A week ago the school paid for the teachers to visit the famous grasslands, here in Inner Mongolia. Our group consisted of six teachers and one of the Chinese members of staff, a man named Patrick.
At this time of year, however, the grasslands were lacking in grass. There was a dusty sprinkling of greenery, but by and large it was dirt and sand that covered the land.
We had to leave Hohhot at 7am, in a convoy of two cars, and we arrived in the grasslands around 10am, after our driver stopped in a small village, in the middle of nowhere. We took this opportunity to meet a pig and some of the other locals, who were congregating in a small shop.

When we arrived at the grasslands we were both disappointed and relieved to see the "yurts" we would be spending the night in. The yurts were yurt shaped, but that might be as far as the description "yurt" could possibly stretch. These yurts had panoramic glass windows, TVs, with satellite dishes sticking out from every roof, they were constructed from concrete, had two beds in apiece and were en-suite, with a western styled toilet. None of us had prepared for this eventuality and so we hadn't even brought enough soap; our priority had been beer.

We didn't have long to rest before we were herded out for some horse riding. Out of the group only myself and another teacher had any experience at riding. I was quite excited to get back on a horse and had hear a lot about Mongolian riding prowess. I was eager to gallop across the lush, green valleys, but sadly my hopes were dashed as we trekked over a sand path, lined by old fences. At one point the path opened up onto a field and the horses were encouraged up to a trot. Mike and Dom, two of my colleagues, were bounced up and down complaining about the discomfort it was causing them.
After a minute of trotting we arrived at a small house and dismounted. We all marched inside and were offered tea and Mongolian snacks. These snacks took the form of Mongolian cheese and small, shortbread-like biscuits. Mongolian cheese comes as little, white pellets that could be easily mistaken for mints. Some of it's sweet, some is salty, but it's all very hard and chewy.

After we rode back to the camp we had lunch and a rest. Lunch was very traditional Chinese: lots of dishes were brought out and many of the ingredients seemed obscure. Over lunch a Mongolian band who worked there played music. I was expecting something highly traditional, like Mongolian throat singing, but instead one guy took up the synthesizer, one man played the traditional string instrument, whilst a third man sang into a microphone; of course he had reverb up to the maximum. They didn't play particularly ancient music, instead opting for modern classics associated with the grasslands, one of which Dom excitedly called "the grassland song." At one point our Chinese staff member, Patrick, got up and had a word with the band. I wondered if he was asking for some throat singing, but was assured by the other teachers that Patrick was a virtuosic singer. Sure enough he was handed a microphone and pulled off a faultless duet.

After lunch it transpired that Patrick was a man of many talents. What barely passed for an archery range had been set up and our drinking at lunch had been ignored; rather it had been accepted as quite unremarkable. The targets on this range were under 15 feet away, but that was probably for the best, as the wind was exceedingly strong. As if to remind us of how windy it was the range was lined with flags. Separating the range itself from the firing position were lengths of bunting and waiting for us were two old bows and a handful of arrows, all missing their fletching. I inspected the bows and didn't quite understand them. Both were recurve, but neither had a sight. One bow was exceptionally light, whilst the other felt just about right for me. We split up the teachers and decided to have a little competition. It just so happened that I, as well as the only other teacher with experience, ended up on the same team. We also had a teacher, Kirsty, who was the only one of us to get a bull's eye. However, the most consistent member of our team was Patrick, who almost always landed points. Our team won by an almost unfair margin and after a particularly competitive member of the other team left in search of a commiserate beer, we decided to do a tournament to discover who was the best. By some fortune, or the fact I had worked out how to compensate for the lack of sight, I won.

Not a lot else happened in the grasslands; the place is characterised for its sparse nature. We did have a good time, but were happy to get back to Hohhot for a nice, warm shower and a cup of decent coffee at the new Starbucks, which has opened next to my school.

