Great. Thanks for that, mate. That'll be really comforting when nobody in my class of 44 is listening, or indeed conscious, at 8am tomorrow.
Brilliant.
Apparently, Chairman Mao once advised children to fall asleep in class if they were bored by their teachers. Great. Thanks for that, mate. That'll be really comforting when nobody in my class of 44 is listening, or indeed conscious, at 8am tomorrow. Brilliant.
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Huanghe Science & Technology University, Zhengzhou, Henan, China. Monday 20th December 2010. 7pm.
Director: largely absent. Starring: Anna Birley - Zhu Ying Tai. Edward Mason - Liang Shan Bo. Wendy - Narrator. Hi,
Sorry I couldn't chat for longer last night - the time difference caught up with me. After a long week of teaching, make-up classes, meetings about pay and trying (not very successfully) to learn my lines for this play, I'll be glad when term finishes and we fly to Kunming on 7th January! Dancing around at the front of my classes, trying to enthuse the students about a confusing language they'll doubtless never use once they've left college, I often feel less like a teacher and more like an entertainer. Out of the classroom, I've given a fair few performances too: first, there was my not-Oscar-nominated performance for the College's promo video, then the impromptu speech at the teachers' meeting, and the weekly shows at English Corner. Oh, who could forget my bit-part in the Chinese soap opera?
But, this... this is something else. In most of... No. In all my classes, the back bench is occupied by three or four sleeping heads. The heads are connected to shoulders by a neck, with an arm either side and part of a torso underneath, the rest of it being obscured by the desk onto which these body parts collapse the instant any kind of teaching begins nearby.
TV: Welcome to English Corner "Make it say something." "Look! It's going to speak!" "Give it something, throw it some food. Then it'll speak English!" I imagined the thirty or so Chinese students stood before me, mesmerised by the foreigner in front of them at the first English Corner of the semester, felt they were at language-practice petting zoo. English Corner is a weekly opportunity for students here to speak with the resident laowai, and to try out the vocabulary they've endlessly drilled in the classroom. I was invited to the first meeting, in front of the library's new giant TV, while Anna judged the final of the Host Competition. It didn't start well. I arrived to find that the menu offered only Bryan and me and that the other foreign teachers had given their apologies/ made excuses/ avoided the phone calls of invitation. This wasn't a problem to start with - the gathered students were transfixed by the television above, but when it switched off mid-film, I found myself surrounded by an entire class from the Business School, and their teacher. Feeling the pressure of the sixty eyes focussed on my lips, I picked two random kids at the front. So it's 11.30am today, and we're leaving the flat, on the way to the office to plan lessons etc. and Morning - the Chairman of the English Club - is waiting in the hall.
"You should go to the new restaurant," he says, while on the phone to someone else. They've built a Western restaurant (we'll examine this concept soon) on the ground floor of our building, with space for a bar/ library/ souvenir shop - rumours abound - as well. Today was the opening day, and the laowai teachers had been invited as honorary guests to test the food, for free, and offer advice to the chef. "For lunch? What time shall we go?" Anna asks Morning. "Eleven Thirty." "Oh, so now then." I reply, thinking it's a bit early and I only got up 15 minutes ago. "No, you should wait some minutes." For what is unclear, and not important, so we head straight down. The Riuerside Western Restaurant - this is NOT a typo, on my part at least - is underneath the apartments at our end of the building. Part of the restaurant is underneath our living room, so I'm hoping I'll get wireless reception down there when they fix the bloody internet... Nobody else seems concerned about the spelling mistake on the three foot tall signs. I'm obviously not normally a stickler for spelling, and I particularly like some of the other Chinglish botches around campus, but when there are 30 Anglophones living in the building above the restaurant, who are in China to teach English, a typo as big as RiUerside on our doorstep is a bit too much to stomach. As is the food. It just kept coming. We must have had eight courses. It started with hot water - how very Western, eh? - which was laced with plaster dust as th builders left this morning. Coffee followed, in a reversal of Western dining traditions, with popcorn and then spicy tomato and pork soup. Then T-Bone steak and (seven, count them) chips, with peppercorn sauce. This was actually pretty good, although the steak and been sufficiently well walloped as to taste more like burger-on-the-bone. Spicy chicken (cold, with skin on), spicy pork (cold) with pak choi, garlicky celery, hawaiian pizza with prawns and meatballs covered in rice all followed and filled us all up. It was strange to be eating with knives and forks too! The food was actually quite tasty, but flicking through the menu it looks very pricey - I won't be going there with my students - and there are some very suspect Western meals on offer: fancy a whole turtle, on a plate, head and all, drenched in tomato sauce? The chef was then came out to enthusiastically ask for comments and advice. We tried to convey the idea of English Breakfast, Anna drew a picture and Morning translated, but the idea faltered when it turned out that they don't have baked beans in China. Importing these may make a small fortune... The Riuerside is apparently opening 10.30-22.00 which is quite cool - it serves beer, very suspect Chinese red wine and 60% proof baiju, the Chinese traditional let's-get-smashed drink used for toasting people you want to see be sick. So it'll be a nice place for a quiet drink at night, and won't cause too much noise below the flat every night, I'm sure... And who knows what they could ever need a souvenir shop here for... Evening/ afternoon all, depending on where you are.
