Let’s cut the bullshit
My last blog felt more like a necessary evil – an article written for a travel supplement – rather than a truly insightful snapshot of my life.
A friend was very vocal about it being very non-representative of my time in Shanghai, which though was exaggerated, still made me think.
Exactly why am I writing this blog?
Is it a pseudo diary of my exploits? Is it to entertain you? Even inform you?
And perhaps the most pertinent question is who am I writing this for? When I was asked that question, I was stumped. I had to think about it. Is this for those Brummies and Little Englanders that I left behind? Is it for all those friends that I’ve met with, to recount our adventures in the style of a ripping yarn? Or have the most recent ones been written to satisfy the expat website in Shanghai that’s been publishing my work?
Or is it for me? To diary what I’ve actually done.
WelI suppose you could level that recently its been a little confused mix bit of all the above. One thing’s for sure, I’ve left out some of the interesting bits. Specifically one topic that rests very close to my heart. And it’s not food this time.
Suppose its about time I come clean on a few things, and let you into my Shanghai experience a little more. After all I’ll be the only one reading this in ‘20 years time’ to quote a Polish sage.
And besides, it’ll be far more interesting. Cos this time I’ll include the gory bits
Let’s go back to the beginning…
...to a subject I’ve neglected to indulge you on
Women
Can’t live with em
Can’t live without em
Can’t be picking them up at 4am in the morning when you’re drunk off your nut and expect them to be stable.
The impact of my single night of indiscretion with a crazy, dangerous Chinese girl called Ellie, barely a month in to my stay in Shanghai, wasn’t just a sore head and nagging feeling of guilt in the morning. It’s ramifications were pretty huge.
It led to a massive row with my flatmate Susan, standing and shouting at the top of our voices in our hallway at each other about whether I could or could not bring girls back to the flat without notifying her. At 5am, I felt she didn’t need to know.
The neighbours – and the poor girl who had just moved into our flat that very day – got full audio surround coverage of exactly what I thought of Susan’s opinion.
Thing is I was out of line. Susan’s not very good at explaining herself in English, and had tried to warn me about how she felt about one night stands – but it had come out wrong, as if she was asking me it was not something to do every week.
Every week? My goodness, I’m barely capable of changing my pants every week.
Besides, I should have been smarter when it came to choosing where I wanted to live in the first place. Instead of going ‘native’ and diving straight into sharing an abode with a 36 year old bitter Chinese woman who constantly bemoans how the best of life has past her by, I should have stumped up and moved in with some expats. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
You see my vitriolic outburst wasn’t just directed at what she was trying to deny me, but more of a cumulative anger that had built up from a month of just listening to her moan and winge about every little factor of life. I was sick and tired of her, but had relied on my British reserve and politeness to get me through it each day. Until that night when drunk, and finally feeling – in my head – that I had finally a shot at calling out her character, I went for it.
Next morning, I apologized. I even bought her flowers. But the damage had been done. Mine and Susan’s relationship deteriorated dramatically. It was no more.
Ironically the apartment became far more livable, as I was now left to my own devices. No longer did I have to sit around and listen to her. I didn’t really need an excuse to retire to my bedroom and private balcony. She did her thing, and I did mine.
Happy days…
...but Susan would still take every opportunity to bite at me, snap away at my heels if there was something she needed to say.
And as the months went past, it got more and more tiresome. I was really learning a few life lessons here.
One of them was: Chinese women and me are not meant to be.
Because even before Susan, and psychopathic Ellie (whose story I will tell – just over a few beers)…
...there was Lingling.
I had met her on the train from Nan Ninh to Shanghai. I had met even before I set foot in the city. Our journey was 33 hours and we were sharing a cabin, but it was until around 5 hours before we were to hit Shanghai that we started talking.
Immediately Lingling – a lingerie retailer of all things – came across as a smart, cute, slightly scatty girl who was easy to talk to. Even with our lack of a common language. She tried to teach me Chinese. I tried to pull her. And though it wasn’t straight no, she did say that she waited 6 months before she even kissed her last boyfriend. I wasn’t going to be that patient, so friends was the only way to go.
And friends we became. She lived in Hangzhou – not far from Shanghai (as long as you travel by supersonic train). She had even missed her stop because we were so engrossed in talking to each other. So as a Thank You for her teaching me Chinese, I paid a visit to her a couple of weeks into my stay.
It was a lovely day, walking round the West Lake of Hangzhou (the city’s only real landmark highlight – but a good one nonetheless) and when I came back we kept up her correspondence.
