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2005-11-02
Sorry I didn't chat to you the other day. I was in the middle of a hectic
patch. We had just finished hosting a Halloween Party and I was off out to
birthday party. The next day, the new SSIS teachers' team beat the Bosch 4
- 1. They were previously undefeated and had won a local amateur league.
We were very pleased with ourselves. Look forward to seeing you in
December. Nick
2005-10-02 Latest
Dear All 2 October 2005
Monday passed without incident, or at least without an unearthed incident. The chairman and director were in Paris; maybe something happened there.
Since the school opened (or rather didn’t open) I have been an eager spectator to the insanity of our management and administration. This week, I got the opportunity to join in. Six months ago, I put the order for humanities resources; all of them intended for the start of this academic year. Wednesday was the first month anniversary of the official start to that year, and my non-arrived sources list was still in three figures. The school has a total of three administrative staff who deal with purchases: for two of them, purchases are the sum total of their job. What is more, the Chinese government only allows one wholesaler, the incomparable Shanghai Book Traders (SBT), the company that makes you work for the honour of handing them cash. Of the three SSIS admin staff it wasn’t clear who dealt with SBT and who received the orders: the responsibility rotated as the mood took them, and there was no single person in overall charge. Who should I deal with? To add to the piquancy of my dilemma, arriving resources have been sent to six different locations over the past month, distinctions inspired by the whim of the receiving administration artist. The distance from the humanities office to anyone of these rooms is a mile there and back according to Ruth’s odometer, and resources can arrive at all times.
I therefore hedged my bets in an attempt to find out when my books and CDRoms had arrived. I sent soft copies of my lists to three people they should, hopefully, affect; to make doubly sure they new about them, I invested in the half mile walk to the main office to introduce myself, have a chat and hand over the hard copy lists. I extracted promises from all involved, plus a passing librarian, that as soon as my resources came in they would tell me, and they would also start pestering SBT for an explanation as to why the books hadn’t arrived after a mere six months.
It was on Wednesday, that I finally got an SBT explanation in the form of a spreadsheet (which I alphabeticalised for myself) that gave the curious status of each order item: half of which were marked as ‘arrived’ despite their conspicuous absence on humanities’ shelves. They could not possibly arrived: not only had I been promised that their arrival would be accompanied by a note to me, and anyway I had worn more shoe leather in periodic checks to the resource rooms.
I had not counted on our administration’s vast reserves of creativity: the books had not been logged; they were just sent directly to the primary school. I found this out when I queried the SBT list with Amanda, one of the purchasing officers, “Look, SBT are trying to trick us: these books haven’t arrived.”
As reward for my revelation, I got the enigmatic, Chinese “Yes.”
I have learnt the procedure for dealing with this: I maintained eye contact, smiled and nodded.
Finally she cracked, “They have arrived.”
“Erm,” I stuttered, thrown utterly off-guard, “but I haven’t got them.”
Again, I got the non-committal syllable, technically known as stonewalling, actually expressed as, “No.”
I was now to agitated to rest content with the conventional form of eye-contact, smile and nod, I leapt straight in with, “Where are they?”
“In the primary resource room.”
The instinctive response to this is, “What the hell are they doing there?” But, I realised why they were there in the same moment the question popped into my head, and a reflex saved me from articulating it. Chinese administration is based on one simple principle, “what is the easiest thing to do at the particular time a task is foistered upon you.” In the context of customer service, this generally involves saying that a product is unavailable; or, of it is clearly available, but previously unnoticed by the customer, jabbing a mute and irritated finger in its general direction. Clearly, my books had come at the same time as a large quantity of primary resources, and Amanda wasn’t about to be checking lists in her eagerness to get the stuff out of sight, and once out of sight, then out of mind.
Now such administration is merely lazy, challenging it would make it obstructionist; so I smiled, acknowledged the extent of her workload, left my opinions unstated, and asked for help in finding my books in primary, “What, now?” “Really, that would be very good.” “But...” “Yes, I really do appreciate how busy you are?” I said, in a tone that expressed sympathy and also enough of a hint that I wasn’t going away until I got the books, and the easiest course right now was to show me the room.
The new site is such a distance that I can’t come in early or leave late: I have to take the bus at the allocated times. I have to start work at 7.45 and finish at 5.15, whatever; so now I bring sandwiches so that I can work through break and lunch and completed the thousand unnecessary tasks thrown at me. Curiously, I am beginning to enjoy it: a game; the prize being to seize some small space of educational sanity from the determined administrative chaos.
Nick
2005-09-24 Fire on the bus
Dear All 24 September 2005
While for anyone who goes out to work, Monday always has a touch of dread about it, SSIS Mondays are becoming a thing of particular horror. Our first Monday of the year never happened: the school simply was not ready; on our first real Monday, a colleague died, on the next, a typhoon hit the school; and on our latest Monday, a school bus caught fire.
Thankfully, no-one was injured; but more through the efforts of the older students, than the intervention of the school’s two paid employees on board. While the driver was struggling to put out an engine fire with a fire-extinguish that didn’t work and then his flask of tea, the bus ayi ran from the vehicle, leaving some 20 children on board. It was left to several members of my Grade 10s to unbuckle the kindergarten kids and, in one case, lift an hysterical child off.
I am certain, though, that our director did sterling work in calming parents concerns: they were thanked for expressing their concerns, their suggests noted, but reassured that school buses are regularly serviced, the fire extinguished always checked and the staff thoroughly trained. I am sure parents also overlooked the actual explanation for engine fire, extinguisher failure and carers who run from their helpless charges.
To be honest, I have had other safety concerns on my mind. Although the hole in the maths/humanities office is no longer one of them: nine days of constant pestering finally paid off, and it was grudgingly fixed. That fate still awaits the roof tiles that teeter precariously some two weeks after they were first dislodged: only a bout of unseasonably clement weather has thwarted their further progress.
In other areas, the library remains closed through lack of furniture; and while our ‘state of the art’ [sic] labs are finally open for business, students have to stand through lessons because there are no stalls. Although there are plenty of people with the opportunity to appreciate the discomfort of these locations, two of the largest and pleasantly decorated rooms are currently unused: the chairman and director are both on leadership training courses in Paris. It is only a pity they didn’t receive such training a long time before now.
It is of course far more interesting to write about what is going wrong; and despite the content of these emails, I am remarkably content in my job. I think I would feel frustrated if the surrounding management were merely bad, but it has become so awful that it is comic distraction, rather than a source irritation. I enjoy teaching my classes, and the humanities administration is going well. Even the Grade 12 economics classes I have had to teach after school have been fine, and there is now a light at the end of that particular tunnel, as a replacement teacher will come on October 10th.
And things have been pleasant at home. Last Sunday, we celebrated Moon Festival by inviting 14 kindergarten children, making moon cakes, enacting the story of Chang E, making chalk drawings of the story outside, and banging instruments around Sudu. Ruth escaped with a friend, but George loved it: he demanded another Moon Festival before the standard one next year.
At the moment, George is playing with his lego, Chloe is at a birthday party, Ruth and Katherine are at a Latin dancing lesson. Chug is having a nap, and the sky is blue.
Nick
2005-09-17 Typhoon
17 September 2005
Dear All
The week started with a typhoon, giving me a bit of joy with an unexpected day off. Last Sunday, it was being billed as the biggest thing to hit this province since the Three Tenors came to Shanghai; a government official took the decision to close down all the schools on Monday, and I got word just as Sunday’s early evening depression was beginning to settle on the pit of my stomach.
In the event, the typhoon came to very little during the night and Monday was a glorious day, perfectly designed for romps in the park. I should say, the typhoon came to very little in the properly constructed parts of town: Sudu’s total damage was one bent sapling; our state of the art new school did not escape so lightly. The roofs tiles that hadn’t been knocked straight to the floor, tittered precariously on edges waiting for young children to drop on. In the humanities/maths office, the typhoon had managed the incredible feat of punching a perfectly square hole in the ceiling, so that I can now sit at my desk looking directly at the blue skies that followed the storm. All corridors are decorated with buckets catching water from burst and damaged pipes. Perhaps in a special commemoration to the typhoon, the management committee took the decision not to deal with any of the damage whatsoever; I spent the week warning to kids avoid wet patches and the edges of buildings. Like all the other problems we encounter, it will be ‘sorted out by next week.’ The next week of what, nobody reveals.
Generally though, it is nice to be back at school ¨C more specifically the classroom. A lot of the work we have done in the Humanities department is now showing up in the external reports that have come in during the last couple of weeks. After an excellent IBO report, the students’ Grade 10 results are significantly better in humanities than any other subject area. I would like to think that the reason we didn’t appear on the chairman’s numbered priority list, which had maths and science at the top and music and PE at the bottom, is that he doesn’t need to worry about us; there is always the possibility however, he views us a painful filler between maths and science lessons.
George has started to explore life’s deep questions. “Do people love God because he has all the power?” He asked me as we walked to the park, last Monday, then spotting Sudu’s sole typhoon casualty,”Because he can blow up trees?” Clearly, he had decided to veer on the side of caution in the expression of his love, because later he told me,”Daddy, I love you and God, but you don’t have all the power, and I can’t hear God.” This is all part of his growing realisation of his own mortality, which he seems to have already worked out,”Daddy, when I die and become somebody new, you can have my fart machine.” Which of course was very touching, but I thought it best to point out the simple flaw,”Georgie, I will die first.” Now, if George went to a school that had humanities anywhere on its numbered priorities, he might have developed a proper concept of time,”You will die?” He asked, shocked, implying the near rather than distant future,”I don’t want you to die.” “I won’t die now, but I will die one day.” He let out a groan at this:”You die, Monday?” To which, I responded in the way all metaphysical discussions should end,”Let’s get an ice-cream.”
Nick
2005-09-10 Latest Message
10 Sept 2005
Dear All
Last week has been lodged with the Guinness book of Records; we know it was long , way over the standard 168 hours , but we are seeking confirmation that it may have been the longest week ever. On Wednesday morning, I switched on the internet to check it really wasn’t Friday. By Thursday, I was reminding students about lessons they had learnt in a non-existent previous school week.
The week started in the worst possible way: the sudden death of a colleague. Mike Scott, the economics teacher, was close to 60 and had a massive heart attack. On the Saturday, he had had some chest pains, but the hospital gave the all-clear after running a full range of tests. He came in with the rest of us, bright and early, Monday morning. At 8.30 I stood chatting to him in the foyer as we greeted students to the new school. He was in good spirits as we left to our homerooms ten minutes later. At 9.10 I left my homeroom to ask the secondary head, Frank Davis, if he had any maps of the school. Our conversation was interrupted to listen to the sound of sirens, but we just shrugged and continued; thinking it could be for anything. Frank had no maps, so I went to reception, who gave me a copy, and then to the photocopy room to run off enough for my class. As I climbed the stairs back to my classroom, I could see Mike on a gurney, his face purple, his heart being massaged by a paramedic; his wife holding his hand, the director, Frank and the school’s Chinese business manager standing by in mute concern. I hurried by to shoo away to of my class who were descending the stairs into the incident.
