End of March letter

Yixing

26^th March

This is around the time of the spring equinox here and my mobile phone tells me that the temperatures here in Yixing and in Melbourne are pretty similar.  What a relief, I’ve never lived where it snows and though snow can be quite beautiful to look at, it can be dangerous to try and live life in. –after breaking a leg in Morocco, the last thing I want to do is break a hip in China.  Spring is coming and some days are a delight. The blossoms are stunning.  Magnolia trees are planted “everywhere” – almost. We went for a drive and saw fields of plum and peach trees in bloom and farmers have planted magnolias every so often just because they are beautiful.  I pass parks on my way to work and have been taking photos over the past 5 days as the blossom trees come out.

All is going well here.  Sometimes I find it lonely, as there are virtually no foreigners in this city and few Chinese who I could have a real conversation with.  There are some English films that have Chinese subtitles but they are the rubbish American violent films that I wouldn’t be interested in.  Trying to find more of a life outside work, I’ve taken up Chinese brush painting.  There is some very beautiful work around and I’m learning from You tube. I think you can learn almost anything on You tube. I might find a teacher too if there is one interested in teaching a non-Chinese speaker.

These drawings are the first time I put pen to paper.

 

There are many, many things I like about teaching.  Some of the students are just lovely.  After we finish what we have to cover in the class we can just talk about virtually whatever we want.  The idea is to get the students talking.  It is so interesting to swap stories about the way we see the world and what our lives involve.   I especially enjoy the young adults.  My generalisation would be that people in China appear to work pretty hard.   The vast majority of our classes have 2 or 3 students.  The biggest classes we have are 10 students.  Mind you, put a few teenage boys (who aren’t really interested in being there) in a class of 10 and it can be a bit of a headache.

My mandarin is coming along “sort of”.    I have learnt a lot of words the problem is that no one can understand me.  That of course is an exaggeration, but the pronunciation is maybe the hardest. One of my lovely students Evonne has become a friend and one day we went for a drive out of town.  She was helping me with my Chinese and one of the very hard words to say is toilet, which sounds something like Tser swar.  Here we are driving down the highway practising  Tser swar about 50 times or more until I almost got it right.  Anyone driving past who could lip read would have wondered what on earth these two crazy women were up to.    I am now on the look out for a good Chinese pronunciation app.

I am having my first guests for dinner on Tuesday, two lovely students, Evonne (as mentioned above) and Leena.  And a friend of Evonne’s, Chao Hong who I have come to greatly respect.  She makes teapots in the traditional way and sometimes I go to her studio and she makes her pots and I do some textile work.

All the kitchen has is 2 gas burners.  And I have 2 saucepans and very limited crockery.  So I have planned a menu, which I think will work.   I haven’t sorted out yet what to do about tea.  Tea is such a ritual and important part of Chinese life.   I have accumulated most of the necessary equipment but I don’t have the knowledge of how to prepare and serve the tea.  There is no way I would presume to serve tea to a Chinese person.  I’m not at all stressed about this.  They are great people and we will have a good laugh about my dilemma I am sure.

Last month was Chinese New Year and as you can probably imagine, it was “bigger than Ben Hur”.  Very much like our build up to Christmas/New Year.  I really enjoyed learning the stories and traditions of New Year.   I helped make dumplings on New Years Eve and now have the red banners around my front door that will ensure a healthy prosperous year.  And of course I was kept awake by the fireworks a couple of nights. 

We had a week off for New Year and like I think, nearly every other English teacher in the country, took myself off to Beijing for 6 days.  Chinese transport is VERY impressive, efficient and easy to negotiate.  Beijing wasn’t nearly as daunting as I had imagined.  So much to do.  Walked all day and by about 3pm, my feet were nearly frozen. The moat around the Forbidden City was frozen which tells you how cold it was.  Did a day tour to the Great Wall, I’ll attach some photos and it really is one of the amazing places in this world.   7 of the 9 people on the tour were young Air Stewards from Hawai Airlines who had a 5 day layover in Beijing and they were so much fun. 

Next time will have to talk to you about fashion in China.  This is a wealthy area and people are generally very well dressed though not always to our taste.  Some of the little kids in designer clothing are gorgeous. Some look like something Yohji Yamamoto would have dressed.