A new life in Huaian
Well, here I am, back in China, for the start of another year teaching English. For those of you who don't know, whilst I am in the same Province (Jiangsu), I have moved cities from Yancheng to Huaian (pronounced Hwhy - ann). My new city is about one and three quarter hours by train from the old city. It is still north of Shanghai, but further west than Yancheng. It takes around the same time to get to Shanghai by bus (5 hours), but is closer to Nanjing (3 hours). Huaian is very similar to Yancheng; that is, it is a small, regional city with very little western influence. Like Yancheng, Huaian has nothing much going for it in terms of attracting the tourist, other than - (a) It was the home of their very famous former Premier, Zhou Enlai (pronounced Joe en-lie), who was the first Premier of the PR China under Chairman Mao and a much more reasonable chap than Mao during the time of the Cultural Revolution, and is home to the Zhou Enlai memorial and his former residence; and (b) Huaiyan cooking is one of the 4 famous styles of Chinese cooking, although it seems that these days the local people are more interested in KFC and McDonalds than they are in their traditional cooking style.
So, you may ask, why am I here? Good question. Not sure of the answer. I had convinced myself by the end of last term that I wanted to stay in a smaller city and continue to experience the "real China", instead of getting caught up in the ex-pat lifestyle in cities like Shanghai, Nanjing and Beijing. I could have stayed in Yancheng, but many of my students there, who had become my friends, graduated at the end of last term and moved back to their hometowns. One of those students/friends was Betty, and she invited me to teach in her city, Huaian. I had already visited this city a few times with her, met her family and friends, become somewhat familiar with the city, so I decided to come here.
Last year I was at a teacher's college. This year I am at a technical college. The word is that there will be many more males than females at this school, which is the reverse of last year. However, whilst that might be the case overall, it seems that English major courses still attract more females than males. So, in my first class on Monday, I had 23 females and 14 males. Still, this is an improvement on the Yancheng ratio, where, for example, in one class of 41 students, I had 1 male!
There are many similarities between this school and the last one. For example, the lack of information provided to teachers (foreign teachers at least) is already evident. Also, like last year, I have been left to my own devices in my apartment and not introduced to a single person in the English department. It is very strange. It seems like once they get you here and can use you to boost the school's reputation, they are no longer interested in you. But I am used to that after last year.
So, I arrived in Huaian last Wednesday and have been here 1 week. Nothing much has happened in that time. I have spent a lot of time in my apartment, watching DVDs and trying to configure my computer. Very exciting!
My apartment is quite good. It is a spacious 2 bedroom apartment right on the main campus. It has all of the mod cons and, unlike in Yancheng, I can actually use the 2nd bedroom. (You might recall that the 2nd bedroom in my last apartment was mysteriously locked .... I never did find out what was behind the locked door???) The building is fairly new, only 1-2 years old, but like all buildings in China, the workmanship is pretty shoddy. My shower floods my laundry and the towel rail has already fallen off. Luckily, one of the foreign teachers here is a bit of handyman, so he has made a dam with some type of Sealy sealant type stuff to stop the water running from the shower into the laundry.
So, what about the other foreigners. Unfortunately, the foreigner community does not look as large as it was in Yancheng, and it certainly is not as close knit. There are 5 foreign teachers at this school (including me), although there are 6 foreigners living in this building, with one lady teaching at another college.
Within a few hours of arriving, I had met Troy. He is a 28 year old Australian from Brisbane who lives nearby but works for a private school. It seems he will be my social outlet here in Huaian as we have a like minded cultural interest in drinking alcohol. He is only here on weekends though, as he lives and works in a school in another town during the week. Apparently he has an Australian Phillipino girlfriend, but she works in Hangzhou which is in another province and many hours by bus from here.
Jennifer is an American lady who lives in this building but teaches at another college. I have only met her briefly. Troy and I differ in our opinion of her age - he thinks she is late 20's, I think she is in her 40's??? Don't know how we can be so far apart. Anyway, we both agree that she is probably not the party girl type.
Roger is a 50 something Australian, although I am not sure what city or state he is from. He seems very laid back and companionable. Someone tells me he is a Buddhist, which would account for his relaxed and peaceful attitude, but I can't confirm or deny this. I do know that he is a writer and is not really all that interested in teaching. He seems to spend most of his time in his apartment writing.
