I just returned from a quick trip to the supermarket for a couple of things. One of those things was to get some dishwashing liquid. What "flavours" of dishwashing liquid do you think you can get here?
Well there is Yellow Flavour, which is what we are currently using. Today I bought some Papaya Flavour. The other three didn't really appeal to me...seeing they were Aloe Flavour, Ginger Flavour and GARLIC Flavour. I smelt the garlic one, and it was..interesting.
Don't know why those flavours haven't caught on in Australia.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
An interesting country... (Marcus)
Indeed it is. On a daily basis as we move through our daily life away from life, we are constantly observing what is a culture that continues to remain so completely different to our own. At first when I was told that it could take absolutely years to understand culture - I thought, pfft, sure, a month or two here and we could already tell you what it's all about - but the more we think about it, the more we see of it, the harder it really is to understand.
There are just so many elements to the culture as a whole that work so differently to the western culture we're used to back home.
We were out to dinner last night and talking about the 30 million or so males who would not be able to find wives due to the female shortage as a result of the one child policy. Yes, female shortage. What are these people supposed to do? How do these men who cant find partners live when they are too old to work? Courtney said in addition to this, a huge number of Chinese women are also heading overseas and marrying foreigners, because of course it gives much greater opportunities than can be found easily back home.
The problem with China is there's so many Chinese. I think increasingly the country is going to find itself encountering larger and larger issues directly related to over-population. How can the country continue to feed such a massive number of people when it's building over all its farming land? How is it going to sustain it's populace when it's polluting it's waters so badly and already in the northern half of the country there are already water shortages?
One thing is clear in China, and that the people are all based around family. When a couple marries it is to have a child. The child is born and the parents go to work. The grandparents then look after the child. When the child is old enough to have its own kid, those parents then work whilst the now grandparents look after the kid. And it goes around and around and around in a huge circle of community. Often it seems large numbers of families are grouped together in communities.
So what happens when someone cannot marry and cannot have kids? He will have no-one to support him when he grows older and too frail to work. Does he link up with another family somehow - or more realistically, does he die completely miserable, living in extreme poverty. We see instances of extreme poverty all around us. As we have said before, the beggars are never in your face, but they also look weathered and about as poor as you can get. It really makes me feel sorry for these people. We give the odd beggar a few coins and they appreciate it, but you cant help everyone. Like the time we saw this poor old man hobbling across the road on a lame leg. He only had one half-sized crutch and the way he moved looked terrible. He obviously couldn't afford a second one. Sometimes you feel so helpless.
But beyond that, the place is just an eye-opener on a daily basis. As we deal with our own day to day issues - particularly of late with the weather, we are always observing the Chinese go about their daily lives. We're always finding things that both interest and amuse us. How can these people who have seemingly zero organizational ability somehow tear out a bamboo garden then replace it within a day or two with an intricate garden boxed in with a handmade fence? It just doesn't make sense sometimes. Somehow there's organizational layers buried beneath what appears to be chaos.
The building site next door is a good example. These buildings go up at an almost alarming rate. On top of the roof would have to be easily 20 workers. They seem to do nothing more than work on the top of whatever the structure is currently up. As the building increases in height, so to do these workers remain on the roof, building from above. Like all Chinese workers, there's seemingly ten times as many as needs be there, but like ants, they all have their roles.
I could go on and on and on about the things we see; and? I probably will, but for now I leave it at this, there's mosquitoes to kill. Thank god the weather has cooled in the last day or so at least - today was hot but right now it's quite pleasant. Really not looking forward to Summer, which is now a mere few weeks away.
There are just so many elements to the culture as a whole that work so differently to the western culture we're used to back home.
We were out to dinner last night and talking about the 30 million or so males who would not be able to find wives due to the female shortage as a result of the one child policy. Yes, female shortage. What are these people supposed to do? How do these men who cant find partners live when they are too old to work? Courtney said in addition to this, a huge number of Chinese women are also heading overseas and marrying foreigners, because of course it gives much greater opportunities than can be found easily back home.
The problem with China is there's so many Chinese. I think increasingly the country is going to find itself encountering larger and larger issues directly related to over-population. How can the country continue to feed such a massive number of people when it's building over all its farming land? How is it going to sustain it's populace when it's polluting it's waters so badly and already in the northern half of the country there are already water shortages?
One thing is clear in China, and that the people are all based around family. When a couple marries it is to have a child. The child is born and the parents go to work. The grandparents then look after the child. When the child is old enough to have its own kid, those parents then work whilst the now grandparents look after the kid. And it goes around and around and around in a huge circle of community. Often it seems large numbers of families are grouped together in communities.
So what happens when someone cannot marry and cannot have kids? He will have no-one to support him when he grows older and too frail to work. Does he link up with another family somehow - or more realistically, does he die completely miserable, living in extreme poverty. We see instances of extreme poverty all around us. As we have said before, the beggars are never in your face, but they also look weathered and about as poor as you can get. It really makes me feel sorry for these people. We give the odd beggar a few coins and they appreciate it, but you cant help everyone. Like the time we saw this poor old man hobbling across the road on a lame leg. He only had one half-sized crutch and the way he moved looked terrible. He obviously couldn't afford a second one. Sometimes you feel so helpless.
But beyond that, the place is just an eye-opener on a daily basis. As we deal with our own day to day issues - particularly of late with the weather, we are always observing the Chinese go about their daily lives. We're always finding things that both interest and amuse us. How can these people who have seemingly zero organizational ability somehow tear out a bamboo garden then replace it within a day or two with an intricate garden boxed in with a handmade fence? It just doesn't make sense sometimes. Somehow there's organizational layers buried beneath what appears to be chaos.
The building site next door is a good example. These buildings go up at an almost alarming rate. On top of the roof would have to be easily 20 workers. They seem to do nothing more than work on the top of whatever the structure is currently up. As the building increases in height, so to do these workers remain on the roof, building from above. Like all Chinese workers, there's seemingly ten times as many as needs be there, but like ants, they all have their roles.
I could go on and on and on about the things we see; and? I probably will, but for now I leave it at this, there's mosquitoes to kill. Thank god the weather has cooled in the last day or so at least - today was hot but right now it's quite pleasant. Really not looking forward to Summer, which is now a mere few weeks away.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Lovely times! (Marcus)
Well night number one in the bed a la mosquito net was a complete success! Not. It's quite cool in there actually, like a 'room within a room' as Courtney says, but Jesus Christ almighty, I was bitten all over first my left hand, and then my right. The net must have worked so well that it trapped a %(UW() mosquito IN with us somehow. I had to get up and wash my hands in cold water then spray myself with this herbal repellant stuff(anti-mozzie product no. 298), and despite a nicely swollen little finger, the rest of the night was...still crap.
Crap because it was hot as hell in the room last night - leading into the most feral day we have had in China yet. It really makes us look forward to the rapidly oncoming Summer!
It was mostly cloudy - well as far as we could tell, but the Sun was penetrating the smog. The weather website said it was low to mid-30's, but felt like 42 with the sun/humidity. And yeah, it did. It was absolutely disgusting outside. Between classes it started pissing down raining so of course I had no umbrella and had to run a distance between buildings to my next class. By the time I got there I was dripping with a combination of sweat and acid rain. It was heavy rain too - the kind that almost instantly soaks you.
So yeah, we just can't wait for Summer proper, which is supposedly hot, humid and very wet with thunderstorms. It has been raining all afternoon and continues outside. I HOPE it will be a little cooler tomorrow. It's going to be so much fun travelling in this kind of weather, woot!
Crap because it was hot as hell in the room last night - leading into the most feral day we have had in China yet. It really makes us look forward to the rapidly oncoming Summer!
It was mostly cloudy - well as far as we could tell, but the Sun was penetrating the smog. The weather website said it was low to mid-30's, but felt like 42 with the sun/humidity. And yeah, it did. It was absolutely disgusting outside. Between classes it started pissing down raining so of course I had no umbrella and had to run a distance between buildings to my next class. By the time I got there I was dripping with a combination of sweat and acid rain. It was heavy rain too - the kind that almost instantly soaks you.
So yeah, we just can't wait for Summer proper, which is supposedly hot, humid and very wet with thunderstorms. It has been raining all afternoon and continues outside. I HOPE it will be a little cooler tomorrow. It's going to be so much fun travelling in this kind of weather, woot!
BBQ's and Mozzies and Stinky hot weather oh my! (marcus)
So nothing really much has been happening of late that’s really worth noting down. We had a lazy day on Saturday, cooking bacon and eggs – though Courtney wasn’t used to this particular type of bacon which I cooked last time – not realizing that if you cook it for any longer than oh 5 seconds it turns to leather. So while it tasted great, it basically turned to bacon dust in your mouth when you bit it – extra uber super sayan gosu crispy. It was nice just to have a day in, not actually anticipating teaching at some point in the day.
