David's Big Adventure in China

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 students are all freshmen and when they arrived here they were assigned a class number from 1 to 12 (there are 12 classes of 40 freshmen each). They are assigned to classes in a manner to ensure that the average college entrance exam test scores are about the same for each class and that each class has some students with high scores and some students with low scores. I teach Writing to classes 3 and 4 and I teach Listening & Speaking to class 3 so class 3 is my primary class. Another teacher teaches Reading to both class 3 and 4 and teaches Listening & Speaking to class 4. The students have almost all their classes together as a group and they also form sports teams from their class for intramural competition. Doing almost everything together facilitates them forming a strong bond that will last a lifetime and reinforces the group culture here. I know people here in their 40’s who still often get together with their high school and college classmates. These former classmates become part of their guanxi (network of contacts) that acts as an “old boys network” would in the west.

I learn a lot from reading my students journals that are part of their Writing class. One thing I learned about is a meeting that the class held to assess the previous semester. Some of the group felt that they were not unified enough as a class so they talked at length about how to become more unified. Shortly after the meeting there was a basketball game between my class and another class (1st and 3rd quarters were played by the girls and the 2nd and 4th quarters were played by the boys). Most of the class members who were not playing attended the game (as I did) to cheer on their classmates. They were playing a team that had more talent but because of their strong efforts, they were leading near the end of the game. The other team made a strong effort to tie the game and we went into overtime. During overtime, the kids in my class just ran out of gas and were overpowered and lost. Even though we lost, the entire class felt proud and unified because they had really pulled together and fought hard.

The school requires the kids to do some “society practice” such as spending some time teaching at an elementary school or something similar. Some of the kids went to a school for the blind to do some teaching. China is not handicapped friendly as very few places are handicapped accessible. It was nice to learn that there are some special schools for the handicapped. The kids are also required to do some work on campus such as lawn work. They don’t really have typical lawn care tools that would make the work easy so they make up for it by using a lot of manpower (the students). They do get some college credit for this work “class”.

A few weeks ago I saw the students having some sort of meeting outside one of the buildings. When I asked them what was it about I was told that it was a meeting to recruit them to join “the party”. I was told that most of them signed up to join. Being part of the party will help them down the road with their career and will also increase their guanxi (network). Many of them will probably not stick with it long term as most people I know are not active members of the party. The ones that join will be required to attend a lot of meetings to learn about the party and keep up with new developments in the party.

The last thing I will write about is the anniversary of the earthquake in Sichuan Province that occurred on May 12, 2008. There were over 85,000 people killed and millions that were made homeless. I don’t know how many are still living in temporary shelter but I know that they are building like crazy to try and get them in homes. I read about one town where 50% of the population of 10,000 were killed. Some of the worst hit towns have been fenced and made off-limits and they are building a new town nearby. Here is a link to reports provided by NPR (National Public Radio). NPR reporters happened to be in Sichuan last year when the quake occurred and they returned to report 1 year later. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90430135

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 fun but working harder than I care too. If not for the economic crisis wiping out more than 40% of my net worth I’d probably find an easier job even if it didn’t really pay enough to support me. Originally I thought I’d do this for 4 or 5 years then fully retire but now it looks like I’ll need to keep going a bit longer. Because of the economic crisis it seems there are more people coming here looking for jobs which creates a more competitive job market for the foreign teachers. My school recently fired a teacher due to student complaints and I heard that the Dean made the comment that it’s easy to find new teachers now because of the economic crisis. My student evaluation scores were good so hopefully I won’t have any problems.

A while back we had the Tomb Sweeping holiday and May 1 was the Labor Day holiday. One of the customs for the Tomb Sweeping holiday (like Memorial Day) is that people go to their ancestors’ graves, clean them off and leave food for the ancestors to eat. After leaving the food at the tomb for a short time, they take it back with them and eat it.

