Читать книгу A WAY OF LIFE - Notes from a Small Chinese Province - Maria Linnemann - Страница 7

CHAPTER TWO

First Teaching Days

March 2001

Dear Ma,

Sorry about the inky pen! I haven’t managed to find any replacements yet.

Well, the first teaching days are behind us, and all went well. We have large classes: each of mine number about fifty students and I’m already thinking about splitting them into two. The classes, not the students. I found the lessons very enjoyable. This week Roy and I made a register of all our classes and spent the rest of the time introducing ourselves. I illustrated my account with photos from home, which the students were delighted to see. They were all thrilled to see your beautiful bungalow and garden.

“We don’t have gardens here,” one student told me, gazing at your front garden with its rose bush in full bloom. “There are so many people in China and we don’t have the space for gardens.”

When the students in my first class heard that you have ten children, there were screams of disbelief from the girls and gasps from the boys. Have I mentioned the fact that young people here are called boys and girls until they marry, as a student kindly informed me after I had greeted his class with: “Good morning, Ladies and Gentlemen!” and earned a stifled giggle. The news of your long row of offspring (photo taken in your garden!) swiftly travelled from one class to the next, so that very soon I was asking the students to tell me about my family – that was fun!

Two parcels have just arrived – brilliant! Thank you so much! Please thank the post office ladies who put kind messages on the back of one of the packages, and tell them I’m doing fine and am well supplied with Chinese and English biscuits!

The Waiban, the lady whose job it is to make sure we have everything we need, is very kind and helpful and has made our first week a lot easier than it would otherwise have been. Roy and I were invited to tea in her home one afternoon and we met her husband and their lively little daughter, Wei Wei, whose English name is Bella. Most children and young people who are learning English give themselves an English name, or are given one by a parent. English is “in”!

We also had dinner with the Dean of our faculty and other dignitaries one day this week during which Roy firmly defended his non-drinking habit. After making a few pointed remarks, accompanied with a smile, about “a real man” and his drink, the Dean, somewhat disappointed but gracious, ceded the point. The fact that Roy is also a vegetarian brought brief looks of astonishment from some of the dignitaries, but there were no remarks about “a man and his meat”.

You would like the campus gardens. There are many trees along the paths that weave through the grounds; a group of gardeners tend to the areas planted with shrubs and bushes, and one finds little places where one can sit and relax of an evening. I haven’t seen any blue skies yet, but in the late evening the darkness up above can grant one the impression that there has been a blue hue earlier in the day, and it’s pleasant to walk and chat together in the calm of those surroundings. The air pollution, it cannot be denied, is a problem. Although this is an agricultural province there are a number of factory buildings close by, some of them constantly billowing black smoke from their chimneys that can be seen from our university. One of the first things I discovered in a small shop on the main street was a shelf displaying packets of wet wipes, and these will become a regular purchase I fear, over the next weeks and months. The classroom desks need a daily wiping down and the wipes are coal-black after one use. Many students wear specially made short sleeves that are worn from wrist to elbow, in order to protect their clothes. It reminds me of the black-capped newspaper office characters who sported such sleeve protectors, in the old John Wayne films. I’ve already been promised a pair of ‘pretty’ sleeves by one of my students, who wishes to go shopping with me in town to find me some “beautiful clothes”. Have I brought the wrong outfits with me? Help!

As I’ve mentioned, Roy and I live in two flats in a fourstory house situated in the residential compound of the university. Roy’s on the ground floor; I’m on the first in one of three flats on that level. There’s a long, narrow balcony on two sides of my flat, which will be useful for hanging out the clothes to dry. Though perhaps not the whites.

I must mention again the number of babies and small children who are to be seen with their grannies walking about the residential area during the day whilst the parents are at work. The little one are gorgeous. They walk about at a very early age, and climb any steps quite fearlessly and with great agility. I assume they are potty-trained – even the babies on their grannies’ arms wear no nappies. There’s a gaping hole in their little trousers that speaks volumes. The “toughening up” starts early and at the bottom… Grannies have already approached me and asked me to speak English to their little ones. The old ladies love it when I oblige, but the babies always look singularly unimpressed. My students are rather more encouraging, thank goodness!

On our street there are many interesting sights to be seen: the small pavement stands are occupied by shoemakers, umbrella repairers and a knife-grinder. I hope I will be able to send you some photos, when I’ve become more of a familiar sight on the street. There’s a milkman who visits our compound daily. I’ve ordered a bottle of milk and two yogurts for every day and he leaves them in the house entrance when I’m out teaching. The milk is a must for my Nescafe. One of the little shops sells Nescafe as well as everything from toothpaste to bread and biscuits – hurray for the latter! I miss the rye bread, by the way. The white bread looks like English white bread until you cut it open and find a strange yellow sweet stuff in the middle. No cheese here and no butter. I’m told that these may be bought from a supermarket in Zhengzhou, the capital city of Henan province, but it’ll be a while before there is time to make the six-hour journey there by train.

