Friday 18 September 2009
Medical Examination
Katie, Josh, Patrick and I all went for a family outing to the 'Institute of Inspection and Quarantine' yesterday morning. We had to be given physicals for our work visas. Anna and Maggie (Chinese English teachers)came with us so we didn't get lost and to translate etc. They're both really shy, especially Maggie - who constantly looks like a mixture of worried and embarrassed. We started off by filling in these forms, and Katie and I were sitting next to each other. Maggie and Anna came over, looking more embarrassed than usual, and started apologising. We were like 'why? What's happened?' and after a few nervous glances they turned this little computer screen around to us with the words 'ARE YOU PREGNANT?' on. We both laughed a lot about the amount of distress that this question had clearly caused the both of them.
After the forms were all filled in, and it was established that none of us were pregnant, we went through to the medical exams bit. All glass doors and face masks. We had to give blood - which Katie failed to do, and they finally had to take it our of her hand. While this was going on Anna was talking to her, again looking really embarrassed. Then she came out of the blood-giving room to where I was sitting on a bench, waiting my turn. After a couple of apologies Anna produced a little plastic pot. 'Oh for the urine sample?' I asked, 'I don't know how to say.... peepee?' was her reply. She was blushing furiously at this point. 'Yeah. Urine sample.' She then asked me to tell Katie, so I yelled through the door 'KATIE THEY WANT A URINE SAMPLE' just to further Anna and Maggie's embarrassment 'THOUGHT SO' she shouted back, while pressing on her had with cotton wool.
The urine sample itself was quite an accomplishment. It was both Katie's and my first experience with a squat toilet. We were a little apprehensive. Katie warned us about her 'shy bladder.' After her first failed attempt, we all told her to thing of waterfalls and so on. Still no luck. So it rolled round to the third time and Josh and Patrick decided that what she really needed was to be sung to. They asked me how the tune for 'Eye of the Tiger' went, before marching down the corridor to stand outside the locked ladies loos singing it. Really loudly. They came back (without Katie) 'did it work?' 'I dunno. She screamed at us to go away.' Katie appeared a few minutes later, while I was in the eye exam, and I hear a round of applause echoing down the corridor. 'Oh good, she peed.' I said to myself. Doctor Xu looked very confused. After my eye exam I rejoined the group, congratulated Katie, and asked if Doctor Xu had chatted anyone else up. He had.
After the ECGs, ultrasounds and X-rays (which apparently the doctor made the boys pose like a deformed chicken for) we left. We Got a school bus back to the kindergarten and had a brunch in the office consisting of Sushi cakes and egg tarts, courtesy of Anna and Salen.
After the forms were all filled in, and it was established that none of us were pregnant, we went through to the medical exams bit. All glass doors and face masks. We had to give blood - which Katie failed to do, and they finally had to take it our of her hand. While this was going on Anna was talking to her, again looking really embarrassed. Then she came out of the blood-giving room to where I was sitting on a bench, waiting my turn. After a couple of apologies Anna produced a little plastic pot. 'Oh for the urine sample?' I asked, 'I don't know how to say.... peepee?' was her reply. She was blushing furiously at this point. 'Yeah. Urine sample.' She then asked me to tell Katie, so I yelled through the door 'KATIE THEY WANT A URINE SAMPLE' just to further Anna and Maggie's embarrassment 'THOUGHT SO' she shouted back, while pressing on her had with cotton wool.
The urine sample itself was quite an accomplishment. It was both Katie's and my first experience with a squat toilet. We were a little apprehensive. Katie warned us about her 'shy bladder.' After her first failed attempt, we all told her to thing of waterfalls and so on. Still no luck. So it rolled round to the third time and Josh and Patrick decided that what she really needed was to be sung to. They asked me how the tune for 'Eye of the Tiger' went, before marching down the corridor to stand outside the locked ladies loos singing it. Really loudly. They came back (without Katie) 'did it work?' 'I dunno. She screamed at us to go away.' Katie appeared a few minutes later, while I was in the eye exam, and I hear a round of applause echoing down the corridor. 'Oh good, she peed.' I said to myself. Doctor Xu looked very confused. After my eye exam I rejoined the group, congratulated Katie, and asked if Doctor Xu had chatted anyone else up. He had.
After the ECGs, ultrasounds and X-rays (which apparently the doctor made the boys pose like a deformed chicken for) we left. We Got a school bus back to the kindergarten and had a brunch in the office consisting of Sushi cakes and egg tarts, courtesy of Anna and Salen.