Glen is a kiwi of indeterminate age. I would say late 40's but could be older. He has taught at this school for 2 years and is very helpful. He has provided me with lots of information on this school, classes, resources, maps, bus schedules, etc. He is also the handyman who made the dam in my shower and fixed my shower rail.
Joe is a 63 year old American with a vietnamese wife. He apparently taught in Vietnam for 8 years before coming to China. He has a PHD in Education. Joe is very American. He seems nice enough, but probably past the party age. His Vietnamese wife, Hang, is his 4th wife.
Change Parker (yes, that is his name), is a 50 something American. He is married to a Chinese lady. Change is very quiet and softly spoken and a nice guy. I probably like him the best so far. His life story is interesting. He told me it over dinner when his wife was in Nanjing and then invited me to dinner at his place the next night to meet his wife. She is his 4th wife - well, 5th if you count the fact that he married his 1st wife a 2nd time. Yes, that's right. Apparently his 1st wife left him for another man after 6 months of marriage. His second marriage lasted 5 years and he has a 25 year old daughter from that marriage. His 3rd marriage lasted 20 years but produced no children and ended in divorce. After his 3rd marriage ended, he decided to come to China. However, just before he left for China he met his 1st wife again and their feelings for each other were rekindled. But he came to China anyway, met Lin Li (current wife) and had a secret relationship with her for about 5 months. But alas, the 1st wife begged him to come back to America and try again, so he left Lin Li and returned to America. He remarried the 1st wife and this time the marriage lasted 3 months before she left him for another man. After a bit of soul searching, Change decided to return to China and marry Lin Li. He arrived at the beginning of June and they were married 2 weeks later! What a sucker for punishment! Anyway, I hope this one works out for him. Lin Li is very nice. Her English is not great though, so communication must be difficult.
On Friday night, Betty and I went out with Troy and Glen to a couple of bars. There we ran into 2 other foreigners who are new to Huaian and teaching at a middle school. Mark is an Irishman with wild long red hair, and Bill is an American. Both seem pretty young. They were already well inebriated when we discovered them, so I didn't really get to have meaningful conversations with them.
There is also an older American lady at the teacher's college but I have not met her yet.
And apart from a few businessmen with whom there is apparently not much social interaction, that seems to be about it. There may be some other foreigners floating around at other schools, but, if there are, we don't know about them and they probably don't know about us.
Teaching started on Monday, but I only have 1 class per week at the moment. My first class were International Trade majors rather than English majors. They are 2nd year students. Their English is pretty good. I do have 4 other English major classes, but they are 1st year students and their classes don't start until after the national day holiday in the 2nd week of October. All of my classes so far are oral English, which means no teaching writing, which I hated. What a hard life!
That is a total of 5 classes, 10 periods. My contract requires me to teach 9 classes, 18 periods per week. On my 2nd day here, I was told by the foreign affairs lady that there would not be enough classes for me and I would have to teach some middle school classes. I promptly told her that I applied to teach college students and did not want to nor intend to teach middle school students. I have since found out that the foreign affairs department has a habit of "selling" the services of foreign teachers to other schools as a money making enterprise. (I feel like a prostitute!)
I was later informed that the school had arranged for Joe and I to teach 6 classes on a Wednesday at a college in a "suburb" of Huaian. So, on Saturday, a car collected Joe and I to take us to this college to meet the relevant people. The "suburb" turned out to be a small town in another county 1 hour's drive from Huaian city. On the way, we were informed that we would be collected by this car every Wednesday at 6am to be driven to the college to start teaching at 7:40am - 4 classes before lunch and 2 classes after lunch. We would have to stay in this remote college for 3 hours over the lunch break and then driven back to Huaian in the late afternoon. The inducement for doing this was a "free lunch" in the school canteen - eating slop.
Needless to say, both Joe and I had some issues with these arrangements and Joe kindly allowed me to explain these issues to the Dean of the English department and our foreign affairs representative. We were invited to eat in the school canteen and then the visit was over. On the way out, the Dean asked Joe and I to give back the text books he had previously given us. It seems that, because of the issues we raised, we were not going to be invited to teach at that college afterall! What a shame!
