TV stardom for Yangzhou English News editor

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…..a box of chocolates from Jason's parents to each of the teachers who attended his 10th birthday party last week. It's good to be thanked for taking the trouble to attend a meal as guests of honour at a swish restaurant.....

…..meeting at Kelly's place with Chinese teachers including Roger, the one who wants to get some music underway, Su Yin Hui, also Peter, who now, thanks to Roger, has an electric bass guitar. Kelly, who plays piano, is keen to be the keyboard player, in fact he's into anything that looks remotely as though it might happen.....

…..during the conversation Roger makes the interesting comment that it's easier (for him) to read in Chinese rather than English because when he reads the Chinese characters it is a visual experience. He's looking at the meaning of the characters not trying to hear the words as he would reading English. I haven't really considered before that our alphabet almost forces us to hear the words we're reading then decipher the meaning, a two step process. It's so automatic we don't think we're even doing it but getting the meaning straight from the characters would certainly be a different reading experience. The Chinese have the advantage of knowing both systems.....

…..Tuesday, finally after a call from Dr. Wei last night, meet at another little breakfast cafe on Dongguan Lu to discuss the tutoring times for a colleague's son. It seems Sunday morning will be the best time & would still leave time to make use of the rest of the day (I already have a student, Jeffson, from the school who has private tutoring on Sunday afternoon at 3.30pm for 45 minutes). Doctor' Wei's English is becoming a little more fluent & I'm learning more Chinese words, as well as forgetting several more. Pronunciation is in need of a lot of work on both sides! I get some assistance in finding some zinc cream (always useful to have around & some to replace a tube I borrowed from Cathy at the school). I can't even find my way round a pharmacy back home, I'd stand Buckley's chance in China.....

…..my potential second private student, the one getting ready to head for Australia, has been held up by her parents' inability to obtain visas & may not be going for another couple of years. Tutoring sessions have been put on hold.....

…..Kelly, let's split the Grade 3 special class into 2 & each take half of them once a week. They'll learn more than spending 45 minutes with me yelling, “Anjing!” (quiet) & trying to get them all to focus on task. I do have sympathy (after, not during, the class) as they've been at lessons since 8am, maybe earlier & by 5pm need some time out, not another class.....

…..so mild this week I'm not even wearing my beanie half the time.....

…..Kelly is going to pick up some trousers he's having made by a tailor in the city. He's probably a couple of centimetres taller than me & has no chance at all of finding anything in the shops to fit. He & Liz suggest I cycle in with them & afterwards we can celebrate by my showing them the little Korean restaurant that Peter, Nelson & I went to last Saturday. We turn off the main Wenchang street in the city centre & cycle through back alleys where a few months ago we would probably have had visions of muggings, throats being slit, teachers left for dead in the darkness. Now we cycle along chatting away & avoiding the pedestrians in perfect safety. Unfortunately the trousers, sorry, pants, won't be ready until tomorrow. Kelly's doing well with his Chinese though & manages to negotiate a return “mingtian xiawu” (tomorrow afternoon) to collect the finished article. He found a pair of his pants that he really liked & that fitted well, took them along & asked for a pair exactly the same design in a denim material he choose at the shop but with wool lining for winter. ¥230 or around Au$40 & an extra ¥30 for the additional pockets. I think I might get a pair made too.....

…..we make a fine job of ordering at the Korean restaurant. Initially they left a writing pad on the table & Kelly actually starts filling it in from the few characters we can recognise on the menu (not many!). He's also willing to go the extra step & ask other, unsuspecting diners how to say the name of their meal in Chinese if he spots something he likes the look of. The staff realise we are illiterate & come to decipher our requests for the rice dishes in the stone bowls (knowing the words for 'stone', 'bowl' & 'rice'), then augmented by the words for beef, chicken & squid. We even manage to look up 'pancakes' in our pocket dictionaries & of course we learned “yi ping pijiu” (a bottle of beer) quite early in our studies. We end up with a great meal again & waddle out with full bellies & pockets ¥20 lighter.....


