Wǒ men chī fàn le! ~ triumphs, gifts, poetry, barf, see U soon.

Once in a blue moon, blue robin pokes a dishevelled noggin above the canopy, hails Caesar, taps a red breast 'pon a red heel, spins thrice, smiles hirsutely, beguiles a fruit tree, dines at Mucci's, finds a smoochie, passes the dutchie, parses a speechie, cusses, cusses, cusses, mud.

*

It is Saturday morning, 05:35. Alarm goes, I wake. Muggy, dull-eyed, ready for adventure. Dark cool night stretching limbs over campus like a waking carcass shivering off sleep.

06:00, I board the coach. I am given steamed dumplings (x2), a fruity sweet drink, name forgotten (x1), and I am offered eggs from a cardboard box, which I refuse. I chow; we trundle.

07:00, give or take, we arrive. We hang about. Time drags, we pay ninja. I meet other foreigners. We are the International Team (+ my Chinese friends who I came with). We are seven strong, and we are mighty like a juggernaut. Competitors turn out in throngs, some decked out in gear GEAR GEAR, helmets and pads and the works. I am in shorts, and a special pink t-shirt. I feel quite dandy.



Chris is here, thank goodness. These are the Riddell brothers. There are a lot of them!



No large-scale event is complete without CAMOUFLAGE, no ma'am. Camo and fists, camo and fists.



Our task is to climb a very tall building ¬ it is called a Vertical Marathon, and I am a Vertical Marathon runner. We are allowed (encouraged, required....) to use the stairs, rather than scaling the outside of the building. Daunting? Heh!

53 floors is actually quite a long way, though I forget the exact height climb. Technically speaking it is darn high and therefore a challenge of which all us competitors are filled with pride and beans. 150 people = 300 legs = 3000±2 toes (anomalies are the rule) = how many grins? How much sweat sweated?? How much adrenaline???

We are awesome!!



Guess how I/we did!



Correct! I came fourth. See if you can find my name on the screen. (HINT: stand up, turn around and touch the ground with your palms, close your eyes and say to yourself in a dull rumbling tenor, "if I need a hint, I'm a douchebag, if I need a hint..." etc., repeat until mind = pulp)



This is 熊 谦 (Xiong Qian), our International Team star player! She was #1 out of all the gals, and won a terrific smile! No she had that already! Well anyway, she won some serious warmth that day. A lot of us got these hefty glass awards, which was great but also seemed ridiculous. Upon completion, everybody was given a solid gold medallion (I already ate mine). I guess they don't do things by halves here after all.



My prize was an 'Aromatic 60 mins'. I was slightly less titillated when I discovered that it can only be used in conjunction with a paid service. However, this is still good. A surreal, silly, early, bountiful and broadly buoyant morning for us!



We had a VERY TASTY Korean feast for lunch, incl. kimchi (pàocài), pig skin (chewy, bit weird), peng courgettes, bbq stuff oh yes, lettuce, noodley soup, heavens oh my I think I ate too much. The other two were just so encouraging, you know? Anyway, once we'd finished, I thought that's that, I won't be seeing that again. But how wrong I was!

That evening I ate noodles at a place near the campus, being oggled by two sporty fellows across the way, clearly finding a comfortably solo white boy adequately gawkable. I finish up, I feel swell, swollen in fact, as I might have eaten too much. So I leave, I bounce, thinking, that's that, again, and, I sure won't be seeing that again! Oh, how assuming makes an ass.

02:00, internal alarm goes ring-a-dingding! Nothing for it, lurch, hoo wahhh! There they all are! Ah, Korean food, noodles, chilli flakes (and not the kind I love - the kind that sting your nose as they pass the wrong way through it...if there is a wrong way), whoffffffhh. Detail. Sunday was a quiet day.

*

Other culinary surprises of the past week include:

- chicken feet // to be honest, which I am, these were disappointing. A lot has been made of the importance of feet, for chicken(s), possibly amplified by inability to fly, ineptitude with prolonged airbornness. They are everywhere, in soups and in packets, and I had built them up. Ate, pedestal shattered, all skin and bone, and not tasty skin at that. Trickle of blood, slightly morbid, not fussed.

- duck's heart // certainly a novelty. There were hundreds, on sticks, and I was encouraged to try. We did. It was, soft. Almost mushy, but held maintained structural integrity without a prob. Bit slimy, tasted good. Prefer to C.F., would eat again. Ethics are on hold, and, at any rate, kudos to China for not wasting what we waste. Everything is on offer. Duck's head is next on the list.