So, I wonder what is in store for me now. The other three teachers are teaching some middle school classes and Joe, who has a PHD in Education, has been given some Literature and History classes. The foreign affairs department have since informed me that there will be more students enrolling in the college after the national day holiday and I will be given more classes then. It would be good if that is the case. However, the other foreign teachers here told me not to be surprised if my services get onsold to another school anyway. I think it is very underhanded and deceitful conduct. If this is a usual practice at this school then I should have been informed aobut it before I packed up my life and moved to this city. We will see what happens!
Since arriving, I have purchased a mobile phone and a DVD player, with Betty's help. The mobile phone shopping was an interesting experience. I wanted to buy a particular model of Nokia, with which I was familiar, to simply make and receive calls and send and receive messages. However, all the phones these days have fandangle colour digital screens and every function under the sun short of cleaning your teeth for you. The bonafide mobile phone shops don't seem to carry the old models anymore. So Betty took me to a "2nd hand mobile phone market". This was a huge enclosed market with hundreds of vendors hawking their products. I was a bit dubious about the legality of this market. Where do the phones come from and what is the quality like? I am sure many of the phones have simply fallen off the back of trucks. It is probable that the phone I lost ended up in a market like this. Anyway, I found the model I wanted and only paid 360 yuan (less than AU$60) for the phone, 2 batteries (of dubious quality) and a charger. It came in a proper Nokia box with manual! So far, so good.
Seeing I had paid so little for the phone, I decided to spend a bit more on the DVD player so we went to a bonafide electrical appliance store. Betty did the negotiating and got sucked into a particular model because of all the free gifts they offered - 3 DVDs, 2 music VCDs, a cup, karaoke microphones and 2 badminton racquets. So I paid 460 yuan (less than AU$75) for the DVD and all the crap that went along with it! The 3 gift DVDs were "Legends of the Fall" with Brad Pitt, "Hollywood Homicide" with Harrison Ford and "Paprika" with actors unknown. Interestingly, "Paprika" turns out to be an Italian porno movie about a girl who goes to a brothel to make a quick buck to help her fiance and ends up making a career out of being a prostitute. Quite the gift!!
Well, that is about all I have to tell you for now. I am sure there will be many more interesting stories to come.
Take care and keep in touch
Well, here I am, back in China, for the start of another year teaching English. For those of you who don't know, whilst I am in the same Province (Jiangsu), I have moved cities from Yancheng to Huaian (pronounced Hwhy - ann). My new city is about one and three quarter hours by train from the old city. It is still north of Shanghai, but further west than Yancheng. It takes around the same time to get to Shanghai by bus (5 hours), but is closer to Nanjing (3 hours). Huaian is very similar to Yancheng; that is, it is a small, regional city with very little western influence. Like Yancheng, Huaian has nothing much going for it in terms of attracting the tourist, other than - (a) It was the home of their very famous former Premier, Zhou Enlai (pronounced Joe en-lie), who was the first Premier of the PR China under Chairman Mao and a much more reasonable chap than Mao during the time of the Cultural Revolution, and is home to the Zhou Enlai memorial and his former residence; and (b) Huaiyan cooking is one of the 4 famous styles of Chinese cooking, although it seems that these days the local people are more interested in KFC and McDonalds than they are in their traditional cooking style.
So, you may ask, why am I here? Good question. Not sure of the answer. I had convinced myself by the end of last term that I wanted to stay in a smaller city and continue to experience the "real China", instead of getting caught up in the ex-pat lifestyle in cities like Shanghai, Nanjing and Beijing. I could have stayed in Yancheng, but many of my students there, who had become my friends, graduated at the end of last term and moved back to their hometowns. One of those students/friends was Betty, and she invited me to teach in her city, Huaian. I had already visited this city a few times with her, met her family and friends, become somewhat familiar with the city, so I decided to come here.
Last year I was at a teacher's college. This year I am at a technical college. The word is that there will be many more males than females at this school, which is the reverse of last year. However, whilst that might be the case overall, it seems that English major courses still attract more females than males. So, in my first class on Monday, I had 23 females and 14 males. Still, this is an improvement on the Yancheng ratio, where, for example, in one class of 41 students, I had 1 male!
There are many similarities between this school and the last one. For example, the lack of information provided to teachers (foreign teachers at least) is already evident. Also, like last year, I have been left to my own devices in my apartment and not introduced to a single person in the English department. It is very strange. It seems like once they get you here and can use you to boost the school's reputation, they are no longer interested in you. But I am used to that after last year.
