Long Road Back

The summer holiday was great. We had seven weeks of no teaching. It was especially nice because I was fed up with my primary employer and had been ready to move on a mere six weeks into the school year. However, I persevered and made it to the end. Or almost the end. I grew weary of waiting for them to give us a definite date that the school year would end. This was a common practice with this organization. They rarely had any idea when events would happen, including beginning and ending of terms until just a few weeks, or even days before. Since I needed to book tickets, and prices always go up as you near your departure date, I went ahead and booked our tickets for the ninth of July. Sometime around the middle of June, they decided that the last day of the term would be July 12. I was close enough and they were probably glad to see me and my pickiness go. Summer was great. I had quality time with family and friends. I enjoyed the great outdoors, eating, drinking good beer, eating, playing music, eating, playing golf, drinking water from the tap and eating. Somehow, I gained weight. Our trip back was long, but uneventful. We flew on Taiwan's EVA Airlines (motto: half a glass of wine is enough for a twelve hour flight) which left Seattle at 2 am and after a stopover in Taipei, plopped us in Hong Kong at 10 am the next day. We spent most of the next 20 hours sleeping, although we did take a break from this for some meals and shopping. A nine hour bus ride the next day got us to Zhanjiang just in time for the taxi shift change so we waited about 25 minutes for a bus to take us near our apartment. We had brought a LOT of stuff back with us, so we had been humping 25 pound packs and dragging 50 pound wheeled suitcases around Seattle, and Hong Kong. The novelty was wearing off by the time we had hauled everything over a couple of blocks of uneven sidewalk and up the four flights of stairs to our flat. However, the key still worked and we walked into a clean apartment with all plants alive and only one dead cockroach on the floor. This was Wednesday evening, and I had my first class Friday evening and a full weekend of lessons after that. No time for jet lag! We also had been informed that we would need to move since our landlady wanted to take advantage of the real estate boom and sell the apartment before the bubble burst. On Saturday I looked at a decent place, much bigger than the old place, nearby on the University campus for only $32 more a month. I paid 6 months rent in advance the following Monday, and we moved seven days later. I hate moving, even to a nicer place, and this place is a lot nicer. It has a lot of windows and is much brighter. It has 3 bedrooms and an office. It has a much larger living room. Our old place had a balcony where you did your laundry and hung your clothes. The new place has a balcony and a room for laundry with lots of windows so you stuff dries quickly. (Nobody in Zhanjiang uses a clothes dryer.) It even has a western toilet instead of a squatty potty! Anyway, I hate moving. When we first came here five years ago, we had all our possessions in two massive suitcases and a couple of carry ons. It took a small truck two trips to move all the stuff we have amassed since. There is a lot of furniture. There are a lot of clothes. There are books. Office supplies. Kitchen stuff. Plants. (Movers hate plants.) These guys moved us the last time and they are good at it. They are strong. One little guy balances a full sized mattress on his back and goes up the stairs, no problem. They can haul their weight in stuff. Up stairs. Up six flights of stairs, which is where our new place is, the sixth floor of a nine story walk up. Nine stories—Chinese people are tough! We have always lived on the fourth floor here. Three apartments, all on the fourth floor. Nobody wants to live on the fourth floor because the number 4 is bad luck here. So they rent it to foreigners... We finally have an apartment that isn't cursed. Not as good as the eighth floor. 8 is really good luck, but not worth the climb, I think. Anyway, within two weeks I had gone back to work, partied with my friends, and moved, all without the luxury of recovering from jet lag. I celebrated by getting a dandy head cold and spending a couple of days in bed sleeping. I would wake up periodically to blow my nose and unpack. The place is nearly together. I don't have internet yet, but it will happen soon now that I have given money to China Telecom. Their technician will arrive sometime in the next few weeks, will only speak Cantonese, and need to borrow tools, but will somehow manage to get things working. Later.... I now have internet (obviously). It's horrible service! I think that the data is deposited into a bin and hauled by underpaid laborers up the stairs before being dumped on the doorstep, then sorted by undertrained tech school grads and manually inserted into the cable. It's all you can get on the campus, which may explain a lot about why China lags behind many places in the world in higher education. However, I had discovered that a cell phone company offers a wireless internet service and subscribed to it. It's good, and it's portable, and I am up and running.

