Our school had a ceremony (speeches, fireworks at the end) on Friday morning to celebrate its status change from training school to college. Up until this year, all of Xinyu College's students were 3 year students. Although I'm not sure about other departments, the foreign studies department where I teach was basically a vocational school. There were three majors: English Education, Business English, and Business Japanese. So all the students were expected to find fairly permanent jobs in those fields following graduation.

Now the college also has an English major for 4 year students. These are the students who did better in high school. And with a major in English I guess some of them might go on to graduate school instead of getting into a career right after college. So the school's reputation has jumped up a bit this year.

We were allowed to leave school without having to attend any post-ceremony lunch parties. That was lucky given the extreme likelihood that we would have been made to drink 白酒 (baijiu, liquor), the drink of choice for any lunch or dinner gathering of more than 3 people.

Later that night Bleisha, Fujii, and I went to a massage parlour just up the street where Bleisha and Laura have gone a few times this semester. I had already heard from Laura that it hurts pretty bad but that I would feel better the next day. Most of it did hurt pretty bad but I didn't really feel much better the next day. I was mostly just sore in my shoulders and lower back. But it was pretty funny, I guess. Me, Bleisha, and Fujii all in one room, lying as quietly as we could as the three masseuses slapped us and yanked us and kneaded us until one of us would say ouch or "痛" (tong, pain). All in all I might do it again some day.

A Pictureless Post

Sorry for having not posted any pictures recently. I'd like to but my camera huai le'd (done broke) so I'm going to have to stick with text this time. Since Thanksgiving ended I've been going to school but mostly to observe other teachers since I'm now down to 2 classes a week. It's been good though, I've come up with some ideas for lessons and I've also picked up on some teaching methods that work and some that don't.

I've also been tutoring quite a bit, four times a week usually. It's almost always at night since that's the only time when Michelle doesn't have class, so I've been taking a taxi over to her house at around 6:30 and stay there for 2 hours each time. During the first hour we usually talk about what she's been doing and then watch a TV show (usually Friends) for the second hour with me explaining slang or cultural references made during the show. I think the TV viewing is helping her. Maybe, I hope.

I met a couple guys from Britain who teach at the Number 4 middle school across the street from the old campus. They're here for a gap year teaching English before they will return to England to start college. Myself and the other foreign teachers have gone out with them a few times to a couple restaurants and a bar where we were the only customers on a Saturday night. It was a pretty nice bar nonetheless.

I was going to go to a tennis tournament in Nanchang this weekend but it was rescheduled, I think, due to bad weather. But I still play every now and then with various people around the city.

I've learned a lot about the Chinese education system from Michelle, and what I've learned is basically that it's extremely intense. First, from middle school to high school the students have class 7 days a week. Monday through Friday they have morning, afternoon, and night classes, on Saturday they get the night off, and Sunday they get the morning off. There also doesn't seem to be a clear start and stop date for the school year. They just keep studying and going to class and taking tests until the teacher tells them they can take a break, which is sometime around the Spring Festival in early February, and then come back to school until sometime in June. They officially have a summer holiday of about a month but I think a lot of the students still go to classes of some sort, most likely at private English language schools. At the end of high school, they take their college entrance exams. If they do well, then they go to college, and if they don't do so well, they either go to a less reputable college or stay on in high school for another year to study and prepare to take the test again. So there's a ton of pressure on kids to do well in school and study all the time. They're not all sad or really angry or that sort of thing. I guess there's a lot of camaraderie amongst the students. Plus they basically have no choice, it's the only way for them to have the chance to get a higher-paying job. It's just very different from, say, ol' Avery High.

I think that's all I've got for now. I'll be coming home in a couple weeks.

Thanksgiving

Some pictures from Thanksgiving.

Here's the food.


My mashed taters are in the silver pan with the glass top and the black handle. Dumplings to the left, Romeo's chicken at 11 o' clock. Bleisha's green beans and another vegetable dish at the bottom of the picture. Fruit salad next to the ketchup. Fujii's sweet egg sushi rolls with the toothpicks sticking out. And Bleisha's sweet yam dish in the green bowl with the plastic wrap on top.

All of us.


