At first I thought all the girls were children and asked where the University students were? My guide replied, “These are the students!”
Nothing quite prepares you for you first site of China. I had read several books when preparing to come here to teach for nine months but the immediate culture shock is still hard to imagine. I had been in South America doing research into animal habitats in the Montane Mountain area of the Amazonian part of Ecuador. After several weeks my part of the work had come to an end and I flew back to the UK. As it was late in the year all the work for teaching had already disappeared and so I was jobless and sitting at home scouring the internet for likely appointments. I could have started up my private practice again but wanted to travel again. One job came up on the net for teaching cultural studies in English at a University in Beijing. I did not think I stood much of a chance but duly sent my resume and references plus copies of passport and photos. To my surprise a quick response came with a list of things I must do in order to be considered. The usual things, medical checks, police check, visa application, application forms – everything in triplicate of course. After a few weeks and having gone through the motions my contact in Beijing revealed that the actual post was in a place called JinHua in the ZheJiang Province of East China. The university was called Zhejiang Normal University, which I later discovered is a teacher’s university, most graduates go on to teach at schools and colleges. Still beggars cannot be too choosy so I accepted and duly booked my air ticket to join them.
On arrival in Shanghai, I was expecting to see lots of people in Chairman Mao suits and short stiff haircuts. However to my surprise everyone in the airport was gaily dressed and looking like any other airport. However I surmised this was just typical international airport dressing and thought that once out of the airport I would see some typical Chinese people but after two days of travel with no sleep I was too tired to care at that moment. I was met by my contact at the University a young man called Sunny who led me to a small bus and asked me to wait. It was very hot and even in the shade I was melting. After about an hour he came back with a Scottish lady and her two children and her Chinese husband. She too had been recruited to the university and trailing behind them was a Russian who was coming to teach art classes. He was a wiry little man with a dishevelled look and short untrimmed beard. We all piled in the bus and Sunny told us it was a five hour journey to the University so tonight we would stay in a near-by motel and leave in the morning. The hotel was modest and clean but like all cheap motels attached to airports. I had to then get Sunny to understand I was a vegetarian and did not eat meat. He did his best to provide me some food but kept trying to give me fish, seafood, chicken and it took a while to make him realise a vegetarian only ate vegetables. This became the one sticking point in the years to come in China and the first Chinese language I learned was how to say, no meat. I spent the evening with the Russian art teacher, who could speak a little English and seemed to drink a lot. The next day I awoke to my first full day in China, what adventure now awaited, what the views from the bus would be, I was excited and ready to go. The bus left early and we all climbed in and found our seat after stowing our luggage. We settled down, exchanged names and pleasantries and then fell into silence as we were all very tired, even after a nights sleep in the heat of Shanghai; we still were jet lagged from travelling without sleep for days. I never can sleep when travelling, some people can fall asleep anywhere but I have never been able to do that. I need a bed.
On arriving in the town of JinHua there was very little to see. Dirty buildings from pollution, small shops with signs in characters you could not read and lots of people. People everywhere, crowded in the pavements, the road and the small eating houses no bigger often than a garden shed, open to the street with plastic tables and chairs. It was strange to see so many people eating in the street. I saw a few people in Mao suits but most were in dirty trousers and ragged vests. It was still hot and most men wore nothing over their hairless chests. We stopped at a restaurant with two large jars the size of a man flanking the doors. Sunny told me these were filled with tea eggs, some over a hundred years old. They evidently put the boiled chicken or ducks eggs into cold tea and just leave them. They are supposed to be a delightful treat however I threw eggs away in England after two weeks in the fridge so the thought of eating a one hundred year old egg did nothing for me. The meal consisted of mainly meat dishes and what vegetables there were had meat mixed into them. So I was starving at the end of a bowl of rice and some nuts. This was to become my usual fair in China when invited out. The Chinese cannot help themselves sprinkling cheap meat over vegetables. They would often say – leave the meat and eat just the vegetables – but they did not grasp the principal of vegetarianism – that no meat meant no meat juices or anything meat has touched. Yes I was going to starve in China unless I cooked for myself.
After the meal we proceeded to the gates of the University. This place was huge, I have been to many British campuses and compared to this they were mere small parks. This was a town all by itself. Later as I began to find my way around you discovered it had its own shops, buses for students to get around and hundreds of bicycles. The bicycle is an essential form of transport here. Everywhere there are rows and rows of parked bikes leaning against each other while riders sat in classrooms studying for their future when the bicycle could be dispensed with and the car and lifestyle achieved.
