Another day in the life of…

Today was a pretty average day with the exception of lunch time when we held a Meeting which all the Chinese teachers were told to attend. Our style of business the day before yesterday impressed the woman in charge so much that she basically told all the other teachers to come. Joel did a good Presentation and many seem very interested with one person at least committing herself to the cause.

On a totally different note, it is interesting to see the Chinese labour mentality. In England, the general trend seems to be redundancy because of technological improvement, ie machines getting bigger and better and replacing people. In China, however, the exact opposit seems to be true. Doubtless in some areas, people are being sacked because a maching can do the job faster or better, or both; however, here it seems that this is not the case. Examples of this are found everywhere, however perhaps the most fitting was the case today of cutting the school playing field. It is the same size as a full football field, in the middle of a proper 400m running track. In England this would take one person on a tractor style lawn mower the best part of 1h to cut and clean the cut grass up. However, here there were 5 people (or perhaps one or two more) working for the whole day to cut it. The reason was that the school had only bought one small petrol-powered lawn mower, dating back perhaps 20 years. There was one person walking this up and down, perhaps 75m 200 times during the course of the day, in the blazing heat and about 4 people walking atfer him raking up the grass into piles for 2 more people to put into bin bags and take away to despose of. This sort of thing is evident all over China: humans are cheap, but machines are expensive.

Another day out

Just got back from another day out with the classes; it was really good fun. We went to a theme park, which in China does not imply any rides. There was the strangest museam ever called the Museam of Civilised Man, which nstarted off with the standard broken pots and axes and pictures of monkey-like humans around a fire, but then progressed to much stranger things. After leaving that section, there was a thing on farming, which apparently in China has 24 seasons, and then we went into a tropical rainforest. However, this was no normal greenhouse type rainforest. The curator clearly thought that having actual trees there would be terriblt old fashioned and to have the humidity and heat set up high would be stupid (Actually, they could have just opened the windows). In lieu of any trees then there were some bits of wood that looked like they had once been small trees, and a mass of concrete trees which had been poorly painted to resemble the rainforest. There was also a CD of various frog-croaking, a fake rainforest smell, and the whole ‘display’ was air conditioned at a nice 18 degrees. Very strange.

Progressing further through this piece, there was a log cabin which had been tilted to make you feel dizzy (how this is justified in a Civilised Man exhibition, I do not know), a map of a model sustainable village and some photocopies of drawings of fruits housed in highly protective casings. There were alsom some cement-based fruits as well.

We sat down and wateched some dancing – the can can followed by some break-dancing and then some indian dancing and then some flemenco. Very surreal. Then we ate a nice lunch and after lunch headed to the water section of the park – basically a few ponds with ropes across them or stepping stones etc. That was quite fun and it’s impossible to really describe here as there were so mant different ways to cross the pond. There was also a water-dodgems thing which was really really fun. Quite an enjoyable day out and I have picked up even more of a tan and my first sun-burn in a few years. It was quite blisteringly hot today 🙂

I’m still rolling on

Not really much new news from here – tending to get into a routine of not sleeping and being around kids most of the day. I’m actually pretty good at mornings now, although I doubt that will carry on much after the camp. I guess the jet-lag when I get home will fix it up for a few days though. Got some new team members – a guy called Leon and his girlfriend called Pinkey; both of whom are Chinese and will study abroad. Leon was on one of these camps a few years ago and lives in Guangzho and wants to help out, which is cool. His body doesn’t seem to have adjusted to our schedule yet though, and he’s sharing a room with me so I seem ot be wakinghim up when I come in about 11:30ish and when I get up at 6ish.

Yesterday being Sunday, we did the usual. Had a full day of teaching and so on but found some time in the afternoon to sing some well known songs and look at a well known book. Some people from the camp were interested and came along, and by popular demand we did similar today with some teachers and the chinese organizer of this camp coming along and being very interested to find out more about us. Everyone around the campus is saying how different this camp is from previous years and are interested in why. Have had many long English conversations with people.

