E-reader Exasperation

I love reading. I love reading all kinds of things, whether it is novels, novellas, short stories, academic writing, magazine articles, or newspaper clippings, I love it all. Reading is amazing, and it's a wonder I get anything done with the amount of things I love to read.

Books like this help keep me anti-social

In preparing to come to China, I didn't exactly have a lot of room for books to come with me, having to use my suitcase's room for things like clothing and medicine, so I was only able to bring several books to feed my love of reading. 

The English-language books I brought with me

Before I left China, however, I also came up with another solution to my problems: e-books. Yes, rather than burdening myself with an absurdly large number of books, I could instead just download them in a variety of formats (PDF, MOBI, LIT, DOC, TXT etc.). Thus, I ended up downloading approximately 20 gigabytes worth of e-books. To put that in perspective, my e-book copy of Charles Dickens's novel 'A Tale of Two Cities' is 783 kilobytes, and it takes more than 1 million kilobytes to equal a single gigabyte. Simply put, I wasn't in any short supply of books.

Like this, but digitized

Something I didn't count on when I got to China, however, would be my computer's set-up. Because I have to connect to a cable to get my internet, rather than access any sort of wireless WiFi, my laptop is essentially stuck in one place. Worse yet is the terrible chair that I was given for my dorm room. As the pictures below will demonstrate, it is rusty, fairly uncomfortable looking, and is literally held together with duct tape that I brought with me from Canada:

You can only wish your chair was this amazing

I realized this set-up was not conducive to a constructive reading environment, and decided I needed another way to read my e-books. The solution was obvious: I needed to buy an e-book reader. Having only bought my cellphone on campus, I knew nothing about where to get any sort of electronics in Suzhou; however, my roommate Miguel told me that he had bought his laptop at a large electronics shopping center not far from campus, and said he'd take me there to go and see about purchasing an e-book reader. Funny enough, the electronics shopping center happened to be very near the 'totally authentic' Apple stores that I mentioned in a previous post. 

A 100% 'legitimate' electronics shopping center

I first looked at several Apple iPads, which were upwards of 3000RMB, and far too expensive for something I just wanted to read e-books on.

I started asking vendors about 'e-book readers', or dianzishu (电子书) as they're called in Chinese. It was actually fairly difficult to find someone who sold them, but after several minutes of searching, I finally found a person that sold them.

The vendor was looking for an e-book reader amid the huge piles of iPads

I told the vendor that I had no problems buying a Chinese e-book reader as long as it could read English. So, 700RMB later, I had my first e-reader, a 'WeFound F630':

It's not at all a rip-off of a Kobo or a Kindle...

For an extra 150RMB, I also decided to purchase an MP3 player, which the dealer assured me was not an Apple product and proudly 'made in China.'

Because it was so obviously 'not Apple,' I named it the 'Chi-Pod'

Of course, how boring would it be if the blog post ended here, and things didn't go horribly horribly wrong with my pirated Chinese technology? Of course, the e-reader didn't work right from the start, as it refused to read PDFs, DOC, MOBI, or LITs, and thus eradicating the entire reason I bought the damnable contraption. TXT (that is Notepad) files worked on it, but it kept misreading certain letters and words as Chinese characters, making for wonderful reading like this (click on the image to enlarge):

The Chi-pod worked decently enough, though it had such a comically short battery-life it wasn't even worthwhile leaving it unplugged. 

Understandably annoyed, I went back to the vendor to get a refund on my shoddy merchandise. The vendor, determined to keep my money and then-some, offered me a counter-proposal to him giving back my money: for an extra 100RMB, he would get me a fully English-language Kindle from Amazon by the next day. I decided to go against my gut instincts and agreed to the purchase. 

Luckily, my paranoia turned out to be completely wrong this time, as the vendor did indeed have an authentic English-language Kindle, imported from Shanghai, from Amazon.com.

Though it's still made in China...

Better yet, the Kindle accepts all of the formats I want, and provides programs that can convert your files to formats that will be easier to read on the Kindle's screen.

Now if you will excuse me, I'm going to go and read something!

Until next time, enjoy the semi-relevant music:

The Shanghai Sh*ts, OR Experimenting with Chinese food can be hazardous to your health

Hello everyone! So I've once again been an excellent politician and ignored my own rules on posting, being that this is my first post in over a week! Luckily, my excuse for doing so is the very subject of this blog post!

Hell yea

Near the end of the week-long holiday last week, Miguel and I decided to try out some different meals from my usual fare of going to the canteen and spending 10-12RMB on some questionably-cooked meat and vegetables.

My standard dinner: Tomatoes, Potatoes, and Mystery Meat...

...purchased from here!

I decided to try out some of the local restaurants, going to an overpriced Islamic - or Huimin (Hwey Min 回民) as they're called in China - place that looked like it had some interesting foods.

