Wuhan - Cooling Off

12nd October 2008

Ni hao,

Renzo "The Red" reporting from China.

Find attached 3 photos:

• The first of me with a couple of kids I've "adopted", with a waterfall in the background
• Me with the father of the boy
• Lastly, an Australian (Deanne) friend's bathroom which I have dubbed "Deanne's Dunny" which can act as the toilet, shower and sink for peeling vegetables. Apparently all three modes of operation have been known to occur concurrently, in some parts of the country!

Wuhan the 'hot centre" is rapidly cooling down, which has forced me to go on a winter clothes shopping spree. Fortunately clothes are relatively cheap here and I am becoming less reliant on my Chinese teacher translator, getting by with a few chosen words and lots of gestures. One salesperson took it to the extreme when pointing to a price tag with 348 yuan written on it by showing me 3 fingers, followed by 4 and finally raising 8 fingers - I felt like raising 2 fingers to her (but not as a victory salute!).

I've also bought myself a new bicycle - decided I couldn't wait for the Chinese mafia to steal (oops, I mean find) a second-hand one for me. It's a 21-speed mountain bike with Shimano gears, front shocks and light enough for me to carry up to my 3rd-floor apartment: students and teachers are amazed that I would outlay such an enormous sum of money as Y698 (approx $120 at the time). However, I'm whizzing past all the rusting 50-100 year-old bikes (and riders to match) whilst keeping an eye on the rest of the traffic.

The English teaching is a lot of fun and quite rewarding, especially when I've been recognised by the students and teachers who have dubbed me a workaholic. I've now been taken out to a number of banquets where a whole variety of dishes have been served, including frogs, doves and a variety of fish: the last one was a teachers' dinner given by the Dean of the faculty where he asked me if I would be interested in teaching a Business course, to which I respectfully declined.

Reading many students' essays can get very boring but every now and then I get a good laugh, such as one student commenting on an author's view of English spoken in non-English-speaking countries: he took great offence at the author referrring to the use of "bastardised" English - the student writing, at length, on how rude the author was in using such bad language! I now have a new group of students, some of whom did not have an English name. To rectify this I've been handing out names that sound a bit like their Chinese names (Sheryl, Shawn and Jamie amongst them). One student with a "wal..." sound I anointed as "Wally", figuring he won't know any better until he later came up to me with a dictionary in his hand asking "please teacher, can I change my name" whilst showing me the definition of Wally as "a silly or inept person". We then settled on "Walter".

Zai jian from the "Not-So-Hot Centre".