So, I arrived in Huaian last Wednesday and have been here 1 week. Nothing much has happened in that time. I have spent a lot of time in my apartment, watching DVDs and trying to configure my computer. Very exciting!
My apartment is quite good. It is a spacious 2 bedroom apartment right on the main campus. It has all of the mod cons and, unlike in Yancheng, I can actually use the 2nd bedroom. (You might recall that the 2nd bedroom in my last apartment was mysteriously locked .... I never did find out what was behind the locked door???) The building is fairly new, only 1-2 years old, but like all buildings in China, the workmanship is pretty shoddy. My shower floods my laundry and the towel rail has already fallen off. Luckily, one of the foreign teachers here is a bit of handyman, so he has made a dam with some type of Sealy sealant type stuff to stop the water running from the shower into the laundry.
So, what about the other foreigners. Unfortunately, the foreigner community does not look as large as it was in Yancheng, and it certainly is not as close knit. There are 5 foreign teachers at this school (including me), although there are 6 foreigners living in this building, with one lady teaching at another college.
Within a few hours of arriving, I had met Troy. He is a 28 year old Australian from Brisbane who lives nearby but works for a private school. It seems he will be my social outlet here in Huaian as we have a like minded cultural interest in drinking alcohol. He is only here on weekends though, as he lives and works in a school in another town during the week. Apparently he has an Australian Phillipino girlfriend, but she works in Hangzhou which is in another province and many hours by bus from here.
Jennifer is an American lady who lives in this building but teaches at another college. I have only met her briefly. Troy and I differ in our opinion of her age - he thinks she is late 20's, I think she is in her 40's??? Don't know how we can be so far apart. Anyway, we both agree that she is probably not the party girl type.
Roger is a 50 something Australian, although I am not sure what city or state he is from. He seems very laid back and companionable. Someone tells me he is a Buddhist, which would account for his relaxed and peaceful attitude, but I can't confirm or deny this. I do know that he is a writer and is not really all that interested in teaching. He seems to spend most of his time in his apartment writing.
Glen is a kiwi of indeterminate age. I would say late 40's but could be older. He has taught at this school for 2 years and is very helpful. He has provided me with lots of information on this school, classes, resources, maps, bus schedules, etc. He is also the handyman who made the dam in my shower and fixed my shower rail.
Joe is a 63 year old American with a vietnamese wife. He apparently taught in Vietnam for 8 years before coming to China. He has a PHD in Education. Joe is very American. He seems nice enough, but probably past the party age. His Vietnamese wife, Hang, is his 4th wife.
Change Parker (yes, that is his name), is a 50 something American. He is married to a Chinese lady. Change is very quiet and softly spoken and a nice guy. I probably like him the best so far. His life story is interesting. He told me it over dinner when his wife was in Nanjing and then invited me to dinner at his place the next night to meet his wife. She is his 4th wife - well, 5th if you count the fact that he married his 1st wife a 2nd time. Yes, that's right. Apparently his 1st wife left him for another man after 6 months of marriage. His second marriage lasted 5 years and he has a 25 year old daughter from that marriage. His 3rd marriage lasted 20 years but produced no children and ended in divorce. After his 3rd marriage ended, he decided to come to China. However, just before he left for China he met his 1st wife again and their feelings for each other were rekindled. But he came to China anyway, met Lin Li (current wife) and had a secret relationship with her for about 5 months. But alas, the 1st wife begged him to come back to America and try again, so he left Lin Li and returned to America. He remarried the 1st wife and this time the marriage lasted 3 months before she left him for another man. After a bit of soul searching, Change decided to return to China and marry Lin Li. He arrived at the beginning of June and they were married 2 weeks later! What a sucker for punishment! Anyway, I hope this one works out for him. Lin Li is very nice. Her English is not great though, so communication must be difficult.
On Friday night, Betty and I went out with Troy and Glen to a couple of bars. There we ran into 2 other foreigners who are new to Huaian and teaching at a middle school. Mark is an Irishman with wild long red hair, and Bill is an American. Both seem pretty young. They were already well inebriated when we discovered them, so I didn't really get to have meaningful conversations with them.
There is also an older American lady at the teacher's college but I have not met her yet.