At 10 o’clock break, I went to Frank to offer my services for cover; Frank, upset, told me that Mike had died. Mike had been a large character, and an hour and a half before he had been joking with me: I didn’t feel upset - it didn’t feel real. Frank asked me to take his canteen duty so that he could make a general announcement to staff at the beginning of lunch. I was quite grateful for the distraction of the farcical chaos engendered by our latest contractor without a clue; a contractor who believed that two workers would be sufficient to serve 400 students all coming at 12.30; with me subbing as potato doler, the queue was reduced to a mere hour long.
The week has been so busy, I haven’t had too much time to reflect on Monday’s events; except that they have highlighted the essential pettiness of so much that happens. For 10 days I had been trying to get an electricity supply to the humanities rooms; I had tired on verbal requests, and was sending two notes a day, hoping to ware down the powers-that-be. The diurnal response was that the school were waiting on the electricity company who had to rewire things. I argued it was probably a blown fuse: on Wednesday, after ten days of pestering, two workers opened up the fuse cupboard, flicked a couple of switches and we were back on. I could carry on, but that event stands emblematic of my week.
Some of the Chinese staff are saying that the school has bad feng shui; that the west to east orientation of the school is a mistake, and the large open areas through the centre along the positive energy to rush through and out, while bad energy collects in the recesses of the classrooms bunched off to the north and south. The physics teacher in a show of cross-cultural support explained that negative ions do collect in corners, and quantum mechanics suggests that there can be connections between areas not physically linked. But really the Western teachers believe our early troubles to have a more mundane origin.
We have moved into a school, still under construction. Not just in the details such as unpredictable electricity supply, no gas, partial water supply, air-conditioning confined to the offices of the top managers, no curtains, no whiteboards, lifts out of action, no putty in the glass doors so that the windows fall out, no computers for the computer labs; but in substantive things as well , a theatre full of scaffolding, astro-turf and running tracks not laid, a swimming pool full of unmixed cement, tractors still moving earth, roads being laid. As teachers, we came back not to prepare for lessons and administration, but to lug furniture in the humid 90s because the removal company the school had contracted only had small vans to move more than 100 rooms, and then failed to pay their workers who promptly went on strike. Meanwhile our management skulked in their offices, the only air-conditioned part of the building avoiding all contact with us. It was a stressful week for teachers, amid the heat, the dust and the toxic fumes, and clearly it took a greater toll on some more than others.
Meanwhile, the school’s upper management have been demonstrating their skills in co-ordination, decision-making, prioritisation and sensible consultation. The science labs are still not in operation after a week’s delay to the school year. The chief engineer has supervised labs in which the electric points are behind the cupboards, the sinks are so large there is only room for four work surfaces in classes up to 25 students, the water pipes are a trip hazard across the floor, and the gas pipes take up all the storage space in the half of the labs that are actually supplied. A grown man, he has been known to run away when questioned about this. The newly appointed IT and finance co-ordinator, a Singaporean from a business not teaching background, who finds time to take priority excursions into a profession he has only just come into contact with. He is not in charge of the academic department of IT, rather the administration of the systems: an administration that forgot to order computers for the computer rooms, in fact managed to make such oversight an irrelevance by failing to ensure internet sockets and electrical sockets for them to connect to, even if we had them. The server containing all student and curriculum information is still not up, two and half weeks since the latest deadline passed causing our organisation and teaching to inspirational rather than planned. Amid this the IT director took time out to ask the head of academic IT to show him his (inaccessible) curriculum so that he could improve them. The latter, a bluff Australian, told him he had other priorities, and for the sake of future good relations left it at that.
However, it is our Singaporean chairman of the board, the top man in the comedy club that is our new school, that has really led the way in the proper ordering of priorities and processes of consultation for teaching amid a building site. At the end of last year, he announced to 150 staff that a former American education secretary had said that Singaporean maths textbooks were better than American ones; therefore the school would use Singaporean maths books. Unfortunately, he hadn’t passed this message on to his head of maths who, after careful consideration of a wide range of resources in relation to the curriculum we deliver, had just ordered 400 Australian textbooks. This week, the chairman has had to take time out of the big decisions to have meetings with the man who should have had charge of this small decision to have explained how maths is taught, and then override him anyway. The principle then took the head of maths aside to tell him to order the Singaporean books, but just not use them.
Still the canteen has two workers for 400 students, and lunch time has to be extended into teaching periods.
Anyway, I am meant to be spending this weekend boning up on economics, as I am taking one of Mike’s IB diploma classes after school until they can find a replacement. My one piece of good news was the report I got back for my submitted Grade 10 work, which congratulated me on the excellence of my sample.
Nick
2005-09-04 News
Dear All
It seems an absurd thing to be grateful for - absurd and slightly cruel; but there was no lasting harm to the person at the centre of it all, and it helped me gain an important perspective to the week’s events.
Katherine has been more than usually busy at the beginning of the school year: the massive growth in students coupled with natural turnover has led to an unprecedented number of new teachers. About 45, the usually percentage of whom need ayis and nannies. It is an opportunity for Katherine to see teachers as employers - a break from our status as moaning employees.
Interestingly, many teachers feel that our employers owe a moral obligation to us; that we should be listened to, consulted; that there is a fair wage for our work, independent of the wage we agreed to take. As employers of ayis, not all teachers care to extend these principles: this relationship is purely business, in which employers are perfectly entitled to get the best deal, and it is the ayi’s responsibility to take care of themselves.
On Tuesday, an upset ayi came to our door, wanting Katherine to clear up a mystery. She had worked for just two days for the new employer Katherine had introduced. As she turned up for work, the clearly-now-ex-employer had grabbed her keys from the ayi, flung them to the ground and shouted abuse at her, in a language she didn’t understand. Then another ayi, already inside, told her that she had been fired, and that she was her replacement.
The new teacher’s tack with Katherine was to insist that she had every
right to fire the ayi. Something Katherine agreed with, but went on to
point out that it was not her right she was questioning but her behaviour. The new teacher then said that the ayi had not done a good job, which had upset her, and that is why she had angrily dismissed the ayi. Sadly for the new teacher, Katherine had found out from the new ayi, who happens to have a language in common, that she had been engaged on Saturday, the day before Katherine’s ayi had even begun work. Katherine informed the new teacher of what she knew, adding, “You are liar, and your behaviour in shameful,’ in a matter of fact tone that floored her adversary. But not for long, “I have a right to get the best deal for myself, and if I can a cheaper ayi I will.” “You have that right, but not the right to be rude to people and lied about them. I am her best chance of getting a new job, and you have just told me she is a poor worker, which isn’t true.”
Worse, the woman initially refused to pay the two days the ayi had worked; Katherine had to go round and bang on her door. Even when she handed over the cash, she complained that she would now be short this month. Unlike the ayi she fired, I presume.
As it happened, Katherine managed to find replacement work almost immediately: but every time at school there is bus chaos, or not enough
meals ordered, or furniture isn’t moved because of striking workers, or the gas engineer turns up without the plans, or the water engineer doesn’t know where the main pipe is, the catering company forget to apply for a licence, or all school computers are finally ordered one working day before school starts with a month delivery time, or the chief engineer omits electric sockets from the IT rooms or installs sinks to the science labs that collapse when water runs into them ¨C I can remind myself that at least I will be getting my cheque at the end of the month.
Nick
2005-08-26 Latest News
Dear All
Already another week has passed in China, and England seems further and further away. After the drama of last week’s fight, this week has been busy but comfortably mundane.
While the children have an extra week, I was back to work on Monday: not at the new site as expected, but amongst unmoved boxes in a ghost school. My friend Richard, who in his capacity as head of science, has had to visit the new site often, is not full of heart warming prospects. All the furniture was stolen, and a freak rainstorm caused one of the flat roofs to partially collapse. The only sports facility that will be available until the end of October is a single dance study; so our 1100 students will become experts at patiently waiting for a waltz. The science labs are in such a state of confusion that the chief engineer has refused to answer emails and phone calls all summer; and when finally forced to meet Richard and confronted with a multitude of design faults, pretended to inspect the door, then slipped away. The absence of gas, adequate electricity sockets, or water from most labs was explained away on the grounds that ‘you won’t actually need them,’ and when shown the plans that he had signed along with Richard and the director, insouciantly admitted that they had been completely ignored, and ‘you shouldn’t worry.’ It was, apparently, a fist class denial of reality.
Secretly I am glad of Richard’s problems, as they give perspective to my own: a sudden departmental arrival, who is still working out his notice, and has not taught humanities before; a department member who refuses to join the department, and sees his room as his personal room, and the resources inside as also belonging him personally. These two problems have neatly combined to accentuate each other: Chuck, our most recent newbie caused by the unexpected influx of an additional 90 students to secondary in the last month, does not have a classroom. I have largely accommodated him in mine, causing many of my lessons to move: being a humanities teacher, I felt that their most logical home was another humanities classroom, which anyway as head of humanities I had first say over. Such is the theory. But when I told the economics teacher, that it was his classroom I would be moving to, in a conversation that started by him telling me that he wouldn’t have anything to do with the humanities department despite being technically part of it. Initially he refused, but when I made it plain that I was making a polite but enforceable statement, not a request; he changed tack to demanding that I didn’t use any of ‘his’ equipment in the room: equipment that belongs to the school. As I don’t need the equipment, and I had already got what I wanted, I left him with the satisfaction with a point over me, and good relations maintained. Fortunately, my department who want to be included are generally reasonable individuals.
There are 45 new teachers in the school, and a fair few have children. Ruth and Chloe have already made friends and I have organised a trip to Water World so that families can mix. We are becoming a very large community now.
Nick
2005-08-20 China latest
Dear All
It is now a week that I have been back, and I have so easily slipped back into life that it seems that I never left. I am formally required to return to work on Monday, but have started things already. Frank, the head of secondary, asked me on Friday to explain how things have changed and how that affects humanities. During the summer a large Korean company started operating in a town near here, bring in 100 Korean families. In secondary alone 90 additional students have enrolled over the summer. I am not quite sure how this managed to be unexpected, to out school’s higher powers: companies don’t just turn up, settling down on the road to somewhere else; but it was certainly unexpected to the people who are required to take action, rather than just the cash. At the end of last year, the secondary section had 250 students; the new academic year will begin with 400 students. Frank has to employ two new teachers at the last minute ¨C both of whom were teaching TEFL locally. I have one extra member of my department ¨C who with a name like Chuck, can’t help but be North American. I now have seven teachers I have to communicate with for humanities work, whose timetables add up to 6 full ones. I’m still not getting a pay rise.
