2004.1.16, to Shenzhen

Rise at 6:30 and there is just a trace of light in the sky.  I go to the outside water tap to wash and shave.  It is windy and showery but not uncomfortable.  The rest of the house wakens gradually and breakfast is served – sweet potatoes boiled in sugar and water, delicious.

A lot of discussion goes on about the travel arrangements for this morning but I’m not involved – it’s all in Chinese.  Last night Zhang Ke gave us three options and Huang Jiamin decided on the 3rd. I followed on.  This morning things seem to have changed, possibly due to the weather, possibly other things.  Transport has been arranged to take us to the railway station and a transit van appears and to pick us up.  Zhang Ke’s mum gives us a bag of dried sweet potato – a home-made sweet-meat – and a box of satsuma’s each, which all go into my rucsac.  I give her a wooden comb.

We bounce along the dirt track until reaching a road and then bump along mile after mile of severely pot-holed concrete surfacing.  We pass through one town [no name] which has as much sparkle and charm as a shanty town.  Guangdong is supposed to be one the wealthiest of the Chinese provinces but this is one place still waiting for the wealth to arrive.  It is awful. The road surfaces are badly broken – the transit van just creeps along – everything looks old, worn or damaged – or all three.  There are no large shops, only small enterprises housed in run-down premises.

We continue along the road until the surfacing disappears under another section of highway development, which isn’t too bad until we reach a section where the earth has not been packed hard.  The soft wet earth has been ploughed deeply by vehicle wheels, a motorbike is stuck in the mud and a pedestrian is struggling through.  We wait for the motorbike to restart and then move on.  I thought we were going to Yuantan but we arrive in Qingyuan and go to the railway station.  Qingyuan is not much different to the last town we passed through – not the nicest place to be.  Some places are poor but don’t look too bad, others are poor and ugly. this one is hideous.  We get the tickets and then wait for the train.  It is travelling from Chongqing – about 1 day away – and is a little late.

Eventually the train pulls in and we get on board and 30 minutes later we arrive in Guangzhou Huo Che Zhan.  Leaving the platform we see something I’ve never seen before; thousands of people in queues at every booth and at every doorway in sight.  Extra barriers have been erected to control the crowds and the police are out in force.  This is the movement of people which occurs every year before and after the Spring Festival.  Some of the people have camped in the queue-lines and appear to have been there for some time.  Many are playing card-games, eating, drinking and anything else to pass the time.  If the scene inside the station was surprise what I see outside is an eye-opener.   The queues stretch hundreds of yards across the forecourt and down the streets.  Temporary barriers are in use and there are many desks and stalls manned by police and station staff.  Some of the passengers seem quite relaxed and happy, others look more resigned and others dicidedly fed-up.  Huang Jiamin to a number of people, policemen and officials without letting me in on the conversation. All I know is she decides it is better idea to go to Guangzhou Huo Che Zhan Dong.  We take the Metro which is very clean, modern and spacious and would make Londoners green with envy.  Guangzhou East station is the epitome of order and civilisation in comparison with the older station but even here it is busy.  It is already halfway through the afternoon by the time I buy the ticket and shortly after, we part company. Huang Jiamin heads for home in Shunde and I board the train to Shenzhen.

The Guangzhou to Shenzhen rail route is very modern and efficient and the journey goes without a hitch.  I have been receiving text messages from Deng Lu, the student I am meeting in Shenzhen, since morning so I am confident there will be someone at the station waiting for me.  Arrival is prompt and finding her is easy.

We take a bus to the Nanshan district where Deng Lu shows me to the International Youth Hostel.  For a hostel it is quite impressive, not the kind of thing I remember from my earlier days, it is more on a par with a hotel.  After booking in I dump my luggage in my room and we go out to eat.

Deng Lu is not quite so fluent in English as Huang Jiamin but her pronunciation is excellent and with the aid of an electronic Chinese-English dictionary we are able to kep up a conversation for the next 2 hours.

2004.1.15, traditional living and dying

Rise at 6:30 – it’s still dark.  Stand on the balcony and watch the sky lighten.  Zhang Ke appears and goes to the outside tap downstairs to wash.  While waiting I see a line of people with lanterns walking along the path to the house, occasionally tossing firecrackers by the wayside and guess this is his family.

