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My dreams of travel in China seem rather perverse. This year I intended to visit several of the generic sights, the places you ’should’ go to, so that once that is out of the way I can visit the places I really want to go to. I have been told by many travellers that China is a difficult place for travellers. The food, language, culture and living conditions can seem a universe away from home. Everywhere travellers go they are met with blank faces, raised prices and varying degrees of suspicion. I find it useful to bear in mind the history of the country, particularly their interactions with the west, and in that context suspicion is no more unusual here than it would be in any part of the developing world. Bear that in mind and try to focus on the more open-minded of the people around you. With a little practise it becomes easy to differentiate between those who are likely to be friendly and those who will not. Focus on the friendly, give the others more time.

Still, travelling can seem to me like a task rather than something to be enjoyed. It is the experience of living in China which to me is the more worthwhile. The more familiar you become with your surroundings and the people the more friendly it will seem and simple things like repeated trips to the same restaurant rather than trying many different ones can make the difference between enjoyment and nervous exhaustion. I prefer to return to the same places and people, friends and familiar faces. For me the time here is not about the quantity of famous sights you can see in a holiday but rather the people you can meet, the half hour conversations with total strangers and the brief window into someone’s life. For that reason I like to spend a little longer at fewer places to get to know the area better and to see the things that I would be unable to notice if I was rushing about taking photographs.

A few tips:

Don’t try to see everything. Pick a few favourites, or ever better, choose a geographical area and travel within the south or within the north to cut down on travel fatigue and costs. If you enjoyed it maybe you will come back and see more. If you didn’t enjoy it your probably wouldn’t have enjoyed traversing the whole country anyway.

Put your easygoing hat on. The logic and the system of China is very different to home. Don’t get too worried or irritated if the day doesn’t go according to plan. Often those days turn out to be the best. Being easygoing helps immensely when it comes to travel conditions, language barriers and sanitation.

Smile. If someone smiles, smile. If someone says hello, say hello back. Except in tourist spots, outside airportsand  train stations and so on where a certain amount of hustling for business goes on, when someone says hello they are just being friendly. In remoter areas the hellos become more frequent. Bear with it and keep smiling; you may have seen thousands of Chinese before, but often they have never seen a foreigner so if you are rude to them they will remember it and may treat other foreigners differently due to the reaction they get from you.

Buy a current guidebook or a really good map with Chinese phrases. Pointing and grunting is completely acceptable if done with a smile. Remember, China is a country with dozens of languages and hundreds of dialects so the Chinese themselves cannot always make themselves understood. However, speaking some basic Chinese is always helpful and eases difficult situations along.

Bargain. Sometimes you can cut the price as much as 50% and many shoppers and shopkeepers find the process fun and exhilarating. I myself dislike bargaining and have come to terms with the fact that I probably pay over-price for most things outside the supermarket. Many people say that the Chinese will cheat you but I always draw a very important difference between cheating your money and cheating yourself. That is to say that if money is taken out of the equation I find the Chinese to be honest and trustworthy. So if like myself you don’t like bargaining, decide whether you can afford or accept the price they offer and act accordingly, or take a friend who can bargain on your behalf. Just try to avoid smart-aleks who will point out how cheaply you could have bought it.

Last but not least: Look. Take the time to sit down and enjoy your surroundings. Spend a few days off the beaten track in the areas where the people are more typically Chinese and everything is more relaxed (and cheaper). Don’t always listen to what the guidebook says. Take a few risks, since so long as you have your address and enough money for a taxi home, you cannot go far wrong.

The greatest pleasure in being an English teacher is of course seeing how your students have progressed. The slow progression through an academic year is barely noticeable, so I always like to return to previous schools, visit old students and see whether, in the end, I have managed to teach them anything. The first thing I noticed in Guangzhou, though was inevitably the changes in the city as much as the people. While I lived in Guangzhou the city opened two underground shopping malls between my apartment and the school so that the journey to work changed drastically (on rainy days I needed venture outside for barely a couple of minutes!).  Now a new subway line has even opened, transforming the awkward journey to several tourist sights into a smooth journey of modern convenience.