The worst of the summer has passed, and though it is T-shirt weather even at night, it is quite possible to play outside. I have been playing piggy-in-the-middle with the children ¨C George’s favourite game, while he is not the piggy.
I witnessed a fight earlier today. Fortunately not involving a member of my brood; although Chug was, once again, responsible for my presence at a major Sudu scene; this time, though, he didn’t take part, nor cost me 100s of RMB. He had, as usual, escaped, and was evading my attempts at recapture by moving from bush to bush. I was too busy looking at Chuggy’s wagging tail to immediately notice that he had skipped a particular bush because it was already occupied by a prone man. It was the woman shrieking just beyond the bush that in fact alerted me to the whole scene ¨C which was completed by another man energetically engaged in making sure that Man No 1 remained prone by the frequent application of his shoe to the other man’s stomach. Kicking man looked angry, Screaming woman looked, as her title suggests, upset, and Prone Man was clearly drunk to the point of unresponsiveness, despite the frequent kickings.
My entrance seemed to calm matters: such beatings are a private matter, and an audience can dampen the most ardent of violent spirits. Screaming Woman and Kicking Man decided that Prone Man should be moved inside: unfortunately the ultimate cause of Prone Man’s horizontal attachment to the ground was not the shoes of Kicking Man but his own considerable alcohol consumption. His legs didn’t work, and he had to be dragged. The dragging clearly roused him; he looked up, saw Kicking Man; regained leg control; and started flailing his arms about. Kicking Man responded in kind; at which point I intervened, I put my arm lightly on his shoulder, and said, “Friend, stop it.” Which he did ¨C perhaps on the grounds that I was about a foot taller than him. The intervention didn’t do Prone Man many favours though: horizontal had become his natural state, and his inspired verticalism dramatically collapsed when Kicking Man stepped away. More unfortunately, he dramatically collapsed directly onto his forehead, without the customary intervention of outstretched hands. Blood was pretty much everywhere, and he rapidly gained a stunningly swollen lump above his eye. I asked Screaming Woman to phone a doctor ¨C she told me she was phoning the police; Kicking Man decided he was needed elsewhere.
By the time the police arrived, a crowd had gathered around Prone Man discussing historical causation: debate centering around whether drink or Screaming Woman were more responsible for the fight. Kicking Man didn’t get much of a mention. He returned, maybe with a guilty conscience, and was arrested as Prone Man was taken in a taxi to the hospital. My name and number was taken as a potential witness.
It’s good to be back
Nick
2005-08-15 A new year
Dear All
I might have more success with regularity if I cut down the length of my emails. As a return to China is the beginning my year, I will turn over a new email leaf; and start with something shorter.
Chloe and I got back without any problems. Door to door including a leisurely meal and wait at Heathrow we arrived in less than 20 hours, which is pretty good going. Both of us have recovered from our jet-lag more rapidly than earlier years; we are clearly getting used to this.
Ruth declared yesterday her wierdest birthday yet: soming to meet us at the airport and then getting a cascade of presents; but she enjoyed herself. She enjoyed ending the day with Tim's birthday present - a chapter of "The Day My Bum Went Psycho." And started today with the Monday knickers supplied by Ellen. We have high hopes of the girls indulging in a daily change of underwear.
In fact all the presents have gone down a bomb. Thanks to Josn for his passed on toys - George was very pleased. Ruth has spent the day teaching her friend Junge Fever and asking me to join in. George has taken his new frisbee for a couple of turns and has caught up on all on new episodes of Dangermouse, and I have been dragged in to observe his car lights despite being the one who actually put them up.
My new colleagues have begun to arrive. I have met the new geographer and a Canadian. They are, at the very least, not immidiately obnoxious. Work front the good news is that the new school won't be finished in time so the children have an extra weeks holiday and we have extra week to swan around pretending we are preparing.
I am being called to Jungle Fever: must go.
Nick
2005-02-16 Re:Whats up?
Tim
I think Matthew is quite right about the Manchurian Madness piece - it was very good, and you should write more. The most difficult thing over extended pieces of writing is that you have to give description and observation a narrative, which is the wind that moves the ship.
January is never a good month for anyone, and if I had my way we would skip straight to February, which contains pancake day, two birthdays and is mercifully short. I read that it has been scientifically proven that January 24th is the most depressing day of the year. Is there no end to the marvels of science? Fortunately my January managed to be too hectic - with exams, reports, Chinese New Year performances - for me to feel too bad. As you say, busy, busy, busy.
Glad to hear that you are getting back to Spanish classes. I am not surprised that you have forgotten most of it, but this time you will remember more quickly, and forget more slowly. If you ever work up the nerve (and I know it is a massive thing), there is no substitute for living in a country. My Chinese progresses unevenly, but I am in another spurt phase: I don't feel I am learning anything new, just becoming more confident in using what I have - grammatical forms that I knew in theory, but never spole in practice, a wider range of vocab. And it is because I have the chance of every day practice.
The wine tasting sounds like fun - at the very least a relaxed atmosphere to socialise. Did I mention that Chug bit me on 20th December? I had to have a number of shots, that resulted in me being banned from alcohol, coffee and ice-cream (which I think was unnecessary and a little bit nasty). Although I didn't hesitate to go out on a big drinking session on January 21st, that month was the best I felt and the best I slept in ages. And I am not a big coffee or alcohol drinker. However since then I only drink coffee before midday, and restrict beer to the weekend.
I joined a gym here a couple of years ago - trouble is that they are so boring, the football and tennis are a lot better. I am now the manager of the school football team - which has several matches next semester in Shanghai and Nanjng, culminating in a tournament in Qingdao. Fortunately I am mainly responsible for the admin side; the coach is a primary school teacher who played for England schoolboys (years ago - he is about my age) and a semi-professional side before becoming a teacher. Frankly, he is really rather good, and the only person I have ever played with that I watch carefully to see how the hell he does it.
I have attached what should be the start of my published writing career. I think I mentioned that I was asked to write an article about Suzhou for the China-Britain Trade Review. CBTW (as I affectionately refer to it) is an organ of the China-Britain Business Council, a quango that encourages Sino-British trade. My deadline was March 2nd, but I sent it in yesterday in case they wanted any modifications. Oh, I can't attach, so I have printed it below.
Keep up all the hard work
Nick
2005-02-14 What's up?
Dear Tim
How are things? I haven't heard from you in a while.
Katherine, Ruth, Chloe and George are all in Sichuan at the moment, leaving me to hold up the Little end in Suzhou and look after Chuggie the Dog. It is quite an usual experience for me to be alone; it is pretty much the first time in nearly 10 years. I am quite enjoying having my own space, although the neighbours are convinced I cannot cope - being alone is not a Chinese thing - I have been invited to lunch and dinner today. I have been able to read books and watch DVDs without interruption; just lie on my bed and think. Nevertheless I will be glad of a return to chaos next week.
Spent a couple of days in Shanghai last week - the typical Chinese experience: watched a cat documentary on the bus, and went to a Picasso exhibition in the Urban Planning Museum, (which is right next to the art gallery, which did, as it happens, have lots of photos of cityscapes). As ever, nothing makes sense.
How's things with you?
Nick
2005-01-16 Latest
Dear All
Katherine's had the most eventful of our week's here. Mr Jiang, who owns the factory that made our furniture, came to dinner yesterday. He is building a 200m squared showroom, and wants Katherine's designs to take up 20 - 40% of the space. If a customer is interested in her furniture, they will be referred to Katherine who will go through with them there exact specifications for their own custom made Katherine wardrobe (or whatever). Katherine gets about 25% of the purchase price. According to the factory manager, his main market is people kitting out their entire apartment, spending between 20 000 and 50 000 RMB.
Katherine is pleased because it uses her creativity, but it does mean that she will be considerably busier. She already has one potential customer through word of mouth and the showroom has not been built yet.
The girls are the middle of an exam week that strectches from Wednesday to Tuesday. Ruth got 90% in her Chinese reading and writing exam, which she was pleased about, and made her feel less bad about having a difficult maths exam. Chloe's exams are more low key, and George is obsessed with finding the letter G in any piece of text he comes across which might be a struggle to assess.
The girls are at a sleepover with one of Chloe's friends, and George is watching the Ultraman DVDs (he bought with Tim's Christmas money) with Eric. All of them are well despite the brisk north wind that travels merrily through our apartment.
My week has been the least eventful. I am still off coffee, alcohol and ice cream as a consequence of my injections, which means I have slept better than I have for years. Sadly another teacher was fired as a consequence of the fight in school before Christmas: one of the participants had resigned on the spot, in anticipation of the inevitable; the other had hung on to the disciplinary procedure went through its paces and clung on to January. Which was probably a mistake as a dismissal for fighting doesn't look good on a teacher's record, whereas a sudden resignation is at least ambigious. My girls think that he was swept away by the tsunami.
Hope all is well with you.
Nick
2004-12-19 From Katherine
Dear all:
Nick and the children are now on holiday. They are very happy in home. We had guests yesterday for lunch. They are Mr. Zhang's family. Mr. Zhang is the manager of the small factory, which did the furniture for our home. His wife is a very kind woman and children are two lovely boys. Mrs. Zhang is a Christian. In conversation I said that in England I was not allowed to skip train fare because Nick would say I am a thief. She looked at me very sincerely and said: "I guess you were not a Christian at that time. Is it right?" I said:" May be I was at that time." She said:" then I assume that you were still a new Christian and not feeling close to God at that time." Although she is in her forties yet she is so child-like in her faith and it is very touching. Her children one is called Noah and another Joshua. They played very well with Chloe and George. George shared his things very well. He came to us complaining that his sisters not sharing. Noah and Joshua said they would come to play again. George has made so much improvement in the last one month. He had a activity book which he previously just scribbled but several nights ago he began to do it properly and he enjoyed it very much. He finished that booklet in one go. He left this afternoon with his sisters to do rock climbing. I asked him to stay. He said:" I go with my sisters. When I come back I give you a big hug." Yesterday after uncle Matthew asked him to send some cat pictures he disappeared for quite a while. Later on I found three pieces of paper full of cats. Previously he was quite shy but recently he really surprised us. On the school bus he had a bag of sweets. He asked around who would like some sweets. A boy was quite rude. He said no in a very grumpy and angry way. George did not catch him and asked again. Then he said yes. George gave him a sweet and seeming not affected by that boy"s manner at all. Several nights ago in a restaurant he actually went to some strangers on the next table, watching them doing a drinking game. He was full of mischief and smile. Later on the cook in the restaurant came out sitting opposite us. They asked his name and he answered and they smiled at each other. Those cooks are a bunch of young man and they really liked George, because they kept smiling at him and said:" wow, he can speak Chinese very well." Actually George"s Chinese is better than English even though both do not make much coherent sense.