Bill with the chopsticks at the front. Romeo to his left. A guy who works at the gym where Laura and Bleisha go. Then me, then Fujii, then Sheila, who is also from the Philippines but teaches at another college in Xinyu called YuGong College. Next is Bleisha and last is another student of mine named Elaine. You may notice there's another head poking out from behind the top of Bill's hair. That's JingJing, another teacher at the college.

The gym guy, Laura, me, Fujii, and Sheila.


Elaine, Bill, Romeo, and JingJing.


And finally, me and Bleisha at Kung Fu class a couple months ago.


We never went back, too much natural talent.

I'm now done with 7 out of my 9 classes, but I'm still pretty busy. I've been going to some other teachers' classes to try and learn more about how to teach. I'll also be helping students prepare for a couple upcoming speech competitions. And I've picked up a tutoring job with a girl named Michelle who'll be going to Canada in January for her last two years of high school and, potentially, college. We meet four times a week for two hours at a time. This is probably what I'll be doing for this last month of the semester.

Shanghai

Last week we had three days off plus the weekend for a school event called "Sports Meeting", which is basically like field day for all the freshmen. For the past few weeks the freshmen classes have been running and exercising on their own in preparation for the competition. Some of the teachers also had to participate, but none of us foreign teachers were required to stay so I took a trip to Shanghai. This is my third time in China but it was my first time to go to Shanghai.

Shanghai is located in the eastern tip of China and about midway up latitude-wise. It sits right at the mouth of the Yangtze River, Asia's longest river, so it's been a major port city for a while now. There's also a river called the Huangpu River that branches off from the Yangtze and runs through the city.

On one side of the city are huge, modern buildings.


I never made it over there during my trip. Instead, I spent most of my time on the south side of the river. Unlike the north side of the river, the southern side is full of Western-style buildings built in the 19th and early 20th centuries, which was Western businesses really started getting interested in Shanghai. I've never seen anything like it in another Chinese city. There was a small section in Guangzhou that had a lot of Western architecture, but Shanghai is full of it. As you get further out of the city, of course, the buildings are more modern and less strikingly Western but the heart of the city looks very European.




I spent most of my first day just walking around some of the older parts of the city. Then it was either on the first or the second day that I met a couple other people staying at the hostel. One was a guy named Scott from Wales who was looking for a teaching job in Shanghai. He found one within the three days that I was staying at the hostel. Another guy I met, Matt, was from Chicago and had just finished a year in Afghanistan and was traveling around East Asia for a while before going back to the US. I hung out with Matt for a couple days until he left for Hong Kong.

I also met another American guy named Mike who was taking a break from work and traveling for a while, and a Polish guy named Mikhail who is a freelance translator for Polish MTV and Comedy Central. His most recent job was to translate Jersey Shore into Polish. I also got a chance to see a couple of my classmates from Davidson Chinese 101, Andrew and Whitey, who are teaching English in a city called Jiaxing, which is about an hour train-ride away from Shanghai. It was good to see them and I had a good time hanging out with all the people from the hostel.

On my last morning in the city I took the metro to what I found out was one of the ritziest parts of the city. But I knew where I was going. It took me about 15 minutes to walk there, deliberate for another 20 over a bowl of noodles, and finally make a decision. So here's what I got.



I tried it out in the driveway the night I got back and I've been going to the People's Square 人民广场 every day for the past few days to practice. I'm really liking it.

Exam time, already

I found out a couple weeks ago from the administration that all the third year students finish their classes and their exams earlier than the first and second year students at Xinyu College. Their last day of classes/exams is November 19th, after which they are supposed to find an internship or a job.

Seven of my nine classes are with third year students majoring in English education. After November 19th, many of them will return to their hometown to teach in a local elementary school. This means I have to finish classes and exams in the next two weeks. Since each class has close to 50 students, it is common for teachers to break up the exam into two class periods, where half the students come one week and the other half come the next week. I too will be using this format for my exam, which is going to be quite easy. The exam is simply a 3-4 minute conversation between me and the student where I ask questions and he or she answers them. There is no written part, it's all oral.

I was thinking about having the students make up and perform skits in English, but when I proposed that idea to one of my classes, they all made it very clear that skits would be boring. They pointed out that skits only require memorization, whereas a one-on-one conversation requires that they actually understand what I say and come up with a response. Thus I will be giving all of my third year students the conversation-style exam.

