7-day week: dream schools, sports day and my first school trip

So all the fun I had on holiday last week was repaid to the bureau this week with 7 straight days of work. This began on Saturday, the day after I got home from Hangzhou. As a result, my lesson plan was rushed and fell apart in the first few minutes of the first lesson, and so I pretended I had just planned a ‘games lesson’ as it was the weekend. I didn’t mind as I felt sorry for them anyway; I walked into class with pretty much the full front row asleep on their desks.  My worst class on a Tuesday morning was much worse than usual. Tuesday mornings usually consist of me getting bullied by 43 teenagers for an hour. This was made worse by the fact a ‘teaching intern’ suddenly turned up to watch me get bullied for an hour. But she will become their regular teacher in a few weeks so at least now she knows to bring her gum shield. 

Walked into class to this on the first day back from holiday

Starting on Monday I was doing an activity with my classes where they had to design their dream school. I showed them a video from youtube of a reconstruction of a British school day. It involves a really irritating child called Jamie showing you through his day at school, and I had to watch it 11 times. There was an uproar in my classes when they realized that our schools finished at around 3.15pm. It was quite tragic to see that many of my students’ dream schools started at 9am and finished at 3.15pm. One group also wrote that at their dream school, they would have ‘only an hour of homework every day’. Yeah an hour of homework still seems a lot. But my students have 8 classes a day, and are given homework for each so you can see why an hour a day seems like a breeze to them. As their usual learning style doesn’t encourage much creativity, it is usually very difficult to get them to be imaginative but this lesson plan was a success. There were some really good ideas. There were a lot of ‘eat’ schools and ‘game’ schools, but my favourite was ‘life’ school. This is located in a big forest where you ‘learn how to life’.

I was invited to my second school’s sports day on Thursday and a school trip on Friday. This was great news as I honestly believed that 7 days of teaching was going to result in some sort of break down. I walked into school at 10am to roars of cheering around the sports field. Most Chinese school have an athletics type field, with basketball courts and a running track. The kids take their sports days very seriously and each class had made their own signs. When I first arrived I was asked to take part in a teacher’s activity. There are 5 boxes each with a certain amount of points. The teachers for each grade compete against each other and you have to stand behind a line and throw your bean bags into the boxes and they count the points. I only got 2 points but it was good fun. I sat with class 3 for the rest of the day and there was a great atmosphere. Whenever one of their class mates were competing they would wave the sign with ‘class 3’ painted on it (三班 san ban) and shout ‘san ban jia you!’. Jia you means to ‘refuel’ or ‘add extra effort’. They did the standard relay, 100m, 400m, long jump etc. There were also three-legged races and one where they link arms back to back with a balloon between them and race like that.

Teacher's game

Girls 400m relay

Cheering with class 8

A sign made and signed by class 3 to remember their sports day

Cheering with class 3

I usually only start at 2pm on a Friday, but as it was school trip day, I had to get up at 6.30 which I was obviously NOT bitter about. I walked into school at 8am to the Pirates of the Caribbean theme tune which is always exciting. This blasts from all of the school speakers to let the students know they need to line up. I got a lot of staring from the younger children. We went to a botanic garden in Suzhou along with 6 other schools, so I attracted lots of attention from the younger children there too. There was lots of 'hello!' and 'nice to meet you!', but ‘waiguoren’ was the main heckle, meaning ‘foreigner’. We all get this everywhere and just naturally respond to it now. We even use it ourselves when talking about other westerners we see in China. I had a wander around the domes with one of my mentors, which were full of tropical plants and parrots. For the rest of the day the teachers all just sat in the café eating and talking. I assume the students just did the same elsewhere. I enjoyed talking to the other teachers as I haven’t spent much time with them so far. Many of the Chinese English teachers tend to avoid speaking to me, either because they’re embarrassed by their English or simply can’t speak enough to have a conversation with me. I discovered that all of the children at this school, my second school, are not from Suzhou. They all come from different provinces in China for their parents to find work. I had recently read an article about China's 'gaokao' exam. This is allegedly the most difficult exam in the world and is taken by every student in China expecting to go to university. It is a controversial exam as poorer students are disadvantaged by the fact they cannot afford tuition and are ranked based on the student's position in the region. So I wanted to know if the students at this school are expecting to take the exam. My mentor said that some might, but it is likely that they will go back to their home towns to take the test, as it would be too difficult in Jiangsu. I assume by this she meant that the competition would be too difficult in Jiangsu (as exams across the provinces are the same, but the competition changes). I realised just how much pressure the students are under.

