42. Only in China

Again I'm typing on the subway, heading back from my private in deepest darkest Pudong. This time with someone looking over my shoulder. I'll try and control what I say.

 The fact is, that even if this private comes at the end of a day that started at 8:40 am, encompassing three different schools and seven separate classes I always come away from the private lesson very happy.

I think only a teacher on a peasantry pay can experience this feeling.

It was a regular day really but I decided to take note of things that make you utter the words 'Only in China'.

 a Durian sweet

My voice went in my third lesson, not a great start to the day. Afterwards I took refuge in the English department. My English colleague, Matt, noticing my throat problem reached into his drawer and pulled out two sweets he’d been given a while back.

I initially thought they were his, so in true British style, I put them in my mouth and ignored the horrible taste that I experienced. It was only when he told me they were offered to him a while back to help his throat. That I started to think about spitting it back out. He then added ‘ it tastes like gas’. He was pretty much spot on.

Durian the worst smelling fruit, as a sweet. Why China Why?

Please import Sherbet Lemons.

The worry

With the bird flu going down at the moment, there is a slight panic in Shanghai to avoid well, birds. It was not surprising therefore that for lunch, out of prawns, chicken legs and sweet and sour pork, it was the former googly eyed, hard shelled creature that was the popular choice on the menu. (Chicken and pork we are being advised to avoid).

It continued in my next school after lunch where the local Chinese teachers told me proudly the tea they were drinking would help prevent bird flu.

What a load of tods wallop. I hear my Grandpa saying.

Copy out a whole paragraph

As I waited in my second schools English department for my class to start, I read over a students who was working on one of the desks. He’d written quite a detailed piece about how manual workers were getting a better pay than ‘white collar’ business men, I was quite impressed to be honest as the kid was only about 12.

It was then that I looked over at another kid sitting three desks from him. Unbelievably his paragraph read the exact same as the previous kid.

Mindless copying about bizarre topics. Only in China.

Being asked the question if someone is a boy or a girl

I had three classes in this school. I’m a big fan of this school to be honest as you can have a native level conversation with the students and a lot of them will crowd the desk after the lesson is over to free talk.

Classic Only in China moment as one girl asks me whether I think her friend is a boy or a girl. What a horrible question! I knew it was a girl without hesitation, but that was only because I’d been wondering the same thing throughout that whole lesson and had finally come to a decision!

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I think Chinese students make fun out of their apparent likeness to each other by making a lot of incest jokes. This was apparent when I did a ‘Worst possible date’ for a Valentines day lesson. Most of the stories involved the girl/boy turning out to be your sister/brother.

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Peace posing

As the day grew to a close I spotted my last Only in China moment. 

While packing up his tools at a road construction site, a builder took out his camera to take a picture of his progress.

A fairly mundane photo. But his friend took it upon himself to place his fingers, just his fingers, into the photo in the peace sign as you can’t have a photo without someone making the peace sign.

Made me laugh. Oh China.