Welcome to China: Beware of androgynous children, long-drop toilets and bull-frogs

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Chapter 2

Welcome to China: Beware of androgynous children, long-drop toilets and bull-frogs.

Okay, so I’ve been in China week now and I’m adjusting to certain things but not others.

The first day, in a word, knackering. But, taking the time to sort a phone and an internet connection made me feel at home. I slept amazingly well despite the wooden slab that is masquerading as a bed in my room. (Since then I have purchased a comforter, I felt like they were too expensive at 30 quid but my ever-wise dad pointed out that over the year the daily cost is very little and for everyday I don’t buy one it is becoming more expensive! I actually managed to get it for 17 in the end.)

Saturday was my first real day here, it was fun. I met up with Lauren and Dave at the park near my house and we had a wander round until the heavens opened and we were forced to retreat to Lauren’s flat with 16p bottles of beer (500ml and 4%!,(MISSING) bargain.)

The supermarkets here sell live fish and eels and worst of all, crabs, it’s kind of like those posh French restaurants where you can pick your own lobster except they absolutely stink and there are thousands of fish or crabs in one tank, but still same idea so the customer can select their purchase. I must admit when I first saw these tanks in my local Carrefour I thought they were aquariums for people to purchase and have in their sitting room as a nice display. It retrospect this is stupid and Lauren soon pointed out my mistake! We decided to go and have a closer look; many of the fish were dead, floating upside down but some where a little bit too lively! We heard a splash and suddenly a fish hurls itself out of the tank, slaps off my leg and falls to the floor where it flops around miserably. Needless to say Lauren and I ran, screaming away from the fish to the safety of dry aisles. We got a few ‘crazy foreigners’ looks from our fellow shoppers but some of the staff saw and were creased. When we were calm we returned to the original task of beer and were delighted to find 6 bottles for 9.60yuan (96p). Champion.

Later we headed to a night-market for food. One of the stalls had different foods all laid out on a bench, tofu, meats, veg, noodles and you get a little basket off the lady and can fill it with goodies, then you give it back to the lady who gives it too the chefs who boil it in a little basket. This stall was kind of equivalent to a savoury tuck shop, someone of a dream to me not being much of a sweet tooth.

After beers and food we headed out for a pretty messy night, meaning Sunday was a bit of a right-off.

I had been expecting to start school on the Monday but I actually only work from Wed-Friday (16 classes in total, 6 Wed, 6 Thurs and 4 Fri mornings). Monday was Teacher’s Day (I’m sure you can all get the concept) and so the school closed at 12noon and all the teachers went for lunch. I had not realised how many teachers worked at Yu Cai Er Xiao (pronounced ‘you tai arr shouw’) but this restaurant was huge and filled with teachers. The food was pre-ordered meaning it was a good opportunity to try some new things. The Chinese people I have dined with have all been very polite, obviously a good thing, however this means that they want you to try the dish first, regardless of what it is… I ate some swan which looked like little battered worms and tasted worse than it looked and something which highly resembled a sea anemone (are they fish?) that I was informed was sweet and sour fish, it was delicious. There was a slight downfall though, it was presented on a plate next to a huge sweet and sour coated fish-head that was stood upright so that its mouth was pointing towards the ceiling.

In restaurants food does not come out all together, it comes out plate by plate so you can eat a little off one and then a little off the next etc. About half way through the meal a big bowl of chili-red soup was brought to the table.

‘What is that?’ I asked one of the teachers.

‘Bullfrog soup’ she replied, ‘it’s spicy, will you try it?’

‘Erm…….. I’m afraid it might be too spicy for me, maybe another time….’

Good excuse but they did not buy it! Luckily, they found it funny and I was not offered bull frog soup again. I would not have been so opposed to the idea if the creature in the soup did not so much resemble a bullfrog, but there was no mistaking what it was; its legs, arms (front-legs?) body and head were all present and all still attached. It looked very froggy.

After lunch I joined some of the teachers at karaoke. KTV is a big part of life here in China, I’m not sure why, maybe I should ask. This, as most of you probably know, would not be my usual choice of a mid-afternoon hangout however I felt I should go since I had been asked and an experience is an experience. I was served with milk tea and juice (instead of the copious amounts of alcohol I expect to be present in any social situation that involves karaoke) and was handed a microphone for numerous Justin Bieber/Beiber and Avril Lavinge songs. It is safe to say I did not know many of them (I’m not even sure I’ve spelt either of their names right). I firmly believed that Avril only had three songs, apparently this is not the case! I cannot say that I enjoyed mid-day sober karaoke, but I did survive.

On Tuesday I had to take classes to cover for the other English tacher at my school as he was in Hong Kong sorting his visa. The classes were okay but the kids are NOT the little angels I was told but still not too bad!

So, to assist with my lessons (as many have around 60 kids) I was given a microphone head set with a speaker that clips onto your clothes. I did not notice that in the box of the microphone there was a strap to fix the speaker on so you can wear it across you body like a little handbag. After my second lesson I asked my co-teacher Vivian where the toilets were, I hadn’t at this point considered what the toilets may be like, to hope for a western toilet is ambitious but I was expecting a door, apparently this was over-ambitious too… The toilets she gestured me towards were, in fact, small cubicles with no doors and were shared with the students, meaning as little privacy as possible! I decided to give it a go and headed to the end cubicle as I felt this would be the most private however this was the toilet where all the waste from the shared drains ran towards, meaning there is a big hole for it all to fall down and drain away. As I lifted my skirt and crouched my clipped on speaker escaped from my waistband and fell to its doom down the meter-deep drain with a bang. Oh dear. The worst part was I couldn’t even use the toilet, no right-minded teacher in the UK would pee in a room in full view of their 6year-old students and not expect to be arrested! So... good impressions on the first day. I acted like the incident had traumatized me and they were sympathetic but I had to strain my voice for a few days until I got a new microphone!

So, one of the things my Grade 2 classes have been learning is Boy and Girl. This topic is a bit boring but the book I teach from suggested a game that I have been using. Basically a student comes to the front of the room and faces the blackboard (oh sorry, where is my PCness, ‘chalkboard’) and another student shouts ‘hello’ or ‘good morning’ and the student at the front has to guess if it was a boy or a girl. Most of the time they get it right but its just to get them used to the language really. On Thursday I was playing this game when a little boy at the board answered ‘girl?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘that was a boy!’ to which Vivian (my co-teacher) exclaimed ‘That’s a little girl!’ Awkward. This little girl was a child that in the North-East we would refer to as ‘bairn’ when speaking to the child’s parents in fear of making the mistake that I did.

Tonight as I was leaving school I had a wander around the opposite way to where I live as there is a few market stalls, one selling quail-egg kebabs, amazing. Just past the market there is, what appeared to me, to be a children’s playground, but here’s the twist it was being used solely by adults as kind of like an outdoor, metal gym!

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Comments

[Faymies]

FISH!?!
JENNY!! this description of the fish was much too detailed for my liking. I thoroughly enjoyed the 'bairn' comment though, talk about awkward moment hahaha. These are cool these blogs, almost like a book. I think Miss Wallbank would really enjoy reading them. Sounds like your having a mint time, cant wait till i win the lottery so i can come over for a while xxxxx