Posted 8:33 AM by Gobbler
"Your friends on the Endor Moon are walking into a trap... An entire legion of my best troops are waiting for them... Oh, Im afraid the Death Star Shield will be quite operational when your friends arrive." Emperor Palpatine, The Return of the Jedi.

The post that should have been posted yesterday but didn't for technical reasons is below this should be read first. This will all make so much more sense then.

Basically, we were being posted off to the countryside for the experiment. We met at 11:30 for lunch. Unlike dinner the night before, which turned out to be quite a frightening experience, there were no chicken feet. I can confirm that the rest of the world have it right by sticking to legs, breast and wings. Feet are not the most delicious things in the world. Don?t tell Bill that tho, he just loves them and pretty much chowed down a plateful by himself. I offered some help and chewed away a few digits. If you are a skin fetishist of the gastronomic kind then they are recommended. Lovely and chewy. They may also be suitable for vegetarians as there is not a scrap of meat in sight, just skin, bone, cartilage and a whopping chew factor. Even better chew factor, in fact, than pigs ear which I have chowed down frequently and am, repugnantly, even beginning to like. And far better than pig tail, which we had for dinner. Trouble with pig tail is that there is actually some meat in it. While this is tempered by lots and lots of lovely, hairy, chewy skin, not o mention bone and cartilage, the presence of some nutritional goodness from the meat in my book means that it loses out to chicken feet by an inch. And bill would surely agree.

But for lunch they kept us happy with some ordinary dishes, and afterwards, now well stocked, we boarded our tinted window minibus for the trip to the site of 'The Experiment.'

It took us almost two hours to get there through scattered farms and villages. We were going to a high school in some provincial town where most of the students lived in said farms and villages, to teach a couple of classes. Its just a one off and a complete PR guan-xi-it-to-the-max exercise as far as I can gather. Our college director benificently loans out his elite foreign experts to some backwater college and in the process collects serious guan xi credits. Countryside college gets to boast that it has international elite foreign experts teaching at its college. Students get an exciting spectacle. Everyones a winner, and everyones happy, and everyone chucks about a good portion of guanxi. We get chucked in the middle. We are the college mascots who have to go on tour. But we do get a free lunch and a free dinner.

This is not to try to paint a pessimistic picture, but to point out the realities of the affair. We did not go to this school today to teach english. We had 45 minute classes. It is not possible to teach anything useful vis a vis speaking english to 50 kids for 45 minutes once in a semester. We are the college mascots. We turn up, talk foreign for a bit, smile, say how marvellous it all is in front of 50 kids and then get whisked off to the next class, to talk foreign for a bit, smile, say how marvellous it all is in front of 50 kids and then get whisked off to the next class.

But for most of us at least, it was bloody good fun. As our blacked out van rolled into the school, we could see some people standing outside waiting to receive us. We got out and approached, and each of the four of us received a beautiful bouquet of flowers from a girl who said ?Welcome to our school?. Suddenly we werent pawns in the evil directors game of guan xi, we were visiting dignitaries, celebrities.

Bill, ever one to have a somewhat selective memory, got a bit confused poor fellow. When he said that we had 2 45 minute classes to teach what he meant to say was four 45 minute classes. Of course he did. The classes were simple enough but tiring. For the kids here a foreign teacher is a genuine novelty and so they were well behaved and interested. Had to sign a few more books at the end of one of the classes and was asked in three of the classes to sing a song. I told them id sing one when I next came. Whiile this satisfied them there is a danger that we will return to the school which could be most unfortunate all round. While Rubrick and I finished the classes on quite a buzz, caroline and therefore Chris were somewhat less enamoured, Caroline having to contend with one class of about 110 students, which gave her the wibbles in quite a big way. I asked how it went. ?Id prefer to have my legs broken? was the somewhat downbeat reply. Ah well.

We were all in serious need of a beer after that kind of effort and we were duly whisked to a restaurant for dinner with some of the top brass. We didn?t talk to them much, only bill, and got a few ganbei's in. this is where you say ?gan bei? to someone and you both down your drinks. Gan bei indeed. Useful for washing down those pig tails. At the end of the meal, a process which simply involves everyone getting up and walking off, we got back in our blacked out van and rolled home, getting back at about 8:30. The regional tour was over, and so was my day off.


"What's your name son?" "Private Arsehole, Sir!" "Excuse me?" "Arsehole, Sir!" "I see... And who is that?" "That's Private Arsehole too, Sir! He's my brother. We're both Arseholes, Sir!" - Spaceballs

There really are some distubing names rolling about in China. This excerpt from another CIEE teacher working up in Shanghai:

"i have a bill gates & bloodsucker, also something, anything and nothing in one class. theres one girl called shopping a guy called killer. i also teach g.w.bush so i will definately have to help him with his spoken english."

Rubrick teaches Microsoft. His top student is a girl named Easy.

And on that note its time for bed.

Posted 7:13 AM by Gobbler
The Experiment

Apparently we're getting far too comfortable with this teaching business. Well absolutely, i mean we've already taught for seven days, we need a new challenge. Bill the waiban has signed us up for what, disturbingly, he has termed 'an Experiment'. Its the sort of name we would come up with, but when the guy who's supposed to be convincing you its a good idea calls it that there is cause for a degree of consternation.

