David's Big Adventure in China

I’m in Guangzhou now. It’s a very large city a 2 hour bus ride from Zhuhai and not far from Hong Kong so I can get some HK tv stations so there are more tv options and even a few U.S. tv shows. I’m in a nice hotel with a comfortable room, nice bathroom and good internet connection. It feels like luxury compared to the apartment in Zhuhai and all for only $26 per night. I have been working on doing an online course to get a certificate for teaching business English and doing a little sightseeing. I have also been preparing for some traveling that I will be doing over the next few weeks. Here in GZ I have visited Chen’s Ancestral Lineage Hall and The Museum of the Mausoleum of the Nanyue King. I have posted some pic’s from Chen’s which show some of the features of the building and also show some impressive examples of Chinese craftsmanship. These pic’s are posted in a new folder called China travel. I also posted a couple new pic’s in the teacher training folder labeled graduation of me getting my TESOL certificate.
Chen’s Hall was built in 1636 during the Ming dynasty by the extended Chen family and served many purposes. The Museum of the Mausoleum was discovered during construction in 1983 and is the tomb of a king from the Han dynasty that died around 130 BC. The tomb contained thousands of artifacts and included the remains of the king and 11 others including 4 concubines, some cooks and other servants/guards. Sorry, my pic’s of the tomb since I forgot my camera that day.
I know I have commented a few times about some of the foods here but I thought I’d take the time to list some of the “unique” foods I have eaten since I’ve been here. Some of them I enjoyed and some of them I prefer to never try again…..lol. The Chinese do not waste any part of an animal; they seem to find a make a meal out of every part. The question I have is what happens to the good parts such as the chicken breasts and the ham from pigs as I don’t ever seem to get the good parts in a restaurant. So here’s the list…..I’m sure I have forgotten a few things but this is most of them. Eel, fish head, cow stomach (too chewy and not all that tasty), chicken feet, fresh squeezed bamboo juice (very sweet) and pigeon. The whole time I was in Zhuhai I didn’t have any hamburgers so my first day here in GZ I went to McDonalds for a Big Mac (cost was $1.70). There are a few western restaurants in a big mall not too far away so I can easily get my fix of western food. I also sometimes go to a nearby street café for dim sum for breakfast which costs less than a dollar and more than half the price is for the bottle of orange juice. Well, that’s it for now!

Well I’m pretty much finished with the class now. We did more teaching in local schools this week. The classrooms at the local schools do not all have air conditioning so it gets incredibly hot. I taught two lessons back to back and it had to be at least 95 F in there and very humid. My shirt was so wet with sweat that it could not have been more wet if I had just pulled it out of the washing machine. The students are used to it so they handle it okay.
Jenny, our Chinese teacher was telling us that the public schools here are very good and have plenty of money. The public schools are better than the private schools and the teachers are paid much more at the public schools. The private schools are for the children of people who are not originally from the local area. The local governments issue resident permits to people whose families have lived in an area for a long time. Having a resident permit entitles you to send your children to the public schools and other benefits. Since Jenny and her family are from another province they do not have a resident permit for this area and have to pay to send their child to private school. Since Jenny does not have a resident permit for this area she could not get a job teaching at a local public school although she is well educated and well qualified. Apparently you also have to have GuanXi (pronounced Guanji and means connections) to get a job at the public schools. The Chinese government has some of these policies to discourage people from moving from the countryside to the cities to find jobs.
I was watching the news (we get 1 English news channel and it is a government run channel thus the news is filtered and slanted) and they were talking about car license plates in Shanghai. They are trying to discourage people from driving in Shanghai so they are limiting the number of new license plates they issue and they are auctioning off the ones that they do issue. The going price for a new license plate is about $6000 U.S.!
Since my job does not start until September I plan to some traveling but I have not finalized my plans yet. There is an online Business English class that will take several days to complete that I want to do and will plan to do it soon.
I added some new photos in a new album called teacher training. Several of the pictures are from Macao when I went there a couple weeks ago. We saw the dragon boat races when we were there.

When I loaded the pic’s that I referred to in my last post I missed a step and didn’t get them posted properly so if you looked for them right after I posted the blog update and they weren’t there ... [Continue reading this entry]

Today is Saturday and we don’t have class today. Some of us are going to a barbeque at a tea plantation with the students from the school. The school has arranged this outing for the students. ... [Continue reading this entry]

I’m in Zhuhai now (near Macau and Honk Kong) learning to teach English. I can’t believe I’m diagramming sentences. I didn’t enjoy it when I did it 38 years ago and I’m not enjoying it now! ... [Continue reading this entry]

I’m writing this while on a bus from Guilin to Guangzhou. No the bus does not have wireless internet: I will copy and paste it later onto the blog site. It’s about a 9 hour bus ... [Continue reading this entry]

I'm back in Nanning now after a few days in Kunming. Kunming is about the same size as Nanning but didn't seem to have as much personality. The city seemed to shut down earlier in the ... [Continue reading this entry]

I am going to Kunming today which is known as the spring city for it's San Francisco like weather. It is in Yunnan province in South Central China. I have been in Nanning for almost a week and ... [Continue reading this entry]

I have been here more than a week now and I have survived without any big difficulties. Whenever I need help someone is there to give it to me. In general, the people here have been ... [Continue reading this entry]

I'm in Indiana now visiting with family and I leave for China on May 9. I moved out of my apartment in Oakland, CA a week ago and I've been busy finalizing everything to prepare for this trip. ... [Continue reading this entry]