I don't know if any of you have ever been to Shijiazhuang, but I have, and without a doubt it is probably the worst place i have ever travelled to. I am sorry if i have offended anyone from there, there are probably worst places, like Afganisthan. Anyway, i found myself on a train going to there with just one hundred yuan in my pocket, being promised a flat and a good job by teaching agents over the internet. Nothing matched my expectations, so with fairness, it was this that also blighted my reception of the place. If any of you are teachers out there, beware of a teaching agent in Shijiazhuang called Victor - he encapsulates all that is bad about these people who acquire teaching jobs for foreigners. I write in the third person when writing flashbacks and dreams. My name is Richard. And there is no women really in this, just an account of madness. Actually might go on holiday to Shijiazhuang one day and retrace my steps, sunbathe by a river full up with sh*t and other unclassified substances.

This is it:

Food litters the floor. Empty packets of sausage, sunflower seeds, discarded shells, and plenty of prawns. The smell of rotten prawns pervades the carriage, and the smell of the people. This is the nadir of Chinese society, the itinerant workers, the labourers and such, never seeming to be silent but create hours of constant noise. There is never slumber. To make matters worse there are some families, with carrier bags full of their earthly posessions, having family squabbles, they seeming to an uncomprehending listener to be verging on the violent, the mother giving off some seemingly passionate vitriolic observations to a quiet and obedient daughter who looks at the floor; the mother is obese, her face holds something of the beauty of her youth, but still mostly bespeaks her position as the lioness of the family today. It’s a man woman. Beside these large women, the husbands and the labourers seem scrawny - deceptive, as without fail, underneath their shirts will reveal powerful muscles. There is a physical hidden strength in the Chinese, the working classes, that the people in universities do not have. A baby, fresh into the world, walks unsteadily up the carriage looking with wonder at the different peoples, then unsure and not venturing too far, with instinct runs back to his mother. The baby boy ventures out but never goes too far, and always returns home. He has no nappy on, is half naked, his lower half being bare, and in the middle of the aisle on one of his peregrinations, he squats mechanically and shits. When he has to urinate the father takes him to a toilet, but the toilet is locked at stations and so the child with his father will discreetly pee in some corner or other sometimes. No one minds. It is a necessity. There is hours of this. Even the people themselves seem not to have washed. I am in the middle, sitting with some Chinese males, who seem of a better class than the rough labourers that are the majority. I do not seem to have intruded on their group and am greeted with smiles. They offer me sunflower seeds that I accept as to not be impolite. They expertly crack the sunflower shells in their mouths and eat the insides; I try but cannot, end up eating the shell as well, and then with difficulty try to open the shell with my fingernails. Still, it is a distraction from the quite hellish scene that meets my eyes. Peasant class rail travel. Well, I got the ticket for free, so cannot complain. All I am hoping is that the city and the place where I will stay will be nice. This is the slow train and will take fourteen hours to get to the capital of Hebei province, Shijiazhuang. Fourteen hours! I have my entire possessions with me, a few bags, and had managed to get them somehow stuffed under my seats. That was when the train was relatively empty, I thinking that it would remain so and had said, “Ah! Not so bad!” but then to my dismay saw small armies beginning to get on the train, every little nook and cranny and available inch of space filled up with something, be it people, luggage, and finally prawns, piss and sh*t. My buttocks hurt. My scrotum is itchy. I need a wash and have body odour. I still have the majority of the journey left. I cannot even lie down and stretch out and sleep, as every seat has been taken. All I can do is sit here. The man next to me buys some beers from the snacks seller who walks up and down the aisle, miraculously getting through the carnage, and the man offers me one of the beers. Also miraculously, I refuse. It is a day and night of miracles. I do not even allow a sitting down of the Houses of Parliament of my Head on the subject of drinking - I just abstain, knowing the meagre amount of money I have and that my survival certainly depends on my drinking stopping, as I will find myself jobless again if I go on - or worse. I definitely do not want to be here. Did I really come to China for this? I have playful notions of getting my first pay packet and then taking flight and going home. Will see how it goes. Trains: they have seem such a big part of my life. All these major episodes revolve around them. Funny to think that much of my life is a direct result of industrialisation. You get different sorts. This is much different from those old trains you used to get in England, what I used to go to school on. I remember those - in the good old days…

Out of my Brain on the Train

The old 1970s train rumbles through the peaceful Kent countryside, the empty green fields, undulating hills topped by woods, no motorway seeming to break the tranquillity of a bygone age. The only thing that is almost modern in this setting is the train itself, but in the first class compartment, a small section partitioned off from the rest of the train by sliding doors and with wooden panelled walls and fatter cushions, a person may get the impression of being in some past and glorious age, the nineteenth century even, when trains first appeared, being luxuriously separated from the masses. Richard and his friend from school are sitting in the first class compartment, with their feet up on the cushions, Richard rolling joints methodically after he has smoked one and shared it. The train is on its way from Rochester to Bromley..
“Have you got any more skunk, James?” Richard asks a question of his friend, more of a demand than a question, knowing James has bought an eighth of marijuana from an Indian boy in school.
“No, I need to save this,” Jame’s “posh” voice answers, the short, skinny, ginger haired boy cradling the precious parcel in his hands.
“You tight c**t. Mant of tarms arve sorted you at,” Richard goes in his most natural mispronounciation.
James relents, and hands over the bag, and says timidly, “Don’t take too much, I am saving it for later.”

Richard is coming up to taking his GCSE examinations. He joined a private school on his mother’s insistence and had no choice anyway as he had been expelled from two other schools and this was the only one which would take him - the only one willing to take him for the money. It was a wise move, despite the cost. The school was called Rochester City Tutors, and was a college as well, allowing students to go on and do their A-levels there. Built into the residences of former upper middle class people of the Victorian era it had a Bohemian and liberalised feel to it, was not draconian in its methods and turned out being more effective because so. But there were no Cockneys. No one Richard could have said were his own. He went to school and hung around with these people and that was it. They went their separate ways afterwards. James was one of these people, a young man who lived in the countryside somewhere and had wealthy parents, and all in all lived a very sheltered life. James had taken a liking to Richard, his accent and dress sense, it giving off ideas off that seemingly far-away place, London, and of the excitement there, and the criminality there. He thought Richard was “cool” - a word which he liked to use, as many others in the school did. It was with mortification that Richard saw that James started to dress like him, albeit in a cheaper way, and followed him and mimicked his actions. People started to call James “Richard’s friend“. Richard had told him myriads of times to “f*** off and leave me alone!” but all to no avail, as James persisted in ghosting him. Richard was a pragmatist: he thought that if he could not get rid of the boy he would at least get something out of him, and therefore smoked most of his marijuana, drugs that Richard had introduced him to.
“You took a lot of puff just to put into tha joint!” James squeaks.
“Shut up you f-ing sigh.”
James, like an obedient dog, sits silently whilst Richard starts to smoke his joint. “Why can’t I roll the joints? And I don’t believe what you said about roller’s privilege,” James wails in muffled resentment.
“Firstly, because you are sh*t. Secondly, the roller’s privilege is an official rule in the puffer’s handbook, which a hippy in India wrote some time in the sixties. They needed some sort of rules in their groups otherwise everyone would hog the joint.”
“Why don’t we just take three tugs each and then pass it on? You smoke two thirds of the joint before you pass it on.”
“That’s just absurd. I don’t take so much anyway. I roll an excellent joint, quite a nice smoke when compared with yours, and that is why I smoke two thirds - my roller’s privilege. If you don’t like it - f*** off.”
Richard has a couple of cans of Stella Artois by his side. A few joints after school, and a few cans, that is what he needs. A few cans of beer gives him just the right buzz, he not needing anymore. There is no compulsion for him to get completely obliterated and out of his skull. He enjoys the scenery passing him by, seeming to go by in slow motion, a scene that has been set up for his enjoyment solely, or so he thinks, the world when under the effects of marijuana pleasing to the senses. Nothing can be better. Only the distraction of Jame’s prattle destroys his picture of erstwhile bucolic peace.
“Look at her. She is fit!” James says, as the train pulls in at a station and a tall blonde walks by, giving him a sneer for his compliment and attention.
“I hate that word,” Richard sighs, “it’s proper muggy.” Richard closes his eyes, the soft rumble of the train engine starting again and the warm country air and fading sunshine of the late afternoon all soporific.

“Boom! Boom! Boom!” the peace is rudely awakened by a thunderous clangour on the first class doors, and startled, Richard jumps up and opens his eyes - there is his cousin Mark Bond - scarred face, large head, the thuggish all of him. There is a particularly nasty looking and deep scar in the middle of his forehead that Richard does not recall ever seeing before. Mark is always fighting. Richard is mightily pleased to see him: the man is a legend! His fondest memroies were of him fighting it out in the park in Brixton with a giant of a man and he had always looked up to him. It had been some years since they had met, and of all places! In the middle of the Kent countryside. The middle of nowhere.
“HAHAHA!” Mark’s crazed face laughs a depraved sounding laugh, sadistic sounding, with his face crushed against the window.
“Marcus! Was appnin mate?” Richard shouts out in genuine astonishment and pleasure.
“Whose that?” James queries in terror.
Mark comes into the first class carriage and seats his hefty self beside Richard in one of the seats. “What you up to? Mad meeting you here, ain’t it? I have moved dan here with me mum and that.”
“Yeah! The places you meet people!” says Richard excitedly. “This is me mate, James.”
“Alright,” Mark nods, surmising the kid in seconds and knowing what he is, and does not bother further talking to him. James is in awe of present company. “I was just rand me hippy mate Sean and he gave me a bottle of water which has magic mushroom juice in it. He boiled the mushrooms, so the water had all the stuff from it. Wanna get tripping?”
“Tripping?” Richard says in uncertainty, but the idea a tantalising one, as it conjures images of colour and the magical. “I’ve never tried it but would like to. Go on then.”
“I have some pukka stuff. Got a nice bit of Jamaican cess weed. I’ll roll a big joint. Here take a swig of this.” Mark passes the bottle of magic mushroom juice around, water mixed with orange juice which is in a Robinson’s squash bottle. Both Richard and James, with some trepidation take slow swigs from the bottle. Richard then takes a largish gulp. Mark’s turn comes and he greedily downs half of the whole bottle. “HAHA!” he opens his mouth wide and his eyes, looking mentally impaired and uses that warped laugh again. He loves a drug. The three of them are nice and stoned. The carriage door from the outside looks as if there might be a fire in there, as all three smoke joints. As yet the effects of the intake of magic mushrooms has not had an effect on Richard. With James it may a different matter, he appearing distrait, his face reddened, and he not quick to answering any questions after some time.
“Here. Oi! Oi!” Mark waves his hand in Jame’s face and clicks his fingers, trying to get his attention. “Let’s try a bit of that skunk Richard told me about that you got, please.” Mark asks politely, showing a gentler side to his rambunctious exterior. “Yes. Here you go. Try and be careful with it.” James obliges.
“Thanks mate.” Mark then uses most of the contents for a joint. He rolls a joint, and greedily smokes the majority of it, until James has the courage to squeak, “You have taken rather a lot of that. Give me some.”
The joint two thirds smoked already, Mark replies, “Roller’s privilege mate, it’s in the hippy rule book, man. That was written in India.”
“I told ya!” Richard says to James, and then catches Mark’s eye and starts to laugh, as they both do.
“Oh, alright then,” complacently utters James, as he smokes the remains of what is really his smoke. Mark used to say the same thing to Richard when he first started “puffing”, and when he could not roll. Mark would roll the joints and then claim “roller’s privilege”, which was of course a fiction. It was only later that Richard realised that and used it himself later on with idiots like James.
“How did you do that to your head Mark?” Richard points at the deep scar that is in the middle of Mark’s forehead.
“I was outta mar nut in the pub the other day-”
“Fighting?”
“Nah. I ead butted a pint. Glassed meself. There was blood pouring at and everything.”
“Why did you do that?”
“I just thought ‘f*** it!’”
“Oh right. Nice one.”
“’Nice one’ - shut up you idiot,” Mark orders Richard, fathoming that Richard is being slightly sarcastic. Richard laughs in return. After the initial ten minutes of greetings and stories has subsided, the three have to deal with the silences or make conversation. The effects of the magic mushrooms start to tell on Richard, he seeing everything as if it is far off, and the edges of objects in vision seem as if they are waving, kind of like the effect that smoke has on vision when it obstructs view.
“Those things are starting to tell on me.”
“I’m tripping mate,” says Mark, not as loud and garrulous as when he entered.
God knows what is going on in Jame’s mind. His sheltered and middle class notions of reality must be turned upside down. He is completely silent and probably fearful of present company. When the train stops at some parochial out of the way Victorian station or other, he realises that he has to alight.
“Boys, I have to go.”
“’Boy!’!” Mark laghs, sneering at him, taking the term “boys” as a belittling device.
James gets up and pulls the handle of the train door, opening the door outwards. Mark starts shouting out to him, “Oi mate! You’ve went the wrong w-”
Too late. James falls onto the other rail track. He has went out of the wrong door, not looking at what he is doing, and there is no platform awaiting him but a substantial drop.
“HAHAHA!” the magic mushroom effect fully on him now, Richard is in stitches and feels this is the funniest thing he has ever seen in his life. Mark gets up and looks out of the window, in between his involuntary laughter and concern for the safety of James. “Quick get on the platform. Quick man, get on the platform before a train comes and runs you over, you dickhead!”
The boy scrambles up onto the other platform. Then h walks nonchalantly off, tripping out of his mind.
“Would you look at the state of him. How you feeling?” Mark asks Richard, as the train is ten minutes more into its journey.
“I’m not feeling too good,” Richard says as he is smoking a joint. He has started hallucinating, the sight of flayed and waving edges of things now turned into a vast distortion of space and impression. Mark’s face is bubbling. “You’re face looks like it is cooking.”
“HAHAHAHA-” Mark’s laugh stops abruptly.
“Smoking is one thing! But smoking that sh*t is another!”
The door of the first class compartment is violently opened. A conductor in his blue unifrom with his ticket machine is doing the rounds and has smelt the marijuana. Mark starts to explain that it was the previous occupiers. Richard looks to the man and he is vastly towering above him, having a demon face, and his uniform is the attire of some horrid regime.
“Arrrgggggh,” Richard shrieks silently, his hands almost to his face in terror. He cowers looking to the man and finding his voice terrifying, “You will be slung off at the next stop. Get off or I will call the police.” The conductor pulls the door shut sharply.
“Looks, like we’ll have to get off the next stop.”
“It’s alright, I get off at there anyway,. Mark”
Richard is terrified in the contemplation that he will have to walk though a whole busy high street to get home - full of bubbling faces and demons, demons like the conductor he has just seen.
“How the f*** am I going to walk home like this?!!!” he cries.
“HAHAHA.” Mark’s laughter echoes in his ears.

The night comes and goes. Hours go by in this hellhole of a train. China’s very unpretty countryside slides past, making nonsense of any Arcadian notion of admiration. In the early morning I arrive. My fellow passengers wish me luck in Chinese. A new place. Unfortunately, not out of my brain on the train, but at least I have survived the train journey. Let’s see if I can survive China and Shijiazhaung.

*

“This is our director, Victor,” said one of the girls who had picked me up at the station. I was welcomed by a fat man, with an amused face, he having a self-amused smile, which was almost childish, hiding the greed that was within and the flair he had for making money out of just about anything.
“Hallo! Hallo! Would you like something to eat?”
“If you are doing anything, yes,” I answered.
Turning into harsh Chinese he shouted out through to the kitchen and out came an obese fat faced woman, swarthy from the sun, and who had a pock marked face. Her smiling expression did not look natural upon her.
“What do you like to eat? You like Chinese food?”
“I’ll eat anything, just not any fish, thank you.”
The wife went into the kitchen, to prepare some “ambrosial delights”. I was in a flat which was half living quarters and half office: there were two desks with computers where two young Chinese women worked enrolling teachers and contacting schools, one of them the girl who had picked me up from the station and who was extraordinarily tall, and another who was short, they being both polar opposites and good material for a comedy sketch; the rest of the house contained a couple of sofas, the bedroom of Victor and his wife and another bedroom which was their son’s. It was well furnished, but was hardly a place to relax, or for them to call a home.
“What is this we are eating? I like the meat,” I said as we were sat at the dining table and was eating into the substantial brown meat I had in my bowl, trying to mix it with the rice.
“It is donkey!” answered Victor. With that I almost spat it out and did not further my eating. Victor had what may have been a handsome face at one time, and had a playful youthful impression, what with his actions when leaving his stomach bare and was slapping it, sitting there like a Buddha with his bare belly when eating at the dining table. But impression can be deceptive. I was just glad to have landed on safe ground though.
“Do you have the apartment ready for me? When will I go there?”
Flanneling, as he always would be, he said in an unconcerned way, “Don’t worry about that. We have a very nice place set up for you. We will take you there soon. Not today, but my son’s room you can use for the time being.”
“He does not mind?”
“No. Weclome here are you!”
They had said that the place was already ready when they had been sending me emails when I was in Dalian. It was the first dishonesty, as well as someone impersonating a teacher by email. I did not mention that. I had no choice in these matters anyway.
“Do you have a letter? From your previous school?” Victor said in between motuhfuls of rice, he eating at a rapid pace, as if the food were still alive and would run away if not consumed fast enough, and bits of food were at the sides of his mouth which he did not notice.
“You mean a recommendation letter? Yes, I have a photocopy here.” I handed him the piece of paper and he took it, reading it, then spoke in Chinese with his wife. A certain uxorious relationship he had with her; she was not some vacuous and obedient and ugly entity of the kitchen, but was an active part in this business. Always in dissonance with her smiling face, her guttural Chinese, which was even remindful of a growling dog, told him something which I knew was negative, shaking her head and then roughly handing him the letter and going back into the kitchen after collecting the bowls on the table.
“My wife say this is no good enough. This is only copy. You need a paper with the red stamp. Can you call your school?”
“I can call them, yes.”
“You can use the phone here if you want to.”
I did not want him listening to any conversations I had. Speaking with Henry on the phone may have involved some discussion about my drinking, seeing as he had been contacted before by the place in Dalian.
“I will go out. I want to have a walk.”
“Do not go out. Stay here,” his light hearted manner sort of turned half serious.
“Excuse me, I can go anywhere I want to.”
The cloud that had gathered over his countenance dissipated and he persisted with his usual disarming stupid appearing smile. “Of course! We just care about you! Make sure you are ok. If you go out, please no drinking, ok?”
“How does he know I am a drinker?” I thought. “Does it show now?” I told him, “I am not going to drink. Why do you think that?”
“We have other teacher from the Britain - he like to drink a lot.”
“Well, not everyone from Britain drinks a lot mate.”
Not necessarily true, certainly not in my case. The one thing I had in my mind was to do some reconnaissance seeking out those little cheap restaurants where I could go and get a drink. Not now though, would wait until later. Shijiazhaung was a typical Chinese city: noisy, heavy traffic, serried ranks of high rises, the neon lights of places in the centre, but there was something different about this place in that it was more polluted, you could discern that as soon as you arrived, and after a small while I would be coughing a lot, trying to get used to the foul air. I later read it was one of the most polluted cities in the world, was the twenty fifth or so I think, this great railway hub and coal centre. Although not cosmopolitan, Shijiazhaung did not seem too provincial, was just around the corner from Beijing and had most comforts one could want. My first impressions were not too downcast, and I felt buoyed up by our proximity to Beijing, thinking I was just next door to Bidur, would catch the train into Beijing on the weekends, and then sally back and get on with my job. And Bidur! I had not talked to him in quite a while, well, a year and a half, and was not even sure he was in Beijing. But I was suire he would be there, having a girlfriend and a business. He was definitely of the more intelligent kind I had met in my travels, and the nicer type. But first thing was first and I had to make an embarrassing and very uncomfortable call to my former university.
“Hello, Henry, this is me, Richard-”
The phone was put down.
“The bastard!” I blushed with the humiliation. There was nothing for it but to call again
“Yes, what do you want?” said Henry in a robotic voice. .
“Hello, Henry, do not put the phone down, I have something to ask you. You see, I want to work so I can get the money to get out of your country. That is why I am asking this. I need a recommendation letter from you so I can begin another job.”
“We can do it for you.”
“Thanks very much. I will give you the number of my job agent and then you can sort it out. You have helped me a lot.”
Seeing as I being further employed could bring disrepute upon their establishment, they could have refused me, then only God knows what may have ensued. The smallest things could be serious problems in China, whilst the most flagrant corruption went on in the upper echelons.

Back in the flat, I noticed that sitting at the computers with the two girls, sitting heavily back at times in the couches eating some fruit out of the bowl that was on the table, and purposely ignoring me was a white skinhead in an England shirt, with shorts on with his socks pulled up, and had a large round earing in one ear - he would not look out of place in any suburban town outside a pub in Britain on a weekend at closing time making a lot of noise and then getting arrested. A true product of working class and very uneducated Britain. I had to initiate any conversation:
“Where you from mate?”
“Wales, mate.”
I looked at his England shirt, and before I could say anything he had known what it would be, “It’s for the girls mate. They all think I look like Beckham. I pulled a couple who came up to me in the McDonald’s and said I looked like Beckham. Ended up f-ing them good and proper, like.”
Scrutinising his pointed nose, dark hair, and glinting and mad eyes, I could not see any resemblance to Beckham. As if psychic, he guessed my thoughts, “I know, I don’t think I look anything like him either, but they all think we look the same these stupid *bleep* f-ers.”
I could hear the valleys in his accent; Gavin had the humour, the fatalistic humour of the Welsh, shrugging his shoulders and sort of accepting the absurdity of things but always aware of how absurd they were, especially in China. The phrase “stupid *bleep* f-ers” rang out in the typing sound and silence of the room but the two girls said nothing. Some people could get really upset by that term, but ironically enough, not the Chinese themselves, it was the sanctimonious foreigners who would. It held no connotation to the Chinese, except maybe the ones who had been and lived abroad and heard themselves disparaged with that term, but even some years ago it was used on television in Only Fools and Horses and was used widely just as a harmless term by a lot of working class English.
“Gavin,” that was his name, “can you come down the road with me and have a beer. I want to talk to you about some things and you can tell me about this place.”
“Make it the one because I have to go and meet my girlfriend,” and then he added proudly, “she is a model!”
“You’ll have to give me some pictures to see.”
“I have them on my phone.”
“Show me in a restaurant.”
The pair of us went to leave and walk out of the door, when like a vulture Victor swooped on us, and said, “No drinking you two!”
“No, no Victor!” Gavin said, as if talking to an old friend, “none of that for us! Not too many anyway.”
“Come, I walk with you,” Victor walked down the stairs with us. Like two friends were Gavin the Welshman and Victor, but the relationship and the behaviour exposed something sycophantic in Gavin. He was sucking up to the man, hoping to gain favour in acquiring jobs.
“There new girl coming from Germany. What do you think?” Victor handed me a picture of a plain girl with an upturned nose, resembling a pig.
“She’s not bad Victor.” I passed the picture back.
“Victor! You carry that picture everywhere,” Gavin playfully chided, “I think you have something in mind for that girl, you dirty bugger!”
Victor let out a false, nasal sounding laugh, slapping his bared stomach, “I like western woman, maybe you can help me with her and find me other one. Maybe I help you with Chinese woman”
“You have a wife Victor,” I said in seriousness, trying to be on a moral high stool that did not become me.
“I know. But she f-ing ugly.”
“HAHAHA!” There were some things good about the man, and that was a very funny and honest comment.
“Look at my new car!” Victor pointed out a brand new silver and black Volkswagen Passat in very fine condition. It was a personification of his hard work - the result of the efforts of the teachers he had gained employment for. Victor was nouveau riche, and was following in the footsteps of the political and financial elite of China, they marked out by the silver and black cars they drove. But Victor was still a peasant, a pig in a silk suit, and his manners and his eating betrayed that.
“I want to join Communist party,” he said, as he surveyed his car from top to bottom, walking backwards and forwards, proud of his acquiisition. “They refuse me. I must try again when I have more money.”
“Are you a Communist? Why would you want to join the Communist party?” I scoffing at the hypocrisy of the whole thing, this Pharisee who wanted to join an organisation which ostensibly meant economic equality for all, but was reaping all the benefits from the labour of others. Still it was Chinese money he was taking, not ours really.
“If in Communist party many thing can happen for me. Many door open.” You had to admire the honesty of the man, that the party was only a means to an end and facilitated nepotism.
“We have to go Victor, see you tomorrow,” said Gavin, slapping Victor’s stomach. I wondered how long he had known this man.
“One moment, Gavin. Today police call me and they say want speak with you. I say I don’t know.”
“Keep it that way, Victor.”
“I will, the policeman is a dog.”
I was laughing, and quite agreed with that. Though whether or not he really felt that remained to be seen. He could call them dogs whenever he wanted, but I am sure when he needed their help he would not be slow to pick up the phone. The Chinese loved a phone.