The family arrive with a number of items of furniture, a few possessions, a sack of rice, a bag of tea and number of oil lamps I saw them preparing yesterday.  More firecrackers are set off and a lamp is placed in each room along with scent-burners.  The family then begin clearing away debris left by the builders and preparing breakfast.  Throughout the day the lamps are kept burning and the burners are renewed periodically.

We wait for Huang Jiamin to arrive and then have breakfast – rice noodles, some sort of equivalent of popcorn made from brown rice [delicious] and a hollow ball made from rice starch [equally good].

During the morning the funeral at the neighbouring house continues, though I ‘m too busy watching and doing other things to see everything that is happening.  Late in the morning we go to a fish pond and after a couple of attempts we catch a fish about 18 inches in length – can’t show you the proof as we ate it.  Although it is January and less than 1000 kilomtres from Jiujiang there are butterflies all around – Cabbage Whites and others of various colours, purple, brown.  It is all a bit overwhelming.

At the house a chicken is killed, plucked and cleaned for lunch so there will be a choice of meat – chicken and fish.

At midday there are more firecrackers and gongs from the funeral and a procession sets off for the burial ground.

After lunch I go with Huang Jiamin and Zhang Jianhua [Ke’s younger brother] and we walk along the valley for a few miles passing many orange groves.  On the hillsides are areas where the woodland has been cleared away and replaced by orange trees and other areas where the terracing is still being prepared.  The terracing must take a while to dig on the steepest slopes.  Eventually we turn back and on the return walk we turn off the main track and start climbing the hillside.  It is very steep in places and the woodland prevents us seeing the top.  Huang Jiamin gives up and Zhang Jianhua and I continue up to a point where the path becomes level and runs along the hillside so we struggle directly upwards until we reach the ridge top.  I won’t say the view is magnificent – it doesn’t equal a Pennine view – but it was worth the effort.  Getting back down is more of a problem as the sides are very steep so we move through the undergrowth until we find a better place of descent.   We slip and slide using trees and stumps as the ground is stony and loose until we reach the path and then go back down to rejoin Huang Jiamin.   We continue on our way back to the house via a different path and when we are in an area that I recognise I stop to sit down and take in the view and realise I am sweating from the exertion and the heat.  While sitting I notice the sound of crickets all around me, something we won’t hear in Jiujiang for several more months – I’m looking forward to the return of the warm weather.  Zhang Ke maintains that Guangdong only has three seasons as there is no winter, Huang Jiamin says Jiujiang only has two seasons, summer and winter.  Does this mean that Hoylanswaine only has two seasons also, winter and 6 months of bad weather?

Then return to the house.  Later in the afternoon a group of us go to the old house on the back of a trailer towed at very low speed by a strange looking engine.  It looks like an oversized lawnmower but it is a general purpose agricultural vehicle used for ploughing rice fields and doing other jobs.  Back at the old house we load furniture and other items on to the trailer and then set off back.  I choose to walk, it is quicker.  I’m not sure which of the two houses I prefer, the old one is homely and everything is well-established.  The new one is lighter, better lit and, if everything worked [e.g. plumbing] would be more convenient.  The hard tiling on the floor makes it much easier to clean off the chicken-shit.  It is a mixture of modernity and traditional Chinese living.

We wash and then have dinner.  Evening is cloudy, possibly it will rain tomorrow.

2004.1.14, on to Qingyuan

The objective today is to get to a small village somewhere outside Qinyuan, where Zhang Ke lives.  Catch the No.37 bus to a bus station then change for for an old wood-seated banger.  The bus fills up but shows no sign of going anywhere.  An argument breaks out between a passenger and the driver and continues incessantly until we start moving.  The argument is typically Chinese involving a lot of shouting, gesturing, posturing, insulting and finger waving but doesn’t develop into physical violence.  Eventually, after three bus rides, a twenty minute walk and a short ride in a transit van we arrive at the long distance bus station. It’s near to midday and we still haven’t left the city.   We board a crappy old 19-seater bus along with 23 other passengers, plus the conductor and driver – total 28 bodies and numerous items of luggage and freight.  As we reach the edge of the city we join a large highway and after 1 hour turn off onto the Qingyuan road.  The road soon narrows and becomes rough before becoming a dirt road.  Some sections are being replaced by a new highway and the original road has disappeared leaving only a packed earth surface to drive on.  The new highway cuts through one village and a number of buildings have been demolished to make way.  One house has had the front section demolished but the rear is still in use.  The journey reminds me of the bus-ride to Fuzhou last summer.  After arriving at a small non-descript town we alight and I assume this is our destination but Zhang Ke says we have to go further.  We are immediately harassed by motorcyclists plying for trade.  I ask Zhang Ke how far it is to walk and he says 1 kilometre so I say we’ll walk and then set off.  The riders are very persistent and continue to hassle the others passengers all the way there.  At a bridge over a dried up riverbed I stop to look around and wait for the others to catch up.  Zhang Ke mentions that the next bus station is under a tree at the other end of the village.  So there is more travelling.

