Beijing to Suzhou

Despite our train being at 8am, we had to be on the coach by 4.30am as they had put us on the same coach as people with earlier trains. I knew that train stations in China worked like airports, with terminals, gates and security. So the prospects of packing again, getting up at 3.30am and getting frisked on the train station were all making me really dread the journey. But it was all surprisingly smooth. It was strange to see everyone at the training camp just disperse in different directions, leaving the 12 of us sat on the floor of the station outside Starbucks. We were all sat quite close together in the carriage which was nice. It took 5 hours on the bullet train to get to Suzhou, with not a clue as to what school I was working at or where I was living. When we arrived into Suzhou, I made the mistake of opting for a huge staircase down to the ground floor instead of the jam packed escalators. It got to a point on the stairs where I literally couldn’t lift it anymore, and resorted to sliding it down on its side, until a man on his way down picked it up and put it down at the bottom and told me to have a nice time. As embarrassing as this was I was very grateful.

Outside Suzhou train station when we first arrived

In Suzhou we work for a Bureau called Suzhou Education Association for International Exchange. They allocated us to between 1 and 3 schools each. We were never told before arriving in Suzhou what or how many schools we would be working at, or where we would be living. Everyone became increasingly anxious to know these things throughout the training but despite emailing and asking our different contacts, we heard nothing. Because of this, I was under the impression that they simply didn’t know, and that they would just allocate us a school and a flat on our arrival. But when we arrived, they had a lovely laminated book containing a list of our names, the school(s) we would each be working at and our addresses in Suzhou. And even at this point they were reluctant to hand it over. This was referred to in our training as ‘nowism’, which in China is a cultural aversion to forward planning. It is an ancient Chinese belief that people do not need to know what is happening until it is actually happening, and this is definitely reflected in day to day life here. Sometimes, when it causes you a lot of inconvenience, it is hard to see why they couldn’t have provided us with the information. But at the same time, you can’t always understand cultural habits and you just have to get used to them.

We were taken to our flat by 3 volunteers who had never been to the flat before. They spent half an hour trying to let us into the wrong one. When we finally entered the right one, it was more than I expected. The wifi was already set up, we had a ping pong table as a kitchen table, two double bedrooms (one with an en suite, the other with a drying room), and a study. When I told our volunteers that we had been told we would be taken to a supermarket to buy our bedding, they had no clue what we were talking about. Luckily the biggest supermarket in Suzhou is right behind our complex, so getting our bedding back wouldn’t be too big a deal. In Beijing we didn’t get much staring. The locals seemed to be used to foreigners, maybe because the hotel was quite a big conference centre. Also, our local supermarket in Beijing was fairly Western, so the first two weeks was pretty cushy. The trip to RT Mart on our first day in Suzhou was our first realistic experience of China. There are sales people marking every area in the supermarket and we had 5 of them talking at us in Chinese and holding up different duvets. When we stopped to breathe for a second and looked up, an audience of Chinese shoppers had gathered around to watch the foreigners trying to buy duvets. Our flat mate also had an issue with some fake money at the till, of course attracting another audience. After finally getting back to the flat with our big ‘moving in’ shop, Ant accidentally tried to get into the flat with the main front door key, and it snapped in the lock. We were desperately trying to pick it out with a Biro and the other key, when a nice Chinese man stopped on the landing with a brief case, and began gesturing to us that the key had broken in the lock. It was hard to see how he thought we were unaware of this.

Christening the ping pong table

We moved to Suzhou on the Sunday and on Monday morning we were taken to get our sim cards. This involved sitting in China Mobile for hours. The day after this we had to get our medicals redone because the £275 ones we had done in England (which involved a full medical, an Xray, an ECG and bloods) were ‘not good enough’.  Having these done again in China sounded awful, but it wasn’t bad at all. In a way it was a really good experience to have. It was just so profoundly different to how Western hospitals do things that it was actually entertaining (and of course the Bureau paid for everything). First, we queued up with our passports and were given a checklist of everything that needed to be done. Then we had to go up to another floor, which was just a corridor full of rooms. We just had to go in and out of each room, and have each nurse tick it off on the checklist. There wasn’t much privacy in any of the rooms except for the ultrasound and ECG. The bloods room reminded me of a manicure place, just lots of people at different tables having blood taken. I was quite surprised to find a Chinese patient just chilling in the room with his checklist when I was getting my height, weight and blood pressure taken. And there were quite a few of us just watching each other having Xrays done which was enjoyable. Next on this day was bank accounts. We got to the bank at 1.45, and we had bets going on what time we would leave. I won with 5pm.

On Wednesday and Thursday we had more TEFL training. This was much more effective than the Beijing training as we had time to think, and also a nice long lunch. It was sprung upon us that on Friday we would have to do a demo lesson each. All of the mentor teachers from each of our Chinese schools would be coming to watch us each hold a 10 minute lesson at the Bureau. I feel so comfortable teaching children, but when it comes to teaching peers it’s a lot more intense. After the demo lesson, we met our mentor teachers and went to visit our schools for the first time. My schools are Suzhou No. 16 Middle School and Suzhou No. 24 Middle School. I went to No. 16 first with my mentors Lance and ‘Driver’. First I had lunch, and then a walk around the campus. It is a fairly small school, and I am the only teacher there with my own classroom, so the students will come to me for their lessons. I share an office with 3 other English teachers. Then Lance took me via moped to No. 24, just down the road. No. 24 is even smaller, with what looks like a small block of flats where the classrooms are. I share a big office with several other English teachers. I had never taken a bus in China before, but it is the best way to get to No. 16 in particular as the metro station is further away. My mentor had printed off a map, with the stops I have to get on and off at in pinyin and how many stops it would take to get home. The first few bus stops had signs with a name in pinyin, but the rest had only Chinese characters. I was counting the stops and had my map out, when a Chinese couple came over and took it off me. I must have miscounted the stops as they began gesturing to me that I should have got off two stops back. I got off with them at the next stop and I started to try and walk back when the lady grabbed me by the arm and marched me across the road in front of oncoming traffic. She put me on the bus that was just stopping and told the driver where I needed to get off in Chinese, and he kicked me off at my bus stop.  The great thing about China is that if something goes wrong, you always know the locals will do their best. It’s a shame foreigners aren’t always treat so nicely at home. 

Welcome meetings and TEFL training at the Bureau (I'm at the back, third from left)