“How long you been here then mate?” I asked Gavin as we walked down a narrow road which had market stalls either side of it selling freshly slaughtered meat, the people crying out underneath their awnings as flies buzzed in great swarms around the rotting carrion.
“A couple of months.”
“You seem to get on really well with that Victor fella. Is he alright then?”
“Yeah, Victor’s alright. He has helped me out a lot.”
“What was that about the police and that?”
“I was drunk the other night and crashed my motorbike. They have my name and that, and I pulled up Victor’s address but they do not know where I live. They wanna talk to me but there is nothing to talk about. The thing is I do not have a license for the bike. See, he does help you out Victor.”
“I’m sure he is alright. Been here two months, so how long in China?”
“About a year. I was in the north east before, in Harbin. Horrible place. Bloody mafia place it was. I was trapped there, the teaching company was trying to force me into a job, not letting us leave and that. f-ing hell, man, nightmare.”
On Gavin’s arms, ostentatiously stamped for the world to see below the short sleeved England shirt he wore, were Chinese tattoos. He walked with a side to side gait, a product of the disgruntled and unemployed working class of Britain on a weekend, and what with his tattoos and his earing he looked a bit oafish, not at all like a teacher. It made nonsense of the seriousness of the profession. Not that I took it that seriously.
“Did you get them tats done over here?”
“Nah, I had them done in Wales for cheap. f*** knows what they mean but I had people in bars in Harbin wanting to fight me because of them, mafia like. f-ing full up of the mafia the place was.” Gavin said this half admiringly of them, and then added, “One of my mates in Shijiazhaung knows the mafia and is a right nutter. Jinza is his name.”
“Right. What’s this place like? The main thoroughfare was nice, having a few restaurants and that, but it does seem a bit boring. What is there to do here? What are the people like?”
“They f-ing hate us, man! Don’t you think? Everywhere in China, they f-ing hate us man. Look at these people!” he nodded at the busy personnel of the stalls, their faces seen through the crowds of live birds and such, “they would love to chop our heads the first chance they got!”
“Not necessarily true,” I thought. But then there was a lot of truth in it - was we really welcome here? I knew myself the difference between an affected smile and a genuine one, and I had seen a lot of affected ones; if there were not smiles then there would be outright scowls from men and pompous aloofness from women. I was experiencing racism, but I did not begrudge the Chinese that. I even sympathised with them in many regards.
Sitting down at a table, waving the flies way from the tops of our beers, I told Gavin some truths about myself, which was a mistake as he was a wrong’un, a self-propelled minnow of the teaching agent I would be working for.
“I am alcoholic Gavin, at least I think I am. The reason why I am here is that I was sacked from a university in Dalian that I had not even started at.”
“f-ing hell, man! Why d’you drink?”
“Like the feeling.”
“I like a drink but keep it under control though,” Gavin said, judging me in a way, as if I was some creature who had some affliction that he could look at from afar, which made me wonder, had not he himself crashed when drunk? In time I saw that Gavin was just as much of a drinker as myself, and did very stupid things on it.
“I have a fake degree, you know.” Gavin said.
“Really?” I tried to look dignified, intellectually august, and replied, “I have a real one. I went to London University and studied English literature.”
What I took for a knowing look entered Gavin’s green eyes, and he continued, “most of the teachers coming to China have got one. It’s no big thing over here. They just want someone from native countries to teach.”
“Where did you get your degree from?”
“Some website and a company in London. f-ing sh*t man, the degree had like a sticker on it that fell off. Got me jobs here though.”
“Where’s your girl then?”
Gavin handed me his mobile phone and there I saw a plain Chinese girl, pursing her lips and making the peace sign with both hands. I still had a picture of Luyao and handed it to him and aksed him what he thought. “She’s a f-ing dog, man.”
“Cheeky bastard,” I thought, thinking Luyao was my girl. You had to have some fallacies in life, living with stark reality was too much. Going into the depths of a feeling for a woman revealed the greatest emotional and euphoric side to me, flirting with the eternal, the spiritual, until that woman become a goddess and was not even a woman anymore, and the person herself was not concerned in this dream - it was an indulgence of myself.
“I gotta go, Rich,” Gavin said, rising to the occasion, “I’ll see you most days up at Victor’s. We both will be working at the college together, you should see the size of it there, f-ing huge it is.”
“They said they will be finding me a place to live.”
“Did they? As far as I know I am the only teacher here so far, and there are not any flats left. Good flat it is they give you.”
“Good then.”
He walked off with his funny walk, cigarette in his mouth, earing dangling, with his shorts and white socks. It was good to meet someone from near home, but I got the impression of just what an utter wally Gavin was.
After a few I walked back to Victor’s, sitting heavily in his couch watching the two girls work, taking a fancy to the tall one, beer always enhancing the little beauty anyone held, especially Chinese beauty, and was trying to get her number but to no avail.
“Later we take you dinner outside,” Victor said.
I was touched by his generosity, “Thanks so much, Victor!”
“Go have sleep. Have wash. You stay here until we find the home for you from the school.”
“I need to ask you something Victor. I have no money almost, and may need to borrow some from you.”
“I can borrow you some money. Please sign this piece of paper, and write that I give you money.”
In a flourishing hand I wrote that I had borrowed an amount and then took two hundred yuan from Victor, handing him the piece of paper with the quip, “Please keep that safe Victor, it might be worth something one day.”
“Why?”
“Because I am going to be famous and do something.”
“HAHAHA. It will be the priceless!”
Body odour and sweaty balls. There was not one wink of sleep on the train. What a nightmare journey. Something that I would forever remember though. Who wanted to be in a day in day out monotonous job doing the same thing everyday, so that most days you forgot? These days I was living; though they were the worst days, they were also going to be the best days. I tried to sleep, hoping to enter the oblivious realms of somnolence, but worries nagged way at me. I was not in my own room, was in this boy‘s room, a Chinese. It was strange. Sleep I never had. I woke up uncomfortably and went to dinner with Victor and his wife, when the night had descended and we had some repellent repast in some restaurant or other across the road.
“Why you come China, Richard?” Victor asked me, sublimating his attention from the food to myself, partaking of copious amounts of tomato and egg soup, a watery and tasteless concoction.
“To find a woman and marry her, Victor.”
I still was on a quest for love I suppose: love is a sina quo non, there to counter hate, and my life was full of hate at the moment, and maybe alaways had been. Had I ever been in love? No, I do not think really I had been. It was a confusion with lust and attraction which I had undergone.
“You want Chinese woman? You want to marry?”
“Certainly so.”
“This is very good!” he said, rubbing his hands together and then talking enthusiastically with his wife, who answered almost incomprehensibly with her mouth stuffed.
“My wife say we can help you. We know many young woman would be interest in foreigner like you. Will you stay in Shijizhaung?”
“If I find someone and like it here then that could be quite probable.”
“Excellent. That is good!”
Another day into the unkown in China. I was still in one piece. The morrow would bring me news of good or ill.

Early in the morning, as I slept uncomfortably in his son’s bed, a son who had came in the night before resigned to not having his own bed and looking pissed off about it, Victor came into the room and announced: “I go Beijing to pick up German girl from airport, and get Irish boy. They will be teacher here. Do you want come with me?”
“No, I still need a good rest, Victor.”
“You stay here and wait for me. I will be three hour.”
I did not fancy three hours in a car with this man, talking the simplest English, absolute flummery. I got strange thoughts, not just with him, but a man could be talking with me and then for no reason whatsoever I would be thinking, “What if I just punched him right in the face now?” and this thought would not just be reserved for small men but men I knew would annihilate me, and in situations so where I could have been lynched by the Chinese. It was that and also a fear I had that I may throw myself out of the car door in the middle of the motorway. Irrational fears, they merely floated in the mind, were not so strong that I was going to act upon them, but then what were they doing there anyway? With Victor gone I tried to read the books I still had which Bidur had given me, one about India and something about her history and her language, and I sat there whilst the two girl workers typed away, attempting to seem the intellectual I was not.
“I am going out for a walk,” I told the tall girl, who I actually quite liked.
“One moment,” the tall girl said and called in to Victor’s wife. She came imperiously through, I catching her miserable looking face in the reflection of the kitchen windown, which changed into a smile when she was in the sitting room.
“Victor wife say that you should leave your passport. Not good if you lose it. Then very bad for you.”
“O yes, you are right there. Here you go.”
That august, wrinkled and fat dog of a woman walked back into the kitchen clutching my passport, having something of the imperial about her. The Grand Old Dowager Empress was she like, but Victor’s wife was probably worse - I wonder what history would have been like if she had supreme control of China at one time? I went into the cheapest looking restaurant I could find, drunk cheap and weak beer which had bits of something floating in the top of it, and shared cigarettes with the owner, in the heat the restaurant staff of these lowly places always half naked from the waist up (the men). Flies buzzed around everywhere, the room was uncleaned, and the waiters at the their tables ate their noodles, smiling over at me, the elderly man coming over and throwing a cigarette onto the table. The restaurant lights were off, it being the middle of the day, and it was cooler in here and almost dark, the snoring of one of the asleep waiters louder than the low level volume television station. There was almost something picturesque in this early afternoon in a Chinese hovel. I was not too troubled about those thoughts, the fear of doing something on imuplse which would be detrimental to myself - like head butting Victor for no reason. They were somehow relinquished when I had a drink. It was like they came out of nowhere and were not a product of myself. A deep despair I had when they came up, like they were some nagging entity which plagued me and nothing in the world could stop them. I had heard somewhere that sooner or later, when you think about something enough, you end up doing it. Please God, no! I don’t want to hurt anyone! Make them stop! A god, if there was one, answered my prayers, and he done this by administering beer to myself. It solved the problem; it may have caused it. To ameliorate my life, which would have to involve the giving up of drink, would necessarily portend those thoughts - they were openly stifled by a drink. That’s when you are in trouble. But as said before, it did not trouble me too much at this time, I was at my happiest when sitting alone in restaurants like this. I never went over five pints and returned to Victor’s flat, completely at a loss of what to do with myself. In my deepest state of boredom and restlessness, that was when the man returned, with him a pale, even pasty, slender young man of about the same age as myself, with dark brown hair, and with freckles on the sides of his cheeks. He must have been the new teacher, and made a more positive picture than the one I gained of the Welshman.
“This is Shane, he from the Ireland,” Victor informed me.
“And this Is Sylvia from the Germany,” and he introduced the girl whose picture he had stuffed into a place of importance in his back pocket. Sylvia was very different from the picture: a very paragon of Aryan health with her long bronze legs, and athletic body and was blonde haired which was not so in the photograph. She was not very photogenic, looked quite attractive as compared with the picture. She was the typical tourist teacher type, doing China for a year to take in the culture and such, and then off again. She was not looking very excited or anything, was even a bit fed up. Definitely, if she was looking for culture, the idealised one where there were temples and shows, traditon and museums, then she was not going to find it here in Shijiazhaung. The Irishman looked buoyed up, up for anything, was chirpy and sat and smoked a cigarette with a cup of coffee which Victor’s dog of a wife made for him, answering the wife when she put it next to him, “Ah, cheers man,” with a significant but understandable Irish accent.
“Aright there! How’s tings?”
I was sitting on the sofa looking bored, my foot in a paroxysm of movement, a nervous something in me, but I answered him, “Yeah, you alright mate? From Ireland?”
“Yeah, man. You English?”
“Yep. But my great grandfather was Irish. Me mum’s Scottish and is a heavy duty Celtic supporter.” I had heard my mother say that my grandmother’s father was Irish, by the name of Quinn, but had been an alcholic and had walked out on the family. Maybe my current problem was in the genes. I had even heard that there may have been Italian blood in the family from some obscure source, and looking at my mother and some of her family you could see that that just might be, my mother had sometimes a Latin appearance, she going very dark in the sun.
“What name do ya family have?” Shane asked
“McVey.”
“Muat be the north of Ireland. So I take it you are a green man yaself?”
“Yeah mate, up the RA!”
Most of the time I was apolitical, but not when I had a drink: then I was anti British, venting pent up resentment against a country which was going against the will of its people, could ignore the rights of people who had fought for it in the past and was on an agenda all of its own, which was not always for immovable high moralistic principles. Something was not right in England, you could tell that as soon as you arrived.
Being polite I asked the German girl a question, “How do you find China? Like it?”
“It is not what I expected. I hope I grow to like it with time.”
Victor walked in, but politely was not slapping his big bald and wet sweaty Chinese stomach, “Sylvia, I take you to you home now. Shane, Richard. You wait here. I take you somewhere to eat after.”
A bit indignant I thought, “I was meant to get somewhere to live. I suppose it is different with women, they need to have protection and have to be looked after first. Always ladies first.” I tried to be patient.
Shane was on the phone to his mother informing her he was safe. A miracle of technology, in this different world and talking to someone in Irleand. “Ma, I got here alright, the teaching agent is gonna find me another job. I met another boy here from London, but his family are northern Irish.”
“Is he green?” I heard the voice say on the phone.
“No worreis ma, he is green.”
“That’s alroyt den,” the voice said.
Well, I had passed the test. But I was still English. Whilst Shane was in the toilet I looked at his passport - there was a much younger appearing man than the one in front of me, fresher, and not showing the ears which now stuck out a little from his head. My own passport held similar discrepancies - China was having an effect on me, probably for the worst.
“Where you been teaching then?” I asked Shane.
“In Beijing. I shared a flat with a Romanian bird. Great times man, just out and out arse sex. She loved it!”
“Arse sex…hmmm…how about the teaching?”
“I was teaching kids, pretty good job and I liked the little f-ers. I used to pick them up in class man and spin them around.”
“I had a little teaching experience witb kids, but felt like I had been sodmomised against my will. HaHAHA.”
“HAHAHA. Sodomised - can’t have been pleasant that. They underpaid me though, the f-ers, by about a thousand or so in Beijing. Dirty fecking peasants these Chinese.”
“Do you like the birds?”
“Much better in Thailand, man, that’ll be the place I wind up in. Got tight fannys though the *bleep*.”
“Hmm…indeed they do.”
Here was one of my own - risqué jokes and no holds barred in decorum with the Chinese. I knew we would get on well.
“I met another teacher here, from Wales. He told me has a fake degree. He has an earing and has tatoos and looks a bit of a hooligan-”
“That man’s a fecking teacher?” incredulous was Shane.
“Yep. Gavin is his name, I suppose you’ll be meeting him soon.”
“You gonna be working here? I don’t like this place, it’s f-ing Calcutta, man.”
“I have no choice, I was fired from another school I was at up in Dalian. Drinking like mad I was on my own, kicking off with Chinese in restaurants, throwing chop sticks at them and the like. They all reported it, proper grasses these Chinese, Shane.”
“Dirty f-ing peasants. I have not got a degree myself you know. A lot of jobs do not take anyone without one. But there are tonnes of jobs in China.”
“On that account I am fine myself - I have a degree from London University in English Literature,” myself, Professor Simpson, proclaimed proudly.
“Good on ya!”
The tall girl, who I had named Victoria in a kind of honour of my former student (who I did not meet when I was in Nanjing at the university of science, though had arranged it), came over to Shane and told him, “We have got copy of your degree.”
“ did not know I had one!”
She handed him a piece of paper, a cheap photocopy of something they had done on the computer. Victoria went on, “You will need this to make sure you can get job when you try later.”
It was typical of the Augean methods of Victor and his business, but I did not mind, doing it myself.
“Can I see that, Shane?”
“Here.”
The paper was an exact copy of mine, had the coat of arms of London University on it, but had changed the subject from English Literature to Economics.
“HAHA,” I laughed forcibly, perturbed that they had copied mine, “they have copied mine here you know, but put your name on it.”
“Really? Dirty peasants! I hope you don’t mind Rich, I’m just a man trying to get on.”
“Course not mate!”
Mine was fake anyway, there being no difference between myself and Shane except that I had paid two hundred pounds for my degree. I did not hold it against the man.
Victor walked back in, telling us, “Come with me, I take you to my friend’s bar.”
“Now we’re talking!” almost shouted Shane.
“You like a drink, Shane,” I asked.
“You joking? I’m Irish man. I even like a smoke of the old brown once in a while. Over there in Holland I was, out of me head on it, going to swingers parties doing birds when their men were watching - loved it!”
“I think I may have an alcohol problem, meself like.”
“I could tell-”
“From what?”
“The way your leg was going when I walked in, you looked like you was clucking for a drink. And you told me about the other stuff when you got fired.”
“Yeah, will have to calm it down.”
“Yeah, you’ll be fine.”

Victor loved his car, before getting into it he stood admiringly looking at it, as if it would move.
“Good car you got there, Victor!” said Shane.
“I know. I work hard for this. Before I have nothing, but then I learn English, just by myself, and create this business and now I have car and home and wife. I even want to join Communist party and think that one day that I can.”
No matter how Victor made his money, he still had worked hard to get this business up and running. He still had a hell of way to go in English though, but then China, even in its highest chambers, was not throwing out English speakers of eloquence or originality. The man’s love for his car seemed stronger even than his affection for his family - he hardly spoke to his son, and had said himself that his wife was ugly, though you could see he did not do anything without her. I had an impulse to one day run a key over Victor’s car, not for any particular reason, but sort of out of jealousy. I was being faced with Chinese with money.
On the main thoroughfare of Shijiazhaung city, Victor’s friend’s bar was on a side street. The centre was a typical Chinese town and had its prized single McDonalds and Pizza Hut, its claim to being modern. There were no foreigners in this place that I could see, but we did not get much attention, but certainly a sort of grudging acceptance.
“This my friend bar!”
An empty large room which had large purple comfortable sofas was his friend’s bar. Some soporific and boring Chinese tune or other played on the speakers. Victor sat himself comfortably down on the sofas, spoke with us in his halting English, having a notebook and pen and writing all of the words which he did not know down, using from time to time his electronic dictionary. He did not buy anything; probably thought it was a waste of money. A friend of his came, a stocky Chinese who told us that he was an expert in kung fu and who offered to teach us one day. He also had his notebook and pen with him. Gavin came in, still with the England shirt on, the exact same clothes he had on before. Forever more he would more or less wear the same clothes.
“Ah..my friend!” greeted Victor.
“How ya doing boys?” Gavin said, taking a cigarette stuck above his ear and lighting it, always chain smoking was he, the cheapest cigarettes that were sold. “Hello, mate.” he said to Shane, “Gavin’s the name.”
“I’m Shane, nice to meet ye!”
“Did you meet the German girl, Victor?” Gavin asked.
“Yes, I meet the German girl, Sylvia.”
“Nice? Would you like to…” then Gavin made backwards and forwards motions denoting coitus.
“Yes, I very much…I like to f*** very much!”
“Ha. Victor is a dirty bugger! He keeps her picture in his pocket,” and then turning to Shane and I, half confidentially, he said in whisper, “I bet he knocks one out over her when his wife is out. Can’t blame him!”
Shane nudged me, “Is this the guy, the man you were telling me about?”
“That’s the one.”
“f***! Who’d employ him?” he finished in a discreet whisper.
In a rodomontade, one that rankled with me, Gavin said, “I was doing a lot of this with my model girlfriend this morning…” and he did the silly backwards and forwards motion again.
I am not sure out of jealousy or not, but probably not as I had never met his girlfriend, I thought with venom, “This geezer is a f-ing c**t. A sigh bones. A log. A donut,” all those Cockney epithets in one huge emotion of dislike. Well, not exactly dislike, but a distaste for him. The epitome of the anti style - even the London boys who I knew had a bit of panache and taste. The lesson went on; that is what it was - an English lesson for Victor and his friend, they both taking notes. Victor went to sleep, his stomach bared and he snoring loudly with his feet up on the cushions. The kung fu man stayed, wanting to learn more. Exasperated, as I was, Shane asked Gavin, “Do you do this a lot?”
“Yeah, Victor is down here nearly everyday. He likes to get enough English.”
“f*** this. I am having a beer.”
“I would not buy one in here, Shane, they are very expensive.”
Hearing the word “beer”, Victor opened one eye and said, “No drink beer.”
Shane, desperate, but I think more shocked at the suggestion, said in near affront, “You can’t tell me Victor that I can’t have a beer, where I come from its part and parcel.”
“Part and parcel?”
Gavin’s annoying Welsh accent piped in, saying in slow motion, the self proclaimed teacher, “Part and parcel Victor - it is part of his culture.”
“I’ve been travelling all day, like, I need a f-ing drink!” said Shane and ordered one, both Gavin and I accepting when he offered.
“When does the teaching start Victor?” I asked him, eager to join with work.
“September.”
“That’s one month away. What will I do in the meantime?”
“You can come here with me.”
I looked at Shane with an astounded and fearful face. Gavin seemed to be enjoying himself - he liked this life. He enjoyed grovelling. Ever the cynic I thought, “This fat bastard is getting money out of us and free English lessons.” I said aloud but made it appear as if in passing and having no relevance, “Teaching English like this I could get paid a hundred an hour for.”
More seriously Victor’s quick and self-righteous riposte was, “But you get my service!”
It was minutes after that that he left with his friend. The three of us were left sitting there, Shane finishing his drink and ordering another but Gavin slowly sipping his drink as he did not want to pay for anything. It then dawned on me - this was something of a joke:
“A Welshman, Englishman, and an Irishman - this is like a f-ing joke!”
“HAHAHA!” Shane started laughing.
How much of a joke it would get to be would remain to be seen - it became a perfect comedy.

Gavin’s girlfriend came with a short friend of hers, of “passable” beauty, and they were a vacuous couple - showing an almost starstruck excitement that they were in confabulations with foreigners, seeming to think they were a bit important because of it. Did these people have brains? They took a dislike to me, as many would.
“Gavin,” I queried, “is there anything to see here? I heard there is a bridge not far from here which is meant to be the oldest in the world. Are there any museums?”
“Museums?” he replied, almost startled, “Why would you wanna go to any museums? Never heard of the bridge, but it does not sound too exciting, does it?”
“What is it you actually do here?”
Having a smug and salacious smile upon his face, he winked. “Me and my girl here,” putting his hand protectively around her, “we like to…” and then he started to do the backwards and forwards motion. The girl giggled stupidly. How tasteless and vulgar. I could not see that relationship lasting. I tried getting the other girl’s number, but to no avail.
“I havva boyfrienda, from American.”
Was not my type anyway, they being two brainless individuals. Gavin’s girl was perfect for him, he having a blinkered view of the world which involved sex, food, and cheapness - he was always on the lookout for freebies, and he was never going to have meaningful conversations with her, beyond what his world was. Gavin was such an embodiment of mediocrity at best, in his late twenties and never achieving anything, not even educating himself, and his whole soul cried out that he was never really going to do anything. It made me ashamed that I was here, and in hindsight I was a bit of a snob.
“Hey Shane and Richard! D’you want to come to a barbecue tonight? I’m meeting up with some friends, Jinza and an American mate of mine. We eat at a little restaurant which does the kebabs. Loads of beers and food and it’s all free! It’s free man!”
“Get over it you mug,” derisively my thoughts said. Gavin was going on about everything being free, as if that was the greatest thing in the world, and what one should strive for. In Victor’s place I had said to him, “Did not think much of that food mate - f-ing donkey,” he had responded, “But it’s free! Can’t complain!”
“Yeah. Sound, man.” Shane gave his approval. I did as well.