I’ve seen on tv recently talk about intellectual property rights and they have shown local authorities destroying hundreds of illegal copies of dvd’s, etc. Of course you can still buy whatever you want. At the small dvd stall next to the fruit juice stall where I often buy watermelon juice, I saw MS Office software for sale. I asked the lady how much and she told me 8 yuan which is about $1.20 U.S. Amazing! One thing I forgot to mention about buying my toaster oven at Wal-mart is that it’s common practice that anytime you buy something electrical here that they take it out of the box, plug it in and turn it on to show you that it really works. Obviously, the Chinese don’t have a lot of confidence in the quality of their own products. My last shopping story is about my visit to an upscale shopping plaza here. I went into the BMW store (goods with the BMW car company logo) and looked at the prices on a couple things. The polo shirts were priced at more than $175 U.S. I was shocked since not many people in the U.S. would pay that much for a polo shirt no matter what logo it has on it. There were no customers in the store so they probably don’t sell much and what they do sell is probably to people who buy it just so they can brag about how expensive it was.

I saw an interesting demo on the street a couple weeks ago by a guy that was apparently selling some sort of miracle powder. He was putting wooden skewers straight through the head of a live chicken. After putting about 5 of them through he then took them out, poured some powder into the holes in the chickens head, then folded the head under the body and put the chicken in a basket which he covered. Then he ate some of the powder. After talking for a few minutes he began to pull the chicken out of the basket but teased us a few times before he actually pulled out. After he pulled it out, he hit the chicken on the head a few times before it started walking around. I didn’t stay to see if anyone purchased any of his miracle powder.

A recent lesson was about food and the chapter in the book had a page talking about strange foods eaten in different places around the world. I asked my students what was the strangest thing they had eaten. One of the students told me that she had eaten human placenta. They make a soup out with it and consider it to be like medicine to make you stronger. You can only get it if you know someone at the hospital that can obtain it for you. I was told by a friend that it was common years ago when you had a baby to ask them to give you the placenta from your own birth. I’ve been pretty brave about trying the different foods here but I’m not sure if I could try this one. I did a quick Internet search and found that there were references to eating this on the net.

I have one last comment on the topic of babies. I may have mentioned this before but I was reminded of it recently when talking to a couple of the ladies that work in the office that are pregnant. It is illegal here for a doctor to tell parents the sex of their baby before birth. This is because of the one child policy and the strong preference for sons. Well that’s enough for now.

I’ve been busy with my teaching recently and next week is mid-term exams week. I’ve also been busy making some travel plans for a couple upcoming holidays and for the summer vacation. For summer vacation I’m planning on going to Japan for 3 weeks with the first 2 weeks being a guided tour with Intrepid Tours and then I’ll try doing the last week on my own. After Japan I think I’ll come back to China and do some traveling within China. Anyone want to come join me? For my winter break next year I’m thinking about going to Egypt.

I’m planning on staying here at Guangxi University for another year which will take me to July 2010. After that, I am hoping to become an IELTS Examiner. IELTS is an English exam for people that want to demonstrate their English proficiency and is used by many western universities as a factor in evaluating admission for foreign students. The work is mostly on weekends but apparently I can make as much money as I make now by working 3 weekends a month. That job would also give me much more flexibility regarding when I can take vacation time. I’d really like to be able to travel when not everyone else is traveling and this job would make that easier. Tentatively, my next visit to USA will be in summer or early fall of 2010.

Exiting News Flash! – I bought a toaster oven and now I can make toast and cook other things. It cost me about $80 U.S. I could have bought one cheaper but the clerk at Wal-mart (there are sales people readily available in every department at Wal-marts here to assist you) convinced me to buy the imported model instead of the Chinese made model. So recently, for the first time since I moved to China I purchased butter and salt and pepper. I started cooking a little bit but it’s just not worth the effort to do much cooking considering the poor kitchen facility (no hot water, I have to move the cooktop to use it, etc.). I was so excited the first time I made toast…..lol. One thing I cooked was spaghetti but the spaghetti sauce I bought at Wal-mart was really just tomato sauce with no seasoning.

