting. this was supposed to be a sightseeing floor, but he certainly seemed to have other things on his mind as he then went on to tell us that the hotel in the building has rooms for 6000 dollars for a one night stand. had a good chuckle over that one. like i say, i was pleased with myself and all, happy in my ignorance. for it appears n ow that the post has not appeared. i call sabotage. not only can i not view my blog it appears that i cant post on it either. boo hoo. i'll just quickly try to publish this little piece and if succesful will get back to you.

Posted 8:56 PM by Gobbler
"Liberalism is extremely harmful in a revolutionary collective." - Chairman Mao, Combat Liberalism, sept 7, 1937

Perhaps this is why i cannot view my blog. Instead of going there i am diverted to some chinese site that appears to be advertising vacuum cleaners. I supose this is much more in the spirit of the 'revolutionary collective', while my liberal blog is more in the 'extremely harmful' category. funny, i thought i was heading more for the right wing of the spectrum rather than liberal, or if not right wing then left wing. all swings and roundabouts you know, thqats what my history teacher used to say. You cant get the bbc website here either, far too subversive, and cnn's not at all popular. so excuse me for not being hugely responsive totalk backs.

While the same noodles as yesterday and lunch the day before were on offer for breakfast this morning, they did have other edibles that did the job. foolishly ignoring what i wrote yesterday, i today opted for the off white liquid next to the hot orange squash, under the advice that it was 'really quite tasty'. it isnt. i would describe it as 'really quite unpleasant, and with suspicious bits in it.' i cant remember what it was though i new at the time, and anyway the ordeal is thankfully over now. back to the warm orange juice from now on.

last night we went to a famous thai style restaurant with live entertainment while we eat. there were two highlights to this in my opinion, tho i have time now to describe only one. the less highlighty highlight im afraid, but it is quicker to describe. a long high pitched squeal from the singer, 'hyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee' or something of teh sort that was evidently supposed to be very impressive, appealing and perhaps even slightly saucy. it only served to distract me as i was tackling the piece of chicken i was transporting via chopstick from the dish to my plate, with the unfortunate result that a little piece of it detached itselfand plopped into my beer. had to fish the little bugger out, it caused some upset. the beer was alright tho.

Posted 9:08 PM by Gobbler
Theres going to be some changes in this here place

AS Chairman Mao said in his famous speech on "The Situation and Our policy after the victory in the war of resistance against japan" on August 13 1945, "Our duty is to hold ourselves responsible to the people. Every word, every act and every policy must conform to the peoples interests..." Therefore, herenow and henceforthwith i shall no longer employ the word 'blog' in every title. I will utilise any words i jolly well please.

Because you see blogreaders, it is time to ring in the changes. I'm in Shanghai now, the city of smog as it has been christened not thirty seconds ago. lots of people in this here town and the ones ive met sofar have been entirely reasonable. thats to be expected as they have all been hotel staff and bar staff. We're staying at the marvellous hotel sunmoon three stars. Two men down as a couple of halfwits missed the plane. During the roll call on the bus at the airport it emerged that there was also another individual missing, one Chris Tofer. No one appeared to have even heard of the fellow, let alone met him and it seemd that some ghastly error had occured until the lady reading out the names realised that her english wasnt impeccable and she was supposed to say Christopher. this solved the problem quickly.

driving through shanghai it became obvious that its quite a big place. Some 15 million or so of the buggers and as far as i can tell they've each got there own scyscraper towork in and block of flats to live in, there are so many. After a short welcome at the hotel which involved handing over 50 bucks or your credit card for a deposit, something that William M. Hutchinson, the big egg in london, hadnt told us about. After a coouple of cooling lagers a short nap was had beofre dinner. Rather nice so it was, although i report with regret that the noodles from lunch and rice from dinner both reappeared for breakfast. thats not appropriate.

after dinner last night we went out for a spot of karaoke, which unsurprisingly was an embarrassment all round, but there we are. the several beers that were put down meant that we stayed up til about one china time which has splatted that jet lag. while otehrs were waking up at two or three, their body clocks ringing in the new day, we slept like logs. A little tip. Get a lottle (thats micra talk, very clever. crap car though) tipsy and reset that sleeping pattern.

Unfortunately, just like the nap we took yesterday afternoon, it was a struggle to get up and we were late for breakfast. Ive got a new alarm clock and though im very good at setting it i had not, until the words of chairman mao saved me a few minutes ago, worked out how to A) turn it off or B) set the time. you will agree that part B) was a fairly elementary operation but not so. for, twiddle the knob as much as we cared, ther time didnt move and the alarm arm verily sailed round the face. this wasnt a total disaster as long as we could manage the maths on the time difference. i must say however that this skill abandoned me completely this morning and i thought it had all gone horribly wrong, that it was half eleven, and that i would be fired for misconduct on my first day. in the end we struggled down to breakfast; a little late but not too late for the noodles from the lunhc before and several glasses of warm orange squash. not by choice i should mention. but one had to drink something and the warm off white liquid looked very sketchy.

We joined forces to try to work out how to alter the time on my peculiar alarm clock. jon myh roomate and teaching chum examined the beast while i selected some choice words forom maos little red book. The chapter entitled "dare to struggle and dare to win" seemed appropriate and i read out the first quote: "People of the world, unite and defeat the U.S. aggressors and all their running dogs!..." In truth it wasnt quite what i had had in mind, but then jon cracked the alarming clock quandry and all was well. Thats one point for the little red book. This is going to be an interesting few months...