It’s been some time since an update but with the 70th anniversary of the PRC coming the Chinese government have been putting pressure on VPNs meaning internet contact outside the country is increasingly difficult. As difficult moving out here has been, I at least could chat to friends and family back home despite a seven hour difference. Now even that has become near impossible.
Now my memory of the middle of last week has become a bit hazy, but it was mostly uneventful. As always, we met up in the evening to play DnD.
Thursday 26th September
Tried a new noodle place locally. Huge bowl of noodles and veg for just 12rmb, noodles were thick and slightly chewy, made for a great dish. Definitely will put this place down for future.
Friday 27th September
Busy middle of the day, and a brief lunchtime. Immediately after work myself and a colleague took a taxi to Tianjin airport to fly to Shenzhen for a training weekend. Fortunately my chinese colleague arranged the flights, taxis, hotels for us both. Absolute lifesaver, would have been stuffed otherwise.
The pollution over Tianjin was so bad I could barely see the city through the smog. A three hour flight, boring and I couldn’t sleep a wink despite being pretty tired from the day.
The hotel picked was ‘British styled’ with corridors dressed like city streets with lampposts, phone boxes and shop windows. The room was very good and decorated with pillows with London buses and the like.
Though I found some of my first examples of dodgy translations in China!
Saturday 28th September
I’d been a little sceptical about the training, partly because training that I had done in the UK seemed a bit general. This was specifically for Cambridge A-level Chemistry, and it was actually very good. Though at first there was a bit of crossed wires in school and While I thought I was signed up to the event I was not! But no worry, they took me in anyway and were a couple people short, phew!! That could have been awkward. So we spent a lot of the day on general classroom activities and strategies. The heat here saps your strength, the humidity is very high too.
Sunday 29th September
This training day was better than the first. In the morning we did a question on a practical paper, carrying out the experiment and completing the questions on the paper. I could do the practical work great of course, plenty of experience there, but my approach to filling in the practical paper would have cost me a lot of marks as their expectations are specific. I learnt a lot from this and now know much better what to tell my students, we also looked a lot at standard exam papers and how they are marked. So for all my doubts about the training, I came away a lot better prepared for teaching my new curriculum.
Both evenings headed into Shenzhen to eat seeing the city at night.
Monday 30th September
Colleague left early to go to Beijing to stay with family, I chose to pay for another night so I could see some of Shenzhen. It’s mostly a new city so there is not a lot of history to see. There was a temple in the south of the city I went to see but it was shut, maybe because it was a Monday or because it was the day before the anniversary. That was a shame, as I doubt I’ll be coming back to the city again, there wasn’t that much to see after all. I headed back to the area called Sea World, which is just an area with more expats than others. Really, I didn’t see much to do here, but a lot was closed up. There was a bar on a boat selling European beers but that was shut too, so I walked a bit into town. China seems to have a real thing for expensive clothing and shoe shops, every other shop is some designer store selling western branded goods but to me it’s utterly boring. There’s little variety, I don’t see bookshops for example, or shops with much variety in magazines. Perhaps they don’t really do newspapers here.
I also bought a new iPhone. The Oppo phone has driven me mad, I can’t type on it properly and the apps all seem clunky and difficult to use, there are adverts and if you can manage all these things somehow I can’t work it out in chinese. So my life got much easier with that purchase!
Started feeling ill in the evening, strongly suspect I picked up a stomach bug somewhere in the last could of days. Could be anywhere, from some food, the swarms on the metro or just something I’ve handled. Not everything is particularly sanitary here.
Tuesday 1st October
Definitely suffering some stomach bug, and my flight delayed 3 hours! I decided to stay in my room as long as possible, fortunately the check out time was 2pm! But my flight now wasn’t until 18.50. Argh!! So I stayed in (near the toilet) and watched the 70th anniversary parade. Chinese know how to throw a massive event. Though given the fact its a celebration for the people, almost no one is actually allowed to attend the event in Beijing. The city is closed off, the public told to stay away, it gets huge coverage on TV. I can see logic in controlling the crowds, without restrictions Beijing city centre would be flooded with unmanageable millions of people. But the main reason they block access is because they fear any kind of disruption or demonstration at this particular time.
Still though, made for great viewing of military equipment, and an extraordinary number of missiles on display.
I killed a lot of time at the hotel and then got a bus to the airport. The time really dragged as my flight was delayed and I was struggling with a stomach bug. I couldn’t sleep on the plane, the moment I did nod off one of the attendants woke my up to adjust my seat for landing even though it was 40 minutes away. That I had a taxi already booked the other end was a relief.