One of the things that amuses me about China, is their ‘translation engines’ that spew out leftfield attempts at converting Chinese to English. Because of the way the Chinese language is constructed, with a lot of nouns formed from descriptive couplets of other nouns and verbs (a bit like the word ‘sunset’ in English), and their lack of tense, it can lead to some intriguing translations – or ‘Chinglish’ as the hybrid language has been christened.
And this was at no time more apparent than when Lingling started to email me.
Talk with you I feel very relaxed very interesting. Let me forget the fatigue of the road thank you. You are very cute and a very sunny smart people. Well today is my birthday. Happy birthday atmosphere I hope I can infect you. In Shanghai they are not familiar with to pay more attention Oh, do not know to look up hehe.
Ahh. Sweet eh? In the passing months there was more
I think if a friend can be deeply missed in my heart, I wish you a happy happy life in China to work, usually pay more attention to their own body. I will look at your idle down.
Bless – though not sure what she was saying about my body. Still, I was really beginning to enjoy her emails
Have the song of the birds, the wind cool... With cheerful mood, I think that border is absolutely fantastic hehe. That can be good relaxation. That moment without any pressure only a free and relaxed. But sometimes in the sun or good ah, can repair calcium. 9:00 to 11 sun repair calcium. But now the hot sun, go out to hold an umbrella, or burn into small Africa hehe. Black haha.
Confuscious indeed – and good advice on calcium intake. Seems as if I’ve lifted the curse of me and Chinese girls. Maybe my luck isn’t so bad
Danny, but recently I had some difficulties, most recently to and manufacturers into batch, quantity is big enough, funding, a bad headache. Great pressure, I if into a few goods prices high, so I must into large, because I now of what money is not enough, so I'm a headache, so I have a small request, I hope that you can support to help me for a while. And I think you to borrow the 3 million yuan, plus my own funds, it should be ok. I want to let oneself to make more money, so I hope you to help me. Sincerely hope.
Come again?
And I think you to borrow the 3 million yuan, plus my own funds, it should be ok.
Oh right
3 million yuan? Only around £300,000
It hurt me, made me think that I just walked around with the word ‘Mug’ etched in Chinese across my face. I hadn’t felt that I had been looking for companionship, after all I had spent this much time on my own so far, and been perfectly happy. Hadn’t I? But now that I was settled, and the pace that life on the road gives you disappears…
...exposes certain things that are missing in your life.
I shook it off, put it down to ‘another funny story I could include in my blog’ and moved on. Ho hum, time to get tough.
But don’t feel sorry for me. Not at all. Because things were about to change and we’ll see then what you have to say.
As you walk around China, a lot of male Laowi (foreigners), who have seemingly mastered the knack of winning the Chinese heart, end up in relationships with the native female. And so solidly are they held onto by the female of the species (with the shadow of her family looming over the horizon) that it kind of leaves those not blessed with the same mastery of overcoming that cultural divide, the rest of the market.
Expat ladies.
Now before I come to sound too much like shauvanistic pig, my subsequent relations were encouraged by the expat culture of dating/sleeping around, usually prefixed by the statement: ‘That’s Shanghai!’
Maybe due to the transient nature of the city, casual relations seem pre-approved and encouraged within sections of the expat community. The majority of the males, and even the females, that I met shared a common lack of commitment to anything other than polygamy.
It’s the place that can turn the most redundant batsmen, into amateur players for a short period of time. Shanghai does a great job of inflating your ego, the illusions created in such a buoyant market giving you a deceptive confidence.
It changed my fortunes.
First it was little miss Italy.
Or little miss Italy with the oversized head.
Little miss Italy with the oversized head, whose love of Aikido – and ‘affectionately’ trying out her moves on me – would have her in stitches, and my arms close to plaster.
I had met her at my first music festival, tiny, boho, sparky and spunky – her oversized head nicely camouflaged in scarf. She was cool, echoes of the traveler mentality that I had been missing. And we quickly moved things along.
And despite her penchant for aggressive acts of frolicking, she was quite sweet, helping me regain a little of my stance against the occasional loneliness you feel so far away from home.
It wasn’t going to last, though. She may not have known that, but she also never commanded any commitment. I was beginning to flex my muscles, realize that there was a game to be played, and I may have a role in it.
And soon enough, enter stage left: ‘innocent’ Miss England.
A southern girl, with a faux naivety that challenged an academic mind, spilling out in a Jane Austen crossed with hippy activist campaigning against Newbury bypasses.
