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Published: June 22nd 2009
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Went out for a nice meal this evening for our once a week date night 😊, and although at 6:00pm, it was a balmy 94 degrees here in DanYang, the #1 bus offered us a nice breeze and for 1 yuan apiece, you just can't beat the scenery, the smells, the immersion deep into everyday life here in central China.
We love taking the bus these days basically because a cab
gouges us for 6 yuan (about .60) but the bus takes us to the same place, albeit with a little xtra diesel fuel for flavor, and costs only 1 yuan (about .10) 😱 We could always take the three-wheeled rickshaw for 5 yuan (.50) but we just hate seeing these middle-to-graveyard-old men (none of younger than 60 years old) sweating and grunting to pedal our lazy
American butts down to a restaurant where we will spend more than our Lance Armstrong wannabe makes in a month. No kidding, it's just shameful, so we take the bus and try to look friendly.
On the way back we encounter the usual congestion of cars causing a major traffic jam out in front of the security gate for my school, where
we live. But tonight things are different. We notice as we walk up to the gate and see that not only is it closed but there is a gauntlet of police yelling, pushing, and taking charge of what at first does not seem like an unruly crowd of...parents(!). As we stare in disbelief from the safe outer ring of the raucousness, one of Jennifer's hosts, Cynthia, just happens to be bringing fresh clothes to her husband who works at my school, #1 High School in DanYang. We have a friend so it looks like we can get through and go home this evening, and as we get closer we realize this is not a friendly mob of appreciative parents admiring our school...
Cynthia explains that the rambunctious crowd consists of angry and disappointed parents - parents whose children did not make it over the academic high-bar that my school requires and they, their kid, is not being allowed to attend this most prestigious high school to get their high school education this year. And let me tell you, these parents are upset. Some are crying, most are pushing, screaming, yelling, waving fingers and trying their best to squeeze through
the thin opening in the ten foot high, steel accordion gate, not to mention the six or seven police officers stopping anybody and everybody and doing their fair share of yelling and intimidating and suddenly we are in the middle of a Rolling Stones concert being pushed from behind up to the stage - it is madness.
Cynthia leads us through the outer ring of the pack but I get separated from Jennifer as she wrangles her way up to the guard, and upon seeing her white, foreign face, pushes the angry mob to the side and in a flash she is through. I, on the other hand, having downed my share of a bottle of nice Great Wall red wine at dinner, do not feel the need to push or persuade anybody that I should be let through the gauntlet, I am, after all, a seasoned veteran here at the school and I can see in my mind's eye on of my favorite sayings on a T-shirt flash in front of my eyes. "I'm kind of a big deal around here." Instantly I get jostled and shoved and pushed and prodded in seven different regions and now it's not so funny anymore. Come on people, we live here, I hear myself muttering. Nope. Not moving. Hmmmmm.
I raise my white face to the sky and catch the eyes of my regular guard at the gate. We say hello every morning, good evening every evening, and he laughs because I never stop and get off my bike when I come through the gate like I'm supposed to. He thinks I'm stupid and I let him. The guard sees my bald, sunburned head and proceeds to part the black-haired sea like Moses and I did have to sharpen my elbows as I finagled my way through the steel gate and felt like a quail's egg as I popped out on the other side, safe and sound, a bit disoriented.
Cynthia exclaimed that this happens every year at the same month, same day, same time - it's summer time at our high school and the new semester of kids are being indoctrinated into our elite education system.
But, this reminds me to mention that we have successfully negotiated our summer plans for the two months we have off this year here in China. We don't get paid for summer vacation but my high school provides a ten day Summer Camp to new students as well as other students from around the area. I could not get exact numbers but the school charges about 1,500 - 2,000 yuan (about $200 which is a lot of money here) per student for the Summer Camp. They asked us if we wanted to teach of course but they only offered us the same amount we would normally get for teaching the same amount of hours. We didn't feel like putting that much work into it so we asked them for more. It took about a week but we met with them tonight and we have come to a fair amount for us to teach so we were celebrating tonight because not only do we get to teach Summer Camp, we also get to work with three other foreign teachers from Canada who will be teaching with us.
So, this is our last week of teaching our kids and Jennifer and I are saying goodbye to our students of six months in our own way. She is playing music, and going around and talking to each of her kids as much as possible. I am showing a slide show of objects I took a picture of so close they look abstract, totally unrecognizable, and getting them to guess what they are. I'm also showing a slide show of all the pictures I took of them, and their classmates, over the six months I have been their oral English teacher. Jenn says they love her class and my students are loving my class too. Some seem as sad to be moving on as I do for staying behind and teaching the new round of students next semester. I am taking a class picture of each of my classes, all 16 of them, with each of the 55 - 60 kids and me, and then sending them all a copy if they send me an email...it's the least I can do.
At the end of this week we are heading out into central China for about 10 days. We are trekking to a large city, Hangzhou, and then to a city I can't pronounce, but Jenny says it is going to be fantastic and beaches are on the agenda. Sweet. We will come back refreshed and then do the Summer Camp and then we are off for the next six weeks. We are planning to travel across central China to Chengdu, Chongqing, and then take the three day train to Tibet (Lhasa) and we may even be able to get to the base camp of Mount Everest! Now this is why we moved to China!
At home, safe and sound, I'm playing Alice Cooper on iTunes, Jenny is reading a book on the bed, and we are headed out to a our little patio to watch the stars, and fireworks show (every night!), and talk about how much we will miss our students, how excited we are about what we can do during Summer Camp, and just what will Lhasa look like after we have been on a train for three days? Summer time could not be more exciting...
Cheers!
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GypsyKing
Sean Ward
This is Alice...
Yea. Cooper! nice post dude, thanks for the props about my song...had me some kick-ass summers, bro, hope you did too. Billion Dollar Babies was a good one too but nobody bought that album...take it easy, have fun in China. Peace out, Love, Alice.