Knobcottage in China

School this week is cancelled. It is sports week. We were due in school as 7 a.m. and all lined up.  It all started at 7:40 am..sort of.  There was a procession to the stadium of three thousand children, with the teachers bringing up the rear, so it took about twenty minutes for al of the students to leave the playground in class order and we followed.  Same march as yesterday but with one difference.  The 'mad man' started chanting.  At first I had no idea what it was about.  He chanted, then we chanted.  It was quite funny because it was to the tune of Bob the Builder, so I was joining in, but with the wrong lyrics!  "Can we fix it?"  "Yes we can!".  I even showed the YouTube video of the Bob the Builder theme tune to one of my Chinese colleagues; it brought a smile to his face. Anyhow, we eventually arrived and were all in the correct order.  Famous local people made speeches, the drone flew overhead taking video footage and we...

Today something happened that I had been wanting to happen for a long time.  I got to visit the dormitories!  I preferred  to see the male dormitories, but I got to see the female ones!  It all started this morning when the dorms were empty because the residents were all playing sports. As we were all lined up and waiting to go to the stadium, Charles, a Chinese teacher who can speak quite good English, introduced me to Mr. Tang.  He's in charge of the dormitories.  i asked could he arrange a visit and he said he could.  Little did I know that later that day  I'd be visiting a dorm! After the official opening ceremony, the teachers were dismissed.   I met Charles and he met Mr. Tang. He asked via Charles when I would like to visit.  I told him and they had a long discussion.  I am guessing here but I think they decided that as the girl's dorm would be tidier than the boys dorm ,then they would take me there.  Sherika wa...

Never knowing when you r holidays are or when I should and shouldn't be in school is much of a given now.  I know when I should be in school according to my timetable, but there are days off here and there that no one bothers to tell me about until it is there.  The last one I found out about only when the students started emptying the classrooms!  Sports Day/Week was much in that bracket.  I had spoken to our new boss Ray, a really nice guy, and he posted that we shouldn't be teaching on Friday afternoon.  My old boss, Jenny, now promoted, jumped in with both feet, told him he was wrong and set out all the rules of where we should be and what we should wear as she understood them.  Long story short, the weather had turned and the rehearsal due for the Friday was now due on Sunday at 2 p.m.  So I turned up Sunday in the school yard.  People started to gather and so did the clouds.  Light drizzle.  Again long story short, we set of on a...

The over-engineered bins. On my way to work I pass some.nice new steel bins, quite unusual for Jiangkou.  The bins here are usually old paint tins, or mobile ones that look like two-wheelers wheelbarrows. Very smart, I'm sure you'll agree, especially if you knew what the rest of Jiangkiu looks like!  However I was intrigued by the black platform on which they stand.  Nearby there is what I thought was a bus shelter.  It isn't.  It is a covered poster describing the complex under-street bin mechanism. Basically, buried beneath each little bin is a large wheelie Ninon a hydraulic platform.  The little bins have hinged bottoms, and as the weight of rubbish in the bins increases, they swing and empty their contents  into the wheelie bin below, and then, minus their rubbish they swing up again.  (There is also a pedal to empty the small bin contents into the wheelie bins).  When the wheelie bins are full, the hy...

My friend Angela, who was the second person I met after arriving in China, now works at a college of education in Tongren.  I met her at Guiyang railway station when my 'chaperone' Wendy was buying some McDonald's! Long story short, her college is celebrating it's 100th anniversary this weekend and she invited me over. It all started with a taxi ride.  She is well connected in Jiangkiu because her husband use to work here, and she knows many different ways of getting to and fro… Tongren.  In this case she booked a private driver for me.  This is a taxi operated by an individual who gets calls from prospective passengers and when there are enough passengers the journey commences.  In this case I was the first passenger.  We then went to the bus station and picked up another passenger.  Then to the other side of town and picked up another passenger.  Then back to the bust station for passenger number four.  Then the fun started.  T...

