Back in Beijing. I have been here for a few days and I have managed to be quite busy. There was some work for me on both thursday and friday so I can expect a paycheque and I went out sightseeing/shopping yesterday and today with Rae.

The work was ok. I did one demo class and lots, like 50+ evaluations over two days. I don't think I am very good at doing evaluations... I feel bad about doing it, and sometimes it is very hard to tell who's English is better. In general, most people tend to just memorize some stock sentences anyway such as:
"do you have any hobbies?"
"swimming, read books..."
In general, it is rare to find someone who is funtional in English, but then I guess that's why they are learning

One of the jobs I went to was at pingguoyuan, way out in the western suburbs of the city. Not only was it on the last stop of the subway line, but it was a 15 minute bus ride once we got there. All told, it was one and a half hours away from my home in (fairly) central Beijing. I decided then that I could never do a job that required me to commute so much every day, especially not one in Beijing that would only give me at most 3 hours of work every time I went out there.

As for this week, I don't know that work is going to be that good at all. I have one private lesson tomorrow night with Ms Long from the China Development Bank, but after that I don't have anything firmly schedualed until thursday when I give the same woman another lesson. If things keep going this way, there is no way that I will save any money to go traveling in August. I know that the Pingdingshan job is always there if I want it, but Beijing is so much more of a city that I don't know if I could really move back there. I think if Adam does not find me some suitable work this week I will start looking for other employment.

On the social side things are also just so-so. I underestimated the problems that would arise from living with my girlfriend and a friend at the same time. This problem is then exaserbated by the lack of any sort of connection between the two. It is not that they don't like eachother, it is that they don't seem to all that interested in eachother. Also, being that one is a debate friend and the other is a girlfriend and language exchange partner, they naturally have gotten to know different sides of me. This makes it particularly hard to spend all of my time with both of them together.

Tonight was a pleasant evening. We went out for dinner with Rae's friend Kimberly and to our surprise John, a guy who I had met at a party in Vancouver and a few times afterwards also happened to be there. This was somewhat less of a surprise because we knew that he was going to be in China this summer, but it was still nice to see him. I think very highly of him and would like to see him again before he leaves Beijing. John's friend _____ (I forgot his name) was also there with John. ____ is from Taiwan and for some reason that he did not properly explain he was unwilling to speak English the entire night. I caught on quickly that he was able to understand the English we were speaking and it turned out that he had been living in Vancouver for seven years. I do not really know what to make of him except that perhaps he is ashamed of his terrible English ability or that perhaps he is very nationalistic for a country he has never lived in. After dinner, the three of us (Rae, Gabe and myself, of course) had a romantic walk around the lake. Houhai must truely be one of the most pleasant places in Beijing, if not the most pleasant. I am happy that we are going there so often.

No new major insights on China since my last post. I do, however still stand by my statement about China being a scary police state. Despite its modern apperance, it is still not a democracy. People are not free and most of all the media is not free.

I guess I should get to bed...

Marc

Still in Pingdingshan...

The boss here wants me and Rae to stay. I am flattered, but I don't think I will. This place is really nothing compared to Beijing.. there is nothing to do, there isn't even good shopping. I feel bad for the school. The English teachers can barely speak English and they don't seem to have hired a manager yet. I don't know whether this school will be able to make any money. Even if we stayed, I think we would have to spend half of our time on recruitment and half of our time on children just to bring the school to the break-even point.

On the other hand, I am definately tempted by the offer. I feel that I am very useful here... I feel that I can make a difference here, perhaps make the school into something better than it could be otherwise. Maybe it is just the personal appeals of Mr Zhang. He has been very good to me and Rae in our time here, he is also a very nice, funny and interesting person. But, I should not let the frendship that I have developed over this one week cloud my judgement and make me do something that I might spend a whole summer regretting. Also, Rae would never go for it.

When I tried to read my blog yesterday, I was blocked. I guess blogspot is blocked in China. I find this quite funny because I am perfectly able to write and publish this blog, but not able to look at it. But, then again, from the Chinese government's perspective, it makes sense. It does not matter what foreigners think, even if they are getting the informaiton from people inside the country. What matters is what people in China think, or rather don't think.

Here, in Pingdingshan (PDS), I have discovered many things that I should have realized long ago. The first is that China is still very very closed. Here in PDS people are extremely closed minded. Not closed minded in terms of being racist or homophobic as we might use the term in Canada, but closed minded in the sense that they don't know anything about and don't care at all about the outside world. Even the people who do English majors in university are not at all interested in finding out anything about life in Canada. They do not listen to foreign music, watch foreign movies, read foreign anything or even think about the world outside China's borders in any sort of non-superficial way.

This closed mindedness is evidenced in the way even educated people divide up the world. It is not divided into China, Asia, the West, Africa, the Middle East etc... it is divided into guonei and guowai, that is inside and outside China. They seem to make no distinction between North America and Europe or even Africa. They also seem to have very little interest in seeing the world.

Well I have to go..

