The 14.5 hour flight to Shanghai was long but smooth and fortunately uneventful. When we arrived there were four health officials who entered the plane to do tests. They were very efficient and it was well done. From the airport Daniel Cho and I took a taxi to our hotel in Shanghai.
The next morning we went to East Nanjing Road to see the sights of Shanghai. With the World’s Fair coming to Shanghai, the Bund is under construction as well as many buildings in the area. A vacant lot last year has a beautiful new building going up this year. There is no evidence of a poor economy here and I believe the growth rate is over 6%.
We visited the shopping area a couple of times taking the subway each time.
On Sunday we took the train to Nanjing to start the orientation on Monday. We stayed on the outskirts of Nanjing at the International Conference Centre. It was a lovely location in the forest area closed to the tomb of the Ming emperor. Over the course of the week we had several workshops on various themes as well as two trips. This time I went to the Amity Printing Press, producing the most Bibles in the world. They are well over 50 million. A very interesting visit and I bought a couple of New Testaments in Chinese and English. My other visit was to the Massacre Museum. I visited it last year and returned since it is so well done.
Finally, on Sunday we were transported to Ma’anshan, a city of about one million, for our teaching. We are in a hotel on the campus on the Anhui University of Technology. Anhui is the province we are in. The university is quite nice but different from our campuses and the hotel is comfortable. We get all of our meals here.
Our classes are about a 10 minute walk at the Foreign Language School. We did our testing on Sunday and had our opening ceremonies on Monday. Since I am the team leader, I had to make a speech that was translated into Chinese. We then started into our classes. At the present time there are 15 primary teachers with Jane Coates from Leeds England and Sonia Jackson from London England has 11 Middle School teachers. At the present time I have 18 Middle School teachers. We have formed a good team and work well together. Our teacher-students are all from the Ma’anshan area. They are wonderful group of teachers ranging from three months of teaching to 22 years. Since this is a new project we are concentrating on oral English but also more on techniques and strategies. The teachers ask a lot of questions about teaching also about Canada and teachers there. In China, it is hard to imagine, that the classes range from 35-45 minutes and my teachers here tell me they have from 40-72 in a class.
The weather is very hot. Right now at 9:30 pm it is 28C with a humidex of 41. Fortunately our classrooms and hotel rooms are air conditioned. The traffic here is crazy. You need to look both ways on one way streets and cross walks do not mean very much. Red lights are merely suggestions since they may or may not obey them. However the best is the Chinese people are wonderful. They are friendly and try hard to communicate. They love to meet foreigners and still have an appreciation of Canadians. We have great access on the internet and on Skype. Overall, I am very impressed with what I have seen in this area. I just wish it would cool down a bit.
An interesting thing about the three of us is we all have our birthdays this week. They are Sonia on the 14th, Jane on the 15th and mine the 19th.
Better go for now. I wish you all the best from Ma’anshan China.
David Phillips
David Phillips works in The Vine: Connecting People, Places and Programs at the national office of The Presbyterian Church in Canada.