Had a lie-in today, didn't emerge from the flat until 2pm so that sort of wrote off the Plant market. I still feel a bit jet-lagged and don't feel like sleeping until two in the morning, which is an odd time to go to bed in any timezone. This'll have to stop by Friday if I have to teach classes at 8am. Fortunately, we've got some Nescafe in - it comes premixed as coffee, milk and two sugars, all in one sachet, how lucky is that? - and there's hot water in the office so I can get a fix before having to coax the students into speaking each day. Still no internet in the flat, I think the rumours yesterday were just that, rumours. Apparently it'll be ready in a few days... manana, manana... That would, however, be bang in the middle of this week's holiday (Tues-Thurs), so can't be true. It could be done Friday, or the following Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday, but then there's the next holiday Thursday to the following Friday. Welcome to China - the other mantra to Chinese finishing. Where the Information Super Highway is so far failing us, snailmail might be possible if you want to write letters/cards/haiku. Huanghe S&T College International Studies School Third Southern Circle and Huazhai Road Zhengzhou Henan Province CHINA Apparently you then put my name at the bottom. And you can write in English. And it will get here. Apparently. Doubtless it'll take forever, so best get those Christmas cards off early, eh? This afternoon, or what was left of it, we went to Century Mart shopping centre. It's a 15 minute tuktuk ride (think tricycle moped with a dog kennel on the back, and you sit in the dog kennel trying not to fally out the open sides while the driver swerves erratically through oncoming traffic, calm as you like, not looking left or right, or anywhere in particular.) Century sells utter tat alongside top dollar cosmetics - L'Oreal, genuine et al. - and has a food hall too. Got Galaxy chocolate, vegetables, squeezy mop. Didn't get live fish, live turtles, noodles - cannot find them anywhere other than on your plate in a restaurant. Who would have thought. Tuktuk on the way back got stuck in a pothole puddle, stalled three or four times; we freed ourselves from near-certain death and collision with an equally manically driven lorry coming the other way by rocking back and forth. Dirver was no help, calm as you like. I might buy a moped and take my death in a road traffic accident into my own hands. Had lunch in Chinese version of KFC, called Dicos. It was delicious, which means I'll be ill. Question for you: If MacDonalds has Big Mac, what do you think Dicos has? I'll leave you with that Hello again,
It's pretty later here, I'm with an American teacher - Brian - who's helped me get into the office after hours thanks to a security guard he's friendly with so he can watch NFL and I can tell you guy's what a great time I've had these first three days. We've had a few teething problems with the flat, namely no hot water with the shower and the toilet didn't work. At first the cold showers were a God-send given the stifling heat but the novelty's worne off quickly, maybe after three minutes. Fortunately it's been fixed. The toilet is sort of fixed. It wouldn't flush, or rather it did flush, but the water just came flowing out he back rather than discretely going down whichever pipes toilet water is supposed to. We've had it fixed a few times now, this afternoon it the workmen just stuffed the back with cement and I think, in my by now expert opinion, it'll be ok once that has dried. We've been laughing and joking about it with the other laowai - foreigners - who've got/ had many similar apartment problems and the best answer we've got so far is "Chinese finishing - near enough is good enough". There's a lovely Chinese lady (speaks zero English, rabbits on in Chinese at 100mph knowing full well that we can't speak a word) who's helped us out and it should be totally sorted by the morning. Speaking of not speaking Chinese, lots of the teachers here have been in ZZ, or China at least, for a year or more, and aren't fluent in the language. I find this odd as when they say that they speak enough to survive, I find that they understand to the same level as, for example, Mubai understands French. Sorry to pick on you Mubai xx. I can tell that getting fluent in a year is nigh on impossible, but I'm going to find a tutor soon, or do a language exchange with a student or three, and