Recently while grading some writing assignments I found that more than 10% of the students had plagiarized. One student was a student I caught twice last semester doing this. After the second time last semester I gave her a 0 for that assignment and made her write a paper titled “What is Plagiarism”. When I caught her this time, I told her I am reducing her score for the entire semester by 6 points. She came back to see me later with another student to help translate because she is not confident in her spoken English. She said she was only trying to improve her scores and how could she improve them because she was not happy with her final score the previous semester. I reminded her that her score on her previous writing assignment was 92 and that her writing is good so she just needs to quit trying to cheat! The assignment she plagiarized on was her journals which are not directly graded for writing quality. Sometimes Chinese thinking drives us crazy……lol.

I have posted some new pictures from trips to a couple parks and the zoo, and a picture of our students performing the play “High School Musical” (they did it in English and did a great job). They are in the folder GU (Guangxi University) under “Recent Pictures”. As a reminder, you can find the link for the pictures on the right hand side of the blog. Until next time….

I’ve been back in China now for about 4 weeks and we’re in week 3 of the spring semester. Upon my return to China, I retrieved my checked bag in Beijing and noticed that the lock was missing. I opened the bag and didn’t find anything missing. I’m assuming that the customs folks in China cut the lock to have a look inside to make sure I was bringing in any inappropriate items. I had several books inside so they probably made sure they were not on the banned list. The lock was a TSA (Transportation Security Administration – USA) approved lock that the Customs folks have a master key to but I guess the Chinese Customs folks don’t have a master key.

Speaking of locks, I got locked out of my apartment one day a couple weeks ago. I was out on the porch hanging laundry when a strong wind came and blew the door closed. My keys and phone were locked inside. As luck would have it, I was only wearing my boxers and a t-shirt as it was quite warm that day. So I had to go outside to go to some other teachers’ apartments hoping to find someone home that could call the office for me. Fortunately it was before 5:00 in the afternoon and we found the right guy and he understood my Chinese and came with a key within 15 minutes.

Of course I’m keeping up on the economic news from the U.S. and I don’t need to tell you how bad it is. It’s bad here too but not as bad as in the states. The government here is saying they think a recovery has already begun here but nobody believes that. Car sales here had been running over 20% higher than the previous year but in recent months have only been around 8% higher than the previous year. Total car sales here in December were more that total car sales in the USA. I know tons of people have lost their jobs in China but judging by the crowds at Wal-mart here on Sunday, things are not so bad. While there, I checked the price on a toaster as it would be nice to have one. They only had one model and price was equivalent to $55 U.S. I was shocked that it was so expensive. They had toaster ovens that you could buy for just a little bit more money.

A Chinese friend of mine that has been living in the states for about 30 years thought that some of my blog writings have been too negative about the Chinese. I will provide some balance by telling you about a conversation I had recently. I went to some friends’ home for dinner (a Swiss guy and his Chinese wife) and joining us there was another family. Both husband and wife are pretty high up in the police department. The husband was telling us about a trip he made to the U.S. and about his visit to a police force in New York. It was an educational trip to learn about police methods. He was disappointed that the people he met with in New York did not invite he and his colleagues to dinner and he felt they were not very hospitable. Perhaps he would have been treated differently someplace other than New York but I agreed with him that Chinese are more friendly and hospitable to visitors than Americans. Most of the people I have met here are very kind and generous and go out of their way to be friendly and hospitable.

Speaking of the police, I recently was politely asked to accompany some policemen to the local visa office without knowing why at the time. A fellow teacher (an American married to a Chinese lady) had asked me to join him for an English corner at his housing complex near campus for an hour one Saturday. An English corner normally is where people get together to informally practice their English. I agreed to go there as a couple times I and other teachers have been invited to that complex for parties. When I got there for the English corner it was actually an English lesson for the residents rather than a typical English corner. My colleagues wife had a book that she and I used to conduct a simple lesson for about 30 some residents of the complex. My colleague was in a different room giving a more advanced lesson. After we finished the lessons there were some police officers waiting for us and asked my colleague and I to go with them to their office. After we arrived there, they separated us and asked us questions about the lesson and if we were paid for it (we were not paid) and did we have an agreement with the complex to teach every week. They called the Dean from our school to come there too. It wasn’t until after they finished the questions and let us go that I discovered why we were there. The builder had used my colleague’s picture in a full page newspaper ad trying to sell apartments there, saying that among the amenities they offered free English lessons to the residents. They have to have a license to operate an English school and also, it is not allowed for us foreigners to have another job beside the one that was used for obtaining our visa. I’m still not sure why this was such a big deal that 4 policemen were working on their day off but I’m guessing that another builder with connections complained. I haven’t heard any more about it. If they found that we were working outside of our visa they technically could have revoked our visas. Obviously, I won’t be going there for any English corners or lessons in the future!

