Mid-term Exam Freedom

Second week in November saw mid-term exams for all the students at my school.

What this meant for me was holiday!!!

Due to some pretty fortunate timing, all four of my grades were given exams on the days I was supposed to teach them, leaving me with a whole week free. A week I fully intended making the most of.




The week began with a trip out into the mountains with Class 111. These guys are the top class in the top grade. I don't teach them. In fact, neither does Anthony. They have so much work that they couldn't fit an oral English lesson into their timetable.

One funny thing about classes here is that the top sets are all taught through video lessons transmitted live from another, wealthier school somewhere else in China. Apparently this decision was made to improve the standard of teaching here. Forget about hiring better teachers or training them further, or maybe replacing the missing glass in the classroom windows...lets spend a load on sparkly novelties like long-distance interactive video lessons.

That's a laugh too. They call these things interactive lessons. Couldn't be further from the truth. I've sat in on some of these lessons, and it's just like watching a TV show. A TV

show with poor picture and sound quality. I couldn't even understand some of the things the teacher was saying, so how can the students? The poor kids just sit there in silence while they watch teams of students from another class in this rich school play hangman together or come up to the front of the class to read their compositions or answer questions.

Our kids should be playing hangman together or showing off their own work. It's like a form of punishment. Look at all these people having fun. Just look and see what we're denying you.

The teacher in this other school asks her students questions or gets them to read out things she's written on the board, and I've watched our kids mouth the words or mumble the answers to themselves, but no-one's listening. No-one's there to check their comprehension, or pronunciation, or to give them praise. They can't have a grammar point reiterated if they didn't quite follow it. The lady on the TV just keeps on going.

Of course there's a teacher in the room while they watch, but these teachers are just there to press play. They've been demoted to technicians.
And these are among the best teachers in the school, with the best spoken English. If I were them, I'd feel insulted and humiliated. I'm sorry, you're teaching isn't good enough. We're replacing you with a TV. What a waste.

A TV will never be a replacement for a real life teacher nor observation of any amount of high quality teaching a substitute for actual meaningful interaction.

It really grates on me.


But I digress... Anyway...the reason I got ranting in the first place was to explain why I went out with Class 111. These busy, busy students had an extra day off because their long-distance school was on holiday at that time, so they could have no instruction (Again, how dumb is that? Grrr...). While Anthony still had classes to give, I was free so went with them to have a picnic. The top four photos are from then. We had a great time. We scrambled up steep slopes in search of firewood, I sank ankle-deep into a hidden, muddy stream, was scratched to death by vines and bushes, nearly got sunburnt (in early November!!! Fantastic.), caught crabs in the reservoir to roast on the fire, ate barbecued chicken's feet and numerous other dishes, jumped rope with everyone, ate some more, took plenty of pictures, chatted and generally had lots of fun (See, too much ranting, no room for detail). Suffice to say, it was cool.

A few days later, I decided to fully exploit my time and go
on a little jolly up to Liuyang to see our Canadian friends. My
fellow colleagues here had the most trouble trying to grasp the concept that I was going away somewhere without Anthony. We were going to be parted. Was that even possible? Surely we could not possibly manage to survive if we were not within a half mile radius of each other?

I poke fun at the situation here, and it sounds absurd, but you cannot imagine the shock that it gave these people to hear I was going away somewhere alone. It was like I'd just gone and smacked them across the face. Utter disbelief.

And then when I told them I intended on going
by train for comfort and speed, well, no combination of swear words under the sun could possibly have hurt their ears more.

It would have been laughable, were I not pretty pissed off at the time. They just don't see us as two unique human beings. They tried to get me to postpone my trip until the weekend, when Anthony was also free, which would have given us just 1 full day in Liuyang and been a complete waste of time. They tried to arrange for us to go to a nearer town to see other friends instead - friends who weren't expecting us. They even started to cancel Anthony's outstanding lessons that week so he could go with me! Ridiculous!!

I stood my ground, but compromised on how to get there and took the bus instead. The 7 hour bumpy bus ride with the loud crappy techno music and awful Chinese VCd films. The bus that arrived back in Lanshan so late that I had to climb over the gate well past midnight to get back on
campus and into my apartment. Yeah, that was a good idea...