Teachers Day
The 10th of September is teachers day. To celebrate, all of the teachers at the school went out for dinner on the preceding Saturday. They told me about this about a week before, also telling me that some teachers give speeches, sing songs etc. which is nice. Well, that's what I thought until they handed be a sheet of lyrics. They said that the whole English office (7 of us at the time) would be singing this song by a Chinese artist called 'Joey.' They picked it because it has English lyrics. Such beautiful lines as 'a little bit of something, these are our memories.' Great.
So after hearing this awful song played over and over in our office, I was starting to learn the words - through gritted teeth - and then one morning there was more news about the teachers day dinner. There weren't to be any performances this year, they regretted to tell me, and we all had to pay for the dinner. So I was really pleased, naturally, but apparently I was the only one. I really didn't mind paying the equivalent of £3.50 to not sing this song. They felt differently.
The dinner was really good. The traditionally-dressed waitresses laid out what seemed to be Noah's ark on our table, and we all washed our bowls and chopsticks in our tea before tucking in (tradition in Guangdong). I've learned not to ask what various meats are before eating them, but sometimes the locals ask 'oh, how's the pigs feet?' just as I'm chewing on it. 'Well, it was nice, but now it's gross.'
On the actual teachers day kids give their teachers presents. I managed to accumulate 3 cards, 2 bunches of flowers, some cake, a box of chocolates, a thermos, a fan, some Chinese hanging decoration and a miniature tea set. Win. It was the American boys's (Josh and Patrick) first days, so they hadn't even met the kids yet, and even they managed to get a few gifts! A couple of the teachers didn't get presents. I was talking to Anna about Crystal (both Chinese teachers in the English office) and how she didn't get presents. She teaches some of the youngest kids, about 3 years old, so I was like 'are they too young to understand teachers day?' and Anna replied 'sometimes. Some are just not very nice.'
So now all 3 Americans are here (the aforementioned two and a girl called Katie) and they're all lovely. It's nice to have more people about that speak the same language at you. At it's also nice to not be the only person getting stared at. Patrick even speaks some mandarin which is really helpful!
So after hearing this awful song played over and over in our office, I was starting to learn the words - through gritted teeth - and then one morning there was more news about the teachers day dinner. There weren't to be any performances this year, they regretted to tell me, and we all had to pay for the dinner. So I was really pleased, naturally, but apparently I was the only one. I really didn't mind paying the equivalent of £3.50 to not sing this song. They felt differently.
The dinner was really good. The traditionally-dressed waitresses laid out what seemed to be Noah's ark on our table, and we all washed our bowls and chopsticks in our tea before tucking in (tradition in Guangdong). I've learned not to ask what various meats are before eating them, but sometimes the locals ask 'oh, how's the pigs feet?' just as I'm chewing on it. 'Well, it was nice, but now it's gross.'
On the actual teachers day kids give their teachers presents. I managed to accumulate 3 cards, 2 bunches of flowers, some cake, a box of chocolates, a thermos, a fan, some Chinese hanging decoration and a miniature tea set. Win. It was the American boys's (Josh and Patrick) first days, so they hadn't even met the kids yet, and even they managed to get a few gifts! A couple of the teachers didn't get presents. I was talking to Anna about Crystal (both Chinese teachers in the English office) and how she didn't get presents. She teaches some of the youngest kids, about 3 years old, so I was like 'are they too young to understand teachers day?' and Anna replied 'sometimes. Some are just not very nice.'
So now all 3 Americans are here (the aforementioned two and a girl called Katie) and they're all lovely. It's nice to have more people about that speak the same language at you. At it's also nice to not be the only person getting stared at. Patrick even speaks some mandarin which is really helpful!
Thursday 27 August 2009
School Dinners
The school dining room has three rows of long tables, with stools attached. All students and members of staff are assigned two metal bowls and a metal spoon. This was pretty much the picture of 'Communism' I'd had in my head before I got here. We all sit side-by-side (the staff eat after the kids, fortunately - I don't want to start the afternoon with rice in my hair) after taking our bowls to the window of the kitchen and being served our food. Once we've finished, we go to the sinks outside and wash our bowls. Unfortunately we don't have grey overalls to wear while we do this, and there is often chatter - though I don't understand the vast majority.
