Wo kan bu dong (I see, don't understand)

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…..I am starting to get myself organised as we move into the 4th week of teaching. Little things like having a supply of tea & even coffee for when Peter comes round once a week for a music session. Arriving later than the other teachers when I came from Australia didn't help & being illiterate in the supermarket means that I either buy the wrong thing or take much longer to find items. Frequently both.....

…..talk of a trip to Hunan province in the South West for the October break.....air fares too expensive (a return flight well over ¥3000) & train journey too long (it's over 3000km). So, in the 1 week holiday starting next Thursday, it looks as though I'm in a small group thinking of heading for Chongqing, about 35 hours by train from nearby Nanjing & at the head of the huge (650km long) man made lake formed by the 3 Gorges Dam project. With minimal Chinese it should be an adventure that's for sure....

…..I am very proud of myself today. Having finally found out where the Post Office is (it does actually say "China Post" in English when you get there) I manage to buy envelopes, a stamp, post an insurance related letter to Australia & buy bus tickets for the correct day to travel to Nanjing for the holiday trip. All this with a Post Office clerk who doesn't speak any English..... well, it's an achievement of sorts. It is during our long lunch break when most Chinese in these parts take a nap so it is mercifully deserted except for a couple of clerks. When the transaction is completed the clerk attaches the stamp. I am about to grab the letter & ensure it is sealed when she returns from the back room with a pot of glue & a small brush & carefully completes the job for me.....

…..on the way back from the Post Office on my bike see a quite elegant woman in a black trouser suit walk across the pavement from her shop &, holding an index finger daintily across one nostril, clears the copious contents of the other just as I pass by. S'not something you see every day.....

…..a message on the noticeboard near the teacher's dorms announces, “Photos for visas. Meet at the Admin. Building at 4.45pm”. We all foolishly think it will be a 5 minute procedure in one of our offices then off to dinner. We have no idea we will be spirited away by bus for more than half an hour in heavy traffic to the other side of Yangzhou. We arrive at what is by common consensus the biggest police station that any of us have ever seen (even the Americans!). At least 25 storeys high, very modern & slick, to finally sit in front of a webcam atop a computer screen to be photographed before battling through the traffic back to the school. Too late for the cafeteria it is an excuse to eat at the restaurant across the road again.....

….I have been finding out tricks relating to class discipline. For instance, combined with the knowledge that I have to sign a sort of behaviour register at the end of each lesson for the Chinese teachers a “good” ,smiling face & a demonic, “evil” face drawn on the board at the beginning of each lesson & the threat, or promise, of a tick under one or the other works wonders. The chalk only has to hover over the evil face to produce a class of attentive, well behaved students, if only for a short time.....

…..while shopping I have taken to arming myself with the words, written in Pinyin, of things I'm likely to want. With a bit of sign language as an aid this reduces the arm-waving & is proving pretty successful.....

…..the work visa process is finally in train & my return flight date needs to be changed. Having travelled here on a 60 day tourist visa it would have been suspicious at the very least to have a return date on my ticket of July 2010 so I booked a “dummy” date of September 26th with the intention of changing it when the work visa was approved. I suddenly realise the return date is only 2 days away! I find the number of the Qantas office in Shanghai. The phone in my room still doesn't work. Rainy lets me use her phone in the administration office. It only takes 25 minutes for someone to answer but a quick enquiry in Chinese established that she did speak English (very well actually). Yes, the date could be changed to July next year. Too easy! No, wait. I ask how to pay the Au50 fee? "When would I be in Shanghai next?" I tel her I have no immediate plans. It must be paid by the 15th of October, no, you cannot pay by Visa (not that my cash passport would work as I only have a 4 digit pin & they insist on 6 digits here). There appears to be no system (money order etc.) to allow payment by post. I am planning to go to Chongqing (in the opposite direction) next week for the 1 week holiday. So, the answer appears to be to book a special leave day, spend ¥200 on a return trip to Shanghai to pay a bill of roughly ¥280. All this on the day after a thirty hour train trip back from Yichang, the first city on the downstream side of the Three Gorges Dam. Why is life so difficult? Ah, well, I'll just make it part of the big adventure that is China.....

…..with age, occasionally, comes wisdom. We are all expected to play our part in community events, like the Teacher's Day show mentioned in a previous newsletter. No coercion involved but last week it was suggested that representatives from the foreign teachers should choose to take part in a play being organised by the Chinese teachers OR be part of a school delegation to the opening of a new Medical Centre in the city. Experience has taught me that plays usually involve rehearsals & often a degree of ad hoc organisation that is tiresome & irritating. Visits to openings are often accompanied by speeches & ceremonies which might be a little tiresome BUT these are usually followed by food & a chance to talk to all sorts of interesting people. The amount & quality of food & conversation tends to be in proportion to the magnitude of the premises being opened. A whole Medical Centre! - my hand is up straight away. I won't know until Sunday whether it was a good choice but so far the neophyte actors have spent 2 Chinese lessons rehearsing their lines (between 1 & 4 lines each) &, after any activity which involves foreign teachers being assembled as a group they are collared for another play rehearsal. They are generally pretty sick of it by now. Even if the opening of the Medical Centre isn't as good as I'm hoping it will all be over in a couple of hours, then we can go back to the school & watch the play!....

…..3am Friday morning. After yet another warm, sticky, humid day we finally got some heavy rain. I am awoken by a clap of thunder directly overhead, as are several others. I watch for a while as the lightning flickers all around, virtually without a break, then go back to sleep.....