The bus turns up soon after we arrive at the tree and we set off on another broken concrete road jammed into another tin box on wheels – standing room only this time.  An elderly lady looks deeply distressed and spends the journey sobbing on the shoulder of her husband.  A young woman clutches her face and looks as if she is about to vomit.

About half an hour later we alight at another town with no name and this time Zhang Ke gives us no choice but to take a motorbike each to reach his home.  He says it is 6 km away.  We set off along another broken concrete surface – if we fall the consequences are going to be unpleasant.  The road becomes a dirt track and Kenny directs us to a cluster of houses where his family home is.

It is a traditional Chinese farmhouse in a cluster of similar houses.  The entrance opens into the first kitchen area, which then leads to a small courtyard with two outside loos and a manual water pump.  The main living area is through a door from the courtyard and is paved with stone blocks.  The entrance is 4 metres high and has two wooden doors, which stay open all day; chickens wander in and out as they wish.  There is no ceiling; the only thing above is the tiled roof.  There are a number of smaller rooms leading off from the main room and this is where the family members sleep – there are 3 generations living at this house at the moment.  Walls are bare brick, wooden shelving has been inserted in corners and there are some electrical appliances – fluorescent lighting, a TV, radio.  Above the side rooms are store rooms and there is an open mizzen platform above part of the main living room.  Furniture is solid wood and simple.  After drinking tea all 3 of us get on board Kenny’s motorbike and go bouncing along a dirt track to his family’s new house.  It has only just been completed and they will begin moving in soon.  In a few moments we are there.  The house is not quite finished and looks much more modern than the other one.  It stands alone, has 3 floor levels plus a flat roof area.  Floors have ceramic tiling, the doors are metal, windows have sliding glass panels and are covered by metal grilles and there are large vents in some of the walls.

Then off to an orange grove up the hill from the house and we’re introduced to other members of his family and afriends working on the grove.  We each take a pair of cutters and are shown how to pick satsuma oranges and then spend the next two hours happily stripping the trees of the fruit.  After finishing that area of the hillside we go down to where the oranges are sorted for size and grade and then boxed.  While standing around a funeral procession appears and enters the house immediately adjacent.  The wailing and chanting continues inside the house – but I’m unsure if they are about to go the burial ground or have just returned.  The widow was with the procession.

We return to the new house – they will begin moving in tomorrow – but he will sleep here tonight and he tells me I will be sleeping here too.  Some food is brought to the house, the first we have had since the morning, which we finish off then continue talking outside.  The weather is beautiful and unbelievably warm but the sky is clear which means it might be cool tonight.

We walk back to the old house and start preparing the evening meal.  Only one of the kitchen areas is used and it is fitted with two fireplaces to heat two large woks.  Water is boiled for everyone to have an evening wash.

The wash area/loo is just a small section of the courtyard surrounded by a brick wall and containing a large bucket as a toilet.  Washing is done by stripping off inside the area and then using a ladle to splash yourself down with hot water and washing down.  Then dry off and dress up again.  Relatively simple and effective.

Dinner is served and everyone sits around the big table in the living room, it consists of rice, three meat and vegetable dishes plus vegetable soup.  Clear away the pots afterwards and more washing up.

I’m invited to visit Zhang Ke’s neighbours for half an hour.  There is a full turnout as apparently I am the first foreigner to visit the village [can this be true, or do they tell everyone that story?].

After returning to the Zhang house the children follow us in and sit around.  Zhang Ke finds a calendar and asks me if I understand the Chinese zodiac signs; I don’t so we sit around talking about the meanings of our different signs.  Ke is a monkey, Jiamin a pig and I’m a rat.  The meaning of some of the qualities is blurred in the translations [and I'm geting sleepy].