So, it was a hellish trip, but I managed ok. I bought a crappy little Mp3 player especially for it. The only way I managed to survive. My foreign affairs officer placed me on the bus like a 3 year old and scoured the aisle trying to find someone she vaguely recognised to babysit me and see me onto the right bus in Changsha. Humiliating. She found two ex-students. Once we left I didn't speak to them again. I found my own way. It was the second time I'd done this trip anyway. I fully understand that I am her
responsibility and that if anything happened to me they'd never get another foreign teacher again, but all I'm asking for is a little faith and respect.

I met my friends in Changsha and we took a taxi service into Liuyang. The last eight photos are all from this trip. Liuyang is a city of about 1 million and is where about 40% of the world's fireworks are made. They're going off constantly. Due to this industry, Liuyang is pretty rich. The school where my friends teach certainly is. They have huge, well-maintained buildings and even their own observatory on top of the science building!
Blimey, they even have a science building. Our science facilities consist of a tray of apparatus which the science teacher carries from class to class... This town also has some western food (which I sampled), decent shopping (which I exploited) and most importantly some nightlife (which I overdosed on!).

God, I've missed going out to bars, getting nicely fuzzy and dancing the night away to some halfway decent music. We went out on three of the four nights I was there. The Saturday night was best. We had a pretty good Chinese meal with plenty of beer. Beer I could drink at my own
pace. Heaven. We then went to this little street-side BBQ place where they did cheap little fried snacks and had cheap beer before going on to a bar called the Blue Fox. Jess and Sarah are regulars there and the bar owner even joined us for the night. We were drinking red wine mixed with sprite (which made it very down-able) and what was best is that it magically replenished itself. Every time I looked down, there was another full glass waiting for me. I was soon on stage with everyone, encouraged by 'DJ Michael' (seen upper left at the top of the stairs waving us goodbye at the end of the night), who invited us especially to come and 'make a crazy party' dancing my ass off, only pausing to reach down and pick up another glass of that magical wine...


God it was a good night. We were the last to leave and even after that I sat up with some other foreign teachers from the same town at the street-side BBQ until 4am when I finally stumbled home, on my own, and into bed.

If my foreign affairs officer only knew. She'd probably have a heart-attack. Earlier that day the Canadians received a call from their officer 'reminding' them (for the first time since they'd been there) to make sure they were home by 11pm. This bore all the hallmarks of Susan interfering and checking up on me, but to hell with that!

Great night. I felt it in the morning. I looked like I felt it too (see above!). But it was the kind of hangover where you just laugh all day at it cos you know it was well deserved and worth it.

Other activities over those few days included a trip to Changsha where the girls got Chinese character tattoos done (at least it's authentic, but not quite as mystical in a place where people can actually read it and start asking you why you've got 'happiness with your mother' written on the back of your neck when you really intended it to be interpreted as 'peace'...) and I bought a new Ipod!!! I now possess a shiny new black 30gb video Ipod, and at a cheaper price than in the UK too. It cost three quarters of my monthly salary but is oh so worth it. In fact I spent so much this trip that I came back with my backpack fully stuffed and another two carrier bags full of purchases. Ha, one of those carrier bags even happened to be a Morrisons Supermarket carrier bag. That's right. Morrisons. 'More reasons to shop at Morrisons' Morrisons. The Morrisons that I used to visit weekly up in Bradford and that proudly states on the bag 'Keep Britain tidy'. This I was given in Changsha. A Morrisons carrier bag, in China. You could not have made it up.

Airplanes and Arseholes

Right, sorry for not posting for a bit. Been on holiday. More of that to come. But first I wanted to make a comment on today's events...

So, this weekend was my first at home and relaxing since I went away to visit friends in Liuyang. Saturday was great. We didn't have to go anywhere. I spent the day in my apartment just chilling. I watched some DVDs, wrote an email or two, and got down to learning some Chinese. Fantastic.

Sunday started off a little worse. We got invited out to dinner with a teacher and her husband. Not what we wanted, as it would inevitably end up with us getting drunk, and I wanted to call my family that evening (and be able to remember it afterwards). So I politely declined and offered that as an excuse...only for her to come back and say we'd go out for lunch instead.

