Greetings to you, the residents of Millinocket, East Millinocket, Medway, and all of Maine to this, the first installment of a special edition of 'Stories from China', written specifically for the readers of Magic City News by R.P. BenDedek.

This is how many who know him would like to see R.P.BenDedek permanently displayed.

'Who' you might ask, 'is R.P. BenDedek?' Well actually he is a nobody! It isn't even his real name, but that under which he has self-published an academic book on the Internet. He is a 51 year old Australian male currently working as an Oral English Teacher in China. How do I know this? Because I am he! It will be my great pleasure to share with you at Magic City News, some of my experiences in and photographs of China.

Whilst there are many stories and photos from China in the Articles Section at www.kingscalendar.com, the stories and photographs in this 'Special Edition of Stories from China', will, for the most part, be 'unique. Every effort will be made to provide original photographs that do not appear at KingscalendarCom.

The Front View of Hong Hu No. 1 Senior Middle School

Currently I am teaching Oral English in Hong Hu Number One Senior Middle School. But that is not where my story begins. In April of 2001 my mother died, having been pre-deceased by my father and two of my 5 siblings.

When in September of that year my boss suggested I might be happier working elsewhere, (I can't actually print her exact 'suggestion'), I decided to completely give up working and concentrate on finishing writing the results of my 10 years of research into Biblical Chronology.

I accomplished that within three months, but over the following year, between various travelling adventures including a 10 week tour of Europe, I rewrote it several times. When I returned from Europe in November of 2002, I discovered that my brother was home from China. When he returned the following February, I followed. I am often asked, 'What made you decide to go to China?'. The truth is, that I had reached a point in life where I realised the truth of something written in the Bible: {Ecclesiastes Chapter 1:14} I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.

I have in fact, 'been there and done that' in relation to so many things, and had come to a point in my life where I looked at the world around me and decided that I just wanted someone to stop the merry-go-round and let me off. In fact I did not really so much 'decide' to go to China, as decide that I no longer wanted to be a part of the 'real world'. China for me, was intended to be just a temporary distraction from the nothingness of my life. But as things have transpired, it has given me a new lease on life. Despite all the set backs and frustrations of life here, I can say without qualification, that I have not been this happy since I was 18 years old.

Even though I live very comfortably by Chinese Standards, life here is anything but comfortable by western standards given the frequent loss of power, water, and the internet, not to mention the non availability of Butter, cheese, cream, bacon, Australian Vegemite, and having to put up with sweetened milk and rice bread.

A shot of the Wang Fujing in Beijing - the pedestrian mall.

The day to day experiences of living in China matches neither one's preconception of 'Communist China' nor those expectations conjured up by touristy images of quaint buildings and beautifully attired peasants.

Do not think for a moment that what you will read in my stories will be 'sugary and touristy'. I want to share with you the real everyday life and experiences of not only a foreigner in China, but of the people themselves.

In doing this I feel sure that you will not like some of things that I will share. They may be somewhat shocking! They may be gross!

In fact, there are a lot of things that are 'shocking, gross and disgusting' about China. In the tourist brochures they will say something like ... 'Conditions in China are not as sanitary as they are in the West'.

Visitors to China can expect 'less than sanitary' conditions. This is the ladies public convenience outside my front door.

What a wonderful piece of 'nothingness' that statement is. They should write, 'Once you have visited a Chinese Public toilet, you will find yourself headed for the nearest airport looking to be on the first plane home'. But more of that later. Let me tell you of my first impressions of China.

I arrived in Beijing in the first week of February 2003. My brother had arrived before me, and together with Geoffrey Weymouth, the manager of 'Global Access China', (the company that was providing us with a teaching placement), he met me at the airport. Beijing is a huge and modern city that is 'on par' with any other major city in the world.

I don't know what I expected, but it was not this big modern city. The Airport is connected to the city by a very long, modern and beautiful expressway. Beijing itself has wide busy streets, modern buildings, chain stores, every imaginable type of modern big city store and lots of 'glitz and glamour'.