At bed time we board Zhang Ke’s motorbike and set off for the new house.  The downstairs toilet is locked and he doesn’t have the key.  The upstairs WC isn’t working as the water pressure is too low so we take a couple of buckets of water with us to flush the toilet.

The  night is the most peaceful I have had since leaving Jiujiang.  Must be up early in the morning as his family will be arriving at 7:00.  It’s a tradition.

2004.1.12 – 14, to Guangzhou

Arrive at the railway station late in the afternoon, Monday.   At the entrance is one huge queue, only one door is open and luggage is being opened and searched.  Inside I follow the signs to No 1 Waiting Room where I see an entrance gate for train K87.  It gate is open already and there are several hundreds bodies trying to get through so I wait until the crowd subsides.  I follow the crowd into a large unlit tunnel beneath the railway lines, there are no signs or displays to say where anything is so I follow everyone else.  Eventually emerge into the bright sunlight and see the Jiujiang – Guangzhou train, at least 30 carriages long.  Each carriage has a smartly uniformed steward or stewardess standing outside the door.  Walk about a quarter of a mile down the platform to find the right  carriage and then exchange my ticket for a token telling me which bunk is mine.  Struggle past the other passengers and find what I think is my bunk and dump some of my luggage on it.  There are bags or people on all the others but it turns out to be the wrong one; a Chinese gentleman shows me his family’s tokens and indicates I should be on the other side and on the lower level.  Sort my luggage and then push my rucsac on to the rack and settle down.  The exertion of shifting luggage in a confined space and in a HEATED carriage has made me sweat.

Train leaves 2 minutes early and then stops at Lu Shan Station just 30 minutes from Jiujiang.  Then continue rolling along at a lazy 50 mph through the Jiangxi countryside with soft background music playing.  As we go along various people appear with trolleys and trays selling fruit, drinks, cooked food [where is the kitchen?], lucky charms and tacky toys.

Even after an hour on board the tingle of excitement and anticipation isn’t there – have I lost my appetite for travel, have my senses become dulled?

Pass through tea plantations, endless fields of rice, vegetable fields and by numerous clusters of houses.  As we leave the Lushan area the tea plantations disappear and the land becomes completely flat.  Not a hill, not a bump, not a hint of a pimple in sight.  I am clueless regarding the names of the villages and small towns we pass and it is only by luck that I manage to spot the names of the places where we stop – they are not very well signed.

Nanchang is the first major stop at 18:00.  Then Ji’an at 20:30.

I assumed the occupants of the surrounding bunks were of the same family, one man, one woman, one boy, one girl, but it soon became clear that I was wrong.  The mother and daughter share the other lower bunk. The father and son occupy the middle level, the two upper bunks haven’t been prepared for use.  The two adults don’t speak to each other but the girl occasionally engages the boy in conversation, much to his annoyance.

This is going to be a long night.  While I am half asleep Miss Bao [from Jiangxi, Fuzhou] calls me on my mobile and speaks almost non-stop for 15 minutes, apart from the occasional grunt or “uh-hu” I’m not sure what my contribution to the conversation was.  She still hasn’t lost her attachment to myself and John K – nor her girlish innocence.  She ends by inviting me to visit her hometown.

Then Jing Gan Shan at 21:10 then another stop somewhere at 22:15.and Ganzhou at 23:10.

Sleep until another station at 5:30 [Huizhou?].  As the sky lightens we seem to be passing through one built up area after another.  The railway line now has overhead cables so this is one of the better-made tracks.  The day becomes clearer and I can see what appears to be one continuous urban sprawl.  Large pools of stagnant water, a river, high rise blocks, then a stretch of rice fields, a power station, a highway, and, as the day becomes brighter, small shacks appear amongst the fields and on waste ground.  Almost the same kind of scene as when I first entered China, 10 months ago.  Then more fields with root crops, palm trees, a hill in the distance, another dirty factory and the start of another area of suburbia.  A rubbish tip with a construction site on top of it.  Then an area of expensive looking houses on one side of the track and a highway junction, surrounded by slum apartments, on the other side.  Then the beginning of another sprawl and the train runs alongside a highway passing modern-looking factories.  Passengers are beginning to move so this must be Guangzhou.

