a pound of flesh. plus some.

Hohhot just turned up the hot.

Two weeks into summer. Thirty-two degrees. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.

Just an endless blue sky, a searing sun and hairy sweaty bulging bellies at every turn.

I knew summer here was going to be hot. Google told me so. Wikipedia told me so. Lonely Planet, Aston, the ancient volume of Encyclopedia Britannica gathering dust on my parents' bookshelf. The whole damn world was warning me.

But back when I signed that contract in January, I figured - ah, I'll handle it.

The things we learn.

This is only the beginning. July, I'm told, can [and will] hit thirty-nine degrees.

[someone save me]

Am mildly comforted by the fact that I’m not the only one suffering. The local park is littered with panting bodies stretched out in hammocks or on the footpath. The more desperate are joining the dead fish and stinking rubbish in the lake [read: cesspool]. Students gasp their way through Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes in our airless forty-degree classrooms. Young and old Hohhotians are sucking down iceblocks for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Chinese women especially fear the sun. God forbid their skin be a shade beyond milk-white; the slightest tan is as undesirable as finding a cat hair in one's noodles. Those who dare to venture into said disfiguring rays do so beneath a [suitably garish] umbrella, long sleeves, gloves and a hat. And, to be sure, a skin-bleaching sunblock.

Men - unfortunately exempt from Snow White rule - are zealously rolling their shirts up. Great hairy swollen paunches saunter alongside the taut midriffs of mohawked teenagers; shirtless middle-aged men sit glistening over warm beers in restaurant windows. No gut is forsaken.

But when that cursed ball of fire sinks below the horizon, all is forgiven.

It’s like flicking a switch. Summer evenings in Hohhot are riot of food, beer, street stalls, plastic tables and bad music blasting from bad speakers. Once-quiet streets are clogged with hawkers [bellowing handbags nail clippers Spongebob socks slingshots ] who jostle for space amongst street food stalls [frying noodles skewered meat seaweed tofu]. Daytime dust and pollution are choked by the stink of oil and grease and chilli and barbecued flesh of godknowswhat animal.

Life resumes. People eat, gossip, laugh, sing, cry, shout, drink, yarn, eat some more. People celebrate being able to breathe freely; being able to stand up without their arse sticking to the chair.

The crowds, the noise, the joy, the sensual pleasure of it could almost make one forget the stifling sickness of the day.

Then I wake in twisted sheets and too-thick air with sandpaper mouth and stinging eyes. Solid wall of heat burning through my limp curtains.

Frizzy hair. Swollen feet. Sweaty backside.

And my neighbour's glistening girth.

Twelve goddamn hours to salvation is just too goddamn long. Bugger this; I'm going home.

grass, dust and hand-picked lamb.

In a city with few drawcards [bar whimsical foreigners trying to make a buck by teaching English] Hohhot's proximity to the famous, guidebook-proofed Mongolian Grasslands is, quite possibly, its single saving grace.

And nobody lets you forget it.

Ah, the grasslands, they say. Very beautiful. Very green. Lots of green. Lots of trees. Mountains. Horses.

Not like Hohhot, they add. Hohhot; very dry. No green. You must go to grasslands.

Now, a hundred and forty kuai down, I can say I've seen the sodding grasslands. I've also experienced Chinese tourism at its "organised fun" best.

Eight am. Arrive at pickup point ten minutes late. Wait with bored-looking driver. Fellow tourists fail to show. We leave.

Ninety minutes later, scenery drifts from patchwork farmland and various mud-brick villages to open space. Wide open space. Acres of it, stretching over plains and hills and into the distance. Occasionally dotted with a sheep or goat.

And vague brushstrokes of green that could pass for blades of grass.

At this point, tour guide [bored 20-something girl in sneakers and sequinned Micky Mouse t-shirt] eventually swivels around in her seat to toss us the magic word: grasslands.

Right.

Arrive at what appears to be centre of Organised Fun. Van deposits us between tethered horses, motorbikes and rows upon rows of 'traditional' Mongolian yurts. Yurts turn out to be motel rooms [for the serious tourist], complete with key, starched linen and TV.

So it begins.

Turns out our deliciously cheap fee for the Exclusive Grasslands One Day Tour only covers half the fun: getting there. Dumped in the middle of the desert, we are now expected to either get on a gleaming quad bike [200 kuai per rider] or the back of a mangy horse [240-500 kuai per flea-bitten rump].

Or, kick around in the dust.

Deliberations. We choose the bikes. I get a battered two-wheeler and its beer-bellied, cowboy-hatted owner.