Since only half the students will be coming to class for the next two weeks, this was our last week with everyone together. At the end of each class we took pictures for about 5 or 10 minutes. I took some with my own camera and then a bunch of the students took pictures with me using their phones. Here are some of mine:










After November 19th, I will only have two classes of second year students majoring in Business English. Romeo suggested that the administration may ask me to teach English to students from outside the foreign languages department. (All college students, regardless of their major, must pass an English language test called the CET). I'm not sure yet what I will be doing after I finish with the third year students, but if the administration doesn't give me anything else, I think I'll look into teaching some tennis.

Lights out

Yesterday I left my apartment at around five in the afternoon to go downtown and shop for clothes. I bought a few things, ate dinner, and then took a bus back to the old campus. When I got off, things seemed a little strange but I wasn't sure exactly what it was. I started to walk in the direction that I thought was towards the apartment until I realized that not only was I going the wrong way, but also that none of the buildings on that street had power. I asked someone for directions and eventually arrived back at the apartment. I had walked for about fifteen minutes and still all of the buildings were without power, including our apartment. I put down some of my things in my apartment and went back outside to buy candles. The man on duty at the gate told me how to say "candle" in Chinese ("la zhu") and I went down the street towards some shops that sell household supplies. The first store I went into had already sold out of candles but the second one still had four left. I bought three of them before realizing that I had no candle holders. I asked the shopkeeper but he said they didn't have any. He did, however, have a solution.


After I got back, I lit a couple candles and then went to see what Bleisha was doing. Having the power cut off was perfect for Halloween night so we tried to scare Laura. Bleisha called her and told her to come up to her room to hang out. When Laura got to the top of the stairs I jumped out and yelled her name, but Laura had already seen me hiding so the attempt failed. Afterwords we hung out at Bleisha's for a while. Then I went back to my room and just as I was getting into bed the power came back on. I still don't know what caused it.

Orange picking

I went orange picking this morning with my Business English students as well as Laura and Bleisha. I've heard there are quite a few orange farms in the Xinyu area and oranges do seem to be the most common fruit eaten here in Xinyu. The farm we went to was about 15 minutes away by cab and Bleisha, Laura, and I met the students there at around 9 in the morning. It's, I think, about 7 to 10 yuan (1 or 2 US dollars) per person and you can pick up to 1 or 2 kilograms worth of oranges. I don't know exactly how much it costs because the students paid for us.

The orange picking mostly consisted of walking around the farm, picking some oranges, eating a couple, and maybe taking a few pictures with someone's cell phone.


I got a few of my own. Here's one with we and some of my students.


Michael taking a picture of Laura (in the top middle) and some students.


Bill climbing a tree to get oranges from the top.


Bill in the top of another tree, this time a taller one.


We walked around picking oranges for about an hour and then started to head back towards the entrance. Before we left, we took a few class photos. Here's one.


The characters on the flag "外国语系" mean "Foreign Languages Department". They took the flag off its staff for our class pictures.

And here are a few more of my students.


The flag was soon returned to its rightful position on the staff, and Bleisha led the way with it as we marched out of the farm, purses, backpacks and old grocery bags filled with oranges. Here's Bleisha with Bill to the right and Henry, who got lost during the trip and found us again at the end with some very unripe-looking oranges, on the left.


Because we were such a big group, the owner of the farm let us take up to 75 kilograms of oranges. But the students hadn't taken nearly that much, so Bill, Bruce, Tiger, and I went back with a couple big sacks to fill them up. We filled both sacks and came back to the rest of the students, all of whom had been waiting outside the entrance. We set the two sacks down and a mad scramble for oranges ensued. After that we walked a little ways to the bus stop where the students would catch a bus back to school. Bleisha, Laura, and I sad goodbye and took a cab back to the old campus.

Not a whole lot going on these days. It got a lot colder over the past few days. Actually quite cold really. I've gotta buy some more clothes. A jacket, maybe some sweaters, and hopefully some pants that reach all the way down to my ankles. That probably won't happen.

The sun came out this afternoon. This is the view out my window. The street below, the middle school on the other side of the street, and the vendors who sell their food through the fence to the students when they have a break from class.



Here's my new guitar that I bought the other day. I've been wanting to give it a shot for a while now.


