Welcome
back, - or welcome.
Monday
the 17th February saw us back to work at school and putting our
Spring Festival holiday break behind us.
The first couple of days for me saw a couple of roster changes before I
got given a completely new roster which compressed my classes into a Monday to
Thursday schedule and 3 days off. Of course they have managed to sneak in a
couple of extra classes per week. Then
to be told that maybe this will change as some Chinese teachers may want to
swap some classes with me. I did get
asked to swap one class to a Friday at 4pm – yeah, -that didn’t happen. Liking the look of my 4 day week.
And
Julie? Well the first 2 weeks were a
period of limbo really as the head teacher was busy and no-one could decide on
a roster and what they wanted her to teach - so pretty much had the first week
off and the second week was on a day by day basis. Plenty of time for some lesson planning and
in the end Julie took in a copy of my 4 day roster and got the result we were
hoping for – yep, same 4 days a week.
Excellent!
Last
October through a chance meeting at a supermarket we have met up with a group
of locals who meet once a fortnight for an English Corner. Basically this is a group of people who get
together to converse in English as opportunities to do so are very limited and
they have to make an effort to get together with similar minded people. For
them to have some foreign native English speakers in their group is a really
big thing and for some is the first time they have spoken to a foreign person. This is mutually beneficial, as for us it is
a great way to meet some real locals in a social environment away from school
and secondly we need people that can help us with translations. Most of the group are very apologetic about
their poor English when in fact they can generally be understood and hold a
simple conversation – and then there are some we have met who you would
consider quite fluent in English.
Let
me tell you about Dong; she is 57 years old and used to work in the cafeteria
of a large factory. She learnt a very
small amount of English when a child at school – two of the phrases she does
remember are –“always remember class struggle” and “long live Chairman Mao”. Dong has decided to try and learn English
and started by using a basic children’s word book she had managed to get her
hands on. She saw the article in the
local paper about Julie and I helping at a local English Corner and she
travelled to the venue the day before to make sure she knew where to go as she
didn’t want to miss out. She is a lovely
lady with a great sense of humour and we have many laughs as she learns new
words, practices her pronunciation and writes down new words/phrases in her
notebook.
Through
this group we have made friends with a guy called Frank. He is 38 and has spent 10 years in the UK and
Canada studying and working –so his English is pretty good. Also he sees things a little differently than
your average Chinese person having been exposed to western culture for a long
period as well as having had the ability to access information that is
otherwise still very much restricted here. He has been helping us with
translation and been a really good friend to have. For instance he spent the afternoon with us
to help Julie get her eyes tested and new glasses. He came with us another day to sort out an IT
issue with my computer for me. OK, have
a laugh – my laptop died suddenly and I could not turn it on. As it turned out
the power cable was faulty and it would only charge intermittently. Frank came out pretty much straight away when
we phoned him and took us to a friend of his with a computer repair place to
get it sorted; a new cord.
For
the 4/5/6th of April we decided on another weekend trip to Nanjing
as there was some sights we missed out on last time. Frank’s fiancée lives in Nanjing and he went
to University there as well. We met up with them on the Saturday morning and
they were our local tour guides for the day which made the whole experience so
much easier and informative. Feletia is
an English teacher at a local University, she also has great English, and together
they make a really nice couple.-photos
Once
again visited Jimmy’s Sports Bar in Nanjing.
So we walk in, order a drink and say “hi” to this guy at the bar. Another Kiwi -hometown Marton, been living in
China for 10 years and also involved in teaching English. He has been to 75 countries – now that’s a
serious travelling effort!! He was 60
and has married a local lady and has a 5 year old daughter – and get this, is a
couple of years older than his father-in-law.
Having
a yarn with this guy and on comes the Super 15 Rugby, Auckland Blues vs
Brumbies being played in Canberra. I
quickly worked out the time and figured this game is live, so…I called Paul, (brother
in Aussie) on Facetime and he is quick to show me he is at the game sitting in
the stand, I then show him I am watching it live while propping up the bar at
Jimmy’s in Nanjing. He was suitably impressed.
Isn’t technology amazing.
