Around the World Without Flying - Part 4 - IgoUgo China Journal

Week 34, 35 & 36 - First Impressions

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Summer should be a time of excessive tanning and evening drinking. For my wife and I, it’s been nothing but six day, sixty hour working weeks brought about by extra summer classes and my employer’s strange obsession with sacking every new teacher that arrives. Since arriving in China I’ve had the pleasure of welcoming three new teachers through the gates of Benxi, all of which have been sacked within a month. First impressions seemingly count for a lot here. Thrown in at the deep end with classes full of scrutinizing parents and expectant children, the sink or swim philosophy has yet to reap any survivors. It’s not only your teaching style that’s rigorously examined. Your appea...Read More

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Week 33 - No Beating!

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It’s been a long time coming, but summer has finally arrived in China’s north-east with a bang. Within the space of four weeks, the snow covered streets have been replaced with hot glorious sun, temperatures exceeding thirty degrees Celsius and inhabitants hell bent on eating the world’s supply of ice cream. While market sellers and barbecued kebab stalls line the roads, ‘tai-chi’ experts wielding samurai swords, orchestras playing poignant songs of yesteryear, and groups of choreographed dancing women compete for space in the cities parks. At night, like light-crazed moths, people flock around street illuminations to carry on with these activities. Women have replaced their long-johns and...Read More

It’s been a long time coming, but summer has finally arrived in China’s north-east with a bang. Within the space of four weeks, the snow covered streets have been replaced with hot glorious sun, temperatures exceeding thirty degrees Celsius and inhabitants hell bent on eating the world’s supply of ice cream. While market sellers and barbecued kebab stalls line the roads, ‘tai-chi’ experts wielding samurai swords, orchestras playing poignant songs of yesteryear, and groups of choreographed dancing women compete for space in the cities parks. At night, like light-crazed moths, people flock around street illuminations to carry on with these activities.

Women have replaced their long-johns and thick winter fur coats with slinky floral dresses and parasols, their unshaven legs and bushy armpits on show for all to see. Although this may seem slightly uncivilised to Western cultures, the men join them with t-shirts rolled up to their armpits, exposing flabby man boobs and swollen bellies, which they rub, stroke and fondle with disturbing regularity. Acceptable as this is, trying to add flip-flops to either outfit is deeply frowned upon, as I soon found out, as doing so brings an even greater concentration of confused stares and mocking gestures. Dress code rules can be highly confusing. Whereas wearing flip-flops outside can be similarly associated to walking down Oxford Street in only your pants, walking, shopping and eating in public wearing nothing but your pyjamas is perfectly acceptable and can be witnessed on virtually every street.

In recent months life as an English teacher has been remarkably civilised with understanding parents and well-behaved children filling my classrooms. Of course, this was all going to change in the week running up to my birthday celebrations. Probably the hardest thing I have to deal with when teaching is classroom violence. Not student on student conflicts, but parents striking out against their siblings. It’s not unusual during lesson time to watch a mother walk from the back of the class, slap their child across the head and return to their seat, deeming their child wasn’t paying enough attention. After watching one mother strike her daughter twice across the face in quick succession after answering a question incorrectly, it was therefore refreshing to see two fellow parents restrain the mother in question from unleashing further fury on her daughter. I’m still unsure whether stepping in to end such conflicts would be wise, or whether it would just show my ignorance to the accepted norms of the local culture.

Some parents have a strange ideology of how English should be learnt. One parent approached my Chinese assistant at the end of class to voice her concerns over the fact her daughter didn’t understand some of the questions I was asking in class. She went on to suggest that in future maybe it would be better to only use vocabulary they already knew. My response of, "surely you are requesting me to not teach any new English ever again then," was met with blank silence.

Another parent interrupted mid-class, after their daughter answered, "yes he is," to the "is the penguin a boy," question I had just asked. The question was in relation to a story we had just read about a cartoon penguin. I was a little confused to what was so urgent to stop my class and was even more flummoxed to learn the parent was not happy her daughter was answering these ’yes-no’ questions with the words yes and no. I did think about asking the "is the penguin a boy," question one more time and teaching the class to respond with the more in depth analysis of, "yes, but if the penguin is in fact a transsexual, transvestite or hermaphrodite, then this clouds its sexuality considerably," but decided this would be too much new vocabulary for one lesson.

With now having a regular slot teaching in the public schools, alongside the easier, cushier private school lessons, my schedule is the busiest it’s ever been. While public school teaching requires less lesson planning, it does have the downside of teaching in stuffy, sweltering classrooms to over a hundred students at a time, leaving you drenched in sweat as though just stepping out of a sauna fully clothed. Many public schools in the area enforce harsh levels of punishment to those students misbehaving. I rarely have discipline issues in class, but after watching one girl student fumbling about under her desk, a closer inspection found she was holding a knife. She handed it over, with the expression of just receiving a life-sentence at the Old Bailey and I could only imagine the trouble she was about to find herself in. Especially considering the increased levels of security schools find themselves under following a spate of unrelated school stabbing incidents.