The school had a concert at the end of the term. Chloe was so good in her performance. She really came alive when she was on the stage. Afterwards I went to her class to say well done to her. There were two boys wanting to take picture with her. One of the boys" mum came to me and said that her boy had Chloe"s photo in his bedroom and he talks a lot about Chloe. Not only she is popular with the boys but she is also very popular among the girls. One Singaporean mum went to her and ask why she has not played with her daughter as much as before. Of course I felt very proud of Chloe. Her natural social skill and diplomacy is even superial to some adults. She is definitely better than me. Ruth was quite sad last night. She said she has no friends now. Nobody really likes her. She finds friendship quite difficult. But I found that she has improved recently. She is more helpful and gentle around the house now. I hurt my back last week and the pain has not gone away. Today it was very bad. I asked her to go to the massage place to get somebody come to me. She stopped what she was doing and sprang out to find help. Then later on she offered to help me with the cleaning since the ayi is not here in the morning. She also came to me and nick to give us hugs & gentle ones, improvement from previous jumping onto us and really rough and hard hug.
Hope you are all well. Hope you have a good Christmas and happy New Year.
Love
Katherine
2004-11-13 Latest
Dear All
The weather turned this week from a bright blue 21 degrees to a constantly pouring 10; prompting a shift in conversation from, “how long will it last? I’ve never known it so good,’ to, “well, we are set for the winter now.’
It was in this vein that I interrupted a group of Singaporeans on the morning of our temperature collapse discussing the possibility of further falls.
“The vegetable lady reckons it will drop to 2 degrees by Monday.” Glory remarked.
Sze Ying, who is more cynical about people in general and vegetable ladies in particular, shot back with, “What does she know?”
Glory stood her ground, “She is local.”
“What good is that?”
“Well she might have heard it on the news.”
I didn’t like to take sides, but I shared Sze Ying’s doubts about the vegetable lady; a small, but surprisingly loud woman who runs a stall in the local neighbourhood centre. I have had personal experience of her numerical liberalism; admittedly in her capacity as vegetable trader, rather than weather forecaster, but I think the principle might still apply. The newly opened neighbourhood centre is a five-minute walk from Sudu, and rather conveniently stocks a full range of groceries in neatly arranged stalls on two hygienic floors. Near the entrance is a small newsagent with a LCD price board on the wall behind: the government sets agricultural prices to control inflation, but with a small range to indulge the Chinese penchant for bargaining. It is this board that allowed me to expose the vegetable lady’s villainy. Fortunately my knowledge of Chinese characters, which falters on the steps of Tang poetry and Song novels, saunters through common groceries, re-enforced by my regular checking of the vegetable board. I therefore knew well that the government, in its mastering of economic minutiae, had decided that a pound of potatoes should retail at no less than 1.1 RMB (about 5p) and no more than, and perhaps only to the spendthrift, 1.4. I was therefore a little taken aback at the vegetable lady’s suggestion that I trump up 4RMB a pound for her potatoes, located just 10 metres from the government’s price board. “Ni kan dao jiaban” Look at the price board, I asked, pointing for added emphasis. She didn’t need to, so looked at the floor sheepishly, stifling a chuckle; suddenly snapping her head up, “2!”
“1.3” I replied.
“1.8.” Clearly, this was not a woman who was going to allow the government of China (Suzhou branch) to oppress her into dropping her potato price for a foreigner. It is possible that I could have forced her from her 1.8 perch onto the floor of a just price, but I was struck by the epiphany that I was haggling over 2 pence. Nevertheless, ever since that woman’s words have been tainted.
Which is all a round about way of saying that I pay too much for vegetables, talk about the weather and things have got colder and wetter. Today is therefore one of the few days that I have not gone outside to kick the football around with George and the girls, and Chuggy is getting a little jumpy through a walkless stay in the apartment. George is entertaining us with his own take on a Tang dynasty poem he learnt at school. The line, “Li li jie xing ku” cleverly changed to “Lin Lin jie xing ku.” Which, I am sure you will appreciate is a great deal more pertinent for us. [The original means, every grain of rice is the result of bitterly hard work; George’s version is, George is the result of bitterly hard work.] In English he changes the Beatles, “Love me do’ to “love me poo’ and, “All you need is love’ to “All you need is poo.’ We have high hopes for the boy.
Chloe’s Danish friend Caroline has just left after a sleepover and Ruth has returned from a sleepover and a row with Scottish Katie. They are now employing all the social skills that we have lovingly imparted to them to have a massive argument about who created what mess. Ruth has a very definite worldview. “I really liked my last art teacher Mr Morgan; he was really funny. I don’t like Ms Rodriguez at all, she is a proper art teacher & no fun at all.” And a couple of days later, she was explaining why no-one liked the music teacher, Mr Wackerman, “He makes kids do stuff in his lesson.” Chloe incurred Ruth’s wrath for being, “a boring as a scientist,’ although, to be fair, Chloe did later admit to liking science.
I missed this weekend’s party & a colleague’s birthday. I’ve decided to take a break. The rain has now stopped, and George is hassling me to kick his football.
Nick
2004-10-30 This week's events
Dear All
The children are in the kitchen at the moment cooking cakes with their friends. They have finally got to the development stage I have been waiting for, for years ¨C organising activities by themselves. They looked up the recipes on the Internet, prepared the ingredients, cooked them, and are now clearing the table, trying to prevent George scoffing the raw cake mixture. When I can get them to cook our meals and bring me breakfast in bed, I will finally think it has been all worthwhile.
To the girls¡¯ immense relief, George was away for most of the cooking process, with me at the local French supermarket. Saturday is always supermarket bedlam, and if I try to avoid shopping generally, Saturdays are a very particular aspect of that general avoidance. However, in a moment of weakness, if not complete insanity, I decided that it might be fun to go shopping with George.
George is quite an entertaining conversationalist, and it was nice to have an extended dip into the delights of his curious world. He established the terms straight away, "Dad, you are not important. Mum is important, but not you." Then he paused to consider this, looked me over and added, "Your hair is important though." Previously George¡¯s hair fascination had stopped with his own, which he lovingly combs and sprays with gel every morning; but I had a radical overhaul of my most northerly follicles this week, and it seems to have taken George aback; shifting his hair perspective on the world. He has begun to build a hair world view, proclaiming, "I don't like people with yellow hair. They are not nice." And really it is difficult to knock; my further questioning showed that George had laid cast iron tautological foundations for this one.
"Why are they not nice?"
"Because they have yellow hair."
Really, you can't argue.
Nevertheless, our chat soon moved on as our journey to the supermarket started, "You're silly a one," he accused me from the back of the bike. "Who said that?"I exclaimed, to give George a chance to lie his way out of this serious allegation. "Genus George." He replied, rather surprisingly. "Do you mean Genius George?" I asked, thinking perhaps that George had adapted the more conventional, Young Master, to a title more befitting his self-image. But George confirmed, "No, no, no. Genus George." Perhaps, I had time to consider in the gaps that open in George's halting sentences, because he is a sub-specious of the Little Family; but I was soon disabused, ¡°because I is a very clever boy." Immediately inventing his own grammar for this revelation.
The girls' chat is generally easier to cope with, although I was flummoxed at Chloe's request to explain the term, "Too gay to function." Goodness only knows where she picked that one up.
Katherine is out at the moment, involved in her little business introducing cleaners. She recently doubled her price and still people are coming. The number of foreigners in Suzhou increased from 8000 to 13000 last year, and so there is a large enough market to keep Katherine busy. It earns her more than a Chinese secondary school teacher gets, and really there is a lot of room to develop it.
Hope all is well with you.
Nick
2004-10-21 from Katherine
Hi:
How are you? It is nice to hear from you, Tim. I would like one day to visit Rome, if I ever get the money. Actually anywhere which is beautiful. Life is so short I am already middle aged and have not traveled for pleasure. I love England and every time I think of it I remember that garden some distance from Brighton which is so full of coulours last time I visited it. It seem to have a peaceful, never changing beauty about it.
Recently I watched two Chinese films. "Hero" and "house of flying daggers". They both are fantastic films. Hero's fighting scene is so beautiful.. The energy. The confidence. It is truly amazing. Especially the fight between the two women in the forest. And the scene of the lovers fighting in the desert .I watched it over and over again. Even though I do not like the story and some of the cast. The emperor lacks charisma, some scenes are over done but the overall spirit is just a pure fantasy ¨C and a likable one ,too. House of flying daggers is more mature as a commercial film. The plot can not be reckoned, but when you watch it you are simply carried away by the superb scenes. Some how it manages to be less memorable than hero.
George is a such silly boy. He came to me this morning and said " I had a dream. I went to a forest and I lost something." I asked: "what did you lose?" he said:" I lost myself." He also gets very jealous. He told me I am not allowed to cuddle daddy and his two sisters because I am only allowed to cuddle him. Chloe came to my bed this morning and asked me to sing for her. She was on my tummy. I sang. And she said in a very soft voice:" oh mummy, it is so beautiful. I really like your voice. I can only see your nostrils from here." That really made me laugh. Ruth is quite hard working right at the moment. She is doing a lot of homework and also playing hard.
Nick is doing well. He is working very hard. He truly has a gift of being loving and kind towards his pupils. One student from Preston still writes to him regularly. And the students here seem to love him. I went out several times with him seeing teenagers saying hello to him with real affection.
I am still doing the ayi introduction service. Most people are reasonable. But some are just so - how to speak- really self centered" oh, dear, I don't mind how you do these jobs but as long as they are done and I am only going to pay you for three hours "
Regardlss these jobs will take the ayis 5 hours or even more. I think people do not have an obligation to be gernerous but they do need to be reasonable. There is only so much human being can achieve in a certain amout of time. I think I will go for orientation for companies. I won't work myself to death about it. Nothing is more important than my children. If I succeed, fine, if not I am not gutted.
Hope everything goes well for you
Love
Katherine
2004-10-17 Latest
Dear All
Everyone is fine here, although the girls did have Monday off school. Both were running a fever, which a day in bed cured. Personally I think they had one too many sleepovers during the holiday the week before.
Back to school weeks always have a flat feel about them; the girls flatness was particular short however: Monday was off sick, and Friday was a training day for teachers. I am not sure that the three days in between gave them enough time to get that fed up.