Now permitted to undertake our First Real Experience of Traditional Mongolian Life, we are driven to a lonely yurt made of white tarpaulin slapbang in the middle of... well, grasslands. Yurt is conveniently equipped with tables, chairs and sour-faced yurt-dweller-cum-waitress. We are fed traditional Mongolian fare of biscuits and milk sweets [from store-bought plastic packets] and weak tea [poured from thermos].

Back to Yurt City and lunch. Large dining hall peppered with listless Real Mongolians dressed in Real Traditional Costumes [over their jeans and Converse sneakers]. And snap-happy tourists. Tour pamphlet has promised meal of traditional "hand-picked lamb"; assume this to be the platter of grey gristle and bone delivered alongside dishes of vegetables [glistening with monosodium glutamate]. Dining experience is accompanied by soothing traditional music [played on Yamaha keyboard]. The vegetarian eats the celery.

Showtime. Costumed men gather in centre of circus ring for curious wrestling match in which objective seems to be none other than to pull one's opponent to the ground. Crowd cheers politely.

More costumed men. Horses. Men gallop on horses and attempt to pick up something [dunno what] from the ground. Crowd cheers politely.

Show over. Back to bus.

Not, however, end of Organised Fun.

Arrive back in [beloved] Hohhot. Sleepy tourists deposited at doors of ... factory.

March with other tourists past Live Examples of Authentic Workmanship: scores of downtrodden workers hunched over desks sewing/hammering/painting leather canteens, trinkets and wall hangings.

March on. Factory becomes showroom. Endless maze of cured leather canteens/trinkets/wall hangings/handbags interspersed with jade bracelets, carved knives, stuffed animals, rugs, sheepskin slippers.

Piles of packaged dried beef. Packaged dried milk. Packaged dried lizard.

Some twenty minutes later, waiguorens exit factory. Empty-handed. Find van. Wait.

And wait.

Last of fellow tourists emerge a full hour later, happily shopped out and happily laden with bags of dead animal products.

Well. The Grasslands.

Tick.

what the guidebook forgot.

June.

Doesn't seem quite real. The first three months have flown [ dragged?] by. So long ago it seems that I got off that plane and breathed in China's [minus-five degrees Celsius] air for the first time.

Have I settled in?

Culture shock still bites. It's the little things that still make me gape. Little things that jolt me out of my complacency; remind me I'm still here, remind me how un-Chinese I am.

That make me realise how, in many ways, China and I are still holding one another at arm's length.

And how, in many ways, China and I are still utterly fascinated with one another.

• the spitting. Chinese can spit. I wake every morning to my neighbour's particularly gutteral, hacking, phlegm-filled expulsion. I dodge parcels of it on the street every day. It's an art form; one I am yet to master.
  
  
• dignity [lack thereof]. Women's toilets lack locks; sometimes they lack a door. Children are not exempt; in lieu of nappies, babies and toddlers wear crotchless pants and simply squat - or are held by parent making 'whisss whisss whisss sounds - wherever nature calls. Street corners and restaurant steps know no mercy.
  
  
• privacy [lack thereof]. Whole families sleep, eat, watch TV, cook, wash, spit and fight within fifteen square feet of one another. A family of indeterminable size [up to twelve people at any one time] live on the bottom floor of my apartment building in a room the size of railway carriage. Most night I see them [through open door] crammed around the two double beds, bowlfuls of noodles/meat/soup/bread in hands, TV blaring, three mangy dogs wandering amongst it all.
  
  
• advertising. Cabbage, dates and apricots are something to yell about. Or, to tape oneself yelling about and play [on loop] from a tinny ghetto blaster tied to the back of a battered donkey-drawn cart.
  
  
• etiquette. Consumption of one's noodles should be heard by one's grandmother in Shanghai.
  
  
• fashion. Anything goes. Fuschia-pink spandex, green denim, floral print, sequins, bows, ribbons, feathers, giant silver buckles. Together.
  
  
• road safety. Mothers with child balanced on the back of a scooter [the latter using both hands to eat an ice cream] will drive, utterly blase, in front of a bus.
  
  
• comedy. A waigouren returning a "hello!" is the funniest thing most Chinese have ever heard.
  
  
• children. Those between the ages of four and eight embody the proverbial Duracell bunny. Minus the OFF switch.
  
  
• tradesmen. Usually lacking in tools/skills/English. But get the job done
  
  
• street food. Oh, joy. At three in the morning, nothing is more satisfying, more alcohol-absorbing, more lip-smackingly divine than a three-yuan, piping-hot egg pancake fried on a street stall and eaten from a plastic bag.
  
  
• road safety #2. At three in the morning, taxi drivers are sometimes more intoxicated than their passengers.
  
  

China, I do love you.

But, bloody hell, you're hard work sometimes.