am already speaking as much as possible. Today we had lunch with some of the teachers in one of the three big cafeterias on campus. The food's great. Really great, right up my street. A big plate of chow mien - noodles yeah, spicy - costs about 40 pence. Cheap as chips. Except they don't have chips. Although there are McDo and KFC in the city. Not been yet. Afterwards we took a taxi (40 mins, £2.20) to a fabric bazaar in ZZ to buy rugs and mats for the flat. We've got a great colour scheme - basically, if something's a colour, any colour, we'll have it. You should see the flat - I'll add new photos soon, you wouldn't know my mother's an interior designer whose website has 3'000 internet adverts a week :) Found a great little coffee shop called Coffeemaster that serves decent Americano, albeit at Starbucks UK prices. It has wireless - that's from where I Skyped you Dad from my iPod. Tomorrow, which is actually today here as it's gone midnight now, we're going to a 'Plant and Technology Market'. Only in China could these to be at the same place, eh? I want to get more greenery for the flat, like in Durham, as I read it's good feng shui. Also there are rumours that the internet is ready now but they don't have cables, or it might be tomorrow, or in three days - I'm going to buy a cable and possibly a router, which'll be maybe £5 and see what happens. I was once told, in Morocco as it happens, that I 'haggle like a Frenchman' - Sally you may know what this means, I'm taking it as a compliment and that's totally the way in China. Whatever they ask for in the fabric bazaar, plant market etc., offer half then barter up. Often they'll have none of it, but we're definitely being charged a premium for being white, so it seems unfair to pay the asking price. Hatty, I think you'll love the silks in the bazaar. There are also tailors who'll make anything you ask for (in some of the worst fabrics I've ever seen, worse that the crap they sell in Mill House that we had to pretend to be interested in when Mubai took/dragged us there). It can take a week for them to make the garment though so if you order something when you're here, perhaps I'll have to send it to you. Got a Chinese number, I'll email it if you don't all have it by now. Having an ace time, all very exciting, so much to take in. xx HELLO From CHINA!!!
We're here, we're safe and so far, it's great. The flights were ok - I got loads of sleep, Anna got none, I was somehow in trouble for this but then I tried to speak Chinese to two men who turned out to be Japanese, and my humiliation made up for being well rested. We got to the flat at about midnight our time (we're 7hrs ahead). It is huge. It is huge. No seriously. You come into the living room which has a three piece black leather suite around a nice coffee table pointed at the FLATSCREEN TV. Yep, you read that correctly. FLATSCREEN TV. Kitchen is in the same room, microwave, mini fridge, hot plate and kettle. 9 cupboards. 9 cupboards. Go through into the bedroom - another room entirely - queen-sized bed, bookcase, three wardrobes and desk, with new computer. Then into the ensuite bathroom, sorry, I mean wetroom!! Western loo, don't panic. Landed on my feet, landed on my feet. We were woken up at 6am with the whole of campus doing morning exercises and military drills. Everyone is in fatigues and marching up and down the basketball and tennis courts outside the block. Apparently this isn't normal, there's some kind of start-of-term celebration going on. Right now I'm in the International Studies office. We've met lots of nice foreign teachers - there are 30 :- Americans, Canadians, Aussies, Kiwis, Japanese, Brits. No Frenchies yet but I secretly hope there might be one. Anna's been told twice this morning alone to keep hold of me, because I'll be popular with the Chinese girls. She hit me afterwards. We won't get internet in the flat for a week or so, but I think I'll be able to use it in this office fairly regularly. I'll upload photos when I get the chance. Oh, teaching! Not started yet, term doesn't being until Monday but I don't think we'll have any classes until the following Friday so we've plenty of time to settle in. We'll both be teaching Freshmen - first years - it seems and, from what I can gather, that means their level will be quite poor. Anyway, love to you all, seems I can use hotmail and Gmail so I'll be in touch. Ed x |
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