The latest addition to Katherine's furniture came on Friday at 6am. You need a special licence to be on the industrial park after 7, so all her furniture has been the cause of grumpy days. There are a couple more pieces yet to come, but along with the painted walls, our apartment has been transformed. George is particularly pleased with the steering wheel that enables his bunkbed to be driven.
Chloe spent Friday with her friend Olivia, George is almost permanently with Eric, and at the moment Nora is here visiting both girls. They are not short of a social life. This year the number of foreigners in Suzhou has leapt from 8000 to 13000.
The school will move to a new site next September with an eventually capacity of 4000. Incredibly (considering the move will start in July) the plans have not been finalised, let alone the first clod unturned. It will go up in three months and start falling apart in one - if every other building round here is to go by.
George is undergoing a verbal explosion at the moment. From years of not talking he is suddenly quite chatty in two languages. It is quite a surprise.
Hope you are all well
Nick
2004-10-06 My TV Experience
Dear All
Sorry I haven't had the most communicative of months it has been really busy. I am writing a series of emails to explain what we have been up to. The first one is about something that happened a couple of weeks ago.
A lot of things have ceased to surprise me in China; it is a land that can best be imagined by looking at its roads: overcrowded, having lots of rules that nobody obeys, but with one essential principle- look out for yourself, not just left and right but over both shoulders as well; because something unusual can and will come from anywhere.
So, while I admit that having the principal interrupt a meeting at 5 pm on a Friday evening to ask me to appear on a TV game show the next day was hardly routine; the impropriety of the request did not occur to me as unusual. I rapidly acquiesced to keep the meeting moving along.
An aspect of only being given 21 hours before taking a major role in a TV show that will be beamed across the whole of the province is that there is not much time to brood on it. In England regional TV is a very small step up from CCTV; Jiangsu's 75 million people make it a very small step down from the largest country in Western Europe.
It wasn't just a lack of time that distracted me from brooding; a very busy schedule in the intervening 21 hours and a total ignorance of what I was getting myself into also helped. The school principal, Jon Lane, had delivered the request to participate, which, along with a desire not to waste meeting time and a sense of curiosity, strongly influenced my decision. He had been phoned by the TV station the day before to find, "foreigner with a Chinese partner for a game show."¯ Which was the exact amount of information I was given at the time: details are simply not a Chinese thing. Anyway, Jon took the phone number of my Chinese partner to pass on to the TV station to sort out the details
Fortunately, I had little time to consider the endless possibilities of what might happen as I first had to contend with a tennis match, dinner with colleagues, eight hours sleep and then a football tournament on the Saturday morning: which turned out only to be a distraction, and not a serious impediment to going as we managed to enjoy the good luck of crashing out to a 5-1 defeat in the first round.
In fact, I didn't really discuss the show until Katherine and I were getting ready to go to it.
"Katherine what this show actually is?"
"You know those shows where foreigners speak Chinese, and people laugh?"
"Ye-eh," I assented nervously.
"Well, it's one of those," she announced without the slightest hint of concern.
I panicked. "Oh no. How do I get out of it? I am going to make a public fool of myself."
"People won't people laughing at you; they'll just be laughing."
"And myself and my actions will be the object of that laughter: how is that not being laughed at?" I asked, the tone of my voice beginning to rise desperately.
"But it's not meant personally." Katherine explained patiently, as if trying to calm a het-up child.
"Mm, but me being the person at the centre of all this hilarity, might take it, well personally."
The TV studio is hard to miss with a rather large transmitting tower on the top. We did though manage to miss the main entrance, and ended doing a full circle of the building; which gave me time to resign myself to the fate of being made a fool of, and force myself to relax and enjoy it. There is nothing more humiliating than the frantic grasping of a straw of dignity in a sea of embarrassment: better to sink calmly with a smile on your face.
I thought our diversion around the entire perimeter of the building might have made us a little late; especially as we arrived just 10 minutes before filming was due to commence. But if we were late, then the other contestants and the audience were even later. A complete absence of forward planning beyond a vague intention that such and such an event will happen in the proximity of a particular afternoon is an occasionally endearing although mostly frustrating feature of China. 2 minutes before airtime a 150 strong audience popped out of nowhere, although I have an idea that the local shops were slightly less crowded than they might have been as a consequence of the show:
"What do you mean, we will be here for 3 hours. I only agreed to come in because I thought these shows were 30 minutes long. I haven¡¯t eaten yet."
The audience were given red shirts if they sat on the left, yellow in the middle, blue on the left. I soon discovered Reds were my lot, as one row had been entrusted with the sacred duty of holding aloft character placards that together formed the sentence: "Really good, Nick!" Another part of my section had the obligatory oversized "Jia You!" Hand (Come on!)
At the end of the crowd were my fellow contestants.
I wasn't actually told, but the arrangement of the studio gave me some clues as to what would happen. There were three desks on the right, with the names of the three foreign contestants. On each desk, an LCD scorecard, a buzzer and a microphone. Opposite were a further three desks with the names of our Chinese partners. In the middle was a lectern adorned by flowers and a microphone. The side "walls" were in fact intersecting bright yellow panels, which from my angle could be seen a jumble of leads, technicians and a penguin. The back "wall" of the studio was a mock up of an ancient Chinese building, with two large doors in the middle. I knew we were to answer questions; I just hoped weren't bunched together in a hapless team against our Chinese partners.
I was quite comforted at the sight of my colleagues in humiliation. One of them doubled as a colleague during the week: Werner Paetzold. The other was a Danish guy who had been in China for two months and did not speak a word of Chinese. Werner's Chinese is not as good as mine. If I was in for a hard time, they were in for worse.
The partners were odd collection. Not personally odd, obviously: something I wouldn't dare to suggest, as Katherine was amongst them, but odd in a partnership sense. Werner had brought his Taiwanese boyfriend, and perhaps I only thought this because I was armed with prior knowledge, but I was sure that while they did nothing to flaunt their illegal status, they did nothing to hide it either. The Danish guy had with him a recently acquired girlfriend, who during the show demonstrated a growing irritation at her side of their relationship bargain.
A little under a minute before the start a member of the production staff came to me to ask if I knew what the original purpose of the Great Wall was. Military I replied, and he seemed very satisfied, and told me that if I won I would get a musical instrument; which, given my lack of interest in all things musical, seemed little compensation for taking part.
It was about 30 minutes before I discovered the significance of that single exchange. The show has an opening sequence of two foreign children pooping out of the large doors, dry ice rising, reciting the show's unwieldy thirty-word catch phrase. Unfortunately neither had been given rehearsal time, and they repeatedly failed to get it right. After twenty-two minutes, just as I was thinking my fixed grin of mock appreciation and tenderness might become a permanent manic scar on my expressions, the two of them got the damn phrase correct, my grin relaxed into a smile, and my fifth round of applause was genuinely heart felt. The hostess moved forward to take the hands of the little ones and lead them between two of the bright and yellow panels, away to some other life. Then a terrible thing happened. A mobile phone went off. The ordinary quietness of filming turned into a leaden silence as the hostess froze. The ringing continued, brazen to the misery it was causing. It could have been co-ordinated action: the entire studio, bar one, looked down the length of their own bodies, in case the offending instrument was attached to them, then in relief turned their heads to and fro to find the offender. The actual criminal sat at a prominent position at the back, and the greater part of the audience was aware of his guilt before he himself had woken up: those closest to him first noticed him as The Origin, and this awareness rippled out through the three sections of the audience to the crew at front.
The main cameraman woke with a start, the red camera light still on. He gave his 200 strong audience a startled look, then jerked his head in a panicky way in the direction of his pocket, but fumbling out the mobile phone and stopping the noise.
As it was, the children only needed another two takes to recover from this, before we began round one. I was in pole position and every round would begin with me; which I felt to be a special privilege as we were not forewarned what would occur, and I had to work out the instructions from a fairly rapid Chinese given in presenter-speak. I knew I would be asked a question and I could ask Katherine for help if I didn't know the answer, but none of the foreigners had the Chinese for "This is not a buzzer round." Funny really: the language you learn in books, and what you actually need. The director decided against retaking the scene in which the three of us frantically pressed buzzers (although, I don't know why the Danish guy bothered). But then us misunderstanding instructions was part of the fun.
My first question was: What was the original purpose of the Great Wall? I answered confidently. Werner was also suspiciously correct on the number of strings possessed by some ancient Chinese instrument. The Danish guy scored half points, asking his not yet estranged girlfriend for help on his question.
I had points on the board; I relaxed. And then the worst of all nightmares: a singing round. Misfortune compounded misfortune, for the viewer as well myself, as it became immediately apparent that of the three foreigners required to sing only I knew the song. This is mainly because it was a traditional song from Katherine's province that I have heard her sing many times and partly because I could recognise enough of the characters on the teleprompter to make up the difference.
After I had done my bit to destroy the entertainment industry in China, I was a little resentful to find all three of us awarded the same points.
During the break, the director's assistant came over to ask me and Werner to speak more Chinese when the chance arose. I asked Katherine to see if she could find out what we were meant to do in subsequent rounds and fill us in. Like a Roman gladiator I was in competition with Werner and Danish Guy, but in reality there was a growing comradery between us: all information received was eagerly devoured and shared.
Werner and I got through the Chinese character round unscathed. There was a large magnetic board and, on a table in front, the component parts of a character. A man in penguin suit shuffled onto the set to offer each of the contestants a base part of a character, to which the components had to be added to make a new character. The penguin had not been primed to his exact role, which caused another three takes, but only I found an untrained penguin amusing - to everyone else Danish Guy putting his character upside down was their hilarious highlight.
Coming into the penultimate buzzer round (a term I now understood) Werner was ahead on points. However I scored a blinder, picking up every point available for a series of questions of Chinese culture and history.
The last round was a curious idea: an ancient Chinese writing set was wheeled centre stage, and by using the brushes, paper, ink grinder etc as props the Chinese partner was meant to demonstrate a pair of antonyms to their startled partner, who was merely required to guess correctly. For example the hair brushes could be thick and thin; long and short. The saving grace of this round was that the penguin was not involved.
I got through mine: long and short. Werner was having a tougher time with together and apart, so partly because the buzzer round had secured my win and partly because of a feeling of comradery, I whispered the answer to Werner. He bought me a couple of large drinks later. Danish Guy got his answer from a sympathetic member of the audience, and as this was far more blatant was only awarded half points.
I received my prize with an enthusiastic smile, and am now the proud possessor of a four stringed Er Hu, which according to the price tag left on, cost the TV company Y800.
Ruth and Chloe were invited back to give the introduction the next week, but that is another story.
