The end is near...

...meaning, the end of our time in Suzhou that is. For America, it's a great beginning. I took this photo of my TV in the middle of the night when Obama was being sworn in. Never thought I would care this much about an American president. The world feels different now, positive, hopeful and literate. Every time I hear Obama speak I can't help but compare him to Dubya, McCain for worse, Palin. There is just no comparison.

A really old post that I never finished...

A topic worth blogging about is the recent arrival of Cold Rock, or as it's known here, Cold Stone! Turns out Suzhou is not so bad after all! Two Cold Stones have opened up within walking distance of our apartment, in the last month or so. It is all very exciting as ice-cream is one of those things that is hard to get (the good stuff) over here.

Above is a photo of the humungous crowd that were out to see the Olympic flame a few weeks ago. This photo was taken during one of those classic crowd dynamics moments, where one dude starts running and it starts everyone running in the same direction for no reason. There was a huge crowd surge and there was actually nothing to see. The patriotism was a little edgy at times, with thousands of people chanting and running, it all felt just a touch like it was on a knife's edge.

I wonder if he's cold

"In the winter, I wonder if he's cold, when it's raining, I wonder if he's getting wet".

This was a quote from a Ch*nese woman who's only son was kidnapped about 3 years ago when he was 5 years old. I was watching a 4 Corners special about child trafficking in Ch*na and it broke my heart. When a girl marries (this probably applies more to poorer provinces these days than the big cities) she leaves her family and joins her husband's family. So families who have a girl are left with nobody to look after them in their old age. The one child policy means that they can't have another to 'try' for a boy. This leads to some families trying to buy a boy, or if they are very poor, sell one. If a child can't be found that 'meets the needs' of the buyers, one can be stolen. Girls can be bought and sold too, but at a much lower price.

The other tragedy of the strictly enforced one child policy is that couples must have a birth permit before falling pregnant. One couple who got pregnant without a permit hid for almost a year to avoid paying the fine. Eventually they realised they had to 'come clean' in order for their son to have access to education and health care. It took them 4 years to finish paying the fine. One year later, their son was taken. Another couple got pregnant out of wedlock and, since they are too young to legally marry, cannot ever register their baby. Their child will forever be a non-person with no birth certificate, no access to education and no civil rights. If they go to a hospital for medical care they run the risk of being reported and having an abortion forced on them, or being hit with a huge fine. They feel their only choice is to sell their baby.

It was amazing to 'eavesdrop' on secretly filmed conversations about buying and selling children. How cute ones and smart ones are worth more, but you can't give away an ugly one. How older ones (up to 5 or 6) are worth even more because the buyer doesn't have to go to the trouble of looking after a young baby.

Another heartbreaking impact of Draconian law making where instead of education and empowerment, people are managed, ordered and commanded. The Ch*nese government still denies that the current gender imbalance has anything to do with the one child policy. According to 4 Corners, there are millions of girls aborted every year. This in turn has created a market for kidnapping and selling young girls as brides to men who simply can't find one because there are not enough women.

I was talking to Xiao Rao (Archie's nanny) about the possibility of us having another child and I was acutely aware of the freedom I have to make this choice. I can decide when and where, yes or no, when to stop and I don't have to apply to any government agency for permission. In fact my government pays me to breed.

Zhonguo Mei Mei

Hello and welcome back Phillis! Don't underestimate yourself by the way, you and Gwennie are my audience! OK so you may be wondering about the photo. I went along with a group of girlfriends a couple of weeks ago and tarted up China style for a photo shoot. It was heaps of fun. Quite the thing to do if you are a Chinese girl (translation of the title 'Chinese little sister'). You actually get a book full of fancy pictures of yourself! You may notice that I have been photoshopped and airbrushed....just a bit!

