The sad reality of very large numbers

Sunday 7th Dec
Ok, gonna start this entry on a serious note.
Since i had no plans today the principal allowed me to accompany him a to a careers fair at one of the uni's to recruit new staff. When we got there the queue of students waiting to enter was absolutely massive. I don't know if this scale turn out is normal by china standards, but i'm sure the world economic crisis has reduced the available jobs out in the work force.

I ended up doing a lot more than observing, as su peng wanted recruits who could speak good english and got me to speak to all the potential candidates in english to test them out. Most of em were quite nervous since it was like a first phase job interview, but i tried to be as friendly as possible. I did have to ask all the necessary questions like 'what job experience do u have', and what are you studying, and it was sad when they couldn't say they had any experience or skills, and that their english was clearly not very strong. Still though, they all seemed so keen to apply, and it really saddened me that most of these guys wouldn't get a return call. i guess it's the same in any country, but here the situation seems even more dire due to the large amount of graduates coming out. Maybe it was also their broken english which made it seem even more heart breaking. and you just know that alot of these students have parents who have saved their asses off to pay for their uni fees.

The uni lies on the outkirts of the city, and it has quite a different feel to the unis back home. the campus of this partiucular uni feels quite sparse, and it's practically built out in the middle of nowhere next to 2 small villages. Theres like no gardens or public areas within the grounds, and all the deparrtments and lecture rooms are located in large centralized massive buildings. check out the pic above of the library! you have to walk quite long distances between these centralized bulidings and the dorms.


One of the funny things i came across was their system of hot water supply. Since the dorms only have cold water all the students have to collect their hot water from the 'hot water' room each day. It reminded me of villagers going down to the local well to collect water, except these were uni students in the 21st century!



One of the other workers from the school also gave me a tour of the adjoining villages. Since the students often go in there to buy things and eat the local economy of these villages has really picked up. The one we visited still contains one of the houses that Chiang Kai-Shek used to reside in. Theres a pic of the billboard advertising this attached. On the way back to the uni we passed this villager who i just had to take a pic of. She looked like could've been one of those peasant workers from those old Communist advertisements, with the rosy cheeks and big toothy smile.