Nick
2004-09-11
Dear Tim
Thanks for your email; I'm sorry it has taken a while to reply: I was back to work on August 24th and it has been really busy since then.
It is funny you should mention your website; I was having a look at it last month: it is really well done - simple (at point of use) but effective, like all the best ideas. However I noticed some of the links were not longer coming up. This might be because of funny screening here in China.
I happy for my writing to go up. I have know idea the chances of it being ripped off; but I guess if it was it would be quite a compliment. I don't regard my writing so far as a finished product, but essays in developing a style and voice: there are still too many structural weaknesses at the moment.
I am, at the moment, too busy to worry about such things. You might remember I became head of department last October - my first real management post. Since then I have becomer chair of two important committees: Lower School Camp and Approaches To Learning (ATL).
The former is pretty much what it says it is, except that it isn't actually a camp; more two nights in a hotel, with three days of activities. Even so there is a lot to do (most of it a story in its own right). ATL is a bit more academic. There are lots of skills that some or all subjects use - from writing a sentence or drawing a graph to giving a presentation and working in groups to thinking inductively or deductively. These skills might be the specific remit of one subject to teach or every subject to touch upon. The purpose of our committee is to link up the subjects in these skills areas so that teachers can take a consistent approach and students can explicitely see the transferability of their skills. New Labour would have called it, 'Joined Up Education.'
Much to my surprise I am enjoying my management and co-ordination roles. It has made me a lot busier - I have just completed a 60 hour week, but so far I have found it pleasantly stressful. It is early days - I have been in management for less than a year, but I think I am better at it than teaching: the department documents and structures I wrote or oversaw the writing of were commended by external asessors last June. I think after my further two years here I will look for chances to move up the ladder.
I finished Are You Dave Gorman? There are few laugh out loud books but this was definitely one of them; it had a strangely compelling plot as well. I think I will put off the Googlewhack book to darker days.
Glad to hear that you are out and about - hope to here more of your news
Nick
2004-08-14
Dear Tim
Sorry it has taken a while to reply to you email: I normally keep emails in my intray until I have replied, but because yours had a photo I saved and deleted it, thereby forgetting that I had one.
Thanks very much for having Ruth. I am glad to hear that she behaved herself and she was positive. It really sounds like she has an excellent time in England; my only hope is that she does not come back and rub it in with Chloe. I think Chloe has done a lot this summer, but it might not compare.
Yesterday we came back from a couple of days in the Yellow Mountains. It was almost exactly two full days, as we got an overnight trains there and back so we could arrive at the very beginning of the first day and leave at the very end of the second day, with a stay in the world's worst hotel in between. There is a story in it all, but I haven't got the energy right now so I will leave it. Despite a certain amount of chaos that is to be expected on a visit to a Chinese mountain we had a good time.
Katherine has taken the Chloe and George to the cinema to watch Superman 2 this evening (in Chinese).
Hope all is well.
Nick
2004-08-07
Dear Tim
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
I am sorry that I didn't get round to sending this email on your birthday. Really I have no excuse for it as my days are generally quite lazy. I have been going into school to help get Katherine's business set up, and have been swimming with my remaining children every other day, but it is hardly a punishing schedule.
I realise that Wednesdays are not the best days for celebrations, corrupted as they are by their workday proquintity, but I hope you have an excellent picnic today in compensation. Will Ruth be there? She informs me that she has bought a present for you; it was only when she asked me if we had one that Katherine admitted that yours one of the presents that she omitted to pack with Ruth on the logically grounds that it was entirelly unbought. Sorry.
I have heard that some curious presents are winging your way from South London. But is there anything you would like from China? I can post over the finest set of DVDs to sail the seven seas; there is nothing more typically Chinese than that; or I could look for something a little more arty.
On the subject of arty: do you have my Chinese paintings? There is one which is set on brick red silk and is of a large water colour flower, and another of a woman kneeling. If you have them and aren't really using them could you send them back with Ruth? We are redecorating. Of course if you have them nicely displayed please feel free to hold on to them. Could you also give Ruth the Rise and Fall of Great Powers - I can't remember who wrote it but it says empires rise and fall based on military might. I fancy another crack at this year.
Nothing much happening here. I have taken more of an interest in the paper since Chuggie's appearance in it. On days when corgi wolfhounds are not attacking young children, our local rag must turn to other provinces for its source material. Fortunately the Suzhou City News has a clear sense of values: and that value is money; so the editor is constantly on the look out for the story that sells: generally these have at least one of three elements ¨C the macabre, the erotic, or the criminal. Within the category of macabre, bizarre has to head the list; and this must have been how a curious little incident from Hubei made it into its august pages.
¡°It says here a corpse fell through the roof of a woman's home.¡± Katherine read out in a remarkably even tone.
¡°Oh my God!¡± I replied with a dramatically appropriate response, ¡°How did that happen?¡±
¡°It doesn't say: just that a corpse fell into an old woman's living room, and to get it out they would have had to carry it through the kitchen. The woman refused to have a corpse in her kitchen, so they had to knock a hole in her back wall.¡±
¡°Who's ¡®they¡¯?¡±
¡°Which ¡®they¡¯?¡±
¡°The ¡®they¡¯ that did the wall knocking.¡±
¡°Just says, workers¡±
¡°Who did they work for?¡±
¡°It doesn't say: the people responsible for the corpse falling through her roof, I guess.¡±
¡°Who the hell would that be?¡± I asked incredulously, ¡°Who could possibly be responsible for corpses falling through roofs? Is there some sort of government department for it?¡±
¡°I dunno,¡¯ Katherine admitted plainly, ¡°it doesn't say. It isn't a very long report¡±
That is the beauty of the Chinese media: information is given, but never enough for it to make any sense; people are left with the vague sense of being informed, without actually knowing anything.
Chloe and I are going to the Yellow Mountains on an overnight train next week.
Nick
2004-07-24
Dear Matthew and Bridget
I have sent Tim and Ellen a copy for the photos (Hi Tim! Hi Ellen!)
Thank you for having Ruth to stay over. By the sound of her emails and weekend telephone conversations she has been having a great time in Newhaven but I am sure mum will be very grateful to have a break from my energetic daughter. Before going to England she agreed that it would be a good idea to make a positive contribution to her grandma's household, and I am sure she would like to carry on that attitude with you, although she may have to be reminded of her enthusiasm to help.
Your present to George has arrived at school; Katherine went to pick it up last week but there was nobody in the secondary section. We will have more time next week and can easily wander in to get it. Thank you. Did Bridget get her present from us?
It is very hot and humid here at the moment. I have just got back from a short walk to the park and my T-shirt is soaked in sweat; I am glad that this computer is directly under the air conditioner. We have managed to fill up the first two weeks of the holiday, and time is passing very pleasantly. Chloe has spent several nights staying over at friends' and we have had a daughter of a family friend stay with us for a week - a fifteen year old Sichuan girl. Her father hoped she would improve her English but CHloe and George insisted in speaking to her in Chinese all the time. My Chinese improved.
We bought season tickets to Waterworld (see photo) (it is only open in July and August), which is full of pools, slides, large wet bouncy bubbles and rapids. We have been going every week, and several times to local pools. Considering the weather these places have been surprisingly uncluttered.
About an hour's bus ride from here is Tian Ping Mountain. Tian Ping clearly has the title ¡®mountain¡¯ as an honorary thing, because it would have failed the height test if it were given out for technical merit. Despite being more of an optimistic hill than a mountain it is a surprising good looking place; temple buildings and animal shaped rock outcrops scattered around tree covered slopes. On top of a pleasant walk around well maintained gardens there are opportunities to spend more money on a brief horse ride (see photo), archery, a boating lake and a shooting gallery (another photo); of course there are the usual souvenir stalls, noodle counters and photographers as well. Chloe was keen to climb the mountain in the midday sun (see photo)
I heard that David won a music competition - very well done to him. Is this a talent he wants to develop? How is the football going? How are Josh and Daniel?
Must go - we have been invited to lunch by a property developer.
Nick
2004-07-24
Dear Tim
I am sorry that I have been a bit remiss with the emails this year; I have generally felt more hassled, though the last two weeks have been a great time to relax. Hopefully you got my email for Matthew and Bridget with the latest photos of Chloe and George.
The digital camera has been fantastic, and not just in being able to send photos across to people. With an old camera I would take photos cautiously aware of the cost of processing a dud. Now I just shoot them off willy nilly. The other great advantage is viewing them: instead of a big wad of photos waiting to be sorted in my bottom drawer I can view them easily on my computer, which I do regularly.
We picked up your parcel from the post office today. Thank you very much. George received the duplo cars just before we were due to go out and was consequently very reluctant to leave the apartment: he has been revisting his duplo all afternoon. He was initially confused about who had given them to him, 'Thank you dad.' he said as he took the packages from me. 'It's not from me, George, it's from your Uncle Tim.' I explained. George, not understanding the concept of a postal system let alone its mechanics, looked at me is surprise, 'Uncle Tim is here?' It took a while to explain you were still in England, yet your present was here.
Michael has corrupted George into a great Danger Mouse fan. He gave 3 DVDs while he was here and George insists on watching as many episodes every day as he thinks he can get away with. He also inflicts his rendention of the not very extensive theme song upon us at regular intervals. George's other great passions are bike riding, flinging himself manically into water and shooting people. He is not a terribly complex boy.
Thank you very much for the two books. They look like good fun, so I shall save them for when term begins and I need cheering up again. At the moment I am reading, 'Three Kingdoms,' one of the four classic Chinese novels. It is over 2000 pages and was written in the Ming dynasty, after the invention of the printing press because you really would have had a nervous breakdown if you were asked to copy out the contents. I am up to page 650 and when I have knocked this one of the head I only have Journey to the West to down and I would have completed all four. Three Kingdoms is similar to Outlaws of the Marsh: they are both set at the end of a dynasty (the Han in the former; the Song in the later) and detail the herioc efforts of a noble warriors trying to preserve the dying dynasties. They are boy's own adventures in contrast to 'Dream of Red Mansions' which was set in the mid-Qing dynasty and is a gossipy soap opera of the decline of a noble house. It is a girl's book and I have never got beyond page 1200 despite two efforts. I am sure it is a more sophisticated read than Journey to the West, on the basis that almost anything that could provide the basic material for the crazily dubbed 1970s series, 'Monkey' has got to irretrivably base and good fun. One for next Summer holiday.
I have attached four things I have written recently: three of them in the last couple of weeks as I am trying to get back to the habit of regular writing. Tell me what you think: are they any good?
Nick
2004-04-21 Hello (from Katherine)
Hi, everyone:
How was your Easter? Hope you all enjoyed some nice sunshine.
