MEPHEDRONE IN CHINA

I met Sun on West Street in Yangshuo. It’s the main shopping street in this mountainous tourist trap and Sun was perched on an impractically tiny stool behind a towering stall, covered in tarpaulin. He must have seen me through a periscope because he jumped to his feet. He held out his fist and, admiring his effort, I shook his clenched hand. Our conversation began as mine normally do here; a mispronounced introduction in Chinese, a la teenage internet chat room dating. ‘Tom. 18. English.’

He was a lovely chap! I’m going on a hike today, Sun. Such beautiful mountains in Yangshou! So beautiful they’re on the back of this 20 yuan note, see? No, give it back.

So I went to the caves yesterday. Ah! This was my cue. I whipped out The Cave Pic.

The Cave Pic is a photograph of me and 6 other English guys standing in a mud cave. A laminated, wipe-clean picture of 7 half-naked teenagers splashing around in a knee-deep pool of exfoliating mud. Oh yeah. The squaresquares go mad for the Cave Pic and Sun was no exception. Any way, what do you sell here Sun?

“Do you want Miaow?”

No! Had the status of mephedrone reached the dizzy heights of the Yangshuo mountains!? No, I bloody well don’t Sun and neither should you - it’s illegal now don’t you know? I can still hear Hattie Harman harping on, craning her pre-historic neck through her brother-in-laws new loft-extension’s window. It ain’t safe and, now, it ain’t legal.

You don’t want to do it, Sun. I’ve seen them, squatting in the corners of nightclubs like defecating gremlins as they chew their teeth to talcum powder. You can spot them a mile off, Sun, eyes as wide as their future mono-nostril. You don’t want to join the motor-mouth brigade, chattering away in a one-man tournament of Just A Minute (with flagrant disregard for the rule of no repetition.)

Miaow Miaow has become the new British pre-teen drug du jour, and was was recently in the papers a lot as it was banned by the government. This was newsworthy as the bearded bloke that disagreed with the Government was named after the Nutty Professor. Miaow also deserves special mention as Brighton’s third biggest export (after buy-to-let real estate and white-washed wooded furniture) but that’s a world away from Guangxi Province. Steer well clear, Sun.

A bit put-out, he pulled back the tarpaulin cover to show me his contraband wares.

He was selling plastic solar-powered cats. The Chinese ones which wave to give you good luck and money, high on nothing but the sun’s rays.

At least now he knows.

Don't Worry Ma, I'm Only Being Sick For Hours On End

spending 9 hours a day in an office with people speaking Chinese does odd things to your hearing. sometime in late february, somewhere deep in my synapses, cerebral beamont decided to give up on trying to relate these alien sounds to meanings. now he focuses instead on what the Chinese words sound similar to. there's a word used all the time which sounds identical to an unfortunate racial slur i think it means 'that'.

the most unsettling one is the word meaning 'correct', but used as yes - dui (dway). sounds harmless, but Chinese people in the office have a habit of shouting it a hundred times at once really, really quickly and out of nowhere. it sounds like a drum roll by the drummer of Slipknot, or a tommy gun. it's not the end of the world, but it makes me want to jump up and hide under the desk. DADADADADADADADADADADWAY! completely out of nowhere. pretty unsettling.

the long-anticipated trip to the Military Museum was every bit as GLORIOUS as expected. Lots of artefacts demonstrating in arse-aching detail how the Chinese army have developed to be quite so very good. being the only white guy in a feature exhibition of the Opium Wars (on a Chinese National Holiday, to boot) wasn't that much fun either. Glares all round!

we spent the last weekend in Qingdao, on a not-so-sunny beach trying to ignore the feeling that we were the only survivors in a post-apocalyptic ghost town. things looked up - hilariously, we stumbled upon China's Muscle Beach and spent a few minutes in a ridiculous face-off with some elderly chinese weightlifters (Workers' Stadium Tai chi regiment but with heavy weights). Andrew stole the show as a Under-21 Northern Ireland Deadlifting Champion (seriously, he brought a 3kg tub of meat powder to China). My contribution will be immortalised in an upcoming photoblog...

Then spent the night with people we'd met in the hostel, some people from New Zealand and Denmark and other countries that churn out incredibly nice people. had a good night watching West Ham win 1-0 and enjoying my revelation that i should start talking to only foreigners about UK football - they have no idea i'm as clueless as they are. BUT THEN:

the next day turned out a bit worse. as the others woke to meet the Kiwi Danishes and take a bus to hike the Laoshan mountains, i decided that it would be a much better idea to contract a kind of viral-food poisoning hybrid illness. my seaside hike turned into a glaring contest with our flu-ey chinese roommate (i may stink of sick but you snore like a fucking hoover, pal), and i spent the morning getting to know the toilet bowl, sent to sleep on the freezing tiled floor by the foghorn lullaby of The Flu-ey Roomie. then spent the rest of the day glowering at eachother as we lay in sickly slumber, like two sickly pissheads vying for some A&E attention in the waiting room.

Just got back into beijing from xi'an, where we saw the Terracotta Army (self-appointed 'eighth wonder of the world'). they're thousands of years old which is quite cool, especially when you consider that the only stuff we have from back then in the Uk are nondescript bronze slabs which might have been used for something somewhere by someone who was possibly important. Unfortunately, 1,000 of them are in Canada at the moment. ('on tour, like a rock band!'. Cue explanation of Spinal Tap to bemused Chinese lawyer). There were loads of them anyway. Luckily, cloud-bathing, weight-lifting and vomiting stayed off the cards. yay!

normandy travel blog

When i was 13, i went on a tour of Northern France with my basketball team to play at High Schools in the most grey and sullen towns that Normandy could muster (think The Road). This 5-day series of sporting Waterloos (i wish) was punctuated by a pretty incongruous day out at a war memorial site. I can't remember its name but it was absolutely vast, and a seminal pit-stop on a tour of Great War attrocities . It should have been a solemn place, but it wasn't. Oddly, there was no sadness in our teenage mourning that freezing afternoon, and as far as I can tell, the mourning of the other visitors.

There was a well-thumbed book in a monument building - a Yellow Pages of those who fell in the War and were buried there. We each took turns to leaf through the laminated pages in search of a war hero who also bore our names. (Predictibly, I didn't find one matching my non-surname - a pesky registrar and illiterate ancestor made sure of that many years ago) There was little remorse in this, but a boyish pride and nostalgia. For me, it was not put there to allow a personalised account of the thousands of white marble crosses, but a chance to feel some visible patriotism, by knowing that a relative contributed to the grand declarations of chivalry plastered on the walls. This was a chance to revel in the regalia of the catalogue of the dead, and in the achievement of people i felt i knew. Like looking for friends in a school photo or a sibling's name on the board of sports captains in the school hall.

It felt like mourning to be seen as mourning; outwardly paying my dues for not having to speak German. I remember my self-congratulations at the saintly humility of trudging down the rows of allied men, then turning to walk with the Schmidts and Mullers. I'd like to think that ever year on the 11th November, i stand at the rain at the Old Steine for different reasons. I'm not convinced.

I' about to leave the flat to meet a colleague for a tour around the China People's Revolution Military Museum. I've a feeling it might have a slightly different vibe...