And now a word from Michael...

Today I had the pleasure to be a judge at a speech competition with 14 students from our University. There were 4 Chinese English teachers and 2 Western teachers including myself. It was truly an inspiration to see the courage and hard work that these students exhibited this afternoon. Their topic was “Unity and Diversity.” We judged them on pronunciation, speech content quality, language quality, spontaneous speech, and answering questions from the judges. In my opinion, about half of them could have debated at any top rated Western university and done well. Most were not English majors but from the schools of Architecture, Engineering or other disciplines.

As you enter the campus there is a long row of blackboards with Chinese inscriptions written. One blackboard had the following saying in English written by Huang Hayun, Dean of the English Department. It states, “It’s not intelligence alone that brings success, but also the desire to succeed, the commitment to work hard and the courage to believe in yourself.” I found this incredibly inspirational and plan to share it with all my classes but today was a perfect example of exactly what he was trying to convey. The hard work and preparation, along with a huge dose of courage that went into today’s presentation, made this whole adventure worthwhile. And we’re just getting started!! We haven’t even been here a month yet.

One of my students was in today’s competition. She is working toward a career in broadcasting. She is a broadcaster for the campus radio station and although she did not place in the top three I have no doubt that she will end up successful at whatever she attempts. She has so much courage, sophistication and class for a sophomore it’s scary. Most of her education is in front of her and I see a bright future written all over her face. Her parents will be filled with pride one day if they’re not already. This was just another day in the life of an “Oral English” teacher.

Pictures of Friends

Michael, Elsie, William and Shirley

Foreign Teachers out for Thai food

Stephen
Robert

Pauline and Carol (teacher from another Hangzhou university)

Molly & Matt (teacher from another Hangzhou school)
John
Ken & Jeremy

Erin, Karl & Michael

That's what on a stick?

A couple of days ago we went to the 2006 China International Beer Festival in Hangzhou. It was just our Minnesota State Fair with German beer and a carnival atmosphere. Just like our State Fair there is always food on a stick although here they call it Chinse Famous Snacks. No, we did not try any.

Suzhou, Noodles and Peanut Butter

Actually, we’ve been pretty busy either traveling or getting ready for the rest of our class load to begin. Cindy starts September 25th with hers and Michael starts October 9th with his and we’re averaging 35 students per class.In the middle of the month we traveled by bus -- 2 hours -- to a wonderful city called Suzhou. Situated in the south of Jiangsu Province, in the middle of the Yangtze Delta, this city is called a water-town and is known as the "Oriental Venice." The city was set up in BC 514; being a city with history of more than 2500 years. Now tourists know it to be the place to buy silk and visit wonderful gardens.

We went to visit a new friend whom we met before coming to China. Paulo has lived in Asia for a few years and presently teaches at an International School (a private school) for the children of CEOs and other executives from all around the world including Fins, Brits, Koreans, Dutch and Americans. Unlike us, he works a full 8 hours each day, gets an expense account, has a huge salary and wonderful three bedroom apartment with a clothes dryer. That is living large! When he was back home he went to Trader Joes and shipped 19 boxes back full of food stuff and of course, personal items he’s been storing for years. Those boxes were packed, shipped and unpacked at the expense of the school. Nice situation but he really has to work for it and he has loads of practical experience and education.

Paulo made a Sunday breakfast for us that was absolutely delicious and his family tradition. He made us pancakes with peanut butter and maple syrup. Yep, and we enjoyed it so try it, you might like it. Thanks Paulo for a wonderful visit and for all the help you give us.

Back in Xiasha, our local area, we’ve found a new restaurant that we both like. It’s a Muslim place. The specialties of most Muslim restaurants are homemade noodles. Besides that and the lack of pork they are known for their cleanliness. It’s not that we don’t eat pork but we really like the cleanliness. Anyway, here’s a picture of one of the guys pulling noodles and if you’ve never had freshly made noodles, YOU ARE MISSING SOMETHING! They melt in your mouth like butter.

Cindy sat in on Pauline's class one day, she's from Canada, because Pauline brought in her toaster and made the students toasted bread with peanut butter. A first for 99% of them and only 2 of 30 didn't like the peanut butter.



