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.