A couple of hours later, we were sat at a table in a large open road running through a closed shopping district in the open crepuscular air. At night the tables came out and the stools, kebab stool owners roasting kebabs and having barrels of beer ready for consumption. The pedestrian road which the tables and chairs took up was filthy, had the rubbish of the day still upon it, as well as discarded bones and food from the tables. Rats scurried past at times, and the carousers and eaters pissed in darkened alleys by the side. The ambrosial deligthts of pollution via car traffic from the surrounding roads, roasting sheep’s flesh, and piss were the norm here. It made me feel ill, especially when waking up the next day after having eaten the food all night and drunk the beer - the mere suggestion of the smell would have me throwing up.
“This is beer land,” Gavin informed us, sitting down at the table and waving at a couple of the kebab stall owners who recognised him. The way Gavin had described this place it was like it was some heavenly realm of plenty where people could get pissed to their heart’s content, and was buzzing in addition. It was in reality just any street of China on a weekend night - but those streets you would not find anywhere else in the world.
“The way you were talking about it, Gavin, I thought you meant a pub or club or something,” Shane was not too impressed.
“There’s a club around the corner where we can get birds. They call it Disco Land.”
“Sounds just as thrilling as here.”
Ignoring that quip, Gavin issued a warning, “But have to be careful in Discoland, seen it kick off with the Chinese in there many a time. Ah! There’s my little mate!” Gavin waved out enthusiastically and I turned around and saw a midget - the first and last I saw in China. What was his life like? I mean it was bad enough being a midget anyway, but being one in China was beyond my imagination. You had to admire the little survivor. The great Communist country of China, they had no time for the mentally impaired, the defected or disabled, and you could see this in the social makeup, there were no handicaps - the fact that this little fellow was here was a miracle in itself. I tried to imagine his life, how sad it must have been, but he looked happy enough. I thought what a great book it would make - The Chinese Midget - and thought one day I might have a try of doing it. Increasingly, I was thinking of writing, though never actually did it. I would procrastinate, always telling myself that one day I would begin. But I told the world I was going to write a book one day. The little fellow came up to our table, waddling as he came, and reminded me of a rather cute penguin. With some difficulty, he lifted himself onto our stool and sat down and had a beer.
“Go on little man, get one down ya!” shouted Shane, buying him a drink and treating him graciously. People sitting at the other tables looked round, staring and smiling. It sounded even more of a joke now - an Englishman, Irishman, Welshman and a midget - but I wondered what the punch line was. Shane bought a lot of drinks that night, seeming not to care about his spending. Gavin accepted, but never offered himself. I accepted but continually reassured the Irishman, “When I get money I will also treat you, Shanus.”
“Don’t worry man, it’s only a few beers.”
“Jinza! How you doing you mad f-er you!!?” Gavin cried out to the other side of the street. Through the crowd of people sitting down at the tables there appeared a fat Chinese man with a ponytail, with an entourage with him, a few young and skinny Chinese, and a confident white man by his side who was muscley, dressed in skin tight black t-shirt and blue jeans - I knew by the apparel that he must be American, nothing really making a statement in this dress but was a means of making his muscles seen. They walked with a confident, even arrogant gait, especially Jinza in the middle, and their presence had a verve about it, which could be felt in the vicinity, people continually looking over. I think this Jinza character felt somehow empowered by being in the presence of foreigners. This was the supposed person with Mafioso links that Gavin had continually told me about, his versions of this Jinza being full of adulation.
“Hallo, monster!” said Jinza, his fat self and thick set neck and head I expecting to bring forth something deeper than the comical squeak which came from him.
“They call me monster because in the pictures they take my eyes always are red, like a monster! Take picture Jinza!”
“Picture,” he enunciated slowly, the fat boy Chinese person, and then thought about it, lost in childish appearing thought, and then said, “Yesssa!” and pulled out a camera, took a picture of Gavin. He showed the result to everyone on the camera screen - “Monster!” he said quietly and half drunk Gavin‘s eyes were red..
“Great bike you got Jinza,” Gavin said, grovelling and going over and marvelling at Jinza’s scooter. Jinza grunted in reply: it seemed he understood English but could speak hardly any. Jinza went over and opened the seat up, producing nefarious implements of hurt - proper tools - knuckle dusters, a cosh, and a chain. They were by and large a pacific race, but piss them off enough…
“f-ing hell, Jinza! You’re bloody mad you are!” Gavin turned to Shanus and I and repeated, “Jinza’s bloody mad he is!”
Shanus, which I was now calling him, nudged me and whispered, “I take it this is the hard man he has been talking about all night.”
“It seems so, Shanus.”
The crowd was all assembled, getting down to drinking beer. I tried to talk to the American, have a meaningful conversation but he was mainly curious about how much Chinese I knew. Not much, I had answered.
“How long have you been here?”
“Almost two years, in China.”
“Two years! Two years!” his surprise a rodomontade of his own knowledge, and his ease of conversation in Chinese with the others showed how much he did know.
“How long you been here yourself?”
“Nine months.”
“Teaching?”
“Yes, but only for the time being. I have my fingers in other pies, trade and stuff. I live with one of these guys, and I have made it a rule to only speak Chinese when I am with them, even though he knows some English and can get on in it. That way I will learn faster.”
Jealous, perhaps, in a riposte to his transparent arrogance, I stated pompously, “I am going to write a novel about my time here. I think it could be quite good, and will include the times I have spent in Russia and Mongolia-”
Ignoring what I said and cutting me off sharply, he said condescendingly, “I have finished a novel.”
“Oh yes? What’s it about?” I queried politely.
“This guy is in a room and does not know why he is there. He is talking with another man and there are other tables with couples of them talking. Turns out it is death. He has to talk his way out of the place.”
Portraying a fake interest in the project, I said, “That sounds great. Quite imaginative,” though my instinct told me that it was boring and a complete load of sh*t. Where was the plot? Where were the characters? Must be one hell of a dialogue to hold the audience’s attention.
“Yes.” the American nodded, self assured. Another reason to hate Americans. He purposely ignored me when I tried to delve further into the details, talking Chinese with the others. I looked at Shanus and he was onto it, looking me directly in the eye and saying, “f-ing rude, man, that is.”
“Tell me about it,” and then in soliloquy to myself I said, “I’m better than these slags. I am South London mate.”
That miasma never went away though, the overbearing feeling that something bad was going to happen. I was paranoid. I sought some succour and reassurance from Gavin, and though he was oafish, and I did not want to end up like him, I did and still do like some of the apsects of him.
“Do you think I will be alright here? I do not want to f*** up.”
“Then don’t man. You got to keep it under control, Richard, you are an alcoholic,” he tried to soothe me with words which I found patronising and talked as if he had known me for years, telling me to stop drinking whilst he had a pint of beer to his lips. “We’ll get down the gym together. A man of your size, if you did the training, could be f-ing Tyson in a few months.”
“Can you really make this place a home?” I asked, pulling a desperate face as I surveyed the rubbish strewn street.
“I call this home already! Got me girl, got me mates, got me job. I don’t want for nothing. I’m not going to Wales man, nothing back there for me. Me family hate me man. I got a couple of kids back home, but I can only keep in touch with them, cannot do much. Don’t worry about the mistakes you’ve made Richard, getting sacked from jobs - you have a chance here. Look at it that way.”
In one effort to reginite the conversation which I had begun before with the American, I asked him his name.
“Jason.”
“Well, my name is Richard.”
“I know, my girlfriend told me. You met her earlier today.”
So that minuscule fool of a girl had told him I had asked for her number - that was why there was this petty aloofness, and bitching. In Celtic solidarity me and Shanus kept together, singing songs.
“Ohhh Ah up the Ra! Ooh ah up the Ra!”
“The fields of athern rye!”
“No nae never - ooh up the ra - no nae never no more! I played the Wild Rover, no never no more!”
Catching momentarily Jinza’s eye whilst in the actions of this bonhomie with the Irishman, there was a glint of hostility, which then went as quickly as it came, Jinza sitting there inscrutably, answering questions with a childlike playfulness. In reality a primordial instinct was telling him that his territory was being threatened - he did not like the two intrusive visitors here who shouted loudly, but who though rambunctious were not meaning it in threatening way - but his instinct probably did not tell him that. I knew then that the man did not like me. I missed David. My best friend. Drinks and the food was put upon the bill. Gavin had said it would all be free and that Jinza and his pals would pay for it all. When the bill came I did not see anyone putting their hands into their pockets. Jinza said over to me, “You pay this time, Richard.”
“I have no money.”
In reply Jinza huffed. He had spoken the little English he knew. I saw plates and plates of kebab sticks they had finished, they eating more than their drinking. Shanus and I had not eaten anything. Our drinking would not have cost much.
“You’re gonna have to pay Shanus.” I said, “Otherwise these people are gonna get the hump.”
Shanus was drunk now, and a complete contrast to the chirpy, healthy appearing, optimistic and friendly young man I had met at first earlier in the day; here was a slurring, swaying man, with maddened and glazed eyes who threw off comments in his Irish of sardonic wit and anger at the Chinese assembled.
“Dirty shower of f-ing peasants.” He paid the bill, a hundred yuan or so, but sat in his chair angry as hell, swaying from side to side, talking almost to himself in anger, but looking at Jinza. “So you think you are the hard man d’ya? And buddy boy here, the yank, does not even pay anything towards the bill. Left it all to me.” Shanus turned to me and was going to say something but recognised me through the mists of drunkenness, recognising me as an ally, and said nothing. “Dirty shower of peasants,” he kept muttering to himself as he put a cigarette to his wet lips, the dirty being pronounced “dorty”. Jinza looked staright at him but could not understand him. Gavin, crafty around money, ingored it all and tried to make conversation with the midget, he always repeating the little Chinese he knew and the word, “Jenda? Jenda?”, meaning, or so he told me, really. He was nodding to the midget’s Chinese, as if he understood.
“Gavin, where is the toilet around here?”
“You know mate, it is anywhere - you’ve been pissing all night all over the place.”
“I don’t mean for the pissing - I have a turtle’s head poking through my bum cheeks.”
“The same mate. Anywhere, but somewhere a bit more discreet. You’d better crouch, and do it that way, if you can. Want me to come and help you?”
My stoamch was in dire straits. Painful. Result of eating donkey which Victor’s dog of a wife had purchased “freshly” from the market earlier in the day.
“Please do.”
“Here’ll do,” Gavin said, pointing out a small alley by the side of the road which had a lot of rubbish in it.
“Look at the state of this place!”
“It’s only to sh*t in” he said in that braod Welsh accent, amusing in his pragmatism though he did not see it, “can’t be choosy about the places you sh*t in.”
“HAHAH,” I was laughing as I was crouched down with my excrement poking through my buttocks, at the absurdity of the situation and his comment.
He laughed in return, “Bloody hell, Richard! Look at you, man!”
My laughter was suddenly turned to sounds of fear when I heard something very close to me dart through the rubbish.
“Bloody rat that is.” Gavin said matter of factly. “Better finish or it might come and bite you on the arse. Push harder Richard!”
Not wanting to put any more effort into it but cutting the whole thing short, I squeezed my buttcoks, cutting the turd in half. No doubt, half of the turd was now mushy and all around my rectum. Old skiddy bollocks.
“That hurt my arse.” I said, whilst walking in a funny way and stopping to scratch my bum. “Any chance of any toilet paper around here?”
“You ask for the world don’t you?” Gavin giggled, “Toilet paper! Go and get some of the tissues off of the kebab people.” Even the necessities of life were lacking in a lot of places in Shijiazhuang. Most of the restaurants never had toilets.
Shanus was still going on about dirty peasants, so I got him out of there. “Come on Shanus, we had better go.”
Hearing me through the drunkenness he got himself up, rambling on, and Gavin, onto his anger, said, “Where you going boys? Need help getting back to Victor’s?”
“Ah…yeh fecker,” Shane mumbled.
“I have the address, we’ll be alright. See you soon.”
Shanus was in an aggressive mood, shouting out now and then at people passing, meeting their smiles with profanities, so that they did not know how to take it; with some groups of males though, they could tell something was up and they gave those cold stares. The pacific race that could become nefarious and unrelenting - I knew that too well, and a lot of us London lads had a wariness of the Chinese, we avoiding ever “knocking” a Chinese restaurant as we knew what the consequences would be.
“Come on just the one, for the road, Richard.” Shanus was trying to drag me over to one of a group of tables outside of a restaurant where a group of these staring males were sitting.
“No way mate, we’d better go. We’ll wind up in aggro in these places.”
In the middle of the street, though not as busy now as in the day, Shanus pulled out his penis and started having a blatant piss there for everybody to see. The young men at the table outside the restaurant, including the waiters, started to shout over at him, telling him to stop.
“What? You dorty people! f*** ya yeah! Eeeer!” and Shanus held his penis upwards so the urine made a lage loop and came splashing down in a foamy puddle. An action I would mimick when I was drunk.
“Come on you, let’s get you going. Sorry! Sorry!” I shouted over at the men in Chinese and bundled with difficulty Shanus into the back of a taxi.
“Why d’you keep calling me Shanus?” Shanus drunkenly asked in the back of the car. “Me name’s Shane.”
“Shanus sounds much better - don’t you think?”
“Ah, you’re alright Richard.”
The phone rang and Shanus picked it up - I heard the accent of the valleys coming from Gavin asking if he was safe and sound. “Ah, feck off you dorty ponce yeh!” and Shanus put down the phone. “Dorty ponces them people, ordering all the food and not even having the money to pay for it.”
We both arrived back at Victor’s flat, I ready to go into his son’s bedroom.
“Richard,” Victor’s sickeningly forced sweet voice informed me, “Shane will be staying in the bed, and you will be sleeping in the bed we provide for you.”
Relegated, discarded to make room for the new meat that Victor received. I wondered when exactly I would be taken to my new flat, which was “very nice and ready”. I spent a troubled and almost sleepless night on the makeshift bed, tossing and turning, the springs noisily rebelling against my movements, with cries that said they did not want to be disturbed. Shijiazhuang.

*

To be in the centre you more or less had what every city had in China. You did not feel so cut off from the world. Where I was taken to live was in the far suburbs of Shijiazhuang, becoming more desolate looking, the buildings more rundown, the people shabbier, and the restaurants far filthier. It was in fact on the edge of the countryside, there would be disorganised fields to the sides of the road, having overgrown grass that blew in the wind, and people everywhere would ride on bicycles down the dirty side lanes, the ringing of the bells the only cheerful sound in this depressing place. I had never been out of the nicer places of Beijing, Nanjing, and Dalian, but this was probably what the majority of China was like. Victor took me here in his car, pointing out to me, “Look there is a river.”
A river with restaurants and their tables beside it, that some attempt to make it seem fashionable maybe, and there were single groups of fishermen, old men, who sat on the banks, silently trying to look into it whilst smoking cigarettes.
“Do they catch any fish in there, Victor?”
“I never saw. If they do I not eat it”
“Pollution.”
“Yes. Very dirty river.”
It was a brown sludge, an open sewer, holes in the sides threw out strange looking substances that one could only presume was waste. The smell confirmed that. The district smelt like sh*t, and the fumes of some unidentified toxin mixed with the gritty district perfume - earth, car exhausts, and low budget cooking - and produced something awful, which at first I had to hold my nose against, not being used to it. With time I gave it no second thought. A train rumbled noisily past us at a crossroads, there not being any obstruction to us crossing over the lines. Factory chimneys smoked away on every horizon. This seemed like an industrial power house. I regretted ever leaving Nanjing. I had scoffed at the view it was called the green city of China, but compared to this…
“This going to be your place to live just temporary. It is in the school.”
The school was a group of four five flight buildings, austere and military looking and of red bricks, without any style whatsoever, did not even have the advantage of being ugly, they were completely roobed of any personality, but portrayed that faceless value that Victorian prisons had in England. Their style had no character but the way they were just dropped in this industrial wasteland in this open area, made them appear as squat, rectangular and fat intruders that were not going to budge. The paving stones in the school itself, they gave testament that the place was unwanted; between every single crack the grass and weeds sprouted high and defiantly, and probably at one time someone had cut it regularly, but gave up seeing how pertinacious the earth was. The football filed was completely overgrown, the height of the grass coming up to chest level. It was abandoned and the goal posts were rusty. The place offered no emotion but one of emptiness and desolation. Victor had to exaplain himself at the gate of the school, was in lengthy desicussion, to an old guard in a grey uniform. I smiled in greeting but he completely ignored me. By the side of the gate there was an outhouse where the guards lived, their caps on pegs and their truncheons. There was a large amount of truncheons. The place seemed like a prison, but not only a prison - a shithole prison. At one of the buildings which was nearest to the gate we were met by a plump Chinese woman, in her late twenties, seemed to convey no personality at all, was a person and worked for the school and that was it; even when I had known her some time I stil could not tell anything about her or describe her. She fitted in well with the school, this seemingly brain dead woman - short, squat and plump and an intruder on my life.
“This is Miss Bai,” Victor introduced me.
“Nice to meet you Miss Bai. I am glad to be at your school. I have been teaching in China for almost two years and am looking forward to this new position.”
“Hello,” is all she said.
“We go to sign the contract with Miss Bai,” Victor informed me and we all went upstairs, entering an almost antiquated office, probably very much what the office had been like for decades, having bare bright blue and garish walls, wooden desks and those ubiquitous hard sofas which always were in the same style, and a huge fan in the middle of the room above us. A map of China was on the wall prominently displayed, and intimidating in her size to me who was now trapped within her and in one of her (for me) meanest regions. On Miss Bai’s desk was a small China flag. Not a computer to be seen. This was the administrative centre and they did not use computers, had a special room that was used by many for that. It made one wonder, where did the funds go? This was a private school and was charging the students more than what they would have got charged by a good state university. In this dreary scene and place, a woman glided in, her hair complete black and glistening from being freshly washed and was down to her waist. She was a beauty. How was it humanly possible that such a creature could exist in this place?
“You will sign one year contract. We pay you five thousand for one month. Twenty hour one week, and free place to live.”
“That’s all very well, but I want to know when I will finally be living somewhere, an aparment is what I want.”
Prevaricating, as the Chinese do when they do not want to do something, buying time so as to finally making something normal and therefore eternal, she said, “I will need to contact landlord. You must wait. Now we show you where you will live.” And she had said “where I will live“, the way she said almost with finality. On the same corridor a few doors along she opened a door and revealed a small room, which must have been a classroom before but now had a bed in it, a televison, two sitting chairs, a fan, and a cupboard and an electric stove, a portable one. It was clean but it was Spartan. If I had taken a picture of it and shown someone it without them knowing they would have thought it was just a very comfortable cell. That’s the impression I got of the place - a comfortable prison. Miss Bai left me with Victor as I unpacked my things.
“Please no tell Gavin or Shane that you have this place. You are very lucky because you have place in the school.”
“In the school? Are you joking? I’m not staying here Victor, if that’s what you are implying. I would sooner go back to England than stay here.”
“Calm down, calm down, Richard. Just wait and we will find you place to stay later.”
It, and Victor was starting to get on my nerves. It had already been a couple of weeks before I had even been moved into here.

Not wanting to stay in my new room, the converted classroom, for the time being just yet, I went back to Victor’s in the late afternoon where Shane was sitting bored, recovering from a hangover. We had both been drinking heavily. He had made it up with Gavin, but still was tetchy with him. That man himself walked through the door, this time wearing a basketball top, amazingly enough, an England basketball top. Aside to me, Shanus sneered, “Some sort of Welshman when he is wearing that.”
Gavin, walking with his shoulders bursting from side to side, turned a chair around and sat in it, its back in between his legs, in some attempt at appearing cool, and he took a cigarette out of his ear and lit up. “Hiya boys, how’s et been going, eh?”
Shanus did not answer him, but closed his eyes, as if trying to go to sleep. It’s what we did a lot around Victor’s, try and sleep through as much as we could. There was nothing to do.
“How’s ya drinking?” Gavin asked aloud, meant for the ears of everyone, including Victor who was sat nearby. He was patronising, though I think he menat well. He might have meant well, but my head was saying, “Who does this prick think he is to go around giving me advice and think he can judge me?” His drinking was just the same as mine. There was not much difference between us; Gavin thought he was some exemplar in life, as a teacher and in life in China. He had often said, “He’s a good teacher, Victor.” pointing at me, “Get him some part time work. Not as good as a teacher as me though,” laughing over at me but meaning it. The ethos of Victor’s organisation was one of distrust and underhand dealings, of talking behind one another’s back and so on. I had been pulled aside a number of times by both Victor and his wife and been told about jobs, even elsewhere if I wanted them, but had been warned not to tell others about them, principally Gavin and Shane. I had remarked, “I am open with them, I think honesty is important,” but Victor, Gavin’s “friend” had said, “When Gavin talks to us, he tells us not to give you part time jobs and to give them all to him.” I was jaded with the pettiness of it all. Have the jobs if you really want them!
“Boys, been having me doubts about me bird.”
“What’s been happening with her mate?” I replied to Gavin.
“She’s just been acting weird. Jason reckons she might have another fella. Can I use the phone, Victor?” Victor assented. Another of the great things Victor did, and what Gavin used to the full whenever he had the chance, was allowing us to use the phone for local phone calls.
“Hello baby,” Gavin’s Welsh accent went into sickeningly saccharine affection. “What you been doing these days? You’ve not been yourself. Why have you not been answering my phone calls?” and he said this very slowly, even with a mock Chinese pronunciation.
“I thinka you don’t like me.” the China girl answered on the other end.
“But I do like you,” Gavin said in an attempt to try and be soothing.
“You always say bad thinga to me, and maka joka bout me.”
“I don’t. I really like you. You know that.”
“There some thing I cannot say to you.”
“You know baby, you can say anything to me.”
“You don’t like me. Boo hoo boo hoo,” the girl started crying. We could hear her on the other end of the phone. “Don’t cry,” Gavin consoled her, “I do like you, don’t cry…”
“I can’t put up with this sh*t. Coming Rich? I’m getting the f*** out of here,” Shanus got up, bleary eyed; still angry with Gavin. I had to get away from the man as well. I was glad he was dumped though. Pretty devilish little creatures those Chinese girls were - she was the one dumping him and she was now attempting to make it seem like Gavin was the one who was doing it. I wondered out of whose consideration she was doing that for - she might not have been all bad, the old slag, as she may not have wanted Gavin to feel like he had been outright dumped and therefore feel worthless. As we left, before we closed the door, I could hear Gavin’s voice beginning to change its tone into one of begging, stopping short of, “Please don’t leave me, or I’ll kill myself.”
Shanus slammed the door and walked down the stairs. “Whatever you do Rich, don’t ever wind up like that c**t.”
“Don’t plan on it, mate.”
“Cheer up mate,” I put my hand on Shane’s shoulder, “at least that was funny - ‘I do like you baby.’”
“HAHAHA. He’s a f-ing idiot. Oi bet she’s been fecking de whole toon.”
“Use your restaurants as pubs Shane, that’s the trick.”
We did. I had always done. Both of us sat in a restaurant across the road. Shane’s phone rang and it was Gavin.
“Shane, man, I don’t want to be enemies with you. Come on, us boys have to stick together. I don’t know why you have got the hump with me, I still don’t know what I’ve done.”
“Ah, it’s nothing, Gavin, I just get a bit touchy sometimes. It was that night you invited us out then your whole crowd left me to the bill.”
“Jinza will sort you out mate, he is a good bloke.”
“Ah, come over for a beer. We‘re in the restaurant opposite.”
“He’s not so bad, I suppose,” ruminated Shanus, “I’ve gotta calm me temper.”
“He’s not so bad,” I said in reply, “but he is a bit of a c**t.”
Gavin came down, his flowing basketball top and tattoos, and his earing, complimented by a large fake gold chain. “Looks like I’m a free man, boys. Jason’s girl told him that she has been dating someone behind my back. A rich Chinese, like.”
“Did you ever use to take the girl out anywhere?”
“She’s got money herself man, she used to take me out. Gonna miss her I am, she used to clean my aparment for me and everything!”
“For free,” I thought.
“I’m glad we’re mates again, Shanus.” Gavin had now picked up on the new style of name I had used for Shane, “Bloody touchy one this one, eh!” and he clapped a hand around Shane’s back. “We’ve got a hell of a bloody night of drinking ahead of us tonight. And I for one, am off to have a f*** down lady’s lane tonight.”