We’re trying to save a chunk of our monthly wages to feed it back into either our summer holiday, travel after we’re done or being able to ..live, when we return to Australia. The money we make teaching is peanuts compared to what we were making back home, but we knew this before making the decision to take a bit of a ‘time out’ year. I guess we were both expecting it to be a bit easier/cruiser than it is – though as Matt points out every time I say that, we do kinda sleep-in every single day of the week – our 15 hour working week that is! But in our defence, the lesson plans do take a lot more time than we would have anticipated – particularly this week where Courtney has basically gone to town.
The weekend BBQ was a nice change from Chinese reality. While it’s not really easy to get classic BBQ food around here, Abby did a great job putting together some meat kebabs. They also tried to make some hamburger patties out of Chinese mince, but the consistency of the meat wasn’t so flash; surprise surprise! Chinese supermarket meat on the whole is pretty bloody average we’ve found. And beyond all that, it was nice just to kick back by a Barbie with a beer(which I will point out is ridiculously cheap in the supermarkets). The balconey at Matt and Abby’s is built in basically and it didn’t ventilate particularly well. Even with the windows fully open, the smoke from the BBQ insisted on staying inside the balconey itself. I think that’s just the Chinese design – well it has to be. Nothing ever really happens like you’d hope it would here. All in all a great night though. Next time we want to get them over to see our place, go out for dinner and grab some massages at the local blind place. Not that we know what the procedure is for having visitors yet – with us living in a secure environment with 24/7 active guards front and back.
As I’ve been typing this, I have killed 2 mosquitoes. Did I mention how much I fcking HATE them???????? I am just so utterly over them. I could never permanently live in a place where they are like this. I remember thinking when we were in Port Douglas(where we decided to come to China actually) - the days were oppressively hot, but the nights and the warm air were beautiful. You spent a great deal of the day outside and in and out of the pool, and it was just a leisure lifestyle. They would undoubtedly get mosquitoes up there similar to what we have here(though I doubt the ones there are possibly carrying lovely little death germs from the local canals of death water). Living with them here gives me a new perspective on them, and I just could NOT handle living like this forever. For some god knows what reason, Courtney barely gets bitten, while I am like a pile of shit before a squadron of pregnant flies. I have a nice big one on my forehead that I woke up with this morning, and right now both my toe and ankle are itching like crazy. We’re sleeping for the first time under the net tonight so I hope it helps. I might sound like I’m whinging, and I probably am, but I’m also getting bitten every single fkng night to the point of going insane. The other night I woke up with 2 large bumps on my foot(which was hanging over the side of the bed) and it was so unbelievably itchy. I put some savlon disinfectant on it to sooth it somewhat, but I just could not get back to sleep. The itching was so bad it was almost painful.
And in other news the weather of late has been basically feral. Courtney was saying spring was supposedly the best time to come to China – and yeah well we’re kind of worried about just how uncomfortable it’s going to get. For one, you read things about the mozzies such as, “Good luck, it’s only gonna get worse!” Sweet! The weather has been muggy as hell – likeable to what we experienced in Port Douglas during the rainy season actually. 30+ degree days with high humidity where the actual temperature feels like 40 rather than low 30’s. It’s supposed to cool down later this week – and rain, but that only means it will remain muggy. We are spending more and more time hibernating in our air-conditioned cave of an apartment. We are slowly becoming used to the sheen of sweat that is basically permanently on your skin. We think summer will be this hot, but with basically no let up to the run on of hot weather. At the moment there’s mostly a cooler breeze with all hot weather – summer we are thinking will be hot days coupled with hot muggy air. Summer is supposedly very wet here. Nice – it will be sticky.
Ok just as I wrote that I just killed mozzie number 3. The first two were with my hands. I am becoming Kung Fu good at snatching them out of the air with one hand and crushing them to death. This last one was the biggest one I’ve seen yet I think, and I just destroyed it with my new bat of destruction. This electrified tennis racket is the best thing I’ve played with in years. I can see myself becoming addicted to it. There’s something just so completely satisfying about frying flying insects with a super loud CRACK! This last one gave off a little puff of smoke as it went down in a blaze of not glory. Die you little prick, die!
So weather, mozzies, bbq’s and I think I am about done. One last thing I will say on a completely unrelated note – I noticed one of my students today had big claw marks raked down the side of his face. I asked the class about it and they said it was a cat..then a tiger, then finally admitted it was a fight between two students. The other student was this nice little boy, really quiet, seemingly quite shy, but moreso just quiet, with a nice face. Somehow he’s clawed the other kids face hardcore! I wanted to take a photo but it felt kind of inappropriate. Most of the kids have long nails I think, so this is probably their weapon of choice in a schoolyard fisticuff. Cracks me up, you never know what you’re going to witness next. This seemingly quiet kid must have been pushed over the edge and snapped – kind of like this nerd kid at school did to me one class when I emptied his pencil case on the desk – BAM! MENTAL!
Goodnight!
Monday, May 26, 2008
Miscellaneous Things (Courtney)
Some pictures of recent happenings...
Men doing what they do best...hanging at the bbq. What's that you say? BBQ?! Yes that's right, Matt and Abby asked us around for a bbq on Saturday night and I have to say it was pretty darn good. We are now planning on buying a bbq of our own.
On the way to the bbq we stopped at the madness that is Carrefour (the french supermarket). It's going to be a LONG time before I can face going back. But that's another story altogether, and may at some point get a blogpost all of it's own. In the complex I stopped to look at some shorts. I swear I've tried on every pair of black shorts in Wuxi. So I finally found some that weren't made of plastic/parachute material, or didn't have chains, feathers, bits of pvc etc. They almost fit too which is a nice change. Of course though, nothing is plain around here. The shorts have detatchable suspenders. God only knows why. Just to give you an idea of the fashion challenges we face in this country.
I'm sure anyone who reads this blog would be aware that Marcus has been having some issues with mossies. Me on the other hand, I don't seem to get bitten. So Marcus has literally bought every contraption there is to buy. We have one of those blue electric zapper things, a plug in device that emits a smell, cans of spray, bottles of repelant. You name it. The latest edition to the house is the above tennis racquet. How is that going to help kill mossies you ask. Well it's ELECTRIFIED! Oh yeah. Marcus 12, mosquitos NIL.
Take 4 on the mossie net, and we have success. It took a new net (which was exactly the same as the old one), Mr Pan, me and a lady from his office, but we did it. Note that the mossie net sits on top of the mattress, not underneath. We are yet to figure out how to make the bed now that this thing is on it.
And finally, large novelty cardboard dice. These took a large part of my weekend to make, and barely escaped being destroyed in todays classes after having been thrown around by 300 odd kids. We played a very fun game with the kids today, and I don't think either of us have been so stuffed in a long time. And to think the Chinese teachers probably see us as lazy. Wouldn't find them making novelty dice on their loungeroom floor ;-)
Friday, May 23, 2008
Postscript to Marcus' post (Courtney)
Everything Marcus said in his last post is so completely true. Every week is up and down and every class has it's good and bad moments. It makes it hard to decide whether you like this teaching caper or not! As a friend put it in an email during the week "It's 90% crowd control." Couldn't have put it better!
On the whole this was actually a really good week on the teaching front. Senior 1 are behaving themselves a whole lot more, our few ground rules that we lazily gave out a few weeks ago seem to be working quite well. Whilst the kids are still reluctant to talk, they are at least for the most part being quiet when they should be quiet! And I've even noticed a lot more "Good Afternoons" and "Lao shi haos" (basically hello teacher or teacher good) being said to me as I wander around the school. The "heelloooos" are definately decreasing. Most of the Junior kids will actually call me by name now as well.
We were concerned going into this week with Senior 1 as all of the classes have been mixed up. They have started new electives and the classes have been rearranged accordingly. However we have mostly retained our own students, with handfuls of new faces in each class. I was almost nervous going to my new Class 10 this afternoon. I normally teach Class 8 who I really like and the rest of my classes during the week hadn't been TOO mixed up so I was worried about how many new kids would be in Class 10. But for the most part it turned out to be my Class 8 minus a few faces, including "Sarah" unfortunately. Thankfully Harper (my latest naming addition) and his cool buddy are still there, along with Wei and his mate too. Wei is the kid who emails me in gangstar.
