Hot Springs

Thanks to my work, I spent Tuesday afternoon relaxing at the Beijing No 8 hot springs! what a place, it is the perfect picture of opulence. Marble, lush fabrics expensive couches, all manner of spas, sauna's, steam rooms, man beauty products (including milk and honey massages). What a place and all for nixs.

Of course, like all things Chinese, this place is not for the faint of heart. I mean I'm no stranger to weird situations surrounding hot springs, after all I have been party to the weird 'cleanliness' assessments at the Blue Lagoon in Iceland, but this takes the cake.

The hot springs are all nude. Something I only discovered after the change room attendant not only informed me casually, 'bath, no clothes, no clothes', but also decided to he would assist me in striping naked by pulling off my pants for me... very weird. Obviously I was slightly taken a back by this hands on approach, and so flustered kind of bolted from the attendants reach into the hot springs area, only to be chased by him waving a pair of cotton 'hygienic' undies above his head. Needless to say the other very naked Chinese men in the spring thought this hilarious, and then thought it side splitingly funny when the attend then proceeded, without clear consent I may add, to dress me in the cotton undies!!!

Ahh well, I thought, its too late now, and let's face it, there's no way I'm saving face, so undies firming attached I plunged into the pool. It was bloody fantastic. The mineralised water makes you feel instantly refreshed...

I then proceeded to take advantage of all the freebies:

sauna - apparently Hot is not enough in china, this sauna must have had a direct feed from the sun... it was face meltingly hot.

steam room - I don't even know what I was thinking. After the sauna I could barely stand, the steam room was a small room filled from the floor to the ceiling in molten lava pretending to be steam. The problem was once you entered you couldn't see anything and because the steam is so hot, it burns your lungs and nose, then slowly your hair feels like its on fire... its bloody horrible.

I entered the room with my boss (who conveniently speaks Chinese and was able to tell his attendant that there was no chance he was wearing anything but his swimmers!!!! bastard) Although the attendant got the last laugh, because upon entering the steam room, and feeling himself being set alight, he panicked and became disorientated... he almost started to cry with panic as he screamed... where's the door, the door, ahhh my lungs... where's the f*cking door... He was rescued by the omnipresent attendant, who incidentally had the largest smile I have ever seen on a Chinese persons face... it was great.

Flesh eating fish pool - That's no typo, you may have heard of this. The pool is about the size of a standard spa, but it is filled with millions of small fish about the size of pen lid, which fairly obviously, love nothing more than sucking the dead skin off human bodies. It is singly the strangest experience I've had since being in china!! At first it's just wrong, you spend the first 5 minutes sayings, ah, ah, get them off, get them off, then after a while you relax into it, and it just feels like a light pins and needles.... all over your body. Until of course you loose concentration and make the dreaded mistake of looking down... The sight you are confronted with is stuff of nightmares... millions of little creatures attached to your body... everywhere and I mean everywhere, biting and nibbling... its a just weird. But after about 20 minutes, my skin felt fantastic, even my feet (possible the driest in all china) were perfectly exfoliated!!! You have to try it!

Shower time - That's right you guessed it, after about 2 hours in the springs we all decided to retire to the restaurant for a meal, and then to the relaxation room... a massive room with individual lounges and individual flat screen TV's with millions of movies available. But before that the attendant insists that you shower. No drama, off comes the the nappy and i step into the shower recess, when I am pushed back by the attendant, who quickly turns on the water, and makes me wait until the temperature is perfect for me. heaven forbid I injure myself with water that is too hot or worse too cold. I then had to utter the following words, i kid you not...

"no thank you, I will be washing myself today" - I had the instant thought of Eddy Murphy in 'coming to america' except more manly... no thanks.

So i wash myself using some of the most extravagant soaps and shampoo's, then I step out to be greeted again by the ever faithful attendant who is holding the towel open... I take the towel and dry myself, something I notice after looking around is unusual here. Most men are standing still while the attend drys them... I appreciate that up until 20 years ago, all men were equal, and so now some are living it up by allowing others to wait on them...but some things are a solo operation!

What a day, and what an experience! If you ever get a chance to experience a Chinese, or Korean or Japanese hot spring, take it... its fantastic.