Hohhot is becoming increasingly Westernised and China, in general is opening up. Dom and I were sitting in a new jazz bar last night talking with the singer from the house band about that very topic. He had taught himself English from listening to tapes and using Youtube, and so he had an American accent. He sang mostly lounge jazz, very well, but as we talked the band's other singer, a woman, was leading a rendition of a piece of Chinese jazz. I asked the jazz man why the government bothered to ban Youtube when it was so easy to get around the ban using a VPN. He replied that only people with good English skills knew about VPNs or could acquire one. He agreed that China was opening up, however, and that the newly graduated generation no longer identified with the ideologies of Mao Zedong. He motioned towards the band and told me that the music they were playing had been written in the time of the Chinese Republic, before the Communist Revolution. I asked him if it was during the Cultural Revolution that a lot of this music had disappeared and he said that "Cultural Revolution," was a dirty term now. He recounted how songs and music associated with expression and freedom were clamped down on, but, he said, now that freedom's beginning to emerge again. The song ended and he excused himself to take his place in the band again. It was getting late and so we decided to leave, but it struck me as significant that a particular song had been recovered after so many years and played once again in a more relaxed China, one filled with young people open and interested in music that hadn't just been dictated by state bureaus.

It has been two months since my last entry, which is an almost unforgivable lull. However, aside from buying a bike from another teacher and cycling it around a little bit, I haven't done anything massively exciting.
Most of what I do is teaching and making homework for my classes. I teach a variety of levels and ages, from clueless four year old kids to semi-fluent eleven year olds. In fact, it is hard to truly ascertain the age of the children, or indeed anyone in China it seems, because here they have a very bizarre way of measuring age. Apparently gestation counts as a year, and so when you're born you're already one year old. Consequently, whenever someone tells me their age I subtract one year (or add one, if I'm telling someone my age). However, I am never sure when people are using this Chinese age counting, and so for all I know some people might be a year older than I assume.
My classes are split into three levels: Kindergarten, "Pop Tots" and "Our Discovery Island (or ODI, for short)." The latter two are named for the books we use, but roughly equate into age groups of 3-6 for Tots, as we call them, and 7-15 for ODI. My oldest class are on the third level of ODI and are about 11/12 years old. Kindergarten has its own strange ways, as it's a contract the school have with various kindergartens in the city (only one of which I go to regularly).

There are, actually, three kindergartens our school sends teachers to: Shao Ning Gong and two schools owned by one company. The former school is very modern and exceedingly big (bigger and nicer than Scottish Parliament). I didn't like it much when I covered for a teacher there, though. The classes are only thirty minutes long and each class has around twenty-five to thirty students. Far too many for such a short amount of time, I think. I found it more challenging to focus enough on each kid, to ensure that they had a good grasp of what I was teaching. Also, the kindergarten I go to has a big, soft floor as the room is also used for taekwondo (a word I can now spell, thanks to a unit on sport that I've just started teaching for the third time).
The kindergarten I go to has classes of forty minutes with around nineteen students in it. It involves a lot of running around, shouting and pulling silly faces, which I enjoy. It is, however, a 9am start, which means that I have to be on my way before 8am. I also get a three hour lunch break on the Wednesdays I work there, which is a trifle too long; I often end up dozing or doodling in the classroom until my afternoon class. IT does give me ample time to visit my favourite restaurant for lunch, which is a short walk away.

Pop Tots is a little like kindergarten, especially the low levels (one of my Tots is also in my kindergarten), but with the addition of a register, homework and the occasional craft activity. I enjoy Tots because I can run around and be silly and the kids are generally very well behaved. I teach two levels of Tots, a mid-level and the top level. The mid-level are a lot slower at language acquisition, but sometimes surprise you with their knowledge. They're very sweet and games with them often consist in chasing them to music or throwing teddy-bears at flash cards.
The teaching I do is very game-based. I will introduce the language we're targeting and then get the kids to practice it by playing games. Games have one of two objectives: either they directly involve the language (like spelling races) or they're just good fun and the loser has to say a sentence or answer a question.
The disadvantage of Tots level students is that they are not quite old enough for more of the interesting games; they haven't developed the motor skills required or the language ability.

