Chemical green, I told myself after having mulled over the best way to describe the preternatural glow of the sky for several long minutes. The Hong Kong-Guangzhou train was hurtling along a post-industrial wilderness as dour as one could ever wish to encounter. Dilapidated factories peppered the landscape while ducks milled about irately in muddy ponds. Toxic-looking clouds clung menacingly to the heavens. I was on my way to a place that would be my home for a whole year. ?What have I got myself into??, I wondered with a growing sense of trepidation.

Guangzhou, or Canton as it is known by the French, is the capital of Guangdong province. Located thousands of kilometres from Beijing, on the Pearl River Delta (PRD), the province has always enjoyed considerably more freedom than the rest of the country. For this reason, Guangzhou has a long history of trade with the outside world. The Cantonese are also great travellers and their cuisine is one of China?s most popular exports.

Trade really is the name of the game in the PRD, which, aptly, is known as the ?factory of the world?. It is however losing its competitive edge in manufacturing and belatedly attempting to get into more hi-tech sectors. Its biannual trade fair is still one of the biggest in the world and foreigners from all over the world flock there to get a slice of the lucrative import/export cake.

It was to this mercantile environment that I was headed. How does one decide to spend a year in so foreign a city? A fascination for the Middle Kingdom and a desire to flee the increasingly humdrum nature of my life here had compelled me to contact an old friend who was teaching English there. I asked him whether it would be possible to find work in Guangzhou. He answered in the affirmative.

To my next question, which had something to do about the city itself, he replied with one short phrase, ?Guangzhou is big, too hot and sometimes dirty?. The fact that there was also mention of ?good beer? might have weighed in the metropolis?s favour, although, I?m glad to say, not inordinately so. As I was to discover a few weeks later, his succinct description was spot on, although he did forget to mention how cold the winters are.

By the time my train arrived at Guangzhou station, the clouds had been torn asunder and a thunderstorm was turning the streets into rivers faster than it takes to say ?flash flood?. The contrasts were striking. Skyscrapers and bicycles. Wealth and squalor. Luxury brands and scrap heaps. The scene, in a nutshell, could be described as ?First World infrastructure meets Third World chaos?.

Initially, the most disturbing aspect of moving to China was the language barrier. All the road and shop signs are in Mandarin (or Putonghua as it called in, erm, Mandarin), as are most menus, safety instructions, maps and the like. I had several friends who studied Putonghua at the University of Guangzhou. After six months of intensive learning they were able to get by quite well. I?m even proud to say that I had a Mauritian friend who pulled off the admirable feat of studying medicine there after only a year spent learning Mandarin.

There was nothing that I found cooler than a Westerner who could engage in an animated conversation with a local taxi driver. One of the things that makes speaking Putonghua (writing is a whole other kettle fish) so challenging is that it?s a tonal language. This means that the way one pronounces the word is as important as the word itself. The same word can have several different meanings, depending on the way one pronounces it. For example, the word for horse and mother is the same. Unless one gets the tone just right, one runs the risk of complimenting a friend?s mother?s culinary skills by saying, ?Your horse cooks very well?. For this reason, foreigners who attempt to speak Putonghoa are an inexhaustible source of amusement for the locals.

When I began teaching at a school I expected to find scores of young Chinese eager to lap up the knowledge I had been employed to impart. I couldn?t have been further from the truth. Most are obsessed with the same things as their Western counterparts. Indeed, even if an opening up of the democratic space seems more distant than ever, economic liberalisation has hit Chinese high streets with all the subtlety of a crash test dummy. The youth generally prefer computer games to calligraphy, McDonald?s to their mother?s traditional cooking, and MTV to CCTV.

Initiated in 1978, Mao Zedong?s one-child policy has affected Chinese society in a way that few people could have foreseen. Indeed, the policy may have succeeded in reigning in a population explosion that threatened to gobble up the country?s resources but it also created a lot of spoilt offspring, in the cities at least. Each child is constantly doted upon by two parents and four grandparents. That child is also the repository of unbearable expectations. In addition to an incredibly gruelling academic schedule, next to which the CPE is a walk in the park, Chinese youngsters are expected to excel at playing at least one instrument and myriad other activities in order to sate their family?s thirst for excellence. It?s no wonder they were distracted when they came to my classes on Sunday mornings.

The adults I taught during the evenings were another premise altogether. They were invariably kind, inquisitive and considerate, if often lacking in creativity. They wanted to know everything about where I came from and about the world in general. They were incredibly keen English learners as they saw the language of Shakespeare as a passport to a better job and, by extension, life.

<I>«Its biannual trade fair is still one of the biggest in the world and foreigners from all over the world flock there to get a slice of the lucrative import/export cake.»</I>

Despite the fascination for the world beyond China?s borders, they were immensely proud of their country and culture. Most of them had no idea what all the fuss about Tibet was. It always had been and always would a province of the Middle Kingdom. They also had a very paradoxical relationship with Japan. Although they openly professed their hatred for the Land of the rising sun (the horrendous rape of Nanking is understandably still a sore point), they couldn?t help but admire the detested country?s technological prowess and economic success.

Food is an immensely important facet of life in Guangdong. A typical Sunday morning is spent in a restaurant where families feast on ?dim sum?, a seemingly endless stream of steamed treats. A more disturbing is the Cantonese habit of considering practically every single animal on the World Conservation Union?s Red List as a delicacy. The huge majority of the menus are written in Putonghua, meaning that one is limited to choosing a dish from the photographs on the menu or those that one remembers off by heart. Both approaches can be problematic. It often happens that the selected dish resembles the photograph very little, if it all. I remember ordering an innocuous enough looking soup until I stirred it and saw a couple of seahorses bob stiffly to the surface. The second, or safe, approach made for a very limited diet.

A year later, day for day, I boarded a Hong Kong-bound ship in Nangsha harbour. I reflected solemnly on the past twelve months and realized that it?d take a lifetime to even scratch the surface of this amazingly complex and variegate country. Would I do it all again? I would, in a heartbeat. What would I do it differently? I would definitely dedicate more time to learning Mandarin. Language is the key to learning about any culture. All the more so in China.

<B>PHOTOS : Jackie CAREY-PRICE</B>