Party with the PARTY

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.....A new direction this week. Apart from some nice photos of Yangzhou in spring in the main album now that I have a Pro account with Photobucket, which includes unlimited uploads, I thought I might as well sort through the short video clips & upload a few that some of you might find interesting. See the China-Video album.....

…..we are informed, at short notice of course, that some (how many?) foreign teachers are required to volunteer to do demonstration classes on Friday afternoon (when exactly, & for how long? - & why?). The story filters out in instalments. Although the school is a private organisation it gets some funding from the government & naturally the Party (THE PARTY) is keen to ensure that methods, curriculum & class structure are acceptable. So, three (maybe more) teachers will demonstrate western techniques of teaching languages to the visiting army of PARTY officials.....

…..before the fleet of black cars have begun to arrive questions are asked by some irritated foreign teachers. Why the late notice? Why just before the Tomb Sweeping Day long weekend, when many people will be going away for the weekend? Most of us have fewer classes on Fridays (I only have one, in the morning). Peter & I volunteer as we will be staying in Yangzhou so it's not a problem. By the time the required number of volunteers has increased to exceed the number of raised hands some teachers with train tickets booked for Beijing are informed, in military fashion, the volunteers will be you, you & you! We finally have a meeting & assurances are given that the event won't extend into travelling time.....

…..I had a call on QQ, the Internet messaging service used, it seems, by almost everyone in China who is connected to the Internet. It was from Wenyi (Enya) the student who chatted to me on the train to Harbin. She & a friend want to visit Yangzhou & see the famous & historic sights. As I haven't planned a trip away I organise the guest room at the school for them. She is overjoyed as they are having trouble finding an affordable hotel &, at ¥40 a night, or less than Au$7 for both of them, it's ridiculously cheap even by Chinese standards. They are students so are used to educational establishments with hot water that is only available at predetermined times....

…..a short article about QQ from: http://www.thedarkvisitor.com:

The new benchmark for any Chinese internet enterprise now seems to be when the number of users surpasses the total US population. QQ has now accomplished that with 350 million registered members.
Funny thing too, the last report on the Chinese online population put it at 290 million. So, everybody in China uses QQ and another 60 million from outside the country?.....

…..near five o'clock on Friday afternoon & the supposedly half hour special class is postponed until the guests get closer, to avoid the classes being finished before they actually arrive. My hand picked group of students, including a couple of naughty kids who have been better in class since I've been making efforts to pay them extra attention & give them a fair go, are pretty noisy by this time. I play a couple of songs to get the noise coordinated at least. A few parents nearby seem to enjoy “Hello Goodbye” & “Here comes the sun”. The class is going really well by the time the PARTY arrives en masse. We are just finishing an exercise on prepositions using a koala soft toy, bought in Australia but repatriated to its birthplace, China, & an inflatable pink flamingo. “The grey koala is on the chair & in front of the pink flamingo”. I often make things up as I go. I'll bet you didn't know that “pink flamingo” (& “grey koala”) can be sung or chanted to the Hallelujah chorus. I don't know what the PARTY make of western methods but the kids enjoy it. They (the students that is) are ready to go after fifty minutes of the half hour lesson have passed......

…..Saturday & the train arrives from Nantong, only half an hour late. Wenyi & her friend, Xiao Nan (Little Nan) are ready to start sightseeing almost at once. After a quick look at Wenchang Ge, that structure in the middle of the city that we foreign teachers, in our ignorance, used to call “the Pagoda”, we find a small Moslem restaurant in a street I haven't explored before. It's very basic, cheap & cheerful might be the best description, but the little mezzanine floor, with a ceiling so low I can't even stand upright, has a certain charm. The food is hot, spicy & very dericious. Sorry, I'll probably substitute the “r” for the “l” in delicious for the rest of my life.....

…..Little Nan is a bit shy & very quiet. She says her English is not good but it's more an issue of confidence, as with many people here who can read & write to a quite advanced level but just don't get the practice with spoken English. Wenyi fills in the gaps, even though she has to make frequent reference to the electronic dictionary in her phone.....

…..they are very happy to wander round the shops on Dongguan Jie, the street with all the craft shops, buying things for friends & family. It gives me a chance to have another look at what's on offer. It's a pity that things like, for instance, wood carvings & pottery, are anathema to aircraft baggage allowances. Name one person who wouldn't be overjoyed to receive a life size porcelain effigy of a waving Mao Zedong. Seriously, there is some stunning work there & cheaper than in the shops at Shou Xi Hu (Slender West Lake) park.

…..being a public holiday the Ge Gardens, a historic residence accessible from Dongguan Jie, is crowded. Even the rockeries, at which the Chinese excel, are crammed with people, in, on & around them. In the newly growing affluence of China more people are tourists within their own country. Millions of digital cameras of all shapes & sizes are working flat out on days like this churning out billions of blurry, grainy images of people holding up hands palm forward, with middle & third fingers splayed in salute, in front of, next to or behind almost any fixed object.....