- Chinese peach // absolutely bloody gorgeous. Taste of tropical juice, not from concentrate. Flavour explosion, shall be going back. Two peach trees in our garden are going to be getting many visits from us, ho mama, say it again.

- durian lolly // fine. Went to make full purchase of durian, were unable to purchase part, and whole is expensive ~ postponed. Durian lolly was a substitute, and was tasty. Naturally, flavour softened / made enjoyable to all with inclusion of milk and sugar and flavours, but durianness detectable, & delectable.

- powdered soybean milk // this is the ting, here. Many students drink this hot in the morning. I am now among their ranks. It is proteinous and vitaminous and voluminous and delicious, sets one up with a smile and a firm hug. Buds pleased, mind ready for action. Bare cheap and good for a snack any time of the day ~ mei tian! (every day)

- lotus root, pronounced ǒu // been eating this for a few weeks now, and the word is fun to say. Lunch today = lotus root stuff, beany potatoey stuff, rice. Nice.

- egg stuff which was like a pudding! // ridonkulously tasty, sweet and tangy, like sweet&sour but not sour, and sweet differently, and oh hhhheavens quite the numero uno. was it scrambled, was it fried? Who cares, Jeremy?, nobody does.

There is lots here for the taste bud, bud.!

*



Hey, I saw two of my students in the canteen one evening, quite late, and they gave me this. She's Sheryl, as in Sheryl Crow, because if your favourite mistake is to soak up the sun, then a change is gonna do you good. (actually no because sun-soaking is wholesome and gorgeous as long as you don't do it too much because then you will become leather, and whilst leather shoes are desirable for their durability and resilience, leather self is not)

This is a paper-cutting cutting of paper I accomplished during our training week. It hangs on my all in the prescribed place and blesses entrants with its concentricity and teeth, its chi exuberant and exultant and exaltant red.



Why the hell are you so sad? This is motivational Mervin. He's unhappy with his chin; he curses it every morning. He is the only star that is visible 24/7.



This is gift #2, and an altogether lovely one, from a dear student who goes by Allen. In our first lesson, he told me he liked poetry, so I was like DUDE POETRY'S STUPID HAHA thrilled and patted him genteelly on the back asked him about what poetry he liked. He told me Li Bai, as an example. Last week, at the beginning of class, he handed me a fresh new notebook, in which he had written this note.



On the first page he had written out three of Li Bai's poems (in Chinese script), so my goal is to be able to read them by July. Realistic??!?!? Hey, every day is a winding road!

Basically, I feel big.



I went up to the Lotus market in the north of the city, because it seemed like something worth doing. It was, I suppose. Here, I think, the factories which write Made In China on everything send things, when they have too many...things. There are chutes, or something. 5, maybe 6 storeys, each one telling a different...story. You go in one and are in a sort of chessboard maze, all blocks and squares, look right look left (pan around the labyrinth), corridors of stuff so much stuff. A place for voyeurism.



Get the feeling you're being watched? Everyone is unique! There's always one. I told you I was wearing red today!









see U soon, though perhaps not.









Is it though, China? Is it? Do you practice what you preach?



Hey on the plus side I'm totally legal here, no questions asked (unless we play ninja in Tianfu Square and thereby demonstrate our ability to have fun, then questions will be asked). Please don't photocopy this and print it out and try and pass it off as your own. The mechanical arms will pluck you from your slumber, rent you from dreams you sweetly dream, deliver you to justice's cloying embrace.



Action shot, film: setting - mise-en-scene, 'matography, darkness // flanked, unafraid ~ light, shadow, contrast | in media res #begin.



Juxtaposition, intellectualism, horse. Donnie / wizened, lurching (ey). Proper photos courtesy of one T.vH. // terrifically volatile harbinger, mess ye not.



MARATHON: At the top of the building, you tap in your finger thing which records your time, they hand you coconut milk and red bull and what have you, and there's a dude on the decks spinning out 90s slow-groove hip-hop beats, and I'm moving, I'm moving, and my legs feel sweet and the coconut milk has gone to my head, and during the ascent I'm given this pipette-dispenser thing with 50% glucose mixture inside, and I touch it to my tongue and I zippppp into action, flit flit flit, I'm a butterfly, I can just float, these steps are, these steps are---where are the steps?? They're gone! WHy???? because I'm at the top, Cheshire-cat grin like I don' mind one squat. Darn toot'n.

