lunchtime management

The last week has been spent doing a TESOL(enligh teaching course) in beijing. There was about 20+ of us in total, most of the others were from the USA, 3 brits, a romanian, an italian, an frenchman and a mexican. I was the only australian,and the only one of chinese ethinicity. something of an advantage and a drawback, but i'll get to that later.I feel sorry for the students who'll be getting the italian or mexican. Their accents were pretty thick and their teaching presentations were riddled with spelling and gramatical errors! Not really fair if you ask me.

Everyone else in the class couldn't speak a word of mandarin, except for maybe hello and count a few numbers. Even our american teacher who'd been living in china for 14 years probably couldn't hold a basic conversation, and he also had that real cringing way of pronouncing words, which reminded me of my grade 8 chinese teacher. So anyway, after everyone figured out i had some grasp of mandarin, some lunch breaks became quite a challenge.

Most of the noodle houses and restaurants around the hotel were in the local community, so most didn't have enlgish on the menu or have waiters who could speak it. So the first day was a bit of a nightmare with almost the entire class going out together with me unofficially appointed to take care of the ordering. And you know what it's like when you get a big group together and nobody wants to make any decisions, especially amongst a group of people you just met. It was compounded by the fact that it seemed like some of these guys had never walked into a chinese restaurant in their lives. Usually when i goto asian restaurants it's with other asians, and i realize now i take this for granted. Normally i don't have to scan and monitor the other people at the table to check they're handling the food alright. Chopstick skills were lacking, what seemed like the mildest dishes were too spicy for them, dishes were too exotic, teapots needed to be refilled ect ect. I felt like i was some mother taking care of a bunch of children!
There was one thick glass noodles in soup dish in particular, and nobody was able to serve the noodles into their own bowls. most of it ended up on the table! though in fairness the dish was originally intened for a single person and not for sharing.

after the first few days though some of the other students found restaurants with pictures on the menu and were happy enough to go it alone and point. still, other days I would have a procession of what seemed like a bunch of lost stray dogs, following me around to whatever restaurant i decided on. and it's not like i can read the entire menu, or willing to sit there and read the 50+options on there to the rest of the class. at least it was good practice for my mando.

I was happy to tell the others how to say and ask certain things in mando, but i didn't appreciate the big italian guy wanting me to translate his flirtations to one of the tea girls in real time. "alan, tell her I think she is preeeetty" ......"what is she saying now?" "oh she is sooo cuuutte"ect ect.

on the last day he really tested the waters, telling me he really wanted to sleep with one of the three teagirls, and would need my help. I sorta palmed him off and he didn't ask again, though i heard in the end he did manage to ask them back to his room for what they thought would be "a chat". I think they were quite shocked and upset when they realized what they'd been invited up there for! you could say he almost pulled a dominique strauss-kahn

More Bosom time with Mother China

that's right, I'm back in the ancestral home again. Back to experience the lifestyle and culture of the next biggest superpower, the ways of the most populous nation on earth. Back for more smelly tofu, more hard bargaining, more spittle and hocking, and more hard lessons on life and its trifles.

Apologies for the delayed first blog. I originally couldn't access this blog because I hadn't realized most English based blogging sites have been blocked in China. I then created a new blog on a chinese based site, but realized some of you wouldn't be able to navigate around it! Then after being told about all the great things about VPNs and the little risk I caved into the pressure and got one. So now I have facebook again too :)

Actually I'm not sure if all blog - spots were banned or just select ones like mine. Hmmm if it's the later, maybe I should tone down what I write this time round about Chinese life :) I swear I can't remember writing anything inflammatory or that would've raised the ire of the Communist Party. Not that I have or am going to blog about anything political or sensitive to the government here (in case anyone from the government is reading this right now :) ) So for friends out there who post comments or send emails to me, please be sensitive to the words you use. Even if you do it as a joke it could still draw some unwarranted attention to me or this blog!

As before, I'll try to keep my entries interesting and insightful. I don't believe you'll be riveted to your computer screens if I told you every little detail of my days here, for example 'I had dumplings for breakfast, had a great day at work, scratched myself, then played mah-jong with the boys over bai-jiu, yadda yadda yadda....... I will try to keep it topical, or give random musings from what I observe.

This time round I won't have to play the charades game when it comes to language barriers. I got several dictionaries on my iphone. YESSSS. Though if my iphone does run out of juice, I guess I will have to revert to charades, exasperating arm waving and diagrams.

So a little background about this trip. This time I'm here to work as an English teacher at a university in Nanjing, unlike the previous trip when I came as a student of mandarin (in Xi'an). This time I'm here much longer - 10 months at least. If I survive and enjoy the experience, maybe I'll come back again, we'll see. At the same time it's a great opportunity to turbo-charge the mandarin proficiency. I have improved somewhat since the last trip through language partners, intermittent karaoke sessions, and hours of immersion in Mando love songs and shithouse Taiwanese dramas (very painful) But if I continued down this path I'd only end up being some Asian-Casanova with the ability to write Chinese love poetry or some other crap. No use to me.

On my first day here in China I think I was scammed twice - the taxi driver short changed me by 2 rmb while the bell boy managed to get a tip from me before I realized it's not the norm here. Ah well, I couldn't have been bothered at the time, and the bellboy was rather helpful later on.

Rather than play it safe and eat western and overpriced food in the hotel restaurant, thought I'd venture out to the small noodle houses dotted around the old apartment blocks surrounding the hotel. It's a bit surreal, one minute you're in this relatively modern and cushy hotel, and right outside the gates is an old community full of locals. The surrounding apartment blocks are quite old, and the residents don't seem to be rich by Beijing standards. I think their community has been there much longer than the hotels that have sprung up right in the midst of their suburb! I got a real sense of the residents when I sat down in the noodle house and ordered some beef brisket noodles. Casually clad, wearing slippers, one woman who looked like she was in her nightie , a family of 15 celebrating some event and making rapturous noise, and a bunch of teenagers running between serving customers and eating their dinner at the tables (must be family run business). I was able to order in mandarin and understand what the waiter was telling me when I entered, so nobody paid me a second glance. In other words, my cover hadn't been blown.

That's how I felt last time, and will probably feel this time round in China. Like some undercover foreigner, lao wai 老外， who gets to glimpse the locals with their guard let down. In "'locals only'' places with the presence of a foreigner the locals can stop being themselves and the spotlight turns on the outsider, which is a shame because you then don't get to see the people being themselves. That's one good thing about being of Chinese ethnicity. I can blend in as long as I don't wear anything too outlandish or start taking pics of things a local would find mundane (again, thankyou iphone for discretion). Its great because if my cover's not blown I feel I can do as the locals do, like turn and gork at other people, and slurp my noodle soup. It also helps to maintain my cover. I think I did arouse suspicion though when I asked for a spoon for my soup ( I later realized everyone else didn't have one and we're just drinking from the bowl), and also when I said thank you after receiving the change. The counter girl had a double take and had to ask me to repeat it again, after which she gave a wry smile. LOL. I'll have to work on being more rude from now on.