Five Year Economic Development Zone

Zhanjiang is in the midst of a Five Year Economic Development Zone makeover.  Last year it was given FYEDZ status and big changes have been happening.  The big picture projects are centered around a major expansion of the port.  It is a very underutilized deep water port which is the closest port China has to all points south, including the Middle East.  This means oil.  The refining capacity is being increased.  Rail lines are coming, including high speed trains.  There is a new airport in the works.  Buildings are going up at a dizzying pace.  Lots of money is being poured into the place, much of it actually going into projects after satisfying the greed of those who control the projects.  Schools are being built.  Roads are being improved.  Bus and ferry stations are being replaced.  This is pretty impressive stuff.
There is also a big effort to improve Zhanjiang's image.  Zhanjiang has no image, per se.  It is an unknown backwater of 7 million souls.  Most people here are just a generation or two removed from rural life.  It is kind of a mega village.  The people are mostly what the urbanites here snidely refer to as "countryside people".  They litter, they spit, they pee in the bushes.  In general they are lacking in social graces.  Many are small entrepreneurs.  They have fruit carts.  They sell vegetables on tarps on the sidewalks.  They run businesses out or closet sized shops that spill out onto the sidewalks.  They have unlicensed cafes that spill out onto the sidewalks.  The sidewalks are crowded, with wares, tables, stinky tofu stands, meat, produce, motorbikes, and people.  It has its charms, and is a centuries old tradition here.
The people in charge of Zhanjiang's new image are changing all this.  Early this year, trash bins went up on my street about every 20 meters or so.  A couple of months ago, our favorite barbecue place, an awesome enterprise that was rolled out across the street every night, was shut down.  Then businesses started closing--unlicensed, I suppose.  Then all the food stands, fruit carts, and street vendors disappeared.  All the retailers that used to spill out onto the sidewalks have all their wares crammed into their too small shops.  These shops were for all practical purposes, night storage places.  Even the old guys who used to set up their card tables and play cards on the sidewalks are gone.  Sidewalks are clear and walking is a cinch.  It's boring, and it has ruined the livelihoods of countless people.  Some economic plan!

Career Shift

Hmm. Not much going on in this blog lately.  I've been very busy, with two jobs, and now a third project in the development stage that sucks just about all the energy that's left.

After this school year I will be making another job shift.  I'll be leaving the International Kindergarten and working for a learning center that I helped start.  It's a place that I worked in in my spare time, and has grown and grown with demand for my classes outpacing my energy and spare time.  

I have a generous pay plan and fewer hours.  It's also just across the street from my apartment.  Perfect.

I will also be working with an electronics company on a sort of secret project that will involve electronical stuff and English teaching.

Although the kindergarten was a major improvement over teaching at the #1 Middle School, it left much to be desired.  I'll get into that more later.  

I only have a little over four weeks before the school year ends and we head back to the US for the summer.  I'm looking forward to the rest.  I could use a break from crowds, humidity, horns, death defying street crossing, kids, Cantonese, and watery beer.

Is Our Children Learning English?

Sometimes I hear from students that I used to teach.  I received a text message from a high school student the other night.  She asked:
"What's the difference between A MAJORITY OF and THE MAJORITY OF?  which one is used more often by native speakers?"
I sensed that she had encountered one of many trick questions that the English Education Cabal uses to make learning English one of the more challenging things a student in China will try to do.  I answered:
"Either is OK."  
I then received two messages, back to back:
"which one is formal in written English?"
"I mean in the exam"
I knew it!  It was one of many questions that appear on their abysmal written exams!  The sadists who create these exams have no desire to show how well students have learned English.  They don't care if kids learn English or not.  They only want to trip them up.   The Chinese "experts" responsible for creating the curriculum for English education are nearly complete failures.  A few students manage to learn English in spite of the schools, but they do this by seeking outside help.
First the schools concentrate on vocabulary, and much of it is irrelevant to every day lives of students.  They keep having to learn new words every day, which they are tested on in written tests.  They never use the words, and they become forgotten.  During the Olympics I saw a vocabulary list for a fourth grader that included "javelin" and "Greco Roman wrestling". 
Later, in high school, the exams concentrate on obscure grammar, and much of it is obsolete.  It seems that the intention is to make something akin to a high stakes TV game show rather than to teach the language.  There is little effort to exercise common language, and virtually no students graduate from high school with and ability to carry on even a rudimentary conversation.  Here is a common encounter that a foreigner will have on the street in China:
Adolescent Boy in a group of adolescent boys:  "HELLO!"
Foreigner:  "Hello."
Boys all laugh.
Foreigner:  "How are you?"
Blank looks from the boys followed by nervous laughter.
This actually happens a lot.  I have stopped answering adolescent boys who say "hello".
Getting back to the text messaging saga--I felt that a Chinese English teacher could explain this better since they might know what the "correct" answer was on the exam.  I answered:  "I have no idea.  This is one of those crazy questions that only happen in Chinese English exams.  Ask you Chinese English teacher."
When I taught high school students questions like this were a daily occurrence.  Generally, I could provide the grammatically correct answer, and often I would tell them that even though this was technically correct, we never actually spoke like this.  Then I would tell them the common phrase.
I'm glad to be teaching kindergarten now.