The past few weeks have been really amazing. The earthquake has shone a light on this country the likes of which the Olympics could never do. For the first time, flags flew at half mast (even in T Square) in mourning of 'common people'. This has never happened before for 'the people', only in commemoration of the passing of 'important' folks like the big M and the like. Many commentators have commentated that it marks the turning of a corner where the value of the common human life is given value like never before. I hope so. Although I just finished watching the 4 Corners special on the trafficking of children and women in China. But as they say, small steps are better than none. The fund raising has been incredible though. I can't imagine that in 1973 (I think) when more than 250,000 were killed in another catastrophic earthquake, that there was much public awareness, let alone the kind of fund raising efforts we have seen. I was proud that my school raised about 96,000RMB (about 15,000AUD). I have seen on local TV, some shows that look I guess like our equivalent of the telethon, where people are lined up one after the other proudly declaring how much they have donated.

One week after the earthquake the country marked a 3 minute national mourning period, to coincide with the time the earthquake hit and the length of time it went on for. Our school did it the sombre way, by observing 3 minutes of silence, during which I had my grade 11 Biology class. I asked them to stand and I had some powerpoint pictures from the news websites for them to watch. I was holding back the tears. My class, bless them, are lovely and it was a meaningful moment for us. I kept thinking about all the new orphans and all the parents who lost their children and who may now be too old to have another child. Some may have been sterilized after the birth of their first (and only) child and may never be able to have another one. Many of the school buildings were, in some towns, the only ones to be destroyed because they for some reason were subject to very poor building safety standards. The rest of the country observed a 'national cry of anguish', where all horns, alarms and sirens were sounded for 3 minutes. I didn't hear it from school but Andrew did and he said it sounded amazing. I like that idea better than the 3 minute silence. Sometimes when you're p*ssed off you just want to scream.

BJ

We just got back this morning from a trip to BJ. We heard there were some touristy things up there which were a bit of a must see, so we saw. The Brick Wall was very great. I was extremely impressed, it is quite a sight. After getting hot and puffed walking up to the cable car pick up, I wondered about the poor guys who built the thing, lugging heavy stones up a huge hill in the boiling summer and freezing winter. Amazing. We were also very lucky to go on a day when there were not many tourists. It was amazingly not very crowded and lovely hot weather too. It was also cool to see the big buildings called the soap bubble and the birds nest (in the city, not at the brick wall) also quite impressive, although hard to see for the smog.

T Square, the F City and the Summer Palace were.....I feel like a chump saying this but it was all a bit 'conveyor belt' like. Throngs of tourists streaming in, along and out in the same direction. Very very crowded, relentless staring and not fun. Of course the buildings were quite beautiful, but the F City was mostly under construction for it's pre-sporting event tart up and the Summer Palace, although very nice, was so crowded and very much like the gardens in Suzhou. We had a strange dawn experience in T Square when we went to see the flag raising ceremony and it was hard not to be moved by all that that place represents, with the big portrait of the big M looming over everyone. I felt awed and sad at the hero-isation of this person. The guards were lined up to precision every 3 or 4 meters, facing the crowd and watching every move with stern, 'don't f*** with me' eyes.

As usual, I found the staring, pointing, shouts of 'foreigner!!' and constant baby attention hard to take. BJ was not a pram friendly city, we had to carry ours up countless flights of stairs to access train stations, restaurants, above mentioned tourist sites and even to cross the road. I did actually see one or two people in wheelchairs (almost unheard of here in Suzhou) and thought 'how the hell do those guys get around??'

I loved catching the train up and back overnight. Seriously, is there a better way to travel than in a sleeper on a train? OK maybe the suites on the Singapore Airlines A380, but seeing as I'll not be paying ten thou or so for a ticket anytime soon, the train sleeper has got to be the bees knees of travel.

There are the usual funny 'only in Chna' stories, such as seeing our first random breath test set up, only to realise that they weren't changing the straw between drivers!! No kidding, I watched the policeman test one guy in the lane next to us and then move on to the next car and test the next driver without changing the mouth piece. Bird flu anyone?

