David's Big Adventure in China

I was at a western food store recently which is run by an American and overhead a conversation about matchmaking services. The American guy was coaching a Chinese lady about how to operate a matchmaking service and how much to charge. There are many people here who make money helping the Chinese ladies meet foreign men and some of them charge a lot for their services. Some of them are legitimate and do their best to help the ladies find a foreign husband but some provide little more than short lived hope. I have heard of some of these ladies paying more than $1000 USD. Why are these ladies so desperate to find a foreign husband you ask? Some of them think the foreigners are rich and are going for the money, some want a passport to live in a country they think is better and where their child can get a good education, and some don’t want to have anything to do with the Chinese men. The local men have a bad reputation for treating the ladies poorly and being playboys, especially if they have money. It is not uncommon for a man with money to pay the living expenses of a young girlfriend even if he is married. I have mostly been able to avoid people involved in these activities but did have a foreign guy try to introduce me to a lady last year who I suspect was paying him for this kind of service.

Students…….I became a bit frustrated this week with some of my students. I gave a quiz last week and in one of the classes the average score was 73 (this was typical of all three classes). One third of the students had a score of 94 or higher so obviously the quiz was not too difficult. That means that the average for the other 2/3’s was about 62 which tells me that they are not doing any work outside of class. Is this true of kids in college in the U.S.? Is it unreasonable of me to think they should actually do the assigned homework? Most of my students come from families with money and most of them are the only child which has led to many of them being spoiled. Combine that with the culture here of not allowing any child to fail a class and you’ve got a sure recipe for laziness. There was a kid who showed up in one of my classes in week 7 asking to be added to the class he said because of scheduling issues. I talked to someone in the office about him and found out that he was instructed during week 3 to go join my class but apparently he decided to play for a few weeks first. He did the same thing for his other classes. We decided not to allow him to join any classes and I assume he has now gone home and had to explain to his parents why he’s not in school. I was happy that the school allowed him to fail as it sends a message to the other students. One of my best students from last year is taking my accounting class this year. She told me recently that she just found out that her mother is an accountant. I’ve been amazed here by how little the kids know about their parents’ jobs.

I had a nice Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, complete with turkey and dressing and pumpkin pie. It cost me $16 which is about the most I’ve paid for a dinner here in China. I hope you had a great Thanksgiving holiday!

I’m hard at work back in Nanning after my holiday trip. The weather has cooled off here in the past few days thanks to typhoon Parma which followed me back to China from the Philippines. I flew to Manila on October 1 and on the way in I could see some of the flooding that has impacted Manila. I then flew on to a city called Bacolod which is about half way from Manila to the far south of the Phils. This city was rated by a magazine as the best city to live in the Phils. I spent almost 5 days there and wasn’t sure why it was named the best city for living. They were having a big festival there so that made it a bit more interesting but otherwise it wasn’t a very interesting place. I then flew back to Manila and took a bus to Tagaytay which is about 35 miles south of Manila. It is a small city located on a ridge with a nice view of a lake and a volcanic island in the lake. The volcano blew its top not so long ago so it makes for a nice view except that I barely got to see it because of the bad weather. The weather there is generally cooler than Manila with a nice breeze and it was cool and rainy during my time there thanks to the return of typhoon Parma’s outer bands. Tagaytay was a pretty comfortable place to stay because of the weather and plenty of restaurants. It is a resort area frequented by people from Manila wanting to escape Manila for a few days. There are also many foreigners living there and I ran into a gathering of about 20 foreigners in the bar/café next to my hotel. I joined them for a beer and learned about their experiences living there.

Since I have lived in China I have come to appreciate how lucky I am to have been born in an English speaking country and the USA in particular. English has become the global language and through my teaching I have come to appreciate how big the U.S. economy is relative to the rest of the world. I think most of us who grew up in the states take these things for granted and have a U.S. focused view of the world because so much of the world’s media and entertainment are based in the states. Friday I went to the provincial Personnel Department building to interview doctors to test their English level (the Personnel Department contacted my school and asked for 3 foreign teachers to help conduct the interviews.) The doctors have applied for an exchange program to go study for a short period of time in Germany. When they are in Germany, they will use English to communicate with the doctors there. Nobody expects them to speak German. When I was working for Dreyer’s, I learned after we were acquired by Nestle that English is the common language for Nestle for their operations all over the world (they are based in Switzerland). I have since learned that other multinationals also use English as the common language. I have also learned in my travels that English signs are common in most countries and English is almost always the second language used.

China has been in the news recently for its economy having recovered quickly from the recession. They are expecting 8% growth in the economy this year but there is some skepticism about that number because ... [Continue reading this entry]

On August 7, I took the overnight train to Kunming, then went to the airport and met a friend. We took a flight to Shangri-la in western Yunnan Province (not far from Tibet and Myanmar). ... [Continue reading this entry]

On Monday, July 13, I left Nanning on an overnight train to Guangzhou. I needed to go to Guangzhou before I went to Japan to buy my Japan Rail-pass. I bought a 3 week ... [Continue reading this entry]

Facebook has been blocked here so I haven't been able to log in for about 5 days. Some of you Facebook users in the states could post a comment letting others know that it's been blocked here.

About 3 weeks ago I played a small role in a made for tv movie. One of the national tv networks here is making a movie about Deng Xiao Peng, one of the former ... [Continue reading this entry]

I have been busy recently preparing for the final exams and the end of this semester (July 3) and also preparing for next semester. I will teach two different classes next semester: International Business English, ... [Continue reading this entry]

This time I am going to write mostly about how schools here work. From elementary school through college, kids are put in a class and that group of students does most everything together. My ... [Continue reading this entry]

Well it’s been 2 years since I left my job and began this little adventure of mine. I arrived in China on May 10, 2007, and it’s been quite a ride. I’m still having ... [Continue reading this entry]