But I have been doing some things, of course. Yesterday some of my students took me, Bleisha, and Romeo to the KTV (karaoke television) downtown early in the afternoon. We stayed there for a few hours singing songs (I could only sing a few because almost all of them were either Chinese songs, which I don't know the words to, or old American pop songs that I'm not familiar with, but I did sing a few, Britney Spears "Lucky" and "A Whole New World" were my top choices) and then went on to a hot pot restaurant for dinner. If you don't know what hot pot is, it's a style of food where there's a very hot pot of broth divided into two halves; one half is spicy, the other isn't. Then you order a bunch of raw vegetables and meats and put them into the broth. You wait a few minutes and then scoop out the food with a ladle, wait a couple minutes for it to cool down, and then eat. It's really good.

And today I went to play some tennis in the park nearby the old campus with a guy I met last week at the new campus. He graduated from Xinyu College last year and was a tennis/PE major. Now he lives in Xinyu and teaches tennis. We didn't get to hit for very long because I had to string a racket first, which ended up taking about an hour and a half (it usually takes 30 minutes). The machine was a bit hard to work with and my string broke when I was right at the end of the racket, so I had to redo the second half. But we got to hit a few before he had to give a lesson to a couple kids.

And tonight we, the foreign teachers, made dinner. Romeo made rice and Bleisha and I (mostly Bleisha) made some Japanese mushroom soup with egg and broiled turnips with chicken gizzards. It turned out to be a really good meal.




And here's the hall kitchen.


I think I'm going to start using this more often from now on. It's a lot more convenient than cooking in your room or in the hall like most of the teachers do. There are no lights in the hall so you have to try and chop things and add spices in the right amounts all in the dark. Not good. Having light should be nice.

Kung fu/gong fu/功夫

I went to my first kung fu class yesterday afternoon with Bleisha, Fujii, and a group of students, some of which were from Fujii's Japanese language class. After we had all arrived at the track where the class was to be held, the first thing we did was take a lap with the hundreds of other students who were also there to take various PE courses. We finished our lap and then got into lines to wait for instruction. Our teacher was a man in his forties who would stand at the front of the class and demonstrate the movements for us while explaining them in Chinese. I could understand some but not all of what he said so I stood at the back and just tried to imitate what the other students were doing. This was the third or fourth kung fu class so I already had to try and figure out what the students have been learning for the past couple weeks. Given that I was making so many mistakes, and that I was a lanky white guy trying to do kung fu, a lot of the students were having a good time watching me. I can see how it must have been quite funny. I finally started to get the hang of it a little bit and the students in the other classes had to pay attention to their own activities so things started to calm down.

But our kung fu class ended up being a lot of fun. We were basically just learning how to do a long series of movements involving punching, kicking, stomping, and lunging. We would learn one part, then another, and then another. Then at the end, we tried to put all the parts together. The class lasted for an hour and a half and they have it every Thursday afternoon. I think I will try to attend next week's class.

Dangerous times

1. Apparently there was some sort of gas leak or explosion at a local factory this past weekend. Nobody really seemed to know what happened and I didn't end up hearing about it until a couple days after the event. Some people said some factory workers had been killed, others said large numbers of Xinyu residents fled the city. And then the last thing I heard was that a few workers had gotten sick and that nobody had left. It's too bad I can't read the local newspaper, I might be able to know about these sorts of things if I could.

2. Every day after lunch the other foreign teachers and I get in a van that takes us back to the old campus. Most of us don't have afternoon classes so it doesn't make much sense for us to hang around the new campus without anything to do. But today we were taken back in a cab instead of the van. We've done this before and everything was fine in the past but this time the cab driver was not quite fit to drive. Bleisha and I were sitting in the back with Laura in the front. From my position I could see the driver's face in the reflection of the rear view mirror. As we sped down the highway, I could see the driver drifting off into sleep. By the time we were nearing the old campus, his focus seemed to have dropped drastically and all three of us were getting a bit concerned. We were also laughing though because we would watch him and wait for his eyes to slowly shut and then talk out loud about how he was falling asleep and about to wreck. At last we arrived at the gate. We got out, made sure the driver had already been paid, and watched as the car drove off in the hazy early afternoon sunlight.