For my students too though life has changed. Long awaited visas to the United States are beginning to arrive, the wait taking anywhere from three to ten years. After waiting so long what had begun to seem like a dream has become reality for many of the mature students and efforts at learning English have been redoubled. Whereas before lessons in culture and western lifestyle were something to be endured, my friends/ students are now hanging on every word, fearful that something forgotten now will turn out to be vital in the next few years. My tour of Guangzhou this winter was a whirlwind of appointments with old friends but in the minutes I had left to think about it I realised that I would far rather migrate to China than to make the opposite journey. For those who are familiar only with the communist isolated image of China, bicycles, Mao suits and incomprehensible language, this may come as a surprise. But please consider this; when I first arrived in China the local people were happy to help, to make sure I got where I wanted to go, that they gave me food that I liked to eat, that I was comfortable. In this I am not speaking of the school or company that you work for. Often their interest ends when you walk out of the classroom, I am speaking rather of the unnamed taxi drivers, shop assistants, restaurant owners and passersby on the street. Many Chinese see a foreigner and feel glad. They are glad to welcome you to their country and are anxious that you should enjoy yourself. Can we say the same of ourselves in the UK and other western countries?  I don’t believe so. To be honest, the reaction I receive in China is reliant upon the history of the area I am living in or visiting, plainly speaking, on whether foreigners have treated the people and the area with respect. For this reason, the reception foreigners in Hong Kong or Guangzhou receive is usually less friendly than in a smaller more remote city. But saying that, the greatest responsibility comes upon yourself. Ability to speak basic polite conversational Chinese goes a long way, but a smile and nod will also do the trick. It is a simple truth that without the warmth and friendship of the people I have met here all of the natural and historical beauties would be worth almost nothing.  So the question comes again. Can I say the same of my own countrymen? Do we welcome strangers, help them if they need help? Are we patient when they cannot speak our language? We as westerners have immense priviledges in China in terms of the way that we are treated but on the other hand, the newcomers to our own countries are often treated as second-class citizens and are unwelcome. It is not with anger that I say this but rather with sadness, particularly as I watch my friends begin on this journey to the west with their hopes and dreams of western developed countries. Trying too explicitly to warn them seems to ruin their natural innocence of our reality but of course some measure of fact must be given to them.

Of course it is not only negativity and worry that I feel when my friends tell me of their plans. It is exciting to imagine them seeing new things, trying new foods, expanding their horizons in ways they can only dream of. Despite the difficulties when they first arrive, my students at least will have already expatriated families to help and support them as they look for jobs and try to place their children in schools. They have a foundation in English that many other immigrants do not, and their hope will carry them along way into a brave new future of bi-lingual children, New York taxi cabs, Californian beaches and New England country houses…

Living now in Changchun in China’s northeast I finally feel that I am living in Communist China. The news clippings, documentaries and pictures of China that are familiar to all of us show the wide boulevards packed with bicycles and rundown taxis and the hardworking masses in their blue cotton trousers and voluminous khaki overcoats and here in Changchun it is easy to see those stereotypes. Guangzhou and Chongqing on the other hand are rather different. Much of Chongqing city is made up of narrow roads clinging precariously to the steep mountainside, or of sweeping flyovers several stories high. Guangzhou meanwhile has the typical wide streets but instead of austere government buildings and large public parks the main street through the city is lined with designer stores, fast food restaurants and shopping malls. In the north where politics is often more important than money you can feel as though you have stepped into a 1970’s or 80’s snapshot of the People’s Republic with all the significance that this has.
Changchun, like much of China is a living and breathing contradiction. Jaguars and Porsches pass horse drawn carts on the busy roads and farmers sell baskets of oranges outside McDonald’s branches. Here, unlike the metropolises of Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hongkong the sky is blue and stars are visible in the night sky. Such a simple thing which we take for granted is a cause of great delight in this fast growing economy. The people here are proud of their city, the film capital of China, and Changchun people are statistically some of the happiest in China. They are swift to point out that their spoken Chinese is some of the most standard, their food delicious and that their people are hospitable and friendly. Unlike Chongqing and Suzhou where the women are famed for their beauty, the people here are more likely to reccommend their men who are reputed to be more handsome than those of other provinces, standing taller and stronger (and often hairier) than their southern counterparts.
However, Changchun is not an easy place to live in. Summers are warm but winters are bitterly cold, temperatures dropping as low as minus thirty during January and February. Fierce winds rip down from Siberia and from November to March the ground is blanketed in snow. The weather, fortunately, is very dry and the snow does not pile up much more than six to ten inches deep, but in order to keep the roads clear the government sends out armies of workers who chip the ice from the tarmac with narrow fork-like implements.
Everyone is wrapped up against the cold, the more cautious sporting earmuffs, face masks and fur lined boots. Small children can barely walk in their padded trousers and coats while the men’s favourite way to keep warm seems to be drinking rice wine with as much as a 60% alcohol content!

