I have decided to publish my first post today due the number of challenges myself and Alex have faced in the first 4 days of our time here. Lets rewind 4 days…
We arrived in Hangzhou at about 1pm on Monday afternoon after 24 hours transit, and were immediately greeted by Lynn from ‘Echo English’, the agency that recruited us. We were taken back to a hostel for the night where we headed straight to orientation where everything about our jobs was explained to us. We were slightly disappointed to learn that we were going to be working outside of Hangzhou, the city we had spent so much time researching.
Once we stepped outside the hostel in the evening, it was clear to see we had arrived in another world. People would walk past and stare at us like we were outsiders, and in truth we were. Next door was a spa of some sort and after a long plane journey I had no second thoughts. As we entered, we were mobbed by the girls working there and had no choice but to have several photos taken with them – were westerners that uncommon here? Before coming out, the research I had done led me to believe that Hangzhou was a haven for foreign teachers but my first few hours here made me think otherwise. I left the spa an hour later desperately needing another massage, to put it nicely.
Alex collected me from outside the spa and we then went for dinner, which came to a meager 8.5 rmb (85p) and that was with a bottle of water. We walked over to a nearby river and we were greeted by several hundred dancing locals. Everyone seemed so happy and I found myself smiling. My fears about this year began to disappear. I mean, I have never really considered myself to be a naive person, but I obviously just let myself get lost in this beautiful moment.
On Tuesday, we were up early, I mean we had landed less than 24 hours before, but there was work to be done! We went to have a medical and then it was lunchtime. We went out with the ‘echo’ girls and we were taken to a restaurant across the road. They ordered us vegetarian dishes but to our disgust, we found little bits of pork floating at the bottom of our tofu dish. It was at this point I realised that I will probably come back in July about 10kg lighter, if I am lucky.
Alex and I had no prior experience in the teaching field, so we were taken to a 2 hour training class. We learnt next to nothing, and little did we know that was it for the training before the real thing began. We were taken to the bus station at about 5:30pm for what we were told was a half hour bus journey. An hour and a half later we arrived in Lin’an, a very rural looking Chinese town. This town seemed more real than Hangzhou. The people here were existing purely to survive and work. We were taken to our apartments by our English assistant, Bonnie, and while the size wasn’t a problem, many other things seemed to be. On the bright side, my D.I.Y skills should increase tenfold during my time out here. Alex was given a nicer apartment but you have to learn to work with what you’ve got. Bonnie then took us to a supermarket close by and we bought all the necessities, although the stock of western foods was very limited and very expensive. The majority of goods had passed their sell-by date, so we both stocked up on the vegetarian pot noodles. Bonnie dropped us back and told us we had to meet the next day at 7am outside our apartment.
What we hadn’t realised is that our mattress resembles a piece of wood, comfort wise anyway. So we met up with Bonnie on Wednesday morning at the time she had requested and headed to school in the hot, humid conditions. This walk made the bleep test look like a drop in the ocean. Well, not really, but we arrived at school about 40 minutes later dripping in sweat. We walked into the English office where we met 3 fellow foreigners who were also contracted to work at Lin’an Primary school – 2 American girls and 1 British guy. We sat down and 10 minutes later I was called out the office to take my first class. No preparation, no advice, no real training, no syllabus, nothing. If any of you have ever got past the crying stage, you begin to laugh. I went straight through to that final phase. I arrive in my classroom of 12/13 year old kids and again, all these kids look at me in the same way I look at pictures of space – with an infinite number of questions. I have always hated public speaking, it is a fear that I have come here to conquer and by the end of the first class, I was buzzing. I had completely winged it. I briskly walked back to the office with a gleaming smile and was quizzed by a nervous Alex, yet to take his first class. 20 minutes later, I was called out to take my second class and this time I was a bit more nervous as this was a longer class. I got each member of my class to introduce themselves and called each one up one by one. These kids each take on an English name and some of them are very peculiar, so I found it difficult to not laugh as I was calling ‘Dick’ up. I was slightly more lost in this second class and so decided to drag one activity I had thought up. To my surprise, the kids became more interested as the activity went on, which sort of saved my skin, as I was being assessed by another teacher. We had a meeting with the principal after our morning classes and given a set of rules and suddenly it felt like I was back in primary school again.
I decided I wanted to sign up to the gym, and so Bonnie took me. She had to, because no one in this town spoke any English, and hand gestures one would use in the Western world seem to be different to here in China. We arrived at the gym, and it was a ghost town. There was a guy working at the front desk claiming to be a personal trainer, offering me any help if I needed it and whilst he may have been one of the larger guys in this town, I wouldn’t be surprised if he weighed less than my right leg. 1500rmb (£150) for the year was a very good deal considering the gym itself was fully kitted out with everything one could think off.
We headed to Wall Mart expecting big things and were slightly disappointed with the fact that no one spoke English and again, a lot of foods being past their sell-by date. Nevertheless, we left the shops with a number of carrier bags filled with goods to help us survive. Up until this point I had been living on peanut butter, my favourite food and the only Western one we could find which seemed alright. We got a taxi home and 10 seconds after we had been dropped off and the taxi had sped away, I realised my carrier bags were still in the boot. I was struggling and not just because of this particular incident. It was this, added to the broken promises of our Chinese recruiting agency, the lack of edible food, the cockroaches in my room, an average of 2 hours sleep a night, living in a city that is about as far away from home as you could get and the feeling of sickness that started to hit me on Wednesday night.
I had woken up about 6 times during Wednesday night, rushing off to be sick ridding my body of about half of the 1000 calories I had taken in that day. It was here that I realised, if I was badly ill, how would I get help? No one speaks English, I couldn’t get to the hospital even if I needed to. On Thursday morning, whilst I felt a bit rough, I felt in better spirits and decided that I was going to stick with it. I have always been so willing to give up if something got a little tough, but this experience will make or break me as a person and it is an experience like no other. I had previously travelled the world for 7 months but that doesn’t come close to the difficulties faced here. I relaxed in bed on Thursday as it was a public Chinese Holiday and went to dinner with Alex, Carly and Bailey. Chinese food here and back home are very different. At home people eat Chinese because it is tasty but here, they eat because they need to eat. This may be a harsh assessment due to my vegetarian status in China.
Before I came to China, I set myself many goals such as learning Kung Fu, Mandarin and travelling across Asia, but for now I am fully focused on survival. This experience so far has made me fully understand the western comforts that I for one, have never really appreciated. What one needs and one wants are so very different.
This article has been kindly contributed by Simon and can be originally seen from his personal blog here:
https://simoses17.wordpress.com/2015/09/04/survival-in-rural-china/
Interested? Teach English in China. Apply now.
Interested in working in China and want to find out more? Our UK agency ensures that schools are up to top standard and provides an additional layer of protection and reassurance when negotiating issues with your Chinese school. To find out the latest vetted and quality assessed top providers in China check out nooneliterecruitment.com/teach-english-in-china.