You don't have to go far from the main streets to enter the real China

But detour a street or so from the Main roads, and you discover a somewhat different world. From the airport we were taken to and accommodated in a 'regular' Chinese hotel. By this I mean, that as foreigners on work visas, we were entitled to stay in the lower priced regular Chinese hotels rather than in the 'tourist' hotels that cost up to 1000 yuan a night. In American money that is not much at all, but can you imagine being an ordinary U.S. worker paying US$1000 a night to stay in a 4 star hotel? Foreign teachers in China receive a lot of money compared to the locals, but even they don't like to pay that much money in Chinese Yuan.

A building at the Ming Tombs Beijing.

A government worker or teacher might get 2000 yuan a month (if he is honest), while the minimum guaranteed wage (in Shanghai at least) is 457 per month, so there is no way the average Chinese person will pay 1000 yuan a night.

On the other hand, Many Chinese are anything but 'average'.

We stayed only two days in Beijing and naturally took the obligatory tour of Badaling at the Great Wall of China, as well as of the 'forbidden city'. Then we were off to Hong Hu via a plane flight to Wuhan.

Now where in the world is Hong Hu you may ask. Well, to tell the truth, we were there for 3 weeks before we were able to find a map that could tell us.

We had had no idea in which direction our plane had flown, and had no idea if we were in the north, south, east, west or centre of China. If you draw a line from Beijing to Hong Kong and another west from Shanghai, just about at the intersection point you should see 'Wuhan', the capital of Hubei Province.

Can you guess what this might be? Let me tell you. It's an endurance course that unbelievably many old folk can pass. It is freezing cold in winter and exhausting to climb.

It is apparently the third Major City of China. Even in Wuhan many people have never heard of Hong Hu (so don't feel too poorly over your ignorance). They have of course heard of Chibi (the site of the famous Battle of the Three Kingdoms) which is located about 25 kilometres east of Hong Hu on the other side of the Yangtze River.

At Wuhan airport (Tianhe JiChang) we were met by representatives of Hong Hu Number One Senior Middle school, and immediately (without so much as a by your leave and by the way would you like to know where you are or what the place looks like), whisked away in the school bus for the three hour drive South to Hong Hu.

We had travelled for about 30 minutes when we pulled into a roadside restaurant (quite nice) and this poor novice had his 'first, authentic, Chinese meal'. There was fish and pork; black dried up flat 'tyre like' duck, green things and white things and purple things and lots of oil and noodles and everything swimming in peppers and to tell the truth, I wasn't even glad to see the rice.

This is an eatery on the road out front of the school and in front of the Farmer's house

There was not one thing on that table that I could eat or would eat given the free choice. But manners being manners, one asks a lot of questions to keep the hosts busy while you 'feign' eating. Now you can get away with this for two reasons. Firstly, unlike in the west, it is you who determines what you shall eat and in what quantity; and secondly, if you have never used chopsticks before, it doesn't make any difference how hungry you are, you are not going to actually eat much. In fact, over the first eight weeks in China, I lost six to eight kilograms in weight, AND THAT WAS WITHOUT TRYING.

This is an unusual sight in Hong Hu for all the rubbish is in one place making it easier to sort through.

The trip between Wuhan and Hong Hu remains as fascinating to me now as it was on that day. There were some traces of snow on some rooftops, big sprawling fields that ran off into the distance, landscape that was dotted with fish ponds (aquaculture being a major industry in these parts), and 'honest to god hovels' that some people call home.

It was the houses that gave me the biggest shock. The closer you got to little townships, the more lavish some houses appeared, which in itself is a shock, but interspersed between townships, one finds little villages in which the condition of the houses is almost unimaginable.

This is a farmer's house next to the School. At the time this article was published, it was an island in an inland lake. The walkway was under water.

And even if you were to make the mistake of thinking that you were looking at stables of some sort, you can't help but appreciate the impoverished state of the people when you see women knee deep in stagnant ponds, washing their clothes. And how do you know it is their clothes they are washing? Because they hang them up in the trees to dry.