When asked to compare Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping the students like to stick to physical facts. Mao Zedong is fatter than Deng Xiaoping, Mao Zedong is older than Deng Xiaoping. Mao Zedong’s hometown is farther south than Deng Xiaoping’s. “It’s a sensitive topic,” points out Rachel, and as a new student she is somewhat reticent to discuss anything political sensitive especially with the other students who are relative strangers. Her male classmates are a little less shy. “There are only us five here,” her classmate counters and so the discussion begins.
In the UK of course this would barely be a sensitive topic. If asked to compare Churchill and Thatcher, say, then students would certainly not limit themselves to pointing out that Churchill was fat and male and Thatcher was thin and female, but here even decades on, the topic is sensitive.
The most out-spoken student is perhaps oddly the student with the most to lose. A full decade older than the others he was born towards the end of the Cultural Revolution in a small village in central China. Married with a child it seems that he would be the most cautious of attracting attention to himself but perhaps he, more than the others, is aware of the semi-openness of of China and the fact that the government is not interested in someone like him, the Lao Bai Xing. This phrase Lao Bai Xing means Old Hundred Names and refers to the common people of China. The non-political, powerless masses. There is safety as well as helplessness in belonging to Old Hundred Names. They can speak as they wish, having neither the resources nor the connections to make a difference. Jason is aware of this but still is a little cautious in what he says, weighing his words carefully.
“Mao Zedong’s writing was better than Deng Xiaoping’s”,he says at length. He refers not only to the content of the writing but also to the handwriting. The ability to do calligraphy and write poetical prose being traditional male virtues. The infamous Red Book of Mao Zedong being full of such prose the Chinese know only too well power of the written word. Curiously neither Deng nor Mao were particularly powerful orators, both being provincial peasants they spoke Mandarin strongly accented with regional dialects.
This first comment of Jason’s seems fairly innocent but in the tradition of respect for writing and art it is more loaded than first meets the eye. Another student, Ben delivers a deeper cut, but in the opposite direction.
“Deng was cleverer than Mao.” There is silence for a moment. The cult of Mao Zedong is very much still alive in parts of China, especially among the older generations. In Guangdong the people are notoriously non-political, preferring to pursue money and good food but are oddly more traditional than the northern Chinese as the Cantonese continue to follow Daoism, Buddhism and Feng Shui to a far greater extent than most of their compatriots.  The classroom is split between one northerner, two Cantonese, a central Chinese and a foreigner and nobody is quite sure yet what to say. To unfavourably compare the intelligence of one of the great heroes of modern China is an interesting step. Even when speaking English the Chinese are good at weighing their words, layering the meaning so that you can understand but allowing them an escape route of  ‘misunderstanding’ should the conversation go sour.
“Mao built China with violence,” Jason finally agrees. “But Deng developed a new China with his mind.”
As in the West, Deng is generally more popular than Mao. The development and newfound prosperity of China’s cities is in a large part due to Deng Xiaoping, but still the students are reluctant to criticise Mao as his prescence still hangs heavily over the whole country. They are quicker to complain about the current politicians, particularly Wen Jiabao.
The fourth student finally weighs in. “I like Mao before 1949, but I like Deng after 1949.” This distinction is greeted with nodding heads and consensus. For although the current form of the Communist Party is linked with corruption and dictatorship the Party before 1949 was very favourably considered when compared to Chiang Kai Shek’s Nationalist Party during the Chinese Civil War. The corruption of the Nationalists lost favour with the peasants who were tired of finding their crops and livestock ‘commandeered.’ However, as Jason points out, the older generations still prefer Mao as Mao is associated with a time of greater simplicity and ease. People knew what to do, what was right and wrong, where the next meal was coming from. The new age of development can be confusing to the older generations who only as long ago as the fifties were growing up with bicycles, horse-drawn carts and no running water.
The Cultural Revolution, Great Leap Forward and Tiananmen Square are not even mentioned in a discussion of these men. There is a kind of national agreement to sweep these events under the carpet. Nobody wishes to discuss what happened during these times and for the younger students they may not even be fully aware of some of the events. It can be difficult to illicit any kind of response to these events as many Chinese cannot understand why so many foreigners want to focus on the dark moments of their history. They prefer to highlight the good; education and land reform, health care, improved living conditions, greater prosperity. The students do not want to delve into the problems and contradictions of Communism in China and are not even interested in discussing the advantages of Communism in China. This is Guangzhou, politics are irrelevant, all you need is money. They bring the discussion back to a lighter note.
“Mao Zedong had more wives than Deng Xiaoping did…”