Now I would like to apologize for making anyone worry about me. I don't intend to make anyone anxious, these are just strange and in some ways funny things that have happened recently. But it's not all so bad and scary. We've been having great weather, truly the best since I've been here. Around 70 degrees and clear skies. We may be getting rain soon so I will be making efforts to enjoy the good weather while I can. That means playing basketball and tennis at school, and making a more thorough trip up the mountain just behind the old campus.

And class is still going well. I'm still enjoying it and my students seem to as well. The past couple days I did lessons on going to see a doctor. I had them brainstorm at the beginning of class about medical-related vocabulary. Then I had the students pair up and do a role-play with one being a patient and the other a doctor. They all liked that very much. At the end, I gave them a few scenarios where they were the doctor and they had to choose who to save. They had to choose between things like saving more lives or saving fewer, or killing one person to save several people. They seemed to enjoy that part of the lesson.

The main thing is simply to figure out ways to keep their attention and keep them interested in the activities. I think philosophical debate might be one way to do that, so I'm going to keep experimenting with it.

Moving

This week a new English teacher named Laura arrived in Xinyu. Laura's from Baltimore and she graduated from UNC Chapel Hill this spring. Before she got here Romeo, Bleisha, and I were teaching her classes (I had one extra class of freshmen students for the past couple weeks). Now that she's here we will be back to our original teaching schedules, which means I'm back down to nine classes per week.

One other change has taken place, which is that I've moved into the room in which Laura was going to live and she's in the one where I was living before (I used to be in room 301, now I'm in room 403). Laura wasn't too keen on 403, the apartment she was initially assigned, because it has only one room instead of two and because it has a squatter toilet and not a Western one. I liked my old room alright but I felt strange living in such a big place while all the other Chinese teachers lived in one-room apartments.



I've had a couple problems; the TV doesn't turn on and when I turned on one of the lamps over my bed there was a small explosion, causing some sparks to fly and a loss of power throughout the apartment. But the power was fixed that same afternoon by a guy with whom I can barely communicate since he seems to only speak the Xinyu dialect. And my TV may be getting repaired soon so I think the place is going to be fine.

National Holiday with Bill

Our break for national holiday began last Thursday after classes had finished. I came back to my apartment, packed for my trip with Bill, and took a bus over to the new campus to meet up with some students. I played basketball that afternoon, got some dinner with Bill and another student of mine named McGrady, and then hung out in McGrady's room that night before going to bed in Bill's dorm. Some of Bill's roommates had already left for the holiday so there were plenty of beds for me to choose from. Bill and I woke up early the next morning, took a taxi to the bus stop, and got on a bus headed in the direction of Bill's hometown. We rode for a couple hours, transferred to another bus, rode that one for another couple hours, and then met up with one of Bill's former high school teachers in a town called Le'an. His teacher and a driver took Bill and I in a van to his home, which is in a village called Pang'an.

This is Bill's new house.


His father, mother, and uncle are building the house by themselves. They worked on the house throughout the day each day while I was there. Bill's mom would stop to help his grandmother prepare meals while his father and uncle would continue to work on the house until it was time to eat. Since the new house hasn't been finished, everyone still lives in the old house which is actually behind the new one. I didn't take enough pictures of the old house but I did get one of the dining room where we ate all our meals.


The food was delicious. All the ingredients came from the surrounding area, including the fish we ate for lunch that day and for several meals after. When we got to the house Bill's dad had just bought the fish from one of his neighbors.


Bill's hometown was very small, maybe 10 houses on his street.



People grow a lot of rice in the area, and the rice we ate at meals, which was grown by his parents, might have been the best I've ever had.


After they harvest the rice they lay it out on the road to dry. Everyone still drives on it just the same.


We ate lunch, had some (a lot of) beer, and a group of us went in the van to Liukeng, a small town more than 1000 years old. A man with the family name Dong moved there around 900 AD to build his home and set up a school. The school produced many successful students and the Dong family line has continued on ever since. Bill's former teacher is a descendant in the Dong line and he gave us a tour of the town. Bill translated for me.






We took this after having walked around the village and just before getting back in the van. From left to right: Bill's aunt, Bill and his cousin, me, Bill's teacher from high school, Bill's dad, and Bill's uncle.