The food at the school is generally quite nice. Pretty bland, but I don't really mind that - and it's healthy. We get 3 meals a day free-of-charge so you can't really complain. Breakfast is usually noodle soup, but it does very sometimes - occasionally we'll get a rice-version of porridge, or a sweet bun with warm rice milk. Today we had a kind of rice and chicken broth with a bread roll. I say bread roll, they were pretty different to the kind of bread rolls I'm used to. They were entirely white, and really springy. They basically tasted like they'd not been cooked nearly enough (Anna, you'd love them). I commented on the difference between English and Chinese buns to the other teachers, and they explained that they'd been steamed rather than baked. Fair enough. Still not very nice though.
Lunch and dinner always takes the same format. There will be three different dishes in the kitchen, all fried: one is simply green vegetables, the second is generally a mixture of one or two kinds of veg and some meat, and the third can be anything from meat to potatoes to weird blocks of egg. In the dining room there's always a massive rice cooker fulled to the brim and some kind of watery soup. This all sounds a lot worse than it tastes. After ladelling my rice on top of the veg in my bowl and taking my place among the troops, I was munching away on some kind of mushroom affair and was looking at the girl next to me as she ate her soup. It was a pale green, with bit of something-like-spinach in. But as she lifted out her spoon to take the next mouthful, I noticed that it had a whole chicken foot on it. I am not kidding. And she put it into her mouth, whole, and started chewing. I stopped eating for a while and my friend Anna (not the same Anna that likes to eat dough) who was sitting across from me got up to go and get some soup. I grabbed my bowl and hastily followed, and as she went to serve herself I hissed 'are there chicken feet in this?' she looked at me and coyly asked 'you don't like chicken feet?'
She's got a point I suppose, I haven't ever tried one. New experiences, and all that. But then she pulled out the ladel with this claw-like foot, all bleached and bloated from being boiled in this green soup... I just couldn't do it. Gross. I ladelled some of the green liquid from the top of the pot, being sure to avoid any lingering toes, before resuming my place in the ranks. I ate a few spoonfuls, merely to save face, but seriously - chicken feet?
The food at the school is generally quite nice. Pretty bland, but I don't really mind that - and it's healthy. We get 3 meals a day free-of-charge so you can't really complain. Breakfast is usually noodle soup, but it does very sometimes - occasionally we'll get a rice-version of porridge, or a sweet bun with warm rice milk. Today we had a kind of rice and chicken broth with a bread roll. I say bread roll, they were pretty different to the kind of bread rolls I'm used to. They were entirely white, and really springy. They basically tasted like they'd not been cooked nearly enough (Anna, you'd love them). I commented on the difference between English and Chinese buns to the other teachers, and they explained that they'd been steamed rather than baked. Fair enough. Still not very nice though.
Lunch and dinner always takes the same format. There will be three different dishes in the kitchen, all fried: one is simply green vegetables, the second is generally a mixture of one or two kinds of veg and some meat, and the third can be anything from meat to potatoes to weird blocks of egg. In the dining room there's always a massive rice cooker fulled to the brim and some kind of watery soup. This all sounds a lot worse than it tastes. After ladelling my rice on top of the veg in my bowl and taking my place among the troops, I was munching away on some kind of mushroom affair and was looking at the girl next to me as she ate her soup. It was a pale green, with bit of something-like-spinach in. But as she lifted out her spoon to take the next mouthful, I noticed that it had a whole chicken foot on it. I am not kidding. And she put it into her mouth, whole, and started chewing. I stopped eating for a while and my friend Anna (not the same Anna that likes to eat dough) who was sitting across from me got up to go and get some soup. I grabbed my bowl and hastily followed, and as she went to serve herself I hissed 'are there chicken feet in this?' she looked at me and coyly asked 'you don't like chicken feet?'
She's got a point I suppose, I haven't ever tried one. New experiences, and all that. But then she pulled out the ladel with this claw-like foot, all bleached and bloated from being boiled in this green soup... I just couldn't do it. Gross. I ladelled some of the green liquid from the top of the pot, being sure to avoid any lingering toes, before resuming my place in the ranks. I ate a few spoonfuls, merely to save face, but seriously - chicken feet?