French Colonial Zhanjiang

I live in an area of Zhanjiang that I call the “French Quarter”.  For fewer than 50 years this city was part of the French colonial empire.  It had been deeded to the French in 1898 for 100 years and they hoped to get good use of its excellent natural port.  The Wikipediaversion of this story is here.  It was a fishing village called Guangzhouwan.

The problem as I see it was that there was not a lot of resources to exploit.  The area has excellent farm land and growing conditions and the fishery at the time was outstanding.  About all they managed to do was to scrape out some coal, and build a railroad.  They also supported missionaries and built a church which stands today. At one point there were some 250 French folks living here, but I imagine that it was not the most exciting place to spend your life, unless you enjoyed swatting mosquitoes.

There is some interesting architecture left over here that hasn’t met the wrecking ball.  Some government buildings and the church are still in use, and a lighthouse is a feature in a park.  Most are kind of derelict dwellings with cobbled walls filling in what were once arched, open verandas and it makes for some interesting sightseeing.

I have found a lot of old images of the area in the form of postcards being sold online.  Here they some of the good ones along with some of what’s left today.
Click the pix for a larger view.

This is the Catholic church just down the street.



Here is the church today.  There is mass every Sunday.

                               

The church is in the background.  This was taken fairly close to where our apartment building is now.

Although it has fallen into disrepair, this building holds offices for the police.

Besides the church, this government building is the best preserved of the old French buildings

These are some buildings around the neighborhood.  There are even some cobblestone streets.

A couple of French kids with their local counterparts.

Ipoh, Malaysia

Our final destination was Ipoh, which is north of Kuala Lumpur in the hills.  I wanted to see my old college roomie, Kurt, who is teaching there.  Our travel time coincided with Chinese New Year, or the Lunar New Year, or Spring Festival (let’s just refer to it as CNY) which is the second biggest travel time in Malaysia after Ramadan.  Ipoh’s population is about 70% Chinese descent, and the biggest feature of CNY is people going back to be with their families,  So we heading into a massive Chinese migration, and our arrival by bus was to be far from imminent.  Direct buses from Melaka to Ipoh were booked, “finished” is the Malaysian English word used.  Kurt suggested getting to Kuala Lumpur (KL), then seeing what we could do from there.  If worse came to worse we could hire a taxi for about a hundred dollars.

Let me talk about Malaysian bus stations.  There are a lot of carriers, and a seemingly endless array of windows representing a seemingly endless array of bus companies.  Touts wander about trying to get you to go their company, although they are not especially annoying.  Also ticket sellers are chanting out their windows destinations.   The passengers are fair representations of the varying ethnicities of this nation, women in head colorful head scarves, Indians, and Chinese.  White folks seem to be mostly flying or in tour groups.  There are food stalls aplenty with more of that yummy food, as well as bakeries and convenience stores.  The restrooms are fairly clean since you have to pay to use them, and that gives the potty purveyors a sort of obligation to keep you from gagging upon entry.  The Malay word for toilet is “tandas”.  It was the second Malay word I learned after hello which is “hai”.

Buses here mostly leave late, and ours was no exception, although it wasn’t very late.  We landed in KL at the most modern bus facility I’ve ever seen, rivaling most modern airports.  It had massive escalators taking us to the upper level, and was very shiny.  Apparently the modern, shiny place discourages touts and hollering, because it was very subdued in tone.  We discovered we couldn’t get to Ipoh from this facility, and that we would need to get to another place where the buses go north.  Confusing directions were given for which city bus to take, so we wisely took a taxi.