In Guangzhou there is a sense of hope and high expectations for the future, students in various stages of preparations for trips abroad, from housewives who have spent the last ten years waiting to immigrate to the US to high school students who are prepared to spend RMB30,000 (Three thousand pounds) on a one-way ticket to the country of their choice to begin their study abroad. Here, in a school catering for the ambitious, wealthy or determined almost 70% of the students have travelled out of mainland China to Hong Kong, Macau and sometimes Thailand, Japan or the west. When compared to the students of Chongqing, this percentage seems incredibly high. Of the 350 students for whom I was personally responsible only one or two had travelled as far out of China as Hong Kong.
Guangzhou is, therefore, a more cosmopolitan city with many people having a broader and more detailed idea of the outside world than the people of China’s interior. Upon my first trip from Chongqing to Hong Kong I was struck by the differences in prosperity, technology and opportunity but when travelling from Guangzhou one finds that the differences are relatively small with many of the Cantonese stereotypes existing in both cities. A Chinese friend, on her first trip to Hong Kong pointed out that the city simply felt like an unfamiliar district of her home city, Guangzhou, as the language, food and customs mirrored those over the border.
Here in Guangzhou the students look forward to jobs in business, a proliferation of engineers, foreign traders, designers and accountants dominating the face of the school. Carrying electronic dictionaries, Ipods, laptop computers and Portable Playstations they consider the wealth line to be drawn at cars and holidays or study abroad. Contrasting this attitdue with Chongqing you find that the wealth line is drawn at those who take a sleeper train home rather than a hard seat, or those who pay a few yuan a week to have their laundry done rather than washing clothes by hand.
That is not to say that laptop computers and Ipods are never seen in Chongqing but rather that they are rarely the newest model and are treasured as the most valuable posessions, but generously lent to classmates and friends in need.
In Guangzhou people hope to become rich, to travel abroad, to be famous. Their realistic expectations are somewhat lower but still there is an underlying current of excitement about the future where dreams seem almost within the grasp of the new graduates. In Chongqing, students studying at the college are well aware of their limitations. The college does not expect high grades in the university entrance examinations and many of the students know that their future is rather similar to their past, to return home to dusty towns and teach an ever lower level of English to students who will have no chance to meet or befriend English speakers. If this future seems bleak then perhaps it is but many of these students adjust their expectations accordingly. They want to make their parents proud. Want to improve the prospects of their hometowns. Most telling are the students who wish to avoid the destined teaching position and try something new. The entrepreneurs who run semi-illegal hostels by the university, the dreamers who quit college to study kungfu and hope to write books on Chinese culture, the go-getters who immerse themselves in extra-curricular activities but never have time for class.
For me the double-sided nature of China seems stronger than ever before. The glittering lights, shiny white walls and determinedly fashionable clothes fade away within seconds of stepping off the main road. In Chongqing this was less true as the poor was such an overwhelming majority that it was possible to forget about the rich. Here in Guangzhou the poor remain a majority but considerably less visible between the brand new subway system, the shopping centres and the neon lights. But stepping off the main road takes you into another life, a life which for me has more of a gravitational pull, full of kind-hearted, generous and welcoming people who are humble and modest, in contrast with the often materialistic, uber-modern nouveaux riche. In my street alone you can meet the motorbike taxi-men who struggle to make a thousand pounds in a year and yet offer me free rides home, the waiters who spend hours on end standing in the baking sun but who always have a smile on their faces, the men in their forties who work from dawn until well after dusk then sleep in the loft above their dirty and hot workplaces. These are the people who make up the roots of China, uncomplaining and hardworking. More than the starry-eyed yuppies these common people fill the memories I take with me at the end of the year for these are the people who are unchanging, to me the past present and future of China.