We had a fun-filled afternoon the day before yesterday, to celebrate International Women’s Day. All kinds of games had been organised and Roy was invited to come along and join in. One could win wonderful things such as dishcloths and kitchen spoons. Roy had brought his camera and took photos of the proceedings, including one of me being beaten hands down in a strong-arm match against Zheng Ping, our Waiban. I’ll try to get a copy for you! Roy excelled in the game of volleyball played with enormous plastic blow-up hands, and also drew great applause when picking up marbles with chopsticks out of a bowl of water. I won second prize in the competition to see who could stand blindfolded and on one leg for longest. Considering that this was a discipline the VSO had neglected to include in their training programme, I couldn’t help feeling a tinge of pride – and it won me a dishcloth and a plastic thermometer. I now feel fully equipped to face anything that Nanyang Normal University may confront me with during the coming months.

I hope I can get to town today. The living room light can’t be turned off and the switch is too hot to touch. Zheng Ping has summoned the electrician to come and fix it, and he is due any time now – fingers crossed!

Before I close the letter to take to town, I must mention that I’ve already been invited to a dormitory party by some of the girls in one of my first-year classes. They are expecting me to sing – help! The Titanic-hit: “My Heart Will Go On” – HELP! Roy also has his work cut out for him, having to refuse the telephone numbers that are being pressed upon him by numerous girl students – poor Roy!

Here comes the electrician! Big hugs and much love to all!

An Early Letter to Hannover

May 2001

Hello my dears!

On a cool, windy day there’s a chance to recover from the heat of yesterday that made teaching quite exhausting.

In every classroom there’s at least one ceiling fan resembling a helicopter propeller. I was nearly blown off course yesterday and spent a lot of effort trying to dodge its furious activity. Today I have the beginnings of a cold – the second since arriving here – and blue packets of tissues adorned with smiling yellow half-moons accompany me everywhere. There is something comforting about that smiley half-moon when one has sneezed for the umpteenth time whilst attempting to explain a complex phonetic phenomenon. The psychology of packaging?!

Yesterday I bought myself an electric dictionary. It has a thousand functions which I have yet to understand, but I like the fact that the Chinese words are given in pinyin. Pinyin is the Chinese writing system that uses our alphabet letters. It is the first reading system that schoolchildren here learn to use, since learning to read with Chinese characters alone would make early reading progress too slow. One later advantage is that our alphabet presents no problems for students when learning English.

I am told that there is a river not far from the university that one can get to by a short taxi ride. It’s called the “Bai He”, I believe – the White River. It would be nice to go there for a walk on a Sunday afternoon. The mosquitoes might be a problem, though. They abound here in the warm months and I would rather avoid contact with the little beasts, even though we take our malaria tablets. At night there is the troublesome ritual of drawing the nets over the bed in such a fashion that not even the wiliest of them can find a way through to my nose or elbow. You know me, I have two left hands in such matters. Every morning the net is sprinkled with mosquitoes who have succumbed to the anti-brumm that was sprayed over the drape the night before. Without the nets, sleep would be impossible.

Today I was given a new telephone, to be used with an IP card that can be bought at the post office. I bought a super one today that has a Beijing opera character’s face on it. At last I can ring England and Germany without having to ask Roy if I can use his phone. Slowly, I’m feeling settled!

My chopstick technique, however, progresses erratically; sometimes it’s up, sometimes it’s down – today it was down. The rice was not as sticky as usual – well, that’s my excuse. The rice that is grown in this province is delicious. Most of my students seem to prefer noodles, but I will stick to rice. The art of mastering the “noodle slurp”, as I call it, is not on my list of desired accomplishments. I know you will say that I’m too fastidious, but I say that it’s my musician’s ear that can’t discern a redeeming note in the sound, or should I say: redeeming sound in the slurp!

The colleagues I have met in the staffroom are very friendly, but we are all too busy to have much time to chat. One pleasant feature there is the ping -pong table. The young teachers enjoy a few minutes of playing during the short morning break and it’s relaxing to watch them. Pingpong is immensely popular in China and players are very successful in international tournaments. I hope I get to have a go at playing with a colleague some time!

It’s a pleasant thing to be able to walk about the campus gardens for a while in the evenings with Roy or one of my new friends. The gardeners work hard to maintain them, and there are some lovely green plants that you would enjoy identifying – I haven’t a clue, of course. I just take pleasure in them!

This letter has been such a ramble; I shall stop and try to get it to the college post office before it closes!

Hope to speak to you on the phone soon!

Love to all!