David's Big Adventure in China

I imagine most of you have read or heard about the tainted milk in China. Some of the most respected milk companies here have been found to have a harmful chemical (Melamine) in some of their products with the biggest issue being milk powder for babies. The chemical is especially harmful for babies and more than 50,000 babies have been hospitalized with kidney stones being a common symptom. The company with the most pervasive tainted products knew about the problems before the Olympics and kept it quiet until after the Olympics and only then addressed the problem because an affiliated company in New Zealand learned of the problem and blew the whistle on them. I regularly consume milk from one of the companies that was found to have limited problems. The milk companies blamed the problem on suppliers who apparently added the chemical to boost the nutritional test results of watered down product. The small amounts of Melamine that I may have consumed are supposedly not enough to harm adults. The issue came to light about a month ago but just in the past 10 days the small grocery store on campus has been out of almost all liquid milk. I went to the big grocery off campus this morning and found Nestle milk available. More than 95% of the milk here is sold at room temperature in cardboard cartons as China doesn’t have the infrastructure for storing and transporting cold milk. The taste of the milk here is barely tolerable to me and I buy the best quality stuff available. I read a translation of a blog written by someone in the film industry in China and she said that if the government paid as much attention to food safety as they did to monitoring the film industry there would be no tainted food problems. According to the blog, the government must approve all movie scripts, script changes and the final cut of the movie before it can be released for distribution. The Premier recently said that the government was also accountable for this problem and had been lax in supervision and management. I know there are risks galore here when it comes to eating. I watch the locals and if the locals are eating something I figure it’s probably okay. I try not to eat too much of anything unless I know for sure it’s safe (such as American company products). I especially stay away from fish. I’ve been pretty lucky and haven’t had any major illnesses except 1 case of extremely overactive bowels which required medical treatment.

It’s surprising how frequently in my daily life here that I’m reminded of my business career in the states. Pretty much every day I consume Coca-Cola Company products such as Coke and Minute Maid orange juice. I often see and sometimes dine at KFC or McDonalds which are customers of Henny Penny Corp., the equipment manufacturing company in Ohio where I worked for 5 years. I also often see and consume Nestle products (Edy’s and Dreyer’s Ice Cream merged with Nestle several years ago). I was recently reminded of my time at the hotel company in Orlando when a few weeks ago I saw the owner of that company on CNN. He is the owner of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan that was bombed.

I recently saw an article on the internet talking about a simple news quiz that was given to some Americans. The questions were 1) which political party is in the majority of the House of Representatives, 2) who is the Secretary of State, and 3) who is the Prime Minister of Great Britain. Apparently, only 18% of the respondents got all 3 right. I got all 3 and the answers are democrats, Condoleezza Rica, and Gordon Brown. What I find interesting about this is how little attention most Americans pay to world events. I doubt very many Americans could name the President or Prime Minister of China but I think most Chinese could name the U.S. President and many could also name the Secretary of State. The news on Chinese tv including the Chinese language stations has a lot of coverage about events in the U.S. such as the presidential race. I’ve been surprised by how much coverage U.S. events get on the news programs here. Of course, sometimes the coverage is tilted towards propaganda.

I just got back from spending a few days in Zhaoqing which is in Guangdong province not too far from Hong Kong and Wuzhou which is in Guangxi province near the border of Guangdong province. October 1 is the national day here like our 4th of July and they make it into a full week holiday by having us work the weekend before the holiday week so we can have 7 days off. We worked Saturday and Sunday instead of Monday and Tuesday and then the official holiday is 3 days (Wednesday through Friday). Thus, we had Monday through Sunday off. They don’t confirm the schedule until just a few days before so you’re taking a bit of a chance if you book travel before the last minute.

Zhaoqing is a medium sized city of about 3 million people and Wuzhou is a small city of about 300,000. I thought both were pretty nice cities and Wuzhou had a very nice look and feel to it….not too big and not too small. You can buy a nice 1600 square foot apartment there for less than $60,000. I traveled with a friend and we visited some of her friends in Wuzhou while there. One day we went to a local park with a bunch of other people and had a bbq of large chicken wings, corn on the cob, etc. We had some trouble finding a hotel when we first arrived in Wuzhou because it was a holiday but we found a place that quoted a rate of 110 yuan per room (about $18). After they saw that I was a foreigner they said they were not qualified to accept foreigners (not all hotels are allowed to accept us). Then the lady said we could stay but it would cost us 300 yuan per room. My friend argued with her then told her to shove it and we ended up staying at a friend’s home. Zhaoqing has a PBR (Pabst Blue Ribbon) beer factory and some fountains in the city center park are made to look like very large PBR cans (see pics….I also posted some pics of Nanning, the school and one of my classes). While in Zhaoqing we visited Dinghu Mountain which was a scenic place with a nice lake.

Classes are in full swing now and I’ve got a total of about 100 students (almost all freshmen). I see 40 of the students for 2 hours each week, 40 of them for 4 hours and 40 minutes, and the other 20 for 1 hour. It’s much better than the 300 students I had last semester at the other school that I only saw once a week for 90 minutes. I’m teaching 4 Writing classes with about 20 students in each, 1 Listening and Speaking class with 40 students (same kids as 2 of my Writing classes), and one English Culture class. I have a total of eighteen 40 minute periods with 2 periods being a babysitter during listening lab. The students seem to be quite a bit better than the students I had last year. Almost all of them are from this province and many of them are from right here in Nanning. I also have one Italian student who is here studying something about veterinary medicine. Most of the students come from fairly prosperous families as the tuition here is almost $3000 per year (very expensive for China). There are 6 of us teaching Freshman Writing so we have to coordinate material to be covered and on the Mid-Term and Final Exam tests as all the students will take the same test at the same time. We had to turn in a written course plan and also have to turn in our lesson plans. This school is much more professional than the one in Kunming. This school is a special school under the Guangxi University umbrella. The students study primarily English in this school for 2 years then go on to the regular university or abroad to study the subject of their choice. If they choose a major other than English, it will take them 5 years to get their B.S. degree. There are about 900 students in total at this school. Most of their classes are with native English speakers.