Swine flu hit the news here with the same force as back home in the UK. Pamphlets were handed out with government advice on self-protection, but since the initial shock and concern H1N1 has largely fallen out of sight. However, there remain signs of caution. Plastic sheeting (sticky back plastic) has been applied over the buttons and controls of many public appliances, including telephones, lifts and ticket machines. Health forms are filled in at Customs and passengers’ temperatures are taken at all major train stations and border crossings. One doctor told me that his workload has almost doubled due to the extra paperwork required for patients who enter the hospital with a fever. In a single night the doctor deals with up to and over a hundred feverish patients but with only a thin surgical mask to protect him he doesn’t seem concerned. Actual cases of Swine Flu in Guangzhou have been few, but the memory of SARS is still hanging over the residents’ heads.

Precautions on the Hong Kong side seem, inevitably, somewhat more professional. Since SARS the Hong Kong SAR has been routinely testing the temperature of every traveller back and cross the border and considering the thousands of day-trip visitors that is no small undertaking. Customs officers and locals often resort to wearing a surgical mask when suffering from respiratory problems and in winter the sea of masked faces can look like an army of surgeons travelling to work on the underground MTR. During the inital outbreak of Swine Flu trains and planes leaving or arriving in Hong Kong were delayed for up to four or five hours following the discovery of ill or feverish travellers. Whether these precautions are enough is a matter for the doctors and governments to consider, but the popular joke in China is that Swine Flu is not worth worrying about when road accidents kill six hundred Chinese everyday.  It is an ancient Chinese habit, or wisdom even, that they do not worry about what they cannot control, and so after a temporary blip of interest H1N1 slips back into the vast abyss of things that they cannot change and life goes on almost as normal, simply with more premature trips to the hospital.

The language defines Guangzhou. The loudness, the perpetual playfully mocking tone and the puns and misunderstandings woven in makes Cantonese both delightful and murderously difficult to learn. Standard Chinese or Mandarin has four tones which show differences between the words and facilitate understanding as the actual sounds used in Chinese are limited to a relatively small number, making Chinese pronunciation of English words rather odd and stilted. London becomes Lundun, Paris becomes Bali and Canada becomes Jianada.  Misunderstandings in Mandarin are

a plenty. A badly spoken or misheard tone can be interpreted in a way that makes the intended meaning bizarre, laughable, or worse, downright rude. However, if you are feeling daunted by Mandarin then Cantonese is far more frightening. In Hong Kong and Guangzhou, the two main Cantonese speaking cities, there are no less than nine tones.

The people of Guangdong are fiercely proud of their language. Unlike most of the regions of China, Guangdong has a distinct language. It is not simply a dialect or accent based on Mandarin; Guangdong has a related but separate language. Until about twenty years ago, most Cantonese did not speak Mandarin and with sometimes radically different pronunciation and different grammar Mandarin and Cantonese speakers cannot be mutually understood without concentrated study. For a teacher in China, Guangzhou provides an extra challenge. The majority of students here are Cantonese and although they may speak different dialects of Cantonese they can at least understand one another. About twenty percent of students, however, are native to other provinces and for reasons of snobbery, lack of time or a firm belief in the impossibility of learning the language, they usually are unable to speak or understand Cantonese. In the classroom this often leads to a divide between Cantonese and ‘other’ dialect speakers.

The divide does not only exist in the classroom. Mandarin speakers are often quietly or not so quietly despised by the locals, excluding them from business, jobs, apartment renting and friendship The snobbery based on belief in a superior language works both ways, and it is no only language that divides them. Northerners tend to have a slower way of life, but are more politically conscious. The Cantonese however, living in the liberated economic zones of Shenzhen and Guangzhou, are more traditional, continuing to follow Buddhism and Daoism but most of all are following the favourite Chinese god: Money.

 Mandarin speakers see Cantonese as an outdated dialect, while the Cantonese see their language as an essential part of their culture. They are Cantonese before they are Chinese and as far as they are concerned, no one, not even the Communist Party, can take that away.

