A very good bye to San-Zhong

JULY 1, 2007: Mercifully, Friday was the last day of token foreignerism at that goddam high school.New photos

Understandably sultry and uninterested to the end, the majority of the students couldn't even understand how to play Simon Says. Meanwhile a minority, as usual, were wide-eyed and hanging on every word i said (which was mostly repetition of terms like "SHUT UP" in Chinese). The system of non-Chinese speaking English teachers in high schools here is utter madness, but as i've said before, it has little to do with the English ability of the students and a lot to do with bragging rights for the school honchos. Imagine if you had to take a Chinese class taught by a Chinese dude who didn't speak English...


Most of the students are unblievably immature for their age, owing mostly to the One Child Policy, and one of the more interesting sights to be observed in a high school is the ways friendly affection is displayed. You might have noticed some examples in the skellies episode below. It's quite common to see two 18+ year olds of the same sex with their arms around each other, holding hands, embracing lovingly or sitting on each other's lap in the playground or classroom. They're quite monogamous about it and there are many inseparable couples. They'll even sleep with their head in their friend's lap. Boxxy has a hilarious anecdote from one of her classes in which she tells a boy off (actually a 20-year-old man) for talking in class. The seat next to him appeared to be vacant but after her sudden outburst a startled face sprang up from the first boy's lap with the contrite expression of one caught doing, well, exactly what one normally associates with faces in laps.


My final class was teaching the school's Chinese teachers of English. I would call them Chinese English teachers but the fact is they're 2 books - that is, 2 semesters - ahead of their students. I like teaching them because they rarely show up. If they do, it's late, and we always finish half an hour early. However little the students learned, i'd say most of them would be catching up to the teachers. The best students are already better. On the last day we finished 40 minutes early so i got to take some photos. Here's a secret one of Harry, the Swiss-German teacher, singing his charming and hilariously earnest songs to his 'schtchoodendts' on the last day. Those are some of the lyrics behind him.


Some of the head teachers took the foreign teachers to dinner afterwards. A couple of them are legends but of course their number one aim was to get us drunk on baijiu. They're very sneaky, the Chinese, when it comes to drinking. Their definition of drinking someone under the table includes feigning drinking or taking tiny sips while your opponent (some simple foreigner) puts in a genuine effort. They failed - i left early.