Sunday 23 August 2009
Zumiao Temple
I live next door to Guan Hua Kindergarten's Principle, Ling something something (I have no idea how to say it, let alone spell it) and this morning she showed me how to work the washing machine, then the kitchen appliances - we have an electric hob which looks like a set of scales - then she gave me a weird pink fruit. The outside was like a dusty pink, and when you cut it open the skin just underneath the surface was fluorescent pink, and the inside was white with loads of little black seeds dotted about. Ling told me the Chinese name (which, naturally, I've forgotten) and I'm not sure of the English one. Maybe Dragon Fruit, I think that exists. Ling's sort of adopting me, she doesn't speak much English, but she's really lovely and has a daughter whose about my age. I'm not complaining, it means I can work the cooking-scales.
So after all the pink-fruit antics, I decided to do some more exploring. I went to Zumiao Temple, which means 'temple of the Ancestors' but apparently only because it's the oldest one in Foshan. It was awesome! Unfortunately I don't have a camera, so the photo In the corner is just a Google one. It's of the front gate to the temple from the outside. When you first walk into the grounds, on your left is a huge wing chun museum. It was amazing. There were two guys practicing on this little courtyard in the middle of this massive ancient Chinese temple, I felt like I was in a Bruce Lee film or something. All around the temple there were loads of wooden and stone carvings of lions and dragons, and golden Buddha statues with incense burning that people were bowing to as they walked past. There was also a big gold statue of some guy, the sign (some of them were in English for us foreigners) said that it was a made up emperor based on the God of the north. They had two cannons dating back to the opium wars, which is really weird because I've just been reading about this war in The Rings of Saturn. I felt all knowledgeable. But also like a bit of a dick because I'm British. There were carvings of foreigners looking like deformed dwarfs because they disliked us so much!
There was a massive pond FILLED with coy carp and turtles, and had hundreds of dragonflies buzzing around, and incense sticks burning. It was beautiful. There was a statue of a turtle with a snake on its back in the middle of the pond, as well as two trees on pillars, and people were chucking money onto them. Somewhere else in the temple there was this massive tree, which looked normal from a distance, but when you walk under it, if you look up, there hundreds of red cards with gold writing and little plastic satsumas attached to them. Sounds weird, I know, but there is a point to the plastic fruit. The satsuma is filled with water to weight it, so that you throw the whole thing up in the air and it catches on one of the branches. I have no idea why, as there weren't any English signs by the tree. Because this is a fairly touristy place - as shown by the English signs - I wasn't stared at as much. Either that or I'm just getting used to it. I think I even saw another white person. But, saying that I did have some guy ask (mime) to have his picture taken with me.
I came back on a motorbike taxi again, but I got there by bus - despite not knowing the city or the language, aren't I clever? I got in and cooked some dumplings. These were just frozen ones from a supermarket (same as the kind you can get in the UK) so they weren't as nice as the fresh ones. A lady called Dudu - don't laugh - took Glenn, Amanda and me out for lunch the other day and we had these dumplings which each had 3 fresh shrimp inside, they were so frigging tasty! So I sat back with my dumplings, a beer and watched the wire before a massive thunderstorm started and caught my attention. Lovely.
Saturday 22 August 2009
Motorcycle Taxi
I've been in China since late on Tuesday and, aside from Glenn and Amanda (two lovely Canadians who left the day after I arrived), I've not met another native-English speaker since I got here. And people in this country also seem to think that pale skin is synonymous with good looks so, on account of the fact that my skin isn't dissimilar to sheet of plain paper, I stand out quite a lot. More than a few times I've been told (mostly via one of the English-speaking teachers) 'You are so beautiful! Are you English? The English are so pale and beautiful!' It can be a little embarrassing. I was at one of the large shopping centres today, I'm pretty sure I was the only white person there, and I was stared at constantly. People kept trying to speak to me, but I had no clue what they were saying. I bought a phone and the clerk who helped me spoke some English. He told me that I was very beautiful and that he was glad to have met me. Then asked if I'd come to China with my boyfriend (sly), so I sort of implied that I wasn't here for very long before leaving. I also went to buy some food from one of the little shops by the side of the road. Luckily, one of them spoke English so could explain to me what everything was. There were 5 different dishes, all fried, and all on sticks. One was a large chicken wing, two were sticks with about 4 balls on - one was some kind of small egg, the other a meatball - and one with odd-looking chunks of meat. The lady didn't know how to say the latter in English, so asked the other customers in the shop if they knew. One guy pointed at his arse, so I went with the chicken wing. It was yummy.
