The campus has a small PSB station but with only a handful of staff; if they had tried to stand in the way of a few thousand angry students they would have been turned into mincemeat.  The PLA had arrived early Saturday morning and the message was put out that they would be there for the rest of the semester.

As to what triggered it all, again Johnny’s comments made a lot of sense, ‘a mixture of alcohol and seething resentment’. Each year the students are required to make an advanced payment for utilities to be used in the coming year.  The charge is always an overpayment so quite a lot of it is repaid at the end of the year.  This year the college told them that no repayment would be made and this seems to have been the straw which broke the camel’s back. The college is simply one big money making machine for those at the top [President Huang Bo Qang ended up in gaol on corruption charges] or in any position to cause problems and the students are exploited to the limit, and beyond. All goods at the campus shops are overpriced, as are the canteens which are also of notoriously poor quality.  The college is able to get away with all that as it enforces a ‘closed campus’ regime from Sunday evening to late Friday afternoon, allowing only teachers and a few privileged students to pass through the gates during that time.

My co-teacher had no kind words for the rioters which I can understand as she had been shaken by the experience [though not physically] and I won’t repeat what she thought should be done with those responsible, but, having been there myself for longer than is sensible, I could sympathise with the rioters.

No one mentioned any deaths, during or immediately after the fracas, so maybe, apart from a few scratches and bruises, no one was seriously hurt.  I hope so.

More news arrived from Johnny Ray, an American teacher at JJ who I had met while there.  During the night the main entrance to the Bai Gong [White House] had been broken down and two vehicles parked outside – not far from the balcony outside 301, where he now lives with Ruby his wife – were burnt.  The PLA had arrived in the morning and were now patrolling the grounds.

After lunch we got on board two motorbikes and set off on the last stage of the trip to her village. About half the bike trip was on paved roads, the rest was on dirt tracks.

The village was similar to the one I visited in Guangdong in 2003 but much poorer.  Every house in the Guangdong village was a decent house, though some were better than others; in Hangshan [Jessica's village] there was only one good house, and some were worse than others.  The Guangdong farmers had found their niche and were making money, the Hangshan farmers were getting by.

On Saturday afternoon we went out into the woods on the hillsides to collect yang mei fruit [bay-berries, in English].  I had seen these things on the markets but never eaten them.  They grow wild on large trees [about 20 metres high] and are hard work to collect.  The trees were on very steep hillsides covered in thick undergrowth and having found a suitable tree  someone had to climb it.  While up in the tree you looked across the woods to spot the next possible tree; finding them from the ground level would have been very slow work. There were four of us in the party, Jessica, a young man, and Hong Ruxian and we might have managed 3 kilograms between us – not a lot.  Thinking of how much they would sell for on the market we would have just managed to feed ourselves.  In addition to the the cost in time there are other costs to take into account; every one of us was filthy on returning to the farmhouse so all our clothing had to be washed, we collected a number of cuts and bruises from slips and falls on the slopes and received a few stings from airborne insects.

In the evening we went out walking the tracks, I’m not sure why as there is no street lighting and finding your way around in pitch blackness isn’t easy.  But what made it worthwhile for me was the fireflies which I had never seen before.  Although Hangshan is only a short distance from Fuzhou the difference in conditions is enough to permit these insects to exist. Jessica caught a few and put them in jar and to use as a lantern which was surprisingly effective.  But then, after a long enough period of darkness your eyes begin to adjust and the retina uses its ‘night vision’ cells.

On Sunday morning we had a similar fruit-picking expedition but much closer to the farm.  I don’t know the name of the fruit, only that it was green, the size of a plum, with a very hard skin similar to a gooseberry and it had a large stone in the middle.  And it was bitter to taste.
At lunch time I was invited to try my hand at cooking in the farmhouse kitchen,  This was something of a challenge as the cooking range was wood-fired, the cooking pans were bigger and fixed in place and the cooking tools were different to those I had used at home.  All the food was home-grown and freshly picked – there was no fridge-freezer in Jessica’s home – and one of the vegetables I was told to cook was new to me.  But the result was passable.

The return journey on Sunday afternoon was the reverse of the outward trip and took about 4 hours overall, but the distance was probably less than 150 km.

Next door to the campus is the Fuzhou People’s Park, a relic from the 1950s and it looks it.  Recently ECIT bought the park [how you buy municipal property I really don't know] and built a spanking brand new library in the middle of it.  It is excellent and would do credit to any college or university.  The public are still able visit the park just as they did before.  One of the more questionable parts of it, the zoo, seems to be gradually closing down [about as fast as the animals die off].  On the first floor of the library is a small geological museum which gives a clue as to where the main part of ECIT comes from.  Originally it was the ECIG, East China Institute of Geology, and this is still its speciality and to rub it in a bit further, in geological circles, it is world renowned which explains the mysterious strangers sometimes seen around the campus; visiting academics from around the world.  Apparently it also has connections with the military, though which part is something out of bounds for me.

