Life experience

[khiemtran]

Well, I have danced on a tabletop now. I have also been led onto stage by a beautiful Uighur dancer, although, fortunately for my marriage, I didn't have to dance with her.

I have navigated a taxi to two successive airports using only Mandarin and managed some elementary smalltalk with the driver. And got a receipt afterwards.

I have heard a Mozart string quartet live for the first time, and heard someone actually play a bamboo flute worse than I do.

I have walked across a main intersection in Beijing without blinking an eyelid (only previous visitors to China will understand this).

I know what it's like now to stand on a vaguely familiar street and realize that I've actually been here before, only without the forest of skyscrapers.

Comments

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

My husband thought China was wonderful. He wants to go back and I would love to go, so we shall see.

I know what it's like now to stand on a vaguely familiar street and realize that I've actually been here before, only without the forest of skyscrapers.

But that I can experience at any time just by going home to Manchester. :)

I hadn't even seen the new shopping centre they'd built all over my old familiar streets before the IRA blew it up and it was all rebuilt again!

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Well, you know people from all over Asia dream of going to exotic Manchester. They have some sort of football team there, I understand...

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

They have some sort of football team there, I understand...

Yes, and that causes me certain problems of identity too...

This is where I used to live. This photo is taken from just outside our old house. See the pointy-roofed building in the distance? If I remember correctly, that's the Newton Heath railway engineering works. That's where Manchester United started as the works team.

Manchester United ought to be the team I support. My grandparents supported them for more than 60 years^[1], from before the First World War. And now people all over the world, who have never been to Britain -- let alone Manchester -- claim them as their own.

I find this very weird...

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^[1] The other side of the family supported Manchester City, which is why my brother and I never really supported either. It was necessary to remain strictly neutral. :)

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

It sounds like an interesting trip!

Now if we can get you to take a camera...

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

There are some photos from my first trip there here (http://www.tranli.com/TripReportChina.html). No very good ones, I'm afraid. I bought my MZ-5N duty free for the trip and I literally had to learn how to use it as I went along.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I love the photo of the steps in the mist. Magical!

G went to Guangzhou and actually braved the underground system. (He has the confidence thing down to a T!) He speaks absolutely no Mandarin and as you say, the locals didn't speak English, but he managed to observe what the others were doing and purchase a token from a machine, then he has to ask an official (via sign language) to show him what to do with it. He contrived to get off at the right station by the simple expedient careful counting!