As Marcus was saying, the classes this week have been good and the lessons we delivered suited the classes and we not only had fun but managed to get quite a bit out of the kids. One thing is for sure though, you NEVER know what is going to happen in a class. You can never predict, and sometimes the results are hilarious. In one of my Thursday classes, as my Junior kids were diligently filling in their handout, I could hear a class going bananas. Of course I know that this must be Marcus' class. The rest of the building is silent and there is just an absolute roar of noise coming from upstairs. Sure enough I ask Marcus later and yup, it was his class playing a game!
With our "Plane Crash Survivor" game for the Seniors, we have had some really interesting comments and reasons from the kids. Number 1 reason for needing a gun was either to shoot yetis (yes, yetis!) or dinosaurs! The best though was this afternoon when I asked Wei what his groups top 5 things were. Number 1 was a knife. Not to kill animals or cut down trees. His reason was "so when things get very bad we can cut ourselves and feel pain so that we remain awake and not go crazy." Right. What would second be Wei? "A gun, so if need be we could shoot each other." And dare I ask number 3? "Newspapers." And what would you use the newspapers for (mind you, every other kid has said to read or to make a fire). He says "for when we need to go to the bathroom!" Great stuff.
Then I had Class 2, which is one of my best classes of the week. These kids are switched on, and you can almost have a class discussion with them. During the week I had run into their Chinese English teacher who said to me they like my classes more than hers. Woo hoo! So perhaps I went in with a big head today, but I ran a tight ship and at the end of the class I received a round of applause. Oh the adulation!
On the whole this was actually a really good week on the teaching front. Senior 1 are behaving themselves a whole lot more, our few ground rules that we lazily gave out a few weeks ago seem to be working quite well. Whilst the kids are still reluctant to talk, they are at least for the most part being quiet when they should be quiet! And I've even noticed a lot more "Good Afternoons" and "Lao shi haos" (basically hello teacher or teacher good) being said to me as I wander around the school. The "heelloooos" are definately decreasing. Most of the Junior kids will actually call me by name now as well.
We were concerned going into this week with Senior 1 as all of the classes have been mixed up. They have started new electives and the classes have been rearranged accordingly. However we have mostly retained our own students, with handfuls of new faces in each class. I was almost nervous going to my new Class 10 this afternoon. I normally teach Class 8 who I really like and the rest of my classes during the week hadn't been TOO mixed up so I was worried about how many new kids would be in Class 10. But for the most part it turned out to be my Class 8 minus a few faces, including "Sarah" unfortunately. Thankfully Harper (my latest naming addition) and his cool buddy are still there, along with Wei and his mate too. Wei is the kid who emails me in gangstar.
As Marcus was saying, the classes this week have been good and the lessons we delivered suited the classes and we not only had fun but managed to get quite a bit out of the kids. One thing is for sure though, you NEVER know what is going to happen in a class. You can never predict, and sometimes the results are hilarious. In one of my Thursday classes, as my Junior kids were diligently filling in their handout, I could hear a class going bananas. Of course I know that this must be Marcus' class. The rest of the building is silent and there is just an absolute roar of noise coming from upstairs. Sure enough I ask Marcus later and yup, it was his class playing a game!
With our "Plane Crash Survivor" game for the Seniors, we have had some really interesting comments and reasons from the kids. Number 1 reason for needing a gun was either to shoot yetis (yes, yetis!) or dinosaurs! The best though was this afternoon when I asked Wei what his groups top 5 things were. Number 1 was a knife. Not to kill animals or cut down trees. His reason was "so when things get very bad we can cut ourselves and feel pain so that we remain awake and not go crazy." Right. What would second be Wei? "A gun, so if need be we could shoot each other." And dare I ask number 3? "Newspapers." And what would you use the newspapers for (mind you, every other kid has said to read or to make a fire). He says "for when we need to go to the bathroom!" Great stuff.
Then I had Class 2, which is one of my best classes of the week. These kids are switched on, and you can almost have a class discussion with them. During the week I had run into their Chinese English teacher who said to me they like my classes more than hers. Woo hoo! So perhaps I went in with a big head today, but I ran a tight ship and at the end of the class I received a round of applause. Oh the adulation!
Up up up! Down down down (Marcus)
Ah it's not all bad, the teaching thing, but by the end of the week, no matter whether the lesson is a complete success or just so-so, I am thoroughly over doing the same thing so many times in a row. Particularly on Friday's where it's 4 of the same lesson in one day, blergh.
So this week for our Seniors we did the exercise where you are in a plane crash type scenario and have to prioratise from 10 salvaged items etc etc - I am sure everyone has done this. It worked out pretty good actually, but I am glad it's over as it gets boring after the 4th or 5th time.
For the juniors and gifted we did a second lesson on time. Last week we did Time Bingo(tm) which was great fun. They loved having prizes for 1st, 2nd, 3rd. We bought them things like packets of biscuits, packets of chips etc etc from the local school shop. They're always hungry in class and being able to suddenly have these was a treat for them.
This week the guts of the lesson was a Clock Race(tm). We drew up two clocks(actually I don't think Courtney even did this once...) on the board and then divided the class into two teams of around 25ish each.
I discovered that later in the week they enjoyed picking their own team names, so we went with that. They were also SUPER damned noisy. Being a race, they all got completely into it, and were often cheering and clapping each kid as he came up to the front to compete.
The rules were simple - 2 empty clock faces, 2 kids. I would call random times and the first to draw the hands correctly wins a point for their team - first to 12.
Here we've got two of my gifted. Parker on the left, wearing my sunglasses to look cool, and 'Mr Sexy'. Mr Sexy has been the name of this kid ever since we did the Cat excercise where they had to find verbs for every letter of the alphabet to describe a cat. Well this poor kid said Sexy, and I've been milking it ever since. I call him Mr Sexy and the kids fkng love it. The kid behind him even sits there ALL class with a little homemade sign pointing at him, "Mr Sexy ->"
So it was Team Parker vs Team Sexy. Every time Team Sexy won a point, I'd turn around and say all dramatic like, "Sooo sexy," and they'd just love it. Ah these kids crack me up. The two gifted classes are the best part of my week. I think class 1 with Mr Sexy is now my favourite.
This kid, Parker, along with two others, one named Taylor the other I cant remember, run to escort me to class every week now. It was initially just Taylor, now there's 3 of them. Parker wears sunglasses as I think his eyes are quite sensitive to bright light when he's out. They're such cool little kids; i'd happily adopt them and bring them home to raise as my minions anyday.
Here we have the post-game blackboard melee that took place after Team Strawberry defeated Team Dinosaur. As we played, I had any kids who were being annoyingly noisy come and draw either a strawberry or a dinosaur on their teams side of the board.
At the end of the class, I dragged up all of the 'Dinosaur' team and forced them to cover the board in strawberries - you know, seeing the strawberries had the glory and all. Initially it went smoothly until they started doing dinosaurs as well to which the Strawberry team wouldn't settle for and the above board melee was the end result. The noise factor was extreme, but it was all highly amusing.
I'd love to know what the other Chinese teachers think are going on inside my classes as the cheering with the Clock race itself was hellishly loud also.
Ah the joys of it all. I definitely prefer these age groups to the teens - although the teens do have their highlights, they're just frustratingly hard to get speaking. We can effectively throw anything at the kids knowing they will volunteer to speak or participate.
So this week for our Seniors we did the exercise where you are in a plane crash type scenario and have to prioratise from 10 salvaged items etc etc - I am sure everyone has done this. It worked out pretty good actually, but I am glad it's over as it gets boring after the 4th or 5th time.
For the juniors and gifted we did a second lesson on time. Last week we did Time Bingo(tm) which was great fun. They loved having prizes for 1st, 2nd, 3rd. We bought them things like packets of biscuits, packets of chips etc etc from the local school shop. They're always hungry in class and being able to suddenly have these was a treat for them.
This week the guts of the lesson was a Clock Race(tm). We drew up two clocks(actually I don't think Courtney even did this once...) on the board and then divided the class into two teams of around 25ish each.
I discovered that later in the week they enjoyed picking their own team names, so we went with that. They were also SUPER damned noisy. Being a race, they all got completely into it, and were often cheering and clapping each kid as he came up to the front to compete.
The rules were simple - 2 empty clock faces, 2 kids. I would call random times and the first to draw the hands correctly wins a point for their team - first to 12.
Here we've got two of my gifted. Parker on the left, wearing my sunglasses to look cool, and 'Mr Sexy'. Mr Sexy has been the name of this kid ever since we did the Cat excercise where they had to find verbs for every letter of the alphabet to describe a cat. Well this poor kid said Sexy, and I've been milking it ever since. I call him Mr Sexy and the kids fkng love it. The kid behind him even sits there ALL class with a little homemade sign pointing at him, "Mr Sexy ->"So it was Team Parker vs Team Sexy. Every time Team Sexy won a point, I'd turn around and say all dramatic like, "Sooo sexy," and they'd just love it. Ah these kids crack me up. The two gifted classes are the best part of my week. I think class 1 with Mr Sexy is now my favourite.
