Friday 5th September, 2014                     2200

Where to start? At the beginning I suppose.

As I mentioned previously, I still had the urge to have one last piece of travelling before term starts and contacted some current and ex students to see where they were. Vivian came up trumps, now being a teacher in Yiwu, so I suggested that I might pay a visit. She was over the moon, as apparently were two of her classmates who now also work in that city. She told me the bus took about four hours from here.

Never believe anyone in China when they tell you times because usually they err drastically on the favourable side and sometimes, as in this case, tell complete porkies. There probably is no bus (although Kevin’s student says she found one which takes about a month to get there) and the trains don’t run to there from here. Determined I was going to go, I did my homework and found the best way to go was by train via Wuhu and it would take me about twelve hours. Not impressed but now I know I can smoke, not an obstacle.

Anyway, I wrote down the trains I wanted to take and decided it had to be a three night visit seeing as the earliest I could get there was ten at night. One of my current students has returned - I have been looking after her plant during the holiday - and she mentioned she was going to Wuhu on Sunday, could she help? Certainly she could but I couldn’t go on Sunday due to the return trip getting to our train station at 0220 on Thursday so I asked if she could go on Saturday so I could be back on Wednesday. Very kindly she agreed.

I duly booked a hotel and five minutes before I went to collect her to go and buy the train tickets I received a message to say that I had to attend a meeting on Tuesday for training in how to use a classroom. You may think this odd, I personally think it is barmy. After all, I was using said classrooms last term and what is there to learn about using a classroom?? Ok, fine.

As I was riding to her dormitory it suddenly dawned - hold on, I won’t be back until the early hours of Wednesday! Phone call time. But the term doesn’t start until Wednesday and my first class is Friday. But all the teachers were told they had to be on campus from the 1st because of the inspection. All the teachers except the foreigners as usual! Sorry you will need to ask for leave. Well I am not going to do that given the precariousness of the foreign teachers’ job situation so I thought it would be a simple matter of moving everything forward by a day. Off we went to the station. We got there and my student asked for my ID. I had forgotten you need it for trains but not buses. Shit. I left her there and came back to get the book. When I returned we went to buy my tickets. So far so good.

Thereafter the wheels came off. The train I wanted to take on the return from Wuhu had no seats available so there was much talking in Mandarin and eventually my student asked me for about 200y. I had spotted on the cashier’s computer screen that it appeared I would have a five hour wait in Wuhu on the way back and get back here at seven in the morning. There was absolutely no way I was going to agree to that and so eventually I had to simply say forget it. I have cancelled my trip. This has all been occasioned by the utter lack of communication between the school and the foreign teachers, precisely as it has been since the day I arrived. Had we been informed not only of the meeting but also the requirement to be here ten days too early, I would never have even thought of arranging a trip. I am less than delighted and can’t wait to see what exciting new things we will be “taught” about our classrooms. Perhaps they will have a revolutionary new way of avoiding the floor panels caving in when I walk on them (which has happened on more than one occasion).

If I can secure tickets my new plan is to still go there (Yiwu is famous for having China’s biggest open air market) during the Golden Week and on coming back go to Anqing to visit Yvonne for a night seeing as the train to there gets in at a more Godly hour.

Tonight I was invited to dinner at a newly opened restaurant by the owner of the little school. The food was ok and the owner brought along two very young daughters of a friend plus his 18 month old son. The girls were cute and his son couldn’t stop staring at me, whether because of my obesity or strangeness is unknown.

When I left I could have done the Chinese thing and ridden the wrong way along the road to get to the turning I needed but I decided as there had  been five attempts at wiping me out on the way in, I would stick to the rules even though nobody else does. The problem was,  I took an unknown road assuming it would lead me to familiar territory. I found myself catastrophically lost. It was dark and there were no landmarks to help me and the longer I rode the more concerned I became. It’s one thing getting disorientated when you have a tank of petrol, quite another when you are running on batteries.

Eventually and for the first time in months, I spied the temple near college at night. Tonight it was lit. At least I had a reference point. Eventually (and I have no idea where I rode) I found a slightly familiar route and made it back. Had I run out of power it would have been pointless calling for help as I couldn’t tell them where I was. The annoying thing is, had I taken the next turning a half a mile further on I would never have got lost.  Lesson learnt.