Bordering the main campus and the Peoples Park is Xi Hu.  This is a large pond or small lake used for fishing, pleasure boating and washing your clothes – you can often see small groups of people in a far corner by the lake and it has been given the same name as the slightly more renowned lake  in Hangzhou.  Whether the name is real, or is a bit of tongue in cheek Chinese humour I’m not sure but it seems you can visit two world-famous places in one swoop here. Stay at the White House and view West Lake at the same time.

Temperature has been very low and the skies steely grey.  Earlier this month the temperature seemed to be creeping up but Chris [from Oz] said he saw a forecast which said that we were in for a cold spell.  And it was right as last weekend it snowed.  It has gone away now but everything still feels cold and damp.

At the campus I was taken to a restaurant and treated to a slap-up meal.  I would tell you more about it but I was so tired I can hardly remember anything beyond rice – except some exceptionally hot stuff which made me sit up and take notice.  All very kind of them, but really, all I wanted after more than a day and a half of travel from the UK was to sleep.

Accommodation is in a white building built as a hotel [sometimes called the White House or Bai Gong]  but with a wing specifically for foreign teachers and visiting officials. The flat is rather nice although the lounge window doesn’t have much of a view. All the rooms were tarted up last year when some government inspectors came to stay, hence the rather posh panelling in the main room.  Bedroom has a balcony partly obscured by a large tree growing outside.  The balcony ceiling has a rather nifty rack, raised and lowered by a pulley, for drying clothing.  The only place to have not been modernised is the kitchen, but I suppose government officials don’t do their own cooking and why bother when you have a hotel restaurant on your doorstep.

It is chilly but I slept like  a log last night.

The floors are covered with ceramic tiles, not the smooth marble pattern seen in the Bai Gong.  Fittings and internal arrangements are a little more basic and simple.  The kitchen looked bare, when I first arrived, with very little to say it was a kitchen other than the gas-hobs.  These are in a bay window area, common to almost all Chinese kitchens but absent in the Bai Gong, with extractor fans above them.  Instead of a stainless steel sink the kitchen has a concrete trough lined with ceramic tiles, not particularly easy to use or keep clean.  The only hot water is that which comes from the shower, if you want hot water for the kitchen or the washroom handbasin the first thing to do is put on the kettle.  In the other flat both the shower and handbasin were connected with a hot water supply.

The lounge isn’t too big, which is an advantage, and the bedroom is a reasonable size.  The one thing I didn’t like was having the bed head up against the outside wall.  This was both potentially cold and brought me quite close to the traffic noise on the Expressway which passes near the campus.  An hour of heaving furniture around, and then shoving a tatty old carpet down the stairs, produced a more satisfactory arrangement.

At first it looked rather uninviting but after adding a few small touches here and there, buying in a few bits of equipment/furniture [mainly for the kitchen] it began to feel lived in.

The train rolls on through the grey morning and eventually arrives in Jiujiang at around 7:30.  Being at the end of the carriage I am the first to leave the train and as I hop on to the platform begin to breathe puffs of vapour – back to the cold weather.  Although it is cool the morning is pleasant and I walk back to the campus.

The flat is cold and dirty – how it accumulates dirt when no-one is in residence defeats me, but it does – so the first thing to do is to go over the place and clean it. Then out to Shi Li to do some shopping.

Gradually the flat feels more like it should be and after feeding things begin to feel more normal.

And so to a restful evening back in JiuJiang.

Huang Jiamin leaves to go shopping and return home and I wander round the station to find a quiet corner – my train doesn’t leave until 19:30.  It is easy enough to find a quiet place but there are no seats, except in the waiting rooms and these are assigned to specific trains but I don’t know which is the correct one for my train.  I camp on the 2^nd floor of the circular hall which forms the main entrance to the station for the next few hours.  Although the main surge of people returning to work from home has passed there are still thousands of people around, in ticket queues, in toilet queues, waiting room queues and just sitting around on the floor looking as fed up as I feel.

After 17:00 I return to the ground floor and take another look at the board.  The K85 is displayed and the time is readable but all other details are in Chinese – of course.  But there is a Chinese number under a Chinese column heading which I guess is the waiting room number.  Set off for the 4^th floor and pass through the first set of gates, passing my luggage through a scanning machine.  On the first notice board I see there is no mention of K85 so I take a look at each of the rooms until I spot the sign I want to see – information is usually there somewhere but it isn’t always easy to find.  Then settle down for the next couple of hours and watch the numbers of bodies accumulate and disappear.  This is just one of five waiting halls [room isn’t the correct word] and the passengers of up to 5 trains can be held in here at the same time.  I don’t know what the seating capacity is but it will be at least one thousand.  It is thronging with people.  Occasionally a gate is opened and hundreds of people exit on to the platform below.   And then the numbers build up again.