Our students are warming up and beginning to express themselves more. It’s been like pulling teeth to this point but improving each week. Only seven new classes to go through the same slow warm up and we’ll be “home free.”

Cake gratefully provided by Zhejiang Sci-Tech University

It was the big 49 on September 8th for Cindy. All in all it was a pretty relaxed
type of day and we went for dinner with two of the FT’s. Stephen and Pauline, as
we have told you before, are from Canada and going on their fourth year teaching at ZSTU. They suggested a new (5 days old) restaurant in our local area called C’ Straits and since they had gone to the one in the city of Hangzhou and enjoyed it we said, “sure, why not.” By the way, this Taiwanese franchise has a number of them throughout China. Now remember, this new restaurant opened its doors about a week ago but has been in business in China for a couple of years now. So, we had heard good things, were celebrating Cindy’s birthday and had high expectations. Sad to say it was a no go and Cindy has called for a re do on her celebration.

There were four of us and Michael’s meal (Chinese) came first after waiting 30 minutes. Then Stephen’s meal of pork tenderloin in wine sauce (Cindy ordered the same thing) came about 45 minutes later. Then Pauline’s Norwegian salmon arrived about 10 minutes after that, and finally, Cindy’s meal arrived. The problem was that it wasn’t what she ordered and, it was over cooked to the point of being rubbery. Cindy wants, and will get, her re do. For all of you who know Cindy you know it was also her twin sister's birthday but because we are in China Cindy turned 49 a day earlier....Happy Birthday Sandie.

Overall, it’s been pretty uneventful the last couple of days. At least the hot and humid weather has broken and now we have cool days with lots of rain. That’s no big deal and a welcome relief. What each of us has been doing mostly is preparing for our class today, Monday, September 11, 2006.

All in all, we both feel that they, the students, responded to us and our prepared materials. First we want to cover the biggest cultural difference between Chinese students and American college students. They, our lovely students, are generally, and painfully, shy. They feel shame if they make any mistakes so in order not to feel shame or embarrassment they don’t open their mouths. You’ve all heard about this but the way to best explain it so that you all have a very clear picture is to ask you to close your eyes for a moment.

Now, picture yourself driving on a country road at late at night when all of a sudden, you come upon a deer in the center of the road. Picture those big beautiful scared shitless eyes. Now you can picture our students when we ask them a question. And that is when they even look at us (or any of the other FTs) because mostly, they keep their heads down thinking they won’t be called upon.

Another cultural aspect of teaching in China and in universities is that these students have studied very hard to get to this point. Their main concern, and that of their parents, is to get them those fantastic grades to get into the top universities. Once there, or here as the case may be, the students have almost no more incentative to study. We hear that it is almost impossible for them to fail out of school. We most assuradly are not expected to fail them. This is beside the fact that last year, China graduated almost four million students from universities around the country. Do you think there are that many new jobs here?

Where is the motivation for these young people to learn? Most probably do not see themselves using English. Many we know don't see the need for this ability. But those that do see the possibilites, and well, those are the ones who will benefit from the FTs who come here to teach.

As we’ve said, our first Monday was like those lovely deer in the headlights but with some hard work on our part we have each warmed them up a bit and really feel like they responded better this week. With a little more extra work we hope to open them up even more down the road and since our Chinese friends have told us that it could take a couple more classes for the students to really open up we’re feeling just fine.

Two more weeks of easy going and then we start with the other seven classes we have to teach. We're betting that we’ll be mongo busy with prep and teaching and English Corner then.

For all of those who sent birthday wishes a big thank you.

Later, Cindy & Michael

Wushan Hill picture

Stretching into the city proper and composed of the Ziyang hill are the Yunju Hill and some other small hills. The Wushan Hill measures 1001n in altitude and is known for its beautiful scenery. It s also the site of Heavenly Wind at Wushan and is also known as having one of the best views of the West Lake. Wushan Square and Wushan Hill is a major town center in Hangzhou. The view from the top is excellent on a clear day, and there are also trails around the hills from behind the pagoda. The pagoda itself has been modernized with an elevator and nice open-air teahouse at the top, but the original bell is still intact and in use. This area also features easy access to Hefang Jie shopping street at the base of the hill, full of small pedestrian streets and shopping stalls. It is also extremely close to the West Lake itself.