Inside the Huimin restaurant

Unfortunately, the folks who ran the restaurant catered mainly to the stupid foreigners who understand nothing about Chinese pricing, as the menu showed some of the most outrageous prices I'd ever seen in a Chinese restaurant:

I don't care if I get to eat the sheep's brains, 1888RMB is still too much!

Thus, being a total cheapskate, Miguel and I decided to opt for a lot of the cheapest things on the menu, rice and lamb kebabs (yang row chwan 羊肉串)! 

The meat didn't even taste that good

With the debacle of the Huimin restaurant at an end, we both decided to give the canteen another try. As it turns out, the canteen does not just serve questionably-cooked, lukewarm meals, but rather a variety of strange and wondrous meal that include a make-your-own-soup (malatang 麻辣烫 - which I've eaten previously)...

... as well as a freshly-made food section that cost a little more than the luke-warm pig swill food that you could get at the the primary canteen:

That little trip ended me up with a box of noodles, literally called "Eggs and Beef with fried Noodles" or "Jidan Niurou Chaomian (鸡蛋牛肉炒面)", which was much warmer and more pleasant to eat than my usual cafeteria fare.

Comes with complimentary wooden chopsticks!

The next day, Miguel took me to a place that one of the other Laowai had shown him, where they sold much higher quality meat-kebabs than the barely edible - and overpriced - food at the Huimin restaurant. 

Unfortunately, as the saying goes, "curiosity killed the cat," which was what was metaphorically about to happen to my innards.

Thanks Boromir!

When I woke up the next morning, I found my stomach to be in an unbearable amount of pain. After trying to tough it out and let the feeling pass naturally, I gave up and rushed to my medicine drawer. Before I left for China, I smartly bought a fairly large collection of medicine with the knowledge that finding such things in China would be a little more difficult.

My medical 'war chest'

After taking some medicine from my supplies, the pain diminished and I felt better, but, of course, the worst was yet to come.

It wasn't long after that my intestines began to sing a lovely tune to me, that simply refused to stop. Below is an approximation of that tune:

After several hours, my dorm room's bathroom and I became very, very well acquainted with one another. It was a very uncomfortable time to say the least, and I came to realize that I needed to get some of the only kind of medicine I had forgotten to bring with me from Canada. Miguel was still recovering from a night of heavy drinking, so I had to venture out alone in my journey to get some medication. 

I first went to my ayi (阿姨), who is basically the caretaker of my dorm building, and asked her where on campus I could find some medication. The ayi pointed me in the direction of the campus hospital, which I quickly made my way to. Unfortunately, when I got to the entrance of the hospital, the lovely guard at the door told me the building was for emergencies only, and that there were no medications for what I needed on campus. After clarifying with the guard that this was a hospital that had no medication in it, he said to me that I would have to go off campus to look for a drug store. My reaction was well-behaved and appropriate:

Still in considerable discomfort, I stumbled my way out of the nearest campus gate to look for a drug store. Luckily, there was a drug store fairly close-by, and I went inside and purchased some medication that was recommended by the pharmacists. 

My Chinese medication

I took the medication, and the symptoms slowly began to abate. I was confident that would be able to get to class once the holiday was finished. This, however, didn't turn out to be the case, as my lovely condition continued for almost a week straight - albeit greatly lessened from what it had originally been. I was feeling so terrible that I even chose to take some time off of work from my kindergarten job.

As of writing this, I good enough to actually go to my classes and work this upcoming week, and will - hopefully - be able to return to my regular schedule here in Suzhou. In the meantime, I've learned my lesson not to experiment too much with Chinese food around here, and be sure to play closer attention to the health inspection labels put up in every Chinese restaurant!

As you can see by the happy face, the Chinese bureaucracy declares the SuDa canteens to be CLEAN!

Until next time!

Ma'Ke Laoshi (Teacher Mark)

I have a secret. Well, it's not a very well-hidden secret, but it's a secret I've been keeping from my my peers at the university. For the past three weeks, I have been working as a teacher for a kindergarten, teaching kids from the age of 3 to 6 simple English words and phrases.

Me at the entrance to the school

It all started four weeks ago today, after I got back to my dormitory from another grueling day of Chinese classes. I was all ready to sit down in front of my computer and read my e-book copy of The Hobbit for the 37th time study, when Miguel, my roommate, asked me if I was interested in some part-time work teaching kids English. Miguel's English is not exactly fluent, so I just thought I misunderstood him. This didn't turn out to be the case, as Miguel had another Mexican friend, a young lady named Marianela - or just "Nela" for short - was looking for native English speakers to fill out a part-time teaching position teaching little children English. 

The kids busily 'learning' English

When Miguel asked me again, I wasn't quite sure how to respond. I need to make a few things clear before I continue: Over my years of studying Chinese language and culture, I have run into a good number of folks who have taught English overseas in China, South Korea, and Japan. Despite their experiences being generally quite good, I never once considered trying out that line of work myself. This was mainly because I considered the whole enterprise to be an absolute waste of my time. As far as I was concerned, there was no foreseeable financial gain to bring back to Canada, and it would simply distract me from achieving my real career goals back home. Finally, I never thought I had the proper disposition for dealing with kids, as my natural reaction to rowdiness and 'fun' is to crush it with the proverbial wrath of an angry god.

