THE NEW TERM BEGINS

As I try to settle in to my fourth and last term in China, at least for the present, I meet my students and review last year's work as well as explaining what we will be doing this term. As time goes by, I realise I haven't heard from anyone since I left for Guangxi and I begin to get worried about this: of course I can contact them myself but am rather wary of doing so, as it can become tiring when you have to do all the work yourself! I do email my friend Abby and we meet up for some pizza: I also try Seven and Christine but do not get a reply so for the present decide to leave it to fate. As I say it's too tiring to try and make people spend time with you when they don't want to. I wonder if I will ever hear from them again? Last term I had a similar experience and as I recall I took matters into my own hands, emailed a number of people and asked how they were, and this led to a number of meet-ups, following which I cycled out to R66 and met up with some expats. I am sure I will bump into them again at some stage. I've been through this before and each time the only solution has been to go out and work on expanding my social circle. But I can't do this forever as there are a finite number of English speakers n Baoding! I make some chilli and one or two simple Chinese dishes at home for lunch and dinner.

For the present I've abandoned my plans to make new artworks and try to have a show as it has simply been too difficult to obtain the materials I need and organise space at this stage. I should by now have completed the first set of paintings and be working on the second. So it looks as if I will have to wait until I get back to England. I could get the university to help but that would mire me in endless drudgery so I feel it is best to wait. I can always change my mind.  

I see my colleague Sean for a meal and have a nice evening but most of the time I fall into my old habit of hanging about the shacks, watching the people and have coupled this with watching horror films in my flat at night!

The weather is bitterly cold, but it seems to be rapidly changing, as on some days the sun is out, the sky is bright and it's warm enough for me to lose one or even two of my layers! However at this time this alternates with cold spells and one day it snows: the flakes are very small and it looks very fine, but it settles and continues for several hours to form a thick blanket on the ground. The trouble with snow is that the after-effects of a snowfall can last for days or even weeks: but it does thaw after a day creating some minor floods. In the shacks it drips off the roofs sometimes cascading inside so I find myself avoiding miniature showers. All the same, I feel spring is in the air early this year!

Many of the roadside shacks were demolished during the holidays, however somewhat to my delight the families who ran these have returned and built new ones! I usually only tend to go for a beer there anyway and occasionally chat with colleagues. I make plans for my eventual return journey to England (I hate using the word “trip”, it's trivial.) also for the holidays in the summer and at Christmas: it helps to keep me sane! In addition I plan to visit Beijing again a few times before I go back: perhaps once a month.

One day the gloom has become too much for me so I cycle out to my favourite hutong near the old campus of the University where I stayed when I first arrived in 2015. This lifts my spirits as it's much more colourful than the area I'm in now. There is a huge indoor food market with a large number of stalls offering different kinds of Chinese food: similar to the one in Guilin, plus outdoor shacks in the hutong.

Today the sun is bright and warm so I have a pleasant walk around and have lunch in the small restaurant where I first met Abby and her friends. I decide to order prawns with cashew nuts and rice which is the closest I've come so far to the kind of Chinese food I used to eat in England since I came to China.

Following this I return to the campus and bump into a colleague in the shacks, so we have a pleasant afternoon in the sunshine chatting over a few beers! In all this is a good day.

As the teaching continues I find it to be the high spot of my week: we revisit the installation we made last year and the weather continues to be good. I am beginning to lose some of my clothing layers.