David's Big Adventure in China

It turned cold here again a few days ago and I was reminded of the strange Chinese habit of leaving the windows open even if it’s only 45 degrees outside with no heat inside. They have to have “fresh air” no matter the temperature. They will wear a winter coat and tolerate the cold rather than close the windows……..drives me crazy sometimes! They also have this strange concept of “heat in the body”. If someone is not feeling well they often attribute the illness to not enough or too much “heat in the body”. Then they say that the doctor told them to eat or not eat certain foods because they contribute to the heat in the body problem.

Nanning has now become a modern city! We have a Marriott hotel here now. It opened within the last two weeks and I went there last week to meet a friend. When I was there I met the General Manager (from Singapore) and the Food and Beverage Manager (from Austria). Pretty much all the employees that guests would interact with speak English. Marriott brought in about 100 employees from other places to work there. I think both the guys I met had been working in Shanghai. The GM (his name is Peter Pan – no joking) asked me about any International schools in Nanning for his teenage sons. He enrolled them in a local Chinese school and they weren’t happy there because they were being bullied to pay protection money. They are ethnic Chinese and speak English and Chinese fluently and had attended International schools in the other cities they lived in China. There is one small International school here run by an American family. They opened the school in 2002 and started with only 5 students (3 of them being their own children). They now have about 50 students in total in grades 1 to 12 from 9 different countries. They are only allowed to have foreign students in their school. I know the guy that runs this school and gave the GM at the hotel his contact information. The foreigner community here is pretty small and I think there are fewer than 2000 of us in this city of more than 3 million.

I spent most of Christmas day preparing final exams and then in the evening went to a bar/restaurant owned by a Chinese lady I know. She wanted me to be there to play Santa for a Christmas party. They gave me something to wear that looked more like a Mrs. Claus outfit than a Santa suit. I said a few ho ho ho’s and ate, drank and was merry. They had a little Christmas show with some Christmas songs, etc. It’s interesting how much English they used for a mostly Chinese audience. Half of the bar was being used by a Chinese church group to have a service which tended to reduce the merry making of the rest of the group. I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and will have a Happy New Year too!