The weather in Suzhou is getting very warm and today¡¯s temperature is around 25 centigrade. Ruth had a stomachache this morning and stayed at home. She took the dog out for a walk, did a little cross-stitch. She also watched one episode of ¡®friends¡¯ and told me the funny bits in it in an excited and incoherent manner. I curbed the urge to tell her how to retell a story in a calm way, I cannot do it well either. Chloe has done very well this term. I attended the parent meeting and talked with her teacher. She is a hard worker and emotionally very mature. The teacher heard her saying to a friend:¡¯ Olivia, that¡¯s not very kind of you. You have hurt my feeling and I feel like crying.¡± And the friend did stop what she was doing. Another time in a cake shop she was playing around and chatted happily with the waitresses who were very friendly towards her. She felt happy and well liked. She has that lovely smile on her face. Suddenly she came towards me and there were tears in her eye. She was trying hard to hold back the tears. She told me that a woman who just left the shop said to her: ¡®you are very naughty and I don¡¯t like you.¡± I told her that of course some people would dislike her; it is as natural as that some people would like her. She took it well and went away, played in a quiet and subdued manner. The teacher also told me that her attitude in learning has improved. Her best friend Olivia is a Singaporean whose mum is very pushy towards her daughter¡¯s academic progress. Chloe would not want to fall behind her friend in any way. She has made a lot of progress. She is reading fluently now, of course she still struggles over some difficult words. George is a very good-natured child, always having a smile on his face. He is getting willful, too. One morning I took him to the gate waiting for the school bus. He told me that he forgot to bring his car. I told him he could not go back to fetch the car now for he is going to miss the bus. One minute later I heard the girls shouting his name. Tuning around I saw George on the stepping-stones across the little stream ten metres away from us. I shouted his name and he simply ignored me. The bus came and went. I ran back home and met him on the way, he was huffing and puffing from all the running, face red, sweat on his forehead, steaming actually. He saw me, stopped and looked at me, looked worried: ¡®mum, are you angry with me?¡¯ I took him home and told him off. He was quite, looked rather repentant. Then he looked at me, began to make funny faces. Not out of naughtiness but of wanting to amuse me. I tried hard not to laugh but failed.
Life here is all right. I have made two friends I see on regular basis. They are mums who have similar age children as my George. Julia is a mid thirty fashion lover who was educated in one of china¡¯s most prestigious university (Beijing second foreign language college) and new-south Wales University in Australia. She worked as marketing and sales manager in some big name IT companies. She always wants to learn and is currently taking English lessons from me. She is open, hard working, but never punctual. After some time with her I realize that is possibly not the worst vice as long as you take a book with you or cross-stitch which make the waiting time more constructive. Today we went to master of nets garden with Collin, a Canadian whose wife is a teacher working in the same school as Nick. We agreed to meet at 9:40, then cycle there together. She appeared 15 minutes later, meticulously dressed up. It was fun in the garden. Collin was really impressed with the garden saying how elegant the building style and how beautiful the carvings are. Julia said to me in Chinese that she couldn¡¯t believe how stupid our ancestors were. The reason: while Europeans were developing modern technologies and weapons so that they were able to become powerful and wealthy, the Chinese were busy carving those intricate and tedious patterns on wood and stones. Fair point, but I argued it is art. Maybe people did derive some pleasure from it. Julia¡¯s reply is that if our ancestors have a bit more financial brain, we would be so much richer now. We had lunch together and Julia insisted the restaurant should also give me a free cup of coffee other than the coffee provided along with her meal. she got what she wanted. A very enjoyable morning.
My father is coming to stay with us for some time. We are all excited about it other than I am worrying about my father¡¯s reaction of the two dogs. Their food bill amount to the same number as my mother¡¯s monthly retirement wage.
Any way it should be fun having him here. He is a very active man and life here will be a bit different.
All the best to you all.
Love Katherine
2004-03-11
Dear Tim
Sorry its taking a while to reply. I have been very busy recently, as you guessed, and also felt a little under the weather.
The head of humanities job is quite a challenge given that I have no extra time to do it. I am having to write a policy document with no time to do it at all. I find it quite stressful, although I like both aspects of my job - the teacher and the administration, I just wish management had arranged poroper time for it.
There also has been a lot of flu around; both girls have been unwell, and although I don't think I succumbed completely I have felt achy and drained for the past week or so - pressure of work hasn't helped.
Generally not much has happened sine you and mum returned. The children are back in a school routine. Chloe's party went well. Ruth has got a new French friend and has been socialising a lot recently. George is still a happy lump.
Hope all is well with you
Nick
2004-01-05
I am sending this to everyone partly because I cannot remember who asked me what.
I was back to school today after an incredibly hectic Christmas break - very pleasant though. We visited a few more of the local beauty spots and had some adventures along the way.
I think K has aready replied about Christmas presents. Which reminds me - send my thanks to Jean for the book, I will get round to a letter soon.
Somebody was telling me something about Freud and it struck me that I really didn't know anything about him. I don't really have the time, energy or inclination to read anything original, but a beginners guide to Freud and Jung would be appreciated. I would also like a biographies of Napolean and FDR and a general history of Russia especially the period from Peter the Great to the end of the nineteenth century. Any good popular science books, especially on biology.
Other things that would be extremely useful: baking powder; custard; glitter; gold/sliver spray; birthday ideas for Chloe include art and craft kits from Woolworth. George likes duplo (I know June is a long way away, but we can store things).
Tim or mum - is my Alexander Murray book on the History of Maths hanging around anywhere in either of your places - it might be with mum on the bookshelf outside on your bedroom. Tim - can I borrow your book onthe French Revolution?
The girls are really looking forward to seeing their grandma and uncle Tim. We have worked out a couple of schedules depending on what you feel you are up to. The weather here has been very mild but I strongly suggest that you bring warm weather clothing as we may go up a mountain. We do have heating in our apartment, contrary to popular belief, but it is not a centrally heated and not well insulated so while it is possible to keep it hot it is quite expensive to do so (expensive on an English scale) so we prefer to put a jumper on and an extra layer on in bed.
Thanks to Matthew and Bridget for the presents - George loves the duplo giraffe; and Ellen for the books. The children will be sending proper letters in due course. Did the boys get their presents from us?
Nick
2003-12-13
Dear All
Hopefully life will be slightly less hectic for the next few weeks; although that does not seem that likely with Christmas coming up. There is only a week left of term and as the students sat their exams last week the real term is already over. I have a busy weekend of marking ahead but otherwise there are not too many stresses at the moment. I have prepared lessons next week explaining the history of Christmas, for many of the children I teach they do not get days off school in their own country for Christmas and really know nothing about it.
The girls have also had exams this week, although George has thankfully been spared. That is not to say that some of the parents hadn¡¯t asked for K1 exams, one parent of a K2 child asked the head of kindergarten why her four year old wasn¡¯t getting weekly spelling tests: no prizes for guessing which country at the end of the Malay peninsular that mother was from.
Ruth seems to have done well, although it is school policy not to give averages so it is difficult to tell. It says something of the type of school it is that Ruth scored 95% in her science test and was disappointed that she got 5 wrong. I had a look at her revision sheets and they included classifying species and the technical names for parts of the plant like chlorophyll and what their functions were. Goodness only knows what will be left for her to study by the time she gets to secondary.
George has taken to roller skating around the house and we only suffered one bruised pot plant before he got the hang of it. He has a remarkably good sense of balance; I can¡¯t imagine where it is from.
We shall be having guests round soon so I should get ready.
Nick
2003-12-07
Dear Tim
I am sorry that it has taken me all week to reply - I have felt swamped recently. Next week is exam week and I have been writing the little blighters recently in addition to Libby's exams while she is on maternity leave. To sort out an exam - thinking of suitable questions, scanning in sources of evidence, formating it all, proof reading, collating the photocopies and then depositing them in the appropriate place take at least three hours per exam; I have eight to write. This is in addition to my usual teaching load, a mad dash to catch up on all marking so that students are up to date before the exams, form tutor responsibilities (including sorting out new students - two in my form in the last week), head of department stuff and a two hour meeting for the teacher rep com. And after all that I come back to the chaos of my family in the run up to Christmas.
I have thought a lot about your itenary. You wil first come while I am still working so that you can see something of Chloe before she jets off to Germany. A week in Suzhou is anyway a good idea - it is a major tourist city and frequently mentioned in Chinese literature. A representative sample of Suzhou's delights would take about three or four days. Then there are a whole bunch of things to do in Shanghai. Hangzhou - another famous old city and Wuxi, which is a beautiful place on the lake are also nearby. You can't go without without clocking up a couple of water towns, not least because I have suffered the lot, and they are worth a look. Historically Jiangsu is China's richest province and frequent residence of emperors, military rebels such as the Ming general San Guo Feng, and mad, religious rebels like the Tai Pings. Nanjing, Jiangsu's old imperial capital, would also be worth a look. K will also research a more countryside location so that you can both see something of pastroal China. So far everything is within a four hour train journey of Suzhou. I figured mum would not want anything too demanding, and this way we can make frequent returns to Base Sudu to take stock. My only other thought is that mum might want to take a look a Beijing while she is in this part of the world. It is about a two hour flight and we couldn't all go because of the expense; but she might want to have a look.
The bookshelves look great - if you have the money why not make your home into a luxury bachelor pad, expecially as you are going to pay off the mortgage soon.
Glad to hear that you are still perservering with the Spanish. When the mortgage is all paid off you will have to spend a couple of years in a Spanish speaking country to make yourself fluent. It really is the only way - get a tefl qualification and teach English: it would better than living off rent money from your flat because it will force you to interact.
Although I am tired and hassled at the moment I am using Chinese more socially and have continued with lessons. I am participating more and more in conversations and discussed life with people who would have been a brick wall. I can also make sense of children's stories and can get the gist of many newspaper stories. Unfortunately the other aspect of learning more is that I am increasingly aware of what I don't know. When K talked with her friends I used to switch off completely; now that I can pariticipate it is far more frustrating to come across sections that I don't understand.
Everyone here is fine - I'll send a general email with other news.
Nick
2003-12-07
Dear All
My weeks continue to be very busy but they are flying past and I am amazed that it is more than three months since this term began and just two weeks to this Christmas break. We haven't thought much about Christmas yet: what a big difference advertising, or its absence makes; the girls and especially George have been barely aware of Christmas's approach. In the last week they have been preparing for the school¡¯s Christmas concert and yesterday went to the expat Christmas party, but even so the demands for presents have yet to kick in. Remarkably, without consumer goods being dangled in front of them they are all quite content with what they have. Clearly the purpose of industrial production is no longer to satisfy needs but to create them.