What could I say to that? I could only say yes, knowing full well that it was even worse than going out for dinner as it would mess up the whole day and I'd get nothing done. As it was, the drinking was mild, and was balanced out by a nice foot massage afterwards. It was a good time. We were satisfied. Unfortunately the day was marred by some bad news for Anthony. He found out at lunch that one of his best friends back in Wisconsin had died in a car accident. The kid was only 19, and a really good friend to Anthony. It's harsh. He spoke to his friends back home but has no real chance of getting back home for the funeral. It's 2000 dollars for a return trip and he wouldn't even make it back in time for the services. And that's before all the hassles with visas. We can't leave the country and return easily because we never got given medicals to enable us to qualify as residents... Bit of a downer.

It was in this atmosphere today that we were told by Mr Lei the annoying English teacher that we were going out to a restaurant for lunch. Worst news in the world. He's the guy that forces rice wine on you, and today he was on form.

The occasion was to celebrate the performance of a student from his class in the recent exams. I've been to these deals before. I went to one last week with a student from one of my favourite classes. It was pleasant. She even told me her dream was to become an English teacher, so of course I'll now do everything in my power to help her achieve this. Thumbs up all round.

Today the student was again from one of my classes, but one of the dullest and least contributory that I have. I didn't even recognise him as being my student so was far from enthusiastic about events...

It started off slowly, and our hopes were raised, only to be cruelly dashed when a well lubricated Mr Lei appeared with a whole kettle of rice wine. He took away the beer we'd been drinking and told us we were to drink rice wine. 'No beer. Just rice wine. He is my student, so I am the host. You must drink rice wine with me.'

Ok, one cup. Whatever. But it kept on coming. Bear in mind that this is lunch. I had one class straight after lunch and Anthony had two. Two bad ones at that. You need your wits for this kind of thing. Besides that I find it completely unacceptable to be drunk and in charge of a class of 60-odd kids. Mr Lei couldn't care less. After two 'last' cups I plain refused. I had to cover my glass with my hand to stop him filling it up. I drank with anyone else but him. The guy was pissing me off so much I was ready to throw that wine right back in his face. I was as rude as I have ever been here, and to other teachers it was clear how I felt, but the man is so oblivious. Arsehole.

I felt even worse for Anthony. He's too nice to say no. He likes Mr Lei more than me and just can't refuse. And after his mate died, and with 2 classes straight after lunch, God I felt bad. I was so angry I could barely keep my chopsticks steady. They just don't realise how unpleasant this is for us. Anthony shouldn't even have been there in the first place!! This kid was my student, not Anthony's, so why should he be there too? Mr Lei answered that one for us. He actually said, plain as, 'For you know, you must not be separated'. We were gobsmacked. We know they treat us like we were one person, but here he even said it! Jesus!

We ate as fast as we could and escaped relatively unscathed, but bloody hell. Just when things seem to settle, there's always something to rock the boat.

Thank God for good students. I had my 'nice' Junior 2 class today, which has the girls we always eat dinner with in it. Their topic was on following instructions and the lesson I came up with was pure enjoyment. First we played Simon Says, with plenty of silly actions like 'pretend to be a cow'. This was really good fun, and so useful as they all had to take part, listen carefully and process the language quickly to respond in time. After a few rounds I handed it to the students and had them come to the front and read out instructions, while I took their empty place at the desk. They all found this hilarious, especially when I got it wrong... Faked, of course... ;)

Then I gave them all a piece of paper, taught them a few useful words, and instructed them on how to make a paper airplane. I didn't tell them what they were making until they were finished, when I held up the plane, said 'Finally, hold up your paper airplane and let it fly', and watched it glide across the classroom accompanied by all the kids gasping 'whoa!'. Cue a frenzy of airplane throwing which lasted a good five minutes!! God knows what other teachers passing by must have thought, but it worked so well. It made my day 100% better and I'm thankful for that.

Halloween

Well, seeing as we completely alone in this town for celebrating western holidays ands traditions, we decided to make them go with a bang.

