Tangled up in Red: Touristy stuff, ebike incompetence and more teaching

Life in China is gradually starting to calm down but this week has been hectic. I had to do a 6-day week at school because of the days off we had for Mid-autumn festival last week (in China, you have to make up time you have off, even at a weekend). So my work week started on Sunday. This obviously takes its toll on the kids just as much as me so it’s been an exhausting week. Having students fall asleep in the classroom is quite a common problem, hopefully not because my lessons are so dull. I have one student who is quite sassy and has a bad attitude. He talks over me every lesson and I asked his regular class teacher if he is ok as he seems to really dislike English. She said he doesn’t dislike it, he just likes to talk, but if he isn’t allowed to talk he goes to sleep. I would rather he go to sleep than talk over me so I’ve had to start moving him to the back. In my second school, one boy was stood up the whole time. I asked him why he wasn’t sat down and he just responded ‘I can’t’. He couldn’t tell me in English why not, so his friend said ‘if he sits down, he falls asleep’. As funny as this is I just feel like education here would be much more effective if they had a bit more sleep. They are at school 8am until 6pm and then generally just do homework until late at night. So a 6-day week wasn’t going to help matters.

As a result of the long week, we ended up desperate for something to do mid-week. So on Wednesday a group of us went to watch the night show at the Master of Nets garden. Ant and I have been to the Master of Nets garden before when it was raining, which wasn’t as bad it sounds as there was no one there and it was really peaceful. For the night show, it was quite busy with tourists and other Westerners but there was a great atmosphere. There are coloured lights all around the garden which reflect into the pond so it was good to see at night. The show consists of 8 performances each in different parts of the garden, and you wander from place to place for each performance of Chinese opera, instrumental music, dance and singing. Some of the Chinese opera was really weird and creepy but the folk and instrumental music was amazing.

One of the opera performances at the night show

Instrumental music with a dancer

On Friday we found a burger. We were invited to a live music event at an expat bar called Meisterbrau in SIP (Suzhou Industrial Park). This is quite a wealthy part of Suzhou with Singaporean influence and loads of expats. We had all planned to get a beer and burger deal for 50 yuan but I assumed it would be a Chinese version of a burger, not a burger as I know it. But it was a real burger, complete with gherkin, egg and cheese. It even came with real beer, and I got quite drunk throughout the night here as I had grown used to drinking Chinese 3% beer. So the next day was filled with hungover tourism. We went for a wander around Panmen Scenic Spot, which is right near our home and it was beautiful. This area is famous for its historical relics and the oldest pagoda in Suzhou is also here. It was just 20 yuan to get in (£2) and I think I’ll be going there quite often. We also visited the Humble Administrator’s Garden on Sunday which is one of the most famous gardens in Suzhou and much bigger than the ones we have already visited.

Perfect. My Friday night burger

I have finally been able to ride the ebike in real traffic which is so fun. It started with us deciding after a meal that I would ride it home, but I shat myself in the middle of a main road and had to swap with Ant again. Once we got onto a better road I went to the front again and have driven it quite often since. It is such a convenient way to get around. We’ve been going to the gym quite often which is one metro stop from us, so it only takes 5 minutes on the ebike. There was an incident on Wednesday night though. We had just been for some tea and I was getting ready to drive us home, but Ant had turned the bike on with the keys whilst it was still on its stand. So I pushed it off its stand and pulled the throttle back to do so, lost control of the bike and it ran me into some other parked up ebikes. The alarms started going off I was shouting for help whilst Ant stood and watched, until some chefs outside a restaurant ran over and rescued me. The problem was I couldn’t have let go of the throttle without letting go of the bike completely because it was pulling away from me, if I’d have let go of it completely the damage would have been worse. It was highly embarrassing but the chefs were so nice and were checking the bike to see if anything had gone wrong with it. We already knew it hadn’t, it was just pure stupidity but we stood looking speechless anyway as though it was totally the bike’s fault. They waved us off as we drove away and didn’t even laugh at us