Side street

This alley way picture is while we are standing in the Wushan Village itself. We thought it was a nice photo opportunity to show you the standard roof tops of the side street homes.

Linan Mountain Pagoda

This picture is of a pagoda that was inside the big gates of an old monestary. We were here only a week and our friends took us out of Hangzhou to this mountain.

LinAn city lies to the South of Tianmu Mountain, which is in the Northwest of Zhejiang province. Lying west of Hangzhou and east of Yellow Mountain, LinAn is the key door between Zhejiang province and Anhui province. It is also the trade centre between the two provinces. It is the only mountain area city within Changjiang delta. LinAn has an area of 3,126.8 square km, a population of 500,000 and the jurisdictional area includes 15 towns and 24 villages. In 1986 the State Council authorized it as the coastal developing economical city. Rich natural resources, abundant rainfall, and a warm climate, all make its percentage of forest cover up to 71.3%. It has such an advantageous ecological situation that it breeds more than 4,700 biological species. Tianmu Mountain has a reputation of a 'species gene treasure store'.

Mountains, lakes, forest, hot spring, corrosion caves, Buddhist temple and other ancient remains make LinAn a great place of green treasure grounds in Changjiang delta. Since ancient times, LinAn ten scenes, Tangchang ten scenes and Yuqian eight scenes have been famous. Tourist scenes are scattered from west to east, within several hundred kilometers. There is Longtang Mountain, Daming Mountain and Rijing Cave, Tuanko Hotspring, Tianmu Mountain and Yuewang Hill, Linglong Hill, Tomb of King Qian, Qingshan Lake and Dongxiao Cave.

We only climbed a very small portion of our little oasis. It was way to hot and way to big to cover it all.

Last three days

Monday, September 4 was our very first day of teaching in China. Our class periods are 2-45 minute classes back-to-back with a five minute break in between. We both had one class and it Michael who went first with a class at 8 AM. Both of us agreed that the best way to start was to introduce ourselves, tell them about our education and majors, talk about vacations (they just got back from theirs) and other interests. We then handed out sheets of papers and asked each of them to answer the questions we just answered. We did this for a couple of reasons. First, it gave us a chance to pass around another needed piece of paper requesting their phone numbers and English names. Secondly, we knew that after they finished we could ask them to stand up and tell us what they wrote and assess their English skills, and thirdly, use up some time. Ninety minutes is a long time!

Michael’s class consists of thirty-one students, mostly young girls, who are sophomores majoring in English. Of the thirty-one in the class only 4 or 5 are boys. One girl, who is studying broadcasting and works as a broadcaster on the campus radio station, has already asked him to join her as a partner on the radio. He hasn’t made a commitment yet but is thinking about it.

It was slow going for the first half hour or so with only six students speaking up as most of them were apprehensive. He hopes he broke the ice and that they will open up next week. The most fun was the verbal exchange he did receive when he talked about basketball. He used his knowledge and admiration of Yao Ming as a metaphor for how anyone can work hard and succeed at anything if they put their heart into it. With everyone knowing Yao Ming this was a hit! For those of you who don’t know who the heck he is just Google him and you’ll find out.

Cindy’s class began at 1:30 PM and consists of mostly young men with only 5-6 young girls. These are also sophomores but are known as “advanced” because they have a bit more English behind them. On those informational sheets they state that they are computer, information, electrical, or technology majors with only one psychology major. It was easier to get these students involved with their advanced language skills, thankfully, and there was some laughter too! With no knowledge of Yao Ming, Cindy’s hook was humor and giving them a hard time without embarrassing them.

Biggest laugh for us both were the English names some of these young people have chosen. Here are just a few. Watermelon, Big, Small, Fluffy, Ring, Winds and Windy, Snow, Dream, and of course last but not least, Cool (we both had one of these.) There’s so much more to come :)

We’re off until next Monday so Tuesday we got on our bikes and headed to the open market about a mile away. We got our bikes filled with air, lifted the handle bars and tried to get a special paper in order for the university to reimburse us for the cost of the bike. When we started to show the paper that our Chinese contact wrote for us to show the bike seller, we became famous. As lots of students are out buying their own bikes within moments we were surrounded by 30 of them wanting to either hear what we wanted from the bike seller or help us because we were trying to tell him what we needed. They were very helpful and we got what we needed.

