Advertisement
Published: August 26th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Hefei City area
This is a view from our hotel overlooking the city moat, back towards town centre. What a blessing it is to be back in Yancheng. We didn’t realize how quiet and peaceful this town is, until you spend time in the Province Capitals. We were in Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province for just on five weeks, then just under a week in Nanjing, our province capital. The pace of city life is all the same. There is constant traffic noise, millions of scooters, rows of buses, volumes of cars and mixed in amongst all of this, a load of pedestrians.
If you have not been staying in China for a longer period than a holiday, you probably haven’t noticed how they move about. There is little consideration for others, any form of road courtesy or manners is almost non-existent, and there is a continual push, shove and jostle of daily movements. If we stepped aside before alighting a bus to allow an older person to get on, then more than likely, several younger Chinese would push in front of all of us. Occasionally they would stand to allow an elderly person to sit, but mostly they didn’t want to see, so just looked out the window, so they didn’t have to get up.
Lord Bao
This is a wall carving of Lord Bao, larger than life. Everything is “about me, right now”. Cars, buses, trucks, trikes, bikes and pedestrians, all push in front, rather than slow a little to go behind. It is a feeling that it is against their culture to let someone else go first. We are often complimented on our manners, just because we may hold a lift door, or allow someone else to go into a room first - basic stuff, but totally out of the ordinary for the Chinese. Even when getting off a bus in a one-way street, when the bus stops about 500mm out from the curb, more often than not one or more scooter or bicycle riders go between the bus and the curb, knowing that passengers are getting on and off at that point, rather than go on the outside of the bus, or heaven forbid, they might have to stop for one minute for a clear road before proceeding. In the bigger cities, this type of behaviour is worst.
What did we do in Hefei for five weeks? Well, we spent the first couple of days acting as a tourist to find our way around, and orienteering ourselves between our temporary apartment and the school
Bao Gong's Memorial Temple
Boa Gong, commonly known as Lord Bao. This is the temple adjacent to the Pagoda. in which we were to teach. During this period we did visit Lord Bao’s Memorial Temple and Pagoda, as it was just down the road from our hotel. Lord Bao is a local ancient hero to the Hefei people as he was known as a corruption-free official in the Northern Song Dynasty (960 - 1279 AD). Bao Gong is recorded as one of the four forthright and honest ministers in Chinese history - the other three were Ji An of the Han Dynasty, Wei Zheng of the Tang Dynasty, and Hai Rui of the Ming Dynasty. One would hope that China had more than only four honest public officials in their long history. The pagoda was quite well detailed in Bao’s life and achievements and worth visiting.
After our first couple of days off, we started work at the New Dynamic Institute (NDI) which is a private business teaching English. NDI has a large number of school establishments scattered around China. As this was a private organization, we expected the teaching curriculum would be different to what we had been doing at our government college. How right we were. Firstly, we got to teach small classes. All the students,
Lord Bao
Inside this Pagoda was quite well inscribed telling Bao's life story. which ranged in age from 12 to 50, from school students to business people, were graded in accordance with their English abilities. They were paying students, so not only wanted to be there to learn, but were eager to learn too. The exception of course was the Summer School students, as some of these were told to go and improve their English by their parents - they were weekday, daytime only students, whereas the others attended when they could, and the school held classes until 9 pm on weekdays and 6 pm on weekends.
Our weekend was Tuesday and Wednesday, but that didn’t matter to us, as we still had some time to explore Hefei. Mostly we caught up on sleep during our days off, but we did go to the Anhui Provincial Museum twice - also well worth a look. We also had an outing to the Botanic Gardens beside their lake, for a day of cricket and fun with the Summer kids. At the gardens, we found these musical rocks - for RMB1, you hire a rubber mallet and dong the rocks in different places to obtain a different sound - fascinating, eh.
The museum filled
Anhui Mountains
This is a pictorial of Anhui Province, showing the significant mountians of this region. in some blanks for us in relation to China’s history, which was good, as different Dynasties had their capital in this region. We were surprised when we went into their Dinosaur Exhibit though. We found that they had uncovered some bones and fossils of a different elephant type mammal to any we had seen before. This elephant wasn’t very big, but under the trunk, the mouth was quite wide and there were two large spoon-like teeth, which they used to feed. They also had the skeleton of this huge elephant, which I think was similar in size to the old mammoth, but it wasn’t wooly.