That first day in Hubei consisted of a myriad of conflicting images. The dirt poor beside the affluent; the donkey cart beside the most modern air conditioned long distance buses; the flash cars and brightly tiled houses beside rubbish tips through which old men and women dig in their search for paper and plastic to sell to the recyclers.

If you ever go on a tour of China, get a guide to take you off the beaten track. It really is a 'different world'.

This is the full view of the street at Jung Feng. Old one side and new the other side.

As this is the first of many such articles, I am going to finish this story here, and just leave you with some photographs accompanied by some brief comments.

In the next edition, I will introduce to you the City of Hong Hu and its surrounds. In following editions I will take you a little further afield, and along the way will introduce you to the many 'funny' and 'FUNNY' things to be experienced as a foreigner in China.

Additional Photographs

These four children come from Jung Feng a very tiny village not far from Hong Hu

Local children at Jung Feng posing for photographs. This little village has only a few houses, with most being of the modern cement and tile variety. Although not situated far off the main road, it is on the other side of a little river and it is a circuitous route that one must follow to arrive there.

The poorer side of the street at Jung Feng.

It is a perfect life for young boys who like to run wild and free, and I guess we can include 'some' girls in that.

Temple of Heaven (Tian Tan) Beijing where the Emperor offered up sacrifice once a year.

This is a standard touristy shot. For those who don't recognise it, it is of the Temple of Heaven (Tian Tan) in Beijing. All it's features are measured in multiples of Nine. There is a spot at the top where the Emperor offered up prayers to heaven for the coming Harvest.

In and around Tiananmen, Forbidden City - Badaling Great Wall - 2003

 

There are a few old and new temples in Hong Hu.

I took these shots just after I bought the digital camera. These are not actually temples any more, although I don't know exactly what they are used for.  These children were not running from the foreigner, but his camera.  They were determined not to have their photographs taken. Maybe they were more afraid of my stealing their spirits than their bodies. (Foreigners do that you know!)

Just what it looks like - a cave house in the mountain - HanYang Wuhan.

Just down the side street from my home away from home in Wuhan (The Qing Chuan Holiday Inn), there are to be found many places like this.  They are caves in the side of the mountain and home to many people.

Original photo lost - this is just a photo of my classroom in Hong Hu.

What you see here is a self introduction that has been created from the answers to 15 commonly asked questions. This lesson is also about providing informative answers, and joining sentences using conjunctions. Notice the phonetics? Not that I know or understand true phonetics, but from what I have learned in class, the only effective way to teach the correct pronunciation is homophonetically.

Class 9 top and Class 11 bottom.

I must be the only foreign teacher who is permitted to throw students out of class. This (Top) was class nine's last lesson and I threw them all out. Four girls refused to go but wanted to talk with me, and slowly 8 others came and joined in.  The other 30 disappeared.  The bottom photo is of 4 boys in class 11.  The two boys closest to me recently acted as an interpreter for a lady who had difficulty understanding me.  I did not tell them until after she had left, that she was the headmaster of the VIP English Language School.  These boys believe that their English is poor.  They finally were able to understand how far they had come and how good their English really is.

Shrine at Chibi 25 kilometres east of Hong Hu. Site of the Three Kingdoms Battle.

edan Chair from the Museum at Chibi with Zhan Yan beside it.

This was not in fact a trip to the future (2025/01/01) but a trip to the past history of Chibi which is located on the other side of the Chang Jiang river.  This young boy Zhan Yan was 13 years old at the time this photo was taken. In July of 2003 just after he finished his first year of English studies, his mother arranged to drop him off at my house to visit me for 2 hours to practice his English.  One week later she returned to collect him.  Now he lives with me (virtually), and his grandmother wants to give him to me so that I can take him back to Australia.  I told her that by the time I move permanently back home, he will be 30 years old.

I HOPE YOU HAVE ENJOYED THIS VISIT.

� 2004 BenDedek, R.P. (2002) The King's Calendar: The Secret of Qumran http://www.kingscalendar.com     Stories from China at http://www.kingscalendar.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?action=topics&viewcat=news

� 2004 Special Edition of Stories from China Photographs by R.P. BenDedek. Comments to MagicCityStories@kingscalendar.com