Botanic garden

There were REAL parrots!

Golden Week: Nanjing and Hangzhou

In October over a billion Chinese people get a week off work  and school to celebrate National Day, and everyone goes on holiday. We had to hand over our passports to the Public Security Bureau in order to get our residency permits, so we couldn’t fly anywhere. We were able to get a train as long as we had photocopies of our passports and the receipt from the Public Security Bureau to say they had it. We decided to go to Nanjing for 3 days first, just an hour and a half west of Suzhou. And then on to Hangzhou for 3 days,  an hour and a half south of Suzhou. Our first train (to Nanjing) was at 8am, and so we got to Nanjing at around 9.30. We were too early to check in so we went wandering around the Qinhuai district where the Confucius Temple is and other tourist attractions. There is lots of street food here and gift shops, and it is just on the banks of the Qinhuai River. We decided to get a taxi to the hotel as our bags were heavy. We had the hotel confirmation up on our phones, with the address in English and Chinese. The first two shook their heads and drove off, leaving us in the middle of the road shouting ‘but why?!’. The third taxi took us, and we never figured out what the problem had been.

Relaxing in first class (it was all they had) on the way to Nanjing

Outside Confucius Temple

Confucius

The Presidential Palace was our next stop. This used to be the royal residency and housed the Office of the President of the Republic of China from 1927 until 1949. Now it’s a museum. This was nice, it reminded me a lot of the gardens in Suzhou. It was fairly busy but it was so big inside that it wasn’t much of a problem. After this, we went to check out the Gate of China (also known as Zhonghua Gate). This wall was built by Emperor Zhu YuanZhang from 1366 to 1387, to defend Nanjing from attack. Zhonghua Gate is the south gate of the city. We walked for quite a while to get here and it was really nice to look at, as it was night time and all lit up. There is quite a lot to see inside but we were too hungry to stick around. Qinhuai district by night was full of tourists but this only added to the pleasant atmosphere. I noticed people wandering around with little red balls on a stick, I decided to try one and it was literally mini toffee apples on a stick. Worth the 10 kuai.

Presidential Palace garden

Gate of China

Qinhuai District with my toffee apples

We decided to spend a whole day at Dr. Sun Yat-Sen’s Mausoleum. He was one of the leaders of the Chinese democratic revolution and the ‘father’ of the Republic of China. This attraction is within a large scenic area, which allegedly represents an alarm bell as can be seen from the air. It was quite a long walk up to the Mausoleum but definitely worth it (although it was swarming with wasps). It was really busy but not in a restrictive way, we were just walking with a herd of other people all the time. Once we got up to the mausoleum at the top of the steps it was beautiful. You have to queue to actually go into the Mausoleum and you just walk straight around and go out again, as you are in a line and not allowed to take pictures. There is a huge statue of Sun Yat-Sen and then a bloke in front of it shouting the Chinese equivalent of ‘oi’ at anyone trying to take pictures. We then paid quite a lot to go into the garden area containing the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum. We all got quite hungry but the only food around seemed to be really expensive pot noodles. Trying to get back to the metro station we got quite lost and deliriously hungry. We wandered into a food place and paid 18 kuai for what looked like a decent meal and turned out to be a pot noodle - heartbreaking. 

View from the Mausoleum

View of the Mausoleum (and me and Ant)

One of the things I was most looking forward to seeing was the Nanjing Massacre Memorial, as I have seen documentaries and read about this before. It's a museum built in 1985 to remember the people killed in the Nanjing Massacre or the Rape of Nanjing (1937).  The first thing you see on the way in is a huge statue of a woman holding a dead baby. There are smaller statues all along the way up to the main entrance of victims along with quotes from first-hand accounts. Just from this I knew the museum was going to be intense. It was quite cramped inside and the captions were very small, but apart from this it was really well laid out. It didn’t actually go into as much detail about the killings as I thought it would, but that’s probably because they are horrific. One interesting fact I found was about a German called John Rabe who worked for German Siemens Corporation. He settled in Nanjing and became the director in charge of the Nanjing branch of the Nazi party. He hid potential victims of the massacre in his house, which is also now a museum.

