Well, it's certainly
been a year of ups and downs. Pity it's ended on quite a lot of downs
but that's how life goes sometimes.
So let's begin at the
beginning back in January when I had a holiday in Beijing which feels
like a lifetime ago. It was a great holiday and even though I've
visited the place half a dozen times now it never fails to be
interesting. This time the highlights were seeing a deserted section
of the Great Wall covered in snow, finding a few excellent beers and
some amazing pizza, wandering round the Summer Palace – again
covered in snow, finding an English Language bookshop and filling my
suitcase with cheese to take back to Baiyin.
After that things
chugged on like the Grand Old Duke Of York's Men – neither up nor
down – until May when I was introduced to Teresa and life started
looking up. Soon my western friends were saying what a great couple
we make and my Chinese friends, as Chinese friends are prone to do,
were asking when (not even "if") we would get married. This is the
first question on most Chinese people's mind apparently. Say “hi”
to a woman once and everyone wants to set a wedding date.
Well sorry to
disappoint but we are happy keeping things on the
boyfriend-girlfriend track right now.
Summer saw me teaching
summer school and visiting Yangshuo, where the school was located, was a high though discovering
that a mix up meant I would only be paid half what I thought and
would end up losing money dampened the end a bit. Of course Teresa
came down to stay for a week which was another high but our only
serious argument to date marred the end of that a little.
We sorted it out though
and life in Baiyin resumed it's normal course with the addition
of some new teachers to the City – Kelly and Anthony. That brought
it up to five with me, Carol and Megan – Ben and Jess having
already left.
A dark undercurrent
started to flow in around mid October with rumours that next year the
number of teachers would be cutback to two. As always in China
getting hard information was – and still is – difficult. No one
here will ever come right out and tell you bad news. They hint, they
suggest, they offer tantalising clues. What they never do is tell you
anything straight. It's cultural and to us seems a very odd – and extremely
frustrating – way of going about things. They are completely direct
with personal remarks – like my student telling me I'm too fat –
but with something important it can be like pulling teeth to get the
necessary answers.
The end of October had
an up that turned into a down with Carol's Hallowe'en party. This was
an event that she organised at a cafe where the kids paid a small fee
and had an evening of English games, fun and dressing up. It was fun
but afterwards, when planning a similar Christmas party it was made
clear to us in no uncertain terms that this is something we cannot
do. We can organise no events – and especially no paid events –
without the express permission of the school. Permission that we
would be unable to get, so no point in asking.
The dark rumblings
continued. Our administrator had a “secret” meeting with me and
Carol indicating that we would be staying next term but all the other
teachers were likely to be gone. This was secret until ten minutes
later when I called the other teachers and told them everything that had been said. We do things
differently in the west and I don't like keeping secrets that affect people's lives. The trouble with this new plan was that it
involved a fifty percent increase in workload, one of us living on
campus in the west of the city and no pay rise.
No one was happy.
Two teachers were
officially told they would be leaving – and given that one of them,
like me, now had a Chinese partner, this was not welcome news.
A little rise in
fortunes came when I was asked to go back to Yangshuo during Spring
Break to do some teacher training – an area I have long been
interested in.
Then I slipped and
broke my knee.
Then my girlfriend was
put into a new post at work which means we hardly ever see each other.
Then my gout returned.
As lovely a string of
“downs” as you could hope to end the year on.
The resulting plaster
cast will however be off in time for me to still to the teacher
training.
Now the third teacher's
departure has been confirmed but with the slight good news that both
Carol and I will be staying and the workload won't increase because another school has decided to do without. That's
lucky because if it had I would be put in the impossible position of
choosing between an intolerable job in the city with Teresa or a
tolerable one in a city without her.
And that is how
everything stands as the new year races towards us.
As I said, a year of
ups and downs.
But the ups were good enough to make the downs seem unimportant, and you can't really ask for more.
