An English Teacher in China: January 2013

IECS

Langfang Teachers College is closed for the winter break so that means it is time for all the teachers and students to travel. Most all of the students have already left the campus and boarded a train for their respective homes. A few students have stayed around Langfang to find part-time work during the holiday. There isn’t much for me to do around here now... So, it is time to travel.

First stop on the list of destinations was Sanya City on the Island of Hainan. Hainan is a rather large tropical island off the southern coast of China and the eastern coast of Vietnam. It’s a beautiful tropical paradise with white sands, blue waters, and tall mountains covered in lush green palm trees. It’s warm and sunny, which is quite a contrast to Langfang. But my trip down to Hainan wasn’t all leisure. I was traveling down there for the annual IECS winter staff conference. All of the IECS teachers in China were in attendance.

The travel experience was a story in and of itself. It all started on Saturday morning a little over a week ago. The three IECS teachers from Tainjin, along with Jess (the IECS state-side secretary), came to Langfang to spend a couple of days with Jaime and I. We were planning on all leaving for Hainan together. However, we failed to take into account that this is the busiest time of the year in China to travel. We left for the train station nearly an hour and a half early but it didn’t matter. The tickets lines were enormous! It took us an hour and a half just to get our tickets! By that time our train had already come and gone. But that’s okay. It just meant that we needed to exchange our tickets for a later train. However, this quickly became a problem. The clerk tried to exchange the tickets but the computer wasn’t working properly. After a while the station manager finally came over and she tried to fix the machine. But nothing would help. Finally the station manager pulled out a pen and a piece of blank paper. She proceeded to write down something in Chinese and then told me to show the note to a security guard at the entrance. I did as I was told.

The security guard merely laughed when he saw the paper than called another guard over to have a look. The second guard laughed as well. Then the two guards opened the gate and escorted us to the front of the line. I was shocked! The stewardess at the boarding gate looked at my hand written note, chuckled, and then ushered the six of us onto the next train. We were finally on our way to Beijing! However, I wonder what that note said...?

Most of the IECS teachers came together in Beijing before leaving for Sanya. They had a nice dinner and went shopping. I, however, was suffering from food poisoning and spent most of Saturday in Jim’s hotel bathroom. Not fun! I was really worried that I might have the flu and that meant that flying the next day was going to be really tough. However, I felt a lot better in the morning and the flight down to Hainan went smoothly.

It was great getting to the Sanya airport and immediately shedding two layers of clothes. That morning we had left in the snow and now I was standing in the sun with a t-shirt and shorts. We all made our way to the Baohang Hotel and joined up with the rest of the IECS teachers who had arrived earlier.

The conference kept us fairly busy but there was plenty of time to hit the beach. It was great just to lie in the beach chairs and soak up the sun. The ocean was fairly warm and getting to swim in the blue waters was great! There was an abundance of tropical fruit everywhere! It was easy to get your fill of pineapples, mangoes, bananas, and coconuts. At nighttime they had live music on the beach and even a few places that played English songs. We arrived one night just in time to hear “Hotel California.”

One of the coolest things that happened during our time in Sanya was getting to visit a resort with over 60 different hot springs. Each pool had its own special property. There was a hot spring filled with rose petals, one filled with lemon slices, and one that was even filled with coffee! The weirdest of them all was the therapeutic fish spring. This was a special pool with hundreds of tiny fish that could live in hot water. The fish would actually swim up to you and eat off the dead skin from your body. It was super ticklish. They said that it’s a great way to exfoliate your skin. All I can say is that it feels really weird. But I had to try it so I got in. Within a minute I had a couple dozen fish sucking away at my skin. The girls tried it too at it was great seeing them freak out! Ha ha...

Another great thing that happened was getting to meet one of Beth’s students. This young man goes to school in Tianjin but actually comes from Hainan. Beth had invited him to join us for day at the beach. Bob is a really great guy. He’s super energetic and always smiling. He and I hit it off really quick and we spent most of the day together. We swam together, did Tai Chi on the beach, and even had pizza together. It started getting late and I knew that Bob had a long drive home. Neither Beth nor I really wanted him to go so I invited him to share the second bed in my hotel room. He agreed and we ended up staying up really late watching Mission Imposable: Ghost Protocol in Mandarin. I'm glad there were English subtitles.

The best part of the whole week happened on the beach. Each day I would head to the beach to practice my Tai Chi. I just love practicing in time with the sound of the crashing waves. A lot of Chinese tourists would walk by, they would see me practicing and then they would want to take a picture with me. Some of them would even want me to teach them some of the basic moves. It seems rather funny to me that I, as an American, was teaching Tai Chi, a Chinese martial art, to Chinese people!

During my time practicing Tai Chi, one older man came up and was watching me quite intently. He seemed to be studying my form. Finally he came over and introduced himself as Grandmaster Wu Bin. I had no idea who that was at the time but a Chinese friend explained to me that this old man was the wushu coach that trained Li Lian Jie. I didn’t know who that was either. My Chinese friend then explained to me that Li Lian Jie is a famous movie star. Yet, I still didn’t know the name… How foolish I was in that moment. Li Lian Jie is known to most Americans as Jet Li... yes, the Jet Li from such movies as "Hero" and "Romeo Must Die." I was actually standing on the beach talking to the man that trained Jet Li! Then the old man invited me to join him as together we practiced Tai Chi on the beach. It was really cool. Afterwards he then did a demonstration of wushu and it was very impressive!

I’m back in Langfang now and it feels good to be back in a familiar environment. However, I big part of me still would like to be laying on the beach soaking up the sun. Oh, well. Back to winter coats and snow shovels!