Three hours later. The same restaurant. Nine at night. The customers had came, eaten, and then suddenly left. The three of us sit on stools drinking, with a plate of kebabs left on the side. An incrustation of flies coats the meat, but Gavin still eats them, and then asks the waiter to heat them up again. “Bloody lady’s lane tonight, boys! I tell ya!” Gavin keeps proclaiming. We are getting ourselves buzzed up, hyped up, and when fortified to our satisfaction will unleash ourselves on this lane that Gavin so admires, though I doubt you will find any ladies there. Diseased whores perhaps, but no ladies.
“Ooh ah up the Ra! Ooh ah up the Ra!” Shanus is in singing mood. On an oppostie table, there is a man in uniform, having a black peaked cap with China’s national emblem on it - the gates of the Forbidden City with stars. He is some sort of policeman or guard and he is drunk, alone, not eating, and raises his glass every time Shane starts singing rebel songs.
“Whey!” Shanus shouts over to the man as we guzzle beer “To Ireland! That’s your man over dere,” the Irish accent more pronounced now that he is drinking, “he ya man! Pissheads like us! Come over here ya.”
The uniformed man comes over and sits with us, bringing his pint with him. “Can I try on your hat?” I ask, taking it off of his head. He graciously allows me and when I try to return it to him he refuses it, motioning with his hands for me to keep it. I sit there with the police hat on. The man also has a whistle, and we are intermittently whistling on the thing to IRA songs. This is more like Ibiza, not Shijiazhaung on a Monday night. It’s the holiday, so why not, I think. We have nothing better to do.

“To Lady’s Lane,” Gavin informs the taxi driver, giving him directions, until we arrive in a run down district on the edge of town. Going down a side street, we enter a netherworld place, dark alleys with bright red and orange lights, barber shops which do not cut hair. The alleys twist and turn, holding secrets of life we have no idea of, secrets of misery, lost souls standing at the doors in cheap makeup and clothes, some shops with little sinister men staring menacingly at us. The rotten stench of the district cooking fills the air, the smoke rising and filling the alleys, making this dream-like and surreal, but for the people who live here - hell. At first bemused by us, the prostitutes become a little afraid, with all the noise and laughter.
“Come and suck our dicks!” shouts Shanus. Gavin walks boldly up to the whores at the doors, asking them the price, and when told what he does not want to hear, above fifty Yuan, marches on. The noise causes an old woman, a virago, to come out, shouting for us to clear off if we are not going to be spending any money and continue being noisy. “Wahey, come and have a look at this!” hollers Shanus, holding his shrivelled up penis for the world to see, with the policeman’s cap on, and urinating in the middle of the street. I see what he is doing and deem it a splendid idea, so both of us are walking down the alleys with both of our manhoods out, both shrivelled up, and both to some extent Irish.
“Hello dere darlin!” Shanus greets one girl, and though in this seasoned profession, she gingerly receives us at the door on the street. Shanus points to his cap, “I’m the law and I’m here for a freebie.” She does not understand, the poor short girl in a white dress which is going yellow from the cigarette smoke which is smoked daily in the waiting room where the girls sit. She looks at the police hat, perplexed, then notices that Shanus and I both have our cocks hanging out. She runs back in, covering her face.
I say in drunken amusement, “Scared of our coreys! She sucks five hundred a day - what’s wrong with ours!”
“You boys are f-ing mad you are!” says Gavin, still trying to be the sensible one, and even thinks because he is a few years older he has got to set an example. His amazement makes us laugh all the harder.
“This is the one!” Gavin finally announces. A burly woman greets us, ushering us in whilst some of the women inside squeak with delight and fear. The shouting continues. Shanus picks up one of the women, proclaiming, “This one’s for me!” and swivels her in the air.
“Gavin. Shanus. I’m not coming in. I don’t feel like it. I am too drunk and will not be able to do anything. Sorry about that.”
“Come and have a go, Richard, you tight bastard,” Shanus encourages.
“Really.”
“Don’t know what you’re missing Rich. We’ll be half hour.”

Gavin closes the door and the welter of sounds created by us disappear. I tread heavily over to an open air restaurant opposite which is deserted, walking across the sandy and dusty floor. Without the noise it is just another night in China. The brothels are not busy. The girls return to the doors, peeking out and smoking their cigarettes. Barbecue ovens outside of restaurants throw off a different light from the sickening unnatural electric of the brothels and restaurants. There is something warmer and primordial about the sensation it brings when you see it. Shijiazhuang has that countryside aspect amongst its urbanity. A lot of China does. A reflection of the people. Most are country at heart. Old men pass on squeaking bicycles; ring their bells when they pass me as if to say hello. Guttersnipe children play, running along the lanes but never too far from where they live, many the sons of restaurant and cigarette shop owners. The sound of televisions can be heard in the background, a voice asking questions and receiving laughter. I tilt my head back and let the ice cold beer slide down. I smack my lips and notice a tree in this area, the only one, sprouting forth amidst where it should not be - an old haggard thing, with rubbish collected at its base. Just like a miniature of the tree an old man sits at the base, the same as many an old beggar, the Confucius beard and dusty rags, and starts to play on his string instrument. The eerie, lamenting sound, embodying China itself, makes the air come to life, this testament from the man of the street. The notes hold a life of their own. I sense something ancient in this, and feel for this man. He is following in the footsteps of the ancients. The man from the netherworld, playing for this crepuscular netherworld - the puissant ugliness of Shijiazhuang is its beauty. Seeming to end just as suddenly as it begun, the music stops. The old man straps the instrument to his back and goes on his way, without giving one look in my direction. He was not playing for money. Gone from this district it is as if he never existed. The music was played for me - from a ghost to a ghost.
This quiet, this almost near peaceful night, is rudely awakened when the door of the brothel slides open and the noise from the women and the boys reaches my ears.
“That was de best fook I’ve had in ages, man!” Shanus exults.
“Don’t know what you missed. Only fifty yuan, Richard. Always next time!” Gavin promises.
It is the same as when the dreams and romance of the night are dispelled by the banality of car engines of the early morning. Real life. I could live in a dream forever. In this drunken reverie. What I just experienced for a fleeting second when that old man was playing and I was sitting alone listening, a witness to one of the ages, that was what I drank for. To feel the emotion sober I would always have to calm it down. Ineffable.

The roving drunks. We soon lost each other, each on his own blackout and mission. Going into one sloven restaurant the floor of which had just been cleaned by a dirty mop I found Gavin. Completely wrecked. His eyes bloodshot. He made a grimace at me when I walked in and could not get his words out properly. He was not as used to this as I was. He drank a lot but could not handle it. I could black out and still go on, even for two days. The desire to drink was that strong within me.
“Where’s Shanus, Gavin?”
“Dooon na.” Gavin let his head drop on the table, closed his eyes, but kept fidgeting, not getting any proper sleep. I drunk my beer laughing at him, saying, “Go on, get your head down.”
“Am fine. Come on Richard, I’ll take you down lady’s, get what you did not…”
“Yeah, I think I could do with a bit of that now!” I was drunk enough. I never went with any of those women when I was sober. I was always drunk. I could not bear the filthiness of it when sober.
“Come on you, let’s have a walk.”
I dragged Gavin up from his chair, and he sort of unsteadily led the way, going down a deserted street and smashing his head into a couple of lamp posts.
“You’ll love this.”
“I’m sure I will Gavin.”
I liked being sober, at least a bit, when others were drunk. It was a good time to be in control.
“f-ing ead, man, got to get sleep…”
“What was that mate?”
Gavin mumbled something indecipherable. He then lay down in the middle of the deserted road. But not just lay down, he was splayed out, his arms over his head and his legs pushing away from his body. He could easily be run over and killed.
“Get up you silly Welsh mug.”
“Ggmmmhhhddd.” Gavin turned to his side and started snuggling up, snuggling up to nothing, and had placed both hands underneath his head acting as a pillow. He was getting ready for some serious sleeping. A car came along the road, slowing down as it neared us. Then another. The cars were sounding their horns. “Get up you Welsh mug!” I kicked Gavin pretty hard in his thigh and he yelped. “”f-ing hell!” and got up as if ready to protect himself. “What happened?”
“I just saved your life. You walked out into the road and I pushed you out of the way.”
“Oh.”
Gavin told the cars to f*** off and they drove off yelling abuse out of the windows. His head looked down at the floor. When I mentioned prostitutes he remembered and seemed more eager, there was more determination in his step. A passing police car went by. “It’s the f-ing busies man, don’t look at them.” In two minutes it was coming back, slowing down alongside us. An unfriendly looking policeman was asking us something in Chinese from the moving car. Gavin was waving them away. They drove in front of us and pulled over, the driver jumping out, opening a door and motioning for us to get in. We complied. They got in the front and were radioing through to someone. They asked questions of Gavin, and he, bad enough when sober, now thought he was fluent in Chinese. Many “jenda, jenda” came out. I knew more Chinese than Gavin did, and knew he was making no sense to them. They were pulling us up for no reason. They had nothing to do and that was that. This sort of stuff could take hours in China. “I think we’d better go, Gavin.”
“I agree with you.”
We both got out of the car. The police were at a loss what to do - we had not done anything wrong so they could not arrest us. They probably wanted to do a lengthy visa and job check. As soon as we turned a corner we started to run, and heard the police shouting behind us. Jumping over a wall with broken glass on the top it, cutting our hands up, we waited in some sort of vegetable plot.
“Gavin, this is f-ing insane. We have done nothing wrong.”
“I know, but it’s f-ing China though ennet.”
The little scare had sobered him up. It was something like twenty minutes we waited for, until we had both had enough and carried on with our journey. “This is some trouble just for a poxy brass, mate.”
“Here now.”
Early hours of the morning, the sun taking its first involuntary peep at the world, the birds going their ways with their cryptic singing, only once in the day louder than car traffic and that is now. I recognise Lady’s Lane,a true dump it is, losing its twlight splendour in the early hours. And I love it, there is a restaurant open, having never shut in the first place. More beer. Gavin looked like he was sobering up - one bottle brings him back to the amount he has had and his head is on the table again. His eyes closed he is still ordering food from a man still roasting kebabs in the very early morning. “Nine mutton kebabs.” Gavin’s hand denotes the Chinese sign for nine, his eyes closed and he asleep but still his hand held aloft showing the number nine. Why he orders nine kebabs instead of any other number is beyond me.
“Gavin! Gavin! Gavin!” I slapped him around the face a bit but nothing would wake him. “Listen mate, thanks for showing me where to find this. I’m off now. See you later mate. I will come back after I have been in here, and then take you home.” I could not be babysitter. I was sure I would find him a half hour later after I had nipped over the road.

Any door! Any door will do! Knocking on one for a bit it was slid open by a sleepy eyed eighteen year old, squat, plain looking, stumpy legs, but not totally ugly. She did not do anything for me - she was merely an object. Within the dirty abode other young women slept in the semi- darkness, the only thing to cool them at all a small fan that blew from one side of the room to the other. Here was squalor. The girl agreed on a price - fifty yuan - the cheapest you would get it in the country, probably. I was led up to a largish room upstairs, which had other steel frame beds in there, some without mattresses. Absolutely no decoration. A bare room with beds. It was the zoo of my dreams. The zoo for women where food was passed through a hatch and people watched women chained up to beds from a conveyor belt. The sun shone gloriously through the windows. I was in China and alive. Me from the other ends of the earth, here in China! A mosquito buzzed noisily as I pumped this girl. The buzzing stopped as it must have been feasting on my flesh. The girl turned her face away from mine, as I stunk, making sounds of displeasure. I did not even really want to do this. I looked to the side of me and noticed her legs and saw she had kneee high boots on and with that image in mind tried to get into it. I could not. I wanted to cuddle up. But you cannot canoodle with whores. This was a waste of time. I stopped, only a minute or so into it. The mosquitoes continued buzzing, a drone somewhere of an air fan went on, and the sun shone brilliantly through the windows with an orange glare. Well, what’s the story morning glory! I shouted out the lyrics, waking up the whores, who shouted at me, and I was pushed to the exit by the young girl just before the madame came out and gave me an earful. This was what it was all about. Waking up in diseased and dirty places with the sun shining gloriously through the windows, you drunk, and contented, knowing that moment never lasts forever, so enjoy it to its full knowing its mortality. To drink in pursuit of that moment. That was part of it.

Gavin was nowhere to be seen when I came out. Must have been off on his travels. I found my way back to Victor’s a couple of hours later, smelling of alcohol. Shanus was sat there, sleepily drunk.
“Where did you go last night? We lost you.” I asked him.
“I have no idea.”
“HAHA. I left Gavin at a restaurant, asleep. I only went off for half an hour. He was not there when I got back.”
Victor received a phone call and when he finished said to us, “Gavin is just found asleep outside the McDonald’s on the floor. I have to tell them he work here.”
Shanus and I started laughing. “Why do you think he went there?” Shanus asked.
“To pull some birds I presume.”
“We wait for Gavin, then you and Shane will go to school. Shane have to sign some contract with school,” commanded Victor.
“I’m pissed, man.”
“You British always get drunk. Cause me so much trouble,” Victor said in ill humour. “I wonder if I make the right decision about you people.”
“I’m not British, Victor!” half angrily Shanus pointed out.
“You used to be,” I let him know.
“Ah, feck off.”
A laborious ascent could be heard from outside, heavy footfalls that would stamp the ground twice when stopping, to turn on the lights, banging your foot making the lights in the stairs come on, and then there was a heavy knock. Shanus and I looked at each other and said at the same time, “Gavin.” The door was opened and revealed the man himself, tired, but sober, with his England t-shirt covered in black marks.
“Why d’you leave me?” he said, angered with me slightly.
“I could not wake you up. I went to get a bird. I left you there but you must have walked off.”
Victor started, something of a dressing down, “Gavin, you always cause me so much trouble. The police are asking about you today. You are found asleep outside the McDonald’s!”
This was news to him, “You’re bleeding joking, Victor! Why would I go there?”
“I think you must have been going there because you had the idea of women in your drunken head.” I judged.
Gavin scowled slightly at me after I made this remark - angered with me for leaving him, which he had strangely remembered.
“You were lying in the middle of the road. You were murder and we nearly got arrested, though through no fault of our own. The police were following us even though we did not do anything.”
“It’s these a-hole Chinese, man. I can’t stand the way they go ‘lao wei, lao wei’ every two seconds,” said an annoyed Shanus. He was not a fan of the Chinese.
“It does not mean you are bad. It just mean you are foreigner.”
Gavin started then, “But it’s rude Victor. Little kids going ‘foreigner, foreigner’ and pointing at you. I don’t like it.”
“Maybe you go home, then.”
That shut us up, well, Gavin and me, but Shanus had a short quip for that, “If we did Victor, you’d be f***ed for money then. HAHA.” Victor laughed in response.
“See you later Gavin!” I slapped him on the shoulder. He gave a slight grimace in response, still annoyed with me for leaving him. And I did leave him. I was glad he wondered off.

The college, my new home for the moment, was too bright for drunken eyes. The halls echoed with closing doors and voices, the corridors had the sun shining through them, stark reality, and there was an enclosed smell, a stuffy smell, of farts. It was in every nook and cranny of the building. The stale stench of lingering farts. The bright blue of the walls brought us back to reality. Shanus was suffering, his dark Irish hair was wet from the sweat, an accretion of sweat from the hardened drinking of these days, and the beads dripped off of his chin and nose and ran down his forehead. I was the same, but unlike Shanus I wore short sleeved shirts. This mad Irishman wore a jumper in summer.
“I can’t believe I am going to be staying in Calcutta.”
“It’s gonna be good Shanus, me and you are going to be living together and it will be a right proper laugh. You watch.” I assured him. I had one of my own for a flatmate.
“This is Miss Bai.” Victor introduced Shanus. “This is Shane.”
“Hello dere, Miss Bai.”
Miss Bai stood with her hands on her hips surmising Shanus and me. She let nothing be known by her expression, but I am sure she knew we were drunk. “So you went to London University?” she asked Shanus.
“That I did. It’s a grand university, so it is.”
“The same as Richard. Did you know each other?”
“We’ve been best mates for years, so we have.”
I nodded in agreement.
“We’ll have a place ready for you soon. Do you mind living together?”
“No, we’d like that.”
“Great. Here is the contract to sign, Shane. You have to stay here one year.”
With a lot of effort, his hand and head swaying, his eyes unable to focuse properly, Shanus got an erratic something down on the paper which sufficed as his signature. In passing, and almost in regret he said to no one in particular as he handed the contract back, “I have to say though. This place is like Calcutta. It’s a shithole. I don’t know how China’s gonna be the next superpower. Do you, Rich?”
Standing with my hands in my short pockets, a bit shocked he was talking like this in front of our boss, who took no notice of him, I agreed. “When you see places like this district, it makes you wonder. They might be a superpower, but still is a carsey in a lotta places.”
“HAHAHA. A carsey!”
“Both of you begin on the first of September. I will see you then. Goodbye.”
Walking out to Victor’s car, Victor said, half trying to pull Shane by the arm, “Come Shane, you come with me today. We can do some things.”
“I thought you was coming with me Shanus?”
“That I am! Sorry, Victor, I am going with Richard.”
Victor stood with his legs apart evenly, in a stance, and warned us, “You two, no get drunk. This my reputation. This my job. This your job.”
“Don’t worry Victor, we are fine.”
“Richard is alcoholic, maybe not good if you are all together.”
“That is a liberty. Gavin told you that? I am not the one, Victor, who gets found on streets by the police drunk. Gavin is an idiot.”
“Just no get too drunk.” The rotund man got in his car and drove off.

“He wants his money.”
“That’s right, Shanus. He does not care about anything else.”
“Where to now?”
“Let’s hit this shithole.”
The road was uneven with potholes in it. Cars gingerly found their way along it, criss-crossing the street, some getting stuck and the drivers with help would have to push them out. Another country aspect to the place. There were many open air restaurants, and the students who were just coming back from the holidays were eating in them, the rancid smell escaping the boiling containers - smell of cheap spice and unimaginable meat. Peasants, labourers, were asleep by the side of the road on the filthy grass, their heads propped up upon their hats, and despite the noise around them of people and of cars and scooters, they slept at peace. The mosquitoes buzzed around them. We discovered a restaurant which sold draught beer opposite these sleeping beauties.
“Jar pee, please.”
Two pints were brought to us as we sat outside of a restaurant at a table with an umbrella shade over it. We watched the newly arrived students going by. An aberration in China, none paid any attention to us whatsoever. A guitar sounded from the hairdresser’s next door, and I went in there and aksed to borrow the guitar and was allowed. One thing which would never happen in England. I belted out Wonderwall about a million times, the only song I knew how to play properly. Oh, and Morning Glory. What a glorious memory in such a horrible surrounding, there was nothing like it, in the brothel. It was one of those things that would stay with me for life.
“Ya can see the Mongolian in her.” Shane referred to the woman serving us. Tall and with high cheekbones, noble looking in a nomadic sort of way (I suppose). You could see the Mongolian in her. The mystery of the ages - why were the Chinese the way they were physically? Why was there such a solidarity within their race? Like one huge organism. How could they travel all over the world and settle and keep their communities more or less intact. They had a strong culture and survival instinct - you had to admire them for it.
“Hallo! Hallo!” her husband said over to us, with broken teeth showing when he smiled, and who had slightly red dyed hair.
“Chinese Irishman over there Shanus.”
“Ha. f*** ye! He would not look out of place at home him, I tell ye.”
“I have not had any sleep in two days mate. The truth is, I do not wanna go back to that classroom of theirs. I especially do not want to go back when they are there.”
“I can’t believe they allowed me to sign a contract drunk, man. What sort of school is that?”
“I fear not a very good one.”
The bronze German teacher we had met previously, looking a pardigm of Teutonic health, with her sunglasses on and her blonde hair thrown over her shoulders, walked past, with a dumpy Asian girl.
“Sylvia, Sylvia, Sylvia!” Shanus shouted out. She came over with her friend.
“Hello boys. How are you doing? This is my friend from Korea, she will be teaching at our school.”
“Hello there.”
“How are you finding it here the both of you,” I asked.
The Korean girl pulled a face of displeasure and of worry, “I am afraid that I do not like it so far. The flat leaves something to be desired. I find the food disgusting. I am Korean and I cannot even get used to it.”
“Ye, it’s a shithole!” shouted Shanus.
“I was even thinking of going,” I let them know.
“No, I will finish my contract. Then I will see where I want to go. I thought it would be nicer than this. But at least we have an apartment.” Sylvia had decided.
“I am living in a classroom that has been converted into living quarters.”
“That’s terrible.” Sylvia sympathised.
“So, Sylvia,” I began, “you are German?”
“Yes, you know that.”
“I am an admirer of the German Wehrmacht, and even of Hitler.”
I expected an answer saying that she was not interested in the subject, it was a part of history that was behind her country, Hitler was an evil man, and so on, but to my surpise, she answered, “Hitler did some good things. He was not all bad.”
That was conducive to my eagerness for the subject, and I went on, “The Schutzstaffeln, they were a great army. The SA, they were…” I gave her an earful.
Shanus stood up and shouted, “Heil Hitler!”
I got up and saluted him in return. We both were drinking and doing the salute.
“I need to go a piss, Shanus.”
“The toilets miles away man, over the road dere. I’m not taking ye.”
Drunk and unable to see properly I started to walk unsteadily. “f*** it, I’ll go here then.” I pulled my penis from out of my shorts.
“HAHAHA!” Shanus was in uproar. “Ugggghhhh!” the girls shrieked, trying to cover their eyes.
I went over to the beer barrel and started to urinate all over it. The Mongolian appearing woman came out and then turned away covering her face. The owner with the ginger hair was laughing and led me away from it and sat me down. He understood a drunk.
“We are going now, cannot stay goodbye!” said Sylvia in disgust. They both walked off.
“Stay girls why don’t ye? Come on! Ah, you scared them off Rich.”
“I am drunk out of my head mate.”
“Time for you to go home!”
God knows how Shanus managed to get me home but he did. I was in blackout mode, him trying to hold me up, but once I had that force behind me of unsteadiness I was crashing into the ground and was sometimes landing flat on my face. We walked past the stern guards at the gate, who seeing me drunk all came out of their hut and watched, I a spectacle they could enjoy. Shanus got me right past the office without us being seen and got me into bed. After that - sleep. Comatose.

