连笔字体下载:A teacher's?simple life

A teacher's simple life
By Dougie Richardson (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2011-05-18 10:31
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I'm an English teacher in Zhuhai, Guangdong province. I've been here for nearly four months now. I was in China for three months in 2009, teaching in Xiaolan town, Zhongshan, but I had to cut that visit short. While I was back in the UK, where I'm from, I knew I wanted to come back to China to live, so I tried to learn a little Chinese. I learned a few basic words and phrases, and I continue to study now I'm back in China full time. I don't know much though, and it makes life difficult at times.
Dougie Richardson [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]
I was teaching an adult class a few days ago, and the topic was culture shock. I was telling them about how I occasionally feel like a child in China, because I often can't do the simplest of things.
Of course It's not because I’m stupid, but because of the language barrier. A perfect example occurred about a week ago. One of my adult students was trying to phone her phone with mine, so she could save my number. She couldn't do it, and told me that my phone had been disconnected. I wasn't sure what she meant and I was in the middle of teaching, so I didn't pay too much attention. The next day I tried to make a phone call, but instead of a dial tone, all I got was a voice message in Chinese which I didn't understand a word of. Then someone texted me, and so I texted back and it seemed to send the text okay. I received and replied to another text later that day, so I thought that whatever the problem had been was now sorted out. I tried making another phone that evening though, and was getting the same message in Chinese. I checked my balance, and I had 16 yuan, so the problem wasn't that I was out of credit. I tried phoning customer services. China Mobile, the company I use, has an English speaking customer service hotline. Really it should be called a slightly warm line, rather than a hot line. I once spent three days trying to get through, only to be told every time, "sorry, no one is available to take your call right now, please try later". This time it only took till the afternoon of the following day to speak to someone.
Anyway, the girl in customer services told me that my account had been suspended due to lack of money. "But" I protested, "I have sixteen Yuan in credit!" "Yes", she replied, "but you have to pay 18 yuan on the twenty sixth of every month, and because you only had sixteen, they suspended your account". I explained that I didn't know I had to pay a monthly fee as I didn't have a contract, but it seems that pay as you go in China is pay as you go and pay monthly as well. So the problem was a lack of funds. "Okay" I said, "can I use my debit card to put some money in my phone?" "Yes", she said, "just go into your bank and fill out the form and they will allow you to do that". So I explained that no one in the branch I use spoke English, and I'm pretty sure none of the other branches round here have anyone who's English is good enough to help me fill out the necessary form. When we opened the accounts, someone from TPR, the school I work for, took half a dozen of us new teachers to the bank, and did all the talking and filled out all the forms. We just had to show our passports and sign the bottom of the form. We didn’t even get to give our apartments address, they used the TPR office instead. I don't even know if we get bank statements sent to us through the mail, though I suspect not, it would be considered it a waste of paper in China, and rightly so. In the Internet age there is no need to sacrifice trees to keep people up to date with their finances, we can do it all online. At least I could if I read and wrote enough Chinese. Internet banking, another thing I did with ease back home, is now closed to me until I learn to read and write properly.
So now I know I have to have at least 18 yuan in credit on the 25th of the month, or they'll cut me off. I told my adult students that I don't even use buses very much, because while every bus has it's destination clearly marked on the front, and every bus stop lists the stops of every bus, I have no idea what any of it says. I do have a bus pass, it's pretty easy to get one and to top it up, you just go the desk on the sixth floor of the local supermarket and hand over the card and however much money you want to charge it with. So sometimes I just get on a random bus to see where it goes. I get off and wander around and explore, then I go to the opposite side of the road and get the same bus back. Bus stops in China are not as frequent as in the UK though, I would say there's probably one stop for every three you would find back home, so sometimes you have to walk a bit to find a bus stop.
It made me think though, about how simple my life has become here. Not because I'm giving up anything in favour of a more ascetic life, but because so many of the things I take for granted back home are just not accessible to me now. I managed to join the gym today, but only because I had my teaching assistant at TPR write "I would like to join for one year" on a bit of paper in Chinese. They didn't charge me as much as I thought it was supposed to be though, so I have a suspicion they only gave me a six month membership instead of the one year I asked for. Of course I have to take someone Chinese who speaks English with me to ask them to check it, otherwise I have no way of knowing what kind of membership I have. All of my utility bills are paid through the school and they deduct the money from my salary. I even have to phone Bing Bing, TPR’s go to guy for the foreigners, when I run out of gas for my cooker and water heater. It's LPG, so they come and swap out the bottle for me. It's a very good service though, I phone Bing Bing and the gas man appears within the hour, back home I would be lucky to get it the next day. It's the same with the water for my water cooler. Bing Bing doesn't speak much English though, and so I was very pleased the other day when I phoned him and told him I wanted to order two bottles of water in Chinese, and he said "okay" straight away. My Chinese is obviously getting better, though the guy only brought one bottle with him, so something was lost in the translation. The next step for me is to phone the water company myself and order the water. The strange thing is I don't even know my own address. I know where I live, obviously, but I don't actually know the street name or the building name. I will have to ask someone at the school, and record them saying it on my phone, so I can memorise it and repeat it back to the water company person on the phone.

So I don't do many of the things I would do in the UK. I want to learn Tai Chi, and I know they teach it at Zhuhai sports centre, but the instructor is unlikely to speak enough English for me to understand what they are saying. It would be nice to travel outside of Zhuhai sometimes, there's a lot of interesting places in Guangdong province within a day's journey, but the logistics of finding your way without either getting lost or getting ripped off for fares puts me off for now. Buying things online from Tao Bao will have to wait until I can find someone to talk me through the procedure for setting up my account and registering my debit card. On the positive side I don't spend as much money as I might if I knew what I was doing, so that's okay.
On the whole, I would have to say I like my simple life. I'm growing more patient as I grow older, and I'm here for the long haul. It's a good incentive to learn Chinese, and it’s all part of the adventure. I do a lot more here than I ever did when I lived in Xiaolan in 2009, and my confidence in my language ability grows a little every day. In the meantime I find that not being able to focus outwards so much allows me to focus inwards more. I learn more about myself every day, and I'm changing and growing as a person. I still occasionally feel frustrated and like a child who is just learning about the world around him though. It's a strange feeling for a man in his mid forties who can manage to achieve most of his goals in his native country. I don't let it get to me too much though. China has too much to offer, and I'm having too good a time to see it as anything but a challenge, and to just keep smiling and learning.
The author is an English teacher in Zhuhai, Guangdong province.