Beijing Zoo or Concentration Camp

Fortunately for us, we both had Monday off. Unfortunately, we decided to go to the Beijing Zoo. Words can not describe the horror of the zoo. All zoo's are bad, but this was just the next level of abuse, cruelty and using animals as play things.

Don't get me wrong, some of the enclosures are OK. for example the panda's seem relatively happy in their concrete enclosures munching away on bamboo shoots. And they did have at least one big cat enclosure that looked OK (as you can see below),but the problem is that they have 1 decent enclosure for big cats, but about 10 cats; tigers, lions and a leopard. So it seems they only let one cat out at a time. The others are kept in a viewing hall that looks like the sheep exhibit at the royal Easter show, except the sheep are in bigger pens. Most of the cats could barely move in the their cells, most if not all had hunched backs from the the lack of movement, and when looking into their eyes, only the hardest of hearts could not feel their pain.



Naturally like all zoo's, this one was filled to the brim with knob heads, that don't care about the conditions, they just want the perfect photo of the beast... hence they scream out, yell, bang the bars with bottles to get the animals attention. It was f*cked in the worst possible way.

At one point I was actually praying to the god of lions, that the guy who was laughing as he ran his bottle across the bars would slip and his arm would fall between the bars and the Lion would have at least one moment of joy in his horrible existence by ripping the pricks arm off. If it had happened I would have burst out laughing, and taken hundreds of photo's of the prick bleeding to death.

So, now that you know how I really feel, i have included some photo's below of animals that looked mildly happy. However, I even feel guilty showing these because I feel like I have made those animals life worse by taking part in that horrible display.

Relaxing China Style

As you may or may not know, the Chinese people absolutely love a public holiday. They have millions of them for various reasons, some logical, some less so. As it turns out, Sunday was one of the 'less so' ones. According to the lunar calendar Sunday was mid-autumn festival day, and as a result a public holiday.

The significance of this holiday is not important, what is important is that my school gave me sunday off and Skye's work gave her Monday off, these facts coupled with our regular days off meant that for the first time since arriving in Beijing Skye and I had two days off together. Hoorah!

We decided to spend the sunday relaxing Chinese style, as a result, we headed off to the nearest public park and just wandered about on the concrete paths and admired the perfectly manicured lawns (which must be landmined because no-one and I mean NO-ONE ever breaches the santurary of the path and steps on the grass) and lovely old trees.

The park we chose is particularly famous as it is on the only hill in all of Beijing. Naturally the hill was man made in the 1400 by an emperor who fancied a panoramic view of his city and people (that is of course when he was allowed to venture out of the Forbidden City, and across the road to the park.)

The place, as you can see from the photo's is both beautiful and busy.

But not just busy with people having picnics (there are no picnics because you can't walk on the god damn grass!) and maybe playing a bit of footy or something. No the park is filled with people doing what the Chinese love to do when the get any spare time... Karaoke!

As far as we could tell there were at least 7 different Karaoke set-ups, ranging from traditional opera with live bands, to weird Asian pop rubbish. Some had dancers, like this photo, others had these great picture boards with the music and the words to help out the singer.

It obviously goes without saying, however, you'll notice from the picture below that it was not just singing karaoke, but also instrumental, the elbow you see is a guy belting out everyone's favourite traditional tune on the chinese version of the violin.

Whilst I am being somewhat flipant about the Chinese love affair with Karaoke, I have to say it was bloody fantastic. Chinese people know how to have a good time. they don't get bogged down with all the rubbish about what others think, or how they look, they don't worry very much about silly ego issues at all, instead they throw caution to the wind and get up there, sing, dance or play instruments.

I can't help but think that at some stage in history, the Chinese must have had some contact with the Scots, because they share two great loves, singing in public places and getting roaringly drunk... not always in that order.

Before you ask, whilst I was invited several times to sing... after flipping through the song book I was simply unable to find 'I think we're alone now' by Tiffany, and so, whilst tempted I had to decline. However, Skye did flirt with the idea of trying out a bit of instrumental karaoke, as evidenced by the photo to my right, however, whilst she is very good on the gord flute (and I mean that seriously... those clarinet lessons were usuful after all!) we were unable to find a set up that needed an extra gord flutist and alas, Skye chance of 15 minutes of fame went begging.