Waking up. It is with a gasp that this happens. I look left and hear the television, a welcome sign of life, but I pay no attention to the news. The covers and the room are unkempt, I probably staggering about when I was drunk before. It’s night time. What immediately hits me is the sense I am on my own. Go back to sleep. I try to sleep but something troubles me, my vulnerability now in life, my financial troubles a constant bugbear. Will I be able to get out of this? For God’s sake, I live in a classroom! “Oh God!” I say, and lift myself up off of the bed rubbing my face, feeling rough as hell. “Gonna have a wash and then go out.” I look out of the window and see there are signs of life on the dark road, though do not know the time. On the television is the BBC World News, they reporting on the withdrawal of Israeli forces from a part of Gaza, showing very emotional Jews having to evacuate the area. Lucky I have this station, as it is banned in China. I might use it for lessons…will see. “It’s proper hot in here!” I open the window, pulling the mosquito net to the side. Hundreds of moths immediately fly in, so I shut it again. I try in vain to kill all of them. Time will tell what they do to my clothes. I open my door, to reveal outside pure and unabridged darkness. “Hello!” I shout down the corridor, and this lets off a ghostly echo, that repeats what I said further and further away, the “Hello“ repeated sounding like it is coming from someone or something else. There is no one here. The school is closed. I turn on the light switch but the lights do not go on. The hallway light does not work, for whatever reason. The only sound is of the tap dripping from the toilet across the way where I want to go to have a wash. This is fit for a horror film. With no small trepidation, I walk with light steps over to the toilet, where the light works. The light from my room and from the bathroom both light up their portions of the corridor, but this small area is still surrounded on both sides by the unknown - the watchful darkness. The toilet is like a scene from the film Saw. Dirty tiles and a filthy floor. The strong toxic smell of urine. They say a woman’s toilet is nicer, and the ones I have been in mostly are, but this one - well - it’s terrible. I have to go to the toilet to defecate, but there is no enjoyment for me here, not like when I could sit back before and enjoy a good read. It’s squatting for me. I open a section door and there in the bowl of the toilet is huge piled up shits. Each toilet bowl in the room is the same. They have not been flushed. In one toilet bowl there is one sh*t that stands out from the others, is a different colour, a very dark black, and it is huge, a long and fat snake that looks like it must have hurt the person who released it. I bet it came out of Miss Bai’s arse - she has the capacity to achieve that remarkable feat. How can these things come out of the a-holes of women? How can they sh*t when they are working? I know I never do. It’s the one thing that I cannot explain and try to ignore - women shitting - but here I am faced with it in all its earthly splendour. I will flush it away. I press the flush button and it makes some effete response. The flush system is not working. Nature cannot be helped and so I get on my knees above the pile of sh*t, my buttocks inches away from it, and on top of that smelly hoard arrives my own squirty dedication. No paper. It does not matter, I do this a lot, washing my rectum afterwards with soap and water, though sometimes the towel will have marks on after, but that cannot be helped now. There is a poor excuse for a shower, a rusty metallic extrusion coming of the wall. I turn on the tap and there is some violent commotion going on somewhere amongst hidden pipes or whatever, a spluttering of water and then it all stops. I turn the tap off and on countless times. Dead. Poking my head out of the doorway I look from left to right scanning the corridor. I then run into my room and close the door quickly and lock it. This is truly one of the most dreadful experiences of my life. I have to get out of here! I am going to make some calls tomorrow, and see if I can get some money sent over, then will arrange a job elsewhere. I still have a job opportunity in Nanjing, that I was told would always be there for me, with the university of finance. In the meantime I will have to put up with this. Read a book? I try. It is not happening. Alcoholism has deprived me of the need to read. My first year in China and in all that time I had only ever read a book. The news is repeated. Nothing interesting there. I look out of the window and see the lights of a far away restaurant - holding promises of plenty. I will go there. I wipe my arse with scraps of paper and put them in a plastic bag, promising myself I will discard them later. My shirt is thrown on, and a pair of shorts. Noticing a scrap of paper which I had used to wipe my arse and which I had not put away in the carrier bag, I see that it has something written on it. It is from Shane - “Rich, too drunk to do anything. Going back to Victor’s. Signed contract drunk. Mad. See you soon for a few.” Nice. That heartens me, as if he is here himself. With fortitude I decide to run for the front door of the building. I shun the unknown, the shadows, but here, with all my courage I must go into the shadows. I do, just thinking of the moment of getting out of this place. Getting down the stairs, after using the stair rail as a guide, I see the lights of the streets outside through the front glass windows. Freedom. I laugh at my fear. I put my hands on the doors and push - locked. With frustration I push harder and harder. I shout out, “Anyone, let me out of here!” No one hears. It’s too far away from the guard hut. I run back to my room and sit on my bed, listlessly looking at the bright blue and white walls. What a liberty! Locking me in here! There might have been a fire or something. This decides it for me - I am going to leave. I will call a friend from England to lend me the money to do a runner in the morning.

The morning does come. I have fallen asleep. Doors are opening and closing, the corridor echoes with voices. Wearily, I go out to Miss Bai’s office a couple of doors along from me. I knock politely and wait at the open door. She notices me and then looks back to a newspaper she is reading on her desk.
“Miss Bai. I was locked in the school last night. That is not on. I need to have a shower, as nothing was working last night. The toilets are disgusting.”
“I will tell them to give you a key to one of the doors. The shower is not working these days, and also the toilet. It is something to do with the water system.” There was never an apology from Miss Bai.
“When will I be getting an apartment?”
“Soon. I am speaking to the landlord.”
“How will I wash?”
“Maybe you can go to Victor?”

A rare event in the north, it started to rain and to rain heavily. It was the middle of August, still as hot as it would ever be, but summer ended abruptly and winter came fast, which would be about the end of October. There is something romantic about the rain. I bought a few bottles of the local beer, which was the strongest I had ever tasted in China, being five per cent. Just like drinking Stella. The air brushed coldy against one out there, and the heavens were braying. There was something cataclysmic and beautiful in this weather. Rain drops beat against my window, at first softly but then harder, thumping away with intermittent flashes of electricity. I snuggled up to the warmth of my bed, one leg out, and drank my beer. I loved the rain when you were indoors. Wistfully I recollected moments of the past. With a few beers I could even be contented in this classroom for a home - it was warm and dry, but then I was brought down to reality when I heard people talking outside of my door. Imgaine what it would be like when the students were back? The noise! The beer made one decide - time to get on the blower. The road had turned into a veritable river. I was out in it after the rain had subsided. The dust of the street and the mud, as well as substances without names and excrement mixed in with the water, filled the potholes, and created this stream. It looked like a small flood. With my sandals on I walked through this, my feet going into the substances and I cringing. Pure dirtiness. I got to a store across the road, where a whole family lived in a room attached to the front. Small dirty children came out of nowhere, out of nooks and crannies created by the merchandise and junk in there. There was a dusty and old smell, and the structure was made of some sort of timber. With the little children who came out, two little boys who looked up with wonder at me, and who wore something not far off from rags, I got the impression of being in a bygone age - Victorian perhaps, a bit like Fagin’s den, or medieval Europe, those clothes and this structure not much different. I did not come to China really to live amongst this. I mean, I enjoyed these shitholes but did not want to live in them. I had a good few phone calls to make. First was David.
“David. Shijiazhaung is terrible.”
“Richard, I thought that. I never been to there, but my friend tell me is not interesting.”
“I am living in a classroom, and it is very poor. I do not trust this job agent.”
“In a classroom! I think you should not have lost the job in Dalian.”
“Tell me about it. I don’t know what to do now. I have signed a contract and now have a new visa from there. It’s like am tied to here now.”
“Call Teacher Liu. I think he can help you.”
“Larry Liu?”
“Yes, have a try.”
“Give me the number then please, David.”
I called Larry and felt uneasy. He was a luminary of the aeronautics university and surely had heard things about me, the disreputable things. It was also not like we were best friends and I could call on him for help. I would just ask for some advice.
“Hello Larry. This is Richard Simpson who worked with you before. How are you doing?”
“Richard. Yes, how are you? Where are you now? I heard you made friends with some of the students and you have gone to Dalian.”
“Yes, I did do that, but I have wound up in Shijiazhuang.”
“Wow, I have heard that is not a very nice city.”
“You are correct there - it’s horrible. I am working for a school now and they have not even given me an apartment. I am living in a classroom. I was wondering if you could give me any advice?” the “advice” meant help. He knew that, but it was probably limited what he could do for me.
“A classroom? Thay gave you a classroom to live in?” He sounded absolutely stunned.
“More or less. It’s a room in the school that was used as an office or a classroom before and which they have put a bed, television and cupboard in. I use the public toilet as a bathroom.”
“You have to be careful about these places in China, Richard. Not everywhere is good like Nanjing, you know. I suggest to you to get out of there as soon as you can.”
“I will.”
“Do.”
“Cheers.”
I made a phone call to a friend, one of those old friends I would often call when in China. I spent a lot of money on international cards, calling long lost friends, even ones I did not call when I was in England, lonely and lost in China and grasping at straws, and would often get a surprised answer and question, “Why the call?” But not so with Kenny Osman, a friend through the ages. I had to borrow money. I had pride, but there was no one else I could turn to, my mother being a single parent at the moment, not having anything. Everyone had “gone through” at the moment, again no one really coming near my mother. She was on her own. And so was I. A miracle: I was standing at that counter in a medieval ramshackle hut of a shop, with monkey children peeping out of different places within it, with a river as a road outside and on the end of the line was Kenny in south London in England.
“Ken, I am in Barney Rubble, mate.”
“Why, what you done now?”
“Weeeer.”
“Weeeer.”
We often made this strange noise to each other, a cross between a sheep and Bugs Bunny.
“I have wound up in the worst place you can imagine. They promised me a flat and everything but I have been put up in a classroom. Proper liberty Ken, so I am gonna do a runner.”
“D’you need some money sent over?”
“Yeah, a nifty if you can, it will cover my train fare and also give me a bit of time until I next get a wage. If you can do this for me Ken, I will be eternally grateful.”
“I will send it today, Richard. Fifty pounds. Don’t worry and get yourself out of there.”

At Victor’s I asked him, “Is there a Western Union here?”
“Yes. Why you want to go?”
“I have money that has been sent to me by a friend, so need to go and pick that up. I have been living on very little this past couple of weeks. Can you give me my passport? I need it to collect the money.”
A shadow came across Victor’s face. He did not immediately answer me. He went over to his wife and I could hear my name mentioned. The woman started to bawl, then came out of the kitchen shouting at her husband, a virago, pointing at me at times and shouting her head off, whilst I sat there dumbfounded.
“What’s this all about, Victor?”
“Why you want to leave?”
“I don’t want to leave, I just want my money which a friend has sent over to me. You have my passport and it is my property and this is not negotiable.”
“I no give you your passport.”
“But it’s the law, you cannot keep me prisoner.”
“I come the office with you and get your money with you. If you want to keep your passport, then you must give me money.”
“Money for what? I owe you merely two hundred. I will pay you two hundred, no problem. I will be getting about seven hundred.”
“No, not two hundred. You owe me six hundred.”
“Six hundred!” I shouted, getting confrontational, “For what?”
“For my service.”
“If you don’t give me my passport back, I am going to go to the police.”
“Please try, you will find they agree me, and some police are friend.”
“Ha. And you are the one who said the police are dogs.”
“My friend good dog.”
I could not laugh at the comment. He had me, so to say, by the balls. Maybe I should have tried contacting the police, but it would have been a messy experience: their judgements, I am almost certain, would have been partisan, they telling me to pay him first as he had indeed provided a “service”, though it was not worth what he said. I had no choice really - I was not going to be able to get to Nanjing on a hundred Yuan.
I collected the money, and gave Victor what I owed him, and so retained my passport. In his car he put on pleading eyes and said, “Please don’t leave Shijiazhuang. You will like this place. Please don’t leave.”
“I am not leaving.”
“Please, please, please.”
It was not me he was pleading with: it was the three thousand Yuan he saw me as, sitting there mobile in his car and not quite his yet. I had a plan to get the cheapest ticket, with some money borrowed from Shane, but that would mean me arriving in Nanjing with absolutely nothing. I reneged on my decision. I let Victor keep my passport, and took the money I so desperately needed in return. It looked like I would have to get used to this exiguous lifestyle in this retrograde town.

*

I “regaled” the students with the usual. Where I was from and so on. They could hardly get out a word. It was still hot, and I felt a sweating lubber up there on the platform. Thirty to forty people watching you when you are not looking your best and feeling like hell, well, it was not the best job.
“What’s your hobby?” I asked one of the girls, a petite pig appearing thing.
“Dancing.”
“Show us.”
With a lot of confidence she started to do some flamenco like dancing, lifting her dress up and down, in the middle of the classroom, whilst the class clapped.
“That was startling. How’s your English?”
“Not as good as my dancing.”
“So, I am going to play a word game now. Choose any word you want, and it can be a verb or a noun or an adjective - any word. We are going to start one continuous story. So, for example, if I chose the word “tiger”, and then someone else chose the word “banana” we could do this - ’One day there was a tiger who lived alone in the jungle‘- then stop and go to the next person, ‘and the tiger was very hungry and went looking for bananas’. This will go on, each person using their word, saying it at least once in their sentence. Understand?”
They had been in hysterics when I mentioned a tiger and banana. Nineteen year olds. Children. They had all nodded eagerly when I asked them if they understood, and they were preparing for this with smiles on their faces. A contrast to when they had something serious to contemplate.
“You have a minute to think of a word.”
A minute later I shouted, “Begin! Volunteers!” of course, not one. “You! What’s your word?”
“Tiger.”
“Original, go on.”
“There was a handsome tiger in the forest who is very lonely.”
“You!” I pointed at someone else, “Word?”
“Flower.”
“Go on.”
“The tiger liked another beautiful tiger so he went to get some flowers to give to her.”
The class were laughing at the absurdity of such a picture.
“You.”
A young girl, the prettiest in the class, and the best student, who made one feel guilty for hating the profession, this particular job, so much, got up, holding back her laughter.
“There is a gorilla who is very grumpy and would often fight other gorillas. The gorilla has a father who told him ‘You need to calm down young gorilla’, so the gorilla…” the story went on and on, almost an epic. I stopped her short, “What relevance does this have to what we were just doing?”
“Erm…I misunderstand what you say for us to do,” the young girl said, biting her lip in perplexion.
“Never mind, you spoke well, and you have a good knowledge of the language. You are a good tryer.”
A hiatus in the story which did begin to flow with some time as it got further into it, was when a student who I had just chosen was just completely unable to go on with anything, could not think of one sentence to use the word in. That would stop the flow. Then I got to one of the girls sat in the back to talk, who I suspected of being a lesbian, was dumpy with a level fringe and wore boy’s clothes. These girls, you got one or two in a lot of classes, usually quite studious, introverted, and disgruntled and older than their years.
“You.”
“My word is stupid.”
“Go on.”
“A boy woke up from a dream, and he realised that this story was a dream and it was a stupid story. This is a stupid lesson.”
I had never been so castigated to my face by a student before, but you had to admire her. I answered, “I completely agree, but there you go.”
“We have the book here about American culture, I think we should use this.”
It was the book they provided, an introduction to American literature, excerpts from Twain and Hemingway - if they could not even do an assignment like the one I had just given them then how on earth were they going to be able to read the likes of them? Impossible. My entire time, really, of teaching in China I had not came across students who would have been capable of that, only the intellectual class and a few at the aeronautics university. It was with relief that the bell for break sounded - a saviour from the fart filled classroom.

Out of their classrooms for the break, were Gavin and Shanus, who smoked by the boys’ toilet, Gavin never changing his attire - the England basketball top, ostentatiously revealing his tattoos.
“You look like a proper teacher up there, Richard,” praised Shanus. “Look like you do it proper.”
“Thanks for that Shanus. I have always felt awkward in classrooms. They are useless students though, cannot say I am enjoying this. What have you been teaching them?”
“Corporal punishment. Seriously, teaching them the meaning of the word and then trying to get them to have a debate upon the subject.”
“Nice. Could be arduous that though, I can hardly get a word out of mine. How about you Gavin? What are you doing with them?”
“I’m making them talk about movies.”
“Sounds interesting.”
I espied another foreigner, walking down the corridor, a tall man with dark hair who looked like Buddy Holly, and who wore a suit, all dressed up for the job.
“Hey. Hey. How you doing? You also working here?”
A thick American accent answered, “Yes. I do this job part time but I have a full time job with the railway university.” The “railway” university - there was a university for everything in China. “You guys teaching English here?”
“Yeah. It’s sh*t, man,” Gavin informed him, dragging on his cigarette.
“Is there a dress code for teaching here?” He looked Gavin up and down.
“You can wear what you want,” Gavin said, sidling up to him and whispering into his ear as if this were a state secret.
“Oh, right. Hey guys, I have to get going. See you around.”
Waiting for the American to get out of earshot, he exclaimed, “What a prick! Looking me up and down, like, what an arrogant prick!”
Looking out of the window I saw that the thick hedge running in the middle of the main pathway which existed before the beginning of term had now been neatly trimmed to form the words “English”.
“Would you look at that-”
Gavin said what I was thinking, “Yeah, I know, pathetic int et?”
“HAHA. Yes.” The man could sometimes hit the nail right on the head. It was pathetic. He went on, “Sometimes I wonder what I’m f-ing doing here.”
“You’re not the only one. Listen, can I come and sit in your lesson. I have a gap after this one.”
“Yeah, take some inspiration from the master.”
An hour later I was sat in his class and like a monkey Gavin was throwing himself about on stage, his earring still dangling when he had stopped moving.
“Right, I want all you students to think of a movie and tell me about it,” he said to his class.
And that was it.
“Go on, you, what’s your favourite movie?”
“The Lion King.”
“Yes,” Gavin was now right up in the boy student’s face, almost touching. “Good movie int et?”
“Yes,” answered the boy, put out by this alien in his face.
“Thanks, sit down.”
As one could surmise, this single question and single answer class was not going to last long, and it did not. Gavin was scratching his skinhead, and turning his head from side to side, appearing comic as the earring would dangle. “Right, now, erm, right, I want you to sing a song!”
They all started laughing and clapping. “You, sing me a song.”
A young man got up, went red, looked at the ground, and said nothing. “Oh come on, I want you to sing a song. Anything will do.” Gavin encouraged him, his face up in front of the boy’s and inches away.
Falteringly, the boy did start to sing, anything to get Gavin’s impression of a face away from him, “Take me to your heart…” a Chinese pop hit which was overplayed and was sung in English. The government was shooting people in the back of the head, prostitution and disease was everywhere, and the future intelligentsia of China were singing Take Me to Your Heart in their classrooms. Gavin started swaying from side to side, in time witht the song, clapping his hands. “Wow, that was great that!” I decided never to sit in on another lesson, but would do if I ever felt bored and wanted to be entertained.
“You did a great job there Gavin, that was quite enjoyable,” I gave him encouragement.

“Hello honey!” I shouted out when I got back to the flat. Shanus and I had joke pet names for each other now that we were living together. They had finally got us a flat and thankfully it was only a couple of weeks after I had received money from England. Miss Bai threw us in a filthy two bedroom place on the top floor of a block near the school, with the dust collected from quite a while, black floors, and a spluttering shower and blackened and grimy tiles in the bathroom. For my bed was a construction which had wood in the middle, without a mattress. It was a very hard bed. To make matters worse, there was a hole in the middle, so my arse would be poking out in the middle of it when asleep, and it gave me a bad back. There was a hard wooden sofa we sat on to watch films at night. I still had about three hundred films collected from my stay in Nanjing.
“Hello dere my poppet!” Shanus replied.
“I sat in on Gavin’s class like I said I would.”
“What was it like?”
“f-ing sh*t.”
“HAHAHA.”
“I want you to tell me your favourite movie…proper crap. They were looking at him like he was a nutter, he was right up in their faces with his mad eyes.”
“He was round here de other day. Was looking through your films, Richard.”
“Oh yeah?”
“He saw the ones you got about Hitler-”
“Which ones?” I had about ten about the Nazis.
“He got out Mein Kampf, and said, you’re f-ing mad. He said, ‘Im telling ya, Richard is f-ing got a screw loose. He’s not right.’ I couldn’t stop laughing, man.”
“The c**t.”
Shanus was giving the place some home touches, was attempting normality, buying tea bags and a mop and we had our DVD player which the school provided. He had a couple of books which he brought with him, and was trying to immerse himself in those - Dubliners by Joyce and The Cider House Rules. I had started the Cider House Rules, and it was depressing, a bit lewd and was not a good read. I read it invariably on the shitter. Reading it whilst I was straining on the toilet, I shouted out to Shanus:
“Why did you buy this book?”
“Why d’you think?”
“It’s something to do with cider, ain’t it?”
“HAHAHA.”
“But the books not about cider in anyway really.”
“I know, I gave up reading it, man.”
A film was put on, Mein Kampf, and we prepared ourselves for a night of sobriety and these films. Hitler was irate with something, shouting and gesticulating.
“HAHA. Grand man, him,” Shanus remarked.
“A fascinating one.”
Hitler finished with the things he was saying, to much fanatic applause.
“On that note, fancy a beer?”
“Thought, you’d never ask, Rich.”
“Better have something to eat, methinks. I just can’t stand this food though. Can you?”
“It’s because we’re sick from the booze, man. We can’t eat because of that. I’m getting something to eat today though.”
“Potato?” I queried in an Irish accent.
“Ha. Ya bastard, ya. It’s the only decent dish they do though, the potatoes and beef.” It was the only dish we really knew how to order except for rice.

This place at night, the suburbs of Shijiazhaung, there was no lighting on the roads, no street lights, and the only light that one got was from the restaurants. On one of the roads there was a drain that had not been covered up, and around it were people with torches. Apparently someone had fell down the train, and they were trying to lift him up.
“Could have been me or you that, Shanus.”
“I wish it was, I could have taken a week off from that shitty teaching job.”
“No chance of suing them in China though.”
By the riverside there were a lot of restaurants, the place where I had seen old men fishing before. Shanus and I sat ourselves down drinking beer and dishes were sent over by a friend we had made in the restaurant, an Uighur as this was a Muslim restaurant. The man sat with us, and we spoke very simple Chinese with him. He did not want any money for the dishes he had brought over which we were politely nibbling at, tomatoes coated in sugar, and wet peas still in their shells.
“He’s the best *bleep* I’ve met over here,” Shanus let me know, “the others, they are just out for themselves. Always going on about money. That Victor and his wife, they are greey greedy people. Shame this one looks like Saddam.”
“Oh yeah, he does!” And he did, had the exact same moustache and an Arab appearance.
“That one looks like he would not be out of place back home.” Shanus pointed at one of the waiters, who had a European appearance, and almost ginger-blonde hair, which was perfectly natural. These waiters, robust types as compared with the Han Chinese, were doing pull ups on a kind of railing that had been put in between a couple of trees. Very athlectic, and from what I had heard of the Uighurs, tough. The genetics of the world, and of these people in China were a mystery - they surely had some common genes as the English though, with the blonde hair. The migrations of the past, the results they brought forth were not recorded and were shrouded in mystery. These Uighurs here in China, I wondered of their ancestry.
“Lamb to the slaughter, dere Rich.”
I looked around and saw they were bringing out a sheep to kill right there on the spot, in the Muslim way, cutting it at the neck and letting the blood run. The animal had that lifeless eye to it, even before it was dead. It made no sound, and went meekly to its death. Like vultures, the people dined on it. The animal was sliced up, the blood spilled into the streets and mixed with the filth and its meat was put upon kebab sticks and was roasted. They stripped meat from it and we saw the bones, still red from the blood.
“Fancy a kebab now, Shanus?”
“Ah, feck off. f-ing savages these people. Let’s go and go somewhere a bit more civilised.”
A couple of restaurants along there was a place which sold the meat and potato dish which we basically lived on. We forced that fare down. Bottled beer and the sharing of jaundiced views of the Chinese.
“I can’t believe you like these women, Richard.”
“I don’t know what it is, it is like I am obsessed and depraved in some way. Even in the ugly ones I find some beauty.”
“I don’t like the people at all. Out for themselves. Thai birds are better. Way better, man. The people are nicer too, will help you out and are genuinely friendly. I s‘pose Chinese birds have tight fannies though.”
In heaven - a Friday night, nothing in the morning to do, no work for a couple of days and the knowledge that at hand are as many beers as possible. At least in recollection it seems like heaven, but in reality it was not: we were too very disgruntled and bored young men who were lost to the world, an engima to the Chinese and of course, I was an enigma to myself. I was well read, I suppose clever as people said, but I had no idea what I was aspiring to be, had nebulous notions of writing something one day but so far had not done a thing except dream about it - a writer manqué. I hated my job, I was in an alien land, which when I tried to make it my home was constantly reminded it was not by the stares and disparaging remarks that would occur at least once a day. But in some strange sense I loved the place. The ubiquitous smoke, the people and their idiosyncracies, the effluvium which filled the air most strongly in the day, the loneliness, it created the depression and the paradox that I was at my highest state of euphoria when I was in my highest state of depression.
“I swear that fish looks depressed, Rich.”
“f*** off, you’re drunk you nutter.”
“No, it’s not humane having dem there like dat.”
I looked at the fish tank in the restaurant and saw the fish swimming about emotionless, but having barely enough room to move about, were packed in tightly, and I tried to take his comment seriously but on reflection burst out laughing, “They’re f-ing fish!”
“HAHAHA. I know, so they are!”
A whopping splash reached our ears and we saw that one of the fish had jumped out of the tank and was jumping around on the floor gasping for air. A waiter quickly picked it up and put it back in the tank.
Shanus poured admiration upon the fish, “He shows spirit that one, you see him?”
“I think I recognise the one, yeah, the one with the slightly greyish colour.”
“Don’t forget that fish, he shows spirit. I swear he has Irish in him. He is a freedom fighter he is.”
“Freedom!” I said, imitating Braveheart.
“We’ve got to get him out of here really. Don’t you think? We’ll set him free down in the river with his friends and family.” Shanus said this drunk and with amusement but he also had a hint of the serious in his plan.
“I will back that one.”
I asked the waiter how much the fish would cost and it was something like twenty yuan. We went in halves and bought it. The fish was put in a plastic carrier bag for us, which was filled with water. The river was a bit further away from this restaurant and we would have to get there by getting on Shane’s electric bicycle.
“Quick Shane! I think his movements are slowing down and he might be dying on me.”
“Don’t give up on us, Willy!”
The bike skidded to a halt upon a bridge which went over the river and we stopped and was preparing to throw the fish out of the bag.
“Stop, Richard, shouldn’t we say something before we sling him in?”
“He’s gonna die Shanus! Just do it.”
“Right. Free Willy!” and he threw the fish in the river which landed with a lifeloss flop. The sound ceased, no splashing or signs of life.
“I think it was dead already, Shanus.”
“I think it was too. Should we say a prayer?”
“Might as well.”
“Dear Jesus, look after our little friend, Willy, if he is alive. If he is not, make a nice place for him in fish heaven or wherever it is they go. And remember us for doing this good deed. I always like an underdog who shows spirit. Amen.” Shanus sighed.
And with that we started humming some elegiac tune or other with our arms over each other’s shoulder looking into the silent black depths of the river.
“Let’s get home and listen to some tunes.”
“Nice one, a wake for Willy,” affirmed Shanus.