This kid, Parker, along with two others, one named Taylor the other I cant remember, run to escort me to class every week now. It was initially just Taylor, now there's 3 of them. Parker wears sunglasses as I think his eyes are quite sensitive to bright light when he's out. They're such cool little kids; i'd happily adopt them and bring them home to raise as my minions anyday.
Here we have the post-game blackboard melee that took place after Team Strawberry defeated Team Dinosaur. As we played, I had any kids who were being annoyingly noisy come and draw either a strawberry or a dinosaur on their teams side of the board.At the end of the class, I dragged up all of the 'Dinosaur' team and forced them to cover the board in strawberries - you know, seeing the strawberries had the glory and all. Initially it went smoothly until they started doing dinosaurs as well to which the Strawberry team wouldn't settle for and the above board melee was the end result. The noise factor was extreme, but it was all highly amusing.
I'd love to know what the other Chinese teachers think are going on inside my classes as the cheering with the Clock race itself was hellishly loud also.
Ah the joys of it all. I definitely prefer these age groups to the teens - although the teens do have their highlights, they're just frustratingly hard to get speaking. We can effectively throw anything at the kids knowing they will volunteer to speak or participate.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Mr Pan he's our man! (Courtney)
Mr Pan has been rather absent of late. We tell ourselves that it's not us, that maybe he is just busy, but we are starting to think that the novelty of us westerners has worn off.
Well Mr Pan dropped by last night, and unlike his fly in fly out visits of late, he actually hung around for a bit and helped us out with a couple of things. We bought a mossie net about 2 months ago and have attempted to put this thing together only twice...each time we have gone bananas trying to get it together only to get no where. It is singlehandedly the most frustrating design you could imagine. So we asked Mr Pan a couple of weeks ago if he might be able to have a look at it for us, as seemingly he bought the same one when we bought ours. Needless to say after Mr Pan had a look at it last night, it was decided that the net is "broken" and needs to go back to the store. Thank ye gods Mr Pan has taken it upon himself to do this as I couldn't even fathom how we would try and exchange something at the store we bought it from. Even so, I'm not sure that another one would be any better. You can't seem to get mossie nets here that just hang from the roof. They are all these fandangaled things that look like tents and sit on top of the mattress. I've no idea how someone is supposed to get in or out of bed, or for that matter make the bed...but only time will tell.
Mossie net attempt #3. Still no luck.
As he was about to go, Mr Pan spotted our newly purchased fan lying in parts on the floor. We had only just returned from a trip to the shops to buy a screwdriver to assemble the fan. Well, Mr Pan isn't one to let something go, so before we could try to stop him he's down on the floor putting the fan together. I had assembled half of it, but had stopped at the base due to not having a screwdriver (we had actually spoken to Mr Pan the previous evening, and Marcus asked if he had a screwdriver we could borrow. Mr Pan mistook this as us needing the "school driver"...ah, the joys of translation!) All I can say is I am very glad Mr Pan started working on this thing as I would not have figured it out.
Marcus and Mr Pan deep in contemplation over the fan. I'm not sure what Marcus is looking at given the instructions were in Chinese ;-)
And finally, it wouldn't be like Mr Pan to come over not baring some odd purchase or "gift". Last night was no exception. He came in carrying the world's smallest watermelon.."a gift for you!" See below for hand-to-watermelon ratio....
Speaking of which, I think I might go eat some now!
And in what can only be described as the best news we have heard since arriving here, we finally said to Mr Pan last night - the couch has got to go! We can take no more of sitting on what is basically nothing more than a park bench. Three months in and enough is enough! Turns out he believes the school has a couch somewhere that they can swap for our couch. He is going to organise something with Mr Shen, the principle. We live in hope....
Teaching woes (Marcus)
Begin rant!
Well teaching continues to be a challenging uphill battle. It’s definitely far more difficult than I would have anticipated – I mean, I knew it’d be hard, going into a completely new field such as we have with basically no experience beyond what we could call transferable skills from the world of business – however, it’s not so much the in-class teaching, but the lesson planning. Actually it’s a combination of the two.
The problem definitely stems from the fact that their language skills are all over the place. Their reading and writing are actually very good. If you ask any of the students to write something, 9 times out of 10 they can. Sure the English isn’t perfect, but it’s surprisingly good. Their reading is likewise right up there. If you look at their textbooks it’s actually quite amazing how difficult the text they are reading is. I would almost say that their reading is almost at an advanced level whilst their writing upper-intermediate.
Their speaking however is atrocious. I know speaking another language is by and far the hardest part. Well that can depend on the language I suppose – if you are learning Chinese, most of the time you’ll be able to speak it, not read or write it – but with English it appears to be the other way around. In order to get anything out of these students were have to physically pull it out. It is extremely tiring, and very disheartening. It goes up and down with the different classes. If we didn’t have our junior classes – particularly gifted – if we had to deal with nothing but the senior 1 teenagers, well I think we would have bailed on this job and headed home by now, I really do.
They are extremely frustrating, and there’s been little to no change in the 3+ months we’ve been doing this. Yes they are more comfortable with us, and I am sure they understand us better, but their actual output of spoken language is in most cases pathetic.
I know this isn’t a new problem in Chinese classes in China as you can see this kind of thing all over the forums at Dave’s ESL Café(www.eslcafe.com), where other ESL teachers have practically the same issues. The teaching scenario in China doesn’t help. Here you have huge classes which itself is probably most of the problem. That and the fact that they would do little to no speaking in all their other English classes – of which there are many. In fact English is one of the most important subjects as it plays a very big part towards getting into university or not – yet actually speaking English seems to hold little to no weight.
The fact there’s over 50 kids in each class makes it hard for a number of reasons. With the junior kids it’s not so bad, as they are all willing to talk and participate. With the teens they will only participate if pushed. Most are happy to give one word answers or do no work when asked. Most will have giggle fits and laugh into their hands if put on the spot – yet when we encourage them to write things down to assist them with reading them out – they don’t. They piss around, talk in Chinese and well sometimes I wonder why we bother.
The rooms aren’t small, but they’re also not large. There’s no room to actually get them up and do activities other than getting them to the front of the room – and that’s where they perform the worst. It’s not possible to push desks out of the way and do fun things in the middle as they are all overflowing with books. These classrooms are their daily prisons. It’s not possible to get them to do individual activities where we have them stand up and speak one by one – for after a few have had their turns the rest are bored shitless and start to talk. They don’t talk much louder than a whisper most days anyway, so once a few kids start talking even I can’t bloody understand what the student in the spotlight is trying to say.
It’s so frustrating. We skim the ESL websites looking for new ideas to try in class, new games, new activities, but practically 98% of them aren’t suitable. Some require actually doing things in class – physically, and we just don’t have the room, nor can we really take them anywhere outside, there’s just too many of them to manage that easily in the 40 minute timeframe. Nor can we physically take things in beyond printouts - we can’t take in 55 pairs of scissors or 900 coloured pens. That rules that kind of creative thing out. Nor do half the games or activities work. Roleplays are ridiculous, they really are. Sure, one group in seven will actually put one together, but most involve the group standing before the class, pissing themselves, passing around a sheet of paper that has nothing written on it, trying to make it up on the spot.
I swear to god, I don’t know what to do with these students. I would gladly shed myself of the senior 1 classes and teach more junior in their place. They have had their issues too, but they are infinitely more workable. I really like the kids of all classes, but 90% of the whole level just will not give anything beyond the bare minimum – and even that has to be dragged out.
Forget classroom discussions. They are a complete waste of time. When we plan a lesson around a classroom discussion, it involves us as the teachers explaining the topic, then dragging answers out of each and every kid. No-one volunteers anything. We have to ask them questions. We get a one word answer, to which we ask them another question then get another one word answer. The next kid just says, Me too! Bleh.
The school gives us no support in this area either. When we have told them the issues we face they say simply, Find ways to motivate them! I bet they don’t even know what they are being taught by their Chinese teachers. As long as the marks are high and the school fees coming in, who cares. Oh and as long as we have our two teachers with white faces and can tell other schools we have them.
I like teaching – I find it actually very much agrees with me as a person. I don’t like lesson planning however, I find it very difficult, and I think that is because of all the resources we find, most are unsuitable. What we have tried is a complete mish-mash of different ideas. Some have worked well, but most are just the same old pattern of getting nothing out of the classes.