Halloween was the first significant one to come our way, and we decided to buy some sweets and let the kids come trick-or-treating to our house. We bought 3 pumpkins to carve and about 100 yuan's worth of sweets (only about 8 quid, but a big bag nonetheless). We told all our classes about it and what they had to do and after the last class went back to our apartment to see if anyone would turn up.

Demand slightly exceeded expectations...

Withing minutes we were faced with a huge crowd of junior 1s and 2s stampeding towards our door all shouting 'give me!! give me!!'. Some tried to say trick-or-treat and some of the junior 1s had even made masks but it all soon descended into complete chaos. It was all grabbing hands and pushing and shoving and shouting as the kids ripped the bags of sweets from our hands...

I can't say it wasn't enjoyable though. A bit bewildering, yes, but still quite good fun. It was
good to be able to treat our favourite students, as it was only the enthusiastic ones who turned up.

And man were they enthusiastic.

It turned out afterwards that some teachers had been telling their students to go before dinner, and some had said go after dinner. With this in mind, Anthony quickly ran back to the shop and bought another 100 yuan of sweets, just in case.

It was well worth it. We came back from dinner and the yard outside our apartment was full of kids. Whoever had missed out on the first round
had by now heard all about it and were waiting for us. There were upwards of 300 kids all pressing forward to get into our apartment, and we weren't even in there!! We had to literally fight our way in, and fight our way back out again with the sweets. It was a bloodbath, but so much fun.

When I went into my junior 1 class the next day they all shouted 'trick-or-treat' and held out their hands for sweets. I just laughed at them. No way. I for one am glad this festival only comes round once a year!!

The pumpkins we carved were brilliant. Everyone kept stopping outside our apartment to have a look. They had never seen anything like it before. All we could hear from inside was 'hao guai!' (beautiful) and 'nangua' (pumpkin) as people stopped to look. The Chinese are a curious bunch at the best of times, and this really drew a crowd.

We lit them when it got dark and left them outside our apartment while we went to an evening show. This was some kind of talent/variety show, with singing and dancing, all performed by students from various schools.

There were prizes to be won and a good deal of them were won by students from our school, Yizhong (yi means one, zhong means middle - No. 1 middle school).

Our good friend Li zhe came second with a great dance. Most were traditional folk dances, so we got to see some culture that night too.



















The majority of the performers were Anthony's students, the senior 3s, but one or two were mine, and we speak to all of them anyway, so we had a laugh. There was one act that was absolutely brilliant. This little girl who must have been about 4 years old got up on stage in traditional Indian costume and danced along perfectly for 3 minutes, belly-dancing and bobbing her chin like you see all those Bollywood dancers do. It was amazingly cute.




It all went on rather late though and when we came back we found our pumpkins had quite literally had their lights put out. I think this was the most scary image of Halloween, with the blackened eyes and what looks like blood coming from the back of my little pumpkin... Brilliant.








But we weren't finished with the visitors. These two guys actually managed to make me jump when I opened the door, believe it or not. We eat with these guys every day in the teacher's canteen. Anyone who has the vaguest relationship to a teacher can eat in there. It's an improvement on the students' dining hall as at least here you can sit down and don't have everything slopped into one bowl to eat from. These lads got the meaning of Halloween and helped make it one of the best I've ever had.

yi, er, san, si.

Towards the end of October, I had just finished class and on my way back to my apartment noticed that a load of students were parading on the playground below. They were senior 1 and junior 1 students - the junior 1s being mine, and my favourites, so I ran back to get my camera and watched the rest of the parades. Each class came forward and had to do a routine in front of a panel of judges.

You won't find this in UK schools and it was a little reminder of the fact we are in a slightly restrictive communist country. Most of the time, we are completely unaware of this. The place is
as everyday as you could imagine. It hits you unexpectedly, like when I tried to send a CD of pictures home to my family but was refused at the post office because they couldn't check what was on it first (This is also a sharp reminder of the poverty - the main town post office doesn't even have a computer).

From the general shittiness of some of the parading, it seems clear that most of the people here don't take it too seriously either. The top classes were good, and it was really interesting to watch, but it all seemed a little forced and out of place.

