In ffice:smarttags" />China, in the squares which are found here and there around a city, many people gather. Lots of them just sit, watching things. If anything remotely interesting happens, a crowd will gather, even if it’s just something like someone clearing all the leaves off of a tree (ok so I did stop and look at that too, it was a little bizarre). There’s a real sort of community thing, people are really interested in what’s going on around them, they don’t just walk around in their own little tunnel. In the evenings, even more people come to the squares, music blares from loudspeakers, and they dance. In fact I have seen some groups of people dancing just on a street, with no music or anything. But in the square it’s more organised, they stand in rows and rows, all perfectly lined up, all doing the same steps and turning the same way at the same time. I guess they must have learned this together, but I’ve never seem them learn, they all just know what they’re doing. In Shapingba square, two minutes’ walk from my school, there is a group like this, of about 200ish people, and beside them about 50 couples ballroom-dance to the same music. It’s very sweet and always makes me stop and smile. On Saturday evening however, Fred decided he felt like showing off, and dragged me into the midst of the ballroom couples and started swinging me around ridiculously. Of course, a crowd gathered, and when Fred gave a bow, they all clapped and said what wonderful dancers we were. They must have been joking, as this was nothing like a proper dance, but at least they didn’t seem to mind us gatecrashing their party. The crowd expanded and wrapped itself around us, as Fred made them all laugh with his bursts of Chongqing dialect and strange humour. Then he suggested that an oldish man dance with me, to which I was not too happy about but couldn’t very easily refuse, so the next thing I know I was waltzing around Shapingba square, in a circle of perfectly-spaced Chinese people all doing the same dance and moving round at the same speed. It was really bizarre, with all the neon lights and skyscrapers towering above us, and the very serious faces of the dancers, and the old men sitting under trees spectating. My time at ballroom dancing society at uni was not wasted after all, and I managed to fit in well enough with the rest of them that for a moment, I felt like I could even be Chinese.

fficeffice" /> 

I found out the other day that some of my earlier weblog comments on aspects of Chinese life were actually not just a foreigner seeing things the wrong way and I was interested to see that some of the things I had observed were discussed in the papers. For example, you may remember me saying several times that I felt just a little uncomfortable with all the fireworks that were being set off all over the place, especially by 3-year-old children, but the Chinese insisted it was perfectly safe and everyone knew what they were doing. However, the papers pointed out that over half of all Chinese fireworks do not meet safety regulations, and that many cities are bringing in bans on them being set off because people keep getting hurt and killed. There were signs in Beijing when I was there saying setting off fireworks was not allowed, but one particular image is still clear in my mind, of one of these posters trodden into the ground, and small children gleefully running away from a banging thing they had just lit only a couple of metres away. The bans don’t seem to be working. The other thing was about televisions. I said that no matter how small and poor a family seems to be, they all still have a TV set, most better than mine (and mine’s pretty great). Over Spring Festival, the government gave lots of people in a poor province a TV as a happy new year present. I would have thought that the dancers in the square would be enough to entertain everyone, but this helps to explain why absolutely everyone in China seems to have a TV set.

Going back to school has not been as bad as I feared. Many of my classes gave me a big cheer when I went in last week, which was kinda nice. And the activities went well. Then yesterday, in one of the more lively and unsettled classes, a lizard was being waved at the girls by the boys to make them scream. I went over to confiscate it, thinking it was plastic, but withdrew my hand at the last moment as even though it looked plastic, I couldn’t be sure. Thank goodness I did, as then a boy picked it up and it started wriggling. Then it seemed to disappear, probably into someone’s desk, and I carried on teaching for five minutes, and then looked down at my desk to see Mr. Lizard lying lazily on my notes. Of course, I screamed loudly and leaped halfway across the classroom, which was hilarious for everyone, including me actually, as for some reason I didn’t see this as being unacceptable behaviour but quite normal in a Chinese classroom. My friend had told me how one day in his class a girl showed him the rabbit that lived in her desk. So I laughed along with them, before getting a boy to put the lizard in a box and I took it and put it on top of the water dispenser at the front of the class, telling everyone not to touch it. These kids are so fast and I must be blind, as the next thing I knew, I turned round and it was gone. I had a look around, but couldn’t find it, and then saw the box, empty, and spent the rest of the class paranoid that there was a lizard in my bag or on my back. But there wasn’t and everyone did the work better than they ever have before, and now even the ones from that class who used to be rude and rebellious say hello nicely when they see me around, perhaps because I was such a good sport about their horrid lizard. Or perhaps they’re just laughing at me for being the victim of their little pranks.