Summer is Coming, April-May 2014

Welcome back, or welcome if a first time visitor to our blog.

The change is pretty much complete and its farewell to winter, a short spring and summer is pretty much here.  The temperature has been sitting around the early to mid-twenties this last week with a high on the weekend just gone of 29 degrees.  Julie is very happy!

A couple of weeks ago we organised the latest expats dinner.  This time I thought a good theme would be “bring a Chinese friend”.  We have all needed a friend or two we can call on to help us out at various times and it was a good opportunity to return a bit of hospitality.  It is hard to explain just how excited some of the locals were at being invited and having the opportunity to mix socially with a large group of English speaking people.  For dinner there was a total of 46 people and was a great night. Nationalities included; New Zealanders, American, Canadian, English, Welsh, Tunisian, Irish, French and Chinese.  We even made the newspaper!! –see attached article.

We got a phone call one Thursday evening asking if we would help out with judging at a speech competition on the weekend.  Sure, seems like another experience worth having. Well it sure was interesting.  The kids were aged from maybe 3/4 years old through to University students.  Some were just too cute, some funny and some that were surprisingly good when compared to their peers.  And then there were the blank stares as the odd kid’s rehearsed speech fell apart to be followed by silence then tears.  This often under the watchful gaze of “Tiger Mama” standing behind the judges waving hands and arms, mouthing words trying to coach their kids along.  Even had one Mama, whose kid had pretty much forgotten his speech during his allotted time, during a break drag her kid up to me and made him deliver his speech to me.  There were about 120 kids in the competition and all got a prize as I was told it doesn’t matter how bad -the minimum score was 60%.  Was an interesting afternoon. Oh, and the whole thing apparently ended up on local TV and I am now David, as they had a spare “David” nametag and couldn’t find anything to make a “Jonathan” tag with.    -photos

The 1^st of May is a national holiday, Labour day for the workers.  It reminded me of the news articles we often used to have on TV in years gone by when the “May Day” parades of the Chinese and Russian Communist regimes were shown on the TV news featuring row upon row of marching soldiers, tanks and ICBM’s (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles) parading past dignitaries/leaders.

But for us it’s a holiday making it a long week-end.  Shanghai here we come again.  Another 6 hour bus trip from Huaian to Shanghai where we join Robert and Lily who had travelled down earlier in the day, we had to work till lunchtime –OK I actually got the locals to do my 2 afternoon classes so we could get away early.  This time we were staying at a Youth Hostel and had a rough idea on how to get there, when at the Shanghai bus station we went to get a cab and they wanted 110RMB for a trip that was 25-30, thanks but “up yours Jack”, blatant rip-offs for foreigners piss me off. Again – TIC. Did the 3RMB each Metro with one interchange and a 7 minute walk to the hostel; we sure showed that taxi driver we didn’t need him.  Robert even had a cold beer waiting for me at the hostel –nice!

A great couple of days in Shanghai wandering around taking in the sights.  We were joined for a couple of days by Alena Sue, friend from Hamilton NZ, who is in Shanghai taking an advanced/refresher Chinese language course for 5 weeks.  Visited the Shanghai World Finance Centre tower, to the 100^th floor viewing platform at approx. 480metres high, pretty amazing. –photos.  Did some shopping at the “fake” markets.  It was a maze of small shops with goods on display but if you are interested in looking at more you are then taken out the back through a concealed door, often a panel of the display swings back revealing a small room stacked floor to ceiling with products.  Even went to one with a secret room off a secret room!!  Another with hidden compartments full of watches behind the toe-space in the bench display unit and a hidden entry door with double electro-magnetic locks activated by a key-ring remote to a room approx. 1.8 x1.2m3 – squashed in and locked in!  Sure was an interesting experience.

During the evening of the 1^st we were heading to the Bund area in downtown Shanghai and the trains were absolutely packed, should have been a clue really. When we got out onto the street the crowds were huge and packed shoulder to shoulder.  Felt like half of Shanghai’s 24 million people were on the same street that night in our own May Day parade.

Once again we had some great meals while out and about.  Have recently had a look back at photos and it looks like we do a lot of dining out – well we do!! Hahaha. –more dining photos!

It’s May the 8^th and time is really flying by and it won’t be long till our contract finishes at the start of July.  We recently signed up for an extra two weeks summer school gig for mid July in a city 2 hours south of Huaian.  It pays more for the 2 weeks than we currently earn in a month so we figure it will help with the travel plans we are making.

Trust all is well with everyone.  As you can see life here in the Middle Kingdom is always interesting.  Keep in touch – drop us a line.

Later,  J2 on walkabout