This afternoon I was just lazing around ‘supervising’ swimming, which just supervises itself. Managed to get some time to read my GNT which has been rather neglected of late. Also been learning quite a lot of Chinese. I cannot pronounce it or remember the sound of words, but I’m getting quite good at remembering the characters. Ruth seems to be getting quite good at the speaking side of things, and so we sound be set for the travel side of things afterwards.

Apologies for the lack of postcards, but the Chinese don’t seem to believe in them. I have not spied any on our travels around China and we have done a lot of travel. When we near Beijing, thre will doubtless be some but perhaps I will just have some of my photos printed off and write on the back of them…

You only die twice

The past few days have remained as hectic as ever over here. Yesterday was a non-teaching day but was still hard work as we ha to get the class to prepare things to do for the tallent show and the closing ceremony. In the evening, we had a murder mystery in which I was killed whilst attempting to kill Katie Liu. I had to lie outside dying for 20 minutes before I was allowed to resurrect. Lost a t-shirt to the tomato source… However, the children were not veyr nice to my corpse – I really don’t want to die around those children (although sometimes I think they will be the death of me). Several thought I was not really dead and so they poked my in the stomach, and one jumped on my fingers to make sure that I was not really dead. The worst feeling was the mosquitos which I could feel were sucking my blood (even though I’d put DEET on) but I couldn’t move to kill them. Later that evening, we had to reenact the murder so I was killed by Katie twice in the same evening.

sweet sweat

Lunch was very nice as always and got about 50 min of nap.. was really tired this morning for some reason. All the kids were knackered too. Afternoon supervisions went ok as well although sitting outside on the balcony was very sweaty. It’s always very humid here , however it seemed to be moreso this afternoon meaning that the body sweats a lot more. Chinese people do too and no-one seems that bothered about it, but for us westerners it is very strange. Then, we went swimming for about an hour, but at the threat of rain and the drop in temperature (very cold; must have been almost reaching 25…) the kids scarpered and we were forced to abandon the pool too… So, I went to play badminton for 30 min with Wayne (A Chinese helper from the company) and Roger (my absolutely amazing Chinese teacher). Turned out that it comes back quite quickly so I was almost back to full speed after 30 minutes of playing it. However, I have never sweated so much in my life. Forced to take my thin t-shirt off half-way through and had to wipe my hand and raquet after every serve and when I’d finished I was dripping as if I had just come out of the shower… Ming. Anyway, off to the recycled fashion show now.. Apparently I’m the person my class will be dressing up… The joy… Hopefully be able to put some photos of things up in the next few days as the internet here has improved somewhat.

Thunder storms

Last night we had a nice time watching Home Alone. I’d not seen it before, and it was very funny even if it was made for younder children. The kids absolutely loved it. However, during this a massive thunder storm had gathered, with a tropical downpour. It was probably the largest flood I’d ever seen however pretty moderate by Chinese standards. I was soaked to the bone after about 30 seconds of standing outside and lightening continued to flash til daybreak around the mountains which surround this area. Apparently we’re in for this for the next few days as well, which should be fun.

This morning, although the actual thunder and lightening had ceased for a few hours, it seemed to have energized the classes to be even more wild than usual. All the teachers are rather tired and all the classes are now bored of English and just want to mess around with each other. Even bribary with sweets is no longer quite as effective. Ah well, adapt and improvise.

Class trip

Just got back from the class trip we had today. It was to a place called a ‘national forest’, well at least buy the broken English on the signs. It basically comprised of some temples, a “zoo”, a small amusement park, some shops and a tobogan track.

For the morning, we split into our classes and went on the amusement park rides. There were about 7 in all, most not particularly scary and all designed for Chinese children, meaning that I had to leave my legs hanging outside the capsule whilst being hurled around near bare machinary. The children bought many toy guns and animals and so on from the shops. As the animals (mostly budgeries and hamsters) are not allowed to love in their dorms and we were not about to look after them, we forced them to take them back to the shops.