My apartment was on the fifth floor of a block over-looking the lake and pagoda. It had a small bathroom with a bath, kitchen come dining room and a sitting room with TV, DVD player and comfortable large chairs. It also sported a desk with internet connection. The bedroom was small with a double bed and wardrobe. The place was not fancy but was clean and smart with most of the furniture looking new. A water bottle dispenser stood in the kitchen plugged into the wall to provide water for drinking and cooking. You never use tap water in China if you can help it. The bottles of water were about 10 litres and cost 8 rmb to replace each time. They lasted me about a week at a time. Chinese kitchens have no ovens only two gas rings and a microwave with grill. This meant quite a limited fair for English cooks who are used to oven made food. However after a while I did adopt a cooking regime that worked with what I had.
As everything came with meat I decided very quickly to fill up my cupboards with food and the essentials such as salt, sugar, bread, butter etcetera. However my first visit to a Chinese supermarket made me realise my diet was going to change rapidly to food I had not ever seen before. Unlike English supermarkets there was no butter, no cheese, no margarine, and no canned produce except some jars of food I could not recognise. On the other hand there were rows and rows of gaily covered wrappers of instant noodles evidently the student’s daily diet away from the canteens. The other thing you notice is row after row in women’s period towels. In an English supermarket you may see two foot of shelf with sanitary towels but here you had five or six aisles of the things. I learned later that it is the Chinese way to wear these permanently even when not in the monthly cycle. Also the sale of paper tissues is enormous here. They do not believe in handkerchiefs as they see them as dirty. They throw away paper in such tonnage you scarcely can believe them. The Chinese have no sense of conservation when it comes to paper products of all kinds. One of my staple foods of the future however was biscuits and these also had wide shelf space. At first you look at the outside of the wrapper and think yummy they look good. Alas at home you discover that the artists of biscuit wrappers have somewhat expressive licence when doing the artwork.
What is on the wrapper, looking large, covered in chocolate and thick turns out to be a great disappointment when opening the packages. The biscuits look anaemic compared to the wrapper depiction. By the time you get to the checkout you realise what a lot of rubbish food you have bought with very little of anything with substance. One thing I did learn to enjoy was the bean bread. This was sweet to the taste and came in all sorts of shapes. It became great filler and many products here are made from Soya-bean paste. In fact Soya was my main source of nutrients while in China as it came in many forms. However I do miss Lynda McCartney frozen food, as frozen food in China meant bread buns, dumplings and jiaozi (meat or veg fillings with a sauce). Many Westeners take to Chinese food very quickly and enjoy the tastes. The supermarkets did not sell fresh vegetables for this you went to the open markets. These places were always filthy and the people serving unwashed and ill-kept, however the food was fresh and provided you washed it thoroughly you felt ok. Early in China most foreigners will get sick from gastroenteritis and suffer diaharea and bouts of fever. It takes time for your constitution to adjust to the lack of hygiene in Chinese food. If you eat in the street you are asking to be sick, the food is disguised with sauces and fat, most being bad meat and rotten food bought cheap by the street vendors. It is to be avoided at all costs or you can suffer the consequences a few days later. Believe me spending hours sitting in the toilet is no joke and do not look for solutions in the pharmacies – tiger penis does not help you. You do discover after a while that you can buy almost any prescription medicine from the West over the counter cutting out the middle man (doctors) and anti-biotics can be bought very cheaply.
All the teachers had about a week to prepare for the first classes and were shown around the campus, given a local map in English and Chinese to help get around and meetings and memos to orientate you to the life of a Chinese University. I was quite looking forward to my first class in which I had planned a guessing game based on, Who Am I, and an introduction to English culture. I was told at the first class I would be given a student list from the monitor and need to tick off the attendees as they appear. I had six classes initially each week of two hours making a total teaching time of 12 for the week. Not to onerous I thought as I was repeating the lesson to each one.
The day came and I went early to my classroom to make sure I found the right place. When I arrived about 20 students were already sitting at desks studying books and rehearsing out loud some English words they were trying to learn. I felt a little self-conscious so after dumping my bag, coat and chalk I decided to walk about until about 5 minutes to start time. It was a very old building at the University and had wooded floors and dirty windows. The classrooms were huge and had ceiling fans buzzing around to try and keep everyone cool. These made a lot of noise and later you had to bear the heat and switch them off to be able to hear the lessons. I was the only foreign teacher in this block and most of the Chinese teachers spoke no English except, hello and how are you. At five minutes too I walked back to the class room. The entrance door was at the rear of the classroom and you had to walk the length to get to the board area and teachers desk. As I entered my breath was taken away, there were at least a hundred students with their backs to me as I worked my way to the front. I turned around and could not believe it. One hundred girls of about 21 years old and at the far back five boys all staring towards me. The girls, (ignoring the boys completely) were a picture from a fashion parade and beauty pageant all rolled into one. They all looked so beautiful! I had obviously died in the night and been whisked to heaven. A pretty little girl with a pig-tail gave me an attendance list and shyly sat down. I turned to the board and wrote, Dr. Stephen F. Myler. I turned back and said, “my name is Stephen and the first thing we are going to do – is learn something about who I am” 100 expectant faces looked towards me and I knew this was going to be ok.
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