Blogs from Yancheng, Jiangsu, China, Asia
December 28th 2008
It must be that as you get older, time flies. Here we are writing our final Blog from Yancheng. We arrived here on 24 March 2008, and will leave Yancheng shortly, on 9 January 2009. It doesn’t seem like we have been here for that long, yet we are about to leave to return home. Even though we were based in Yancheng, we have seen parts of China and will be off to visit Beijing, Harbin and finally Shanghai, before boarding our plane home. Whilst here, we have visited Xuzhou in the north of Jiangsu Province, an ancient Han Dynasty capital; Nanjing several times, the current capital of this Province and also an ancient national capital; Nantong, which is the city on the north of the Yangtze River in the south east corner of Jiangsu Province ... read more
October 12th 2008
China celebrated its National Day with a few days holiday, between 1 - 4 October. Our school, for some unknown reason (at that time), told us that they were off for the full week, commencing Monday 29 Sep. As the foreign teachers didn’t want to stay around Yancheng for a full week, we all took off in different directions. We went west, to the centre of China, towards Xian, but stopped at a city called LuoYang, in Henan province. The main attraction of LuoYang is the World Heritage Listed Buddhist Grottoes, just south of the city centre. If you have ever travelled by train in China, you will understand what we went through, as China train travel is certainly unique. Also, during any Chinese holiday period, public transport is at its most crowded and seats on ... read more
August 26th 2008
What a blessing it is to be back in Yancheng. We didn’t realize how quiet and peaceful this town is, until you spend time in the Province Capitals. We were in Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province for just on five weeks, then just under a week in Nanjing, our province capital. The pace of city life is all the same. There is constant traffic noise, millions of scooters, rows of buses, volumes of cars and mixed in amongst all of this, a load of pedestrians. If you have not been staying in China for a longer period than a holiday, you probably haven’t noticed how they move about. There is little consideration for others, any form of road courtesy or manners is almost non-existent, and there is a continual push, shove and jostle of daily ... read more
July 10th 2008
Here we are, back in Yancheng for a couple of days, before we are off to Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province. Anhui Province Adjoins Jiangsu province to the southwest, and Hefei, is about 150 km southwest of Nanjing. The holiday was generally good, as far as a holiday can be in china, but it wasn’t until we got back to our school apartment, that our real dramas began. That will be another story. We are sure that one day we will laugh about what happened, but until that day, we are still a bit upset with the widespread Chinese lack of consideration of others. Onto our holiday. We started out going back to Nanjing, only because we wanted to train it to Wuxi, then ferry ride from Wuxi to Suzhou, then bus back to Yancheng. ... read more
June 27th 2008
Well, back from our ‘flying trip’ to Nantong, the city located on the northern banks of the Yangtze River, just north of Shanghai. Nantong is only a quick 2 1/2 hour train ride (which took us 3 1/2) south from Yancheng. It was a pleasant change to get some ‘cleaner’ air, from all the farm burning in Yancheng. We have been booking our accommodation from an internet site, which specializes in China accommodation. They have a good range of hotels, but unfortunately, the hotel information on the internet is a bit light-on, so we take a bit of a punt whenever we book a hotel. So far, so good. However, we did recommend our Xuzhou Hotel to a couple of other teachers from here, who were going to use Xuzhou as a stop-over on their way ... read more
June 22nd 2008
The school decided to change our teaching schedule, so we finished off our teaching term on Friday 13 June, instead of 5 July. As we had some unexpected time off, we decided to do a bit of exploring of Jiangsu Province, where we are based. Yancheng is south of the middle of the Province, but closer to the east coast. We had read about some Terracotta Warriors in the city of Xuzhou, which is located up in the far northwest of our Province. It is about a 4 1/2 hour train trip away. Not much is written about these Terracotta Warriors, as they certainly aren’t as famous as the Qin Dynasty Warriors found in Xian, in central China. The Han Dynasty was in power in China between 206 BC and 220 AD. The Chu King, who ... read more
June 9th 2008
Daily life goes on. It is fascinating to watch the workers go about their business. Ever day the same thing - sweep this section of road with a stall-type broom, collect rubbish along this section of road, beat the heck out of the rape (canola) bushes to collect the seed, burn the stubble in the paddocks - life goes on, 7 days a week, and generally 14 hours a day. If the workers (that is what they call the casual day-labourers) don’t work, they don’t get paid. Simple. Oh how we long to see some blue sky, smell the clean air, and walk in the bush. Where we are, all of these are definitely lacking. The bush we expected, as we knew we were going to a farming area, and the air pollution we also expected ... read more
May 24th 2008
Hello Australia, et al, It only seemed like a few weeks ago when we wrote to say we had been in China for one month, and now we have been here for two months. Wow, time sure flies fast nowadays. At least we can’t say that we are bored. Nothing is normal in our routine. One of the most frustrating parts of working here, is that we are only told what is happening, at the last moment. Even then, we only get a bit of the picture, so have to try to find out for ourselves what is happening. They certainly work on a “need to know” basis, and are used to being told what to do, rather than keeping everyone informed. I guess we are used to the “no surprises rule”, but that isn’t China’s ... read more
May 5th 2008
That was exciting, our first trip to Nanjing, the Jiangsu Province capital. We had heard a lot of people talking of Nanjing - how great it was, the history, better for shopping and so on. Many of our students from this Province haven’t yet visited Nanjing and they seemed pleased that we were going there, after only being in their country for such a short time. Well, what a shock! We must have been on the worse bus in the fleet. For a three hour trip, we were traveling for nearly 4 1/2. The driver seemed to take all the back roads, drifting on and off the expressway. He was an impatient driver and just about flattened the battery with his hand on the horn so often. Next time, we wear earplugs. Mind you, on our ... read more
April 24th 2008
Hi all, We weren't having much success in loading photos properly into the previous Blog site, so we have switched to this new TravelBlog site. I'll try uploading some photos and see the end result. Hopefully, a better presentation will result. Happy Anzac Day. Click on full screen to view all photos. Best wishes, Graeme & Betty-Anne... read more