The zoo was rather small and depressing as most small, foreign zoos tend to be. Most of the animals seemed to be trying to kill themselves, some appearing to have succeeded but for their twitching on the uncleaned floors of their small cages. One noteable difference however was that they had what I would consider to be common animals there as well. Several dogs and cats which roam the streets here in abundence, and also pigeons which upon reflection I don’t recall having seen yet in China, certainly not with the abundence with which they pollute Cambridge. Indeed, I asked one of the Chinese teachers that we were with and he said that although there were some pigeons in China they were not generally found in this area… Interesting…

But the highlight of the day had to be the tobogan ride – it was about 1km of track down the side of a hill and was covered blisteringly fast – several people approaching the 1 minute mark. Andrew managed to take his camera down in video mode so we have several videos of the track. It’s really fun going so fast with your bottom about 2 inches from the ground around banked corners where you have to lean to stop yourself from going over the edge.. unless you want to use the brake.

Tonight, I think we are plonking the kids in front of a film whilst we have some time to recuperate, and I will have to plan my lessons for tomorrow. Subject matter is no problem, it is more how to present it in such a way that they might have a chance of learning something and also making it interesting enough that I do not have to resort to sweet bribary.

Have just looked at my arm while tryping – about half way through the day I was told my neck was getting a little burnt, so I put some sumcream on my neck and face and just rubbed the residue off on my arm. I can now quite clearly see where upon my arm I rubbed as it is noticably whiter than the area surrounding it. Maybe I should spend more time in the sun; which I doubtless will with the swimming activity tomorrow afternoon (as with all other afternoons. This place does have times of good fun even with ll of the hard work.. Speaking of good fun; it’s about dinner time so we’ll have our thrice-daily feast served to us!

Teaching in China

Wow! It’s been a manic few days of teaching the children. The day before we were due to start, we were told that we had to write an hour-long test for all of the children to do to test their English. The purpose of this test was not clear; they are not meant to see the result, and we are meant to give them another test at the end of the camp to see how they have improved. The fact that they will be tested on totally different subject matter didn’t seem to occur to the Chinese. Anyway, we wrote the tests and were then told that they were way too hard – apparently Chinese children are not taught about tenses until they are 12, rendering virtually everyone’s teaching material useless (there are about 200 kids less than 12 and 40 above, the majority of whom are 13-15 years old and even they don’t seem to have been taught about tenses.

So, the pattern of each day is to get up at 6:30 and then meet for 20 min of prayer 7-7:20. We then have aa quick breakfast and teach 3*50 minute classes between 8 and 11:45. Then a quick lunch, some book study with the team 1:30-2:30 and then 1 hour of supervisions with the children – groups of 2 or 3 for 15 minutes each. Yesterday this time was quite strange – in China apparently the way they learn English is by memorizing role-plays, so I had to phrase the question just right for them to understand and they replied with the memorized answer. For example I said “do you like animals” and the kid just looked blankly into space the same way I do when accosted by over-friendly supermarket staff here. When I said “What is your favourite animal” the response came straight away “My favourite animal is a pig”. Apparenly one child has a pet pig which is blue. There wa sone child who is quite talkative in class, even speaking in English, but during the supervision time he did not want to say a word – he used the other kid as a translator. I wrote down “I have no brothers or sisters” but he refused to say it and just stared blankly into space. Then we have afternoon activities. Because so many of the children wanted to go swimming, I have been assigned to pool duty, which basically means 1h30 swimming around the pool in the hot sun. They have a 50 meter pool and the kids seem to get on fine by themselves – whenever I went down the shallow end they splashed and tried to jump on me but when I practiced diving up the deep end or just doing lengths they let me alone and were still having fun amongst themselves. Sooo lucky not to be supervising the basketball or football activities.

After all this, we have an hour or so for dinner and then the evening activity until 9. Last night, this was ice-breakers etc and so we did some dancing and hokey cokey etc. I was told to lead the king kong dance and the children seemed to enjoy it. After this I just want to go to bed but most nights I have been staying up until the midnight region trying to think of something to teach the children the next day.