I teach two levels of ODI. ODI goes from level one to level five. I have one level two class and three level three classes. My level two class are by far my favourite class. They are old enough to play almost any game and still young and enthusiastic enough to enjoy it. Perhaps, on the other hand, they are too enthusiastic: they are by far my most boisterous class. This might be because they are a class of nine boys and four girls. They are, despite being ODI 2, perhaps my most able class and can spell better than many of my ODI 3s.
My favourite game to play is also a favourite with this class: there are two inflatable, rubber horses which the kids love to bounce on. I split the class into two teams and have a member of each team race to the white board. The first kid to get there and write a correct sentence (a prompt for which is often on the board) gets a point. The great thing about this class is that even the losing side shouts and celebrates when the winner is announced.
My ODI 3s are of varying ability. Some of them very much struggle with writing and grammar. I have one class, which is a bit smaller and contains my best students; however, they can run amok if not kept under control and given plenty of fun games and activities. I have two larger classes (one of fifteen students, the other of eighteen) who are absolutely crazy. One class, the bigger one, I inherited from a veteran teacher. They are reasonably bright, but often speak Chinese in class. I have a rule in my ODI classes that if I hear Chinese the kid who spoke it loses all the points for their team (I always include team games as I think competition is a good way of encouraging the kids and this punishment is a good upshot of having points on the board). My rule has backfired in the form of kids always shouting out "so and so spoke Chinese!" At first it was "So and so Chinese," as Chinese people have a talent for avoiding verbs in sentences, so I had to teach them "spoke."

Over all, I really enjoy teaching because it's an energetic outlet and often I see a lot of improvement in the kids' abilities. Largely it is the active and fun aspects that appeal to me and from the parent feedback I've had I think that's the right approach to have. The photos I've included in this post come from a class my director of studies asked me to photograph (for a promotional website) and the smaller one is of my PAs talking to student who is affectionately known as "big fat Mike," by the teaching staff.

I carried on along the road and left the rubble town behind, but rickety old houses remained, lining the roadside. Many of these houses looked to be in dire need of maintenance, or a complete remodelling. Several of the dwellings were mud brick constructions and one house had a herd of sheep grazing on its over-grown roof. I wondered if that was the owner's method of weed control, but he swiftly disillusioned me of this notion as he came out his house shouting at the sheep. I don't think they were even his flock.
The people in this area obviously utilised their roofs as storage areas and some of the dogs in the area used them as places from which to howl at passing strangers. Many of the dogs in Hohhot wear clothes, but out in the sticks they hadn't made it to the doggy-boutique and instead they showed their exposed, scruffy fur as true dogs do. The dogs were still significantly smaller than dogs in the west, but they looked like familiar breeds, almost miniatures of the dogs I'm used to.

The countryside was cold and barren. Domiciles were derelict and dilapidated and the streets were strewn with litter people had dumped carelessly around. There was no appreciation for nature and wildlife, but this lack of appreciation is a symptom of something I've increasingly observed here: China's desperate need to escape from its past.
In China people don't cherish their heritage in the same way we do in the west. There were no good old days, there were only the primitive days of poverty and starvation. This is why China is so big on machines; they feel a pressure to demonstrate that they've moved into the modern world. China's countryside is at odds with this progress and if you tell a Chinese person that you want to see the old, run down areas they can't understand why. In Britain people are interested in how we used to live; it's important for us to know where we came from and what life was like in times gone by. In China the memory is still fresh in people's minds and for some it isn't a memory. This coexistence of modern superpower and impoverished developing country is a source of tension that leads to a proud rejection of anything less than ideal ultra-modernism and socio-economic progress.
In a sad, but fortunate way, it is this schism of wealth that allows someone like me to live so well on what would be a low wage in the west. In fact, there is little to spend money on here and so it is easy to save enough to travel or buy lavishly with. I don't think I need an 80 inch television, however.

