I am a panda

This week I visited my two placement primary schools for the first time. As of next term, I'll be doing training workshops with all of the teachers in each school, which is different from the middle schools where I only work with the English teachers. Anyway, the two schools could hardly have been more different! children at Wu Guan Primary

Wu Guan is a small school in a remote village with few resources and lots of children that board there during the week as it's too far to go home each day (though on the plus side, the class sizes are small!) Wu Guan school building on a sadly dull and smoky day. Villagers in particular use coal for heating in the winter and so the pollution is at its worst in Jan/Feb.

Shang Zhen is also in a village but it's a much bigger one quite close to Danfeng and has the best resources of any school I've seen in China. It has a library, a science lab, a running track and a computer suite.
In both schools, the leaders and staff seemed quite enthusiastic about me coming to work with them and I must admit that it'll be nice to work with primary age kids again after a term in a middle school.

Shang Zhen's beautiful and well resourced school library




After looking round Shang Zhen primary, the school leaders took me out for lunch and after that we took a walk around the village as it was having its monthly market, where all the farmers and craftsmen from round about bring their goods to sell in the street.
I asked my colleagues if they thought it would be okay for me to take photos and got the perplexing response, "Of course. You are a panda."
After a bit of discussion, I managed to figure out that what they meant was that I was a precious and rare thing and everyone would want to help me and look after me. Yeah, baby!






Buying eggs











Farmer selling peanuts and sunflower seeds

In the news this week...

I'm now getting the China Daily, an English language newspaper, delivered to me in Danfeng. Unfortunately, it's always about 3 days old when I get it so I don't use it particularly to find out news but it's very useful for finding out about Chinese culture, opinions and beliefs. Sometimes, the stories are frightening - like the dairy farmer who was executed when his polluted cows milk killed some babies - and sometimes it's hilarious, like this extract from last week's paper.

A shopping centre in Hebei is planning to build an exclusive car park, especially designed for women, with their preferences in mind. The Wanxiang Shopping Centre plans to design the facility with bigger parking spaces and women-friendly colour schemes such as pink and light purple. It also plans to employ specially trained female parking attendants to guide the women drivers into the parking spaces.

Wang Zheng, an executive at the shopping centre said the car park was designed keeping in mind a woman's "strong sense of colour and different sense of distance. The parking spaces are one metre wider than normal and will have signs that correspond more to women's needs," he said.

I love it!

We are stardust

It has been a while since my last post but since I haven't been in China (and this is a China blog) that makes sense. And as my wonderful dad died on the 21st Dec, I haven't really been feeling like writing. Anyway, as my mum says, "life goes on," and so here's my latest update.
I got back last Thursday to a flat that hadn't changed since I left (what was I expecting?!) Everything still in one piece, everything still working, and all my belongings where they should be, which made me feel "home."
I had lots of presents to give out in return for the kindness shown to me by my friends in Danfeng the day or two before I left.
On Friday night, my school took me out for a "welcome home" banquet, where I tried quite a few new dishes including some kind of baked flowers from a tree (delicious) something called "wild plant" fried with garlic (edible with the garlic - would be less edible without!) and something which came with the vegetable course and so fooled me. It looked beige and bland so I took a slice but once it was in my mouth, it was clear that it was NO vegetable. "Zhe shi shenme?" I asked. "What's this?" Pork, I was told, which I immediately realised meant a slice of pure pork fat! Bleugh! I let it slip down my throat but I'll be more careful in future...
Today I walked around Danfeng and it was nice to see everyone, even though for a lot of people it seems to be like I was new in town again and they're back to staring and pointing. Sigh...
The students have exams for the next few weeks so there's little work I can do with their teachers so my goal for the next three weeks is to make proper inroads into Mandarin. It's embarrassing how little I can speak now.
Case in point: I bumped into my boss's mother today on the way back from the supermarket. She's an old woman and she grabbed my hands and pulled me back to her home.
Obviously it's nice to feel wanted and part of things but after the basics of "I came back three days ago" and "yes, I've had lunch" (very important in China!) I found I couldn't say anything that she could understand. I tried asking where her granddaughter was ( my 2 year old pal!) but I obviously didn't make sense cos she smiled and nodded instead of giving me a place, and then I tried a few other conversational gambits to no avail.
So, written in black and white (er, or purple) my New Year's Resolution is to reach a decent level of communication in Mandarin in the next month or so. Will keep you posted on my progress...