To Beijing

So we went to Beijing for a couple of days, now we're back in Hangzhou waiting to go to our schools. Beijing is a nice city, the weather is much better, and you can actually get wheat-based products, which is a godsend here where everything is rice-based. It's also just a nicer city in general than most of the places I've been - you have nice public parks where you actually see the old people doing taiqi and whatever, which I'd been hearing about but never seen.

Our tour guide was pretty ruthless, as usual, so we managed to see most of the major sites in three days. The first day, we went to the Heavenly Temple, which opens into Tiananmen square, with the famous portrait of Mao.That's just a stock photo, I should have real photos up soon. Anyway, the next day, we went to the Great Wall, which was one of the big things I was looking forward to. I have some really good pictures of that. We also saw the acrobats - they were cool like always.

The coolest thing about Beijing was all the Mao memorabilia. I bought myself a "Little Red Book" in English and Chinese, so I could walk around with it and offer Mao's input on any given situation. I also bought some old Chinese propoganda posters. I showed them to our tour guide, and a hilarious conversation ensued.

"Do you like Mao?" she asked me.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because he's Chinese."
"Is that the only reason?"
"Yeah...how about you?"
"I also like Mao."
"Why?"
"Because he could...well...control people's thoughts."

Indeed, he could control people's thoughts. What can you say to that?

Oh, and speaking of conspiracy theories, and strange relationships and whatever...I'm finally starting to learn more about how this whole program works, and it turns out UCE is just a relatively minor player. As far as I can tell, they seem to actually be dormant for the school year, so for those of us that are staying the year, they are basically just a recruitment agency. The people who we actually sign a contract with (we also have a contract with UCE, which is really short and basically says we should follow the other contract)...they are also basically a recruitment agency. Nova Language College, which I hear is based in Canada, is actually going to be the name on our paycheck, and I guess they're the only entity which has a contract with the actual school. For some reason I thought these strange arrangements would be less common in China than in America...that it definitely not the case.

And, finally, in the news...rumor has it that Survivor China, the first American TV show to be filmed in China, is being filmed in the next province over...too bad they don't have an English teachers edition.

High school

I'm with the high schoolers now, which is harder work - I would definitely be lost without Betty's help - but I can also talk about political subjects sometimes. One of my older classes was so good I could actually lecture them on the arguments for/against No Child Left Behind, and they seemed interested about it. Anyway, one of my favorite subjects to talk about, especially now that my kids aren't quite as advanced, is travel. It's kind of funny though, because I think I know more about a lot of things, even within China, than the students. Most of them have never even been outside of Zhejiang province, and in about two weeks, after I go to Beijing and Hong Kong, I will be better travelled than practically all of them.

Yesterday, I asked my students to write a short essay about China or something in China. Three of the best essays were about Hainan island, noting (all of them) that it's the second largest island in China (after Taiwan), and that it has a good flower market, and good scuba diving. So I asked how many people had actually been to Hainan, and nobody raised their hand. Apparently they had learned about these things on the internet, or in classes, or something.

An even more amusing episode was when I asked one class if anybody had ever been outside China. One student raised his hand, and said he had been to Taiwan. I kind of waited, and the other students started laughing at him. I would love to go and teach them blasphemous things, but I might lose my job. It's probably very easy to do in private though. I would just love it if Charlie would take us on our tour of Beijing - "please, tell me more about Tiananmen Square. What else do you know? I'm in a learning mood today." I don't want to do that to our UCE guy who will probably be leading the tour, though, because I don't want to get anybody in trouble. Charlie was so much fun because he actually worked for the government - fair game in my book.

Anyway, I'm getting better at being independent, which is good, because I don't really know how much assistance I will get at my long-term school. Betty's been helping me a lot with my Chinese - and you really can't learn it without somebody to talk to. I've been eating outside of campus a lot by myself, which involves taking a taxi into town. The first time I did that though, I walked into this one restaurant that looked a little bit fancier, but no Western food, so I assumed it couldn't be too much more expensive than a regular place. It was confusing though becuase there wasn't really a menu - often times there are pictures, but I can even read enough characters to make do without the pictures. Usually I end up ordering, ironically enough, (Indian) curry fried rice. Anyway, the place I ended up at turned out to be a gourmet fish place, and they didn't have menus because there was really only one thing - really expensive fish. So I ended up with 94 yuan worth of way more fish than I could possibly eat (you're supposed to come with friends; I pleaded with them to only give me half a fish, but I don't think they usually do that.) So after that I have been sticking to the places I know, which are mostly cafeteria - type places. They are very good, and very cheap, but they mostly serve rice and noodles. I still haven't figured out how to get main courses - probably the best meal I've had since I've been here has been some spicy Sichuan tofu that I got for 5 yuan, but with the help of a Chinese assistant - and now I'm a little bit scared to try.