Another way of passing the time, during the Spring Festival, was to visit temples. I became a little nostalgic for India when I visited the Five Pagodas temple in the centre of town. It was well endowed with Tibetan prayer flags and had all the familiar rooms containing Buddhas of various shapes, sizes and colours. There were a couple of prayer wheels, but not enough to feel fully authentic. Because it was the Spring Festival entry was free, but usually there is a fee. This also seemed a little strange to me, but the final touches came when I heard monastic chanting. I hadn't heard anything like it since India, but it was once again a knock-off: a CD of chants being played over a sound system. Nevertheless, it was interesting to visit and felt tranquil amongst the busy city with its constant barrage of fireworks. Another temple just around the corner was mobbed with crowds rushing around to buy presents for the Spring Festival. I tried a squid kebab, which seems to be a common and popular street food here. The crowds drowned the temple like the tide swallowing a delicate rock-pool and the sacred features of the area were obscured by people flogging fireworks, balloons, food and all sorts of fake antiques. I spied a colourful column which had been fenced off as if protected from the pollution of human commerce. Only a massive statue of Confucius truly stood out from the throng of people, looking sternly down as if to question the modern values accepted by the people who still venerate him.

A short bus ride past the airport, followed by a forty minute walk takes you to the White Pagoda. The pagoda itself is a vaguely interesting piece of architecture and the walk out there is a reminder of how fractured China's modern facade is. There are lots of stores littered along the route and they all have big signs, many in neon. It struck me that one day, perhaps within the next decade, Hohhot will expand out and swallow up this area. It's rife for development, but is still thriving as a rural satellite to Hohhot. Unlike the other rural village I visited, the one with a smooth, fresh road and crumbling, demolished buildings, this village has a road full of deep ravine-like pot holes whilst it remains operational and populated. Where was that other, clean road leading to, if it was lined with forgotten and uncared for buildings? This broken road, with a real village centred around it, eventually leads to another city up north. This strange contradiction once again reminds me of China's bizarre priorities.

My two week holiday ended with the Lantern Festival celebrations. Lantern Festival occurs on the night of the first full moon after New Year's. This festival is yet another chance for the Chinese to indulge their "pyromaniacal" tendencies. It is a night in which China's remaining stock of fireworks are released and wishes are sent into the heavens, symbolically attached to flimsy paper lanterns.
I met up with some other English teachers in Hohhot's main square for the event. The area was lit with passionate red lighting, appropriately coloured to coincide with Valentine's day. That night red became a manifold symbol: it was the emblem of the New Year, the color of China and the vibrant space between the couples who held each others' hands as they watched their dreams sail into the sky. The lanterns were scattered above my head like an artificial constellation and I watched them dance and shift into different arrangements reminding me of the chaos of life; maybe if I could follow my lantern, like a target, my wish would be granted. There were so many lanterns, however, that soon I lost sight of mine and was simply tracking the general shapes and movements of the man-made lights.
The festival atmosphere was joyful and hopeful. My gaze fell upon families sharing candy floss and encouraging their children's experiments with explosives. A couple of fathers stood far back to take photos as their sons let off hand held roman candles. The blatant disregard for western safety standards in the centre of this westernised metropolis again reminded me of the strange mix of developing and modern that has come to embody China for me. Of course, in several years new safety standards will be introduced and no one will mourn the passing of the old ones, instead they will scoff at the "primitiveness" of a past standard of living. For me, however, there was nothing primitive about it; I was just fascinated with this more carefree and exuberant mode of existence. 

For days red regalia and decorations were flogged on every street. By the 30th the vendors had saturated the market and every door was adorned with red banners featuring golden script. Round, red Chinese lanterns hang from lampposts and lintels.
Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, as many people call it, fell on the 30th of January this year. That morning I awoke to what sounded like gunfire. After scouring the view from my window for several minutes I spotted some smoke and faint flashes that signified the detonation of fireworks.
These fireworks haven't let up since. They get more intense at night, reaching a climax around midnight and then falling into a lull between 5am and 5pm. Each day since the 31st the explosions have died down, but every so often there is still the odd bang or the sound of firecrackers which, being from a cold, wet country, immediately sounds akin to heavy hail hitting glass.