…..far from being left behind by the younger generation I find they are flagging by the end of what has been a very warm afternoon. The sun has made a valiant effort to shine through the haze & my neck has a distinct red tinge to it. We stop at the little bakery round the corner, which has a queue as always, & I buy some of those wafer thin sesame seed things whose name I can never remember. We go back to the school for Wenyi & Little Nan to go to their room to have a rest before venturing out for dinner.....

…..Shen Yue, one of my students' parents, recommended a place at the local Da Run Fa. After waiting a while to get a table in the crowded little chain restaurant it's not bad. It's so much easier with someone to decipher the menus & not having to take pot luck on what arrives at the table.....

…..Chinese students, as far as I can tell, are generally not all-night party animals. After a day walking around & with plans to visit Shou Xi Hu (Slender West Lake) on Sunday they're ready to go back by nine pm. We arrive back at the school &, after giving them a chance to recuperate & have a shower, I go to make sure they have enough blankets, food & drinks to find they are just about ready to retire for the night. That gives me time to catch up on processing the day's photos, answering emails etc. ....

…..they don't get up so early either. By the time they come to knock on my door I have been up for about an hour, sorted the rest of the photos, had a cuppa & phoned my son to wish him a happy birthday. They slept well & are happy with the rooms & the stack of things I left for them, milk, noodles, fruit, sunflower seeds, milk tea.....

…..it's not easy, especially in Australia, to imagine the sheer number of people that can visit a popular park on a public holiday weekend in China. I have photos of the crush at the ticket office & gates of Shou Xi Hu, & on some of the bridges in the park.....

…..a remarkable event; Dr. Wei actually has time to visit the park, long enough for a couple of photos to be taken as proof. Only for a couple of hours between sleep & the next hospital shift but I think the fresh (by local standards) air & sunshine should be just what the doctor ordered, so to speak. Little Nan seems happy to have another Chinese person to speak to. Everyone seems to get on well together after Wenyi & Little Nan get their tickets & we launch into the scrum.....

…..it's more of a shuffle than a walk until we get further into the park but, as expected, the start of spring & the blossoming of the trees is already spectacular. Having lived for so long in a country without four clearly defined seasons I can now see why people get so excited about spring in the northern temperate countries. In another couple of weeks I expect it will be in full bloom & worth another visit.....

…..out through the west gate of the park & there should be time to visit the Daming Temple later in the afternoon after trawling through the soft toy shops near the gate & seeing more fluffy facsimilies of the popular cartoon character Xǐ Yáng Yáng, (Pleasant Goat), than you could shake a stick at we head for the nearby Temple, less than a couple of kilometres up the road.....

…..they take one look at the nine storeys of the massive wooden pagoda, quickly calculate the number of steps & decide they are too tired. The thought that someone as old & decrepit as myself is ready to do the climb is insufficient to goad them into taking on the challenge so we just have a look around the other buildings in the complex. Memory cards in cameras are filling fast.....

…..Shen Yue has recommended another restaurant for dinner. By the time we have got off the bus at the wrong stop, (the local guide again), & walked to the plant & pet market it's starting to close down. The restaurant isn't far away & they are ready to sit down by this time. It's cheap enough & the food is very good but not as plentiful as we are used to by now. Wenyi doesn't hit it off with the fuwuyuan (waitress) who appears to be unconcerned whether or not we get service. Some of her local patois is not comprehensible to Wenyi, who is from Qiqihar in the far northern reaches of China, beyond Harbin. Although I can't really tell yet (it's all Chinese to me), I get the impression that the Yangzhou accent compared to Putonghua (standard Mandarin) is similar to the difference between a Glasgow Scottish dialect & BBC English.....

…..they're not up early on Monday either & the Tomb Sweeping holiday is almost over. When they are finally knock on my door we eat the eggs & baozi I collected earlier from the cafeteria & some bread then catch the number 32 bus to the zoo where I try to avoid catching too much sun & finding that the giant panda has either escaped or moved house. They don't seem too upset about that, only that the holiday is almost over & it's time to go & pick up their things from the guest room & go to the East bus station for the coach to Nantong.....


…..after a weekend of eating out (for about the same price as one restaurant meal might cost back in Australia) I am invited by the parent of one of my students, along with grandma, to a vegetarian restaurant at the Living Mall, a big shopping centre on the west side of Yangzhou. It's apparently run by Buddhists, from Korea I think. It looks a little expensive, the décor is simple but very elegant. I know some of you, like the carnivorous teachers I work with, probably consider “vegetarian restaurant” to be an oxymoron & that a meal without meat, sometimes virtually all meat, is not really fit for human consumption. I have to say this is the best meal of the weekend. I am fooled again by the mushroom that is almost indistinguishable from finely sliced beef, the sauces are just fantastic & that most bland of vegetarian offerings, doufu (tofu), is at this restaurant, with the sauce, is a taste & texture sensation. Surely there has been a mistake. It can't be ¥60, or less than Au$10 for three people. No, not each, the total bill.....

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