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Doug and Chris Gandy write...

...about their experiences while volunteering in China.

Left Toronto 6:30 AM Sunday. The flight to Vancouver was 5 Hours, Beijing 11 hours, Yantai 1 hour with a few hours waiting each airport. With a 12 hour time difference we arrived in Yantai at 9:30 PM on Monday. All very confusing. There was a mix up in-flight numbers the flight we were supposed to be on did not exist so we arrived an hour early and had to telephone Jack (director of the China Volunteer Program) to pick us up. This was the first experience with the Chinese telephone. We were delivered to the Dong Wei Hotel and had a very restless sleep since 11:00 at night seemed like 11:00 in the morning.

On Tuesday they (the school) told us our room would not be ready for awhile so we were taken back and forth to the hotel to live out of a suitcase for a few days. It turned out to be 5 days.

Two Americans from California are here for the third year. They are gung-ho to come and teach and get their teaching booster shot after retiring from teaching. They leave in a month to work at a private enterprise involving ecology back in California. They have many friends here, usually former students, and keep very busy. She was a former teacher and we sat in on one of her classes (32 students). She is very well organized and the students were very responsive. In a class of 32 it is difficult to get much English conversation. The few competent students do all the talking. In the evening we attended the English Corner where the students could ask any questions and practice their English. With about 75 students in one room clustered around 4 teachers the noise level was too high to have much conversation but some did ask questions. We finally got a more organized approach to English Corner, where I can take 10 kids to another room and then have a more satisfying conversation with them. They have a chance to ask questions and respond with their own comments.

We were taken out for lunch on Tuesday along with all the new teachers by the Director and some of the English Teachers. It was an elaborate affair in a private dining room, many dishes on the table and many waitresses to keep the beer and food coming. Piles of thinly sliced mutton, various vegetables and bean curd blocks are put in the hot pot and fished out with chopsticks when they are cooked. If you can’t use chopsticks you would starve. It was a delightful experience.

The school is a private college teaching mainly languages, English, Japanese and Korean, with the classes grouped as a language major or as a Tour Guide or a Flight Attendant. There are about 400 girls and100 boys between 15 and 20 years old. The girls live at the school and the boys are taken by bus to a dormitory about a kilometer away. They have a very full program. The wake up bell is at 5:45 AM. They go out for exercise which usually means running around the block with each class as a platoon. You can hear them shouting as they run; one, two three etc. in Chinese. It helped us learn the numbers! Breakfast is at 7:00 and classes start at 8:00. From 11:30 to 2:30 is a long lunch and sleep break. Classes then go to 5:15. After a break for dinner they return to the classroom to study until 9:00. They are in bed with lights out by 10:00. Saturday afternoon and Sunday are free. It’s a long hard day for them and many just put their heads down and sleep in class for a few minutes. Some eat in the cafeteria but many collect rice and a few vegetables in a plastic bag and eat in their rooms or in the classroom. The cafeteria food is rice, stuffed dumplings, noodles, a variety of vegetables, steamed rice breads and some soups. After 2 weeks of this rather bland diet we yearn to get some more tasty meals. I guess cafeteria food is the same world-wide! There is also a tuck shop with a variety of junk food. The menu gets pretty boring, the same for all three meals except at breakfast there is a fried bread and eggs boiled in tea.

Wednesday we met our first classes. The class size ranges from 12 to 43 with the average around 20. Doug was scheduled for a class of 45 but I convinced them you could not have much conversation with that many. We talked with

Kids aged 10 to 14 and they have 90 in some classes! Others are struggling with 40-45. How you can work with them is one I can’t figure out. They also see them once a week for a 45minute session. What could they possibly learn? The interesting thing is these kids are very well behaved (in our classes) some are very interested and others just go off somewhere in their own world. The knowledge of English varies widely. In general they can all read English since they have studied it since grade 3 or so. Their Romanized alphabet called Pinyin allows them to sound out any word. When you listen to them read you are led to believe their knowledge of English is very high. However, for most, their comprehension from reading is low and their comprehension of the spoken language is very low. They have been taught using a workbook and an audio tape with many workbook style exercises but they never get a chance to speak except is a unison sing song chant. They experience a great deal of difficulty with spoken English without a written backup. This makes teaching English Conversation a challenge. How to wean them away from their textbook workbook to creative individual conversation when there are 20 plus in a class will require some inventive ideas. They all give each other the answers in the classroom so an individual will not be embarrassed. To get them to try on their own is going to be the key.

In China paper is expensive and making copies of anything is not encouraged. Any handouts need to be paid for by the students. It took 3 weeks for us to get a computer & the printer is in a different office; and the computer room is usually either full or locked. All this adds to the frustration level. We now have a computer, one disc, and have found a commercial copy shop and can generate some materials. The only problem is the commands on the Word program are in Chinese characters so finding anything is a matter or memory and trial and error.