Obligatory parenthetical cheese, you know how we do.



Week's assignment is to listen to the big tunes of JJ Grey & Mofro, and/or watch Ferris Bueller, because he'll make you reminisce and feel as sweet as you are.

*

sweet as you are
teeth like a tiger
setting the bar
high as a glider
show me how far
and I'll spot you a rider
testing, yī èr,
daily a fighter.

Toilet Wisdom // One Step Civilization

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could play TENNIS? I ask you. Here is the dream team, united, ignited, fiery-breathed and like a steaming hoard of dragons constantly one, only one, contained within a self so terraqueously self-contained and terra-terrifically whole as to be almost indistinguishable from the preceding land and subsequent water, receding hand / sequined mortar, here to stand and make a stand in this higgledy-piggledy world, in whose folds we lie, at once prostrate and irate, consummate and deliberate. 

I thoroughly enjoyed playing tennis with this bunch, despite the latent vol. swimming through my bloodstream from previous day(s). Weekend was a hoot. 

What did you do during the weekend?

Usually I...

When it's sunny, I...

During winter, I...

Next weekend, we will... (future tense)

Five points for use of future tense. Hey, great! You formed a sentence in the perfect tense. Let's not talk about grammar, because grammar breaks my balls. That's the infinitive with s, because it's singular third-person. Simple present. You think so too, about grammar? I'm glad you do. If anyone wants to learn about grammar, please wait outside and pick your nose until you reach your brain. Twizzle it out like a noodle on a chopstick and fling it at the ceiling. If it sticks, more fool you. If not, place one end in one nostril, the other in the other, slurp and sniff 'til that baby doth whiff, check yourself in a mirror and chuckle to your heart's content. Re-enter and ask me again if I'd like to do a lesson on grammar. 

On your birthday, on your special day, you are given a bowl containing one humongous giant long noodle (<-- this bit is not a joke). One must slurp said noodle in one fell swoop is that the phrase? All in one, slurpy durpy, better hope your tongue and lungs are up to it; successful completion of the task grants access to the township's casket of good fortune. Take a handful, no more no less, and it's yours. This is why large hands are seen as lucky, you see?

One thing certainly worth remarking on is the bloody fauna. These silver-backed monstrosities are certainly not few and/or far between. They crowd in plazas and slink behind unwitting tourists who step back and come a serious cropper, landing on their sorry arses and giggled at by those in the know, who most likely have previously suffered. These critters swill their metallic jowls, coaxing regular snails from their caverns with promises of leadership, growth and an end to salt (their nemesis). Unfortunately, snails of regular stature lack the rhetorical clout required to ensure they get what they deserve. They pale, pallidly and pailly, into insignailifance. Hyuk.

Toilet Wisdom // TW.

Lessons have been going great actually, thanks. Yeah, really good. At the end of lessons, sometimes I ask my students to write answers to a couple of little questions. What was useful in the lesson, what wasn't, etc. That kind of thing. Helps me modify the lesson for subsequent classes, as I use the same plans for different classes. 

Usually the exit-slips (JARGON) are informative, sometimes funny, sometimes unbearably sweet. Here are a few of my favourites.

 

One student said she liked her 'funny and facetious teacher', another called me seductive. Mostly they are appreciative and make me feel extra appreciative. They are exuberant and lovely, and they jolly well keep me on my toes. Them sweetie-pies. 

I been running, climbing, playing tennis - muscles. Lots of people run after eating dinner here, in order to lose weight. Losing weight is a big thing. People think they are too fat. Of course it is kind of silly, because 99% of students on the campus are athletic as fook (JARGON), or at least generally toned. But, alas and butt, comparisons will be made, inferiority will be complexed, the passive voice will be used. So I've been running, not to lose weight but because sometimes after lessons I'm pumped and feel like transferring energy from my body to the track, via means of trainers and movement. What? The Movement!

Rock and roll. Peace and love.

Wherever ye are

wherever ye be

bear in mind

that all that ye see

is never too far

nor never too close

so sit on your hind

and love what ye be.