After the parading, some of my junior 1s asked me to go play ping pong with them. Cos I had a camera with me, it meant that many photos had to be taken. I don't mind, I like these kids.

The photos give you a little glimpse at the school campus, which I haven't gotten round to photographing properly for you all yet. The top two parading pictures show firstly the animal sheds which substitute as the students' dining halls, and secondly the junior 1 classrooms on the top floor of the two-storey building facing the playground, with department offices underneath.

The next two show the main teaching building in the background. All the classrooms are accessed via outside walkways and there are about 6-7 classrooms per level.

This photo also shows standing in front of me, second from the left, a kid who is ping pong mad.
And ever since I played with the junior 1s and spoke some Chinese with them, he always races up to me with his ping pong bat and shouts 'fa ping pong qiu!! fa ping pong qiu!!' (don't check up on that spelling there, it's probably wrong) basically, 'play ping pong ball!! play ping pong
ball!!'. He's a persistant little bugger. He even comes to find me when I'm eating lunch. It's cool though. He's a good kid, and the 11-year olds are only a little bit better than me at ping pong, so I prefer to play with them anyway!!

Wan Nian Qiao BBQ

On the 28th of October, all of the English department had a staff outing to Wan Nian Qiao, the 10,000 year-old bridge, to have a BBQ.

We rode out there in the back of a truck with everyone piled in - almost all the teachers and about 6 of their kids. It was very cool. I've never ridden in a truck before so was loving it. It didn't half make you aware of the potholes though, sat on those metal wheel arches...




We didn't end up going to the actual bridge, which we had seen on an earlier bike trip with some students, but went to a place called the 'people's village'. This is some kind of open-air recreational resource centre with fishing stands over the river, a boat which you can ride and several small retirement houses which are in the process of being built.

There was also a small cave leading to a tunnel which we could head down and access another fishing spot from. It was pretty interesting.









We all walked up the hillside to a small clearing behind some of the new retirement houses and gathered rocks and wood to make three small campfires. There was a convenient 'table' to set out all the food on and soon we were BBQing away. There were chicken legs, salted meat, cauliflower, tofu, sweetcorn and sweet potatoes which we all began cooking with varying degrees of success...












Burning things is always good fun, so we had a great time. It was nice to spend some quality time with all of the teachers. Normally we only see a few of them in the English Office at any one time, and while we've eaten and drunk with them and sung karaoke, those times have rarely been as enjoyable.

What was great about this trip was that there was no beer!!!




So we ate ( a little), didn't drink, were blinded by smoke, but were merry.












Here our good friend Seven and Mr Yang are tucking in to their nicely done chicken legs.

In addition to the meat, they brought along some cakes, bread and salad dressing. The salad dressing must have been on our behalf. It may have had something to do with the BBQ that we had in Yangshuo, but somewhere along the line our teachers had been informed that westerners like to BBQ and that they must have salad dressing with it. I remember them mentioning it when we were driving to Lanshan for the first time, and we stopped off in Guilin to buy some, but I'd forgotten all about it until this little jar
cropped up at the BBQ.

It's funny what bizarre little cultural traits these people latch on to, most often completely without any reason or justification. The whole world believes that Brits stop what they're doing at 4pm and have tea and scones. Can I ask any Brit if they've ever witnessed this? I certainly haven't. But anyway, salad dressing...

You could tell that this was here purely for our benefit by the way they smeared it over uncooked chicken like a marinade before taking it to the BBQ and ate it on top of cake and bread as if they'd done it all their lives. We couldn't bring ourselves to tell them how wrong they were. It was kinda sweet in a very innocent way.




Having digital cameras (or cameras full-stop) we are often called upon to take many many many photos. Sometimes it's as though they are inviting our cameras out to various occasions with Anthony and I tagging along purely as button-pressing accessories. I don't feel bad about that though. It means I've got a hell of a lot of excellent photos now.

This is a great group shot of all of us. I can't name names. I still don't know some of them (Chinese names are hard!!), but all of the teachers I work most closely with are here, plus a few extra who've become good friends. They're a good
bunch. They look after us well.