I’m in Florida now enjoying the moderately warm weather. I spent about 10 days in Indiana visiting family, eating like a pig and mostly staying inside to avoid the cold weather outside. Then I went to Reno, Nevada for a day to check on my property, then on to Tucson to visit my brother and sister there, then came to Florida. Next week I will return to Indiana for a few more days before heading back to China.

Here’s some tidbits I gathered from newspapers on my ride back to the states. The economy in China is slowing down as evidenced by auto sales and by the number of people going home early for Spring Festival (Chinese New Year). Auto sales in China for 2008 were only up 7.3% vs. 2007 compared to the twenty some percent that they have been growing in the past few years. Less than 10% of auto purchases in China are financed and more than 60% are for vehicles with less than a 1.6 liter engine. The newspaper said that many of the 188 million people that are expected to travel by train during Spring Festival are going home early because of no work with some people waiting at a train station for 3 days to get a ticket. The drinking buddies of a man that died after drinking too much are being sued because they kept urging him to drink more while at a banquet. When dining with others in China when one person takes a drink (alcoholic) everyone takes a drink because each sip is a toast and if you try to refuse the others will push you hard to join them.

Below are the highlights from a list that was e-mailed to me a while back that I thought you might enjoy.

You Know You’ve Lived in China Too Long When…

1. You’re at an expensive western restaurant and don’t even notice the
guy at the next table yelling into his cell phone
3. You walk backwards in the park listening to a transistor radio
5. You smoke in crowded elevators.
6. All white people look the same to you
7. You like the smell of the bus.
9. You no longer need tissues to blow your nose (they lean over, use a finger to block one nostril and then blow their snot onto the street or sidewalk)
11. You throw your used toilet paper in the basket (as a courtesy to
the next person)
13. You think a 30 year old woman who carries a Hello Kitty lunch box is cute
17. You aren’t aware that one is supposed to pay for software (much of the software on university computers is illegal)
23. You take large sum of cash whenever you go to a hospital in your home country
25. You think it’s silly to buy a new bike when it’ll get stolen soon
and stolen bikes are half the price.
29. You no longer wait in line, but go immediately to the head of the queue
30. It becomes exciting to see if you can get on the elevator before
anyone can get off
32. You no longer wonder how someone who earns US$ 400.00 per month
can drive a Mercedes
38. You look over people’s shoulder to see what they are reading
39. You honk your horn at people because they are in your way as you
drive down the sidewalk
43. You have a pinky fingernail an inch long (Chinese believe that if the small finger is too short then your life will be short)
49. You are able to jump the queue because the idiot Laowai (foreigner) left 2 centimetres between himself and the person in front of them
51. You start cutting off large vehicles on your bicycle
59. Firecrackers don’t wake you up
60. Your family stops asking when you’ll be coming back
61. You wear out your vehicle’s horn before its brakes
63. Forks feel funny
76. You and a friend get on a bus, sit at opposite ends of the bus,
and continue your conversation by yelling from one end to the other
79. You start recognizing the Chinese songs on the radio and sing
along to them with the taxi driver
80. the guy next to you on the bus is examining his booger while rolling
it between his fingers and you don’t mind.
92. Even you start messing up “he” and “she” in English and also don’t
get what the big deal is when you do
101. You don’t mind when at the hospital you have to carry your pee
(in an open container) the equivalent of 3 blocks and up 2 flights of
stairs and the whole time other people are trying to put their faces
in it to see if it looks different to theirs
102. You forget what clean smells like
103. You haven’t eaten anything baked in months
104. You spend less than 10 yuan ($1.45) for a satisfying lunch, but might end up eating at a table with 4 strangers
105. You eat soup with chopsticks
108. Get on the bus and sleep right away
109. Your Chinese friends allow you to pay the bill at the karaoke bar
113. You don’t get upset at the bank by doing 10 different signatures
in 10 different forms to get your own money