Some people will spend several days travelling – I know a number of students who have to travel for 2 or 3 days to get to college – so my journey is very modest by comparison.

Early in the evening a horde of people appear from an adjacent waiting hall, their train is now stopping at one of our platforms.  For a while there is a stampede and chaos reigns but then two policemen and some officials with loud hailers appear and everyone is organised into two columns stretching across the waiting hall, through the corridor and to the next hall – a couple of thousand people.

The gate for the Jiujiang train is opened 15 minutes before departure and several hundred people all try to get through the gate first.  Everyone gets on board and we are off on time.  The train is very busy and every bunk in my carriage is occupied.  I’m on a top level bunk and very close to a loud speaker so I get my full moneysworth of the announcements and background music.

The translated notice on the carriage toilet door is a novelty “No occupying while stabling”.

Settle down quickly and doze off.

When the bus leaves I text Huang Jiamin and she tells me the journey may be 1½ hours.  As we go along I identify different places and can follow the route on my map – first time I have been able to do that for a long time.

About one hour and forty-five minutes later we roll into Da Liang bus station, in Shun De, and I see Huang Jiamin waiting by the alighting platform.  She immediately takes me to a taxi and a few minutes later we stop outside the Yong Ting Hotel [not the Ying Tong Tiddle I Po], where I book in for the next week.

After dumping my luggage I am lead around the streets to her house and introduced to her parents.  We are just in time for lunch – a very straightforward Guangdong meal.

After lunch, Huang Jiamin, her mother and myself set off for the World of Flowers Exhibition on the north side of the city.  Looking at the map it doesn’t seem very far away but the bus route goes all over the city and instead of the expected half hour ride the journey takes almost one hour.  At every stop more people pile on to the bus until it seems impossible for more to board but the driver continues to stop and take on more passengers.  When near the end of the ride the numbers begin to go down.

The Flower Exhibition is much the same as any other similar event, some of the flowers are different, that is all.  There is an open air performance by a band playing traditional Chinese instruments, which are all made from porcelain.  Walk around for a couple of hours and then take the bus back to Da Liang.

Walk from the bus station to a street full of cafés and restaurants.  They are all busy and most have tables on the pavement outside.  The restaurant HJM’s mum chooses is full inside so we take an outside table.  The day is closing and the air is cooling down but no-one seems to mind.  The food is good; meat, shellfish, squid and various vegetables.  Afterwards we part company and Huang Jiamin takes me to the city centre.

We walk through the city centre and she shows me one of her old schools, Shun De No. 1 Middle School, which she says is one of the best in Guangdong.  In Zhonglou Square we find an open-air performance going on so we climb the steps outside the Renmin Hall to watch it.  It is not as good as the Shenzhen performances – they will take a lot of beating – it is only a small show involving about two dozen performers but it is more lively than the Zhuhai pageant.  And it is free.  Afterwards we go to the top of the tower in Fengshan Park – the highest point in Da Liang – but we don’t stay long; the wind is very cool.

While walking back through the centre we see a lion-dancing contest outside the sports stadium so we stay to watch.  Guangdong is well known in China for food and for lion-dancing.  A team is made up of about 12 musicians who play drums and other percussion instruments plus the two men who are the head and tail of the lion [in Jiangxi lion dancing is unknown, dragon dancing is the mode].  We are just in time to see the winners of the contest performing again after receiving their prize.  The dance begins on the ground and involves some complicated moves and steps to indicate that the lion is afraid to climb the on to the posts.  The mood of the music changes to encourage the lion and he responds by climbing on to the first of the vertical posts – a feat in itself.  The vertical posts set in the ground begin at about one and a half metres in height and progress upwards.  They are set in pairs and many pairs are more than one and half metres apart.  The top of each post just big enough for a foot so leaping from one pair of posts to the other takes great care and skill.  Sometimes the lion stands on his hind legs and leaps across the gaps. i.e. the man in the back of the lion carries the man at the front, and at other times the lion leaps across one set of posts straight to the next and turns direction at the same time.  It all needs strength, daring and skill and this team deserved to win.

Before finishing the day Huang Jiamin takes me to another café, which serves sweet dishes, and orders something made of sweetened milk – it is delicious.

Shun De may not be the most glamorous place in China but if you go there you need a big stomach – the food is terrific.