Today I have a break the the morning as one class was off doing a music lesson. I walked into town the the aforementioned department store to buy some stuff for the team – big packs of white rabbit (sweets, perhaps a bit like chewits but all the same flavour) and some shampoo and shower gel. This was quite an expreience beucase all the bottles were in chinese. Eventually, I managed to communicate what I wanted but I think the several assistants probabloy gave me stuff for women. Doesn’t seem to be any sanitary stuff for men here, apart from razors which are everywhere in abundence.

On the subject of sweets, it seems that the Chinese have got it sorted. Not so much in terms of the content of the sweets – most are some sort of dried plumb and chocolate is virtually unheard of, but in the packaging. I remember many times as a child in hot weather trying to peel the wrapping away from the sweet, made even worse in hot weather. Eventually, I tended to give up and just eat both and perhaps pick the paper out of my mouth afterwards. However some genius came up with putting a layer of rice paper in between the sweet and the wrappign – the wrapping just peals away and then you eat the rice-paper and the sweet. Certainly someone in England should invent such a wrapping!

Two of the teachers I have been working with have been intwerested to find out more about my subject of study – I would like to talk to them further about it.

Rural China

Wow what can I say… Apparently “Rural China” means we stay in a top hotel in a city of a bit under half a million people. We spentthe mornings teaching teachers from across a few counties who teach in poorer rural schools and also some of their students. In the afternoons we went travelling around the various tourist attractions in the local area. We visited the largest lake in southern china and had a boat ride to a tropical island there where we spent a few hours swimming in the lake and exploring the island.

Another day we went to a model rural village – a few years back it was subsistance farming only but now thanks to quite a large investment it has been turned into a community producing perhaps as much as 1m yuan (70k gbp) each year – a lot in China where the average teaching wage is perhaps 25k yuan/year. We then visited some old houses which are now converted to be ancestor worship temples with various things to stop the evil sprits getting in.

We also went to a dinosaur egg exhibition – they recently uncovered 10000 odddinosaureggs and put them, on display. HOwever one egg looks pretty much any other. Outside this there wasa very tall old building which we climbed up to the top of and could see the whole of Heyuan from. There was a small room on top in which we sang some songs etc. Had a little wander around the small village nearby after, which was quite run down and probably more like the average chinese village. The people there were all very nice though, but quite a few didn’t really want their photos taken.

The young communists were very amicable and we had several outings with the teachers on which we could get to know them better and chat about deep issues. Towards the end of the week we held a Q&A session at the hotel which was very well attended. On the sunday we went to the local three-self church and were very warmly received. We sang some English Christian songs but the language barrier was quite considerable. Amazed by the men-women ratio begin about 1:10 – a common problem in Chinese churches apparently.

On the last day we wereinvited to a retreet place about 2h drive along mountain roads. About half the group went and with several other teachers and communist party members. It was all for free and we were asked to advertise it amongst our friends. Usually very dubious about such things but this was actually really good. It was run by a chinese former Engish-teacher named Jason and some british investment. Also involves the local community so prospers them and Jason seems very caring as well. THough we were only there for 15 hours in was amazing. It was ina dip surrounded by mountains, the only thing other than green forest being the village itself. Upon arrival we went white-water rafting along the river and then had a wonderful dinner/kareoki session and then spent the rest of the evening playing mafia in the hot springs which the place in famour for. Went to bed about midnight and then a few of us got up at 4 at my instigation and climbedto the top of one of the mountains to see in the sunrise. It was amazing but after the half-way point the pathbecame disused so we had to cut our way through what was pretty much jungle to recover the trail. Was amazing seeing the first bits of sunrise and took many photos but alas the fog closed in just before 6 and we did not get to see the true sun-rise as we had to pack and have breakfast by 7:30.

All-in-all an excellent week! Now back in Shen Zhen for the next two and a half weeks teaching English-the firstkids arrive on Saturday sewe have 2 days of peace and quite to prepare before then.

2 updates in one day…

Tomorrow we head off to northern Guandong curtosy of the young communists party – they’re taking us up there to do some travelling and teach English to English teachers. Not really done much today – rehursing a pantomime and sorting lessons out. About to go swimming and maybe watch a film later… Been quite hot today at perhaps 33ish