Followers of my previous peregrinations will know that I am usually an avid travel blogger, and my desire to record whatever wanders past my eyes and into my head has, for the last few years at least, bordered on the obsessive compulsive. When I say, then, that I have been too busy over the last few days to write a word, it is no exaggeration. School has been around 13 hours a day, ten days a week, and the free time I have had has been filled with hastily preparing lessons for classes full of excitable students. I spent half of today, our “day off” preparing for tomorrow's second ‘opening ceremony’. I’m itching to write more about teaching, but first I should tell you more about the city where I’m staying.
Changsha is famous for being (very near to) the birthplace of chairman Mao and my first impressions of the city were not altogether favourable. With a population, in 2003, of at least 6 million people*, it sprawls for miles in every direction and its south side, while doubtlessly full of personality, isn’t easy on the eye. The city centre, however, is just lovely as long as you ignore the smog. I have now had time to visit the city centre thrice, once when I went to ‘bar street’, yesterday when I went for a meal with my wonderful teaching assistants, and today when I absolutely failed to find Mao’s university.
Changsha’s city centre, far from being the higgledy piggledy mess of many ‘developing’ cities I’ve visited, is nearly pristine and filled with restaurants and shops selling clothes, expensive alcohol and a cornucopia of western luxury goods. Squint through the smog and you can see large well-kempt shopping centres, tree-lined streets, temples, pagodas, bulletin boards and restaurants. Although there are obvious signs of poverty, while Kampala and Hyderabad have as much effluence as affluence, there is not a piece of rubbish to be found in central Changsha thanks, solely, to the armies of orange-clad litter pickers, who ceaselessly patrol every inch of the metropolis.
A sweep is as lucky as lucky can be.
Nightlife in Changsha, if that’s what your into, is also very good. Take a trip to the imaginatively named ‘Bar Street’ and you’re presented with a choice of about thirty funky, wood-panelled Chinese bars. Personally I think it would make more sense to spread them out over the city, but if you’re after a shot of “Jack Benign’s” vodka, a glass of brandy and sweet green tea, or a game of surprisingly enjoyable Chinese dice, you can’t go far wrong.
The university district of Changsha is also rather verdant and, when I went with a couple of friends to find chairman Mao’s old university, it was lovely. We popped off the bus and passed a picturesque lily-covered lake, where Chinese men in hats were fishing for pointlessly tiny fish. We passed a few university buildings and climbed what we thought to be the famous hill on which Mao used to sit and think about the doctrines of communism. Up and up we climbed, past bamboo forest, gravestones and beautiful city vistas until we happened on a teacher and a group of children who informed us that Mao’s university was a few miles down the road and the hill we were on wasn’t famous in any way shape or form.
He shall have a fishy on a little dishy
Anyway, it all starts again in seven hours, so I’ll leave it there for now. Tomorrow is another opening ceremony and I have to be as fresh as I can be.
*To put this in perspective, Norway has a population of roughly 4.7 million and New Zealand 4.3 million.
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