Marc

So here I am in Pingdingshan, Henan province. Modern English sent me here to be the foriegner teacher as they set up a new franchise school. I would like to think that I got the job because of my public speaking experience, but in all likelyhood I got it because I am the only experienced teacher who is not very busy. Adam, my boss also suggested that I bring Rae along with me. Again, while I would like to think that he wanted us to have a romantic vacation in the provinces together, in reality it is more likely that he knew that I would be much better off going with someone who spoke Chinese. He was right.

Pingdingshan (flat-peaked mountain) is an industrial town of about 600000. Apparantly it is famous in China for it's coal deposits, but I had certainly never heard of it. It is not in any guidebook and the only hits it gets on google are either for sending flowers or are about some Christians who got arrested for being Christian. Although I can not be entirely sure about this, I think I am the only white person in this city. I guess for this reason, I am treated like a celeberty or an honoured guest. People stare at me on the street and everyone at work is especially nice to me.

The work here is pretty boring... it more or less involves getting up in the morning to go to a school to give a few demonstration lessons, then going to a different school or different schools to give more demonstrations in the afternoon. Unlike in Beijing where Modern English is a school for adults, here in Pingdingshan, the only market is kids. Adults have no use for English as there are no foreign companies. I do not particularly like teaching kids, but when there is no goal to teach them anything, and when just being a yellow-haired long-nosed foreigner is enough to impress them, the work is easy enough.

Another major difference between here and Beijing is that the quality of the teachers is much much lower. In Beijing, most of the Chinese teachers are quite good at English. Even if they have an accent, they are easy to understand and can, of course, have a real conversation with a foreigner. Here it is not the case. Many of the teachers can barely understand me (even though I speak a standard Canadian English) and I have a hard time understanding them too. They, along with the school management, justify this by saying that the level required to teach children is lower than that for adults. While this may be generally true, the kids who learn from some of these teachers are not going to know English as a coherent and complete foreign language that can be used for communication.... and that does not even begin to describe the accent that these kids will learn.

It is a good thing that Rae came here with me because she speaks English and is a much more experienced teacher than anyone else they have here. She is very happy because she is going to get paid for this which means that she is actually doing real work in China.

The boss of the school, Mr Zhang (Sean) is a really nice guy. He is tall and has a friendly face. Like all Chinese business men, he likes to wear golf shirts with fancy (hahaha) colours and patterns. He is also very worldly for a Chinese person, especially from the interior. Apparantly he works at the local TV station in the marketing department, but there is always so much ambiguity surrounding everything here. The surprising thing, however, is that he can not speak even a little bit of English. It seems as if he just saw how well the other English schools in town were doing and decided that he wanted a piece of the action. Mr Zhang is very very nice to me and Rae. He has taken us out to many nice and expensive meals, pays for all of our taxi rides, and is always very friendly. The flip side of that is that he is sure to make as much use of ome as he can while I am here. As the only foreigner in the city, he has been showing me off as many places as possible to get publicity for the school including two local TV appearances. For now, I am happy to whore myself out like this becuase he is a nice guy, and the whole thing is kinda fun.

Back in Beijing, I feel a little bit guilty for abandoning Gabe alone in Beijing. He does not speak any Chinese and does not really know anyone. It is a good thing that he has work and does not cook for himself or else I don't know that he would ever leave the house. However, maybe by making him navigate the city alone for one week he will get a better sense of the place and get adjusted more quickly... or at least that is what I am telling myself.

Well, still having fun for now... tonight we will eat yang rou chuan and drink beer so I am happy！

So...

It has been a month since my last post. I am now in China. It is ok. Not much has changed since the last time I was here except that I feel less of a sense of adventure and I am picking up more on the real quality of life deficiencies. For instance, traffic here is lethal. Seriously lethal. It takes forever to do anything because everything is so far away from everything else. Buying things is always a struggle when you have to bargain. It is such a huge effort to get the right price, even when you know it to begin with. My efforts to buy a high quality fake Patek Phillipe were for naught as seller after seller would not go below RMB200... I eventually gave up.

I am getting along well with Rae. This is somewhat surprising since we are spending all of our time together. She is getting more worried and discouraged about not finding a job yet. I think she is over reacting because she has not been looking for a job for very long. She has an interview tomorrow... I hope she gets it.

Since I have been here, I have not been working very much. Until now, I have only had one regular class. This has been with a manager at the China Development Bank. She is very nice, but her English is not very good. I try to help her, but our three hours together pretty much turn into a conversation with me listening to whatever she has to say. For now, I am just happy to be making RMB130/hour and developing my first guanxi connection.

On saturday I will be going to Henan provice on some sort of a business trip. I will be helping to set up a new location for my school, Modern English. It is cool because I will be making RMB4000 plus expenses for a week in which I would have otherwise only made about RMB1000 . It is also cool because I get to see a new part of the country without haveing to take time off work to travel. I don't really know what they have there... I assume it is pretty backwards but I hope it is not. Either way, I am sure I will have a good time because Rae will be going with me and because I will be on TV.

Well... I'll try to give a better post next time,

Marc