Michael had a chance to meet and talk with a post grad there that really had much better English than the rest. He is from the Shanghai area and is down here for school (not our university) but what was interesting was that as soon as he found out we were from MN he mentioned the Timberwolves and its biggest player, Kevin Garnet. If time allows it he might contact us as Michael gave him a card with our number.

Today, September 6, we had to meet up with Molly (FT from Philadelphia) at 8 AM. A driver picked us up to go to downtown Hangzhou for medical exam and resident permit. The driver got us there at 9AM (Fanny met us there as she lives only 10 minutes from there) and then we all had our blood test, electrocardiogram, and an eye, weight, and blood pressure check. The female doctors (we think because they all had white coats on) listened to our hearts and performed an EKG. We also had one chest x-ray. This took only about 1 ½ hours to complete and cost us 386 RMB or $48.60 U.S.

By the way, the results came back at 3:30 PM as Fanny had to go back to the hospital where this took place and pick them up for our 4 PM meeting to apply for our resident permit. Amazing!

Molly, Michael and Cindy spent the day eating, walking around a tourist area and finding a free Hangzhou History Museum. Then we headed to the Resident Permit Office where we waited 45 minutes to apply for the permit. This permit will be ready for us to pick up in a week (will cost us 400 RMB or $50) and it is only then that we may be allowed to travel to another city.

Most interesting occurrence at the Resident Permit Office – we met a Chinese born U.S. citizen who was hired by a university -- not to far from ours -- as a resident professor to head a huge project. He was a professor in Tampa Bay, Florida for ten years. Michael didn’t quite get the whole background of his course of study but he thinks it is in some bio-technical sophisticated arena. This gentleman was given a huge grant to build a department that at this point has twenty professors. We hope to hear from him as again, Michael passed out one of our cards.

Biggest disappointment was after we got home and looked at the conversion of kilograms to pounds and we realized that we hadn’t lost that much weight :(

Staff Meeting

This post was placed on this blog on Sunday, September 3rd.

Our first meeting was held on Saturday, 11 AM. At least that is when the meeting was called for. It started around 11:30 -- Chinese time.

The players. Staff / foreign teacher (FT) interesting items and/or bios:
Foreign teacher’s names are Erin 20+ (Ohio), Stephen 60 (Canada), Pauline 50+ (Canada), John 60 (Australia), Jeremy 20 + (Wisconsin) , Robert 50+ (Philippines), Karl 20+ (Ireland), Molly 20+ (Philadelphia), Ken 50 + (Boston) & Greg 50+ (Canada).

Erin: 1st year - very bright, easy going – told you about her
Stephen: 4th year – told you about him – liaison for FTs to Fanny
Pauline: 4th year – wife of Stephen, nice. She just arrived from Canada
John: 3rd year – told you about him in previous post
Jeremy: 1st year - taught in middle school. Knows a bit of Mandarin
Robert: 3rd year – seems nice enough and easy going too
Karl: 1st year - easy going, bright – we told you about him
Molly: 1st year - sweet and bright - told you about her
Ken: 1st year - ex-carpenter, writer and musician and just arrived
Greg: 1st year - wife has job with multinational in Shanghai

Chinese Staff.

Fanny: liaison to help teachers with living situational issues
(Christina – her boss)
Oliver: liaison to help teachers with teaching situational issues
(Harry – his boss)
Ashley: secretary for Oliver and for us

Michael wants to know, “Who’s on first?”
(Abbott and Costello reference for those under the age of 40)

The Meeting:
No agenda but there was a lot of information sharing. There are 130 faculty in the language department at this university and of those, 110 are English teachers. Japanese, German, Russian and French are also taught. We were told that there are 45 undergraduate, 33 graduate and 2 Ph.D. programs. Within walking distance of our university there are 14 other universities. This is truly an educational zone.

With this in mind you can surmise that there is a lot of competition for us foreign teachers. That’s why the salaries for our services have increased from about 3000 to 4800 per month in the last couple of years. That is RMB (Chinese currency) and is $603 U.S. We also get a free apartment with a computer, dvd, and fully equipped kitchen, bedding and such.

