Far Out in the Far East

This last week has been the Chinese National Holiday, which is also a paid holiday for teachers and a nice break for Jacque and me. We spent an entire day exploring the ancient city of Chu at Mo Hill and saw a lot of ancient temples, city walls, statues, and artifacts that were very interesting. Also during the past few days we’ve explored areas of Wuhan that we’ve never been before both on the western and eastern sides of the Yangzi River. We’ve found some interesting markets and shopping malls, but mainly we’ve discovered that shopping in Wuhan (at least at shopping malls) is similar to the food selection in Wuhan in that it’s lacking variety. Its mainly noodles and rice. There are thousands of little privately owned shops all selling the same dainty, overpriced, pastel-colored stuff. Maybe I’m a little short sided because I’m a man but it seems like every store just has the same thing as its neighbor, namely clothes, shoes, and eyewear…that’s it. If you need electronics, art, books, furniture, novelties, antiques, etc. then you must find some special ‘district’ in which all they sell are those things. The night markets are a lot of fun however, passing street vendors and they’re multiple (fake) wares adds a little bit of spice to what I consider to be relatively bland shopping experience in the enormous shopping malls.

During our explorations Jacque and I have stumbled upon a few markets that sell imported American products. These establishments have come to allow us to enjoy the simple pleasures that we often take for granted in the states. For example, the other day Jacque and I ordered two pizzas from the Papa Johns we found in our city and had it delivered to our apartment. We ordered one Hawaiian style and one BBQ Chicken. We later discovered that we had to pay for the delivery boy’s taxi fare to and from our place which didn’t make us happy but a few minutes into our delicious, cheesy pizza melted our anger away. Also, near the large pedestrian mall just a few blocks from our home is a Dairy Queen…its outstanding. I swear the vanilla is the best I’ve ever had (imagine an Oreo blizzard made from Haagen-Dazs ice cream) so rich and so good. It’s even a treat to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the Chinese people haven’t even heard of such a thing and rarely eat sandwiches anyway so when I found some quality Jiffy Peanut Butter and some strawberry jelly I went to town.

These are just the simple American pleasures we enjoy, don’t get me wrong we have discovered some excellent food selections near our place that we enjoy on a regular basis. There’s an establishment in the backstreet which makes mainly noodles that is run by a Chinese family who believes in Islam. They have pictures of teary Muslim children hanging on the shop walls looking up to heaven with Mecca in the background. Naturally we’ve dubbed this establishment “The Muslim Noodle Shop”. There are also various restaurants we dine at with our fellow American teachers where we can all sit down, order various vegetables (bok choi, eggplant, carrots, potatoes, bamboo), meats (duck, chicken, beef, fish) , and tofu (gross) which we eat together at a round-robin style table. There are also several juice stands and street vendors that we eat at regularly (ask me about a Chinese Taco sometime).

Work is going very well and as expected I am enjoying teaching very much. I feel that I have a good connection with my students which makes their learning fun but also allows me to push them. Last week I assigned the students in my freshman class to prepare a dialogue with a classmate and then come perform that dialogue in front of the class and one student in particular (who I’d previously named William) refused to come up. I told him repeatedly in English and Chinese to come to the front but he just shook his head and sat there with his arms folded like a 3 year old. I threatened to give him a “zero” if he did not at least give it a try and he still refused. I was about to give up and just let him fail when the class began pounding their desks and yelling “Will-um…Will-um…Will-um!!” to which he finally stood up and came to the front and read his part of the dialogue. He didn’t do so bad either, he wasn’t William Shakespeare by any means, but he did OK and got full credit for trying. The post-grad students are all great, they perform superbly and do as they’re told. These freshman kids though…sometimes I feel like I have to kick them in the face to get them to do anything. I enjoy my students though and we get along well, most of them have never had a foreign teacher before, and none of them have had one that speaks Chinese. I allow them to ask a question in Chinese if they absolutely do not know how to ask it in English and then I teach them how to ask that question in English so they can do it next time. I only speak Chinese to my students outside of class or if they are having a particularly hard time understanding an assignment. I also put the fear into them that if they are saying something bad about me I’ll understand them. I’m known for giving “fist-bumps” as the students enter or leave the classroom. At first they didn’t understand it at all and they thought I wanted to hit them or something so they’d back away or duck down as I went in to “bump” them. Now most of them get it and I get fist-bumps by students who aren’t even in my classes when I walk around campus. Preparation for each class does not take up a lot of my time, the classes are pretty basic and based on oral English so the most important thing is giving the students a chance to speak to me and have me correct them when they say something wrong. Nothing too strenuous, life in China is good.