Not so Modern

Modern

Most Malaysian taxis (teksi---this language is easy!) running out of a bus terminal are operated from a teksi stand, so you just tell the agent where you want to go, then they call a driver over to translate since none of them are able to speak English.  You pay them and off you go.

We were dropped at a terminal downtown that although big, was not as lofty as the new one.  The ceiling was about 7 feet high and it had all the charms of the other terminals.  To our joy, there were buses to Ipoh.  In fact, one was scheduled to leave in half an hour.  Our good fortune was greatly appreciated, and we had just enough time to stock up on some junk food at a convenience store, since a real meal would have been pushing the time line.  We went to our appointed loading dock which was located in the basement.  This was a massive area with idling buses aplenty.  It was open at the outside, and had some exhaust vents but this was inadequate for the amount of bus flatulence being exuded.   The departure time came and went.  And went some more.  It went a lot.  Eventually I began to suspect that they were waiting to sell enough tickets to fill the bus as people kept trickling down.  Eventually there were a lot of people down there, and after a few buses came and went our bus arrived.  It was yellow and said “bas sekala” on the side—school bus.  Some enterprising transport folks were pulling together whatever they could to make a buck during this peak travel time.  However the “bas” was a real express item with curtains, cushy seats and AC so we got onboard, well endowed with an hours worth of diesel fumes.  Drugs are very illegal in Malaysia, but this bus wait was a fair substitute, and it took me a couple of hours to come down.

About that time, we began to climb and the scenery finally changed from palm oil groves to jungle and mountains.  Very cool mountains.  Karst mountains of the kind you see in Guilin, China.  Although we did not see any monkeys, we knew they were there.

The journey north was very slow due to the Chinese migration to Ipoh, but we eventually arrived at the most Third World station to date.  It was old, poorly cooled, noisy and had a ceiling that was about six and a half feet high.  I got to use a Malaysian pay phone which has a great fuzz tone.  Conversations on these devices are a little like having your voices filtered through the guitar riff of “You Really Got Me”.  Anyway, Kurt had no idea where this Mecca for bus travelers was, so we looked for the teksi window.  They were out to lunch (5:30 pm?) so we went outside to find a ride.  It was hot.  We had to haggle with the drivers.  Some didn’t want to go where we wanted because of the Chinese traffic.  We eventually found a driver who was willing for a price that was reasonable, and off we went.

Malaysian drivers are a lot better than those in China.  They mostly obey the laws, and are capable of staying in one lane.  They rarely honk.  They aren’t up to Western standards, but are refreshingly competent when compared to their counterparts in the Middle Kingdom.

However, our driver was Indian, so I asked him if Chinese Malays were bad drivers.  His grumpy demeanor changed and grin cracked his face.  "Oh yes, indeed!  Most awful!" he answered  As he maneuvered through the crawling traffic, including some spiffy shoulder passing, and even including a little dirt driving, we discussed the shortcomings of the Chinese driver, which are legion.

He got us to Kurt’s condo, which is really an apartment in a high rise building with an awesome view of the karst mountains.  His apartment is very nice, and well appointed, and even has a small balcony.  We had arrived at Ipoh at last, and were ready for beer and cocktails and catching up on the many years since we had last seen each other.

The next few days involved catching up, although when you haven’t seen each other for a few decades, you are mostly sharing broad swathes of your lives.  We also met some other expats, did some shopping, eating, drinking, and an afternoon of golf.

The teachers we met have it good, much better than the foreign teachers here in China. They are part of Kurt’s team, and all go into the mountain villages to train the English teachers there.  All have master’s degrees.

They get a decent salary, a generous housing allowance and a car.  We met a few who used their generous bucks to set themselves up in some very nice housing.  They had large houses on real lots with trees, lawns and gardens.  That is something that just does not exist in my part of China, without the kind of income that a corrupt government official may have.
. 

 Some Colleagues' Neighborhood

Malaysia has certain advantages to foreigners as well.  Because of the large European influence, including British colonial rule, a lot of food items are readily available in the supermarket, including good bread, lots of cheeses, real sausages, and proper American junk food. 

