The Freshmen, The Supermarket Lawyer and Stormin Norman!

Well, it has been some weeks since the last instalment
of my China saga. I have been saving up the juicy
stories for you!

I have some photos of my trip away during the national
day holiday, which I will send as soon as I work out
how to compress the files into a smaller format to
attach to an email.

I had a pretty vicious head cold after returning from
my galavanting around the county. It took the best
part of 2 weeks to recover, but I am AOK now.

I arrived back in Yancheng on the Thursday, and then
had makeup classes on both Saturday and Sunday. I was
supposed to meet 2 of my 3 first year classes
(freshmen) on the Sunday, but ended up cancelling
these classes as I was too sick to do them. I am
supposed to make up the make up classes at some stage,
but hopefully the faculty will just forget about them!

So, I met my 3 freshmen classes the next week. The
little dears were very excited to have a foreign
teacher and certainly seem more willing to actually
participate in the class than my 3rd year students.


The first lesson with each class just involved
introductions again. Quite a few of the freshies did
not have English names as they had not had a foreign
teacher during middle school (high school). (It is
only the foreign teachers who give their students
English names because we ignoramuses cannot pronounce
their Chinese names!).


So it was my turn to give some English names. Although
I had sworn to myself that I would not give any
students "weather" names, I got a bit stuck when one
student said she was born in Winter and wanted a name
which related to this season. I racked my brain to try
to think of a normal name that has something to do
with winter, but just came up with words like - cold,
blizzard, freeze, etc. So, given that I already have a
"snow" in most of my classes anyway, I thought "Why
the hell not have another one". So Snow it is.

Of course, some of them already had English names, so
I got another dose of entertainment listening to them.
In one class, the first 3 students in the first row
are Duck, Leaf and Nurse. Then there is Joss, Blue,
Molya, Fly, Shell, Cindarella, Wing, Show, Cherry,
Stone, Monday, and Daily. Add those new ones to the
popular Apple's, Snow's, CiCi's etc. With 114 students
in 3 classes, you get some good ones!

Adding to the entertainment value, were some of the
comments from the students when they were introducing themselves and
asking me questions. The best one though came from a young girl whose
upper lip quivered with excitement when it was her turn to talk to the
foreigner. She said, and I quote, "I hope you will enjoying your time in
China and become every more beautiful, charming and sexy". Now how are
you supposed to respond to that!

So, I have had 3 lessons with each of the freshman
classes now and, thankfully, they seem to be
maintaining most of their initial enthusiasm. In fact,
in the break between periods in my Thursday morning
class last week, I was mobbed by about 10 students all
wanting to talk to me. One girl gave me a tiny photo
of herself, cut out in the shape of a love heart.
Another told me that one of her Chinese teachers had
told them that I have an "open horse". At least that's
what I thought she said at first. I figured that
couldn't be right, so maybe an "open heart". Finally,
I worked out that she meant an "open house" and that
she, and the 10 other students crowding round me,
wanted to know when they could come and visit me. Oh
shit! I was taken by surprise a bit, so I fobbed them
off with some crap about ringing or emailing me at any
time. I guess I will have to let them know next week
some times that I will make myself available for them
to come and visit.

Then I got asked for my QQ number. Now QQ is a big
thing in China. Anybody who is anybody has a QQ
number, and it just so happens that my student, Betty,
set me up on QQ. This is an online chatting service
similar to MSN Messenger, but, in typical Chinese
fashion, with a lot of annoying little flashing and
talking icons that mostly serve as a distraction. Unfortunately, I could
not remember my QQ number, so instead told the class they could write
their QQ numbers down for me. So now I have 17 QQ numbers from just one
class. Looks like I will be spending a lot of time online chatting with
students!

Anyway, enough of the freshmen and onto another story.
I often go to a small supermarket near my apartment to
pick up a few things. There is a young girl who is a
cashier at the supermarket who has a few words of
English and she is always eager to display her talents
when I come through her register. Anyway, one
afternoon, she said something more than her usual
"hello" "Your Welcome" etc. I heard "English" and
something that sounded like "phone". I asked her if
she was asking for my phone number and held my hand up
to my ear like a phone. "Yes" she said. So I wrote my
name and number on a bit of paper.

A few days later she called me at home. I could
understand that it was the girl from the supermarket
as she said "I from Yajiale" (which is the name of the supermarket). She
told me her name was Sun Jing but the conversation pretty much fell to
pieces from there. I thought she was asking me to teach her English and
inviting me to her home, but she had obviously just practiced a few key
words or phrases, and when I answered, she was not able to understand my
response. Luckily, Betty was at my apartment when Sun Jing called, so I
put her on to translate. She indeed did want me to teach her English and
invited me to her home. I had to decline on the teaching job, but told
her I was happy to meet with her and talk to her, so accepted her offer
to visit her home.


