Blogs from Zhongshan, Guangdong, China, Asia - page 4

Kia ora all!! I've been meaning to write a group email for some considerable time now. I am in Zhongshan city in China, if you didn't know, and I am loving every moment of it. I left on February 18 to arrive in Hong Kong city where I stayed a night before making my way to this small city of four million. Hong kong's cool as. Lots of people and foreigners and lights. I'm sure I'll go there some more tis year! I arrived on Tuesday 19th via a ferry to Zhongshan where I was greeted by a number of teachers from the school I am teaching at, and important figures in Education. I am teaching at the Zhongshan Experimental Primary School (www.zssy.net) where I am teaching mainly 6 and 7 year olds basic English. So ... read more

Steven/ Zhongshan gets a brief mention in the LP- summing up, not a place to divert travellers for very long, but we have called it home now for 4 months now. We've thrown ourselves into some learning and cultural pursuits. We started going to a Kung-fu class a while back. This is an extract from my diary shortly after starting: Oct 29th 2007 'We've just got back from our second lesson kung-fu lesson. The younger of the two teachers taught us. He looks like a chiselled acolyte - Lelde thinks he should be in the movies- ... the instruction is clear, despite the language barrier. The most notable thing about this evening was that the older teacher took us to meet his friends after the lesson. We drove in a tiny micro-van with our bikes jammed ... read more

Steven/ So time is flying, We're in the office on a Saturday, thought we'd add an entry here so you you know that we remain as teachers. We've got more classes now- of all levels- it's a good challenge. We both celebrated birthdays in August. We have found a cool bar here with a live band and friendly atmosphere- the whole place sang "Happy Birthday" to us on each of our birthdays- strange as they're only eight days appart so it was a bit like deja vous. Lelde got to blow candles out on a cake, on stage- it happended to be the singers' birthday too!( the girl on the right hand side of the group picture. One sad thing is that our colleague, Ramona has finnished work and left for a visit to northern China ... read more

Steven/ Hello there, We are now in Guangdong province. Our plan to travel strictly overland has been briefly interupted by a China East airways flight from Kunming, Yunnan to Guanzhou( used to be Canton). This was on Sunday. We were flown here to start teaching English. We are just getting settled in and hope to stay at least until October, if not beyond. I think that, with overland travel, you experience changes around you gradually, whereas if you fly then you find yourself suddenly in what can be a completely new situation.The reason for the tiltle is that here in Guangdong, life looks different to that in the China that we have seen so far.In Guangdong, around 50% of the companies are funded from HongKong, so there are many aspects of this part of China that ... read more