However, she did managed to bargain the guy down to a decent price and so is now the proud owner of that very gord flute... of course we may both end up with Hep A, after the guy 'demonstrated' how to play it several times... But hey, its China!

Overall the park was bloody fantastic. We spent several hours just wandering around, listening to the karaoke, watching about 100 people ballroom dance (yes i know its random) there was even a 'speakers' corner where a few older blokes were chewing the ears of anyone that would listen. Luckily for us we couldn't understand a word they were saying. Although interestingly, some people were obviously saying things that were controversial because they were speaking very softly and the listeners were gathered around close. Having said that, we are in China, so speaking out about a controversial subject probably means slagging the very boring, heavily chinese focussed olympic games coverage (oops, this blog may get blocked after that comment....)

I shall leave you now with a few photo's of the park... enjoy.

Pollution? What Pollution?

Ahhhh... that pollution!

5-a-side Soccer

That's right my friends, I have joined a 5 a side soccer team. Well actually I am a founding member!!!! This may turn out to be an important factor when we go on to win the Mastercard Beijing Club Soccer League (division two). Or when they realise i'm rubbish and try and oust me!!!

The team is truly international. They consist of:

Me - obviously
Kang - an Australian guy who used to work at my school, but has since landed a very sweet job in an international school teaching P.E
Aubrey - a Dutch teacher, who also happens to be Kang's boss.
Dave - A Glaswegian science teacher
Rio - An Australian Tennis coach - no-one really knows him, or even knows why he's in the team, but hey, its China, randomness is the only way.
Antonio - A Spanish science teacher.
Josh - An Englishmen who occasionally turns up, gets into fights then disappears for a few weeks

Individually we are weak, but together, we join forces to become the irrepressible - 'Get the beers in'

I should point out that the Mastercard Club Football comp is not some mickey mouse operation like the Tempe indoor I used to play.

Firstly, its outdoor. The pitch is FIFA approved synthetic grass (the you know the really cool stuff that is like little plastic blades of grass).

Secondly, they have real referees and monetary fines for yellow and red cards. Its rumoured that a red card will see you suspended for 1 week and fined upwards of 300 yuan (AUD50).

Thirdly, because most of the teams are expats its like a world cup every week. Italians playing dirty and sneaking wins in the last minute, Chinese diving, and Russians threatening to kill people's families... its bloody great!

So, now that I have clearly explained that the comp is serious, you won't be surprised to hear that in order to join the comp we needed to play two trial matches to have our level assessed. After the trial matches we quickly sent off a late entry form for the paralympics 5 a side comp, but unfortunately, whilst the organisers felt for our situation, they explained that firstly a team must consist of 8 members from the same country, and secondly being unco-ordinated is not yet considered a disability!! HA! bureaucracy gone mad!

After the trials we were placed in the South League division two.

By some miracle (some of the other teams are suggesting by design) we are a better team than the trials showed. We have since played 4 league matches (we play double headers every Tuesday night!) won 2 and lost 2, we are sitting in 5th place in a comp of 8. Sounds bad but we are only 2 points off second place, and in fact, 2 wins tonight will see us move into second place!

to quote escape to victory, "Hatch, Hatch, we can win this."

Oh did i mention that last week, it was pouring with rain, and we only had 4 players!!! we managed to hold the very fancied Italian team to 1-1 right until the dying moments when they got a lucky goal (always the way, bloody Italians!) and then we absolutely poleaxed a Chinese team 4-0.

Stay posted ladies and gentlemen, because I can sense a league win for 'Get the Beers in'.

Exotic Foods list

All of the below were delicious... once i overcame the very strange consistencies!

Duck's tongue - you have to try this!!! get yourselves to China Town asap
Duck's blood - take it leave it
Donkey - this was surprisingly very nice. Like beef except more gamey
Eel - just a another type of fish
Kidney - I've now had various kinds, i can assure you a cow's kidney tastes similar to a pigs
Cow's intestine - Doesn't taste like anything, and has consistency of rubber. With a good sauce its lovely
Frog - strange one this, their ain't much meat on those tiny legs!


The list is growing stay tuned