On New Year's Eve I watched from my hotel window as people set off fireworks on the side of the street, right outside the government building. The fireworks bloomed inches from my face, directly outside my window and the cars passing below were showered with sparks and ash.

I was meeting the other teachers who had stayed in Hohhot for Spring Festival at a teacher's flat so that we could watch the fireworks in his area and let off some of our own. When I arrived his wife, a Chinese woman, and her mother were watching a popular Chinese New Year's broadcast. In fact, this television marathon of a programme is the most watched in the entire world: every year almost every person in China watches it. Unfortunately by the time I arrived I had missed the martial arts display, the shadow theatre and Jackie Chan's slot, but I did get to see some very funny opera and a couple of contortionists. I understood nothing of what the hosts were saying and was relieved when our host, James, suggested that we went down into the courtyard. He explained that it was nearing midnight and things would be hotting up.

The scene outside was already more intense than any fireworks display I had hitherto experienced. Several large fires blazed in the centre of the courtyard and men stood next to exploding barrels as they lit yet more rockets. Firecrackers were occasionally let off, showering us in a harsh strobe. We had some boxes of "bangers;" fireworks that exploded when thrown against a surface. These weren't like the bangers from a joke shop - they gave off a bright flare of white light and were almost audible over the din of the display. However, in the maelstrom of gunpowder and magnesium their effect was almost totally lost.

As it drew closer to midnight the fireworks intensified. There was barely a silent second and the fireworks we let off were lost in the fray. I remember James shouting something about our fireworks, but I couldn't tell which they were because so many vibrant explosions were concurrent.
The scene was what I expect a full on war zone during attrition to be like. The explosions were endless and every so often the ratatatat of machine gun-like firecrackers pierced through the thundering sound-scape. A couple of the teachers looked a little shell-shocked and James suggested we took a stroll around the block to get away from the immediate vicinity of the fireworks and see what other mayhem was occurring.

We got onto the street and were met with more fire-works, blooming over the top of buildings. Fires lines the streets at 5 meter intervals. These had been created by locals, who gathered around them for warmth and as a source of fire for lighting more fireworks. People ignited rockets and roman candles on the roadside and I watched a few cyclists and motorists try to navigate through the chaos.

We completed out route and headed back to James' flat. After collecting my things I headed home, wide awake from the sights and sounds. If you've ever thought that Chinese people are quiet, reserved and private this is a festival that would blow your mind. The fervour with which people greet one another over this period is remarkable, but not out of my experience of China so far; people are always warm and eager to talk - even if you don't speak any Chinese and they don't speak English. Chinese people are just as manic and excitable as people in the West, but whilst we get drunk and cause havoc in the streets and pubs Chinese people just blow things up.
Yesterday I saw two small boys playing with firecrackers. They were carefully unfurling the large roll and laying them on the pavement. A man, possible a parent of one of the boys, came striding out of a nearby establishment, cigarette dangling from his mouth, and began berating the children. I thought, as he picked up one of the lines of firecrackers, that we was going to roll them back up, but instead he repositioned them and lit them, to the children's amusement. At least he wasn't letting extreme minors play with explosives, even if his own disregard for personal safety was a little disconcerting.

The image above is that of Wanda plaza; one of the big three shopping mall/ residential complexes in Hohhot. Wanda is a commercial magnate. He is also a very famous man in China, perhaps the Donald Trump or Alan Sugar of the PRC. This complex includes a large shopping mall, offices, residences and a hotel. Currently I am waiting for a leaving teacher to vacate their flat so I can move in. In the meantime I'm staying on the 20th floor of the hotel - the building on the left. I work just a short distance away, on the 9th floor of the building on the right.

