Screetching around a corner in central Fukang I noticed a statue. A 10ft horse stood on its hinds legs above a globe with a large inscription written in traditional Chinese characters beneath. I shyly asked Mr Tian what the statue was aboout. Breifly removing his fourth cigerette from his mouth he replied in his rough voice: 'It says Fukang is the Worlds Traveller City'.

How appropriate.

Over the course of 2 weeks I had travelled 9098 miles (by my rough calculations), by plane, car and train. Oh wait, no, just plane and car. And here I was, entering Fukang: The Travellers City.

The first week was, as ever, busy. And again I will apologise for the lateness of this blog. Yet I am beginning to catch up now. I'm going to save talking about the school for next week, as it was only the second week when teaching began in full (we followed our South African counterparts in their lessons for the first). So in this blog I'm going to focus on; Fukang and our apartment. Later on I'll talk about the food, the people, the teaching and much much more!

Despite the huge cliche in this statement I'm going to say; Fukang is a city of contrasts. Infact, even calling it a city is a contested point. It certainly has the population of a city; with 160,000 people it is only marginally smaller than Newcastle. Yet the city feels alot smaller. There are only four major streets and there is less traffic than my home town; Hexham. The city has America-style urban planning, with long straight roads and large side walks. There are trees everywhere which are all painted white from the bottom to about 2 ft up. If anyone has any ideas why they do this, I'd love to know. Also despite low levels of traffic, the roads are quite lethal. As Alex says: 'A green man only means you are less likely to be hit by a car'. Basically you can turn left or right on a red light, and if you have less than four wheels you can go wherever you want, whenever you want. Unlike many other places in Xingjang there isn't a Uighur district and Han district as here in Fukang the number of Han is proportionally much higher. The best thing about Fukang is, without a doubt, the nightlife. And no, I'm not talking about drinking or clubbing. Here in Fukang the nightlight consists of a large paved park, with an artificial stream with hundreds of dancers, musicians, sportsman and painters! There is a group in the south of the park with a bat and a ball (looked like they were playing badminton first time we saw them) and they dance holding the ball on the bat, getting very embarressed when it flies off. Then further north is the diablo and (real) badminton players. Further north still is two seperate groups of older Han chinese women who do syncronised dancing. We have no idea how they all know the moves so well, but they are really quite good! We wanted to join in but they were too serious...Then to the east there is a Beijing Orchestra, old men playing music and their wives(?) dancing with hug fans. To the west there always a small group of Kazachs doing their traditional dance, which looks very difficult. To the south of that there is a kids area, bouncy castle, paddling pool, little cars the whole sha-bang! Now my favourite area of the whole park is the Uighur dancing area. Me and Alex have gone dancing with Uighurs twice now, and we are hilariously bad... But the Uighurs that we have danced with have appreciated us trying! There are normally about 100 dancers there, with alot of watchers. Uighur dancing is...well...I have no idea how to describe dancing. Basically you dance with a partner and keep walking past them while walking like a chicken and flicking your wrists. Or, atleast, thats what me and Alex do. Anyway, there is loads more going on in the park, such an amazing place! Fukang has alot more to offer, I'm sure I'll talk about it more in the future.

Now, our apartment. Firstly it is really quite large, with alot of quirks! We have a main sitting room (the lounge), my very small room (called winterfell), the kitchen-come-diner, the room we dare not enter, Alex's very large room (called Midguard), the bathroom-come-toilet-come-shower and finally my favourite room; the Batcave. That is a tiny room where the gas shower is turned on and off. Hopefully I can get some pictures up in due course. I love my room, it is quite similar to my room at hope, in size if nothing else! I have a chinese periodic table, a mickey mouse light and some anime posters, none of which I bought. I think my room must have been a little girls room, there was an incredibly creepy doll thing in the cupboard. We have a stove and a wok, although we are looking to get a pan. The last volunteers bought an little oven, so thats good. Some of the quirks. All the remotes for the various electronics we have (DVD, Television and the channel box) seem to be tuned into the aircon. So if you turn up the volume on the tele you turn the fans higher on the aircon. And if you turn the DVD player on you turn the aricon off. This little anomily confused us for days, as to why the aircon was so sporadic. The ironic thing is, the aircon remote doesn't actually work, with anything. Another quirk is the shower, while having an shower spray water over the whole bathroom is the usual in China our heating system isn't (I don't think). So now our shower is gas heated in the summer, which works well. Yet once winter starts our hot water comes from the radiator and the central heating. Yet that doesnt come on until well into winter aparently. So just as you want hot showers, when winter is starting, we will be having cold showers. The joys. Yet far and above the best thing about our apartment is the view. Between two buildings opposite us lies the Tian Shan mountains, with Bogeda Peak dominating. And it is absolutley stunning. I mean, no pictures or words will be able to describe how dramatic the Tian Shan mountains are but lets just say they should have filmed Lord of the Rings here. Please look up Bogeda Peak to understand what I'm taking about, it truly is a great way to start each day!

So I think I'll leave it there for the first week. Still got lots to talk about, describing my experiences with a bit of local knowledge thrown in. If anyone has any questions please feel free to messege me!Finally getting some time now that I'm into a routine. Until next time,

Stephen