After the photo opportunities had passed and all the food had been eaten, we went for a ride on a little boat.

The area through which the river flows is very pretty and this was another highlight to the day, even though most of the time we were occupied taking photos with absolutely everyone.

In the end there were probably one and a half times as many people on board as there were seats, which was a little worrying, especially as
the boat tended to lean from side to side quite severely when going round corners.

The kids had all been kitted out with life-jackets. None of the adults were wearing any. So it just demonstrates how they see us in their eyes when Anthony and I were also asked to wear them.

We are often treated like children here and it's a struggle to make ourselves be seen as competent adults. This was a perfect example. While I appreciate that their hearts are in the right place, it is a little insulting not to be taken for the responsible, capable, experienced adults that we
are.

I mean, seriously... I've been swimming regularly and seriously ever since I can remember. If that boat went down, it would be me pulling them out of that water.

Anyway, needless to say, we didn't wear the life-jackets...












There was a little re-enactment of Titanic with Anthony and Seven, though I think Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet were a little better matched height-wise...
















This was our truck! I rode the whole way back stood up behind the cab, feeling the wind in my hair and the bugs on my face. It was great.

A few minutes down the way we stopped to pick up Mr Sui's moped, which had broken down on the way over earlier on. We hauled it onto the back on the truck and had the slightly odd situation where Mr Sui, his son, and Mr Yang were riding on the moped, on the back on the truck. Whatever. It made a great photo.

We stopped along the way for dinner, but it was a
very rushed affair as they all had to be back for a
meeting very soon. It meant that we ate, but again didn't drink any beer!! We each had a pepsi and were the happiest guys alive.

To top it all off, that same weekend we got paid and survived another day without drinking (much) beer. It was bliss.

Jiu Ni Shan and Ningyuan

A week after returning from Zhangjiajie, some of our teachers took us on a trip to see some local sights. We took the school's car with Mr Li the Driver, his young bratish son, Mr Li the Principal, Mr Lei an English teacher with aspirations and Susan, our foreign affairs officer.

First stop was a temple complex at Jiu Ni Shan. It was quite an impressive complex really, full of some great old buildings and monuments.

There were dragons everywhere, and I made sure I took plenty of photos.

Besides having a tour round the complex we were able to go up some of the towers and for a small fee, ring a huge bell and beat a massive drum, all a specific number of times, as each number has a specific meaning. As a reward for beating the drum and donating a few yuan, we were taken up another tower to drink some tea.

There is apparently a complete and strict etiquette for drinking tea - always discard the first brew, never drink a cup in less than three mouthfuls or something like that... I dunno. It's good stuff though. I've never been a fan of English tea, but the Chinese stuff is pretty good.

The best one was a tea that was extremely bitter. The best thing was, that after a cup of this tea, if you drink a cup of hot water it tastes amazingly sweet. It was a funny effect but we couldn't get enough.

It was a nice way to spend a Sunday morning.


























Nearby was a large cave. The place has a similar geology to Yangshuo and Zhangjiajie but less spectacular. Still, there are some shared features. The cave was pretty cool. The main opening was impressive, and while the inside could not compare with Yellow Dragon Cave, it was in some way better because it is completely un-touristy and under-exploited. As our guide took us through she switched on strings of lights to light our way ahead and turned off the lights behind as she went, so there was only illumination in our immediate section. It was as if we were among the first people ever to explore this site.

That was kinda nice.




















After the cave came lunch and then another trip out to a different town, Ningyuan. I had no idea where we were going and had fallen asleep in the car (thanks to lunchtime beer) so when I woke up I thought I was in Lanshan again. The streets of Ningyuan are exactly the same. This place is bigger though. The ulterior motive for our trip was exposed here. Principal Li was attending a meeting at a middle school in the town and while he met with the other principals, we went to see another famous temple in the town.

I'm not so sure of the name, but this place is the second largest Confucian temple in China.
Considering that the largest is in Confucius' birthplace, that's quite good going. It's very old and incredible ornate. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, we couldn't find out too much about it as there was no English information and no guide. All I know is that it was important and has some amazing architecture and decoration.

That was impressive enough.