Mark's Journal: Oct 6th

Up earlier than breakfast was ready (first time here!) and a last morning with Yujin's Ma and Ba, Cui-Cui, an aunt, an uncle, and one of the 30-odd cousins. Such lovely people. Ma, who doesn't read, taught Heather a Chinese song last night, then got Cui-Cui to write it down for her - and then laughed when she realised of course Heather can't read Chinese.

We went to the local "free market" which happens every fifth day (lunar calendar) to collect twenty-five Shandong-style roast chickens for Yujin to take back to Beijing. I could have spent all day there: all kinds of things for sale at hundreds and hundreds of stalls - whole skinned goats, live rabbits, superglue, doughsticks, fertilizer, spices, dried alted fish of all kinds and sizes, wet fish, wool, shoes, baskets, shoe-repairing, nets, bottles, offal ... We have officially left the "developed world" - there was a stall selling the innards of a single pig, and you just don't get that in Coventry.

We were film-stars or a freak show, with lots and lots of people staring, some open-mouthed, at their first non-Chinese people. A smile and a "Ni hao" from us would result in anything from a returned smile, to an amazed stare, to a fit of giggles, to blank incomprehension, to one guy who followed me for ten minutes, sure he could get me to talk Chinese if he tried for long enough. Never anything unfriendly, let alone aggressive, but still a tiny window into how Sati and Mo get treated on, say, Bournemouth beach: I could tell I'd want to know the Chinese for "what are you looking at?!" after a day or two of even this benign staring.