It involves, as far as i can gather, firstly meeting Bill at 11:30 for lunch. Any activity that begins with a free lunch is suspect as theres always the chance that youre being Guan Xi'd into a checkmate position. Then we'll be driven 1 1/2 hours into the countryside to teach some country bumpkins a thing or two. then we'll drive back and have dinner. Thats my free day taken up. And the four of us (Chairman Jon works under different authority) have agreed to all of this, after we've signed our contracts. its only going to happen once or twice this semester so we're promised, but even so there is a suspicion that theres something oily and poisonous in the water. And I'm not referring to Chris's fluid faeces emissions. Thats what he called them in his group email, or something like it. Apparently he was so hung up on (or perhaps that should be 'pinned down by') his diarrhoea that he just had to mention it to everyone, but didnt want to upset people by calling it diarrhoea. To my mind, everyone knows where they stand with a word like diarrhoea, they are prepared for it. Then suddenly they are slapped in the face by the distastefully graphic 'fluid faeces emissions'. It made me go eww, and ive been in the 'nam. That one backfired a bit, if you see what I mean. We shall just have to wait and see how ‘The Experiment’ goes

Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational Battle Station. Emperor Palpatine, a.k.a. ‘Not the bloke from the Colgate Ad.’ The Return of the Jedi.

Or bicycle in this case. After the last effort collapsed last week under a combined, western arse assault, ive got a lovely new light blue number. Smashing so it is and ive been assured that this one cost a whopping 25 quid. The one I had before was only 7 quid. No wonder it was so rubbish.

Posted 9:00 AM by Gobbler
Ooh, Matron, take me away! – The Carry On films

The majority of my beloved 400 - odd students would be slow to appreciate the high comedy associated with this phrase and I doubt that one of them would be familiar with the works of Sid James and his band. Thus it would be a futile exercise to attempt to explore such a topic as british comedy. Today the plan was to try something a little more in the international sphere.

It was one of those two step plans to success. Always playing second fiddle to plans such as the three step plan and the celebrated four step plan, not to mention the 5-year plan for economic growth so popular with one party governments of yesteryear, I nevertheless opted for the old two step. Not holding out much hope for step one I was pleasantly surprised when a class of 17 an 18 year olds went quite doolally over the game ‘guess what I’m drawing on the board. Is it a rectangle? A car? A truck? A bus? Nooo!, it’s a train. Who would have guessed it, ah what fun. I repeat, 17 and 18 year olds.

But if step 1 had been right on the markk, it suddenly looked as tho step 2 was impenetrably high brow. As valentines day has just been and gone, and it being increasingly popular over here, rubers and I thought it would be interesting to discuss valentines day and related topics. I split the class into groups and gave each group a different question to consider, write about and then present to the class. Some groups did very well, others struggled. St-ru-ggled. Well, you’d struggle when faced with the question ‘should couples show affection in public?’ (what some might nievely call an interesting discussion topic) when not one of the four in the group has a dictionary or has the will to borrow one, or understands the words ‘couple’ and ‘affection’ or can comprehend what the public has got to do with it all, or really gives a rats arse. Ahh, oh well.

And then the little git at the back. Thought he was a girl, he wasn’t. thought he called himself vootor, apparently he calls himself Victor, evidently just doesn’t like spelling. He sits back on his haunches grinning and chatting for the 15 minutes allotted to work on his response, then saunters to the front of the class and, off the cuff, gives a decent, clear, lengthy and comprehendable answer.

I call out for ‘Mann’ to come to the front of the class. Mann does not stir, mann is not forthcoming. Turns out that Mann has been wiped out, eradicated. I am informed that Mann is not called Mann any more. Well, you would change your name from Mann if you were a girl. Mann is now called Stella. A decent name from the bizarre class that features the likes of Shadow, September, Purple, Blue, Snow, Sky, King, Ice Cream and the rest. And that was my class today.

They’re killing us here. Lets go over there and get killed. – American Officer, Omaha Beach, D-Day, June 6 1944.

It was time to get the hell out of Yangzhou. I’d done a weeks teaching, and that seemed long enough to warrant a holiday. Jon had yet to start teaching, and that seemed reason enough to warrant a holiday. We took off for Changzhou. It was some guys birthday, and a CIEE gathering had been called. I had never really spoken to the guy but at least knew who he was, a decent punter. Working on the Guan Xi I had bought him a present. Lovely thing it was, very cute. I spotted it in the supermarket nestled in there amongst the selections of peanuts, chocolates and other snacks. I suppose technically it qualified as a snack. ( which reminds me last week some student assured me five times she loves to eat snakes. It was on the fourth repeat that I twigged she meant snacks. I felt a lot more assured of the sanity of this country when I worked out what she was trying to say) Quite a big gift in many ways, and full of goodies. About ten inches long and eight high, in three parts. A clear plastic base, excepting the camouflage and missile stickers on it and the red wheels. A green plastic middle and a purple plastic top. I can see it now. It was a tank. The green turret twisted round and the big purple head of the commander twisted round too. It was the big purple head of Tinky Winky from the teletubbies. On a tank on wheels. Filled with jam. Oh yes, the chassis of the tank was filled with jam. The purple head of tinky winky on a green turreted tank on bright red wheels filled with jam.

Whatever the marketing department were putting in their tea what they thought that gem up should probably not be included from now on, banned by managerial decree if necessary. The thought patterns behind the concept must have been bordering on the diabolical and would have kept medical experts busy for months. “Ive got these two great ideas, teletubbies and tanks, now how can I blend the two? Ah, yes, that’s it, I’ll stick the head of a teletubby on a tank, great. Hmm, but how can I guarantee it’s a winner with little mao? Hmm. Ah yes, I have it! Jam!”

The yellow eyes of tinky winky, one of which was slightly peeling, looked quite threatening. It was the stuff of nightmares really, but with jam, and it made the obvious present. The party couldn’t fail to go splendidly after that, and now we’re back in yangzhou plotting our next daring escapade. And we’re teaching too.