This semester ends in about one month and it is the end of the Chinese school year. We are dreading having to teach the same senior 1 class when it becomes senior 2. We will then have to come up with a whole semesters worth of new lesson plans when we’re already just scraping by. We are hoping we get a new senior 1, or something else, so we can reuse all the lesson plans we have created to date. We are also hoping we do not lose our gifted class as they are the definite highlight of our week.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Service with a smile! (Marcus)
On and on a quick note - Courtney was quite down the other day, stemming from the absolute lack of interest the women in the photoshop gave her when she went to pick up her film.
Well today we went back in to pick them up and they hadn't finished them but got to it el pronto. Her camera has 4 lenses and takes these interesting panel type shots - I am sure she will upload some to the blog as they're really quite cool. Anyway they weren't sure on whether they were what we wanted or not. We confirmed that they were, the staff speaking zero english, and they quickly printed them for us. It took 10 minutes. This 10 minute job that took initially over two days to complete.
Anyhow while we were waiting, we witnessed an absolute classic in Chinese customer service. I loved this so much, having worked for 6 years in a photo lab.
A guy came in and walked to the counter. He handed the woman there his docket to pick up his photos. He didn't say a word. She took the docket, turned behind her, found his photos then dumped them on the counter. Dumped - litterally. It was a cross between a carefactor zero throw and a toss. Just plomp, right there on the counter. Then she immediately turned her back on him and started doing something else. NOT A WORD was uttered. Not a, "There you go!" or, "Thanks for that!" or anything, NADA!
So the guy has a look at his photos, slides them back into the wallet then walks out and is on his way. Not a single word uttered during the exchange. Absolute pisser.
I think Courtney witnessing that at least realizes now that it's not US, the foreign monkey's. They reserve that kind of quality service for their own kin too!
Well today we went back in to pick them up and they hadn't finished them but got to it el pronto. Her camera has 4 lenses and takes these interesting panel type shots - I am sure she will upload some to the blog as they're really quite cool. Anyway they weren't sure on whether they were what we wanted or not. We confirmed that they were, the staff speaking zero english, and they quickly printed them for us. It took 10 minutes. This 10 minute job that took initially over two days to complete.
Anyhow while we were waiting, we witnessed an absolute classic in Chinese customer service. I loved this so much, having worked for 6 years in a photo lab.
A guy came in and walked to the counter. He handed the woman there his docket to pick up his photos. He didn't say a word. She took the docket, turned behind her, found his photos then dumped them on the counter. Dumped - litterally. It was a cross between a carefactor zero throw and a toss. Just plomp, right there on the counter. Then she immediately turned her back on him and started doing something else. NOT A WORD was uttered. Not a, "There you go!" or, "Thanks for that!" or anything, NADA!
So the guy has a look at his photos, slides them back into the wallet then walks out and is on his way. Not a single word uttered during the exchange. Absolute pisser.
I think Courtney witnessing that at least realizes now that it's not US, the foreign monkey's. They reserve that kind of quality service for their own kin too!
But wait, there's more! (Marcus)
I always feel that when I come home from a place like Shanghai, I want to write pages and pages about it so I can remember it. When I think about it as I bang it out on the keyboard, more things come to me, little things that I don’t want to forget.
And Courtney also.
And yes we finally went to bloody Yu Yuan gardens, are you happy now mum?! The zigzagging bridge to the teahouse in the middle was so serene. We stopped there to contemplate life for a short while; just us and 50 gazillion other people.
For example, along the Bund, all the buildings are 1920’s European. We initially walked down along the river itself, which was a nonstop parade of every conceivable type of watercraft(including floating billboards), then walked down in behind the buildings. Our first goal was lunch and we had a great Chinese meal in a place called Grandmothers Restaurant. Now I don’t know what this place is, but I’ve heard about it SOMEwhere, but damned if I can remember where. I read a fair bit of travel literature on China before coming here so I think it might have been in one. Anyhow..
We left the restaurant and walked along the street towards one of the main shopping roads, Nanjing Road. Nanjing is the name of the capital of our province, Jiangsu province. Shanghai is beside Jiangsu but isn’t actually a part of it. Shanghai is Shanghai. The street behind the Bund was the rear’s of the buildings fronting the river and not as interesting obviously as their fronts, but what struck me as super interesting was the fact that the whole area now, with old buildings on both sides of us was practically like walking through parts of Melbourne. If you squinted and blocked out the fact there were 100% Chinese people you could forget you were in China and pretend you were back home – though that little illusion was ripped clear with the blasting of the ships horns a few hundred metres away.
As Courtney said, the English language that’s present in Shanghai is hard to re-adjust to. When we sat in Grandmothers restaurant, it didn’t even occur to me initially that the menu was completely in English as well as Chinese. I was flicking through the pages reading the dishes and it didn’t occur to me how damned easy this was. All the taxi’s had a little audio greeting in Chinese and then in English. We have become so completely used to absolutely no English – or at least the bare minimum, that when we see it now, it doesn’t even register initially. Shanghai is a huge international city, Wuxi is not. Moreso, the district we live in in Wuxi is like the sticks compared to anything located in Shanghai. Where we are is practically local – in fact, one female teacher here called this area ‘the country.’ Some days it really does feel like it’s the sticks. None moreso than when you return from a place the size of Shanghai and look out the window at the what is now just a boring view of rows of high rise apartments.
So as Courtney mentioned we made a specific effort to get up very early..5:30, and head down to the Bund to experience it. We had to do it, at least once. I am really glad we did, though I was absolutely tired as hell and my neck was giving me a nasty headache. We didn’t bring the damned panadol either, so that was fun. The Bund was a different place in the morning. It was a misty(China mist: smog)morning and sunny, shedding a beautiful – actually peaceful light on everything. As expected, the Chinese were out doing Tai Chi. This is what we came to see. They were mostly concentrated around the area where the monument to the People’s heroes was. On our way to the Bund(roughly a 10-15 min walk), we could see oldies of various description heading in the same direction. As they walked they were banging their hands on their thighs, using those ball things in their hands(ben wa balls?) and various other activities. Movement seems to be a huge part of Chinese culture. It is not uncommon to see someone standing beside a tree and slapping it – getting movement into their arms. People walking backwards achieves the same goal. You see all manner of exercises, aimed at getting that rascally chi moving.
It was quite windy on the Bund, yet pleasant. Further along the main stretch were the early morning kite enthusiasts. I really like watching these guys. They seem to just simply enjoy putting a kite in the sky and letting it fly in place – I guess there’s a deeper method to it, but to me it’s similar to that peaceful relaxation that having a fishing line in a river can bring to people. There were kites of all descriptions and I think my favourite was a single kite divided into two smaller kites that resembled birds. They fluttered around in the breeze and if you didn’t see the other kites, would swear they were a pair of birds just riding the breeze. We sat down for a while just watching the world go by(and because I felt so tired and headachey it was making me feel a bit sick). Naturally as it got deeper into the morning, we got to see the first arrival of the first hawkers. Along would come some random man, plonk down his garbage bag, then out came a spinning top and he’d start spinning it enthusiastically.
Oh of course there were also people selling kites themselves – remember I said they were situational sellers? Well if there’s real kite flyers out, there’s the kite hawkers with them. These were around 20 tiny kites linked together, the most popular being stamped with the Olympic mascots. Of course we had every one of these try and catch our interest. One guy cracked me up. The first time we rejected him – he came back a short while later and had pulled out a different kite design. I could almost see his brain ticking away…hmm maybe this design, maybe this is the one they want. So over he comes with a big cheesy smile, ‘How about this one? You like? It’s very nice.” Nope we say, and give him our best PISS OFF smiles in return.
So we had our haircuts(as Courtney mentioned) and they were cheap and completely fine. The salon was very modern and extremely busy. The name of the place was Benson’s Hair Salon and Benson himself cut my hair. A guy named Sam, the director of the place(creative director I think) cut Courtney’s. They gave our hair a wash, gave us a head massage(they being the other workers, not the top gun hairdressers), then we sat down to have the cuts. Afterwards, they gave my hair another rinse to get the small hairs out(Christ they don’t even do that at home!), then waxed it up and it was out the door – mine only costing around 15 bucks AU, and I dare say a much better haircut to boot! That at least puts our mind to rest. If you could see some of the haircuts the young Chinese think to be fashionable – particularly the Chinese hairdressers, you would understand our concern at getting this done. It’s like finding a local dentist here – you just don’t want to be doing this kind of thing in China – I mean, going to a Chinese dentist? Sounds like a horror story – and potentially is if the quality of the hospital I was put in when I got food poisoning was any indication of local health standards – BUT we also know of a good western looking dentist, right around the corner from where we live also – so we have those nasty baskets covered.