The expat party was our first of the season. At 3 pounds a ticket for a buffet at the Sheriton, clearly a deal was made; part of which was that it started at 10.30 am. The children took part in a nativity. Ruth was one of two narrators and did a very professional job ¨C everyone else including Chloe as an angel and George as a shepherd had non-speaking parts.
On the bus on the way home, George was sitting on Katherine's lap, clutching his plastic trumpet; he gave a mournful toot before drifting off. K turned to me, sitting behind, "He still has the energy to blow his trumpet." George suddenly roused himself, "Budui mama, wo chui laba"; literarily" that's not right mum, I blew the trumpet". Clearly what was not right was Katherine speaking in English.
Chuggie has settled in and is now sleeping or at least less noisy at night. The children are putting up the Christmas tree and Chug has been put in a cage.
Nick
2003-11-29
Dear All
Things here are going well at home, but busy, busy, busy at work. The girls are very much settled, and Ruth is beginning to do a lot better at school. Her teacher last year was interesting and inspiring and Ruth loved her, just she wasn't very good at maths. This was fine for those many children with personal tutors (our school is full of them) or have lots of natural ability but Ruth was struggling. This year Ruth has a plodder for a teacher: Ruth doesn't find him interesting, but her maths has come on leaps and bounds. Last year she seemed to go backwards - forgetting the times tables she knew, now she knows them all up to 10 and can use them to solve three step problems.
Expectations are very high at the school. Ome Singaporean parent asked the head of kindergarten why the 4 years olds were not given weekly spelling tests. One delegation of nine Singaporean parents gave a Year One teacher a nine point plan to improve results in her class. They are insane. Few parents are content with the extension of the school day to 4 and provide all sorts of extra lessons for their children at the weekend and in the evening.
A colleague organised the school's first disco last month. A parent wrote into complain that teenagers were allowed to get close to each other in a darkened room; and, as we are an international school, each national group should have put on a display of their national dance (which, as one wit pointed out, is probably now disco). I jokingly said to one parent at my first parent-teacher interview that I needed to beat the child to get work out of him, and I was told I had full permission.
But then the wealth discrepencies outside our door are incredible. K's Hong Kong friend, Louis, earns US$ 8000 a month while the average worker in his factory gets US$130 a month. Asians puts a very high premium on universtiy education, far more than we do and it is difficult to become part of the elite without one.
I am having to type this with my feet up (literally, I rarely get the meataphorical chance) as Ruth's new dog, Chug is teething and finds my feet particularly inviting. I bought Chug a couple of weeks ago and I have been exhausted ever since. On his first night he whined most of the night. Chug is only two months old and someone suggested that he missed him mum; that same someone informed Ruth, probably wanting to remain anonymous from me, that we should put a clock next to him when he slept so that he would think it was his mother's heartbeat. To my surprise it worked brilliantly, right up to the time the alarm went off. Chug was frantic for about the next half hour and I really never got back to sleep.
Not many nights after this I was woken by K at 4.30. Chug had been nibbling her toes and she was concerned that he was rabid. This is despite the fact that he had displayed no other symptoms adn was bought as a puppy from a neighbour, with a conspicious absence of virilent dog viruses in her apartment. Nevertheless I was required to examine the dog and cross-reference him against the internet sites.
Chuggy's nocturnal adventures have been particularly annoying as school is becoming more and more demanding. Since I became head of humanities a couple of months ago I have been regularly doing 50 - 55 hours a week. I would still much rather be here than Lytham as my twenty hours teaching is actually a pleasure and not a fight, but there is still a lot to do.
Well soon it will be the upside of teaching - in three weeks I get two weeks for Christmas, then two weeks back at school before three weeks for Spring Festival.
Nick
2003-11-17
Dear All
I am in a rare quiet moment, and as I don¡¯t know when the next one will be I will take the chance to give a quick update. The last few weeks have been incredibly hectic, and I in a doubtless-related move, my body decided to go down with a heavy cold yesterday. It was unfortunately timed to coincide with Libby¡¯s birthday meal, which I attended anyway.
I am sure I have mentioned Libby several times before. She is my colleague in the humanities department, and her and her partner Richard are our closest friends here. Libby has just started her maternity leave, and is due to pop her sprog anytime in the next week. Like Ruth their child will be born in China, although in vastly different circumstances. Katherine¡¯s parents paid 300 RMB to a ramshackle Sichuan medical facility for Ruth¡¯s birth (about 20 pounds), and felt overcharged. Libby and Richard are forking out 30 000 RMB (about 2000 pounds) at a state of the art hospital in Shanghai.
We have done a lot less socialising in large staff groups this year. This is partly because large staff groups are just too large, and partly because many of the organising figures have now left the school. Last year we had a birthday club: for a 10 RMB monthly contribution you were guaranteed a present on your birthday and every month we would celebrate that month¡¯s birthdays. That has now lapsed, and we have split into different social groups: primary and secondary mixing less and less. The other problem has been a big increase in our workload ¨C secondary has had its day extended to 4 pm, and my teaching load has increased by 30%. On top of this I, and several others, have head of department responsibilities which are particular burdensome as they are entirely new. I am working hard to produce basic documentation that every department should have. This week I have had meetings on four out of a possible five evenings and that will be the same next week. But I am enjoying it: it feels like I am part of a proper school that is going places.
The girls are increasingly happy and settled. Chloe¡¯s Chinese has progressed enormously and she is in a mainstream Chinese class with Taiwanese children ¨C this also means that she socialises with Chinese speakers. Ruth has been far slower: a fact that Chloe is beginning to use to her advantage. I came home to an empty apartment the other day. Katherine had taken George to the park but the first I knew of the girls¡¯ whereabouts is when I answered the doorbell to a panting Ruth, waving her hand in front of her face. ¡°Need water¡± is all she managed to rasp before rushing inside. I didn¡¯t need to ask what the problem was ¨C as soon as the water had been rapidly consumed she promptly told me. ¡°You must tell Chloe off. She tricked me.¡± Chloe returned soon after with studied innocence on her face. ¡°Tell her off,¡± Ruth shouted, ¡°she told me the red stuff was a sweet.¡± ¡°What red stuff?¡± I asked. Chloe produced a pepper from her pocket. ¡°This. I thought Mrs Yang told me it was a sweet, but she must have actually said it was too spicy. I didn¡¯t eat because I don¡¯t eat sweets before dinner.¡± ¡°Liar! You knew¡± Ruth screamed and Chloe¡¯s expression was a little too innocent.
Yesterday I bought a dog, after Perdy, dog 1, also bought it. Actually Perdy died some weeks ago; I don¡¯t think he made it beyond September. Ruth had been pestering us for a dog for some time, and she is incredibly focused in her demands. She doesn¡¯t go for the scatter gun ¨C just one thing, repeated and repeated (although as we are now far removed from advertising the girls¡¯ desire for consumer goods has fallen dramatically). Our will power and resolve finally collapsed in September; but dogs here can cost thousands of yuan. We were warned not to go to the Bird and Flower market but the lure of its cheapness was irresistible. Ruth picked Perdy from litter in a chaotically, capitalist street crowded with animals for sale on the grounds that she looked healthiest. I have since learnt that such looks can be deceptive and are sometimes chemically induced.
Perdy started well in our household, and I am only glad that Ruth¡¯s depressive friend declared that no animal from the Bird and Flower market lives more than three days after liberation. When Perdy died after a week Ruth, ever literal minded, consoled herself that she got four days more with her dog than most people got with theirs.
I like to think that Perdy was not only well taken of in her short life but that she got a good sending off as well. The funeral ceremony may have appeared simple but it represented an hour¡¯s worth of digging and another hour searching for appropriate wood, buying the tools and constructing a cross. Ruth said a few poignant words, lowered Perdy in and then we all got a spade and slowly buried her. Not quite all, for George had taken the opportunity of this moving moment to slightly fade, and reappear in the kitchen; where he conducted a brief, but brutally effective raid on the refrigerator.
Chug is not a replacement for Perdy as every life has an independent value, but if you choose not to consider that, then he is. He was not purchased at the Bird and Flower market ¨C our lesson had not only be learnt, but also rubbed in by a local who told us that the animals there were injected with stimulants before they are sold so that they look perky. Chug is a local, born in Sudu at the beginning of October and kept humanely by a pet owner, not an entrepreneur: which gave him the added advantage of being cheap.
We shall see how it goes ¨C Ruth is ecstatic and George is throwing tantrums for his own dog. But last night was trouble enough. First Ruth left the front door open in her hurry to rush next door to tell Yin Lu about Chug; and on her return could not find Chug. She searched our apartment for an hour, and then spent another tearful hour outside with a torch. She bumped into Chug¡¯s erstwhile owner, who came round to explain that Chug, not being suicidal, would not have rushed outside on a night like this (about 5 degrees), and must be hiding. Sure enough, what had taken Ruth an hour took me around three minutes as I discovered Chug on a pile of towels in a wardrobe, snoozing away. Worse was to come ¨C at about one this morning Chug started whining and didn¡¯t doze off to three. I have not felt good today.
Nick
2003-10-25
Dear All
I am sorry about the late arrival of this week¡¯s epistle, . Last week was secondary camp, called so for largely historic reasons, I suppose. Secondary still go, but our three star hotel is a far removed from a camp as flowers are from oaks, which is much to its credit, as Chinese hotels do not always evolve so far from rudimentary forms of human habitation (or from flowers).
To be honest I didn¡¯t really expect to end the first day making loud pig noises behind a clump of bamboo next to a radioactive stream, although the day¡¯s early promise had dissipated quickly. The early promise itself was the sun; after three days of drizzle, fears of a washout were high. For me, however the sun was somewhat of an irritant: I had packed all more waterproofs and warm clothing, and no space for sun cream.
The genuine, un-self-inflicted troubles began about thirty minutes after I arrived at school. A parent phoned: their child had missed their bus; could we divert our party of 150 through the city centre at rush hour to pick her up. Not that it was a difficult call to make; I am glad that it was not mine. The next one was though. A school bus was caught in traffic and wouldn¡¯t arrive for 45 minutes (at least that was the message that I got). I had two areas of responsibility ¨C travel and hotel rooms; the first travel decision the head of secondary thankfully preempted with a blunt no; this one he magnanimously left to me. I decided, without too much thought, that the school should bare some responsibility for a school bus being late, and that we would hold back one of our three coaches to wait for the four students abandoned aboard. 10 minutes later they duly arrived, looking bemused at the fuss: apparently the 45 minute figure was measured from some other nominal time that had little affect on our planning. Troubles with translations would be a recurring theme.
To be
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