…..I find a children's book in the teachers' room which is really useful for me learning Chinese characters. The simple stories are written in characters, with Pinyin (Roman letter equivalents) immediately above so I can pronounce the Chinese words then the story in English translation underneath, The latter has some lexical issues. In the story of the fox inviting the crane for lunch he gives the crane a flat plate so that, because of the shape of his beak, the crane can't eat the soup. This is how the next sentence is translated; “However, the crane's mouth was cuspidal, he couldn't eat the soup at all.....”. I must use the word “cuspidal” a lot more. Some other interesting inclusions; “...the youngest bear came into the gate with full of wound”, or the little cat,” “Mum, today I will go such a big fishing” the cat said bouncingly & vivaciously”. There is much work for the English teacher here.....

…..today (Thursday) I start teaching the first class a Christmas song, John Lennon's “So this is Christmas”. I write the chorus on the board for the students & a couple start, unprompted, to write the words down. Before long they are all at it (our classes are specifically for spoken English so we rarely get them to write anything). Then one little girl comes up & sweetly points out there should be commas at the ends of the lines &, for good measure, the apostrophe poorly located in the hurriedly written word “let's”. Ah well, this class at least will know the words next week & the teacher will be more careful with his punctuation next time.....

…..Cathy comes round for a while to run through a song she wants to do for the Christmas show, “Chestnuts roasting round an open fire”. I don't really know it but have downloaded the lyrics & chords. It's one of those complex, 1940's jazz chord progressions, interesting & challenging for a hack guitarist like me.....

…..Corey & Will, two of the teachers who have been here a few years, took some of the others out for a meal tonight at the dog restaurant. I declined, not out of any moral objection to eating dog but as I don't even eat omnivorous mammals such as pigs I didn't think there would be much on the menu for me. Peter reports back later, (too late for the practice of Christmas songs we were supposed to have with Cathy for whatever is being planned by way of a Christmas show), that it tasted fine, not dissimilar to beef, was cut quite finely & was not, as reported by other gastronomic adventurers, greasy in texture. Sorry it's a third hand report but it's the closest you'll get from me. I should add, having witnessed horrified Western reactions to the idea of eating dogs, that the Chinese are very fond of animals, as are westerners who have pets but still eat vast quantities of cows, pigs & sheep, without caring much about how they are treated before they arrive on the plate. The Chinese also wear a look of incredulity when told that (some) Australians eat kangaroo, more so if I am able to explain that it would be better if we ate kangaroo instead of beef as they would not damage the land so much as cattle. Still, dog is not on my “to try” list....

…..Friday. Emily wants help finding the Electronics Mart & looking at a laptop to replace hers which is dying. I need to get a lead for the DVD player in my room which I haven't used yet since it was repaired. After looking all around she ends up back at the stall where the assistant speaks English so she doesn't really need my help. They can't accept her credit card however so back to square one, for a while at least.....

…..by the time all this has happened it's too late to go back to the school cafeteria for dinner & I have already told her about the Korean restaurant so I end up there for the third time in 7 days. It's crowded & no wonder, with 2 main dishes, a side dish & 2 plates of pancakes for ¥19 each (including drink of course). Two young Chinese men sit next to us & it turns out they are Linkin Park & Radiohead fans. They had to write Radiohead as neither of us could understand them but we got Linkin Park the first time. It gets incrementally easier each time to order food, make simple conversation &, later, ask a lady at the bus stop whether there would be any more no.32 buses. The answer was no, the last one is around 7pm so we ended up lashing out ¥4.5 each on a taxi back from the Da Ren Fa supermarket.....

…..Saturday morning, I have already had cereal & fruit but I end up going for a second breakfast, brunch really, with Dr. Wei on the west side of town. A small hotplate is brought to the table. We are given bowls, chopsticks & very thin plastic aprons to protect our clothes from any errant oil from the hotplate. I ask what is being ticked off on the order form. Beef, chicken, vegetables, rice. The meat is thinly sliced & cooked first. There are small bowls of sauces to flavour the meat & vegetables as they are cooked. What a find, someone who knows all the good places to eat, at reasonable prices & who, if I don't jump in very quickly, usually pays first & won't accept any remuneration! Cheap English lessons I suppose but still, I'm learning some Chinese too.....

…..Off to the bookshop (& the bank - I realise I don't quite have enough to pay for the breakfast anyway! Bu hao yisi! - literally “Not good meaning”, or “I'm embarrassed to say this....”). A bags of roasted chestnuts for each of us on the way to the Xinhua bookshop to choose some English books to assist with English studies. After getting to the 5th floor we finally find some suitable books, one conversational English, with accompanying CD & one with some written exercises. This time I grab the books & make sure I pay for them. Books are plentiful (in Chinese!) & quite reasonably priced if often poorly bound. I notice there are a number of classic English works translated into Chinese & some in both English & Chinese. Later it will be good to recommend some of these though I'll have to check the translations first (for cuspidal beaks etc....).....