So I think the whole theme of this mini-shanghai visit was to enjoy the Bund and the view surrounding it. The view was absolutely incredible and neither the photos or the little videos we took do it justice. Next time we want to again stay near the French quarter so we can explore it a little better, or at least somewhere in the thick of one of the busy shopping districts. The only drawback to where we did stay was it was a little ways away from these type of areas. For the Bund and the view though – and of course the old-style street beside the hotel, it was perfect. I think we’ll definitely stay there again, it’s too cheap not to. I think a weekend trip there with Abby and Matt would be a winner.
One last thing about where we stayed this time opposed to where we stayed when we came to visit Barb (near Fuxing Park) – the feel of the city was _completely_ different. It’s hard to explain but the French concession had a totally different atmosphere to the..I don’t know what you would even call it, the ‘North of the Bund’ area we were. Both definitely had their own charms. I would like to explore the city even further though I think the only place that looks average is the Pudong area. Pudong was supposedly farmland some 20-30 years ago. It’s now where the huge and iconic Pearl tower is – right on the river. It is basically a brand new chunk of modern looking city, and a favoured place for expats to live as a result. It’s also in my opinion, completely lacking in character(including the Pearl tower) and I just have no interest in going over there. We WILL at some stage be going up the Pearl tower, but this weekend the views we discovered were more than enough, going up a bit higher again really wouldn’t have had the same impact.
Proof that I was in a really cool place.
And Courtney also.
Our bed in relation to Super Cool View(tm). It's a pity all the main lights go out at 10pm because when they do, it's like going from holy christ it's sci-fi city, to oh, it looks like Melbourne now.
Some of the European buildings along the Bund. Note the Chinese flags all over them. It's classic East meets West, and oh so communist. I bet someone somewhere really digs the fact those flags are on those buildings. It's like payback for all those opium war shenanigans.
And proof of Courtney getting her haircut in Shanghai. How rich does that sound? In 60 years time, when she's reclining in a chair with a chardie, she can tell the grandkids, "Oh yes, that was me getting my hair cut in Shanghai." I have to admit I was kinda impressed by the whole roll and blow dry thing going on over there.
Looking over towards the Pudong district from the Bund; bathed in the beautiful light of around 6am. The Pudong was supposedly just farmland a good 20-30 years ago. If you click on the larger version, take a close look at the building third from right. It's still under construction but it's quite an amazing design. It's a combination of a classic building shape kind of emerging from the preferred straight/futuristic design which most buildings are. Shanghai has some absolutely awesomely designed buildings, it's probably the highlight in my opinion.
The European buildings look amazing when fully lit up.
A bride and groom walking to the Bund for some photographs. Of course the bride has trackie dacks and sneakers on under her dress; wouldn't be China if she didn't. She can't take all the credit though, the groom's suit was..questionable.
And yes we finally went to bloody Yu Yuan gardens, are you happy now mum?! The zigzagging bridge to the teahouse in the middle was so serene. We stopped there to contemplate life for a short while; just us and 50 gazillion other people.
Finally, finally I had a camera on hand when witnessing the glory of fully grown adults wearing their pajama's in the street in the middle of the afternoon. Don't you dare think for a second these are some kind of Chinese traditional costume - these are Target style pj's. Please do yourself a favour and click on the image to see it at it's original size and appreciate the Hello Kitty design on the woman.
And last but not least, a mother helping her two children to piss onto the street. The older child has been taught what to do and goes to work whilst the younger one still requires aiming assistance. When we say China is feeling more normal by the day, passing this kind of scene and not really batting an eyelid is what we mean - though that being said, the pleasant smell of piss puddles just never gets old.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Earthquake (Courtney)
As you all know, China was hit by a massive earthquake a week ago. The figure has been revised to 8.0 on the ricter scale, making it China's biggest earthquake in 30 years (and inducing waves of rumours as 8 is a lucky number, and it occured 88 days before the games begin). Aftershocks, some measuring 5 and above, are still being felt. Strangely we have been almost ignorant of this happening. When I'm at home, whenever I see a natural disastor on the news, I can't help but wonder what it must feel like being in a country when such a devasting event happens. I suppose because Australia is relatively stable in that regard, we really don't get a sense of how large these things are.
Well, even now living here, we still don't really have a sense of exactly what has happened or what is happening. And when I say that, I mean it from a people perspective, not from a news front. The media has been incredibly open about the devastation and death toll. I mean from the people we work with (well, supposedly work with) we haven't spoken with anyone about it. This feels strange, and reinforces how..isolated, I suppose you would say, we are at the school. We have none of that office comraderie of "water cooler" talk.
But that is besides the point. Today all of China began an offical three day mourning period. The torch relay has been dramatically scaled down, and a minute silence was observed at 2:28 this afternoon (the time at which the earthquake struck last Monday). You know that this huge tragedy has occurred, yet you feel somewhat detatched from it. Just like at home I read the news and feel horrible for these poor people, yet it doesn't really feel like it's in the same country we live in. Approximatley 15 million people have been affected by this, which is just unfathomable. It has also made me realise that I am becoming attached here, everytime I read a story about the schools that have been ruined and the deaths, all I can think about is that happening here with my students.
Today at the Junior Campus, our second class was rescheduled. We weren't initially told why, and this is what bugs me. The entire school was having an assembly to mark the minute's silence and to hand over donations. I had to ask what was going on, and no one made any attempt to include us. I realise there is a language barrier, but we are these people's collegues. We live in their country. A simple motion of a hand to say "join us" would have sufficed. We didn't know what to do, so we went and joined in. Then of course for the first few minutes we became the focal point. I felt like we were damned if we did and damned if we didn't. There was no way I was going to sit in the office whilst everyone was out paying their respects, not a chance, but then I felt foolish for standing with the other teachers. We were asked by students afterward if we understood what was being said. I suppose the concept that perhaps the sentiment was more important than the words was lost along the way.
Needless to say when the school photographer started hovering near us, I turned my back. It was the one time when I did not feel like being made a spectacle of, not with something this serious.
One thing is for sure, the people and govn have ralied to help the victims. It's actually inspiring reading the stories of those doing everything they can to help.
Well, even now living here, we still don't really have a sense of exactly what has happened or what is happening. And when I say that, I mean it from a people perspective, not from a news front. The media has been incredibly open about the devastation and death toll. I mean from the people we work with (well, supposedly work with) we haven't spoken with anyone about it. This feels strange, and reinforces how..isolated, I suppose you would say, we are at the school. We have none of that office comraderie of "water cooler" talk.
But that is besides the point. Today all of China began an offical three day mourning period. The torch relay has been dramatically scaled down, and a minute silence was observed at 2:28 this afternoon (the time at which the earthquake struck last Monday). You know that this huge tragedy has occurred, yet you feel somewhat detatched from it. Just like at home I read the news and feel horrible for these poor people, yet it doesn't really feel like it's in the same country we live in. Approximatley 15 million people have been affected by this, which is just unfathomable. It has also made me realise that I am becoming attached here, everytime I read a story about the schools that have been ruined and the deaths, all I can think about is that happening here with my students.
Today at the Junior Campus, our second class was rescheduled. We weren't initially told why, and this is what bugs me. The entire school was having an assembly to mark the minute's silence and to hand over donations. I had to ask what was going on, and no one made any attempt to include us. I realise there is a language barrier, but we are these people's collegues. We live in their country. A simple motion of a hand to say "join us" would have sufficed. We didn't know what to do, so we went and joined in. Then of course for the first few minutes we became the focal point. I felt like we were damned if we did and damned if we didn't. There was no way I was going to sit in the office whilst everyone was out paying their respects, not a chance, but then I felt foolish for standing with the other teachers. We were asked by students afterward if we understood what was being said. I suppose the concept that perhaps the sentiment was more important than the words was lost along the way.
Needless to say when the school photographer started hovering near us, I turned my back. It was the one time when I did not feel like being made a spectacle of, not with something this serious.
One thing is for sure, the people and govn have ralied to help the victims. It's actually inspiring reading the stories of those doing everything they can to help.
Snap Happy (Courtney)
And so we return from the big city lights of Shanghai, back to little ole Wuxi. Funny though how after three months it's actually nice to open the front door and feel "home". Well, as home as we can feel anyways.
We took a mammoth amount of photos in the space of two days, however I will be nice as I am only going to subject you to 16. It's hard to know what to say about Shanghai. I absolutely love it there, but it's very difficult to pinpoint a reason why. Hopefully as I write some captions to the photos my reasons will become clearer...to myself! It's such a huge city, huge on a scale I couldn't have imagined, it just goes on and on seemingly forever. I love the modern, garish architecture of Pudong, feel like I'm in Europe strolling the Bund, and could just stare for hours down the narrow alleys of the old housing communities. There is so much happening in this city, and a lot of the time you don't feel as though you are in China China, but a paler version.