The train arrives 4 minutes early at 07:26, quite good timing for a journey scheduled for 17 hours 29 minutes.  I strip off a layer of clothing before alighting and then join the crowd following the exit signs and emerge into Guangzhou Huo Che Zhan Dong [Guangzhou East Railway Station].  I wander among the crowd of anxious faces waiting to meet their friends and relatives and almost on reaching the edge of the crowd see two friendly faces, Huang Jiamin and a young man whose name escapes me.  D works for a computer company in Guangzhou and is here to show us across the city centre; Huang Jiamin has contacts everywhere.  We take a bus into the centre and, after D shows us where to get the next one, he leaves us for work.  We continue on another bus to Guangdong Commercial College where Zhang Ke, another of Huang Jiamin’s friends, is a student.  Like Jiujiang Financial and Economic College, Guangdong Commercial College is on the outskirts of the city, the difference is the Guangzhou is much bigger than Jiujiang [pop. of GZ > 6 million, pop. of JJ 350,000] so the journey takes longer, almost 2 hours.  Zhang Ke is taking an exam this morning so we wait in his dormitory for him to finish.

When the exam is over we go out to a small restaurant near the college gates.  After lunch set off across the city, first by bus, then Metro to the Chen family temple.  There we meet Sunny, one of Zhang Ke’s classmates [she is already a qualified tour guide but wants to become an international tour guide] and she shows us around the temple.  But first we see a performance of Sichuan Opera.  I’m not sure that opera is the correct translation as the performance involves music and dance, not singing – but the most notable feature of these performances is the way the performer changes the mask on his/her face while still in view of the audience – and often close-up.  The changes are done very quickly – less than one second – and the method of changing is a professional secret.  It is certainly impressive and there are many people standing around with cameras trying to capture the change on film.

After leaving the temple we return to the Metro and go to Shamian Dao, an old part of Guangzhou which contains a significant proportion of European style architecture.  This was the only area where European merchants who came to the city, when it was first opened to the west, set up their houses and businesses.  It is a lovely and peaceful area, even the original British Embassy building is still here, spoilt only by the prominence of American style trend shops – Benjamin’s Place, Jennifer’s Place, Lucy’s Place – and the number of grossly overweight white blobs of lard wandering around.  By the side of the river is the White Swan Hotel, the first 5-star hotel to open in Guangzhou.

The afternoon is drawing to a close so we take two more bus rides to get back to G.C.C. where we go to another restaurant and have dinner – rice plus six dishes.  Fish, beef, pigs’ gut, pork, squid, endless vegetables and a few other things I can’t name.  Then collect my rucsac from Zhang Ke’s dormitory and go to my hotel room.

The room door is made of metal and has a curious locking mechanism.  There is an en-suite shower and a squat-hole. The flushing mechanism is a bucket of water.  Disposable toothbrush is provided but there is no washbowl.

The place was relatively quiet when we chose the room at midday, now it is a little different.  There is a street market outside, a bus station 100 yards away and worst of all, some place of entertainment on the floor below.

The loud music continues until 04:30 the next morning, with footsteps padding up and down the corridor throughout the night, and then there is 30 minutes of peace before the morning noises begin.  Motorbikes driving past, buses starting up, voices in the street. May as well get up.

2004.1.4 – 11, newcomers and minders

On Sunday watch the 16^th Rhythmic Gymnastics World Championship on CCTV with some students.  They translate the commentary as it goes along,  or at least when something interesting happens.  The contest is won by the Russian team.

On Monday make some progress in marking the video presentations and one of the obstacles is identifying each face and voice on the tape; I haven’t seen enough of these students for long enough to know them all.  Enlist the help of the political secretary of one of the classes.