I
had the chicken burger for dinner at Jimmy’s and woke at 3am not feeling flash
at all and proceeded to bring it back up.
Was good to go again by mid-morning, –nothing like a short sharp dose of
food poisoning.
We
also visited the impressive Nanjing Bridge over the Yangtze River. It was finished in 1968 and was the third
bridge over the Yangtze River which has a length of 6400 km’s and is the
longest river in Asia, third longest in the world. This bridge was a huge
propaganda subject for the Chinese as initially the Russians were going to
build it and when the two countries fell out in the early 60’s it became the
first national project the locals had completed on their own. Let’s not forget the massive gains made by
not having to barge everything across this massive river. There are now 60 bridges and 3 tunnels
crossing the Yangtze River as it makes it way to the coast at Shanghai. We were with an American guy who spoke
Chinese and were inside the bridge structure where there is a small museum, and
a large statue of Mao, when this little kid with a family group was in an
adjacent room and he apparently asked his family, “where is grandfather
Mao?” Yep, a lot of the locals clearly
idolise Mao - and the brainwashing continues.
The
following weekend saw us team up with Robert and Lily for a trip to Qingdao, about
5 hours by bus north east of Huaian, on the Yellow Sea coast. On the way we drove over a new bridge across
a large bay – so what you are thinking; it was 27 kilometres long, had an
interchange as part of it, built in 4 years by 10,000 workers in two shifts
around the clock, has 3 bridges for shipping access, 5300 piles, 450,000 tonnes
of steel and 2.3 million m3 of concrete, claimed to be the longest over sea
bridge in the world, official cost of 10 billion RMB, ($2billion NZ) unofficial
rumoured cost of 55 billion RMB ($11billion NZ). How’s that for a budget
blow-out! It was pretty impressive even
if it did not seem that busy. We then found out it has the local nickname of
“the bridge to nowhere” due to its lack of use.
I quote - “The bridge was
the idea of a local official in the Chinese Communist Party who has since been dismissed for corruption”. But,
hey, it looks good and kept a lot of people employed – are you thinking TIC yet?
–(this/that is China)
Qingdao,
home of Tsingtao beer. Now there’s the
real reason for the trip. We visited the original brewery and did the tour
which included a little sampling of the product. Was really interesting – made more so by the
English speaking guide we hired. This is one of 35 Tsingtao breweries in China.
A bit of local history; with a Chinese
Dynasty, wars and Concessions this city has had the following countries holding
power in Qingdao in recent times, (recent by Chinese standards anyway) – till
1898 China, then it was a German Concession till the Japanese invaded in 1914,
taken back by China in 1922 and then re-taken by Japan in 1938 till 1945 when
it’s back to Chinese control. So the
brewery was started by the Germans, taken over by the Japanese twice and then
back to the Chinese, again. Qingdao was
also where the Japanese originally started their Asahi and Sapporo branded
beers. The Qingdao locals drink the beer “fresh” from dispensing kegs at small street
stalls and is sold in a plastic bag by weight and you get a straw to drink it
with. –photo. Just a bit of trivia for all you fellow beer drinkers out there.
Try a Tsingtao or two, it’s not half bad.
The
city is also big on its seafood and everywhere you go there are fish-of all
sizes and shapes, shellfish, crabs and an assortment of other sea life, some of
which is really hard to describe let alone ever bother to try and guess what it
could be. And they are all on display in
either tanks or large shallow plastic dishes sitting on the footpath
inter-connected with a mass of small plastic tubing and a small pump going flat
out in an often losing battle to try and oxygenate the water. –photo. Fresh
seafood? - some of it might have been.
TIC.
Another
notable aspect of Qingdao is the architecture.
The old city area has a very strong German/European feel to it and is
unlike most other Chinese cities we have visited. Even the Hostel we stayed at was quite
different, an old observatory complete with domed roof, spiral stairs and a
great rooftop bar/restaurant set-up with a 60RMB/NZ$12 dinner deal of burgers
and beers one night and ribs the next, all you can eat/drink in 2 hours. How’s
that?
As
you can see, “back to work” has not been all work – managing to find some time
to play as well.
Till
next time,
J2
on walkabout.
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