Filling the silent stairs and block with our noise we were stamping our feet and clapping when a girl came out from her flat who was a student of our school. She was with her sister and liked the two of us, “Hello boys, we are having a party in our house would you like to come in?” We assented and I was showering the participants with kisses, one her sister, who was repelled by me and sat there brooding that I had dared to try and kiss her on the cheek.
“Why the party?” asked Shanus.
“My birthday,” the girl answered.
“Some party.” They were sharing a meal, the four of them, all girls from our school, and were watching a film.
“We’re having a party in our flat, you see, it’s our birthday everyday. We‘ll see you later!”
“Come here and give me a kiss all of you.” I lunged drunkenly. The sister screamed in protest. Shanus and I went up to our flat laughing all the way. Damien Dempsey we played at full blast, an Irish singer Shanus had told me about, singing about social problems, drugs and the history of Ireland. A poet. A startling revelation and a pleasure to listen to. Poignant, reminding us of our seclusion, and of our disease. I was sure Shanus was an alcoholic.

Lord won’t you give me the strength to go on
And carry on
Because Lord, when the devil gets into my head
I feel so blue

“You dirty f-ing shower of peasants, have this f-ing shower!” hollered Shanus at China. He was stood up on a stool by the window with his penis out urinating out of the window, pissing on the people below in the street. Always mindful of good ideas, I joined him, so we were both stood at the window screaming and shouting and pissing below. Angry voices could be heard from below.
“They won’t know it’s piss, Shanus, they’ll think its water.”
Bottles of beer in our hands we were marching around the front room doing the goose step, doing the Nazi salute, with Hitler on the television and Damien Dempsey playing at full volume. The klaxon of our doorbell sounded. It was the electric phone bell at the entrance of the flats.
“That’ll be the people we just pissed on,” suggested Shanus.
“Ignore it.”
It was persistent. Whoever it was, was not going away.
“Hello, what the f*** do you want?” I shouted into the receiver. A lot of shouting in Chinese answered me. I put down the phone and it continued. “We have to go down there Shanus and sort this out.” I mustered all the bravura I had, which was not genuine as I had been drinking. We went down. On the steet arguing with the girl from our school and her sister as well as the other girls, was a young short and skinny man who when he saw me was trying to go for me half heartedly but was stopped by the screaming girls.
“I think you’ve pissed him off Richard.”
“You don’t say, Shanus.”
“HAHA. You grabbed his bird’s arse.”
“You’re joking. I don’t remember that.”
The man was still ireful about something, more so with the girls than me. It was verging on the violent. The “gentleman” in me, I thought I would stop it and sort this fellow out myself, give him a few slaps and leave it like that. In the back of my mind in China was always the fact that I was alone here, that my ilk, foreigners, were not liked here and that if I did get in trouble there may be a horde of Chinese outside of my door later on. I had never forgotten the day the Dalian Mafia had given a severe beating to the man in the disco. Shijiazhaung was a more lawless place, the more I stayed here the more I felt that I was in increasing danger. Nevertheless, I went up to the man, who was sitting on the kerb half crying and arguing with the girls, and who I saw was very drunk, and I shaped up to him, saying in English, “Yeah, you want it do you you c**t?” Though he could not understand me he knew I was offering him out and to my surprise he had a bicycle chain in his hand and drunkenly started to swing at me with it. I jumped out of the way. The girls surrounded him, trying to restrain him. He turned his anger on them and started smashing the girl who we knew and her sister around the head with the bicycle chain. Hitting them like they were men. Now, the gentleman in me, the knight in shining armour, should have came to the rescue…
“Let’s leave them to it, Shanus.”
“I make you right, dirty shower of peasants.”
The door of the block closed on the commotion going on outside, and we caroused further upstairs in our flat. Survival instinct kicked in and I knew there would have been further trouble if I had been fighting with the young man.

The morning. Or it could be the afternoon. The trains rumble away and from the restaurants across the street music is played from speakers that are set outside. Even on this high floor I can hear it fully. My skin itches like mad. A usefulness of getting drunk, I reflect, other than forgetting, is that I do not feel this itchiness. It has been driving me mad for the time I have been living here. Even though I have washed the blankets I still itch. I don’t know if wood gets lice. Heavy night last night. Funny though. I remember me and Shanus left on bad terms, badinage in drunkenness that had turned into animosity between Irish and English. That can all be forgiven.
It’s drunk talk. I hear voices outside, Shane’s, a woman’s.
“Don’t go in there, Miss Bai.”
“I just want to give Richard some timetable for extra lessons.”
“I would not go in there if I were you.”
She is right not to go in. There is a breathing monster in here at the moment. I am thankful when she goes. That horrid feeling in the mind; not just the physical tribulation that I attend to. The spiritual disarray. Close my eyes and forget I am here. I doubt that the years of my past have even existed. It has always been Shijiazhaung and that constant music and this sickly beer and gibberish from everyone. The top floor of this flat. The tenth floor. Imagine it. Leaping out. With that thought I get up and go into the sitting room and sitting there looking a picture of health is Shanus with a cup of tea.
“Hello Richard. Cup of tea there, man. Gavin was round yesterday night later on, and you were swinging for him.”
“Don’t remember that.”
“You were drunk, flat out of it.”
“I remember you also being drunk.”
“Not as much as you.”
“Well, sorry.”
“Remember the boy who went for you last night?”
“Oh yeah, oh yeah! What was that all about?”
“That was the girl, you grabbed her arse, that was her boyfriend.” Shanus suddenly turns aggressive and is full of venom, his face twisted and it is an ugly corruption of the happy go lucky man I know. “You’ll get us f-ing killed, you will. I don’t think you’re well liked by Gavin and his friends.” We had been drinking some nights in beer land, but I had not really talked with any of the others, American Jason or Jinza the *bleep*. Shanus calms down a bit. “I’m sorry,” he apologises.
“Don’t worry, about it,” though I do not forget the look or his tone of voice.
I open the door and find that there is a little pup standing there crying, and in my erratic state it makes me jump out of my skin.
“There’s a little dog here, Shanus.”
“I know, Mad Dog Adair.”
“HAHAHA.”
“It’s the neighbour’s dog.”
The jokes are the one thing which lift the pall over our existence in this dreary place, Shijiazhaung, and the shadow which ever so slightly is creeping into the relationship between me and my flatmate.

*

“Bloody swinging for me he was,” Gavin told his clique in beer land, “you’re horrible when you are drunk, Richard, a really nasty person. I was ducking and diving the whole time.”
“What?” Jason asked incredulously.
“Me when I am drunk mate, I am murder. I don’t remember doing it.”
“If that was me, I’d probably just cry,” Jason remarked, and then explained it to Jinza, who gave me a filthy look. “Here, try some of these chicken necks,” offered Jason, and I had a few. “They are Jinza’s.” The man was giving me an awful stare, as I had just eaten some of what was his without asking. There was a general odium towards me coming from everyone I got to know. It made one think they were unwanted and misunderstood.
“You’ve not been doing the bloody cleaning,” Shanus joined in, “and the trouble you are causing around the area makes me not even want to live with ye.”
“Oh alright, alright, you’re not perfect yourself.”
“And ye a ponce. I have been giving you loads of money.”
“But you know that I will pay that all back when I get me own bit.”
“Yeah? How much?”
“Well, by my calculations, I owe you about a couple of hundred.”
“Fwoor,” Shanus scoffed at me, “does not even cover near enough.”
“Carry on you mug and you’ll see-”
“Ah, feck off.”
I was glaring at Shanus and he was glaring at me. The silent fat man, Jinza, was staring directly at me just waiting for me to say something. I caught his look but did not return it for longer than a few seconds. I felt a million miles away from home. I had not called home in a while. I missed England. Funny enough, I missed Nanjing
“I’m all out of money,” I declared, and then pleaded, “Shanus, can you give me the taxi fare home?”
“Feck off ya ponce!”
I flared up, and then shaped up, “Come on then you f-ing c**t!” there was no answer, “And who are you looking at?” I pointed at Jinza. The silent Buddha with a pony tale, looking far from serene, suddenly jumped up howling and in his hand held a cosh, and started to run at me. Depsite the drink in me, I got up immediately with animal instinct and just dodged the first blow that was aimed at my head. This was a bit too strong for my liking. But he kept coming at me, and swinging blows at me that I was dodging. The unhealthy man then ran out of breath and returned to the table. I came back over to the table wanting directions written down on paper so that I could show the taxi driver.
“Just go, Richard,” said Jason.
“Feck off,” Shanus waved me away.
Jinza jumped up again with his piece of metal and went running after me again, in between the tables of diners and drinkers. I had done nothing really. I was alone in this world in China now. But one thing Shanus did not count on was coming back to live with me. He could not get away from me then. I noticed Gavin was taking their side and was telling me to go home. I was an object of general hate.

Never liking to get into a taxi and not knowing the way to go, I got into one, and thought I could rely on my instinct to direct the taxi driver. It was of no use drunk. We were soon lost. I also did not have a key to my home, I found, having lost it in beer land when I was being chased around with a cosh. Lucky I had not been caught with that, as would have found myself with a bleeding head and lost and without money. The police were called of course, and the rigmarole began. At first one policeman, then another and another. Three squad cars surrounded us on a road somewhere in Shijiazhuang. I only knew the name of the school in English. They managed to find someone who knew English, and so I was eventually brought to the school. Not without them calling the school first - Miss Bai, others, and the director. When brought to the school it was with three police cars, as well as the taxi driver, who was waiting for his fare. Endless wait. The policemen chatted with the guards, and started to show off in their cars, driving the cars and doing skids in them, on the deserted road outside of the school. Something was terribly wrong with Shijiazhuang, it was almost anarchic. I had planned on actually staying here, but pay day was only a couple of weeks away and I had an idea of calling to see if the job was still on offer in Nanjing at the finance university. People wanting to kill me, Jinza and the fellow whose girlfriend I had apparently touched up; a trio of us who would never give up drinking and were probably all alcoholic; a truly third world place where the necessities were lacking and to get anything was considered lucky; a job that promised no future and merely allowed one to exist - I had to get out of this quagmire. The director of the school eventually came out and paid the taxi driver a hundred yuan for his time.
“Im sorry about this, I am just locked out of my house, and was lost. I did not know what else to do.”
“No drink too much,” he grunted and showed me the way to where I would sleep for that night, a spare room in the school, a wooden bed which I think was meant for the use of the caretaker. In the morning I got an earful, from Victor, saying the school was having second thoughts about me because of this incident. Every little thing involved one’s job. I went back to my home and saw Shane but he still was in ill humour, and was slamming doors and stuff. He was really beginning to get on my nerves.

*

Shanus is sitting trying to watch a film, but the evidence of his own plight and his discontent with living with someone else shows. Richard sits watching with him, but a difference to how they have been with each other from the start is evident - there is just silence - and in this silence they notice each others little movements - movements of resentment.
“I’m going out,” Shanus decides, “coming?” he asks Richard.
“Nope, I am giving up drinking,” and he means it, or at least thinks he does. It took a lot of effort to refuse the invitation. Thinking about it, he decides he was wrong to refuse and will go and buy himself some beers.
“Try and clean the f-ing house while I am out. I am going over to see Gavin.” Gavin lives just around the corner but hardly ever comes around to their place.
Richard creeps to the restaurant down the stairs, and gets eight bottles and then brings them back up. He talks to himself.
“What am I doing in this f-ing carsey? With these imbeciles? If he carries on I am going to chin him, f*** the consequences.”
A film is played, and before it begins trailers for other films are shown. One is for the film Orlando, a novel of Virginia Wolf’s. Different stages of English history, a person living both as man and woman through these. Violin music is played, dramatic, maudlin, arousing Richard’s sentiment of the artistic and the sublime, and holding some form of cryptic meaning, one that he cannot grasp. He thinks this is what had always made him distinct from the people he was brought up with - he appreciates art, and feels himself somehow innately “great”. This is the arrogance in him. Drink fuels this arrogance. It would not be surprising if he found himself the lowest drunk and still thought himself somehow better, or more educated, than the fellow tramps he drinks with. The trailer is replayed. Tears well up. He toasts the television. To an outside observer, this would seem strange; Richard is not normal. And they may be right. Seven bottles and Richard is almost in the deepest stages of drunkenness. Shanus arrives back from Gavin’s.
“You’ve not f-ing tidied. You’re f-ing useless!”
There is a maddened glint in Richard’s eye, all the anger that has built up in him shows in the eye, and with intuition Shanus makes for his bedroom. Richard jumps up and goes for him, “Come on then you pirck! Come on! Come on! Come on!” .
Shanus shuts the door just in time. He locks it. With all his might, Richard is trying to smash it open, kicking it, head butting it, forcing his whole body into it. He is shouting, spitting insults out and promises of violence. “Arm gonna kill ya!”
Shanus gets on the phone, “Gavin! This is Shane. Richard’s gone mad. He is trying to kick down my door.”
“Get the f*** out of there Shane!”
“I can’t I’m stuck in my room.”
“Can he get in there?”
“No. He is trying but I have locked it.”
“Is he drunk?”
“He’s out of his head, man.”
“He’ll soon be asleep then. Get out of there and come over mine as soon as you get the chance. Right, ring me and let me know.”
Like some beast who wants its prey, and is lying in wait, Richard walks up and down outside of Shanus’s door, huffing and puffing. The ferocity of the kicks at the door gets weaker. The beast is tiring himself out. Shanus has his ear to the door and finally hears a sigh and crash onto Richard’s bed. The beast is asleep. He turns the lock, peeps out, hears snoring, then dashes out of the front door.

Very early in the morning, before school began, I got a phone call. “It’s Gavin, Richard. Can you remember last night?”
“No mate.” I was rubbing my head.
“Shanus rang me up and says, ’Richard is going bloody mad’. He has came over to stay with me.”
“Why what happened?”
“You were trying to kick down his door and was going to kill him. I don’t know what he said to you. He is staying with me, does not want to go back to live with you.”
“Tell him I am sorry.”
“I think you’d better do that yourself.”
It was seven in the morning and I had a long day ahead. Teaching. It was what I was here for, I suppose. The worst job I have ever done…wait…probably not the worst one…

Lowest of the Low

Night shift. Most people are now comfortably at home in bed, work something they do not have to think about right now. It’s comfortably tucked away and is remote. Commuters, office people and the like, they have no idea about the workers who clean the streets, never give a thought to it, and if they do see those sort of people it is with abhorrence of the smell they bring and with an increased appreciation they are not doing such a job. Not too many people want the night shift: cleaning the roads in Peckham Rye after dark is not the safest work around. Richard finds himself doing this job, the only one he could find immediately. He left school, worked in the city at a publishing firm, but found that the three hundred and fifty pounds he got a week was easily spent in the pub. Not just in the pub, but easily spent on cocaine. It did not stop at weekends, but became a daily “duty” so that he was often sniffed up in work. It inevitably came to the attention of the manager, who was duty bound to sack him. Work was hard to come by afterwards. Sixteen is an in-between age, a lot of companies thinking you are too young to employ. They want just that little bit more of maturedom. College was a thought, but that is months away, so in the meantime what can Richard do? Stay and lay about round the house - it would not be too bad he thinks, except that his mother is a constant nag. Idleness, no, it’s not happening. You need to work to have money for drink and the other things. It is a powerful descent from being educated privately, from reading nineteenth century Russian Literature, to cleaning the filthiest streets of London in one of the most dangerous areas.

“Cor, she’s a bit of alright!” says Pete, remarking upon an attractive Asian woman walking down a side road from Dog Kennel Hill, where they clean before they go to Peckahm Rye. Women are something that are elusive to these men who work in this trade, they being looked down upon. “Let’s see if she is alright walking about down here on her own.” Richard, Pete the driver and another road sweeper are in a dust cart, the smell absolutely stinking but is not noticed when got used to. The dust cart pulls up slowly beside the Indian woman and Pete leans out of the window. “You alright luv? You alright walking round here on your own?” She hurries her pace and mutters a quick, “Yes, thanks.”
“She was a bitta alright, her!”
“Yeah, she was fit, man,” the other road sweeper says, with a part Jamaican accent from the area, though this young man, the same age as Richard, is white.
“I think she was up for it, I do,”declares Pete.
“You two have no f-ing chance,” thinks Richard.

Pete has been working the job for years, twenty odd years or so, and this is all he knows. He is a native of Peckham but moved out years ago - “Couldn’t stand the colonials”, he gives as a reason, and he is not an exception, there is a significant white flight from all of South London. Bald, in his late fifties, with rotten teeth, it is hard to think that any woman would find him interesting, though they are what he always talks about. The same with the young road sweeper, who has been on the job for a couple of years. They have no hope really with women, not unless they pay ten pound to one of the many crack whores that are in some parts of the streets of Camberwell and Pekcham they work in. There is not much scope in conversation between the trio. They can hardly talk about work - “I swept up a big turd there, it looked like a pineapple!” They are happy, Pete and the kid, with their position at the lowest spectrum of society - not the lowest, that would be tramps, but the lowest employed spectrum.
“Can I borrow a light off of you,” Richard asks the kid, who refuses, “I ain’t got much gas.” Just shows what petty, lowly people these are.

“We’ve got Peckham Rye to do now, and down the front line,” shouts Pete. They brace themselves. They do not like this area. “I put me walkie talkie away here. One day they thought I was old bill, and took it off me and threw it to the ground. It smashed to pieces.” The three of them alight: a rotten smell meets them, as if of rotten vegetables and the strong smell of urine is there, as well as the remains of a fish smell from the market in the day. Briskly they sweep the streets, Pete and the kid going up front and Richard following behind with the bin filling it up with the piles of filth they set to the side for him. Dark hooded figures give them detestable looks, as if to say “What are these doing in our area?” There are no whites, and Richard feels unsafe. Though they don’t say it, Pete and the kid feel vulnerable as well, and this is why this part of the job is done fastest. “Hurry up! Hurry up!” Pete keeps shouting out down to Richard. He keeps criticising Richard afterwards to the bosses saying he is not fast enough. Road sweeping - Pete loves his job. Outside the McDonald’s and KFC, now shut as it is around midnight, the litter and rubbish is thickest, the wrappers and discarded chicken bones sucked dry of meat and juice, and are all built up. Richard feels a slave, picking up after people. The lowest of the low. Was he created to do this? Was this what it was all about? Richard looks up at the grey tower blocks, down the threatening streets where small gangs stand at the crossroads. It is a godless world. Going further down the street, appearing almost like a beacon is light and the sound of singing. . It is singing coming from a gospel church. To live in such squalor it is necessary to believe in god and a better place. Crowds of Africans in their idiosyncratic attire - women with orange head dresses, men with crocodile shoes and purple suits - flock around the church entrance on Peckham Rye. Though it is late there are some children there. One man carries his toddler daughter in his hands, then allows her to squat and urinate in the street, directly in the path of the road sweepers. The African man gives them no heed. They are the living dead so do not mind them.
“Back in the jungle!” Pete shouts out to the kid and Richard. “Bleedin colonials!”

Peckham Rye is the smelliest and dirtiest part of their job, but just off of that is the front line which is the most dangerous part. Row upon row of Jamaican eateries and “social clubs”, and seedy looking cab offices. At least it is full of colour and vibrancy. Old Jamaicans smoke reefers outside of the cafes and chat and drink beer. Many are “holding”, on the job selling crack and heroin. The police do not bother venturing down here. Nervously, with his shovel, Richard is picking up one of the piles left for him, and the end of his shovel accidentally knocks into the side of one of these Jamaicans. In answer to this physical contact there is a long and indignant sucking of the teeth, and Richard turns around from his work and sees a young Jamaican with bloodshot eyes staring at him, as if he wishes him dead.
“Sorry,” Richard says, at the mercy of the person.
The wild look dissipates a bit, and the Jamaican answers, “Jist don’t touch me agin wit that ting.” It is a warning. Richard has never felt uncomfortable being white before. He feels unwelcome being here. Strange to think this is England. If this is what multiculturalism will bring them let them keep it, he thinks. It is with joy that that part of the job is finished with, they driving off to have their “lunch” at a McDonald’s, leaving behind the aggressive drug dealers, the lost souls of white whores hooked on crack and heroin and the people trapped like animals for the rest of their lives in high rises in this South London netherworld.

“Three large cokes, please,” Pete says at the 24 hour McDonald’s on Old Kent Road at the window, the shop not being opened for safety reasons at this time of night. There are five or six black girls behind the road sweeping trio, glaring at them and making disparaging remarks:
“Look at the garbage man! He stinks, man! Get the f*** away from dem, they stink innit! Shitty job man.”
A coward, Pete says loudly, as if being clever, to the kid and Richard, “Got a promotion then, a dustbin man makes twice as much as I do.”
Nice one Peter, you really got them there.

Early morning. The shift is coming to its end. Buses are running again. Radios and televisions can be heard through the open windows of some places. The sun is just beginning to show its face. The kid and Richard sit on a wall waiting for Pete to come around with the van so they can all drive back to the dump. Two young men are waiting at the bus stop. One is looking over and shouting out and laughing, “Oi dickheads! You two are dickheads! Road sweeper dickheads!” Richard looks at the kid, his road sweeping companion, but he says nothing and is ignoring the comments. The kid must be used to it. Richard feels like a piece of sh*t, spat on by everyone, cleaning up their sh*t after them off of the streets.
“You what you f-ing c**t?” Richard screams, all the anger coming out of him which has built up inside him, he screaming at the world. He has his broom raised above his head and is about to smash it around the young fellow’s head.
“Calm down, calm down man!” the young black fellow says. He gets on the bus when it comes then shouts out as it leaves, “Road sweeper dickheads! Get a proper job!” and spits out of the window, it not hitting the road sweepers. This for a public service.
It would have been suicidal doing that down the front line. Then again no one on the front line was shouting out at Richard. The fellow who had called the kid and Richard dickheads, he acutally did Rich a favour - he left the job. It was the soundest advice he could have been given - to get a proper job.