There are also night clubs with live music and dancing.  The only night clubs in our city in China are Karaoke clubs. ( Karaoke clubs in Zhanjiang are truly awesome if you enjoy ear shattering Chinese pop songs sung off key, in a smoky room, while drinking watery beer and sweet red wine.)   In a big change of pace for us, we went to a night club in Ipoh to celebrate Chinese New Year Eve.  We were entertained by a dreadlocked Philippine reggae band with a lovely lady singer that cleverly played mostly older pop songs to reggae and ska rhythms.  My favorite was the Carpenters’ “Yesterday Once More”.  We drank real European beer in pint glasses, but not very much because the prices that the Malaysian mullahs set in order to make heathen non believers suffer for their sins, were dear.

Another night we went out for pizza at a place that was owned by an American, and that pizza was better than most you can get in the USA.  Most of the customers were Chinese.

They have satellite TV that has expat appeal, at least if you like things like rugby and what the world calls “football”.

They also have golf courses.  Kurt and I also had an afternoon of 18 holes of jungle golf.  It was at a private club that allows general public, or at least they let us play.  First I had to buy a collared shirt, and scrounge some golf shoes, because if a member saw me in my Oregon t-shirt and sandals, there would be some kind of hell to pay.  The shirt was affordable and sporty.  The shoes were marginal and belonged to some poor caddy, but we were golfing!  We shared clubs and had a cart.  With the heat and humidity, walking 18 holes might have been a little too much like the Bataan Death March.

 Driving Range

 Clothing Fail

The greens were very lush and slow.  If you hit a ball into the woods it was best to leave it--cobras and such.  Monkeys are known to swipe balls, but there is no penalty to drop a ball where they took it.  I’m not sure the rule if they move it.  Jungle golf requires lots of water.  I drank at least half a gallon, and still didn’t need to pee until much later in the evening.  It also saps your energy, so that by the 15^th hole or so, it begins to feel like Bataan Death Golf, but without the Japanese soldiers bayoneting you if you top the ball.

Since it was an upper crust golf club, the green fees included a shower and towel to cleanse oneself from the sweat and money dung, and to soothe the red ant and mosquito bites.

Our time in Malaysia was drawing to a close, so we booked a ticket on an “ekspres bas” (express bus-- easy language!!!) to Johar Bahru.  We were told it was a six hour trip, but we were becoming wise to the ways of Malaysian timetables.  A Malay will tell you it takes 10 minutes to make a one hour trip.  They either have no sense of time, or they just like to mess with your head.  We knew that it would take longer anyway since there would be massive traffic due to the Spring Festival exodus.

Our bus left 40 minutes late, then took an hour to get through town, stopping at 2 other stations before hitting the freeway south.  We crawled south through a lot of traffic, but things got faster once we passed Kuala Lumpur.  10 hours after departing we arrived at the Larkin Bus Terminal in Johar.  I had hoped we would arrive there early enough to go to Singapore for the night, but it was 9 pm, so I found some wifi at a KFC (they are everywhere in the world) and booked an excellent 3 star hotel for very cheap and we took a teksi there.

The next day was spent getting to our hotel in Singapore, then exploring around the ‘hood.  We had Indian food for dinner, got to bed early then flew out the next morning for Hong Kong.

On the flight back, I had a chance to reflect on our trip, and what things really stood out.  First, the toilets—public toilets are cleanish.  You have both squatty potties and the sit down variety.  There is almost always soap, and water is abundant.  They really flush!  On Tioman Island, the toilets were so mighty, that you could flush a decent sized cat, and not have to call the plumber to unclog the system.

There are a lot of cats.  They are everywhere and seem unafraid and fairly healthy.  As a result, I never saw a rat.

People are very friendly and helpful.  This is true of all the ethnic groups we encountered.  When we appeared to be confused, someone would offer to unconfused us.  Directions we got from people were nearly always inaccurate, maybe they got them from the guide books.

Guide books, while helpful, can also be cunningly deceitful.

We never had any stomach problems.
We packed the perfect amount and type of things that we would need.  Everything fit into two smallish backpacks, and we used everything we brought, including band aids, pocket tool and mini flash light.  I guess I really didn't need the compass.

The buses, though not very punctual, are very comfy, and the bus stations are very entertaining.

If we return, which we would like to, I will take advantage of any opportunity to buy duty free booze.

Unless I really wanted to spend some time in Singapore, I would make sure my flight ended in Kuala Lumpur.  A lot of time was wasted crossing the border and traveling to and from there.

I would eat more Indian food.