…..Peter & I go to Yangzhou to do a bit of basic shopping & get a couple of presents for upcoming birthdays. We, rather I, get involved in a conversation with some of the locals on the bus when they find I can speak a couple of words of Chinese. I have to keep telling them I don't understand what they are asking me half of the time but at least in the other half (OK, quarter) I do make some sense of some of it. It amuses them anyway.....

….at one of the bus stops I glance out to see a man with a suitcase running for the bus. He just misses it. I wouldn't even remember the incident if it hadn't been for a taxi which pulls up in front of the bus at the junction near the big canal near the Yangzhou Number 1 hospital. The hapless traveller has hailed the taxi, headed off the packed bus & is now approaching in a state of apoplexy as we wait at the lights. He proceeds to launch a tirade at the driver, who sits like a stone Buddha staring at the bridge hoping the lights will change soon. This provokes the assailant further. He punches the windscreen several times. He attempts, unsuccessfully to open the driver's window, also to pull the side mirror off the bus. He then turns to go back to the taxi, assisted in his passage by a now slightly embarrassed taxi driver. A crowd has started to form in addition to the captive audience on the bus. The rage has not yet subsided. He turns, runs back to the bus & proceeds to try to rip off the windscreen wiper. The wiper remains intact but he does succeed in coating his hands with a thick layer of black, greasy dirt. The scene is set for a final, cataclysmic assault possibly followed by a coronary attack. In the end the taxi driver & a few bystanders escort him quietly back to the taxi.....

…..I managed to quietly snap a couple of photos of the incident, not photographic masterpieces (I am trying to keep the camera out of sight) but I've posted at one on Photobucket (see the link at the start of the message.....

…..as though Rainy hasn't enough to do in administration with Angel recuperating from her eye operation, she comes to Peter's room on Friday afternoon looking dejectedly for more volunteers to represent the school. Near the new road construction by the New Bridge, I noticed a big screen display set up as I cycled back from the city after taking some night photos. It is the site of a proposed convention centre for Canal Cities of the World. Yangzhou is on the route of the Grand Canal, 1900km long, which links Beijing in the north with the Yangzi (Yangtse) river in the south & beyond, to Hangzhou, south west of Shanghai. It is a colossal piece of civil engineering built over a period of 1000 years starting in 486BC! Peter & I, out of sympathy as much as anything, agree to go.....

…..the opening (or rather a celebration of Canal Cities) is accompanied by the usual massed displays that we in Australia, with approximately the population of greater Shanghai spread over an entire continent, can never hope to match. Rainy organises a school bus for herself, Peter, Cathy & me. With the procession of black cars (government officials), buses, bikes & pedestrians it would be quicker to walk & in fact we do, from the inflatable arch entrance, a ubiquitous feature of “openings” in China, to the seated area in front of the installation representing sailing boats towering over the giant screen showing every trick seen on cleverly edited video displays on western TV ads. There are gongs, drums, Chinese lantern style balloons with 10 metre long tails full of Chinese characters I still can't read. When the rain finally comes, after the speeches & their English translations, hundreds of plastic wrapped umbrellas & green raincoats appear as if by magic in a huge pile on the ground for the guests to use on their way out.....

…..Sunday, & those who volunteered for the opening of the Foreign Experts Medical Centre assemble at 8.50am in front of the Administration building & catch the number 32 bus to the city (another ¥1 or about 18c out of my pocket). It's never quite clear when arrangements are vague & the speeches are all in Chinese, this time with a translator who is struggling with the English language. We are shown to a room in a brand new, 6 storey section of a Medical Centre dedicated to the 'Foreign Experts' in Yangzhou. Now it's rare to see a westerner in the city, we all get stares when we go about our business there, either singly or in groups. Here today are 60 invited representatives, teachers, contractors (including our friend Vincent, the chemical engineer from Alabama who shouted us a meal last week), but, with the estimated number probably in the hundreds at most, it hardly seemed enough to warrant this amazing, luxurious, opulent, state of the art establishment with ALL the latest in technology that we saw on our brief guided tour. I can't explain what Positron Emission Tomography is but they've got the gear that can do it. (I also looked it up in the online Chinese dictionary & they've got a word for it too;

Zhēngdiànzǐzhàoshèduàncéngshèyǐng).

…..they seem to genuinely want us to feel that we are an important part of China's progress in the modern world. If it is an act it is a very convincing one. The passport style Medical Card that we are all ceremoniously issued with is impressive but I can't imagine we can do anything with it without paying some sort of considerable insurance premium. I will check though.....

…..The endless corridors, walkways & walls of the circular 6 storey atrium were covered with paintings & framed Chinese calligraphy. These were almost exclusively the work of Medical Centre staff, from the Director down!.....

…..the reception lunch afterwards, at yet another vast restaurant with enough staff to run an ocean liner &, rather than a conventional meal, an endless parade of interesting but indescribable entrees is in keeping with the centre itself. I am placed next to a thoracic surgeon who speaks very good English & 2 other medical staff who could speak a little. The staff of the Medical Centre provide a continuous show on the large stage, comedy skits, singing, dancing. I speak to the waitress who was folding the napkins on our table when we arrived. I explain that I don't eat pork & ask her to help me identify the dishes that might be a problem (it's almost impossible in some cases to tell what's on offer). She identifies them for me as they arrive with a subtle nod. After collecting name cards from the various people nearby who are very keen to let us know how welcome we are & what a great contribution we are making to China we head for the No.4 bus back to the school, shaking our heads in communal wonder.....

…..the international teacher's contribution to the school show, after numerous time consuming, resented & painful rehearsals, is cancelled. No one is really sure why but Peter's report of the local teacher's polished performances provide a clue.....

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