a man on a bus

Xining has an expert's knack of riling even the mildest-mannered people. From the rude, reckless drivers to the insane behaviour of pedestrians to the spitting, snarling and smoking populace who treat the street as their own front room. I once saw three workmen in hardhats go at each other with shovels and a girl bark like a dog and gob at her boy friend in a Xining cafe. He wasn't barking but he spat back. Don't get me started on the Hui men with their carpets and Friday afternoon prayers.

It's easy - especially if you are British where complaining has been mastered as a fine art -- to find yourself caught in an endless samsara of bitching.

But today I was yanked down to earth. 

It happened on the 102, a humble little bus that trundles from my university into the centre of Xining. 

I boarded and moved to a space clear of bags and human bodies and clung on (for dear life, I will do a post about the Xining's sado-masochistic bus drivers later) to the back of one seat. 

The man in that seat kept staring at me. In my peripheral vision -- I was in no mood to make eye contact -- I could see he was a smallish man and wore the distintive white cap of the Muslim Hui ethnic group.  Under his gaze, I gritted my teeth, stared out of the window and ignored him.

Then I heard a groaning noise. It was coming from the seated starer.  I glanced down, and it was then that I realised he had a nervous disorder, maybe cerebral palsy. His hands were twisted into cones, his body hung at a strange angle and he shook slightly but regularly.

I felt a sudden stab of shame. 

When he looked up, I smiled, and he smiled back.

Maybe five minutes later it was his stop, He curled out of his chair. I tried to help him move to the door, but he had everything under control. He gestured to the now empty seat for me to sit in it (very rare in Xining where seats are fought over tooth and nail) but I shook my head and smiled.

As the bus screeched to a suicidal stop and the doors jerked open he clambered down. As he stepped off he looked back and gave me an enormous grin.

The bus pulled away I watched him walk off in his unique way. His strides may have been uncoordinated but he walked strongly and with decision.

He treated me with humanity. 

And made me think what really do I have to complain about?

That's a man on a bus for you.

Dr Rex and China's 18th Party Congress

As China opened it's (very important) 18th Party Congress, and western journalists moaned about how boring it was before it had even started, thousands of kilometres west, I went to see a doctor about my hip that was giving me a bit of gyp.

Xining's Red Cross hospital sticks up like a bandaged finger on the edge of Xining's (relatively high-end) International Village (国际村）apartment complexes, favoured by the cities professional expats. It is of the old school -- bathroom tiles and blue-tinted glass for the exterior design but don't hold that against it. Miraculously, several western doctors work in the clinic including a Swiss surgeon and Dr. Rex (more on him later).

In the hospital's car park, a giant TV screen was playing footage from Beijing's Great Hall of the People, where the Congress is being held. 

Inside the clinic, it wasn't chaotic, it was clean and the nurses were courteous. Fourth floor for the 外国专家. A young nurse helped me join the hospital (simple form -- name, age and marital status!) and 挂号 (register to see the doctor). Cost to see Dr. Rex, who is a graduate from Harvard Medical School, 12 yuan. That's £1.20. 

The nurse chats for a while. It's turned cold, I say. (I'm British). Yes, she nods, Last night was 立冬 (Lidong). Lidong literally means the start of winter. She looks at her colleagues who are struggling with mops and buckets, gives me a hurried apology and says she has to get back to work.

I go to the bathroom. It's sparkling clean (unlike the fetid cesspits that invite wickedly at our university). "There's a foreigner here," I hear one of the orderlies say.

As I wait, two female orderlies crowd around me to inspect my silver rings. The very smiley one, who has faint pixie genes, is deaf. But she natters away.

Dr. Rex has been in China off and on for 10 years. He started in Shanghai, spent a few years in Yushu (pre-earthquake) and is now in the modern civilized urban harmony of Xining. He's here because "of his faith" and "to help the people."

He has a gentle self deferential manner. A passion to help beats beneath his white coat. And he has a doctorly chuckle. 

Better than I remember from my NHS experiences.

That's Xining's Red Cross Hospital for you.

Show and Tell

Everyone loves Friday. And I'm no exception.

This Friday it was a double bill of excitement for us here in Xining. In the afternoon our university held a Chinese Language foreign student/teacher talent competition. Our attendance in the audience was compulsory.  While tonight I got last minute tickets from a cameraman friend for a special show on Qinghai TV (Amdo channel), a song tribute to a moustached cowboy-hatted Amdo star.

First off is the the university talent show. Foreigners were herded into the middle aisle. A group of half a dozen Tibetan lads sat off to the side. One with a gravity-defying quiff that gave him a good extra half a foot in height.

Up on stage we were pleasured by a singing duo of Koreans, one with an acoustic guitar; a Malaysian woman who waxed lyrical about her Chinese roots and the great friendship between Malaysia and Xining, a mad Russian in a suit who said he loved Qinghai, an English girl in a Tibetan chuba who strummed her mandolin and sung the Kangding Love Song in a soprano, a Canadian, fluent in Tibetan but not in Chinese, who talked a bit about tangkas, a series of dreadful poetry readings, a Dutch woman who sang the Chinese national anthem in knee-high boots, and a black guy in a cool trilby who crooned a Smokey Robinson-esque number in Chinese.

The highlight was a group of Mongolians who did an edgy dance number as a finale. The girls looked they might have been washing dishes, but the guys, descendants no doubt of the mighty Kublai Khan, were right into it, tent trouser legs flapping in raunchy rhythm. 

Talent, there was not. Long spells of torturous Chinese sycophancy there was. It was nice to see that everyone got a prize, but the top prize went to the Chinese man who organized it! And why not?

Three runners up prizes went to the three brown noses: the Dutch girl who sang the Chinese anthem, the Malaysian woman who adores China and another Malaysian woman who recited poetry although it would have been nice if she hadn't. 

When we emerged blinking we walked into a sandstorm. The sky was a very attractive browny-orange and our mouths soon felt they had morphed into the bottom of our shoes. 

Then onto Qinghai TV. We crawled through the molasses of Xining's Friday evening rush-hour traffic to arrive just in time to have lost our seats but get two new ones. The entrance was guarded by people's armed police and coppers in hard white helmets and white leather braces. I wanted to twang them but they weren't the Village People. 

We sat in the audience and clapped or waved our hands when directed. The performers, all very good, except for some young kids who were a bit rusty, mimed to their songs. So effectively we were listening to CDs. At very loud volume. In a hall. Surrounded by police. 

The old Tibetan man in front of me kept blowing his nose into his hanky. The girl next to me kept checking her phone. The cops were watching. We could have done with a snack.

Three hours in our bums were frozen into a rictus of pain and we escaped.

That's Qinghai TV for you!

Xining snow

Christmas came early to Xining today. About 11 this morning, big flakes, like saucers for mice, came floating down from the overcast heavens.

This magical scene lasted for about 20 minutes. An hour later, the sky was blue, the sun was shining, and wooly gloves were no longer needed.

This is the view from my bedroom window (echoes of  People's Public Housing Project 242 Romania circa. 1976), overlooking the university campus. The trees have been losing their leaves over the past few weeks and so now they are as bare as the day they were born!

Winter in Xining officially lasts six months. That seems unnecessarily cruel. However, the central heating -- centrally controlled -- came on in mid-October and will last until mid-April! Except for the protesters I caught protesting two day's ago (see previous post).