Happy Holidays from China! I enjoyed a nice turkey dinner for Thanksgiving at restaurant with many other foreigners. I really stuffed myself. About a week after Thanksgiving I went to a nice restaurant that has a big buffet and serves a lot of barbequed meat similar to a Brazilian restaurant. Among the many kinds of meat was dog, so I gave it a try. It was quite tasty. I don’t know what kind of dog it was. I asked my students in class one day how many had eaten dog and at least a third of them had eaten it. There were a few in the class that had a dog as a pet and had also eaten dog. Christmas eve dinner was a pitch-in dinner at a teacher’s apartment. Christmas day was just a normal day with classes as usual. The school told the foreign teachers that we could take the 24th and the 25th off if we wanted but the students still needed to go to class and have work to do. I skipped two short classes but went to my other classes. In one class we had a little party and gift exchange (see pic’s). I haven’t made any plans for New Year’s eve yet. New Year’s day is a holiday for us.

One way I stay connected to the USA is by listening online to some of my favorite radio stations from back home. I sometimes listen to KFOG which is my favorite radio station in the San Francisco bay area and I also listen to a couple National Public Radio stations (one in Tampa and one in Colorado). I have posted pic’s of some of my recent local entertainment such as visiting the new car show at the convention center and joining my students for a bbq at a local park. As you can see, they also use sexy girls here to sell cars at the car show. The sexy models attract more photo-graphers than the cars.

This semester is almost finished with finals beginning in about a week. I’m looking forward to finishing the semester and heading to the states for about 3 weeks. I will arrive in the states in mid January and look forward to seeing many of you during my visit. I hope you all are having a great holiday season and are not too affected by the financial crisis. Let’s hope a strong recovery begins soon.

Wow, it’s been about 5 weeks since I have written anything. I’ve been so busy grading my students writing I haven’t had time to write in my blog. We had a 3 day weekend about 3 weeks ago due to the school sports meeting and I took the opportunity to get out of town. I went with a friend to Yangshuo, which is a famous tourist area that I visited briefly in May of last year. It takes a 5 hour train ride and a 1 hour bus ride to get there. It is famous for its scenery (see pic’s…click on the link to pic’s on the right side). Many foreigners go there and sometimes the foreigners become the tourist attraction for the Chinese as they stop and take pictures of groups of foreigners. On Friday and Saturday during the day we rented bicycles for about $2 per day and went for long rides in the countryside. In the evenings we relaxed in the restaurants and ate western food. During dinner one evening some foreigners were sitting near us and after overhearing them say something about the U.S., I asked them where they were from. They were from the Midwest and a couple of them had lived and worked in Suzhou where Henny Penny Corp. has a factory. I told them about HP because I used to work for HP in Ohio and one of them said she knew the general manager in Suzhou ……what a small world it is.

After my trip in early October, I’ve been wanting to write about Chinese hospitality. Most Chinese are very kind and hospitable. Some of us westerners think they are sometimes too hospitable. When eating, it is very common for them to put food in your bowl without asking you. When you are with them, they always ask you to sit and sometimes say it in a way that sounds more like a command than an invitation. While I was staying at the home of friends of my friend, the husband was having trouble getting me to understand what he was saying in Chinese so his solution was to move very close to my face thinking that would help me understand. For most Chinese, their spatial comfort zone is much smaller than us westerners (that is, they are accustomed to being very close to others when talking to them). Because there are so many people in China, they are used to being crowded together and it is also common for there to be a lot of touching even among friends of the same sex.