I hear reincarnation is making a comeback HA HA OF COURSE

Ahoy there, and before you do anything, just look at this boy (below) MOVE! I mean, he's a statue. His name translates literally to Ode to the Peppercorn, hence his uppermost adornments -- I mean LOOK, at how seriously BIG he really IS. Merits upper case if nothing else. 

See how his eyes, kind of, follow you? Let's take a closer look,

shall we? 

Wuw. Somewhat akin to the Lisa, Mona, but perhaps even more ambiguous, at once wholly calming, exuding auras galore from his gigantic pores (each one can swallow a small child, we're told), and at the same time uncannily unsettling, disarming, dissociating, generally speaking a bunker-load of negativising prefixes, enough to set any unassuming passer-by off kilter. Whoa Derek, yes mama.

Lips too, each a luscious ladleful of languor, curving blithely t'ward roseate cheeks. 

OK that's that. No more adjectives. Lips, nose, what's next? 

Ears, like ears of corn (simile does not equal adjective HA), sagging because each one is a storage place for dreams. Buddha has dreamed a thousand thousand dreams. That is a lot. Does he serve his purpose though? Let us see.

Construction started in 713. Unfortunately Hai Tong (chief architect, ascendant of Kevin McCloud of G.D. fame) pissed away too much of the project's funding on opiates, cock-fights and supercilious exhibitions of wealth. However, when duly admonished by contemporaries and/or circumstances (regret's wrath doth sting like a scorp'), he gouged out his own eyes. This demonstration of sincerity fell on deaf ears, however, and he soon died of no-eyes and/or too little blood.

Eventually, another chap sponsored the build, and Buddha's final toenail was clipped 90 years after start date. Can you imagine something taking 90 years to build? Can you actually? Right now, no one will embark on a 90-year project (except, yes, OK, John Malkovich and Robert Rodriguez, whose film 100 Years will be released in just under 100 years, thoughts on that after class), because no one knows what state the earth will be in a century from now. 

Seriously like what. And but when? The Mosul Dam is under threat, and will wipe out a million if/when it breaks - no one even knows! Nuclear weapons, obviously. Naomi Klein wrote This Changes Everything and of course it didn't - it just cemented certain ideas in certain already informed and already sceptical minds. I haven't even got round to reading it yet - what difference am I making. We live in oblivion and BUDDHA SITS AND CALMS THE WATERS. Or does he?


That's ^ the point, really. Buddha was erected all those years ago in order to quell the waters whose turbulence was just too turbulent and whose tumult was just too etc. for the shipping ships who shipped goods from one place to another. Did/does Buddha do the job - this is the question which is unanswerable and in fact invalid, because did he accept the job in the first place, and because if he's doing a job then he deserves to be paid at least minimum wage (I say living wage) therefor, and so the crux is a tangle of you know what I mean. NEXT

This is just a fraction of the cue, but we played our cards right so we didn't q for 2 long.

Place littered with temples, towers, bamboo tufts and orange benches. Calmer with every footstep.

Symmetry, squares, 
pillars round, lanterns abound, 
kid's gone and found himself a pound. SOUND. 

Beware the red liquid. 

Beware the Panda! That reminds me. Sophie and I were tasked with writing a 15-20 minute play for the Foreign Language Department students, to be performed in May. Boshed it together in no time at all (a week maybe) and it is called Beware the Panda. Anyone who wants to come and see it PM me for details, we can't cover flights but I'll cover noodles (cover you with oodles of noodles).

What do we think of that? A-OK.

Rumour/legend has it (Kenzie told me) that Buddha was a gorgeous hunk of a man, true sex-BOMB if ever there was one, and that his attractiveness plagued him. No one would take him seriously. Solution? Get mega fat. Then everybody will take you seriously. So he did, and grew jocund, jovial and wholly jolly. Did people take him seriously, now that he was as roundly rotund as a beach ball? 

My two cents: no more, no less, or maybe...yes, less.


Let's say Chubbuddha is not chuffed with this roundness. He misses the days when the distance from bed to beach was a mere jaunt. His newfound weight lends him buoyancy but reduces slickness in the water. He yearns for abs, bi- and triceps, the whole shabang. One night, he has a dream.

In the dream, he is ripped, curled, bedecked in patterns and stripes. Well bronzed and certifiably slammin', people flock from here AND there in order to gaze upon his lashes and sultry chin(s). 

There is a knock at his giant golden door. This door is cantankerous and can be seen from space - we are in the future. Buddha is tech-savvy, though maintains an analogue facade. 

