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Published: September 18th 2011
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Butterfly, Yangzhou
Spotted on my way back to my apartment Photos:
…..autumn is approaching by slow degrees. After another spell of 30C plus weather & clear skies it's clothing is now only damp rather than dripping after a day in the classroom . Since the last issue we've had our second week of teaching, (my schedule of back to back afternoon classes still hard to get accustomed to), & a trip to the historic canal city of Suzhou, at the end of the famed Silk road but only two & a half hours by bus south west of Yangzhou.....
…..Sunshine is leaving Yangzhou. Our short-lived career will end in a few weeks as she migrates to warmer climate, Beihai, a seaside town in southern, tropical China. She leaves me with some chord charts for songs I'd never played before & some great new friends from the travel magazine she works for. In fact they invited me out unexpectedly last week to the Sichuan restaurant above Gloria Jean's for an interesting Chinese banquet & a chat with a travelling photographer who by now should be in either Mongolia or Russia.....
…..I have discovered an unexpected weapon for use in Grade 8 classes. Grade 3 students can comfortably double
Canal bridge at night, Suzhou
Always gorgeous in the evening the volume of any request yelled at them thereby drown it out in the chaos. A couple of the older classes are starting to get out of hand & not responding to polite requests to, “Sit up & listen”. Out of curiosity rather than anger I bring the flat of my hand down really hard on the teacher's desk. The stunned, astounded looks are a picture & the ensuing silence is a beautiful thing. Now in many cases I need only to raise my hand over the desk & the class is facing me, tolerably attentive but with fingers plugging their ears. With this & a few testing students having pushed far enough to feel the wrath of the Antichrist I may have achieved some sort of order. Of course there is always one class of Neanderthals who would be better employed learning how to sharpen flints & keep the cave tidy but I'll work on them.....
…..I now, unofficially, own half a bike, in fact half a pushbike & half an e-bike. Marc, a new teacher, a self proclaimed “hillbilly” in his 30s from South Carolina, has lost a lot of weight recently. Having bought Patrick's old, &
Shop, Suzhou
Still open at 10pm battered, e-bike, he has decided that some exercise would be good for him. Having refused to sell him my pushbike we finally arrive at a share arrangement. We both have keys to both bikes & can take whichever is available. Maybe I won't get so much exercise now & so risk going to seed. I'll risk it.....
…..it will be interesting to hear Marc's students by the end of the school year. The stock answer, parroted by most Chinese kids, to the question, “How are you?”, is expected to be, “Aaahm faahn, thenk yew” rather than the more usual, “I'm fine, thank you”.. We, (even other American teachers), are stumped as to the meaning of the word, “heey'n”. It turns out to be “hen”, from which we obtain “aygs”, or “eggs”.....
…..I've been working with Shen Yue on a translation of my friend Greg's Australian children's musical educational CD package, which he's hoping to market in China. It's been an interesting exercise as he uses about 15 instruments on the CD, some of which may have been translated into Chinese for the first time. I'm thinking specifically of the Lagerphone here. It took some effort & without my
Mofun Cafe, Suzhou
Just behind the hostel experience in an Aussie bush band in the early 1980s it might never have been completed. I am impressed to see that bodhran & oud are both defined & translated in the electronic dictionary I bought in Shanghai.....
…..of course, you're dying to know. The Lagerphone, that venerable Australian bush instrument, made from beer bottle tops nailed to a stick has been transliterated as a “borrowed word” that aims to mimic the English pronunciation rather than translate directly. Shen Yue has come up with “lā-gé-fēng”.....
…..no YYW last week as it was the Mid-Autumn festival long weekend. Paul, our administrator, & four teachers travel to Suzhou, ostensibly to catch up with Peter, who is now studying there & Miss Piggy, who now has a job at Canon, printing high quality images from a ¥1,000,000 printing machine.....
…..the other reason for the trip is to visit the Bookworm, a secondhand bookshop with a collection of English language books. It turns out to be a sort of makeshift library & cafe, not quite what we are after. Miss Piggy has joined us by this time so we all walk around the old canals in the central district of Pingjiang.
Fruit seller, Suzhou
Never a shortage of food It's chaotic, quaint, busy, touristy & photogenic......
…..it appears Miss Piggy's situation is not what I had assumed. Although she sent two wedding photos it appears the papers were never signed, there has been a fairly major disagreement with her boyfriend so she is now living in accommodation at the factory while he remains in Guizhou, nearly 30 hours away by train, probably never to venture to Jiangsu. As usual much is lost in translation but, as we return to the hostel in the evening we see her off to her apartment, boarding the bus continuing a protracted & animated phone conversation with him.....
…..the foreign teachers are invited to a new Italian restaurant in Yangzhou's central Times Square. No strings attached. The Chinese owners are after advice on how their service & offerings can be improved. I review the menu & point out that some additional effort in the translation of “Wild fungus cake hates the soup” might be in order.....
…..talking of translations, Miss Piggy asks if I can help interpret something for, (I think this is what she's asking...) a non-Chinese speaking employee at her factory in Suzhou. I end up with about a
dozen technical printing terms to translate. With my dictionary & some additional assistance I think I made it.....
…..what is it about China? The air quality is bad at best, awful at worst, the winters, here in Jiangsu at least, are long, grey & miserable, the majority of foreigners are not even conversational in Chinese, let alone fluent, we cannot help but feel alien most of the time. So why do so many like, even love, living here? I try to paint a balanced picture when I write about this place, from my skewed, Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Australian perspective. The good & the bad aspects, the highs & lows of being a real foreigner, illiterate & ignorant of huge chunks of the life going on all around. Despite that new friends are very loyal & make every effort to let you know it is their “honour” to be your friend. By now you may think I'm crazy for living here but I have to say, it is my honour to be their friend, & to remain your friend too.....
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