And apart from a few businessmen with whom there is apparently not much social interaction, that seems to be about it. There may be some other foreigners floating around at other schools, but, if there are, we don't know about them and they probably don't know about us.
Teaching started on Monday, but I only have 1 class per week at the moment. My first class were International Trade majors rather than English majors. They are 2nd year students. Their English is pretty good. I do have 4 other English major classes, but they are 1st year students and their classes don't start until after the national day holiday in the 2nd week of October. All of my classes so far are oral English, which means no teaching writing, which I hated. What a hard life!
That is a total of 5 classes, 10 periods. My contract requires me to teach 9 classes, 18 periods per week. On my 2nd day here, I was told by the foreign affairs lady that there would not be enough classes for me and I would have to teach some middle school classes. I promptly told her that I applied to teach college students and did not want to nor intend to teach middle school students. I have since found out that the foreign affairs department has a habit of "selling" the services of foreign teachers to other schools as a money making enterprise. (I feel like a prostitute!)
I was later informed that the school had arranged for Joe and I to teach 6 classes on a Wednesday at a college in a "suburb" of Huaian. So, on Saturday, a car collected Joe and I to take us to this college to meet the relevant people. The "suburb" turned out to be a small town in another county 1 hour's drive from Huaian city. On the way, we were informed that we would be collected by this car every Wednesday at 6am to be driven to the college to start teaching at 7:40am - 4 classes before lunch and 2 classes after lunch. We would have to stay in this remote college for 3 hours over the lunch break and then driven back to Huaian in the late afternoon. The inducement for doing this was a "free lunch" in the school canteen - eating slop.
Needless to say, both Joe and I had some issues with these arrangements and Joe kindly allowed me to explain these issues to the Dean of the English department and our foreign affairs representative. We were invited to eat in the school canteen and then the visit was over. On the way out, the Dean asked Joe and I to give back the text books he had previously given us. It seems that, because of the issues we raised, we were not going to be invited to teach at that college afterall! What a shame!
So, I wonder what is in store for me now. The other three teachers are teaching some middle school classes and Joe, who has a PHD in Education, has been given some Literature and History classes. The foreign affairs department have since informed me that there will be more students enrolling in the college after the national day holiday and I will be given more classes then. It would be good if that is the case. However, the other foreign teachers here told me not to be surprised if my services get onsold to another school anyway. I think it is very underhanded and deceitful conduct. If this is a usual practice at this school then I should have been informed aobut it before I packed up my life and moved to this city. We will see what happens!
Since arriving, I have purchased a mobile phone and a DVD player, with Betty's help. The mobile phone shopping was an interesting experience. I wanted to buy a particular model of Nokia, with which I was familiar, to simply make and receive calls and send and receive messages. However, all the phones these days have fandangle colour digital screens and every function under the sun short of cleaning your teeth for you. The bonafide mobile phone shops don't seem to carry the old models anymore. So Betty took me to a "2nd hand mobile phone market". This was a huge enclosed market with hundreds of vendors hawking their products. I was a bit dubious about the legality of this market. Where do the phones come from and what is the quality like? I am sure many of the phones have simply fallen off the back of trucks. It is probable that the phone I lost ended up in a market like this. Anyway, I found the model I wanted and only paid 360 yuan (less than AU$60) for the phone, 2 batteries (of dubious quality) and a charger. It came in a proper Nokia box with manual! So far, so good.
Seeing I had paid so little for the phone, I decided to spend a bit more on the DVD player so we went to a bonafide electrical appliance store. Betty did the negotiating and got sucked into a particular model because of all the free gifts they offered - 3 DVDs, 2 music VCDs, a cup, karaoke microphones and 2 badminton racquets. So I paid 460 yuan (less than AU$75) for the DVD and all the crap that went along with it! The 3 gift DVDs were "Legends of the Fall" with Brad Pitt, "Hollywood Homicide" with Harrison Ford and "Paprika" with actors unknown. Interestingly, "Paprika" turns out to be an Italian porno movie about a girl who goes to a brothel to make a quick buck to help her fiance and ends up making a career out of being a prostitute. Quite the gift!!
Well, that is about all I have to tell you for now. I am sure there will be many more interesting stories to come.
Take care and keep in touch
posted by Travelling1972 | 2:46 PM
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