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Published: November 1st 2010
So it's hard to believe that I've been in China now almost 2 months, up to now I have talked relatively little about China it’s hard to know where to start really, I have so much to say as always!! This blog therefore will be considerable longer than the others as I will try and include as much detail about living in China as I can. All of you that know me well (actually you don’t even have to know me that well) know I love to talk so this blog may go on a bit, but feel free to take a break, have a cup of tea or go to the shop in between reading this. Or you can completely abandon reading it all together I won’t be offended it’ll just be similar to when I’m talking, many people can zone out/stop listening after a while as I’m just rambling on, the same probably will be true of this blog. I’m more than used to this and am perfectly ok with it as I just love to talk so whether people are actively listening or not doesn’t really bother me!! I am on one of my days off so I
School gates...
...where Chinese kids learn American english!have no time limit and therefore can ramble on for as long as I want, as this first paragraph just proved 😊
First I’ll begin by talking about my job. I am working in a very good school that is very well run and the managers/owners; Eddie a crazy American and his Chinese wife Sally are great. I have two full days of classes Saturday and Sunday 13hours of teaching in total, it is a pretty full on schedule at the weekends. Throughout the week I have a few classes, some in a kindergarden and some in a public school that work with Aston (the American company with which I am based). In total I teach for 17 and 1/2hrs a week excluding lesson planning and our weekly workshops. I have every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday off, which is great to go exploring nearby cities!! The kids for the most part are great and I'm having lots of fun with them but just like at school anywhere there's 1 or 2 that drive me crazy, so intelligent but so lazy, then some of the littler kids are just on another planet daydreaming or jumping off their seat, some are
as young as 3years old. With the younger classes parents sit in the classroom so these classes need to be extra exciting and stimulating which can sometimes be hard work. They love to complain if "little Johnny" isn't paying attention or won't listen.... erm he's your child and you are in the class with him aah..... the Chinese are a league of their own when it comes to complaining.... but all in all I really am enjoying it!!! . In class we always work with a Chinese teacher so that is good, didn't know that was going to happen but it definitely helps a lot. Only issues we have is my Irish accent which often is very funny to them how I pronounce different words but we are teaching the kids both ways, usually the American way which they have learnt and my Irish/Donegal way, but it definitely keeps things interesting!! Who knew there were so many different pronunciations of some words, sometimes the kids don’t even recognize a word when I say it my way. Also not surprisingly I have to slow down my speech a lot which is definitely a challenge but I’m getting the hang of it!
In my school there are two other foreign teachers from America I live with one of them Demond and so far we are getting on fine, we even go travelling together on our days off. We are waiting on Adam from England to come join us as our fourth foreign teacher he has been trying to get here since September but there is so much good damn red tape to get through in China things are being really delayed. I was a special case and the school sorted my details out in a “special way” as I was travelling before I came it would have been very difficult to process me in the same way. But don’t worry the immigration men aren’t after me, I am working and living legally in this country and I’ll not be deported home anytime soon!
One other thing about my job is that it offers us free Chinese lessons 4 hours a week, they have only started recently but they will definitely help. So far out here I have been depending on my acting skills to demonstrate what I want however I must say that this is more than manageable in most
situations 😊 When going to eat we just make sure we can see the food to point at what we want or get menus with pictures but slowly we are getting better. I’ll never be able to read the menu; learning to speak it is a whole different story from learning to read it because of the Chinese script. But if you know the names of different foods you like it works out ok as most restaurants have similar dishes. I have to say here however that my flatmate Demond is way better at speaking Chinese than me he studies in his free time, maybe I should start... so I tend to rely on him and Eddie (who has lived here for 7years) to do most of the speaking in restaurants. Constantly people are trying to talk to me expecting me to know what they are saying and I just give them this blank stare, give a shrug of the shoulders and a brief sentence in Chinese that says I don’t understand! So far I know how to say a very basic introduction, thank you, goodbye, how much, and names of some foods oh but I can order beers!! Also
...they do have Dublin,
however I don't actually have any classes in this classroom!! understand the numbers fairly well which helped with my bargaining skills when at the markets in Beijing. The phrases “too expensive” and “can you make it cheaper” were very useful!!
Now on to a few things very interesting about Chinese culture... Of course many things over here are very different to back home, I’ve visited many places but there was definitely a huge culture shock when I arrived in China, but I’ll just mention some of the more noteworthy ones. Firstly one of the things that is the most difficult to get used to is the spitting. It’s a Chinese habit that I have to put up with everyday 😞, it’s truly appalling. Indoors, outdoors, on trains, in restaurants anywhere there is no rule, males and females alike are constantly spitting. Eddie tries to tell me I’ll get used to it but even if I lived here for the rest of my life the sound of someone clearing their throat then spitting will never get any easier to listen to. So when I asked about while the hell they have this horrific habit here is the main explanation I was given; Chinese traditional medicine... they believe that swallowing dirt
Inside the classroom...
...max. kids per class is 18 but most classes are much smaller (and there is a fair amount of pollution everywhere) is not good for the body so the simply don’t and just scoop up all that’s in their throat and spit it out. Sorry to all of you who are right now retching while reading this disgusting piece of information, but I live with it on a daily basis so I just thought I’d share it!! So be warned if you are ever going to visit China this is one thing you will have to learn to cope with.