Looking back on that I could be grateful for the job I had at that time. That was a living hell, to be trod and spat upon. London was a nightmare. Anywhere but there…

*

Isolation again. Solitary drinking. My head filled with the monotones of the students, voices that went on and on in my head, and were only to some degree quelled by drinking. It was the drinking which caused them, probably. Maybe some people had the propensity to be worse off when drinking. Maybe some people had more the capacity to go mad from it. I decided to remain abstinent from drink. Strangely enough, watching films about Hitler filled me with resolve, “Hitler did not drink. There was a man! I am English, of a strong race which achieved great things, probably unequalled by any other people.” This was an antidote to the notion I had, inflated when I was around Shanus, that I was an Irish rebel and it was in my blood to drink and there was nothing wrong with it. The first day I did not take a drop. The second day. The third day was remarkably better, I was making a go of it, and the place seemed more like home, I envisaging and getting a glimpse of normality. Still, those nights were lonely…

This is a remarkable city. Busy, showing all the signs of success and commerce. Great skyscrapers and metro lines go around, and people walk on their ways, faceless and on their own agendas. It could be any city in China, but there is something different about here. Looking closely at the tall buildings, you realise that they are actually pints, pints of Guinness, large black buildings with white tops. Slender buildings aspiring to the heavens, squat ones refusing to go any further then their more earthly proportions, but all black and white. Before the summit of every building is a little bend, just like a pint glass. Rectangular pints, diagonal pints, square pints - every conceivable shape of pint. Remarkably, you can make out little windows, a lighter shade of blackness, but some of these are open, revealing someone or other looking out. You can see fizziness rising up to the white summits, making these structures look beautiful, as beautiful as a pint of Guinness. “This is how a city should be,” I say rhapsodically, “This is untrammelled beauty.” The sky is blue with fluffy cotton wool clouds, and the foaming summits of the buildings fit in well with this, a heavenly harmony, the heads bubbling slightly and making the sky become alive with popping soft bubbles. A black and white metro train moves almost silently, creamily along the track above, with a swoosh, reminding me of something, “Oh yes, I have to go and meet Shanus. Where is that man?” It feels like I have been looking for him for hours, unsuccessfully. I have a vague idea where I am meant to be going to meet him. On the platform of the metro station, high up and seeming to look down upon this city of pints of Guinness, there is a metro map. “Welcome to Guinness City,” it says, and has a confusing plethora of stations. One of the stations says Shijiazhuang and I know that is my one. The sun shines brilliantly, warmly, just like before sunset, bathing everything in glory, telling us that overall the world is good, and not to worry about anything. Faceless women, I only seeming to catch sight of them from behind, swing their chestnut hair whilst waiting for the trains, are dressed in flowery summer dresses. The swoosh of the train on the opposite platform is a pleasing sound, making one glad to be alive and here; a contrast to the clanging racket of trains I hear always elsewhere. The sound for some ineffable reason makes me want to drink. The one word which enters my head, in answer and desciprtion to the beautiful scenes which meet my eyes, the women in summer dresses, the gaseous buildings, the fluffy clouds and blue sky, is “creamy”. It’s a creamy paradise. I used to think of heaven as a big white place, people sitting about idly but happily in the clouds, but this is a way better picture than that - this could be heaven. I have no worries. No duties. I want to get drunk. I want Guinness.

The train arrives. There are merry sounds inside and a lot of space. Guitars play. Singing. There is a carnival atmosphere But everyone seems to have their heads turned away from me. I am ignored. Can they see me? Could I be a ghost? It reminds me of the tube in London, serried ranks of people not daring to look at each other on their way to work. I had always thought there was nothing more despairing to the soul than an early British morning on a weekday, and there was not, but this is not that place. How nice if London were like this. This place is filled with happiness. The train itself, it is like one of those sixties tubes, but seems smarter, spruced up, and everything is black and white: black and white chequered material on the passenger cushions, black and white ceiling, black and white doors. I am surprised in Guinness City that everyone does not wear black and white. But that would be a bit like a uniform. The jocularity, the verve what I see and hear would not accept such uniformity it seems. I peer at advertisements above the windows and passengers. Since no one is talking to me it’s the only thing I can do. I have no confidence talking to people. It seems such fun, such friendship, such carelessness is not for the likes of me. It seems such women are not for the likes of me. Every advertisement, showing uniformity that the people do not have, is for Guinness - Guinness housing, Guinness pills, books about Guinness. I say, “Guinness,” when I realise this, reading out the advertisements aloud. And though I think this is all charming, I have a slight intuition that there is something wrong about the place. I really want a drink down me, which is why I am travelling but I know there is something wrong about that and feel guilty about it.

The motions of the train change. It was smooth before, but now it starts to shake, makes clattering noises underneath my feet and I see we are no longer above the city looking down upon it, but are underground, I seeing outside of the windows that we are in a tunnel, with old cables with incrustations of decades of dust. Is this London? From out of the tunnel we emerge into a white bricked underground station, immaculate, spotless, and art deco. A train announcer speaks what sounds like French over a crackly announcer. Are we in Paris? A board on the platfrom shows the information, “Change here for trains to Shijiazhuang.” I think about it and then decide we cannot be in Paris as the board is in English. The crowds that had got on the train with me from Guinness City melt into the crowds that are on the platfrom and leaving to exit the station or change. But there is a difference: the people on the platforms are dressed in what seems like 1940s dress, suits and the women wearing the hats of that period, with decorative nets over their faces and bright red lipstick. Where in Guinness City there had been a jocund atmosphere, and people were dressed for summer and music was played, people here are deathly silent, are pallid, dressed heavily as if for winter, and have worried looks on their faces. There is no chatter. It’s like being in the past. I look down at myself for the first time and see I am also dressed in the fashion of the forties , wearing a grey suit, with matching colour waistcoat, and have on a brilliant red tie. I feel my head and know I am wearing a flat cap. I look a bit of a character and admire myself in a mirror which just happens to be on the platform. I start to walk down the platfrom, following the directions shown, but have changed my mind about going to Shijiazhaung to see Shanus. It might be good to have a drink in this city, wherever it is. I certainly like the way the people dress. See if I can have that pint of Guinness here; Shanus can wait. A woman sidles up to me, dressed in red, with a grey skirt on, and a man with almost the same outfit on as mine but is chequered. The woman starts talking to me, through the side of her mouth, her lips almost not moving and looking straight ahead.
“We have been waiting for you, Richard.”
“You were said to be the best man. It is an honour to meet you at last! I heard many good, good things about you,” the man said in near rapture.
My ego is inflated. Though on the train all I had in mind was to go and get drunk with Shanus in the bar and place I think we were meant to meet in, I now recall that I am needed here and it has all been arranged. It must have got forgotten, in cofusion or something, or the weight of Guinness on the mind.
“Where’s the target?” I ask, now assuming “naturally” the poise of the deadpan professional killer with a mission. Not only with a mission but with a belief in what I am doing.
“We’ve been following him for a while. We know his every move and his daily destinations,” answers the brunette woman in red walking beside me, with pale skin and red luscious lips. She looks French, has an accent and has an urbane ambinece mixed with an air of formidable intelligence and fortitude. An opposite of what I have found admirable of women in China I think to myself, ethereal and even meek, and what this woman is is more what I attest to the characterisitcs of men. But it is equally alluring. But sex is far from our thoughts now.
“Protection?” I ask.
“Two, they sit a few yards away at their own table whilst he is in the café. They can easily be dealt with,” the man points out with military precision, seeming not to display any emotion, but takes off his grey trilby hat and wipes away a bead of sweat with his red hankerchief - a sign of nervousness perhaps.
“I take it you have your item?” the woman for the first time looks at me with cold steel blue eyes, but takes them instantly away again.
I feel in my jacket and feel a gun. It had always been there. I had always been doing this. This is what I was made for. I feel elation in this. I know what I am. A purpose. A mission. This is the epitome of cool. This is like a f-ing film, except it’s reality.
“We have to be careful, the German intelligence is good,” the man informs me. “They may have information about your coming. They have no idea who the target is though, so we need not worry about that. We know what we are doing.”
“A few of our members have been taken in,” the woman says, her brow a worried frown.
It does not matter. No one can touch me. The two of them seem to gather more confidence now that I am here, you can see that in their step. Me, Richard Simpson, master assassin. And we’re doing the Germans? Why? I like the Germans, but they are taking liberties. This is my job, I don’t care if Hitler is teetotal or not. This is the war. This is a war.

We walk up some steps still with the black and white bricks and art deco design. A rundown staion entrance greets us. It’s the same station entrance I have seen in Russia in Moscow, the melting snow and ice turned black, drunks in flocks drinking vodka and stamping their feet to keep warm, old babushkas wailing sitting in the sludge begging for money fruitlessly with their wrinkled hands held out. Attached to the staion entrance is an underground shopping mall, just like in Russia, the air breathing cold against the people who are wrapped up in furs. There are shops selling cheap watches and playing music.
“Quick, down this way! The Germans.” the man grabs me by the arm and starts to take me down another path of the mall. At the end of the path we are going down I can see a bobbing crowd of German helmets above the crowd getting closer to us. I can only see the helmets. No matter how much we try to get away from them, the helmets get closer but we still cannot see their faces nor uniforms.
“Quick behind me!” the woman throws me behind her, and then gets on her knees in a shooting position and starts shooting with a pistol taken from her coat. The man does the same. The crowd disperses and we finally can see the Germans. They are all in grey, wearing immaculate uniforms, and are kneeling as well shooting at us from down the other end of the narrow path in this mall, either side of the path the shops selling watches and music. I notice with surprise that the Germans do not look German. They are Chinese. Like machines, they mechanically load their guns and fire and then reload. Nothing hits us. We are invincible. We flee, and the Germans are in hot pursuit. Well, the German Chinese.

“We were lucky. Don’t run and keep calm. I know the city perfectly.” This woman is definitely in control of us. The man is a sidekick. .
“Where are we-” I begin to ask but she shuts me up before I can ask - “No time for questions.”
It’s a splendid city, wherever it is. Baroque style buildings, true creativity and style. Nothing I have ever seen can match here. But I have seen it, I assure myself, this is Paris. Or Prague? Or Venice? Down side streets, briskly going over cobbled roads, where an august 1940s car will sometimes softly go past. Pursuers are lost in this maze. Violin music plays somewhere or other. Opera singers are on the street. The people are dressed in 1940s fashion, the men in a dapper way and the women elegantly, with a lot of rouge. The people are happy.
“He usually goes past here, on his way to his favourite café. It’s a favourite of German officers, but there are not many there now. We will sit at this café to do some reconnaissance,” orders the woman. We sit at a table on the street outside of the café where there are other diners and drinkers. It’s all very fashionable. I am chuffed to be here. But I have a job to do.
“Yes, I know we have to do this German officer. And don’t worry, it will come off nicely.” I assure my new friends, my accomplices.
“Three coffees,” the man orders from the waiter, in what sounds like French. Must be Paris. Guinness City is more or less forgotten, but the stylish surroundings and the excitement remind me of that drink I was wanting. It is not everyday that you can get drunk in the nineteen forties.
“Can you get me a pint of Guinness, please?”
“Richard,” the woman answers sharply, but not in a confrontational way, “with all due respect, you have a job to do now. This is no time for drinking pints of Guinness, you have a job to do and the freedom and future of the country to think about!”
“Oh alright, then,” I answer, disappointed but maintaining my deadpan cool. But what country is it?

A motorcade snails through the street in front of us, with little Nazi flags on the sides of the front of the cars fluttering from the wind and the force of the drive. The café turns silent. The music stops. Everyone looks with trepidation at the black Mercedes cars. Rap music is coming out aggressively from them. It is Chinese rap music. Harsh, discordant, an affront to the culture of the city. It is taunting the conquered. The drivers are German Chinese soldiers with German helmets on and are bobbing up and down in time to the music and the cars are going up and down as well. In the back of the cars are German officers, all who are Chinese like the drivers, and they look smugly out of their windows with slit eyes that are so narrow that they seem to not actually contain eyes. They sneer, revealing goofy teeth.
“That’s the one there, General Von Bald. The car in front,” the man discreetly lets me know, with hatred in his face. “He is the worst of them!”
The black, elegant Mercedes stops at a café at the other end of the street, and an officer, a general gets out of the car, with a long black leather coat with epaulettes thrown over his shoulders, and seems to breathe in deeply, taking in his surroundings with satisfaction in that long breath. He seems the perfect German. He walks over to one one of the tables where the obsequious manager pulls a chair out for him at a table motioning for him to sit down and laughing at the general’s comments. The sun shines on the man’s deep golden blonde. He reminds me of someone, but not sure who, cannot see his face. But something rings a bell. He seems to assume an arrogant posture, with his legs crossed, sitting back smoking a cigarette and blowing out smoke rings. He drinks large brandies, swirling them and smelling them before he drinks. Two soldiers had got out with him from the car and went to sit at a café across the road, keeping an eye on him, whilst the car waits around the corner.
“We’ll wait a couple of minutes then we must do them. This is when they will least be expecting it,” my man says.
The two Chinese German soldiers on the opposite side are at their tables drinking pints of lager, yelling at the waiter to get more drinks, kicking him up the backside and spitting at the people walking by. They sing and urinate publicly, even trying to urinate on the waiter who brings them their drinks, he running back into the café and peering cautiously from behind a window pane, cowering behind his manager. I think they will receive a dressing down from their general but he sits graciously back in his chair and claps his hands in appreciation of their actions, as if it is the last act of an opera. “Bravo! Bravo! Bravo, boys!” General Von Bald raises his glass in toast to his bodyguards and a guttural and drunken sound responds.
“Now!” the woman with me whispers in my ear, taking resolute steps towards the trio, effacing the seriousness of her expression and assuming an alluring and seductive smile. I am enamoured of her. I don’t know what I prefer, the possessive virago she was before, the cold killer and independent woman, or the sexually enticing creature that now walks in front of me. We appear as if we are not together. My man, still walks behind me, looking nonchalantly ahead of him and not at the targets. There is just the three of them now. The motorcade and its horrible rap music has turned off and went on its way after dropping them off. There is a single car around the corner.
“Hello boys,” the woman says, after the two soldiers call her over to them. They are shouting something in Chinese. My man brushes past me and whispers sharply, “Now!”
I approach the general’s table, he sitting with his back to me. I notice his hair is thinning at the back, a white patch on the crown of his head, and he sits observing his surroundings, still smoking, and I see his cigarette is in a long cigarette holder, which is golden, matching his hair. I walk and then am facing the man. He is about thirty, slightly fat, and looks drunk. I look closely at him. It is me. Me with blonder hair and in an SS general’s uniform. I look great. I look down at my assassin’s attire I have on, the smart grey suit and white shirt and red tie, and look at his imperial splendour and wish I am sitting there sipping brandy in his stead. I look brilliant in that uniform..
“Have a drink!” Genral Richard Von Bald cries out, getting up and motioning for Richard the Assassin to sit down. “I have not seen you for ages, we should sit down and share a brandy!”
I hear gunshots from behind me and look and see that the woman has shot one of the soldiers and then she coldy disposes of the other who has his pint raised to his lips, the shot going straight through the glass and through the back of his mouth, there a golden shower, which is strangely not tinted with blood, spurting out the back of his neck all over the street.
“Rebels! Resistance! Quick friend, we must take care of them. It is lucky I met you here!” General Von Bald cowers behind a chair and table, and looks at me helplessly, but he has in his hand a luger pistol.
“Now, you fool!” shouts the woman in red to me, with dark red blood all over her pale face. The man who was with us is now firing at the end of the street at other soldiers who have been alerted. General Von Bald, me with blonde hair, looks at me, realising what I am here for. I see the utter dejection he feels, knowing I have betrayed him.
“You!” he says in disbelief.
I pull my gun out and pump him five times in the chest. His gun was not raised and it was as if he just accepted the betrayal. I feel elation. I feel great. A god. The blood floats down over the medals, crawling over Iron Crosses. I stand looking at the picture, admiring it.
“Quick, we must go!” the woman runs and takes me by the hand. I give myself, General Richard Von Bald, one last look, laying there in blood but in a macabre glory, and looking at peace, with a smile upon the face.
“I’ll deal with this one!” I shout as I pull my gun out, smelling of gunpowder still from the disposal of Von Bald, and point it at the black Mercedes driven by a Chinese German which screeches to a halt in front of us.
“No, he’s one of us, we have got one on the inside,” my man lowers my arm. We scramble into the car and it drives off at high speed, shots being fired at us from German Chinese soldiers but we losing the sound and sight of any soldiers in moments..

“This is really, really excellent!” I say, “I have thoroughly enjoyed myself. Did you see who that man was? He was me but with blonde hair. He knew me, how was that?”
“That’s impossible, and how could he be you?” the woman answers mysteriously. All in the car are silent, as if hiding something from me. Are these friends? Filled with the glory of the escapade, and the escape I start to laugh and sing and grab and hug the woman, who hugs me in return, implanting a long and noisy kiss on my cheek, which has probably left a big red mark..
“Let’s go and celebrate!” I declare, “Let’s find a bar and get thoroughly drunk!”
“Ahhh…Richard…that’s a good idea,” the Chinese German driver turning around says. It’s David.
“David! Ah, you are in on this! We are on the same team, thanks for saving us! I just shot the general.”
“I know,” David answers, “I wish I could have been the one. You are lucky to have such a chance. I hated that man.”
“What did he actually do, Von Bald?” I ask, wanting to know a bit more about my self, my other side.
“Nothing, he is a leader. It’s what he represents that is important. Getting them at the top, disorganise their chain of command, that’s good tactics,” David answers, sounding more grown up than when I usually spoke with him, and with better English.
I feel a twinge of sorrow for Von Bald, especially when I recall the bald patch at the back of his head, and the look in his eyes when I shot him. He was after all, only human.

Not knowing exactly how we got here, we are all sat in a wooden panelled Irish bar, at a large table eating a Sunday roast. Drinks are ordered. I order brandy but it never comes. I get more and more intimate with the woman in red but she does not reveal her name. “It’s a secret,” she says, “do not want you revealing me to the Gestapo.” I feel a bit hurt about that, she thinking I might be an informer, but who knows what one will say under torture.
“I am going to write a book about this. This is a great great story.” I somehow realise this is a dream in some moments and say, “I wish my head prodced more like this. This could be a film.” I look at my man, my accomplice on the hit, and then recognise him for the first time. He is the actor who played the chef in Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. “It’s very very nice to meet you, you know. We did a good job there.”
“It’s nice to meet you as well mate. It’s an honour actually.” the Chef says.
“I loved you in Lock Stock by the way.”
“Cheers mate.”
“I bet you know a lot of people in the film industry, we could get this little story made into a film, don’t you think?”
“Would be a blockbuster, mate.”
“I am a teacher in China, and am going to write a book about that. Reckon we could get it made into a film?”
“I’ll talk to my bosses and I think we could get something rolling.”
I am contented. Finally feel like I have made it in life. The brandy does not come. The woman has gone, I dejected about that as I had been promised sex, and so is Chef. I did not get his number, f***. I remember after all the events, that I have to go and meet Shanus.

Somehow I am back in Guinness City, and it is dark now, the pints of Guinness which are the buildings are lit up and the colour of purple. There is a sort of palace which must have been built in the Victorian era, with fountains spurting out Guinness. A sort of Statue of Liberty effigy, the same sort of staute stands in this area towering over all, hodling aloft a pint of Guinness. The man Shanus is more elusive the more I try and find him. I have no idea now where to look for him, but I wonder over to a Chinese restaurant, a regular hovel. I am sure of who I am now, an assassin working for the resistance against the Germans; just wish people knew about it so I could get some fame and respect. But that is not how it works. There is a wooden bar in the restaurant, and a Chinese man pouring out pints. I am cautious, I was just battling it out with the Chinese Germans an hour or so ago. I still have the gun somewhere in my jacket. A man at the bar says contemptuously to the barman, “Get me another pint of Guinness, you dirty fecking peasant, ye!”
It’s Shanus, I recognise the back of his head and the Puma jumper he wears all of the time, as well as the sound of his voice. I go up to him and tap him on the shoulder. “I have been looking for you for ages,”
Shanus turns around and his face is a pint of Guinness: he has the same hair, going over his forehead and around his ears, but for a face there is a pint of guiness, with the Guinness emblem in the middle where his nose should have been. But he is talking and something is opening and closing and acting as his mouth. He has eyes as well, which are his for sure.
“Been waiting for ages for ye, ye cont!”
“What happened to you?”
“f-ing been here for ages waiting and went a bit heavy on the Guinness.”
“It’ll soon wear off, but your face now is actually a pint.”
“I don’t wanna stay like this, it’ll not be good for the birds.” Shanus worries.
I order a pint from the barman. At last, am going to get a pint of Guinness. Can sit down and enjoy the cool taste.
“I got some coke as well, Rich, off some guy on the street. The trouble is, I don’t have a nose now. You can sniff it all if you want.”
“Wonderful, give it to me, mate!”
Even better, a drink and a toot. That way I will not get too drunk. Shanus fumbles around in his pockets looking for it.
“Come on, mate! Come on, I am waiting.”
“Wait there,” responds Shanus, Guinness Head.
“You never guess what I have been doing? Killing Germans, it was amazing, I done this General. I feel a bit bad about it, and you know what, the general was an exact ringer for me. It looked exactly like me actually.”
“Stop talking sh*t ye,” Shanus pulls out the coke and it spills out onto the floor and goes through a gap in the wooden planks. I try to get to it but cannot. I try to sniff up the traces that are left on the wooden floor but they become wet when I try to do so and it is all in vain. Never mind, I will drink. It’s good to have a drink. Think about the day’s events. The pint of Guinness comes but it crashes to the floor.
“Get me another one, barman.”
“Sorry, we are all out of booze.”
“You’re f-ing joking!”
Shanus’s laughter echoes in my ears…