From the moment I arrived I was busy. As soon as I'd stowed my suitcase in my hotel room I was out on the street again, heading to a small shop where I would get some passport photos done for my certificate of professional expertise. Chinese New Year is nigh upon us and the Chinese love the colour red, so my photo was taken against a red backdrop. After a few minutes of photo-shopping my portrait was ready for printing. I looked nothing like myself after the digital makeover the man gave me. He removed my blemishes and red cheeks, gave me a hair cut and readjusted my head to a less jaunty angle: all in the space of two minutes. He had one hand flying around the keyboard, whilst the other manoeuvred the computer mouse in quick, precise movements. This was my first experience of the Chinese obsession with modernism.

The next day I was off for a medical required for my resident's permit. This was a bizarre experience. I went with one of the Chinese staff from the school at which I work. Her English name is Julia and she filled in all my forms and even insisted on holding my coat and scarf as the medical proceeded. For the examinations I had to go to a building presumably designed for the purpose. Not quite a hospital, not quite an office complex, it was something like a medical center with people milling from room to room for the different examinations. We had a form to fill in and a different room for each field on the form. First up was the blood test. I sat and watched a girl give blood and get a vaccination for her upcoming trip to the United States of America. Then it was my turn to have blood siphoned from my arm. The doctor, a stern woman of middle age who could have passed for a teacher or a lawyer, plucked a needle from a local stack and pricked my prominent vein. It was at this point that I told Julia that I knew I was HIV negative and if my results came back positive I knew from where the contagion had come.  After two vials were filled she took a swab and spread some of my blood onto a sheet of paper. She dripped some solutions onto it and circled my blood group. If it's that easy, I thought, why did it take so long and cost so much when I got it done in Edinburgh?
The next room to visit was the ultrasound. I watched as several people's insides were displayed on a screen in an incomprehensible form. When it was my go I asked Julia how my baby was. She laughed and said it was fine; apparently I had passed that part of the medical and everything looked clear. I couldn't help by laugh as the woman rolled the probe around on my tummy, it tickled, and I was told to stop laughing because it obscured the results.
I also underwent a crude eye test, during which I read letters off an overhead projector. There were five doctors running that test, but I think they had collected there just for fun because all they had to do was click a mouse and a new letter would appear on a different part of the screen and at a different size. After that I had a full body x-ray and then I was taken into a room where a man asked me how my arms and legs were. "Fine," I told him and some ticks went on the form. He then grabbed my neck and started strangling me. Apparently this was part of the medical, but I don't know what he was checking for - his hands never once went near my glands.
On my way to the BMI and blood pressure room I stopped in the toilet to give my urine sample. This was the most ridiculous part. I had been given a cup to urinate into and a small, plastic test tube to fill from the cup. The toilets looked like a cup graveyard. Half full cups had been deposited on every surface imaginable. They did not produce a particularly pleasant smell. Once filled, I put my test tube in a rack provided, near to the door, and thoroughly washed my hands.
In the BMI room there were two strange looking machines. One looked like a set of scales, but from a sci-fi movie: it extended up and towered over me. I stood on it and a button was pressed. It immediately measured my height, weight and calculated my BMI (20) from these results. Next I had to put my arm into a machine reminiscent of a torturing device. It squeezed and spat out a reading. Everything seemed to be in order and so we moved onto the final room, the ECG.
We watched a couple of people get wired up before it was my shot. In China medical procedures aren't exactly private. People just wander into the room and watch other patients as they await their turn. I was glad when the doctor unplugged me and Julia announced that we were finished.
I have discovered, in my travels, the lax and slightly disorganised nature of developing countries' healthcare. Hohhot's ranged somewhere below Quito's, but above Dharamsala's.

Now that all the administrative tasks seem to be out the way my resident's permit is almost complete. At this moment it is being processed and is with my passport at the local police station. Sadly it'll be there a few days because during Chinese New Year everything shuts down.
I think I will write another post about my school separately because it too will be rather long.