New Friends - Chinese and Foreigners

I know you must be champing at the bit for the next
instalment of my China adventures, so here it is!

It has actually been a relatively quiet week, this
week. I guess I must be "settling in".

My classes went ok, although I am still having
difficulty getting the students to actually speak in
class.


In the audio visual class, I tried to play celebrity
heads - I used Tom Cruise with one class and David
Beckham with the other. None of the students would
volunteer to be the "celebrity head" so I had to
nominate a student, which did not go down too well with
the unlucky victims. And then the buggers cheated by
speaking to each other in Chinese!

So, I decided just to stick to showing the movies for
now. I thought "Bend it Like Beckham" would be a
"wholesome" choice, but after watching it again, I
realise that there is quite a bit of (mild for our
standards) swearing/cursing, lying to parents, and homosexual/lesbian
references, which may not be understood or appreciated. (China still
seems to be a fairly homophobic culture). Now, I remembered this movie
to be a fairly wholesome one - quite amazing the difference in
standards!


It did not help my cause when I met David, a Chinese
teacher in the English dept, who asked me what movies
I was showing and then entered into a 10 minute
monologue on the "bad language" in most Hollywood
films and how he sticks to the classics with
"beautiful language".

Oh well, I think my students might need a dose of
western reality with their movies! Of course, whether
they understand the movie remains to be seen. Given
that the plot centres around an Indian Sikh family in
London, even I find the myriad of accents and the
colloquial expressions difficult to follow at times,
so I don't know how my students will go.

I have not got any interesting cuisine stories to tell
you about this week. I have been doing a bit of
cooking for myself, or going out with Annie and her
student Michelle to a couple of local restaurants.
Michelle does the ordering and we stick to fairly
normal dishes.


However, those who know my eating habits well will be
surprised to hear that I am eating a lot of
beancurd/tofu over here. It comes in many shapes,
sizes and flavours and I am actually quite enjoying
it.

One of my audio/visual students, Smiling Fish,
approached me after class and offered to bring a few
students over to my apartment to cook for me. Ok! So,
Smiling Fish, Jordan, Ice Man and Barry, came to my
apartment at 8:00am on Saturday and took me to the
markets to buy fresh meat & veges and other cooking
products. They would not let me pay for anything. They
then came back to my apartment and cooked up a feast -
stir fry chives; egg and tomato; egg and cucumber;
stir fry pork, potato and green peppers; egg and
mushroom soup (yes, they like to use eggs in their
cooking), stir fry snails (yes snails again - quite
frankly a much preferable choice to the eel looking
things they were going to buy!) and rice.


I watched them prepare and cook everything in the wok
and so got a few tips on Chinese cooking. They use a
lot of oil, salt, sugar, chicken stock and flour
starch in their cooking, which can't be too good for
you.

We then sat around my table and enjoyed the feast. I
could not quite work out how to eat snails with
chopsticks. Particularly as these snails were tiny and
still in their shells. It was quite a sight watching
them pick up the snails with the chopsticks and then sucking/slurping
the meat from the shell and spitting the shells on the table! I tried a
few. They tasted good but I was pretty unsuccessful on the
sucking/slurping skills. I pretty much made all the right noises, just
did not get the snail out of its shell!

Anyway, these same students have offered to take me to
the city park next weekend, so it looks like I have
made my first friends.

Last night, I went out to dinner with other foreign
teachers or business people in Yancheng. That is,
teachers at other schools. I was surprised to learn
that there are about 15 or so other foreigners here.
They all meet for dinner every Saturday night.

Unfortunately, it does not seem that Yancheng attracts
the "younger" crowd, so apart from a few, they are all
mostly older, retired people. So, whilst I might not
get the travel partners I was hoping to find, at least
there is a good support network here.

There are a few younger Chinese who come along to the
dinners too - obviously to practice their English and
to order for us!

There are 5 other Australians, 4 or 5 Kiwis, a few
Americans, a couple of Canadians, an Englishman, an
Italian and a Brazilian.

Out of that crew, there is one younger Australian guy
from Melbourne and 2 younger, female Canadians. I
suspect though that the Australian guy bats for the
other team, so no potential there for me!

All of the Aussies are from Melbourne, so there was a
lively discussion about the AFL grand final. I was
pleased to find out that the Lions are into their 4th
straight grand final!

After dinner, we went to a "bar". This was a "saloon"
style bar which played Elvis incessantly. Apart from
one other table, we were the only ones there. Quite a
night life Yancheng offers! Oh well, it was good to be
able to have an alcoholic beverage, swear a bit and
talk about the football.

Well, that is it. My week in a nutshell. Oh, I signed
a 6 month contract with this school on Monday.
Wouldn't you know it, but the Qld Education mob
contacted me on Wed about a job with the Unilearn
program in Beijing in mid October. 3 times the salary
I am earning here and a big city. Very tempting, but I
decided to rough it out here in Yancheng for awhile
and experience the "real" China. I can hear my sisters
telling me how stupid I am as I write this....

Beijing will still be there in 6 months time.

Take care all. Go the Lions!

love Meagan