Main statue on the way into the Museum

One of the smaller statues on the way to the entrance

The Peace Bell in the garden of the memorial museum: it was installed the day before the 66th anniversary of the massacre, and weighs 6.6 tons to represent the anniversary

Another one from the museum garden

Next was Hangzhou. We went to find an H&M first as we needed supplies like boxers and socks. We decided to get the metro to the most central stop and hope for the best. We walked straight into a huge mall and found an H&M on the third floor. There are H&Ms everywhere in China, which is really handy when there is just something you need as you never know what to expect in Chinese clothes shops. We then went to check in. Our hotel was right by West Lake and also right near a metro stop so it was a really convenient spot. We went to get some lunch first, which again was hard as it was quite a touristy area. Then we wandered around the lake all evening. West Lake has amazing views, and it wasn’t even too busy. The next day we walked all around it the opposite way to see some things on the other side. We wanted to go up Leifeng Pagoda but it looked really busy and it was quite pricy so we decided to carry on. Eventually we came to Precious Stone Hill, which was worth the long walk to the top. The views of the city and the lake were incredible. There were photos being taken of a couple; a man in a suit and a woman in a wedding dress. This was for a photo shoot, not an actual wedding. But we were all wondering how the hell they got up there looking immaculate.

View of West Lake on our walk around

Another West Lake view

Photo shoot at the top of Precious Stone Hill

The area we stayed in in Hangzhou was picturesque and really lively. We were right on a cobbled street full of shops, cafes and bars. A lot of the bars were coffee shops by day so were really cosy and welcoming. We went for a drink on the second night and ended up staying out longer than expected. We were just on our way out and had paid the bill, when two Chinese blokes asked if we would stay and talk them if they bought as another beer. I looked at Kate and she apprehensively replied ‘erm, you have to say yes to everything in China…’. So we stayed and chatted to them. This was really cool because they spoke a bit of English but not very much, so it meant we got to use quite a lot of Chinese and practice. We ended up agreeing to meet them again the following night but I woke up quite hungover and immediately decided against it. On the last morning we treated ourselves to a proper coffee at one of the cafes - it was perfect. Coffee is quite expensive here so I have gone without, but the coffee shops looked too appealing. We then went to the Grand Canal, the longest canal in the world which runs all the way to Beijing. I felt quite ill at this point and didn’t fancy walking too far up it, but it was a great place to see.

Top notch coffee

The Grand Canal

As it rained quite badly for the rest of the day we decided to get a boat on the lake. The lake was all misty and choppy and although it was raining we stood on the deck and took loads of pictures. The boat took us to a scenic area on an island and then to the other side of the lake. We had a wander but then discovered that the boats had stopped. We were absolutely starving and couldn’t find the right bus as all of the traffic on the main road was going the same way. Finally we found out that the traffic on the other side of the road was turning around somewhere, so we eventually got food and got home. I would say that has been the main issue with travelling around China. We ended up in fairly touristy places (as that's where most of the stuff is) and its hard to find a descent and affordable place to eat. Maybe that's because we live in small communities of local people in Suzhou and so notice the price difference more. 

Looking very tangled up in red on our boat trip

I expected the whole week to be busier and wetter than it was. There were lots of people but it never restricted us in anyway and we were never queuing for long. We did see lots of other foreigners in Hangzhou which was strange. I have only seen the odd one in Suzhou outside of our ELA group. The weather was also much better than expected. It only rained properly on the last day and we actually had a really sunny day in Hangzhou. Nanjing was very polluted and grey but nothing troublesome. Overall a very successful first holiday in China.

Lit up high-rise buildings in Nanjing combined with pollution to create some lovely colours 

Hangzhou train station on our way home: as mentioned in one of my previous blogs, the stations are like airports. You can see the gates along the sides