A Chinese teacher makes approximately 1000-2000 RMB a month and must pay for their own apartment but she or he gets a pension, paid vacation and bonuses. This is their career and they study for years. We, the foreign teachers, don’t usually stay long and might not have the experience they have but we have the accents they want their students to hear. Knowing the Chinese it might not be that much longer that they will need us.

Back to our schedules

In our earlier entry, Tour Around the Place, we spoke of our schedules. Things have changed. After exchanging schedules with John Norman we are now on the same timetable. Although Michael knows his class schedule and student body, Cindy still does not. The biggest change however is that we both now have one class starting tomorrow (Monday.) This one class we will have through our 16th week (week of Dec. 25th.) In 3 weeks we will then begin our other classes (7 classes). That means that we must teach into the 18th week of the term or until Jan 15th and for your information, no matter when your classes begin you must teach a total of 16 weeks (one week off, October 1-7, for a Chinese national holiday.)

With only one class starting tomorrow it means that we will have 6 days off each week for the next 3 weeks. What to do? Where to go? Don’t worry about us as you know we’ll figure that one out soon.

Dinner tonight was with our friends Shirley, William and their lovely 16 year old daughter. We took the express bus into town where they picked us up and then we drove close to West Lake and the botanical gardens. Shirley knew of a farmer’s home (these are three story homes owned by what used to be farmers, hence the name) where they served tea and food. We went for tea and conversation and ended up staying for the dinner as well. Delicious! Crab, chicken soup like mom use to make, eggplant, lotus root with water chestnut, another vegetable dish that we don’t know of but was good and rice. The bill ended up being 150RMB or approximately $19 for 5 people. The best part of the evening was by far the company – definitely!

By the way, Michael found his bicycle. It's a bute at 349 RMB or $42 U.S. It's a ten speed and will definatly carry him anywhere he wants. It's made by a company called Forever, the first bike company to exist in China.

Personal note: Elliott (Cindy’s father) – thanks for the key chain with the flashlight – put it to good use already. By the way, William’s company makes those for U.S. export :)

Answers to those Questions from readers: 1) We have a grocery store 3 blocks away from our apartment. It's what they call a supermart. You can purchase a bike, clothes, cookware, bedding, electronics, everything a student would need and even, upstairs, food. 2) The university is a 15 minute walk from our place. 3) There is an outdoor market about 20 minutes from us and now with two bikes we'll head down that way.

Getting things done

August 31, 2006

We’ve been here in Hangzhou for a week now and we’ve pretty much settled into our new home. What we have left to buy in order to make our lives a little more comfortable is insignificant…..maybe.

Yesterday, August 30th, we had a meeting with Fanny in her office on campus. All week she, and one of her office mates, has been attending a seminar for translation services. That means she’s been unreachable to us and the other FTs. Her list of “must do” and “can wait” must be long. We sent her an email and we’re pretty sure others did as well. The difference, we called her on her mobile and made an appointment to meet with her.

On our list is setting up a bank account for each of us, computer issues, bus guide, hot plate, rice cooker and sim card (phone number from China Telecom which really is a card that is placed into the back of the phone.) By the way, the phone we are using was lent to us from a friend in Minnesota -- thanks Greg.

Michael also wants to get a bicycle and had questions concerning getting one that’s big enough to handle his “non-Chinese” frame. This we still have to research. Of course, there were those odd smaller issues. We know that we have her for ½ hour before she must return to her seminar. Quick, talk fast and hope for the best.

It’s amazing how quickly things can get done when one knows that there is a time pressure and by golly, Fanny took care of business. If it wasn’t handled on the phone or in the office she set up a time to meet today, August 31st.

This is quite the young woman this Fanny. She handles all 12 (we think) FTs and all their concerns, problems, questions and dire needs. By the way, she is a graduate of the university we’re working at but think we’ve mentioned that before.

As for today we got our sim card, our bank account setup is something Fanny is working on, and we got our hot plate and rice cooker. Michael is ready to cook! We're sure that's going to be an adventure in and of itself.

Last night something special happened. We had the wildest thunder and lightening storm we’ve ever seen. Our building has six stories (like many around us) but surrounding our little apartment complex (6 buildings in all) are 20-25 story buildings. It made for some huge echoes bouncing back and forth between the buildings. There was loads of rain pouring down, lots of wind blowing and loud booms and lightening bolts. It was glorious and crazy at the same time!