West Lake in Hangzhou is “the” original lake, there are many others in China but this is the real one. There are excellent English/Chinese maps of the lake and its surroundings to be bought for 5Yuan, although not quite to scale for a few of the sights, it does give you an excellent idea of what to see. Or you could just wander and find things along the way. It is 15kms along the whole perimeter of the lake, and we think about 10 kms if you use the short cut of the causeway. There are excellent “walking streets” along the [View Full Entry]

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West Lake Youth Hostel is on Nanshan Road and right beside the lake, just out of the main city area. It’s a fantastic little place, with such a nice ambience, friendly helpful staff who speak some English and within easy distance of restaurants, temples, museums, bus and of course the lake and the magnificent walk and paths and gardens. We booked a private room, with its own shower and toilet with towels and linen supplied; just bring your toilet paper. Tea and coffee facilities are provided in each room, with plasma TV and reverse cycle air con, a neat little home [View Full Entry]

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On Wednesday afternoon Karl and I and half of Shanghai decided to head off for New Years Eve. We left university with a crowd of students, all of us at the bus stop trying to get on buses already stuffed to the gunwales, trying to hail any cab, amazing. Lucky us managed to get a cab and we sped off to Century Ave Metro stop. This is a great metro station that has 3 lines of metro, is close to us, and is not the huge trek once you get underground, that is involved in some of the bigger metro stations. [View Full Entry]

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On Tuesday, a week ago, we headed off in the afternoon to what is referred to in the guidebooks as “Old Town”. This was Karl’s last day in Shanghai and we had not managed to fit this “must see” sight in the itinerary as yet. Old Town or Nan Shi as the locals refer to this area is in Puxi, so we headed off on the 993 to the ferry terminal and the end of the bus line. You take the left hand ferry of the 2 and you line up with the bikes and bicycles and rush on; it’s sort [View Full Entry]

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The Chinese language is rich and full with descriptive terms and phrases. When they translate into English they try to move this same type of language across and the use of superlatives and platitudes abound. Here are some excellent examples of cross cultural confusion, mistranslation and general confusion [View Full Entry]

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Culture, culture and more culture was the theme of the day. We knew we were in for rain on Sunday we so decided to plan our day around the art galleries and museums in People’s Square in Puxi. And yes we woke up to fine misty rain. Having got out of bed late, we made it into this area around 12-30pm after the usual bus and metro 6 and metro2 travel, so lunch was the first priority. The food court under the Raffles shopping town in the People’s square areas is quite OK for a quick, hot meal, with choices of [View Full Entry]

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Did not have enough time to load pictures for the last blog so here they are [View Full Entry]

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This blog is as much for me to remember what I have been doing as anyone that reads it, hence my need to be quite chronological at times. Because we were expecting rain on Sunday we decided to venture into the French Concession in the Puxi area on Saturday. The locals don’t call it this, only the westerners, and apparently very few French ever lived here. This area is an old established part of Shanghai that housed the elite from many nations prior to the Second World War and the invasion of the Japanese into China in 1937. The architecture in [View Full Entry]

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Friday is my day off so Boxing Day we set off for a day of sight seeing and playing tourists, and visiting the many toilets around Shanghai to service Karl’s bladder which does not like cold weather. First stop was the Municipal Bureau where I had to hand over 400Yuan, and get something done with my visa to get my Foreign Experts Certificate, which allows me to stay and work in China. We took a taxi; the driver took us via one of the ring roads, which have been built in Shanghai to allow the traffic to move freely. He managed [View Full Entry]

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Its business as usual on Christmas Day in China, so our classes went ahead as per normal. SSPU did allow us to rearrange and make up classes so we could have the afternoon off, but I still had 2 x 80 minutes classes to teach on Christmas morning. Kim one of the other ESL teachers and I decided to combine classes and we organized a big room plus enlisted the aide of our 2 partners, Karl and Roly, as assistants for the morning. ESL in China needs to focus on speaking and listening. On the whole the students reading and writing [View Full Entry]

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