Motorcycle Taxi

I've been in China since late on Tuesday and, aside from Glenn and Amanda (two lovely Canadians who left the day after I arrived), I've not met another native-English speaker since I got here. And people in this country also seem to think that pale skin is synonymous with good looks so, on account of the fact that my skin isn't dissimilar to sheet of plain paper, I stand out quite a lot. More than a few times I've been told (mostly via one of the English-speaking teachers) 'You are so beautiful! Are you English? The English are so pale and beautiful!' It can be a little embarrassing. I was at one of the large shopping centres today, I'm pretty sure I was the only white person there, and I was stared at constantly. People kept trying to speak to me, but I had no clue what they were saying. I bought a phone and the clerk who helped me spoke some English. He told me that I was very beautiful and that he was glad to have met me. Then asked if I'd come to China with my boyfriend (sly), so I sort of implied that I wasn't here for very long before leaving. I also went to buy some food from one of the little shops by the side of the road. Luckily, one of them spoke English so could explain to me what everything was. There were 5 different dishes, all fried, and all on sticks. One was a large chicken wing, two were sticks with about 4 balls on - one was some kind of small egg, the other a meatball - and one with odd-looking chunks of meat. The lady didn't know how to say the latter in English, so asked the other customers in the shop if they knew. One guy pointed at his arse, so I went with the chicken wing. It was yummy.

I got a taxi to the shopping centre, as I'd have no idea where to get off the bus. The English teachers wrote down where I wanted to go on a piece of paper so that I just had to show the driver, which was nice. When I wanted to come home it was about half 5ish, so all of the taxis already had passengers. I waited for one for a while, mostly for the air conditioning, but soon gave up. So I got a motorcycle taxi. These aren't licensed, it's just a guy with a motorbike who picks people up for whatever price he feels like (about £1 today, I probably could have got it for about 70p though), and they are everywhere! I pointed at my piece of paper with the school's name on, then held up fingers until we agreed on a price. I hopped on the back and he gave me a blue helmet which resembled one of the bob-the-builder hard hats, except probably a lot less sturdy. The helmet almost fell off about 5 times so I just held it for the latter part of the journey. The traffic in this country is mad. Almost on a par with Rome. I don't think I've seen a single road sign, nobody really pays attention to traffic lights, and there is the incessant noise of beeping horns. It was pretty fun though, and felt surprisingly safe - which was good as there isn't anywhere to hold on. He went really fast too, which made up for the lack of air conditioning. And people don't stare as much when you're whizzing past them at top speed. I felt like a proper local!