Tangled up in Red

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)

Suffering all of the bureaucratic hurdles we had to face to get our Chinese working visa made arriving here on Sunday 14^th August all the more worth it. Ant and I began applying to come and work in China over two years ago; we were forced to withdraw last year due to delays in Beijing (where I had been placed) and so we were deliriously happy when we landed at Beijing Capital Airport after a smooth 10 hour flight, with our suitcases even rolling out early on the conveyor belt. I didn’t think that was even possible. We were brought back to reality when greeted with an astronomically long queue in front of a sign saying FOREIGNERS, which only reminded us how difficult it was to get there.

As we slept through lunch at the hotel, it was time to venture out for the first time. The hotel was in Shunyi District, just outside of Beijing. The main road outside the hotel complex was a death trap (to us foreigners, anyway). We literally had to look both ways at once, with the main road occupied mainly by people who had ‘no respect for life’ as we were told by our training leader on the first day of training. On top of this there is a separate lane for e-bikes. My technique was to just wait for a Chinese person to follow as they crossed over, they seemed to know what they were doing.

There were not many English speakers, which surprised me. We expected training camp to be a bit like an English-speaking bubble, especially being in Beijing. We stumbled into a food place just over the road and immediately had to use some of the little Chinese we knew. The lady serving us was very considerate and really tried to understand what we were trying to say. I managed ‘no spicy’ and ‘no meat’. I had been trying not to eat meat before arriving but realised soon into the training that it would be difficult to maintain. Ant managed ‘beef’ in Chinese, and so after this communication through terrible Chinese and some interpretive dance, we sat down without a clue what was coming. It turned out to be a noodle soup, mine not spicy and without meat and Ant’s included beef – success. I noticed how friendly the local people were immediately. We had been told quite intimidating things before arriving, such as that the police often ask foreigners for their passports, and if you can’t show it they can detain you. It’s easy to believe things like this when you don’t know a country very well, and maybe it is true in some parts, but the only policemen I have come across whilst here have been very warm and welcoming. Just on the way back to the hotel we were quite cautious about the police station next door, as we had just handed in our passports so that our company could buy our train tickets to Suzhou, but the policeman outside just waved and shouted ‘Ni hao!'.

Training in Beijing was intense. We arrived on the Sunday and work was due to start on the Tuesday. We were split up into groups of three (with people who were headed to the same province) and the groups were sent to different schools in the Shunyi district to practice teaching in the mornings from 8.30 to 12pm. We would then be driven back to the hotel, have an hour’s break and all head to another school for three hours of TEFL training. We would then have dinner in the hotel and spend the evening planning lessons. There were also a few days when Chinese lessons would be held, in which case dinner was held later. It was nerve wracking knowing that we would be teaching straight away without having had any training yet. I was thankful to have a partner in the beginning, as many people had to teach alone. From what I have heard from teacher friends in England, Chinese students in comparison to British students must be an absolute breeze. When preparing to move to China, I hadn’t thought much about the teaching, despite it being the whole point. Chinese students are culturally very respectful of teachers, and I was amazed everyday by how polite they were. Whilst at the school, we were followed around by an IT man with a camcorder which was pointed at us constantly. I did wonder what would happen with the videos/pictures. After the two weeks of training, the school held a closing ceremony for us. I didn’t realise how much the school and students valued our presence until a long montage of us teaching was played to the song ‘you raise me up’, which was both hilarious and very moving. We also sang a Chinese song in Chinese, using the lyrics printed out in pinyin. This wasn't as humiliating as we expected though as the teachers joined in with us. Chinese teaching is traditionally very teacher-focused, the students do not get much chance to be creative or expressive in any way. They also usually have 12 hour days of classes followed by homework at night. Being able to break that up with a different style of teaching and hopefully some fun was very rewarding. Despite not being able to see much of Beijing or the local culture, I learned a lot about China in the first two weeks.