“I need a drink!” were my first words when I woke up. It was an entertaining dream. It was one of those rare dreams where you actually regretted waking up. A strange dream, and for the psychologists probably full of meaning. I certainly was getting vicarious pleasure form the act of drinking and the thought of it in the dream. It certainly was created by an alcoholic mind. I could trace some of its aspects and inspirations: Guinness from Shanus and Ireland; the Germans from the documentaries I had been watching. I still could not figure out why I had been sent to go and assassinate myself though. That was a bit of a shock in the dream. I was unable to drink in the dream or to take any drugs, though it was the one thought which permeated it. My subconscious was probably telling me that I could not drink. That I could never drink. Or perhaps the opposite, as the first thing I thought of doing now was to go and get a drink. Abstinence ended and fortunately it was a Saturday. Lunchtime across the road, a few bottles down me. I still could not get over the dream:
“Why was his name General Von Bald? Must be where me hair is going a bit,” I mumbled to myself, and looked in the reflection of the window, holding up my hair to see where my hair was going. I had been utterly convinced that it would make a great film, and strangely at times knew it was a dream. Though I might have fooled myself at times that I was not an alcoholic, dreaming about a city of Guinness was certainly a sign that I was. The fish tanks reminded me of Shanus, this was the same restaurant where we had freed Willy the fish. I missed the old fella, even my dreams were a quest to find him. He must have grown on me. I went around to Gavin’s, half drunk. The college had provided him with a very comfortable flat, unlike ours.
“Hiya Rich,” Gavin said, just dressed and shaved with his England basketball top on. “Hows things?”
“Is Shanus here? I have not seen him in a week.”
“Yeah, but are you drunk though. You ain’t gonna start any trouble are ya?”
“No, no, let’s have a word with him.
I walked into the blackened bedroom, where Shanus was laying down on the floor, a quilt put on the floor acting as his bed.
“Comfortable down there, Shanus?”
He did not answer, and gazed at me resentfully.
“Oh come on mate, I was drunk when I tried to go for you, and it was not entirely my fault. I have honestly missed you, and we have been good friends in there for most of the time this past few weeks. I am sorry. It will not happen again. Come home honey. We‘re both Irish after all.”
Sitting with folded arms, with pursed lips Shanus finally let out a smile and said, “You’re f-ing nuts you are. I’ve missed ye too.” Shanus got out of bed.
“I have few beers here boy for ya,” I informed him, “and I bought a bottle of that rice wine. Let’s celebrate our reconciliation.”
“Good man. I thought ye had given up the drink? Gavin told me after he saw ye and spoke with ye.”
“I did, and was doing quite well, four days I did without a drink, but last night I was having a dream about being in a city of Guinness pints. Mad it was, the buildings were Guinness and everything. You were in it, and your head was a pint of Guinness. One of the best dreams I have ever had. The first thing I did was go straight down to the restaurant and have a few. It’s no good all of us being split up, we are foreigners and all in the same boat here. We need a bit of solidarity, otherwise we’ll all go mad.”
“Guinness city? Hahaha. That’s fecking mad. No wonder ye can’t stop. It’ll be good to get on a proper bed.”
“Not really proper is it? Hard as f***, I have a hole in the middle of mine.”
“Boys, I have to go out now, got to do a private tuition job. I’ll leave you here and be back in a couple of hours. Look after the place and no trouble, ok?”
“Sweet Gav.”
“Cheers Gav, man.”
Shanus and I got down to the bottles of beer, throwing shots of baijiu down our necks and chasing them with cold beer. The rice wine was an evil drink, causing us to retch. After getting over the initial retch you still can taste and smell the fumes, and this causes a recurrence of the retch until, with me, I have to go and get something out of me in the toilet. I was sick all over Gavin’s toilet.
“He’ll not be happy about that, Rich,” Shanus warned me, laughing whilst he did.
“f*** him. Jenda.”
“Jenda, jenda. Ah, good to have ye back Richard man.”
“Good to be back mate, I have been going mad up there on me own. I got my passport off of Miss Bai by the way.”
“Did ye?”
“Yeah. And that c**t Victor has already asked for it. No way he is getting it mate. To be honest with you, I am going in a week.”
“Miss Bai’s got me passport, but I think she told me she is going to give it back to Victor.”
“Don’t do it mate. You saw what happened to me.”
“He told us he gets the money for us from the school next week. When we get paid he will get paid. That makes it nine thousand yuan from us three as well as from the other teachers. He is making a fortune for f*** all.”
“Don’t tell Gavin, Shanus, that I am going. I think Victor has a few tricks up his sleeve that he would try to use to prevent me from leaving.” I did not doubt that Victor had sufficient grippe with the authorities to prevent me from going, especially as I was signed up to this school now with a contract.
“Come and have a look at the picture on the internet, Shanus, of the school I am going to.”
I showed Shanus a picture of one of the campuses, which looked beautiful, a church like structure upon a lake, the sun shining up from the water of the lake. Picturesque.
“That looks like f-ing Disney Land!”
“You don’t think I should stay here with you and Gavin. Sit this one out?”
“If I had the chance to go there I would take it immediately. It‘s f-ing Disney Land, better than Disney Land actually.”
“Well, you’ve settled it then, Shanus. I have already spoken to them and they have told me to come. I mentioned I am at a bad school and that I want to leave. They said they would sort everything out when I get there.”
“Tis the best thing Richard!”
English, my language, was my quid pro quo for a life in China, and before was merely for getting up on stage and saying a few words, very easy, and I deemed it an unfair exchange - women, a flat and a salary; now the exchange was unfair in a different light - this was not worth it, living in this nightmare. A truly typical Chinese city in the interior. I could go insane here.
“Come on let’s go out on a restaurant crawl.”
The Xinjiang restaurant was the place we went to, it now nearing the evening, and was getting dark. The muscular Uighurs were outside with their shirts off, glaring at me. One of them looked like he was going to go for me. A waitress restrained him.
“You’ve done something here Richard?”
“It looks like it Shanus. Quick, let’s go.”
After walking a bit down the road, we were ourselves again. I was increasingly fearful in this city. It was a dangerous place. Dangerous for me being a complete pisshead and annoying everyone, taking outrageous liberties.
“Shanus, I have to get away from here, and am really glad I have the chance. It’s like everyone here wants to kill me.”
“Hahahaha. The funny thing about it is that you’re probably not wrong.”
Back in Gavin’s house we got completely obliterated. I went and used Gavin’s toilet, and called out to Shanus through the open door as I urinated, “Shanus, look,” and then pissed everywhere.
“Hahahaha! He’ll go f-ing beserk. Jenda, jenda, jenda!”
“f*** him, the slag!”
Gavin came home: “Look at the state of you two!”
We sat laughing like two naughty schoolboys.
“I just had some terrible news. Me little one in Wales, he has broken his leg.”
“Has he Gavin? Is he alright?” said Shanus, acting concerned through his drunkenness.
“Hahahaha!” I burst out laughing, just looking at Gavin’s face.
“You’re a ‘orrible bastard when ya drunk, Rich. How could you laugh about that?”
“I ain’t laughing about that, just laughing at your face when you said it. I love you, Gav.” And I did, in my own way, but just did not trust him.
“Richard is wanted by a lot of people around here. Some waiters in the Muslim place were about to go for him.”
“f-ing hell, Rich,” Gav said as if in shock, making me feel worse about that. “Are you really gonna stay here? I’d go if I were you, mate.”
“Nah, I’m gonna do me contract and then f*** off.”
“I reckon you’ll be dead by the time your contract finishes.”
“Cheers.”
“Seriously, you’re pissing everybody off. This place is horrible, I liked it before but even I am getting pissed off with it.”
Gavin gave me unctuous advice. I did not trust the man and even drunk kept my secret. He was that much in with Victor that news of my departure might make the man take measures. Gavin got up to go to the toilet, and then shouted in horror, “Ohhhhh! Boys! Who’s pissed everywhere and been sick?”

*

Disco City. To get in here you have to go through a metal detector, and there are cameras in all corners of the two dance floors. Metal detectors in clubs, you do not even get that really in London. Just another sign of the hidden violence that is Shijiazhuang. The three stooges, Gavin, Shanus and I are the only foreigners in here. We are drunk from drinking in Beer Land, American Jason and Jinza the *bleep* not drinking with us, probably because I was there. I did not want to drink with them either. Some women but mostly men are queuing to get in, and we receive a few hostile glances. The men are like animals protecting their female species; their property. It reminds me of the Old Kent Road in the early years. Inside the club there is no space, the dance floors are packed, mostly with men swinging their heads with their eyes closed, surrounding the single women. The women take no interest in us. That is a difference I notice here with the rest of China I have been to - no one really takes much of an interest in us, not even the women.
“Great in here boys, ain’t it?” Gavin is grooving about in his basketball top.
“It’s alright I s’pose. Nothing like Beijing though.” I judge, and cannot wait to leave Shijiazhuang.
Gavin and Shanus go off to dance. The club plays songs and replays them a half an hour later. I buy a few bottles of Budweiser and will make them last. Always calling for the barman is hard work, there so many people. I have my own little space at the bar. Suddenly, a scuffle begins in the crowd, and gets nearer to me. A man is on the floor and a couple of men are kicking him. Gavin pounces over putting his face up close, drunk, watching all of this. The men grab a couple of the bottles at the bar and start smashing the man on the floor over the head with them. They use the bottles I have bought and was about to drink, but I am not going to say anything. The man on the floor is Chinese; I dread to think what they would do to a foreigner. It is in the early hours of the morning that we finally leave the place, going straight over to a restaurant directly outside, sitting at a large round table. The boys drink themselves silly. But I still go on and on. Shanus leaves. Daylight begins to happen, and Gavin is still up with me knocking them back.
“I have no more money left, Gavin.”
“I have not got any either.”
“What are we gonna do?”
“Go home.”
“Nah, wait a minute.”
The staff of the restaurant are asleep upstairs, and trust us enough to leave us at the bottom drinking. We are still drinking at the table on the street. They do not trust us that much though, as the fridge is locked.
“f***, the fridge is locked Gav,” I say as I am quietly trying to open the fridge and get some beer.
“Just leave it, we’ll get some later when we get back to our place,” Gavin says, now on his scooter, and it is started and he is ready to go.
“Nah, nah, nah…”
I wrench the door open and the glass smashes rather loudly. No sound from upstairs. I tiptoe out with about six bottles.
“They won’t fit, Rich.”
“f*** it, I’ll just bring the two then.”
We ride off. Gavin says, “You’re f-ing mad you are!”
“I told you I am a good thief.”
“You weren’t that good, you smashed the fridge. That was stupid that, we won’t be able to use the place again.”
“Don’t worry about it. You worry too much,” I say, mimicking Joe Pepsci in Goodfellas.

Five thousand Yuan had been paid to us all. The school had obviated in telling us an exact date of the payment, so that we all feared we would not get paid. Miss Bai tried to stall paying Gavin and Shanus the full amount as they had missed lessons, but we all three went to the payment office and got it from behind her back. Otherwise, who knows? The night of the day I had stolen the beers, we went out to Disco City again. Drunk again. But Shanus was the most civilised. I had given him a thousand yuan as thanks for the help he had given financially, and we were on good terms. I came out of Disco City with Gavin and found Shanus sitting at a table talking with an African gentleman, probably the only one in Shijiazhuang.
“How ye doing boys?”
“Good, Shanus. Rich,” Gavin said, “do you remember this place?”
“No, what?”
“You robbed a few beers from here before. Look at the fridge.”
I looked at the fridge and saw the glass was taped up. I started laughing, “Oh yeah! But they will not know it was us, no witnesses.”
“Be careful, mate.”
I was thinking it was England, if there were no witnesses then there was nothing to worry about. But this was China: we were the only ones at the restaurant at the time, and we were only drinking beer and were drunk at that. Who else was going to smash open a fridge to take more beers? We were guilty without even being seen.
“Dhere’s the teachers with Victor,” Shanus remarked, nodding at Sylvia and the Korean, as well as a young fat Englishman with glasses who was working as a teacher, walking along the road, who was from somewhere near Liverpool. They came and sat over.
“You from Liverpool, mate?” I asked the Englishman.
“Near there, a little town just outside of Liverpool.”
“Know Kirby?”
“Yeah, Kirby,” and he put on the strong Liverpool accent.
“Me old man has loads of mates from there.”
“I don’t fecking like you,” Shanus said to the man. “You’re a cont.” Shanus for some reason did not like the man, after having met him a few times at Victor’s.
“Come on Shane,” the man remonstrated, without requiting the colourful epithet, “I don’t know why you have got it in for me. I have noticed this after the last few days. I’m just a regular guy out for a drink.”
“Feck ye, ye,” Shanus said drunkenly. I thought Shanus was not drunk, before talking politely to the African.
“Leave him alone, Shanus!” I ordered.
“Ye can feck off as well!”
I just laughed and said to the Scouser, “Don’t mind him mate, he always has the hump.”
Unnoticed by us, a couple of waiters were standing close by. More came out of the kitchen, and stood near our table, as if keeping guard. Even more came out, it seeming as if they had an army in there. Something was up. I said aside to Gavin, “Do you think it could be anything to do with yesterday?”
“Ah, Richard, it’s definitely to do with f-ing yesterday. What have you done?”
“Keep calm, mate. They don’t know for sure it was us who took the beers.”
“Us? It was f-ing you!”
I knew then that I could not count on Gavin to back me up. He would point the finger at me if any trouble came.
“What are these doing around our table now?” the Liverpool man remarked, shitting his pants.
It was undeniable now that there were about fifteen men standing around our table, with their eyes directly upon us.
“I don’t know mate, but you know what, I am going.”
“I make you right there, I’ll come with you.”
Both of us got up and started to walk away but I was accosted by one of the waiters, who ran up the road after me, pulling me back by the arm. He was not interested in the Liverpool man who almost ran down the road. It was definitely about the beers and the fridge. The little waiter had that ready look of violence in him, but betrayed some fear, and looked expectantly down the road to where the restaurant was. Five of his friends came running up, and also took a hold of me, and I raised my hands in a sort of surrender, going, “Ok,ok, ok!”

I got back to the table and now Shanus was on to what was happening. The girls had already fled and so had Shanus’s African friend. But Shanus was not too bothered.
“Oym going when I feel like it. I have done nothing, they are not keeping me here. Ha. What have ye f-ing done, Richard?”
Gavin tried to get up and walk away but was pushed down by the waiters. We were surrounded by about fifteen waiters, but they were not doing anything, just surrounded us and kept an eye on us. Very Chinese. I suppose they were waiting for the police.
“It’s all your f-ing fault, Richard,” Gavin moaned with his head in his hands.
“Well, boys, have a wonderful time,” Shanus raised himself from his chair with a sigh. “Oy’ll see ye later if ye ever make it out of this alive!”
Shanus went to walk away but he was also surrounded by a load of waiters, putting their hands on him and trying to push him back towards his seat.
“Get your fecking filthy hands off of me, ye dirty peasants!” and Shanus barged past them and got on his scooter. He was going to put the key in his ignition but now a guard of the car park had came over to help in the commotion, of course helping the waiters and he pulled the key out of Shanus’s hand.
“Ye filthy bastard, give me my key. Ye all a load of filthy bastards!”
At this point the waiters did nothing, but you could tell they were on the ready if any violence was dished out. I did not fancy Shanus’s chances too much. Even drunk, as I was now, I still had canny judgement and kept my mouth shut and smiled back at the aggressive stares of the waiters and smoked and drunk my beer.
“It’s all your fault, you bastard,” Gavin sneered at me.
“Solidarity, Gavin. Keep calm. Stick together. Oi Shanus! Come over here and shut up and drink your beer and wait for whatever they are going to do. It can only be a fine, and I will pay that as soon as. Just keep your mouths shut, that way we’ll be fine.”
“Ye, can shut ye fecking mouth!”
“Sit down you mug.”
Huffing and puffing, Shanus came over and sat himself down, and in bad temper drank his beer, muttering expletives directed at me and the assembled Chinese. He was returning the stares the Chinese directed at him, “What? What? Who ye looking at ye dirty *bleep*?”
One of the waiters who he was shouting this at came toward Shanus ready to punch him, and Shanus got up out of his chair, but the waiter was held back by his colleagues. This went on for some time. Even hours. Where were the police? They did come in the end, after an hour or two of this stand off. But they came and were absolutely useless, and stood around as well, making phone calls and stood looking at us all. I merely drank my beers and continued smoking. I always smoked when drunk, but not as heavily as now. Must have been the stress. Shanus ordered another beer but was refused.
“This takes the fecking piss. Oym fecking off.” and he tried to walk away, past the policemen, and the stand off became chaos. Gavin tried to be an intermediary, an emollient to Shanus’s anger, which was justified anger - he had nothing to do with this. Nor had Gavin really. But they were not making it any better. I am sure if they had been calm the police would not have even been involved and we could have paid a bribe.
“You dorty fecking shower of peasants!” Shanus threw out a weak punch, not really intending to do any damage, was more like a symptom of his frustration, but as soon as he did, about five of the waiters flew into him and issued punches and kicks of plenty. Cowed by that, but still shouting strong, Shanus kept telling them they were peasants. Gavin was jumping around, trying to restrain the men, speaking what he thought was fluent Chinese, “Jenda, jenda!” and for his efforts received a couple of punches. This went on and on. At one point all of the waiters ran at Gavin and I saw him tumble down into the ground as they were all kicking into him. He got up, dazed. The police watched all this.
“Gavin! Shanus! If you shut up, they don’t kick you so much!”
“Ye!” Shanus screamed, pointing at me, “It was him!”
I sat back in my chair, some waiters now sitting back with me, and I shared their cigarettes. At first they looked at me aggressively, but seeing as I had no intention of violence, they sort of let me be and shared their cigarettes with me. The very last violent altercation occurred, Shanus getting knocked down with a few punches. He sort of lost the fight in him then. The shouting fight. Victor arrived. I had given his card to the police hours before and they had only just called him.
“What happen?” he asked me.
“I don’t know Victor, these waiters surrounded us and then attacked us.”
“Victor!” Gavin shouted out, “Richard stole some beers and we are the ones getting in trouble for it!”
“They are drunk, Victor. I have been offering the police money to pay for what they think we done to the fridge,” I pointed at the fridge, “But so far they have said nothing. They just stand around here and allow Gavin and Shane to get beaten up. We have been here for four hours.”
“I talk to them.” Victor came back and said, “Ok, we decide five hundred yuan.”
It was way too much but I wanted to get out. I said I would pay it.

The waiters grew less aggressive, and we were going to be driven back to our flat where one of the waiters would receive the money. Shanus became less aggressive, and then said, “Thanks Rich, man.”
“Least I could do.”
“Why didn’t ye help us?”
“Fifteen people? What exactly could I do? Get beaten up as well?”
Gavin had a large egg like bump protruding out of the front of his head. I remembered him going down being kicked by all the little Chinese and it did cause a laugh. “I think I’ve broken my rib boys. I am not going into school this week.”
Rather miraculously, Shanus shook the head waiter’s hand, and all was cheery as they waved goodbye. They had just been beaten the sh*t out of and were all smiles.
I got and paid the money at our flat. Already I was getting short. All the money was going on beer. I would definitely have to go and get my ticket back to Nanjing that week. The police asked for my passport after giving them the money. I pretended I did not understand and walked off down an alley and went into a breakfast place and ordered a beer. Victor came and found me.
“I think you should leave China! Gavin and Shane tell me that you are stealing the beer!”
“They are lying, I don’t know anything about it.”
“Then why you pay the fine?”
“Because I did not want to see them get hurt anymore. This is how they repay me? With friends like these who needs enemies?”
“You show good behaviour and keep yourself safe in that situation.”
“Thanks, was not very hard.”
“Miss Bai tell me you get your passport back with the new visa. Can you give me your passport?”
“No.”
“I want to keep it safe.”
“No, it’s mine and leave me alone.”
The greedy man walked away.

Gavin and Shanus were taken down to the police station a few days later and quite predictably told all; it did not do them any good, however, as their passports were confiscated and held by the police. A sign of the corruption of this part of China, the police would not return them unless paid fifty thousand yuan, which is about five grand or so. And there was no crime. They were the ones beaten up. The only thing that could be construed as “criminal”, was that they were working for a school on the wrong visa, it was not a work visa and was only a tourist visa. With embassy pressure they were finally returned. I also was continually asked by Miss Bai to go down to the police station to be questioned but answered that I had paid money and had nothing to say. The police were at a loss with what to do and left me. In the questioning rooms Gavin and Shane must have been crying out my name. They were eventually deported. Shanus was off with me during my last week, but we had a couple of last nights together. The last night before I took the train to Nanjing was one to remember.

*

“I’ll be sorry to see ye go,” Shanus says to me as we dine on beef and potatoes in a restaurant.
“I will miss you. But can’t say I am sorry about leaving this place.”
“Me and Gavin have got to go now. We beat up an American in Disco City and they look like throwing us out properly now.”
Police cars had often been parked outside the school administration building due to the incident at the restaurant and which I had been blamed for. Gavin and Shanus might have got away with the first incident, but then a couple of days later they went and seriously hurt an American. It made me look innocent. Police were always at the school.
“I don’t think Victor will mind ye going now, he has got paid for you. I think he has been paid for us as well.”
“Well, he got what he wanted the greedy c**t.”
“Remember when we freed the fish out of here?”
“Yeah - free Willy!”
“Hahaha.” Shanus laughs. We are friends again. Not good to leave with bad blood.
“I have a student coming around to get me tomorrow to take me to the train station, Shanus. Not from our school, but one who I give private lessons to.”
“What’s her name?”
“I gave her the name Deborah. Victor introduced me to her and got paid for it. I did not know about that.”
“Greedy cont.”
Victor had introduced me to a young student of another university, the girl a potential girlfriend he said. She was a rather dull youngster, must have been a little mad to want to be around a drunk like me. What I did not know was that Victor had charged her two hundred yuan to be introduced to me. I let her practice her English with me free of charge. Two hundred yuan for an introduction!
“I have enjoyed here though,” I say, rather sadly. My head is a farrago of impressions and feelings, of Guinness and Nazi assassinations (of myself), of the fear of death and of alcohol. I do not know what to make of it, but I feel like I am losing a friend.
“Let’s go up,” Shanus decides and we take bundles of beer up to our flat.

In the flat I put on Pink Floyd’s The Wall, the movie. It reminds me of these dark days. I will one day be in that dark place that the main character is in. The song, Bring the Boys Back Home, plays, the English soldiers in uniform, and I stand to attention respectfully and salute them.
“Ye English c**ts! Go on home British soldiers, go on home!” Shanus shouts, pointing playful insults at me. “Rich, ye lucky to be leaving dis shithool. Look at it! I’ve got to stay here with jenda jenda.” Shanus gets up, pulls his penis out and pisses all over the top of the TV. I do the same, always seeming to follow what he is doing. I must be original, and do my own thing. Laughing so much I cannot get a word out, I squat in the middle of the sitting room and have a sh*t. There is a big sh*t on the floor. Shanus and I are laughing so much it hurts.
“It looks like it’s going to talk with us. Looks like it is having a drink with us.” Shanus puts a beer beside the sh*t.
“Look, Rich, look!”
I look around and see Shanus has his backside in the fridge and is straining. He is laughing so much that all of the sh*t comes out on top of the apples in the fridge that were bought for me by Deborah. He closes the door of the fridge.
“I bet it stinks in there Shanus!”
“Fooking does.”
Shanus soon drinks to oblivion, falling off of the sofa and laying on the floor, his head inches away from my turd. I soon follow, rolled up on the couch.

Nine in the morning: the door is being knocked upon. Deborah must have got upstairs. I open it, and let the petite girl come in, with her glasses on, looking the archetypal bookworm.
“Are you ready? I take you train station,” she inquires.
“Yeah, gis a minute,” I answer.
Shanus wakes up, still drunk. “I almost put my head in ye sh*t last night, Richard.” He notices Deborah, “Ah, nice to meet ye. I’d love to feck ye up the arse.”
“Sorry,” she says, puzzled by his accent, “I don’t understand.”
“I’d love to stick me cock up ye arse. But never mind, want a coffee? Even better, we have plenty of beer.”
“No thank you, I don’t drink.”
“We still have time,” I tell them when I am ready, “let’s watch a film and have a couple of beers.”
“Noyce one,” says Shanus, “we’re fecking pissheads man.”
I try to put a film on but it will not work. The television is broken. “How did that happen?”
“We pissed on it last night.”
“Hahaha. Oh yeah!”
Deborah walks over to sit on the couch and her foot goes directly into the black fudge which I had left the night before. “Uggghhhhh!” she screams, and looks as if she will start sobbing. Shanus and I look at each other and start laughing.
“What is this?” Deboarh asks.
“It’s sh*t,” Shanus answers, “from a dog. The neighbour has a mad dog and he came running around here last night and had a sh*t and then fecked off.”
“Yeah, Mad Dog Adair.”
“HAHAHA.”
Sat down we talk about the good times we have had. Shanus keeps telling the girl he wants to have anal sex with her. She keeps saying she does not understand. He wants to go into a more detailed analysis but I stop him short, telling him she is a good girl.
“I want to go for an apple which I bought you.”
“Yes, they are in the fridge.”
Deborah opens the fridge and god knows what meets her eyes, but it definitely is Shanus’s sh*t.
“Ugggghhhh!”
“HAHAHA.”
“I cannot take you anywhere, this is too disgusting. Find the station yourself!” Deborah runs out of the flat with her hands covering her face.
“HAHAHA!”

I go on drinking, and when I do leave and get to the station am only just in time. Shanus is on the platfrom waving with a can of beer in his hand. On the train again, but not into the unknown. I know Nanjing, and can even call it home. After what I have just been through and the place I have lived in this is going to be heaven. It’s a relief to escape from Shijiazhuang.