They also found a human type skull, which was neither Peking Man nor Java Man, but had similarities to both, which puts him mid-way between the two. Anyone into paleontology, would find this absolutely fascinating, but I don’t know how widely known this find is. Anyway, we found it interesting.
The sad part in relation to this museum, was that none of the Chinese we spoke to about the museum had visited it, nor did they know of fossil and bone finds. I guess we are all a bit like that, we visit
Typical ceiling and mural
Most of the ceilings were well decorated in traditional colours and designs, and each wall had a different magnificent mural, depicting the various stories. someone else’s exhibits and look at their history, but we don’t check out our own back yard first.
Anyway, teaching at NDI was tiring in a way, but interesting, as we quickly built a rapport with the students, who were very exited to learn from us. Working in small groups, sometimes with a one-on-one situation, gave students the ability to get some personal coaching to help them improve their English. We didn’t do too badly as representatives of our country, as there are a lot more Chinese now who think Aussies are great people and would now like to visit our wonderful country some time in the future.
Keith and Vivian, whose teaching place we took, returned on-time, a bit travel weary, but we then headed off to Nanjing to explore the Purple Mountain area.
On the Monday, (18 Aug) was Betty-Anne’s birthday, and we had arranged to have a couple of days of luxury in the city Sofitel. Graeme had pre-arranged with one of the hotel Managers, who we had known from a previous stay, to deliver a birthday cake to our table as a surprise for Betty-Anne. We had just finished a sumptuous (expensive) buffet
NDI School
The school was the 18th floor of an inner city office building. dinner, when the cake was delivered. After shedding a few tears because she couldn’t share her birthday cake with her grandchildren, Betty-Anne headed off around the restaurant to find some children with whom to share her cake. That worked, and a few Chinese ladies at an adjoining table ate the balance, so the cake and good cheer was spread around for another year.
The Ming Mausoleum and the Linggu Temple were worth a visit, and we had a delicious vegetarian lunch, with a cold beer, at the Buddhist café. The ride up the cablecar to the peak was disappointing, as the air quality left a lot to be desired and it was impossible to see to the bottom of the mountain. The view wasn’t to be seen, but it was a long cablecar ride and there was a cool breeze towards the top.
In between relaxing in the air-conditioning and watching the Olympics (Chinese channels, of course and in itself, was an interesting experience) we did a bit of shopping and wandering the city centre. Overall, we liked Nanjing, despite the hustle and bustle of the city, and visitng the mountain area in Autumn would be a magic
NDI Foreign Teachers
There were three Aussies, one Camaroon and one Phillipines teacher. time, with the variety in leaf colour from their deciduous trees.
Well, we are back in Yancheng and trying to find out what we are teaching next term. Today is Tuesday and we start again next Monday. The English staff tell us that the school has decided to introduce a curriculum book for us to follow for the next term, but they haven’t got it yet. They have a meeting on Saturday and we will find out on Sunday our Programme - this is China and we don’t do forward planning over here! Big frustration with the country, but only for westerners - the Chinese just accept what they are told and when they are told - forward planning is unheard of, at least in the lower community levels.
We can’t see anything more exciting happening in our lives for the next couple of months, so we will keep in touch and keep you informed if and when something happens - we are certain that it will, too.
Best wishes to all,
Graeme & Betty-Anne
Advertisement
Tot: 0.079s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 9; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0438s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
The Ashworths
Graeme & Betty-Anne
Working in Hefei
Sorry about the delay in responding, but we didn't think to check for comments. No, we are not working in Hefei at present,as we only temped for 5 weeks. We liked Hefei, but the roads were all under construction at the time we were there, and they were quite messy. The school is moving to nearer the railway station, north of the city, and that should make transport easier to and from school. The apartment we stayed in was on the south side, adjacent to the Carrafour, so there were heaps of cheap eateries. Contact Keith or vivian at NDI as they will be able to give you the "goss". good luck and enjoy your time in China.