Quaa quaa Lordy Joe

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.....Sunday, 25th of April, the day of the Yangzhou half marathon. A number of foreign teachers have enlisted & hundreds of students & others so it's up before six am to get on one of the many buses lined up in the school grounds & into the crowded centre of Yangzhou to prepare for the race. I am there to take some photos, (see link above). There are a lot of pictures there as I left them all posted for the participants to go through. I find a few interesting characters in the crowd.....

…..having been interested in the history of Nanjing & not finding a copy of the DVD with at least English subtitles, I manage to borrow a copy of the film about John Rabe, a German expatriate working for Siemens in the 1930's. He & a group of foreigners living in Nanjing helped to create a protected zone in the city when the Japanese invaded & saved many Chinese from the massacre. It is interesting to see what the Chinese subtitle writers make of the English. In the movie the following wartime ditty, sung to the tune of Colonel Bogey, is sung in English, which makes the translation all the more amusing;

Hitler has only got one ball,
Göring has two but very small,
Himmler is somewhat sim'lar,
But poor old Goebbels has no balls at all.

Translated in the subtitles as
“Hitler, is a very timid person,
Goering, is also a very timid person......etc”.....

…..This week, had I been teaching at an Australian school, I would have been in court, probably on 2 counts.....
…..1. Lisa, one of the best students in class 10 & a really sweet girl, catches me walking to class after lunch &, while chatting with me, holds my hand as we walk to the classroom. Guilty.....
…..2. Steven & Ted, having been told in English & Chinese that any more talking in class would result in a trip to the teacher's office are busy throwing erasers at each other as I turn to the board. “Gen wo, qu bang gong shi” (“With me, to office” - pidgin Chinese is sufficient). Steven sits bolt upright at his desk as though he could never do any wrong. I repeat the request. Ted hangs back. Steven refuses so I pick him up by the back of his jacket & drag him, legs trailing, through the classroom, along the corridor & throw him through the office door for his head teacher to deal with. Ted thinks better of being the next & so follows on behind. Have I gone too far? Guilty.....

…..when I return to the class they are, for this class, remarkably well behaved. I relax & we have a good lesson after that.....

…..when I return to the office after class, Pan Laoshi, the maths teacher, drags Ted to my desk & says something to him in Chinese. I think he's asking him to apologise to me for being a pain in the neck. When the words are not forthcoming quickly enough he boots him in the backside a few times to release a, “Sorry Teacher”. It's then I wonder if I am too soft.....

…..we're doing dinosaurs this week. Mostly to give them some practice with combinations of vocabulary, “long tail, short tail”, “long neck, short neck”, “eats meat, eats plants”, etc. my main transgression this week is giving the students a worksheet that is a little too hard for them to follow. The bright ones pick it up &, in a class where they will pay attention & listen, or even carry on with their work quietly enough for me to explain it to the others, it's not so bad but some of the slower students are struggling so I have a lesson to learn too, in addition to learning how to draw a passable triceratops on the board in less than forty five seconds.....

.....it's the Labour Day holiday this weekend, Monday off. Some have taken the opportunity to go on a trip. Patrick to Xi'an, the ancient capital of China & home to the Terracotta Warriors. Cathy, counting the days until she finishes her four year sojourn in China & goes back to her old job as a dentist's receptionist in Winnipeg, is off to Zibo to say goodbye to friends at her first posting in China. Kelly & Liz are frantically trying to cram in as much as possible as they are not aiming to return next year. They are going to Qingdao, a seaside city only about 400km north of Yangzhou. I think they are hoping the sea air will be good for them as they have both been fighting off bugs of various sorts for weeks now.....

…..for those left in Yangzhou it's a glorious, sunny weekend, a bit too hot if anything with the temperature climbing to around 30C every day. I especially notice it as I am cycling around the city from one end to the other....

…..on Saturday I end up going with one of the parents to.....no, you probably won't believe this, an Amway meeting. Partly because she had a friend there who is looking for an English tutor. I recommend Peter but he is unable to go today so I agree to go along, to sound out his potential student but also to see the Chinese take on what, in Australia, is a deplorably sly & sleazy form of marketing. I have talked to people for a long time before they have suddenly turned the conversation to a “business opportunity” & asked vague rhetorical questions about possible six figure incomes before finally, almost by accident, mentioning the word “Amway”.....

…..everyone is very friendly but maybe I'm not there long enough for the hard sell. I am quite happy to do my best to converse with a very happy crowd of people, parents with children, tour guides, doctors & others who are preparing & tasting food. What else would I expect in China?.....

…..I am taught a phrase in “Yangzhouhua”, the local accent which Li Wenyi found impenetrable when visiting from Nantong a few weeks ago. It apparently means “very good” & approximates to “quaa quaa Lordy Joe”. The local people crack up laughing if you say it, a little like a Chinese person in Yorkshire with only a basic command of English, asking someone to, “Put wood in't hole” instead of “Shut the door”.....

…..I get a free dinner & watch part of the opening ceremony for the Shanghai Expo. on TV. President Hu Jintao, who, by way of a very tenuous connection, is from Jiangyan, near Taizhou, Miss Piggy's home town about a hour by train east of Yangzhou, welcomes world leaders in a tedious ceremony of handshaking that lasts far too long. The most remarkable thing, especially after living in this generally very slim country for eight months, is the sheer size of some of the presidents, prime ministers & their partners. Some could barely walk across the stage to President Hu & looked incredibly unstatesmanlike for the photos.....

…..the fireworks are, of course, fantastic, the use of the Pearl Tower in the Pudong area as a launching pad for a particularly brilliant part of the display very inspired. We have tickets & are aiming to go in two weeks.....

Great photo, audio or video opportunities missed this week:

…..the summer fashions, both appalling & absolutely stunning, visible all around Yangzhou now that summer appears to be on its way, not to mention several dubious or ineptly translated messages on t-shirts.....

…..Tianyi's dad, Qiao Ming, with his apron on, cooking lunch today, Sunday. Grandma is visiting family in the country. He's a really good cook. I am impressed & tell him so.....

…..the look on my face as I discover the intermittent loud squeak on a nearby bike on the New Bridge is actually a goose in a sack tied to the side of the bike.....

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