Cake & chopsticks

---

.....The Photobucket website gives statistics on the photos & videos posted.It appears that the videos are a great success, class 3/8's rendition of "Always look on the bright side of life" being the most popular. This week, after the 10th birthday party of one of my students I have uploaded a short instructional video in which Teacher Su (Suzy) demonstrates how to tackle birthday cake with chopsticks, plus a look around the venue, which, from previous experience, is fairly standard for a 10th birthday among the emerging middle class.....

….. ….my bike is filthy, I must clean it....hold on, I wrote this two weeks ago & still haven't done anything about it......

…..Teacher Liu, the head teacher of the infamous class 3/9, has taken to making tang (soup) in the teachers' office in a slow cooker near her desk. Well, it's not really a soup as such, even though that's what they call it. Not really stewed fruit either, though there is a small, very sweet, round fruit in it. There's also a fungus called yin'er or silver ear, because of its resemblance to an ear lobe. Before I get a close look at the ingredients I cause some hilarity by mistaking the word yin'er (silver ear) for ying'er (a baby). At least they know now that this foreign barbarian doesn't eat his own young.....

…..Friday afternoon in my new spot in the teacher's office having just finished the lesson planning for next week Suzy informs me that I have been invited to my student Wang Jia Wei's (Larry's) tenth birthday. It's now three thirty & we are to meet at the office at five. Ah well, I'll go for a haircut tomorrow.....

…..two parents collect us from the school. I get into a car with Xie Ya Nan, class 3/8 head teacher. The woman driving the car has a baby seat IN THE FRONT. I tell them that's not allowed in Australia. They seem mildly surprised. The mother then hands the baby to Xie Ya Nan so that we can amuse him, unrestrained, in the back. We drive mostly in second gear, staying on the road even though not always in a particular lane, & eventually arrive in one piece.....

…..party, pretty standard format by now, large restaurant with round tables for a dozen people, endless dishes arriving. What did I try this time? Pigeon (“Do you eat this in Australia?”), chicken's stomach, (dark meat but a bit chewy), something that looked like a small dark purple fruit but is made from something else that appears to be like a sticky, sweetened dough. Dian xing. I can't get much more detail but they are very dericious. Probably three or four different fish dishes & so on, & so on. As mentioned above I posted a few, very short, video clips.....

…..Teacher Xia has the baby & between us we manage to keep him amused most of the way back to the school. Eventually he wants his mum. She pulls over to the side of the road about one & a half kilometres from the school. “Ni keyi kai che ma?” (“Can you drive a car?”). Well, yes I can but I don't have a passport (I don't know the word for licence). They get my meaning but don't seem concerned. Mum gets in the back to tend to the baby while I get in the front, remembering the driver's seat is on the left, work out the gears & make careful progress across the New Bridge. The traffic isn't heavy on this side of Yangzhou by nine pm but it's still necessary to look out for cyclists & motorcyclists without lights & cars undecided about which lane they should be in.....

…..two points about driving in China. I have seen some of the most appalling driving here, some of it from white-knuckle trips in the passenger seats of cars. Lane discipline is an oxymoron, looking before pulling out onto a busy road is optional, giving way to pedestrians on a crossing unheard of, cutting people off to get into a gap a fun pastime, getting across a busy bike lane to get onto the road (without looking) is an enforced game of chicken for the cyclists & the horn is a substitute for worry beads to keep at least one hand busy most of the time. However, amongst all this chaos there is no road rage, in fact not even a raising of blood pressure. People give way, move across or slow down without any thought to displaying the rude finger, yelling verbal abuse or exhibiting even worse driving in order to cut you off before reaching for the baseball bat under their seat.....

…..it's time for school excursions next week. Grade 3 should be going to Nanjing & Kelly & I will be going along for the ride. In a city of seven, eight or nine million, (depending on what population statistics you read) it shouldn't be a difficult task to lose some of our more problematic students .....

…..Kelly & I are preparing to go to dinner next Monday & are inviting all our grade 3 teachers along. It's payback time for all the generosity we have received from the teachers & many other people since arriving in China. Their first reaction was to offer to pay a share but this time we will foot the bill. Note to self; call Roger, the guitarist & English teacher from Kelly's office, to help organise the booking at the restaurant. A native Chinese speaker will be invaluable.....

….now that the weather is generally improving I go for my second haircut in China. I visit the same hairdresser as I did for my last trim. One of the assistants washes my hair. Then the proprieter cuts it but also trims my beard. He does a fantastic, neat job. With the beard as well I'm expecting the price to increase from the previous ¥25. It does. ¥30 this time, or a shade under Au$5.....

…..there are casualties in the race for a better standard of living, which starts with parents driving their children, or rather, in most cases, child, to the best possible academic results. The one child policy means that family ambition is loaded firmly on one set of young shoulders & there's no let up for more than twenty years. I met a family recently whose daughter, in her late teens, cracked under the pressure & had what in my day would have been called a nervous breakdown. She sat looking blankly at the wall. After talking to her it was obvious she had learned some English & it was only after I'd finished a conversation in a messy mixture of Chinese & English that I found out her mother was delighted as she hadn't spoken to anybody up to that point. I went back & took her a little pocket book about Australia. She had apparently been asking for the English Teacher. She started marking words in the book & asking me what words meant. If she is getting better it will be a slow process though.....

---