While chatting about this habit I may as well mention another one that is very common over here and that is smoking. Again there is nowhere this isn’t done, trains, subway stations, restaurants even places like KFC and Mc Donald’s where there is meant to be a universal law against it. And now that I have got on to the topic of restaurants I’ll keep going. Many of the local places where we eat that Eddie has taken us to serve really good food however if you weren’t advised of this beforehand you would probably never enter many of the establishments I have frequently eaten in. The Chinese culture is that
Classroom 1
almost all the rooms have a fabulous painting on the wall! when you are eating if you find a bone in your food or a piece of fat or something you don’t want to eat you simply throw it on the floor. A used napkin on the floor, the plastic covering from your chopsticks on the floor, cigarette butts on the floor. After a meal with friends it looks like animals from the zoo have just eaten. So what is the idea behind this tradition, simple really, they figure it’s much easier to sweep the floor after the customers have gone than to clear off dirty plates and tables, again another truly bizarre custom. Now there are restaurants over here that are posher than this and most people don’t use the floor as a bin but they are pricey (by Chinese standards) and it’s not where the locals eat unless it’s a special occasion!
I’m really enjoying the food over here however what we think of typical Chinese food is definitely not what they eat. I haven’t had one curry since coming to China! A very popular type of food in china is barbecued food which we mainly associate with Australia or America. However it is different, they don’t have
Classroom 2
paintings actually can be very useful when teaching colours/counting numbers/animals etc. steaks, hamburgers etc over here they skewer anything in bite size pieces meats, bread, vegetables etc and the seasonings they use before they barbecue it give it a distinct flavour that is different from any barbecued food I’ve eaten anywhere, it’s delicious, one of my favourites is actually skewered chicken hearts 😱 A delicacy I had never eaten before I came to China! Another popular way of cooking is hot pot where on your table you have a constantly boiling metal pot of stock spicy/non spicy depending on your tastes. Then raw and fresh ingredients such as thin strips of meat, vegetables, tofu and seafood including dipping sauces are laid around the simmering pot and you cook and eat as you go, again very tasty! Dumplings are another favourite of mine which are very popular they come in all shapes and sizes with lots of different fillings! Then of course there is the rice and noodles. Mentioning noodles here I must point out that in a noodle house in China the slurping that takes place it fairly funny, then most just but the bowls to their mouths to drink the soups, some do use a spoon/ladle to drink the broth
which is definitely the way I choose to do it! Except for noodle houses which are the Chinese equivalent to fast food, meals are always served with lots of different dishes in the centre of the table and everyone eats from them, there is no such thing as everyone ordering one dish for themselves but I like this as you get to try some of everything. Oh and one thing I had to get used to very quickly was the chopsticks.... before coming here I hadn’t a clue how to use them. My first experience with them left Eddie rolling laughing and he even took a photo to show how badly I was trying to use them. But I quickly became very accustomed to them and now can use them to pick up single grains of rice with local people even saying how good I am at using them, well it was either learn or go hungry!!
Toilets are another BIG issue ill briefly talk about! So as I am in China the main style of toilet is of course the squat toilets which I had become used to from travelling around SE Asia. However the cleanliness of these
toilets is unbelievable, or should I say lack of cleanliness. There is often no doors on the cubicles just partitions between each stall, really never seen anything like some of these toilets. Also there is never toilet roll every female in China that I know always has toilet roll or tissues in their bags and then there may/may not be a sink so hand sanitizer is another handbag essential. However my apartment does have a western (i.e. normal) toilet so at least that is something depending on the toilet I find in a restaurant etc I often decide to wait until I get home! Also before the weather got cold I ate and drank in lots of places where the tables were all set up outside and these places didn’t even have a toilet, crazy stuff!
One last thing about the Chinese is the pushing and shoving that takes place everywhere queuing is just not something that takes place. And its part and parcel of the culture, I guess with a country that has approximately 1.3billion people it is almost to be expected. However in the beginning it was very frustrating for me especially in the supermarket when you
are trying to get your fruit/veg. weighed and everyone is pushing ahead, however I quickly learned how it’s done and I now push forward and join in with the masses. My height and size gives me an advantage over many of them. Although many people assume all Chinese are fairly short and petite this is definitely not true. There are plenty of tall people apparently the further North in China you are the taller they are something to do with the different nations and I am fairly north living in Tangshan. Also I have seen some overweight Chinese people too, more than I had expected to see and then I realised the amount of Mc Donald’s, KFC’s, pizza huts etc around and can understand why. The traditional Chinese diet is definitely very healthy however these foreign fast food chains which are becoming more and more popular are definitely the cause of many of the younger generations being overweight.
Just a final point here that comes to mind when I mentioned the pushing and shoving is the trains. China has possibly one of the worst railway systems I have used (it is on a par with some of the terrible
trains I experienced across Italy last year). Now the trains are very cheap as with most things in China a 3hr journey to Beijing costs around €4. But this is very relative to everything in China, beers in the supermarket cost between 30 and 70cents and up to a €1 in a restaurant, and then in a club in Beijing they can charge €3 which is a complete rip off by Chinese standards!! In the markets last weekend in Beijing I bought fur lined real leather ankle boots in the market for €12 and a lovely real leather handbag for €9, of course this was after much haggling but the ‘made in China’ stickers that we are so used to seeing on everything definitely pays off when you live here as it reduces the cost of everything!! Just realised I have completely drifted off the story about trains... So you but a train ticket get on then there is no seats so you stand in between the carriages where everyone loves to smoke and are almost chocked to death and are pushed and shoved as people get on and off the trains. So now we have learnt the word for
seats and try to never take a ticket unless we have seats, yet last day they said there was no seats, so we came prepared with these little fold away seats they sell at the stations and there was seats on the train really you just can never tell in advance what your train journey is going to be like! I’ll not go in to the story of our disastrous train journey here that Mum found quite hilarious I’ll leave that for another day as I think I’ve said plenty already 😱
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Kratos
John Smith
lol
Looks like you are going through culture shock.. a large dose of it. I think you'll be fine in due time. I had a similar culture shock in India but the Asian nations do have an appeal that can be hard to see but is difficult to forget.