Under normal birthday circumstances, this would be my 29th such celebration. In China though, with a baby already aged one the moment they leave their mother’s womb, this meant I would have a legitimate practice shot at celebrating the big 3-0. To mark this premature passing in to my new decade of existence, my wife had lined up a number of surprises, taking in Benxi’s best highlights; the local zoo, followed by what the Chinese do best; karaoke.

Shrouded in mist and rain, rolling down from nearby mountain peaks, Benxi zoo looks wild and surprisingly promising from the outside. Actually finding the zoo proved a little trickier than I was expecting. Not knowing the Chinese word for zoo, I took it for granted the taxi driver I flagged down would understand the monkey, elephant and lion charades I wildly performed with excitable zest. Slightly bemused, the taxi driver nodded his understanding and as my wife and I sat back in the taxi, we basked in the ingenuity of my actions. Unfortunately, my charades had been drastically mistaken. Minutes later, too embarrassed to argue, we’d been dropped off at a local pet store. Yet to see a pet store stocking monkeys, elephants and lions for sale, I tried the same charade technique a second time, hoping the first taxi driver had been a little ‘special’. This time it worked perfectly.

After hearing of the death of several under nourished, Siberian tigers in nearby Shenyang zoo, the variety and quality of animals on show at Benxi zoo was surprising. Even more surprising were the ‘no beating’ signs dotted around some of the enclosures, warning of the dangers of attempting to take on a tiger, lion, wolf, or even a bear in a one-on-one fight of strength. From my experience, these signs would be far more suited to the classroom!

My birthday celebrations were polished off with a trip to a KTV karaoke joint. With a small number of English hits to choose from, I found myself screaming and screeching to Maroon 5, Backstreet Boys and Avril Lavigne before ending the night with a near perfect rendition of Eminem’s Stan. Maybe rapping is a skill I have overlooked in the past! Read Less

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Week 31 & 32 - A Vomiting Success

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Great Wall Marathon of China Photo - China, Asia

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After five months of waiting, and occasionally training, judgement day finally arrived. Like a prowling stalker, the Great Wall Marathon of China had crept up on me with little warning and great haste. I certainly wasn’t ready for it, the majority of my running done on treadmills, safely away from the sub-zero extremes of winter. Now one of the world’s toughest marathons, incorporating 5,164 of the Great Wall steps, was becoming more daunting as the seconds ticked away to the start of the race.The Great Wall Marathon of China is ran along the Huangyaguan section of the Great Wall and the surrounding mountainous countryside in Tianjin Province, which borders Beijing. Unfortunately, having a...Read More

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Week 29 & 30 - Sauteed Morning Glory

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There’s only so much "I’ll use you for all I can," attitude a hard-working, honest chap like myself can take, and upon hearing the three day ‘Labour Day’ national holiday was possibly being overlooked by my immediate superior, I decided it was finally time to fight back. A fight back that was surprisingly over before it started, my secret weapon, my contract, landing the winning punch with impressive ease.With the three day national holiday confirmed, the need to secure train tickets to and from my proposed holiday destination became an issue of utmost importance. Like all national holidays in China, it’s the only chance most inhabitants get to travel, often leaving public transportation u...Read More

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Week 26, 27 & 28 - A Hernia Hypochondriac

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For me, one of the more worrisome moments of travel is when illness strikes. I’m not talking about your everyday run-of-the-mill sniffles, or a bout of the runs after a dodgy street kebab. I’m talking about the more serious aches and pains that you slowly realise might need more than a paracetamol tablet to fix. After four days of constant pain in my lower abdomen and groin, it dawned on me this could be something which wouldn’t take care of itself. I might be in need of expert consultation. In such times of need, like always, I turn to my closest, most trusted ally: Doctor Google. Doctor Google is a pessimist at the best of times, and after typing in my symptoms, I was highly disappointed...Read More

For me, one of the more worrisome moments of travel is when illness strikes. I’m not talking about your everyday run-of-the-mill sniffles, or a bout of the runs after a dodgy street kebab. I’m talking about the more serious aches and pains that you slowly realise might need more than a paracetamol tablet to fix. After four days of constant pain in my lower abdomen and groin, it dawned on me this could be something which wouldn’t take care of itself. I might be in need of expert consultation.