When I'm in Wuxi, being called out to and pointed and laughed at, I long for anonymity and to just be another face in the crowd, doing my grocery shopping or catching the bus. Yet then we hit Shanghai and I long for the quiet that comes with no one speaking English where we live. Shanghai swarms with people (literally - the population of Australia lives in this city alone) and the majority of those people have some level of English. It takes a while to sink back into hearing English everywhere...and suddenly everything seems noiser, mostly because you can understand what is being said around you, it's no longer just background noise. Everyone wants to talk to you and sell you something. Poor Marcus, he gets sucked in every time. I turn around and Marcus is still 50 metres behind me trapped in a conversation that is only leading in one direction. I am not kidding when I say we had been on the Bund for about 20 minutes and had only moved approximately 50 metres as Marcus said hello to anybody who caught his attention! Although, I should point out that whilst he was having his image torturously cut out of paper, I was being photographed by a man with his son. Initially I thought he was just flattering me when he said he wanted my photo because he thought I was beautiful...it was only hours later that it occurred to me that my image is now probably plastered on posters down the length of the Bund as advertising for the mobile photo people...sigh!
So Shanghai has its ups and downs, but what city doesn't. Regardless of the non stop hawkers (and they really are NON STOP) and people wanting to "practice" their English, Shanghai has a charm and a buzz to it that I dare say isn't found in any other Chinese city.
The Bund by day...how's the serenity...
Spectacular by night.
This is about 10:30 at night. Absolutely jumping with people.
And then the peacefulness of early morning. This was The Bund at its best. Quiet and breezy with the oldies doing their tai chi and exercise. I might point out that we got up at 5:30am to check it out!
Tai Chi...and some very funky sunvisors.
This is what I wanted to see most, the fan dancers. Sadly they were tucked away in this crummy little spot and I didn't manage to get even one ok photo. But seeing their graceful moves was a highlight for me.
Syncronised sword dancing. I wonder if it's master and prodigee.
A couple of streets away from the apartment was this fantastic block of streets, it was as though we had stumbled into Hong Kong. The street we ate on consisted of only 3 types of stores - restaurants, cigarette shops and of course, brothels.
The old, and fast disappearing laneways. You can really get a sense of what this city looked like a few decades ago. Life goes on here just as it always has. They are beautiful to see, yet at the same time you feel like you are invading their privacy.
And now for some miscellaneous shots...
The people of China will sleep ANYWHERE. Give them a surface and they will sleep on it, no matter how obscure. If you look closely you will see not one, but two people asleep in this picture.
Need an ear service? We saw this on the way to getting haircuts. Yes that's right, haircuts. And what a success it was! I thought we could both be sporting caps for a long time to come but the guys did a great job...and all for the low price of 68 yuan (about $10 including full movie star styling) for me, and 150 yuan for Marcus. Go figure!
The popular drink of the moment.
Lunch!
And finally, at a market we went to, we stumbled into one of the numerous Chinese art shops. Whilst Marcus was off looking at Chinese seals, I was anxiously eyeing a couple who were bartering over a series of 4 paintings. I was desperately hoping they wouldn't purchase them all as I had fallen in love with them myself. Well, it was my lucky day as they only bought 2 of them. So I snapped up the other two before she had a chance to move, and successfully cleared my purse of all money. Thankfully I had heard the whole bartering process that the other two went through (and one was Chinese, so the price is always lower), so she sold them to me for the same price. I just absolutely love them and was prepared to carry them on their frames all the way to Wuxi if need be. Not to worry though, within a jiffy they were off their frames and for an even cheaper price they now sit in a box awaiting our next home! They stand probably just over a metre tall, and remind us so much of the little kiddies we teach.
You can even just catch a glimpse of my very trendy 12 yuan slippers in the corner ;-)
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Lady lady, you want rolex??? (Marcus)
Well our weekend in Shanghai has come and gone and we had an absolute blast of a time. In fact we had such a good time that by Saturday night we were absolutely stuffed! We had been on the go for exactly 12 hours. By the 12th hour we both couldn’t get back to the apartment quick enough and fell asleep without even swapping goodnights. In fact I can’t even remember going to bed I was so tired.
We got up early and caught a taxi into Wuxi, our train leaving at around 9:30am. All went smoothly and the station was actually the quietest we had seen it(though China quiet is still people everywhere, don’t worry.) We were separated for the second time on the train, our seat numbers 15 & 16 being on two different sides and against the window in each case – stupid us for thinking they’d put us together (again!). We are going to make sure that when we travel in sleeper trains that we specifically ask for this, as I can just imagine it completely not occurring to them that duh, we might want to sit together – or more so, sleep in the same goddamn carriage. Chinese thinking is sometimes not thinking at all.
Once we arrived in Shanghai it was hot and sunny and considerably better than our first visit – which was arriving in heavy rain with no umbrella and huge crowds due to it being International Women’s day. We caught another taxi to the apartment and checked in. The reception was Frank Hu’s room on the 19th floor – just an everyday apartment. As we got out of the lift, a corgi ran up to us and absolutely barked it’s ass off. It was only satisfied when Frank had seemingly allowed us to enter the reception office. He allowed us to pick from two apartments, one on floor 19, the other on 21. I decided the one on 21 looked a bit better(and the one on level 19 stunk of cleaning products) – both offered an amazing view. The apartment on floor 19 had a bed which was high up on a platform, whilst the level 21 room had the bed all the way over near the window. We slept with the curtains open so we could go to bed with the view, and wake to the view. In fact I woke up several times during the night as it was quite hot in the room, each time seeing the sky and cityscape in a slightly different hue.
The view itself was amazing. We overlooked the northern end of the Bund and across to the Pearl tower. Below us was a combination of the old and new. At the foot of the building were clear square blocks of original Shanghai architecture. Most were lived in and some were in various states of ruin. Behind them towards the Huangpu river were new, towering skyscrapers. Shanghai is an extremely interesting city with an even more interesting history. One of the best parts about it is you can see evidence of the old Shanghai everywhere. When you explore the older streets, it’s always with the backdrop of the brand new buildings. The contrast is so interesting to witness.
A block of some original Shanghai architecture. It doesn't look like much from above, but when you look closely, they're a hive of activity. The alleyways that eat their way through them are like a dressed movie set. It's a shame to see these being bulldozed and turned into skyrises.
Our building was in a completely different part of the city from our first visit. Here we were actually in what was a very old suburb/area of the city. Around us we had streets that still had that ‘old shanghai’ feel to them. We loved that. If we walked straight north, in about 10-15 minutes we would hit the Bund and all it offered. If we walked 5 minutes west – or rather, immediately around us, was this old neighborhood. Down the middle of it, signs of every fluro description were lit up. A combination of interesting alleys into authentic looking living areas, multi-leveled restaurants, fruit shops, cigarette shops, brothels, you name it, they were there.
We have discovered in the last few weeks that the brothels are actually everywhere and were completely under our noses. Most are under the guise of beauty salons, but they’re everywhere – particularly when the sun goes down. In these shops, the girls are simply standing or sitting in the front windows – often playing on their mobile phones, or playing cards. It would have to be about the easiest thing ever finding one(if you were so inclined!) – which is interesting as it’s actually illegal in China. I have heard some lovely things about foreigners getting busted using their services, and having their passports marked accordingly.
These brothels are interesting. They are not in any way threatening. The girls don’t come up to you and try and push their wares on you, nor do they look like some druggie infested den where you might get beaten and mugged. They look just like any other store. The girls look about as disinterested as possible. And the thing that is the most interesting about them – they’re right there amongst all the other every day shops. This is why we didn’t even notice them despite having walked by a couple many times. They’re just there. You would raise no more interest walking into the fruit shop next door than walking into the knock shop with the 3 bored looking teenage girls looking to make enough money to buy the latest mobile phone model.
Jumping back a few hours, we first went for a walk down to the Bund in the sunshine and took a few photos. Along the Bund as expected it was absolutely packed with tourists. It was here that we discovered another roaring trade of China – street …hmm I don’t even know what I would call them – peddlers? People who either try and trick you into buying something or outright try and show you their wares – whether you are interested or not.
The former actually kind of shit me to tears. I have had a few instances now where I have genuinely been interested in talking with someone, only to see the nature of the conversation suddenly turn towards the – what should have been expected.