So 2 days later I visited her home and met her mother
and brother. Betty came with me to translate - luckily
- otherwise it would have been a fairly labourious
evening! She showed me some photos of herself when she
was younger, then we ate dumplings, then she showed me
some ancient coins from the Qing dynasty that her
grandfather had collected, then we ate fruit, then we
watched Terminator 3 on her computer. Her brother
kindly turned on the English audio and they read the
Chinese subtitles. Of course it was a black market
DVD, so the audio was pretty much inaudible most of
the time. During the movie, Sun Jing kept handing me
tiny glass animal figurines that she collects. So I
had about 10 of these figurines by the end of the
movie, which she insisted, through Betty, I take with
me.

Now the interesting thing about Sun Jing is that,
whilst she works at the supermarket, she is apparently self-studying for
a national law exam. And all she needs to do to practice law, despite
not having studied through a University or College, is sit an exam to
receive a Certificate. Apparently you don't need a degree. I wonder what
my 5 years of study were for?

Ok, next I need to tell you about Max. He is the young
(22) American teacher - longish blond hair, green
eyes. Max grew up in DC but studied Chinese at a
Liberal Arts College in some backwater town in
Minnesota. He majored in Chinese Literature and
ultimately wants to translate Chinese literature. So,
young Max is a bit of an intellectual (he wants to be
a literary giant one day) and completely lacking in
life experiences. But he is a nice, genuine, guy, if
somewhat stereotypically brash at times.

Max, although nice looking, would not stand out in the
crowd as being particularly good looking in America or Australia.
However in Yancheng, Max is an international sex symbol!


Probably three quarters of the student population at
our college is female. And although the students range
in age from about 19 - 24, they mostly have the
emotional maturity of 15-16 year olds. So they are
very giggly and very enamoured with young Max and his
blond locks. Whilst, before Max's arrival, I was
pretty much the centre of attention as the only
caucasian, he certainly now has that dubious honour. I
have stopped counting the number of girls who have
come up to him and crooned "Your so handsome". He has
even been told he is a "fox" by one of his students.
And the poor boy is at a loss to know what to do or
say. He tells me that he wants to be known for his
literary genius and not his looks. And given that he
is an intellectual, he is not interested in forming a relationship with
a girl he cannot communicate with other than through the "language of
love".

There is one girl in particular who is a bit obsessed
with Max. Her name is Norman. Yes, Norman. She came up
to Max & I as we were walking on campus one day and
was very excited to talk with us. Almost her first
utterance was "Your so handsome", directed to Max of
course. She then insisted on meeting with us a few
days later to give us some "famous tea" from her
hometown. We actually ran into her again a couple of
days later, but she was all eyes for Maxie and I was
given the short shrift. She was almost
hyperventilating with excitement and gave Max a letter
and asked him for his phone number, which he stupidly
gave to her.

We eventually managed to get away from her, and then
it was Max's turn to hyperventilate. He did not want
to read the letter, so I kindly (hee hee) offered to
do it for him. It was 4 or 5 pages about how Norman
thinks she and Max are soul mates. Actually most of it
was her translation of a Chinese song into English - a
Chinese love song. (This was about 2 weeks ago, but I
don't think Max has read the letter yet!)

Ultimately we both got a cannister of the "famous
tea", althoug Max's came with a love heart shaped
photo of Norman with the words "Together Forever"
printed on it.

Max refused to answer his phone for about a week in
case it was Norman. At some point she must have found
out where he lived as we came back to the apartment
block one day to find an invitation to join her for
dumplings pinned to his door. He let another few days
go by before he finally returned her many calls, after
I told him he needed to grow a spine.

So Max met Norman for dumplings last Sunday. I was not
there, of course, so I am not privy to the details.
Although I did hear that she bought him some heart
shaped potato wedges from KFC and insisted on singing
a Chinese love song to him in the middle of Da Niang
Dumplings. Apparently, Max has a girlfriend who is
currently working in Beijing and he cannot wait to see
her again. (This is partly true, although the
girlfriend is his ex and she is currently living in
Beijing with her current boyfriend).

I tell you, this saga has given me endless hours of
amusement!

Anyway, it is 11:00pm and I have a class at 8:00am
tomorrow which I have not prepared for. So I will
leave it here. I have many more stories to tell you,
but I will leave them for the next email, to which I
will attach some photos.

love Meagan