I got a taxi to the shopping centre, as I'd have no idea where to get off the bus. The English teachers wrote down where I wanted to go on a piece of paper so that I just had to show the driver, which was nice. When I wanted to come home it was about half 5ish, so all of the taxis already had passengers. I waited for one for a while, mostly for the air conditioning, but soon gave up. So I got a motorcycle taxi. These aren't licensed, it's just a guy with a motorbike who picks people up for whatever price he feels like (about £1 today, I probably could have got it for about 70p though), and they are everywhere! I pointed at my piece of paper with the school's name on, then held up fingers until we agreed on a price. I hopped on the back and he gave me a blue helmet which resembled one of the bob-the-builder hard hats, except probably a lot less sturdy. The helmet almost fell off about 5 times so I just held it for the latter part of the journey. The traffic in this country is mad. Almost on a par with Rome. I don't think I've seen a single road sign, nobody really pays attention to traffic lights, and there is the incessant noise of beeping horns. It was pretty fun though, and felt surprisingly safe - which was good as there isn't anywhere to hold on. He went really fast too, which made up for the lack of air conditioning. And people don't stare as much when you're whizzing past them at top speed. I felt like a proper local!
I got a taxi to the shopping centre, as I'd have no idea where to get off the bus. The English teachers wrote down where I wanted to go on a piece of paper so that I just had to show the driver, which was nice. When I wanted to come home it was about half 5ish, so all of the taxis already had passengers. I waited for one for a while, mostly for the air conditioning, but soon gave up. So I got a motorcycle taxi. These aren't licensed, it's just a guy with a motorbike who picks people up for whatever price he feels like (about £1 today, I probably could have got it for about 70p though), and they are everywhere! I pointed at my piece of paper with the school's name on, then held up fingers until we agreed on a price. I hopped on the back and he gave me a blue helmet which resembled one of the bob-the-builder hard hats, except probably a lot less sturdy. The helmet almost fell off about 5 times so I just held it for the latter part of the journey. The traffic in this country is mad. Almost on a par with Rome. I don't think I've seen a single road sign, nobody really pays attention to traffic lights, and there is the incessant noise of beeping horns. It was pretty fun though, and felt surprisingly safe - which was good as there isn't anywhere to hold on. He went really fast too, which made up for the lack of air conditioning. And people don't stare as much when you're whizzing past them at top speed. I felt like a proper local!
Monday 10 August 2009
Amnesty International
I've spent a lot of today having a big Google-session to try and organise my life. I'm going to be teaching in China for the next year, and then the plan is to do an MA in Human Rights, back in the UK. So I've spent a lot of time looking at relevant work experience for next summer, for before I would be starting. If I have the money, I'll hopefully be able to volunteer at some kind of refugee camp (I've found websites for ones in Kenya and Palestine, which I could apply for), or failing that, maybe some kind of internship or fundraising job for a relevant charity or similar organisation.
I was on the Amnesty International site, getting updated on all their current missions, and started reading the details of the campaigns going on in China at the moment. Loads of interesting things, such as campaigning against censorship, torture and the death penalty (apparently they execute more people per year than the rest of the world put together), and petitions to free human rights advocates in China. Then I went to sign up for the updates on the things going on in China, as there obviously won't be much information on it available when I'm over there.
Then I thought - hang on - will they be checking my emails? I mean I know there won't be someone sitting there trawling through every one, but they could easily scan them for buzz words - all of which would probably be included in these kinds of emails. That's what they do with their internet censorship anyway, I think. And, if so, will I be likely to get arrested? Because after reading what Amnesty have to say, I don't really fancy that. They might just block my emails though, which would only be irritating. I could always blag the 'I'm a stupid Westerner' thing. Unless they're looking at this website, too...
I was on the Amnesty International site, getting updated on all their current missions, and started reading the details of the campaigns going on in China at the moment. Loads of interesting things, such as campaigning against censorship, torture and the death penalty (apparently they execute more people per year than the rest of the world put together), and petitions to free human rights advocates in China. Then I went to sign up for the updates on the things going on in China, as there obviously won't be much information on it available when I'm over there.
Then I thought - hang on - will they be checking my emails? I mean I know there won't be someone sitting there trawling through every one, but they could easily scan them for buzz words - all of which would probably be included in these kinds of emails. That's what they do with their internet censorship anyway, I think. And, if so, will I be likely to get arrested? Because after reading what Amnesty have to say, I don't really fancy that. They might just block my emails though, which would only be irritating. I could always blag the 'I'm a stupid Westerner' thing. Unless they're looking at this website, too...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