My first instance of this was at the far northern end of the Bund where there is a large monument dedicated to the People’s Heroes of China – all very communist. Here(and we actually worked out later that this is where we saw the Amazing Race go, woo Amazing Race!) there was a canal before the monument which was walled off. In the water there was a pontoon on the water that was covered with turtles and…very large frogs. In fact the frogs and turtles were vying for positions on the platform and there was a large amount of jostling going on. The smaller and seemingly more resourceful turtles had actually claimed comfortable and relatively safe positions on the much larger shells of the bigger turtles. I was rooting for the lone Frog that I could see. The poor bastard was completely outnumbered, and one large prick of a turtle(of course with a smaller one on his back) was trying to push him back in the water.
So as I was watching the turtles, a Chinese man asked me if I liked turtles. Courtney had walked away to take some photographs but I stayed around as I was curious as to why they were there. The turtles were present in respect to the monument he told me, then all about the monument itself and the event that took place in I believe 1929 that caused it’s erection. The turtle in China signifies long life, thus here they were. After a bit more chitchat, where are you from, etc etc, he told me there were cave’s below where we were, and that he was an artist and his sculptures were down there. He then asked if I would like to go and have a look – nah. I was actually interested in seeing the caves, but inevitably the conversation had lead to him trying to setup a sale. I bid him farewell and went off to check out the Bund proper.
It seems the most important to the average street seller is getting you IN to their shop. In the Yu Yuan market we went to Sunday afternoon, one woman was saying to me, “Come in! You like, come in!” and I was already about a metre or so IN the shop – which I pointed out to her.
As we walked further along I found another monument which looked classically communist and was a monument to the worker heroes – so told another Chinese man with particularly bad teeth. We spoke about the worker rebellion of the 20’s and this and that when he told me he was an artist. Now call me dumbshit here for not recognizing his pitch, but he then told me he was a paper cutter and proceeded to pull out a piece of paper and start cutting something.
Now this perked my interest for two reasons. The Chinese, while annoying salesmen, are actually highly talented artists with this kind of thing. Some of their paper cutting is simply stunning. On the other hand, I knew Courtney was really into this kind of thing, so I thought there might be something really cool to be gleaned from this to show her(not purchase, mind). So away he goes, cutting something without me asking which soon turns out to be his attempt at my head – an outline, complete with silhouette. Well other than looking like I’m about 20 hears older with a double chin and big nose, it wasn’t too bad…well then and there that is, when I looked at it later it actually looks kinda crap. So he cut it up and I was enjoying the exchange, I really was. I found what he was talking about interesting – his years cutting paper, his family history doing it etc, and then he whips out a little piece of plastic envelope with a white square in the middle which is clearly designed to stick the cutting onto. And then I realized that yeah, I had taken the bait, like any other stupid westerner. So he handed me it and I smiled and said thanks and well, gotta go! And there was an awkward silence. Then he said what I knew he’d say – What about my payment? (or something similar). So I asked how much he wanted for his efforts – expecting the usual completely exorbitant over-pricing, and he wanted 20 yuan. I said no, I didn’t want him to cut it, yadda yada, I’ll give you three. He didn’t look happy with that, wanted 15, I said nup, 3. Luckily I have been here long enough to lose my little bo beep timidness with this kind of thing, so while he’d trapped me, he got no more than 3rmb for his efforts. At that he let me keep it, but NOT the plastic envelope display case – which I found amusing. Just like the guy in the Science and technology market who wanted 540rmb for the pair of shoes I wanted – I got him down to 315 and got the shoes in a plastic bag – not the box. I bet the lack of box was mostly spite, but what the hell, I got a new pair of shoes that 1. I really like and, 2. will fall apart in about 3 weeks. Either way, I am happy.
Oh check me out, it's a dead ringer!!! .......not.
So that was the subtle trapper. What appears to be a friendly face whose keen for a chat(something that poor Marcus is always interested in LL) always turns out to be a pain in the ass. Beyond these guys there’s the locational vendors of absolute shit. If you go to a culturally important garden, or somewhere with amazing views such as the Bund, you’ll find these guys, en masse. They obviously get a dollar or something for every sale they make as they are usually all selling the same thing. In Suzhou when we took a bicycle rickshaw to the Humble Administrators garden, outside it was a canal where they were doing boat tours- sort of like Venice style – cept the water looks and smells like it’s filled with poo. Our driver/rider at the end of the trip heartily recommended this boat trip, showing us(pushing it in our face rather)a few photos on a laminated piece of cardboard. This was our first experience of it. As we politely declined, we were then approached every one metre by what appeared to be migrant workers(will talk more about these people some other time), pushing in our faces the very same laminated boards. If you tell them no they mostly just continue on to the next ‘whitey’, thankfully they don’t hang on you. So all along the Bund we found these guys, trying to sell photographs – or rather, the ability to have your photos taken. On their boards were Chinese posing for photos with the odd foreigner. The foreigner being on there meant it was OK-USA!! It cracks me up that the Chinese(or Asian tourists) are ones who fuel these fires, willing to undergo anything, no matter how tacky.
And there’s still another two types of salesman we encounter all over the place – though considerably moreso in touristy type places such as Shanghai. It seems my little post about Shanghai has been completely side-tracked, but whatever.
Wherever there are tourists there are people enthusiastically trying to sell EVERY CONCIEVABLE GIMICKY PIECE OF CRAP YOU CAN IMAGINE!!! Holy Christ these guys amaze me. 9 times out of 10 they’re migrants(ie people from the middle of China – they look a lot darker than most Chinese and a lot more weathered). They will sit there from dawn till dusk enthusiastically spinning tops that light up and make sounds, winding up toy chickens and setting them off, throwing rubber pigs with full force against a piece of cardboard, showing how well they splatter, tossing little rubber spidermen up onto windows, setting toy army men into action, demonstrating roller-skate wheels that light up and clip onto your shoes and my new favourite, dangling two felt rat things from a cord so it looks like they alive and chasing each other. They do this stuff NON STOP, and actually look into what they’re doing. It’s unbelievable. Some way some how they muster continual energy into trying to make what they’re selling look, hey you beaut you want this it’s great!! They’re in every tourist destination, and in Shanghai, all through the subway tunnels. Wherever there’s people, there’s these sellers and they are always, always always selling new versions of absolute crap. I have to embarrassedly admit that by the end of today I kinda wanted a rubber splat pig L I actually bartered with this guy secretly while Courtney was in a shop and got him down from haha you are fucking kidding 40rmb??!? to 10 rmb for two before Courtney came out and saw me and I walked away while the guy was literally tugging me back by the arm as he knew he had me. Not today sorry chump, my pride has already been trampled on!
Pig seller number 487 - why I bartered with him I do not know. Deep down a little part of me still desires one :(
Bloody yay! Shoe skates! You want to buy? Look, you like?
And last but by no means least, there are the sellers of the mighty 3; 1. Watches. 2. Bags. 3. DVDs. These people are everywhere. They come out of nowhere and in some places are as common as the situational sellers of crap. Every few paces one will thrust a fold out sheet into your stomach with photos of watches, bags and/or dvd’s. They want to take you to their secret stash of fake goodies. They are EVERYWHERE. They approach with, LADY LADY HELLO, want Rolex??? I just can’t believe how much of this crap there is. They don’t hassle you for the most part, they spiel their Watch Bag DVDs?? Pitch and don’t follow in most cases. I give them a wo bu yao(I don’t want) or just ignore them, either does the trick. Today I was tired as hell, and as we walked I started amusing myself by saying to them before they could talk, “Let me guess, Watches bags and dvds?!?!” to which they mistook it as interest then followed me for an extra five metres. Ah well, it’s all fun at the end of the day.
I think of the _350_ odd photos we took over the weekend(yes, weekend), this is my favourite. That smile isn't because of the amazing view, it's because this is practically the first time Courtney has had real white wine since coming to China, in an actual proper wine glass. This stuff is an absolute rarity over here. But anyway, i like the colour, projected down from a massive blue lit neon behind us contrasted with the warm orange of the city.
As for Shanghai, I am sure Courtney will tell you more. I will say one thing though – the highlight of the weekend for me was the nightscape view of the city from the 26th floor of our apartment building. We were outside, drinking cocktails, beer and wine in the open night air and watched the sun go down and the lights slowly move through dusk to full night. The view as it transformed – amazing. The view when it was full dark? Absolutely unbelievable. I felt speechless. I was so utterly impressed by it. A German couple were up with us, and he said that he had been to all of the major American cities, Dubai and all over Europe and he said it was the best city view he had seen to date. I could believe that. To see the majesty of such a famous city from such a good vantage was worth the trip alone in my opinion. Below is a somewhat low quality video I took of the view – and even that doesn’t include the other sides of the building where it continued. The size and scale of the city just blew me away. And to think, beyond it’s border not ten minutes by train is polluted farmland.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