I have been so busy lately because we just finished mid-term exams and I had about 7 extra hours of classes this week. Our school was asked to put together English speaking lessons for a bunch of government officials. I was asked to take the lowest level group and had about 7 hours with them and also spent about 7 hours preparing for their lessons. They are giving me extra pay for it but I didn’t do it for the money. They also asked me to teach some other classes at night that they offer to the general community but I declined. I’m working more than I want already and I haven’t had enough time to study Chinese or do other things I want to do. Today I did have some time for shopping and with my higher pay here I have more spending money so I went to Wal-mart and bought a dvd player (300 yuan, $44). I’ve been without a dvd player except for the one on my pc for 18 months. It will be nice to watch movies and tv shows on a screen bigger than my laptop. Yesterday, I purchased seasons 1-3 of the show “Numbers” and seasons 1-6 of the show “24” and the total cost for the 9 dvd’s was just under $6. Well that’s all for now.

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.

On Monday, August 25, I moved into my apartment at the school. It’s an upgrade from my apartment in Kunming but not ideal. It’s in a good location overlooking a pond and close to the classroom buildings. It has a western bathroom with a tub/shower combo and a sink with counter area and a big mirror. The kitchen is a separate room with lots of counter space, cabinets with doors falling off, a microwave, a two burner hot plate, and dual sinks with only cold water. The living room will be used as the dining room and office since there is no sofa and the tv cable outlet is in the bedroom. We have 4 English channels on the tv, a PG13 version of HBO, another movie channel, CNN and a sports channel. In addition to the dining table and chairs (seats 4), the living room has a good sized desk and the refrigerator. The kitchen doesn’t really have room for the fridge. The bedroom is decent size and has a queen size bed. The living room and bedroom have carpet which badly needs cleaned. Outside the front door is a large enclosed patio area which is where the washing machine is located along with rods attached to the ceiling for hanging clothes to dry. It’s so nice to have a washing machine again after hand washing clothes for the better part of the last 6 weeks!

On Tuesday the 26th we started having orientation meetings and will have these meetings on and off for almost 3 weeks. Classes don’t actually start until September 16 because the sophomores will have military training for their first 2 weeks and the freshmen arrive later. The school assigned 2 student volunteers to be assistants for each teacher to help with things like translation, showing us around campus, helping us go shopping, etc. It’s quite a contrast from the 2 minute orientation I had at the school in Kunming last year.

What did you think of the Olympics? I’d be interested in hearing your perspective from the coverage you saw there. I watched quite a bit of the events but had to watch them all on the local channels with Chinese announcers and of course focusing on Chinese athletes. The Chinese government English channel was prohibited by it’s agreements with the Olympic Committee from broadcasting events on the English channel since that channel is broadcast internationally. I heard on the English channel that there were 9 channels broadcasting the events here and one day I flipped through the channels and saw 6 different events being shown. I also read coverage on the internet. I thought they did a fabulous job of hosting and running the games and their athletes performed incredibly well. Here they reported the medal standings in order of the most gold medals which of course China won the most. The opening and closing ceremonies were great! The guy in the opening ceremony that “flew through the air” to light the caldron is a famous athlete (Li Ning) from Guangxi and he has donated a bunch of money to GU (Guangxi University) to build a sports field. I was very happy for the Chinese people to see the Olympics go so well. Because of China’s recent history (the last 150 years) the Chinese people feel like second class citizens in the world. The Olympics has helped them take a big step towards feeling like equals with people from other leading countries. The controversies about the female gymnasts’ ages and a few broken promises were minimized here. From what I read on the net, it seems the International Committee didn’t really want to investigate the age issue since their approach was to ask the same people that were accused of giving them false documents to provide more documents proving the original documents were not false. Most of my local friends that I talked to about the age issue believe that the girls were probably younger than claimed.

The age issue highlights one of the major issues of China which is their ethics and honesty. I’ve touched on this issue before on some of my posts about my students. They discourage religious worship and there is little active promotion and teaching of morals and ethics. Many practices that are condemned in developed western countries are accepted here. Singapore is a great contrast as they have taught and demanded honesty and rule following to an extreme.

In the time that I was here waiting to move into my apartment I went to a beach city called Beihai which is about 2 hours drive from here and is on the south China coast (see pic’s’). Along the way in a small town we saw a man walking along the side of the road buck naked….lol…. he was probably mentally disturbed.