On Tuesday go into town to John K to see Jiujiang’s new municipal library.  On the way we stop at  the CBC eatery which opened very recently.It’s a replica of KFC; same colour scheme, same style of layout to the bar, same menu but with a couple of extras thrown in, and the prices are only slightly less.  It is located adjacent t o the fairground at Gantang Hu so it should do well.  Further along the road, where Lushan Lu turns into Lushan NanLu, the road widens.  It looks like the deck of an aircraft carrier, there are two very wide lanes for the motor traffic on each carriageway plus another lane, of equal width, on each side of the road used by cycles and hand-carts.  If this were Britain crossing such a road would be perilous if not suicidal but here the traffic is relatively light and slow moving so we are able to stroll across the road, pausing now and again to let a bicycle or bus pass by, without any anxiety.  There are only two roads in Jiujiang that I know of that are wider.  Shi Li Da Dao has two traffic lanes and a cycle lane for each carriageway plus a segregated lane [big enough for two-way traffic] on each side of the road and Chang Hong Da Dao, the road which passes the railway station, has the same lane arrangement but wider, it is one expanse of tarmac.  The library is quite easy to find and it looks to be relatively new but not particularly well maintained.  John says the building was first owned by an American company and when their business in China failed they sold it to Jiujiang City.  It is only a fraction of the size of the college library and many of the rooms are locked.  The names of the rooms have been translated into English on the directions board and some have quite intriguing names ‘See Obstacle Reading Room’, ‘Multi-funnectional Room’.  I would have loved to have known what the obstacle room was all about but it was locked.

After returning to the college I visit the Foreign Affairs Office bit find that still haven’t bought the ticket I asked for and last month’s salary is still not available. They ‘will try their best to get it tomorrrow’.

Spend the Wednesday afternoon with some of the Foreign Teachers and catch up on some of teh gosip.  The latest arrival to the community of foreign teachers in Jiujiang, a man called Martyn that no-one seems to have met, has departed.  He arrived at No.2 Middle School at Christmas time and was immediately put into the care of ‘minders’.  When a Chinese school or college gets its first foreign teacher they become very protective and tend to treat them like china, after they realise the FT is human and can do things for himself he will have more freedom.  It seems the minders at No. 2 school went right over the top and wouldn’t let Martyn out of their sight, for the first week he didn’t even have a key to his flat and after he found microphones in his apartment he called it a day.  The other little surprise is the departure of Charles Lynn, a Taiwanese.  The college has refused to renew his contract but haven’t given him the real reason why – bad reports from the students – they told him he was too late in requesting renewal [which is absolute bullshit, mine was signed last week].  His spoken English is poor, so it is questionable whether he should have been teaching English at all, but the students didn’t like him much and some claimed to be unable to understand is English or Chinese.  He should have been shown the evaluation forms from the students and given an opportunity to act on it.

Friday evening is spent at the Lin Ping Hong with Valerie, from the Jiujiang Teachers College, and two of the employees from CCB who want to start an English school.  Discuss marketing, staff, and other issues.  The CCB people want to aim at a mass, low quality school, we think a more elite high quality school would be better.  Low grade schools spring up all over the place but really good ones are hard to find.  The nearest one we know of is in Shanghai.

On Saturday cycle around to Valerie’s flat. She asked if I would look at her laptop as it is having problems.  Various experts from her college have had a look at it but none have done anything other than make it worse.  After I arrive she tells me that Alex will be coming along sometime in the morning.  This means I will have to grit my teeth and restrain myself from indulging in acts of violence; I have met him twice already, two many times, if you see what I mean.   Alex rubs everyone up the wrong way, he has no manners, no social skills or cultural sensitivity and an unfortunate way of talking at people.  He isn’t suitable for teaching language [not many English speakers understand him] and shouldn’t be working overseas.  However, like many young nerds he does have some experience in playing about with PCs so we may be able to keep him sufficiently occupied to prevent him committing any social faux-pas.

In the afternoon Alex leaves and I stay talking with Valerie.  She is 65, came from England then moved to Australia, lost her husband at a young age and brought up a family of 4 on a farm in the outback.  She has many years of experience working in EFL and overseas, has been in China for several years and has many interesting stories to tell.  She has some connections with an underground church movement in China and also has some knowledge of what happened to Martyn, at No.2 Middle School.  It is an interesting story but, as yet, uncorroborated.  Apparently there was some trouble in the province with another foreigner which made the government uncomfortable.  The trouble-maker has been expelled and the matter quietened down but to avoid any repetition the provincial government instructed that all foreign newcomers to the province should be kept under close supervision – particularly those with any connection with the trouble-maker.  Martyn may have had some connection with the man – possibly without even being aware of it.  She also has some interesting insights into the background of other foreign teachers in the area, some of which are eye-openers, but she seems to be too upright, too open and too morally strict to be telling tall stories.

At the end of the afternoon I ride back to our campus and it is dark by the time I arrive.