Returning to Chongqing is a somewhat surreal experience. Chongqing itself has changed, with bus routes diverted to make way for the new highway into the main shopping area, but the small town that was home for the academic year of 2007/08 is barely recognisable. The bridge across the Jialing River has been extended into the town, running right down across the crossroads by the People’s Hospital. After months of bumpy roads off this bridge, including an impossibly steep ramp, this new bridge is efficient, clean and lifeless. It seems almost a pity to lose the winding route that led us across the river last year. Seeing trucks loaded with huge adult pigs stuck on that steep slope last year and people riding on the back of trucks hanging on for dear life as they bumped over the potholes reminded you that life in the countryside and small towns is harder but with infinitely more freedom than in the city.

The centre of town too has been domesticated. The long road running deep into the north side of town has been edged with white fences to stop jaywalking and make traffic run smoother. The same system exists in many cities, forcing pedestrians to walk for ten minutes or more to find a crossing. The system in Hechuan doubtless cuts down on jaywalking, leaving only young men who leap over the fences in order to cross, but whether the traffic is improved is a different matter. In a town where pedicabs, taxis, buses, motorcycles and the occasional cow are thrown together on the same stretch of road the simple installation of traffic controls is not enough to change the national habit of winding through traffic, accelerating at incredible speeds and deploying the horn instead of the brake. Tourists to Beijing often close their eyes as they shoot across the city and in the back of taxis where seat belts have yet to be installed the passenger can only hope that the security screen around the driver will prevent them sustaining serious injury.

Small towns like Hechuan have yet to be subjected to the traffic rules as strictly as the large flat and often anonymous cities like Shanghai, Chengdu and Guangzhou. The crime of jaywalking is punishable with a fine of twenty yuan (about two pounds sterling) or watching traffic accidents compiled into a gory forty minute long video. Most choose the former. Jaywalking is common for particular reasons, however. Firstly, pedestrians often outnumber cars and can force the traffic to stop by sheer power of numbers. But perhaps more telling is the strangeness of the pedestrian crossings. The green man will show, but cars will continue to turn into the street because bizarrely the cars and the pedestrians both have right of way. In the cities the drivers have a rather irritable reaction to this senseless arrangement and will drive at full speed despite or perhaps because of the pedestrians, but in the countryside there is more balance. It is every man for himself but nobody takes offence or bothers to get angry. Drivers drive as fast as possible and pedestrians saunter into the road as though it were empty. What results is a kind of organised chaos where everyone must remain absolutely alert and where minor accidents are common. There is an unspoken agreement that if the pedestrian acts as though they cannot see the cars then the car must stop to allow them pass and for their part the drivers do not object but simply take the pause as an opportunity to spit out of the window or light another cigarette while traffic police look on in bemusement and boredom while they light another cigarette of their own.

Van Wong is a slightly built twenty-two year old. He has a shadow of a moustache on his upper lip and a reluctant, thoughtful smile. He comes from Hubei in central China and so he is isolated somewhat from his peers among the students who are mostly from Guangzhou and chatter away in lively Cantonese. He studied Veterinary Science at university, his studies including an internship at a rabbit farm, the rabbits being intensively farmed for meat. Such an experience, it seems, has given him a more mature outlook on life than many other Chinese men of his age. He is a serious student, studiously making notes and drawing pictures to illustrate what he is saying. Sometimes he even pulls out his mobile phone and shows short videos made during various events of the last year or so. He did so to show the depth of the snow in China last January and February. A train journey from his university in northern Hebei to his hometown would normally take twelve hours, but due to the heavy snow Van’s train, he told me, was delayed without moving for over twenty-four hours. The buffet cart and restaurant car quickly sold out of food and despite being on the train for over forty hours, he was able to buy only one portion of rice and a duck egg to eat. He recalls the incident with surprising fortitude. There is little anger or frustration in the way he describes the experience and he shows me his videos of the foot-deep snow, shot from the window of the train. There is only resignation hidden by a wry sense of humour as he relates that his train was delayed primarily to let government trains pass first on their way to the other provinces.

The same sense of humour shines through as he tells me about the adverse weather conditions of his university. Located far in the north of China, close to Beijing, Hebei suffers from sandstorms which bite into the skin of the inhabitants and into the very masonry of the buildings. During P.E lessons Van told me, the students would often be forced to run for cover behind the school buildings. The students on the football field would feel the wind first and their excited and panicked squeals would alert the students on other sports fields. It is business as usual in China though, and Van takes it all in his stride. He does not feel self pity or righteous anger, only a shy pleasure in not being a football student and so receiving just a couple of seconds warning to save his eyes and skin.