We had a really nice taxi driver who took us out to the Brick Wall and he had the best english of any cab driver I've met. It was nice that we had at least 50% of our conversations during the day in Chnese and the other half in english. He was chuffed to hear that my Dad is also a cabbie and said they were colleagues and that we were friends. His excitement about the big sporting event was very evident and it got me thinking about the individual versus the mass. Here's a really nice man, just like you and me; loves his kid, works hard, is proud of his country and can't wait for the big sporting event, despite the fact that the ticket prices are well out of range for the average Chnese citizen. The people en masse here have done and are doing some really strange things lately, but every individual has a legitimate story to tell. Everyone's perspective is based on their own experience and the information they have had access to (be it accurate or otherwise). I thought about the Cronulla riots a few years ago and thought, if you spoke to any one of those guys from either side, each would have their own legitimate story based on their own experience and information or misinformation they had access to. It's when people get together in huge numbers, fueled by propaganda, alcohol, anger or blind patriotism that things get stupid...*sigh*...what can you do? As Andrew and I often say, and in the words of our old Chnese teacher..."try to understand, this is Chna". I'm trying.

Working Hard!

Above are pictures of our pool when it was covered in snow and frozen over and one in the summer...looks like an ice-skating rink! There were lots of suspicious looking yellow patches of snow everywhere, more evidence of the superfluousness of toilets in this place!

Well we are at that point of the year when we can't wait to get home and are kinda sick and tired of where we are. I am working my butt off trying to get a 4000 word assignment done by the first week of June and believe it or not I am worried that I will go way over the word limit. Better than having the other problem I guess. I have also tried to do this blog twice now and have put it off both times. What the hell did I do with my time pre-baby and pre-masters degree? Bloody hell I have never been so busy! Well, I probably have, just not since I worked in state education in Queensland.

Speaking of QLD, I met a guy the other day who used to be a cop in Queensland in the late 70's early 80's....no more need be said. He said it was pretty great all the free stuff they used to get in exchange for 'protection'. What a time that must have been.

It has been really interesting times here what with recent world events and all. The locals are protesting and calling for a boycott of a local French supermarket chain because of the torch protests in Paris. And yet anyone who protests or demonstrates about any anti-Ch*na issue faces criminal charges. So yes, we have free speech here, just only on one topic. And I heard on the news threats that any anti-torch demonstrators in Nepal will be shot. Imagine trying to do that in Australia...."No sorry, you can't protest [insert topic here], we will shoot you". We live in a lucky, lucky country.

On the up side, 'they' may actually be coming through on 'their' promise to open up the internet before August. Blogger has been blocked since about September or so last year and now it has been open again for a few weeks. I can even see Wikipedia and the BBC! However I am fully expecting it to shut down about one minute after the closing ceremony!

Well I have about 1000 words that need writing and it's not here!

It's been a while

...but I feel very moved to blog. I have not had the desire in quite a while I guess because life had settled into just being life. Perhaps it's another phase of the culture adjustment thing. Not much of great note had happened (oh yeah, we had a baby) and I didn't really have much new stuff to blog about.

But I felt the need to comment on the recent unrest in a country that shall remain un-named, but that wants independence from another country which shall also remain nameless but which has the biggest population in the world.

We have had numerous experiences of having our news blocked here from time to time, maybe a few times a month. Like the time a certain spiritual leader who wears orange robes was given an award by the President of the US. We'll be watching TV and suddenly the screen will just go black for a few minutes. But in the past few days, the news blackouts have become a many times a day occurrence. Almost every news bulletin will begin blacked out because 'the T*bet story' is usually the lead story. Any time orange robes man comes on to speak, forget about it. It's making me so angry and making us both seriously question (not for the first time) why we are here. I've never had my right to freedom of information taken away from me before, and even though I can get the information from other sources (some news internet sites are still accessible) I feel indignant that a government should decide what I can and can't watch. But am I a hypocrite for being here in the first place? We are hearing reports of calls to boycott the summer games because attendance supposedly makes you compliant in the denial of human rights of a so called c*mmunist government. Does living here make us culprits? I'm angry and torn. The official CCTV (english language propaganda TV station) line is that the orange robes guy has incited all the violence in T*bet and that only 10 innocent civilians were 'accidently' killed by fires lit by nasty and evil T*betan separatists. Also that the Ch*nese army has shown 'great restraint' in it's dealings with rounding up protesters by force. Foreign news agencies have also been denied entry into the area and all tourists are being kicked out....so that nobody sees what comes next? I'm scared for these people. There was an 'amnesty' deadline where people were encouraged to come forward and 'own up' of they had been involved in protests and also to 'dob' their friends in. In exchange they would be 'dealt with leniently'. Yeah right.

