11. Teaching in China
It’s a beautiful sunny day and I’m on a train on the way to
Wuhan, a city of 9,000,000 people, to see my agent. It was cold enough last night to freeze the water in the pail which catches the drips from my air-conditioner. As usual, there were problems with my computer this week but the school responded by buying an English version of Windows 2000 and the computer teacher re-formatted the drive. I hope this will make the machine trouble-free but there is one little problem already, the internet doesn’t work (I later found this was only a matter of the plug not being seated properly in the power board! Embarrassing).
The lack of internet access led to another nice experience. My agent, Bob, e-mailed me some directions in Chinese so I could present them to taxi drivers in
Wuhan. I went looking for an Internet café after morning classes and found one almost next door to one of the nice restaurants I go to. A young woman who is probably the assistant manager saw me walk past and came into the shop, filled with curiosity. Many Chinese have a child-like approach to foreigners and will even follow one in the street for a while, quite innocently.
The shop was actually a computer sales shop, I discovered later, but when I said “Internet?” one of the staff got up from the computer he was using and I was ushered into his place. I accessed the mail I needed to copy and asked if it could be printed. My friend the manageress understood and told the staff of the shop what I wanted. One of them appeared with a miniature USB memory device, copied the two documents, and went off to print them. The lady, whose name I don’t know, sat with me and began trying to decipher the letter I was reading! Privacy is not strictly observed in
China. There was nothing private in it so I went through it word for word with her with the help of my phrasebook. After a short time I was given the printed letters and I excused myself and left to catch this train. When I attempted to pay for the Internet use and printing I was told there was no charge.
I have not commented before on how beautifully some Chinese women dress. There are many gorgeous clothes for sale and women with the means to do so take full advantage of this. The prices may seem cheap to us by currency conversion arithmetic but I think some women save hard to buy what they want. If some of these clothes were sold on the Australian market they would fetch a small fortune. My ‘friend’ from the restaurant was wearing a wonderful deep purple jacket in a velvet-like finish with subtly imprinted roses around its skirt. Her trousers were a tone different and probably not made to go with the jacket but matched perfectly. I would guess that she saved hard to buy such beautiful clothes. (Later I was to find out exactly what that jacket cost. There was no way she could ever have afforded it but the person who gave it to her was wealthy.)
It is very hard for me to tell the age of a Chinese woman. If they are under thirty they often look to me as if they are in their late teens.
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