Letter: Liu ge xingqi (six weeks)

Dear Friends,

About a month ago, I wrote "Only two more days until the end of semester!" As you might guess, I was looking forward to the holiday. Actually, after my classes finished I still had to prepare and mark an exam, then compile the marks for all my classes and submit them in duplicate. Whenever I showed the results to another teacher, the first question was always, "Did anybody fail?" But luckily (and thanks to a little bit of fiddling) everybody passed. Let me just clarify that: although the students here are hard-working and competitive, at the end of the day this is only a "level 2" university and does not really have any reputation to maintain. As a teacher once said to me, with deep concern, "If a student fails to receive a degree, then how will they find a good job in the future?"

I finished all the paperwork more than two weeks ago, but today marks the official start of the summer holiday, which is 6 weeks long or maybe more. Wow, I haven't had a holiday like that in years! And although I usually don't like talking about things before they happen, I want to say a few words about my plans for the summer.

Unfortunately, a lot of my friends have left. Tie Cheng has gone back south to her home town, not far from Shanghai. Her train passed through some areas of flooding where she saw only the roofs of houses poking above the water. Jackie has gone with his girlfriend to visit her family in Inner Mongolia. Even Wang Xin, a teacher, has taken her three-year-old son (but not her husband) and gone to visit her mother up north, which she says has become an annual "routine". And yes, the basketball crowd has left too. For exercise now, I practise kicking jianzi in front of my apartment building, which is turning out to be a good way to meet my neighbours.

I want to spend a lot more time improving my chinese during the holidays, especially reading and listening. I'd love to be able to write better, but there's not much necessity for that and I think that I can make quicker gains from study in other areas. I've bought some listening tapes, and as for reading...well, I like reading. I just keep an eye out for suitable material, like textbooks or comics. I really hope that reading will help me improve my vocabulary.

I want to be a student for these 6 weeks, not a teacher. I've turned down one or two opportunities for work during the holiday. I also had to be firm when the college encouraged me to take a few extra classes next semester. I didn't come to China to get rich!

I'm sure some of you will be asking, what about travelling during the break? That's obligatory of course, and I've already bought a backpack. This is the second time in my life I've bought a backpack, and this time I erred on the side of smaller rather than larger! The first thing on my list of places to go is Amelia's home town, Shenyang, the capital of the province that I'm in. In fact, that's the only definite thing on my list, in the whole of this not-very-small country. Although the image of the itinerant backpacker is a very romantic one for me (I loved this China Travelogue for example), and despite the trouble I've had convincing my Australian friends of this, I am not actually very adventurous and it was not wanderlust that carried me to China. So I'll probably spend most of the holidays right here, looking for people to torment with my bad chinese, or reading children's stories ("Ooh, I remember that chapter from primary school!" said one student, flicking through my chinese reader). I'm also going to try cooking something a bit more demanding than instant noodles. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Love Todd

hmmm, the holidays. Mine start tomorrow, only four weeks. I have stepped up my chinese study as I have been lazy lately. The main reason that I came here was to develop my chinese and become fluent. I study a little each day, then when I go out at night to have dinner, I can practice what I learnt during the day. I have bougfht a copy of Laozi, the dao de jing, but it's still a case of 'kanbudong'. However my dictionary is helping me to slowly, slowly,slowly work through it. I am looking foreward to reading about your cooking adventures. Mine started last friday. You see the food in our cafeteria is just plain bad. Too much weijing(msg) and everything tastes the same. So I cooked the very 'rongyi' xi hong shi chou ji dan. Yay! my next dish will be yu xiang rou si. anyways, i hope that your trip to shenyang is enjoyable. I am going to beijing and most likely to the yanjing brewery, but only because my friend in town who sells beer has business to take care of there. The great Wall is the main place I want to go though. After that its to Henan with one of my 'jingcha' friends who's family has a factory down there. I'm definately not going to miss out on visiting the shaolinci. Take care and good luck in your studies. matt

matt 14.07.2003 , 17:47

Yep, I have to admit that the ubiquitous fried tomatoes and egg recipe was my first attempt too. And what a catastrophe! I overcooked the tomatoes, and stirred the eggs through before they had set, so the result was a kind of tomato and egg soup! A humbling experience. But I didn't forget to add my favourite herb, coriander. Is that Dao De Jing a translation into modern Chinese, or is it the one that begins "ke ming dao fei chang dao" - that's classical Chinese! My dream is just to read the newspaper.

Todd 15.07.2003 , 20:57

Good luck with your travels to Shenyang. If you're interested, I'm headed back to Dalian via Shandong; if you're looking for some adventure in August, you can take a boat down to Yantai/Weihai and we can cruise Shandong province before heading back to Dalian?

Dezza [homepage] 16.07.2003 , 13:23

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