Letter from Moganshan, east China

It is good manners in China to tell someone what you think they want to hear, as soon as possible after meeting them. The locals here jump to conclusions like British children jump into puddles. Hence first conversations become a series of corrections rather than an exchange of pleasantries.

I went to the barber for a haircut. There were a couple of local businessmen paying.

“You’re the foreigner from Harmony village aren’t you,” one of them shouted.

“There are no foreigners in Harmony village actually,” I replied.

“Then you must be the one from 395 village,” the other declared with delight.

“No.”

“Then you have to be the one in Immortal Cave village!” That decided it.

“Actually,” the barber chipped in, “he’s the one from Moganshan.”

That’s another thing about locals. They talk in front of you as if you were not there.

The men left and the barber got to work.

“You must have just got back from new year in Britain,” he said. He was referring to the Chinese new year, which everyone goes home for—even foreigners, apparently.

After my haircut I walked across the town square to look at the entries in the annual photography competition. One showed a foreign performer backstage, smiling at a Chinese child. I assume it was taken at last year’s Expo in Shanghai. The caption translated literally: “An old outsider looking at someone who belongs to a nation.” Not the Chinese nation, just a nation. No wonder foreigners look the same.

Don’t call the fire brigade

A family of Chinese tourists, quite rare in winter, were the first to raise the alarm.

“I think the hotel up the hill is on fire,” the mother said nervously to a policeman. He and his colleagues were sitting outside a restaurant in the warm winter sunshine.

Sure enough, there was a column of smoke rising from the bamboo forest. The policemen threw down their chopsticks and sprinted up the hill, radios and mobile phones pressed to their ears, shouting.

Smoke was pouring from the derelict hotel. Policemen and workmen were running into the building with basins full of snow and coming out for refills. The ground was littered with empty fire extinguishers. One policeman was covered head to foot in white powder. He looked like a ghost.

More police arrived with fire hoses but the water was frozen in the hydrants. It didn’t look like the firefighting equipment had been tested recently. Finally, after a tense 20 minutes, the fire was extinguished.

Once the drama was over, the gossip began back on the high street. The fire had been started by an electrical appliance which must have been left on by the caretaker. There was no sign of him. In the middle of the blame game someone asked: “Why didn’t they call the fire brigade?”

“Oh no, they couldn’t do that,” said someone else. “Then there would have to be a report. Someone might lose his job.”

All must score 100 per cent

We’re in trouble at school. We’ve been told that both of our children are falling behind. Our daughter might have to drop a year based on the results of the latest exams, held on the second day of the new term.

The exams were actually the end of term ones, cancelled because of the heavy snow. The staff decided that day pupils (among them our children) would be unable to get to school—unlikely, since most of them live close by. The boarders were sent home early—as if transport wasn’t a problem after all—with homework for the holiday.

The school was shut up. We couldn’t get our schoolbags, let alone the homework. Our phone calls went unanswered, as everything shuts down for Chinese new year.

When we delivered the children for the first day of the new term I addressed my concerns to my son’s teacher. She told me not to worry, here was the homework book, he could catch up over the next few weeks.

The next day the exams were sprung. My son scored 80 per cent and was second bottom of the class. My daughter fared worse. Less than 95 per cent is a bad result.

The Chinese education system is relentless. I wonder how much the other pupils enjoyed the new year holiday—and how the teachers distinguish the brighter students from the rest when they all score 100.