After we got back to Pang'an, we ate dinner, drank more beer, and Bill and I eventually went to sleep in an extra room in a neighbor's house. I think Bill's uncle may be staying in his room while the house is under construction.

The next day we went to the home of another of Bill's uncles for lunch.


Bill introduced me to his cousin, who goes to military school in Guangzhou and was also at home for the break.


After lunch Bill, his cousin, and I took out the motorcycle-with-trailer out for a spin. Bill's cousin did most of the driving since he knew what he was doing. We gave it a try too but we soon stopped after Bill slowly plunged the bike into the ditch.


Before we left, I took a few pictures of Bill's cousin and her new baby boy.


All kids of about 5 years or younger wear pants like this so they can go to the bathroom whenever they need to, and they do. You have to watch out when you're walking down the street because you can very easily step in a puddle of pee or actually get peed on. That almost happened to me the other day when I came around a corner and a boy was standing right there letting it go. But if you watch your step and make wide turns around corners you should be fine.

On the third day we didn't do too much. Fished a little and hung out with some of Bill's old classmates from elementary school. One of them recently caught a group or swarm of bees and put them in a box he built.



The next morning Bill and I left for Le'an. I rode with Bill's dad on his motorcycle to the bus stop where I was to wait until he had gone back to get Bill. A small van came and we took that instead of the bus and arrived in Le'an a couple hours later. Bill's aunt, his two cousins, and their grandmother live in Le'an so we headed over to their house for lunch.

That afternoon we met up with two of Bill's old classmates from high school to walk over to the main park. We walked around for a while and then started to walk back to the apartment. On the way back, Bill stopped by a doctor's office to ask about a problem he had been having with his throat. The doctor's told him the problem was actually somewhat serious and that he would need to stay in the office and be put on a drip for at least 2 hours. Bill started the drip and one of his friends took me for a short walk around Le'an. We came back to Bill not long after to see how he was doing. Bill's friend left soon after that to go on a date with his girlfriend and Bill and I stayed on in the main lobby of the doctor's office.

After Bill had finished, we went back to his aunt's house, ate some dinner, then went back out again to an internet bar, and finally came back to his aunt's house to go to sleep.

The next morning Bill had to go back to the doctor's office so I accompanied him as he sat outside the office in the back with some other patients. His aunt came by not long after we got there to see how he was doing. I then left with her to go to the grocery store around the corner and pick out some food for lunch that day. After we had bought the groceries I helped her carry them back to the apartment and then went back down to see Bill. When I got there he been joined by one of his friends from Xinyu named He Yan and two of He Yan's friends. Bill was almost finished with his medicine so we walked back to the apartment while he carried the bottle of solution above his head.

We ate lunch at Bill's aunt's and then got in He Yan's car to go see Liukeng a second time. When we got there we were met by one of Bill's friends from home, who led us around the village. From left to right: a guy from Xinyu who teaches math at an elementary school in northern Jiangxi, Peter who is from Xinyu and studies Chinese medicine in Nanchang, Bill's friend and our guide, He Yan, and Bill.


I had already seen most of what we saw that day. Peter took a good picture of the outside wall of the old house.


And we did go into an old performance theater that I had not been to the first time around. On the balconies inside the theater were old slogans saying things like "Long live Mao".


There were a bunch of kids running around Liukeng and they all seemed to like having their picture taken.




These two followed us around for at least an hour.


Nothing to be afraid of when you've got them around. Here are the guys as we were walking back to the car.


We drove back that afternoon and then Bill and I went back to his aunt's for dinner.

Bill was waiting on a package from his brother in Fujian province (on the border with Jiangxi Province) and I wanted to get back to Xinyu to get ready for class, so I rode back to Xinyu with He Yan and Peter the medical student. We got back into Xinyu around 1 pm, met one of He Yan's friends for lunch, and then He Yan and Peter dropped me off at the old campus.

I had a great time during the vacation. It was good to get out of the city and the area where Bill is from was beautiful. Bill's parents, grandmother, and uncle were all very nice to me, and the food was great. The best thing, though, was that going with Bill gave me a chance to meet a lot of people. I really enjoyed getting to know his family and his friends.

Now we have a few weeks before our last break for the semester, which will be in late October. I'm not sure yet where I will go but I'm thinking about Shanghai. It would be my first time to go there.