…..the good doctor packed off safely to work it was back to school, stopping off for some fruit at what is now my regular fruit shop just round the corner from the Da Ren Fa. The teachers have been given VIP tickets to an international Women's Handball game, Russia versus Germany at the stadium on the west side of Yangzhou. No one even knows what handball is but we get into the taxi & go to find out. After finally making ourselves understood & avoiding being taken to the railway station by mistake we get there in plenty of time for the game. The stadium looks brand new but there are several spots where the water is leaking through the complex curves of the roof. The game appears to be a cross between basketball & soccer, played by amazons you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley. The Russian coach made the game for me, sounding like a 60-a-day man with bad laryngitis, was bellowing hoarsely at his team the whole game while pacing up & down. The photos, taken inside the stadium without flash, are a bit grainy but worth it for the expressions.....

…..after the game the Australian / Canadian contingent go to a Korean restaurant that Cathy knows near the other Da Ren Fa on this side of the city. A big week for eating out. It's a good thing most of the meals have been ridiculously cheap (or paid for!). This one is a little more expensive, by our now totally distorted idea of prices. In a very nice restaurant for several dishes, vegetables, rice & pancakes plus meat delivered to & barbecued at the table by an army of attentive waiters & waitresses it cost an extravagant ¥52 each, or about Au$8 (probably less, I believe the exchange rate is a little better now). Then there's Au$1, sometimes Au$2 for taxi fares. Hedonism is alive & well in China.....

…..I had two calls at the restaurant from Dr. Wei, one to arrange a time to meet a colleague's son tomorrow morning to arrange English lessons, the other to check a word in the books bought this morning. “Spelled f-a-r-t. Does this word have many meanings or only one?” Er, it's not really a convenient time to discuss etymology, I'll explain later. I will check the books even more thoroughly next time.....

…..the son of Dr. Wei's colleague is a really lovely kid, Qiao Tianyi, or George. He is 9, about the same age as my Grade 3 students, speaks English as well as my best students already & his whole family (Mum, Dad & Grandma) is really nice. They live not far from the hospital. I already told Dr. Wei I wouldn't charge anything just to meet them & evaluate the boy but they still offer payment (which I refuse). It is a pleasure to meet & talk to them.....

…..on the way into Walmart, to get a bite to eat, a saucepan for Dr. Wei & some milk & yoghurt for me before heading back to our respective jobs we are waylaid by 2 young men with a TV camera who want to interview me for the Yangzhou TV news on what I think of the way the Chinese recognise Christmas. I think they are hoping for something complimentary as my first response (in English by the way, translated by Dr. Wei - my language skills are not yet up to TV interview standard), indicating that there was not much understanding of the Christmas story didn't appear to be what they wanted. With a little prompting from Dr.Wei I am able to truthfully say I hope to enjoy celebrating Christmas with new friends in China. That does the trick. Am I being manipulated for political reasons? Or is it the worldwide urge to find the lowest common denominator for TV? I'll be interested to see if any of my students spot my 15 seconds of fame on TV......

…..after I get back to my rooms after tutoring & sending some e-mails (still from the teacher's room) I said “Hi” to Ms. Ding, the music teacher's wife, walking across the landing with some washing. “You go warmar today?” I ask her to please repeat the question but to no avail. She rephrases it. “You go shopping to warmar this afftanoon?” “Ah!, yes, I did go shopping at Walmart this afternoon”. She replied, “I see you on TV”. Oh dear, that means that at least some kids in each class will have seen teecha on TV & I'll cop it all week.....

Great photo, audio or video opportunities missed this week:

…..Kelly, the 1.85m, red-haired boy from Montana, crossing the road on his bike at the big Wenchang Ge intersection in the town centre, against the lights, in front of 2 traffic control policemen. They didn't seem too concerned as cars coming round the roundabout passed him on both sides. He made it.....

.....the customers at the Korean restaurant as Kelly (him again!), towering over the table, pointed at their meal to ask what it was called in a distinctly American accented Mandarin.....

…..Elizabeth, Kelly's wife, as he pointed at the meals of other customers in .....

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