Me - "How dare you have fun!"

Despite my misgivings, I decided to meet with Miguel's friend Nela to further discuss this opportunity.

The kids at play

Meeting with Nela proved to be a very useful choice, as I was told what I would really be doing was spending two-and-a-half hours (1.30-4PM) from Monday to Friday teaching several different classes of kindergartners English. While I would be provided with a book to teach with, the "curriculum" was largely up for me to decide - Nela bluntly told me that you're really just entertaining and playing games with the kids, as they hardly had a good grasp of Chinese at their ages, let alone English. I also learned what my salary would be for this job, which added up to me being paid almost as much in a week as I was for an entire month of my scholarship earnings! Better yet, I would be paid directly in cash, without the need to open any bank accounts here in China, or having to pay any taxes.

What was going on in my mind as I was told about the salary

The job seemed both easy and interesting, and so I went with Nela to the home office of my new employer, "Hong N English" (洪恩英语).

When I first saw the office, I though "what a small school..."

After a very short interview with a older woman named "Mrs. Chan" - who insisted I speak only English to her despite her English skills being terrible and my Chinese good enough to have an interview with her - I signed a contract for a four-month employment period that is due to finish on December 15th of this year. I also insisted that be allowed to see a teaching demonstration from the young man whom I was replacing - an Irish fellow named Christy who happens to speak less Chinese than the kindergartners spoke English. 

Christy preparing to teach

Thus, the following day, I went to the office, and hopped in a beat up-looking van - that I was supposed to be taken in every day - off to the school.

Inside the van - on the left is our driver (a Chinese fellow who insists I call him 'Michael'), and to the right is Nela

Once we go to the school, named 3+3 - or 三之三 in Chinese - I learned that I would be teaching three different levels of children divided according to their age groups: the Newton Class (ages 5-6), the Einstein Class (ages 3-4), and the Zhang Heng Class (ages 2-3). Every day, I would have to teach two groups of Newton classes for half an hour each, four groups of Einstein classes for twenty minutes each, and one Zhang Heng class for ten minutes per day. This knowledge in hand, I entered my first classes with Christy to see what a usual day would be for me. Rather than describing what Christy did, however, I will show you two videos of a very similar style of teaching:

It was one of the strangest experiences I've ever seen, as Christy spent most of the class just screwing around with the kids, and teaching them some random words and phrases. While it wasn't nearly as hilarious as Donnie's kindergarten class in the above videos, it was pretty close in terms of what was taught.

The 'teaching structure' that we teachers apparently teach these kids. Nowhere does it say, however, that we must teach the kids how to 'dougie.'

The 'textbooks" I was given were not of much use either, as they were obviously ripped off from a western-kindergarten book, and expect you to draaaaaaaaaag out teaching these kids extremely simple words:

These two pages constitute a week-long 'unit'

Regardless of my complaints about the textbook, teaching these kids has proven to be one of the most entertaining experiences I've ever had. That is not to say teaching them is not tiring, because it most certainly is exhausting, but teaching these kids fills me with a lot more joy and fulfillment than I gained attending my Chinese classes - the very reason I came here to Suzhou in the first place! 

One of the hallways in the school leading to my first kindergarten class of the day

What makes the classes even better for me is that I don't have to worry about keeping order in any of the classes whatsoever, since each class is assigned one or two Chinese Teaching Assistants - who speak less English than the kids - to keep the kids on track - usually through hitting them and yelling at them very loudly in Chinese - and leaves me free to be the big, harmless foreigner!

The woman in the white shirt there doesn't hesitate to use that hairbrush in her hand for more than hair brushing...

The preparation for these classes is extremely easy, though you must be able to change your plans on the fly, as some of the activities you planned for the day may not turn out as well as you hoped. For instance, I tried to teach the kids body parts to the tune of of the song "Blessed Assurance," but I quickly realized the kids could not differentiate between the body parts and the words "this is my," as many of them were simply referring to their noses or legs as "thisismy."

My reaction when I realized what I'd done

I also quickly realized that I needed to add in props to my teaching repertoire to keep these kids attentive and entertained, and so I created a 'game' where I have the kids sing a dumbed-down line from a song - like "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" - and use a set of 'magical chopsticks' and randomly pick the kids one after another to repeat a rehearsed word in English.

The front gate of the school

I also figured I'd follow Christy's (and Donnie's) lead, and teach the kids some original words and phrases or my own. Being that I'm an ubernerd, I decided to teach the kids some English from things I enjoy, such as Star Trek...

...and Star Wars...

... and Friends...

I can't wait to teach them some stuff from Lord of the Rings next!

Just imagine all those little kids screaming Gandalf's line "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!" in unison.

Until next time!