Where In The World Is Evan?

In China the first three days of May are one of the most busy public holidays of the year. Unlike the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) this holiday is not of the stay-at-home variety. As such, some fellow teachers and I set off for a week in what we anticipated to be the idyllic mountain community of Songpan (near the northern border of Sichuan province).

As we left my apartment for the taxi ride across town, to to catch our long distance bus, we were five–Olen (USA), Jon (UK), Sergio (ESP), Richard (AUS) and I–but this fortuitous start was not to last. Due to a still unresolved mix up with one of the bus tickets, we found ourselves at the station short one ticket as the bus was ready to leave. This setback saw Richard, who has an infrequent yet volatile temper, storm out of the station cursing my name as Jon and I stood around in bewilderment. Not to be disparaged from our much anticipated holiday, however, we set off forthwith.
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Today I got a bus down to Leshan, with my friends Jon and Olen, to see the world’s largest Buddha—71 meters tall, and carved into the side of a cliff. The giant Buddha itself was a little disappointing, however, the surrounding gardens, temples, and caves were quite interesting. Olen, being himself, had to pose beside the sign at the Pond of Vanquishing Demons that said “No Sprinkling’, doing just that of course!

Early on we found a seemingly abandoned staircase leading up through heavy undergrowth towards the top of a small mountain. Following the stairs as high as they would go we found what appeared to be a wall of nipples carved into the mountain. It wasn’t until we started to descend that we realised that we had climbed out onto the head of a giant reclining Buddha—the nipples were in fact stylized hair.
On our way out of the park we came upon a disused temple, where a Chinese maintenance woman was sleeping on the job. Surprisingly she didn’t see the humor in us taking a photo, and in true Chinese entrepreneurial style, demanding money to delete it. In the end, Olen accidentally deleted the photo, in an attempt to mollify the enraged woman, however, this had little effect and Olen had to flee down the mountain with her in hot pursuit.
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Do you remember that wednesday two weeks ago when it was sunny? That was a nice day…

When the sun shines in Chengdu people speak about it for weeks, like back in February when they spoke for weeks about the first snow in about 5 years.

I spent most of my two hour lunch break today sitting on a bench seat in the beautifully landscaped gardens of the Chengdu Number 7 Development School, in Wenjiang, enjoying the weather. As I sat there intermittently basking in the sun and retreating to the shade, afforded by the climbing roses that covered a nearby pergola, countless students and teachers passed by and paused with a quizzical expression across their faces.

Hello Evan… what are you doing?

They would invariably ask.

Fine weather is so rare in this part of China (in most parts for that matter) that there seems to be no real cultural impetus to get out and enjoy it. They seem to genuinely not understand why I would want to be sitting outside, doing nothing, beneath a clear blue sky. The basketball courts, the soccer pitch, the running tract all lie empty as the students are corralled back into their dorms and the teachers retreat to their cold spartan offices to sip from jars of hot water or green tea.

Sorry for the long delay in updates, however, life has been somewhat distracting these last few weeks (or should that be months?). I could offer many and varied excuses for this, but the legitimate ones alone would end up comprising the bulk of this post, so I’ll leave it at ’sorry’.

To give you all the highly abridged version of events: life is good, beer is cheap, and I have a well paying job and an apartment in the city of Chengdu, Sichuan Province, People’s Republic of China.

To wind back in time a little, after stating my intention to remain in China I received a generous offer from a beautiful French woman (hello Anne!) to come and stay with her in the 5-star hotel where she worked and lived (in Chengdu). At the time we were in Xian, where we had meet at an Arab street market a couple of days before, along with Dave, a Canadian I had met in Beijing and had been traveling with for over a week, and Olen, an American that Anne had meet earlier that day. Nonetheless, and having no real plans for finding work to rejuvenate my now overdrawn bank account, I traveled 16 hours across China on a hardsleeper train to take up this hospitable offer (Anne told me later that the flight took about 2 hours). I suspect that if Anne had known how long I’d hang about she might not have been so quick with her generosity.
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Sorry about the delay between posts, however, my teaching schedule has been surprisingly tirering and it’s been a real struggle to make the time to go to an internet caffe. The recent St. Patrick’s day celebrations and my birthday party haven’t helped with my seemingly chronic tiredness (I’ve only had a cumulative 6.5 hours sleep in the last two days).

