I tried to write a brilliant succinct Letter From China. But I am just too worn out in the Guangzhou heat. Also my apartment computer is acting in a way only a delinquent desk top computer can. My Chinese girl friend has left me after one night. I think it was E M Forster who wrote that losing a romance has the same tug of pain as losing an umbrella. My Chinese work visa has also gone down the drain. It expired after I took a short week holiday in Hong Kong. I had thought Hong Kong was now part of China. I returned to mainland China on a tourist visa. China and Hong Kong are one country two systems! Don't you forget it. I suspect Hong Kong will become a model of a post modern city state. Its population do what they like best i.e. make money and pursue a good life style and leave their security and Chinese identity to the Chinese Government.    

My language school in Guangzhou is nothing like I was told in Auckland New Zealand. I had the image of a high school affiliated to a prestigious Chinese University. It seems to me to be a crammer for kindergarten and primary children. I am spared the kindergarten children.


My apartment could kindly be described as Spartan. Unkindly as slumming. I have been here for more than a week and am still waiting for a functioning television and microwave oven. But it has two best attributes. Hot water and no one else.

The staff at my school are lovely and friendly. The principal said we were all one big family. I have heard that before. The children are delightful and well behaved as only Chinese children can be.

I had a splendid hair cut by young male hair dressers in Guangzhou. Then in the same establishment I had a massage by a very straight laced young woman. I always have one after a long flight. Otherwise my elderly bones bother me for a week.

Guangzhou is a neat kind of place. I suspect it is slowly becoming a satellite city of Hong Kong which is only two hours train journey away.

China has meanly blocked my web site. Esl Daily operates in Guangzhou. If you the reader are a senior Chinese offical, your Government is being very petty and irrational. So here is a suggestion. The next time an Australian official lectures to you about the Dalai Lama or human rights generally, rub his or her nose in Australia's human rights record. For that sagacious advice please restore my web site. My web site operates in Hong Kong. One country two systems!

To be continued.

Goethe