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By Hannu
Yes, yes, yes, I'm still here in Beijing, and I'm still teaching
Chinese people oral English. January and February were slow months
teaching wise, but it's picking up rapidly now as we are in full
spring. For some reason the Chinese want to study when the weather
is warm and nice, and prefer to be outdoors during the winter when
daylight and heat are sparse. This winter was apparently one of
the coldest in Beijing for a long time, with temperatures sometimes
reaching minus 15 C. Not much snow though, just enough slush to
ruin my suede CAT-shoes, bought for $12 at a typical tourist market
here in BJ. Well, they are starting to fall to pieces now and I
am looking for new and higher quality ones. Hard to find western
sizes though...
Actually teaching is starting to suck. The schools curriculum
is rather ridiculous, as I have told you guys before. It's basically
repeating loud in chorus after the teacher, which creates parrots
rather than creatively thinking speakers capable of communicating
in English. But, it's an easy course for the teacher to follow.
Once you've done one term of it (which is 2 months or 35 day/lessons)
you know how to do it, and can repeat it all including small private
comments on the exercises for the next class/term you start teaching.
You just turn up and do everything by the books, and the employer
is happy and it gives you money. Good money, even. Not in January
and February when my salaries weren't bigger than 400-500 dollars
a month; barely enough to survive on (if one wants more in life
than just food and lodging). But now in March and April salaries
were and will be about 1300 dollars each. A nice little stash.
But not only teaching has given me an income here. I also did a
ten day intensive training with a Chinese woman who wanted to rehearse
her story for the Canadian immigration officer she was due to meet
for an immigration interview/test. That was a new challenge for
me: what on earth might such an interview be like? I thought for
a while, and in a few days I was asking her all the questions I
imagined the immigration officer might ask her; over and over again
and in many different ways so that she could reply to anything that
might come up. She paid me about 150 dollars for my helping. In
the end she passed the test/interview gallantly, the officer even
telling her she was very well prepared. It was a great experience
for me too, to do this coaching, and it gave me some insight into
what it must be like to move to another country but having to go
through the process of proving you're sincere about it and not just
after the "easy life and the money of the west". The way
it works here in China is actually that the person who wants to
immigrate have (in almost all cases) already been to an agency and
forked up something like 2500-4000 dollars to them to check them
for the possibilities to get a visa. Then, if the person gets more
than 60 assessment points according to a set list made by the immigration
bureau, for such various things as educational background, experience,
English skills, age group, etc., the agency will send the person
on for an immigration interview at the embassy. That is where the
interviewer checks them for personal suitability. "Can this
Chinese person become a good citizen of Canada?". The immigrant
needs to get a total of 70 assessment points at this interview to
get a visa. That is, the minimum 60 points that the person first
got by the agency's check - to even be sent to the embassy interview,
then another 1 to 10 points at the interview itself to get a minimum
total of 70, which is what you need to get a visa. So what I trained
my student in was to get her act together when it comes to telling
her story about herself, and to make sure she wouldn't say things
like "I just..." or "maybe" or "I think"
or "only" when describing her work or education. And not
to contradict herself as she did one day when we talked about the
whole set of reasons why she wants to go to Canada. First she said
"one reason why I have chosen Canada and not the U.S. is because
it's a multicultural country; more so than the States where people
live more segregated". The minute after, when I asked her what
she thinks about black people, she said "Oh, I don't like them"...
That view isn't that uncommon in China...
Yes, quite interesting it was, this training of mine...
It also turned out that I had an opportunity to meet up with relatives
from my mother country Finland. In January my cousin from Finland,
working with telecommunications (No, not Nokia!), was sent here
by his company, and so we met up again 7 years after we'd last seen
each other - here in BJ! We don't have much contact over the Baltic
sea in my family, so it was amazing to meet him here and not in
Scandinavia. He stayed for a month, via him I met a whole bunch
of other Finns from my hometown in Finland (all working for the
same company), and in BJ, of all places, I have actually met 0.1%
of the entire population of that small town Lohja, with only 35000
inhabitants... And I have practised my Finnish much more then I
have learned Chinese... Every weekend, going out maybe a bit too
much, maybe drinking a bit too much, definitely meeting too many
foreigners compared to Chinese people...
I have decided to do a third term of teaching here, and finish
the job in May. Thinking back on the time here (5 months now!),
I do regret one thing, and that is that I haven't made a bigger
effort to learn Chinese while I've been here. I never planned to
stay this long; if I would have known in October, then I would have
put some energy into learning the local language. Instead, I have
been too busy partying and meeting ex-pats and trying to get to
know people - westerners, not chinese, unfortunately... I don't
know why, really. Laziness, perhaps, more than anything else...
It's easier to meet someone from your own culture, but it makes
your life here very secluded. You're not really part of it all.
If one could speak Chinese, one could meet the locals in a completely
different way, go out with them, laugh with them, party with them,
talk with them, get to know them... I'm ashamed to say, but I can't
really say I know China that well myself, despite me having been
here for a total of 10 months of my life (including previous trips
here)...
So
Where Do I Go From Here?
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