Today was strange and I am not sure I want to publish everything, but here goes! Teaching Today teaching was little difficult and I had to shout at a few classes.  It scared them a little but brought them back on track, however I discovered something that puzzled me. Some of the lower sets do not seem to know the concept of left and right!  I was teaching the position of objects and started to ask questions about what was on the left of and what was on the right of.  It was obvious that two of my classes had no idea what I was talking about.  I was stumped!  I was not prepared for this!  I did the best I could and carried on.  I seem to remember that in my study of Chinese, the that it was more normal to use north of south of etc. but still thought the pupils would know the idea of left and right.  I later asked a Chinese Friend and they thought that the pupils should know this.  I remain puzzled over this one. A free lunch at school f...

Well, SInce I got Taobao ( the Chinese equivalent of Amazon) working, life has not wquite been the same.  I can now buy a few necessary and a few 'luxury' items.  By far the most interesting has been a set of Nordic walkng sticks.  Now as we al know, hardly anyone in Dorchester does Nordic walking.  In Jiangkou, no one does it....except me!  However, whilst no one lese does it, the park is full of weirdos doing allsorts of weird stuff.  each of them totally accepted by everyone else, even the ****** who started doing one arm pressups in teh middle of teh sequence dancing.  No one cares.  Care in the community in the park.  So one day I was out walking when I bumped into Wan Yi,  This Wan Yi:   everyone seems to know him and he runs all sortsof exercise classes in Jiangku including and early morning class in the park.  To cut a long story short, he had a go of the stick.  In this case enthusiasm got the better of t...

It had been a tough day at school.  The kids as always were fine, the bosses as usual weren't.  Our old boss who shouldn't be our boss still thinks she is.  Our new boss us never there.  Today I had stayed in school for our prescribed meeting.  No one turned up no one apologised.  In context, last term we had no meetings and no problems.  This term, the problems are with the meetings.  Our boss(es) have failed to turn up for the out of four scheduled meetings with only one notification/apology.  However, after school closed for the holidays we were required to stay back for an important meeting.  We had the meeting.  The main content was two messages.  Sheila was told off for using the story of Jack and the beanstalk because it was against Chinese values of hard work leading to success because Jack stole items, and it had references to murder.  The second item was about our regular meeting.  We were told when it wou...

Well I decided it was time to eat, so I got changed and went downstairs.  Just ad I reached the path that lead to the road, a big brown BMW pulled up.  I thought they were lost...And I certainly couldn't help them there!  However someone wound down the window and called my name.  It was woodshopman!  Had I eaten?  No.  Get in....Possibly the start of an interesting evening. We cruised a while and eventually found a hot pot restaurant.  We went upstairs to a room and sat down.  We were given the usual tick box paper menu and items were ordered.  We sat around and waited, it looked like some others were due to arrive. sitting around waiting checking the tick box menu further checking of the tick box menu When the menus had been ticked, the tea and bowls came and so did the tea!  We drank and waited.  eventually others came too.  Eventually there were six of us.  The dishes arrived.  Much to my ...

I had been working hard and decided ti was time to play, so I went ot the park.  I was sitting on teh wall chatting with a teacher in both mandarin and chinglish wehn a message came on my phone from Susan.  Susan is one of my newer friends, her husband is the Police Surgeon. She asked me if I was in the park.  I told her I was.  She said come and find me, and sent a video.  I worked out where seh was and we eventually met up.  We taked a while and went for a walk still talking.  We stopped on the bridge and chatted about school. Me and Susan first attempt at the selfie e and Susan second attempt at the selfie After a brief chat she said she was going walking and her freinds would soone meet her.  We walked out of town.  She kept picking things up and asking what they were and telling me the Chinese name for them.  I kept forgetting, she kept reminding!  Evetnually we turned around, headed back into town adn met her fre...

This holiday has been a bit quiet compared to many.  Not so much contact with friends and Sherika just wants to stay at home.  Anyway it was dinner time (lunch)  I texted Susan and asked if she had eaten.  She had.  So I went alone.  I was passing woodshop amn's shop when it suddenly dawned on me that I could invite him.  I snook into his shop an d surprised him!  He was even more surprised when I asked him out to lunch.  Surprised and embarrassed.  He insisted that I was the guest in his country and that he should be paying!  Stalemate.  We sat down and drank tea.  Shortly afterwards two of his friends arrived then another.  The last to arrive I will call blingking.  He had the look of new money about him.  He was very interested in me. We all drunk tea for a while.  Then a conversation happened between Woodshop man and blingking.  It was about me and food.  Blinking jumped up and said "Come...