He calls upon a minor to open the ruddy door, lest the knocker grow tired and take their gifts elsewhere, dote on a different pseudo-deity or demigod (what do we call him?? something alliterative!!). Because, you know, who doesn't love myrrh? I'm one for mirth, myself. Myrrh or mirth, urban space or rolling hills, apples or ice cream - so help me.

The little one runs straight to the door, inputs the code (techie Budd) and undoes the golden latch.

Interlude: wild Sophie appeared! 
You threw bait.
Wild Sophie ran away. 

An angry Wiggum pushes on the door with such force that the wee chappie is launched into the wall and mashed to to a pulp. Buddha's dream is dutty, for sure.

Wiggum's gnarled brow's arch resembles that of his lute, which he plays with fiery verve. His beard tufts waggle - prehensile and pernicious, like Medusa's snakes. He strums a standard 4-5-1 before he is assailed with questions. Will he not apologise for squashing Buddha's boy? Has he no heart?

He angers, and his red eyes turn green. His facial tufts clump together, because strength in numbers. He unsheathes his sword and looks almost as if he will lunge it into Buddha's bare breast. 

Real Buddha, in his sleep, tosses and turns - will this be the end? The monstrous nostrils of his potential assaulter are cavernous and intimidating. There is no snot, only depth. In a blink of his mind's eye, he thinks of a funny punny about depth of snot and photography and boogers but forgets it before he can write it down. 

Back to what matters: ostensibly irate and bearing down, bearded beast of a Wise Man twirls his mighty weapon, its black surface glinting NOT ONCE in the candlelight, and aims it directly at the smushed corpse of B's servant. A blue ray of pure light and rejuvenating NRG shoots from its tip and reconstitutes the boy. Everyone's OK, gosh we're glad! 

He retrieves from his East-Pak messenger bag a Zip-Loc bag containing goodies, which he lays at the foot of Buddha. 

These snacraments please the Buddha greatly. The joy he feels fills the room, and is breathed in by all present. It puts hairs on the boy's chest, and increases the foliage on the man's face,

until he has a right big bush framing his visage, and swells with pride. 

Buddha opens one of the packets of food. Gosh, these look delicious. Where did you find them?

At the Kwik-E-Mart, which we all need, replies Brown Beard, reminiscing about the television of his (equally tech-savvy) youth. 

"If I may," he continues. "You grip the golden balls thus, 'twixt thumb and forefinger. That way it will not slip from thy grip." As he says this, his beard unravels. It is spectacular, and Buddha thinks ooh crikey, I wonder what that would feel like between my toes. He is distracted by this vision, which invokes a reverie so immersive and all-encompassing that he can only give himself over to it.

Buddha awakes, finds himself hungry. 

Chewing on a papapapaya, he wanders outside. The flesh satiates his thirst, the sweetness cools his head. He feels a million dollars, and finds this red chair to boot. Winner winner, vegetarian dinner. 

*

This door opens into Buddha's giant stony butt. 

No it's not.

Obligatory overload of photos of the cool thing that we saw of which there are already literally millions of pictographic iterations saturating the web. Hey, what's a few more drops in the ocean...?

Feet for perspective. Each foot weighs the same as THE WORLD'S PROBLEMS and that's a fact - that's a thing you can't deny. 

Umbrella for perspective. This one's actually a toy. The Budd's not even that big. 

 Stairs, treacherous, queuing, descent, sightseers, fingernails. 

Lost City of Atlantis just over the way. Enshrouded by a mist which promises much and delivers much of a muchness. 

Parabolicking is illegal in 22 of China's 23 provinces, the exception being Hunan, where it is institutionally encouraged. Reward = 5 yuan and a bunk up the boco per kg of parabollock I mean parabolic certifiably parabollicked. 

Afterwards, we went and got a bit silly in Leshan. Spot the foreigners!

There they are! We have all converged in this place to eat and drink and be merry, so we shall.

Remember when you're feeling down
to play your favourite tune--
stick some chopsticks down your gullet,
feel your body swoon.

Stick 'em right inside your throat
and yell "I'm really doing it, Brune!"
Tickle your trachea well
and fill your lungs with Clair de Lune. 

And check out Thewlis as Verlaine and DiCap as Rimbaud in Total Eclipse - it is a movie! And yes I am in publicity now. Bubye!