In such times of need, like always, I turn to my closest, most trusted ally: Doctor Google. Doctor Google is a pessimist at the best of times, and after typing in my symptoms, I was highly disappointed to see that with months left to live, I really should splash out on that dream holiday sooner, rather than later. Thinking rationally, I crossed off the more serious ailments from my growing list of possibilities and narrowed my search down to just the one; a hernia. The pain, swelling and symptoms all fitted and with my Great Wall of China Marathon only weeks away, I knew the sooner I had the necessary surgery, the more chance I would have to make it to the start line.

Within an hour, I was racing towards the best hospital in town, with my concerned boss and his wife. For once I was happy to be a foreigner in a small Chinese city, as I was ushered past the queuing casualties in to an examination room, where seven worried doctors battled for my attention. My Chinese isn’t the best, but I could recognise from their arm-waving motions, they wanted me to strip to my birthday suit. I felt a little self-conscious as my boss’s wife watched with a, ‘yay, I get to see a foreign peni* for the first time’ look. A dirty scowl and a few choice words from my boss, soon had his wife retreating for the door. My boss tried to follow, but was apprehended since he was the only person in the room who could speak both English and Chinese.

With the added stress of standing naked before my employer and seven chatty doctors I think I failed to do the age-old ‘East-West size difference’ arguments justice. As my boss looked embarrassingly on, all seven doctors took it in turns to grope, prod, pull, twist and poke my nether regions to try and identify the problem. None of them could, and before I knew what was happening, I was being frog-marched to another area of the hospital where my boss informed me they wanted to ‘take a photo’.

I wasn’t quite sure what a Polaroid picture would do to diagnose my complaint, but I asked no questions. Luckily the photo turned out to be an ultrasound and as I lay on the examination table having my insides examined like a pregnant lady, I became aware of some strange happenings. Either the three doctors residing over me were the only authorized paperwork signing personnel in the whole hospital, or news of a naked foreigner having an ultrasound travels around the hospital like a wild fire. I counted twelve giggling, staring nurses entering the room, before I was able to dress and reclaim my modesty.

The verdict? I had nothing but a ‘muscle infection.’ In other words, a pulled groin muscle. I wouldn’t like to point the finger and call myself a pathetic little hypochondriac, but the evidence would prove otherwise. It was several weeks before I could look my boss in the eyes again.

Benxi is a mountainous city built on huge iron ore and coal deposits (the worlds worst mining disaster took place in this city back in 1942 when 1549 miners lost their lives). With my Great Wall of China Marathon including large sections of this formidable man-made masterpiece, living in such a mountainous city, with ‘step-enhanced’ mountain climbs has it’s benefits. With the groin ‘injury’ gone and the city finally clear of snow, I was at last able to enjoy a spot of marathon training outside on the polluted streets of Benxi, rather than on a gradient-free, gym-trapped treadmill. Climbing the two-thousand steps to the summit of the nearest mountain, even a heavily sweating, red-faced foreigner can’t break the locals’ tai-chi practising and opera singing concentration levels. Running down the opposite side of these surrounding mountains is like entering another world. No more haze, pollution or city life. Only nature, clean air and tranquillity.

Logging all those miles in preparation hasn’t stopped the opportunities for socialising with local friends. There are two things you can be more or less guaranteed when visiting the families of Chinese friends. Firstly they love to teach you the art of making dumplings. After so many dumpling making lessons in these circumstances, I’m becoming quite the expert. Considering the antics of one disgruntled Chinese worker, having this skill is certainly beneficial. Discontented at his pay and work conditions, one man decided to add in the extra ingredient of insecticide at his dumpling factory. After similar ‘tainting’ cases, I think the best this man can now hope for is life imprisonment.

Secondly, it’s only a matter of time before the father will want to test your ability to consume vast quantities of alcohol. There is just one rule to this drinking malarkey; the more you can drink the more respect you earn. I love respect, but I can’t say I’m an impressive drinker. On my last visit to a local Chinese friend’s family I was immensely relieved to realise the father I was enjoying a few swift glasses of beer with, was nothing but a champion lightweight. He knew this, and to prove he was still a better man than me, I was forced to participate in an exhibition of strength. After being comprehensively beaten in press-up, sit-up, arm wrestling and ‘who weighs less’ contests, I conceded defeat, much to his pleasure. He refused my offer of a ‘double or nothing’ thumb-wrestling match and basked in his victory. Competitiveness seems to be an integral part of daily Chinese life. Read Less

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Around the World Without Flying - Part 4

Week 34, 35 & 36 - First Impressions

Week 33 - No Beating!

Week 31 & 32 - A Vomiting Success

Week 29 & 30 - Sauteed Morning Glory

Week 26, 27 & 28 - A Hernia Hypochondriac

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