My birthday celebrations at my new apartment went quite well. As my birthday fell on a Tuesday, and I had to leave for work at 7:30 am the following day, I didn’t do too much on the day itself (just had a quite night in with my late-fifties flatmate and a couple of bottles of bad Chinese wine - unfortunatly the Chinese don’t make any other kind). I did, however, have a great birthday party last night, with much drunken shenannigans and enjoyment had by all - at least all those that could still remember in the morning
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The last three months for me have been an experience that I will not easily forget. I have gone from the painful lows of contracting endemic typhus in Cyprus to the euphoric highs of partying in Amsterdam. I have experienced amazing extremes of temperature, attempted to communicate in 6 languages that I cannot speak, and countless other noteworthy challenges.

Despite the hardships that I have endured during this time, and indeed in part because of the challenges successfully met, when I reflect upon the last 99 days it is clear to me that I have been happier in this time than in longer than I care to remember. As such my 9:45 am flight from Beijing to Melbourne departed this morning without me on it. The last two weeks that I have spent here in China have been so exciting and fun that I have decided to defer my studies and live here in China indefinitely. This is a country of such beauty with a people who, despite the financial poverty of their lives, have an richness and enthusiasm for life that is truly infectious. No doubt I will miss you all during this time much more than I already do, however, this is a choice that I feel compelled to make as too much of my life back home seems hollow by comparison.

My love and best wishes go out to you all, and with hope that we will meet again soon.

Check out the Beijing, Shanghai, Xi’an, and Chengdu photo galleries.

The temperature in Mongolia dropped to below -30 degrees Celsius recently, which makes it a little tough to get around on foot.

One of the locals thought it would be a funny joke to send me off on a “5 minute” walk to another village “just down the road” when it was -25 outside. Taking him seriously I set off on what turned out to be a 1.5 hour return journey–see above for results.

Check out the Mongolia photo gallery.

I just thought I’d take this opportunity to give you guys a quick update as to what I’m up to before I drop out of contact again for a while.

Presently I am in Irkutsk, Siberia, where I’ve just returned from two days in the tiny lake side town of Listvyanka. The weather here is extremely cold, as anticipated. It’s -13 degrees outside now, but it was around -20 in Listvyanka, and when coupled with both heavy snow and strong wind it makes it a little uncomfortable to get around on foot (Listvyanka has a population of about 2,500 so there is no public transport).

I met a couple of New Zealanders at my homestay in Listvyanka, as well as two Americans in a cafe, which are the only other English speaking foreigners I have met so far in Russia. The five of us ended up having a great time drinking copious amounts of Russian vodka to stave off the cold (which unfortunately did nothing for our balance nor coordination on the icy ground).

Tomorrow night I catch a train out of Russia and into Mongolia, something I’m quite looking forward to after hearing lots of nice stories from the Kiwis, who had come to Irkutsk directly from Ulaan Baatar. Whilst I’m there I probably wont have access to the internet, so I will be incommunicado for about a week (factoring in transit time to Beijing).

Check out the Siberia photo gallery.

It’s been a while since I made a detailed post and a lot has happened. As I mentioned in my last post Amsterdam was fantastic - I can’t remember ever having such intense fun for such a prolonged period as I did there.

My first 6 days where spent in a quiet hostel near the museum district, which allowed me to see 7 museums and countless monuments and buildings. Christmas day was rather quiet and a bit lonely as there was very little to do, but I went out drinking with a group of travelers from the hostel at night which was a lot of fun.

After that I moved to a larger, and much more party oriented, hostel in the center of town. Most of my second week was spent partying, with very late nights and very little sleep. My average daily schedule was bed around 5:00 am and up for breakfast at 10:00 am (as it finished at 10:30). Needless to say I consumed very large quantities of coffee to maintain this sort of lifestyle.
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Happy New year to everyone.

My time here in Holland has been so fantastic that I regret only organising to stay here for two weeks. Amsterdam itself is a very enjoyable city in which to celebrate the new year, and anything else you want, in the most hedonistic way possible. I’ve made a concerted effort to sample almost everything this city has to offer, which has kept me very busy. In one regard, however, it’s probably good for me to be leaving here, as it will allow me to finally get an early night with some quality sleep. Despite the lack of sleep, however, my health has fully recovered after the problems in Cyprus.

Since I’ve been in Amsterdam I’ve met a fascinating cross section of people from all over the world - including a female lawyer for the Israeli military police, but that’s another story - which has been great.

Unfortunately this has to be short update as I’ve got to run to the airport - my flight to Russia leaves today.

I hope you are all doing well back home.

Check out the Amsterdam and Utrecht photo galleries.