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Published: September 9th 2008
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My room
Complete with Cezanne wall...a little bit of Southern France in China. Thanks Kiki. I’m here! I met my headmaster and contact teacher at a contract signing ceremony in the hotel this morning and then moved straight to my school. There’s a Walmart right across the street, and I don’t even feel bad shopping at it. The area is really nice: there’s a park, plenty of restaurants and convenience stores, a China Construction Bank (Bank of America, I love you), and it’s mostly quiet and green. Shenzhen’s most expensive apartment building is a block away—30,000 to 40,000 yuan per square meter!
My apartment is awesome—although it was pretty dirty and still needs some work, it’s pretty big with nice furniture, a huge tv and dvd player, a separate kitchen and bathroom, a king size bed, a desk, two bedside tables, two easy chairs, a couch, and a coffee table! My apartment in college never managed to get a coffee table! I have more storage space and shelves than I’ve ever had in my life. I was expecting freshman year dorm room, so I was pleasantly surprised with the working room phone (you can call me in my room 00186075583503616 if you’d like!), microwave, hot plate, wok, and random meat cleaver in the kitchen. The
Nice diggs, huh?
My bed is a king size...I've never slept in a bed this big in my life. Four of me could fit in it. entertainment stand blows my mind.
My school is only three years old. It has a track and soccer field, and my classes will only have 40 students in them instead of 60. I only have to teach 10 classes a week, for 45 minutes, meaning I’ll only be working about 10 hours a week with prep time and the English corner thing I’m supposed to be helping with. My contact teacher is really nice, and the head master was really accommodating and helpful.
For my first dinner, the other English teachers, my contact teacher, and headmaster all went out to a Cantonese restaurant. We were served octopus, squid, quasi-raw goat, roast duck, various veggies, bbq pork buns, buns with peanut butter and coconut in them, and at least 15 other dishes, some delicious and others slightly nauseating. The best part of the meal, my friends, was a Chinese custom I had yet to experience—the endless toasting of a dinner party. The head master bought a bottle of Chinese red wine and a bottle of special baijiu, or rice wine, called maotai jiu, which is basically Chinese vodka. Ian, the other foreign teacher at the school with me, the
headmaster, and the other male teacher were the only ones drinking the baijiu other than me—I’m not sure if women don’t usually drink it or if it’s expensive and we were the guests of honor. The baijiu was served in little tiny cups, the size of about one fourth of a shot glass. It smelled like rubbing alcohol. As the headmaster made the first toast to welcome us to his school, he explained that baijiu was one of the world’s “three most famous liquors, along with Irish whiskey and French cognac.” I had no idea. What followed was an hour an a half of toasts for us, the new Chinese English teachers, the headmaster’s hospitality, another welcome, toasts hoping we’d be friends, etc etc. Sometimes we’d just take a sip, other times we’d be challenged—they’d say ganbei, which is literally bottoms up. Then we’d have to finish our glass of wine or tiny shot glass of baijiu. Normally, ganbei seems to just mean cheers, but because we’re English teachers they encouraged us to act on the literal meaning. Little Ian was red faced and wasted in about 20 minutes.
Ian was born in Hong Kong and adopted by American
parents. He has to explain this every time someone doesn’t understand “why he has an Asian face but can’t speak Chinese.” The English teachers told him there’d be a lot more pressure on him to learn because people would think he was crazy or playing a practice joke. They told him to pretend to be Japanese or Korean. I’m really lucky, especially because the English teachers are all young and want to practice their English, and I have no where near that amount of pressure on me. Hopefully it will help the poor dude learn faster. Kiki’s school treated their Asian teacher poorly last year and requested a “white American” foreign teacher this year. Hello racism 2008 Asian style—that was a doozy.
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julia Haverty
non-member comment
haha your toasting story killed me. my dad always told me stories about the ridiculous amounts of drinking you do there and how much pressure there is to keep up. that liquor you're drinking sounds like maotai, which might be the most vile thing ever. my dad brought a bottle back and i was never brave enough to even try it. i can't wait, you're going to have so many good conversations with my dad and brother...if you ever actually meet them. how long are you staying for?