I met Miss England at the World Music festival (my second), in between the twirls of the Whirling Dervishes. I had met her cos Oscar was speaking to her. Sweet and dizzy, she was so English, that maybe I saw a little piece of home in her.
I saw her again, and we shared a kiss and a cuddle, and with the promise of something new and exciting.
However, she nipped things in the bud at our next date. Or it was more of a case of ‘Not Yet’, and ‘Can we still be friends’. So even though the sun shone, and the conversation flowed, our trip to Shanghai Zoo wasn’t going be that start.
And it strangely bothered me a little, if I’m honest. It wasn’t as if I was really looking for something even semi permanent, or that I really thought that much of Miss England, but I kinda liked her. And I was impatient – I knew I was going. I wanted her to be of that same ‘It’s just Shanghai man’ mindset.
Cos that’s what I wanted.
At least I thought I did. Because surely if you are to engage in this game, you need to be made of tough stuff. You can’t get hurt on the basis of a slight rebuff. You just laugh it off, and move on. So I tried.
And that was then the lovely Miss Russia came along.
Up until this point only few people knew the secret that I was to be leaving relatively soon. But as if felt far away, the secret would sit quite happily in the back of my mind, with the guilt only reserved for friends and work.
But Miss Russia took that guilt one step further. What had started over an innocent game of squash, (again via the social magician Oscar) quickly snowballed dangerously close to boyfriend/girlfriend status. Again, I kept my secret firmly tucked away, preferring to bat away any queries into my length of stay with a shrug and a ‘dunno’. But it was a secret that started to come back and bite me, Miss Russia introduced me to some wonderful things that had stayed off my Shanghai radar.
She took me to Art and design galleries, she took me to Archery. She even took me to the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra at the city’s’ stunning Oriental Arts Centre in Pudong. She was creatively prolific, painting and playing music in her spare time, and while seemingly reserved, animal instincts would prevail in the appropriate circumstances.
Our affair wasn’t illicit, a matter of convenience or friends with benefits. She was loving opening my eyes to what else Shanghai had to offer, and I was enjoying experiencing them.
It made the whole notion of being ‘a player’ a bit of farce. I’m not one who can emotionally manage 2 football clubs, let alone multiple girls. Miss Russia made me feel comfortable, confident and engaged.
And I didn’t want to enter more numbers into phone.
The thing was as she became more excited about all the potential activities the ‘future’ would have us doing, my secret kept tapping me on the shoulder and whispering in my ear…
...there is no future.
Again, I had got myself into a situation where my lack of honesty was to pay a price. One of a deeper emotional nature. My neglect was selfish, it was shitty.
I would have to ‘fess up.
Shanghai had taught me another life lesson. She took it pretty well, in fact splendidly well, insisting we carry on what we had right until the very end. Maybe actually starting to apply my lessons had started to pay off.
I was going to end my stay on a high. I had already left Susan’s place and moved in with Tintin lookalike Dave Ashton, a true English gent of the highest order – a friend of my sister, whose glowing endorsement is bang on. Our mutual love of food, The Wire, cricket and taking the piss out of each others appearance (I don’t really look like a hobbit though do I?), has made the past 3 weeks a real joy.
And it’s also been filled with other little moments, like a free rafting trip with my dear Oscarlito, whose increasing presence in my life and my heart will be the subject of a great Bromance movie one day.
The trip was paid for by the Chinese government to market a rural based river facility to Laowi. It shows you how much concrete exists around you, when the government have to drive you out of the city for 3 hours so they can go ‘Look! Countryside.’
But I came back energized. I was full of confidence again, the skip has returned to my step, and as my next big chapter of my trip loomed, I was back on my game.
I was sad to say bye, I was (contrary to popular belief and Polish mythology) sentimental. However, it seemed my guilt I felt towards my boss, my friends (especially dear Oscarlito), my female dalliances, my beautiful adorable kids at school was to be the biggest punishment that my secret was going to cost me.
I wasn’t a player, I wasn’t the thick skinned cowboy this city can paint you out as, but I had been lucky to have survived such a gross display of dishonesty, without a scratch.
But oh no, Shanghai had other ideas.
After my last night with Miss Russia I woke up with something that would bring right back down to earth. That would cause me insufferable torture in my last week in this city, and countless hours in a Chinese hospital.
A veritable pain in the arse.
Thrombosed Hemarrhoids to be precise.
Karma, ain’t it a wonderful thing