Wow! Blogger's back!!

Well I think it has been blocked since May or June, so either somebody's asleep at the keyboard or they've decided my blog is not an insurrectionist outlet for political upheaval. Also, due to the unusually fast speed of photo uploading tonight, I've added two pictures from our sort of recent trip to Nanjing and one with me and the lovely Esther on a school pub crawl. The Nanjng ones include Boat Captain Gilroy on a jaunt around a stinky lake and a man with a very lazy dog. I just don't know what to do with myself with all this internet freedom. Probably all those who used to read my blog have now given up as it's been so long since I've updated it. Besides, I think Facebook has taken over the world. I was considering retiring Nancy Goes to Hollywood, but I'm kind of attached now.

Well I am now on leave from work and it took me about 48 hours to realise I am not the sort to enjoy staying home all day....waiting....luckily I have an exam coming up in November that I have been feverishly studying for during the past 4 days.

Another observation - it is not pregnant women who are at fault for constant mind-numbing conversations about babies and pregnancy, it is everyone else! Suddenly I find that there is only one topic (some) people can talk to me about....the baby, the pregnancy etc etc. I used to be good for all types and topics of conversation, now it seems I am limited (only by some) to just the one! I might write a coffee table book about 'passing comments' made to you when you're pregnant. Here are some examples:

"Not long now eh?"
"When are you due?"
"Boy, you're really showing!"
"I think you've dropped" (??)
"Can I touch your belly" (???!!!)
"Are you looking forward to it?" (????!!!!)

It's kind of interesting to see the difference in the news that gets reported here and then to see what makes it onto the news web sites from home. For example, I am surfing the internet because there has been about two hours blanket coverage on the return of Benazir Bhutto, the exiled former PM, to Pakistan. It didn't appear on the Age and ABC websites until just now. I have also seen hardly any coverage of the crisis in Myanmar on these sites, but it's being blanketed here (probably because it's a very close neighbour). Funnily enough yesterday when I was watching CNN's coverage of the award given to the DalLma by the United States, my TV screen mysteriously went black.

Yippee for the return of Blogger!!

That's not me

This post has been removed.

Typhoon who?

Last Wednesday was all very exciting, I got treated to my first 'Typhoon Day'. Our school shut down for the day in anticipation of what the news media was referring to as a 'Super Typhoon' which I don't mind saying was a little scary, given that we live on the 19th floor of an 18 month old building with ceiling to floor cracks in the walls already!!

As I checked the news from time to time, the storm was called 'the biggest and most destructive Typhoon to hit Shanghai in 10 years'. There was one in the 90's that killed about 300 people, can't remember the name. We were hearing that 2 million people had been evacuated from certain areas around Shanghai and when we saw the satellite picture from edge to edge it stretched from the top of Taiwan to level with Beijing. I thought, 'bloody hell, that's big enough to blow a few buildings down in little ol' Suzhou!'. So we waited, and waited, and waited. I kept hearing that the storm would hit Shanghai 'later'. Once I'd heard this same story for about 12 or so hours, I started to get suspicious. At about 5pm on the day it was supposed to hit, Andrew and I went out for a walk and there was certainly a bit of wind, but that was pretty much it. In the end we got some rain (no more than a usual day) and wind that wasn't even threatening to the wheelie bins. Very disappointing. But the day off was great!