Anyway, yesterday I discovered peanut butter, which I don't particularly eat in the states, but it was so good I started eating it straight from the jar. Someone mentioned to me a while back that in some of the more modern places you can get peanut butter, and I didn't really think anything of it because I don't eat peanut butter. But there are precious few sources of fats in the Chinese diet. The other way to get it is in pizza, but there isn't even really any pizza in Haining. Fortunately, in the town where I'm going, I hear there is a Pizza Hut, and a McDonalds (which I also wouldn't go near in the states, but they are one of the only places where you can get ice cream that tastes good.) Anyway, enough rambling, I'm signing off for now. Four high school classes a day is a lot more than four elementary school classes...

Various updates

Whew...its been a while. Our last assignment ended on Saturday, and we haven't taught since then - which sounds nice in theory, but I haven't been able to get on the internet at all because we keep moving around and going to hotels with shaky connections. We left Haining to go hang out in Hangzhou, which is a really nice city- the nicest city I've been in so far on this trip (definitely including Shanghai). There we got to meet up with a lot of the people who we had met previously and later parted with, so we got to share stories and information and whatnot.

One interesting tidbit I heard - right now, Zhejiang province is the hottest province in all of China. I guess the monsoons down south have been in the international news; unfortunately, we've basically missed it all (the rain always keeps the tempurature down. Someone in another city reported seeing a huge (several hundred, he guesstimated) military convoy roll through his town, presumably to go help deal with the flooding. I think someone else said their classes were cancelled for three days because of the storms. The weather here is ridiculous, and I still haven't seen the monsoon. In one thunderstorm last week I think about five lighning strikes within one or two seconds (or half a second) came within the space of about a minute - I've started to be afraid of thunderstorms again.

Anyway, the even better news is that Haining seems to be the hottest city in Zhejiang province. I was so glad because I thought the heat finally broke when we got to Hangzhou, but we got back here and it was just the same as it always was - which is somewhere about 40 degrees C, I think in the 100's F, though I'm just as happy not to know. Even the guys from Zhoushan (sp?), which was supposed to also be hot, were impressed by the heat here.

So, I'm back at Hongda, which was the first school we were teaching at, but I will be teaching at the high school, not the middle school. We actually have another two more days off before we start teaching, which will be nice. (We might even go back to Hangzhou?) The school is just as restrictive as they were last time, though, even with the new staff and everything. They insist my TA has to go with me everywhere, and of course I've already been through all of this, and I know what to do and everything, so she ends up always chasing me around, pleading "David, come back here." We shouldn't have problems though the way we did last time, for the simple reason that our team leader is way too passive (I don't know how he's going to make it through the year. Actually, I'm worried he might end up just doing anything anyone tells him to do, because he doesn't know how to say no.) Anyway, that leaves me to create the problems, and Betty, my TA, to try to follow after me. I'm not worried, they won't do anything to me, and Betty's just doing her job, they can't punish her if I refuse to follow her commands...

It's all in good fun though, in a couple more days she won't care.

Tipping...and ways to avoid real teaching

I was thinking about my last post, it isn't entirely true that there's no tipping in China. There's no tipping in restaurants, but taxis usually charge a .5 Yuan "gas surcharge" or something - basically a tip. More seriously, I've read that hotels often have a 10% "service fee" or something like that that they don't necessarily disclose in advance - that could easily do more damage than a tip in the US.

So today, for something different, I had my kids teach me about the Chinese zodiac, using Chinese characters. This is something good to do every once in a while, if for no other reason than to remind you how nerve-racking it is to speak in a foreign language in front of native speakers in a classroom setting. In any case, the kids were really impressed by me writing and talking in Chinese, and I think I remember some of the new characters. Tommorow I'm going to teach them to use a frisbee, we're near the end of our time at this school and I don't feel like teaching them too many things...and from what I've seen so far, frisbees are not available anywhere in China. I figure it'll be a once-in-a-lifetime experience..