After four weeks we have a collection of activities they can do in-groups to practice. When they are asked in class the same questions there is a chance of a reasonable response. The process of listening to our Canadian English is different from the text and tapes they have from England. For them translating the meaning into Chinese, formulating an answer, translating the answer back into English and speaking it is a slow process. The listening for meaning is proving to be the most difficult.

The college is near the Yantai University (25,000 students) with a small shopping area in between and a lot of small restaurants. sGood Chinese meals are under six dollars, including a mug of local beer. There is a small supermarket also that sells the basics. Only two of the restaurants have an English menu so it sometimes is a surprise when the food arrives. Yantai is a coastal city so the restaurants serve everything that grows or lives in the sea. The fish have too many bones but the clams, squid, octopus, shrimp and various seaweeds are fun to try and identify. So far our stomachs are behaving. It must be the beer.

There are about ten other volunteer teachers here spread around the city. They are all young just out of college or just going into college and their ideas of fun differ slightly from ours, especially when there is a KFC, MacDonald’s and a Pizza Hut on every second corner. We have been on one trip with them and have met for dinner a few times. Most of these volunteers have classes of 45 plus and the students are a younger age-10-15 years I don’t envy them. Some have 12 different classes once a week. I wonder how much these students benefit from this one shot approach, especially since the volunteers are from different countries. The different accents must confuse them.

At the University there is a College partly sponsored by Canada, teaching Business English and Business Writing. The Head is a lady from New Brunswick who has been here for about five years. There are also about six teachers from Canada. We meet with them for dinner now and then but they are very busy at the start of the term. Julie has given Chris contacts all over China. As well as E-Mails she has telephoned twice to see how we are getting along. Her friends proved very helpful when we went on our 12 day National Day holiday week. This is the October 1st National Day where all of China gets some length of holiday. We visited Shanghai, Hang Zhou and Nanjing. Flying from Yantai to Shanghai is easy since airports are bilingual and many travelers speak some English.

Traveling by train to Hang Zhou, by bus to Nanjing and by train back to Shanghai proved more of a challenge. The train and bus stations are huge, very crowded and therefore very pushy. The tickets are for reserved seats so you must find the correct railway car on the correct platform and board the train which usually only stops for about 10 minutes. During this holiday period the crowds are unbelievable. In Shanghai we went out to the Peoples Square; Nanjing Road pedestrian street on the evening of October 1. Most of China’s 1.2 billion people were on the street it seemed. It was impossible to get into the subway station let alone get on a train. All was very peaceful and orderly with the crowds slowly moving up and down the street. Many police and army personnel were on duty but all they were doing was giving directions and answering questions. We could only tolerate the crowd for about an hour so we celebrated National Day in the hotel.

It is an erroneous impression to think China is a backward country. The sky scrapers of Shanghai make Toronto’s downtown look primitive. The architecture is very beautiful and varied with many parks separating the 75 story buildings. The amount of new construction going on is phenomenal. Shanghai has one of the best museums in China giving 12,000 years of history with rooms full of displays and English explanations as well as an English Audio Tour. We also visited the museum homes of the founders and leaders of the Chinese communist party. There is also a museum of the history of Shanghai under the Pearl TV tower which is the 2ndhighest in the world. Not very fair with the Chinese when they set up their treaty ports although they did introduce western ways to China and rebuilt the port part of Shanghai as a European city.

Hang Zhou is a city with a very scenic lake and tea plantations. Even with the holiday crowds it was pleasant walking around the lake, climbing the hill to the pagoda and monastery and visiting the tea museum. They treat their tea as we treat our wine. They have tea tastings with many types of tea and many types of spring water. It all tastes like green tea to us. All along the lakeside park the people were practicing Tai Chi, ritual sword fighting and flying kites. It made for an interesting morning. Nanjing is building a subway and is full of construction. We visited a park with the tombs of some of China’s greats. It was massive and impressive. The temple of Confucius and the surrounding park is elaborate. A sobering museum is a memorial to the 300,000 people killed by the Japanese when they invaded Nanjing in 1937. No wonder the Chinese don’t trust the Japanese. In the period of the Japanese invasion and the battle between the Nationalists and Communists for control we have been told 30 million Chinese were killed.

Back in Yantai we have resumed teaching for two more weeks. Then three weeks to tour parts of China and on to Vancouver November 13. Last night we were invited to supper at Melody, one of our Chinese friends. It was a fantastic evening. The family prepared a feast! We had fruit, fish, all sorts of different dishes such as shrimp and cabbage, crabs, broccoli dumplings mushrooms and bean curd, and of course beer to go with it. We had a great many toasts of Gangba. They took pictures to show their friends. The room was upstairs was small with a bed and a small round table to seat seven. The kitchen was even smaller. We were treated like royalty and they even escorted us down three flights of stairs to the street.