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.

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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.

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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.!

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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.

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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.